Yet another work week

I spent the past weekend back home in Ann Arbor, and had a great time. I managed to catch up with some of my friends, which was a lot of fun. I got caught up on a lot of errands, and even did a little work on the house. I also spent a bit of time outside shoveling snow, since we got several inches of snow over the weekend.

I was rather happy about one accomplishment this weekend. In 2004, I started the process of networking the house. However, for whatever reason, I had never gotten around to terminating the wiring for the master bedroom. I finally finished the master bedroom wiring, and hooked up the network switch. I now have at least one Gigabit Ethernet jack in four rooms in the house. At some point I will install network wiring in the small bedroom and the kitchen, but both of those are very low priority.

I flew back to DC last night, and while we were on our way into the DC area, I took the following picture. The picture is a little blurry (what else can one do with a point-and-shoot in a moving plane at night?), but it is clear enough to show the general outline of Arlington.


The city from above

This Google Earth snapshot provides a frame of reference for the photo:


Google Earth map of Arlington and Alexandria

Some shots in the dark

While I was driving home tonight, I noticed that the full moon tonight looked very cool. So after throwing in a load of laundry (clean clothes having a higher priority than cool pictures), I headed out to the Iwo Jima Memorial area and took some pictures.

It was an interesting challenge to take a picture of the moon that showed the intricacies of the moon's surface, as well as the slightly reddish color that it had tonight.



I wanted to show the contrast between the moon and the clouds passing in front of it. I did not get the exposure quite right, but it is a cool picture anyway.



Here you can see the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the DC Capitol all lined up together.

Another rant about the mortgage industry

As a follow-up to my previous post about the perils of the financial services industry, I wanted to comment on the housing bubbles and the current state of the housing market. I am convinced that the housing bubble was the direct result of the mortgage lenders indiscriminately lending excessive amounts of money to people who couldn't really afford it. Take the Washington, D.C. market as an example. If lenders had followed previous lending practices, such as requiring down payments and lending only up to three times a person's annual income, housing prices would have climbed at a much slower rate. This is because there would have been significantly less people bidding up the prices of homes, with a much lower amount of available capital to raise bid prices. Housing prices would have gone up, but they would not have increased as significantly as they did during the housing bubble. In addition, those who owned homes would have mortgages that they would have been likely to continue to afford.

Instead, the loose money standards meant that large numbers of people had significant amounts of capital at their disposal, and were bidding up the price of houses. Individual mortgage burdens were at (or exceeded) the amounts they could maximally afford. As a result, the current situation evolved, where significant numbers of people can no longer afford their mortgage payments, leading to foreclosures and precipitous drops in housing values.

Sadly, this situation not only affects the banks and those individuals who borrowed more than they could afford, but it also affects the innocent people who actually can afford their homes and their monthly payments. Because of the significantly reduced home values, homes have become a relatively non-liquid asset. People who need to relocate are unable to sell their homes without losing significant amounts of money. As a result, they either need to continue living in a home that is too small (perhaps they have a new child), or have to rent out their home (perhaps they have to move for their job). So these people have to shoulder the burden generated by the greed of the financial industry, and by those people who borrowed more than they could possibly afford.

And the financial industry wants these same people - the ones who played by the rules, who are financially stable, and who are paying taxes - to help bail it out through low interest rates, more Fannie/Freddie mortgages, and a "stimulus"?

I think that the United States should only consider assisting the financial industry if every executive of Citigroup, Countrywide, Bank of America, Washington Mutual, etc. gives back their multi-million dollar compensation for the past five years. Then maybe we can talk. Otherwise, the financial industry should deal with its own problems.

Bail out the banks?

In the wake of the collapse of the housing boom, banks and financial institutions are taking significant losses. Unfortunately, banks have not been hit with the degree of losses which they actually deserve. The Federal Reserve has been propping up the market and banking industry by lowering the interest rates. The problem is, the banks deserve the financial pain that they are in. Mortgage lenders approved loans to lots of people who couldn't really afford them, and mortgage brokers had financial incentives (provided by the lenders) to sell as many loans as possible, even when the loans were risky. Back in 2004, when I bought my house, mortgage lenders were approving loans up to four or five times the annual incomes of borrowers, as opposed to the traditional multiplier of three.

To demonstrate how totally insane the banking industry was, here is an example in practical terms. With a five to one ratio, this meant that a person with a $70K salary could get a $350K mortgage. This approximates to payments of about $2155 per month on an after-tax income of $4000 per month. Add in another $700 per month in property taxes and insurance, and the person is left with $1145 per month to pay for food ($600), utilities ($150), condo fees ($300), maintenance (???), car payments ($400), clothing, etc. In the DC area, the person would be running a major deficit. Worse, during the housing boom, $350K would only pay for a tiny condo in Arlington.

Of course, the banking industry knows how to do math, and they fully understood the risks associated with the loans that they made. They were gambling that the housing boom would continue, and in the process, made huge profits originating loans. Now, however, the consequences of their actions are coming due, and they want the American taxpayer to help bail them out. At the moment, the help is indirect, through low Fed discount rates, a Treasury-inspired "superfund", market intervention by Freddie and Fannie, and perhaps an economic "stimulus" package. But does anyone doubt that the taxpayer will be asked to bail out the financial industry if these stopgap measures fail?

Capitalism is about taking risks, and hopefully taking smart risks. Companies that make smart decisions should profit, and those that don't should lose money. We shouldn't reward the financial industry for bad behavior, and nobody should shed a tear for the financial industry as it tries to dig itself out of the mess it created.

Another busy week starts

Despite being a short work week since I got back from Colorado, it was a pretty busy week. Despite that, life has been going pretty well. There never seems to be enough time in a day, and I felt like I spent the entire week either in meetings, or preparing for meetings. I was glad when the weekend finally arrived. Yesterday, I managed to get outdoors and went out hiking at Turkey Run with Heather. We had a very fun time, despite that rather muddy trails.

Tomorrow is the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Despite the fact that most of DC has the day off, I have to get a fair amount of administrative work done tomorrow, as well as visit two customer sites. The rest of the week promises to continue to be busy. On the plus side, next weekend, I will be heading home to Ann Arbor for the weekend. I am looking forward to catching up with friends.

Catching up after the holidays

Life has been a bit of a blur since the Christmas holidays finished up. Stepping back into the work world was a little like walking under a waterfall. Work has been a constant stream of activity, and life outside of work has been busy as well. I got a little behind on sleep over the course of the week, and by the time Friday had rolled around, I felt a little like a walking zombie.


Candles at Zen
On Friday evening, I flew out to Colorado to visit my brother, his wife, and my brand-new nephew. My nephew was born right after Christmas, so this was my first time meeting him. He is a somewhat tiny baby, weighing in at about seven pounds at two weeks after being born, and of course he is totally cute. He is at that stage where he is spending most of his time sleeping. Thankfully for my brother and his wife, he's not very fussy, and seems to be a pretty contented baby.

Life in the key of gray

Today was a rather depressing sort of day. It got started on the wrong foot when I woke up after having not quite enough sleep. The fact that I had to get up and pack up for my trip down to Virginia did not help matters at all. I finally got on the road in the early afternoon, and had to cope with almost nine hours of rain, drizzle, and just general gloom. Thankfully, the traffic was not bad, and the construction zones on the Pennsylvania Turnpike (doesn't it seem like there are always construction zones on the Pennsylvania Turnpike?) were idle. I made reasonable time on the roads, and five hundred and thirty-one miles later, I arrived back in the urban mess known as Arlington.

Tomorrow should be a better day, and of course, it is back to work on Monday. Hopefully, the transition back to the work world won't be too painful.

Coming in from the cold

Tonight, I was inspired to go out and take pictures of North Campus at night. The weather was rather cold (about 10 degrees Fahrenheit), so I bundled up and trudged out through the snow. For whatever reason, I had only brought my pocket tripod with me on my trip home from Virginia, and this particular tripod only extends to a height of about twelve inches. This meant that for some of my photos, I had to lie down in the snow, which was a little chilly, to say the least. Shooting pictures at night is always a bit of a challenge, since I have to bracket extensively for exposure, and rely on manual focusing. Still, I managed to get a few decent photos before the biting cold drove me back indoors.

Click on any of the images for a larger version


A path on North Campus



The Music School at night


The Music School sundial

Happy 2008!

I have been enjoying my vacation, although perhaps a little too much. I intended to get some work done, and work on some projects around the house. Neither has happened, but I suppose that isn't a bad thing. The time off has been great. I have managed to catch up with friends, hang out, relax, and generally have a low-stress week.

We got a fair amount of snow here on New Year's Eve. The official measurement for Ann Arbor was ten inches, and I think that's pretty close to what I got at my house. I spent about an hour and half shoveling on New Year's Day. Despite the snow, life in Ann Arbor quickly resumed its normal course, unlike DC where everything would still be shut down.