NewGeography.com blogs

It was eighteen above zero and snow in Fargo this morning. Record high flood forecast on the Red River of the North in the Southern Valley. I went down to Fargo, from Grand Forks (70 miles north), to help my sister’s family empty out their basement. They live in the southern subdivision of Osgood. The blare of heavy equipment resounded throughout the neighborhood as I pulled in, feverishly building an earthen dike as a secondary defense roughly six to eight blocks North of their house. In hurry up mode here, you only move what is irreplaceable – family pictures, cherished belongings of your children when they were young, personal belongings from your life – the rest (TVs, furniture) is just stuff.

As I was leaving the Osgood neighborhood, a steady stream of volunteers marched into the area to bolster the sandbag dikes. Young and old alike working side-by-side to accomplish a greater good – save their community. But for many it wasn’t even their community. Volunteers from throughout the region came to this community to help in its time of need. There is often no reason to be there other than “I heard they needed help”. No questions, no bitching.

Heading to North Fargo, my other sister lives about 8 blocks from the river. The secondary dike there is roughly 2 blocks away from her house. She is heavily involved in emergency preparedness through her work at the local hospital and had her basement cleared out. I was dropping off an emergency generator, submersible sump pump and other supplies hoping that they won’t be needed. Parked in their driveway I saw buses filled with volunteers coming down the clay and snow covered street joined by others walking to the area. Don’t impede emergency vehicles and semis loaded with sandbags – other street traffic was at a minimum.

Why does this region rock? If you saw the resolve of these volunteers, National Guard, Red Cross and emergency personnel and their willingness and ability to work together, help their neighbors and work collaboratively to defend their community you wouldn’t need to ask.

You may have seen the national media coverage of the flooding in North Dakota and Minnesota. Some of us here at NewGeography.com live right in the middle of it. I parked my car this morning at the base of an earthen dike holding back the Red Red River in Grand Forks, ND. Here in Grand Forks we were wiped out by a similar flood and fire in 1997. We evacuated more than 50,000 people at that time and virtually every property in the area was affected.

Since 1997, hundreds of homes have been bought out and $400 million was spent on a dike and diversion protection system creating 2,200 acres of green space and more than 20 miles of trails in our little urbanized area of about 70,000.

This has created a strange feeling - feeling a little useless sitting back and watching the herculean efforts in Fargo while we assemble pieces in the invisible flood wall and listen to officials reassure the public. Many from this area have boarded buses to head down to the Fargo area and help out. Meanwhile, you won't find a drain plug or generator at a store in town.

Here's what's happened so far:

In the western part of the state, Bismarck's situation was alleviated by taking explosives to an ice dam on the Missouri River.

In western North Dakota, parts of small towns including Linton, Hazen, Zap, and Mott have had problems with overland floods.

The most concern now is the rising Red River, making up the North Dakota and Minnesota Border. Thousands of volunteers from around the area have converged on Fargo to help, but the situation is now getting serious. Sandbagging takes a lot of effort and sandbag dikes are subject to failure.

Right now the cities of Fargo and Moorhead are holding strong, but the rural surrounding areas are in trouble.

Here's a video report of the Coast Guard rescuing people from their homes in Oxbow, south of Fargo on Wednesday:

Here's a time lapse video put together by Minnesota Public Radio of the sandbagging efforts at the Fargodome. What's interesting is that this is actually a secodary sandbag filling operation, started up after the huge volunteer turnouts:

And, here's the direct link to the Fargo river guage, updated about every hour. Fargo successfully defended against a flood just under 40 feet in 1997. 41 feet would be a new record, and the region is scrambling to get the protection systems up to 43 feet.

Fargo Flood Gauge

The problem is -- it just keeps on snowing and raining and the projected crests keep rising. The Red River flows north. Our colleague Doug just headed down to Fargo to help protect his sister's house wearing his only possession he has remaining after the Grand Forks floods and fire in 1997: his belt.

We'll keep you posted.

The Treasury this week disclosed details of their plan to pump $1 trillion into the financial system by removing “Legacy Assets” from the balance sheets of banks. Wading through the multitude of documents and documents, I’m reminded of a remark by Michael Milken in a conversation with Charlie Rose on October 27, 2008 “Complexity is not innovation.”

Since its inception, the plan has been sold to Congress and the media as one with potential positive payoffs for the public coffers. To support this idea, proponents point to the experience of the Resolution Trust Company (RTC) in resolving the Savings and Loan (S&L) Crisis. Back then, RTC took over failing S&Ls – some of which were bankrupted by bad real estate loans made worse when they were forced to sell off below-investment grade bond assets – the by-now-well-known Junk Bonds.

Selling off today’s junk bonds will, I agree, clean up the balance sheets of the banks and make them more attractive to investors and depositors. But the investment in junk bonds now is not going to turn out like the investment in junk bonds then. For starters, the value of the junk bonds then declined as a result of the forced sell-off – Congress prohibited S&Ls from holding junk bonds on their balance sheets. When this supply was dumped on the market, the prices naturally dropped. Selling assets at depressed prices damaged a lot of S&Ls. RTC stepped in near the bottom of those prices to take control of the assets. When credit markets returned to normal, the prices of the junk bonds rose and the investments had positive returns.

Then, junk bonds paid extraordinary rates of return – 10 percentage points above Treasuries at the peak. At that time, a 30-year U.S. Treasury bond could be paying more than 18% interest.

Now, we are talking about junk bonds that we all know are junk – no matter fancy labels like “Legacy.” What rate of return could there be on a mortgage bond – no matter how you “slice-and-dice” it – created when mortgage interest rates were 5-6%? Add to that http://www.newgeography.com/content/00679-story-financial-crisis-burnin%... >our knowledge of the problems underlying these assets and it is increasingly unlikely that there will be any positive payoff for taxpayers in this plan.

On March 25, 2009, Mirek Topolanek, President of the European Union, called the U.S. economic plan “the way to hell.” His concern is that we’ll have to finance these trillion dollar bailouts with borrowing and that will ultimately further undermine global financial markets. He’s right, of course. The public-private partnerships will finance the purchase of the “Legacy Assets” by issuing debt. That debt will be guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the same agency that guarantees our savings accounts at the local bank. Our guarantee is backed by the payment of insurance premiums to FDIC. The guarantee on the debt used to purchase Legacy Assets will be secured by the Legacy Assets – which will be rated by the same credit rating agencies that gave us triple-A rated subprime mortgage bonds in the first place. How can this possibly turn out well? I’m sure Treasury, Federal Reserve and FDIC have good intentions, but as EU President Topolanek says, they may all end up as pavement on “the way to hell.” As NYTimes columnist Paul Krugman said of the new plan, “What an awful mess.”

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is on the cover of the April 2009 issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine. In the lead article, “Man in the Middle,” the authors refer to his time at the New York Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) as “experience as a consensus builder.” This overlooks the fact that it was easy for him to get everyone to agree, to build group solidarity, when he simply gave the banks and broker-dealers everything they wanted.

The Primary Dealers, those broker-dealers and banks who have a special arrangement with the FRB for trading in treasury securities, agreed when Geithner let them fail to deliver $2.5 trillion of treasury securities for seven weeks in the fall; they agreed when he let them fail to deliver more than $1 trillion two years earlier; they agreed when he let them fail to deliver treasury securities even after Geithner’s own economists told him it was dangerous. By the way, last year the New York FRB’s public information department prevented those economists from speaking on the record about that research with a Bloomberg reporter.

Now, at a hearing on March 24, 2009 before the House Financial Services Committee, Secretary Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke lectured us on the awesome responsibilities of Treasury and Federal Reserve in the current crisis – without admitting that they had those same responsibilities while the crisis was being created.

In a joint statement from the Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve they offer no explanation for their failure to fulfill their “central role … in preventing and managing financial crises.” Rather, they use the fact of that role to require that we accept whatever plan they put before us today as the best and wisest course. To convince us that their plan is the right one, they can all point to the fact that the stock markets rallied (gaining nearly 7% across the board) led by the shares of financial institutions (Goldman Sachs’ shares went from $97.48 on Friday night to $111.93 on Monday – a gain of about 15%).

I criticized the “Public Private Partnership” when it was announced in February 2009. Calling Wall Street’s bad investments “Legacy Assets” doesn’t change the fact that they are “junk.” They could call it “the hair of the dog” because they now want to invest taxpayer money into the same junk investments that started the financial snow ball rolling in the first place.

Just because the stock market rallied doesn’t make this “consensus building” – I call it being Wall Street’s lapdog.

While San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom was recently chided for his water bottle usage, the city of Los Angeles hasn’t been much better.

It was recently reported that the city of LA spent $184,736 on bottled water in 2008, “despite a mayoral directive that it should not be provided at the city’s expense.”

City officials are encouraged to use coolers or pitchers of tap water for special events, and those that wish to drink bottled water “can do so at their own expense,” said City Controller Laura Chick.

Despite a 2005 memo for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa stating that city funds were not to be used on bottled water, certain city departments continued to spend funds on the plastic bottles.

The biggest spenders were found to be Public Works ($69,696), Los Angeles World Airports ($31,429), Los Angeles Police Department ($19,708), General Services ($19,508), Transportation ($14,595), and Harbor ($11,993).

The Department of Water and Power cut their spending down from $31,160 in 2004/05 to $3,419 in 2008, while the departments of Community Development, Commission on Children Youth and Families, Fire, Housing, Library, Neighborhood Empowerment, and Personnel ceased purchases altogether.

Although spending has been reduced, public employees continue to expect the city to foot the bill for their bottled water. Such blatant non-compliance is hard to swallow.