whichwayup.org

Race to the Bottom

So it looks like the stock market is currently free falling. There is seemingly no end in sight for the current drops, amid all sorts of fear and worry. The credit markets are still not functioning, and it appears as though it’s going to take a lot of effort to get them back on track.

A few thoughts, even though I’m by no means any sort of expert.

While the current situation shares some features of the Great Depression, a lot of things are different. First off, the FDIC has raised insurance limits, and is discussing possibly removing limits all together. It’s not so much whether or not the FDIC could actually pay out if every bank failed (they couldn’t), but to encourage people to keep their money in the bank. Secondly, in the event of massive bank failures, it would be better for the Treasury to simply “print money” (not exactly how it would work, but the idea) to cover losses. It’s better to inflate the currency than to have people completely lose all of their money. I’d take my money even with a 20-25% devaluation than have 0% of it.

Second, the world appears to be working together to find some sort of solution. There is talk of a possible worldwide suspension of trading while specifics of new regulation are hammered out. I worry that this might cause markets to plunge right before this happens, but it might not be the worst idea in the world. Close all the major stock markets to allow people to figure some things out.

My major concern is the fact that Congress has recessed until after the election, and we have a lame duck President. When the election is over, it will be very important to get the new person’s economic team in place ASAP. This will require all sorts of cooperation with the Bush administration. I hope they will agree.

Current Events and the like

A few years ago when I was taking Economic Statistics and Econometrics at Georgetown, I remember other students talking about their awesome internships at Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs. Most of these kids had fathers or uncles or whatnot who worked for an investment bank and had gotten them that crucial summer internship. The summer interhship of getting coffee and possibly reading the Financial Times leads to getting paid to get coffee and read the Financial Times, eventually hopefully leading to lucrative career as an investment banker.

I suppose now the tables have turned, and I’m glad that I didn’t get into that rat race. For a while I thought, what if I had really pushed myself, and tried to get a job in New York with a bank, even though I didn’t want to move to New York or work for a bank. If I had, I’d probably still have a job (for now) but would be terrified and under so much stress.

It all works out in the end, right?

I haven’t really had time to pour over the specifics of what exactly is happening, and the details of this proposed bailout. I can’t help but think this is going to potentially cause more problems than it fixes, though. Gold has been rising obscenely fast the past few days, I’m guessing on fears of serious inflation.

I predicted $1000/ounce for gold last year, but that was too premature. Maybe this year, though. I really hope not, though. For everyone’s sake.

The Dilemma of the Blog

I was reading this post yesterday, and it got me thinking about the purpose of a blog.

I started my first “blog” back in 1999, before I knew what a blog was. It was a simple site, with a backend written in Miva, where I posted links and blurbs about things I was interested in. It even had Miva-powered comments! If you ask me to recall how to even write “Hello world!” in Miva, I won’t be able to tell you.

Anyhow, when I launched whichwayup.org in 2001, it wasn’t simply with the purpose of being a “blog.”

I’m going to differentiate here between the word “blog” circa 2001, and Blog, present day. Today there are more Blogs than ever, many of them located on free hosting services such as Blogger or Typepad, etc, etc. Many people write very anonymously, often never giving away more than a first name or initial. This is completely different than what I was accustomed to when I started this site.

I was used to the idea of a blog being a personal web site of, well, a specific person. It was more than just a blog, the weblog was a portion (often the primary portion) of a person’s web site. The author would try to convey aspects of their personality through the site—and not just with the weblog. Subtle things such as the layout and typography, or the artwork/photography that went a long with the text… it all established a very personal presence on the Internet.

As such, you read a person’s blog… you were interested in what this person had to say, and you were curious as to what else they were interested in. Maybe you read it because they were from the same town as you… or they liked the same kind of music, or you actually knew them in real life. Or maybe you stumbled upon it and just became fascinated for some reason.

In my own life, I know I’ve ended up meeting people in the real world because of their web presence. A few of my good friends, in fact, resulted from coming across a link to their web site somewhere.

But, it’s different now. Blogs of 2008 are often divided into such niche areas, such as a “wine and food blog of Washington, D.C.” written by anonymous. Perhaps this is because people feel that they should write what they know, or at least write about something they feel they are qualified to write about.

I’ve toyed around with this idea, of writing about something very specific that I have a good deal of knowledge about. But each and every time I try to actually go ahead and do that, I’m very turned off by the idea. I don’t want to tailor my writing to attract an audience, or sell advertising. Sure, if I could manage a very popular home improvement blog, I could probably make some money from it. But I wouldn’t want to limit myself to only writing about that.

So instead, I fall back on the 2001 concept of the blog. That this is a site about Dave Stroup. It is, in a way, a little bit egotistical. Sure, you probably won’t come across this site when searching for any specific term. This isn’t a D.C. blog, or a photography blog, or a design blog. It’s not a wine blog, or a hardware blog.

Instead, it’s my site. I write about D.C. I write about photography. I write about travel, wine, hardware, railroads, design and technology. I write about myself. I’d rather have 20 readers who are interested in what I think, or interested to read my prose… than 500 who come to read something I had to force myself to write.

At the end of the day, the best niche is your own—yourself.

Weekend Roundup

So DC survived Hanna, with some moderate-to-serious flooding in the suburbs in Fairfax County. Otherwise it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as Hurricane Isabel back in ‘03, so that’s good. An Isabel-sized storm could always happen again, though, so hopefully having TS Hanna come through at least gave the government some practice in responding. Maybe.

Election Watch 2008 is still on, and McCain is enjoying a bit of a post-convention bounce. The Gallup/USA Today poll that puts McCain-Palin up by 10 points is crap, it’s clearly an outlier. The other post-convention polls pretty much put it at a dead heat (nationwide, likely voters).

However, we have to remember these polls mean little or nothing. Not only is the election still two months away, but national polls don’t measure a whole lot when it comes down to the votes that count, and that’s the Electoral College. Check out FiveThirtyEight.com for an amazingly intricate look at state-by-state data and EV projections. Some of you might remember electoral-vote.com from previous elections… 538 seems to be much more in-depth.

Hanna

So it looks like Tropical Storm Hanna might become a hurricane any hour now. It’s on track to hit DC sometime tomorrow afternoon/evening, but with Tropical Storm conditions beginning tomorrow morning.

We’re under a Tropical Storm Warning now, with an expected 5-8 inches of rain on Saturday. Wind gusts up to 45 mph, but that could increase (or decrease).

I’m not terribly concerned about it, other than the potential for serious annoyances. Thankfully I don’t live in a low-lying area, or own a house anywhere near the Potomac. I live in an apartment building on a hill… flooding hopefully won’t be too much of a concern. However, the building does have a tendency to leak when it rains a lot… so I might end up with some water damage. I’ll just have to move everything away from the spots that are known to leak and set up buckets and towels. I’m a little concerned about losing electricity, but there’s nothing I can really do to prepare for that other than have flashlights and batteries on hand.

Having grown up in the Midwest, hurricanes were a very foreign concept to me. I remember hearing about them on the news… especially Hurricane Andrew back in the day. It wasn’t until 2005, though, when I experienced my first real hurricane with Isabel.

So we’ll see how we fair with Hanna. It looks like Josephine, if it keeps together, might head up this way as well.