Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktSaw this over the weekend. Basically, this billionaire wants to move beyond simple charity to put his money to use in efforts that will lead to job creation and a more lasting effort. I think it’s kind of a “teach a man” vs. “give a man” idea.
But, he’s got an email address and is soliciting ideas. Perhaps a group letter is in order?
See the column here
Late edit: Obviously he should pay us to post on this blog.
Filed under: Uncategorized |
All Things in Moderation 
I'll have to think about that, but I'd say either providing capital to a fledgling business idea, education or infrastructure. When Meg Whitman spent so much money here trying to endear herself to CA voters, I suggested she should use the money as business investment instead and get CA working again, then run for Governor. She would have had a great record to run on then.
LikeLike
Both business and infrastructure.Who all is out of a job? The service sector keeps adding jobs, but the construction industry is having issues. We don't need so many new homes and buildings so much as we need to update what we have.So, how about something geared towards solar/wind/geothermal energy?All of those require construction-like installs, and they will also need future maintenance. But no one wants to do it because it is expensive.However, if a sufficient number were done, everyone's electric load would go down, in addition to creating a 'template' that would result in the installation being cheaper, until it is like just putting on a new roof, or installing all new windows.It is an idea. Don't know how workable, but a start.
LikeLike
I'm fascinated by his desire to give his money away versus investing it in something like small scale venture capitalism. Good business ideas don't require credentials, and create lasting jobs. It was interesting to hear a man who's business success is attributable to rent seeking at least admit that he didn't know how to create jobs. I'm sorry to be a cynic but it just never ceases to amaze me that investment is somehow viewed as "bad" or at best "neutral," while donation is somehow always "good."
LikeLike
Or maybe some kind of school that only teaches trades; whether it is stone masonry, or welding, or jewelry making (I don't mean stringing a few beads together!) It would have to be localized; lots of call for some of that in the city, not so much in rural areas, so the trade school would have to be specific to what the area needs.Let's see…what else…Scholarships for the poor. Something that pays more than just tuition, that helps with the living expenses while you attend.Shoot, I haven't got any real ideas…
LikeLike
Interesting to see the trade school idea — b/c it's the exact opposite of the "everyone must go to college" system we've created. College isn't for everyone and that we push people into debt to finance it just makes it worse.
LikeLike
McWingI'm sorry to be a cynic but it just never ceases to amaze me that investment is somehow viewed as "bad" or at best "neutral," while donation is somehow always "good." By whom? And always? I don't get your point here, who are you talking about, liberals, business people, or just billionaires like this guy?
LikeLike
I agree with the trade school idea, everyone needs a marketable skill if they want success whether in business, finance or blue collar jobs. There are exceptions of course, but less than there used to be.
LikeLike
McWing:I has similar thoughts. If he is actually able to put his money into something that creates "self-sustaining" jobs, ie jobs that create the value to pay for themselves, he will have ended up increasing, not depleting, his fortune. That's called investment, not philanthropy. I am also a little bewildered by the notion that spending on infrastructure will create self-sustaining jobs. It is possible, I suppose, that such spending can create new opportunities for jobs to be created. Build a new road, for example, into a previously unreachable part of the country, and perhaps the ability to exploit the newly accessible area for wealth (and job) creation will occur. But the immediate jobs created by the spending itself are not self-sustaining, and there are plenty of infrastructure projects (like fixing existing roads or bridges) that won't have any noticeable derivative effect on wealth/job creation.
LikeLike
On the trade-school idea, I could be wrong but I don't think the problem right now for the US is a lack of workers with particular skills. The problem is a lack of jobs for a large number of people who already have skills. I am not aware of any businesses that would go on a hiring spree if only it could find workers trained and ready to go. Which, of course, doesn't mean there aren't any. But are there?
LikeLike
Inrfastructure does a lot of good. Fixing existing roads and bridges won't have any noticeable derivative effect on job creation, but will perhaps prevent unnecessary drag. I don't imagine we'd have the economy we have to today without infrastructure, both private and public, that we have–i.e., the Interstate System, our telephone and now cellular infrastructure, communication satellites, and, of course, the Internet . . . and worth noting that the base of two critical pieces of infrastructure, the Internet and the Interstate system, were given a military rationale in their development. I think the infrastructure work is both valuable and important, but a lot of the money we spend doesn't go into either upkeep of infrastructure, or creation of new infrastructure, but into the government playing VC to green energy companies, etc. And this bit is emotional, rather than rationale, but I have a bad feeling about areas being abandoned, roads crumbling, entire neighborhoods being bulldozed . . . I put basic infrastructure maintenance and creation at a high premium, myself, of government spending. I'm wiling to think long term. At least that's something. Infrastructure and education. Laying the groundwork for commercial space exploration. Short term, I don't know what the government can do. As I'm fond of saying, there's no "jobs" button in the Whitehouse, and quick fixes generally don't actually fix much. But billionaires can put their money wherever they like! Want to invest it? Give it away? Go for it. The more billionaires you've got trying something, the more likely it is that one might actually hit job-creation gold.
LikeLike
If he doesn't care about losing (giving away) his money, perhaps what he ought to do is buy up as many underwater home mortgages as possible and restructure the terms, including forgiving portions of it to bring what is owed in line with current market values.
LikeLike
Kevin:Inrfastructure does a lot of good. I agree. I have nothing against infrastructure spending, and indeed most infrastructure (properly understood) is a classic public good for which the government ought be responsible.I just don't think it will necessarily accomplish what Conway says his goal is.
LikeLike
Scott, I like that idea. I wish a billionaire would swoop into CA and do something about the underwater mortgages, they're dragging us all down. And I think infrastructure is valuable in the same ways Kevin does, but also if it puts people back to work, even temporarily, it floods the local economy where the work is being done with money, which may increase the employment numbers overall. Whether it lasts is another story. It would take improvement in overall economic numbers for that to happen.
LikeLike
The problem is a lack of jobs for a large number of people who already have skills. —-The skills that we lost during this recession are mostly manufacturing. (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11247/1171769-28-0.stm)The factory is gone, went overseas. So what do we replace them with?Trades. Cabinetry. Welding. Glass-making (a huge sheet of glass got broken in the Channel 7 news building. CHINA was the only place that could replace it). I am sure that there are a lot more trades.
LikeLike
I also like the idea of evening out mortgages. It is a one-time thing, and done.Banks can stop crying about money lost (they never really got it to begin with, so how could they lose what they never had?).Push the reset button.
LikeLike
Sorry for my generalizing, Lms. This guy's a certified "nipple-sucker,"'as skip ailing used to say. I guess I don't understand why he doesn't open an office in the community and start loaning money to people with good ideas.
LikeLike
"t is a one-time thing, and done"I wonder if it is. We can "reset" the current mess, but as long as we keep policies in place that encourage over-investment in real estate, won't we end up in the same place?
LikeLike
McWing, then that's the idea you should email him with. He seems to be, if we're talking about charity, the "nipple" and not the "nipple-sucker" (Wow,I had a hard time typing that, too much Plumline nanny editing engraved into my being after two years). I agree he has lots of options and really should just get busy doing something. It shouldn't be that hard to figure out if you're a billionaire.
LikeLike
Nova:Yep. Forgive me for not keeping up, but can they still do the derivative thing? Wasn't that the underlying culprit that allowed the unbridled greed that got us to this place?Bring back the old regs that prevented that. We were able to buy and sell houses loooong time before the aughts. Also, (OT) what was the S&L thing about?Anyway, we could reset, but the mortgage industry would first have to be regulated in such fashion that this can't happen again.I don't think the billionaire has much say on that end. Or maybe he might………Any other ideas?
LikeLike
Taroya:Wasn't that the underlying culprit that allowed the unbridled greed that got us to this place?No, it wasn't.Bring back the old regs that prevented that.The regs that prevented what?
LikeLike
"Wasn't that the underlying culprit that allowed the unbridled greed that got us to this place?"You say that like it's a bad thing. "The regs that prevented what?"Selling houses for $0 down, I imagine. I don't know if balloon mortgages were always legal, but we certainly didn't always have them. How long have banks been able to make questionable loans and then immediately resell them? And how long were mortgages being repacked as opaque derivative securities? . . . Look at me, using words like I know what I'm talking about. But . . . there's a lot to it. We can say, "greed" and "deregulation" and yet there are always numerous things that remain unregulated, and greed remains omnipresent, but we don't have collapses like we've seen recently in housing and construction. I found this:http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/03/07/Strahan.pdf . . . But it is dense. I'm not up to summarizing it, yet. I'm not sure I understand it, but I think the immediate lesson to be drawn (via skimming, anyway) is that a lot of things have impacted banking and the financial sector over the past few decades, helping lead to our current situation, not just regulation.Although, I have noted, if a bank is too big to fail, then it is simply too big, and should be busted like a trust.
LikeLike
This comment has been removed by the author.
LikeLike
Reposting the comment that I deleted:Scott: Okay, so what was it then?
LikeLike
Kevin:Selling houses for $0 down, I imagine.You'd probably first have to get the government out of the business of encouraging it.I'm thinking a primer on derivatives and CDO's (not least to explain that they are not the same thing) might have to be the subject of a future post.
LikeLike
Scott — have you noticed a loosening of requirements? I got an offer for an investor loan that only required 20% down — not the usual 25%.
LikeLike
NoVA:I am not really involved in the mortgage side of the market, so I don't know if it has been easing up much. But since I was a buyer at the very, very worst time (summer 2006), I am certainly hoping so.Taroya:There is plenty of blame to go around, among banks, government, individuals. It is a complex situation that doesn't lend itself to saying "Had only this one thing been different, it all would have been OK." But the short of it is that we are in difficult times right now because too many people are over-leveraged, mostly in housing. And that leverage is not the result of derivatives (which, BTW, is a generic term for all kinds of different things). It is the result of people wanting more than they could afford, and both the government and banks wanting to please them.
LikeLike
It surely can't be that simple.I can see over-leverage in housing, and I can see that that would have an impact in construction.But we lost the majority of our jobs in manufacturing. Surely it wasn't just a conversion of bad timing… that we over-leveraged at the same time we lost our jobs base.
LikeLike
"It is the result of people wanting more than they could afford, and both the government and banks wanting to please them."And this would include over-building and over-development, too, right? There was a construction boom going on 6 or 7 years ago that seemed, to me, the polar opposite of what they ought to be doing, given the population attrition in our county. What they were doing in the counties folks were moving too . . . well, they were apparently optimistic that their populations of working adults would continue to grow at 7% a year or more and never, ever stop. And people were told they could afford it. The banks, loan officers, the TV, and Freddie and Fannie said of course you can afford a $300k house on a fry-cooks salary. And that balloon payment . . . well, heck, by the time your house payment quadruples, you'll have probably already sold your house. Or you'll already be rich! In both cases when I went to get house loans, I was approved for an insane amount (I got good credit, but good credit does not give me the power to pay 75% of my income on a house note and survive) and there was very little cautionary warnings about much of anything, leaving me to navigate for myself (fortunately, I don't know much, but I knew I wanted to make the maximum down payment I was capable of making, and that I wanted a fixed-rate mortgage).
LikeLike
"that we over-leveraged at the same time we lost our jobs base."We've been over-leveraging for years. It's only recessions and depressions that put a stop to increasing per capita indebtedness at all (mostly). Eventually, if you have a big adjustment, or a shake up in the sorts of jobs that people get hired to do–an information revolution, if you will–and some bad economic news at some point . . . that will be happening in concert with the mega-indebtedness.
LikeLike
TaroyaYou might be interested in the link in my new post.
LikeLike
Mark, true, in the accounting sense. But all taxes are still costs in the original economic sense of the comment. They are not costs of producing the profit, but they reduce the ultimate return just the same and thereby alter the incentives to invest in the first place as well as the profit that can be reinvested. The folks who say income and profit taxes have no economic impact are as wrong as it is possible to be wrong.
LikeLike