I haven’t done a collection of observations on the news in a while (other than politics), so here goes…
- From the “Waiting for the Stimulus” Department: The House and the Senate have approved an economic stimulus package, and sent it to Shrub to sign. Now, I care less about the rebates, but this package increases the size of mortgage loans that government-chartered mortgage-finance companies can buy. It will take a bit of time for this to propagate through, but it means the conforming limit will be raised. This, combined with hopefully lower interest rates, means that I can (hopefully) refinance into a better long-term loan. I really think (at least in California) this provision will provide more long term economic stimulus than anything else. In the Great Depression, what did the economy in was fear — fear of losing money in banks, fear of market collapse. What is doing us in now is fear of providing credit: yes, you need reasonable standards for giving credit, and people need to not overextend, but when you overly tighten credit, you kill the economy. I think this extension of mortgage insurance will help, and we need further mechanisms to restore confidence in the credit markets (for which rebates do nothing — unless folks use it to pay down their cards — and how many will do that?).
- From the “I Remember It When” Department: Demolition has begun in San Jose of Terminal C at SJC Airport. I have memories of Terminal C (I was going to say “fond,” but thought twice): flying into SJC when the airport was small, walking out right to your rental car. It was a lot like Burbank: small, fast, and take the stairs to the plane. Terminal A is nothing like that: it is all marble and jetways, with convoluted parking garages. They claim the new Terminal B will be an improvement. We shall see. I know a number of folks reading this are NoCal folks: how do you remember Terminal C?
- From the “I Take The Fifth for $500, Alex” Department: Recently, a Canadian with US Residency was arrested by Customs agents when they saw child pron on his computer. However, when they tried to examine the images after his arrest, they had one little problem: the hard disk was encrypted by a password-protected program (PGP, for those familiar with it). The quandry: The government wants him to give up the password, but doing so could violate his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by revealing the contents of the files. The law is on his side: A federal magistrate here has ruled that forcing him to surrender the password would be unconstitutional. This is a case with broad implications.
