Real Estate Market / Inflation / Recession / Depression (Frederick: housing, rent, jobs)

[Bob from down south]

Originally Posted by jazzlover

I don't think fuel will have to get that high--I think $6.00+ will start getting the job done--read: I think a bunch of airlines will be toast.

A few of them are toast already...they just haven't admitted it yet.

Originally Posted by jazzlover

Another thing is the statistics. Current Amtrak is hardly a poster-child for fuel efficiency.

We must have both been typing the same thing at the same time.

Originally Posted by jazzlover

Another factor in the calculations is that they only calculate the fuel use of the vehicle itself, not all of the fuel and petroleum use needed to build and maintain the infrastructure. Highway petroleum efficiency is an absolute nightmare when those costs are factored in--everything from asphalt to snow removal, to the energy needed just to repave the damned things. Rail only uses a fraction of that.

A really good point. I've never seen good stats in one place for what interstate and US highway road maintenance costs are, but it's got to be a number worthy of notice.

[multitrak]

Originally Posted by jazzlover

I feel strongly enough about this that I am currently buying railroad stocks for a long-term investment. I think rail will be the main viable transportation alternative in this country within a few years.

ah ha, so you really don't believe that the US will disintegrate into a feudalistic society within a few years ala kunstler. otherwise why buy rails long term (or any stock for that matter) if you did? i'm guessing that you know that rails are near their 52 week highs. it doesn't matter though, you can always average down if the country slips into a recession/depression. it's funny that rails main products for transport are coal from the powder river basin and corn from the midwest, both destined for energy usage.

and mike/fbe, even soros is onboard the buffet train...whooo, whooo...

[multitrak]

from science citetrack: this week in science provided as a free email service (aaas science volume 319, issue 5863 dated February 1 2008). why is this important? it demostrates that Thomas Gold (dec) might have been correct and that some oil and field fields could have a abiotic origin from mantle methane and as such, a mantle source for those hydrocarbons could be a renewable resource. biogenic theories do not explain helium in oil fields (Keyes Dome Field, Cimarron Co., OK) and oil fields associated with deep lying geologic structures, such as single or multiple zone zones (Midway Sunset Field, along the San Andreas fault, Kern Co., CA).

Assessing Earth's Inorganic Hydrocarbons

A long-standing question, important not just for petroleum resources but possibly in the origin of life, is the degree that a series of inorganic reactions that lengthen carbon chains (known as Fischer-Tropsch type reactions) might yield hydrocarbons from mantle methane. Although several examples of such hydrocarbons have been inferred, it has been difficult to demonstrate a purely mantle, abiogenic origin in the face of abundant biogenic hydrocarbons. Proskurowski et al. (p. 604) now show that the abundance of hydrocarbons in the Lost City vent field, an off-axis system in the Atlantic Ocean, decreases systematically with chain length in a manner predicted by Fischer-Tropsch type reactions. Analysis of carbon isotopes further support an inorganic origin. Because this system is likely representative of many similar systems in the oceans, an abundant source of mantle-derived hydrocarbons may be present on Earth, as well as during Earth's early history. CREDIT: COURTESY OF D. KELLEY AND M. ELEND (UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON), INSTITUTE FOR EXPLORATION, URI-IAO, NOAA, AND THE LOST CITY SCIENCE TEAM

[jazzlover]

Originally Posted by multitrak

ah ha, so you really don't believe that the US will disintegrate into a feudalistic society within a few years ala kunstler. otherwise why buy rails long term (or any stock for that matter) if you did? i'm guessing that you know that rails are near their 52 week highs. it doesn't matter though, you can always average down if the country slips into a recession/depression. it's funny that rails main products for transport are coal from the powder river basin and corn from the midwest, both destined for energy usage.

and mike/fbe, even soros is onboard the buffet train...whooo, whooo...

I am a believer in investing in the industries that one understands and knows. In my case, that, among others, is railroads. Fundamentally, I think they are going to be well-positioned for the troubles that lie ahead. First, they do carry a lot of grain and coal. We are not going to stop needing to transport either. Coal is the one fossil fuel resource of which we have abundant reserves in this country. Notwithstanding the CO2 issues with coal, we aren't going to transcend away from it anytime soon. Right or wrong, if people are confronted between having global warming or having the lights go out in the McMansion, they are going to choose global warming. Also, for most railroads, the biggest growth for them in the last few years has been intermodal transport--translation: taking long-distance transport away from trucks and putting it back on the rails (where it belongs).

The rails also find themselves in a circumstance that they have not enjoyed for nearly three-quarters of a century--substantially growing business. Spiraling fuel costs, highway congestion, and general transportation patterns are all now working in the rails' favor. While increasing fuel costs certainly affect the rails, for every penny fuel increases, it increases the rails' competitive advantage over trucks. As much fuel as the railroads may consume notwithstanding, their substantial fuel economy advantage over trucks makes rail more competitive the higher fuel costs go.

The biggest challenge the railroads face is getting their corporate leadership to "quit fighting the last war." For about a century, railroad management's mantra has been to shed capacity to reduce costs--trimming the sick branches of the tree to save the trunk, so to speak. Now, the railroads have the ability to capture market share by doing just the opposite--adding capacity where needed, and aggressively going after business from other struggling transportation modes--namely trucks. The rails other challenge is to get the playing field leveled in terms of taxation, subsidies, and regulation compared to competing modes of transportation--again, trucks. Trucking enjoys the same basic fascist/socialist economic model that the automobile does in America. That is, where the part of the industry (the trucks themselves) that is privately held may be "profitable," while the massive costs of the basic infrastructure to support the trucks (the roads) are socialized on the taxpayers. There have been three main places that model has been practiced in modern history--the American highway system (and to a lesser extent in some countries that have emulated us), and the economies of Fascist Italy and Germany leading up to and during World War II.

We are reaching the point that the American highway system is going to collapse under its own weight. The US highway infrastructure is crumbling, and the costs to even repair it, much less expand it, are growing quickly beyond this country's ability to pay for it. I discussed this a couple of years with a pretty "way up" highway guy I know. He commented that it wouldn't surprise him at all if Americans were trying to drive electric cars on washboarded gravel highways thirty years from now. He described most of his 30 year career in highway maintenance as "crisis management"--just trying to plug the dam against continuing deterioration of a rickety infrastructure. This another one of those things that Americans do not want to hear, do not want to accept, do not want to confront.

Back to the original point--the railroads could certainly be hurt in a depression, no question about that. But a depression is also a lot like a game of "last man standing." I think the rails will be a survivor. They've been beaten up for about a century--surviving adversity is something they know how to do.

[jazzlover]

Here is another of James Howard Kunstler's very interesting reads:

Localism

Current Colorado would have to be one of the most ill-prepared places in the country for this kind of sea change in "living arrangements." Ironically, the type of economic/social/environmental geography that Kunstler envisions as the future of the US is not dissimilar from what the US (and Colorado) had in the early part of the 20th Century. Considering that many, if not most of most brilliant American leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, and scholars came out of that environment, was it so awful that it wouldn't be worth exploring again?

[multitrak]

The handwriting is on the wall, and so are the numbers. "The great turning point was 1970," he maintains. "Suburban counties, which began growing after the century mark and especially after World War II, began declining, and the decline continues in the 1980s. The core penturban counties peaked in the nineteenth century and then declined, but after 1970 accelerated." But the thrust of Lessinger's findings—and of his predictions—goes well beyond mere real estate speculation or the decline of the suburbs. What he is saying is that his figures provide him with an index to the important linkage between changing rates of settlement and growth and the social and economic realities they reflect. According to his theories, life in America is on the verge of a dramatic sea change. A new America, a new consensus is beginning to form. (MEN March 1988)

The Rise OF New America

I've been quietly accumulated arable land (with preferably senior water rights) in Colorado (and in other states) since the late '70's, long before I've ever heard of Lessinger or even Kunstler for that matter. Lessinger's "penturbia" model was first published in Regions of Opportunity (1986) and pre-dates Kunstler. I first read Lessenger's ideas in the Mother Earth News (1988) article excerpted above and was pleased to see that someone had clearly and RATIONALLY expounded upon my views of what could happen in the future. I absolutely would not live long-term in a major urban area if you paid me, it's just too dangerous. Eventually, the big cities will fail in services and deteriorate in such a manner that the folks still living in them will be prey for the predators and terrorists. But the folks living in the nearby rural communities and on the surrounding farms and ranches should prosper immensely, both in terms of material wealth and quality of life.

more on Lessinger's website: TRANSFORMATION: Fall of the Consumer economy - Rise of the Responsible Capitalist

[jazzlover]

Originally Posted by multitrak

The Rise OF New America

I've been quietly accumulated arable land (with preferably senior water rights) in Colorado (and in other states) since the late '70's, long before I've ever heard of Lessinger or even Kunstler for that matter. Lessinger's "penturbia" model was first published in Regions of Opportunity (1986) and pre-dates Kunstler. I first read Lessenger's ideas in the Mother Earth News (1988) article excerpted above and was pleased to see that someone had clearly and RATIONALLY expounded upon my views of what could happen in the future. I absolutely would not live long-term in a major urban area if you paid me, it's just too dangerous. Eventually, the big cities will fail in services and deteriorate in such a manner that the folks still living in them will be prey for the predators and terrorists. But the folks living in the nearby rural communities and on the surrounding farms and ranches should prosper immensely, both in terms of material wealth and quality of life.

more on Lessinger's website: TRANSFORMATION: Fall of the Consumer economy - Rise of the Responsible Capitalist

I've read Lessinger since "Regions of Opportunity" in 1986. In some respects, his hypotheses are not that much different from Kunstler's. Unfortunately, many suburban yuppies have interpreted "penturbia" to mean building their McMansion on an acreage out in a rural area somewhere. That will be no more sustainable than the decaying urban areas and suburbia in the years ahead because it depends on the same high consumptive use of resources (especially petroleum). How I interpret Lessinger's vision is more of a model akin to the Midwestern US in about 1910. Small, relatively self-sufficient and compact communities, with large areas of "open space"--agricultural land--surrounding them. Those rural areas would be connected to the towns by "farm-to-market" roads, with interurban (now called "light-rail") and regular rail service connecting them to bigger communities and trade centers. Of course, this is often called "New Urbanism"--maybe a better term would be "New Small-townism."

Unfortunately, there is a strong headwind against that kind of thinking because most Americans can't even conceive of a lifestyle that is not totally centered around the automobile. That, despite a mountain of evidence that our over-reliance on the car is unhealthy for the environment, our social structure, our economic health, our national security, and our personal health. I believe that is why people like Kunstler are so pessimistic about our ability to adapt to a new reality that circumstances are going to force upon us. Like dinosaurs, we may not be able (or willing) to adapt quickly enough to avoid catastrophe.

I somewhat disagree with Lessinger about our large core cities. I think they will get to be very dangerous and miserable places (as someone wrote years ago, "I wouldn't want to be in New York City or LA on the day the welfare checks bounce."), and stay that way for quite some time--but, I think they will actually fare better over the long term than suburbia. I think a lot of suburbia, particularly the widely sprawled "exurban" totally auto-dependent type, will become an uninhabited wasteland, slowly being scavenged for usable building materials. What's left will slowly decay--some of it might eventually be plowed back into farmland. At least those core cities may be able to function economically without total reliance on the automobile. Unfortunately, the big cities in the West have mostly been built "large" in the last 50 years around the totally automobile-centric model. It's gonna suck to be living in them when the big change comes. When that happens, some of those old more walkable and mass-transit-friendly Rust Belt cities might start to look pretty good.

[Bob from down south]

Time for a little countervailing thought to balance some of the Lessinger-Kunstler uber-intellectual snobbery. I cringed when I read the linked 1988 article on Lessinger, where it started out telling us how he plays chamber music on his violin, likes "sophisticated" restaurants, live opera, and fancies art etc. As if to say that old gentrified tastes lend something to his credibility, more than if he liked Tex-Mex and listening to old Grateful Dead albums.

Urban living is not inherently more wasteful than the simple life in the country. In fact urban centers came about in the first place to concentrate working populations together with the evolving industrial centers as a matter of efficiency. The factories are largely gone, but there's still something to be said for concentrations of populations from a standpoint of efficiency. High density apartment buildings use much less energy per square foot than individual stand-alone dwellings, and lend themselves to more efficient energy sources, such as electricity. Industrialized agriculture is far and away more efficient than small family farms, and when operated in conjunction with transportation networks that can carry the products to centralized distribution centers in the urban centers, it is much more efficient than the quaint old local farmers' market in the local town square. And timely access to high-tech health care...something that was not really a consideration before urbanization took hold, is not at all efficient (or even available) in many truly rural areas.

I don't follow the logic in the idea that in the post-automobile era the current suburbanite worker would want to move away from the city rather than into it, where work, shopping, and social venues could be found within mass transit or even foot/bicycle range.

Kunstler clearly despises urban architecture (i.e. the "eyesore of the month" link on his website), and the hustle and bustle of urban life. (Me too). But I think the ramifications of declining availability of oil will be towards efficiency, not mass migration to the country for its aesthetics and quality of life. For those who elect to live in the country away from the transportation network...like Kunstler...localization will be more and more necessary. But anyone who thinks that subsistence farming like in the "good 'ol days" of the early 1900s is some kind of fun...well...

Here in Chile, the very high price of gas (especially in comparison to local incomes) keeps the urban centers growing--almost to the point of critical mass, in fact. The tendency is definitely not towards disseminating the population into the millions of hectares of scenic but sparsely inhabited countryside, except for those few who wish to escape the urban lifestyle and who possess the independent means needed to live away from the prospect of a liveable local income.

I also tend to think any decline we see will be more in the exurban areas more distant from the city center, with the close-in suburban areas being swallowed by an expanding urban center. But more migration out of the rural areas towards the cities could result in expansion of the urban areas to envelope much of exurbia, leaving rural areas very sparsely inhabited by Tie-dye and Birkenstock-clad boomers looking for a place to be as one with the universe...at least until the first time they feel chest pains.

[jazzlover]

Originally Posted by Bob from down south

Time for a little countervailing thought to balance some of the Lessinger-Kunstler uber-intellectual snobbery. I cringed when I read the linked 1988 article on Lessinger, where it started out telling us how he plays chamber music on his violin, likes "sophisticated" restaurants, live opera, and fancies art etc. As if to say that old gentrified tastes lend something to his credibility, more than if he liked Tex-Mex and listening to old Grateful Dead albums.

Urban living is not inherently more wasteful than the simple life in the country. In fact urban centers came about in the first place to concentrate working populations together with the evolving industrial centers as a matter of efficiency. The factories are largely gone, but there's still something to be said for concentrations of populations from a standpoint of efficiency. High density apartment buildings use much less energy per square foot than individual stand-alone dwellings, and lend themselves to more efficient energy sources, such as electricity. Industrialized agriculture is far and away more efficient than small family farms, and when operated in conjunction with transportation networks that can carry the products to centralized distribution centers in the urban centers, it is much more efficient than the quaint old local farmers' market in the local town square. And timely access to high-tech health care...something that was not really a consideration before urbanization took hold, is not at all efficient (or even available) in many truly rural areas.

I don't follow the logic in the idea that in the post-automobile era the current suburbanite worker would want to move away from the city rather than into it, where work, shopping, and social venues could be found within mass transit or even foot/bicycle range.

Kunstler clearly despises urban architecture (i.e. the "eyesore of the month" link on his website), and the hustle and bustle of urban life. (Me too). But I think the ramifications of declining availability of oil will be toward efficiency, not mass migration to the country for its aesthetics and quality of life. For those who elect to live in the country away from the transportation network...like Kunstler...localization will be more and more necessary. But anyone who thinks that subsistence farming like in the "good 'ol days" of the early 1900s is some kind of fun...well...

Here in Chile, the very high price of gas (especially in comparison to local incomes) keeps the urban centers growing--almost to the point of critical mass, in fact. The tendency is definitely not towards disseminating the population into the millions of hectares of scenic but sparsely inhabited countryside, except for those few who wish to escape the urban lifestyle and who possess the independent means needed to live away from the prospect of a liveable local income.

I also tend to think any decline we see will be more in the exurban areas more distant from the city center, with the close-in suburban areas being swallowed by an expanding urban center. But more migration out of the rural areas towards the cities could result in expansion of the urban areas to envelope much of exurbia, leaving rural areas very sparsely inhabited by Tie-dye and Birkenstock-clad boomers looking for a place to be as one with the universe...at least until the first time they feel chest pains.

I find much to agree with here, and some with which to disagree. One statement I believe to be only half-correct is the statement about the efficiency of "industrialized" large-scale agriculture. Since I used to work in that exact industry, I think I have some insight. That type of agriculture is, in fact, quite labor efficient. But it is extremely energy-inefficient. It has flourished for a half-century because oil has been cheap, both for farming and for long-distance transportation of foodstuffs. As that era ends, that form of agriculture is going to lose its economic advantage. I think smaller-scale, more energy-efficient and more labor-intensive agriculture will be the result. As diminishing energy resources hamstring more of our funny-money construction and recreation dominated economy--eliminating a lot of employment in those industries--there will be people available once again to work in agriculture. They may ***** and moan about it, but those are likely the jobs to be available.

I agree that existing urban areas are likely to densify--not only in area, but in concentration of people living in structures. Extended families (2 or 3 generations) living under one roof may become quite common again. Many people may once again (as they did in the Great Depression) be taking in strangers as paying boarders in order to make the rent or mortgage payment. Spoiled Americans will likely ***** and moan about this, too, but they are probably going to have no choice.

As I said earlier, the future American landscape may look a whole lot more like the US in 1920 than the US of 2008--relatively densely populated urban areas, very concentrated mass-transit friendly suburbs close to those cities, relatively densely populated walkable smaller towns serving rural hinterlands, and relatively sparsely populated rural areas (most rural residents living there to being tied to the land as a rancher or farmer).

If either my or Bob from down South's vision is correct, the sprawled suburban lifestyle of most Americans doesn't have much of a future--and that is my exact hypothesis.

[Bob from down south]

Speaking of the First Great Depression and the 1920s, I discovered that one of my favorite books on the 1920s has been reproduced and made available for free reading online by the Univ of Virginia.

The book is Only Yesterday, by Frederick Lewis Allen, available in its entirety at:

Only Yesterday--F.L. Allen

The entire book is a great read...I recently read it again for the first time in a few years. It's clear when you read it that many of today's problems...in society and the economy...are nothing close to new.

For those interested just in the economic background, chapters 7, and 11-13 make for some really telling insight into the markets and what drove them over the edge in 1929. And if you read it, you won't need me or anyone else to draw the parallels in human greed and behavior that exist and in fact endanger the markets today.