Our perspective on news of the week in Miami and the world
Monday
With two hands, the Federal Reserve is praying for a soft landing for the economy. With one hand, it is praying that the markets in commercial real estate can stay strong until housing returns to life. With the other hand, that hedge funds and private equity can survive uncontrollable risk.
Who exactly is stepping into the breach as big condo buildings shaping Miami’s skyline fall into default? or stagger to an incomplete finish?
An informed source tells us it’s hedge funds.
The real cowboys are riding into town. And just like the old westerns, when the old man says everything is going to be all right, we can see vultures circling overhead.
Hedge fund “house money” is going to bring down the house in Miami. And guess who going to pay the bar bill?
Tuesday
The New York Times reports space exploration is in jeopardy because outer space is speckled with debris from defunct satellites and other crap we’ve put there. This leads us to the perspective of aliens arriving to earth for the first time, hovering outside our atmosphere, and gazing through the space rubble to the trash we made of the planet. They will want to know how garbage became such a powerful force that billions of people were required to feed it.
Wednesday.
Could it have been a coincidence? On the same day as the annual meeting for Florida’s largest rock mining company, the Palm Beach Post reports that local county commissioners have authorized a study for how rock mining will affect the Everglades Agricultural Area, where sugar is grown at the expense of water quality on either coast of Florida.
Florida Rock Industries has produced a 189 percent return for shareholders over the last five years, according to Chairman Edward Baker—one of the wealthiest men in Florida. "Being in our industry has been a nice place to be invested," he said.
Thursday
Something in the way you smell. Miami news reports high fecal coliform and enterococus on certain beaches, advising swimmers to stay away from poopy water of Crandon Park and 79th Street. Come to Miami and swim in a chlorine treated pool, just like at home.
Friday.
No one knows anything, Part One. If poopy water doesn’t ring your bell, toxic algae might frizzle your chisel. Lee County Commissioner Brian Bigelow addresses business leaders on the west coast, blaming Lake Okeechobee for red drift algae coating its beaches.
One of the cockamamie schemes by the US Army Corps is to pipe toxic Lake Okeechobee water to Miami-Dade County where big, expensive treatment plants can “polish” it for people and nature. Another stinky idea: putting re-use water into Biscayne Bay, where pollution levels have been rising steadily.
Saturday
No one knows anything, Part Two. The Miami Herald reports that housing assistance for up to 800 families in need will be lost because of an inexplicable discrepancy in financial information provided to the federal government by the county housing agency.
The same B section page reports a grand jury investigation blasting the Miami Dade County Commission for being “asleep at the switch” while tens of millions of dollars in funding were wasted through suspected fraud and mismanagement on housing for the poor.
For God’s sake, why won’t the Herald just come out and say it: the Miami Dade County Commission was too busy trying to move the Urban Development Boundary for the benefit of rich lobbyists / big developers who fund their political campaigns, while second and third tier aspiring lobbyists were plundering the housing agency, in the hope that wealth raked from programs to help poor people would help them to be next in line for wealth, fortune and fame as political fundraisers and fat cats.
Sunday
Rushing permits forward before the State of Florida finally decides to cap carbon emissions, Florida Power and Light is pushing a new coal/energy plant at the edge of the Everglades in Glades County. The Miami Herald reports one environmental activist, Susan Glickman of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, “I just think of ‘light cigarette’. It’s still a cigarette. Glades Power Plant is still pulverized coal.”
We suggest erecting four gargantuan billboards at the edge of Everglades, to and fro, on Tamiami Trail and I-75: “Rock mining, suburban sprawl, Sugar, mercury pollution, red algae blooms: here lies the Florida Everglades”.
4 comments:
Living here is already an environmental disaster, we drained the natural habitats, warm the planet thru our sprawl, refuse to recycle all of our trash, pollute the water and land however soon enough G-D will have his revenge, just watch those rising tides and hurricanes, never mind the escalating insurance bills. The only sad thing is that as our new condo city sinks like Atlantis so will the Everglades and all of its creatures.
Tuesday: that will be the reaction of the ET's...make it so.
it is just like the herald to post the most important news on Saturday when no one reads the rag.
This was a great post Gimleteye - I think everyone missed it. I don't think most people got the hang of the read more button. Maybe we have to say "Press here to read more." I made "read more" a different color to see if that helps. But, really good post, keep up the week in review.
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