The week in review by gimleteye

Monday

Tip of the iceberg, part I. The Miami Herald reports that “for the first time ever there’s a known price tag for influencing the Florida legislature: at least $58 million.” The reported numbers are a new requirement passed by a scandal-tarred legislature. If Florida’s 67 counties and untold municipalities were also required to disclose lobbyist fees, and if the disclosures were honest, the number would be in the high hundreds of millions per year.

For instance, how much did the Jacksonville based Florida Rock Industries pay Miami lobbyists to keep the lid on the destruction of the drinking water aquifer that supplies 2.4 million residents?

On Monday, FRI is sold to Vulcan Materials, the biggest producer of highway construction and aggregate materials, for $4.6 billion. Big FRI shareholders who have earned hundreds of millions from the transaction will walk away from Miami-Dade citizens, leaving taxpayers holding the bag for a new water treatment plant to strip cancer-causing benzene and other toxins from their drinking water.

Tuesday

Tip of the iceberg, part II. Bloomberg reports that margin credit to investors for the purposes of borrowing to buy stock reached a record busting $285.6 billion last month, topping the prior high set at the peak of the so called-Internet bubble in 2000.

Wednesday

Tip of the iceberg, part III. As housing markets crash around the nation, investors flee shares of “subprime” borrowers. The Federal Reserve is ho-hum about damage to $1.28 trillion of subprime interest-only adjustable rate and fixed rate mortgage. “Only” 13 percent of a total $10.3 trillion in mortgages outstanding is at risk, says the Fed, when adjustable rate “interest only” mortgages re-set for homes bought at the height of the boom.

It is only a matter of time before defaults in residential mortgage pools outside the subprime category hit financial institutions with major exposure to collateralized debt obligation pools. The New York Times editorial page writes, “More than 20 percent of global private debt securities is now tied to housing in the United States. That works out to a market of $7.5 trillion, far larger than the market for US Treasuries.”

Thursday

Tip of the iceberg, part IV. Former Florida Keys power broker and Monroe County Attorney Jim Hendrick is found guilty on four counts in a federal corruption trial sending shivers through the offices of public officials throughout South Florida.

The Metropolitan Planning Organization in Miami-Dade county approves a resolution favoring building an 11-mile Skyway to replace the roadbed of Tamiami Trail.

Friday

Balloons against billionaires. Jorge Perez’ Related Group accuses neighborhood activists of complaining too much about the impact of proposed condos at Mercy Hospital so citizens send red balloons aloft to demonstrate the height and shadow that would be cast on neighborhoods in one of the most traffic saturated areas of the city.

Saturday

HUD against the ‘hood. Miami Dade managers of the county housing agency have been in “crisis mode” ever since the Miami Herald “House of Lies” series exposed fraud, corruption, and waste in the agency serving the county’s neediest residents. A team of federal inspectors is headed to Miami to kick the tires of properties in the program, allowed to fall into disrepair while Miami Dade county commissioners were focused on filling the needs of production home builders now being swallowed by the housing crash.