Cold Front! by gimleteye

When I came out of the movie theater last night ("Where the Wild Things Are", great!), you could feel a swirling wind trying to push out a whole summer of heat and humidity at once. What a relief to turn off the air conditioning (and deny FPL a few dollars of revenue). The first cold front of the season in Miami arrives like a blessing. It put me in such a good mood that I was nearly willing to find grace in The Miami Herald ...

At the park the dogs were happy. Chasing and barking and excited in the new day. The front page of the Herald has three notable stories. The first, from McClatchy, is about the corruption of the nation's largest bond rating agency, Moody's that bears significant responsibility for the miscalculation of risk that lead to the unfolding economic catastrophe; the worst since the Great Depression. The story adds little to the public record. Everyone was doing it. A day late, a few trillion dollars short. The second story on the front page describes the unfolding consequences of this catastrophe in South Florida: the rising number of home foreclosures and the next tsunami on the horizon. It is a good story, and supports what I've believed for a long time: that this Great Recession is not over by a long shot. We could be heading into a decade or more of economic malaise in South Florida; worth considering in light of the lost decades in Japan as a result of its own property market bubble and bust.

I've written before that The Miami Herald largely missed the biggest story of the 21st century as it unfolded. Too bad. On the other hand, the third story is about the cash hoard held by Miami-Dade county commissioners, individually, and it shows the kind of forensic reporting that only a newspaper with paid journalists can bring to bear on the grief and poor judgement that passes for governance. Although there are only a few reporters on the local beat-- due to the paper's weakened finances, it is good to see the paper striving to catch up to the awful holes in coverage caused by the housing boom when the Herald executive office feverishly justified saying nothing bad about the Growth Machine itself; mainly because their salaries and compensation were so closely tied to profits based on advertising revenue from the Growth Machine. In the sense that the papers are not making money, it is perhaps easier for newspaper executives to pick up the rusty tools of their profession.

I appreciated the end of the report, giving the penultimate word to Commissioner Pepe Diaz, pontificating on "rainy day" funds and an independent observer the last word; noting that "rainy day" funds belong in general revenue not the pockets of county commissioners who are inclined to use their individual stashes to reinforce their permanent incumbencies.

This thinking-- "everyone is doing it"-- connects the county commissioners, corrupt ratings by bond agencies packaging financial derivatives (yes I do know what they are), and homeowners who bought more mortgage than they could afford in good times and now are drowning. The only piece that the Herald continues to fail to report: the role of the homebuilders and the engineering / lobbying cartel who still influence the Herald's executive suites. They were "doing it" too: the Greenberg Traurigs helping out the R. Allen Stanfords, spreading the miscalculation of risk as gospel of "free market" capitalism.

Too bad the Herald won't get into it, for readers. They might start with the travesty of Homestead; the bankers, and insider cronyism, and ethnic/racial politics that obscured so much fraud and corruption. It is just a suggestion, maybe the next cold front will blow it onto the front pages of The Miami Herald.