Why weren't we told, they whinge.
Feb. 3rd, 2009 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksAndrew Marr, whom I feel should no better, continued to reinforce the myth that "no economists warned us" about the current shit-hole in which we find ourselves. "YES WE DID!" you feel like screaming, "BUT YOU DIDN'T LISTEN!" The point is, Radio Four people don't like to bother themselves with tiresome economics, and all its concomitant association with "trade". Then, when it goes tits up, they moan that they weren't warned about the possibility of it happening. What do we have to do? Bash their heads hard on the stuff that we were writing as long ago as 2001?
Point is, no-one will put that on Radio Four, or the BBC News, because (a) it's hypothetical, (b) it's complicated and (c) there are no easy pictures or voxpop interviews with which you can associate it.
And, sadness of sadness, it's still happening. Let's highlight next year's possible "WHY WEREN'T WE TOLD" whinge from Andrew Marr and others on Radio Four. And this isn't ecopnomics, so even Radio Four presenters might understand it.
Nope, this is an earthquake. The "Great San Franciso earthquake of 2010" as it will be known. Except it doesn't have to be that great. It only has to be a repeat of the 1989 6.9 Loma Prieta "rumble". That alone could destory a quarter of SF's 120,000 homes, most of them "soft-storey" wood-frame buildings put up before 1970 (90% of SF buldings were put up before modern building codes came into force).
The San Francisco Planning And Urban Research Association (Spur, www.spur.org) is going to publish a report today that comes out with warnings about as dire as dire can be, effectively saying that the consequences of an earthquake will be like Hurricane Katrina's impact on New orleans, because the city will have about 100,000 homeless people to deal with.
Much of this problem could be avoided if the soft-storey wood frame buildings were retrofitted to modern building code standards. Lives would be saved, uncountable economic cost would be saved and, most importantly, the levels of homelessness would be massively reduced, thus eliminating the social problems that arose in New Orleans after Katrina.
Will it happen? Nope. because the spending now is a certainty if the retrofitting is to take place (and it would have to be made mandatory for it to take place) whereas the savings are a "might have been". We will have to wait for the disaster of 2010, and the inevtiable plaintive cries of "why weren't we told" about these wood-frame buildings, and the relatively small cost involved in making them safe. $1.5bn to save $30bn of economic cost post-earthquake. For SF, those are good odds.
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Point is, no-one will put that on Radio Four, or the BBC News, because (a) it's hypothetical, (b) it's complicated and (c) there are no easy pictures or voxpop interviews with which you can associate it.
And, sadness of sadness, it's still happening. Let's highlight next year's possible "WHY WEREN'T WE TOLD" whinge from Andrew Marr and others on Radio Four. And this isn't ecopnomics, so even Radio Four presenters might understand it.
Nope, this is an earthquake. The "Great San Franciso earthquake of 2010" as it will be known. Except it doesn't have to be that great. It only has to be a repeat of the 1989 6.9 Loma Prieta "rumble". That alone could destory a quarter of SF's 120,000 homes, most of them "soft-storey" wood-frame buildings put up before 1970 (90% of SF buldings were put up before modern building codes came into force).
The San Francisco Planning And Urban Research Association (Spur, www.spur.org) is going to publish a report today that comes out with warnings about as dire as dire can be, effectively saying that the consequences of an earthquake will be like Hurricane Katrina's impact on New orleans, because the city will have about 100,000 homeless people to deal with.
Much of this problem could be avoided if the soft-storey wood frame buildings were retrofitted to modern building code standards. Lives would be saved, uncountable economic cost would be saved and, most importantly, the levels of homelessness would be massively reduced, thus eliminating the social problems that arose in New Orleans after Katrina.
Will it happen? Nope. because the spending now is a certainty if the retrofitting is to take place (and it would have to be made mandatory for it to take place) whereas the savings are a "might have been". We will have to wait for the disaster of 2010, and the inevtiable plaintive cries of "why weren't we told" about these wood-frame buildings, and the relatively small cost involved in making them safe. $1.5bn to save $30bn of economic cost post-earthquake. For SF, those are good odds.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 07:37 pm (UTC)Well, I've just done so anyway.
Maybe there are members of the BBC looking at this blog who want to score a few PC points and make themselves feel better about their lonely life.
I take my sandal off to the BBC. I believe that is the correct form of anger to use in Londonistan now.
Okay, back to you.
... and there's more
Date: 2009-02-03 08:59 pm (UTC)http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/stephanieflanders/2009/01/so_its_official_the_uk.html
Rgds
James D
no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 10:25 pm (UTC)I'm stunned by this.
Where do I apply to become a BBC correspondent?
no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 10:54 pm (UTC)http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/pdf/abn-amro-home-truths-04042007.pdf
'The UK looks more vulnerable to a housing correction than the US. The degree of overvaluation looks more acute, nearing 50 per cent in the UK compared to 25 per cent in the US.'
DY
no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 07:21 am (UTC)a) that the people who were paid to get it right were the ones who got it wrong, not us "amateurs"
b) that it's all very well saying that "the good times won't last", but something else to say "it will end this year".
c) by citing a "consensus" publication.
This tells us more about Ms Flanders than her original piece, and is a good example of the "when in a hole, stop digging" argument.
On point (a) she is now saying that it was the purveyors of conventional wisdom (the paid people) to whom she pays attention, not to the unpaid (who are far more likely to be independent observers). Saying that the establishment supported the establishment view is a tautology.
On point (b) we have the defence of "Ah, you said it would happen, but not when". Any simple logical line of thought sees the flaw in this defence. If I say it will happen in 2008, then the defence can be "Ahh, you said it would happen in 2008, but not which month!" The point was the unsustainability (a matter of economic fundamentals), not of market timing (a matter of trader psychology).
On point (c), Ms Flanders simply reveals the shallowness of her "research". Citing a "consensus" publication is like holding a flag up and saying "well, obviously, you can't expect me to research this stuff deeply.
The matter here is that Ms Flanders says in her postcript something that she did not imply in her main piece. The main piece claimed that the disaster was not predicted. The postscript threw in riders that needed to be included in the main piece if it were to be a valid piece of writing.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2009-02-05 11:32 am (UTC)This reveals a fundamental flaw in the BBC news/interview arena in economics -- because they won't pay any money, they can only get people whose meals are paid for elsewhere. Everyone who makes an economic forecast on the BBC, or gives an interview to an economic non-savant employed by the BBC has their own hidden agenda.
PJ