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NYC Goes Out “Euro-Style” As It Experiences The Results Of “Applied, Stealth Austerity” And Its Citizens Suffer Like Never Before!
In 2008 I gave explicit warning that an unprecedented swath of US
municipalities were at risk of default. I was pooh poohed by many
“experts” who consistently said that the history of default in the US
muni bond market is slim to none. Well, my friends, that is history and
this is now. The dearth of revenues from declining building permits,
sales taxes in the absence of real sales, property taxes from
depreciating properties, etc. – all built upon budgets that were carved
at the peak of bubble economics groupthink combine to make a disastrous
brew.
NYC, arguably the richest economic “city state” in the world and the
mecca of banking and real estate is experiencing “applied austerity”
programs, effectively going through the service and government payment
cutbacks that the Europeans are “promising” to deliver. Keep in mind
that NYC is comparable to, if not larger than, from an economic
footprint perspective Greece and Portugal. I have accurately determined
that the EU is in it very deep – deep enough that default of several
nations is a foregone conclusion (see the complete Pan-European Sovereign Debt Crisis series for more on this).
Despite the nearly guaranteed default of the Euro-area nations, it
ain’t pretty over hear either, particularly as those eliminated services
that have been taken for granted are needed, as in the post Christmas
mini-blizzard. I say mini-blizzard because real New Yorkers know that 16
inches of snow ain’t nothing, and we’ve received more snow than this
regularly. We get snowstorms nearly every year, but this one literally
shut the city down – completely down.
BoomBustBlog:
An upper middle class, tree-lined neighborhood in NYC pictured a full
72+ hours after the snow storm. These are the bankers, doctors, judges
& lawyers that cannot go to work to generate the wages that the city
needs to tax to generate the revenues that could clean these streets.
Nornally, these streets would be cleaned down to the blacktop by
sunrise!
MTA
NYC Transit Delays Continue 4 Days After Snow Storm. Up To 48 hours
after the storm, the entire mass transit system was effectively shut
down. This is how the vast majority of NYers get back and forth from
work.
From the NY Times:
A woman with stroke symptoms in
Midwood, Brooklyn, waited for an ambulance for six hours, finally
arriving at the hospital with telltale signs of advanced brain damage.
In Forest Hills, Queens, bystanders waited for three hours next to a
man lying unconscious in the snow before they were able to flag down
help. And in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a mother in labor who started
calling 911 at 8:30 a.m. on Monday did not get an ambulance until 6
p.m., too late to save the baby.
As a blizzard bore down on New York
City on Sunday and Monday, 911 dispatchers fielded tens of thousands of
calls, trying to triage them by level of severity, from snowed-in cars
at the low end to life-threatening emergencies at the highest. But
even the ambulances assigned the most serious of the calls sometimes
could not get there. At least 200 ambulances got stuck on unplowed
streets or were blocked in by abandoned cars, city officials said
Tuesday.
As the backlog of calls grew — it
ultimately reached 1,300 at its highest point — an unusual directive
went out across the computer screens within ambulances, emergency
workers said. It told them that after 20 minutes of life-saving effort
on a nonresponsive patient, they should call a supervising doctor, who
would make the call about whether to give up. While it is rare for a
person to be revived after 20 minutes, it is usually up to the medical
crew to decide when to call the doctor.
… nearly 170 stranded ambulances had
been dug out by emergency crews, with 40 more still stuck Tuesday
morning. Still, the impassibility of many streets made routine
ambulance runs into odysseys, sometimes with life-threatening or fatal
consequences.
LOSING TIME A Fire Department ambulance got stuck on Madison and Nostrand Avenues in Brooklyn.
In East Midwood, volunteer ambulances
managed to complete nine calls on Monday between getting stuck in
drifts and between abandoned cars. One was to a 74-year-old woman on
Lawrence Avenue who appeared to be having a stroke. Her home-health
aide had called 911 at 9 a.m. on Monday, said Yakov Kornitzer, the
chief of operations for the East Midwood Volunteer Ambulance company,
and in the early afternoon, she finally ran to the local precinct
station for help.
When the ambulance arrived at 3 p.m.,
it was unable to get closer than several blocks away. Two emergency
workers, two paramedics and six police officers carried her on a
stretcher through knee-deep snow, but by then she was unresponsive and
her limbs were already flexed, indicating serious damage to her brain
tissue.
…
When a fire broke out five blocks
from Elmhurst Hospital, emergency workers pulled patients in on sleds
and toboggans, said Dario Centorcelli, a hospital spokesman. As at
other hospitals, doctors and nurses stayed, sleeping on cots. At
Lutheran Medical Center, a registered nurse and an orthopedic
technician spent the day Monday driving around Brooklyn in a Hummer, to
ferry exhausted staff members back and forth.
…In Rego Park, one volunteer
ambulance partnered with a four-wheel-drive Suburban to patrol streets.
About midnight, they were flagged down on Queens Boulevard and 62nd
Drive, where bystanders said they had called 911 three hours earlier
for a man lying face up in the snow.
He was unconscious but still alive,
suffering from severe hypothermia, said Ron Cohen, the public
information officer for the Forest Hills Volunteer Ambulance Corps. The
emergency workers carried him about a block to the vehicle, and he
made it to the hospital alive. “I think a short time longer and he may
not have been,” Mr. Cohen said.
… Fire Department officials said they
received a 911 call at 8:30 a.m. on Monday from a woman in labor in
Crown Heights. But because her birth was not imminent, she was assigned
a nonemergency status. Dispatchers tried to call back several times in
the next few hours to check on the woman, but got no response, the
Fire Department said.
At 4:30 p.m., a second call came in,
saying there was bleeding and the baby was crowning, and dispatchers
called for police and medical crews.
Around 5:20 p.m., police officers,
trudging through the snow because their cars could not get through,
found the woman outside 97 Brooklyn Avenue and brought her into the
vestibule. It was not clear if the woman was just waiting outside or
was trying to make it to the hospital on her own; Interfaith Medical
Center was about eight blocks away.
The baby emerged. Satomi Onikura, 34,
a nurse who lives in the building, said she saw five or six police
officers surrounding a woman swathed in blankets. The baby was laid out
on blankets and was not breathing. The umbilical cord was still
attached. “We were all in a panic,” she said.
An officer got scissors and dental
floss to sever the cord from another neighbor, Valerie Veator, 24. Her
father had been an emergency medical technician, and spoke on the phone
with the police.
The lobby was freezing and wet from
the snow and wind. Ms. Onikura did chest compressions until the
emergency medical crew, whose ambulance had been stuck, finally arrived
to take the mother and baby to the hospital, but the baby did not
survive.
This is the real deal! This is the UGLY side to the greed that brought upon the Asset Securitization Crisis
which spawned all of this nonsense. Did anyone believe that banks could
do this much damage. I know I sure warned many! Here are some more
examples…
Crain’s New York: Mayor: Doing ‘everything we can’ to clear snow
In the face of mounting criticism
over the city’s strained response to a post-Christmas snowstorm that
left ambulances and buses stranded, trains stalled and roads blocked,
Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday defended his administration’s
efforts.
“We are doing everything we can
think of, working hard as we can,” he said at a press conference
Tuesday morning in Brooklyn. “This city has pulled together. I don’t
think we should sit around and think the end of the world is near. We
cannot be every place at all times. We won’t get to everybody. We will
make mistakes.”
… “By all accounts, the collective
storm response was not anywhere near up to the standards New Yorkers
are accustomed to,” said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, in a
statement.
I fear New Yorkers will have to get use to a new normal for the next
couple of years, at a minimum. Professional and institutional Subscribers
can download our Shadow Inventory worksheet to see just how long and
far real asset/derivative malaise is forecast to drag this city – 
Shadow Inventory.
Ms. Quinn scheduled oversight
hearings for Jan. 10 into the city’s “unacceptable” blizzard response,
which she said underscored the need to “protect core public services
from potentially life-threatening budget reductions.”
… the No. 1 obstacle facing workers
as they continue to try to clear snow from the streets. Teams cleared
168 ambulances overnight that had been stuck, but some 40 remained on
the list as of this morning.
“Until we can pull out ambulances, fire trucks and buses, the plows just can’t do anything,” he said. Some
600 buses got stuck, 250 of which remained trapped in the snow and ice
as of Tuesday morning, leaving officials at a loss. “We typically have
not had difficulty with stuck buses,” said Metropolitan Transportation
Authority President Jay Walder. “They’re heavier and have typically
been able to get through the snow. For whatever reason, this snow they
did not get through. I’m not a snow expert to say why.”
This is the kicker, below!
The mayor rejected the
notion that the problems clearing the streets were the result of a
rumored slow down by workers upset over the administration’s
reclassification of sanitation supervisors and by looming budget cuts. He said Deputy Mayor Steven Goldsmith met with union officials Tuesday, who assured him workers were doing all they could.
…
“The response was an epic fail,” he
said. “We have not received answers to basic questions: Where the hell
were the plows? The plows did not exist on side roads in the outer
boroughs. We need to know why.”
State Sen. Carl Kruger, D-Brooklyn,
said the emergency room at Beth Israel Medical Center in Brooklyn was
blockaded by snow until Tuesday morning and that a stalled city bus was
blocking an oil delivery at Maimonides Medical Center.
“It defies comment,” he said. “I
don’t know how we can be caught off guard when they were predicting the
storm for a week in advance.”
Mr. Kruger compared the city’s
response to that of the infamous 1969 snow storm that nearly wrecked
the administration of Mayor John Lindsay and made snow removal outside
of Manhattan a key litmus test for any city leader.
“I’m 61 years old and I’ve lived
through a lot of 16-inch snowfalls before,” Mr. Kruger said. “It’s not
just me hyperventilating. It’s a city that’s frustrated and not
understanding the lack of management and control of the situation.”
The last statement is key. NY gets snowstorms – a lot of them! They
not only fail to shut the city down, they rarely even close the schools
for more than a day. This is obviously the effect of the “stealth
austerity” plans that have stricken the city, and every occurrence that
will require a strain on the city’s services will have similar outcomes
until the city has more resources to bring to bear. That will not be
anytime soon. Keep in mind that this malaise was after the federal
government literally pumped trillions of dollars into the industries
that are the life blood of NYC, the FIRE sector (finance,insurance and
real estate). For more on this multi-trillion dollar stealth bailout of
both FIRE and NYC, see:
- Buried
Deep Within The Files That The Federal Reserve Released On Thier MBS
Purchase Program, We Found TARP 2.0!!! More Taxpayer Money To The Banks! December 16th, 2010 - Continuing
With The Revelation of The Fed’s Stealth Bank Bailout (TARP 2.0), We
Present Our Analysis Of The Use And Abuse Of The Primarily Dealer Credit
Facility December 17th, 2010
It is not inconceivable to fantasize about crucial city services that
save lives getting more of that multi-trillion federal assistance than
bondholders behind failed and fraudulent banking practices, no? As for
the anticipation that this will resolve itself by next year…
.
So, where does this leave us? Well, if it is clear that European
states will probably default, why wouldn’t the same apply to US
municipalities? Three years ago (in 2007) I warned of an extreme spike
in muni defaults. Here is an annotated excerpt of a more detailed
warning written in 2008 when everyone thought I was being a “bear”
(actually, it should be called a realist with a spreadsheet and
objective perspective)…
From the Municipal bond market and the securitization crisis – part 2
Further building on the Municipal bond market and the securitization crisis – part I,
we have calculated the likely default amount on the municipal bonds
issued in the last four years (2004 to 2007). We have assigned default
rates on the municipal bonds for various states on the basis of property
price decline and the decline in the building permits witnessed in
each state. In this analysis, we have also considered defaults on the
general obligation bonds (GO bonds) as the macroeconomic conditions have
deteriorated and could result in increased stress on municipalities.
Although historically, the GO bonds have defaulted rarely (the
contribution to total default by Municipal bonds is 3.54% for GO bonds
and the remaining 96.46% defaults is on Revenue bonds), declining
property prices and rising foreclosures are likely to have a negative
impact on municipalities’ revenues in the form of taxes.
Since we have maintained from the beginning that this crisis is far
worse than any crisis that the US economy has witnessed for close to
half a century, our underlying assumption while calculating the default
probabilities by GO and Revenue bonds has been a premium over
historical default rates on the munis for the period 1979-97. This
premium is dependent on the degree of decline in housing prices,
building permits and the broader infrastructure investment. In the case
of Revenue bonds, the multiple has been considered higher as compared
to GO bonds since historically; Revenue bonds have defaulted more than
the GO bonds.
|
House price decline |
Building permits decline |
Premium over historical defaults for Revenue bonds |
Premium over historical defaults for GO bonds |
|
-5% |
-10% |
1x |
1x |
|
-10% |
-20% |
2x |
1.5x |
|
-15% |
-30% |
3x |
2.0x |
|
> -15% |
> -30% |
4x |
2.5x |
We have calculated the likely defaults on municipal bonds issued
since the year 2004 since this is the period where most US state and
local governments had prepared budgets based on the existing real
estate boom. In addition, the prevailing low interest rate environment
was very conducive for muni bond issuance. However, with the collapse
of the housing market, property values went down and increasing numbers
of homeowners applied for the property revaluation to reduce their
property tax burdens. This increased the burden on the respective
municipalities, as homeowners, in an attempt to mitigate the increase of
their financial obligations obtained during the housing boom equity
spending spree, cut corners by any means necessary. Construction permits
and the associated fee income dropped precipitously, further
constricting the bloated budgets of municipalities who, like the fabled
subprime refinancing, SUV driving 1st time homeowner binged on easy equity-sourced cash.
Additional strains in the revenue sourcing for municipalities are
the rampant foreclosure rate increases and the actual volumes of
foreclosures. Up until the event of actual foreclosure, property taxes
are usually not paid, further hampering the cash flows of
municipalities that relied on these funds. It gets worse. Even after
foreclosure, and even on behalf of the municipality, the back taxes
cannot be monetized and actually paid until the property is sold. Many
auctions in high foreclosure areas are seeing properties with no bid at
the upset price.
This is being exacerbated by the continual fall in prices (see As
Clearly Forecasted On BoomBustBlog, Housing Prices Commence Their
Downward Price Movement In Search Of Equilibrium Scraping Depression
Levels).
This portends very bad things for the banks, the municipalities and the insurers who wrote insurance to cover them! See
- What is the Fallout of the Ambac Bankruptcy on the Investment Banking Industry? Robo-signing Conspiracy Theory Grows Some Balls Monday, November 15th, 2010
- Banks,
Monolines, and Ratings Agencies As The Three Card Monte (Wall)Street
Hustlers! Its a Sucker’s Bet, Who’s Going to Fall for it in QE2? Tuesday, November 9th, 2010 - The Inevitable Has Come To Pass and Those That Insured Guaranteed Blowups Are Being Blown Up! Monday, November 1st, 2010
These developments are likely to have a severe negative impact on
the tax inflow for the state and local governments which forms the
basis of our underlying assumptions. According to our estimates, on the
total municipal bond issuance of US$1.6 trillion in the year 2004-07,
the potential losses due to defaults will be US$22.8 billion or a
default rate of 1.44% with Revenue bonds contributing majority of the
default amount of US$22.5 billion while GO bonds account for US$304
million. This indicates a default rate of 2.12% for the Revenue bonds
and 0.06% for GO bonds.
In the multifamily housing segment, default rates increased
significantly and were extremely high for the period 1987-90, i.e. at
the time of the S&L crisis when real estate lending was reckless
due to declining lending standards by banks and other financial
institutions. The default rate peaked in 1988 in the eleven year period reviewed to 4.31%, followed by 3.41% in 1989.
Those who are interested in reading more on my 3 year old muni sector analysis should read Municipal bond market and the securitization crisis – part I and Municipal bond market and the securitization crisis – part 2. Those interested in subscribing to our research services can do so by following this link.
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Don't even TRY to tussel with me fools. I am a top gun message board flamer, having proved my mettle all over the FC boards. You don't mess with me and you wont' get burned.
Joe \/\/ /\ /\/ G Do you know him?
O \/\/ /\/ E D!
Doo-doo, nice graphic of my name -
I have yet to see any hard evidence that "stealth austerity" is behind the snow situation in NYC, sorry. Correlation is not causation.
Also, if it turns out that it is a data point, it looks like an awfully mild example. So a big city has trouble clearing the streets after a major winter storm? So what? You can't take that fact and extrapolate the collapse of civilization from it.
How do you equate stealth austerity with the collapse of civilization?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayor_Lindsay#Snowstorm
History may not repeat, but it sure does rhymn!
The worst part of this story? The fact that every single person living in this country will turn the cheek and act like nothing happened, and that everything is just hunky dory in their life and who cares about their neighbors/friends/family/etc.....It's not me, so who cares right? The problem is sooner or later it will be you. It will be me. This country is going to shit faster than people want to realize. Any bets on to how long it is going to take before this newly created FED bubble ruptures into the worst collapse ever? It won't be long.....
Dude relax. New York has seen far worse in its long history.
I'd have more respect for this author if he was actually a decent wrtiter. Poor writing skills are indicative of a poor education.
Case in point is this never ending run on sentence, which also has a homophone error:
Despite the nearly guaranteed default of the Euro-area nations, it ain’t pretty over hear either, particularly as those eliminated services that have been taken for granted are needed, as in the post Christmas mini-blizzard.
Yup, I caught that error when I read it and it definitely undermined the writer's credibility in my mind. I see those kinds of errors in a lot of blog entries which indicates that the people aren't proofreading anything they write. Perhaps it is all just fluff produced as content for content junkies who prefer a certain cant to what they read?
Ahem: Care to explain the grammatical correctness of this gem:
"Case in point is this never ending run on sentence, which also has a homophone error:"
see my reply to jkruffin above...I didn't criticize grammer... And what's wrong with the grammar of that sentence anyway, grammar nazi...Oh shit I left out the hyphens! People will undoubtly think that i'm an idiot for that PUNCTUATION error.
"grammar nazi"
Contemplate inwardly this phrase.
uhuh, its a dangling participle, but who cares because this is a message board. However, you trolls are going ad-hominem and ignoring the subject matter. This was one of the first things I was taught as an analyst on the street. I say it because the analysis is great, whereas the writing style is shit.
Well, I happen to like my writing style as do a decent cross section of readers. That being said, this is an analysis an opinion site, not a writing style site. If you feel the analysis was great then it has served its purpose. If you spend much time around the free blogs that put out prodigous amounts of content, you should realize this stuff is written quite quickly without editors and extensive proofing. I will happily and publicly compare my content to that put out by the institution that employs you and let the readership here decide which is of the most value. Of course, we need to compare Apples to Apples, and the content your side produces must not be compensated, edited, or produced on a given time schedule or with a budget.
Keep in mind that if my content is chosen as superior you will have to publiclly retract your comment and identify yourself, ex. name and source of content.
Deal?
Absolutely, Reggie's work and that of the rest of the ZH crew, should be applauded daily for what they offer us. They keep us informed with detailed facts, explained so anyone could get the jest of it and understand what it means to you and everyone else. They might make a typo here and there, but so what, they don't have 20 FED officials there telling them what to write and when to write it like the rest of the MSM today. The media makes the news these days, they don't report it. That, in itself my friends, is very very dangerous. Years ago, the media would have been all over investigating this bailout scam and FED/TRSY scam that is being run, and it would have had the brakes put on it long ago. But alas, here were are today.
You have the nerve to talk about someone's writing, and your punctuation is all over the map and lacking in your sentences. Nice call! Idiot! Your second sentence describes yourself. LOL
I did not criticize his punctuation. I was criticizing his writing skill and style. Even the best authors have an editor or publisher scrub the punctuation, grammar etc. Thus, punctuation and grammar reflect on the editor. A run on sentence is a stylistic mistake, not grammatical.
Additionally, I did not insult the writer. My criticism of the author’s work is valid and the author should benefit from it. Poor style mitigates authority, whilst grammar is excusable.
Wait is the part where we should all pray for 20 feet of snow to fall on NYC and D.C.?
LOL yeah if all the Wall Street bankers can't go out shopping the fucking economy will collapse in a day or two!
nice caption to the photo above but not entirely accurate as that group in order are currently
on a yacht in St. Barths
at hotel in South Beach
at someone's condo in the Bahamas
on the slopes in Colorado
The first thought that came to my mind was "how much better off would we all be if we didn't have these people?" Substitute politicians for doctors and then you have the 4 largest classes of parasites killing the host.
way to many intelligent people on this board NOT to realize that this was a stealth organized slowdown by most DPW across NY and NJ ......way too many same stories across the towns and cities, to just be a coincedence !!! (or else governments really are broke and the end is here)
"Even the swap meets around here are getting pretty corrupt"
This city is a cesspool. The unions of financial thugs and the unions of public thugs make this a real shithole. I have had enough of all of them. You just get so sick of the mentality. Unless you have been in a truly union dominated city you cannot understand just how terrible these people are. They are not fighting for their rights or against discrimination. They are fighting for power and the ability to steal.
How could the streets get plowed properly when so much of the public budgets goes to blue hairs resting in Arizona or Florida? Or it goes to double-dippers that soak up even more of the "wealth".
It has to all come to an end. It will at some point. The writing is on the wall. Too bad this city is filled with so much illiteracy.
so this is what now happens .....when we have snowstorms just about every winter AND this one was predicted to be BIG about 4 days before.......IMAGINE when the next disaster happens without warning .....it will make Katrina look like perfect execution
Mr. Middleton,
Excellent post. You set a very high bar for thoughtful, substantiated analysis. All the verybest in 2011 and beyond and thank you for sharing your insights with those of us who are less talented but rabidly interested.
Respectfully,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHk7WxFg35Y
We need not worry about these "trivial" matters...Harry's Wanger says all is well and that is all we need to know.
I am going to guess too many people went out shopping, got their cars stuck in the snow and clogged the streets thus preventing the snow plows from making their rounds. Not an earth shaking analysis, but it might be one of the culprits.
The City barely moves on good days, throw in 18 inches of snow and cutbacks and it comes to a halt.
Bermuda was sunny and 75, where the Mayor spends his weekends.
The plows they use garbage trucks with snowplows barely function and he demoted 200 San. Supvs and cut OT .
Just recently watched “Crumbling America” on the History Channel.
It’s not just NYC that’s falling apart.
Nation-wide the roads, rails, electrical grid, sewage systems, dams, levees, water pipelines, and bridges have not been maintained, repaired, or replaced as needed. Talk about politicians kicking the can down the road.
Trillions of dollars are needed just to bring the systems up to minimal standards. Trillions and trillions more to upgrade to world-class.
But not to worry.
We will continue to spend double the percentage GDP that others spend on healthcare in order to subsidize the insurance and health industries. We’ll allocate trillions more to keep financial speculators afloat. We’ll spend trillions more to kill illiterate peasants half-way around the world, prop up drug mobsters, and enrich warfare merchants. We’ll build more prisons, fewer schools. We’ll pay for more NSA, TSA, and Homeland policing of ourselves. We’ll do with less, so the wealthiest can have more.
As one can see, the problem is being addressed.
Maybe those union stage hands at The Met making $290,000 a year can learn how to use a shovel. NYC either has banksters at The Goldman Sack or The JP Morgue scamming people or union workers doing nothing and scamming taxpayers.
Violation of Fidicuary Responsibility resulting in deaths, if we had a justice system in this country rather than a CRIMINAL justice system would result in many government employees being charged with neglegent homocide.
reggie, mister bloomberg can't do everything. he's focused on getting all that trans fat out of your diet and also stopping the restaurants from using salt. he has also travelled to other states because they sell guns in accordance with the second amendment, which he don't like, and he also thinks we need to have a carbon tax because well the global bankstas need more money. so LEAVE BLOOMBERG ALONE
When will the arrogant, prideful losers that think they can govern wake up to the fact that large entities, such as a city like New York, cannot be effecively, efficiently and manageably ruled?
When will the people realize that large entities with innumerably diverse cultures, languages, and financial characteristics get it through their thick heads that their domicile is nothing more than chaos with a fragile veneer of organization, easily shattered at the slightest minor crisis?
Large entities, governed by animals with somewhat larger Broca/Wernicke areas than chimps, need to be broken down to manageable size if there is any hope of survival in the long run.
When?
Complexity has its limits.
I think we will find that it is impossible to impelement a 2000-page bill (Obamacare/Finreg, etc.) because the complexity contained in the bill can't be grasped by a bureauracracy of any size.
If a bill can't be read to the full house/senate in less than a half an hour (50 pages double-spaced 12 pt.?), it needs to be simplified.
I will do you one better ... I have a photo from a blizzard of 1996 where people are walking down the middle of Third Avenue. Back then, however, NYC had a mayor who actually accomplished things that mattered, like stopping crime and plowing streets, rather than taking on trans-fats and salt in the people's foods. So, If people are whining about the streets being unplowed, it could be that they have simply become, in the words of Ed Rendell, a bunch of wussies, or it could signal a decline in the political leadership that is more dedicated to feeling good and moral rather than actually accomplishing things.
Serious snow-belt cities can declare a snow-emergency and prohibit parking on the streets...everything gets towed...before the storm reaches it's peak.
That being said, this particular storm came with much higher wind speeds, which made plowing the streets a waste of time, and by the time the wind had died down, many streets were blocked by cars, buses, etc.
If the rumor that bus drivers intentionally got their buses stuck is true, that is very disturbing (and borderline criminal).
Well done Reggie.
Here in Chicagoland, snow in December is not that surprising either. What IS surprising is that NYC appears to have been caught insufficiently prepared. I wonder if the Streets and San. budget was cut last year?
I suspect that the real culprit here is the embattled 2011 budget. Budget cuts threatened across the board. It wouldn't surprise me if it comes to light that this was an intentional work slowdown by the department of sanitation to show New Yorkers (and Mayor B) how crucial they are and why their budget shouldn't be cut. E.G.- Public Union Posturing and strong-arm tactics.
Where I grew up, to this day, the town is completely dug out before the bigger cities. We have no public workers and only a volunteer fire department. People either pick up their shovels or put a plow on their tractor and get to work. The elderly and handicapped are dug out by neighbors.
So much for coordinating a community to pick up a friggin shovel, figure out where to put the snow and dig your selves out.
That being said, nothing but excuses coming out of NYC right now about the storm.
Keep up the great work Reg.
Snow removal in cities is not exactly the same as in the rural country.
In cities, there is nowhere to put the snow except the streets or sidewalks. Shoveling snow off the sidewalks does not clear the streets.
Snow in the streets needs to be hauled away by trucks.
Blame incompetence of city officials. Blame the economic depression that is bankrupting municipalities.
But your self-righteous arrogance over your fellow citizens of New York is unwarranted.
RWE: That's why I said "figure out where to put the snow.." DUH. You might want to work on your reading skills a little bit. I realize snow is very scary, and distracting for you as you are obviously trapped in your home with no food or water (sarcasm).
It is not arrogance, it is simple common sense. We are not exactly rural here either, but we know there is nobody better to help us than ourselves.
I mean seriously dude, it is... SNOW. Sure snow removal is a problem, but it is not an insurmountable apocolypse.
Here ya go--get a big dump truck or anything you can put snow in, put snow in it (push snow up side street, then shovel into container on truck/tractor whatever), take to Manhattan which seems to have an awful lot of plows for some strange reason so they can dispose of it. Repeat. I'm sure others can give you ideas that may need tweeking, but could (shocker) actually work.
Even the mayor of Newark (not a huge fan), but even HE got his butt out there and was helping to dig people out. Newark got snow too and a lot of it.
Simple self-reliance.
But hey, if you need someone else to save you, the rest of us will let the zombies get you first. bwahaha.
A big, fat junk for you. I call bullshit. Any town bigger than 250 people actually has this newfangled thing called a 'snowplow'. Those of us who can read, write, and need to go to work rely upon these amazing things. You better get back to them hogs & chickens now. The wood doesn't chop itself.
How about stop chemtrailing so you can let the sun melt it off. Imagine the money they spend on their weather modifying, geo engineering, bullshit.
I live in mushagain, and have not seen a clear blue (not haze) sky, in months.
Hey great idea. Let me see if ZipCar has any dump trucks and trailers left.
everything is "simple" to the simple-minded.
Obviously you are too simple to realize the arrogance in claiming New Yorkers (unlike you) can't "figure out" where to put the snow.
Why bother relying on one's own self when you can simply rely on the government?
WOOT!!
As usual, very insightful analysis.....
Great post, Reggie.
O/T but I saw that the developer of Angry Birds gave an interview dissing Android as a pain to work with and saying that AAPL will be numero uno for some time to come. Certainly the relative behavior of AAPL vs GOOG the last few months is c/w that view. Any modification of your views?
Maybe the developer of Angry Birds has a financial incentive in stating that information. They both seem pretty easy to work with; the advantage with Android is that it's open platform, so the "basement nerds" have a much lower development cost. Never bet against the "basement nerds", they've headed every single software revolution, period.
http://developer.android.com/
http://developer.apple.com/