What's a little Traffic between friends?

Ramblings Post #320
While the city of Atlanta contains one of the worst stretches of highway in the world that doesn't contain land mines, the rest of the city's traffic isn't really all that bad. Sure you've got your problem people on the road, but all in all if you know the proper side streets and connections you can get around pretty good. With rare exception. Or soon to be not so rare exception, if somebody doesn't do something soon. 

The Westside of Atlanta is hot right now. And by Westside I mean that tiny little bit of real estate parcels between Northside Drive and Marietta Blvd, right around the reservoir. Not to be confused with like, the actual west side of the city where all the black people live. The new restaurants, shopping, wine places, apartments are all fusing together to create that "place" feel that has been successful in Atlanta over the last decade (see Atlantic Station, Shoppes of Buckhead, Avalon.) A quick peruse of Curbed Atlanta shows that even more development is planned for this busy little corridor. So in the Westside, not on the West Side, it seems that everybody with a few million to rub together is trying to get in while the getting is good. 

Now I drive through this area pretty much everyday, as it's on the way to and from work. Note I said drive. Primarily because Atlanta has a slack public transportation system due to too many reasons to go into here, and partly because I no longer completely trust the parking lot at the Marta station on the West Side. But I digress, because right now, during the morning and afternoon rushes, the area's former livestock trails that they've paved over and pretend to be streets are filled to bursting. I get through the morass by knowing when to get in the right, left or bus lane at which particular intersection or stretch of road, having the timing down, and blind luck. A single bus, slow driver, rain or a person trying to do something silly and the whole thing goes to hell very, very quickly. 

From Google Maps, with some drawing on it...

Was a traffic study required before all this was allowed to be built up practically right on top of each other? Is one going to be required in the future for all the other things they're still trying to cram in there? Because all these sweet amenities mean nothing if the streets that connect them are designed for a quarter of the traffic. As much as this city wants to be a New York South, that namesake major city has fairly good public transportation that people actually use. Because it goes places. Atlanta is distinctly a car city.

Under current conditions, there are blind driveways leading to and from shopping, spots where a single car making a left turn means backing up traffic for a block, where I think the light timing is probably set on randomizer, and places where the parking rules for a gin joint from 1935 are the current fashion. And that's on a Tuesday afternoon. Imagine a Friday night, when the nightclubs and bars are open. And since they've just finished knocking something else down to make room to build something else - right across the street from the apartment building I think they finished this spring that already has parking issues - it's only going to get worse. I realize that developers run Atlanta and that zoning laws are merely suggestions to them, but damn. 

I hope that with the coming of the Westside Reservoir Park, no relation, on the actual west side of Atlanta, some of that development will move maybe, to the west. Westerly if you will. To where the black people live. I find it odd that in the black mecca of America that all the development is taking place in the areas without the black people. Funny, huh? This process of economic inclusion could probably be sped along by basically zoning out the rest of the Westside so that you can get close, but not right in there, or starting the next little "place" on the actual west side. Like, say, up the street from my house? Which if anyone is reading this besides those two guys in Russia and the nice lady in Singapore (love you guys! mean it), that means that property values and TAX revenues increase in a broader area. Which might be a good thing, I don't know, not a politician. 

I am wondering exactly how they're going to pull the gentrification that has to happen around the new Georgia Dome in preparation for the Super Bowl. That's a very 'urban' area. I dunno, maybe some of that development will rub off.  I kid. 

Barkeep, A cold beer. No, it doesn't have to be from the brewery by the reservoir, jeez. As long as it's cold.

Greed slips and falls

Eventually, not quite as sure as death and taxes but certainly a front runner, karma settles up. It has currently called in the books of the mortgage industry for a review and people are less than happy.

Much like the dot.com bubble, the mortgage bubble seems to have popped. Or rather exploded, and rather messily leaving a number of people with a great deal of mess on their hands. Again, we're not all going to be rich! It has been blamed in the past few days on 1)Alan Greenspan, 2) speculators, 3) the government 4) and in the next few days the Illuminati in some form or fashion. What's really happening is a basic law of common sense - what goes up must come down. And since it rose so high so swiftly, the expectations of the fall had to be great. Or should have been.

Now comes the clean up, and the fun begins. Much like the dot.com bust, a lot of folks need to go to jail.

You see there is an interesting caveat in the mortgage securities sales, one that is about to drive up shredder sales. If it can be determined there was fraud in the origination of the loan, the seller has to buy back the security at the value it which it was sold. And if you got a home loan in the past five years, you KNOW there was fraud. Which means the banks which packaged it up and sold it the market might have to buy it back, by now at 60% or less what it was priced at when they were the seller.

This would cause a complete collapse of several major banks, investment firms and mortgage lenders. This is because the amount needed bring the loans back in house is more than they have in funds...combined. Essentially anyone who is not the Credit Union up the street would be in a mess of trouble. Let's not even get started with the lawyers. And since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac also are heavy into this item, guess who would have to raise taxes on somebody. White House, we're looking in your direction.

Which is the idea behind our current "best fix" - freezing rates for five years. It puts of the next wave of foreclosures in the next administration, which the Republicans have just about conceded to the Democrats. It should all blow up right around the 2012 elections, forcing higher taxes, a meltdown of financial institutions and putting economic fear back in the populace, just in time for the Republicans to save us. It also gives those responsible time to retire quietly to some warm with lots of rum drinks and women in bikinis.

Now that's what you call a long term strategy. Karl Rove must have dropped in for lunch.

As papers decry the death of personal responsibility on the part of the homeowner, the lenders are slowly backing out of the room before they get noticed. Because nobody told the lenders to give Mary who already had two houses foreclosed on the money to buy a third (with those marble floors she loves) because the fees were outrageous. The people who signed the loans are responsible, but the lender who played with the numbers, the appraisal that said it worth 40% more than it was last month, the manager who let it all ride and the senior management who knew a continuous 35% increase business and fees over 4 years was crazy were all a little bit at fault as well. And since they all got richer...as the economy stagnated, these educated folks of finance had to figure it would give at some point.

And that point for argument's sake would be now.

We're just now getting to where it's gonna get interesting. I'm going to suggest everybody get what they can now and get ready for a long dry spell. In addition to the Georgia drought.

Barkeep. Everclear. No ice.

Ranting and Raving

I believe in the common sense of the idea, I'm wasting my blog. I could be discussing a diatribe against the growing concern of Iran...which presents a formidable challenge for the next round of political leaders as the Radicals attempt to distract the West with terrorism as they make a final sprint to join the Nuclear Club... or I could discuss the housing bubble in this country... which combined with a unfocused and mercenary bent towards a TRUE, unfettered, captalistic society by the current administration has fueled a period of gratitous excess in which a down turn or hiccup of the inflationary markets will turn a number of folks who have turned there homes into piggybanks into paupers...or the current state of sport ...Go Cowboys...or education and parenting...where the kids are so emotionally ill prepared to deal with the possiblity of mediorcity a school is doing away with the honor roll after students commit SUICIDE because of the pressure that's gving them...

...maybe something worthwhile or timely...

Nah. You can get that anywhere.

I may chime in from time to time on more wordly and esoteric topics, but I've got a full time job and full time night life, trying to get three books and movie off the ground, and cram in computer gaming ...AND THIS BLOG...all in 24 hours. Blogs of that sort require actual freaking research, sources and facts. This is all pretty much speculation, conjecture and jokes.

And by the way, if you get poetry, it means I was stuck for something to say.

Sorry.