John Cleese gets us ready for the first weekend of one of the most mind-numbing sport seasons of the year, NFL Pre-season football.
Il Volo – Extraordinary talent? Or more the product of slick marketing?
As with most major metropolitan areas, Houston has its share of urban boondoggles.
Let’s see now.
First and foremost, Houston has the financial black hole known as Metro Light Rail, which will continue to require enormous subsidies for decades to come.
But Houston also has the $100 million Bayport Cruise Ship Terminal, which has never docked a cruise ship since its completion in 2008.
Of course, who could overlook the continuing dither over what to do with Houston’s expensive and obsolescent Astrodome?
Or the Harris County Sports Authority’s problems servicing the junk debt it issued in connection with financing the construction of Houston’s Reliant Stadium for the NFL Texans?
And don’t forget the City of Houston’s decision to build a downtown convention center hotel that is almost certainly a huge money-loser, as well as the City’s ill-advised financing of several smaller downtown hotel projects and Metro’s dubious real estate development deals.
Which brings us to the most recent boondoggle — the local governments’ decision to throw about $50 million or so into the construction of a minor-league soccer stadium.
With that track record, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised with anything that local politicians might cook up as the next urban boondoggle.
But really. Financing of grocery stores?
In early 2005, back when Eliot Spitzer was taking his first pot-shots at American International Group, Inc., I wrote this blog post explaining how even mighty AIG could suffer a fate similar to that of Enron Corporation.
Inasmuch as AIG had a net worth of about $80 billion at the time coming off a previous year of $11 billion in net income on almost $100 billion in revenues, no one (including me) thought there was much of a chance that what I was suggesting could happen to AIG would actually happen to the firm.
Less than four years later, AIG would have suffered the same fate as Enron but for a massive federal government bailout.
The lesson here is that if creditors trust the federal government, then the government’s credit standing will remain high regardless of what the New York analysts say. In reality, the market rates the government’s credit continuously each moment of every day. Just look at fluctuations in interest rates on government debt.
So remember, regardless of what the Washington pols suggest, this is not rocket science.
Quite simply, it’s mostly about trust.
A wonderful eight minutes to begin the week.
The late Duke University philosophy professor Rick Roderick talks about, among other things, the underpinnings of the drug culture of the United States.