On the Economy: History in the Making

This week has seen some incredible things in the markets - huge numbers of big name banks (Wachovia not being the least of them!) being purchased in fire sales, the DOW dropping nearly 800 points, and the proximate cause of that drop: the rejection of the “bailout” bill by the house.  It is that reaction and my predictions on the next couple of days that I’d like to jot down a few notes on.

The reaction of the markets when the bill failed was just what would be expected - by dropping so far, it essentially is bullying lawmakers not only into acting quicker, but including *more* tax breaks for the corporations at fault.  While it is unlikely that this is the result of some meticulous scheme perpetrated by an ingenious Dr. Evil, the way that the market has managed to integrate itself into not just our economy but our consumption-based social lives can certainly be held at fault here.  In one quick day, the public outcry changed from “Don’t bailout wallstreet!” to “My god, I just lost money!  Bail them out!”.  Somehow the message never changed to something more reasonable, like bailing out those that are losing their homes - a bottom up approach, for a nice change.

A bottom up approach would have the further benefit of forcing the banks and institutions that lead us to this to either go under or be sold en masse, allowing more responsible firms that have managed to weather this storm to purchase portions of their assets (which, as an aside, are now much more likely to be paid as the government would be assisting individual homeowners in long-run stabilization).  This would also have the immediate benefit of staving off foreclosures.  More competition, no-one loses their houses, and the people that did this are punished.  Sounds fair to me.

But no, rather we are taking the opposite approach: give the money to the individuals that got us here, buy their failures from them, and then resell them after we (the taxpayers!) absorb the biggest chunk of the losses.  Bah to that.  But, unfortunately, it looks as if the bailout is going to succeed.  More tax credits have been tacked on, making conservatives happy, while the FDIC limit has been upped to 250k, making both sides happy.  While resistance still exists, only a scant number of representatives need to be swayed over, as the previous vote was 12 shy of a majority.  12 votes between us and one of the most ludicrous decision we’ve ever made.

SpaceX Falcon 1 Succesfully Launched

Well, likely ushering in a new age of space exploration, the first entirely privately funded spacecraft has achieved earth orbit.  SpaceX’s Falcon 1 (Video and webcast here: http://www.spacex.com/webcast.php) took off at 16:16 GMT, accelerating to over 5200 meters / second over 10 minutes.

Congratulations go out to these guys - once upon a time this took the might of entire nations.

$45.10 / person: Welcome to the 2010 Census

13.7 Billion dollars. A big number, and also the *conservative* estimate the Census has given for the amount the 2010 census will cost. With an estimated 303 million people living in America (taken, of course, from the Census.gov website) that works out to $45.10 / person.

Really?

I certainly would not dare to understate the importance of the census bureau: the data collection it does is excellent for my own research. Even more astounding is the incredible accessibility they provide on the variety of websites they have developed for end users. But when it takes nearly 9 hours of minimum wage salary to count and catalog a single individual, something is going horrible wrong. We could even be extremely optimistic and say the average census bureau employee is much better paid than myself, making $45 / hour - at this rate, it would still work out to taking at least an hour to count one person. Just one person.

So, here is my call: Geography (and GIS) needs to step it up. Find out whats going on - clearly money is available to be made (at $45 / person, you can get rich quick!). Such incredible resources could be turned to doing very useful things, like creating premade shape files for download, data analysis, or lobbying for more data collection methods to be created.  Through this everyone will benefit - and we can even keep the troops in Iraq for three more days… but thats another topic.

Happy Super Fat Tuesday

Here’s a cool mashup to coincide with today’s primaries. Google & Twitter have teamed up to spatially relate people’s Twitter messages (by using SMS) pertaining to who they voted for, problems with polling stations, and pretty much whatever people had to say about their voting experience. I’ve had the mashup on for a while and it’s been pretty interesting seeing what people had to say. SMS is an interesting way to collect data and I would like to see it used more in the realm of data collection. Cell phones are an untapped market for data submission and this is a great way to get data with spatial variables.

Microsoft, ESRI, Excel, and DBF: Methods for disaster

So, on an average day with average frustrations I would not spend time writing on a topic as nuanced as this, but certainly an issue this important deserves a bit of a note for my fellow GIS users. DBF files, for those who are familiar with them, are key to how data is held in ArcGIS projects - all attributes for spatial entities are held in them. Modifying, manipulating, and otherwise changing data in these attribute tables is as easy as 1, 2, 3 (or so you would believe) if you have a program such as excel installed on your computer - with one … small … caveat. It only works about 25% of the time. The other 75% you will find yourself wondering why your data you just entered into your DBF has magically dissapeared (no matter how many times you save it), your DBF will not load into ArcGIS after you complete your modifications, or any of a thousand other errata than can occur. After beating my head against this issue for months I have finally found a solution (well, 2):

1) Don’t use excel (see Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org) or freeware solution DBF Explorer (http://www.pablosoftwaresolutions.com/html/dbf_explorer.html)

2) If you insist on sticking to Microsoft, puruse this article on how to avoid errors with ArcGIS and Excel when using DBFs. Perhaps it will convince you otherwise: http://www.lib.umich.edu/nsds/spatial_tutorials/excel.html

I appreciate microsoft, I really do. But at some point, the madness has to end.