October 2010
5 posts
4 tags
Foreclosure Fallout will Last 9 Years
Wall Street Journal’s number of the week is startling. “107: How many months it would take to sell banks’ current and shadow inventory of foreclosed homes.” If Journal reporter Mark Whitehouse is right, banks will need 9 years to clear their foreclosure inventory. But I wonder. Could it be longer?
The problem is this: Foreclosed homes typically sell for much less than their...
7 tags
Should Barack Obama Bail Out Americans?
My answer is yes. Artificially created debt is cholesterol clogging the arteries of consumer spending. The economy that created the debt is gone. Only by surgically removing debt can Americans freely spend, thus pumping fresh blood to the heart of the U.S. economy. But, hey, I’m no economist, although in 2005 I rightly predicted the housing bubble’s collapse and much of the...
4 tags
Oddly Together is On Hiatus
This Tumblr blog is going on vacation while I launch “5 Minutes with Joe” and consider what’s next for Oddly Together. Most of the content from Oddly Together has moved to the new blog at joewilcox.com.
As explained in the introductory post to 5 Minutes with Joe, I will continue blogging about technology at Betanews, eventually return to storytelling at Oddly Together and focus...
7 tags
Non-Top-10 List for Journalists
I’ve come to loathe top-10 lists, and I have stopped writing them. They are a sucker’s play for pageviews, although I have always used top-10s mainly for their presentation value. Now that they’re everywhere and displacing original content, I’ve got something of a personal boycott going (hence, why there have been none from me recently at Betanews). It’s with that...
6 tags
'The Social Network' ignores the Network
On Friday, I wrote a review of “The Social Network”. Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig did one better for The New Republic: “Sorkin vs. Zuckerberg—‘The Social Network’ is wonderful entertainment, but its message is actually kind of evil”. Lawrence is insightful as always, although he expects too much of the film’s writer and director. Nevertheless, he makes...