Fresh New Look, Same Crappy Awesome Blog

It's been over three years since I started typing, with wildly varying frequency, some thoughts into this blog. I decided to spruce the place up a bit. The dark wood paneling and orange shag carpet were getting a bit dated and frankly, rather depressing.

I'm going to be somewhat indisposed for the next month, so posting should be no more sporadic than it has been for the past year or so. But I'm hoping to actually put a bit more time into writing over the next few weeks. There's a lot of policy issues at the federal state and local level that I'd like to address. As you might guess, a lot of it centers around infrastructure spending.

We've got 10% unemployment, tremendous borrowing capacity and near endless public works projects around the country that are crying out to be done. National High Speed Rail. Aging, ineffective sewer systems and power grids. Not to mention aging intra-city highways that could be replaced by tunneled alternatives (see, e.g, Gowanus Expressway, BQE) that would revitalize surrounding communities.

With the flight to quality in the markets today, US Bonds are in high demand. We always seem to be able to justify spending hundreds of billions on overseas military adventures. I'd like to see $1 Trillion invested in rebuilding our national infrastructure and putting Americans back to work.

Don't even get me started on the gibbering imbeciles preaching austerity - typically the same clowns who never met a war spending proposal or a tax cut for the rich they didn't like. That path leads to certain disaster. My plan might not solve all our problems, but at least we'll have something tangible for our money.

UPDATE: Calculated Risk, one of the best economics blogs out there, juxtaposes columns from Professor Paul Krugman and Professional Charlatan Alan Greenspan. Greenspan, who has been reliably wrong about everything for over thirty years and is one of the three people most responsible for the economic disaster in America, is of course preaching austerity. Of course the WSJ Op-Ed pages have never been fit to so much as line a bird cage or pick up your dog's poop with, so it is no surprise they would give him a soapbox. Greenspan should be pilloried and pelted with rotten produce for what he's done, yet he has no shame.

The Krugman column deserves your full read.

And because I can, here are some otters to cleanse the palate (h/t Naked Capitalism):

Fare Hikes & Service Cuts

Lest anyone think the MTA funding crisis is over, it is not. Many of our elected officials are patting each other on the back for averting a full scale meltdown, but the can has just been kicked down the road. And while the fare hike is not as dramatic as feared, fares are going up more than 10% next month, with projected increases every year.

We're keeping our buses - for now. But we still do not have a funded 5 year capital plan. And now we learn that many station agents, who provide a human presence in the system, will be cut. Comptroller Thompson's office has a handy tool you can use to see how your local station will be affected.

As an example, the Carroll Street station is set to lose 1 part time station agent from the cuts. No station agent means no one to release the gate when you need to get a package or stroller through. No one to answer questions about service outages or directions. No one with a line to call for aid or report suspicious/criminal activity. I'm a believer in adding cameras to the subways for security, and in adding computer based train controls to improve efficiency. But station agents provide a valuable human element to the system that is hard to quantify, but improves the safety, accessibility and convenience of the subway system. These cuts are penny wise and pound foolish, but they are being forced by the same Assembly and Senate members who failed to pass a real transit funding bill this year.

It has become fashionable to blame the MTA for all manner of shortcomings - but the fault lies in Albany. Only your elected officials can fix the problems our system faces. Demand it!

Cuts on the F line:

Proposed Changes to Service on the F
Station Changes on the F
STATION CHANGE
2nd Ave / Lower East Side One full-time agent eliminated
W 4th St (B,D,F,V) One full-time agent eliminated
23rd St (F,V) One full-time station booth eliminated
East Broadway (F) One part-time agent eliminated
169th St (F) One part-time agent eliminated
Carroll St (F,G) One part-time agent eliminated
Jay St / Borough Hall (A,C,F) One part-time agent eliminated
Bergen St (F,G) One part-time agent eliminated
Essex St / Delancey St (F,J,M,Z) One part-time agent eliminated
179th St / Jamaica (F) One part-time agent eliminated
Coney Island / Stillwell Ave (D,F,N,Q) One part-time agent eliminated
34th St / Herald Sq (B,D,F,N,Q,R,V,W) Three part-time agents eliminated
47th-50th Sts / Rockefeller Center (B,D,F,V) Two part-time agents eliminated
Jackson Hts-Roosevelt Ave (E,F,G,R,V) Two part-time agents eliminated
42nd St / Bryant Park (B,D,F,V) Two part-time agents eliminated

Jon Stewart Slams CNBC, Santelli

I do so love Jon Stewart. If there is any justice, the economic crisis would result in the utter destruction of CNBC and every single commentator on that execrable channel of disinformation would be exiled to Siberia. Enjoy! (via Dealbreaker)

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

2009 Will Be A Tough Year for NYC Real Estate Market

First, a look at the national scene to set the stage: New Home Sales Hit A Record Low.

While prices have fallen precipitously in some bubble markets (e.g. Miami, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego) NYC has held up relatively well. However, we are merely behind the curve here; as I've posted before NYC is subject to the same factors behind those declines.

A figurative crack in the dyke appeared in an article in the New York Times today:

Given the current sales drought, even a handful of auctions could reset prices for new condominiums citywide, said Jonathan J. Miller, the president of Miller Samuel, a Manhattan research and appraisal company. He said he expects the auctioned properties to sell for 40 to 45 percent below the asking prices of the first quarter of 2008, when the market peaked.

. . . .

There are 8,000 new condos on the market in New York City, and 22,000 more are scheduled to go on the market by the end of next year.

And from Clusterstock there is this on Manhattan inventory:

1. inventory now at 11,000 listed homes, condos and coops in manhattan which is almost 3x normal
2. inventory actually grew 1200 units over the last 30-days (the attached stats are a couple of weeks old and the listing velocity INCREASED the last 2 weeks)

I would expect to see some striking declines in apartment prices and to a lesser extent in rents over the next two quarters.

Something to think about for policy makers, as this will not be a blip, but a reversion to historical valuations based on fundamentals (price/rent and price/income ratios).

Graph taken from the Calculated Risk post linked above.

ESTA Unveils New Ad, Website Calling For Reliable Transit Funding

The Empire State Transportation Alliance and campaign for new York's future rolled out a new ad campaign and website to support reliable, adequate funding for NYC's transit system. Take a minute to visit the website, Keep New York Moving, and tell your elected officials that NYC needs reliable transit, and we can't balance the budget on the backs of riders.

Assembly Introduces Package of Tenant Protections

And this time, with a Democratic Senate, some will pass. Tenant protections were gutted in the 1990s and again in 2003. It's about time the pendulum swung back in the other direction. But no article would be complete without a few red herrings and demagoguery from the (intentionally misleadingly named) Rent Stabilization Association:

“You will see increased foreclosures on multiple dwellings,” said Joseph Strasburg, president of the Rent Stabilization Association, a powerful landlord group. “You have total chaos in this city when you have large complexes being foreclosed on.”

News flash: There is going to be a wave of foreclosures regardless. Over the past 8 years credit standards were abandoned, prices were inflated far beyond fundamentals, and speculators bought properties based on pie-in-the-sky pro forma financials. Before I went to law school I was a financial analyst and a lender for a large regional bank (until 2002). The decline in credit standards from 2002 - 2007 was nothing short of breathtaking. It was also the logical outgrowth of Bush administration policy: open the credit spigot, abandon regulatory practices and let the good times roll.

This is the reason for the current economic crisis. It was always unsustainable, and while the adjustment back to valuations based on fundamentals (price/rent ratios, debt service/income ratios) will be painful for many, it is also unavoidable.

Of course the big landlords are going to fight it tooth and nail. But don't rely on them to argue honestly.

Schumer and Nadler Tip o' The Spear For Transit

From Bloomberg:

The Democrat’s amendment to the bill would increase funding to $14.9 billion from $8.4 billion, including $2 billion for capital transportation needs, $2 billion for railways and $2.5 billion for new transit projects.

The extra funding may mean hundreds of millions dollars more for New York City transportation, Schumer said. The region typically gets about a fifth or more of federal transportation spending, he said.

“We want to make sure that this stimulus plan helps mass transit as well as highways,” Schumer said in a press conference outside Grand Central Terminal today. “We all know how important it is to help mass transit; it’s the lifeblood of our metropolitan area.”

I'd like to see more efforts like this from the rest of our delegation.

Bear in mind, these funds are strictly for capital improvements . . . this will do nothing to plug the gap in the operating budget. For that we need our City and State elected officials to act.

Mayor Bloomberg and City Council members: Act now to transfer the city-owned bridges to the MTA so that all river crossings can be tolled at parity. This would (1) raise vital reliable funds for transit, (2) reduce traffic congestion and (3) eliminate perverse incentives for motorists to avoid, e.g. the Battery Tunnel and create traffic bottlenecks at free crossings such as the Brooklyn Bridge.

Governor Paterson, State Senators and Assembly Members: Bring back the commuter tax and dedicate these funds expressly for transit and retirement of transit-related debts, when possible. Enact legislation to allow NYC to institute a residential parking permit program, again with permit fees dedicated to transit.

The MTA has plenty of faults, but the root cause of the current crisis was the failure of the State and City to adequately fund capital needs. Instead, MTA investments were paid for with debt, and that debt burden is now crushing the MTA. Thank you, George Pataki, Rudy Giuliani, and yes, Mike Bloomberg.

We are at a crisis point; we need our politicians to step up and show some real leadership on this issue. Otherwise, as one less than venerable statesman put it in another context, this sucker's going down.

National High Speed Rail: New Site

Via Streetsblog, there are some great new posts up at The Transport Politic for those who fantasize about an adequately funded, well designed high speed rail network in North America. Check out them out here and here.

By national of course, we're really talking more about a series of connecting regional systems. The possibilities are really incredible if we make this a priority. A great way to reduce our reliance on imported oil, as well as free up capacity at airports for those flights that are not practical even with high speed rail (coast to coast, most international).

More on this later. And while we're flogging Transport Politic's posts, Senator Schumer has expanded on Congressman Nadler's efforts to increase transit funding in the stimulus package. Still only crumbs, but gradually improving.

Tishman-Speyer and Stuytown/Peter Cooper Village

New York magazine has a long and fascinating article on the genesis of one of the most regrettable real estate deals in history.

I wish I could have seen my face when this deal was originally announced. I can remember shaking my head in shock at the price T-S paid. One must, however, tip their cap to the faceless MetLife exec who was on the other side of the table. MetLife sold at the absolute top of the market.

This is a perfect example of asset prices inflated beyond all reason when credit lending standards were virtually abandoned over the last 8 years.

UPDATED:
I wasn't clear enough above - this deal is not so much regrettable for Tishman-Speyer; they actually had minimal skin in the game. But their investors are going to get hosed. This deal really is a poster child for the excesses of the financial industry of the last 8 years:

According to people with knowledge of the deal’s structure, Tishman Speyer contributed $56 million of its own money to the $5.4 billion purchase price and didn’t use any of its other properties as collateral. “Jerry is a lover of nonrecourse debt and other people’s money. He liked deals where he could contribute sweat equity,” one real-estate investment banker says. “They have so little money in, and they make so much in management fees, they have nothing to lose when it goes under,” a former Tishman Speyer staffer said.

The financing for the Stuy Town deal was facilitated by a fast-talking Wachovia banker named Rob Verrone. During the bubble years, Verrone became a symbol of the risk-taking that helped inflate the Manhattan market, and in real-estate circles he was dubbed “Large Loan Verrone.” From his table at San Pietro, Verrone held court and pitched Wachovia’s commercial-lending division to real-estate magnates like Donald Trump and Harry Macklowe. Verrone raised more than $4 billion for Stuy Town. Another $500 million came from Merrill Lynch.

The game was really one of hot potato. Wachovia put $1 billion of the bank’s money into the Stuy Town deal, but the neat trick was that Wachovia sold the debt to investors. Hundreds of millions of dollars of Stuy Town’s equity is actually held by a Korean investment fund and CALPERS, the giant California retirement fund, among others. Wachovia also bundled Stuy Town’s $3 billion mortgage in a $7 billion bond offering. Another $1.4 billion tranche of financing, known as “mezzanine debt,” is held by investors including the real-estate firm SL Green and the government of Singapore.

$56 million down with no recourse - that's nearly 100X leverage!! No wonder T-S bid so high, they offloaded nearly all the risk to fools. $56 million cap on the downside and unlimited upside if bubble economics continued for a few more years. Unbelievable.

Hoocoodanode?

Calculated Risk has the analysis on today's horrific employment data. I keep hearing the words "No one could have predicted" with respect to the economic crisis. This is false. Many people, including myself saw the coming collapse in the housing and stock markets.

Via Anonymous Liberal, here is a telling series of clips from Fox News (that bastion of journalistic integrity) featuring a series of howling baboons and Peter Schiff as the lone voice of reason. Watch how he is scoffed at, laughed, and ridiculed . . . for telling the truth. And then wonder, why the hell do these other talking heads still have jobs? How can you possibly justify paying a salary to Larry Kudlow, or Neil Cavuto, or Ben Stein, when they have been consistently 100% wrong about everything? Why is it that many bloggers got it right, and yet millionaire talking heads got it consistently wrong? Some of these people are just bone stupid but many of them are paid to lie. Be skeptical, it's good for your brain and your wallet.

LATE NOTE - To clarify, I disagree with Peter Schiff on plenty of things. But in these particular vignettes what he's saying is dead on.

R.I.P. Tanta

One of my favorite bloggers, Doris "Tanta" Dungey succumbed to a long battle with ovarian cancer this weekend. She was 47. We never met outside of the comments on Calculated Risk, and I didn't even know her real name, but the feeling of loss is overwhelming. I was always able to convince myself that she would get better. She had to.

An incredible wit and intellect has been lost. We are fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn from you, Tanta. I will miss the truth in your voice.

For anyone who wants to learn more about how we got to the place we are in today with respect to the housing finance bubble, Tanta's Ubernerd pieces are incomparable. Tributes to Tanta - The New York Times, Paul Krugman.

We lost another friend within the past two weeks to cancer, a beautiful, wonderful woman of 24, now gone. Life seems terribly unfair sometimes; remember to let the people you care about, respect, love, appreciate and cherish know how you feel about them. You can never tell your family and your partner, "I love you" too much.

Worst Market Crash Since Great Depression.

Wow. This is now officially the worst stock market crash since the Great Depression. Down well over 50% from the peak. Graph courtesy of dshort.com by way of Calculated Risk.

Employment Situation Worsening

The chart (courtesy of Calculated Risk) of continuing claims says it all. The administration is still trying to massage these numbers, attempting to carve out those who are on extended continuing benefits . . . but even so, we're now over 4 million.

I expect jobless figures to significantly worsen.

We absolutely need a major infrastructure spending package from the federal government. It might not happen until President Obama is sworn in, but it must happen, and it will.

I expect to see significant transit infrastructure spending included. We need it, it will create jobs, and set the conditions for future economic growth. IN a related matter, I'm working on a statement on the rumored MTA cutbacks. Short version: the worst possible move they could make at this point would be to cut service.

Hoocoodanode?

Dean Baker has a short piece on the hypocrisy of the mainstream corporate media (in this case, the Washington Post) in their economic reporting.

The point is extremely simple. There was a huge housing bubble that should have been visible to any competent economic analyst. The bubble was fueled by an enormous chain of highly leveraged finance. (As head of Goldman Sachs, Mr. Paulson personally made hundreds of millions of dollars from this bubble.)

It was entirely predictable that the housing bubble would burst and that its collapse would have a huge impact on the financial system and the economy as a whole. There is zero excuse for Paulson being caught by surprise by a "storm" that he helped create. The Post should not be in the business of covering up for Paulson's massive failure.

The Post piece is a fawning bit of hagiography on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, which fails utterly to address the fact that as CEO of Goldman Sachs, Paulson himself had a direct role in creating this mess we are in. And made $500 million, cash money, by doing so.

Talking Points Memo also caught the Post fawning starry-eyed this morning.

Why do people still buy these newspapers?

On the Prospect of Federal Infrastructure Funding

The Observer has a good piece today on state and local officials seeking out federal infrastructure funds.

City and state officials are positioning themselves to garner funding from any new federal stimulus package for various transportation and infrastructure projects. Most of the projects are smaller-scale and nearly ready to start development.

Longtime readers know that I am a believer in federal funding for transit, sewer, energy and communications infrastructure, especially in tough times. As we stand at the edge of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, we need sensible infrastructure spending to provide jobs and set the conditions for our next generation of growth.

One of the lasting lessons I took away from "The Power Broker", Robert Caro's fantastic biography of Bob Moses, was that those who were ready with plans for their dream projects were the first in line for funding when stimulus was available. Bob Moses secured a fortune for New York public works from the WPA and related agencies, and we are still enjoying the fruits of those investments today. It happens that Moses's vision for what to do with that money was disastrously flawed, but there can be no question that he was effective in getting things built.

New York needs leadership that will seize the opportunity in this crisis to make our city better and more sustainable, to preserve New York's preeminent stature as a world class city. But now is not the time for small thinking. It is a time for bold initiative. We have a once in a lifetime opportunity here to dramatically improve our city. Let's aim high.

Our city and state leadership must avoid the trap of thinking small and focusing only on quick fixes. We could: Extend the Second Avenue Subway. Connect La Guardia to the rail transit system. Connect Penn Station to Grand Central. Build the Cross-Harbor Freight Tunnel. Bury the Gowanus Expressway, with dedicated transit facilities. Fix our outdated combined sewer systems. Turn Third Avenue into a green oasis. Build the Vision 42 light rail connector in mid-town. Create true high-speed intercity rail. Regionalize our subway system and commuter lines.

You can get a flavor for what I would do with the money here, here and here.

Will Imploding Real Estate Bubble Sink Toll Gowanus Plan?

First yesterday was the Bloomberg headline: Toll Brothers Revenues Plunge 41%.

Then there was the unseemly grasping of CEO Bob Toll for a handout from the federal government. Believe it or not, Bob Toll, who cashed out stock to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars at the height of the bubble, is now asking for a federal handout for LUXURY home builders. Can't blame him for trying, what with every investment bank and now the automakers squealing at the trough, but this would be utterly wrongheaded policy. The problem in the housing market is that home prices detached from fundamentals (household incomes and rental value) due to easy monetary policy and lax regulation.

Now to top it all off, Toll says that the New York market is hitting the skids:

“New York City was a nice stand-alone beacon,” he said in a conference call this afternoon. “Now it has joined the rest of the country.” That happened, he said, in mid-September after the financial crisis worsened.

Many people do not want to hear it, but the housing market is crashing, and for sound reason. The price of homes rose far beyond what people could afford. Price to income ratios broke through the roof during the bubble and have yet to return to sustainable levels. Most of all the fault lies on Alan Greenspan's shoulders, but the Bush administrations abject failure of regulation, after the GOP-led deregulation of the 1990s is also to blame.

Expect home prices to decline precipitously over the next 18 months. The 4th quarter 2008 and 1st quarter 2009 numbers in particular will be jarring. And builders are still churning out new units into a softening market at near record pace. Projects that have not broken ground, or even been permitted at this point (such as Toll Brothers proposed Gowanus development between Carroll and 2nd Street) have a high probability of being shelved or killed.

At this point, I imagine Toll Brothers will still proceed full steam ahead with their efforts to re-zone the property. If they are successful, they can flip it to another developer or hold onto the site for a period of years. But whether they succeed with the rezoning or not, it grows less likely by the day that this development will be built any time soon.

This will not be the end of the world, but it will be tough for many of us. We do need to take concrete steps to keep people working. I have been saying for a long time now that we need a Federal program of public works, specifically in transit infrastructure, clean energy, clean water, and high speed data networks to get our economy moving again and lay the foundation for the next generation of growth. I hope that President Obama will be even more ambitious than FDR in this regard.

Killing Conservative Lies

Over at NY Mag, Matt Taibbi tears Byron York into tiny, perfectly coiffed pieces over the roots of the economic crisis. A sample:

M.T.: You don't think the unregulated CDS market was a major factor in the current crisis? Were you watching when AIG almost went under? Were you watching the Lehman collapse?

B.Y.: I think that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were also major factors. And I believe that many of the problems in the mortgage area can be attributed to the confluence of Democratic and Republican priorities: the Democrats' desire to give mortgages to people, particularly minorities, who could not afford them, and the Republicans' desire to achieve an "ownership society," in part by giving mortgages to people who could not afford them. Again, I believe that if you are suggesting that the financial crisis is a Republican creation, or even more specifically a McCain creation, I think you're on pretty shaky ground.

M.T.: Oh, come on. Tell me you're not ashamed to put this gigantic international financial Krakatoa at the feet of a bunch of poor black people who missed their mortgage payments. The CDS market, this market for credit default swaps that was created in 2000 by Phil Gramm's Commodities Future Modernization Act, this is now a $62 trillion market, up from $900 billion in 2000. That's like five times the size of the holdings in the NYSE. And it's all speculation by Wall Street traders. It's a classic bubble/Ponzi scheme. The effort of people like you to pin this whole thing on minorities, when in fact this whole thing has been caused by greedy traders dealing in unregulated markets, is despicable.

Toll Brothers CEO: Traffic is "worst we've ever seen"

It looks like Manhattan is still one of their stronger markets, plus Westchester and CT, but overall the housing crunch is taking its . . . Toll. I'll be here all week.

In its release, Toll Brothers said the average price of contracts signed in the quarter was $590,000, down from $711,000 a year earlier and $634,000 in the fiscal first quarter.

Robert Toll said current customer traffic is "the worst we've ever seen," but noted that potential buyers are well-qualified, with an average credit score of 747.

That's a hell of lot of price chopping, with more to come. We will soon see a marked slowdown in residential and commercial building, and we need to start planning for infrastructure projects to help smooth out the disruption in the jobs market. We really, really need to start investing in our transit and utility infrastructure, and soon we're going to need the jobs too.
H/T Calculated Risk (best finance and economics blog on the planet).

UPDATE: Brooklyn market has "faded". I saw in comments elsewhere that the Toll CEO had given the Brooklyn market an "F", but I haven't been able to confirm that yet so please take it with a grain of salt.

Toll gave most U.S. home markets poor grades, saying Southern California and Illinois are `F-,' Arizona an `F,' and New Jersey a `C.' He said the New York exurbs earned a grade ``B+'' and that sales in the city borough of Brooklyn have ``faded.''

Congressman Weiner: Hillary or Gas Tax?

Still waiting for a substantive response from the Weiner camp on McCain/Clinton's incredibly stupid, pandering "Gas Tax Holiday" plan.

Meanwhile, condemnation of the plan is virtually universal from every economist or policy wonk on either side of the aisle. Here's Mayor Mike:

Mayor Bloomberg is criticizing a proposal to suspend the federal gas tax during the summer months, a plan backed by senators Clinton and McCain, as "about the dumbest thing I've heard in an awful long time, from an economic point of view." . . . . Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday he thought, "In this case, Obama had it right."

Asked about a proposal by the state Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, to apply a similar policy to New York state's gas tax — about 33 cents a gallon — over the summer, Mr. Bloomberg repeated his objections.

"I just do not think that it is intelligent policy and it's not a good energy policy," he said.

This is literally among the worst policy ideas I've ever heard. What disgusts me is that I am certain that Clinton is smart enough to know this . . . but is pandering anyway, going for the low-information voters.

Congressman Weiner, a few short months ago, was absolutely correct to say that we need an increased Federal gas tax dedicated to transportation and especially transit improvements. That is still correct today, and I hope that Rep. Weiner will reiterate his call for a responsible gas tax policy.

Clinton, Schumer, McCain Pandering On Gas Taxes

Reuters - Clinton-McCain gas tax holiday slammed as bad idea
Newsweek - Political Pandering
Matt Yglesias - "real harm is done to people's lives by this sort of gimmickry"
Streetsblog - Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton: Where Is the Leadership?
TIME - Clinton joins McCain in the race for panderer in chief
Paul Krugman/New York Times - Gas tax follies

Again, this is the sort of bull$hit pandering I expect from the GOP . . . I expect this steaming pile from McCain. But Clinton and Schumer are out there shilling for a "Gas Tax Holiday" which would do NOTHING to help ordinary Americans while exacerbating our underlying problems of oil dependence and runaway deficits.

Ask any economist worth his salt: the Gas Tax Holiday is the worst kind of economic policy. Pandering to the public, yet shortchanging us of any actual benefit.

Barack Obama (video)is the one candidate in this race has called it for what it is.

My question: where is Congressman and Mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner on this? Weiner very vocally opposed Congestion Pricing on the promise of increasing the Federal gas tax to pay for transit improvements. Yet he is also backing Senator Clinton for President . . . the same Senator Clinton calling for a gas tax holiday. I've called Rep. Weiner for comment, and his staff was polite. I'll post here when I get a substantive response.

Just in case I wasn't clear above: it might sound good in a vacuum, but this gas tax holiday is HORRIBLY IRRESPONSIBLE ECONOMIC POLICY. If you only have time to click one of the above links, click on TIME for Justin Fox's succinct explanation of why this is bogus pandering of the worst sort.