wikipedia: “Little Boxes” is a song written by Malvina Reynolds in 1962, which became a hit for her friend Pete Seeger in 1963.

Thanks, Fatster, I never heard of Malvina Reynolds! When we were kids this is like the first song I remember us trying to learn all the lyrics to. My sisters and I sang it in the car. Wait, Johnny Jingo was 1962… and Pineapple Princess was… 1960, really? Small world, big car, long time ago. Hard to believe those were radio songs then, they sound like children’s records. Old friends — haven’t heard any of them in forever, what a trip! (The Jackie Look!) And then the world changed overnight.

But CAN you be 278% underwater? That doesn’t seem possible. But when a house is worth 36% of the selling price, is it then 64% underwater? I am wishing for one of those government yellow tags, like the ones that come with refrigerators, to tell you what your equity performance is historically likely to be. If you buy a KB Home, you will be 64% underwater or have walked away and lost everything in 5-10 years, something like that.

In terms of ubetchaiam’s city planning, a good question to ask would be, are they studying to see how their prior assumptions worked out? In our case, I am really curious what the county’s accounting looks like. Maybe they’re still ahead, or maybe they aren’t looking back because whatever’s behind them they need more short-term developer dollars now, and it’s always now? I think one reason local governments like developer projects is because they’re all HOAs now, which means the public govt collects property taxes but is off the hook for providing municipal services.

Remember that Pete Seeger song Little Boxes? “Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky, little boxes, little boxes, little boxes, all the same. There’s a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one and they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.” Those were the good old days, who knew? Now there’s tan ones and there’s beige ones and there’s gray ones and there’s khaki ones.

❖If you want to know what percentage of houses in your ZIP are underwater, just go here.

Wow, 68% homes underwater in my California zip code — highest 5% in US! Hey Kamala!

Now what would really be interesting would be a correlation by builder and/or mortgage company — like in my area, or state, how many KB Home/Countrywide homes are underwater — or by title, how many MERS homes are underwater? We had a dense major use development project approved here that was totally out of character with our backcountry community, and then the county would not even enforce the environmental protection rules in their own permit. Somehow they lost the oak trees as well as the requirements for drought-tolerant landscaping. Could not, would not see them. For what? I recently heard of one of the KB houses that originally sold new for around $250,000 in 2005 and then sat empty for a long time, just resold for less than $90,000. I believe that all of the houses in that development must be underwater now or have been at some point.

Also not sure if it means 68% of all of us are underwater by some unspecified high or low amount, or if it means all of us together are on average 68% (highly) underwater. (It says “This map from Zillow shows the proportion of homes with negative equity nationwide,” and then when you mouse over an area it says “amount owed as percentage of home value.”) Do you divide 250/90 (2.78 or 278% underwater?) or 90/250 (0.36 or 36% underwater?)? Ugh, math.

Big Wave by Jenny and Johnny –

Living your life in the gray
Is the new American way
We’re spending what we haven’t made…

..and the books all fried
You are bankrupted because
all the loans you take

Big wave
Big wave
It’s gonna hit you with a big wave

– she talks about the bobcats taking over a failed development in Lake Elsinore – 2008 news story

I can’t stand him. I’d buy one. Put the bobblehead on my dash. Alas for an entrepreneur.

cf the Matt Stoller article I linked to above:

Bill Clinton’s $80 Million Payday, or Why Politicians Don’t Care That Much About Reelection

Elections in many ways are just like regular season games in basketball – they are worth winning, but it’s not worth risking an injury. The reason Obama won’t prosecute bankers, or run anything but a very mild sort of populism, is because he’s not really talking to voters. He just wants to be slightly more appealing than Romney. He’s really talking to the people who made Bill and Hillary Clinton a very wealthy couple, his future prospective clients. We don’t call it bribery, but that’s what it is.