There is a Land Use Meeting on Thursday night.  There should be a discussion of the “3-house” rule that night as well.  I don’t know where that item is on the agenda so it may be early or late.  I know that some folks are worked up about the rule so come on out if you want to hear what’s going on.  Restricting the ability to submit complaints to those that are within 3 houses seems a bit strange but I want to first hear why that was done before I add to the public debte.  It’ll get worked out.

Frankly, this is a picture perfect example of the way things are supposed to work: citizens complain to the Council, the Mayor sends the issue to the appropriate committee and the committee works it out.  I do not know what the ultimate disposition of this will be but the process will not even start if citizens don’t bring things to our attention!

This is a bit off my beaten path but I’ve almost finished reading Alan Greenspan’s autobiography.  The first part is pretty much autobiographical but the second half is an interesting (and accesible even for a layman like me) discussion of economic policy topics.  In the first half, Greenspan talks about his experiences with the “Black Friday” stock market crash that happened shortly after he was appointed Chair of the Federal Reserve.

Fast forward 20 odd years and we have a new chairman and a new economic crisis – the credit crunch.  Bernanke seems to be holding up pretty well through the whole thing – he is making the right noises but the situation will likely to get worse before it gets better.  Fortunately, I have a solution: if we never switch Fed chairman again, we won’t have any problems!  Problem solved…..

Interestingly, the White House has released a statement about the credit conditions and they indicate that tightening credit conditions will not stall business expansion.  I’m not an economist but if credit ain’t available then business expansion would seem to be in trouble.  I would, however, be happy to be wrong.