Two years ago John Edwards invited me and a bunch of Chapel Hill bloggers for dinner. At one point, each of us offered a bit of advice. I told him that a smart candidate would bet that the US economy was soon to crumble and stake out positions that would address that crisis. I focused on the coming housing crisis. Here’s the post — titled “if I were running” — that I wrote the morning after that meeting, adding a couple of additional forward-looking positions a smart candidate would take.

If I were running for President as a dark-horse, I’d:

a) stump for an “energy trust fund to pay for our children’s future energy needs” in the form of a $2/gallon gas tax, with rebates for everyone making less than $80,000 a year. Higher gas prices would reduce pollution, encourage Detroit to build cars for tomorrow rather than yesterday and, by cutting consumption/imports, reduce US funding of anti-American regimes abroad. The revenues would also go to reduce the deficit, lowering interest rates and helping to bail out mortgage holders. (See plank #2.)

b) stump for protection for home buyers who will see their mortgages jump 200-300% in the coming eighteen months and be faced with foreclosure and/or tumbling ad prices.

c) make banks and credit card companies bear the burden for identity theft.

Though not fully baked, some variation on these issues would have broad middle class appeal, and grow more popular in the next two years.

Versus six weeks ago, the phrase “Since the great depression” now has 1524 mentions in Google news and (still) 588,000 in Google search. (Time for a new indexing?)

Looking at Google trends, searches for “recession” are trending up and “bailout” has made a huge spike since the beginning of the year.

Lots of sweating and long hours by my programming colleagues got us over the hump this weekend with server and software upgrades. Whew!

Blogads admin pages will be unavailable Aug. 30-Sept 1 as we perform significant upgrades to our servers and software.

Active ads will serve throughout, but no ad purchases will occur, currently running ads won’t expire or be editable, and adstrips won’t be modifiable. Ads already to scheduled to start during the period will go live Saturday and be extended over the originally purchased period.

We apologize for the downtime.

We just created this draft of our tutorial video. What suggestions?

It seems criminal that Wachovia, which yesterday took a monstrous $8.7 billion loss and already is preparing for another $5.6 billion in losses, is still paying a dividend. The bank has a toxic portfolio of $122 billion of the riskiest mortgages, called pick-a-pay, which allow borrowers to make no payments on principle for an initial period.

$122 billion.

Wachovia currently projects that 12% of these mortgages are going to default. Why should any of these mortgages, most of which are in housing quagmires California and Florida, not end up in default?

$122 billion.

Losses on anything like that scale would force Wachovia to borrow money from taxpayers, you, me, our children and grandchildren. So continuing to pay dividends to shareholders while in such dire straights is akin to seeking to shelter assets from potential creditors.

Congress, busy trying to stop intelligent investors seeking to profit from the stupidity of others by selling short-selling the shares of still-overvalued companies (like Wachovia), should instead be prosecuting money-losing banks that insist on paying dividends with “extra” cash that’s just an accounting fiction.

A dividend is by definition a distribution of profits to shareholders, so how is it legal, or morally conscionable, for unprofitable companies to pay dividends?

Hey, let’s say it one last time: Wachovia’s mighty vaults sit on a $122 billion pit of quicksand.

Watch Joe’s face for the moment when he realizes he’s run out of memory after 20 seconds of filming. Micah was using “qik” and amazing service that lets him broadcast live.

I was walking down mainstreet in Blowing Rock, NC Saturday and noticed a well-dressed middle-aged guy who had paused behind a parked mini-van. His leg was jerking a little and he looked like he was concentrating really hard. I asked whether he was OK and he said, loud and clear and coherently, “yes, I’m fine.”

I sat down on a bench not too far away and watched him. He started to lean on the van’s protruding spare tire and shove it. I went over and asked again, “are you OK?”

He said again, very clearly and in a normal voice “I’m fine.”

20 seconds later, he was flat on his back, looking up at the sky.

“I’m going call 911, OK?”

“No, I’m OK,” he said.

At this point, the guy is sweating and looking pale, so I said cognitive dissonance be damned and ignored his opinions and called 911. A woman stopped and asked the guy if he’s diabetic and he said yes; she gave him a peppermint. Two minutes later he’s sitting up, and the paramedics arrive. I head off to dinner.

Later I learned that diabetics suffering from extreme low blood sugar can become unrooted and report that they’re fine even as they’re melting down. I’m still unnerved by the memory of trying to square this guy’s disintegrating physical condition with his bald-faced statements to the contrary.

Anticipating a lighter, digital future, we cleaned out some shelves and boxes of old videos yesterday. Each group represented a different strata of our lives, and the tattered boxes are themselves chronicles of our loyal patronage for certain videos. The Sound of Music was a particular favorite. Here’s the list:

On our video stand:
Born Free
PBS Home video Liberty, the American revolution 1, 2, 3
Dennis the Menace: Walter Mathau
The mask of Zorro (Banderas, Zeta Jones)
Cats
Annie with Kathy Bates
Annie with Albert Finney, Carol Burnett
Star Wars 5
Harry Potter: Sorcerers stone
The Man from Laramie
Around the world in 80 days
MacKenna’s Gold
Star Wars 1
Alexander the Elephant who couldn’t eat peanuts

Old Box (most circa France):
The Sound of Music
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Mary Poppins
Secret Garden
Monkey Trouble
The Orchestra
The Graduate
Musee D’Orsay
Cousteau
Beatrix Potter Tales
The whole Musi collection
Dinosaur
Oliver
Tintin
Charlie Chaplin: La Gradne Revie de Charlot
Mousehunt
Louvre
Dr. Doolittle
Montee Python
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
The red balloon