Speed of reading

To be savored slowly... or not so slowly

SEATTLE, Washington - Sometimes I think I read too slowly, slower than my capabilities allow, given my genius-level intelligence. Can something be done? I recently stumbled upon the video below, where the host reveals the secrets of this matter. Our reading is slowed because of subvocalization - when we read a word, we move muscles associated with saying the word. This slows us down. Train yourself to stop doing this, and you'll start flying through texts.

It all sounds very straightforward and scientific, except that it may all be hot air. Subvocalization is real (it can be detected with subvocalization-detection equipment) but many experts call bollocks on the idea that it negatively affects reading speed.

I tried the exercise in the video a bit, and I don't think it was helping much, and like any practice exercise in anything (e.g. painting) I bail out quickly.

Even proponents of various speed reading schemes usually concede that it's useful for absorbing information but doesn't let you appreciate style.



Video found here

Football Lock of the Week

SEATTLE, Washington -

Record: 1-2.

This week: BYU (-24) vs. Utah State

this game starts in 20 mins! Lay the lumber RIGHT NOW

UPDATE: Utah State scores a touchdown with five seconds left to cover the number??? 35-17. Jesus mary and joseph. Mark down the Utah St. coach as a guy who knows the pointspreads. Record: 1-3.

On the Roman Polanski situation

You know what happens to nosy fellows?

SEATTLE, Washington - When the French government bails out on you, that usually means your goose is cooked - at least that's what Roman Polanski should be thinking right now.

Now, I have not exactly been calling for Polanski's head on a spear for the last fifteen years, so I've asked myself - should I have been doing just that?

If you asked me two weeks ago, "why did Roman Polanski flee the United States?", I would have said something to the effect that he kinda-sorta got down with a just-short-of-legal girl, and it came to light, and he left rather than deal with the static.

Polanski in fact had negotiated a guilty plea in 1978 on "unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor"; when you read that it kind of settles the issue of whether he had sex with her. So perhaps I have simply been Jedi mind-tricked whenever reading old accounts of why he left the country. Not even old accounts: the story linked above, written today, puts it thusly:

He is accused of having unlawful sex with 13-year-old Samantha Gailey in Los Angeles in 1978, before fleeing the country and spending the intervening period as a fugitive, mainly living in Paris.

That's a bit of a tinted view of the facts, and I suspect everything I've casually read about the circumstances of his flight had a similar ring.

The word "rape" had not entered my thinking, but if it had, I think I (like Whoopi) would have assumed it was a-few-weeks-short-of-legal rape, not "rape rape."

Once you read the details of the legal wranglings, and Gailey's testimony, it certainly puts Polanski in a rotten light. Sounds like "rape rape".

Now, I have also thought about taking a more libertarian perspective on this - specifically, the fact that Gailey has stated that she'd like the dogs called off. Crimes, even a person-on-person crime, are technically regarded as crimes against the state (Polanski v. California, as opposed to Polanski v. Gailey), so Gailey doesn't really have such power. Should she? It is a mainstream libertarian position that her wishes should override the wishes of the state?

Are we (through the government) sticking our nose where it doesn't belong? As Polanski himself said - "You're a very nosy fellow, kitty kat. Huh? You know what happens to nosy fellows?"

Turns out, it doesn't seem to be - I can only find evidence of the most hard-boiled anarchists (and a few Hollywood types) clamoring for a reduced role of the state. Mainstream libertarian opinion (if I may use the term) is much more sympathetic to the government than usual in this matter.

A few reasons to prefer cats to dogs

Clean - like my conscience

SEATTLE, Washington - Cats have quite a few characteristics that make them better to have around then dogs. The first one is obvious - the typical cat has much more contempt for humans than the typical dog. I like that.

One other thing is the cleanliness angle. I was at a friend's house last weekend, and they have a dog, and the dog smelled a little bit. Not a lot, probably the average dog smell, but it's noticeable and this is in spite of the dog getting bathed.

I've had my cat for 11+ years and never cleaned her. Yet, I just took a deep sniff of her torso, and she smells like she just popped out of the clothes dryer. They handle this themselves.

The cruel inevitability of the Seahawks key lime jersey

SEATTLE, Washington - When the Seahawks unveiled their uniform overhaul in 2002, it was noted that there was some really loud lime green piping in the uniform, and in the little eye of the (now slightly edgier, more angry) hawk itself. At the time it would have been absurd to have an entire jersey in such a color.

When Deion Branch arrived with the team in 2006, he was sporting receiver gloves in the lime color. It looked bad, but that's as bad as it could get, right?

A lime jersey appeared this spring as part of a April Fool's hoax... a Photoshopped lime green jersey, ha ha.

The next day, April 2, a more official-looking green-jersey graphic was leaked, and the TNT Seahawks blog wondered whether "that’s the imagery you want to project to an opponent like the Chicago Bears on Sunday."

Now, today, against the Bears, they arrived, and they were the disaster everyone thought they would be.

Football Lock of the Week

SEATTLE, Washington -

Record: 1-1

This week: Georgia (-12) vs. Arizona St.

UPDATE: When did Dennis Erickson teams start showing spine and grit on the road? They lost 20-17, so I fall to 1-2.

Now that's what I'm talkin 'bout... The Swinery

SEATTLE, Washington - The Swinery is in full effect. Maybe it's time to watch the carbs again, after probably averaging a pint of ice cream every other day for the last four months.

The chicken liver pâté - very smooth, a bit more sherry flavor than most. Still has a bit of a pink hue, so it's not overcooked (as people so often do with liver, pâté and otherwise).

Bacon burgers - ground beef with bits of cooked pancetta right in the mix. Allegedly a 75/25 mix, it looks less than that, but it's certainly enough to give the burger a bacony flavor. The grind is very coarse, barely burger-ish if you're used to wispy supermarket grinds. I like the change of pace and the mouth feel.

If you're panicky about the prices at a small shop like this - the ground products did seem a bit on the spendy side (in the $10/lb neighborhood) but are certainly distinctive products, and the whole cuts are not much pricier at all than other higher-end places (e.g. New York steaks at $18/lb). Creatures like quail and goat were in the case.

There's plenty of variety, cheeses, bulk and cured chorizo, assorted forcemeat products - something for everyone.

Where were these chicks when I was at Clemson?

Another Dagny wannabe

SEATTLE, Washington - I noticed in the October 2009 issue of Reason that one of their summer interns, Amanda Carey, is a student at Clemson. She is the editor of the miniscule "right-wing" student paper, the Tiger Town Observer. Very cute, as you can see. Per Reason she talks "a little natural rights, a little Atlas Shrugged" in a regular Friday get-together, followed by a trip to "Super Taco."

Where were these types when I was prowling Tiger Town? I knew one of the members of the Observer staff at the time and he never mentioned cuties (or any women at all, that I recall) at the paper. Otherwise, I'd have also been hanging out with them, talking natural rights.

And Super Taco must be new, because I was quite well versed on cheap eats when I was there and I don't recall it. Does the local Pizza Hut still have a $4 lunch buffet? For the sake of the current students, I hope not. Is Nick's still peddling cheap pitchers of Lowenbrau Dark? Is it a good thing or bad thing if they are?

Football Lock of the Week

NEW YORK, New York -

Record: 1-0

This week: Cardinals @ Jaguars UNDER 42.5

UPDATE: Jacksonville got garbage-time points, unfortunately, to push the game over. Record: 1-1.

Haven't been to Barnes & Noble in a while - rather traumatic

NEW YORK CITY, New York - I've turned into a real grinder in book buying. Used, over-runs, Half Price Books, yard sales - anything but actually walking into a big-ass Barnes & Noble.

I went into one in New Jersey and I've been grinding for so long, I was shocked by the prices. The minimum I saw for a novel was $13.95, and many were $16.95+. I'm used to paying $4 to $7 nowadays. If I really need something that's not available via my usual channels, I'll order it on Amazon for about $10.50 max, and I pay for that with a voucher from a Coinstar machine so it feels like it's free.

Oddly, given my parsimoniousness on this issue, I never read a book from the library.

Do the authors make any money when I buy used? No. Do they make less when I buy at clearance? They must make less, or none at all. What can I say, write for the love of the game. Many of the authors I buy are dead anyway. Our Leaders have blessed us with the First-sale doctrine - take advantage.

Football Lock of the Week

SEATTLE, Washington - I was 8-5 (61.5%) last year and 27-13-1 (67.5%) over 3 years.

So let's get started!

This week:
Wake Forest (-3) vs. Stanford

UPDATE: Wake scores a TD with two seconds left to cover the number, 24-17!

Record: 1-0

300th Post - greatest hits

SEATTLE, Washington - Some hits and misses from the last 299 posts:

The Arts, broadly defined

DeQuincey on drug prohibition

Did N.W.A. lift lyrics from Vladimir Nabokov?

On putting a supercomputer in a former chapel

Review of The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody

Some people drop Big Oil into every conversation


Seattle and Washington

Useless "Landmark" Denny's in Ballard finally allowed to die

Washington State - similar to the Moon

The (former) momentum at the West Seattle Whole Foods site


Celebrities

Harrison Ford looks like a Cap Hill old gay guy

George Takei: similar to the losers from your small hometown

I knew Christina Ricci was short, but holy crap

Orson Welles and the Islamic Revolution


Gambling

Sports betting gene isolated

Fantasy vs. reality for California card rooms

Should you masturbate before gambling?

Movie Review - District 9

SEATTLE, Washington - There was a bit of buzz about this movie before and immediately after its release - that it was a bit more thoughtful than most sci-fi fare, a little more cerebral. Some of these same thoughts were expressed upon the release of The Matrix in 1999.

I've now seen District 9 and it's competent and entertaining enough but it's also utterly conventional. Where exactly is the nuanced, cerebral part... the parallels to apartheid that are as subtle as a brick hitting you in the head?

This movie does what many movies do, rolls out an interesting concept and then ends the movie with a 30-minute shootout that could have been lifted intact from another movie. In fact, that's the exact criticism Roger Ebert had of The Matrix when he reviewed it.

This phenomenon is not limited to sci-fi... L.A. Confidential established a great, Chinatown-ish mood through most of the film, then ended with a big gaudy shootout. The powers that be must have demanded a sweaty Guy Pearce in a firefight. Chinatown has a bullet or two fired at the end, but it's faithful to the tone of the rest of the film.

How far back do we have to go to find some sci-fi without a long concluding firefight? 2001: A Space Odyssey? How about THX-1138? And the latter probably doesn't have a shootout because George Lucas didn't have the budget. I'm surprised he hasn't gone back and plopped a Clone Army into THX.

All you need to know about the "housing crisis" in one press release from nine years ago

SEATTLE, Washington - Via Cafe Hayek, a press release from Wells Fargo in August 2000 (text not bolded in original):

A new home financing program, designed to spur homeownership among California’s educators, may receive an “A” from teachers throughout the state. The program, announced today by Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Inc., the California Housing Loan Insurance Fund (CaHLIF) and Freddie Mac, allows teachers working within the state to purchase a home with a downpayment of just $500.
The program also offers teachers relaxed credit guidelines – making it easier to qualify for the program – and higher qualifying ratios, which allows homebuyers to qualify for more home. Wells Fargo Home Mortgage will be the exclusive provider of these loans; CaHLIF will provide downpayment assistance and mortgage insurance; and, Freddie Mac will purchase the loans.
..
..
A starting salary for a California public school teacher is $29,000 a year, according to the California Teachers Association, while the average teacher’s salary is $44,000. Meanwhile, the median home price in California is $217,520.
..
..
While California educators will only need $500 for a downpayment, the remaining downpayment will be funded by CaHLIF in the form of a 3 percent simple interest loan with payment deferred until the end of the loan term, or when the home is sold or refinanced.

As a commenter at CH noted, a $200K loan under these circumstances would be about $1,300/mo for someone making $44K a year. I make more than triple that and I consider my mortgage of under $1,600 to be approaching the upper range of what I consider acceptable relative to my income.

The "crisis" has repeatedly been spun in the media as crazy, gambling, out of control banks making bad decisions, but in this case all the bank (Wells Fargo) is doing is writing an ill-advised loan, scraping off a bit of vigorish, and dumping the turkey loan off on the only kind of entity that would want such a thing, a government mutant like Freddie Mac.

This particular example is doubly odious, doubly indicative of the danger of having a government entity tinkering in the housing market, because not only was Freddie gobbling up absurd loans, but in this case it was a special for teachers!. Why are teachers making $44K more deserving of cushy loans than anyone else making $44k? At least it was available to both public and private school teachers... cold comfort.

More reasons not to declare a national crisis when someone misses a mortgage payment

SEATTLE, Washington - We the public continue to receive news every month about the percentage of homeowners who are behind on their mortgage payments or in foreclosure. The impression usually given is that every one of these parties just needs a helping hand - that they're scouring through the couch cushions and hitting up relatives for a few bucks, just so they can scrape a payment together. Can't we as a society help these people? Who could possibly want to miss a mortgage payment?

Turns out, a lot of people. I already discussed people intentionally getting foreclosed and making a few bucks in the process last month. Now there's more: a long Time piece on Las Vegas real estate presents another variation of such a strategy. This variation involves short selling (which is the lender agreeing to let a house be sold for less than the value of the loan and letting this amount fully satisfy the borrower's obligation) and is being promoted by Vegas agent Brooke Boemio:

Boemio specializes in short selling, in a particularly Vegas way. Basically, she finds clients who owe more on their house than the house is worth (and that's about 60% of homeowners in Las Vegas) and sells them a new house similar to the one they've been living in at half the price they paid for their old house. Then she tells them to stop paying the mortgage on their old place until the bank becomes so fed up that it's willing to let the owner sell the house at a huge loss rather than dragging everyone through foreclosure. Since that takes about nine months, many of the owners even rent out their old house in the interim, pocketing a profit.

There you go. Creative, perhaps even profitable - but is it ethical?

It's an entire city of John Dillingers, feeling guiltless for stealing from the banks. Boemio is well aware that short selling isn't ethical [emphasis mine - jmr] and is exacerbating Vegas' economic problems. People, she believes, should make their payments, accept their paper losses and ride out the crash. "Guess what, a______s of Las Vegas. That's what gambling is about. That's what investing is about," she says. "It's greedy. But we're all doing it. Because why not?" It's very hard, she says, to suffer as the one honest person in a town of successful con artists.

I'm not a real estate guru but I've been researching and googling this and I'm not really seeing what's inherently unethical about short selling. First of all, the lender has to agree to it - it's their choice to just go ahead with a foreclosure if they so choose. From the seller's perspective, it's their choice to pursue a short sale and there is damage to their credit (albeit not as bad as a foreclosure) but as the article notes, under the Boemio strategy, "they just bought a new house, so they don't care."

There do seem to be some "ethical" concerns around short selling, in such areas as how and when to disclose to the buyer that the property is a short sale, when to list the short offer as "pending" in the MLS, and the fact that some lenders will drag their feet on approval of a short offer, hoping for a slightly better offer to materialize. I don't think any of this renders the whole concept inherently unethical.

Notice what's missing from this picture? No government "rescue" of borrowers, no posturing politicians, no snouts in the trough - just a resolution of the bloat in real estate using existing processes. The banks may take some losses and try to stick their noses in the trough, and unfortunately they'll probably succeed. Still, let's not think of every borrower behind on their payments as a helpless victim.

Found @ The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid

Seattle voter guidance for Aug 18

SEATTLE, Washington - Looking through the voters' pamphlet, many of the candidates sound alike and some positions simply have no one on the ballot deserving of support. To simplify, I identified trouble phrases in the statements of the candidates - stuff that tells you right away, no need to read the rest of the statement and no need to color in the dot next to their name.

"living wage"
"Web 2.0"
"affordable housing"
"we can design an innovative education system"
"lifelong musician"
"create good jobs"
"community activist"
"green jobs"
"stimulus funding"
"tax incentives"
"free college education"
"Nickels"
"stimulus dollar"
"job training"
"pursuit of true public benefits"
(and scariest of all):"new era of action"

The big question facing Jets QB Mark Sanchez

SEATTLE, Washington - Mark Sanchez is in camp with the New York Jets. He has some questions swirling around him - can he handle the media pressure in New York? Will he be the opening-day starter as a rookie? Can he focus on football with all the distractions that his high profile will bring? But most importantly, will he ever be called on the carpet over the photo with the white jeans?

Sanchez did a photo shoot with GQ in May, and most of it is what we'd expect - Sanchez posing with a hot chick in a bikini, etc.

But this one shot... white jeans? White jeans? And a tight shirt that barely reaches his navel with colored horizontal stripes? He looks like a character in Querelle. This can't possibly help his standing in the locker room.

Some suggestions on "Japanese Techniques" for Starbucks

SEATTLE, Washington - Starbucks has started performing time-and-motion studies on its baristas in an attempt to increase efficiency and throughput. The WSJ article on this claims that this is an introduction of "'Lean' Japanese Techniques".

This is probably a good initiative, I'm just not sure how "Japanese" it is. The only evidence the WSJ gives of this is that a former Toyota executive is consulting their "lean team".

One of the tests the "lean team" performs on baristas is having them assemble a Mr. Potato Head doll. That certainly sounds Japanese.

But why not go all the way? There's plenty of other "Japanese Techniques" that Starbucks can try:

• They can try installing some ultra-high-tech Japanese toilets


• They can replace the baristas with modified versions of the Japanese ramen-cooking robots


• The baristas can start asking customers their blood type and customizing their order based on this information


• They can order the baristas to stop having sex

found @ Starbucks Gossip

Rolls-Royce keeping it classy in Bellevue

SEATTLE, Washington - The Rolls-Royce dealership in Overlake has a fine red-and-blue neon OPEN sign in their showroom window. What says "we sell dignified $400,000 cars" quite like a neon OPEN sign? As of this writing, they even have a picture of this travesty on their website.

The nearby Jaguar dealership has not stooped to such garishness.

Why not go all the way and drop a Ca$h for Clunkers sandwich board out front?

Time magazine on the end of handwriting

SEATTLE, Washington - Time has an article this week from a twentysomething woman discussing handwriting - her incompetence at it, a bit of history of it, and some hand-wringing over its demise.

Everyone except college professors of literacy understands that computers are the reason for this:

The knee-jerk explanation is that computers are responsible for our increasingly illegible scrawl, but Steve Graham, a special-education and literacy professor at Vanderbilt University, says that's not the case. The simple fact is that kids haven't learned to write neatly because no one has forced them to. "Writing is just not part of the national agenda anymore," he says.

This is an example of why it's not a good idea to have "national agendas" driven by professors (or maybe anyone else either).

Penmanship was where I was a consistent underperformer in grammar school, and when the report card would come my father would then assign me writing drills, usually transcribing from a book of essays by Andy Rooney.

I haven't tried to write entire sentences in cursive in many years, so I just gave it a shot:



My hand was sore after this effort. Turns out, the hardest part was crossing the t's and dotting the i's... when writing single letters, you do that right away, but with cursive you have to go over the whole word after writing it. This was old hat for many years, but I just now struggled horribly with it.

found @ Slashdot

Lindsay Lohan's dad attempts hot Tiffani-Amber Thiessen pose

SEATTLE, Washington - A sheer top doesn't work for everyone. It definitely worked for Tiffani-Amber Thiessen back in the day. I thought the pic of her below was just about the hottest pic on the young mid-1990s internet. It has an understated sexiness to it. The clothing is perfect. The hair, perfect.

Now we have Michael Lohan, in what looks like a man-version of the same clothing? Why the hell are there pictures of him on the internet at all? Never mind one where he looks like he's trying to imitate one of the great photos of the 1990s.



I spotted Mr Lohan at Just Jared

Astronaut and ape, forever linked, at least in the movies

SEATTLE, Washington - Looks like a small model kit is available (or was available a few years ago) that is a conceptual cousin of one of my 2001: A Space Odyssey paintings.

A modeling fanatic went into detail on all the various flaws and difficulties of the kit. I'm not one of those model kit guys.

At least the kit does not have any features that unsophisticated observers will keep mistaking for a penis.

Summer Glau may be the Russell Branyan of science fiction

Warning: mixing of sports and science fiction ahead

NEW YORK, New York - I've finished watching Firefly and it's clearly another instance of Summer Glau not being given the chance to show her full potential. She spent most of her time prowling around the ship in her muumuu, having the occasional breakdown or uttering a cryptic comment or two. She did not have a prominent role until the final episode.

She had a beefier role in Terminator, but still was not the featured player.

And now, she's going to play second or third fiddle to Eliza Dushku on Dollhouse. Eliza Dushku!

I've questioned Glau's potential before, but after seeing a lot of her work I think she can handle something big. She's just not being given the chance.

Things like this happen in sports. Look at Russell Branyan. For years, he's only been given a chance to be a part-time player: he strikes out too much, he can't field, he can't stay healthy, he can't hit left-handed pitchers, etc.

Now Branyan has been given a chance to be a full-timer in Seattle this year, and he's having a big season. His hitting against left-handed pitchers is not great but is adequate, and he's doing everything else asked of him.

Someone needs to do this with Summer Glau. It's a shame I'm not a television producer, because I'd do it. I'd throw her into the fire, work her hard. To quote from The Mack, I'd work that broad like nobody's ever worked her before. See if she can handle it. I think I'd have a star on my hands.

Powerful drug offered at Cupcake Royale

SEATTLE, Washington - Cupcake Royale has placed a large, well-labeled shaker of nutmeg on their condiment bar. Do they not know that nutmeg is a powerful psychoactive drug? Maybe they do know and that's why it's there.

William S. Burroughs discussed nutmeg in a letter to The British Journal of Addiction in the 1950s, a letter that was reproduced in some editions of Naked Lunch:

Convicts and sailors sometimes have recourse to nutmeg. About a tablespoon is swallowed with water. Results are vaguely similar to marijuana with side effects of headache and nausea. Death would probably supervene before addiction if such addiction is possible. I have only taken nutmeg once.

There are a number of narcotics of the nutmeg family in use among the Indians of South America.

Wikipedia also has some information on the *power* of nutmeg:

Large doses can be dangerous (potentially inducing convulsions, palpitations, nausea, eventual dehydration, and generalized body pain). In large amounts it is reputed to be a strong deliriant. Users report both negative and positive experiences, involving strong open-eye-visuals (hallucinations), and in some cases quite severe anxiety. Users may feel a sensation of blood rush to the head, or a strong euphoria and dissociation.

This probably isn't much of an issue at the West Seattle location, because there aren't enough people around with either the knowledge or the desire to dip into the nutmeg. But, Cupcake Royale is opening a Capitol Hill location later this month, and I'm pretty sure the Capitol Hill hipster/indigent population will blast right through the nutmeg supply. May want to keep the nutmeg behind the counter there, just like how Twice Sold Tales in the U-District can't leave Kerouac books sitting around on the bookshelves where poor students will take them and shove them into their pants.

Sometimes foreclosure is a strategy, not a disaster

SEATTLE, Washington - Media treatments of foreclosures often have an air of treating the foreclosee as a noble victim, someone who's trying to do the right thing but has fallen victim to extraordinary circumstances. An example of this is a Seattle Times story from May on government help for these unfortunate victims:

Aurora Loan Services is set to foreclose on her home overlooking Seattle's Puget Sound on Friday. Despite numerous calls, e-mails and letters, she says she's only been able to have one phone conversation with a company representative.

"It's like this huge, concrete thick wall that you cannot get through," said Inman, 58, who is working as a human resources consultant, but making much less than she was before she was laid off by the City of Seattle.

Let's ignore for a second that we have a city employee who can afford a Puget Sound view property - the tone of the entire article is (1) foreclosees are victims and (2) President Obama is riding to their rescue.

I get an image in my head after reading stories like this, of a cruel bank sending four masked goons to haul the hapless residents from their properties, one goon on each limb, perhaps as a hungry child looks on with a tattered doll in her hands.

First of all - if you're a paycheck or three away from falling into a foreclosure that you don't want to fall into, you should have mortgage insurance. I get solicited for such insurance every month, and I've determined that I don't need it. The woman above (in a view property on a municipal salary where a pay cut has resulted in her not being able to make payments) has simply not been responsible. But I guess this is why the people have elected the politicians that they have elected - to dig them out of these holes.

But beyond that - getting foreclosed is often a strategy for a property owner, not a disaster to be averted at all costs. A friend of mine back east is doing it, and explained his plan to me in detail. He has an underwater condo with a paying renter. He's done the math on his income from the rent and his various costs (mortgage, taxes, condo fee, etc.) and has decided that the best move is to just stop paying everything, keep collecting the rent, and let the slow slow process of foreclosure grab the place when the time comes. He's 60+ years old and doesn't give a damn about his credit rating.

I've always sensed that situations like my friend's are more common than the media are letting on, and now I have some evidence to back me up: analysis of the causes of foreclosure show negative equity to be the leading cause of foreclosures in the second half of 2008, not the reasons more commonly cited in the media (e.g. evil banks offering "teaser" loan rates that roll into higher rates that the victimized borrower cannot afford). Negative equity does not in and of itself make you unable to afford payments, but it may make a thinking owner (like my friend) decide that walking away is the best option.

Of course, all the government "fixes" to the foreclosure "crisis" are either shooting at the wrong targets or aren't likely to lower foreclosure rates much even if they hit their targets (as the WSJ article above discusses in some detail).

codicil: When it comes to real estate, nobody has a more blinkered, myopic view than realtors. An Arizona realtor has dubbed people like my friend "sympathy foreclosees" (who is being sympathetic to whom, I'm still not sure) and declared that Something Must Be Done:

Everybody loses in a sympathy foreclosure, the lender loses money, the buyer damages their credit and usually they neighborhoods with many foreclosures are less attractive to buyers due to high crime in some of these abandoned homes. Something must be done....