US stocks closed with the Dow Jones Industrial Average registering its worst two-day loss on record Tuesday, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Americans to prepare for a coronavirus outbreak and investors attempted to assess the impact of the epidemic in China on global trade and travel…
— from the MarketWatch.com website, February 25, 2020
The stock market took a hit this week. Quite a few news outlets were reporting the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling almost 2,000 points in two days. And MarketWatch had a story about the 10-year Treasury notes, which began like this:
The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield fell below its previous all-time low of 1.325% on Tuesday, according to Tradeweb data, as an extended selloff in the stock-market stirred inflows into haven assets…
The economy had other indicators, said MarketWatch:
In US economic data though, home prices rose 2.9% compared to a year ago in December, according to the Case-Shiller home price index. That was an acceleration from November’s annual gain, but still moderate by the standards of recent years.
While this was going on, former President Barack Obama reportedly issued a “commemorative Tweet” on Monday touting the “longest streak of job creation in American history”… on the 11th anniversary of the Recovery Act.
Apparently, President Trump didn’t like the suggestion that Obama-sponsored legislation was responsible for the 2.5% GDP growth rate during the Trump administration. (Compared to the 2.4% GDP growth during the three years prior to Trump’s election.)
Trump tweeted: “Did you hear the latest con job? President Obama is now trying to take credit for the Economic Boom taking place under the Trump Administration. He had the WEAKEST recovery since the Great Depression, despite Zero Fed Rate & MASSIVE quantitative easing. NOW, best jobs numbers ever. Had to rebuild our military, which was totally depleted. Fed Rate UP, taxes and regulations WAY DOWN.”
While the economy has improved under Trump, the expansion began under Obama…
It’s completely normal for a person — especially, a person with a big ego — to claim he’s the chairlift operator, when in fact, he’s just riding the chairlift along with the rest of us.
I’ve wanted to explore the idea of “responsibility” for quite a while now, and I guess this might be as good a time as any. It’s pretty common for leaders — local leaders, state leaders, national leaders — to claim responsibility for something like jobs growth, or increased Lodgers Tax collections, or rising real estate profits. But we hardly ever hear our leaders take responsibility when things go badly.
For example. I don’t expect — and I assume none of our readers expect — the Trump administration to take responsibility for a record stock market decline this week. When bad things happen, it’s always someone else’s fault. It was fear about a spreading coronavirus epidemic, folks. We had nothing to do with it. When the stock market goes up, or there’s a little bit of jobs growth… why, sure, we made it happen. Of course we did.
I was living in Pagosa Springs during the Great Recession — as were many of our Daily Post readers, no doubt — and I recall the exodus of carpenters, plumbers, and other tradesmen as Archuleta County’s construction industry hit the skids. That economic spiral hit housing prices pretty hard; as I recall, overall property values dropped by about 30% between 2007 and 2011. For a while, the community had one of the highest foreclosure rates in Colorado.
I don’t recall anyone taking responsibility for the Recession. (But I certainly heard people blaming the other guy.) I don’t recall anyone taking responsibility when the construction market crashed in Archuleta County.
I don’t recall anyone taking responsibility for our deteriorating roads and highways, for example.
Speaking of deteriorating highways, we heard an interesting presentation at the February 20 Town Council meeting from CDOT Traffic and Safety Program Engineer Julie Constan. The Town has been working with CDOT on planning for downtown sections of Highway 160 for several years now, though very little change has taken place. Some new lane striping (including bike lanes that get almost zero use). This summer, CDOT will be replacing the stop lights along Highway 160 at the Hot Springs intersection, the Lewis Street intersection, and the Pinon Causeway intersection, starting next month. The price tag is $1.5 million.
I drive through these signalized intersections — all three of them — on a daily basis, and I never noticed that they were broken. Why are these signals are being replaced? I’m sure CDOT must have a good reason.
CDOT has also been talking about reconstructing the roadbed between 1st Street and 10th Street, and that project we can very easily understand, considering the condition of the asphalt lately along Highway 160.
But “additional design elements such as bike lanes, wider sidewalks, pedestrian crossings, raised medians, bump outs, lighting, gateways and landscaping along the corridor will be outside of the scope of the CDOT reconstruction project.” That means, presumably, any of these ordinary highway features will be the responsibility of local taxpayers. That seems to be a growing tendency here in Colorado. When the state government can’t find the money to do all the things they want to do for us, they suggest that town and city governments should cover the shortfall by redirecting local funds, or by putting local tax increases on the ballot.
The Town partnered with CDOT recently to create a Corridor Vision Plan, and to gather community input for these additional elements, splitting the cost of the study 50/50 with CDOT. Council’s priorities have been focused on traffic calming and multi-modal improvements. Several meetings and work sessions have been held with the public and elected officials and staff to gather information and preferences. The plan — with its ‘lane diet’ and pedestrian and landscape improvements — lays out a proposal that “will operate acceptably for at least 20 years.”
The 2020 version of the Corridor Vision Plan can be downloaded here.
And then we have the McCabe Creek project that’s been in the planning process for… what? Eight years?
McCabe Creek
The McCabe Creek crossing will be constructed before US 160 is reconstructed. In the McCabe Creek project, US 160 would be constructed with HMA, matching the existing roadway crown. Then, when the Reconstruction project happens, the HMA would be replaced with PCCP with the lower crown. The curb, gutter, and sidewalk built as part of the McCabe Creek project would all remain.
Now that’s going to be a real mess.