Mortgages come to Russia

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Good article about the burgeoning mortgage market in Russia.

“While the learning curve has been steep, analysts say the post-World War II example of the US – where government-backed credits, loans, and mortgages for GIs transformed the American economy for decades – is a lesson for the Kremlin.

“It’s a huge effect [on] releasing spending power into the economy,” says Gaige of Ernst & Young. In the past, “the money people needed to buy a house would have been taken out of the economy … and their spending power would have been reduced” before and after the purchase by the effort to collect that money.”

Wish I could participate. The only thing worse is watching VIP go from 56 to 100 and not holding any shares…

Views From The Past

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I’m feeling kind of blogged out and decided to post something different. I’ve been going through a batch of family photos that no one has looked at in years. It’s like a time capsule. A few of the pictures may be of general interest. I really like the ones below. A relative of mine made them when President Nixon visited Jerusalem in 1974.

parade route
Parade route with Monastery of the Cross in background.

Rehavia street
I don’t know where this was. It may have been across the street from the prime minister’s residence.

outside the PM's residence
Outside the prime minister’s residence.

“News Is A Conversation”

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Some journalists get it. More are starting to. Here’s a thoughtful essay by one of them. (And he’s a blogger, though he fails to link to his blog.)

It is this power and influence that drives mainstream journalists to look at new media types, especially bloggers, and describe them pejoratively as the “vanity press,” “self-important,” or worse. The question, of course, is if bloggers derive their sense of importance from themselves, then from whom does the mainstream press derive theirs? You see, there exists within journalism today a belief that this power and influence of theirs is a right, a guarantee given to them by some higher authority, and therein lies the rub.

The themes of the essay are second-nature to bloggers, but it’s still nice to see the ideas spread.