Steve Pomerance

Since the first time I wrote on the financial crisis, I have read almost everything relevant I could find. What really got me going was a call I placed to the Treasury Department in the fall of 2008 during the midst of the crisis to get some very basic mortgage data for a column I was working on. The woman from their Office of Public Information first told me that the information was private, and when I laughed out loud at that ridiculous assertion, she told me that they didn`t have it and I would have to call the Mortgage Bankers Association. Apparently the Treasury was its subsidiary. As former Fed chair Alan Greenspan admitted, he operated as if Wall Street was self-regulating. Ben Bernanke is another case in point. In my opinion, his performance demonstrates how badly things work when financial officials think that little regulation is needed, and that the welfare of banks is more important than the welfare of the citizens. During the run-up to the disaster, both while acting...

The Boulder City Council will hold their goal-setting session next weekend. But any progress they might make could be derailed by some ideas that are circulating. Reports are that as many as five council members would like to remove the earmarking from the Open Space tax, meaning that instead of the funds being dedicated to Open Space, they could be used for anything. This would effectively gut the Open Space program. Fortunately, it also would require a charter amendment and thus a vote in November. I expect a bitter campaign battle. I rate this “ugly” — it should never be brought up. Apparently, some council members would like the voters to re-consider direct election of the mayor and district elections of council members, even though this scheme was defeated 2 to 1 in the 2003 election. A directly elected mayor doesn`t work very well with an appointed city manager; either there is a power struggle, or they ignore the rest of the council. Mayoral elections will devolve into who...

The current Boulder City Council should be acknowledged for taking on the “pops and scrapes” issue (also called “compatible development”) and trying to finish it during their term. We should commend this group of our peers for their willingness to struggle with a very difficult issue that has many citizens on each side, and even some on both sides at once. Yes, there have been mistakes made in the process, and the council should definitely avoid making them again, but at least they are making the effort. The criticisms made by Mark Ruzzin and Leslie Durgin in a guest opinion (Camera, Sept. 15) were disingenuous. His council abandoned their attempt to deal with this issue by passing a Floor Area Ratio limit of 0.8 that accomplished essentially nothing. I know Leslie quite well — she was mayor when I was on council — and I believe her concern for a careful process is honest and well intended; however, in my opinion, given the work to date, the council that started this effort needs t...

Introduction The design of this rate structure started as an attempt to simultaneously address six goals for a water utility, like the City of Boulder's, in an area of scarce and expensive water, and that has a large existing customer base who have paid for the utility’s capital plant and water rights through tap fees/plant investment fees (PIFs): The rate structure should be equitable and economically efficient in that it accurately reflects both capital and operating costs associated with each individual customer, not just the “average” customer in a given class. Rates should provide an economically accurate incentive for conservation for all customers , big and small, that includes long term capital costs as well as variable operating costs , Plant Investment Fees should be accurate to current individual consumption levels and/or water budgets , not just to some class average consumption levels at some time in the past, The r...