Everyone is keeping their eye on what will happen with Obama’s stimulus package. When it does pass, Obama pledges full “transparency,” so that “citizens can see how and where their tax dollars are being spent.” So as citizens, how can we best evaluate the appropriateness and effectiveness of projects that will be candidates for stimulus funding?

To help us, stimuluswatch.org has set up a site dedicated to helping “the new administration keep its pledge to invest stimulus money smartly, and to hold public officials to account for the taxpayer money they spend.” They provide a database of “proposed ‘shovel-ready’ projects” throughout the country which will be candidates for federal grant money as part of the stimulus package. The site offers the capability for citizens to view the proposals and decide if they think they are critical or not.

In order to help viewers better assess the appropriateness of these projects, we uploaded the data to Finder! and then used Maker! to compare where these projects will be and where jobs are most needed.

In the map below, we show the projects by the number of jobs that will be created. The larger circles are where more jobs will be created. We also show the change in unemployment by county between November of 2007 and November of 2008. The blue counties are where there was a decrease in unemployment, the white where there was a fairly small increase, and the yellow and orange areas show larger increases.

Taking a look at the country as a whole, it does seem that many of the projects are proposed in areas that have suffered job losses. This is particularly true for areas of Southern California, Florida and the Rust Belt. Areas in the center of the country, where there have been the some decreases in unemployment have less proposals for job creating projects.

Lets look more closely into an area to examine how the proposed projects are matching up to job losses. Georgia is one area that seems to have experienced a heavy loss in jobs over the past year.

You can see in the map above that there are many clusters of counties whose unemployment rate has increased by more than five percent in Georgia. None of these counties have a project planned in the direct vicinity. The county of Hancock Georgia has had the highest increase in unemployment and the third highest unemployment rate for this November of all the counties in the US. In November of 2007, its unemployment rate was 9.2 and in November of 2008 the rate reached 20.1, a 10.9 percent increase overall. The nearest proposed projects to Hancock are either an hour and a half away in Macon or an hour and forty minutes away in Conyers.

While the governor of Georgia may have good reasons for creating jobs in the proposed areas, it leaves one to wonder what will become of the towns, such as Hancock, who have suffered the greatest in this economic crisis.

Take a look at this map yourself in Maker!. You can zoom in to areas you are interested and decide for yourself the validity of these projects.

On the other hand, it is interesting that Illinois is fairly well represented here. Of the 891 projects in the country, 119 or 13.8% of them are in Illinois. While Illinois does have some yellow and orange counties, it is by no means the hardest hit state in the country in terms of unemployment. Does the state expect some favoritism from the new president?

At a closer look, the 119 projects in Illinois will create significantly fewer jobs then projects in other states. California, which faced the fourth highest unemployment rate in November, is proposing 93 projects which will produce 238,329 jobs.

The chart below provides 16 states with the highest unemployment rates in November along with the number of projects proposed in each state and the total number of jobs and the number of jobs per 1,000 people those projects will create.

States like Michigan and South Carolina, who need jobs the most are proposing projects that will create comparatively few jobs per capita. You can download a CSV of this dataset from Finder! and do your own analysis of the proposed projects.

We can also look at the projects compared to state unemployment rates, as is seen in the map below. The yellow and orange states are the ones shown in the graph above. To see this map click here.

Of course nobody is saying that the unemployment rates should be the only criteria as to where stimulus money should go. But if the package it going to truly address unemployment, projects that will add significant jobs to areas with high unemployment rates should be considered strong candidates for federal funding.

Popularity: 32% [?]

There has been a lot of talk about Barack Obama’s tax plan this political season. The biggest question seems to be, who will see their taxes increase? Well we decided to take a closer look at WHERE in the U.S. people will be most affected by the Obama’s tax increase.

First, to clarify, families with an income above $250,000 dollars would see their tax rates return the levels from the 1990’s. According to the Obama campaign, this tax increase will affect about 2% of the population.

So where are these people who earn $250,000? Are they from Republican or Democratic states? Are they concentrated or dispersed?

Since the US Census only provides data for incomes of $200,000 or more, I decided to look at house prices. An individual or family earning $250,000 a year could afford a home valued at about $1 million so we thought that, aside from the obvious margin of error, homes valued at $1 million or more would be a good indicator of who would be affected by Obama’s tax increase. The U.S. Census 2007 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates provides the number of $1 Million+ Owner Occupied Housing Units by state and county. After uploading that data to Finder!, we played around with some maps in Maker!and found some interesting patterns.

See the datasets (states, counties) and map.

Most of the states that had the most $1 Million + Homes were no surprise, however a few were unexpected. Take a look…the first map shows the number of $1 Million + Homes per state as well as 50 counties with the most $1 Million + Homes and the second shows just the counties have the highest number of $1 Million + Homes.

See the datasets (states, counties) and map.

It’s interesting that some of the states with the most homes only have one county that appears in the top 50 list. These counties, such as King County, WA, Maricopa County, AZ, Fulton County, GA, Hennepin County, MN, and Cook County, Il, have more than a third of all of the $1 Million + Homes in their state.

See the datasets (states, counties) and map.

So we know where the people are. Now, how might that affect the election?

Let’s take a look at the most current presidential election polls from USA Election Polls. This map shows that many of the states with the highest percent of $1 Million + Homes are also leaning toward Obama in this year’s election. In other words, the states that have the highest percent of residents that earn over $250,000 and therefore will be most affected by Obama’s tax increases are in states that are voting for Obama.

Of course, a few of those states are highly contested states including Florida, Virginia, and Colorado. Why is that? Well, its important to point out that the percent of million dollar home owners is only around 2% so they are not going to have a huge impact on an election. However, this demographic may be more likely to vote in an election than those earning less money.

See the datasets for states and polls.

The pattern that million dollar home owners tend to live in democratic areas, is also evident at the county level. This map shows the top 50 counties based on who they voted for in the 2004 presidential election. Of the 50 counties, 30 voted for Kerry and 16 voted for Bush. Most of those counties that voted for Bush are in Southern California, Texas, New Jersey, and Illinois. All but Texas voted for Kerry and are in no threat from turning red this year. Of course, taxes did not play as big a role in the election in 2004.

See the dataset and map.

So why is the McCain campaign making such a big issue of the Obama tax plan? Since it will affect mostly people in blue states, maybe they hope to change some minds there. However it seems that such a scenario is unlikely even though people who earn more money do tend to vote Republican. Exit polls from 2004 show that those who earned $50,000 or more voted Republican.

Perhaps the Obama tax plan, which claims it will give tax breaks to those earning less than $200,000, may persuade some of the 98% + of those in the red states who would qualify to vote for Obama. By appealing to the $200,000 earners, maybe Obama is attempting to raise the democratic appeal to income levels above $50,000. It will be interesting to see what happens on Tuesday, especially to see how the richest counties vote this time around.

Popularity: 17% [?]

As the continuing turmoil in the financial sector and a mind boggling trillion $ bailout are together contributing to the general feeling of economic gloom and doom across the nation, the distressing news of a big bank failure last Thursday made it worse. The Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), announced that it had closed Washington Mutual (WaMu), a big bank with over 45,000 employees, more than $300 billion in assets, 2,200 branches in 15 states with over $100 billion in deposits. Billed as one of the largest bank failures in the U.S. history, WaMu was taken into receivership by FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corp), the federal regulatory agency and promptly sold to the highest bidder, JP Morgan & Chase Co for as little as $2 billion.

According to OTS, WaMu, one of the largest savings banks in the country, became unsafe after deposits of more than $16 billions left the bank in just last two weeks. WaMu, which specialized as a mortgage bank was the latest victim after IndyMac, of the combined crises of downturn in housing sector, subprime and credit crunch. FDIC maintains an ongoing list of 100 risky banks. However, this is a secret list that will never become public and neither is the process by which such a list is created.

So we at FortiusOne decided to create our own list the 100 banks based on the level of their exposure to risky/bad loans on their books. For this analysis, risky loans are computed as the sum of the total value of loans on foreclosed residential properties and mortgage defaults (30 plus and 90 plus days late mortgage payments as well as the residential properties that have stopped paying mortgages but have not been foreclosed yet.) The data for the 2nd quarters of 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004 was downloaded from the FDIC website and then geocoded. Only those commercial banks who specialize in real-estate mortgage business were selected and then ranked according to the level of risky loans. The top 100 banks for each of these quarters were combined into one single file, then sorted by the value of the risky loans for the 2nd quarter of 2008. The map below shows only those banks that have risky loans for each of the 2nd quarters, the pie-charts represent risky loans by the 2nd quarters between 2004 to 2008.

Pie-Chart Legend: Red = 2nd qtr 2008, Orange = 2nd qtr 2007, Yellow = 2nd qtr 2006, Green = 2nd qtr 2005 and Purple = 2nd qtr 2004

So how exposed was WaMu to risky lending practices? A lot, according to our analysis of FDIC’s banking statistics for last several quarters. See the cartogram version of the data below where the size of the pie represents the total value of the risky loans. Clearly, WaMu tops in the risky loan business for each of these quarters spanning the pre- and post-housing bubble. WaMu’s bad loans for the 2nd quarters for each of the years between 2004 and 2008 range in value from just a $2.32 billion (2004), $2.63 billion (2005), $4.76 billion (2006), $6.7 billion (2007) to $15.8 billion (2008).

Pie-Chart Legend: Red = 2nd qtr 2008, Orange = 2nd qtr 2007, Yellow = 2nd qtr 2006, Green = 2nd qtr 2005 and Purple = 2nd qtr 2004

However, what is scary is that Wachovia, Countrywide, E-trade and few others are not that far behind. Does that mean, they are the next in line to fail? Not necessary, because exposure to risky loans may just be one of the factors involved in a bank’s failure. Search for a more comprehensive bank data for all quarters between 2004 and 2008 on the Finder! with key word “FDIC” and its analysis in the near future. In the meanwhile browse for the data discussed in this blog here:

Risky bank loans 2nd quarter 2008
Risky bank loans 2nd quarter 2007
Risky bank loans 2nd quarter 2006
Risky bank loans 2nd quarter 2005
Risky bank loans 2nd quarter 2004

Popularity: 30% [?]

Economy was the number 1 issue for Michigan Republicans and they voted in large numbers for Mr. Romney. Michigan has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the U.S. Huge job losses in manufacturing sector, mainly due to down-turn in Michigan’s auto-industry has voters worried about the future. Romney’s “optimistic” message that he would fight to bring those jobs back to Michigan resonated with voters as opposed to McCain’s “straight talk” message that the lost jobs are never coming back!

Romney vis McCain: Michigan primary vote

Note: Brighter hues = Higher vote count, Darker hues = Lower vote count

This is Romney’s first win (not including his win in the Wyoming primary) and probably saved him from dropping out of the primaries after finishing 2nd, both in Iowa and New Hampshire. McCain and Huckabee finished 2nd and 3rd respectively. With Romney’s win in Michigan, the GOP has no clear cut front runner. Romney got nearly 38.9% votes (~337,700), to McCain’s 29.7% (257,400), followed by Huckabee at 16% (~139,600).

DNC (Democratic National Committee) decided to punish Michigan for violating primary rules by moving forward its primary date. They stripped Michigan of all its delegates for the National convention. As a result, both Obama and Edwards withdrew their names, while Clinton’s name remained on the ballot and she won the primary. According to some, Clinton would have won the primary anyway.

Clinton vis Mr. Uncommitted: Michigan primary vote

Note: Brighter hues = Higher vote count, Darker hues = Lower vote count

Interestingly many who wanted to support either Obama or Edwards voted “Uncommitted”. Clinton won more than 55% vote (~327,300) compared to 40% vote for Mr. “Uncommitted” (~236,900). And much of the “Uncommitted” vote came from African Americans and young voters according to the exit polls. This does not bode well for the Clinton camp, as the Democratic primaries move south where African-Americans are a major constituency. More on this in the future blogs.

In the meanwhile you may want to explore all of the maps shown above at Geocommons. Search with keywords “Michigan” or “Primary” to discover dynamic, interactive maps with zoom-in and pan.

Popularity: 16% [?]