August 2010

Running with a conscience: food and drink

August 31, 2010

Melissa Schweisguth photo credit: TIME

This is third guest post on eco-friendly running from Melissa Schweisguth. (Here’s the first, on clothing and shoes, and the second, about racing, training and tech.) I’m featuring Melissa’s post because running and the environment are two of my passions, and she’s done a beautiful job of marrying the two.

Melissa is a 36-year-old fellow sustainability professional and writer who also enjoys running. She puts me to shame, and not just because she clocked an impressive 3:11:07 in the Eugene (Oregon) Marathon this year. Melissa hasn’t thrown anything into a landfill since 2006, which earned her notice in Time magazine (due to non-consumerism and creative reuse.). She thrives on an organic, whole foods, locally-based and almost exclusively vegan diet, (as does famed ultra runner Scott Jurek). She’s been working on improving her running footprint to avoid trampling people or planet and has written three blogposts on running “au naturel” for her blog, Living Acoustically, which she’s kindly agreed to let me share here.  I don’t expect most runners to be as “green” as Melissa, but my hope is that she’ll inspire you, whether you run or not, as she has inspired me to make a change or two in your lives. When she isn’t running, Melissa works a freelance writer and consultant on sustainability issues and media relations, and as director of membership and development for the Food Trade Sustainability Leadership Association.

Here’s my last post about my efforts to maximize and improve running performance while honoring a guiding principle that defines sustainability for me: “live simply so that others may simply live.”

As noted…This is being shared for informational purposes only and not intended to be preachy or judgmental, as neither is my style. We all have different backgrounds and resource demands in our lives, and I’m the first to admit there are many things I can improve!

Food

I grew up eating home-cooked whole food, much of it homegrown organic, and eat exclusively organic whole foods sourced as locally as possible now, and fuel my runs the same way. When I trained for and ran my first race, a marathon, in 2000, so-called energy bars, gels, etc. were emerging and unknown to me. Oatmeal with nuts and raisins worked well enough for me to train for and finish that marathon in 3:39:30.

Clif bars greeted me at the finish line and I had two jobs that routed free samples my way so I started to eat them periodically before long runs and longer races (with the trusty oatmeal) and later added Clif Shots/Bloks/Moons moons for some long runs and races. After deciding to save my trash for a year and realizing the wrappers made up quite a bit of my waste, I made a tote bag from the wrappers, returned to just oatmeal and started making my own energy gels (rice syrup, honey, molasses, cacao powder, salt –provides key electrolytes: sodium, potassium, magnesium, with an initial kick and sustained energy from sweeteners with different glucose/fructose ratios). [click to continue…]

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Running with a conscience: racing, training and tech

August 30, 2010

Melissa Schweisguth photo credit: TIME/Bob Pennell

This is second of three guest posts on eco-friendly running from Melissa Schweisguth. (Here’s the first, on clothing and shoes. Tomorrow she’ll write about food and drink.) I’m featuring Melissa’s post because running and the environment are two of my passions, and she’s done a beautiful job of marrying the two.

Melissa is a 36-year-old fellow sustainability professional and writer who also enjoys running. She puts me to shame, and not just because she clocked an impressive 3:11:07 in the Eugene (Oregon) Marathon this year. Melissa hasn’t thrown anything into a landfill since 2006, which earned her notice in Time magazine (due to non-consumerism and creative reuse.). She thrives on an organic, whole foods, locally-based and almost exclusively vegan diet, (as does famed ultra runner Scott Jurek). She’s been working on improving her running footprint to avoid trampling people or planet and has written three blogposts on running “au naturel” for her blog, Living Acoustically, which she’s kindly agreed to let me share here.  I don’t expect most runners to be as “green” as Melissa, but my hope is that she’ll inspire you, whether you run or not, as she has inspired me to make a change or two in your lives. When she isn’t running, Melissa works a freelance writer and consultant on socially responsible business and media relations, and as director of membership and development for the Food Trade Sustainability Leadership Association.

This is the second post about my efforts to maximize and improve running performance while honoring a guiding principle that defines sustainability to me: “live simply so that others may simply live.” As noted…This is being shared for informational purposes only and not intended to be preachy or judgmental, as neither is my style. We all have different backgrounds and resource demands in our lives, and I’m the first to admit there are many things I can improve!

Racing

When choosing races, my inclination is to stay as local (for simplicity and cost rather than environmental reasons), where I can bike or jog to the starting line. (I also start runs from home or bike to a park 1 mile away.) When travel is involved, carpooling is a good solution, and of course public transit, where available. I volunteer to help set up and handle recycling at local race, and have started to share tips for making races greener, from the Runners World/Nature’s Path Green Team.

Races usually involve freebies, t-shirts, race numbers and medals. I generally decline the bag and swag, being stuff I wouldn’t use anyway and small sample sizes with a lot of packaging waste.

If shirts are optional, I decline to get one. Otherwise, I give it to my dad to wear in the garden or volunteering for Meals on Wheels to share new stories with his clients. Old shirts can easily be made into [click to continue…]

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Running with a conscience

August 29, 2010

Melissa Schweisguth photo credit: TIME

Two of my passions are running and the environment. I do my best to marry them: I’ve recycled my old running shoes. I currently run in Vibram FiveFinger “barefoot” shoes, which are light weight and last a long time. I mix my own Gatorade from a 3 lb. 3 oz. can of powder, which saves plastic bottles. But I also use high tech equipment (Garmin GPS, Monster headphones, iPod shuffle), own dozens of T-shirts from races that are stuffed in a closet and drive 2-3 miles most days just to get to the place where I start my run. Over the years I’ve flown to marathons in Chicago, San Diego, Big Sur and Athens, Greece.

Melissa Schweisguth is a 36-year-old fellow sustainability professional and writer who also enjoys running. She puts me to shame, and not just because she clocked an impressive 3:11:07 in the Eugene (Oregon) Marathon this year. Melissa hasn’t thrown anything into a landfill since 2006, which earned her notice in Time magazine (due to non-consumerism and creative reuse.). She thrives on an organic, whole foods, locally-based and almost exclusively vegan diet, (as does famed ultra runner Scott Jurek). She’s been working on improving her running footprint to avoid trampling people or planet and has written three blogposts on running “au naturel” for her blog, Living Acoustically, which she’s kindly agreed to let me share here.  I don’t expect most runners to be as “green” as Melissa, but my hope is that she’ll inspire you, whether you run or not, as she has inspired me to make a change or two in your lives. When she isn’t running, Melissa works a freelance writer and consultant on sustainability issues and media relations, and as director of membership and development for the Food Trade Sustainability Leadership Association. Here’s her first post, about clothing and shoes:

Sometimes we need new, ready-made things, but, more often, we can reuse, buy used, or make something easily, and get a better, cheaper, more healthful product. It’s easy to forget this since marketers are skilled at wooing us, we’re encouraged to seek upward mobility and novelty, and our culture has devalued making things ourselves: gardening, basic cooking and the like.

While running, I’ve sought to maximize and improve performance while honoring a guiding principle that defines sustainability to me: “live simply so that others may simply live.” (Or, following this blog’s theme, unplug from consumerism and run acoustically.) Below are examples of things I do, some long term and some more recent changes. This is being shared for informational purposes only; it’s not intended to be preachy or judgmental, as that’s not my style. We all have different backgrounds and resource demands in our lives, and I’m the first to admit there are many things I can improve!

Clothing

When I started running, “technical” fabrics and performance-optimizing clothing weren’t on the market. I wore basic clothing and never really bought into the marketing around newfangled stuff. More apparel uses fabrics marketed as environmentally friendly, such as organic cotton, wool, bamboo, hemp and recycled poly, which are great if new things are needed. However, the most sustainable choices are items we have or can get used, which also saves money. I’ve found great shorts, tops and running tights at thrift [click to continue…]

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Ancient wisdom on sustainability

August 26, 2010

Today’s guest post comes from Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb of Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda, Md.

Fred is my rabbi, and he’s a great guy; he was “green” before green was cool. In 19990, during his  junior year at Brandeis, Fred set off on a 3,300-mile walk from Los Angeles to New York as part of a project called the Global Walk for a Livable World. Today, he serves on the national boards of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) and as Chair of Greater Washington Interfaith Power & Light. Fred believes, as I do, that clergy of all faiths can and should play a greater role when it comes to teaching people about the environment, and the impact of their consumption.

This is a letter that Fred wrote last spring in the Adat Shalom newsletter under the headline “You Can’t Take It With You”:

Recently, while wrapping up the Book of Leviticus, we read Parashat Behar. This Torah portion is basically one chapter, Lev. 25 — and it’s at the very top of my list of favorite biblical passages. Behar outlines the every-seven-year Sabbatical (Shmita) during which the fields lie fallow, and the every-fiftieth-year Jubilee (Yovel) when debts are forgiven, slaves are freed, and land is returned to its original owner. It’s the Jewish source for the notion that “you can’t take it with you”.

Leaving aside the scholarly debate over how thoroughly these teachings were practiced and enforced during Temple times, as a values statement there are many vital messages for us today in this teaching, from the political to the personal. Four short examples: [click to continue…]

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Sustainability and your brain

August 25, 2010

Yesterday was my last full day before taking off on vacation. It was a busy day, as usual. I wrapped up a story for FORTUNE, hosted a webinar for Greenbiz, wrote a blogpost, pushed through my email, which now arrives at a rate of 100-200 a day, and ran a couple of errands.

In between, by coincidence–or perhaps not–I stumbled across a couple of NPR interviews. Diane Rehm talked with Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School about his new book, Relaxation Revolution, and Terry Gross of Fresh Air interviewed Matt Richtel of The New York Times about his excellent series of stories, called Your Brain on Computers, which explores how digital media is changing our lives, our culture and, yes, our brains. The interviews were so compelling, and so timely, that I listened to both programs, in full, this morning. (They’re available on iTunes.)

Both were, in a way, about the same thing: how stressing the brain affects health. And while many things are more stressful than being “always on,” facing  tight deadlines and being nagged by that feeling that you haven’t checked your email, oh, in the last 45 minutes,  most of us will never go to war or perform surgery, so these are the of stresses that touch us every day. They can literally be deadly–Richtel won a Pulitzer Prize this year for his terrific series of stories, Driven to Distraction, about the risks of talking and texting behind the wheel. (One of my very top pet peeves is people who talk on the phone while driving.) [click to continue…]

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KaBOOM! What an impact!

August 24, 2010

Darell Hammond of KABOOM!

Fifteen years ago, Darell Hammond, a 24-year-old college dropout who was raised in group home outside of Chicago, had an idea. He wanted to build playgrounds for kids who needed a place to play. He started with a playground in southeast Washington, D.C., raising money from the Home Depot Foundation and others to pay for the job, and assembling a group of volunteers to do the work. Then he built another. And another. Since then, KaBOOM!, the nonprofit that he started  in 1996 (again with help from Home Depot, which remains a supporter to this day), has built 1,800 playgrounds across America, more than anyone. Lately KaBOOM! has done something even more unusual–it upended its business model, and decided to share everything it has learned about play and playgrounds, which happens to be quite a lot, with the rest of the world.

“We decided to open-source our model online,” Darell told me recently, when we met in the group’s playful surroundings–toys are scattered everywhere–on Connecticut Avenue in northwest Washington. “We realized we were a drop in the bucket, when compared to the demand.”

I’d run across Darell now and then over the years, but we’d never sat down to talk until then. He’s an impressive guy and, more importantly, he has built an impressive and deep organization. KaBOOM! brought in about $21 million in revenues last year, and it has a staff of about 75 people, including former senior executives from Ben & Jerry’s, U.S. Food Service, and Discovery Communications’ Animal Planet. More important, KABOOM! built 162 playgrounds last year, and mustered 40,880 volunteers to do so.

In every case, people from the neighborhood where the playground is located play get deeply involved in planning and building it. Typically, they spend three months planning and designing the space, involving kids and adults,  before as few as 200 and as many as 1,200 people gather to construct the playground in a single day. “Organized chaos,” Darell calls it. What happens next matters, too: Neighorbood groups often build a second playground, or organize a crime-watch group, or lobby a city for better services. [click to continue…]

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Sustainable consumption: Opportunity or oxymoron?

August 19, 2010

Imagine that you’re the chief sustainability officer of a FORTUNE 500 company. During a meeting with your CEO, you say: “We need to talk to consumers about using less.”

Improbable? Sure.

Impossible? Perhaps not.

An important conversation to start? Absolutely.

So, at least, says Aron Cramer, the CEO of Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), a nonprofit association of companies, whose mission is to promote a just and sustainable world.

“The American model of consumption cannot be extended to the entire world, and won’t be, because the planet simply can’t support it,” Aron told me, when we spoke by phone the other day. Yet billions of people around the world want to improve their standard of living. Figuring out how they can enjoy a better life, without destroying the environment, “is the mother of all innovation challenges,” Aron says,

Last month, BSR published a 26-page report called The New Frontier in Sustainability: The Business Opportunity in Tackling Sustainable Consumption [PDF, free download). It’s an attempt to get business leaders to think about what sustainable consumption might look like.

The topic “has been the third rail of sustainability politics,” Aron told me, but he added, with his usual optimism, that “more companies are ready to have this discussion.”

If nothing else, the report makes clear the urgency of the issue. Citing a WWF report [PDF], it says:

By recent estimates, our global footprint now exceeds the world’s capacity to regenerate by about 30 percent, and if our current demands continue, by 2030 we will need the equivalent of two planets to maintain our lifestyles.

And yet:

…countless people have insufficient access to basic needs like food, clean water, and adequate shelter, and they also lack access to the resources they need to improve their lives. In 2006, the 1.2 billion people in the OECD countries had an average annual income per capita of US$30,580, while the 5.4 billion people in the rest of the world earned an average of US$3,130. Of those, 19 percent suffer from hunger, 28 percent are drinking polluted water, and 29 percent are illiterate.7 More than 2 billion people continue to rely on less than US$2 per day to meet their needs.

The question is, what business opportunities, if any,  await companies that figure out how to give poor and middle class people what they want in a sustainable way? [click to continue…]

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Clean batteries, dirty coal: your tax dollars at work

August 17, 2010

How would you like to invest in a start-up that makes advance renewable energy storage systems?  Before investing, you should know that this particular company has:

  • -Never made a profit.
  • -Piled up  losses of $44 million since going public in 2007.
  • -Replaced its CEO because he was paid both as an employee and independent contractor.
  • -Seen its stock tumble from $6 to 70 cents a share since going public in 2007

President Obama at ZBB EnergyActually, you’ve already invested. The company is called ZBB Energy, and it’s seeking to commercial zinc-bromide technology developed in Australia back in the 1980s. This week,  President Obama visited its U.S. headquarters in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. According to the White House:

ZBB Energy Corporation is using $1.3 million in Recovery Act State Energy Program loans to fund a $4.5 million factory renovation to triple their capacity to manufacture flow batteries and power systems.  As a result, the company has already retained a dozen workers and will hire about 80 new workers over time.

“Companies like this,” the president said, “are showing us how manufacturing can come back right here in the United States of America, right back here to Wisconsin.”

Well, maybe–but the company will have to find some customers and generate some profits for its  comeback to be meaningful. The $1.3 million may sound like pocket change, and it is, but ZBB also has secured a $14.68 million Recovery Act 48c Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit to build a new factory. It’s one of 183 projects in 43 states to get $2.3 billion in Recovery Act tax credits for clean energy manufacturing projects. The Wall Street Journal editorialized about ZBB today under the headline Uncle Sam, Venture Capitalist.

Meanwhile, another energy-related business in Wisconsin is enjoying an Obama administration subsidy–and this time, the controversy is being generated by the left. Bucyrus, which is based in South Milwaukee, manufactures mining equipment. Unlike ZBB, it doesn’t need government help to survive; the company’s equipment helped excavate the Panama Canal and it generated $2.6 billion in revenue and $312 million in net income last year.

The controversery has arisen because the Export-Import Bank of the United States is moving forward with a $600-million loan guarantee to support the sale and export of Bucyrus mining equipment to a company called Sasan Power Ltd., for a 3,960 megawatt (meaning very big) coal-fired power plant in Madhya Pradesh, India. You read that right–while it’s becoming increasing difficult, thank goodness, to build new, polluting coal plants in the U.S., your government is supporting the construction of a coal plant in India. It agreed to go forward when the project’s backer, Reliance Power, agreed to develop a 250 megawatt renewable energy facility as well.  The Ex-Im Bank, as it’s known, is also considering backing a 4,800 megawatt coal-fired plant in South Africa.

The rationale for the government loan guarantee is, of course, jobs. In a news release, Bucyrus CEO Tim Sullivan praised Wisconsin’s governor, senators and congresspeople for helping to persuade the Ex-Im bank–which initially turned down the loan for environmental reasons–to reverse itself. “The nearly 1,000 U.S. jobs supported by the project include over 300 family-supporting jobs in the Milwaukee region and approximately 650 additional U.S. jobs in Bucyrus’ supply chain,” the company said.

But jobs at what price? Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club and a group called Pacific Environment all oppose the loan because of the new plant will be one of the largest sources of global warming pollutants on earth. Doug Norlen of Pacific Environment said:

The Ex-Im Bank’s ongoing fossil fuel binge indicates a clear unwillingness of the agency to adhere to Congressional climate change directives and systemic bias towards financing fossil fuel projects.

Writing at Huffington Post, Michelle Chan of Friends of the Earth says:

What’s particularly worrying is the precedent that this investment will create. The Sasan deal was the first major test of Exim’s new carbon policy (which resulted from a 2002 lawsuit that Friends of the Earth filed in response to the agency’s failure to consider the greenhouse gas implications of its financing activities). Although the policy is not nearly as robust as Friends of the Earth would have hoped, it does empower the Exim Board to reject applications at an early stage because of their carbon emissions. The fact that congressional and White House pressure caused Exim to reverse course on a decision made under this new policy does not bode well for the other four big coal deals in the Exim pipeline, including the 4,800 megawatt Kusile coal power project in South Africa, which would emit 30.5 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.

Needless to say, ZBB Energy will have to make a whole lot of clean energy storage devices to offset the emissions of big coal plants in India and South Africa, which, to be fair, will probably deliver electricity to lots of people who need it.

What’s most worrisome here is the big picture: The Obama administration, which already owns big chunks of GM, Chrysler and Wall Street, is during a time of record budget deficits intervening in ever-more specific ways in the economy. This is industrial policy at its worst, picking winners and losers, usually in the name of jobs, whether green or in the case of Bucyrus, coal-black. Funny thing, but these loans and grants also have a way of flowing towards politically-connected projects in swing states.

This isn’t to say that the government should keep its hands off the energy business. That’s a pipe dream, pun intended. But if the administration invested lots more in basic energy research and higher education, enacted a stiff  revenue-neutral carbon tax and used the proceeds to reduce payroll taxes, its chances of creating sustainable jobs would be a lot greater. There’d be fewer ribbon-cuttings, for sure, but more prosperity and less waste.

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Social funds: BP, the 1960s, and greed

August 15, 2010

Recently, after posting a column about BP and socially responsible mutual funds (See Social Funds and BP: How embarrassing!)  I heard from Adam Kanzer, who is managing director and general counsel at Domini Social Investments. While Domini has never owned shares of BP, Adam and I began a conversation about the role  of socially-responsible mutual funds. Adam, who has been in the fund business for twelve years, is a smart and committed executive, but we don’t always agree, so we decided to engage in a dialog about social funds.

Adam Kanzer

Adam Kanzer

Marc: Adam, let’s start with BP. Why did Domini exclude the company? Do you hold any other oil or coal companies?

Adam: Domini has consistently excluded BP from our portfolios because of our concerns about their safety record. Our initial review followed the Texas City explosion in 2005, but our decision was quickly reinforced by the Prudhoe Bay spill the following year.  We met with BP to discuss these and related issues with them. And each time we revisited BP, we found more violations.

We’re looking to identify the key sustainability challenges each company faces. For the oil and gas industries, worker safety and environmental compliance are among a handful of core issues we consider.  I should also note that we have consistently excluded Transocean and Halliburton, both of whom played a role in the Deepwater Horizon project. In addition we have also consistently excluded Massey Energy, the other current poster-child for disaster, as well as Toyota for substantial safety, employee relations and human rights concerns.  We discuss these decisions on our website. And yes, we do hold other oil and gas companies, although we set a high bar for entry. We do not invest in companies whose core business is coal mining.

Marc: Any thoughts on why BP was so widely held by other socially-responsible funds?

Adam: As CEO of BP, Lord Browne made very important statements about the reality of climate change at a time when others in his industry were denying its existence. That was important. In addition, BP has been committed to transparency on its social and environmental performance. I can’t speak for other firms, but I can see how those factors may have led some to hold BP. We felt that the safety and environmental issues outweighed these positives.

If a fund’s benchmark is heavily weighted towards oil, then an SRI manager will need to consider that. This tyranny of the benchmark certainly led many to hold BP and other oil companies that in a perfect world they would have preferred to avoid.

Which brings me to the important question that I have not heard – why did all of the so-called ‘mainstream’ investors buy BP? Why did investors allow this company to become one of the largest in the world by market capitalization? At least social investors weighed these issues and came to a decision. The rest of the market acted as if there was no problem.

Marc: That’s an excellent point, and it makes me wonder why people pay mutual fund managers such high fees. They missed the housing and Wall Street bubbles, and didn’t see or care about the safety issues at BP. Clearly most  funds aren’t very good at managing risk.

Turning to another topic, many SRI funds have their roots in the anti-war movement of the 1960s and 1970s as well as in faith-based investing. So funds like Domini exclude companies that make weapons, alcohol, tobacco and nuclear power. My question is, why? Let’s start with weapons. Don’t we need companies that make weapons in the post 9/11 era?

Adam:   First, it is important to understand that we divide those industries into two general categories – companies that provide addictive products and services, and companies whose products contribute to geopolitical instability. We place military weapons manufacturers and nuclear power in the latter category. We do not consider investments in addiction and global instability to be productive uses of capital.

National defense is too important to be placed in the hands of the same system that brought us the financial crisis. When Eisenhower issued his warnings about the growth of the military-industrial complex, he wasn’t questioning our need for a strong national defense. Yes, we need weapons, but do we need publicly traded companies manufacturing weapons? Are the capital markets an appropriate mechanism for providing these goods, or have the markets distorted our national priorities? That’s a critical debate our nation needs to have.

There are also categories of weapons that violate international humanitarian law because they cannot distinguish between military and civilian targets. These include landmines, clusterbombs and nuclear weapons. These ‘products’ make the world more dangerous, and landmines have caused incalculable misery to innocent civilians – including children – around the world. As investors, we have a responsibility to choose wisely. Our Funds’ shareholders choose not to profit from these violations, so we exclude these manufacturers and companies that manufacture nuclear weapons delivery systems.

Marc: What about nuclear power? Some environmentalists, notably Stewart Brand, say we need to seriously consider nukes in light of the climate crisis? [click to continue…]

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American deadbeats

August 12, 2010

Some years ago, we decided to cover up a small indoor swimming pool (don’t ask) in our home in Bethesda, Md., and turn it into a sunroom. The cost was about $25,000 and, although I tend to be averse to debt, we applied for a home equity loan to pay for the renovation. We had, by my reckoning, a couple of hundred thousand dollars of equity in the house,  perhaps a bit more. So we asked Bank of America, our mortgage holder, for a home equity line of credit for $25,000.

No problem, said the banker who called me back. We’re giving you $250,000. Assuming that an extra zero had been added to the loan amount by mistake, I told him we’d asked for $25,000. Yes, the banker said, but we’ve qualified you for $250,000, and so the line of credit will be $250,000. You’re under no obligation to use it, he added, unnecessarily.

Is this predatory lending? Carelessness? Rational behavior? Or some mix of all three?

Regardless, we know now that banks across the country were acting the same way–throwing money at some people (like us) who didn’t want it and at others who would soon prove unable to pay it back. I’ve read and thought a lot about how and why this happened; my three favorite accounts are Michael Lewis’s The Big Short, the radio broadcast The Giant Pool of Money by Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson, of NPR’s Planet Money fame and a paper and podcast from economist Russ Roberts of EconTalk called “Gambling with Other People’s Money: How Perverted Incentives Created the Financial Crisis. All are eye-opening and fascinating–I kid you not.

The housing meltdown is, needless to say, still with us today. It’s the single biggest reason why millions of Americans are unemployed, people aren’t spending and the economy remains choppy, at best. It’s also a cause of what, at the risk of sounding like a fuddy-duddy, looks to me like an erosion of moral values, as many thousands of borrowers simply refuse to pay what they owe.

Under the headline Debts Rise and Go Unpaid, as Bust Erodes Home Equity, The Times reports today that delinquency rates on home equity loans are soaring, in part because people choose not to pay them back: [click to continue…]

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