A White House effort to expand help for homeowners who have been unable to refinance mortgages because the value of their properties has fallen could have a stimulating effect on the year-round East Hampton economy.

    With its outsize economic reliance on real estate transactions, East Hampton is a bit of a company town. And, like many other communities in the United States that have suffered in the long recession, it has seen a significant slowdown in many of the related trades.

    The East End of Long Island has not had the level of walk-away foreclosures as some parts of the country, but a lot of people, particularly those whose properties are in the mid- or relatively low-priced range, are hurting. Mortgage arrangements that might have made sense before 2008, when the sky seemed the limit for housing prices, now are a burden for an unknown number of residents and part-timers. Those who have struggled to keep their houses or protect their nest eggs have tied up cash that could be used for other things — spent locally perhaps instead of being shipped to some distant lending institution.

    The idea of mortgage relief for hard-strapped borrowers has been around for a while in one form or another. The new version of the Home Affordable Refinance Program makes it easier for borrowers who have not fallen behind on payments to refinance and eases certain restrictions on banks. By opening up the refinance market, more homeowners could take advantage of record-low interest rates or lengthen their mortgage terms. Monthly payments could be reduced by hundreds of dollars and household cash freed for purchases or long-delayed home improvements. 

    Some critics of HARP, now HARP 2, have said it is not ambitious enough. Although some 22 million American households would meet eligibility requirements; only about 900,000 of them are expected to take advantage of the new rules. It also remains to be seen if enough lenders will be confident enough to go along with the federal program for borrowers whose loan amounts come close to the appraised value of their properties.

    House prices have not fallen in East Hampton to the degree they have in parts of the country most affected by the downturn. But borrowers here may soon find the path to refinancing eased by the HARP expansion, and that can only help brighten the local economy.

    After years of legal struggle, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, Bloomberg Markets magazine got what could be the scoop of the decade. While Americans were squabbling over the 2008 $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program, the Federal Reserve was secretly handing out more than 11 times that amount at a ridiculously low interest rate to the nation’s biggest banks. In fact, TARP distributed far less than its authorized amount: $392 billion.

    The $7.77 trillion in loans only recently brought to light were supposed to keep the financial system running, and, by most accountings, they were successful. Not only did banks survive, according to Bloomberg, they made money on the deal. The big problem was — and it is a startling indictment of the ties between Washington and high finance — apparently no one in Congress knew of the loans while new rules intended to prevent subsequent collapses were being debated.

    In the Bloomberg piece, the cost of this was made clear: “. . . taxpayers,” the authors said, “paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.” The banks, which argued against disclosing the loans, said that admitting to taking the money might have undermined confidence in them as institutions. This might have been a good thing.

    Let’s pause for a moment to consider together just how much money the Fed doled out at .01 percent interest: The $7.77 trillion loaned from its so-called discount window was more than half the value of everything produced in the United States in 2009. Unbelievably, the total is in the ballpark of the value of all the gold ever mined in all of human history at the metal’s 2011 sky-high prices. Consider, too, that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — combined — have cost $1.1 trillion over the course of the last 10 years.

    Perhaps not surprisingly, Ben Bernanke, the Fed’s chairman, having tried to fight disclosure of the loans and commitments, has accused Bloomberg of getting it wrong. In a quibbling letter to House and Senate leaders, he said the reporting was filled with “numerous errors and misrepresentations,” and said that, at peak, the daily loans only reached $1.5 trillion anyway. Congress had access to monthly reports about the total borrowing, he said. Bloomberg has said it stands by its reporting and issued a point-by-point rebuttal of the Fed chairman’s criticisms.

    Mr. Bernanke sidestepped the entire issue of whether lawmakers were improperly kept in the dark about this huge handout as they considered the scale of the crisis and possible financial reforms — which did not come. Nor do the chairman’s objections explain why he and the banks sought so long and hard to avoid releasing the details — long after the chance of any hypothetical damage to the banks’ reputations was past.

    In retrospect, it would be laughable that the nation was convulsed over the much-smaller TARP if the implications for the credibility of our government were not so serious. Members of George W. Bush’s administration, which inaugurated TARP, were not let in on the Fed’s big secret. The net effect of the clandestine loans is that a real reckoning has never come for the giant banks, which ran up the housing bubble through collateralized debt obligations and other schemes. Inadequate regulations to prevent future financial catastrophes have remained in place because the people who would write new rules — Congress — knew nothing about what was going on.

    Not only are the giant banks now too big to fail, they are too big to regulate, according to some of the Fed’s managers. One hopes that, armed with the new information and knowing to what lengths the Fed and the banks went to avoid disclosure, Congress will look again at effective control of the financial industry. Regardless of what is done, however, it is apt to be too late for those Americans who have lost their jobs and their homes.

    The pending one-month suspension of Larry Penny, the East Hampton Town director of natural resources, on what may be exaggerated charges, does not bode well for the environment here. Though Mr. Penny has the right to a hearing to contest the claims, the outcome appears preordained, and the town board’s move against Mr. Penny seems a precursor to his firing.

    Having presented voters with tax cuts cobbled together by tapping money from surpluses, the town board knows it will have to balance the books sooner or later by trimming expenses. This makes Mr. Penny’s income, roughly $100,000 a year plus benefits, a tempting target. That the board’s majority has in the last two years essentially declared themselves at war with environmentalists provides ample reason for concern that motivations beyond Mr. Penny may be at play.

    If the board acts quickly to solidify the Natural Resources Department in his anticipated absence, however, most fears would be allayed. The town board needs to name a temporary, qualified replacement to take Mr. Penny’s position should the suspension come to pass. If the board does not do so, it will become evident that the majority views the Natural Resources Department as an afterthought or impediment. And, if Mr. Penny is gone for good, the stakes become much higher.

    If the town board is being straight with the community about what it sees as flaws in Mr. Penny’s job performance and fires him, it must quickly hire someone whom it believes will do a more effective job of protecting our natural resources. And, if it’s even just for 30 days, someone must always be watching out for the town’s environment.

The East Hampton Town Board’s new interest in how Cablevision franchise fees are apportioned is a good idea, with the possibility that the hefty sum might be spread more equitably.

    By longstanding practice, nearly all the money the town gets annually from Cablevision goes to LTV, which provides public-access and educational television and broadcasts many town meetings and work sessions. The town board held a hearing last Thursday on Cablevision’s use of the town’s right of way for transmission lines, but much of the real action has taken place in private discussions between the town and the cable company. The town board has been looking to get more money for allowing Cablevision’s Optimum division to have a near-monopoly on television service and a dominant share of Internet use.

    The 2012 town budget anticipates $850,000 as the franchise fee, a more-than-40-percent jump over the amount paid to the town in 2011. The figure is based on 5 percent of Cablevision’s reported revenue in East Hampton Town, up from 3 percent.

    Whatever the actual sum turns out to be for 2012, the thinking around Town Hall lately is that the pass-through to LTV could be reduced. Until a review of LTV’s finances was conducted earlier this year, the town board (and the public) had just about no idea how the money was spent. The board asked for several clarifications of the data LTV submitted.

    With the town’s having cut other social-welfare, education, and cultural services, it seems only reasonable that the size of LTV’s share should also be on the table. Though its supporters are sure to disagree, the outsize payments to LTV that come with few strings attached and minimal oversight appear questionable.

    East Hampton Town may be getting into the fuel-regulation business in a small way, but not without  concern about possible spills and unfair competition.

    The town board is headed toward approving an addition to the code that would make it legal to pump diesel from trucks at the Commercial Dock in Three Mile Harbor; gasoline sales from trucks are prohibited. The practice, which prompted a lively debate at a town board hearing in 2009, has in fact been going on for decades, but without significant controls. If the board approves the law, direct diesel fueling of boats from trucks would end at Lake Montauk and at town-owned docks used by recreational boaters.

    The Gann Road site was singled out because the largest vessels cannot get to the few private marinas with fuel docks at Three Mile Harbor and because it is in easy reach of the deep navigation channel. In Lake Montauk, there are several relatively accessible private fuel facilities with adequate spill containment and other protections.

    The proposed town law contains a troubling contradiction, however. It explicitly acknowledges the environmental risk and potential liability of truck-boat fueling, but would allow it nevertheless where no other source was immediately available. This is not the right solution.

    The community’s interest in clean waterways would be far better served if the town sought a company to set up a diesel facility at the Commercial Dock, meeting the same high safety standards as the private marinas. What East Hampton should not do is allow fuel truck operators to undercut established marine businesses — all of which have had to invest large sums of money to be able to sell fuel — and at the same time increase the risk of ecological damage.

    Tomorrow is Veterans Day and, like last year and the year before that, it is a day on which the United States is engaged in military conflicts on several fronts, including Afghanistan, which is said to be the nation’s longest war.

    According to the census, there are 22 million United States military veterans. About 1.7 million American men and women have served in Afghanistan or Iraq, some in both countries, and some on multiple tours of duty. Each has a personal understanding of what Veterans Day means. In a recent poll, only a third of these veterans said they believed those wars were worth fighting. And the number who reported having emotional difficulty returning to civilian life is now almost twice what it was among those who went to war before Sept. 11, 2011.

    Small gestures can help. One event, for example, will take place on Saturday at the Stephen Talkhouse, the Amagansett music venue. A group of musicians calling themselves Music for Morale will entertain to raise money to buy much-wanted supplies for a Marine unit deployed in Afghanistan, as well as to provide musical instruments for wounded veterans and those suffering from other war-related problems.

    This year, it is important not to overlook this country’s most recent servicemen and women, to thank them for the jobs they did or continue to do, to welcome home those who have returned, and to think with sadness of those who did not.

    Tomorrow on East Hampton Main Street — as in cities, towns, and villages across this country — veterans will march. It will be an opportunity for all of us, those who served and those who did not, to remember.

    If East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson ever thought he had a mandate to do more than complete the work of correcting the financial chaos of the Bill McGintee-era, he can no longer make that assumption following his apparent narrow election victory over Zach Cohen on Tuesday.

    As the poll results came in, it was clear that Mr. Wilkinson’s support had shrunk from the election of 2009. That a relative unknown like Mr. Cohen could come so close to defeating him attests to the dissatisfaction of many voters with the supervisor’s record over the last two years.

    If any message for Mr. Wilkinson can be discerned from the outcome, it is that East Hampton residents want town government to change direction. The specifics may be subject to conjecture, but the consistent theme that has emerged during his term is that the supervisor and his Republican majority must do a better job of listening to constituents rather than dictating to them.

    At its best, elected office is an honor conferred by the voters on those whom they consider best represent their interests. This cannot be ignored by whoever is confirmed as the victor once the absentee ballots are counted.

    In news of the violence that has broken out in Cairo in recent days, a report has circulated that may indicate that the Egyptian authorities are paying attention to how some police in the United States have responded to the Occupy Wall Street protests.

According to the accounts, an Egyptian state television anchor cited the “firm stance” taken by United States law enforcement to “secure the state” as a justification for the Egyptian crackdown. This report came from Twitter, posted by Sultan Al Qassemi, a journalist and important voice in the Arab Spring uprisings. Whether or not this can be independently confirmed, it points to a troubling double standard between the United States’s internal actions and foreign policy.

    Occupy Wall Street first gained widespread attention in September, when a supervising officer in the New York Police Department used pepper spray on an unarmed and nonthreatening group of four women who had been standing together. Before that, the protests had been a curiosity; after it came out that N.Y.P.D.’s “white shirts” from higher ranks were leading an aggressive response to keep “sidewalks clear and crowds moving along,” the protest rapidly grew into a movement. Protesters greeted the news that the officer who had used pepper spray was “punished” by having 10 vacation days docked with anger.

    On Friday, campus police at the University of California Davis used pepper spray on nine seated protesters who had defied orders to move. Photographs of this unprovoked attack have become a new rallying cry of the movement. In one particularly resonant image, some wit digitally placed the campus officer into John Trumbull’s famous painting of the signing of Declaration of Independence, blasting America’s founding document with an orange-colored haze.

    It must be conceded that a few angry cops and misguided public officials do not add up to an overturning of democracy. Nor should  the police’s removal of the library Occupy Wall Street put together at Zuccotti Park be  considered on a par with book-burning in Hitler’s Germany. However, violent responses to the peaceful encampments reinforce the movement’s messages about inequality and the use of official force to resist meaningful change.

    If the report out of Egypt is accurate, the world is indeed watching.

    Now that the election is over, the East Hampton Town Board is picking up a matter it dropped hastily last month concerning East Hampton Airport.

    Fearing what would happen if a public forum about Federal Aviation Administration money was held just before voters went to the polls, Town Hall went into panic mode in October, scratching a hearing on the deal. Having avoided what could have been a political bombshell, the board now plans to go ahead with a request for a relatively modest amount of money from Washington for  deer and security fences at the airport.

    A large number of residents, upset about aircraft noise, have decried taking any more money from the F.A.A. because they say (accurately, from what we can tell) that doing so binds the town’s hands in terms of meaningful control of the airport. Further, they say that the airport has a dedicated fund with a substantial surplus in it that could pay for the work, avoiding further entanglement with the F.A.A.

    Exactly why the town board majority, headed by Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, wants the Washington handout is not clear, but there are a couple of possibilities. One is a fear that airport-noise opponents could someday gain the upper hand and curtail hours of operation or limit certain classes of aircraft. By accepting the F.A.A. money, the current board would make it more difficult for the town to gain the upper hand at the airport, something some of the current majority’s backers worry about.

    Another reason could be that the town needs money. The East Hampton budget relies in part on the use of surpluses to keep tax rates down. But when they are gone, taxes will have to rise or more services be cut. In the 2012 spending plan, for example, the airport’s cash reserve is tapped for $400,000, roughly 10 percent of its budget to cover costs associated with a seasonal control “tower,” actually a trailer.

    Mr. Wilkinson and his budget officer, Len Bernard, are in a difficult place, having cut taxes twice and reduced the town work force about as much as possible. This is why they remain interested in selling such town assets as Fort Pond House in Montauk and scratching together additional non-tax sources wherever they can. The revenue has to come from somewhere. This is insufficient justification, however, for a policy decision that many believe will harm East Hampton in the long run.

    With the consensus being that accepting F.A.A. money comes at the cost of local control, the East Hampton Town Board should find other ways to pay for the fencing.

    Whatever happens next in Manhattan for Occupy Wall Street, after a 1 a.m. eviction by police Tuesday, it is remarkable that the encampment was allowed to remain in Zuccotti Park for so long. This would have been unimaginable in the past. Although the mayor’s responses have been erratic, few were confident at the movement’s outset that he would exercise any restraint.

    The city had successfully limited dissent with Orwellian “free speech zones” during economic summits and political conventions for years. The police were out in force and with video cameras during the National Republican convention a few years ago. Back in September, when all this started, few thought the city would allow the protesters to stay in the park one night, let alone until November.

    Detractors say they don’t understand what the Occupy Wall Street protesters want, but in one important aspect, the movement has been a success. If you ask just about anyone these days if they know what is meant by the 1 percent, they will have at least an inkling. The New York encampment and the others around the country have put the vast prosperity gap in the United States into the public consciousness.

    Whether it will lead to reforms that the poor and working class can take to the bank remains to be seen, but Americans are talking about it, and that’s a start.