They've been talking the market down when there is no way for the market to go but up. We still have a natural gas glut, we're on track to lead the world in oil production a few years from now, and costs for both solar and biofuels continue to decline. With inflation in check and housing starting to pick up, with car sales rising and Christmas looking like a winner, and new technologies abounding everywhere, why not buy?

Buy American stocks. Buy the QQQ, buy the DIS, buy the SPY. Buy.

As I've written before, the "fiscal cliff" is a scam. It's designed by the ultra-wealthy to pass the costs of the last decade's wars and tax cuts on the poor.

Look at who's represented on the so-called "Fix the Debt" group. Most are affiliated with Peter G. Peterson, a very rich man and a long-time opponent of the social safety net. They got theirs, they got a lot of it from the government in the form of defense contracts, but even though you paid for yours, you're not going to get it, because they're going to use the debt to take it away from you.

If debt were really the issue in the "fiscal cliff" these guys would be in barrels lining up to go over it. Sequestration is an answer to the debt, a collection of tax increases and spending cuts designed last year to do what Congress had found itself manifestly unable to do, cut our debt.

So what are Peterson and his friends wringing their hands about? They don't like tax hikes - who does? They don't like their own interests in government spending to be put at risk - who does? They don't like the priorities here - we just had an election about those priorities and their side lost.

Rise above what? If we're rising above anything, tax increases have to be part of the mix. Why is "Fix the Debt" fighting so hard to rescind these tax increases? And why is the President even concerned?

It's because, on balance, there's more deficit reduction in the package than the economy can take right now. It's the right medicine, there's just way too much of it. Growth, in the near run, will take a hit if we go over the cliff. Which increases the debt rather than decreases it. That's what the United Kingdom is experiencing.

But that's no reason to sell stocks. It's an opportunity to get a better deal, either now or next month. One with a little less austerity. Which is what Wall Street will be clamoring for if January 1 comes with no deal. Bring on the Obama tax cuts, they'll say. Bring on the stimulus.

What's really happening is that the supply-siders and Euro-austerity bugs who got us into this mess are trying to win through negotiation what they lost in the election. And guess what - Democrats are on to the game. That's why nothing is happening. Nothing has to happen.

It's hysterical watching John Boehner prance about, claiming he's going to prevent taxes from going up January 1. Don't you get it - taxes are going up on everyone unless you do something. Spending is going down unless you do something. The fiscal cliff is what you wanted, what you voted for. This is all buyer's remorse.

Eric Parnell is shocked, shocked, that the total national debt has risen $5 trillion in the last five years. Why did that happen? Did President Obama walk into office with a healthy economy? Did he walk in with America at peace? With a cooperative political partner on the other side?

No. He walked into office with the economy collapsing, falling at a 9% annual rate, not the 4% rate he was given by the outgoing Administration. He also walked into a political environment where Republicans were devoted to only two goals - keeping the tax cuts and wars that were causing the deficit, and doing all they could to prevent a recovery under a Democratic President.

So we had the Recovery Act, which did in fact pile almost $1 trillion onto the debt. But the fiscal impact of that act has disappeared. What's left, in terms of driving the debt, are mainly the tax cuts and the war. What I wanna know from Peter G. Peterson, Rick Santelli, all the folks at CNBC, from Simpson and Bowles and all their friends at Fix the Debt, is how they plan to pay for the damned war they put on our credit card a decade ago.

Throw grandma from the train? Tell the poor to pound sand? They really think that's going to repay the $10 trillion (with interest) these two wars have cost the American people? Really? Really.

There is an economic reality to all this. Too much austerity, too fast, and we go back into recession, which puts off any effort to pay down the debt by any means we can devise, other than literally eating grandma (nor raw, cooked) and playing "Hunger Games" with those newly graduated from college.

But we don't have to deal with that this month. We can have Obama tax cuts, and a new round of stimulus, next year. That's what is probably going to happen, by the way, although it's likely the tax cuts on 98% of us continue, at least for a while.

But how does that fix the debt? It doesn't.

Fact is we put two wars on the credit card, and have to pay for them. My idea is to tax carbon, to tax fossil fuels. Get rid of all existing programs for renewable energy, and make the link to paying for the wars explicit, make it patriotic. It will take 10 years, but that's how long the wars lasted. We can do this. Ending the tax cuts, now or a little later, restores another piece of the balance. Anything else is along the margins.

When anyone asks me about the debt I have one question. "What's your plan for paying for the wars we put on the credit card and left there?" Whatever you felt about the last decade, whether you supported or opposed the policies of that decade, we're all responsible for the result.

What we need to rise above is our ignoring of that reality.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

The thought that a college president, or athletics director, might do hard time for not reporting a crime that happened 11 years ago, became very real. Adding to pressure to indict Graham Spanier is the fact that he is a sociologist, founding editor of the Journal of Family Issues. (The anger I feel just writing that last sentence is palpable.)

What does this have to do with banking? Well, the more I learn about the LIBOR scandal, the angrier I get. The dam protecting big bankers from jail time may be about to break, just as it is breaking over Spanier.

The Financial Times estimates $22 billion in fines might result from this scandal, but folks are beginning to understand this is not something money can fix.

This is not crazy liberal talk. American Banker suggested it July 3. Business Insider wrote it on Wednesday. Seven U.S. Senators demanded criminal charges yesterday.

But wait, you say. This is something that happened in the last decade. The crime Freeh wrote about happened in 2001.

But wait, you say. This was done by traders, not by the CEOs. Please, the traders on the phone are just the Mike McQuearys in this case, this would not have gone on had the bosses done their jobs.

But wait, you say. Everyone was doing it - we can't jail all of them? In the Penn State case, there's even a criminal case made against the late coach Joe Paterno. If we could jail Joe Paterno for failing to report on a heinous crime, why can't we jail Jamie Dimon, who has been CEO of JP Morgan Chase (JPM) since 2005? Why can't we jail Charles Prince, who headed Citicorp (C) at that time? Or Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs (GS)?

Actually that last is sort of facetious. The real big fish, the Joe Paterno in this scandal, would have to be Blankfein's predecessor. Hank Paulson was CEO when this manipulation apparently started, and he's also the Treasury Secretary who ran the 2008 bailout of "too big to fail" banks that followed the years of scandal.

Point is that alongside "too big to fail" we've created a second category - above the law. It has taken the most abominable horror to dump that principle in college athletics. Maybe LIBOR will create banking's Louis Freeh moment.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

This weekend alone saw three deals announced.

• WellPoint (WLP) taking out AmeriGroup (AGP) for $4.9 billion, a 43% premium. This could be the first of many deals linking insurers to providers.
• Campbell Soup (CPB) buying privately-held Bolthouse Farms for $1.55 billion from Madison Dearborn. It's a long-rumored deal that's primarily defensive for Campbell, which needs to find new markets for fruits-and-vegetables.
• Thomson Reuters (TRI) paying $22/share for FX Alliance (FX), resulting in a 40% pop in shares. The agreement values the company at just under $625 million and is part of a longer term trend of consolidation in financial information.

None of these deals is entirely unexpected or, in some ways, unusual. But like the recently-announced IPO of Kayak they represent a return to financial normalcy, a look across the chasm of present crises to fairly normal and benign business conditions.

As such, they're bullish for the whole market, and the economy in general.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

CEO Tim Hassett said his Hybrid Plugin Electric Vehicle has patents on a technique for using heat pipes to turn engine waste heat into electricity, which can then help power the vehicle. The electric motor acts as a "load assist," meaning the main engine doesn't work as hard and uses less fuel. In an automotive application it all gets attached to your rear axle.

Hassett, who turned around a company called Hawk Motors after working for GE, is working with a company called Inverom in Chicago on the retrofits, focusing on vehicles the size of the Ford F150 or Dodge RAM 5500, which presently have mileage ratings in the single digits. (The company says Inverom can turn around a vehicle in a single day.)

Part of the pitch for commercial fleets is a quick Return On Investment (ROI) calculation, showing that the expense saves money fairly quickly. By re-using the heat generated by motors, brakes and other car parts, Hassett says his team not only saves fuel but extends the life of a commercial engine. And not just car engines. All kinds of motors, including the largest from GE and Siemens, can use the technology.

Hassett is based in Santa Rosa, California, near the Sonoma Valley, but his team is virtual, in places like Florida and Pittsburgh. He says he's been working in electric vehicles all his life, because continuous miners that work underground have always been electric. "The technology used today isn't much different from what was presented" back in the 1960s by his father, he told me. But back then the car companies didn't want to hear about things like variable frequency drives and regenerative braking. They also didn't have lithium-ion batteries, and Hassett says they don't need them, that with his technology lead-acid batteries work fine.

When people criticize alternative energy they usually talk about solar or wind power being non-economic. But the cheapest renewable energy is still the energy you don't use. This is the energy HPEV captures. If we can cut commercial vehicle fuel use by 20%, and extend engine lives, at a reasonable price, owners are going to go for it in a big way.

Hassett and his team, which includes Quentin Ponder and engineer Mark Hadowanec, who worked at Siemens, are just one group out of many who are transforming the economy based on this cheapest renewable energy. Refitting and updating existing products so they do more with less fuel is money in the pocket, and just one way in which the renewable energy world isn't what you think it is.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

They just want their cut of anything that's sold.

To Schonbrun, this spells opportunity. Bitzio has created a system that lets anyone create a Web app, that runs in an as Javascript and HTML5, which Bitzio will then distribute and monetize through ads.

"We're arms dealers for developers," is the way Schonbrun puts it. The key is Everyone Apps, a program introduced late last month that acts as a sort of Blogger-for-apps, letting you design your app without programming, and an app runner, available through the Apple App store, that interfaces your new Web app with the iPhone's features, like its GPS. (Similar products will be available through Bitzio for other phone platforms.)

Schonbrun describes Everyone Apps as "the first step of the Bitzio platform," which also includes a system called App Runner, described by Head Technology Guy (OK, CTO) John Swartz<

We have 30 forms predefined. What we're going to do is let you lay out the forms, put content into the form, and we're not downloading executable code. It's like a PDF reader, customized for mobile." And since you've got a Web app rather than an Apple app, it can run on any device, on Android or even Windows, through Bitzio interfaces.

While the technology engineering is impressive, I'm personally more impressed with the financial engineering.

Most of Bitzio's key people are working for stock. That's why the company is already public, even though it's not yet on the main NASDAQ board and is classed as a "penny" stock, currently at 27 cents/share. (BTZO.OB is the symbol. Qualitystocks profiled it in September.)

Operations are funded by teaching people how to use the tools, a $1,000/person course that drew 150 to San Diego recently, leaving a bunch of people trained to use the Bitzio tools. So far 800 people have paid $1,000 each for the course (with a free DVD), and they're now taking the show on the road - Orlando, Chicago, London - and will expand from there over the next several months.

It starts accelerating in May, when the full Bitzio Platform is launched. The platform is what will monetize your app. It interfaces with mobile ad shops, making certain that any ad space in your app gets an ad, and that you're getting the best price for the space, whether it's Apple's iAds, Google's AdMob, a third party like MobClix http://www.mobclix.com/, or someone else.

"Schonbrun laid out the schedule. "What's out now is the App Code" - Bitzio's name for its education series - "and Everyone Apps. Everyone Apps is available only to those who signed up for the course. Everything else will be coming later - some will come out in pieces to May, but the Bitzio platform itself will be coming out May 1."

The platform will be launched through another educational event, a real world tour, after which the plan is for the company to get onto NASDAQ's venture exchange, and get out of the pink sheets.

You can buy BTZO right now if you have the nerve.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

With apologies to Lauren Bacall, the Facebook S-1 is out, and here are the numbers you need to know:

$1.974 to $3.711. $.606 to $1.

The first set of numbers are Facebook's revenues, for 2010 and 2011, in billions of dollars. That's nearly an 90% growth rate. The second set of numbers are Facebook's earnings for the same period. Fast growth, and $1 billion in earnings is nothing to sneeze at. But growth there is slower.

While most reporters are treating this document the way TMZ might treat Lindsay Lohan coming out of a limo, the question is whether you should take a flyer on it.

There are three answers to that.

1. Do you Facebook? If you don't, then don't touch the IPO. Don't invest in anything you don't understand, or at least know something about. And Facebook is pretty easy to understand once you join it. I did. Didn't like it. They still count me, but I haven't been to my page in a year. I use it to make snarky comments on Web sites that take that credential, I link stories from Seeking Alpha to it, and that's about it. No Farmville cows for me, and I don't look at their ads.

2. Do the math. Facebook is talking about a $100 billion valuation. That's an Amazon-like PE of 100 on trailing year's earnings, 50 if you think they can double it again this year. But they can't, because the law of large numbers says it's harder to move the needle as the numbers get bigger. Right now the market is treating Google at a PE of 20, Apple at 15, Microsoft at 10. My guess is they'll value it at $70 billion and expect a big pop at the open - you always have to have a big pop at the open or what's the point of doing the IPO? What did you pay the underwriters all those millions for, if not for a pop at the open?

3. Look at the headwinds. Forget Google Plus. They can't even get into China. Besides, China already has its own Facebooks, like RenRen, big companies that do whatever the government there says to do, without a qualm. And the market is highly competitive. It's not that they can't get in, I don't think they can compete. And if you can't make it there, your growth horizons narrow.

The S-1 claims there are 845 "active" users on Facebook. I'm sure they include me in that total. I'm not one. Lots of people come into Facebook, and leave. Social networking is a very quirky business, competition always just a click away. It's mostly people who came of age after the Web was spun, the people who will really define the Internet (in contrast to my generation, which just built the thing).

How sticky is Facebook, really? How devoted are how many Facebook users to living their lives on Facebook? Sure, Facebook has "second-mover" advantage, in that they overhauled MySpace and learned some things. But is this the last evolution of the Web, the final chapter?

I don't think so. I don't think that chapter has been written yet. And anyone who does, I'll take your money, drink your milkshake, haz your cheezburger. To succeed Facebook has to ride, successfully, on top of a myriad of changes that have not happened yet.

Its chances of doing this are fair. At least as good as Google's. But as good as Amazon's? I don't think so. The social networking boom, as I've written, began to bust as soon as its shares came to the public market. (Bought any Groupon (GRPN) lately? Any LinkedIn? (LNKD)

Trade it for fun, watch it rise like a skyrocket (because it will in the short term). But as soon as the lock-in period ends for the big shareholders, be gone and on to the next big thing.

It's coming. It's out there. The next big thing is always out there.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.