Make no mistake: in one form or another, carbon emissions legislation, taxation and trading is a growing global trend. Aside from the environmental issues, taxing companies’ carbon emissions is simply too alluring a prospect for most governments to pass up. The challenge comes in accurately measuring exactly what a corporation’s carbon footprint is, and then facilitating the trading of credits. So it stands to reason that companies that help monitor, measure, and trade emissions credits might be interesting long-term investment opportunities.

Experts say measuring a company’s carbon footprint is notoriously difficult. It’s hard enough to measure the primary and secondary impact of, for example, mining companies or utilities. But how effectively can you measure the carbon footprint of a U.S. company that manufactures shoes in China for sale in the U.S?

When Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a speech to bankers Friday in Phoenix, it was refreshing and long overdue to hear a top-ranking federal official finally address community banks and their challenges. I applaud his candor. It was as profound a moment as when, several months ago, government officials finally voiced to the public the difference between investment banks that do deals and move money around (not really banks at all) and real banks that make loans and have deposits.

I don’t know about you, but these past few quarters of mucking about at the bottom and dealing with scandals and dirt has made me want to take a nice, hot financial shower. But if we are beginning the initial stages of the bottoming out process, what’s a decent low-risk sector with a reasonable recovery outlook? Personally, I think the first opportunities have to be in companies that sell everyday stuff people need, including products that keep things and people clean.

Laundry. Dishes. Windows. Kitchen countertops. Teeth. Basic stuff like that. Who’s going to save money by serving their family food on dishes that get three or four uses before washing? Weekly showers and clothing changes are unlikely. If that starts happening I’m going to look around for Charleton Heston muttering “damn dirty apes” and wondering if something happened to the Statue of Liberty.

It’s supremely ironic that the day after the Tribune Corporation declared Chapter 11, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was taken into custody by federal authorities on mind-boggling charges such as trying to broker for pay the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-Elect Obama. Ironic because it was the Chicago Tribune that uncovered the story. Ironic, also, because the Tribune granted a relatively rare government request to sit on a story. And the government argument – to enable authorities to complete a wiretap of Gov. Blagojevich, rather than break the story and destroy the government’s opportunity to obtain the information – must have been compelling.

I was a business and financial journalist for many years. While with The New York Times (NYSE:NYT), I broke a major story on the punitive settlement against AT&T (NYSE:T) in the original antitrust case between AT&T and upstart MCI (later MCI Worldcom and finally defunct). While the television reporters popped in and out of the courtroom and did their one minute standups outside, I spent days in the courtroom following and reporting on the case. Not only did I know the issues inside and out, but I knew enough to track down the just-dismissed jurors so I could poll them about their decision to award a then-astronomical punitive settlement against the once-sacred “Ma Bell.” It was a heck of a scoop.

What a Turkinanamous Week!

When the choice for a national symbol was being debated, Ben Franklin lobbied for the turkey. Any hunters out there know just how cautious and wily the wild turkey is, which is why hunters consider a wild turkey a prize catch. And if you can get past the buzzard look of its featherless head, the turkey is a pretty attractive bird, with nice tail feathers and an impressive mating dance. Good eating, too. The bald (meaning “white” headed) eagle, Franklin argued, is basically a scavenger, putting it on par with vultures - not an appropriate symbol for a great nation, in his opinion. But it is a darned fierce looking bird, with impressive talons.

The US auto industry has lost the war. Not just the battle, but the war. At least, the war for supremacy in fossil-fuel vehicles. We’re not close to being remotely competitive in the arena of fossil fuel-powered vehicles, and we never will be. Legacy pensions, benefits, an uncompetitive pay scale and sheer lack of vibrant new product ideas will ultimately crush the US auto industry. Foreign cars in this country are built in with a far more cost-effective cost structure. Detroit Big Steel is sunk. Pure and simple.

Automakers want a bail out because they’re burning cash at phenomenal rates, but they have no meaningful plans for how, exactly, they’re going to turn things around. What good is a bailout if there is absolutely no opportunity for a turnaround? Detroit will never compete with foreign owned manufacturers. They simply do it better, faster, and cheaper. There is no way Detroit can shed its ugly legacy of high costs, slow market response and white-collar fat. Let’s admit that.

I’ve about had my fill of hearing the words depression, recession, crisis and crash. So I’m looking for a new way to characterize the situation we now face.

The good in what we’re going through now is that maybe, just maybe, this is the grand finale of more than a decade of neglecting what real value is, and what real values are. We’re in a crisis (both risk and opportunity), but there is nothing beneficial about describing it in negative, defeatist terms.