Scrooge

Solar Panels and Parking Lots: An Extraordinary Dual Use

The copper downspouts on our church have been stolen 3 times in as many years. Great idea, PV cells above parking lots: but a problem will be getting the volts to the power pole, after the yobbos swipe the copper lines. Or aluminum lines. Infrastructure costs to protect those lines need to be figured in

How to Spend $700B and Actually Solve the Problem

Most of this worthless debt is 'NINJA' loans to borrowers with No Income, No Job, no Assets. The loans came about because Congress mandated that banks MUST make them: to atone for decades of supposed 'redlining', not making loans to people in certain urban areas. In the past banks would not loan to people who did not meet the credit requirements thought 'safe'. Those people were generally poor, and many lived in high-crime, low-value-housing areas: read 'The Ghetto'. So social engineering changes to banking regulations erased the necessity to have some form of collateral to assure a bank of payback on a loan. 'The Government' assured the banks that their risk was covered, and the loans got written. Real estate boomed, and values went up and up. Soon defaults on mortgages began to rise, and at a certain point, the value of all those bundled high-risk portfolios came into question. A house that in the boom time looked worth $500,000 was suddenly looking more like $300,000 based on sales of comparables in the neighborhood. Many a mortgage exceeded the current value of the property, so why pay it off? You would spend more on the payments than the property could give you back; and the riskiest bets went down first. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac led the charge, and now lead the retreat, along with Wall Street debt-portfolio slicers/dicers who hid the risk by making salami of bundled toxic morgages and assigning fictitious value ratings to it. So by all means, lets completely dismantle our entire national credit structure, and precipitate a global recession, to punish those greedy schmucks! It's great election year politics! But get Congress' social engineers first, starting with Pelosi, Obama, and Dodd, who torpedoed the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac fix legislation in 2005, while receiving mucho contributions from those greedy Main Street and Wall Street bankers.

The Economics of Political Spin

Gramps2 - Hi buddy.
Fitz: Why, in this horrible Republican-created mess of an economy, why would you suggest installing a person who wants to increase mightily the transfer of wealth from private sector(s) to government? Government produces nothing. Increasing taxes is a disincentive to creative work and the deployment of capital (otherwise called the economy, I think). Government (Dem & Rep) wastes our hard-earned cash on give-away entitlement programs that may be touchy-feely vote-getters, but are almost totally without oversight = big fraud-waste-abuse. Electing Obama would be gasoline on the fire! (I had to drag petroleum into this somehow.) I watch my dollars like a hawk. When was the last time anyone was able to carefully check out how Medicare or Medicaid is spending their 100's of millions? Those jokers pay for $1,000 flu shots, and pay bills for people who have been dead for a decade. Universal health care!! "If you think medical care is expensive now, wait until it is free." PJ O'Rourke
If I may paraphrase, If you think the economy sucks now, wait until Obama et al. 'fix' it. A major recession WOULD cut petroleum use, however, so that would be good in your book, right? By the way, an indicator of recession is shrinking oil consumption. Not seeing big evidence of that, are we?

The Economics of Political Spin

Fitz, if recession is here, why the GDP numbers? For financial market meltdown after housing debt crisis, and whom to blame, check out head of Fannie Mae, installed by the Twiddler In Chief, who jacked the system instead of doing his job: until caught at it in 2004.

www.businessweek.com/m...

Trying to pin all your woes on W doesn't wash. Is it against your religion to win a war against homicidal thugs? Or even fight at all? It's the Middle East. They have oil there. al Qaeda wants it, to continue its avowed campaign of world domination, which would mean the end of you, me, all we hold dear, and all the progress since the Renaissance. Since 'compromise' with them means I must stop practicing my religion or die, I say whack 'em. Who ya gonna call?

The Economics of Political Spin

Fitz: You are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own set of facts. GDP YR 2000 $9.8 Trillion; GDP 1ST QUARTER 2008 (chained 2000 dollars) $14.2 Trillion dollars. Bush 43 passed Medicare Rx Drug benefit - a catastrophic increase of indebtedness you say - Dems wanted a benefit twice as big, and all the credit for the giveaway as a vote-catching engine in perpetuity. Think of it as Republican damage control. Do you have to don body armor to visit the Mall, to guard against IED's? This safety brought to you courtesy Ashcroft, Cheney, Bush, in the face of terrific opposition from Pelosi, Reid, and Socialist wing of Dem party (the 99% that give the rest a bad name.) Just exactly what is it you are wishing for, a reversal of all these things? Go back to {insert name here} twiddling his - um - thumbs in the Oval office, while al Qaeda militarizes to international strength? Pish tush, as the longest expansion in market history finally slows, you lash out because no-brainer selections don't work any more: not even yours.

Crude Reality: Big Oil's Purposely Restricting Supply

Paultaut et al. IN RE T. Boone see Foxnews today, Steve Milloy analysis - reporting, actually - of how T. B. will get access to the land he needs for transmission lines: by eminent domain. Huh? How can he do that? Because he is - a water company!! Huh? Gotta read it to believe it.

www.foxnews.com/story/...

Crude Reality: Big Oil's Purposely Restricting Supply

I am pleased that your family in NZ is experiencing no difficulty. Go to Google, search for "New Zealand Energy Crisis". The first article that returns is

www.electricityforum.c...

lamenting the dire problems this year with hydro. And there are hundreds more on same theme.

I think nuclear shows greatest promise for a large-scale fix, but all the other sources (after oil and hydro and coal) have a part - mostly a tiny part - to play. Including drilling.

Crude Reality: Big Oil's Purposely Restricting Supply

From The Guardian, Mon Jun 8, 2008:

"Phil O'Reilly, the chief executive of Business New Zealand, said poor decisions by successive governments had led to New Zealanders living with the threat of electricity shortages. "You just can't run an economy like this," he said.

"If we get through to the end of winter without blackouts; it was all done by the skin of our teeth. I don't think that's a sensible proposition."

Low rainfall is seriously cutting into New Zealand's hydro capacity. The same thing happened in 1992, 2001, 2003, and 2006. Utilities must turn to diesel, nat. gas, etc to avoid shutting down the grid.

M. Trupp, your 'solution' for America's energy problem is similar to proposed solution for medical care using the Canadian model: just stop providing it, and ask for ever-increasing cash to carry the reduced services. A typical bureaucratic mindset. Begone.

Drilling in ANWR: What's Not to Like?

Please, give our politicians a chance to work this out: it has only been 35 years since the necessity became evident.