Clueless Wonder

Despite massive government efforts to bolster the credit market, banks are pulling back strongly on card lending. In the first four months of 2009, banks issued just 9.8M new credit cards - a 38% drop from a year ago. Economist Mark Zandi calls the sharp decline "remarkable."

I'd be curious to see what the numbers were as a percentage of applications. I read a lot on the web about people financing things moving balances from 0% introductory offer card to 0% introductory offer card... now that those seem to be gone, it should result in a lot less churn.

Three-quarters of Americans support government regulation of greenhouse gases, and 62% feel that way even if it means higher taxes. A vote on cap-and-trade, which would have the government issue tradeable permits limiting the amount of greenhouse gases companies could emit, could come as early as tomorrow.

Without taking sides on whether we should or shouldn't prevent greenhouse gases, what is the point in doing it unilaterally? If North America does it, but China doesn't, because of those taxes you've just increased the costs for a local manufacturing business without increasing costs for the foreign businesses, further accellerating the outsourcing push and ultimately having less effect on greenhouse gasses because now you have the fully "polluting" factory PLUS all the transportation bringing the goods from China to America.

Buffett's Battery Buy

Except I don't travel 200 miles in a week. My daily commute is 10 miles each way, and I am lucky enough to have all the shopping I need to do across the street from either work or home, so I almost never need to do additional driving.

In addition, I'm in an area with timed metering for hydro, so in the evening I am only paying 2.6 cents per KWH, so to charge for the day, assuming 1KWH = 1 Mile, would be 26 cents per day. Now, with gas where it is I am paying about $55 for a tank, which lasts me about three weeks, so in my circumstance there would be tremendous savings, depending on the cost premium of the vehicle.

But I agree with you that anyone really putting on the miles probably won't find these practical in the short term.

The Main Street - Wall Street Bout, Round Two

I think Main Street is smarter than Wall Street thinks, and is not against a bailout, but is against a handout, which the initial plan is. I think any plan where money was injected and the government was then the first debtholder or received equity would have sailed right through. It was the blank check with no possibility of oversight or consequence, to the same people who caused the mess, that was to be orchestrated by someone who has arguably mishandled things in the previous weeks, that was a no go.

The one thing I don't get is how liquidity can be maintained during the deleveraging process. I mean, if the whole point to deleveraging is to reduce the debt that has been multiplied 25-30 times, instead of the safer 10-12 times, then wouldn't that mean that there must therefore be less "money" to lend out, and since there was already more than 10-12 times debt out there, that means that by definition, to unwind the financial market problems, liquidity will naturally be restrained, resulting in higher rates to those who get it (which we are seeing), and a higher requirement for payback (which we are seeing)? In other words, how does liquidity get "maintained" without leaving us in the same situation we are in now?

Is There Still Hope for Sony?

Home video sites have long said that the PS3 was the best Blu-Ray player, as it was subsidized by Sony and it was fully upgradeable via wireless network so as new codecs and features were added, the PS3 could adapt... especially since none of the other Blu-Ray players on the market at the time fully implemented the 2.0 specification. When HD-DVD died, I bought two PS3's for movie watching, not intending to buy any games, although I have picked up 4 or 5 games since then.

I have no idea how much Sony makes from every Blu-Ray license, but other analysts have indicated that in the long run, this could be what makes the PS3 profitible... especially now that HD-DVD is dead.