Chris B

10 Solid, Clean Companies Ready for Stimulus, And 5 That Aren't

A better idea might be to pay for it by removing the billions of dollars in direct and indirect subsidies to coal, ethanol, and oil corporations, starting with an end to spending a billion dollars a day fighting self-perpetuating wars in the middle east to secure access to cheap oil (funny, it WAS cheap before we started doing all that).

As far as taxes are concerned, we should raise taxes on the behaviors we want to discourage and lower taxes on the behaviors we want to encourage. Is that really all that controversial? Doesn't matter - economic research shows it works. So if you want to build an economy where we are less dependent on jihadist-produced foreign oil but where people have the incentive to work to earn more income, raise gasoline taxes and cut income taxes.

The Green New Deal: Stocks That Stand to Benefit

WW2 didn't end the depression - it just put everybody to work as soldiers and then killed off or crippled many of the formerly unemployed. That'll fix your statistics any time! Government spending on war production (along with generating massive debt levels that haven't been seen since) was a reversal of the contractionary policies that had extended the depression. In that sense, it was Govt. spending that ended the depression, whether it was for war or having the WPA build roads. The WPA alone might have been too little, too late, but it was a step in the right direction and may have prevented a larger humanitarian disaster.

In any case, the enduring effect of depression-era works projects was a post-war economic boom as the fresh new bridges, roads, railroads, irrigation projects, electrical and phone wires, and buildings were utilized for decades to create the world's most powerful economy. By now, most people have forgotten where that enabling infrastructure came from.

In the 21st century, the best things we can do for our economy are to expand education, acheive greater energy independence, reduce losses from our wasteful healthcare system, and eventually dig ourselves out of debt. As the saying goes, it takes money to make money.

Alternative Energy Storage Is an Investment Tsunami

First, be very, very careful about companies claiming to have "change the world" technology. Being listed on the stock exhanges does not infer legitimacy or truthfulness. There are a lot of outright cons out there whose only purpose is to collect and lose investor's money. Consider Zap! automotive and assume the prospecti are lying to you.

Second, think critically about resources and the needs of billions of people to use those resources. Is there enough lithium on earth to provide two billion cars with several hundred pound batteries? Enough nickel? What are the economics of mining/recycling that much of a semi-rare element? If you think today's prices are high, imagine if the whole world starting consuming it at once. Gold would be yesterday's precious metal! EV's might be uneconomical long before things got that ridiculous.

Third, I cannot understand how folks advocating energy independence and green living don't get excited about (cheap) 40-50 mpg hybrids and insist instead on pure EVs. Those hybrids are a huge improvement over our current fleet of <20mpg conventional cars and are the only economical and technologically capable solution on the table TODAY that could reduce our oil consumption by half. Getting fired up over hypothetical, unproven technology and panning existing medium-term solutions seems impractical.

Fourth, we all need to realize that in the long run, the rise of China means our lives have to change. Suburbs and exurbs will end. 3,000 sf detached houses will end. 4,000 lb cars to commute 20+ miles back and forth to work will end. Affordable airfare will end. Our cities will resemble Tokyo and our towns will resemble those in continental Europe. It won't be the so-called green movement that mandates these changes, it will be economics, and the sooner we change, the wealthier we will be. Light rail beats any EV in terms of both economics and environmental impact.

Torpedo Dry Ships - Cramer's Lightning Round (10/8/08)

I should start a mutual fund that does the exact opposite of what Cramer says. I'd be the next Peter Lynch.

Torpedo Dry Ships - Cramer's Lightning Round (10/8/08)

It will be sad to see millions of impoverished baby boomers who sold at the bottom on the advice of a shouting head on TV, digging through trash and resorting to prostitution and petty theft. But then again, what should we expect from the generation that gambles on stocks with one hand and pay 15% credit card interest with the other. You know... the folks who bought GMC Suburbans in 2003 expecting that Bush's war against Iraq would lower gas prices. You know... the folks who ship thousands of dollars each year to communist China and jihadist Saudi Arabia buying too much junk and oil, and then slap a patriotic magnet on their car (a sticker would be too hard to remove I guess).