While your comments are valid, i.e. of course one should not be overproducing in areas of collapse just to satisfy some labor law, that's not what I'm reading and it's also not the history of the IMF. Instead they are talking about removing collective bargaining across the board, and no, one should not be able to easily fire someone. One can make labor markets more flexible, but that's not through firing, that's through re-allocation and retraining. Think Finland for a moment. When a market goes bust, they do not fire everyone, they literally retrain everyone. That's a huge difference between outright mass firings and turning the labor force into "permatemp". We see how far that has gotten the United States. Because corporations were so busy labor arbitraging and firing people like Schnidler's list, there are now some areas where the expertise needed just isn't there and no American is going to invest to learn it....because that expertise does not pay out, i.e. careers are cut short due to this continual permatemp attitude towards staff.
The reason I wrote this is a pattern and no, labor should not shoulder the burden of derivatives/MNC/Bankster follies. The IMF pattern is to attack social safety nets and labor, all the while ignoring the MNCs, capital, the finance sector. It is the finance sector, capital and especially CDS and currency swaps which need to be reigned in, plus these government financing, LBO type deals which allow governments to hide immediate debt but come back and cost them way too much later.
The IMF routinely doesn't focus on the real areas from which the problem originates and it is the financial sector here, derivatives and instead seems to be almost a neo-con agenda to rip asunder social safety nets and social systems for equality, work security and well, basically the structures which built up the middle classes.
After announcement after announcement, this time I'm just not buying it. Not when we know the Banksters are now 63% of GDP in the U.S. and that's obscene and out of balance. Manufacturing is now about 8-12% of the U.S. economy and that's just so wrong.....yet when it comes to reducing debt levels, it is never shrink the financial sector, cancel out or take a hair cut on CDSes, swaps or LBO deals or other financial vehicles of this nature.....it is always attack the few social safety nets and worker levelers. Collective bargaining? That is their target for a housing bubble? There is no direct connection here that I am aware of....
Is should be retaining all of those construction workers into advanced manufacturing jobs, but I don't see anything in the IMF releases mentioning any of this.
Am I going nuts or is America so used to the worker squeeze mentality that no other causes and areas can be even examined? I'm all ears with statistics, numbers and percentages but ignoring the derivatives, interest, currency swaps and other costs, losses on retirement funds and all of the rest of it...let's chat about those percentages w.r.t. overall GDP drag.
I like your blog but this is bordering on lunacy. The economic theory behind the benefits of the type of labor reforms the IMF is proposing is very straightforward and clear. The basic point is regarding resource allocation; capital and labor in this case.
Quite naturally, a large part of the adjustment process involved in economic booms and busts is shouldered by the labor market. In the case of Spain, the housing and construction industry saw a decade long bubble that is now in the 4th year of bursting. At its peak, the housing and construction industry employed millions of people. The problem is that Spain now has 5 to 10 years of housing supply, therefore has no reason to keep paying people to build. As the structure of the economy adjusts, ie. productive resources shifting from housing and construction to other areas such as alternative energy, people need to develop new skills to sell in the alternative energy industry. This transition takes time, thus there are people left without work. Paying people to stay employed in industries that are not competitive or profitable simple worsens the resource allocation.
Spain's problem is that labor is too secure; companies cannot fire people to match falling demand, thus are forced to overproduce. This is a major drag on economic productivity and thus growth. Allowing companies to fire is fundamentally important to the adjustment process. Your prescriptions would condemn Spain to decades of stagnation, decay, and political and social unrest.
the other members are not chosen yet. Frank wants to put this on C-SPAN, so maybe if he is chair that will happen. Not that it would stop any further weakening of course.
The Hill says 7 Dems, 5 GOP, but of course that doesn't mean much since we have corporate representatives in both parties.
China has socialized, 100%, universal health care. They have a socialized pension system.
I think, since Hillary is now Secretary of State, you should be looking at the Obama administration and their agenda, not lose ties to Bill as wife, and working as a Walmart lawyer.
Currency manipulation comes in heavily, allowing China's final exports to be priced much more cheaply than what should be in reality.
See 2.4 million jobs lost from 2001-2008, directly attributable to currency manipulation. China also has a dynamic VAT, which they change continually, depending upon market conditions. A VAT, not to be confused with a flat tax, is an at the border adjustment tax. (although a VAT is highly regressive).
Chinese businesses already have so many advantages such as:
- dirt cheap labor
- no social security / medicare tax
- few regulations in terms of pollution and workplace safety (just checkout the dog food, toothpaste, tires, drywall, ... they export to the US).
- few labor rules/rights
- ... and so on ...
No US worker can compete here. That worker would be better off on welfare.
So why then must China also cheat on their currency?
Also, I don't think it's just a coincidence that Hillary Clinton is from Arkansas, WalMart is headquartered in Arkansas, WalMart has profited hugely from outsourcing to China, and it was Bill Clinton that pushed China PNTR through Congress resulting in an avalanche of US outsourcing to China.
I think the worst thing they could have done is use disperants to keep the oil from coming to the surface. Those underwater plumes will end up killing and ruining a vast area of sea life.
as in a. they aren't going to do anything about their currency manipulation and b. the executive branch should stop Congress from passing an across the board tariff against China for currency manipulation.
Is the only sure thing and the directional drilling will take another couple of months to get close then they have to intersect with the 7 inch pipe inside the 21 inch pipe then pump the pipe full of mud and cement. That process took 9 months in 1979 with IXTOC. They have two rigs drilling now - they started within a week of the blowout. Newer tech should shorten that time span but who knows?
BP has already said that they are going to try and muck it up next week forcing mud and junk then cement in it through the BOP but in the WSJ they said if it doesn't work the mud could stress the wellhead and cause a blowout. Remember the pipe and wellhead have been weakened each day more and more by the sand thats flowing through with the oil.
They can also pull the well head and put another BOP onto it but in the event of failure there the oil flow would be tremendous. That will be next if next weeks attempt goes sour. The wellhead will be breached at that point so why not?
If you have a water leak in your basement the plumber shuts the water off before repairing the pipe because that water pressure makes it near impossible to repair the pipe. Being a mile underwater doesn't help any.
I believe this proves deep sea drilling is not safe period and should be banned. This will go on for at least two more months and could get much worse if next weeks attempt goes sour.
What is killing me is that they will process and sell the oil they are recovering now through the straw pipe inserted into the main pipe. This will mitigate BP's costs here and maybe allow for a profit. I'd love to see their internal memos regarding this.
although this sounds interesting because the "spread" when someone blows up and of course it will, should limit the contamination area. but the problem is you cannot get rid of it....as in ever.
decentralization of power sounds like a very good idea and to sell "home generators" of a variety pack of sources, or multiple sources sounds like a great idea too.
But this is looking like the entire gulf is going to turn into a toxic dead coated swamp. What do you know about the immediate problem? Is there any military, any nation, anybody beyond BP and the USA who can deal with this, any technology not being used?
Apparently the US (and in other countries) is on the verge of tapping very cheap natural gas from shale that would last several hundred years. Its possible however that in drilling through to the shale that if a pipe broke or exploded that water supplies could be polluted since the shale lies deeper than water. Odds are against this but no one has to tell me that sh*t happens and that the risk is not worth the reward. Tough to replace water and we die without it.
I predict though that the cheap ng will win out over any potential concerns. You know the deal there is a lot of lobbying from these companies. Shell is involved in the US as are Exxon and others.
This is going to put renewables in an untenable position economically. There is already a fledgling infrastructure for natural gas refill stations. In order to make use of shale gas its probable that LNG production facilities will be necessary though. Those are not safe either. Transport seems safe but production is another story.
The bottom line economically is that shale gas may be half the cost of what we pay now for ng.
Another happening right now is mini reactors. I believe these are probably safe. Initially they will be used in out of the way places where oil is imported. These are the size of a small walk in refrigerators self contained and cheap. Like renewables they help decentralize the grid which will be necessary to support electric cars in the next 10-20 years. The biggest advantage with these safety wise is that they are self contained and built at a factory environment rather than onsite. Toshiba is expected to apply for a license for one in a small Alaska town soon. Bill Gates is involved with these also. He backs a mini design that uses spent fuel from existing reactors that could power the entire country for 200 years.
about anything that can actually work generally? The thing with the secondary drilling, why can't they speed that up? It's like the world is still in denial on what this will do and it's almost really too late. The oil has now moved into the stream to take it out to the Atlantic, but this is not the Exxon with a limited amount (regardless of how massive) of total oil.
From what I have been reading the BOP was developed in the 1930's and the design hasn't changed much if at all since.
The pipes on these deep water rigs are actually too thick for the BOPs to close off. The ram shear doesn't have enough ooomph to cut through and seal these pipes. They don't even test them - so this same problem would happen on all other deep sea rigs where the drilling pipes are too heavy.
Regarding the mud thing, I cited a Forbes article early on that said it may well have been a decision by the on board operators not to follow through on a safety protocol due to economic issues $$ that caused the accident. In other words there was something they could have done to prevent this but it would have caused them to lose the well so they dissented and then the blowout happened.
"The investigation into what went wrong when the Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20 and started spilling millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico is sure to find several engineering failures, from cement seals that didn't hold back a powerful gas bubble to a 450-ton, 40-foot-tall blowout preventer, a stack of metal valves and pistons that each failed to close off the well.
"There was, however, a simpler protection against the disaster: mud. An attorney representing a witness says oil giant BP and the owner of the drilling platform, Switzerland-based Transocean Ltd., started to remove a mud barrier before a final cement plug was installed, a move industry experts say weakens control of the well in an emergency. NOLA.com, May 6
I mean there is no way currently to replace oil as the main energy source. That said, I think your post brings to light it's just more corporate lobbyist wish lists vs. anything in the national interest or macro economic interests as well.
I'd like to see the total costs of BP advertising vs. lobbying and see if those costs exceed simply building the safety structures in the rig that they bypassed to save costs.
I'll bet it's a 10:1 ratio. Billions are spent every year on "public relations", instead of investing in real safety, technology and infrastructure.
Those are all excellent points, particularly the label of "fictional market" for cap and trade. I look at the vaunted American Power Act and think back to the second "Leaders' Debate" in the recent British election. Each of the three candidates were fluent in the needs for huge changes in energy consumption and non nuclear alternative sources. Each had programs to do this to varrying degrees. Their programs were all beyond what is proposed here.
Essentially, the American Power Act was an excuse to launch offshore drilling under the guise of a necessary compromise to get a viable energy bill. However, just looking at the estimated impact, we can see that the act will have little impact on the most robust renewables, wind and solar, are not included. I'm not qualified to comment on the Boone Pickens plan for a wind program or the ambitious solar programs outlined. However, it's clear that comprehensive solutions are being offered. Why didn't those show up in this bill? I don't think it's serious, which is a shame.
What I cannot understand is why the U.S. isn't asking other nations, who do have the technology to come in and stop the leak. With the U.S. approving attempts. (Supposedly Russia would nuke the leak, and I don't see how setting off a mega bomb is going to help!).
But the way to stop it supposedly is to drill additional pressure relief lines, so I don't understand why they don't have international help to speed up those drills and didn't do that a month ago.
On Cap & Trade, my understanding it's more about creating a new $2 trillion dollar trading market in carbon. i.e. more profits on fictional trading.
We also had green jobs from Stimulus created offshore and foreign companies receive funds from Stimulus for "green jobs". Obviously not helping America build up this much hyped green economy and assuredly not doing what Stimulus was supposed to do, i.e. hire Americans.
What about T. Boone Pickins gas conversion plan? How much potential for an environmental disaster is gas, and yes it is a carbon based fuel, but how much disaster is there for gas vs. oil?
I wouldn't lump all of Peterson's research in the fiction category and yes I do know about the attack on social safety nets generally. I have to take it paper by paper, statistic by statistic, equation by equation out of there, I cannot soup can label all research as "biased" at all after reading some of their papers.
Case in point is the above. I guess one could spin it as "biomass usage doubles" but when it goes from 2% to 4%, that statement is misleading.
T. Boone Pickins is an uber conservative, but I really think he might be onto something and then building up powerline infrastructure to the wind corridor, which I believe is in NW Texas? Anywho, they do not have the high voltage power line infrastructure to get the energy out. I wonder if they could just charge up some mega batteries and move it around like milk. It's not like we have the cows brought to the house to get milk, same idea.
Nuclear, all it takes is one accident and Chernobyl is something all should be aware of.
This is a very well written piece, it explains the politics and $$, which I sure didn't know the details of.
been buried in "financial reform". On the site, I need people to report errors to me. I just found one but what I really want to know about beyond usability is page load times.
Oh believe me I don't trust either. I loved watching the late George Carlin. A few of his sayings...
"Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff."
"Never trust government"
"The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: You cannot post “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and “Thou shalt not lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. "
"You can’t fight City Hall, but you can goddamn sure blow it up."
I bet the previous quote would have gotten ole George in trouble these days.
In 1987, I promised over the air, on a small AM station that eventually you will see the banks (with the help of government) have great power in the economy. Powers unheard of in previous times.
I can't tell the difference in trust between the two. One takes by force, the other through deception and sometimes they trade sides.
Was there a Middle class Report and talk about Guaranteed Retirement Accounts?
I don't know? Apparently the pension funds had almost constant growth "had an almost constant growth trend in the 14 years of its existence" and economists said, "Economists said more than $4 billion a year in contributions to pension funds would ease government financing needs in 2009, when the government faces mid-term elections. Public spending has historically risen in election years."
So if indeed they had almost constant growth and if indeed the pension money in the hands of government eased financing needs, my non-trusting antenna is raised high in the air.
But doesn't it seem that the countries down in that part of the world are always in some kind of turmoil.
BTW, the site seems to be working ok. Ya getting all the kinks out of it?
As soon as I heard he wasn't running again I knew he had sold out completely.
The whole place is run by lobbyists.
Patrick Kennedy isn't running again but said he was keeping his campaign donations in case he wanted to run for Senate. He is dead in the water can't ever win again but he is keeping the money. That says it all.
While your comments are valid, i.e. of course one should not be overproducing in areas of collapse just to satisfy some labor law, that's not what I'm reading and it's also not the history of the IMF. Instead they are talking about removing collective bargaining across the board, and no, one should not be able to easily fire someone. One can make labor markets more flexible, but that's not through firing, that's through re-allocation and retraining. Think Finland for a moment. When a market goes bust, they do not fire everyone, they literally retrain everyone. That's a huge difference between outright mass firings and turning the labor force into "permatemp". We see how far that has gotten the United States. Because corporations were so busy labor arbitraging and firing people like Schnidler's list, there are now some areas where the expertise needed just isn't there and no American is going to invest to learn it....because that expertise does not pay out, i.e. careers are cut short due to this continual permatemp attitude towards staff.
The reason I wrote this is a pattern and no, labor should not shoulder the burden of derivatives/MNC/Bankster follies. The IMF pattern is to attack social safety nets and labor, all the while ignoring the MNCs, capital, the finance sector. It is the finance sector, capital and especially CDS and currency swaps which need to be reigned in, plus these government financing, LBO type deals which allow governments to hide immediate debt but come back and cost them way too much later.
The IMF routinely doesn't focus on the real areas from which the problem originates and it is the financial sector here, derivatives and instead seems to be almost a neo-con agenda to rip asunder social safety nets and social systems for equality, work security and well, basically the structures which built up the middle classes.
After announcement after announcement, this time I'm just not buying it. Not when we know the Banksters are now 63% of GDP in the U.S. and that's obscene and out of balance. Manufacturing is now about 8-12% of the U.S. economy and that's just so wrong.....yet when it comes to reducing debt levels, it is never shrink the financial sector, cancel out or take a hair cut on CDSes, swaps or LBO deals or other financial vehicles of this nature.....it is always attack the few social safety nets and worker levelers. Collective bargaining? That is their target for a housing bubble? There is no direct connection here that I am aware of....
Is should be retaining all of those construction workers into advanced manufacturing jobs, but I don't see anything in the IMF releases mentioning any of this.
Am I going nuts or is America so used to the worker squeeze mentality that no other causes and areas can be even examined? I'm all ears with statistics, numbers and percentages but ignoring the derivatives, interest, currency swaps and other costs, losses on retirement funds and all of the rest of it...let's chat about those percentages w.r.t. overall GDP drag.
Hello,
I like your blog but this is bordering on lunacy. The economic theory behind the benefits of the type of labor reforms the IMF is proposing is very straightforward and clear. The basic point is regarding resource allocation; capital and labor in this case.
Quite naturally, a large part of the adjustment process involved in economic booms and busts is shouldered by the labor market. In the case of Spain, the housing and construction industry saw a decade long bubble that is now in the 4th year of bursting. At its peak, the housing and construction industry employed millions of people. The problem is that Spain now has 5 to 10 years of housing supply, therefore has no reason to keep paying people to build. As the structure of the economy adjusts, ie. productive resources shifting from housing and construction to other areas such as alternative energy, people need to develop new skills to sell in the alternative energy industry. This transition takes time, thus there are people left without work. Paying people to stay employed in industries that are not competitive or profitable simple worsens the resource allocation.
Spain's problem is that labor is too secure; companies cannot fire people to match falling demand, thus are forced to overproduce. This is a major drag on economic productivity and thus growth. Allowing companies to fire is fundamentally important to the adjustment process. Your prescriptions would condemn Spain to decades of stagnation, decay, and political and social unrest.
the other members are not chosen yet. Frank wants to put this on C-SPAN, so maybe if he is chair that will happen. Not that it would stop any further weakening of course.
The Hill says 7 Dems, 5 GOP, but of course that doesn't mean much since we have corporate representatives in both parties.
China has socialized, 100%, universal health care. They have a socialized pension system.
I think, since Hillary is now Secretary of State, you should be looking at the Obama administration and their agenda, not lose ties to Bill as wife, and working as a Walmart lawyer.
Currency manipulation comes in heavily, allowing China's final exports to be priced much more cheaply than what should be in reality.
See 2.4 million jobs lost from 2001-2008, directly attributable to currency manipulation. China also has a dynamic VAT, which they change continually, depending upon market conditions. A VAT, not to be confused with a flat tax, is an at the border adjustment tax. (although a VAT is highly regressive).
Chinese businesses already have so many advantages such as:
- dirt cheap labor
- no social security / medicare tax
- few regulations in terms of pollution and workplace safety (just checkout the dog food, toothpaste, tires, drywall, ... they export to the US).
- few labor rules/rights
- ... and so on ...
No US worker can compete here. That worker would be better off on welfare.
So why then must China also cheat on their currency?
Also, I don't think it's just a coincidence that Hillary Clinton is from Arkansas, WalMart is headquartered in Arkansas, WalMart has profited hugely from outsourcing to China, and it was Bill Clinton that pushed China PNTR through Congress resulting in an avalanche of US outsourcing to China.
I think the worst thing they could have done is use disperants to keep the oil from coming to the surface. Those underwater plumes will end up killing and ruining a vast area of sea life.
Letting it surface allows for clean up.
Kevin Coster Comes to the Rescue
as in a. they aren't going to do anything about their currency manipulation and b. the executive branch should stop Congress from passing an across the board tariff against China for currency manipulation.
Is the only sure thing and the directional drilling will take another couple of months to get close then they have to intersect with the 7 inch pipe inside the 21 inch pipe then pump the pipe full of mud and cement. That process took 9 months in 1979 with IXTOC. They have two rigs drilling now - they started within a week of the blowout. Newer tech should shorten that time span but who knows?
BP has already said that they are going to try and muck it up next week forcing mud and junk then cement in it through the BOP but in the WSJ they said if it doesn't work the mud could stress the wellhead and cause a blowout. Remember the pipe and wellhead have been weakened each day more and more by the sand thats flowing through with the oil.
They can also pull the well head and put another BOP onto it but in the event of failure there the oil flow would be tremendous. That will be next if next weeks attempt goes sour. The wellhead will be breached at that point so why not?
If you have a water leak in your basement the plumber shuts the water off before repairing the pipe because that water pressure makes it near impossible to repair the pipe. Being a mile underwater doesn't help any.
I believe this proves deep sea drilling is not safe period and should be banned. This will go on for at least two more months and could get much worse if next weeks attempt goes sour.
What is killing me is that they will process and sell the oil they are recovering now through the straw pipe inserted into the main pipe. This will mitigate BP's costs here and maybe allow for a profit. I'd love to see their internal memos regarding this.
although this sounds interesting because the "spread" when someone blows up and of course it will, should limit the contamination area. but the problem is you cannot get rid of it....as in ever.
decentralization of power sounds like a very good idea and to sell "home generators" of a variety pack of sources, or multiple sources sounds like a great idea too.
But this is looking like the entire gulf is going to turn into a toxic dead coated swamp. What do you know about the immediate problem? Is there any military, any nation, anybody beyond BP and the USA who can deal with this, any technology not being used?
Apparently the US (and in other countries) is on the verge of tapping very cheap natural gas from shale that would last several hundred years. Its possible however that in drilling through to the shale that if a pipe broke or exploded that water supplies could be polluted since the shale lies deeper than water. Odds are against this but no one has to tell me that sh*t happens and that the risk is not worth the reward. Tough to replace water and we die without it.
I predict though that the cheap ng will win out over any potential concerns. You know the deal there is a lot of lobbying from these companies. Shell is involved in the US as are Exxon and others.
This is going to put renewables in an untenable position economically. There is already a fledgling infrastructure for natural gas refill stations. In order to make use of shale gas its probable that LNG production facilities will be necessary though. Those are not safe either. Transport seems safe but production is another story.
The bottom line economically is that shale gas may be half the cost of what we pay now for ng.
Another happening right now is mini reactors. I believe these are probably safe. Initially they will be used in out of the way places where oil is imported. These are the size of a small walk in refrigerators self contained and cheap. Like renewables they help decentralize the grid which will be necessary to support electric cars in the next 10-20 years. The biggest advantage with these safety wise is that they are self contained and built at a factory environment rather than onsite. Toshiba is expected to apply for a license for one in a small Alaska town soon. Bill Gates is involved with these also. He backs a mini design that uses spent fuel from existing reactors that could power the entire country for 200 years.
Toshiba and Bill Gates Plot Mini Nuclear Reactors
This is where the power industry is headed unless the renewable energy sector gets more competitive price wise.
about anything that can actually work generally? The thing with the secondary drilling, why can't they speed that up? It's like the world is still in denial on what this will do and it's almost really too late. The oil has now moved into the stream to take it out to the Atlantic, but this is not the Exxon with a limited amount (regardless of how massive) of total oil.
From what I have been reading the BOP was developed in the 1930's and the design hasn't changed much if at all since.
The pipes on these deep water rigs are actually too thick for the BOPs to close off. The ram shear doesn't have enough ooomph to cut through and seal these pipes. They don't even test them - so this same problem would happen on all other deep sea rigs where the drilling pipes are too heavy.
Regarding the mud thing, I cited a Forbes article early on that said it may well have been a decision by the on board operators not to follow through on a safety protocol due to economic issues $$ that caused the accident. In other words there was something they could have done to prevent this but it would have caused them to lose the well so they dissented and then the blowout happened.
Great point. You should write it up.
"The investigation into what went wrong when the Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20 and started spilling millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico is sure to find several engineering failures, from cement seals that didn't hold back a powerful gas bubble to a 450-ton, 40-foot-tall blowout preventer, a stack of metal valves and pistons that each failed to close off the well.
"There was, however, a simpler protection against the disaster: mud. An attorney representing a witness says oil giant BP and the owner of the drilling platform, Switzerland-based Transocean Ltd., started to remove a mud barrier before a final cement plug was installed, a move industry experts say weakens control of the well in an emergency. NOLA.com, May 6
All you need is the price of oil rig mud...
I mean there is no way currently to replace oil as the main energy source. That said, I think your post brings to light it's just more corporate lobbyist wish lists vs. anything in the national interest or macro economic interests as well.
I'd like to see the total costs of BP advertising vs. lobbying and see if those costs exceed simply building the safety structures in the rig that they bypassed to save costs.
I'll bet it's a 10:1 ratio. Billions are spent every year on "public relations", instead of investing in real safety, technology and infrastructure.
Those are all excellent points, particularly the label of "fictional market" for cap and trade. I look at the vaunted American Power Act and think back to the second "Leaders' Debate" in the recent British election. Each of the three candidates were fluent in the needs for huge changes in energy consumption and non nuclear alternative sources. Each had programs to do this to varrying degrees. Their programs were all beyond what is proposed here.
Essentially, the American Power Act was an excuse to launch offshore drilling under the guise of a necessary compromise to get a viable energy bill. However, just looking at the estimated impact, we can see that the act will have little impact on the most robust renewables, wind and solar, are not included. I'm not qualified to comment on the Boone Pickens plan for a wind program or the ambitious solar programs outlined. However, it's clear that comprehensive solutions are being offered. Why didn't those show up in this bill? I don't think it's serious, which is a shame.
What I cannot understand is why the U.S. isn't asking other nations, who do have the technology to come in and stop the leak. With the U.S. approving attempts. (Supposedly Russia would nuke the leak, and I don't see how setting off a mega bomb is going to help!).
But the way to stop it supposedly is to drill additional pressure relief lines, so I don't understand why they don't have international help to speed up those drills and didn't do that a month ago.
On Cap & Trade, my understanding it's more about creating a new $2 trillion dollar trading market in carbon. i.e. more profits on fictional trading.
We also had green jobs from Stimulus created offshore and foreign companies receive funds from Stimulus for "green jobs". Obviously not helping America build up this much hyped green economy and assuredly not doing what Stimulus was supposed to do, i.e. hire Americans.
What about T. Boone Pickins gas conversion plan? How much potential for an environmental disaster is gas, and yes it is a carbon based fuel, but how much disaster is there for gas vs. oil?
I wouldn't lump all of Peterson's research in the fiction category and yes I do know about the attack on social safety nets generally. I have to take it paper by paper, statistic by statistic, equation by equation out of there, I cannot soup can label all research as "biased" at all after reading some of their papers.
Case in point is the above. I guess one could spin it as "biomass usage doubles" but when it goes from 2% to 4%, that statement is misleading.
T. Boone Pickins is an uber conservative, but I really think he might be onto something and then building up powerline infrastructure to the wind corridor, which I believe is in NW Texas? Anywho, they do not have the high voltage power line infrastructure to get the energy out. I wonder if they could just charge up some mega batteries and move it around like milk. It's not like we have the cows brought to the house to get milk, same idea.
Nuclear, all it takes is one accident and Chernobyl is something all should be aware of.
This is a very well written piece, it explains the politics and $$, which I sure didn't know the details of.
The UK was sending us their entire supply of oil dispersant. I guarantee down the road they determine this stuff is worse than the oil.
Just a note on Obama. He has lost the swing support that got him elected. He is coming off as soft on the banks and having broken some promises.
been buried in "financial reform". On the site, I need people to report errors to me. I just found one but what I really want to know about beyond usability is page load times.
once I earn the money, I can never loose it.
Oh believe me I don't trust either. I loved watching the late George Carlin. A few of his sayings...
"Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff."
"Never trust government"
"The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: You cannot post “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and “Thou shalt not lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. "
"You can’t fight City Hall, but you can goddamn sure blow it up."
I bet the previous quote would have gotten ole George in trouble these days.
In 1987, I promised over the air, on a small AM station that eventually you will see the banks (with the help of government) have great power in the economy. Powers unheard of in previous times.
I can't tell the difference in trust between the two. One takes by force, the other through deception and sometimes they trade sides.
Was there a Middle class Report and talk about Guaranteed Retirement Accounts?
I don't know? Apparently the pension funds had almost constant growth "had an almost constant growth trend in the 14 years of its existence" and economists said, "Economists said more than $4 billion a year in contributions to pension funds would ease government financing needs in 2009, when the government faces mid-term elections. Public spending has historically risen in election years."
So if indeed they had almost constant growth and if indeed the pension money in the hands of government eased financing needs, my non-trusting antenna is raised high in the air.
But doesn't it seem that the countries down in that part of the world are always in some kind of turmoil.
BTW, the site seems to be working ok. Ya getting all the kinks out of it?
As soon as I heard he wasn't running again I knew he had sold out completely.
The whole place is run by lobbyists.
Patrick Kennedy isn't running again but said he was keeping his campaign donations in case he wanted to run for Senate. He is dead in the water can't ever win again but he is keeping the money. That says it all.
It is all about the money for 80% of these bums.
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