We have heard much of the Perfect Storm of Doom on Wall Street. How rapid deleveraging of exotic financial instruments has led to the demise of 2 of the 4 investment giants on Wall street, and how that in turn is cascading out into the real economy where small businesses no longer can get lines of credit they have always relied on to keep their businesses running. Closure of these businesses means more unemployed, therefore fewer consumers, therefore less purchasing, therefore more businesses closing. It feeds on itself. It is the Storm of Doom largely brought on by the voodoo economics of the deregulation and something-for-nothing tax cut and deficit spending theology of the right wing.
Today, Paulsen proposes that the government buy up the bad debt of these investment banks. Over the last 6 years, investment companies have been successful in hiding the fact that much of their highly leveraged assets were based on exotic financial instruments that had very low real value. Unwinding the leverage of these assets was leading to a death spiral where lower value of these assets meant that loans based on their former high value required further collateral which required further selling which required further revaluation of other assets. The dominos were falling, Bear Sterns, then Lehman, then Merril Lynch, then AIG. Next up could come Washington Mutual- all once regarded as impregnable institutions. So the government is stopping the death spiral by buying the bad debt. It will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and investment firms will be let off the hook for concealing the bogus value of their assets. Because these companies are so tightly tied to the jobs and income of everyday workers, we have little choice and must submit to the blackmail of wall street. They were free to take enormous risks which ultimately was with tax payer money, and they were successful at lobbying the government not to watch what they were doing.
To keep the consumer economy going, government has rapidly injected capital in the form of consumer rebates. This keeps stores selling and factories building. But economies aren't magic. The government can't indefinately sustain the economy by borrowing money to inject capital to pay for bad debt sins of wall street and to keep money in the pockets of consumers. There are more than a few jokes about how that injected capital is going to WalMart (Chinese goods) and Gas Stations (foreign oil). Little of this money is staying in the US employing workers.
So how long can the Federal government keep printing money?
What we need is a sustainable fiscal stimulus. One that pays for itself, and keeps the majority of the capital in the US. Lawrence Summers brought this up on Charlie Rose a few nights ago. The former treasury secretary under Clinton urged public works projects at a massive scale. The good news is that the such FDR scale projects is not busy work, and they will pay for themselves.
Take the Bonneville Dam, built in the depression, that created tens of thousands of jobs. Although it was not designed as a revenue neutral project, it easily could have been.
We don't have a lot more rivers we can dam, but we do have a lot of windswept land that can take wind turbines, and we have a lot of sun baked desert in Nevada and Arizona that can generate terawatts of power to supply electric cars built by Detroit. To pave the desert with solar panels is not difficult, it just requires the capital. And at current energy prices, such a mammoth project of constructing large numbers of solar panel plants will pay for itself while creating hundreds of thousands of jobs either directly or indirectly. We have several US companies that can build these plants inside of 6 months.
All they need is the capital to do it. All we need is the political will to do it.
Sure, it would be tough to become energy independent in 10 years as Gore proposed. It would require massive mobilization unseen since FDR.
Until September 15th, there was little stomach for such a massive project. Now there is the perfect storm of Hope to address not only the unemployment tidal wave before us, but our energy independence.
Scott Brusaw, an electrical engineer from Idaho, was a speaker at the recent International Workshop on New Functionality in Glass in
Washington, DC. He proposes replacing the current asphalt road surfaces with a system
of solar panel road surfaces - �solar roadways� - crisscrossing the nation. * * * All this depends, of course, on the development of a durable, transparent
protective layer for the solar cells embedded in or deposited onto the roadway.
http://www.gmic.org/News/Joe%20Ryan%20-%20Energy%20Solutions%20from%20Glass%20Road%20Surfaces.pdf
The average cost of asphalt roads in 2006 was roughly $16 per square foot. The cost does not include maintenance (pot hole repair, repainting lines, etc.) or snow/ice removal. The average lane width is 12 feet, so a 4 lane highway would be 12' (width per lane) x 4 (lanes) x 5280' (one mile) = 253440 square feet. Multiply this by $16 per square foot and your one-mile stretch of asphalt highway will cost $4,055,040.00 and will last an average of seven years.
We plan to design the Solar Roadways�to last at least 21 years (three times that of asphalt roads), at which time the panels would need to be refurbished. Adding no additional cost to the current asphalt system, this will allow us to invest about $48 ($16 x 3) per square foot. This means that if each individual panel can be made for no more than $6912.00, then the Solar Roadway� can be built for the same cost as current asphalt roads. However, asphalt roads don't give you anything back.
Based on 15% efficiency, each Solar Road Panel� can produce an average of 7.6kWh per day. Our hypothetical 4-lane, one-mile stretch of road would require 1760 Solar Road Panels�. That means that, each day, this stretch of Solar Roadway� would produce at least 13,376 kWh of electricity. That's 4,882,240 kWh per year - enough to take 500 homes completely "off grid". You don't get that out of asphalt!
In addition, the Solar Roadwayâ�¢ replaces our current aging power grid. The Solar Roadwaysâ�¢ carry power â�" not from a centralized point like a power station, but from the power-producing grid itself â�" along with data signals (cable TV, telephone, high-speed internet, etc.) to every home and business connected to the grid via their driveways and parking lots. In essence, the Solar Roadwaysâ�¢ becomes a conduit for all power and data signals.
http://solarroadways.com/The Numbers.htm
The idea is a game changer.
The necessary R&D could be paid for with a one cent per gallon gasoline tax.
Start with the toll roads (see extended text for Orlando example).
Jim Callahan
Orlando, FL Read More »
Per Gore's office:
The speech will offer a new way of thinking about our energy production and consumption and a new sense of what is possible when we choose to work together. It will propose a means of tapping America's innovative skills to build a more secure energy future.
Who: Former Vice President Al Gore
What: A discussion on the future of America's energy needs
Where: D.A.R. Constitution Hall 1776 D St., NW, Washington, DC
When: Thursday, July 17 at 12:00 p.m. EDT:
During the Second World War America bailed the world out in the Pacific and in Europe. When the state of Israel was created, America was handed a choice. We chose to follow Europe into a millennia long conflict between the Muslim and Christian states. We have since defended European territorial interests loyally.
The ME saw it's heyday long ago. Deforestation and the usual accompanying bundle of conflict and failing economy ended the supremacy enjoyed in the north of Africa and along the eastern Mediterranean, the AAC or Arch of Ancient Civilization. Like the Atacama on the West Coast of SA, poor environmental management has resulted in permanent conditions of climate and topology that ensure continual poverty in low-key arid and semi-arid human habitations. Globally, these conditions signify failed human settlement. The ME is no exception. As it happened, the Muslim faith did well in geophysically impoverished nation states, and Christianity did well in newer, not yet depleted green states. Barrack Obama's backer, Al Gore is not on a child's fool errand. Change in climate and soil are seriously threatening much of the continental United States. That's an issue Obama will have to manage. Read More »
I know that the rumor mill must be swirling already but is it too soon to hope that after Gore's official endorsement of Obama that he could become the VP, or at least get a sweet cabinet position? Man I hope so, there would be no better trusted team to help transform this country into a clean, happy society that is once again liked by the world than Obama/Gore. Gore has got the ecological and international area covered... Read More »
From Al Gore's official endorsement of Barack earlier tonight in Detroit, Michigan:
Many people have waited for some sign that our country is awakening once again. How will we know when a massive wave of reform and recovery and regeneration is about to take hold and renew our nation? What would it look like if such a change were beginning to build? I think we might recognize it as a sign of such change if we saw millions of young people getting involved for the first time in the political process. I think we might just recognize it if we saw that new generation casting aside obsolete and hurtful distinctions and reaching out to one another across the ancient divisions that have frustrated action in the past. I think we would know this change was coming if a new generation rejected the special interest politics of the past and the big money that fueled it, and instead used the internet to get small donations and unite Americans in a common effort to realize our common destiny.
did we all watch our former president on "60 minutes"? he looks great, he sounds great and he is great. here's the latest on his ambitious, aggressive advocacy campaign for climate change. from the washington post:
Until this year, the party bosses of both parties could convene and choose two candidates that would be acceptable to both parties as well as to Corporate America.
The choices for this year were Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney.
http://www.rollcall.com/politics/kstendorsements.html
But somewhere along the way the upper 5% and Corporate America lost control. Maybe democracy threw some sand in their gears.
Now we have a righteous hillbilly, a black man and a corporate lawyer gone awry and condemning corporate America.
Believe me. They did not plan it this way!
GO PROGRESSIVES GO! STICK TOGETHER AGAINST CORRUPTION.
KUCINICH, EDWARDS OBAMA
We don't want to bring back this:
I do believe that there is a club, call it “the upper 5% club” for lack of a better word. I believe that Democrats and Republicans alike belong to this club. These are the people who control the nominations for president of our country.
I think that they have a game going that they play on the American people. The game is a little like “good cop/bad cop”. The top leaderships of both parties (this bunch of the 2%) get together and anoint (not appoint) the candidates that are acceptable to them. They may even pick the winner.
You will notice that there is not a lot of difference sometimes in the biographies of these candidates. They often attend the same prep schools, belong to the same clubs in the same universities. Consider the last election with Kerry and Bush. Both of them graduated from Yale and both of them belonged to the same secret skull and bones club. How different can two WASPS who attended the same school and belonged to the same damn club really be in their outlooks on life?—certainly a question worth consideration, don’t you think?
For more on “Best of Friends”
http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments&v=ORM75G-Jby4
If you want to see how similar the Clinton administration was to the Bush Administration go here:
http://www.debatethis.org/gore/enviro/
Read More »So Who is you number 1 and who is number 2.
Not your VP Choice, who would you choose if you had to pick one right now, and then again if your person was gone.
Harken - Brown '92
I have never voted republican so you DLCer dont tell me if you closet republicans
I think this race is going to last till PA in April with 4 candidates left in the race.
You heard it here
Jack
Hillary only talks to the media once every other week. So I am running short on Hil Jokes, and I think we all covered her bad history. She needs to talk more and say something silly.
Its a slow news day, So I am going to start a rumor that she killed then ate my puppy, which were bastard baby of Bill and my old hound Bertha.
Jack....
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By GRAHAM BOWLEY
Published: December 11, 2007
OSLO, Dec. 10 " He has said it over and over again, in increasingly somber and urgent terms, to anyone who would listen. But former Vice President Al Gore used the occasion of his Nobel Peace Prize lecture here today to proclaim it to the world: climate change is a “planetary emergency,” he said " a “real, rising, imminent and universal” threat to Earth’s very survival.
“We still have the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this,” Mr. Gore said: “Have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion?”
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