Four Horsemen?

the availablility of cheap pot, combined with an insistance on reaching consensus is what made my DSA chapter a non-threat.

But, back on topic: When the economy is down, vices are usually a good place to invest. Tobacco, credit cards, etc.

Inferior goods and places that prey on the misfortunes of others are also good investments: Western Union, check cashining, bail bonds, Walmart.

we can either pay for it now or later

...by creating 700 billion in new money the populace would have had to pay for it later. (How very Keynesian!)

...by letting the market free fall, we pay for it now.

I'm not a complete pessimist, I am confident there is a bottom. The United States should have standard of living that matches its exports and ability to support itself. ...we have had an inflated standard of living as a result of borrowing for quite sometime.

We are presently saddled with debt, and have not invested in physical infrastructure (bridges, information highway, etc) or education in quite sometime.

We sat back stating "we are the best in the world". ...Well, the rest of the world has caught up ...and in some cases "passed us". ...they seem to be tired of paying us to do what they can do for themselves, and tired of giving us their exports for the inflated US dollar. They also no longer fear our military.

So, capitalism will determine our country's worth and wage. Ready?

While we've been busy borrowing to cover the trade and budget deficits, we've blamed the entitlement programs received by the poor (note, these are the ones that not Social Security and Medicare) for our so called declining standard of living, and demolished the safety net. There's about to be a lot more poor to mistakenly blame. Ready?

...As jobs become scarce, enforcement of immigration rules are going to be ramped up. ...this will be a futile attempt by citizens to maintain thier undeserved/uncompetitive/inflated wages. Ready?

This is going to be quite a ride ...I'm thinking Asia is looking good.

just invest in Walmart and credit cards; you'll be fine.

If NYS is smart it will collect as much of the "voluntary tax" as it can. You know, the tax that people are actually more willing to pay as times are more desperate: The lottery.

5. The Global Pool of Money looked elsewhere for investments. It turns out they LOVED these roll-up mortgage packages (I forget the terminology). You are essentially buying a share of a mortgage payment stream for thousands of mortgages.


They're called Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities, or CMBS Pools. And they're f*cking killing the economy. In addition to being incredibly short-sighted investments, ratings agencies such as Moodys and Fitch had the audacity to give these sucker bets triple A ratings, thereby guaranteeing investors would flock to them.

If something is triple A rated, one tends to assume that it would be difficult to lose money on them, or at least less likely than other investments. CMBS Pools should have been rated far less. Like maybe B, or even less. But hey, 20/20 hindsight.

..we could just invest in infrastructure.

...bridges, roads, rail lines, train cars, etc. The service economy won't work if you producing very low value services.

But real estate is the basis of the debt. And as most homeowners see a mortgage as a "good" debt, so did these investors. But the only reason they did is because there's nothing else for them to bet on in this country. Again, the only thing we really have of value is what's between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Maybe movies. Maybe patents. But little else.

mantic wrote: Sheeple better wake tfu.

Lo Kee wrote: [quote=Old Time Brooklyn]You can take a step back from CMBS's and CDO's and just realize that we don't make shit in this country anymore. We're a service economy, a consumer spending economy. So with nothing else to put their money into, these investors put their money into real estate, seemingly the only thing we have of value.

Which is why you should vote for Obama. Bullshit or not, at least he brought up the idea of the US manufacturing tomorrow's non-gasoline cars. We need to get back to being innovative and we need to get back to building things.

Hear, hear otb. Our only way out of this is to re-invent America into a high-skilled workforce creating solutions to problems for which there is actual demand for solutions, such as energy, IT infrastucture.

Save that, our only exportable good is a simulcra, idealized verion of glamour and it's trappings, that will erod as its underpuinnings erode: fashion, entertainment, advertising. Bollywood is the counterpoint to this argument.

America, if it ever was a house on hill, was so because we let imagintations free reign.

Yes we can.

expanding on this theme:


http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10056099-54.html



October 1, 2008 8:58 PM PDT

Google CEO: How to fix U.S. energy problems
Posted by Stephen Shankland 68 comments



SAN FRANCISCO--The United States government has been unable to fix the country's energy problems, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said, but the Internet giant on Wednesday proposed its own 22-year solution.

"We have seen a total and complete failure of leadership in the political parties of the United States," Schmidt said in a speech at the Commonwealth Club here. "We've been working on a plan to help solve this problem."



Google CEO Eric Schmidt describes the company's energy plan.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Earlier in the day, Google unveiled that plan, which doesn't lack for chutzpah: Clean Energy 2030 aims to wean the United States from its dependence on fossil fuels within 22 years.

Schmidt said the plan requires $4.5 trillion in spending to pull it off, but it'll pay for itself with $5.5 trillion in savings. "With this plan, it's cheaper to fix global warming than it is to ignore it," Schmidt said.

The general plan consists of various efforts to save energy; a shift to renewable wind, geothermal, and solar energy; and a complete cessation of energy from coal and oil and halving of natural gas. Those changes would cut energy production-related carbon dioxide emissions from about 6 billion metric tons per year today to 4 billion per year in 2030.

Energy efficiency is at the forefront of Google's thoughts: the company operates hundreds of thousands of servers, and the company has warned that energy costs could outpace server hardware costs. So a decline in energy costs makes practical sense, Schmidt said.

"We save a lot of money when prices go down. It's good for shareholders, good for earnings," he said.

However, he made clear in a meeting with reporters later that the effort is also driven by the moral beliefs of Google's co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Also on Wednesday, Google announced the fruits of its effort to increase the energy efficiency of its data centers.



Google's Clean Energy 2030 plan would completely eliminate coal and oil use for energy production in 22 years.

(Credit: Google)

Economic stimulus
The present financial crisis, with an expected bailout that will cost $700 billion, likely will be followed by further economic stimulus spending that likely will reach $100 million, Schmidt predicted.

"Why not use that money to solve once and for all the things we debate: energy security, rising oil prices, a lack of jobs--especially in rural areas--(and) a lack of technology investment?" Schmidt said. "If you follow my reasoning and take advantage of the technological opportunities--and the apparent willingness of the government to write large checks during a crisis--we can do this."

He acknowledged that the problem will require sustained attention to solve, but said that's the job of governments. "The government spends lots of money on many things that are strategic. It seems to me that energy independence, given the history of the last 10 years, should be at the top of the list," Schmidt said.



Google predicts energy-related carbon dioxide emissions will drop by about a third with its plan.

(Credit: Google)

Energy plan details
How does Google propose to transform the country's energy usage? Here's Google's description:

• Deploying aggressive end-use electrical energy efficiency measures (about 1.4 percent per year savings) to reduce demand 33 percent.

• Replacing all coal and oil electricity generation, and about half of that from natural gas, with renewable electricity: 380 gigawatts (GW) wind: 300 GW onshore + 80 GW offshore; 250 GW solar: 170 GW photovoltaic + 80 GW concentrating solar power; 80 GW geothermal: 15 GW conventional + 65 GW enhanced geothermal systems

• Increasing plug-in vehicles (hybrids & pure electrics) to 90 percent of new car sales in 2030, reaching 42 percent of the total U.S. fleet that year

• Increasing new conventional vehicle fuel efficiency from 31 mpg to 45 mpg in 2030

• Accelerating the turnover of the vehicle fleet from 19 to 13 years (resulting in 25 million new vehicle sales per year in 2030, a 31 percent increase over the baseline)

Advising Obama
Schmidt, who said he's an adviser to Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign, said he prefers that candidate's energy plans. "The Obama program is more in line with the one I'm describing," Schmidt said.

He also dinged Republicans for using the term "clean coal," which he called an oxymoron not unlike "limited nuclear war," and said that offshore oil drilling, although a lively topic of debate, will satisfy only a tiny fraction of the nation's needs and only five years from now at that.

Now is the time to offer the plan, according to author Jeffery Greenblatt, climate and energy technology manager for the company's philanthropic Google.org arm.

"With a new administration and Congress--and multiple energy-related imperatives--this is an opportune, perhaps unprecedented, moment to move from plan to action," Greenblatt said.