Via YouTube

Electric cars racing, Californians and Hawaiians making a Better Place and my neighbor buying $200 in lingerie for his girlfriend. Maybe things are not so bad after all…

Gotcha! I think this stuff is cool, but I also think that is a bad sign. I am weird. I do not think like the average American (or any other nationality for that matter), so I don’t think stuff like this will catch the kind of fire that its cheerleaders want.

The world just keeps on turning, and life goes on relatively unchanged for most of us. We still have jobs, we still have money to spend and we keep on keepin’ on. I heard someone on the radio say that even at the height of the depression, 75% of people were still employed (and their calculations weren’t the phony numbers we have now in the US to calculate unemployment)…

Paying it Forward

What else does that $51 million represent? Just about one hour’s average payment of interest on the U.S. debt.

A single hour.

The United States spent more than $451.15 billion on interest payments on U.S. Treasury securities in the fiscal year ended in September, or more than $1.2 billion a day. Interest is the fourth-biggest monthly expense for the federal government, trailing only the costs of the Defense Department, the Social Security Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services, which administers Medicare and Medicaid.

That is what the US government is 4th best at doing, giving money away to rich people that hold its debt. That is one good thing that has come from all of the credit mess – every day millions of dollars will be saved because the interest rate on T-bills is near 0%. That means rich people are so desperate to sock their money away somewhere safe that they are willing to take almost no return.

Tradable Energy Quotas

I like this idea, but I don’t know exactly how the group behind this site would plan to institute this. Basically, since the earth is a commons, and every human being should have an equal right to it, this is a quota system for energy use and pollution generation. I like this because it has to do with end users, which is a common underlying theme in how I see the world. Imagine if every adult in the world received a ration of 10 quotas monthly. If they only “used” three (they did not consume a lot), they could sell, trade or otherwise dispose of them on the open market. This means that instead of taxing everybody, only those who engage in consumption above the global average would need to buy quotas.

This kills two birds with one stone IMO. First, it would be a massive transfer of wealth to poor people around the world. Second, it would act to include so-called externalities into the economy – that is the untold price of consumption on the environment.

Oilwatch Monthly

The “we have already peaked” people were at least temporarily proven wrong. In late summer, there was about a 1mbpd blip up:

This of course leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Can that level of supply be made available consistently? At what price? For how long? Can consumers afford it? I have my opinions, but we will see once the economy begins to try to recover again…

Let the doom predictions begin

My favorite thing about the end of a year are all of the crazy things that people will predict about the future. This is just the first of many such posts I am sure I will find and link to in the next couple weeks. In case anyone is wondering, I will be making my own predictions as well…

Your town should get ready

Here it is, doom is imminent folks, you need to get your doctor, lawyer, mechanic and waitress on board.

I don’t think you need to get these people on board, and I don’t think outreach to a bunch of dumb, worthless people is a good use of your time. But, this guy does…

When will the oil run out?

You can read the article and watch the super-fun and exciting interview with the chief data manipulator at IEA tap dance around peak oil.

via CoWs

Low interest credit is the solution to the credit crisis

via CR

Your lives at zero percent – ilargi is the fucking boss on financial prose…

The people, elected or not, who have access to all of our money, are now trying to make up for gambling losses by .. gambling. And that’s much worse.

They don’t know that measures will work, they make it up as they go along. You can stick Bernanke being a ’scholar’ of the Great Depression where the sun don’t shine. He’s done everything wrong so far, from the taxpayer’s point of view. His friends are doing fine, mind you, trillions of dollars in losses have been transferred to your tabs. Gambling with other people’s money is an ugly thing, and it never ends well. The rate cut to zero is a herald of things getting completely out of hand. Again, from the point of view of the taxpayer, not the banker. The anonymity of the taxpayer, combined with his complacency, makes him an easy victim. But even there, there’s limits. You just wait.

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