hmmmm, the new buzz words are inflation, the 1970's and commodity prices. I'm going to have to pull out my history hat on this one, but South Korea is most interesting. If only we had protests like that in the US.
On speculation, gambling, 60% of oil markets are speculation. So, I think the unregulated aspect of commodity futures is more important than than being acknowledged here.
Did you say what percentage of these China subsidies are of total price?
I'm not so sure about the evil speculators, check out Prof. Greenburg's testimony and who has a lot of the commodity futures market (JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs), I think closing the Enron loophole (which they didn't actually do in the FARM bill as I understand it), is a good idea.
Also, what is Iraqi oil production now, 2008? or at least 2007?
On the subprime, the budget deficit and the tanking dollar, on this one I believe it's true and you're right, no one is mentioning that...except Soros did in the Senate hearing.
But the Republicans out there "drill, drill, drill" as if that would do anything at all for 10 years is just infuriating.
After I wrote the above, I googled it. While few are actually replacing the transmission, Highway-speed EV car kits are now available in the $2500-$6000 range (depending on the power you want) and small generators are in the $500-$2500 range. Seems to me any enterprising smart young teenager could create a summer job right now looking for parked older vehicles of various types running or not, buying them up, and doing a conversion on them then selling them in the $9000 range. A kid with a high school shop available or even just a friend with a good engine crane and a few tools would be able to do one or two such conversions a day.
I think that topic is worth a diary or two for I feel that the US consumer is once again simply getting squeezed for profits in terms of trying to get a more fuel efficient transportation device. I mean those subcompacts, the technology is over 40 years old, so how can it be that costly to resume production of them?
Since after all, box cars wouldn't work, to reach 50MPG you need light framework AND aerodynamics, OR alternative drive train.
What I don't get, though, is why we're not building hybrids based on the GE locomotive model- effectively replacing not the ENGINE in electric mode, but the TRANSMISSION in both gas and electric modes.
It seems to me, that since DC Electric motors contain fewer moving parts than a modern automatic or stick transmission, they should be cheaper to mass produce and actually CUT the cost of the hybrid vs a standard model car.
Heck, the difference should be enough to pay for the batteries....but if you did it this way, simply replacing the transmission, you could run the GAS engine as a constant speed generator., and you'd STILL see better fuel efficiency.
I think the routes themselves are still fairly inconvenient. I live in a rural area, so it's been awhile but in Silicon valley generally the routes and shuttles were scary because of course everyone works late.
I didn't mention immediate deployment of hydrogen fuel, for as far as I know that technology costs more in development of the hydrogen than is worth. Same with biodiesels. I should have mentioned tax breaks for used cooking oil from restaurants or biodiesels from economically viable methods.
Why I said box cars. I mean these car companies are talking 20k to 65k for new hybrids and what people need are plain super cheap little 50mpg cars.
The IRS approved Employers offer of mass transit purchases for it's employees. Employees purchase their monthly mass transit ticket through their employer. The Purchase is taken from the employee before taxes reducing the employee's taxable income. http://www.irs.gov/irb/2004-29_IRB/ar10.html
Tax the oil industry at whatever rate is needed to bring in revenue equal to average price on April 15 per gallon x number of people in the United States x 20 gallons of gas per week.
Then use that money to finance weekly "transportation vouchers" for each and every American man, woman, and child.
Transportation vouchers should be able to be bought and sold for cash, used to actually purchase fuel, or used to finance high-efficiency vehicles, public transportation passes, and alternative energy transportation such as solar cycles and bicycles.
Continue that until the price of gas falls due to a lack of demand and this year's vouchers become nearly worthless because the price of gas has fallen to production cost.
One of the problems I've seen with buses are they come too far spread apart and they have too many stops.
Park n ride is a great mention. There are places in the US where the commute into work is literally a parking lot, places like NoVA (Northern Virginia to DC). I see no reason why they couldn't set up a network of buses with shuttles from park n rides to the main express bus. I think that commute is grueling, people sit in their cars and it can take 3 hours.
Some common sense planning doesn't seem to be around much in public transit generally. Yeah, I hear ya on mentioning just some clean, nice buses. I have no idea how the tour industry is doing but it sure is a world of difference in experience between a filthy city bus versus a tour bus.
But, the main thing is our government actually knows what to do and that Enron loophole of course is something corporate lobbyists oppose in masse, so that's probably why we don't get the right thing.
Read how the Feinstin amendment claimed they closed the loophole didn't actually do anything.
Yes and add to that the evergrowing evidence that China is systematically hacking our financial institutions, military, and other critical systems infrastuctures - that all while certain globalist companies can't wait to sell them or even give them critical technologies vital to the security and use of the world wide web. This from reputable sources like Time Magazine and The National Journal. Wake up people.
Some of you won't remember but years ago when oil was regulated there was no speculation by investors - oil companies used limited partnerships to fund drilling programs and the basic sale of their product to set prices and the government told them the cap. It worked for years. Enter in speculation - which seems to grow in scope and effect on our pricing. It is not the entire reason for the cost aberrations but it is a significant contributor.
Mass transit only works in heavily congested areas - most of this country isn't heavily congested - there is a huge amount of suburbia and country. It won't work there.
I say roll back the speculation and lets face it - gambling - on the price of oil - if people want to gamble, Las Vegas and CT have some great casinos that would love to oblige them. Allowing the fruits of gambling to set the price of an item of national security is the ultimate in greed and not good for America.
I do have a question though. Oil companies have more money than God. Money runs Washingon DC. Oil companies complain that environmentalists block their drilling and building refinery efforts.I don't believe that environmental groups have even a fraction of the capital and clout in DC big oil does. It would cost billions to drill and build new refineries in the US. Oil companies complain that they only make a few dollars a barrel on refining. SO what is the motivation for oil companies to build refineries in the US, pay US worker salaries and benefits, when they already have demonstrated by using offshore facilities and buying and selling offshore oil they can make huge profits with the minimum of overhead- not to mention get the US military to protect their offshore investments. Why in heavens name would they want to take on more work and overhead doing it here? I submit to you they don't - if they wanted to drill anwar they could do it tomorrow. Money talks.
Appropos of your last point, I don't imagine tour bus operators are doing so well these days due to the increased costs of taking a vacation.
Tour buses are the perfect mass transit vehicle for suburban commuters who don't have the option of rail transit, and aren't wooed by spartan municipal buses (that aren't in adequate supply anyway).
Arrange for a park-n-ride at popular suburban hubs, and run the tour buses from there every 15 minutes in the morning, on the dot. Run them back from downtown or a central rail station every 15 minutes in the afternoon rush hour, on the dot.
Yours truly is one of the people who would make use of one of those buses to avoid wasteful $$$$ killing rush hour traffic jams, in a heartbeat!
Great comment! A blog post on how Japan trade strategy as well as business culture is better than America's, going into the details is something I would like to read about if you want to go into more analysis in a blog post.
Many factors have caused the decline of the US Auto industry. The root causes are bad trade and economic policy. However bad management decisions such as Robert points out putting short term profit ahead of long term investment in new technologies and efficiencies play a very significant role - and this thinking is facilitated by those bad economic and trade policies. Japanese automakers thing in terms of the long term - they have a word for it - kaizen (continuous improvement) Detroit also failed to learn the lessons of the 1970s with the oil embargos - they are caught once again with ugly, poor qaulity gas guzzlers no one wants. Again getting back to the short term thinking - beating up vendors for "cost downs" forced them to cut corners on materials or offshore - reducing quality and discouraging innovation.
What puzzles me is that despite major wage and benefit concessions by labor, plant closures, headcount reductions and increased outsourced content the US makers continue to struggle - could it be that these MBA strategies of cut costs and maxed profits do not really work after all?
A prime example is Ford - for much of the 90s they had the number one or number two selling vehicles in nearly every category - Taurus, Escort, Explorer, Ranger, F series so forth, and for a time were actually knocking on GM's door for the number one spot - yet they failed to keep up with the styles and technologies and rested on theiur larels - they even made the brilliant move of killing off the Taurus one of the most successful vehicle platforms of all time - theres that short term thinking again.
The AM radio blowhards cvontinue to spout the tired old meme that it is the unions fault for detroits woes - yet labor does not make the decisions on marketing, design, quality, product rationalization, technology - And when the unions were stronger and pre Reagan era US automakers totally dominated the globe.
Could it be the whole "supply side" ideology simply does not work?
Where are the Henry Fords that understood the demand side of the equation?
_______________________________________________
"If the hand of the Free Market is invisible, how come we can see it?" Tom Tomorrow
I agree with this analysis, 100% and on top of it, believe the US economy is being decoupled from.
When I hear Bush's answer to this implosion to be make my tax cuts permanent, I literally want to throw something at the TV. This asshat, pardon my French, is worse than Herbert Hoover in terms of being non-responsive. The Bush administration seems to be hell bent on hollowing out the United States and at least making it collapse as a 1st world economic power before he leaves office!
If the US dollar no longer is a reserve currency, I believe there have been many predictions of implosion and to me, that looks increasingly probable.
I mean look at yesterday, no way in hell through just supply/demand does some commodity jump $11 dollars in a single day. Greenberg in his recent testimony implored Congress to act immediately, that this is indeed a major economic crisis and his emotional emphasis illustrated the lack of awareness on most people's parts of this reality.
That includes or lovely current Presidential candidates. They should act immediately as if this were a time of war...but hell no, we get a few platitudes about Americans are really hurting and we must be sensitive to that. Bullshit. They need to act in the national interest on that....now. It's even worse we get that corporate public relations response from Bush to guarantee further implosion.
and you missed Bush I, II on your list. But, the key is not to focus in on a President or even party but on the policies and deals going on behind the scenes. Write your congress representative on it. It's also the businesses fault in that a company like GM just thought about profits through much of this instead of enabling innovation and long term strategy. They thought more short term. In the case of cars/trucks, bad trade policy also has a lot to do with this.
Today on the radio, I heard GM and bankruptcy in the same sentence. We have stupid americans, Reagan, Greenspan and Bill Clinton to thank for the whole freaking mess this country is in. I wouldn't vote for a Clinton or a Republican if I was paid.
.....using a 'crash' Federal Program similar to TVA or other FDR era public works....
Build The Solar Grand Plan.
Then plug your all-electric or hybrid into the wall.
Totally doable...totally blocked by the political idiots we have 'running things...'
hmmmm, the new buzz words are inflation, the 1970's and commodity prices. I'm going to have to pull out my history hat on this one, but South Korea is most interesting. If only we had protests like that in the US.
On speculation, gambling, 60% of oil markets are speculation. So, I think the unregulated aspect of commodity futures is more important than than being acknowledged here.
Did you say what percentage of these China subsidies are of total price?
Raise the Fed funds rate to 7%, and there will be an immediate deleveraging of commodities.
I'm not so sure about the evil speculators, check out Prof. Greenburg's testimony and who has a lot of the commodity futures market (JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs), I think closing the Enron loophole (which they didn't actually do in the FARM bill as I understand it), is a good idea.
Also, what is Iraqi oil production now, 2008? or at least 2007?
On the subprime, the budget deficit and the tanking dollar, on this one I believe it's true and you're right, no one is mentioning that...except Soros did in the Senate hearing.
But the Republicans out there "drill, drill, drill" as if that would do anything at all for 10 years is just infuriating.
forget the kids, how about local mechanics? They also are squeezed to hell and I would buy some rigged up EV.
After I wrote the above, I googled it. While few are actually replacing the transmission, Highway-speed EV car kits are now available in the $2500-$6000 range (depending on the power you want) and small generators are in the $500-$2500 range. Seems to me any enterprising smart young teenager could create a summer job right now looking for parked older vehicles of various types running or not, buying them up, and doing a conversion on them then selling them in the $9000 range. A kid with a high school shop available or even just a friend with a good engine crane and a few tools would be able to do one or two such conversions a day.
I think that topic is worth a diary or two for I feel that the US consumer is once again simply getting squeezed for profits in terms of trying to get a more fuel efficient transportation device. I mean those subcompacts, the technology is over 40 years old, so how can it be that costly to resume production of them?
Since after all, box cars wouldn't work, to reach 50MPG you need light framework AND aerodynamics, OR alternative drive train.
What I don't get, though, is why we're not building hybrids based on the GE locomotive model- effectively replacing not the ENGINE in electric mode, but the TRANSMISSION in both gas and electric modes.
It seems to me, that since DC Electric motors contain fewer moving parts than a modern automatic or stick transmission, they should be cheaper to mass produce and actually CUT the cost of the hybrid vs a standard model car.
Heck, the difference should be enough to pay for the batteries....but if you did it this way, simply replacing the transmission, you could run the GAS engine as a constant speed generator., and you'd STILL see better fuel efficiency.
I think the routes themselves are still fairly inconvenient. I live in a rural area, so it's been awhile but in Silicon valley generally the routes and shuttles were scary because of course everyone works late.
I didn't mention immediate deployment of hydrogen fuel, for as far as I know that technology costs more in development of the hydrogen than is worth. Same with biodiesels. I should have mentioned tax breaks for used cooking oil from restaurants or biodiesels from economically viable methods.
Why I said box cars. I mean these car companies are talking 20k to 65k for new hybrids and what people need are plain super cheap little 50mpg cars.
The IRS approved Employers offer of mass transit purchases for it's employees. Employees purchase their monthly mass transit ticket through their employer. The Purchase is taken from the employee before taxes reducing the employee's taxable income.
http://www.irs.gov/irb/2004-29_IRB/ar10.html
Ok, here's a thought-
Tax the oil industry at whatever rate is needed to bring in revenue equal to average price on April 15 per gallon x number of people in the United States x 20 gallons of gas per week.
Then use that money to finance weekly "transportation vouchers" for each and every American man, woman, and child.
Transportation vouchers should be able to be bought and sold for cash, used to actually purchase fuel, or used to finance high-efficiency vehicles, public transportation passes, and alternative energy transportation such as solar cycles and bicycles.
Continue that until the price of gas falls due to a lack of demand and this year's vouchers become nearly worthless because the price of gas has fallen to production cost.
One of the problems I've seen with buses are they come too far spread apart and they have too many stops.
Park n ride is a great mention. There are places in the US where the commute into work is literally a parking lot, places like NoVA (Northern Virginia to DC). I see no reason why they couldn't set up a network of buses with shuttles from park n rides to the main express bus. I think that commute is grueling, people sit in their cars and it can take 3 hours.
Some common sense planning doesn't seem to be around much in public transit generally. Yeah, I hear ya on mentioning just some clean, nice buses. I have no idea how the tour industry is doing but it sure is a world of difference in experience between a filthy city bus versus a tour bus.
But, the main thing is our government actually knows what to do and that Enron loophole of course is something corporate lobbyists oppose in masse, so that's probably why we don't get the right thing.
Read how the Feinstin amendment claimed they closed the loophole didn't actually do anything.
Yes and add to that the evergrowing evidence that China is systematically hacking our financial institutions, military, and other critical systems infrastuctures - that all while certain globalist companies can't wait to sell them or even give them critical technologies vital to the security and use of the world wide web. This from reputable sources like Time Magazine and The National Journal. Wake up people.
http://www.madnamerica.com
Some of you won't remember but years ago when oil was regulated there was no speculation by investors - oil companies used limited partnerships to fund drilling programs and the basic sale of their product to set prices and the government told them the cap. It worked for years. Enter in speculation - which seems to grow in scope and effect on our pricing. It is not the entire reason for the cost aberrations but it is a significant contributor.
Mass transit only works in heavily congested areas - most of this country isn't heavily congested - there is a huge amount of suburbia and country. It won't work there.
I say roll back the speculation and lets face it - gambling - on the price of oil - if people want to gamble, Las Vegas and CT have some great casinos that would love to oblige them. Allowing the fruits of gambling to set the price of an item of national security is the ultimate in greed and not good for America.
I do have a question though. Oil companies have more money than God. Money runs Washingon DC. Oil companies complain that environmentalists block their drilling and building refinery efforts.I don't believe that environmental groups have even a fraction of the capital and clout in DC big oil does. It would cost billions to drill and build new refineries in the US. Oil companies complain that they only make a few dollars a barrel on refining. SO what is the motivation for oil companies to build refineries in the US, pay US worker salaries and benefits, when they already have demonstrated by using offshore facilities and buying and selling offshore oil they can make huge profits with the minimum of overhead- not to mention get the US military to protect their offshore investments. Why in heavens name would they want to take on more work and overhead doing it here? I submit to you they don't - if they wanted to drill anwar they could do it tomorrow. Money talks.
http://www.madnamerica.com
Appropos of your last point, I don't imagine tour bus operators are doing so well these days due to the increased costs of taking a vacation.
Tour buses are the perfect mass transit vehicle for suburban commuters who don't have the option of rail transit, and aren't wooed by spartan municipal buses (that aren't in adequate supply anyway).
Arrange for a park-n-ride at popular suburban hubs, and run the tour buses from there every 15 minutes in the morning, on the dot. Run them back from downtown or a central rail station every 15 minutes in the afternoon rush hour, on the dot.
Yours truly is one of the people who would make use of one of those buses to avoid wasteful $$$$ killing rush hour traffic jams, in a heartbeat!
Great comment! A blog post on how Japan trade strategy as well as business culture is better than America's, going into the details is something I would like to read about if you want to go into more analysis in a blog post.
Many factors have caused the decline of the US Auto industry. The root causes are bad trade and economic policy. However bad management decisions such as Robert points out putting short term profit ahead of long term investment in new technologies and efficiencies play a very significant role - and this thinking is facilitated by those bad economic and trade policies. Japanese automakers thing in terms of the long term - they have a word for it - kaizen (continuous improvement) Detroit also failed to learn the lessons of the 1970s with the oil embargos - they are caught once again with ugly, poor qaulity gas guzzlers no one wants. Again getting back to the short term thinking - beating up vendors for "cost downs" forced them to cut corners on materials or offshore - reducing quality and discouraging innovation.
What puzzles me is that despite major wage and benefit concessions by labor, plant closures, headcount reductions and increased outsourced content the US makers continue to struggle - could it be that these MBA strategies of cut costs and maxed profits do not really work after all?
A prime example is Ford - for much of the 90s they had the number one or number two selling vehicles in nearly every category - Taurus, Escort, Explorer, Ranger, F series so forth, and for a time were actually knocking on GM's door for the number one spot - yet they failed to keep up with the styles and technologies and rested on theiur larels - they even made the brilliant move of killing off the Taurus one of the most successful vehicle platforms of all time - theres that short term thinking again.
The AM radio blowhards cvontinue to spout the tired old meme that it is the unions fault for detroits woes - yet labor does not make the decisions on marketing, design, quality, product rationalization, technology - And when the unions were stronger and pre Reagan era US automakers totally dominated the globe.
Could it be the whole "supply side" ideology simply does not work?
Where are the Henry Fords that understood the demand side of the equation?
_______________________________________________
"If the hand of the Free Market is invisible, how come we can see it?" Tom Tomorrow
I agree with this analysis, 100% and on top of it, believe the US economy is being decoupled from.
When I hear Bush's answer to this implosion to be make my tax cuts permanent, I literally want to throw something at the TV. This asshat, pardon my French, is worse than Herbert Hoover in terms of being non-responsive. The Bush administration seems to be hell bent on hollowing out the United States and at least making it collapse as a 1st world economic power before he leaves office!
If the US dollar no longer is a reserve currency, I believe there have been many predictions of implosion and to me, that looks increasingly probable.
I mean look at yesterday, no way in hell through just supply/demand does some commodity jump $11 dollars in a single day. Greenberg in his recent testimony implored Congress to act immediately, that this is indeed a major economic crisis and his emotional emphasis illustrated the lack of awareness on most people's parts of this reality.
That includes or lovely current Presidential candidates. They should act immediately as if this were a time of war...but hell no, we get a few platitudes about Americans are really hurting and we must be sensitive to that. Bullshit. They need to act in the national interest on that....now. It's even worse we get that corporate public relations response from Bush to guarantee further implosion.
Man.
and you missed Bush I, II on your list. But, the key is not to focus in on a President or even party but on the policies and deals going on behind the scenes. Write your congress representative on it. It's also the businesses fault in that a company like GM just thought about profits through much of this instead of enabling innovation and long term strategy. They thought more short term. In the case of cars/trucks, bad trade policy also has a lot to do with this.
Today on the radio, I heard GM and bankruptcy in the same sentence. We have stupid americans, Reagan, Greenspan and Bill Clinton to thank for the whole freaking mess this country is in. I wouldn't vote for a Clinton or a Republican if I was paid.
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