Fred is reading
The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30)
by Mark Bauerlein (Author)
http://tinyurl.com/59son8 (us.penguingroup.com)
Fred is listening to
Paula West
http://www.paulawest.net/
Good Links
Ed Wallace’s Inside Automotive – Links to World News
http://insideautomotive.com
Humor and Hypocrisy from the World of Politics
http://politicalirony.com/
Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist
http://davies.lohudblogs.com/
New economic research, data, events and analysis from a London-based economist
http://neweconomist.blogs.com/
Jamie Holts
http://www.bestnewspolitics.com
Get Energy Smart! NOW!!!
http://getenergysmartnow.com/
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H. L. Mencken -
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”
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McCain Blasts Wall Street Failure, Neglects To Mention His Adviser Helped Cause It
by David Corn on 09/15/08
As the news broke of the Lehman Brothers meltdown and the rest of the latest financial crisis, John McCain, speaking at a campaign rally in Florida on Monday, angrily declared,
We will never put America in this position again. We will clean up Wall Street. This is a failure.
And in a statement released by his campaign, McCain called for greater “transparency and accountability” on Wall Street.
If McCain wants to hold someone accountable for the failure in transparency and accountability that led to the current calamity, he should turn to his good friend and adviser, Phil Gramm.
As Mother Jones reported in June, eight years ago, Gramm, then a Republican senator chairing the Senate banking committee, slipped a 262-page bill into a gargantuan, must-pass spending measure. Gramm’s legislation, written with the help of financial industry lobbyists, essentially removed newfangled financial products called swaps from any regulation. Credit default swaps are basically insurance policies that cover the losses on investments, and they have been at the heart of the subprime meltdown because they have enabled large financial institutions to turn risky loans into risky securities that could be packaged and sold to other institutions.
Lehman’s collapse threatens the financial markets because of swaps. From Bloomberg:
Bond-default risk soared worldwide as the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. sparked concern than the $62 trillion credit-derivatives market will unravel….
Lehman, the fourth-largest securities firm until last week, has been one of the 10 largest counterparties in the market for credit-default swaps, according to a 2007 report by Fitch Ratings. The market, which is unregulated and has no central exchange where prices are disclosed, has been the fastest-growing type of so-called over-the-counter derivative, according to the Bank for International Settlements.
“The immediate problem is the derivative default swaps market, in which a plethora of institutional accounts and dealer accounts are at risk,” Bill Gross, manager of the world’s largest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach, California, said in an interview with Bloomberg Radio yesterday. “It induces a tremendous amount of volatility and uncertainty.”
Barclays Capital analysts have estimated that if a financial institution with $2 trillion in credit-default swap trades were to fail, it might trigger between $36 billion and $47 billion in losses for institutions that traded with the firm. So the Lehman fiasco–caused in part by the use of unregulated swaps–could lead to ruin elsewhere in the economy.
Gramm is responsible for the rise of the wild and woolly $62 trillion swaps market. And he was chairman of the McCain campaign and a top economic adviser for McCain–until he dismissed Americans worried about the economy as “whiners.” After that comment, McCain dumped Gramm. But was Gramm truly excommunicated from McCain land? Last month, he attended a meeting of McCain’s top supporters in Aspen, Colorado. And at a dinner that day, McCain singled out Gramm for praise. Last week, failed Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul revealed that Gramm, now an exec for Swiss banking giant UBS (which also lost billions of dollars due to subprime loans and swaps), had recently called him as part of a McCain effort to win Paul’s endorsement. Paul turned Gramm down. (Both Gramm and Paul are Texas Republicans.) Gramm’s Paul-courting effort seems to indicate that the fellow who has done much to cause the current financial troubles (and who was once considered a possible Treasury secretary should McCain win the White House) is back in the good graces of the McCain campaign.
Shortly after McCain promised he would “clean up” Wall Street, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, his running mate, appeared at a Colorado rally on Monday morning and proclaimed that “John McCain and I will put an end to the abuses in Washington and Wall Street that have resulted in this financial crisis.” She promised a McCain administration would “reform the way Wall Street does business.” (She was short on details and spent more time discussing Colorado sports stars from Alaska.) What neither she nor McCain has explained is how they plan to be able to reform Wall Street when they are being assisted by 177 lobbyists and the guy who greased the way to the current crisis with a backroom legislative maneuver. If McCain and Palin are serious about never putting America “in this position again,” they ought to consider seriously writing down any economic advice they get from Phil Gramm.
By the way, both McCain and Palin decried golden parachutes for CEOs. What might Carly Fiorina, a top McCain adviser and surrogate, think of that? She received a $21 million severance package when she was forced out as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, after her not-so-successful stint there–and the value of her golden parachute eventually reached $42 million.
http://tinyurl.com/5ocu55 (www.motherjones.com)
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Wall Street: “A Minute Past Midnight on the Clock for Reform”
NOMI PRINS, celeste@monteiroandco.com
Prins is a former investment banker turned journalist. She used to run the European analytics group at Bear Stearns and has also worked at Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs. She has written extensively about the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had regulated the financial industry since the New Deal. Here is a photo of Clinton signing the repeal:
http://tinyurl.com/4ahwg2 (www.progressivehistorians.com)
“On November 12, 1999, as President Bill Clinton signed into law, and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, former Texas Senator and Banking Committee head Phil Gramm (now a top McCain adviser), and the rest of the captains of Congress gleefully applauded their final dissolution of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, there is a question that must be asked.
“Did they even consider that as [quoting Clinton at the ceremony] ‘Financial services firms will be authorized to conduct a wide range of financial activities, allowing them freedom to innovate in the new economy,’ they’d also be free to self-destruct, taking down with them the general economy and international confidence in the U.S. banking system amidst immense greed, overleveraged capital, poor transparency, and complete lack of judgment?
“Or did they simply not care?
“Notably absent from the ceremony was former Treasury Secretary and co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, Robert Rubin. Three weeks before the signing of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that he had championed and that officially repealed Glass-Steagall, he rushed off to take on a plush vice-chairmanship position at Citigroup [which had merged with Travelers Insurance] — the institution that first benefited most from the repeal. Rubin is now a top adviser to Obama.”
Prins is now a senior fellow at Demos. She is the author of two books: “Other People’s Money: The Corporate Mugging of America” and “Jacked: How Conservatives Are Picking Your Pocket.” Her recent articles include “As Wall Street Collapses: Will Washington Get a Clue?”
http://tinyurl.com/6cyzby (www.alternet.org)
and “Which Investment Bank will Be Next?”
http://tinyurl.com/6y3fny (www.motherjones.com)
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DRILLING FOR OIL IS NOT THE ANSWER
http://tinyurl.com/4qnklj (www.earthpolicy.org)
Jonathan G. Dorn
Background
• The United States consumes nearly 21 million barrels of petroleum per day (7.5 billion barrels per year), one fourth the world total.
• Of the crude oil consumed in the U.S., 66 percent is imported.
• The U.S. is on pace to spend over $500 billion on petroleum imports in 2008.
• U.S. oil production currently occurs onshore in the lower 48 states (2.9 million barrels per day (mbd)), offshore (1.4 mbd, primarily in the Gulf of Mexico), and in Alaska (0.7 mbd).
More Drilling Cannot Make the U.S. Energy Independent
• The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 10.4 billion barrels of oil are technically recoverable in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)—less than one and a half years of consumption.
• The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that of the 59 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) of the lower 48 states, only 18 billion are off limits under the federal moratorium.
• DOE projects that lifting the OCS moratorium would not increase production before 2017 and that by 2030 production would only amount to 0.2 million barrels per day—less than 1 percent of current consumption.
• Total U.S. proved oil reserves are estimated at 21 billion barrels—less than a 3 year supply at the current rate of consumption.
• Since peaking in 1970, U.S. crude oil production has declined 47 percent. World production could be peaking now.
More Drilling Will Not Reduce Oil or Gasoline Prices
• DOE projects that opening ANWR would lower gasoline prices at the pump by a mere 2 cents per gallon.
• Lifting the moratoria on drilling in ANWR and the OCS would reduce the price of a gallon of gasoline by at most 6 cents—and this would not be seen for at least another decade.
• Oil is traded as a global commodity and its price is set on the world market. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) could simply reduce exports to negate even the nominal potential price reduction, a fact acknowledged by DOE.
We Can Move Beyond Oil
• The increase in U.S. automobile fuel economy standards to 35 miles per gallon of gasoline mandated by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 is projected to save more than 1.1 million barrels of oil per day in 2020—roughly half of current U.S. imports from the Persian Gulf. Technology exists to raise standards higher faster.
• Electrifying the U.S. transportation system and restructuring urban transport could reduce petroleum consumption by over 50 percent, nearly eliminating the need for imports.
• Wind-generated electricity could power plug-in hybrid cars, such as GM’s prototype Chevy Volt, at the equivalent of less than $1 per gallon of gasoline.
For information on Earth Policy Institute’s plan to restructure transportation systems and move away from oil, see Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, available at www.earthpolicy.org for free downloading.
For information contact:
Media Contact:
Reah Janise Kauffman
Tel: (202) 496-9290 x 12
E-mail: rjk (at) earthpolicy.org
Research Contact:
Jonathan G. Dorn
Tel: (202) 496-9290 x 15
E-mail: jdorn (at) earthpolicy.org
Earth Policy Institute
1350 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 403
Washington, DC 20036
Web: www.earthpolicy.org
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On Line: Ringing Untrue, Again and Again
New York Times
http://tinyurl.com/3ltx5n (www.nytimes.com)
By Katharine Q. Seelye
September 18, 2008
Much has been made lately by the liberal blogs about Karl Rove’s acknowledgment that Senator John McCain’s campaign has been stretching the truth….
It seems that despite all the exposure of lies, the campaigns just go right on repeating them, as if those whoppers had never been debunked in the first place….
GEORGE LAKOFF, A PROFESSOR OF COGNITIVE SCIENCES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY, and also an Obama supporter, said that trying to negate an image or a lie often only reinforces the lie.
“In order to say someone is a liar, you have to say what the lie is,” he said, advising against this approach. If the Obama campaign wants to dispute Mr. McCain’s assertions that he is a maverick, for instance, he said, it should not say “McCain is not a maverick,’ but that ‘McCain is a yes-man 90 percent of the time.’”
…Mr. Lakoff identifies five “character” factors that determine how people vote: values; authenticity; communication and connection; trust, and identity….
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We Won’t Get Fooled Again … unless we believe in “energy independence”
Special to the Star-Telegram
“The change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fold,
that’s all And the world looks just the same
And history ain’t changed
Meet the New Boss
Same as the Old Boss”
The Who, 1971
As I’ve walked through dealerships over the past two weeks, one thing’s been amazingly consistent: The very first question I’ve been asked has been, “Who do you think will be the next President of the United States?” For one thing, I have no idea. For another, Dallas Fort Worth is far from the best place to gauge overall voter sentiment.
Why? First, Fort Worth and Dallas are doing too well financially, compared to many other regions in this country; second, this region is naturally more conservative than others; and finally, we’re in the South. All of those factors would seem to favor John McCain. One thing I do know is that the Republicans have mastered defining whatever will be the national debate during major elections — even if more often than not the debate offered the country appears designed more to pump up people’s blood pressure and emotions than to clarify reality. The debate seems chosen solely to incite the party loyal to vote.
In the last election cycle the issue was gay marriage, and this time around it’s energy independence. In both cases the debate is designed to define the Democratic Party and what they stand or don’t stand for, while allowing the Republicans to take the high ground. In most years the Democrats can neither change the debate offered nor manage to win the argument, and for the most part it’s been that way since the 1920s.
Generational Turnaround
Being a neutral outsider to the fun and frolic because I don’t vote, I find the accusations thrown about by those involved in the elections stunningly amusing.
Take the case of Mitt Romney, the very Republican former governor of Massachusetts. He’s son of one of the great businessmen and political leaders from the sixties — George Romney, a man whose history I have studied at length and for whom I have great personal respect. On a sad note, I’ve often wondered why, though George Romney’s Mormon faith wasn’t held against him during this political career, it seemed an insurmountable handicap to son Mitt’s attempt to become the Republican nominee. Are we really that much less tolerant today?
On the other hand, it bewilders me that Mitt seems to have completely rejected his father’s wisdom and pragmatism.
George Romney’s vision of our future society involved laying long-term plans for energy conservation. While Mitt Romney’s father ran American Motors from 1954 to 1962, he spoke frequently on how to prepare America for the energy shortage he saw looming decades in the future. It was also George Romney who first suggested that our love of large automobiles forced the country to consume more oil than necessary and created the demand for more and larger highways than necessary. A waste of our national wealth with little to show for it, George suggested in his famous 1955 speech, “The Dinosaur in the Driveway”.
Part of it read, “Cars 19 feet long, weighing two tons are used to run a 118-pound housewife three blocks to the drug store for a package of bobby pins and lipstick.” Of course, change the word “cars” to “SUVs” and those who condemn our use of oil are still giving George Romney’s speech today. Our current President even says that we as a nation are addicted to the stuff.
Liberal and Conservative
In his time, the elder Romney showed great political courage; Americans immediately disregarded what he said as the words of a fool — albeit a fool then running one of America’s largest car companies. Contrast the words of the father with the words of the son at this year’s Republican Convention.
“Is a Congress liberal or conservative that stops nuclear power plants and off-shore drilling, making us more and more dependent on Middle East tyrants? It’s Liberal! Is government spending, excluding inflation, liberal or conservative if it doubles since 1980? It’s Liberal!”
Where do you start to point out all of the mistakes in Mitt’s comments? I hate to be a master of the obvious, but the only attempt to lower the federal deficit happened in the second Clinton Administration; and offshore drilling was banned in California when Ronald Reagan was governor of that state. Our close ties to the Saudi royal family came from many Presidents, but mostly from Richard Nixon.
The final correction comes from the fact that politicians blame the government that they run for our energy problems today; George Romney strongly suggested that it was the choices made by the American people that would lead us down the wrong path.
All Politics, All Presidents
George Romney warned us 53 years ago that our economic future was precarious if we didn’t start real long-term planning for our future energy needs. But no one wanted to hear it. Every president since Richard Nixon has demanded that we start down the road to energy independence. Nixon wanted us fully self-powered by 1980; Gerald Ford extended the date to 1985, while Jimmy Carter thought we would have no more oil by the late eighties. Certainly Ronald Reagan didn’t lift the offshore oil-drilling ban when he gained office. And the first President Bush, formerly a successful oilman, in June of 1990 limited offshore drilling to coasts off of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and certain parts of Alaska.
Of course, even today the public is too often naïve in their belief in our political leaders. It’s not what they say; it’s what they do. For example, Woodrow Wilson had no real intention of “making the world safe for democracy.” If he had honestly intended that to happen, European colonialism would have ended with the peace settlements of the Great War.
Furthermore, 90 percent of today’s problems in the Middle East are the repercussions from those European peace treaties. Likewise, in 1974 Richard Nixon called for American energy independence by 1980 — but he also cut a deal with the Saudi royal family so that they would only accept U.S. dollars in payment for their oil. This ensured that our dollar would remain the world’s dominant reserve currency; after we dissolved the Bretton Woods monetary exchange agreement in 1971, it’s been suggested that oil has taken the place of gold as the collateral for our money.
What If We Outlawed Driving?
…
Complete article at:
http://tinyurl.com/5uqytm (www.star-telegram.com)
Ed Wallace is a recipient of the Gerald R. Loeb Award for business journalism, given by the Anderson School of Business at UCLA, and is a member of the American Historical Society. He reviews new cars every Friday morning at 7:15 on Fox Four’s Good Day, contributes articles to BusinessWeek Online and hosts the talk show, Wheels, 8:00 to 1:00 Saturdays on 570 KLIF.
E-mail: wheels570@sbcglobal.net
[T]he public is too often naïve in their belief in our political leaders. It’s not what they say; it’s what they do.
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The change candidate?
By Ed Quillen
09/14/2008
In need of some guidance to understand this weird election season, I called my favorite inside source, Ananias Ziegler, media relations director of the Committee That Really Runs America. My first question was whether any Republicans are running for the presidency and vice presidency this year.
“Why would you ask that?” he countered. “You must have heard of the McCain-Palin ticket.”
“Indeed I have,” I agreed, “but none of their propaganda says they’re Republicans. They say they’re going to clean up Washington — but haven’t Republicans been pretty much in charge for the past eight years?”
Ziegler granted that was true, although “it doesn’t matter. Even if they were nominated at a Republican convention, they’re really mavericks, and they’re running on a platform of ‘change,’ just like Obama.”
“I can see McCain as a candidate of change,” I agreed. “He’s changed his position on Roe vs. Wade, he’s changed his position on the Bush tax cuts, he’s changed on waterboarding, changed on bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, changed on offshore drilling, changed on immigration . . . .”
Ziegler cut me off. “That’s not the kind of change I meant. Besides, why aren’t you asking me about Sarah Palin?”
“Because there are other people and issues,” I began before I was interrupted.
“Even so,” Ziegler said, “You of all people should be sympathetic to how the Evil Liberal Media are picking on poor little Sarah Barracuda. Surely you must identify with her, being as you also live in a small town in the middle of nowhere, and small towns are the true havens of all that is good about America, yet are derided by the Effete Coastal Elite.”
“If small towns are so great,” I asked, “why is it that less than 10 percent of Americans live in places with fewer than 10,000 residents?”
Ziegler sighed. “But aren’t people more virtuous in small towns?”
“Not that I’ve noticed,” I replied, “but to be fair, I don’t have any good way to compare, since I’ve lived in small towns for 34 years, and so my knowledge of urban wickedness is pretty stale. We might be a little lower in murder and mugging, but I bet we hold our own on child abuse, poaching and meth cooking.”
…
Complete article at:
http://www.denverpost.com/quillen/ci_10441483
Ed Quillen (ed@cozine.com) is a freelance writer, history buff, publisher of Colorado Central Magazine in Salida and frequent contributor to The Post.
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EIA, the Nation’s clearinghouse for energy statistics – This Week in Petroleum (TWIP)
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
This Week in Petroleum (TWIP) has been updated to the EIA website:
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip.asp
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three thousand words
Keith Knight: If Palin were a Democrat
http://tinyurl.com/3fevjv (politicalirony.com)
Adam Zyglis: rescue mission
http://www.cagle.com/working/080918/zyglis.gif
Tab: midnight … pumpkin
http://www.cagle.com/working/080918/tab.jpg
