SAR #8312

The voters may have figured out

that the stuff trickling down wasn't wages.

It Ain't Gas They Guzzle: Why should the taxpayer throw money at Detroit? There comes a time when the old car just isn't worth it. The time has come. The world has too many car companies. No one wants whatever it is that Detroit's building. Putting off the demise for two or three years will simply leave the US facing 2.5 million unemployed with $100 billion or more less. Maybe then the government can convert all those auto sales lots into dorms, singles in sedans, families in vans. No pets.

Size Counts: Which were longer in your town, the lines to vote or the ones at the local food pantry?

Darkness at Dawn: Apparently Obama is still from Illinois, still supports ethanol farming, and will keep Bush's goal of 36 billion gallons of biofools by 2022. So much for a realistic energy policy.

Grinch Be Gone: Deep breath. Exhale. Relax. The $70 billion TARP gift to the top financial firms will let them pay 75-85% of the bonuses expected. Tough, but everybody's got to sacrifice.

Horse to Water: While the cheerleaders urge more drilling on public land and in federal off-shore waters, everyone overlooks reality. A review of 55,000 leases shows that most have not been drilled on and that of those relative few that were only a very few produced oil or natural gas. Doesn't do much good to open for drilling if the petrogeology isn't there.

Broken Toy: Toyota expects earnings in the future year to be one-third those of the previous year.

No Means No: Credit card companies held a party and nobody came. In October no investors could be found who wanted to risk money by bidding on debt backed by credit card receivables. None. First time since 1993.

Interesting Conflict: After stealing $500 from every American , AIG says it cannot pay any of it back and needs more. Let that be a lesson for us: The car makers have already gotten $25 billion, want another $25 billion by nap-time tomorrow, and will be back and back and back. And they will get more and more, too. Because turning them down would not be profitable to the companies that once employed and once again will employ, Obama's financial advisors.

Re-Run: Ambac and MBIA are back in the news, being downgraded some more. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Spin Cycle: Gen.Petraeus, Grand Poobah of the US misadventures in the Middle East and Central Asia says troops can be sent home from Iraq earlier than planned "as a result of dramatically lower violence there." There were over 20 bombs exploded in Baghdad in the last 4 days.

Shoe Two: Peak natural gas output will come sooner than most expect and far more suddenly than most imagine. When a natural gas well runs out, it runs out. It doesn't taper off, it falls off the table. Same too with whole fields.

Diagnosis First: Before we bankrupt the country and our children's future trying to "fix" the economy, maybe we should take a long weekend and figure out where it all went wrong. Not the easy stuff like too much credit nor the dastardly sub-prime mortgage writers and takers. The hard stuff, like what's wrong with unregulated capitalism, why is the "perpetual growth" paradigm doomed to fail, why is globalism such a bad idea, how are we going to survive the energy crisis? There are no easy fixes. For some of our problems there may be no fix at all. Then what?