SAR #8325

Ruining the industrial base of the United States
turns out to have been a poor strategy.

Public Service Announcement: Freddie Mac is at $0.56. Fannie is going for $0.39. Ambac is down to $0.85. NYSE rules says that any stock under $1.00 gets delisted, so if you want to track these stocks, check with the OTC guys. Ford and GM next week?

Perversion: Hedge funds didn't do any better in October than you did. Feel better?

Sequestered: The EU's plan to develop 12 pilot coal-fired power plants with carbon capture and storage technology has been scuttled for lack of funding. Avoiding catastrophic climate change is just too expensive.

Slipping Shipping: At the docks in Long Beach, inbound cars are piling up. Over on the outbound side, recycled cardboard and paper products are pilling up. Sad, the largest export though Long Beach is recycled paper and cardboard. The world doesn't need the one thing the US is good at making: waste.

Lecture: Dr Henry Jacoby, of MIT's Sloan School: "We have to get coal out of the system." There will be a take-home test.

Take Two Aspirin: When the media starts focusing in on a story, you can be pretty sure it's not news anymore. For example: "Is China in a downturn?" The real question is: How long will China's recession last and how bad will it be?

Whistling Past the Graveyard: Pemex's Cantarell oilfield is declining faster than predicted - this year's fall exceeds 300,000 bpd. Worse, the gas in the field is advancing rapidly. When it reaches the wells, the show is over.

Changing Partners: Just as the Great Depression ushered in political and economic change, the current episode will bring the end of globalism, regulation-free markets and "greed is good" capitalism. Might change a few political systems, too.

Call for Delivery: The DOE has some good ideas as to where the US could store its carbon dioxide, if a way to capture, transport and store its carbon dioxide is developed. Also, if we had some beer we could have pizza and beer if we had some pizza.

More than Meets the Eye: The Treasury owns 79.9% of AIG and thus controls it, right? Wrong. A Treasury creation - The AIG Credit Facility Trust - controls the shares. Who are they? Three people "appointed by the Fed." No further information is available - a Paulson/Benanke trademark. [Read the second comment to this story.]

Hippocratic Oath: Scientists have discovered that nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) is 17,000 times more potent than CO2 in causing global warming. NF3 is used in making the solar photovoltaic panels environmentalists put on their rooftops. Or used to be.

Magic Trick: Citibank's Corporate Special Opportunities fund - don't you just love the name? - lost 53% of its value last month and has been liquidated. From $4.2 billion in assets at its peak to just $58 million today, plus (or rather, minus) $880 million in debts. Investors, who had been locked in for a year, have seen 90% of their money disappear.

Porn O'Graph: When I got my first car, gasoline was...