Notice that the comparable run-up from 64 to the 80′s was puntuated by several drops. Then notice that run-up from 92 to ’06 was not punctuated at all, and grew steeper as it went.

That’s because they were giving $1/2 million to the nation’s deadbeats. And because they were deadbeats, they couldn’t/wouldn’t/never were gonna pay the money back. So yeah, deadbeats ruled the last four years, and will rule in the next four. Eventually we will decide not to give stuff to deadbeats. But probably not until our elected deadbeats try to give them some more.

Citi did a conference call the other day titled, “Why banks aren’t lending, and why you haven’y noticed yet?” The numbers were pretty bleak; dare I say abysmal, and this was coming from Citi themselves. They are in deep doo. I can send you the presentation if you like.

FYI corn ethanol is a horrible idea, look a Brazil and how well their sugar cane ethanol program has worked. We should be using sugar based alcohols as they are more energy efficient to produce.

Americans can modify their lifestyle sightly to be closer to Europeans and greatly impact our carbon footprint. A more modern mass transit system would help tremendously as the only distance driving I do is to the Jersey shore, if it were served by effective mass transit I would probably opt to take it. When it is not the summer I put on average 600 miles per month, which amounts to 32 gallons of fuel per month. Total per year of 600 gallons. I am slightly more mindful of my energy use than the typical NJ citizen, but compared to the rest of the us we consume less energy in NJ, unfortunately it is still coal powered.

There is still a lot of low hanging fruit in the US. Sustainable community models, better insulated housing, more efficient heating and cooling, low energy appliances, low energy lighting, low energy tv’s, etc. Americans could easily lower their energy usage by 20% without negatively affecting their quality of life. Additionally if people were willing to pay for more friendly electricity, and fuels we would do better. I for one think the gov needs to invest in nonfood-agrifuels, ie. biobutanol, biodiesel from algae. The time is now, the solution is here we can cut our footprint by 50% by spending 20-30% more money when building a home, the same is true for autos, then you use more sustainable fuels, and modify your usage patterns and easily we can decrease energy usage by 70% per capita without drastically changing our lifestyle. So I think this “the world is ending, the sky is falling attitude” is wrong, the message should be we are in trouble and any little thing that helps a little be it driving less, carpooling, eating less meat should be encouraged as part of the solution.

I rode motorcycles for fifteen years and one thing is certain…riding is suited for pleasure in America; not for necessity (unless you live in one of those touristy towns).

Agree
But that’s how I see it playing out: a painful, drawn out transition that doesn’t even begin until 5-10 years from now, and involves all sorts of patchwork use of coal, gas, rationing of oil resources, ramping up of wind and nuclear, etc.

It’s going to be ugly, and it’s going to stay ugly for some significant period.

The US public, at least the enlightened part that wants to do something about energy, climate change, etc. has been duped into thinking that there is a green alternative for every aspect of modern life. You know, organic burgers instead of fast food, corn ethanol instead of gasoline, carbon offsets for the trip to Barbados. It’s a classic case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. We want the freedom of the open road without the carbon guilt, so we’ll believe anyone who’ll tell us we can have it. The long term solution is rearranging our geography so that we’re no longer an auto-dependent society, which is politically disastrous for whoever steps forward.

imagine if any significant portion of the US decided to go to solar homes (pretend there are no sunlight/orientation issues). We simply do not have the resources to do it in time frames less then 20 – 30 years.

i really do not want to be the spoil sport here, but we need to realize that we are too late for the easy solutions. any of the easy solutions like shifting people to solar homes would takes decades and would need the US to be financially healthy and NOT in an energy crunch.

solar works with our current tech, just not our current society and infrastucture….. will our, or any other society voluntarily rebuild/retool their infrastructure without being forced to?

consider the coming energyr/food crisis an opportunity for human kind to take the next step and learn to think/plan more then 5 years ahead and understand exponential growth. until we learn to plan decades ahead we will continue to repeat bacterial type growth-collapse cycles

This is now the NJ Weather Report.

That freakin’ red leather couch is still there too!!!!

Hah. And I even remember the horrible plastic picnic table style table clothe.

Solar homes, on the other hand – no problem.

I’m just some guy on an RE blog as well. My connections told me the JPM/BSC marriage was a shotgun wedding…

Oil is basically solar energy in liquid form. We’re using solar energy captured hundreds of millions of years ago by plants, which were consumed by dinosaurs, which were eaten by other dinosaurs, which died and decomposed in such a way that their organic matter was liquified and trapped in rock. Or something like that. Solar powered cars have a long, long, long way to go before evolving into anything remotely practical.

45 – Will Citibank be around to open Citi Field next Opening Day? Or will it be Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund Field by then?