Stop Microsoft
Miscellaneous => The Lounge => Topic started by: Aloone_Jonez on 30 September 2008, 22:10
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Should they allow the natural free market sort itself out or should the intervene?
Do you think the US government will respond in the long term by introducing more socialist economic policies?
It think the problem isn't free trade but that stocks and shares are traded to dynamically in stock exchanges, miliion doller deals can be carried out at the press of a key - something radical needs to be done to make investors more cautious when they play with money.
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I'm not entirely sure on this one. I don't think the people who ran these companies should be essentially be getting away with being a total dumbass, but on the other hand I'm not entirely sure how the economy would be fairing if they didn't help.
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I think some sort of bailout is necessary. It's not the fuckheads who ran their companies into the ground that I'm worried about - I'm sure they'll have no problem funding their own early retirements. It's the poor schmucks who invested in the first place who get fucked. Since almost all of those, especially on the high-interest mortgage side, are low-income families (who probably shouldn't have been given mortgages in the first place), they'll be broken and homeless within a few months if we just allow these companies to fail.
Sure, the market would figure itself out eventually. But it would leave a lot of dead bodies in its wake. I think the government has a responsibility to lessen the collateral damage if it can. Post the money for a bailout, but all the executives get minimum wage for 6 months. That'll teach them.
The speculative hypervaluation of properties and commodities is the real fucking problem, and I don't have any idea how to solve it. Set stock value at a percentage of the company's cash holdings, and limit speculative trading to 1 year in advance, maybe.
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I know someone who works at Wendy's (do you want fries with that?). He has a wife and kid and a $3k a month mortgage. I asked him "what were you thinking?" and he didn't have an answer.
Under the failed bailout plan, the government would become the landlord and would try to negociate a mortgage that was affordable, and would recover the money when the property was sold. That's probably the least messy way out.
Foreign investors who were scammed by US banks and brokerage firms should be protected some, too, so they will be willing to invest again. Locals who were scammed have an easier time suing. Otherwise, the firms who gambled with money that wasn't theirs to gamble with should simply be allowed to fail, and the principals held personally responsible to the full extent of their assets.
Fucking up the whole world's economy for personal gain should be treated as a war crime.
It's really a shame we don't have the old USSR penal model. Anyone who stole more than about $200k was simply executed.
All adjustable rate home mortgages as well as balloon (interest payments only at the start) should be absolutely outlawed.
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It's really a shame we don't have the old USSR penal model. Anyone who stole more than about $200k was simply executed.
What a legal system that protects the state from its people rather than its people from the state?
You can't be serious.
You might as will suggest that the US govermnet should adopt marxism and drive the country down the road to socialism, communism and all that bad stuff.
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See what happens. If nothing fixes it self in say, 4 or 5 months, try to fix it.
But since it is the marketers and their greed that got the economy in this mess in the first place, I think it should be their responsibility to fix it.
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See what happens. If nothing fixes it self in say, 4 or 5 months, try to fix it.
But since it is the marketers and their greed that got the economy in this mess in the first place, I think it should be their responsibility to fix it.
Economics is a weird science. Things you do now might have no effect for 2 years, and effects you see immediately might actually be effects of something that happened 10 years ago. It's not like fixing a car, where if it dies on the side of the road, you just call a wrecker and take it to the shop, where they quote you a price to get it back on the road again. Economics is more hit/miss - any bailout plan may work, or it may not. Even if we were to come up with a super-lucky plan that guaranteed results, we still wouldn't see the benefits for 6 months. Effectively, you're suggesting an entire year of bank runs, foreclosures, stock dives, and low-level tinkering. Not a good idea. Either do it now and cross your fingers, or commit to non-interference and set up a bunch of shelters.
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Either do it now and cross your fingers, or commit to non-interference and set up a bunch of shelters.
If the market is supposed to be natural and unpredictable, wouldn't not interfering with it be much better than a few experts trying to influence the flow of cash every day?
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This whole bailout thing to me reeks of a child who scraped his knee and is running to mommy to make it all better.
We fucked up - now time to pay the price. Government is not our mommy. Besides, bailing everyone out might end up increasing future risk-taking: "It's ok, if we screw up again, we'll just ask the government for another bailout."
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Either do it now and cross your fingers, or commit to non-interference and set up a bunch of shelters.
If the market is supposed to be natural and unpredictable, wouldn't not interfering with it be much better than a few experts trying to influence the flow of cash every day?
The subject of much debate. I personally believe that left to its own devices, a completely unregulated market would lead to quite severe exploitation. Slavery, serfdom, sharecropping and shantytowns are all potential products of an unregulated market. If we wish to prevent these things (and it appears that we in fact do), then some regulation must be performed. But how much? In this particular case, I think the amount of damage done by non-regulation would be greater than the potential cost of regulation. Pick a time when not so much is on the line to experiment.
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See what happens. If nothing fixes it self in say, 4 or 5 months, try to fix it.
But since it is the marketers and their greed that got the economy in this mess in the first place, I think it should be their responsibility to fix it.
Economics is a weird science. Things you do now might have no effect for 2 years, and effects you see immediately might actually be effects of something that happened 10 years ago. It's not like fixing a car, where if it dies on the side of the road, you just call a wrecker and take it to the shop, where they quote you a price to get it back on the road again. Economics is more hit/miss - any bailout plan may work, or it may not. Even if we were to come up with a super-lucky plan that guaranteed results, we still wouldn't see the benefits for 6 months. Effectively, you're suggesting an entire year of bank runs, foreclosures, stock dives, and low-level tinkering. Not a good idea. Either do it now and cross your fingers, or commit to non-interference and set up a bunch of shelters.
So the butterfly effect works big time here... I see.
We fucked up - now time to pay the price. Government is not our mommy. Besides, bailing everyone out might end up increasing future risk-taking: "It's ok, if we screw up again, we'll just ask the government for another bailout."
Makes sense, to an extent. I don't think the government would willingly allow the economy to collapse.
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I suggest the Soviet penal model because the crooks here won't commit seppuku when they get caught thieving from the people.
The Soviet economic model sucked, but if we bail out crooks, then so does ours. What has been done is treason and should be treated as such.
I didn't cheer when the planes hit the towers, but I didn't give a shit either. The dead were stock brokers and those who tried to save them. In the US public stock brokering isn't exactly an honest occupation. They make money trading on inside info (legally).
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But fighting fires with a "save em all, let God sort em out" attitude is a pretty honest occupation. If nothing else, we lost a lot of brave rescue workers that day.
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Oh, I'm crying! A bunch of worthless blue collar boneheads who were too dumb to do anything else with their lives but shoot water at fire and follow orders like mindless drones, the type of people who would punch babies to death for no other reason than "durrr the sarge said to", the type of jingoistic idiots who keep the people who cause all of the problems in the world in power due to stupid concepts like duty and honor. If they'd survived, between them they probably would have pissed out thousands of boneheaded kids just as worthless as them. There will always be more dumbfucks to replace them though; don't worry about that.
Yeah, all of those American Bastards dying was a huge loss. S)
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Firefighters aren't like the ones in Fahrenheit 451. They actually do care for who they save, and don't do things just cos they are told to. I'm sure there are some out there like that, but not all.
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I've watched several episodes of Rescue Me. Do not attempt to match wits with me on this subject.
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I suggest the Soviet penal model because the crooks here won't commit seppuku when they get caught thieving from the people.
The Soviet economic model sucked, but if we bail out crooks, then so does ours. What has been done is treason and should be treated as such.
I didn't cheer when the planes hit the towers, but I didn't give a shit either. The dead were stock brokers and those who tried to save them. In the US public stock brokering isn't exactly an honest occupation. They make money trading on inside info (legally).
Yes of course the Soviet model is better than the US, which is why Cuba and North Korea are doing so well. S)
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I've watched several episodes of Rescue Me. Do not attempt to match wits with me on this subject.
That's just a dramatic representation. Television always fucks things up.
Also, more on topic. Now that I understand the situation a lot better, I see that we have ourselves a dilemma. I don't think that the bail-outs would be a very good use of tax money. Besides, the economy will recover. We are at a low point in the economy. It will rise up (hopefully) within a few years or so.
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it's a shame the UK government doesn't read this list.
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Similar problems in the UK?
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Aren't most of the worlds economies having troubles?
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Aren't most of the worlds economies having troubles?
I don't think that's what Calum meant, but it's true, much of the world is experiencing economic hardship. I read the other day that Iceland (of all places) is almost bankrupt.
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what i meant was that the government has just bought billions of pounds worth of shares in all the major banks, using taxpayers' money, in order to avoid any banks going bust. taxpayers now own about 30% of all the major banks. Were we consulted? no. Where will this money go? To pay the bonuses of coke snorting bank CEOs, i suspect.
In addition to this fuel prices are going up in time for winter and so are mortgages, how's that, since all the banks are now flush... with our money, the same taxpayers who have to meet the mortgage repayments...
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Odd, because here gas prices have been going down some.... They'll probably rebound soon.
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yes, oil has dropped in price but not fuel costs, which rose a couple of months ago in anticipation of a rise in global fuel... somehow they seem to have forgotten to lower them this month by similar but converse logic.
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yes, oil has dropped in price but not fuel costs, which rose a couple of months ago in anticipation of a rise in global fuel... somehow they seem to have forgotten to lower them this month by similar but converse logic.
Fuel prices are dropping like a rock here. From $3.45/gal about two months, to about $2.40/gal now
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Which in a weird sort of way is a bad thing, because it will reduce the pressure to come up with new fuel technologies and revolutionary social paradigms. Instead, we're going to just go back to being oil gluttons and wait for the next time prices spike, when we'll do the same thing all over again. Those who cannot remember the past get what they deserve.
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What about all the "going green" stuff? Wouldn't that still push new fuel tech development?
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No. The only reason that stuff was being considered was that with the prices of oil so high, other technologies seemed competitive. With oil being cheap again, all that other stuff is too expensive. So the technology will just sit on the shelf until next time, when they can roll it out again.
I'm off to the dealership to buy a Hummer.
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Ah, so the green stuff was all just a bit of a cover.
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Ah, so the green stuff was all just a bit of a cover.
Some good did come out of it. All electric cars are now a closer reality then they ever have been.
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That's true. But now I'm sure a lot of the research for those is going to back down some, as you all have mentioned.
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I read about a new hydrogen car the other day that seems cool, the Honda Clarity (http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/?ef_id=1097:3:s_b813d95c55fe69fa15930911646c45a1_1053113202:AbCpyEo-KSIAAEIKrbIAAAAB:20081028011709). But there aren't enough hydrogen fuel stations to make them useful. Now that gas is "in" again, it's very unlikely that more hydrogen fuel stations will be built. Too bad for Jamie Lee Curtis, who already bought one.
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I read about a new hydrogen car the other day that seems cool, the Honda Clarity (http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/?ef_id=1097:3:s_b813d95c55fe69fa15930911646c45a1_1053113202:AbCpyEo-KSIAAEIKrbIAAAAB:20081028011709). But there aren't enough hydrogen fuel stations to make them useful. Now that gas is "in" again, it's very unlikely that more hydrogen fuel stations will be built. Too bad for Jamie Lee Curtis, who already bought one.
I don't really see a future for hydrogen cars. The two main ways to get hydrogen are to get it from water - require more electrical energy then you'll get from hydrogen, or to crack it with natural gas which is not helping the fossil fuel problem.
I think plug in hybrids will be have much more success (essentially an electric car, but with a smaller then usual battery pack, and an engine directly coupled to a generator. Should go 50 miles on battery per charge before having to start up the engine.
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The good thing about hydrogen fueled cars that use fuel cell technology is that their more efficient than the combustion engine.
Cracking natural gas isn't such a bad idea as the carbon can be buried under the sea.
Hydrogen from water is also fine as long as the electricity is obtained from renewable sources.
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I don't really see a future for hydrogen cars. The two main ways to get hydrogen are to get it from water - require more electrical energy then you'll get from hydrogen, or to crack it with natural gas which is not helping the fossil fuel problem.
Bad news, kid - the amount of energy used to refine oil is also much higher than what you can get out of it. But we're paying those premium prices to turn point energy sources into mobile energy sources. Windmills and dams are great, but you can't put them under the hood of your car.
I think plug in hybrids will be have much more success (essentially an electric car, but with a smaller then usual battery pack, and an engine directly coupled to a generator. Should go 50 miles on battery per charge before having to start up the engine.
I read a pretty neat article in Wired about that. Your car has this battery in it. Parking spaces have these little battery chargers in them. If your battery doesn't have enough juice to go where you need to go, you just stop by the battery changing station, and 5 minutes later you have a fresh fully-charged battery. Instead of paying per battery, or per kW to charge the battery, you pay a monthly subscription fee. Kinda like a cell phone plan, where you pay $49.99/month for unlimited minutes. The whole thing is controlled by a computer that keeps track of your battery power, networks with the charging stations, and sends you a text message when it needs a fresh battery. Pretty cool idea - but the system the inventor described would only be efficient if everyone was using them.
My uncle, who works in the oil industry, thinks that the future is going to be commuter vehicles - really small cars, like those unbelievably tiny cars from Europe, that get moped gas mileage and can just about hold you, a cup of coffee, and a briefcase. People will use these for the daily commute, and then have a normal-sized vehicle for family outings and recreation.
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I read a pretty neat article in Wired about that. Your car has this battery in it. Parking spaces have these little battery chargers in them. If your battery doesn't have enough juice to go where you need to go, you just stop by the battery changing station, and 5 minutes later you have a fresh fully-charged battery. Instead of paying per battery, or per kW to charge the battery, you pay a monthly subscription fee. Kinda like a cell phone plan, where you pay $49.99/month for unlimited minutes. The whole thing is controlled by a computer that keeps track of your battery power, networks with the charging stations, and sends you a text message when it needs a fresh battery. Pretty cool idea - but the system the inventor described would only be efficient if everyone was using them.
That is actually really clever.
The only thing I can see with hydrogen is the price. Wouldn't it be more expensive than gas?
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The only thing I can see with hydrogen is the price. Wouldn't it be more expensive than gas?
That depends. How expensive is gas? You can make hydrogen by arcing a huge electrical current across a bucket of water - the water is pretty cheap, but the electrical current required is like running your house for a month. The other way to get hydrogen is to pull it out of natural gas the same way you pull gasoline out of oil.
In case you don't know, here's how gasoline is made. First you have to find crude oil, and usually it is in a crack deep underground, so you have to drill down to get it. In the case of offshore oil, sometimes the place you have to drill is under 1000m of water. After it comes up, it goes to the refinery. What the refinery does is heat the crude until it becomes unstable, which is called cracking. Depending on how much you heat it, you get different products - kerosene, lube oil, gasoline, butane, propane, etc. How much does this cost? Hard to say. Use this equation if you want a rough estimate:
($/gal gasoline) - (taxes&profit) * 42 = ($/barrel crude oil) + (refinery costs)
1 barrel = 42 gallons
It seems like the refinery costs would be a lot, but since they already exist, and they do so much volume, they basically become zero, so the current cost of gasoline is based largely on the price of crude oil.
If you make your hydrogen from natural gas, it should be just as easy as making gasoline from oil, since its the same process. And the US has huge natural gas reserves, with more to be found all the time. Actually, natural gas occurs right alongside the oil, and we usually just flare it off because its value is so low. Imagine that - a great energy source being thrown away because only the oil matters. That kind of logic is why high gas prices were such a good thing.
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So according to the US, oil > natural gas, despite the huge supply the US has. That makes no sense, if the US knows natural gas is abundant, and that it could be used to cleaner alternatives, then why the hell is oil still king?
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Because everything is already in place for oil. Think about it - we have been making gasoline-powered vehicles for like 100 years. Back when we started, we didn't know what natural gas was, it just seemed like an annoyance. And just like in the intro to "The Beverly Hillbillies", crude oil did bubble up out of the ground in Pennsylvania back then. Things are a little different now that you have to go a couple miles down to get oil locally, but the refineries and the gas stations and the storage tanks and the "unleaded fuel only" signs on your dashboard are already in place. It's a fuck of a lot easier to do what you did yesterday than come up with a new plan for tomorrow.*
* = haha, conservatives are lazy!
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Ah, so it would be too much trouble to make such a conversion. Maybe take baby steps?
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Well, we've been doing that. Many city's buses now run on natural gas because they burn cleaner and the bus can run all day on a single tank. Texas actually burns natural gas for electricity in some places, and they are planning to do that more.
But back to the original point, a little pressure helps a lot. We had hybrid cars before gas prices went up, but they were expensive and unpopular. Now everybody wants one, every manufacturer is making them, and SUV and Hummer sales are way down. All because gas prices were artificially high for a few months. Probably, some of the newer models will be phased out if gas prices stabilize at a low level.
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I still believe crude oil is much more abundant then natural gas. If we had a cheap efficient way to get the oil shale to a useful sate, we (the U.S) could have enough oil to power the world for the next hundred years or so.
Coal is actually still the most abundant fossil fuel around. If they can come up with a cheaper way to convert into oil/gas, then we would be set on that as well
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According to Wikipedia, oil is only marginally more abundant than gas, but way more heavily used. In the following stats, gas volumes have been converted to barrels, and the most generous estimates of reserves have been used:
Proven Reserves:
Oil - 1371 billion barrels
Gas - 1161 billion barrels
Usage:
Oil - 84 million barrels/day
Gas - 19 million barrels/day
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel#Levels_and_flows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel#Levels_and_flows)
Of course coal is way up there, and there's a shitload of it left. But it's so filthy and environmentally destructive. If you've never visited a coal mine or a coal pit, you ought to sometime. They're the most foul horrorscapes on the planet.
FYI, Wyoming is capable of creating over 85,000 MW of wind electricity. Their current production - less than 450 MW. That's where we need to be. When free energy is just flowing through the air, grab it and do something with it.
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Measuring quantities in barrels is silly, the only fair comparason is what the energy reserves are in terms of oil gas and coal,
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Yea, I never could see why they measure it all in barrels.
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US oil and gas companies use barrel of oil equivalents (BOE) to make their energy accounting easier. Since oil is a liquid and gas is a gas, the volumes don't add up right. And their energy content per volume is also quite different. So they convert the gas to BOE. According to the US IRS, 1 BOE is equal to 5.8x10^6 BTUs. The Wikipedia article linked above converts gas and coal to BBOE, which is billion BOE.
If I were to tell you that world energy reserves were:
oil - 1371 billion barrels
gas - 6381 trillion cubic feet
coal - 997748 million short tons
that wouldn't do you much good, would it? I guess we could come up with some bullshit equation that would convert barrels of oil to short tons of coal, but there's no reason, since apparently someone has done all the work of converting coal and gas to barrels. If you want to work out the BTUs for yourself, that's fine, but if you look at the BBOE, it gives you the same picture of proportion and scale.
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Ah, so it is just used as a standard of measurement.
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But back to the original point, a little pressure helps a lot. We had hybrid cars before gas prices went up, but they were expensive and unpopular. Now everybody wants one, every manufacturer is making them, and SUV and Hummer sales are way down. All because gas prices were artificially high for a few months. Probably, some of the newer models will be phased out if gas prices stabilize at a low level.
But what's a "low level?" Gas will probably never go back down to $1 a gallon. It's still above $2.50 here in Florida, and that still won't sell many Hummers.
Also, if you like conspiracy theories...the price of gas will probably go back up after the presidental election. ;)
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US oil and gas companies use barrel of oil equivalents (BOE) to make their energy accounting easier. Since oil is a liquid and gas is a gas, the volumes don't add up right. And their energy content per volume is also quite different. So they convert the gas to BOE. According to the US IRS, 1 BOE is equal to 5.8x10^6 BTUs. The Wikipedia article linked above converts gas and coal to BBOE, which is billion BOE.
If I were to tell you that world energy reserves were:
oil - 1371 billion barrels
gas - 6381 trillion cubic feet
coal - 997748 million short tons
that wouldn't do you much good, would it? I guess we could come up with some bullshit equation that would convert barrels of oil to short tons of coal, but there's no reason, since apparently someone has done all the work of converting coal and gas to barrels. If you want to work out the BTUs for yourself, that's fine, but if you look at the BBOE, it gives you the same picture of proportion and scale.
That makes sense.
I can't stand imperial measurements though. I wish everyone would adopt metric, it would make life much easier.
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But back to the original point, a little pressure helps a lot. We had hybrid cars before gas prices went up, but they were expensive and unpopular. Now everybody wants one, every manufacturer is making them, and SUV and Hummer sales are way down. All because gas prices were artificially high for a few months. Probably, some of the newer models will be phased out if gas prices stabilize at a low level.
But what's a "low level?" Gas will probably never go back down to $1 a gallon. It's still above $2.50 here in Florida, and that still won't sell many Hummers.
Ah, the good old days - I used to be able to walk into a gas station with $10 and get 5 packs of cigarettes and 5 gallons of gas. You're right, that will never happen again. But when the Chevy Avalanche (one of the lowest mileage vehicles of all time) came out, gas was right around $2.50/gallon. So we can deduce that price is low enough that people will willingly trade economy for style. Obviously, $4/gallon is too high for the same trade, so the tipping point was somewhere in between.
Of course in some places this is all moot. In Texas, even when gas was well over $4/gallon, automotive behaviors did not change much. Old men still sat in their running cars with the AC on while their wives spent half an hour in the grocery store. Pickup sales stayed level, and hybrids still weren't available at any of the town's numerous dealerships, because there just was no demand. Texas is full of people who will grumble about the price of gas, but would rather be broke than change their habits. Which explains why they liked Bush so much. In Colorado, gas could go to $8/gallon, and that wouldn't slow the sale of SUVs and Jeeps, because everyone is convinced that you have to have a 4WD for snow (total bullshit, but it sounds reasonable). Point being that there are other things affecting demand than price alone.
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Prices around here are in the $2.80 range, and dropping. Not that I pay much attention, I don't drive (bike ftw)