Electric cars are a pipe dream

Billy T said:
I assume your figures are correct, but note this is tax-payer money the US can ill afford. Especially as the aid to big oil, plus the much more important low relative to rest of the world taxes on gasoline, has given the US big cars, suburban sprawl, etc.* and slowed the development of (or really the "adoption of" well demonstrated as practical) alternatives (natural gas and sugar cane based alcohol, from tropical countries, not now producing it. Brazil no loner has any for the US as it is making plastic in 200,000 TONS / year plants.)

SUMMARY: US's stupid subsidies to big oil and corn based alcohol with tariffs blocking import of alcohol add to Joe American's taxes and increased his cost/ per mile of driving. Read more in old thread: "How DUMB can US Voters be?"

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*The main "etc." is the destruction of the local farms / food supplies. - Now the average food item on US tables travels about 1200 miles to get there. This suburban infrastructure will be unsustainable soon with much higher oil prices.
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Billy, you have to put things in perspective.

The total energy subsidies, plus the ethanol subsidies come out to ~$22 Billion dollars, or less than 1% of our Federal taxes and this is not something we can ill afford, particularly when you consider that 2/3rds of that subsidy is for Renewables like Ethanol, Wind and Solar, Clean Coal and for Efficiency/Conservation efforts.

Arthur
 
adoucette said:
... The total energy subsidies, plus the ethanol subsidies come out to ~$22 Billion dollars, or less than 1% of our Federal taxes and this is not something we can ill afford, ... Arthur
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I agree that something like $7/ per month from every man, woman and child is not directly a lot of money from most family budgets, but I was more concerned with the indirect costs - the suburban infrastructure / big cars, distant food supplies the low gas taxes made when saying it was not affordable when oil is much more expensive.

Some of the modern tax supported efforts to develop alternative energy sources I approve of. I just don't like the special tax deals* that were given to big oil and the influence it & they have had on the US life style.

* I would include in that the low taxes on gasoline which helps big oil sell more product in the US per capita than in Europe - by at least a factor of two, I would guess. Those low taxes helped Detroit sell SUVs, and gas hog cars. Detroit's "day of reckoning" has already arrived.** Suburban life style's "day of reckoning" is on a few years away. (Before it ends, as I posted long ago, after the dollar's collapse there will be bands of hungry gun-toting men looking for food in suburban basements and other valuables they can carry away, etc. as often-looted, central city food stores will have nearly bare shelves or have closed when food prices are more than the locals can afford.)

**Detroit is planning to un-incorporate much of its current area. There are so few occupied houses in many parts of town that they can not afford to pick up the garbage for just a few dwellers. Also Detroit is tearing down abandoned homes with long over due tax bills, about 200 per month as I recall, and would do twice as many if it could afford to.
 
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Part of third footnote from my post here http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2671237&postcount=362

I think the typical Rare Earth mine and processing releases 1000s of times more radioactivity than a nuclear power plant is allowed too:

"...A four-story tailing dam containing radioactive waste 12 kilometers (7 miles) from Baotou has been “a serious problem” and polluted rivers, Chen Zhanheng, director of the academic department of the Chinese Society of Rare Earths, said in an interview. Baotou Steel Group, which operates the Baiyun Ebo mine, has spent 500 million yuan ($75 million) with the local government to relocate five villages after seepage from the dam polluted agricultural land and drinking water, China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported on Nov. 7. ... “All rare earth ores contain uranium and thorium, which could pose a danger if not disposed of responsibly,” said Dudley J Kingsnorth, who managed Australia’s Mount Weld rare earths project for Ashton Mining of Canada Inc. for 10 years. ..."
Quote from: http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aF6YAwm4MRYc&pos=6

When California's environmentalists learn this, "more than 1000 times a power plants radioactive release", it could be decades in the courts before MolyCorp's mine in CA is operating on a large scale. (end of footnote)

Because of lower labor costs, richer ores, and less environmental rules, China will always produce Rare Earth metals cheaper than the US can.
 
Billy T said:
** Suburban life style's "day of reckoning" is on a few years away. (Before it ends, as I posted long ago, after the dollar's collapse there will be bands of hungry gun-toting men looking for food in suburban basements and other valuables they can carry away, etc. as often-looted, central city food stores will have nearly bare shelves or have closed when food prices are more than the locals can afford.)
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Well if you posted it long ago, then all you are admitting is you are wrong.

Doom sayers always have been.

You are no different.

Arthur
 
adoucette said:
Simple, with good farming practices the soil is NOT depleted, which is why our yields per acre of our crops are not falling year to year, but rising.

Arthur
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Yields are not rising due to good soil. In modern industrial farming, the soil is pretty much just an inert media in which to hold the roots and the fertilizer.
 
That's not my understanding from the farmers that I know.
They pay a great deal of attention to the quality of their soil and are always adding back to it, including things like growing green manure crops and tilling them in.

Arthur
 
adoucette said:
Well if you posted it long ago, then all you are admitting is you are wrong. Doom sayers always have been. You are no different. Arthur
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It is too soon to conclude that as I set out the time table back when GWB still had two years as POTUS as dollar collapse by Halloween 2014. Back then few thought there would be the current financial crisis - I.e. my predictions are coming true, a little bit ahead of schedule.

Also China is as I predicted switching to a domestic market economy ASAP, spending down its dollar reserves, locking up long term supplies of raw materials, energy and food stocks; building up Asian trading (8 new free trade agreement sign and 5 more in negotiations) so that it will be able to dump the remaining US bonds with tolerable loss, all fully recovered in a few years without US and EU competitors buying much of the things it must import (lower prices for many years = more saving than the one time loss).

I predicted and explained why the housing crash had to happen before you or I had heard the term "sub-prime" mortgages. See my post the 6-L cycle post. See it at: http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1502039&postcount=1 and note Baron Max's post 2 with my reply to him in post 4.

Again too soon to tell if I am correct that the dollar will crash before 2014's Halloween with world's "Greatest Depression" in US & EU to quickly follow.
 
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adoucette said:
Well, until it DOES crash, quit patting yourself on the back.

Arthur
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Billy PLEASE do continue with your predictions.I know many fear this coming mess and want to lash out at people like yourself for reminding them."Don't kill the messenger" applies here I believe.I'm grateful(as well as many lurkers I'm sure) to you for the message cause I would rather prepare than NOT be prepared.


PS- Now go and get yourself some 75 - 100k speaking engagements.
 
adoucette said:
Well, until it DOES crash, quit patting yourself on the back. Arthur
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Not doing that - only defending myself from your charge that my predictions had not happened.

river-wind said:
... The 30 year fixed rate, non-increasing loan is a huge benefit to the home buyer, and has played a pretty significant role in the US economy post-WWII. ...
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And here is my 2005 reply, in full, with some bold added:
Billy T said:
Certainly it has been, but may be (I think is) a "house of cards" that can leave people with negative gain. - I.e. a mortgage greater than the value of house on market.

This is very likely (MHO) as recent low interest rates have encouraged many to take cash out of house via re-finance and they have spent that cash, not saved it at the low interest rates available. I.e. many have very little equity in their house now or any other significant savings. If there is even a 5% downturn in the value of their house, many will be bankrupt. As jobs are lost, this is happening to some already.

Summary: A re-financed (with low or zero equity), 30 year fixed rate mortgage is a two edged sword.
The variable interest rate mortgage is a guillotine, soon to cut off many “no equity” necks, as interest rates must rise to get foreigners to finance the US's "twin deficits." I.e. to accept the increasing risk of US default, which is likely as “Baby Boomers” retire and begin to take money from government (Social Security) instead of being the main tax payers.
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From post at: http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=931082&postcount=20

Made in 2005, long before the housing market started its still continuing collapse but I must admit that I did not foresee the FED printing more than 2 trillion dollars to hold interest rates down - I could not imagine anything so damaging in the long term would be done by the FED.

SUMMARY look at my now confirmed predictions and wait until my time table has expired before stating I am wrong.

PS if you have bought Brazilian ADRs when I first suggested that, you would have at least a five fold gain in dollars. My SBS, Sao Paulo's water company, is up about ten fold and still pays a great dividend!
 
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Billy T said:
I predicted and explained why the housing crash had to happen before you or I had heard the term "sub-prime" mortgages. See my post the 6-L cycle post. See it at: http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1502039&postcount=1 and note Baron Max's post 2 with my reply to him in post 4.
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Gosh Billy, That post was on in August of 2007.

The bubble had peaked and burst several years earlier.



Fall 2005: Booming housing market halts abruptly; from the fourth quarter of 2005 to the first quarter of 2006, median prices nationwide drop 3.3 percent.

2006:
May: The subprime lender Ameriquest announces it will cut 3,800 Jobs, close its 229 retail branches and rely instead on the Web[76]
May: Merit Financial Inc, based in Kirkland, Washington, files for bankruptcy and closes its doors, firing all but 80 of its 410 employees; Merit’s marketplace decline about 40% and sales are not bringing in enough revenue to support overhead.[55]
August: U.S. Home Construction Index is down over 40% as of mid-August 2006 compared to a year earlier.[77]
September 7: Nouriel Roubini warns the International Monetary Fund about a coming US housing bust, mortgage-backed securities failures, bank failures, and a recession. His work was based partly on his study of recent economic crises in Russia (1998), Argentina (2000), Mexico (1994), and Asia (1997) [78]
Fall 2006 J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon directs the firm to reduce its exposure to subprime mortgages.[9]

In Q1/2007, S&P/Case-Shiller house price index records first year-over-year decline in nationwide house prices since 1991.[79] The subprime mortgage industry collapses, and a surge of foreclosure activity (twice as bad as 2006)[80] and rising interest rates threaten to depress prices further as problems in the subprime markets spread to the near-prime and prime mortgage markets.[81]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_crisis_impact_timeline


My crystal ball works fine when I use it as a rear-view mirror too.

Show us a post predicting the housing crash from BEFORE 2005 and I'll be impressed, you had a chance to do that in your post as late as December of 2005 but did NOT do so.

Arthur
 
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X-Man2 said:
Billy PLEASE do continue with your predictions. ...
PS- Now go and get yourself some 75 - 100k speaking engagements.
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Thanks, I intend to. I am too old and don't need more money even if any one would pay to hear my POV. I am like the pretty girl with lust for love who said: "I'm sitting on a fortune, but giving it away for free." I hope some did take my advice to buy Brazilian ADRs.
 
adoucette said:
Gosh Billy, That post was on in August of 2007.

The bubble had peaked and burst several years earlier. ... Arthur
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Yes the peak had come and some real estate areas were in modest decline by time of my Aug 2007 post. The whole point of that "6-L post" was to show the mechanism that would lead to one more cycle before a complete collapse - Few were suggesting anything like that would happen and it is still in progress. Did you read Baron Max's post 2 of that thread? There he, like you now, complained I had been making the doom prediction for years and I confirmed that true in post 4, retelling the changing time I predicted the collapse would occur (bringing it ever nearer, not delaying it, as GWB continued to do more harm to the USA.)

The "6L Cycle":
LIQUIDITY ... LOANS to unqualified people, ... LINKAGE between increasing home price and the general economic prosperity, ... LIABILITY, not an asset that he could borrow more against ... LEVERAGE, which pooled many of these low quality mortgages together in packages ... LIQUIDATION that is happening today ...
LIQUIDITY (starting this “6L cycle” again) before this house of cards all comes crashing down in history’s worst depression ... but this is the last time, I predict, before the crash.

My predictions of bankruptcy / crash / heads cut off / is made in my AUGUST 2005* post when home prices were RISING and Greenspan was lower interest rates so many home owners were refinancing at lower rate on greatly appreciated home and taking cash out as if their house was an ATM.

True in last months of 2005 home prices did stop rising and by start of 2006 had dropped 3.3 percent. - Big deal ! A lot of December snow can do as much.

Here is what YOUR link says was the real estate climate in AUGUST 2005, when I posted:

"... August: Raghuram Rajan delivers his paper "Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier?", warning about credit default swaps, at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium. His arguments are rejected by attendees, including Alan Greenspan, Donald Kohn, and Lawrence Summers. ..." - I.e. they did not see what was coming, but I did, and posted it.
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* Reproduced in full as post 1055 this thread.
 
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No Billy, the bubble had burst by the time you made your "prediction" in 2007.

And you made no such prediction in 2005.

Sorry, but quit patting your self on the back until your predictions actually come true

The sky is not falling.

Jobs are increasing, the economy is increasing and the world will go on quite nicely even though there is no end to doomsayers like yourself.

Arthur
 
Oil production cannot increase with the growth of demand and the lower energy available to us in the future translates into less economic activity. This is unavoidable.
 
We have more energy than we know what to do with.

The amount of energy we get from fossil fuels is a tiny fraction of what we get from the sun each day.

We are moving from a fossil fuel based energy system to a renewable energy based system and there is plenty of fossil fuel left to allow for an orderly transition.

If there wasn't there wouldn't be an issue with Global Warming.

You can't worry about BOTH.

Arthur
 
We don't have all the energy from the sun available to do work, so that notion is irrelevant.

The transition you refer to is not just from one energy source to another equivalent one. No combination of alternative energy will ever add up to what has been available to us so far in the form of oil in terms of cheapness and ease of transport. This all points to a downsizing in all aspects of our society that require energy.
 
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