Same Story, Different Day

from another buddy,
trying in vain to send out the news
through Yahoo to Beijing:


Excerpt:
<Several countries, such as India and China, give financial incentives either in the form of tax breaks or cash payments to companies producing fossil fuels including coal that are major contributors to climate change.
Dumping subsidies could cut global warming by 10% by 2050, according to figures form the International Energy Agency and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in the draft. The G20 will discuss possible ways of phasing out subsidies at their next meeting.
"Inefficient fossil fuel subsidies encourage wasteful consumption, reduce our energy security, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with the threat of climate change," the draft reads.
G20 leaders will agree to investigate ways of providing financial help to countries threatened by climate change, according to the draft, and "intensify our efforts" to reach a UN climate change agreement at the upcoming talks in Copenhagen.>>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/25/g20-communique-pittsburgh

I'm a little suspicious as to what exactly is included when they say they want to eliminate fossil fuel "subsidies" in terms of the G20.

Countries like Iran, Saudi, and Ven certainly subsidize consumption but my concern would be that they also eliminate certain legitimate tax deductible expenses for the fossil fuel industry....expenses that are necessarily incurred to carry on in business.

Witness what was done recently in the US with regard to some previously deductible expenses. Are we to see more of the same?

If that's the plan, the effect on new energy supplies will be much more immediate and trump normal geological depletion (which is already a tough hurdle to beat) and put us back to the stone age in no time. Surely, these knuckleheads aren't thinking along those lines while at the same time thinking alternatives can make up the difference on an even more accelerated timeline????

I shudder to think that if such plans are in place how the industry will ever be able to come up with the necessary capital to even come close to meeting our energy needs but is this all part of the master plan?

Are the elites wanting to create energy shortages so they can justify rationing and gain more power over us?

This elite-sponsored govt interference is actually more dangerous than peak oil is because it accelerates the timeline and the speed at which the alternatives need to be ramped up to offset declining fossil fuel supplies.

And there will be no turning back once the industry's capacity in terms of both capital and the necessary skilled human resources is no longer available.

Of course, this would suit the elites who are pulling all the strings in that it would ensure that everybody would have to tow the line and obey govt in order to get their allotment of rationed energy wouldn't it?

I never thought about this before but it makes sense to me now.

In an energy constrained world, we are much more likely to be faced with a more dominant government and that's not a good thing.

Censorship

From time to time, the national news media bring up issues relating to
Chinese censorship on the Internet, often in relation to american companies
such as Yahoo aiding and abetting. As usual, we may have here yet another case
of the shill master trying to divert your attention from what is really going on.

I did not blog about the time I tried to post something on Yahoo about
the seventh planet in our solar system, and the name was replaced with "U)(*&&&%%$".
That was just too funny, but also too trivial to write about.

A friend of mine has been trying all week to post the following post
on one of the (USA) yahoo finance message bases. Every time he tries to
post it, the post is blocked, with no explanation. He emailed it to me
and I tried to post it there under my handle. Yahoo still blocks it.

"I'm not sure I believe the judicial system is all that independent anymore."

Oh yes it is. Don't buy the jive about that.

Yes, the mortgage bag holders know they've got to get the law changed now. They are toast. I suspect most of the states will rule the same way. What the wall street idiots did with the MBSs, or CDOs, or whatever, simply ignored the law. They wanted to turn mortgage lending into a casino.

To do that, you've got to grease the palms of the best gubment money can buy, like they did for years. They were so confident they could buy every Fed. regulator and politician in town they thought they didn't have to worry about the small time state judges. Big mistake.

Obviously, something has to be done. But at this point, I'm not sure what can be done. Obama says no more bailouts. I suspect Ben feels the same way. The recovery of the market takes the CDO crowd's leverage away. And Phil Graham no longer rules the Senate.

And the state court judges don't give a shiess about any of the above.


Bob

Well, lets see if Google will allow me to post it here ...

The markets?

Okay. I don't get these markets.

Okay, we all know that the US Federal Reserve is printing money like mad and putting it into circulation, one way or another. Also, we understand that money
"velocity" is way down because everyone else besides the government is hoarding it.

My understanding is that money is not wealth. It is an arbitrary symbol for wealth,
predicated on the myth that it is scarce (in reality, the government can make absolutely as much of it as sawdust or sand, as much as it wants, right?) Printing
more money does not make more gasoline, or sunlight, does not make more roads,
houses, tires, computers, or anything else. Printing more money to make wealth
is like wearing a flag lapel pin to promote patriotism and heroism. Or,
like pushing string.

So the government is busy printing money and passing it out to the least deserving individuals, the least productive, i.e. certain corporations which have colossally failed to produce wealth but instead have destroyed it. Somehow I don't see how
that helps anybody. Did I miss something?

The media keeps saying over and over that "70% of the economy is the consumer"
and keeps nursing the fond hope that the children, once weaned, can be induced to return to their mother's breast. The citizens are at least peripherally aware of the massive debts. It seems to me, that the way to pay off the debts and to create wealth, is to do work, to engage in productive activity, to engage in activity which is useful and desired by other individuals and entities, to produce goods and service which the rest of the world desires to have ... (somehow, I do not believe that war, coercion, or hypocrisy are commodities that too many people are envious enough to have that they will offer things like oil, cell phones, or tropical hardwood lumber in order to obtain).

Meantime, how can we hope to receive more when we continue to do less and less ourselves?

I don't get it....