McCain proposes flex fuel vehicles
Robert Zubrin
[..] So, as a result of this massive tax increase (in the form of a huge increase in energy costs) — by far the largest in American history — the United States is being driven into a recession. Subjected to the same tax, Europe and Japan will follow, while poor third world countries who can afford high oil prices even less will be pushed towards starvation. And as the misery spreads, the Saudis and other OPEC potentates are putting together huge Sovereign Wealth Funds to execute takeovers of the western corporations their extortion forces into insolvency. Indeed, OPEC will clear $1.5 trillion in net export profits this year. The entire worth of the US Fortune 500 is $18 trillion. So at their current rate of looting, OPEC will accumulate enough cash to buy majority control of the entire Fortune 500 within 6 years.
This is a 5-alarm emergency. The oil crisis is not a matter of high fill-up prices, or even the loss of economic prosperity. Our independence is at stake. Under such circumstances, McCain’s proposals for battery prizes, enforcing CAFE standards, encouraging “zero-emission vehicles,” and even opening the east and west coast continental shelves to oil exploration, range from silly to, at best, marginally relevant.
Fortunately, however, there was one proposal that McCain put forward that could really make a difference. This was his call to require that all new cars sold in the USA be flex fueled.
Flex fuel cars can run on any combination of alcohol (including methanol and ethanol) or gasoline. The technology is readily available and it only costs about $100 per vehicle.
Making America a flex-fuel vehicle market would effectively make flex-fuel the international standard, as all significant foreign car makers would be impelled to convert their lines over as well. Within three years of such a mandate, there would be 50 million cars on the road in the USA capable of running on alternate fuels, and hundreds of millions more worldwide. Around the globe, gasoline would be forced to compete at the pump against alcohol fuels made from any number of sources, including not only current commercial crops like corn and sugar, but cellulosic ethanol made from crop residues and weeds, as well as methanol, which can be made from any kind of biomass without exception, as well as coal, natural gas, and recycled urban trash. Creating such an open-source fuel market would enormously expand and diversify humanity’s fuel resource base, protecting all nations from continued blackmail, robbery, and in some cases, starvation, induced by the oil cartel.
Methanol is selling today, without any subsidy, for $1.50/gallon on the spot market, equivalent in energy terms to gasoline at $2.80/gallon. Make cars that can choose between methanol and gasoline, and the power of OPEC to set high prices will be broken for good — everywhere in the world.
So break out the champagne. Amidst a pile of campaign nonsense, John McCain just set forth one policy that could save the nation.
Yea! for McCain who is still sleepwalking. I don’t really think he wants the job or senility has set in. Quick wake him up as he is putting me to sleep. Obama wins by default! He is running against himself.
Uhm. No, it is actually McCain who has been properly informed about just how much of an illusion our financial system is and it is McCain who, for the past couple of years has wised up and gotten his act together. If anyone is sleepwalking, it is democrats, Obama, and all who vote for Obama who don’t understand Business, Finance, or Econcomics – the Rockefeller style at all. No, it’s not a compromise to try to fight for everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve. As a non-partisan voter, I believe that MCCain does have some great ideas for alternative energies. Although Obama also has good ideas on energy policy changes – he has no AMERICAN STRATEGY to implement them. The democratic strategists think that allowing FOREIGN INVESTORS FROM COMMUNIST AND ISLAMIC STATES IS THE VIABLE solution to save the American economy and what we learned through the democratic betrayal of America and Americans during the 1990s is that democrats devised a clever ponzi scheme to lie, cheat, and steal from American investors as the LITIGATION CASES OF http://www.sec.gov proves! Democrats, working in concert with foreign governments gained power seats over American schools, American banks, American real estate, American churches, and figured out a way on how to work for Satan to destroy Biblical faith and values – which made America great, despite what the smear campaigners have done. MCCain is just waking up and his recent plan to urge inventors to create a better car battery is a great proposal! In this election, MCCain is the better pick because he has ideas on how to implement strategies on how to keep the Titanic from sinking!
If you’re a smart American, you will vote Republican across the board. We can’t allow the democratic strategists to continue destroying America – let’s remember that since 2006, when Democrats seized Congress, they taxed and oil and petroleum cartels, who all got pissed off and decided to keep raising our prices. Democrats, working in concert with OPEC countries are now holding America hostage and blaming Republicans for the mess! If you study how democrats got their money, beginning with the RED SCARE until now – you will discover that many Republicans were heroes after all! Get behind Republicans and oppose democrats at all costs!
It’s also crucial to Israel’s future too! McCain won’t betray America quite the way Obama will.
Flex fuel cars can run on any combination of alcohol (including methanol and ethanol) or gasoline. The technology is readily available and it only costs about $100 per vehicle.
LOWERING THE COSTS MEANS SUCCESS! I disagree with using corn crops or ethanol though. Food should be used to feed people, not for fuel.
I think the best ideas are:
1. Electric cars – I do like the proposal of building better batteries!
2. Hybrids
3. Air Compressor technology – Cars that run on air is simply the best idea I’ve heard yet, although they only go 35 mph.
I don’t like:
1. Nuclear cars? NO WAY! AN ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER THAT WILL ONLY ALLOW EVERYONE TO CREATE NUCLEAR BOMBS!
2. Ethanol – should be used as food for the people. Not a good solution.
3. HIGH GAS PRICES – Hey, the system worked when prices were low but doesn’t work anymore with price increases!
Which candidate fits the following depressing out look for the West and The world?
Harold Hoffman will be interviewed by Tamar Yonah, Israel National Radio. PARADIGM SHIFT: the Financial Tsunami WE ARE IN NOW…
See list of bank losses to date at end of this article. Tuesday morning interview on site click to listen
THE PARADIGM SHIFT WE ARE EXPERIENCING.
1. Three aspects of a nation state and its position Geo Politically and therefore
why The Power Elite are moving us towards a Nation State Destruction.
PART OF THE CONTIBUTORY FACTORS AS TO WHY ARE:
a Economic
b Political/Legal-Judiciary
c Religious
2. Today we deal with Economic and see how it fits into the structure above.
THERE ARE 4-5 CONSTITUENTS OF THE FINANCIAL TSUNAMI WE ARE ALREADY IN:
1 a) Oil Production and Processing- shortfall and lack of refineries coming on stream (takes 5-15 years)
b) The Possibility of a Mid East Conflagration with Iran.
2 a) Currency Devaluations world wide. Printing Fiat Currency.
CENTRAL BANKS AND GOVERNMENTS being totally responsible in creating inflation together.
b) The Sub Prime Mortgage Market is only the tip of Iceberg.
Yet to reveal, the Hedge Fund and Dervative Losses.
3 The Competition, Geo Politically, between the Developed World and the Developing
World for resources (Food, Water, Energy, Raw Materials).
4 The Developing World in part will soon be non exporters of certain raw materials
due to increases in Middle Class demand. Internally (eg: Iran and Mexico will soon have to reduce
export of oil due to increase demand internally and lack of refining capacities).
5 The Clash between the RAMBOS (economists… you and the pound in your pocket) and the BAMBIS (or
BAMBOS). The Radical Ecologists, the latter of whom, are attempting to stop the creation and supply of
Fossil Fuels and Energy eg Oil, Coal, Nucleur Energy in the Developed World
6 The coming on stream of the retirement of Baby Boomers of the 60′s and thus:
The Governments haven’t the money to supply the costs of Social Welfare and Health…
All the above are exponentially (time wise that is) coming together, within the window of 2008-2009-2010.
Some say, up to 2012 – and as they all merge… you have a TOXIC PIE.
IT WILL NEVER BE THE SAME WHEN THOSE THAT SURVIVE COME THROUGH – AND SO WE HAVE A PARADIGM SHIFT to:
HIGH ENERGY PRICES FOR THE NEXT 10-15 YEARS, until new capacities and/or sources come on stream.
Above is a complete summary of what WE ARE ALL FACING.
THE DISCUSSION WILL BE A REFERENCE GUIDE TO ALL AS TO WHAT WE ARE IN AND WHAT WILL BE NEEDED TO SURVIVE BY WAY OF:
A religious philosophy.
To unite groups into co-ops for assisting the aged, the infirm, the bankrupts, with health, with food supply and support. full article and links http://www.britanniaradio.co.uk/?q=node/13799
The Global Crisis: Food, Water and Fuel. Three Fundamental Necessities of Life in Jeopardy
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, June 5, 2008
The sugar coated bullets of the “free market” are killing our children. The act to kill is unpremeditated. It is instrumented in a detached fashion through computer program trading on the New York and Chicago mercantile exchanges, where the global prices of rice, wheat and corn are decided upon.
Poverty is not solely the result of policy failures at a national level. People in different countries are being impoverished simultaneously as a result of a global market mechanism. A small number of financial institutions and global corporations have the ability to determine, through market manipulation, the standard of living of millions of people around the World.
We are at the crossroads of the most serious economic and social crisis in modern history. The process of global impoverishment unleashed at the outset of the 1980s debt crisis has reached a major turning point, leading to the simultaneous outbreak of famines in all major regions of the developing World.
There are many complex features underlying the global economic crisis pertaining to financial markets, the decline in production, the collapse of State institutions and the rapid development of a profit-driven war economy. What is rarely mentioned in this analysis, is how this global economic restructuring forcibly impinges on three fundamental necessities of life: food, water and fuel.
The provision of food, water and fuel is a precondition of civilized society: they are necessary factors for the survival of the human species. In recent years, the prices of these three variables has increased dramatically at the global level, with devastating economic and social consequences.
These three essential goods or commodities, which in a real sense determine the reproduction of economic and social life on planet earth, are under the control of a small number of global corporations and financial institutions.
Both the State as well as the gamut of international organizations –often referred to as the “international community”– serve the unfettered interests of global capitalism. The main intergovernmental bodies including the United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions and the World Trade Organizations (WTO) have endorsed the New World Order on behalf of their corporate sponsors. Governments in both developed and developing countries have abandoned their historical role of regulating key economic variables as well as ensuring a minimum livelihood for their people.
Protest movements directed against the hikes in the prices of food and gasoline have erupted simultaneously in different regions of the World. The conditions are particularly critical in Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala, India, Bangladesh. Spiraling food and fuel prices in Somalia have precipitated the entire country into a situation of mass starvation, coupled with severe water shortages. A similar and equally serious situation prevails in Ethiopia.
Other countries affected by spiraling food prices include Indonesia, the Philippines, Liberia, Egypt, Sudan, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Eritrea, a long list of impoverished countries…, not to mention those under foreign military occupation including Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.
Famine in Ethiopia, June 2008
A famine-like situation hits north-eastern Bangladesh in late Autumn 2006
Most of these labourers in Kurigram go hungry in these three months because of sheer unemployment and a rise in the price of essentials
Deregulation
The provision of food, water and fuel are no longer the object of governmental or intergovernmental regulation or intervention, with a view to alleviating poverty or averting the outbreak of famines.
The fate of millions of human beings is managed behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms as part of a profit driven agenda.
And because these powerful economic actors operate through a seemingly neutral and “invisible” market mechanism, the devastating social impacts of engineered hikes in the prices of food, fuel and water are casually dismissed as the result of supply and demand considerations.
Nature of the Global Economic and Social Crisis
Largely obfuscated by official and media reports, both the ” food crisis” and the ” oil crisis” are the result of the speculative manipulation of market values by powerful economic actors.
We are not dealing with distinct and separate food, fuel and water “crises” but with a global process of economic and social restructuring.
The dramatic price hikes of these three essential commodities is not haphazard. All three variables, including the prices of basic food staples, water for production and consumption and fuel are the object of a process of deliberate and simultaneous market manipulation.
At the heart of the food crisis is the rising price of food staples coupled with a dramatic increase in the price of fuel.
Concurrently, the price of water which is an essential input into agricultural and industrial production, social infrastructure, public sanitation and household consumption has increased abruptly as a result of a Worldwide movement to privatize water resources.
We are dealing with a major economic and social upheaval, an unprecedented global crisis, characterized by the triangular relationship between water, food and fuel: three fundamental variables, which together affect the very means of human survival.
Archive for writedowns and distress
http://bankimplode.com/blog/category/writedowns-and-distress/
HBOS PLC – $2.5B/$4B (0)
Posted on June 25, 2008 1:45 PM
Citigroup – $69.1B/$36B/$22.7B (7)
Posted on June 25, 2008 1:29 PM
JP Morgan Chase – $9.9B (3)
Posted on June 23, 2008 5:45 PM
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce(CIBC) – $6.7B (0)
Posted on June 23, 2008 11:44 AM
Wells Fargo – $2.9B/0/$23B (2)
Posted on June 21, 2008 12:09 PM
Morgan Stanley – $23.2B (0)
Posted on June 19, 2008 1:38 PM
Fifth Third Bancorp – $155M/$2B (0)
Posted on June 18, 2008 5:16 PM
Goldman Sachs – $6.2B (3)
Posted on June 17, 2008 5:15 PM
Barclays PLC – $6.4B/$7.8B (0)
Posted on June 16, 2008 2:15 PM
Lehman Brothers – $7.2B/$6B (2)
Posted on June 15, 2008 12:05 PM
National City – $200M (0)
Posted on June 6, 2008 10:45 AM
Royal Bank of Scotland – $3.6B/$24B (2)
Posted on June 4, 2008 5:34 PM
Societe Generale SA- $13.7 /$8.5B (0)
Posted on June 4, 2008 3:08 PM
BNP Paribas SA-$2.5B/ $0 cash (0)
Posted on June 4, 2008 2:39 PM
Merrill Lynch – $37.5B (1)
Posted on June 2, 2008 2:03 PM
Wachovia – $6.8B/$10.5B (4)
Posted on June 2, 2008 1:23 PM
Washington Mutual – $1.6B (2)
Posted on June 2, 2008 1:03 PM
UBS – $45.0B/$41.5B (2)
Posted on June 1, 2008 11:22 AM
Royal Bank of Canada – $1.4B (0)
Posted on May 29, 2008 6:07 PM
Bank of Montreal (BMO) – $611M (0)
Posted on May 29, 2008 1:02 PM
Bank of America – $4.4B (4)
Posted on May 28, 2008 1:16 PM
Mizuho MFG – $5.4B (0)
Posted on May 22, 2008 2:09 PM
Bayern LB – $9.8B (0)
Posted on May 19, 2008 7:42 AM
WestLB AG – $4.8B (0)
Posted on May 19, 2008 7:35 AM
Natixis – $3.4B (1)
Posted on May 19, 2008 7:31 AM
HSBC Bank PLC – $6.6B (0)
Posted on May 19, 2008 5:32 AM
Credit Agricole SA-$13.8B (0)
Posted on May 12, 2008 5:18 PM
Credit Suisse – $5.95B (0)
Posted on May 2, 2008 5:20 PM
Deutsche Bank – $18.6B (1)
Posted on May 2, 2008 5:19 PM
Mitsubishi Financial Group – $760M (0)
Posted on April 23, 2008 12:54 AM
US Bancorp – $1.2B (0)
Posted on April 16, 2008 12:13 PM
SunTrust – $718.7M-$1.5 B (1)
Posted on April 13, 2008 6:33 PM
Bank of NY Mellon – $118M (0)
Posted on April 9, 2008 11:19 AM
Sovereign Bancorp – $1.580B (0)
Posted on April 8, 2008 1:29 PM
IKB – $12.91B (0)
Posted on March 20, 2008 8:13 PM
DZ BANK AG – $2.1B (0)
Posted on March 7, 2008 9:52 PM
HSBC – $26.5B (0)
Posted on March 5, 2008 5:25 PM
Commerzbank – $855M (1)
Posted on February 15, 2008 9:48 AM