[patientrenter]

January vs May is the only issue. Gotcha. Sorry, I didn’t get enough coffee in me yet:)

[patientrenter]

January vs May is the only issue. Gotcha. Sorry, I didn’t get enough coffee in me yet:)

[patientrenter]

January vs May is the only issue. Gotcha. Sorry, I didn’t get enough coffee in me yet:)

[patientrenter]

January vs May is the only issue. Gotcha. Sorry, I didn’t get enough coffee in me yet:)

[patientrenter]

Niall Ferguson, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, and Ben Bernanke all share at least one goal:

Maintain asset prices, especially home prices, well above their free market level, by any and all means necessary. This includes massive taxpayer-funded intervention, as current subsidies, or as future subsidies (aka loan repayment guarantees).

Almost all homeowners support this. That’s over 60% of our population, and a higher % of voters, so 80-99% of politicians support it. Almost all company managers – and therefore their lobbyists – support it, because switching to a lower asset price regime would put us through a (temporary) recession that would put them in danger.

So hearing a chorus of people from a broad spectrum, including Niall Ferguson, vote for asset price supports (e.g. gobs of cheap money) is not a sign of the policy’s ultimate economic effectiveness. It’s just a sign that a lot of people’s ox will be gored in the short run by the alternatives, and most people are driven by their personal short-run outlook.

[patientrenter]

Niall Ferguson, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, and Ben Bernanke all share at least one goal:

Maintain asset prices, especially home prices, well above their free market level, by any and all means necessary. This includes massive taxpayer-funded intervention, as current subsidies, or as future subsidies (aka loan repayment guarantees).

Almost all homeowners support this. That’s over 60% of our population, and a higher % of voters, so 80-99% of politicians support it. Almost all company managers – and therefore their lobbyists – support it, because switching to a lower asset price regime would put us through a (temporary) recession that would put them in danger.

So hearing a chorus of people from a broad spectrum, including Niall Ferguson, vote for asset price supports (e.g. gobs of cheap money) is not a sign of the policy’s ultimate economic effectiveness. It’s just a sign that a lot of people’s ox will be gored in the short run by the alternatives, and most people are driven by their personal short-run outlook.

[patientrenter]

Niall Ferguson, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, and Ben Bernanke all share at least one goal:

Maintain asset prices, especially home prices, well above their free market level, by any and all means necessary. This includes massive taxpayer-funded intervention, as current subsidies, or as future subsidies (aka loan repayment guarantees).

Almost all homeowners support this. That’s over 60% of our population, and a higher % of voters, so 80-99% of politicians support it. Almost all company managers – and therefore their lobbyists – support it, because switching to a lower asset price regime would put us through a (temporary) recession that would put them in danger.

So hearing a chorus of people from a broad spectrum, including Niall Ferguson, vote for asset price supports (e.g. gobs of cheap money) is not a sign of the policy’s ultimate economic effectiveness. It’s just a sign that a lot of people’s ox will be gored in the short run by the alternatives, and most people are driven by their personal short-run outlook.

[patientrenter]

Niall Ferguson, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, and Ben Bernanke all share at least one goal:

Maintain asset prices, especially home prices, well above their free market level, by any and all means necessary. This includes massive taxpayer-funded intervention, as current subsidies, or as future subsidies (aka loan repayment guarantees).

Almost all homeowners support this. That’s over 60% of our population, and a higher % of voters, so 80-99% of politicians support it. Almost all company managers – and therefore their lobbyists – support it, because switching to a lower asset price regime would put us through a (temporary) recession that would put them in danger.

So hearing a chorus of people from a broad spectrum, including Niall Ferguson, vote for asset price supports (e.g. gobs of cheap money) is not a sign of the policy’s ultimate economic effectiveness. It’s just a sign that a lot of people’s ox will be gored in the short run by the alternatives, and most people are driven by their personal short-run outlook.

[patientrenter]

Niall Ferguson, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, and Ben Bernanke all share at least one goal:

Maintain asset prices, especially home prices, well above their free market level, by any and all means necessary. This includes massive taxpayer-funded intervention, as current subsidies, or as future subsidies (aka loan repayment guarantees).

Almost all homeowners support this. That’s over 60% of our population, and a higher % of voters, so 80-99% of politicians support it. Almost all company managers – and therefore their lobbyists – support it, because switching to a lower asset price regime would put us through a (temporary) recession that would put them in danger.

So hearing a chorus of people from a broad spectrum, including Niall Ferguson, vote for asset price supports (e.g. gobs of cheap money) is not a sign of the policy’s ultimate economic effectiveness. It’s just a sign that a lot of people’s ox will be gored in the short run by the alternatives, and most people are driven by their personal short-run outlook.

[patientrenter]

That was indeed funny.

“Not exactly true”, flu? How so? I thought it sounded very accurate.

[patientrenter]

That was indeed funny.

“Not exactly true”, flu? How so? I thought it sounded very accurate.

[patientrenter]

That was indeed funny.

“Not exactly true”, flu? How so? I thought it sounded very accurate.

[patientrenter]

That was indeed funny.

“Not exactly true”, flu? How so? I thought it sounded very accurate.

[patientrenter]

That was indeed funny.

“Not exactly true”, flu? How so? I thought it sounded very accurate.

[patientrenter]

SD R, I have spent some time camping and hiking in the various California and Utah deserts. I have developed a regard for their beauty, for the public good represented by the natural state of these deserts, and for their fragility.

I agree that if we have to rely heavily on solar power, then we need to identify the areas where it makes the most sense. By that I mean generating the most power with the least transmission loss, for the least environmental and aesthetic damage.

I hope Feinstein’s bill doesn’t preclude that sort of rational analysis of any future decision on solar power. For years, we have had no new nuclear power plants. I often wonder if that was the result of a rational decision-making process, or the product of rank populism. I don’t know enough about Feinstein’s bill, or the overall political and planning process to judge, but I hope that somewhere amongst our leaders there are a few who can rise above pandering to narrow interest groups, and propose and push for coherent broad responses to our collective challenges. I suppose I am very naive!

Oh, and the most effective way by far to move from energy dependence on “people who don’t like us very much” is to increase taxes on all energy consumption provided by types of supply that we currently have to import a lot of – mainly oil. So increase taxes per unit of gasoline, home heating oil, jet fuel…. In Europe and Japan, consistent application of this policy over decades has led to economies that use much less power from oil per unit of GDP.

[Author]

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