Construction association plans to recruit Mexican construction workers
Jose
The job fair is being held on the weekend, so that Mexican skilled
trade workers, who are interested in coming to Canada, won't have to
miss work. ...
Jose@casa_mierda
> The job fair is being held on the weekend, so that Mexican "skilled"
> trade workers, who are interested in coming to Canada, won't have to
>
>
> http://www.journalofcommerce.com/article/id24691
>
>
charles bash
work crew placing ooncrete sidewalks around a high-rise apartment
building in which I lived at the time.
I had time to watch the preparation of the sub-grade and the placing of
the gravel & concrete in several sections varying from 16 feet long to
about 100 feet long.
It was Absolutely the Worst concrete placement work I ever saw. Without
going into a lot of the details. That was in 2003, I believe, and I
posted on it, right here., declaring the work to be Bad!
Hard workin' immigrants have been getting the bulk, I would say, of the
sidewalk "R R" work. ( Remove & Replace) worn. cracked, or otherwise
blemished sidewalks. Probably throughout Fairfax and Arlington Counties.
Everywhere I look at recently placed sidewalks , I can see the telltale
Hallmarks of lousy work.
It didn't use to be this way. They cheat on building the curbs,, They
cheat on placing the "control joints' ( the transverse joints about
every four feet in normal sidewalk placement). . They are Never Deep
enough for 4 inch thick sidewalks, so in less than 6 months ugly cracks
appear Beside the joints, for which the control joints are meant to
prevent!. They cheat on keeping new concrete moist for 5 days
They lay concrete in freezing weather and provide the most skimpy
covering meant to prevent surface freezing,or no covering at all. I
have seen in some cases. where the workers ran out of the polyethelene
plastic sheeting. and a portion of the work was simply left
unprotected.
Anyway, over in Arlington County commercial property owners have been
Stung so badly with R & R concrete sidewalks that there is a big trend
back to Brick Sidewalks! Far more expensive than concrete initially,
but they hold up better and small defects that show up are inexpensive
to repair.
Good luck,, Canadians!!
C. Bash
California Poppy
If only the US would follow the lead. We need these workers in the
US. It is a problem with our legislators in Washington who haven't
acknowledged this. They are too busy passing legislation to "get
Bush" and not taking care of the business of taking care of the rest
of us.
charles bash
workers until every last illegal alien is driven out of this country.
If ever'body had a college course in Business Administration they would
unnerstan something about the workings of Supply & Demand. Until then,
very likely, they will dismiss it as something Unimportant, though an
interesting theory.
Under Capitalism,, especially modern day Capitalism. Get this > An
endless supply of low cost labor will create its Own Demand! That could
easily result in a perceived new shortage!
There is something like EIGHT MILLION independent businesses in the US
at present. To serve a population of 300 million people!
The foolish editors of the Wall Street Journal ran an article alleging
<<< There is a world wide Labor Shortage <<<. I haven't read the article
but the theme certainly sounds specious.
I see illustrations of an over supply of labor everywhere I look in the
shopping malls. Almost every single worker = an immigrant. They are
affordable labor for retail businesses.
The result? In every shopping mall we have a "Mattress Discounter" Do we
really Need that many? What about "fast food" restaurants in urban
areas? If they paid a real living wage,, how many would we have?
We would have fewer, but they would be larger, and "economy of scale'
would help keep the price of restaurant meals "affordable" though
probably somewhat higher.
The acceptance of failure "to pay living wage" that is, a wage that will
allow the "wage earner" to support himself and a family too, in
reasonable comfort, is a major problem in modern day America. You
shouldn't need a college education to be able to earn a living wage.
In Communist Russia, their education system would permit only 50% of
their most able high school graduates to attend college! This was a
program that they thought was correct for a Communist state. It used to
be called "Higher Education".
The total picture is a lot larger than the above, but too high
immigration levels from the 3rd world are giving us low cost labor but
inflicting Hidden Costs on the economy as a whole, which are going
largely unrecognized. A few "voices in the wilderness" are trying to
bring to our attention these Hidden costs.
We certainly Don't Need more than the 2 Million or so immigrants that
are flooding into this country every year. If we really Need that many.
C. Bash.
T Jr Hardman
> There is no way of knowing whether we "need" any more construction
> workers until every last illegal alien is driven out of this country.
<snips />
Not to belittle or denigrate the rest of your remarks, Mr Bash, but this is
something on which we should focus, the "need" of the construction industry.
Yesterday, on MSNBC's "finance channel" on cable, one of the extremely
knowledgeable anchor ladies -- who seems to be particularly expert on the
subprime mortgage crisis-- said something in her "closing bell" hour that
should send chills to the bone of anyone looking to the future.
She said something to the effect of "there is a vast and looming overhang of
completed new housing that has been deliberately held off of the market in
the hopes of preventing a meltdown. But for homebuilders to engage in upkeep
and maintenance of these unmarketed homes is hugely expensive for them.
Within the next 90 days or so they will have to place all of them in the
market one way or another."
Thus, there is about to be a huge surplus of new homes added to what is
already a glut of new homes on a used-homes market which itself is already
drugged in many market areas by a ballooning number of foreclosures.
I should point out that probably the best analysis ever written for the lay
(non-MBA) reader which I have so far seen was in today's _Washington Post_:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/15/AR2007101501435.html
<quote in-part>
An Unsavory Slice of Subprime
By Allan Sloan
Tuesday, October 16, 2007; Page D01
So let's reduce this macro story to human scale. Meet GSAMP Trust 2006-S3, a
$494 million drop in the junk-mortgage bucket, part of the more than
half-a-trillion dollars of mortgage-backed securities issued last year. We
found this issue by asking mortgage mavens to pick the worst deal they knew
of that had been floated by a top-tier firm, and this one's pretty bad.
It was sold by Goldman Sachs. GSAMP originally stood for Goldman Sachs
Alternative Mortgage Products but has become a name itself, like AT&T
and 3M. This issue, which is backed by ultra-risky second-mortgage loans,
contains all the elements that facilitated the housing bubble and bust. It's
got speculators searching for quick gains in hot housing markets, it's got
loans that seem to have been made with little or no serious analysis by
lenders, and finally, it's got Wall Street, which churned out mortgage
"product" because buyers wanted it. As they say on the Street, "When the
ducks quack, feed them."
Alas, almost everyone involved in this duck-feeding deal has had a foul
experience. Less than 18 months after the issue was floated, one-sixth of
the borrowers had already defaulted on their loans. Investors who paid face
value for these securities have suffered heavy losses. That's because their
securities have either defaulted (for a 100 percent loss) or been downgraded
by credit-rating agencies, which has depressed the securities' market
prices. (Check out one of these jewels on a Bloomberg machine, and the price
chart looks like something falling off a cliff.) Even Goldman may have lost
money on GSAMP, but being Goldman, the firm has more than covered its losses
by betting successfully that the price of junk mortgages would drop. Of
course, Goldman knew a lot about this market: GSAMP was just one of 83
mortgage-backed issues totaling $44.5 billion that Goldman sold last year.
Now let's take it from the top.
[ ... ]
In the spring of 2006, Goldman assembled 8,274 second-mortgage loans
originated by Fremont Investment & Loan, Long Beach Mortgage and
assorted other players. More than one-third of the loans were in California,
then a hot market. It was a run-of-the-mill deal, one of the 916
residential-mortgagebacked issues totaling $592 billion that were sold last
year. Most of the information in this article is based on our reading of
various public filings.
The average equity the second-mortgage borrowers had in their homes was 0.71
percent. (No, that's not a misprint: The average loan-to-value of the
issue's borrowers was 99.29 percent.) It gets even hinkier. Some 58 percent
of the loans were no-documentation or low-documentation. This means that
though 98 percent of the borrowers said they were occupying the homes they
were borrowing on -- "owner-occupied" loans are considered less risky than
loans to speculators -- no one knows if that was true. And no one knows
whether borrowers' incomes or assets bore any serious relationship to what
they told the mortgage lenders.
[ ... ]
</quote>
Please read the rest of the article, it's just simply excellent.
However, Sloan's main point is quite visible in that final paragraph.
This was more or less what my Dad would call "buying a pig in a poke"
meaning that you had better inspect what you're paying for before the money
changes hands.
One huge problem here is not just that nobody knew that they were investing
in hugely marginal and mega-risky speculation; additionally the problem in
part is that it seems that it was _designed_ to make it impossible for
anyone to know what a high level of risk they undertook.
Didn't we learn anything from Enron? What we should have learned is that you
just can't trust a lot of the people who make their way into positions of
influence; quite frequently they rose to those positions by stampeding
across the backs of anyone who trusted them.
<quote in-part ibid>
[ ... ]
Goldman acquired these second-mortgage loans and put them together as GSAMP
Trust 2006-S3. To transform them into securities it could sell to investors,
it divided them into tranches -- which is French for "slices," in case
you're interested.
There are trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities in the world
for the same reason that Tyson Foods offers you chicken pieces rather than
insisting you buy an entire bird. Tyson can slice a chicken into breasts,
legs, thighs, giblets -- and Lord knows what else -- and get more for the
pieces than it gets for a whole chicken. Customers are happy because they
get only the pieces they want.
Similarly, Wall Street carves mortgages into tranches because it can get
more for the pieces than it would get for whole mortgages. Mortgages have
maturities that are unpredictable, and they require all that messy
maintenance like collecting the monthly payments, making sure real estate
taxes are paid, chasing slow-pay and no-pay borrowers, and sending out
annual statements of interest and taxes paid. Securities are simpler to deal
with and can be customized.
Someone wants a safe, relatively low-interest, short-term security? Fine,
we'll give him a nice AAA-rated slice that gets repaid quickly and is very
unlikely to default. Someone wants a risky piece with a potentially very
rich yield, an indefinite maturity, and no credit rating at all? One unrated
X tranche coming right up. Interested in legs, thighs, giblets, the heart?
The butcher -- excuse us, the investment banker -- gives customers what they
want.
[ ... ]
</quote>
In effect, the exact problems that lead to the recent collapse of a New
Jersey processed-meat distributor (Topps), was in play in the market. The
problem with hamburger is the opposite of that with apples. As you all know,
"one bad apple doesn't spoil the whole barrel". But with hamburger, if you
churn and chop it enough -- not incidentally removing from it the slightest
trace of the appearance and identity and health of the original cows -- one
bad cow can poison the burgers made from ten thousand more.
The problem here is that it was impossible for anyone to know that the funds
they were buying into were, in effect, better seen as one good cow being
chopped in with 10,000 bad ones, as if the good could cure the badness. But
how was it all kept from stinking so badly nobody would touch it?
<quote in-part ibid>
[ ... ]
How is a buyer of securities like these supposed to know how safe they are?
There are two options. The first is to do what we did: Read the 315-page
prospectus, related documents and other public records with a jaundiced eye
and try to see how things can go wrong. The second is to rely on the
underwriter and the credit-rating agencies -- Moody's and Standard & Poor's.
That, of course, is what nearly everyone does.
In any event, it's impossible for investors to conduct an independent
analysis of the borrowers' credit quality even if they choose to invest the
time, money and effort to do so. That's because Goldman, like other
assemblers of mortgage-backed deals, doesn't tell investors who the
borrowers are. One Goldman filing includes more than 1,000 pages of
individual loans -- but they're listed by code number and Zip code, not name
and address.
Even though the individual loans in GSAMP looked like financial toxic waste,
68 percent of the issue, or $336 million, was rated AAA by both agencies --
as secure as U.S. Treasury bonds. Twenty-five percent of the issue, or $123
million, was rated investment grade, at levels from AA to BBB--. Thus, a
total of 93 percent was rated investment grade. That's despite the fact that
this issue is backed by second mortgages of dubious quality on homes in
which the borrowers (most of whose income and financial assertions weren't
vetted by anyone) had less than 1 percent equity and on which GSAMP couldn't
effectively foreclose.
In a public analysis of the issue, Moody's projected that less than 10
percent of the loans would ultimately default. S&P, which gave the
securities the same ratings Moody's did, almost certainly reached a similar
conclusion but hasn't filed a public analysis and wouldn't share its numbers
with us. As long as housing prices kept rising, it all looked copacetic.
[ ... ]
</quote>
Sloan goes on to detail how reality caught up with the housing bubble and
then suddenly:
<quote in-part ibid>
[ ... ]
Interest rates on mortgages stopped falling. Way too late, as usual,
regulators and lenders began imposing higher credit standards. If you had
borrowed 99 percent-plus of the purchase price (as the average GSAMP
borrower did) and couldn't make your payments, couldn't refinance, and
couldn't sell at a profit, it was over. Lights out.
As a second-mortgage holder, GSAMP couldn't foreclose on deadbeats unless
the first-mortgage holder also foreclosed. That's because to foreclose on a
second mortgage, you have to repay the first mortgage in full, and there was
no money set aside to do that. So if a borrower decided to keep on paying
the first mortgage but not the second, the holder of the second would get
bagged.
If the holder of the first mortgage foreclosed, there was likely to be
little or nothing left for GSAMP, the second-mortgage holder. Indeed,
monthly reports issued by Deutsche Bank, the issue's trustee, indicate that
GSAMP has recovered almost nothing on its foreclosed loans.
[ ... ]
</quote>
But wait: the worst is yet to come!
Sloan goes on to point out that Goldman Sachs wasn't worried about its own
losses if this risky house-of-cards collapsed. _They bet that it would_ when
they shorted an index of mortgage-backed securities.
Sloan summarized as follows:
<quote in-part ibid>
[ ... ]
As we interpret this -- the firm declined to elaborate -- Goldman made more
on its hedges than it lost on its inventory because junk mortgages fell even
more sharply than Goldman thought they would.
[ ... ]
</quote>
There's no doubt in my mind that other investment firms took similar
positions shorting their own market offerings. Indeed, if they're in the
position of Goldman Sachs, _the harder and faster the junk-mortgage funds
fall, the more and faster they make a killing_.
Who loses? The investors, obviously. Almost all of those AAA-rated
"tranches" are effectively worthless. As the European banks say "we have no
idea what is the actual value of those assets". I'm not going out on a limb
here to say "probably nothing or less than nothing".
Who else loses? People who took subprime mortgages. There are already a
record number of defaults and in fact in a lot of cases, it makes more
financial sense for people to simply walk away in the middle of the night
than to try to sell in a crashing market in which they have only a
negative-numbers equity stake. Add to this the recent changes in Federal
bankruptcy laws, and you have a simmering stew of bad burger trying to crawl
out of the pot and engulf the unwary.
This is going to shake out as a lot worse than the dot-bomb implosion, worse
than Enron, worse than MCI. Those are drops in the bucket compared to what's
coming. The big-money players have not just bet by selling short, they're
making that bet work, and pay bigger than they had ever expected.
Middle class, say good bye to your homes, say good bye to your way of life.
Say good bye to your political system, most likely, when desperate
homebuilders go tits-up and unload their "held back" stock onto the market
and saturate it to the point where nobody anywhere is going to want, or
need, to build houses. Say goodbye to anything like peace and prosperity
when approximately 20 million illegal aliens -- mostly from Latin America
-- lose all or almost all of their current 14-million construction jobs and
join the 28-millions of currently unemployed Americans in competing for
whatever other sort of jobs can be found the the economy of a nation that
doesn't seem to manufacture much of anything, and whose entire structure is
currently underpinned by exactly two economic sectors: housing, and bank loans.
--
The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may
often assume the appearance, and produce the effects,
of a treasonable correspondence with the public enemy.
--Gibbon, "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"
marika
<blockspam_thard...@thomashardman.com> wrote:
>
> Not to belittle or denigrate the rest of your remarks, Mr Bash, but this is
> something on which we should focus, the "need" of the construction industry.
This was on msnbc yesterday
SEC reportedly launches Merrill probe
Bank denies allegations tried to cloak exposure to risky debt
updated 2:54 p.m. ET, Fri., Nov. 2, 2007
NEW YORK - The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an
investigation into deals Merrill Lynch & Co. undertook to allegedly
cloak its vulnerability to risky mortgage debt, the Wall Street
Journal reported Friday.
The Journal reported Merrill Lynch struck deals with hedge funds to
take certain positions that did not transfer risk, but merely delayed
when Merrill Lynch would have to disclose its exposure to that risk.
However, responding to the story Merrill said Friday it was not aware
of any transactions that moved billions of dollars of risky subprime-
related assets to hedge funds to reduce company exposure and delay
write-downs.
>
> Yesterday, on MSNBC's "finance channel" on cable, one of the extremely
> knowledgeable anchor ladies -- who seems to be particularly expert on the
> subprime mortgage crisis-- said something in her "closing bell" hour that
> should send chills to the bone of anyone looking to the future.
>
I assume the crash happened shortly before
mk5000
"Did I really need to go into this kind of explanation
though, Bruce? Do you really mean to say that this usage was opaque
to you? (I do note that you got it wrong since you converted my usage
to a claim about "platforms in brains" so it's possible."--stuart w
mirsky
Sanders Kaufman
news:1194109231....@50g2000hsm.googlegroups.com...
> The Journal reported Merrill Lynch struck deals with hedge funds to
> take certain positions that did not transfer risk, but merely delayed
> when Merrill Lynch would have to disclose its exposure to that risk.
Expect a lot more of this in the near future.
The Christian bible says that debt only lasts 7 years - and this president
is a Christian.
Unfortunately - the Uniform Commercial Code has another take on the matter.
A LOT of faith-based speculation occurred during Bush's term.
They were short-sighted, and presumed good faith on the part of the GOP.
So, naturally, they're failing fast.
At the end of Clinton's term, there was a transition period during which
skilled workers lost their jobs, in preparation for a darkened economy.
After the GOP seized power, those jobs were replaced by ones in the
speculation and evangelism industries.
But because of bad faith on the part of the GOP - those Bush Economy jobs
were not as lucrative as the tech ones were.
So now - not only are they going away - but instead of leaving us something
cool, like the web, they are leaving us devastated financial markets.
br...@pobox.com
Typical left wing, Clinton-loving maggot.
Your heroes took a growing economy and turned started it on a downhill
slide -- just like you left wing scum always do.
T Jr Hardman
> On Oct 16, 2:18 pm, T Jr Hardman
> <blockspam_thard...@thomashardman.com> wrote:
>
>> Not to belittle or denigrate the rest of your remarks, Mr Bash, but this is
>> something on which we should focus, the "need" of the construction industry.
>
> This was on msnbc yesterday
>
> SEC reportedly launches Merrill probe
> Bank denies allegations tried to cloak exposure to risky debt
>
> updated 2:54 p.m. ET, Fri., Nov. 2, 2007
> NEW YORK - The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an
> investigation into deals Merrill Lynch & Co. undertook to allegedly
> cloak its vulnerability to risky mortgage debt, the Wall Street
> Journal reported Friday.
>
> The Journal reported Merrill Lynch struck deals with hedge funds to
> take certain positions that did not transfer risk, but merely delayed
> when Merrill Lynch would have to disclose its exposure to that risk.
>
> However, responding to the story Merrill said Friday it was not aware
> of any transactions that moved billions of dollars of risky subprime-
> related assets to hedge funds to reduce company exposure and delay
> write-downs.
I'm sure they're not about to admit to anything. Remember, what caused major
problems to Enron executives wasn't so much the actions that they took, as
it was their saying one thing and being proved to have done another thing.
Not to try to go into detail, as at the moment I am a bit toasty. ;) Maybe
tomorrow. However, this is a slow-motion train wreck, and as it were, the
first-class passengers are hoisting their stemware and downing the
champagne, not yet quite cognizant of the train having left the rails and
traveling through air towards the canyon bottom. They won't notice until
they actually hit bottom, and probably most of them won't notice for long.
>> Yesterday, on MSNBC's "finance channel" on cable, one of the extremely
>> knowledgeable anchor ladies -- who seems to be particularly expert on the
>> subprime mortgage crisis-- said something in her "closing bell" hour that
>> should send chills to the bone of anyone looking to the future.
>>
>
>
> I assume the crash happened shortly before
Ah, you are referring to the adjustment last Thursday or so? No, this was
about 10 days before. Check back on the thread to get the dateline of the
original post; this broadcast was maybe one or two days before that posting.
T Jr Hardman
With all due respect, your response is so simplistic as to be almost
thoughtless.
br...@pobox.com
I've live through over half a century of these maggots. Don't talk
with your mouth full of shit.
Sanders Kaufman
news:472E9DD5...@thomashardman.com...
> marika wrote:
>> However, responding to the story Merrill said Friday it was not aware
>> of any transactions that moved billions of dollars of risky subprime-
>> related assets to hedge funds to reduce company exposure and delay
>> write-downs.
>
> I'm sure they're not about to admit to anything. Remember, what caused
> major problems to Enron executives wasn't so much the actions that they
> took, as it was their saying one thing and being proved to have done
> another thing.
Indeed - the best way to damn the Oil Evangelists is to quote them.
T Jr Hardman
Um, me too.
> Don't talk
> with your mouth full of shit.
Look at it this way: When the Clinton Administration suffered through the
largest-to-date replacement of the Democratic House with a new majority of
first-term Republicans, he took it in stride. When the "Contract with
America" happened, he took it in stride, more or less. But the fact was, it
was under Clinton that the Republicans of the Gingrich Camp managed to
balance the budget, end "Welfare as we know it" and many other great and
wonderful things. And George W. Bush won by a decision and shortly
thereafter, things began to slide. It's difficult to assign blame as
everyone in the dot-com and related industries were engaged in rampant
speculation and irrational exuberance. That whole collapse was something of
a bipartisan clusterfuck and the only think that I know was bad policy on
the part of both parties was letting the country get overrun by illegal
aliens at the same time that industry was offshored, and that offshoring has
been going on to some degree or another since the US stopped manufacturing
TV sets in the early 1980s.
History, sir, is rarely simple, and even when we have significant dates --
such as April 2000 or September 2001 -- the causes are dispersed like a mist
across a lot of preceding time, and the effects are similarly dispersed
across the subsequent days or years.
Simply assigning simple blame to simple causes is, well, simple.
Complex problems don't have simple causes, nor simple solutions.
br...@pobox.com
<blockspam...@thomashardman.com> wrote:
It was also on Blow Job Billy's watch that the economy went from
growth to decline.
T Jr Hardman
It gets even more interesting.
An article in yesterday's _Washington Post_ seems to point out that the main
thing driving the current massive run-up in oil prices is Wall Street, more
or less. There haven't been any actual changes in the supply nor refinery
capacities. What's driving the oil price run up is rampant speculation on
the parts of traders in the business:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/04/AR2007110401753.html
<quote in-part>
Oil's Recent Rise Not as Familiar as It Looks
Traders, Not Political or Supply Concerns, May Be Pushing Fuel Toward $100
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 5, 2007; Page A01
After a week of new records for crude oil prices, the question is:
How high can they go?
In the past 10 weeks, the price of crude oil has shot up
$25 a barrel, closing at $95.93 in New York on Friday,
near an all-time inflation-adjusted peak. Unlike earlier spikes
in oil prices, which came on the heels of war in the
Middle East, this latest ascent does not appear
to be linked to any one conflict or to any physical shortage.
Instead, traders who treat oil like any other commodity are
widely thought to be driving prices upward, bolstered by
a weak dollar and money flowing out of stock markets and
other investment vehicles.
[ ... ]
</quote>
Personally, I think that so many people just lost their asses on the
Subprime Mortage Mess and related investment vehicles, they're making up the
losses in any way they can, and cornering the markets on oil and gouging the
consumers is the quick and easy fix. Note the timing... as soon as it became
obvious that anything remotely dependent on mortgage vehicles was a pure
loser, all of a sudden the cost of oil starts to skyrocket.
Further:
<quote in-part ibid>
[ ... ]
"It just seems that the market is spasming here," said Adam Robinson, an oil
analyst at Lehman Brothers. If slowly declining petroleum inventories start
to build again, he said, "the radical increase we've seen to the upside can
repeat on the way down." Oppenheimer & Sons analyst Fadel Gheit says oil is
$30 a barrel overpriced.
But analysts also say that the past 10 weeks have demonstrated the power of
traders at investment houses. Deutsche Bank oil economist Adam Sieminski,
who spent six months on the bank's trading desk, said it is important not to
underestimate the role of sentiment and technical factors, such as patterns
of price movements and the need to hedge risks in other markets. Now, when
investors hold a large number of options to buy oil at a price of $100, he
says, "it's almost like magnetism. It draws prices to that level."
Traders say that they are not buying and selling on whims, however. The
unusually thin cushion of excess oil production around the world and the
rapid growth in consumption in China and India make this rise in prices
different from earlier oil price spikes, they argue. That combination, the
traders add, leaves the oil markets one incident away from an even steeper
increase.
[ ... ]
</quote>
That's an excellent article, BTW, you are well advised to read it.
Sanders Kaufman
> Sanders Kaufman wrote:
> It gets even more interesting.
>
> An article in yesterday's _Washington Post_ seems to point out that the
> main thing driving the current massive run-up in oil prices is Wall
> Street, more or less. There haven't been any actual changes in the supply
> nor refinery capacities. What's driving the oil price run up is rampant
> speculation on the parts of traders in the business:
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/04/AR2007110401753.html
That's not REAL surprising.
A lot of Bushies like Tony Snow left well-paying jobs to work for the GOP
because they were offered a lot of oil securities.
Now that they're almost all gone, and the house of cards is collapsing,
they're all cashing-out.
T Jr Hardman
Okay, that being said, I can only pray to $DEITY that the next new-car model
year is chock full of small efficient cars that would make a Yaris look like
a gas-hog.
Frankly I am in a snit. One of my personal sources of pride has been driving
older vehicles that I personally can repair and maintain. Unfortunately,
that older technology -- though generally inexpensive and relatively simple
to work on -- can't supply the level of fuel efficiency required in
non-production operations. My old truck used to be something fun to drive
back in the days when gasoline wasn't quite two dollars a gallon. At
$3.00/gallon, it's merely a money-sucking monster which is generally
indestructible and not worth starting unless I have to haul a load for pay.
Let's just say that a while back it was in the shop and I had to walk or
ride the bus everywhere... and at the end of the week I had $100 in my
pocket that otherwise would have gone to the fuel pump. Now that they're
predicting $4/gal by spring, it looks like I'll be trying to walk anywhere I
can, which mostly sucks because in the ten years I've been posting here, my
neighborhood has changed from a fairly nice neighborhood with lots of
retirees into a barrio mostly full of generally hostile foreigners.
Sanders Kaufman
> Sanders Kaufman wrote:
>> A lot of Bushies like Tony Snow left well-paying jobs to work for the GOP
>> because they were offered a lot of oil securities.
>> Now that they're almost all gone, and the house of cards is collapsing,
>> they're all cashing-out.
>
> Okay, that being said, I can only pray to $DEITY that the next new-car
> model year is chock full of small efficient cars that would make a Yaris
> look like a gas-hog.
Why wait until next year when you can get one today at Sams/Wal-Mart?
I got a flyer in the mail today from them.
For $35k (the price of a luxury car or SUV) you can get an all-electric car
from Hybrid Technologies.
It's freeway worthy - with speeds up to 80mph.
It lasts 100 miles on a 5-hour charge.
I don't have the dough today, but I'll bet a dollar that I have one of these
doo-dads within a year or two.
In a related story...
I recently had a go-round with my mom about yard equipment.
She wanted a gas-mower, I told her to go electric.
She wanted the gas mower because it was "self-powered" (meaning the wheels
are powered - not that it's a gas engine).
She got the gas mower - but nearly has a heart attack trying to start the
damned thing.
Since then, she's bought an electric-blower and an electric edger and
electric hedge-trimmers.
Fuck hybrid.
Yay electric!
br...@pobox.com
Half you ever done a state change analysis on the the energy flow for
an all electric vehicle?
By the time that you get from the chemical energy of the fuel at the
boiler to the electric motor of the vehicle, you have consumed many
more times the fuel that you would have used had you simply burned it
in th vehicle in the first place. The only reason that electric cars
are currently considered is that this portion of the equation is
invisible to the technically-illiterate majority.
I say chemical fuel for a reason. There is currently and for the
forseeable future nothing else that will supply the amounts of
electricity required to charge large numbers of electric cars.
Hydroelectric? Forget it. We're already at capacity.
Solar? Possibly, but where are you going to cover enough area to
convert sunlight to the enormous amount of electricity that will be
created? The desert? The ecofreaks won't let you.
Wind power? A joke. I used to travel in and out of the bay area
weekly. Every time that I went by, less than one in ten of those
generators was turning. You could replace all the wind power currently
harnessed in the world with a half dozen nuclear plants.
Nuclear? Again, the ecofreaks won't let you build them.
You love electric cars.
Will you also love the brownouts and blackouts that will accompany
them?
Sanders Kaufman
news:1hs7j3p8k2qv7qvb3...@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 7 Nov 2007 09:53:20 -0600, "Sanders Kaufman"
>>Fuck hybrid.
>>Yay electric!
>
> Half you ever done a state change analysis on the the energy flow for
> an all electric vehicle?
>
> By the time that you get from the chemical energy of the fuel at the
> boiler to the electric motor of the vehicle, you have consumed many
Boiler. Ha!
br...@pobox.com
Typical response from one of the technical and engineering illiterate.
>
>
Governor Swill
>Solar? Possibly, but where are you going to cover enough area to
>convert sunlight to the enormous amount of electricity that will be
>created? The desert? The ecofreaks won't let you.
What's wrong with using the roof of your house?
Swill
--
Money isn't always dollars, but dollars are always money.
Picture of the day
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Hugh Gibbons
Governor Swill <governo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 04:53:56 GMT, br...@pobox.com wrote:
>
> >Solar? Possibly, but where are you going to cover enough area to
> >convert sunlight to the enormous amount of electricity that will be
> >created? The desert? The ecofreaks won't let you.
>
> What's wrong with using the roof of your house?
>
> Swill
This is an excellent point. The average house probably
has 100 square meters of unused space. If fitted with
photovoltaic cells, that would produce peak power of 10kW,
in sunny areas. If you just want it for heat, that's also a huge
offset to your energy costs. Most houses in most areas could
probably heat themselves year round with solar power alone.
There's not much help for Seattle that way, but most Western and
Southern cities could produce a huge amount of power that way
with effectively zero footprint.
Add to that, the roof of every public and private building
has hundreds to thousands of square meters of roof space.
Presently, the barrier is initial cost. It takes years to pay
off the cost of such a system. But in the near future, perhaps,
houses and new business buildings will be built with solar
roofs from the get-go.
Sanders Kaufman
news:M8qdnWBiMsyykKva...@comcast.com...
> Governor Swill <governo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There's not much help for Seattle that way, but most Western and
> Southern cities could produce a huge amount of power that way
> with effectively zero footprint.
Seattle can do something even *greener* than solar - geothermal.
It's as easy as digging a well - and it works regardless of the season or
sunlight.
You lay a copper loop from the well-surface, down into the water table, and
back up to the surface.
In the colder months, water heats in the ground, rises, cools at the
surface, and goes back down - all day; all night.
In the hotter ones, t'other way 'round.
Governor Swill
<hugh_g...@dontsendmeemail.net> wrote:
>This is an excellent point. The average house probably
>has 100 square meters of unused space. If fitted with
>photovoltaic cells, that would produce peak power of 10kW,
>in sunny areas. If you just want it for heat, that's also a huge
>offset to your energy costs. Most houses in most areas could
>probably heat themselves year round with solar power alone.
I knew someone with 2 solar water panels on their roof. A pump
circulated the water under the (stone tile) floors to warm them and
was the water source for small, high efficiency heaters in the kitchen
and bathrooms.
>There's not much help for Seattle that way, but most Western and
>Southern cities could produce a huge amount of power that way
>with effectively zero footprint.
Who cares? It relieves some of the load of production and
distribution. No single energy resource needs to become the "oil" of
this century.
>Add to that, the roof of every public and private building
>has hundreds to thousands of square meters of roof space.
The walls of skyscrapers. The glass windows can be interspersed with
glass covered solar panels. Even if they don't operate at high
efficiency, the'll add something back into the grid, so to speak.
>Presently, the barrier is initial cost. It takes years to pay
>off the cost of such a system. But in the near future, perhaps,
>houses and new business buildings will be built with solar
>roofs from the get-go.
Given the proper tax incentives, builders could be induced to offer
such systems as a very low cost option in new homes. Consumers could
get tax credit also for selecting it.
Still doesn't get us around the responsibility of not being wasteful
with our energy.