When the President and Vice-President extolled the company Enr1, they painted a picture of company creating the motive power for an electric-powered America. It was part of their strategy, not just to create jobs, but to “create whole new industries.” They were going to pick the winners instead of letting primitive capitalism pick the losers.
But it was all fantasy. As the Hill points out, Enr1 has just declared bankruptcy after spending $55M of the $118 million grant it received from the Department of Energy. “This was a difficult, but necessary, decision for our company,” Ener1 CEO Alex Sorokin said in a news release.
A press release on the company’s website said that unexpected business conditions forced it into difficulties:
“We moved aggressively to reduce costs and shift focus when the marketplace did not evolve as quickly as anticipated. Our business plan was impacted when demand for lithium-ion batteries slowed due to lower-than-expected adoption for electric passenger vehicles,” continued Sorokin.
Bloomberg notes that “GM’s Chevy Volt Misses 2011 U.S. Sales Goal as Safety Probed”. “GM is expanding production to 60,000 Volts this year with 45,000 of them earmarked for the U.S. The Volt is being investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration because its batteries caught on fire in the weeks following three government crash tests.”
“The story that GM gave us that Volt sales were constrained by supply doesn’t hit the nail on the head. It was constrained by demand,” said Jeremy Anwyl, vice chairman of Edmunds.com, an automotive research website based in Santa Monica, California. “GM asked the dealers to sell the demonstration models but it didn’t seem to make a difference.” …
Chevrolet dealers may struggle to convince mainstream buyers that the car’s gasoline savings justify the $31,645 price after federal tax credits, said Jim Hall, principal of 2953 Analytics Inc., a consulting firm.
“It takes a tremendous amount of thought for buyers to understand the value of the Volt,” said Hall, who is based in Birmingham, Michigan. “The value is there but it’s a hard thing for Chevy to sell.”
Although Audi of America chief says ‘that anybody who buys the car is an idiot’ because ‘no one will be willing to pay the expected $40,000 base price of the Volt when the cars it’s competing with are $15,000 less’, he is definitely wrong because “General Motors will buy a Chevrolet Volt back from any owner who is afraid the plug-in extended-range electric car will catch fire, the company’s CEO told the Associated Press today.”
Here’s Vice President Joe Biden at another speech mispronouncing Enr1 as Enron 1.
How to Publish on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99
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Ok Roughcoat you got me — I was the 2nd gunman on the Grassy Knoll.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC9y4b3MAuk
Ok Roughcoat you got me — I was the 2nd gunman on the Grassy Knoll.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doWfS0PH5Pg&feature=related
There’s a reason why one of the names proposed for the Houston (Dis)Astros when they move to the AL in 2013 is the Enrons.
Enr1=Enrone
What an unfortunate name.
O/T: Richard, you don’t need any suggestions for topics to tackle.
BCers, however, bring an interesting and thought-provoking range of experience, observation and insight to puzzling issues.
With that in mind, does anyone have thoughts on BHO’s new proposals for higher ed? He touched on some issues in the SOTU and is stumping in the hinterlands insisting the Feds must provide financial rewards/penalties for schools based on their ability to reduce tuition rates (or at least raise rates more slowly)?
Are there pros to this that I can’t see?
When the Mafia would get a loan to buy a store, then sell everything in the store at a steep discount and then sell off all the store fixtures and leave taking the cash they made with them and the the guy or organization who lent the money with zip, it was called a “Bustout.” When the Government does it, it is just market circumstances.
There is nothing wrong with an electric car that an internal combustion engine won’t fix.
The problem with electric cars
Is that they’re all from DC
Where Washington has put in czars
Who don’t know ass from AC
Electric cars date from before
And disappeared because they
Were slow in getting to the shore
And bottled up the causeway
The steamer now that was the cheese
Some water and it’s loaded
With pressure up it sure did please
Until the thing exploded
Then cars were run on gasoline
Performance was upgraded
To speeds not heretofore been seen
And drivers were elated
But now the government insists
That we go all electric
With driving range, with some assists
To calculate in metric
For freedom lost will not return
They’re banning incandescents
And ‘cause there’ll be no gas to burn
They’ll ban anti-depressants
And force us all to drive with smiles
At thirty miles an hour
And travel only fifty miles
Before we’re out of power
Anybody think that maybe the entire Obama Admin is just a gigantic version of “Springtime for Hitler”?
I mean can’t you just see these guys back in 2008 saying, “Ha! The poor fools will be so happy to get rid of us after 4 years that they’ll never even wonder where all the money went! All we have to do is be the worst adminstration ever! It’s foolproof!”
Here come the SkyNet HKs:
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2012/01/the-future-of-warfare.html
….Mr. Obama is not ” picking winners and losers “. He’s only picking losers………..hasn’t picked a winner yet.
Mr. Obama is not ” picking winners and losers “. He’s only picking losers………..hasn’t picked a winner yet.
The interesting question is why he could not do better than 50-50. Suppose you had a complete idiot choosing from a selection at random. He would normally come up with a few accidental winners. But Obama is doing so badly you wonder why.
So something is biasing Obama’s selections toward failure. One possible reason is that when an economic enterprise relies on government for success it is probably unviable otherwise. Rather than being the “best projects” they are possibly the worst projects.
The administration admits to that possibility when it says that it is investing in “high risk projects”, which means if anything, a greater than average chance of going belly-up. But not every high-risk project is necessarily bursting with potential. There are any number of Nigerian emails in my inbox which are definitely high risk propositions, but are unlikely to return on my investment. Of course, if I had a few trillion dollars to waste, I might just see whether the recent offer by Miss Morine Lorna Laboso, whose father was the a manager with CNPC oil company at the Khartoum refinery in Sudan might actually give me the $9.4 Million she had as inheritance from her late dad.
In a way the analogy is quite accurate. President Obama is choosing to answer the spam economic proposals which the market may have rejected, or only looked at because of a government guarantee.
it’s because all of the companies in that product space are non-viable. the technology just isn’t competitive yet. all that money would have been better spent on a manhattan project for electric vehicles, to invent new technology that was competitive. of course then obama would have given it to the chinese.
RWE:
I read your note concerning the Polish veteran you knew. I am indeed interested in finding out more, and many thanks for offering to share the information. Please contact me by sending an email to Richard.
Richard, I hope you don’t mind?
Obama isn’t a complete idiot; he’s an educated fool, which is worse.
It will be a pleasure to pass along the note. But there may be a few hours delay as I am in a very different time zone.
9. Viktor (not that Victor)
Never happen. The technology is almost there, the politics isn’t. I have an old Navy buddy that been working on Cylons for years. We have this argument a lot.
The Cylon builders think that by taking the pilot out of the loop, they can save money. There is no evidence to support that conclusion. They make the mistake of thinking that it’s the pilot that drives the cost of a warplane. It isn’t.
Most of the cost of the F-22 is greed. Greed on the part of the board at Lockheed, greed on the part of the politicians that appropriate monies, greed on the part of the stockholders. No dollar a year man anywhere in the loop.
Thas is a different issue from cost effectiveness. A B-2 cost over 1 Billion Dollars. It is cost effective from a mission POV when a “normal” fighter bomber costs over 50 million and it takes 2 dozen to get the mission done. Any of the “Cylon” designs will cost as much or more then the F-22.
From the political side, the MIC has sucked all the blood out and Congress is balking at 200 million dollar aircraft. There is no way in ‘ell that they will pay for 250 million dollar Cylons. Ain’t gonna happen and those that think it will are delusional. There are warehouses full of weapons systems killed by bad press. Why add another?
The interesting question is why he could not do better than 50-50. Suppose you had a complete idiot choosing from a selection at random. He would normally come up with a few accidental winners. But Obama is doing so badly you wonder why.
The story with conventional venture capital is that it fails 9 times out of 10 and gets well on the one winner. I’m sure Obambus has that in mind. I’ve been in and around a couple of startups funded by the biggest, most sophisticated VCs. Their rule is generally, do not interfere no matter how bad it looks, they buy the ticket and take the ride.
The electric car technology is *just* short of viable, it was not even close with lead-acid batteries, the lithium-ion battery seemed pretty promising, and the lithium-air batteries might be better yet … if anyone could get them to work. I see some families are buying a Nissan Leaf (or Volt?) as a second car for shopping and whatnot, no doubt replacing a Prius, occassionally replacing little electric golf carts that have been sold as eco-vehicles for some years.
… anyway, I can see a well-meaning progressive talking to serious people and coming up with a plan to fund battery production, it would seem to have at least a 1/10 chance of success … except that I cannot see why it would not immediately be undercut by much cheaper Chinese or other offshore production. Or, if a conventional VC would fund it if it had a real 1/10 chance of success (net of Chinese competition), the government agent would either IGNORE the China factor, or else say, OK, it’s only 1 in 20, but that’s WHY we should use public money, we will STILL get well on the one winner – and this might still be considered rational by the accountants and actuaries involved.
–
Remember also that the real greenies like Obambus don’t require green projects to meet competition, they can rationally believe it is OK if green energy is 2x as expensive because of its long-term virtues, namely saving the planet. Could be 10x for all they care, or 100x, it’s a “forced move”. In which case, the recent disappearance of global warming is surely inconvenient – most of these project have been kicking around for five to ten years, when the AGW meme was much stronger.
I do say there is no AGW even while I’m sitting in a California that has had no winter and looks to have some serious drought conditions coming up this year, btw, but:
No Need to Panic About Global Warming
There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy.
…
A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.
…
–
s @ 16: Most of the cost of the F-22 is greed.
Inefficiency, perhaps, but hardly greed. There are two huge overheads, first pushing the state of the art, and second maintaining the defense tech infrastructure. These are challenging enough, but of course doing this or anything on government dollars bloats all operations. It’s well known that if we wanted to produce thousands of F-22 the unit cost would drop by 80%, the overhead being spread much thinner. Blame the system, not the players. Blame our opponents for being goat herders. In economic terms, compared to the banksters, the execs and stockholders of defense companies are basically dirt farmers.
There’s already a capital market for high risk ventures. If the investors in that market are willing to accept a 70, 90 or 95% failure rate given the likely payoff if it hits, these firms are not even making that standard.
Some, like ENR1, may have been close enough to that cutoff such that government money when added makes reduces the exposure of those firms to that of normal high risk venture. But surely the government subsidy or grant represents the gap they need to cross in order to play even in the high stakes casino.
As long as government realizes it is very good at spending money, but not at making a profit that is a good thing. It can concentrate on spending money where no return is even apparent, such as in pure knowledge or basic research, or on goods like defense, peace and order or diplomacy. But why should the government get involved in commercializing a civilian product like a civilian car or batteries? Is it particularly good at making those decisions?
Probably not.
I would argue that rather than spend money which it is ill suited to invest the government would be better off leaving the money in the hands of the investors. Instead of taking the money in taxes in order to most likely squander it on projects they have little competence at a judging, why not leave the money in the system?
Government’s area of competence is by now well known. Things like national defense, border control, public infrastructure, public safety, etc, etc. are things it does well. This is the “core business” of government. That’s what they are “world class” in. President Obama’s strategy appears to be exiting these core businesses in order to use the money on ventures government has little likelihood of knowing anything about.
w @ 18:
Just to be clear, I totally agree that it is inappropriate for government to throw billions into the green arena, other than by raising support for basic research as they have always done. But if they want to play doctor, I was just elaborating the rules they think they are playing under.
Government’s area of competence is by now well known. Things like national defense, border control, public infrastructure, public safety, etc, etc. are things it does well.
Does WELL? Not particularly (just ask stoicheion!) but these are natural monopolies, just too hard to break up and franchise out to private enterprise.
So then of course you ask, so what *else* is a natural monopoly, hmmm? Once upon a time, that was the excuse for AT&T, too. But the rule is, monopolies suck, natural or not.
“The electric car technology is *just* short of viable”
As technology, maybe. There are other factors, chief among them the fact that very few people buy an automobile for transportation. Prestige is the #1 reason people fork over their money. Ego-bo or keeping up with the guy across the street. Excitement is also a big seller, as is sex appeal. None of these reasons are rational.
That is why in the car bizz, we sell the sizzle, not the steak.
How do Chevy Volt sales compare to Chevy Camaro sales?
http://www.insideline.com/ford/mustang/mustang-vs-camaro-race-for-sales-continues.html
pinched
“Just the Facts:
* Ford sold 8,974 Mustangs in June.
* Chevy sold 7,540 Camaros in the same month.
* Camaro is more than 6,000 units ahead of the Mustang in annual 2010 sales.
http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/transportation/stories/chevy-volt-and-nissan-leaf-sales-figures
pinched
“The other much-anticipated vehicle release of late 2010, the Chevy Volt, fared better in sales than the Nissan Leaf despite its higher price tag. During December 2010, Chevy sold 326 Volt models. Determining the owner of the first Chevy Volt is a bit more difficult than figuring out who owned the first Nissan Leaf.
So the tired old Camaro sold 7,540 units in June of 2010 while 6 months later the brand new volt sold 326 units. That had to be shocking. Pun intended.
With a brand new model release, you look to see 50 to 60 thousand sales. It is normal to back log the units. That allows the dealers to hold the sticker.
God I’m reminded of that time back in the 1990s when Republicans, at least almost the majority of em’ in Congress, pretended to give a damn about deficits, nation building in the Balkans, etc etc.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/72084_Page2.html#ixzz1kj0qllxj
There was another thing that bothered me about the Enr1 and Solyndra debacles which I couldn’t remember till now. But it’s come back. The Market for Lemons, a 1970 paper by the economist George Akerlof. It discusses information asymmetry, which occurs when the seller knows more about a product than the buyer.
The interesting thing to notice is that “lemons” like Solyndra and Enr1 can distort the government-sponsored Green Energy business. It becomes a “used car lot” with Barack Obama as its chief used car salesman.
Suppose I were to come up with some carbon trading or Green Energy that really, really worked. I would get less than I might have for my really good idea because those lemons have been allowed onto the lot. At some point government support becomes a negative signal, and I am better off seeking a private sale than vending it through Honest Barack’s.
After Chevy Volt debacle, it will be that much harder for truly viable electric car to get going. “Oh, another Chevy Volt”. So you really wonder whether the President is doing “Green Energy” any favors.
The question is why do we want Barry Obama or any other politician running a venture capital firm with US tax dollars? If I wanted to invest in a venture capital firm I would go with Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway.
What the government is doing – taxing people and then engaging in venture capital investing with the taxed dollars is downright immoral. I wouldn’t be happy if Romney were president and did it either though I would have a lot more confidence in his ability to make sensible investing decisions since he is a professional investor with a proven track record.
I would be ok if the govt wanted to set up a system of incentives where the successful company would get the money AFTER they completed the task it hand, whether it be the first company to build a pogo stick that can get a person to the moon and back or whatever. If one has the option to reward after performance (which I presume that our govt does) rather than try to pick winners up front, why wouldn’t you choose that incentive every time?
Sorry for the attempt at logic.
The cost of the government interference in the market isn’t just the debt or the people ruined by the bankruptcies. It is the opportunity cost. What else could have been done with the money and the talent and the time? It is always the opportunity cost.
One day we may drive around on electric cars. Markets based in appropriate niches will provide the opportunities for experimentation. Failure will precede success. Israel may be a good place for such development. While there may be a market in America there is a special hurdle for anything wearing a GM badge. To me, and modestly I suspect many others, GM is stolen property and anyone buying a GM car is a receiver of stolen goods.
re: #25 and ” Israel may be a good place for such development. ”
and so it is – http://pjmedia.com/blog/is-israel-making-the-electric-car-work/?singlepage=true
and Denmark is next – both have small compact countries, short urban driving distances.
and – similar, very high, car-fuel-tax structures and central government planning — so it is still heavily tax-funds subsidized – but is the step forward in proof-of-concept in the real world – solving the ‘refueling – time ‘ problem of electric only cars
Solyndra and Enrn1 are just political slop for the crony capitalists feeding at the trough. The slush money flows to favored sponsors and supporters like the labor unions. If Romney or Gingrich get elected, the slop will flow in a little different direction (like moon bases), but the Fed will still make sure that trillions flow to bail out their crony capitalist allies, the big banks. The MIC will continue to enforce petrodollar preeminence. Obamacare will also continue and the slow enslavement of the people will continue. The wall street banks own all the candidates except Ron Paul, and that is why he will not be allowed to win even the nomination. This will go on until the rest of the world realizes that they don’t want to support the US empire any more, and they all decide to stop owning dollars.
But Katusa misses one other important point: As the pool of petrodollars grew for the last few decades, each successive dollar printed by the Fed diluted the growing pool of dollars less. This effect has allowed the Fed to subsidize these massive budget and trade surpluses by growing this international pool of dollars that was begging to be diluted. It is similar to how a growing debt bubble in the beginning brings a large increase in GDP but as the debt increases exponentially eventually each dollar of added debt brings less, and eventually negative real GDP growth.
So the US is simultaneously sitting on a debt bubble and a dollar bubble and when one goes so will the other. The elites know this, and this is why Bernanke is extending ZIRP into 2014 and this is why there is so much sabre rattling in the Gulf of Hormuz (pour encouragez les autres).
wretchard #11
“The interesting question is why he could not do better than 50-50. Suppose you had a complete idiot choosing from a selection at random. He would normally come up with a few accidental winners. But Obama is doing so badly you wonder why.
So something is biasing Obama’s selections toward failure. One possible reason is that when an economic enterprise relies on government for success it is probably unviable otherwise. Rather than being the “best projects” they are possibly the worst projects.”
josh #17
“Remember also that the real greenies like Obambus don’t require green projects to meet competition, they can rationally believe it is OK if green energy is 2x as expensive because of its long-term virtues, namely saving the planet. Could be 10x for all they care, or 100x, it’s a “forced move”.”
“Provably unviable”. Words that must always be considered when dealing with the public sector, even more so with rent-seeking “private” companies.
Unhitched from competition and the perceived possibility of failure, and imbued with the feeling that the money will always be there, people do not act in rational ways and do not have the psychological constraints required to do the right thing, or to coninuously evaluate funcitonality.
Hell, some private sector companies can’t do it, why would we think that government entities with even less guidance from the invisible hand could do better?
Like the old nostrum says, public sector jobs aren’t real ones because there is no competition and you can’t be fired outside of committing a felony.
Brings to mind a friend – a successful small businessman in the authentic private sector – who had an in-law who wanted to get into biodiesel production. The in-law got a huge state subsidy to get set up. He consulted with my buddy for some financial and planning advice. My buddy told him flat out it wasn’t viable because absent the subsidy the project would just about break even. But the alt guy went ahead anyways. When the state didn’t renew his grant, he went out of business in a matter of months.
Unexpectedly.
Government, and rent-seekers, are largely filled with people who want to “force” things into being that can’t exist or don’t deserve to exist. If they did, someone in the private sector would likely already be doing them.
Normally not into this sort of thing, but I’m compelled to point out that at this late date, posting stuff from Lew Rockwell is a factually proven marker of unhingedness.
Might as well post something from Lyndon LaRouche. Or Noam Chomsky. All are equivalent.
Did Rockwell write that bit before or after his tryst with Cindy Sheehan, CH?
A good argument can be made that government funding of research is for the public good. The disconnect comes when government becomes venture capitalist for commercial enterprise.
It is no coincidence that that the lost billions or so we already know about was money handed out to political favorites – people who will help the politicians handing out the money stay in power. This game is as old as history.
With Obama it is screamingly obvious that he intends to continue to empty the public treasury to keep the public sector unions and the army of entitlement recipients voting D. It’s as simple as that.
If the majority of American voters think that a few dollars of public money is better for them than living in a civil society based on opportunity and personal responsibility then so be it. The problem is not the politicians. They are the symptom. The problem is the low culture of the public.
“So something is biasing Obama’s selections toward failure.”
I work in the public sector (hey, at least its “defense”), after some time in the private sector, after a career in the military. I am in an operations shop so I get to see a little of everything that goes on. One of the things that consistently amazes me are the cost estimates that come by for various proposals that are generated by the directorates. Amazing because their ROMs NEVER include labor costs, either the government’s or the contractor’s (of record). Labor costs are assumed I guess, people get paid no matter what. It is the mindset of people who have always been in government and who have never had to worry about making payroll every two weeks, which to me was always the most stressful part of the private sector. In the private sector, if you don’t make make payroll, you get fired, or go to jail. Obama and his advisers do not have that perspective and come exclusively from a mindset where payroll is assured and risk is fully subsidized by someone else (taxpayers). They have never had to go to board of directors and convince them to underwrite a project with all of its attendant risk. They think risk is something you assume with other people’s money (taxpayers) who have no say in the matter. I don’t claim to know much, but I do know if you are incapable of identifying all costs in any endeavor, you will never be able to properly evaluate an enterprise or make it work (profit). And if no one is held personally accountable for results, I suggest you will be rather cavalier in your evaluation of what will succeed. My number one rule as a project manager was: everything costs money and I was directly accountable for results.
Government should stay out of the private sector. Providing cash incentives for major technological advances would be a way to direct research. Below is a case in point.
Probably the finest 18th century instrument maker was the Englishman Jesse Ramsden. His specialty was accurate scale division. Here’s a small brass sextant that Ramsden made shortly before his death in 1800. Ramsden’s major achievement was to invent a highly accurate “dividing engine”—the apparatus used to divide the scale into degrees and fractions of degrees. His design was considered so ingenious that the British Board of Longitude awarded Ramsden a prize of 615 pounds—in 18th century terms, a small fortune. His “dividing engine” now resides in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
It should be noted that actual payment of the award took a long time (years).
“this is why there is so much sabre rattling in the Gulf of Hormuz (pour encouragez les autres).”
NO. Your sabre rattling is being done by the Muslims because their good book tells them they have to convert the world to Islam. They rattle their sabre at America because the USA is the biggest wall between Islam and converting the world to Islam. Uncle Sam has a very fine Sabre of his own and when ignorant goat herders rattle theirs he will occasionally show them what a first class sabre looks like. Not often enough IMHO.
30. Peter Boston I agree. Reasearch is good but the line should be drawn there. Results of that research should become public property and the venture boys take the ball from there.
I would like to see the EPA changed from a regulatory body to a center for government research on the environment. Let the goobermint find the tech for better batteries then make it public so the engineers can design autos using that thechnology. No regulations though. Right now the EPA acts on the body politic as a 4 cheesburger a day diet.
Meanwhile, California ( the Land of fruits and nuts) is working on passing a law that requires a certain percentage of new car sales be zero emission vehicles. This will destroy retail auto sales in California. At least we will get some idea of where the public is on this issue. The voters retire the politicians and there will be a line in the sand. Obama’s goal for taxes is 100%. The left will get as close to that as the voters allow.
Wretchard #18:
An observation I have come to, after only 25 years of active duty in the USAF and 11 years working for defense contractor is that the Federal Govt can be good at something it does for itself but cannot be any good at something it does for someone else.
Michael Moore argues that the Fed Govt should take over the nation’s health care because “the government won WWII, and that was successful wasn’t it?” Now aside from basic issues of roles and reponsibilities related to the Constitution, the Fed Govt won WWII because it was doing something for itself. Rather than fighting WWII on the behalf of the American people, the Fed Govt fought WWII for its own benefit – to prevent the US Govt from being done away with – and used the American people to do so, who fought the war, died in the war, and paid for it all. Admittedly, it was a very good thing the Fed govt won the war but that was done on its own behalf. Fortunately they had enough brains not to tell everyone in 1945 that henceforth everyone would drive Jeeps and 6X6 trucks, ride in B-17′s for air travel, and use Shermans to plough fields and build roads. In contrast, in India the Govt armories kept building the WWI pattern Enfield rifle from 1920 right up through the 1960′s, long after their own military had adopted modern autoloading rifles.
Similarly, the Moon Race was done to benefit the Fed Govt – but when the Fed Govt turned those resources to commercial space launch via the Space Shuttle it was an expensive disaster that set up back at least 30 years.
27. ConfederateH
I’m still intrigued by your recent comment about the Jewish-dominated media. Would you care to elaborate on that point? Oh, wait, never mind–I can read all about it at the Stormfront website, or in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
So, POTUS suggests that he is willing to act on limiting congressional inside trading, someone should ask him about limiting inside lending, or is it inside giving away? I will refrain from referring to what is going on as “inside blowing” since we all know that it was addressed by a previous administration.
nmu @ 29: Normally not into this sort of thing, but I’m compelled to point out that at this late date, posting stuff from Lew Rockwell is a factually proven marker of unhingedness. Might as well post something from Lyndon LaRouche. Or Noam Chomsky. All are equivalent.
Just want to second that, and thanks for reminding me that Rockwell is not LaRouche, I tend to use a single bucket in my head for all nutballs.
CH @ 27, stuff from that link is just nutball word salad, makes no sense at all. Yes we have the dollar reserve linked to our debt bubble, but I’ve been watching this in slack-jawed awe for over twenty years, and nobody planned it, it just sort of growed, and to this day nobody has a quantitative model for it, afaik. And now the world is trapped in it, like one of those, um, what are they called, … yeah chinese finger traps. Most of all because, if several trillion in sovereign wealth funds and similar private funds all tried to abandon the dollar, they’d take a 50% haircut getting out, a 50% haircut inflating some alternate currency, and a 50% haircut from reduced US demand, and a 50% haircut from cutthroat competition for remaining demand, totalling about a 95% loss. That’s just Adam Smith’s invisible hand, friend, not the gnomes of Zurich. “Better than my plans, better even than my hopes,” as Gandalf said about something not at all similar.
W @ 18 and RWE @ 34
Government’s area of competence is by now well known. Things like national defense, border control, public infrastructure, public safety, etc, etc. are things it does well. This is the “core business” of government. That’s what they are “world class” in.
I dont agree with the extensive list of competencies that W. ascribes to the gummint. I have observed that the only things the government does well is to kill people and break things and then only when provided with unlimited amounts of resources with which to do it.
The Moore citation is apt but wrong. It illustrates my point precisely. Moore simply cant reason well. He doesnt understand that supreme competence in one area doesnt translate into competence in another. Tom Brady is a long way from a neurosurgeon
Currently, the only vehicle sold in the USA which is all both all-electric and has a chance of economic
viability is the new all-electric motorcycle from Zero Motorcycles:
http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/zero-ds/#
Pretty cool bike, both off-road & on-road, roughly equivalent to a Yamaha 500cc dirt bike, and only costs around $10,000. With a range of only 50 miles when it has to be re-charged, and top speed of only 67 mph, has some limitations, but still it charges up by plugging into a standard 115 volt outlet and charges back to full in about 4 hours. All-electric motorcycles have much more actual market potential then all-electric cars.
As for electric cars, who wants these underpowered-overpriced girlie cars? Does anyone ever watch Mecham Muscle Car Auto Actions on cable TV? At venues all over the USA, hundreds of middle aged men take turns bidding $55K, $65K, $75K or $150K to buy and own the muscle cars of their youth (example: 1970 Pontiac GTO with 400+ cubic inch engine, totally restored and detailed to brand-new mint condition just sold on the show last night for $77K) Cool if you want to burn rubber in the first three gears while going from 0 to 60mph in 3.7 seconds. And note, these muscle cars probably get around 10 mpg in the city, but again, who cares?
And at the upper end of the luxury car market, back in 2008 Mercedes Benz came out with its first 500 HP production car, one of the SLS class. Now since then, in consideration of mother earth, etc etc, surely MB has reduced the Horse Power, since we are all going so green, blah blah, blah. Actually no, the 2012 Mercedes Benz SLS sedan features one model with 550 Horse Power and top speed of 199mph, right out of the show room. Better not tell Obama about this.
Unless a large portion of the male auto-buying public are castrated, electric cars are never going to compete.
bc@39:
And, electric motorcycles aren’t going very far without the macho engine exhaust noise. / erc
Wretchard, thank you for the inside the loop explanation of Filipina mindset with regard to progeny production. I agree that the Filipino race and culture will endure throughout time.
During WWII the govt provided virtually unlimited funding to the producers. All companies that were capable of production were converted to war machine production. This is why you have model 1911 pistols with the singer stamp and such. This led to the producers building up a large amount of engineers and designers and technicians with extra time on their hands and the means with which to explore and experiment and most importantly invent new technologies. It was a moment of divine providence.
Then the war ended and we had all of this energy and technology but no where to put it to use and the human element was plain tired and worn out on a society level. Then along came the moon mistress and we were off! And while the producers were distracted by the mistress the rot set in and we began the trip down entropy lane. Today we have arrived at the beginning of the push for a new socialist utopia. We can all see the coming days. We know what is coming. We know the cost that we be extracted from humanity. What we won’t do is what is required to alter course. One out of four planes made the choice to rush the cabin and overpower the hijackers. And that plane still crashed without survivors.
Do we make the hard choice as LeoIII suggests and go to the roots of socialism and pull them asunder with the bloodless use of the ballot? Or do we wait until we have to flood the garden with the blood of our children to restore the ground and make it fertile again for the next arc of human history. Do we really have free will? Or are we just biological cogs in the grand scheme of the universe, doomed to repeat the cycle just as the forest does?
A sidenote: To me as an outsider to the Jewish culture and community. I have noticed that in general these people are imbued with the best qualities. They have the drive, dedication, determination and will to succeed and they nurture these qualities inside the family unit and insulate them with the extended family unit. They care about their progeny enough to make the sacrifices to teach their children well and expect their children to make the sacrifice to succeed. There are exceptions to this general rule to be sure. But they get it right at a rate of 70 percent or so. A vastly higher rate than most other cultures.
There is no Jewish conspiracy of anything. What there is, is a bunch of less than smart people who have to put the blame of their failure on someone other than themselves. GOD bless the Jews and anyone else willing to make the sacrifices required to be successful and prosperous.
If I wanted to invest in a venture capital firm I would go with Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway.
Warren is a crony-capitalist.
Venture capital is poles apart from his scheme.
——
For those unaware: B-H is a Personal Holding Company ( PHC ) staying just, barely, outside of the IRS trigger. (!)
It has extremely concentrated ownership — the key to a PHC.
The reason that Buffett HAS to sell back shares to BH, along with Munger, et. al. is to prevent the concentrated ownership from crossing over into PHC, de jure, and to suffer a brutal rise in taxation.
BH is massively invested in insurance companies because they are a tax dodge for Warren. It’s too complicated to log in a blog — but insurance companies have their own sub-set of the income tax laws which permit them to stuff their accounts with suspended incomes ( deferred, pending estimated loses ) thusly able to ‘manage’ reported earnings.
These monies are investable — and grist for Warren’s mill.
——-
The fount of Warren’s wealth is the ESTATE TAX.
Not venture capitalism.
He arbitrages that tax at the death bed for the heirs. He is able to conjure up liquidity by way of taking LARGE, family owned/ private corporations public — in the guise of a slice of BH itself — or one of its wholly owned properties.
Thusly, See’s Candies was folded into Blue Chip Stamps….
—-
His other gambit is, and has been, riding the FIRE engine: Finance, Insurance, Real Estate — in the guise of US Bank and Wells Fargo.
Both of these banks are massively underwater, balance sheet wise. The Fedsury is propping them up, along with Moodys and Goldman Sachs by way of their income statements.
The ‘funny business’ Wells Fargo bought into — second and third mortgages in the Los Angeles real estate bubble — are a fright.
They are STILL posted to the books as ‘good money.’ They are utterly worthless. Even the first liens are in trouble!
This tally is in the billions, all in all.
—–
Please do NOT conflate Buffett with private capitalism.
Thank you.
@35. Roughcoat
Your link to the confrontation at the gates of mordor and your slur of Viktor was just plain mean. So is your post above.
But far worse than being mean, you have consistently shown yourself unable to formulate a coherent rebuttal to anything Viktor or myself have written. It appears that not only are you mean, but you are stupid too. And no one is laughing. I find it no surprise that you are unable to find employment. I certainly wouldn’t give a job to a mean and nasty idiot.
@Viktor: This is why the US is screwed. Even if Ron Paul won the election it is doubtful that he could keep up with the malicious idiocy of people like Roughcoat.
Roughcoat,
The Polish POW story has been forwarded.
If “green energy” was viable it would not be receiving government funding. There are plenty of rich liberals who could “save the planet, man” while making a mint if it was viable. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.
bc @ 39: http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/zero-ds/#
I see no acceleration figures? That’s half the point of driving a two-wheel around town. And if they omit it … then we Google and – uh-oh:
To verify the true range, they ran it from a full charge to stone dead – exactly 27.6 miles. Approximately 50% of the total distance was traveling over 60 mph. Top speed with a fully charged battery, lying on the tank, is 68 mph. 0-60 takes 11.35 seconds and the quarter mile passes by at 19.31 seconds at a speed of 66.86 mph. They feel that the bike is adequate as a commute vehicle, but lacks pulling power off road and they say getting started in a rut or up a hill in the dirt is virtually impossible.
–
sounds nfg to me.
se @ 45 has it: If “green energy” was viable it would not be receiving government funding. There are plenty of rich liberals who could “save the planet, man” while making a mint if it was viable. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.
Though I see no reason why a rich conservative wouldn’t save the planet, if it turned a profit. For that matter, a poor conservative would get rich by saving the planet, and all would be well!
–
As for nostalgic muscle-cars, the *vibe* is good but the machinery sucked, horrible mileage, pollution of burned and unburned fuel, bias-ply tires, no handling, ugh. Get yourself a new Cadillac CTS-V and blow any 1960s production cars off the road, or any of a dozen rice-mobiles. Modern technology is immensely better than 1960s, even most economy cars today blow away anything but the top rank from 1970, it’s not even close, and modern car reliability is immensely better, too. My friggin 4-cylinder Accord will give a 396 Malibu Heavy Chevy a run for its money. It’s embarrassing. Actually, now that you mention it, I’m amazed that there are not more economy cars with BAD acceleration. The average economy car in the 1960s did 0-60 in over twelve seconds. Let’s see if I can find numbers for a Toyota Yaris … yup, 10.7. Could probably gain 10% on mpg by cutting that down. The problem is, you have to be able to go 80mph on the freeway these days (when traffic is open, which is rare in Los Angeles!) or you’re a road hazard, I’m guessing that sets the lower HP limit on new cars. OTOH, 80mph is not legal … so it goes.
“The interesting question is why he could not do better than 50-50.”
The reason he picks losers for his Green energy spending program is that Obama does not do real due diligence on any of these government spending exercises. Since when has government ever done due diligence on its spending programs?
The government is not (and should not be) in the venture capital business – it is in the political capital expenditure business. No matter what they tell you, none of these schemes are investments. Obama is spending taxpayer money here. It’s government spending on a government Green energy program. Investments these are not. What we have here is a program for government spending.
In the past I have done valuations of forest properties for a number of different clients. In doing due diligence for a venture capital outfit you check out all the BS statements from the promoters, the “facts” they present and all the stuff they don’t mention. A valuation for a venture capital company is hard nosed and spends effort looking at the downside risk from several different angles. As part of looking at the downside, one company I did a project for wanted the specific names of prospective buyers who would form a resale market if the investment went south.
Other people – and I once brushed momentarily against Enron – are obviously trying to use you to get a favourable report so that they can justify some boondoggle. I wonder if Obama has any due diligence done? If he does, is it done by captured bureaucrats or “friendly” consultants?
43. ConfederateH
You did indeed comment about the Jewish-dominated media, did you not? And I can indeed find similar comments at Stormfront and in the Protocols. Your “coherent rebuttal” to my observation was to offer no coherent rebuttal at all, much less offer any proof that the media is dominated by Jews or provide any, uh, “coherent” analysis of what such domination entails. Instead you say that I am stupid and thus unable to find employment; and, further, you accuse me of exhibiting “malicious idiocy.”
And I’m the one who’s “mean.”
As for Viktor, whom I respect as a worthy adversary–not least because he possess a sense of humor which you so clearly lack–he can take care of himself and fight his own battles. You are not a worthy adversary. You are a Jew hater.
Re Viktor: I actually like him. I also agree with him on certain key issues. I do like to tease him–the same way he likes to tease the rest of us. I do not think he is too terribly perturbed by my teasing.
Herb #38:
As in “If we can put a man on the Moon then why can’t we:”
A. Cure all diseases and provide free health care for everyone.
B. Make all of the residents of the ghetto healthy, wealthy, and wise.
C. Build electric cars powered by solar cells and windmills.
D. Give everyone an ipod, smartphone, and a laptop
E. Feed all the hungry people in the world.
F. Provide everyone with their own home
G. End all housing foreclosures
H. Support education adequately
I. Send all children to college for free
J. Yada, yada yada, you name it, your favorite cause.
Of course most if not all of these tasks are not amenable to solution by even intellects as capable as Eggplant’s or Wretchard’s and probably not even Skynet’s – barring the development of the capability to reprogram both human DNA and human minds. And ironically, it was the manned space program’s attempt to do that favorite 60’s thing and “become relevant” that wasted hundreds of billions of dollars, killed 17 of its own people, – and, by the way, killed manned space programs. The very program that proved “yes we can,” in fact in reality simply proved we could not.
Stoicheon #16:
As for the “Greed” involved in the F-22 and similar programs consider the following case.
At one time there was a small but efficient airline named Republic. They were approached by the FAA, asking that they participate in a study to determine why they had such low overhead. They agreed and the FAA came up with a contract that included paying the airline a purely symbolic amount of money, like $100, since the government could not ask for such study support to be provided for free. The study was completed, and then a few months later the airline was contacted by a government oversight organization that said it had decided to exercise the terms in the contract to conduct a complete and detailed financial audit of Republic’s records. And the reason Republic was so efficient is that they did not have a large HQ staff waiting around to do such things; it was a major impact on them.
Now, if you were selling $10 hammers and found that kind of thing was required by a customer, would you NOT raise the price to, say $400 each or more, to cover that kind of an eventuality?
Slightly OT, but still under the general heading of “consequences of bad guvmint policy”:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/greece-politely-declines-german-annexation-demands
The fit is finally about to hit the shan in Europe. The Big Banks end game always was to take a piece out of you ( as in your best assets) when when they have trapped you in their debt trap web. Greece just told them to take a flying leap.
The negotiations may have finally, after two years, come to their logical conclusion: default for Greece. Now we will see if the FED rushes to the Euro Banks’ rescue at our expense in the aftermath of the default.
Josh@37: “I’ve been watching this in slack-jawed awe for over twenty years, and nobody planned it, it just sort of growed, and to this day nobody has a quantitative model for it, afaik.”
I’m no economist or financier, but I did take 3 economics courses in college and a couple of finance courses…and I don’t see that that story is a “nutball word salad” that doesn’t make sense. Frankly it’s a look at the geopolitical situation from an angle I hadn’t spent much time thinking about, and it makes some apparently nonsensical things start to make a bit more sense. Like our glorious Nobel Peace Prize winning president threatening countries that sell oil, and being at least as willing to use the military as Bush was in blatant contradiction to many of the things he spouted on the campaign trail.
Maybe you can educate me better, but it makes a lot of sense to me that if dollars are pitched as the means of selling petroleum, it could well kick off a race to the bottom, where massive amounts of cash could be repatriated nearly overnight and crash our currency. I’m not saying I know that’s what would happen…if I knew that, I’d prepare accordingly and not be worried. The problem is that I’m in full-on prep mode right now and trying to tell the future, but my crystal ball is broken…it would be a lot easier to prepare if I could have an idea of what the likeliest things to happen are. Right now as far as monetary issues, I’m working off the general theory that the more money is printed or repatriated on a permanent basis, the more inflation there is likely to be sooner or later. I’m still working on beans, bandaids and bullets, but at some point soon I’m going to start on the bullion…the only investment that I know can’t tank to zero and that I can control the risk on.
BTW, I didn’t find that article at Lew Rockwell, either.
Decades back, I was part of a group of filmmakers and video producers who formed a statewide organization in an eastern seaboard state. The trigger issue was state sales tax.
At that time the state revenue agents were under new orders to treat ALL video or film contracts as tangible sales, subject to sales tax reckoned from the full amount of the contract. Many folks had not been collecting sales taxes based on advise they’d received when they called agents at the state revenue offices.
Unfortunately, that advise was incorrect, and the state was not bound by the erroneous advice given by its own paid agents. So since they were beginning to stomp on individual producers for uncollected sales taxes, it seemed a good time to appeal to the legislators. With a few months of vigorous wheedling, we managed to get an official group organized, officers selected, and get a public meeting with a few members of a legislative subcommittee on sales tax.
These two state delegates listened to our stories very patiently for several hours as one producer after another explained that some contracts were pure service, consulting, delivering no tangible items, only research on histories, locations, costumes, costs, schedules, processes, equipment, technologies, et cetera. Such services could amount to tens of thousands of dollars, without producing anything beyond a range of prices and a target delivery date, which clients would happily pay, because of the industry reputation of the producer. The state had long accepted that architects’, doctors, attorneys’, and many other professionals’ fees were exempted from sales tax, and that many other states had enjoyed substantially increased revenues from film productions after exempting production services from sales tax.
Finally, one of these gentlemen seemingly from antebellum days interrupted to summarize the state’s response. “I want to thank you all for your carefully prepared testimony, but at the end of the day,” he drawled, “You have to understand that we are not obliged to be fair!”
It’s amazing how understanding how things really work can help you make a lot of choices.
“Now, if you were selling $10 hammers and found that kind of thing was required by a customer, would you NOT raise the price to, say $400 each or more, to cover that kind of an eventuality?”
Actually, this is one of those ‘big lie’ thangies.
First it was NOT a 10 dollar hammer. Never was. That 400$US hammer was needed to start a knock off cover on a valve fitting on a jet engine. The hammer had to be non-magnetic and non-sparking. It was used in an environment that was 50% jet fuel and very explosive and highly corrosive.
Before the ‘hammer’, Jet engine mechanics would take a 4″ copper tube and pound it flat, then machine a notcgh in 1 end. then one mechanic would position the notch end over a tab on the knock off cover and hold it there while another mechanic tried to hit it with a regular hammer.
The Reporter that broke the story had no idea how much a 4″ copper tube cost or that it could only be used twice at the most. He didn’t even consider that the alternative was a spark in a fuel saturated environment, producing an explosion that would kill at least one man and destroy a multi million dollar aircraft. None of that would have made a good story. No that 400 dollar hammer was the cheapest way to get the job done.
IIRC ( I never fooked with that part of a jet fighter) the knock off cover was for the ECM that controlled the throttle of the engine. It had to be adjusted while the jet was running. Sort of like fine tuning the carburetor right before you make your run.
The reporter involved was a commie bath-tard and his job was to make the military look bad. Nothing fair and balanced about it.
I think my pepperbox is empty. Ba bye.
Roughcoat: “I do not think he is too terribly perturbed by my teasing.”
Yes I can handle it, just as much as I can handle Josh’s ranting about H-1B indentured servants eliminating the incentive for many Americans to study STEM fields, and rambling about Bernanke and the banksters but always belittling supporters of the one candidate who has been willing to take them on and forced the other candidates kicking and screaming to at least say something about the Fed.
It’s almost as sadly amusing as watching Bryan Preston and the rest of the PJM writers whine about how the Establishment has suddenly turned its guns on Newt, and how so unfair that all is. Ditto for Mark Levin who issued rant after rant against Paul when it looked like he’d win Iowa accusing him of planning to run on a third party ticket when Paul’s brother, son and lots of other folks around him have said he has no such intention.
No you Stupid Party drones, you will not be able to blame the hated Ronulans when we get four more years of Obama, sorry.
So they found one anti-Semite out in Tucson who likes him, they paid off David Duke to endorse him as a plant, and engaged in all sorts of other tricks ranging from the stupid (CNN lady interviewing old woman who couldn’t reach Paul in a room full of 300 journos in New Hampshire) to the bizarre (Ron’s son Rand worships Aqua Buddha and is not a real M.D.) to the possibly fabricated (WaPost’s sources probably FOS).
But now they’re shocked, shocked that Elliott Abrams lied about something Newt said about Reagan twenty years ago?
What a bunch of ‘naive’ hacks all getting what they deserve. It reminds me of one of those Wretchard stories about one Filipino hood telling another how sincerely hurt he was by the latter’s betrayal.
End of thread, I had one duplicate comment so now I’ve hit 4.
“Your link… was just plain mean. So is your post above.”
WAAAAHHHH, somebody call the WAAAAHHHHmbulance!!!
Between this and the ZeroMotorcycle (oh WOW! 67 miles an hour! hoo-doggie!) I haven’t seen this much limp-wristed pansy-assery since Xerxes and his retinue pranced through “300″!!! Man up, for God’s sake. You’re givin’ the bar a bad name.
re: wws: common man, be cool. 67 mph is still pretty fast if you run in to a stop sign at that speed.
gotta admit it sounds like a fan or a sowing machine.
On the Unintended Consequences Front, we have this:
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/11/power_plant_closings.html
Sheer lunacy is breaking out in Oregon regarding a western port for American coal. The enviros make no sense whatsoever.
Although many, including denizens of this very site, insist that some good has happened because of them. They heard about it, and also were told about it, and a certain logic was pointed out to them.
So it must be true.
ASIDE: on the cultural front. I was dragged kicking and screaming to see _The Artist_, a very pretentious hoighty-toighty modern silent film that navel gazed on Hollywood. In other words, the film presented itself as a vehicle for everything that I intensely despise.
But I loved it. What a great film.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming …
52. Agoraphobic Plumber – I’m no economist or financier, but I did take 3 economics courses in college and a couple of finance courses…and I don’t see that that story is a “nutball word salad” that doesn’t make sense.
Making sense is the least of it. There’s investment advice at the bottom, the advice is “buy gold”, and the person citing it is promoting Ron P.; it has the all the gleeful gloominess of the foreign expert – all negative, no positive, leading statements, “just asking questions”, and finally the proposed collapse of the US economy ends on a cheerful bullish note. It’s essentially saying that the world is going to dump one fiat currency for another for reasons unexplained, but we had it coming. Who thinks, or invests, like this?
@48. Roughcoat
I believe the phrase I used was “heavily Jewish influenced MSM”. This shows how you have been beating a straw man. But lets assume I did say “Jewish-dominated”. Would that make me an anti-Semite who believes in your second straw man, the protocols of the elders (I have no idea what “stormfront” is).
What if I say the “Jewish dominated NY banks”? Does that mean I believe the protocols of the elders? If I say that Obama is the foodstamp president, does that make me a racist? If I say I hope the US stops military support for Israel, Egypt, Sudan, Korea, Japan and San Francisco does that make me a homophobic, transexualphobic, islamophobic, asian hating, anti-semitic racist? In that case, you must think that Belmont Club is a haven for bigots.
Why don’t you just drop the “jew-hater” witch hunt and stick with the facts. A quick google provides this result:
And he didn’t even mention the Sulzbergers at NYT.
re:# 39
the all-electric muscle car is impractical now, primarily do to fuel storage / battery capacity – thus range although a few have been built that can out-drag race any i.c.e. car – but have very low range – due to lack of ‘fuel’ capacity – electricity – and long ‘refueling’ time – recharging
wether this problem will be solved – I don’t know -
- I am not an advocate of all-electric cars, due to this low-’fuel’ storage problem – as well as the ‘refueling’ time problem.
however – electric driven wheels via hub electric motors, opens up some interesting possibilities – traction control – anti skid – immediate availability of full torque under control – no wheel spin, unless you want to – you could spin the 2 front tires in reverse – the two rear in forward – and build up a nice cloud of burnt rubber – add some Mexican jumping car hydraulic pumps – and you could make the car tap dance with all 4 wheels running in different directions at different speeds.
Diesel electric trains / ships – are common as they allow immediate torque application at very low rpm — they solve the fuel problem by carrying diesel fuel, which runs a generator of appropriate torque at a constant efficient speed – regardless of vehicle speed – the great advantage is – immediate application of full torque from 1 rpm to x rpm –
this could be applied to cars – a diesel generator running at a low efficient constant speed – directly applies electricity to 4 wheel hub-drive electric motors – under computer control which adjust for terrain, traction, braking forces and handling – 4 wheel 90 degree steering becomes possible, as there are no axels – pull up to a parking spot – turn the wheels 90 degrees – and crab sideways into the spot -
@61
What kind of weirdness would even compel a person to look up dumb stuff like that, never mind take the time to write it?
Stoicheion #54:
Yes, the $400 hammer case was a lie.
So was the $400 toilet set. It was in reality a replacement top of the toilet tank for the C-5, a very limited production item. I recall that in that same time frame I paid over $100 for a couple of flat plastic shower wall panels from Sears, made in the thousands.
Then there was the $175 ashtray for the Navy’s S-3. Someone pointed out that a replacement ashtray for any new car cost $40, for an item made in the thousands.
Then there was the quote of $3000 for two P-38 C-ration can openers. Nobody found out about that one because we never bought it; I stopped that.
Combined with the procurement bribe “scandals,” what all this was about was a Leftist DC assault on the DoD budget. They wanted the money to be spent on welfare.
But the fact is, the government imposes all kinds of requirements, both technical and bureaucratic, that drive up procurement costs.
“One of the things Ron Paul doesn’t understand is that there is no “trading with Cuba.” Many people don’t understand that. There is trading with the dictatorship, only. You cannot deal with any individual Cubans. You provide the dictatorship with dollars or euros, and the dictatorship in turn dispenses to individual Cubans a few worthless pesos.
And the dictatorship needs the dollars and euros, of course, as oxygen. This money is what keeps them going, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
When Ron Paul says that we are imposing our views on other countries, what he means is that we’re supporting democracy — i.e., the right of people to decide their government and their future for themselves. The only imposition is done by the tyrants.
When Paul says that we are dictating to other countries, what he means is that we favor the right of people not to be dictated to.
When Paul says that we are bullying other countries, what he means is that we’re standing up for the right of people not to be bullied — by the likes of the Castro brothers, Chávez, and so on.”
Jay Nordlinger Neocon (Joo lover)
I can’t say how many meetings I’ve been in where someone from the DOD has thrown a phone down on the table, and nowadays it would be an iPhone, and ask; “Why can’t we get a (specialized one-off build of a thousand in a lifetime)instrument like that?” Dah, cuz ya aint gonna amortize the cost over 10 million units?
The paperwork, CDRL’s, forms, reports, etc. for defense procurement are obscene. But they ensure that the money goes towards the public trust. They are used to police the suppliers and when the bullets start flying, it is a pretty good bet that the procured item will perform as required. The biggest abuses I ever heard of in the defense industry is when equipment is shipped to the wrong unit or put on the wrong ship. Sailors rather throw a $30,000 piece of equipment off the fan tail and use the case for a lunch box than have to explain to command why they have to ship something back into a system that is not set up for “returns”.
Wonderful article….thank you. It would be nice to know how much this bankrupt company donated to the Obama presidential campaign and the other two ‘green’ companies.
Wretchard:
Perhaps its just as well electric cars are not selling. After all, where is the electricity for them going to come from? Obama is opposed to nuclear power, opposed to domestic and imported oil, opposed to coal and opposed to natural gas. No one could seriously think wind and solar energy could possibly generate the required megawatts consistently and reliably. Large fleets of electric cars and other vehicles, assuming they were built, would simply overload the existing electrical grid, with very bad consequences.
So, if there is no power for such vehicles, and Obama does not want to make such power available, why build them at all? Obama’s energy policy is directly conrtradicting his electric car policy – unless you assume he is simply subsidizing green jobs for political reasons. It makes no economic sense, but I suppose it will help him buy votes.
They’ve been hyping electric cars for 100 years. About as long as they’ve been hyping Utopia through Democratic Socialism.
Here’s what a 1911 newspaper article said about electric cars:
“The designers of electric passenger carrying vehicles have made great advances in the past few years, and these machines have retained all their early popularity and are steadily growing in favor with both men and women. They are very handy for use in the cities, and numbers of the best known and most prominent makers of gasoline cars in this country use electric cars for driving between their homes and their offices.
The enthusiastic interest recently shown by the electric power companies all over the country in furthering the cause of the electric passenger vehicle assures a still greater use of these machines. In the past it was sometimes difficult to make arraignments to have electrics charged unless the vehicles were stored in a garage where owners of electrics were catered to, but this state of affairs has been changed. Now it is possible for an owner of an electric to install his own charging plant in his stable and the electric power companies are anxious to connect their feed wires to these individual charging plants.”
Here’s what a New York Times blog said April 23 2010:
“Jeffery Sachs who heads Columbia’s Earth Institute, added a note of impatience to the proceedings. He invoked the specter of global warming and the auto tailpipe’s role in hastening it, and said the electrification of the automobile “will have to happen a lot faster than such a complex process would normally require.” Effective public policy, he said, can help accelerate E.V. adoption.
“We are on the cusp of an historic worldwide transformation in transportation that starts in the world’s biggest cities,” Mr. Sachs said in an interview. “It’s important from a resource point of view and an environmental point of view.”
A pre-production Chevy Volt was parked on College Walk for the event. Tony Posawatz, the Volt’s line director, said the company was “on a very good glide path to deliver the car.” The first retail cars will be delivered in November, he said. The Volt plugs in and will be home charged; Mr. Posawatz said he was looking forward to “having a gas station in my garage.”
After 100 years of trying they can’t find a battery good enough for a decent electric car at a competitive price. Ener1 is just another failure in 100 years of failures. Modern electric cars are the same old story of an inferior product selling at an inflated price to save the planet. They should ditch the hype and quiet the noise from flapping lips until someone produces a battery that will do the job at a competitive price.
It took a long time to master powered manned flight under reasonable control – from the mythical wax-dripping Icarus to Richard Pearse in 1903 New Zealand (or various other Brazilian and European inventors) and the Wright brothers. I believe that after their non-turning plane in 1903 and a fly-in-circles plane in 1904, the Wright brothers produced the first practical powered, manned plane in 1905 that could do banked turns and fly for about 40 minutes.
There’s no reason why someone won’t invent the first practical electrical car that sells at a reasonable price. It just doesn’t seem to have happened in the past 100 years. Bring back the Wright brothers and they’ll do it.
Tee@60: “It’s essentially saying that the world is going to dump one fiat currency for another for reasons unexplained, but we had it coming. Who thinks, or invests, like this?”
Well…maybe it doesn’t make sense to dump one fiat for another if that’s all there is to it, but Yen, Euro (at least so far) and others are fairly stable. Wouldn’t it simplify transactions if they didn’t have to use the dollar as middleman? Or if gold or silver or platinum or whatever took the place of the dollar…a currency that has no counterparty risk, especially when the alternative is a counterparty who has a moonbat for a president, is kicking up a lot of dust in your neighborhood and is busy spending itself into oblivion?
Ron Paul has positions that are problematic for most people, but that doesn’t mean everything he says is dumb. Gold (and other precious metals) really ARE the only investment you can make and be guaranteed that your investment will NEVER go away. An ounce of gold in biblical times and an ounce of gold today, and at all times in between have bought roughly the same number of loaves of bread, for instance. When the stock and bond markets are rigged worse than a carnival game, that kind of security is really kind of nice…especially with all the money printing and other tricks going on.
Oh, the stories! I was once double paid for a government contract, went to the appropriate authority, and was told that he could accept my money, but there was no procedure for returns. His advice? Hold on to the money so if they asked for it back, you could return it. He also advised that if I was asked for the money, negociate a deal to pay it back ten dollars a month.
That was about 30 years ago. I’m still waiting . . . and the money is still drawing interest in my account, altho not much these days.
re: 69
if you stop thinking of ‘electrical drive’ cars from the silly and senseless ‘environmental’ point of view – and start thinking of them from the advantage of electrical 4 wheel hub drive under computer control point of view – they make a lot of sense –
advantages of the i.c.e.generator feeding 4 wheel electric hub-drive system
you can eliminate the conventional brake system – no fluids or tubing / mechanical discs and calipers – no friction brakes – no mechanicals
you eliminate the gear box – albeit it is replaced in position and weight by an electrical generator – no other mechanicals, fluids, gears
you eliminate the whole drive train – drive shafts – axels – CV joints – differentials, hub lockers – no mechanicals
you eliminate the belt-driven A/C – and the fluid fed Heating system – no mechanicals
you gain 360 degree individual wheel control, individual wheel speed, braking, direction – and immediate electric cabin heating and A/C
your power source – a conventional i.c.e. engine burning a conventional fuel of your choice – runs at a constant – thus – most efficient speed – long life, lowest mpg
you gain immediate access to maximum torque, and all wheel individual control – and no warm-up time -
you are though, at the mercy of computer control, the programer, and code –
such is modern life.
it seems the problem – is conceptual – Electric drive – separated from the idiotic political ‘environmental’ constraints – has a lot of real world advantages –
batteries are not practical – electric individual 4 wheel drive – powered by a generator driven by a modern conventional i.c.e – is.
You mean something Dr Ferdinand Porsche designed before WWII? For the Austrian Army? The first practical “go-anywhere” prime mover, a vehicle that produced electricity with a gasoline engine and fed it to motors in the wheels?
EVs don’t do ‘Winter’ nor ‘Summer’ … that’s what’s done them in.
Only Hawaii, the Virgin Islands and such can make do with their limitations.
FYI, ALL batteries lose power with declining temperatures. Even the ones in EVs.
The elimination of coal based electric power makes it too expensive to use for transportation.
Even as it stands, EVs don’t pay road taxes. That CAN’T last. We still need to fund road reconstruction.
Likewise, CNG cars will also have to pay road taxes.
The tax immunity of the rich can only last as long as the machines are restricted to rich man’s play things.
Any serious adoption MUST trigger a wholesale rejiggering of our road tax schemes.
#73 – yes – Ferdinand – one of those – ahead-of-his-time peeps – had the ideas, didn’t have the tech –
#74 – diesel-electric – no batteries, other than the starter batt that every car now has – and does, obviously, work in winters –
We have been pop-pressed into thinking of electric cars, – as some sort of ‘environmental’ solution – stop thinking of that – look at electric drive as having it’s own advantages – outside of any ‘environmental’ loonyness – not having anything at all to do with ‘environmentalism or saving the world’ or any of that crackpot political bulldung
all modern trains – and ships – use electric drive engines – they carry their own electrical generators – usually run on diesel – doesn’t matter – any fuel will do – runs a traditional internal combustion engine – which turns an electrical generator – which runs the props / wheels – nothing particularly modern about this –
what is modern – is the ability to control this 4wd, by computer.
70. Well…maybe it doesn’t make sense to dump one fiat for another if that’s all there is to it, but Yen, Euro (at least so far) and others are fairly stable. Wouldn’t it simplify transactions if they didn’t have to use the dollar as middleman? Or if gold or silver or platinum or whatever took the place of the dollar…a currency that has no counterparty risk, especially when the alternative is a counterparty who has a moonbat for a president, is kicking up a lot of dust in your neighborhood and is busy spending itself into oblivion?
Ron Paul has positions that are problematic for most people, but that doesn’t mean everything he says is dumb. Gold (and other precious metals) really ARE the only investment you can make and be guaranteed that your investment will NEVER go away. An ounce of gold in biblical times and an ounce of gold today, and at all times in between have bought roughly the same number of loaves of bread, for instance. When the stock and bond markets are rigged worse than a carnival game, that kind of security is really kind of nice…especially with all the money printing and other tricks going on.
I have nothing against gold, and the problem with RP supporters is a matter of noisy malcontents trying to effect an outcome. RP himself is almost a side issue and there’s no sense getting into it here. Our currency dominates trade because of scale and stability, but that doesn’t mean it’s compulsory, or that both the Yen and Euro aren’t already used to buy oil, or don’t exist anywhere as reserve currencies – they do. The article suggested we would, and did, go to war to preserve a preeminence that has been on the wane for some time now, and will probably end in my lifetime in favor of some IMF creation anyway. It’s fiction.
Neither the Euro nor the Yen are gold-backed. Nothing backs stock shares either, but people buy them anyway because the mutual goals of citizens – CEOs, cowboys, Cabinet members, little old ladies – are entwined in the market and thus vested in its maintenance. Currency is similar in that with so much trade, so many foreign entities holding our dollars, it’s impossible to isolate and imagine a sudden mass exodus happening. But all the same, if you want to hedge your bets, you can probably buy Yen, Euros, and gold within your city limits, then you have your own “currency basket” and you’re probably in better shape than Bank of America.
RE: petrodollars and currency baskets
This is an interesting subject to me. Katusa is not the first to make the argument, as noted by AP above. In fact, however, if you at his background, he’s a ‘quant’ – and a young one at that, not that it always matters, but grain of salt. It’s popular right now to apply mathematics and Information Theory to human behavior, but my gut isn’t comfortable with that version of history.
Tee makes a strong case – ‘scale and stability’ are not to be dismissed. I think I agree but only 52%/48%. I wish I had her (and Josh’s) confidence.
Two things come to mind – the Keystone XL pipeline and the 2008 financial collapse.
The pipeline will be built – 99%/1% sure of that but listening to the public conversation is discouraging. The proponents don’t even like the realignment; they refuse to acknowledge existing cases of fracking contamination of water wells, and the economic beneficiaries of Canada feeding China and SE Asian market growth (oh yes opening up new markets for the Bakken output too – actually the one pro-argument that isn’t completely nonsensical); and the number of permanent jobs is escalating on a daily basis from 25-50 to ‘thousands’ to ‘tens of thousands’ to ‘hundreds of thousands’. Shades of NAFTA. Anyway, my point is not to argue the pipeline, but to note the identical level of confidence. This pipeline is not only a good thing; it’s a sure thing (or maybe the other way around. The gossip I heard is that the delay was caused by terrorist concerns – a concern that feeds directly into the advisability of cutting the country literally in half with this project.) Second point is that the level of integrity in argument is notably missing. ‘Sure things’ come with baggage. Sad day when even mitigation strategies are being savaged for the sake of eventuation.
RE the financial collapse, once those layers got peeled back, so-called retail faith in western institutions was close to destroyed. My personal framework included bubbles and market contractions, short-term ‘activity’ with long-term direction, but never a 50% collapse with consequent decades long recovery, likely to be jobless and possibly coupled with gutting SS (and EPA.) Again, not to debate the subjects, but to note that industry ‘confidence’ counted for nothing and the retail investors who believed in the system got their livers handed to them.
To shorten the story, even though the petrodollars argument is suspect, and the rebuttal position more compelling, I would not be surprised to see something along the lines of a currency basket becoming at least an alternative reserve (I think that’s possible.) And that’s how it is done – with systems founded on ‘scale and stability.’