Have Faith and be a personal leader that YOU will carry the day.

Pickens believes 200,000 megawatts can be generated in the high-wind region around Oklahoma. Wind farms have already brough money into stagnating rural economies there.

Liquid fuel may always be expensive from now on, but electricity could be cheap, and our economy can adjust to that reality.

Wind and solar energy are irregular, and electrical energy is expensive to store on a large scale. So suppose the price of electricity varies on an hour-by-hour basis? A free market can adjust to that, and it even creates an incentive for people to develop energy storage, if you can make a profit by buying electricity when it is cheap and selling it back to the grid when it’s not. The free market could solve the energy storage.

For energy transmission; however, I think we need government help to permit building power corridors that permit power to be sold and shipped around the country. The current electrical grid is a mess.

(Good heavens, what a hassle posting this, I had to try three times…why is www.redstate.com still so broken?)

Pickens believes 200,000 megawatts can be generated in the high-wind region around Oklahoma. Wind farms have already brough money into stagnating rural economies there.

Liquid fuel may always be expensive from now on, but electricity could be cheap, and our economy can adjust to that reality.

Wind and solar energy are irregular, and electrical energy is expensive to store on a large scale. So suppose the price of electricity varies on an hour-by-hour basis? A free market can adjust to that, and it even creates an incentive for people to develop energy storage, if you can make a profit by buying electricity when it is cheap and selling it back to the grid when it’s not. The free market could solve the energy storage.

For energy transmission; however, I think we need government help to permit building power corridors that permit power to be sold and shipped around the country. The current electrical grid is a mess.

Forbes gives the example of somebody with a 30 year mortgage. In that situation a mark to market seems silly. However, what if you had a six month mortgage which you needed to roll over every six months? What if you only had 3% equity based on the original purchase price of the house? While an individual obviously can’t do this, it is my understanding that this is how a lot of financial institutions work.

In my example I think it is quite reasonable for the lender to insist on a “mark to market” before they roll over the loan. If the market price of the house has fallen then the borrower has to come up with cash.

Where things become murky is if the “market price” is based on a very small number of transactions. I believe the accountants have rules for this.

Part of that is developing our own oil and natural gas resources. Part of that is developing wind and solar power where they are appropriate to do so (it’s not everywhere). A big part of that is a renewed emphasis on conventional fission nuclear and a long-term emphasis on fusion nuclear.

We need to take back the grid and make it not only cheaper, but cleaner. The technology is here, the question is whether we’ll find the national will to do it.

Inexpensive power is the single most important ingredient to continued economic growth.

This macabre desire to see scalps is because the same bad actors behind this mess are still in charge. Mounting their severed heads on pikes in the Capitol Rotunda would serve two useful purposes:

1. It gets them out of the way so that the distortions they created to cement their powerbases can be destroyed

2. It warns those who come after that hubristic meddling in free markets invites dire consequences

There is a small chance that we get out of this situation by reversing at least some of the totalitarian slide into regulation-mania. There is a small chance that we face chaos and a breakdown of society. The question is whether it is worth risking the latter in a stand-off to achieve the former, or if we [most likely outcome] band-aid it and keep on sliding.

Chaos and a societal breakdown would suck, but at that point, there would be nothing better to do than to settle scores. Make a list.

I think the market can and must correct, but that doesn’t have to toss us into a depression. Let’s hope the “bailout” will permit the former and avoid the latter.

It’s funny to hear nut cases like Ron Paul talk about the gold standard. Any real fiscon knows the elements of Adam Smith, that the Wealth of a Nation depends is created by the productivity of its people. Get Americans back on their feet, and our economy will boom.

I think energy is also at the heart of this problem. Energy amplifies human productivity, and there is plenty of correlation between times of cheap energy and booming econpmy. North Sea oil saved Europe from the stagnation of its socialist economy, and now they are facing recession as that oil has passed its peak.

I hope people are listening to folks like T. Boone Pickens. There is plenty of cheap energy to be had, but we need to encourage it and we need to build the infrastructure to transport it.

Rules 1-3 are death, taxes and gravity.

Let’s use the KISS method for inattentive voters. See a D, don’t vote for it. Better odds than Vegas house odds.

SEN. GRAHAM: Yeah. As I understand it, about 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning, I was in the House, meeting with House Republicans to talk about what we could do. You had three senators, I think, from the Republican side and several senators on the Democratic side meet by themselves, have a news conference — “We’ve got an agreement.”

I never heard about it until I went to the Republican lunch. And if you were in the lunch, it was clear that there was not a consensus about this agreement. There was never an agreement that had buy-in by the House and the Senate.

I appreciate their efforts. But 20 percent of the money that would be collected back to retire the debt we’re going to incur would have went to housing programs, programs like ACORN that have been very fraudulent in nature. So nobody on the Republican side was going to sign up to that. source

I’m hearing calls from a lot of quarters for scalps. As you pointed out, this is about saving the economy, not settling some political or economic score. Putting that kind of money in any politician’s hands will inevitably lead to picking winners and losers on the basis of political affiliation. That’s what got us to this point in the first place. I fail to see how more of the same will either fix the current problem or prevent more of the same in the future. Frankly, this is way too important to leave in the hands of politicians.

I think Forbes’ solution and some of the other’s of a similar mind have correctly identified government meddling with market mechanisms to achieve (so-called) desirable political/social outcomes as the reason for the problems we are facing. Their suggested remedies address this; get rid of the government implemented distortions and remove the impediments to the market working this out on its’ own.

Of course, that would require a major political miracle, ie politicians admitting their own culpability in this mess. The fact that most of the proponents of the $700B government adminstered plan either hold their jobs as a result of being elected or being appointed by elected office holders, or stand to benefit by the actions of elected or appointed officials, is prima facie evidence of collusion and corruption on a gargantuan scale.

Giving $700B to the same people that screwed this pooch in the first place reminds me of P.J. O’Rourke’s admonition in re politicians:

“Giving money and power to politicians is like giving whiskey and car keys to young boys.”

Highly recommended!

Can Forbes somehow get 5 minutes of MCCain’s time?

Maybe 5 minutes of Rudy’s time, and Rudy can get 5 minutes of McCain’s time?

The debate on this topic is pathetic.

http://www.redstate.com/diaries/jsobieski/2008/sep/23/plan-b-plan-c-2/

The Fed wants to deviate from the mark-to-market rule in purchasing the securities from the current holders, but won’t just let the current holders do it for themselves.

Why no bypass the middle man and save $700B dollars?

Again, the entire purpose of the President’s plan is to get temporarily distressed paper off the books of their current holders. To do this, Fed/Treasury will be assigning some “market plus” value in purchasing the securities.

Why not have the Fed/Treasury assign the “Market value” and avoid the $700B thing?

I am so frustrated by the apparent inability to start a discussion on this point.

Somewhere between there and zero.

If it could be done on a macro basis, they could be assigned a purchase value based on a formula, thereby avoiding the sure-to-come charges of favoritism towards one bank/company or another.

Throw in a provision that any institution holding MBS valued this way could carry them on their books at anything at or more than the formulaic value (if warranted by reality, or cost of the MBS if lower), and a market would re-emerge for them.

Problem solved, no $700 billion needed, and even not much needed immediately.