EPA response to the Gulf / BP oil spill:
See http://www.epa.gov/bpspill/ I know that the Administrator was down these in the last couple of days, and that there’s a huge gearing up on this issue.
Category: big-oil
The Oil price jumps again:
No, it’s not because of the demand, it’s because hedge funds and market speculators who drove it to $4-5 a gallon gas are going back into the market because they think that commodity is going to make money again.
Recommends on GM:
Some read-this items on the GM bankruptcy: Cissna Park, Illinois struggles with the loss of a huge chunk of its tax base, as a local GM dealership is closed. A LA Times article on why GM went down for the count. Michael Moore, a GM kid like me, on where we go from here and [...]
Crashola:
If the Seattle Press-Intelligencier survives the next month, it will be as a online paper only. Meanwhile, the Rocky Mountain News of Denver is about to cease publishing. The new US government budget (PDF link) under Obama is going to cap federal employee raises (the automatic kind) to 2% next year; the base this last [...]
Well, someone is thinking:
Abu Dhabi and other Persian Gulf nations stick serious money into post-Oil green energy, because that oil isn’t going to be around forever for all those air conditioners, etc., etc. “The leadership in these breakthrough technologies is a title the U.S. can lose easily,” said Peter Barker-Homek, chief executive of Taqa, Abu Dhabi’s national energy [...]
Surprises-not #3:
With huge numbers of people unemployed, and more rolling into the offices, the states are running out of money to pay benefits. Like 30 out of 50 states. Drill-baby-drill just went *choke*, as oil companies are suddenly unwilling to finance new exploration. Existing wells are being shut down as uneconomical to operate, and forecasts are [...]
So long, Hummers:
Beginning in 1992, a series of tax laws combine to create large tax credits for certain Hummer buyers. By 2002, the New York Times reports that, thanks to changes in the tax code during the Bush administration, an eligible buyer can deduct $34,912 of the $48,800 base price of the Hummer. July 2002: The Hummer [...]
Business as usual:
He also mooted the possibility that the Russian government would buy some of its metal products to shore up falling demand. At under $50 a barrel, the Russian government is taking a beating, because their Big Ticket was oil and gas. The entire economy was not based on industrial production, but in raking in petrodollars. [...]
GM, Redux:
So here’s my ideas, half-baked: Make the deal comprehensive, and mostly a take it or leave it scenario. This sucker has been a political football for decades, and this ends here right now. All three companies essentially go into a central, nationalized receivership corporation. The equity in these businesses is pretty much gone, in any [...]
GM and Automakers Bailout:
I’m actively interested in your poisition on this matter. Feel free to sound off inside *politely*. My own struggles on this:
The Consumer hits the wall:
Robert Reich, the former Labor Secretary and one of my favorites on economics, writes: After the market closed today, Bank of America announced a significant deterioration in people’s ability to repay credit-card and other consumer debt. The central fact is this: consumers in the real economy are coming to the end of their capacities to [...]
The inside of Interior. Waaaaay inside. Oh baby.
Bush officials at the Department of Interior’s Denver office that were ‘overseeing’ oil company royalty payments to the government and taking all sorts of goodies from the oil companies – sex, drugs, hot bubble baths, frat house beer setups, and par-tay par-tay. Then they tried to rewrite the ethics rules to permit them to do [...]
ANWR and money:
In Alaskan politics, you have to remember that the main support of the state revenue system is the tax-on-oil-stuff coming out of the north slope…and that all Alaskans get a cut back from the state of around $1700 a year in ‘reverse taxes’. So EVERYONE supports drilling in ANWR in Alaskan politics. Otherwise, they’d have [...]
Energy #1:
The first thing you have to understand on Big Oil is that they have had this whip-hand on the United States in particular and the world oil market in general for a very long time. They are not interested in giving that sort of level of economic or political control up to anyone. And to [...]