Economic News/Discussion

[Enmore]

Time for a revolution.

I might start pamphleting you like Thomas Paine.

[jimzinsocal]

You know. Ive always been a strong advocate of America Right Or Wrong....but what weve seen during the past months makes me wonder what planet these elected characters are living on.
Seems like everything they touch turns turd.
And then they suggest they are going to do even more.

Oh the rapture. What a bonus. Even more.
Like a bonus.....as Government reasons.... Having 4 proctologists
instead of one.

[Dutchcedar]

Oil companies are familiar with the electric business as there have been and still are fuel burning power plants. Power turbines are quite amenable to many kinds of fuels...but what we care about here are our cars and freight vehicles. Here McCain scores because he understands that wells and shale can relieve our energy dependency on foreign supplies & prices- even if only partially and temporarily. However, should the taxpayer wind up paying for that capacity if the price of oil is still below the line? Big oil has always been about having too little, too late for such crisises and then charging through the snoot to meet the demand.

Electric cars used to be a fantasy...and yet today I drive a hybrid. So power plants definitiely figure into that...if not completely. So I think oil companies have a vested interest.

As far as government involvement, well, oil companies bring more to the table than just cash...they also bring clout. Moreover, "clean" coal emissions aren't so much the issue anymore as it is fly-ash. Research in to scrubber technology and fly-ash by-products is something that can be looked into much more extensively today.

But heck, the point is moot- why bother to pay for any of that when they swing it to use your tax dollar anyhow.

Saying that oil companies are familiar with the electric business because there are fuel burning power plants is like saying they're familiar with the automobile manufacturing business because automobiles run on gasoline. Maybe a few oil companies have actually built power plants, but from my experience, it usually falls on the likes of Bechtel.

My point was that people on the outside of the oil companies are suggesting (and even trying to legislate) what types of ventures they should be investing in. I find the suggestion ludicrous. Its their enterprise and they should follow a course chosen by themselves.

About clean coal... it sounds promising and I'm not trying to pooh-pooh its potential, but so far, it hasn't been proven to work. Its day may come. Like the electric car. But so far, it ain't ripe yet.

[AeroSim]

Saying that oil companies are familiar with the electric business because there are fuel burning power plants is like saying they're familiar with the automobile manufacturing business because automobiles run on gasoline. Maybe a few oil companies have actually built power plants, but from my experience, it usually falls on the likes of Bechtel.

My point was that people on the outside of the oil companies are suggesting (and even trying to legislate) what types of ventures they should be investing in. I find the suggestion ludicrous. Its their enterprise and they should follow a course chosen by themselves.

About clean coal... it sounds promising and I'm not trying to pooh-pooh its potential, but so far, it hasn't been proven to work. Its day may come. Like the electric car. But so far, it ain't ripe yet.

They do not run the business, my point was they do have some vested interest. And it really isn't the point. And here it is:

You want to doom a business? Don't care for it. Treat it like a cash cow. Don't give a sh*t about it's future and see if you can defy the business law: "You have to spend money to make money." Hire money-managing people who don't know the first thing about it to run it. Better still, hire amoral people whose only mission is to blacken the bottom line.

You tell me how you legislate that.

While we can't legislate morality and common sense, we're setting up a system where it's not required. There are no penalties, but subsidies to cover errors in judgement. Dammit- we do have some control over that- or do we anymore?

Now let me veer the topic and blacken that picture a little (understand I'm not referring to you, Dutch, but giving you some insight into someone else).

Ship those expensive American jobs and their know-how overseas to improve your bottom line for a few quarters. (God help you if you ever need those Americans again and that your drive home may need a couple of body-guards).

But it turns out after those few quarters that those countries are demanding infrastructure and oil and whatever it takes to maintain a high tech society and your labor costs go up anyhow. Soon it also dawns on some pipe-smoking raja somewhere that he can run your business better than you can for a whole h*ll of a lot less and buys out your expensive @ss too. Of course, thanks to you, America is now just another 3rd-world sewer. But you never gave a sh*t about those spoiled, bitching American @ssholesAmerican workers and sycophant government officials you addicted to your money anyhow and pull your platinum parachute string and retire to your island villa.

While we can't legislate to correct personality flaws, we can remove government involvement and subsidy into bad behavior and place restrictions on specific trade partners to ensure fair and honest pricing, and exchange for goods, services and labor.

While feeding 1.3 billion Chinese is a daunting challenge, I feel we can do it- especially if THEY spend as much money on the effort as they have on aquiring silicon and aerospace technology as well as Olympic fireworks. They can do this by fair morket pricing their labor and stimulating their consumer habits as well.

Unfortunately, the bottom-line blinds people to the fact that they are simply providing food and shelter for the slaves/peasantproletariat and taking that money to help enslave us with our own debt.

Change is needed....

[Dutchcedar]

They do not run the business, my point was they do have some vested interest. And it really isn't the point. And here it is:

You want to doom a business? Don't care for it. Treat it like a cash cow. Don't give a sh*t about it's future and see if you can defy the business law: "You have to spend money to make money." Hire money-managing people who don't know the first thing about it to run it. Better still, hire amoral people whose only mission is to blacken the bottom line.

You tell me how you legislate that.

I would say that you don't legislate it. Legislation has come at the oil companies from both ends... one that wants to take their profits whenever they sneak towards 10% and another that wants to tell them how to invest in other ventures while restricting their access to domestic oil or refining capacity. Bobble heads on capitol hill aren't any good at running businesses and should stay away from trying to run them. They don't know squat.

Ship those expensive American jobs and their know-how overseas to improve your bottom line for a few quarters. (God help you if you ever need those Americans again and that your drive home may need a couple of body-guards).

If permission for domestic drilling was expanded and domestic refining capacity was allowed to increase, jobs would be created here. Restricting access to both of those ventures through legislation has, at least, moved jobs overseas. Those actions certainly didn't create any jobs domestically. They did nothing to reduce the demand for refined oil products, either. They only screwed the pooch... us.

Change is needed....

It always is. The change we choose to pursue isn't always healthy, though.

[AeroSim]

I think we're saying pretty much the same thing, Dutch. It's just in how we're reading and writing it.

[Dutchcedar]

I think we're saying pretty much the same thing, Dutch. It's just in how we're reading and writing it.

Yeah, I think we are.

I'm trying to get a lot of what you're saying about China. Please don't construe my not commenting on it as not paying attention. I am. Its a big elephant sleeping in the room and one of these days, I hope to understand the big picture better.

In the meantime, I'll read quietly.

[AeroSim]

...
I'm trying to get a lot of what you're saying about China. Please don't construe my not commenting on it as not paying attention. I am. Its a big elephant sleeping in the room and one of these days, I hope to understand the big picture better.

I understand. I think China and foreign national outsourcing is an issue that the Americn people are being deliberately distracted from. And the interested parties have been very successful in achieving that end. There are a growing number of us who are seeing the writing on the wall- and we're afraid there will be too little attention paid to this too late.

In the meantime, we're focussed on the market, social issues and flirting with another main economic issue- the debt. It's a lot to deal with in and of itself and these things ARE some things that need to be dealt with.

However, some of us believe that we're being mis-directed from the real perils of our even-larger trade deficit and the hemoragging loss of quality American jobs and investment capital/tax dollars overseas.

The only result I can see of this squeeze-play on our supply and demand is the loss of the American middle class- and I'm beginning to suspect more and more that it's a contrived agenda.

Well- thanks for listening to me and my croaking prophesies of doom anyhow. And, in all honestly, I don't think the situation is lost while there are still good people who have the courage to do the right thing.

[AeroSim]

Meanwhile? Anyone else been following the layoffs at Yahoo?
Im attempting to determine where all the Yahoo search bots have gone.
Or why user generated yahoo searches have taken a dive.

FTW- From the horse's mouth.

Part of a growing layoff picture?

EA- Electronic Arts? All those ripped-off PC games?
Gannett- a serious MSM- Thanks for the elections, John and Barry!

Some interesting stuff....

[jimzinsocal]

Good stuff. And yeah I should have asked here...Ive been attempting to puzzle the dropoff weve seen here at this site....for Wise and Ryan.

The most noticeable change Ive spotted is with bots or user directed searches from Yahoo. I reasoned perhaps it might be associated
with the Yahoo cutbacks.
Then I noticed the write up [rolleyes] that suggested yet another
reason. People are looking at financial stuff...as some of the financial sites are getting record visits.
What Im able to observe at any given time is detail in the who's online
feature we see at the bottom of Forums Main page. We can observe the specific number of members/guests/search bots and so forth.
I would generally find 400 to 500 search engine requests or indexing bots.
Now maybe I see 20 or so. So its a substantial activity decrease.

Edit: I didnt mean layoffs were good stuff. I meant to say thanks!!

And the fall off was abrubt after 10/3

Heh. Bailout Bill voted on 10/3...on 10/3 I happened to save the numbers for this particular forum. We had > 100 visitors just about thru the day.

[AeroSim]

....
Edit: I didnt mean layoffs were good stuff. I meant to say thanks!!
....

And I didn't mean to say that this reduction was necessarily bad.

The number is about 10% (information not so old)

Layoffs wreak havoc on morale and productivity, so you might be seeing a result of that.

To me, it's kind of like seeing fewer telemarketers in the world. And I'm so tired of the resource-piggy crapplets like toolbars, etc. that everyone thinks you must have to feel cool, safe, secure and productive.

But, enough of my preferences. A little realignment in some areas may be a good thing.

[jimzinsocal]

Agree. Sometimes it can be a positive thing.
Just one of those site issues I cant quite resolve ...mainly because of lack of data. If I had the tools and the time I could formulate an "equation"
that might attempt to define the relationship with activity here
with external data of all sorts.
But? All I can do is ask others for a bit of thinking....that helps me
sort of resolve things in my head.

For here? Lots of searches and indexing translates to page hits.
At present? Thats the common measuring stick. And its way down.
Its changing to a different model based on time spent but for now? Page hits rule.

[AeroSim]

PCs, gaming, overcocking, etc. have been such popular issues for so long and now with the election and economic crisis, attention is, like you've suggested, probably steered away for now. Getting first dibs on a performance one-up by AMD over Intel isn't what it used to be.

But, yeah- I know that for some websites hits are bread and butter.

[jimzinsocal]

^^Yeah....God forbid Ryan takes away my fat phonebook "raise".

[AeroSim]

Market's pretty dead today and flat-lined. Probably action Wednesday after the election.

I've got Obama winning in a landslide. Vote your shares accordingly.