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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (373809)	3/11/2008 9:38:43 PM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573413

Again, oil is only cheap because they are highly subsidized. I'd love to see all tax and other incentives eliminated. In addition, I'd love for our government to tell oil companies to hire their own armies and navies to secure shipping lanes to and from the Middle East and other volatile parts of the world. That would rapidly increase the price of gas to double what it is today. Already, electric based transportation is cheaper than gas transportation. The average cost per mile using an electric car is 2-3 cents vs 12 cents or more for gas based cars. So your entire premise is flawed. Alternatives don't cost more. They are already cost competitive. However, we have an entire infrastructure and auto industry based on oil and gas consumption. We need an infrastructure based on electricity consumption and that takes government investment.

To: TimF who wrote (373809)	3/11/2008 11:24:15 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573413

although that is debatable, because $110 oil is crippling our economy right now Crippling is far too strong of word. Our economy is not crippled, or being crippled, and to the extent its slowing down oil prices are just one reason. I have to agree with you.....its probably not oil that's crippling our economy but rather Bush.

To: TimF who wrote (373809)	3/17/2008 3:57:48 PM
From: Road Walker	Respond to of 1573413

Facing up to debt contagion Mon Mar 17, 12:21 AM ET These days must be humbling for Wall Street financiers, high government officials and others who not long ago were preaching the virtues of leaving debt markets alone to heal themselves. They've plainly failed, and at potentially enormous cost to everyone else. Facing the possibility of a serious financial meltdown, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke jumped in over the weekend to help engineer J.P. Morgan Chase's fire sale purchase of Bear Stearns & Co., a Wall Street investment bank battered by its heavy involvement in mortgage-backed debt, while the troubled firm rushed to sell itself to a more stable suitor. This action came on top of a broader assistance package unveiled Tuesday that included the Fed taking $200 billion in toxic mortgage-backed securities off the books of major firms in return for U.S. Treasuries — a terrible trade-off for taxpayers but apparently necessary to keep the financial system functioning. Both moves are extraordinary and a measure of just how worried the Fed is that the nation's steadily worsening debt crisis will spin out of control. Given the consequences of a financial meltdown, it's hard to fault the Federal Reserve for acting aggressively. But it's also important not to provide too much comfort to those who caused so much harm in the first place. Bear Stearns shareholders have paid a price. The company's stock lost virtually all of its value. But its senior executives are not lining up to give back their bonuses, ones that came fromignoring risk to pump up returns. Bear Stearns bet too heavily in the mortgage debt market, putting itself behind too many mortgage-backed portfolios and failing to understand the risks involved in them. In so doing, it helped inflate a housing bubble, driven in part by the proliferation of wildly inappropriate subprime mortgages. Under normal circumstances, the company would be left to pay for its sins. But its debts to other institutions are big enough that defaulting could cause them to have problems with their own finances. That is the type of contagion the Fed is trying to avert. Even without defaults, the harm done by Bear Stearns and others has generated a general lending skittishness that is spreading to investments as safe as municipal bonds. That is hardly good for a stuttering economy. If nothing else, it is time to realize that if government is going to help financial institutions get out of trouble, it must assume a greater role in keeping them from getting into trouble in the first place. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged as much in a speech last week calling for greater government oversight of mortgage lenders and brokers, and higher standards among the major firms that bundle these loans into mortgage-backed securities. His speech sounded like a litany of all the things government and industry should have been doing years ago and resolutely rejected. A plan for the future perhaps, and a large helping of humble pie for now.