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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (2296)	9/11/2008 11:35:11 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

If we keep racking up our debt with China and China keeps buying it, doesn't that still amount to the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the US...from the US to China and other countries? Of course it does.. But the Chinese were content to park hundreds of billions in relatively low yielding US treasuries, which freed up American capital to invest in higher yielding instruments.. I'll admit that I'm concerned about this as well, and what could happen if the players all decide to fold and end the game. But those kinds of decisions are not usually made casually, and there will be repercussions. One of the things Bejing has tried to avoid is seeing appreciation of the Yuan, so they park their dollars in US treasuries and mortgage bonds. So selling the US debt they currently hold will only exacerbate that, and plunge them further towards lower economic growth, or even recession. The real fear with China is that they won't buy any more.. But then that begs the question of what they will do with their US dollar denominated profits. But getting back to that transfer of wealth, that's why I'm inclined to agree with Pickens. He's an oil guy, and when an oil guy tells us that we need to move to NG and alternatives, I think we should listen up. But I also have a problem here. And maybe it's because I'm kind of enamored with the concept of algae based fuels. I think we should increase R&D into biodiesels from Algae. I think that technology holds a tremendous promise for both CO2 neutral energy production, and also for food-stock byproducts (for livestock). Even if we're able to afford transitioning to NG (because we have an abundance of it), that doesn't work for developing countries where diesel is the primary fuel, and they lack adequate supplies of NG. Algae based biofuels, if proven to be economically viable, could resolve that issue and provide us a new technological export. At the very least, it provides us one more alternative to put in our quiver of alternative fuel options. Hawk

To: RetiredNow who wrote (2296)	9/11/2008 1:38:35 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

Borrowing money isn't a transfer of wealth, at most the interest is a transfer, but even that is a rather debatable assertion as the interest covers the time value of money. But for the sake of argument lets consider the interest to be a transfer. OK lets say 3.5% on $500bil, that's $17.5bil a year. I doubt I would consider that to be the greatest transfer of wealth in US history. To put it in context its less than our annual spending on farm programs.