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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: forceOfHabit who wrote (100675)	1/14/2009 10:31:43 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 110194

Obviously no one knows the whole answer, but I have one suggestion: product design and reclamation. Hmm.. interesting idea. We certainly need to make recycling much more streamlined and "invisible" so that the average person is not required to add to the list of things they have to think about each day. No one is ever against recycling, but few of us are willing to be inconvenienced by it, or we go about it in a haphazard manner (mea culpa).. Heck, I took out some papers for recycling today, but had to drive 4 miles round trip to do my good deed. The reality is that landfill costs are not really incorporated into the costs of new products. Thus, just utilizing the new resources for manufacturing is often less expensive (or more efficient) than utilizing recycled materials. But I think, as in the use of plastic waste to make artificial wood planks that are more durable than real wood is an example where market economics provide a market incentive. But getting back to global consumption, we have billions of people who are no where near the level of economic prosperity as we are, yet they deserve to enjoy the same standard of living. So there are truly some opportunities for people who can facilitate this. And again, with regard to the current financial situation, what we've seen is "financial innovation" outpacing the regulatory mechanisms necessary to prevent market manipulations and provide transparency in assigning asset valuations. Just look at this inane concept of "CDO-squared" where they make a CDO out of a traunche from another CDO.. When I found out about that, it left my head swimming.. I drowned when I found out that each of them required weeks of supercomputer time just to figure out the payouts on them. One more thing, we're going to need a whole new legal infrastructure for enforcing both contract law (CDS and financial surety), as well as international regulation of derivative products. It's plainly clear that self-regulation of the CDS markets was insufficient and has created a financial WMD that threatens the entire financial clearing and surety system. People just plain out lied about their ability to write unregulated insurance (that's really all a CDS is, right?) and now we're paying the price. In fact, it's probable that the creation of CDS, with their ability to play "liar's poker" and a financial shell game regarding financial surety products that no one could truly value with any certainty. This is why I think the beginning of the end of this recession will only come when we get a handle on financial surety. No bank is crazy enough to lend when they can't diversify their risk with credible counter-parties. Hawk

To: forceOfHabit who wrote (100675)	1/15/2009 12:57:42 AM
From: studdog	2 Recommendations Respond to of 110194

Hawkmoon, I agree with your reclamation scenario. It is ludicrous what we waste. Just consider plastic packaging. Used once, then it ends up in the world's oceans. There is a garbage gyre in the middle of the Pacific as large as the continental US. Remember the keep America Beautiful campaign? The crying Indian (who was Italian by the way)? Bought and paid for by the container industry who feared the backlash against the mindless littering that happened once everything was disposable. We were shamed into not throwing trash on the highways but it all ended up in the landfill or in the oceans. A Horrendous and unredeemable waste.