CRA, the cause of the financial crisis, is still there

From investors.com:

The CRA coerces banks into making loans based on political correctness, and little else, to people who can't afford them. Enforced like never before by the Clinton administration, the regulation destroyed credit standards across the mortgage industry, created the subprime market, and caused the housing bubble that has now burst and left us with the worst housing and banking crises since the Great Depression.
...
During the last severe slump, President Reagan deregulated the economy, saying: "Government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem." He's as right today as he was then.

Electricity from Waste Heat

Another track to capturing the energy in low temperature heat: Electricity from Waste Heat:

Instead of turning a turbine, the expanding vapor in Ener-G-Rotors' system turns the gerotor, which is really two concentric rotors. The inner rotor attaches to an axle, and the outer rotor is a kind of collar around it. The rotors have mismatched gear teeth, and when vapor passing between them forces them apart, the gears mesh, turning the rotor.
The company claims that the rotor design is far simpler than that of a turbine, making it potentially easier and cheaper to manufacture, as well as more durable. And the company says that it has invented a proprietary way of mounting the rotor on rolling bearings that makes its movement nearly frictionless.

Low Temperature Geothermal Power

Nice article on Low Temperature Geothermal Power from The Oil Drum. This is power from water than is hot but not boiling.

Low temperature geothermal power is also starting to attract significant interest, as lower temperature water resources are common in many countries (for example, waste hot water produced by oil and gas wells - in Texas alone, more than 12 billon barrels are produced, with oil companies usually re-injecting the waste water into the earth) and new technologies are beginning to appear that allow these resources to be developed commercially.

UTC Power has developed a low-cost Rankine cycle system that can convert temperatures as low as 195 °F (91 °C) into electricity. The technology is similar to a steam engine, with steam or hot water vaporizes a hydrofluorocarbon refrigerant that drives the turbine (it has been compared to a "refrigerator compressor running backwards").

Reject Medicare and lose Social Security, too

I did not know not signing up for Medicare means you lose your Social Security benefits (if they are still available when you retire, of course). From The San Diego Union Tribune via Newsalert:

No law mandates participation in both programs or none. The Clinton administration instituted that regulation, buttressed by Congress' ban on seniors venturing outside Medicare for any service it provides.

Making Big Government Bigger

From the DCExaminer, the 700 Billion is going to make the public sector bigger, not to shore up private enterprise. It quotes Ilya Somin at The Volokh Conspiracy:

"In earlier posts (e.g. - here and here) I have emphasized the risk that the combination of economic crisis and unified Democratic control of Congress and the White House would lead to a vast expansion of government. It looks like key Obama advisers and congressional Democrats are thinking along the same lines. As Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel puts it, the crisis is 'an opportunity to do things you could not do before . . . You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.' The WSJ article from which the quote comes makes clear that the 'things' Emanuel has in mind are government policies that 'pick winners' by subsidizing particular industries on a massive scale - as Congress is already doing with the finance industry, auto industry and others (HT: David Boaz)."

Financial hard times ahead

A link to Finance Trend Matter reviewing an interview with Jim Rogers where "The famed Singapore-based investor discusses a number of timely issues with the FT's John Authers."

Recession: Jim feels that the current recession will be the worst since World War II, a point on which he and Nouriel Roubini seem to agree. However, unlike Roubini, Rogers feels that the policies and stimulus packages enacted by politicians and central bankers around the world will only lengthen and prolong the recession.

Regulators' failings: According to Rogers, most of our current problems are rooted in the failings of regulators and central bank officials who encouraged moral hazard with easy money policies and a string of financial firm bailouts. We have not allowed business failures to occur in recent years, and this has prevented the economic system from cleaning itself out.

Senator Harkin: Centralize all derivatives trading under the CFTC, which I oversee

The Streetwise Professor has an article on risks involved in trading in different venues. A centralized format does not suit all participants, and tends to favor the riskier institutions and trading practices since the central trading place must view all players as equal. In a "broker" model, the individual brokers track the risk of their trading partners and price the different risk rates differently. As noted at the end of the article:

In brief, forcing a one-size-fits-all approach is doomed to failure because it fails to take into account the heterogeneity of financial instruments and financial market participants. We have the proof of experience that it is doomed to failure. But nonetheless, Harkin is playing King Canute, trying to force markets to conform to his will. Good luck with that. All it will do is create opportunities for lawyers–and undermine the efficiency and arguably the soundness of our financial markets.

I am sure that it is just coincidence that Harkin is Chairman of the Senate Ag Committee, which has jurisdiction over the CFTC–which, under Harkin’s bill, would have regulatory authority over every derivative traded from sea to shining sea. Think of the campaign contributions! The thought never crossed his mind, I’m sure.

Animated graffiti

On the lighter side, time-lapse photography and graffiti. Interesting.

Link to video.

Energy Efficiency Report

The Oil Drum points to a report from the American Physical Society. An interesting report in that it collects many of the ways we can make things more energy efficient. Lots of nice graphs. They are listed on pg 17 of the full report. I don't really agree with the report's theme that the government is the best entity to push some of these changes. As far as I can tell, government meddling tends to be for the short term benefit of some narrow interest group with long term effects ranging from bad to worse. Examples like the financial disaster (the CRA bill) and the crumbling auto companies come to mind. It is more likely we will get a power grab like cap-and-trade, where the government bureaucrats start making fine-grained decisions for the majority of american industry, than intelligent policies that private industry can capitalize on.

Wildlife in the suburbs

The comments are interesting ... lots of turkey, deer and coyotes, wit some wolves and cougars mixed in in a post here. From a comment...

I have a flock of parrots in my subdivision in Southern California.

At first it was just one, which leads me to think that it was a couple of caged birds that got loose but nobody called animal control on, but this morning (right before the fires started) I saw a flock of about 30 of ‘em flapping to their favorite nesting place.

"Global warming" hysteria is based on a combination of bad science and fraud

More and more evidence that global warming is a scam to grab power and riches for the eco-elites.

From Powerline linking to the UK Telegraph, the "Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen" anounced the hottest global October ever. This in the face of "reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years." The reason? They have been reusing the August numbers for the last 3 months. Some other tidbits from the story:

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.

There are some interesting comments on the story on the Telegraph site. One points out that "consensus" is not proof. That on this global warming shtick, when "evidence" and "proof" are predominately going against your agenda, claiming "consensus" and declaring your position the only true theory is bad science.

The IPCC is the body which is lying and perverting the data in order to pretend there is a problem. So it's hardly a valid place to find this magical 'consensus', which appears to have taken over from 'proof' as the way science arrives at the truth!

Airlines and car companies

The car companies want a bailout. Experts seem to agree that going through a bankruptcy is the best choice; they will adapt and still make cars. The politicians are the problem.

From SCSU Scholars:

Granting immortality to Detroit’s Big Three does not enhance creative destruction. It retards it. It crosses a line, a bright line. It is not about saving a system; there will still be cars made and sold in America. It is about saving politically powerful corporations. A Detroit bailout would set a precedent for every single politically connected corporation in America. There already is a long line of lobbyists bidding for federal money. If Detroit gets money, then everyone would have a case. After all, are the employees of Circuit City or the newspaper industry inferior to the employees of Chrysler?

Better generators for windmills

This looks good. Now we need a way to get the energy from where it is generated to where we need it.

In ExRo's generator, in contrast, the individual coils can be turned on and off with electronic switches. At low wind speeds, only a few of the coils will switch on--just enough to efficiently harvest the small amount of energy in low-speed wind. (If more coils were active, they would provide more resistance to the revolving magnets.) At higher wind speeds, more coils will turn on to convert more energy into electricity. The switches can be thrown quickly to adapt to fast-changing wind speeds.

Energy Links

As posted by PowerLine, even the most respected of sources, The SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY PROJECT are declaring that the global warming theory is bunk.

Plastic solar cells with 10% efficiency on the way.

Measuring wind speed with lasers. And getting an extra 10% out of windmills by knowing wind speed a few seconds before it get there.

Weekend links

From the "non-family-friendly" blog I read *bad language warning* We keep telling you: THIS AIN’T OVER ... some numbers from the internal campaign polls.

Apparently the people at the Quinn and Rose show have a contact in the Republican camp who is willing to share. Yes. the internal numbers.

A warning: When we checked out that link, it loaded horrendously slowly. But if you want a quick summary, here it is:

New Jersey: McCain 48% - Obambi 43% - Undecided 7%, undecideds currently breaking 4 to 1 for McCain.

[snip]

Michigan, the state that the McCain campaign hasn’t put much of an effort in at all, thinking it already lost: McCain 44% - Obambi 42% - Undecided 10%

OK, now here’s the bad news. There’s a state where Obambi leads.

California: Obambi 44% - McCain 43% - Undecided 9%.

People, if Dear Leader isn’t landsliding by double digits in the People’s Socialist Republic of Kalifornikate??? We rest our case.

Oh, and the state we mentioned before that Obambi is supposedly going to carry in a double-digit clobbering, yet for some reason he is focusing a LOT of effort in?

Pennsylvania: McCain 55% - Obambi 33% - Undecideds 10%

We guess they really don’t like being called racist, redneck, bitter, gun and bible-clinging xenophobes after all. Imagine our surprise.

Number one reason among Democrats breaking for McCain? They’re pissed off that he’s cheating and trying to buy the election.

The fact that the Democratic Machine can get away with smearing anyone that does not agree with their rehashing of failed ideas from the past is outrageous. State employee says she was ordered to check out Joe the Plumber


Forbes article on MSM bias. And the NRO weighs in.


Now that most companies have moved from pension plans to 401K plans, congress is considering a plan to eliminate 401K plans. People would be forced to fork over an additional 10% of their pay to the government and in return would get to be part of ... Social Security! What a deal. And that is OK, i guess, if you don't want to pass the money you earned and did not use to your kids or favorite charity, if you think the government is much smarter than you and can invest it better than you, if you think the bureaucrats in Washington consider your family's long term welfare as very important, and if you believe "public pensions" can defy the laws of physics and finance. On the other had, some jurisdictions are declaring bankruptcy, destroyed by the unreasonable burden of guaranteed pensions when there is no way to guarantee the necessary income to fund them. Most public companies moved away from guaranteed pensions because of this, and many of those that did not went bankrupt and could not pay anyway.


According to The OECD, we already tax our top earners more than any other country in the world. And the Democrats think we should double down on this policy other countries are moving away from as counter-productive?

The table also shows that the U.S. collects more household tax revenue from the top 10 percent of households than any other country and extracts the most from that income group relative to their share of the nation's income.

From Instapundit... some thoughts of Robert Heinlein:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck."

I guess will know in the next few days if we are in for some bad luck.

And a quote from SCSU Scholars:

The American businessmen, as a class, have demonstrated the greatest productive genius and the most spectacular achievements ever recorded in the economic history of mankind. What reward did they receive from our culture and its intellectuals? The position of a hated, persecuted minority. The position of a scapegoat for the evils of the bureaucrats.

The Virginian writes: "Obama Auntie is an Illegal Alien Living In Poverty In Boston, Makes Illegal Contribution to Obama and It's McCain's Fault."

That the headline in the POLITICO where the revelation that Obama's "Auntie Zeituni" is living in a Boston slum is transformed into a Republican "Dirty Trick." The Democrats are demanding a criminal investigation ... I'm serious as a heart attack! And the whole article is about Republican dirty tricks.
These are levels of chutzpah that I never would have believed, and have rarely seen. For those of you who have any doubt, let the record show that it was not the vaunted in-the-tank-so-far-they-need-scuba-gear American press that located "Auntie Zeituni" but that well known conservative rag, the London TimesOnline. I wrote about it HERE.

This still makes me nervous: Obama proposes a Civilian National Defense Force. Just as powerful and well funded as the US Military but focused on the civilian populace. I keep thinking Gestapo.



How is it that people don't like corruption in Washington and yet are willing to vote for someone who blatantly demonstrates it during his campaign? Obama campaign online donation fraud.



She is going to vote for Obama because then she won't have to pay for gas or pay her mortgage anymore. From CaptainCapitalism:

I would like to show her with simple power point presentations that if everybody had her attitude, the country would collapse and there would be no gas and no mortgage because if the world was filled with Peggy's, then nobody would work to drill the oil, refine it into gas, ship it to the gas stations to fill the cars that were never produced, which couldn't be stored anyway because we wouldn't have garages because the houses to which they were supposed to be attached to were never built because the Peggy's of the world were too damn lazy to build the houses in the first place, besides which Barack was going to give them one for free.