Then, after you’ve read enough to span 60 years of financial advice / theory / ect, turn off your computers and go spend time with your family or friends. Frankly, we are spending too much time worrying about what Bernanke is doing or not doing. People were worried about debt in the 50’s. They were worried about debt in the 60’s. They were worried about inflation / debt in the 70’s. They were worried about debt in the 80’s. And on and on.

The secret to get through the next 10 years:

Goddammit, spend less than you make, save the difference.
Put in a honest days of work.
Be kind – The social mood is going to turn south but that doesn’t mean we have to participate.

You hate this advice because it’s too simple. The rest is all nonsense. The proof is in those damn magazines.

“What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun. ”

- Ecclesiastes 1

The issue I have with all these alternative energy sources is that they take A LOT of energy to get built.

I’m not sure, net net, how much more energy we get out of them than what it takes to build them up.

And with the rest of the world growing and vying for the energy that naturally came to us, how easy will it be to build up all these alternative energy systems?

The way I see it, solar is the only way out, yes, it will take 30 years, yet on an a comparible basis to cell phones or computers in general we are at an inflection point. Cell phones deisgned in 1955, hit the maass market, albeit big expensive brick ones in 1985, 1996 hit mass pricing, and boom in 20 years you go from 10% penetration too 90% worldwide. PC’s same story and time frame.

Solar deisnged around 1960, first commercial ones 1990, 30 years, in 2000 or so they ipo’d em, what is the percentage take up 2%…………how long too 10% inflection on the S curve ??????????

I don’t know……….right now 35k for 2k house for panels, saves you 1500 a year, a 17 year payback, if you can get it too 20k you got a shot at solarizing homes, that’s not unrealistic yet probably 15 years away.

IMHO, solar dishes, like the old behemoth satelite TV’s will be the tipping point, if you could get a solar dish installed for 8k, save a grand a year, or use it for you’re electric car, now you’re talking

This is a 30 year change to save energy, and imho, sustain a certain standard of living, going forward. 30 years from now solar will be on all homes and just as common as ac/heating units built into price of homes

Tried to open the game but Explorer shut it down.

Is there another way in?

I mean, I save the url, but url’s expire and so I coped down the bit I thought most interesting:

[name and location omitted, but an expat living in Shanghai]

I wonder why Mr. Ross chose to overlook China’s immense internal
deficiencies when he contributed his analysis of Chimerica. I
live right down the street from the university he teaches at,
Jiao Tong, and I as someone intensely interested in the Chinese
economy and a voracious consumer of information regarding that
subject I must disagree with much of what he said.

Yes, the Chinese economy was better positioned to weather the
financial storm – largely because it’s banks were strong and
solvent, having purged themselves of most of their bad loans over
the preceding decade. The banks – rather than the stimulus – have
been the driver of China’s GDP growth over the past year, doling
out trillions of rmb, much of which went to the construction of
as-of-now useless factories and apartment blocks or ended up
inflating the stock and real estate bubbles. So the banks have in
effect mired themselves back in a position of weakness, as much
of their lending they will never see again. From my office now I
can gaze out at a massive new edifice of glass and concrete that
was landscaped 6 months ago, yet has never been used. Who takes
the loss on this building? The banks, though China will claim the
GDP boost now and sort out the detritus later.

So much of the GDP here is smoke and mirrors, artificially pumped
up by constructing buildings that remain empty, or fleets of cars
that sit idle in car parks so that the leadership can brag that
they sold more cars than America. A strange feature of Chinese
GDP calculation (and retail sale calculation) is that it counts
toward GDP when it is sold from the factory to the business, not
from the business to the consumer. So many here think that the
government and SOEs have been hoarding goods in warehouses and
claiming the GDP boost.

China will have to deal with their profligate ways, just as
America and Japan have had to deal with theirs. China, despite
decades of close partnership with foreign companies, has been
largely unsuccessful in creating their own brand or developing
innovative products – even something like the Iphone, famously
made by FoxComm in Shenzhen, is merely assembled there, with the
high-tech parts shipped in from Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

China better enjoy its brief moment in the sun as the recognized
economic leader, because soon enough the growth rates will come
down (easy money and excess goods can only mask the internal
problems for so long), and she have to settle for more pedestrian
growth and all the unique problems this entails for her.

Input prices have to be lower than the output prices for an economy to work. Oil costs 50$ min to produce so everything else must go up.

1. Governments will print, print, print.
2. This will squeeze out the private side.
3. All sectors will go through a shakeout.
4. Capacity and supply in all sectors will dwindle.
5. Companies will gain pricing power
6. General prices will be above the oil price.
7. Problem solved.

Now how are househoulds going to fare through all this? That’s another issue.

Doesn’t anyone think China with its atuocratic government, will run rings ar0und every nation in the world just thru the ability to avoid the gridlock that passes for government in a republic with a diverse population of 400,000,000 with a democratic form of government that has been sabotaged by lobbyists, and lawyers?

Has anyone here actually been to China to see what is goin on in that country?

Who here, including BR has seen China, spent time there in the last 10 years?

Anyone?

The cost to extract a barrel of oil is 50$ CAD whether it crushes the economy or not. And companies will not produce cash flow negative barrels for very long.

Maybe you can get some switching but I doubt the power grid will maintain it for long. There will a some tipping point where you’ll get a huge increase in power costs.

Let’s be logical here. According to the second law of thermodynamcis, if I recall correctly, systems are said inefficient and lose energy. So if I understand correctly, we will be feeding hydrocarbons to generators so they can generate energy which will be lost all along the power grid to motor cars instead of injecting those same hydrocarbons directly into the car?

My god, England had trouble with its power grid when everybody turned on their plama TV to watch a soccer game! I have trouble believing they could plug in their batteries also.

I guess those living on one side of the street will be allowed to recharge their batteries at 2am and those on the other side at 3am. Or maybe charge times will be alloted by licence plate?

My point is the entire system would need a shakeout to make place for such a substitution.