Posted on 05/30/2010 6:00:24 AM PDT by GVnana
The same goes for "green energy". Here in Texas, the Wyly brothers have launched Green Mountain Energy -- which operates a bunch of wind turbines out in West Texas and sells electricity to the grid.
In de-regulated Texas, this entitles them to sell energy off the grid, as well. They run ads touting "green energy" and certain customers willingly pay a premium price per KwH for it. They actually sell more energy than their windfarm produces. The rest they buy from the other generators at a wholesale price.
If you're a Green Mountain customer, you're getting the same kilowatts everybody else is getting and you're paying more for it. And the Wyly brothers are laughing all the way to the bank...
"Rich enough to be stupid..."
I would say a society's decision to nmake government responsible for "the poor" is a harbinger of decline. This society took care of "the poor" for generations without the government being involved at all, and did a good job with voluntary charitable and Christian organizations. When the "progressives" decided after the turn of the century that it was government's "duty" is when it all began to turn sour.
Will it be too late by then?
No need to read beyond that line. That says it all right there. You should reward good behavior (marriage, work, integrity, honor) and punish bad behavior (laziness, fraud, banks that ignore risk, people who damage their health). Of course, I did read beyond that line. I love reading Steyn. Thanks for posting.
Good post!
Man is the only animal who will bite the hand that feeds him.
Do you realize you just summed up the entire housing bubble and crisis in one brief paragraph? Nice work.
“Do you realize you just summed up the entire housing bubble and crisis in one brief paragraph? Nice work.”
Thanks - You can tell that I was following it closely!!
I would have to agree with your formulation.
It is the interposition of government as the source of subsistence that signals a decline.
Until that point, the poor might still have dreams of independence and there are helping hands available for him to achieve it. Government charity, however, quashes that dream -- nor does it provide anything resembling a helping hand.
“So you went through that TORTURE also...sitting there, month after month, trying to figure out why the hell their stock wouldn’t collapse. If you were like me, you started having self-doubts: Surely I cannot be smarter than the professional investors.”
Bob, I did have some self doubts. But once Countrywide started sliding, WAMU wasn’t far behind ;-)
Glad you did well. I did too.
“No sane person would spend most of his adult life under those conditions, especially if it meant things like depriving their kids of a chance to go to college. Then again, no financially intelligent person would take a loan with terms like that. But then again, no respectable bank would ever make a loan like that. But then again, no reasonable credit rating agency would ever call that loan AAA. But then again, no respectable Wall Street brokerage house would ever buy that loan to package it into a financial instrument. But then again no well-run pension or retirement plan would ever buy a financial instrument with those kinds of loans in them. But then again, no intelligent government would ever insure the loan....”
A + rant ;-)
“Bob, I did have some self doubts. But once Countrywide started sliding, WAMU wasn’t far behind ;-)”
Yea - it was tough on me. Countrywide had just gotten me to my car threshold, and, even without E-Trade flopping around, it was getting harder and harder (for me) to stay in.
Glad you did well too.
Thanks for your story and I’m sure there are tons of them out there. I think it will take awhile before these matters change and it may get worse before people come to their senses.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
And a rich fool just has a lot more of it to lose.
The problem is when the fool is put into office, given him access to everyone’s tax money.
Afro-Marxist economics, no doubt.
Somebody has to be on the receiving end. Four, five, six big banks? Who is holding the cash?
You misconceive the nature of money. It isn't a store of fat in the body of society, it is the blood that circulates within society. The lifeblood of the economy is trust, which enables the members of society to communicate and assist each other freely, ultimately producing more lifeblood, more trust.When the government went on its "affordable housing" binge, it forced the banks to "trust" imprudently, systematically making bad loans. And that produces mistrust, and the implosion of the economy. If there is a "virtuous cycle" producing growth, the same synergy can result in a vicious cycle which deconstructs the economy.
It is no good for the government to attempt to command more trust, because the very act of making such a demand is the opposite of trust - so it destroys trust rather than creating it. Thus, the government can print dollars at will - but when the quantity of dollars increases, their scarcity declines relative to the supply of goods and labor. And when that happens, everyone in society feels betrayed by the "shortage" of goods/labor available compared to the "plenty" of dollars. So the "plenty" of dollars doesn't reflect plenty of actual money, actual trust. Quite the opposite.
So perhaps you see why I find your question, "Who is holding the cash?" to be so alarming. It is precisely the attitude that can produce the problem, but can never solve it. It is "inside the box" thinking.
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