Parts of the credit and mortgage markets today were “offered-only.” That means there were no buyers. None. These markets are different from the highly liquid NYSE and NASDAQ where there is always a buyer for every seller and a seller for every buyer, usually within a second or two. Not so with these thinly traded markets. If no one wants to buy, then no one can sell.

This from “The Lord of the Dark Market”, an anonymous highly-placed financial insider quoted by hedge fund manager Bill Fleckenstein.

From the comments

the guys who tip [Fleckenstein] have been eerily prescient… (sometimes his tips prelude major market drops just by a few days)

No Comments »

I interviewed the Freeway Blogger today after videoing him putting up antiwar signs on San Francisco freeway overpasses. He’s put up over 6,000 of them on California freeways and thus has reached millions of people with an antiwar message. Yes, millions. One busy freeway alone can get 50,000-100,000 cars a day

He explains how to do this easily, quickly, and at very low cost. Use cardboard, not sheets. Paint one side white. Get a $35 overhead projector on eBay and use that to project the letters on the cardboard to make lettering easy. Then you have a “printing press for billboards” and the cost per sign is minuscule.

He says the Left “organizes too much and does too little” and that we need to get out and just do it. To reach millions, you need the message where they can see it - like on freeway overpasses.

4 Comments »

The current electric grid has its origins in the 1960s. One article noted that our current grid dates from the time when Frank Sinatra was in his prime, before a man walked on the moon, and before cell phones were invented.

Of particular concern are congestion areas in southern California and the Eastern Interconnection in the mid-Atlantic states and New England, with a particular trouble spot being in Connecticut near the New York border.

An electric vehicle future will require a smart, modern electrical grid. As will adding power from wind and solar. Lengthy blackouts are not out of the question in congestion areas now.

The country needs to upgrade the electrical grid now.

John Robb is not optimistic, saying this demonstrates “the decline of the state in action.”

No Comments »

Net metering is a policy, usually set by the state and implemented by the electrical utility, that allows customers who generate renewable energy to get paid for it when it goes back into the grid.

Seems a simple enough idea, doesn’t it? Yet in practice the rules can be extremely convoluted, vary widely, and may or may not reimburse the homeowner.

New Jersey and Colorado have the most progressive net metering laws in the nation while New York and California are quite regressive.

Net metering regulations need to favor and encourage, not discourage, homeowners to install renewable power.

Renewable energy World has a useful explanation of the issues involved.

1 Comment »

The first offshore wind farm in the US will be in Delaware, scheduled to be completed in 2012. It might have been done earlier, off Martha’s Vineland, except for all those NIMBY liberal environmentalists (such as the Kennedys) who have tried to block that project every step of the way. Imagine the indignity of looking out on the ocean from your summer home and seeing wind turbines way in the distance. Oh, the horror.

At least Delaware gets it. Good.

2 Comments »

Subtopia profiles the Tear It Down campaign by Amnesty International to end the Guantanamo detentions.

Photo from the Guantanamo Cell Tour on Flickr.

No Comments »