Sapphire Energy just got $100 million in funding from venture capital firms, including one owned by Bill Gates.

They, and other firms, are working at what could be the holy grail of renewable fuel - cost-competitive gasoline created from algae. They’ve already successfully made 91-octane fuel from algae. Now they want to scale the process to 100,000 barrels a day, then to mass production.

Whoever can pull this off - and someone will - well, it’ll make Bill Gates’ fortune look small as well as creating genuinely renewable fuel on a commercial basis. Wow.

From the Sapphire Energy website

The world’s first renewable gasoline, from sunlight and CO2

Sapphire Energy has built a revolutionary platform that uses photosynthetic microorganisms to produce a renewable, high-value replacement for fossil fuel petroleum. This domestic crude oil requires only sunlight, CO2 and non-potable water – and can be produced at massive scale on non-arable land.

Not ethanol, not biodiesel. Renewable gasoline.

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Greenupgrader brings us this sign, and others, a welcome relief from financial doom and gloom.

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The Dow Jones average broke through the June 15 low of 10,962 today, closing at 10,609. This is an extremely negative technical sign and will almost certainly trigger more selling. In addition, there will be increased selling by those just wanting to get the Hell out or forced to sell to pay down debt or make margin calls. Yeah, I’ve been making money buying puts on financials, but things are getting serious.

How does this affect those not in the market? All sorts of way. The interest rate at which banks lend money to each other is soaring. This means they don’t trust each other. If they don’t trust each other, you think they’ll trust your business or you enough to lend to? Right now, not likely. Getting a mortgage approved now must be nearly impossible. Then too, will be all the hurting businesses and subsequent layoffs.

From The Scotsman. “How the Masters of the Universe ran amok and cost us the earth”.

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It’s “the end of American capitalism as we knew it“, says a British economist, arguing that since it is the state that ultimately guarantees banks, that the state should therefore control them.

If so, then why not keep these activities in permanent public ownership?There is a long-standing argument that there is no real case for private ownership of deposit-taking banking institutions, because these cannot exist safely without a deposit guarantee and/or lender of last resort facilities, that are ultimately underwritten by the taxpayer.

Feds want buyer for Washington Mutual. Right now. If not sooner.

Russian stock market halted again. Their stock market is down 25% in three days. It should be grisly fun watching the corrupt billionaires and the criminal entity that is the State (oh sorry, they’re the same thing, aren’t they) rip each other apart for the scraps of what remains of their economy.

Meanwhile, in the Citadel of the Clueless:

Pelosi orders wide Wall Street probe. This should have been done months ago when it might actually have helped. Horse. barn. gone.

Reid says Congress won’t act because “No one knows what to do”. Well that’s just great. How about we get people in there who do have a clue, then?

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No Fear of the Future found this tidbit in a magazine for PMCs, nestled among the Blackwater blimp ad and a How-To article on private sector PSYOP.

An Eskimo village with multiple federal PMC subsidiaries that is currently hiring intelligence analysts in Iraq, forklift operators in Bethesda and El Paso, Iraqi Intelligence Analysts in DC, Special Ops Support in San Antonio, and linquists.

Can you do the math? I want to meet the Northern Virginia lawyer who put this corporate org chart together.

If you think this new outsourced branch of the 21st century market state is going away after the elections, keep dreaming. It’s a brave new world.

As states continue to hollow out, privatization of what they used to do, including war, will continue.

But wait. This means PMCs could be hiding out anywhere. If an Inuit Village can actually be a PMC, then maybe that reclusive group of supposed hippie leftovers way back in Sonoma County aren’t just pot farmers. Maybe they finance their PMC arms purchases from marijuana sales and do espionage for private interests. Who would suspect a 60 yo graybeard with a ponytail and tie-dyed t-shirt of being a double agent or crack shot with an Uzi. Be scared, be very scared.

Seriously though (well, sort of.) With all these PMCs running around beholden to whomever, then things start getting complicated. That uniformed guy taking photos of you at the antiwar demonstration. Is he a cop, in a PMC, a cop from another jurisdiction hired by the PMC to aid local police, or who knows what.

When I helped organize antiwar protests in L.A., LAPD usually had a video squad. They walked among the crowd videoing and were clearly identified as LAPD video. Ok, at least I know where the videos are going. But if it’s a PMC, then who knows where the videos go and why they were hired. Things just get much more opaque as PMCs flourish and grow. Like, who is really in charge?

For more on PMCs, check my review of Licensed to Kill. Hired Guns in the War of Terror by Robert Young Pelton.

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Gov. Schwarzenegger now says he’ll veto the budget that finally got passed 78 days late. And if they override the veto he says he’ll pitch a hissy fit and veto hundreds of other bills simply out of spite. Golly, what an adult, mature reaction that is.

Meanwhile healthcare clinics, schools, and day care clinics are forced to slash services because they can’t receive money if there’s no budget.

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