THE Bailout Thread pt 3 (merged)

[shortonsense]

Carmaker says still aims to bring the electric car to market by 2010

The cash-strapped automaker is putting the breaks on the construction of a factory in Flint, Mich. set to make 1.4 liter engines for the Chevrolet Cruze and Chevy Volt plug-in electric car.

You know, I always figured the Volt was one of those things which would put a stake through the heart of peak oil, but I figured they would at least have to BUILD it before it would have an effect.

[mos6507]

You know, I always figured the Volt was one of those things which would put a stake through the heart of peak oil, but I figured they would at least have to BUILD it before it would have an effect.

I always felt that GM was in a race against time to get the Volt out there before Peak Oil caused a "receding horizon" effect that would prevent meaningful scale-out. So I made a mental note to treat the cancellation of the Volt or the fall of GM as a peak oil canary in the coal mine and a trigger to get to work on my DIY conversion instead. I never thought the credit crisis would bankrupt GM despite oil dropping back down into a comfort zone. If the credit crisis indirectly wipes out EV startups via cheap gas then when gas spikes up again we will be right where we were when the Volt project was announced--behind the curve and racing against time.

[dohboi]

I still think people are missing the point.

How would you feel if at this point Ben and Hank handed Madoff $100 billion because he was too big to fail?

That is what has already happened. The f'ers at Bear Stearns, AIG...were all corrupt, they set up the very sh*t hole that we have now all fallen into, AND WE ARE PAYING THEM TRILLIONS!

Even if we paid both Madoff and all his saps, it would not compare to the heinous payoffs already underway.

The rich have always managed to rip off the poor. Now they are ripping of each other a bit too, but the rest of us have already become their debt surfs. We will be paying for these bailouts/handouts to financial terrorists for the rest of our lives, our children's lives, their children's lives...

[ReverseEngineer]

The rich have always managed to rip off the poor. Now they are ripping of each other a bit too, but the rest of us have already become their debt surfs. We will be paying for these bailouts/handouts to financial terrorists for the rest of our lives, our children's lives, their children's lives...

No, it won't play out that way Dohboi. It might have played out that way if they could have contained the Cascade Failure, but its not containable. We won't be debt slaves to THIS monetary system at least. Nobody is ever going to pay off on $60T lost in the CDS market. There simply won't even be taxpayers to tax pretty soon, because individuals won;t have jobs and companies will be out of biz.

What we may be is slaves to the NEXT Goobermint that takes over, be it national, regional or local, but it won't be debt slaves, it would be the more traditional kind where you work at the point of a gun or are shot on the spot. It will be up to the individuals here whether they will willingly become slaves or whether they will fight before that happens, and many will certainly fight. On which side, who knows, but they will fight for sure. Which side will you stand on Dohboi? I know where I stand, I stand with Tom Joad.

Whenever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Whenever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there . . . . I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an'-I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build-why, I'll be there.

Reverse Engineer

[shakespear1]

Code: Select all

I wouldn't be so quick to assume his family were in on it. The whole thing blew up because his sons caught wind of it and turned him in.

I have a moderate amount of "tin foil" (well I think so) and am not willing to swallow this mush. Madoff n his one office operation managed to even fool his sons what he was doing!!!! Soare we to assume that he had his Quicken software running day in day out fixing the books as those checks were coming in. Mailing out profits to his "investors" every months and the sons noticed nothing.

You can run this scam when the market more or less is always on the upward trajectory, but a Depression Size bear market starts to clear out all the BS operations.

His was just that, a pure inside trader operation which they say on BBC had constant more or less ~10% returns!!!! Miracles do happen.

He ran a ponzi scheme. When times were tough he probable just looked for more "investors" to pay in and thus pay those waiting for the next months check. In the mean time waiting for the good times to return. Besides, he had inside info how to game the system as he was one of those that put this Monopoly Game together.

I think they better be careful how this one is played out as I suspect that if these investors are bailed out then the people siting in Detroit will not be happy. Greece could come to Detroit.

"Let them eat cake" moment.

[MrBean]

Greece could come to Detroit.

"Let them eat cake" moment.

Why the sad face? Revolutions are fun! If a revolution ain't fun, it ain't worth it. Yes they are having fun in Greece. Plenty fun. Those in revolt I mean. Not those in power.

[Gorm]

or those who owns the cars that burns, stores that are smashed and so on. no fun for them either.

[shakespear1]

Code: Select all

Here’s an excerpt from Bailout Nation, about a subject under much discussion today: The incompetence of the S.E.C.

Part IV: Market Failure
Chapter 14. Casting Blame

Over the course of two terms, Bush appointed three SEC Chairmen, each ill-suited for the position. It was a veritable parade of poor choices for the role of regulating stock markets. His first appointment, Harvey Pitt, was a securities industry defense attorney and was wholly unsuited to the position. Instead of representing the interests of investors, Pitt was an industry lapdog. Pitt pledged a “kinder and gentler” SEC just when the opposite was needed in the midst of a huge run of corporate misfeasance.

In an era of corporate accounting scandals, Pitt had close ties to the accounting industry. And for inexplicable reasons, Pitt met with the heads of companies under active SEC investigation. As a Wall Street lawyer, Pitt had “recommended that clients destroy sensitive documents before they could be used against them – advice that seemed to find echoes in the SEC’s investigations into Enron and its shredder-happy auditor, Arthur Andersen.” Pitt had to recuse himself from many of the SEC’s votes — they were frequently about the clients he had represented as a defense attorney. By July of 2002, Senator (and future GOP presidential candidate) John McCain was calling for Pitt’s resignation.

Pitt, not surprisingly, demoralized the agency. To investor advocacy groups, having Pitt as SEC chief was like putting Osama bin Laden in charge of Homeland Security.

Market Failure

[shortonsense]

You know, I always figured the Volt was one of those things which would put a stake through the heart of peak oil, but I figured they would at least have to BUILD it before it would have an effect.

If the credit crisis indirectly wipes out EV startups via cheap gas then when gas spikes up again we will be right where we were when the Volt project was announced--behind the curve and racing against time.

EXCEPT...the money has already been spent on the R&D, and the engineers involved in the project, as they disseminate out into industry after GM lays them off, will not FORGET everything they did on the project.

Every time we go through one of these...ramp up to a new technology, price crash halting it, we learn something. Two steps forward, one step back.

One of THOSE engineers will round up a little seed money from a venture capitalist, and start building a decent little PHEV. He'll get bought up by a surviving auto company ( Honda or Toyota? ). They will mass produce the idea back to life.

In either case, the structural change of electrifying transport continues. And now that we're on the other side of PO and have determined that yes Matilda, it IS like the 70's style recessions in terms of demand destruction, we now have ANOTHER example of how much stronger demand destruction is than run of the mill field decline.

[InToWishin]

Pyramid Scheme Alert Calls Madoff Scandal a Failure of SEC and FTC to Enforce Laws Against Pyramid and Ponzi Schemes

...

More than 1,000 family farms were lured into a pigeon-breeding Ponzi scheme. ( http://www.pyramidschemealert.org/PSAMa ... une08.html ) The promoter paid investors regularly for seven years, relying purely on new investors for his revenue, as the scam spread widely across the country and into the USA.

When the scam collapsed in June of this year, the farmers were ruined with many facing foreclosure on their family farms. Reputable banks had made loans to the farmers to participate in the scam.

Good thing it was just farms. What do farms do anyway? Probably not anything important like office buildings, right?

2009 to witness global agri-commodity shortage

...

Overall, food markets continue to operate in a high and rising cost environment. Credit tightening has reduced the ability of farmers (and countries) to borrow to cover these regular upfront operating costs at the start of each season. ...

And historically low inventory buffers of food products leave the market vulnerable to adverse supply shocks on a seasonal basis. ...

Somebody should tell them the truth! Food comes from restaurants. Everybody knows that, right?

[mos6507]

And now that we're on the other side of PO and have determined that yes Matilda, it IS like the 70's style recessions in terms of demand destruction

You can extrapolate that yes, drivers will change their habits due to high oil prices. You can not extrapolate that this alone (in an economy NOT hobbled by the credit crisis) will moderate prices to this extent. The dropoff in oil demand is largely not due to individual drivers driving less or switching to fuel efficient cars, but the big drop in industrial activity due to the credit crunch.

So the disheartening message of demand destruction is that individual drivers do not have as much of a lever on gas prices as previously thought. As long as industrial activity snaps back and tries to expand it will push oil prices higher even in the face of universal cutbacks in personal gas consumption.

There must be a way to get oil out of society as a whole, not just personal transportation. Even if everyone drives an EV, any savings gained in personal transportation will go out the door again in the increased cost of oil intensive goods.

[dorlomin]

Does anyone here think there is enough Lithium in the world to make lithium ion batteries a major replacement for oil?

Plantagenet hit the nail on the head IMO, its vapour. Either that or its bailout bait.

[vaseline2008]

The Volt? At the rate it was being developed I can assure that there would be all kinds of failures and recalls. You just can't rush R&D and expect to get a great product...I don't care if you're Japanese or German or Martian. As for the niche market for a plug-in hybrid car the car company that Warren Buffet invested $230 Million in, BYD Auto of China has one already...they also have an all electric car too.

Don't make the Volt? Well...there's always an alternative.

China's First Plug-In Hybrid Car Rolls Out

While U.S. automakers struggle to survive after the Senate rejected a bailout for Detroit, one company from China may be showing a way forward for the industry. On Dec. 15, BYD Auto got a jump on General Motors (GM), Toyota (TM), and Nissan (NSANY) by introducing in its home town of Shenzhen the first mass-produced plug-in hybrid, the F3 DM. BYD's new car, with a $22,000 price tag, can run for up to 60 miles on a battery charged from an ordinary electricity outlet.

Early this year there was plenty of skepticism in auto circles about BYD's ability to put together a car that would ever become truly roadworthy. The company unveiled its plug-in hybrid at the Detroit Auto Show in January, and few outsiders figured the Chinese upstart, which had only been in the auto business since 2003, had the know-how to produce a commercially viable plug-in.

One person who seems to believe in the car's viability is Warren Buffett. In September, Des Moines-based MidAmerican Energy, which is controlled by Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA), paid $231 million for a 9.9% stake in BYD Auto's parent company BYD with a view to helping BYD distribute its cars in the U.S. by 2011.

[mos6507]

GM Vows to Deliver Volt, Bailout or Not

[vaseline2008]

Does anyone here think there is enough Lithium in the world to make lithium ion batteries a major replacement for oil?

Plantagenet hit the nail on the head IMO, its vapour. Either that or its bailout bait.

Here are some comparisons with Lead and Lithium. There is supposed to be more Lithium in the Earth's crust than Lead. I chose lead because there are so many lead acid batteries already in use all over the world in our cars.
Lead
Lithium

[CarlosFerreira]

Does anyone here think there is enough Lithium in the world to make lithium ion batteries a major replacement for oil?

Plantagenet hit the nail on the head IMO, its vapour. Either that or its bailout bait.

Here are some comparisons with Lead and Lithium. There is supposed to be more Lithium in the Earth's crust than Lead. I chose lead because there are so many lead acid batteries already in use all over the world in our cars.
Lead
Lithium

I was worrying about this same problem just last night. Thanks for the links.

About R&D time: did anyone notice how long have the VW group been taking to send out a hybrid? They're on the case for a couple of years now, and Porsche (which bought a lot of VW and is essentially a sister company) is at is as well, and still they can't put the wretched thing in production.

[CarlosFerreira]

GM Vows to Deliver Volt, Bailout or Not

Dead men don't deliver

The White House said on Thursday it was considering an “orderly” bankruptcy for the US’s stricken auto companies in its clearest warning yet that General Motors or Chrysler could be forced to file for Chapter 11 protection or similar measures.

Dana Perino, President George W. Bush’s spokeswoman, told reporters the administration was “very close” to making a decision as to how to help the two companies, which have said they need an emergency $15bn to continue operations until the end of March.

[cube]

Does anyone here think there is enough Lithium in the world to make lithium ion batteries a major replacement for oil?

Plantagenet hit the nail on the head IMO, its vapour. Either that or its bailout bait.

Here are some comparisons with Lead and Lithium. There is supposed to be more Lithium in the Earth's crust than Lead. I chose lead because there are so many lead acid batteries already in use all over the world in our cars.
Lead
Lithium

There has been endless debates about what the car of the future will run on. However there is one idea that is not very popular on this forum and perhaps not very popular IRL.
Here's the cube scenario.
how about NO car
I think PO will kill off the concept of single car ownership for 90% of society. How will you go from pt A to pt B?

yeah I know it's not sexy.
I have a really bad habit of saying things that people do NOT want to hear ---> The Truth!
//
getting back to the Chevy Volt is it just me or does anyone else here think it's weird that they are advertising a car with a gasoline engine as being "electric"???

[dorlomin]

I was worrying about this same problem just last night. Thanks for the links.

About R&D time: did anyone notice how long have the VW group been taking to send out a hybrid? They're on the case for a couple of years now, and Porsche (which bought a lot of VW and is essentially a sister company) is at is as well, and still they can't put the wretched thing in production.

The Gruniad pussy foot around the issue. It seems to be opaque. But it does not look like we have anywhere near the capacity to replace a significant portion of our current fleets with lithium yet. The idea that we could ratchet up a technology from powering hand helds to powering a fleet of cars without hitting cost and scaleability issues is more than I am willing to swallow.

Additionaly finding new sources of energy for the grid to charge these wonder cars will be another headache down the road.

I cant see lithium ion batteries being much more than a niche to allow bigger cars to use less petrol. For the luxuary market only (imo).

[CarlosFerreira]

The Gruniad pussy foot[/url] around the issue. It seems to be opaque. But it does not look like we have anywhere near the capacity to replace a significant portion of our current fleets with lithium yet. The idea that we could ratchet up a technology from powering hand helds to powering a fleet of cars without hitting cost and scaleability issues is more than I am willing to swallow.

Additionaly finding new sources of energy for the grid to charge these wonder cars will be another headache down the road.

I cant see lithium ion batteries being much more than a niche to allow bigger cars to use less petrol. For the luxuary market only (imo).

It's not just that. Everybody wants a piece of the action.

One of scarier shotgun marriages being tossed around liberal circles lately has been the green auto bailout. This is the idea that we can save Detroit by giving them money in exchange for their commitment to build a fleet of electric vehicles. The only problem is that they don’t currently know how to do that. Specifically, the battery technology is years away, while Detroit needs the money yesterday. But many of the true believers remain undeterred, suggesting that we can pay Detroit to build the car “shells” now, and store them until the batteries are ready. [I'll let you insert your own 5 year plan joke here.]

So I was already thinking about this today when Tmoney emailed me a Wall Street Journal article (sub. required) reporting on a consortium of US battery manufactures seeking $1 billion in US loans to manufacture batteries in the United States. Now I’m all for subsidizing R&D, but there were some unsettling justifications for the program subtly weaved into the narrative. It’s not that electric car batteries don’t exist, they just don’t exist at a competitive price. Tesla will gladly sell you an electric roadster for $100K. So you’d think that if we really want a fleet of electric cars, we’d be trying to get the batteries from the cheapest source available. Think again. The battery industry has largely migrated from the US to Asia over the past two decades because of cheaper costs and locational spillovers (where do all of your electronics come from?). But this loan would stipulate that all of the money be spent in the US, creating green jobs (there’s bird number two). There is also the vague warning from unspecified “experts” that “battery technology and manufacturing capacity could become as strategically important as oil is today” (and there’s the third bird, national security). I’m no battery expert, but I fail to see the parallels with oil, a geographically concentrated, finite natural resource.

Common Tragedies