international oil speculation as a cause for spikes in oil prices last year

Both India and China are growing economies with populations of over a billion people each.

There are only 300 million Americans,each of them have over three times the population of the U.S. Which means together, they told a combined total of over 6 times the population of the U.S.

The U.S. has been the world's main consumer of oil. Regardless of how much they conserve, neither India or China will be able to keep the prices down.

So last year investors in Dubai and Hong Kong were speculating on oil.

We were blamed because margins were lowered, however the increase in oil speculation in the U.S. was actually less than the margins. And probably because real estate was the hot commodity at the time.

I'm calling this a red herring:
http://www.1440wallstreet.com/index.php/site/comments/crude_oil_rips_after_regulators_show_their_hand/
The lending is krap. But stop bailing out people who knew they were selling krap, let free market discipline take it's course.

China shares up after Cap and Trade Bill Passed the House Vote

Watch China Sunergy (CSUN)
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/historical_quotes.aspx?symbol=CSUN&selected=CSUN

Today Sunday June 28 10:07 pm pst
After Hours
Last: $ 4.63 After Hours
High: $ 4.63
After Hours
Volume: 1,800 After Hours
Low: $ 4.51


Date Open High Low Close/Last Volume
06/26/2009 4.49 4.55 4.42 4.50 761,260
06/25/2009 4.40 4.60 4.27 4.46 895,723
06/24/2009 4.33 4.49 4.20 4.37 858,934
06/23/2009 4.38 4.38 3.85 4.06 1,362,045
06/22/2009 4.61 4.65 4.16 4.19 1,408,459




China financial futures exchange link:
http://www.cffex.com.cn/

RON KIRK FOR THE WIN!!!

This Cabinet rookie is starting as a fiscal wide receiver who took the ball and decided to run for the 5 yard line against Team China. The referee, the WTO is a hairy beast of corruption who's working against Team USA. To play against China, we must understand that we have to beat the referees just so we can get our own numbers up on the board.

Obama's cabinet members, ie. Obama, our most inept Congress and Geithner is undermining Kirk's efforts by spending and giving the U.S. more reason to sell treasuries to China. China buys US Treasuries to prop up the dollar above the Yuan to stay competative on trade. So right now, Kirk is making the right plays by addressing the WTO on China's protectionist policies against the U.S. Unfortunately, team USA never gave Kirk pass protection and defensive linemen.

Here is the WTO issue that he's dealing with. I'm posting a vid and the text of the transcript at the bottom of this post.

Personally, if I were Obama, I would have picked a non-politician; preferably a proven expert at international business or anyone in the Microsoft department that implemented and successfully executed the anti-piracy black screen on their Microsoft Vista program.

Ron Kirk is a novice at international trade relations; his primary occupation before politics was law. He's an attorney. The press and "expert economist" SHILLS both muffle out the damage done to our economy due to the massive deficit in the private sector. Metaphorically, these "expert economists" are getting paid to be raped. Big business pimps for short term gains and the smart people have become their whores. The money must be that good to conciously undermine your professional credibility.

So thank god Ron Kirk understands the weight of his position. He is aggressively pursuing a diplomatic, pragmatical and more intellegent resolution in our trade relations with China. Fixing the trade deficit will repair the economy by putting non-interest compounding money supply back into circulation; which is going to work out much better than manipulating federal reserve interest rates and allowing fraudulent derivatives to be sold again in the market.

Even if he's being lobbied and encouraged by big business to address the WTO on grievances, Kirk is doing more for the American people than the 500+ overpaid idiots in our Congress. So for dealing with the WTO, he will deserve every penny if he can pull this off. I'm a fiscal republican who is extremely critical of the Obama Administration and their handling on domestic matters; and I'm giving Ron Kirk 110% of my support.

Maybe we should probably bribe the WTO like China does. Hmmmm--->how do I know that China bribes the WTO? The WTO is working against us and CHina is known to give out bribes. The probably of that happening is very high.

Here are a few issues that he's dealing with.

Ron Kirk is showing America that he wants to win the game.

Here are a few other links to other related trade issues Ron Kirk is addressing:
US Prepared To Take Fresh WTO Action Vs EU Over Airbus Aid

Secretary Gary Locke and USTR Ron Kirk Call on China To Revoke Mandatory Internet Filtering Software


I'm glad to see him addressing the World Trade Organization in this matter. This is exciting, encouraging news.


Transcripts of the press conference: Kirk and the China defense team.

TRANSCRIPT: Press Conference on WTO Case Against China Over Export Restraints on Raw MaterialsAmbassador Kirk: Good morning. Thank you all for joining us. Forgive me for being a few minutes late.

Before I begin my remarks about the subject of our press conference, the mayor in me has to take a moment and express our thoughts and prayers to the families of those who were killed in the horrible train accident yesterday and extend our support to Mayor Fenty and his team as they struggle to work through this tragedy and make some sense of it and learn from it. So our thoughts and prayers are with all those who lost their lives and those who may have been injured.

This morning I have an opportunity to talk to you about a matter that is critically important not just to our mission here at the United States Trade Representative's Office, but also, we believe, to all the businesses that are involved in helping keep America strong by being in the export business which allows them to create important and good jobs here at home.

Now more than ever, trade is essential to keeping America's economy afloat. We know that as a result of the decline in global trade over the last 18 months or so, to its lowest levels since World War II, and we've seen the effect that's had not only on our economy but on economies around the world.

More significantly, 97 percent of America's exporters are small and medium sized businesses that employ millions upon millions of citizens. Many of them are subcontractors to some of the larger companies with whom you may be more familiar.

And jobs dependent on trade in many cases are better-paying jobs that Americans want and desperately need - with salaries that can range from 13 to 18 percent higher than the national average.

Thus access to markets around the world that help us retain and create good-paying jobs are the kind of trade that Americans can support and that President Obama believes is a critical part of our economic recovery.

Thus barriers to trade can slow our ability to recover from this current economic crisis.

The Obama Administration has been clear with our trading partners that we wish to work together to keep global trade flowing and provide economic opportunities for all of our citizens. But we will always, and that's always, expect our trading partners to play by the rules.

Now, our preferred tools of engagement are direct dialogue and discussions to resolve differences as quickly as possible so that we can keep trade flowing efficiently. But there are instances when our talks don't work as well as we would like for them to, and we've always reserved the right to take action. We will enforce the rights of American manufacturers, farmers, ranchers, our services providers, and our workers through the rules-based global trading system at the World Trade Organization.

So today the Obama administration is insisting on the rights of American businesses and workers to a level playing field. Thus we are initiating formal consultations with China in the World Trade Organization, because we see a major problem in one particular area.

The United States believes that China is unfairly restricting exports of raw materials. These actions are hurting American steel, aluminum and chemical manufacturers, among other industries, that desperately need these materials to make their products. These actions also endanger thousands of jobs in America for those employed in these important sectors.

USTR is very concerned that China appears to be restricting these export materials at the expense of U.S. industries that need these materials for their production. And this appears to be occurring despite very strong and clear WTO rules designed to discipline export restraints.

And we are most troubled that this appears to be a conscious policy to create unfair preferences for Chinese industries by making raw materials cheaper for China's companies to get, and goods more economical for them to produce.

These export restrictions by China skew the playing field against American workers and businesses, but also other industries around the world dependent on these raw materials. And they unfairly advantage Chinese producers.

Under WTO rules, such distortion of the playing field on trade is simply not allowed. It is not okay in specific cases like the one that we raised today. It is certainly not okay as an underpinning of a country's overall industrial policy regime.

Now, more than ever, we must fight against this kind of domestic favoritism.

Earlier this month, I had an opportunity to speak to the US-China Business Council and I made it clear that the United States and our office seek a productive, cooperative relationship with China to advance our mutual economic relationship. This is particularly true in the field of trade.

But I also made it equally clear that the United States will not yield on enforcing the right of American businesses and exporters to compete on a level playing field with China.

And I made it plain that if we can do it by trade diplomacy, that we would do so where we had problems that arise. But if we have to file cases at the WTO, then we would do so.

So after more than two years of urging China to lift these unfair restrictions with no result, we are filing at the WTO today.

Now before many of you run off and write stories that we're escalating tension between the U.S. and China, I want to remind you of one thing. The WTO is a wonderful mechanism for resolving trade disputes that inevitably occur in mature relationships. It's been less than ten years, if you think about it, since China has been admitted to the World Trade Organization. During that time the United States has brought seven cases against China and China has brought four cases against us. And in many of those cases we have been able to resolve them by mutual understanding through Memorandum of Agreements before these cases go from the consultation stage to the appellate body.

So at this stage what we are simply doing is initiating this process by requesting formal consultations with China in a further attempt to find a negotiated solution to this problem. It is very much our hope that we will not have to proceed to the next stage which is requesting a WTO panel to examine this matter.

This is not a step that we have taken lightly, but we are taking it deliberately and it is a necessary step to enforce the rights of America's manufacturers.

It's also the fulfillment of a promise. One that I made during my confirmation hearings to Members of the House and Senate, and it's one that President Obama promised in his 2009 Trade Policy Agenda, that one of the highest priorities of our trade policy would be our standing up for the rights of American workers and businesses in the rules-based global trading system.

President Obama and I are of the firm belief that given a level playing field, American workers and businesses can compete with the best of those anywhere in the world, and we can win.

China's policies on these raw materials seem to put a giant thumb on the scale in favor of Chinese producers. It's our job to make sure we remove that thumb from the scale.

Today's action is proof of our commitment to level the playing field in this area. It is our hope that this dispute is resolved speedily and to the fair benefit of U.S. industries and workers and other industries around the world as well.

Our steelworkers, our aluminum producers, and workers in countless other industries deserve the chance to compete fairly with their Chinese counterparts. This case is simply designed to give them that chance.

I'll be happy to take your questions, and I would remind you after our questions and answers, that our China team and lawyers will be available for a more detailed briefing for you if you have specific questions.

Question: Jim Berger, Washington Trade Daily.

I assume you meet with the Chinese Minister later in the week in Paris. Did you find it to be of no purpose to bring this dispute up then for settlement? Or is it just off the table?

Ambassador Kirk: I do hope to have an opportunity to visit with my counterpart. I'm not sure of my final schedule, Jim, when I attend the OECD. But we believe that after two years of discussion and dialogue with no resolution it was well past the time to take this step at this particular time.

This also, frankly, may give me an opportunity to have a more fruitful conversation with my colleagues with us having taken this first step.

Question: Thank you, Mr. Ambassador, Zengxin Li from Caijing Magazine.

We all know that China is right now highly dependent on investments [inaudible]. [Inaudible] consider the risk of Chinese economy collapsing and endanger the world recovery and even U.S. jobs? Thank you.

Ambassador Kirk: Our first priority is making sure that the United States economy is restored and as part of that economic recovery we believe that trade can become a much more central part of that. But in order for that to happen, trade has to be fair.

One of the reasons the United States made I think the right decision and a wise decision to support China's admission to the WTO was so that we would have a forum to address these types of problems. And I'll be honest, I can't imagine that our resolving trade disputes in a manner that is consistent with commitments that China made when it was admitted to the WTO and it expressly made the commitment that it would not engage in this type of behavior. We think that asking our trading partners to play by the rules that we agreed to will in no way endanger their economy. And we think asking Chinese exporters, frankly, to compete with us on an even playing field will make them stronger and not weaker.

So it's not only good for American manufacturers, we think it will be good for China's economy in the long run.

Question: Dan Neumann, Inside U.S. Trade.

You talked about how these discussions have been going on for over two years. It was our understanding that the Bush administration considered filing a case on this problem at the end of its time in office but declined to.

What changed that calculation for the Obama administration? Was it simply a fact that the talks have gone on for two years? Or is this an example of the Obama administration being tougher on China?

Ambassador Kirk: Well Dan, in Texas we say that's not a question, that's an answer. I don't mean to be --

Question: What would you say in Washington?

Ambassador Kirk: I'd remind you that I'm not standing here as the third Trade Representative of the Bush administration, but as the first Trade Representative for President Obama. And we made a commitment that we would revisit our trade policy in every aspect. President Obama and I both believe that trade can play and should play a role in our overall economic recovery. But we were equally concerned that more and more Americans have become cynical about trade, and one of the reasons is that they believe that the United States has either lack of will or the resources to force our trading partners to play by the rules.

So we think that a critical step, first of all, is restoring America's confidence in our trade policy, and that we have to take the fairly pragmatic step of asking our partners to do what they committed to do. So it's not necessarily an indictment of the previous administration, but we believe if we're going to ask Americans to believe in our trade policy that we have to have our trading partners play by the rules.

Question: Jim Puzzanghera with the LA Times.

Given that this is the first filing by the Obama administration, and following up what you just said, what message do you hope this sends to other trading partners beyond China about the administration's intent to handle trade policy?

Ambassador Kirk: Hopefully all of our partners will realize that we're serious about this.

Secondly, for all of our economies, all of us have parroted the words that we don't want to engage in anti-protectionism, but we have to give real meaning to that. In order to keep global trade flowing and to keep trade liberalization an important part of all of our economic future, we have to engage in behavior that's consistent with the commitments that we made, whether it's through the WTO, or through any of our other Free Trade Agreements.

I want them to know, first of all, the United States is still open for business. We believe that trade can be a critical part of our economic and other countries' economic revival, but if you're going to do business with the United States you're going to have to play by the rules.

Question: Jose Lopez of the Mexican News Agency.

You said you support China's accession to the WTO to have a body to resolve these disputes. However, in March you tried to block the installation of a plant due to the complaint of Buy Mexico and the tuna dolphin safe label. Is there a double standard here?

Ambassador Kirk: No.

Question: Can you explain, please?

Ambassador Kirk: Yes. Listen, the whole purpose of entering, whether it's a Free Trade Agreement or the WTO is we make certain commitments about how we will conduct ourselves with respect to trade. We also set up a body and a framework for how we will resolve disputes. In the case of the tuna dolphin matter between the U.S. and Mexico, that is a matter that clearly should be resolved within the context of NAFTA and that dispute resolution mechanism.

In this case Mexico and the United States which have an extraordinarily close relationship culturally, trade, geographically. Mexico believes that the proper forum should have been the WTO. We have a firm belief that it should be within NAFTA. I don't see any inherent conflict in us insisting or at least pursuing the resolution of that through NAFTA which we think is the more appropriate forum.

Question: Sam Gilston with Washington Tariff and Trade Letter.

I'm trying to understand this. Despite all the complaints about the U.S. trade deficit with China and the antidumping and countervailing duty complaints against Chinese steel and chemicals, you're now saying that China's not exporting enough to the United States. I'm trying to get that in my mind to understand that. Can you clarify what specific products are not being exported that we want more exports from China now?

Ambassador Kirk: Sam, it does seem a bit counter-intuitive, but let me see if I can do it this way.

One, what we want is a non-distorted market between the United States and China. However that may occur, we will work to remove that distortion.

In the case of antidumping and those issues, that tends to be where we have a business that unfairly dumps an excessive amount of material or supplies of products into the United States over and above what we anticipated.

In this particular case we have China, we think, through the exercise of export restraints and other means unfairly restricting the flow of raw materials that are critical to the steel, aluminum and other chemical industries that causes two things. One, it limits our access to supplies that we have to have to make steel. SO it increases the cost of our supplies for American manufacturers. It increases the availability of those materials within China and reduces their costs which then can distort the market.

I'll give you one example. There is a product that's essential to making steel tubes that we call coke. In 2008 China produced 336 million metric tons of coke around the world. By putting export restraints on coke, the amount of exports dropped to 12 million metric tons. You can pretty quickly figure out the impact that had on manufacturers and producers outside of China and the competitive advantage that it gave to China's domestic producers.

So in this case the distortion of the market is caused by the export restraints, not the excess of products that are being shipped. But in every case our goal is clear. We want a market that is not distorted by either unfair tariffs, other non-tariff barriers, or export restraints.

Thank you all for coming.

Again, we have Claire Reade, Tim Stratford, members of our legal team that are happy to go through and give you a much more technical explanation of what we've done. We will give you the complete list of raw materials that are involved. We appreciate your time and attention this morning.

Thank you.

Phillip Morris Plays Sin Tax for Tobacco Monopoly; expect inflation in food prices

THIS IS EXACTLY HOW THE GOVERNMENT IS BEING PLAYED TO BENEFIT BIG BUSINESS!
Government needs to keep it's hands out of business, everytime they touch it they screw it up for everybody.

The nation's largest tobacco manufacturer, Philip Morris, USA, has come out in support of the legislation. Its parent company, Altria Group, said in a statement that on balance, "the legislation is an important step forward to achieve the goal we share with others to provide federal regulation of tobacco products."

Its main rivals, however, have voiced opposition, arguing in part that FDA restrictions on new products will lock in Philip Morris' share of the market.

Altria is the parent company of Phillip Morris. They also own Kraft Foods, Nabisco and a few other food companies.

Phillip Morris can allocate the tax expense to these food companies through their products, as noted the costs of taxes will go to the consumer.

Reynolds, of Camel Joe does not have an alternative market to allocate tax expenses to in order to keep the costs of cigarettes competative.

The tobacco market is marketed to the classes, not the masses. The optimum price is achieved when demand meets supply. With the tax, the supply is reduced for affordability purposes and prices go up. Phillip Morris can keep that equilibrium down for affordability purposes.

So, expect inflation in food prices. Especially if they're produced or sold by either Altria or Phillip Morris.

Who wants to bet that either Altria or Phillip Morris makes an aggressive bid for Reynolds?

http://www.con-suming.com/Tobacco/tobacco_and_non_tobacco_products.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UST_Inc.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/764180/000119312509041005/d10k.htm#toc67862_21
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraft_Foods
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a6wck3.5_LIM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UST_Inc.
http://www.house.gov/jct/x-101-07.pdf

The importance of citizen journalism-Iran

The interweb is flooded with horror stories, stories of revolution, excuses and stories involving the CIA. The Iranian protests are written on Twitter from Iran and videos posted on Youtube. Through the mass influx of information; and too often like 9/11 a reaction by people who have trouble handling information on crisis. A few others would exploit the situation for their own agendas. Unfortunately our domestic fiscal situation is subject to the same misrepresntation. The best point of view is closest to the first person point of view as you can get. The best news is just one reported objectively as if you were there, allowing the audience to make up our minds for ourselves on how we feel about that situation.

Out on the "featured" page of youtube was the video of a 16 year old Neda dying from a gunshot wound to the heart. The reaction from the crowd elimated suspicion that this was a "fake" video. I'm not getting into any stories around this.

But instead of hearing blame thrown around about who gave who weapons ancient history ago, people haven't learned that you can't change the past. And it is asking a lot for unarmed people to just revolt against a Bisaj, or an armed para-military group that kills on behalf of an evil empire. Obama was the eager beaver who wanted to befriend iran back in March, before the election. We must be really afraid of those nukes.

Or Israel is. Come on, like the CIA we can't leave the Jews out of this story too. The CIA and the Jews are behind everything that happens in the world and Americans are always going to be evil; according to the MSM. Look, I'm not even factchecking the CIA and the Semite theories. My bottom line is that leaders who kill their own people should never have access to weapons of mass destruction. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad obviously doesn't seem to place a high value on life except for his own or those who can directly benefit him.

We can't give Iran weapons because when we did that in the past during the Cold War; those weapons were used as a powergrab against the U.S. What we should do is provide these protestors bullet proof vests, helmets, appendages, neosporin, crutches, bandaids, triad nurses, dry ice patches for those bruises, bulletproof cars and borrow a few of Obama's bullet proof glass walls. Obama went golfing, when is he going to need them?

I'll bet not one source in the mainstream media or fox news reports anything that aligns with my point of view.

North Korea also shares a bit of troubles with Iran. Both are led by less than humane jerks who want nukes. There is also a large Korean population in Los Angeles. Both groups made good of their opportunities here. I didn't hear as much from the Iranians, but I've met Koreans who survived the Korean war and heard their perspective on the North Korea/US issue. You can't censor citizen journalism.

Just like I am blogging about America's fiscal troubles; until the interweb is completely censored ... through communication we have direct access to a first person point of view on the situations that affect us.

I'm an average, college educated American citizen. I have very little in common with Robert Murdoch or George Soros. These two tycoons bought off the media. And they're obviousy not representing the news as how it's going to affect me and too many of my fellow Americans.

So in return, I decided to respresent myself. No i'm not a trained journalist. My grammer is lacking on many occasions. But I'd rather represent myself before anybody starts jib jabbing about us "clueless" Americans based on the point of views of the one person who bought off the Mainstream Media for his own agenda.

On Obama's "Financial Regulatory Overhaul"=bloated, INEFFICIENT government

Here's the Official Link to the Overhaul


Obama's Financial "Regulatory Overhaul" is just increasing government with less efficiency than before.

Tim Geithner said that we have a new agency "modeled after the FDIC" to regulate ARM loans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcVmk1z53Vc

Why was the FDIC not involved with the non-bank lenders after the Commodities Futures Modernization Act?

The bankers knew they were selling krap. Not one unsecured credit default was sold by accident.

To regulate this effectively, all Congress had to do was reenact a modernized Glass Steagall Act, kill the Commodities Futures Modernization Act, run these subprime "commodities" through a clearing house and let the SEC create a department to regulate it.

Here are a few questions that the Republicans in Congress really need to ask.

1. Why do we need another department to regulate the subprime market?

-The Commodities Futures Modernization Act (pre2000) took the power from the SEC and gave it to the CFTC that failed to regulated it the subprime market in the last 10 years. Since the SEC is taking heat for it, can we just allow the SEC to regulate this?

-The Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) did not do their jobs; the lack of communication was blamed for their inefficiency. Creating a new agency will result in even lower efficiency.

-Obama tried to put Gensler as the head of the CFTC. Geithner put Pickel as the head of the ISDA. Neither Gensler or Pickel did their jobs to regulate the multi-Quadrillion dollar credit default market. WHY ARE THESE TWO GUYS BACK IN THEIR OLD POSITIONS?!!

Note; the net value of this planet is roughly $70 trillion at this time. A quadrillion U.S. dollars does not yet exist. Source: Worldfactbook.

-Why were the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, the Comptroller of the Currency not given any power to regulate the non-bank lenders?

2) About the Federal Reserve

-Why are we giving them more power when they didn't effectively use the power they had to regulate the banks in the last 10 years?

-Why are we giving the Federal Reserve more power when they lowered interest rates to increase demand or ARM loans, creating artificial demand and disasterous volatility in the real estate sector?

-The Federal Reserve is supposed to be an independant organization. Why are we having the Treasury run it?

-On what credentials is Bernanke using to hire Finke (out of money manager contractors) to regulate this market? There is a serious conflict of interest in both parties.

3) About the Community Reinvestment Act

- The CRA blame is an embarrassing, racist fallacy. Although the CRA is a moral hazard, ***Republicans are the party that thrives on individualism not collectivism***. We are not true conservatives if the party thrives on collectivism, which the racism reflects.

With that being said, Compliance Technologies (who did a SCIENTIFIC, UNBIASED study) concluded that 72% of the subprime borrowers were caucasians. Many who were upper middle class speculators using ARM loans to speculate; others were CAUCASIAN realtors and real estate agents using ARMS to artificially increase the demand and price of real estate across our country.

We need to drop that blame, these things are driving people away from the Republican party. Although it's a moral hazard, in no way did it cause the recent collapse.

-Obama just mentioned that he is creating a new entity to "stamp out bad practices in the mortgage industry". Why is he doing this without mention of the CRA? Why not entrust the FDIC to create a department, not an entire agency to do this?

4. Obama's emphasis on Credit cards.

-Doesn't the FTC already regulate this? Why are we creating yet a new organization to regulate it instead of passing effective laws to empower the FTC to do it?

-Credit card defaults did not cause the collapse of the credit default market.

5. Resolution Authroity= BIGGER GOVERNMENT.


6. Why did they pass a $1 trillion bailout if this isn't going to be regulated correctly? The could've SUSPENDED MARK TO MARKET. Either we cancel the bailout and TARP and let free market discipline handle this, or we get real regulation. Unfortunately, the free markets provide better results.

7. Why were the people not allowed to pursue justice in a free market manner?

-Why can't shareholders and clients of failed banks and nonbank lenders during the subprime collapse sue for damages, prosecute for fraud and throw these bad CEOS in Kenneth Lay's old jail cell.

-The CFTC and the ISDA were not institutions that enforced regulation in prior years when Money Managers attempted to report the sale of fraudulent assets. Which is why the SEC should be handling this market.
Exactly what is going to make this possible in the future so that money managers can effectively protect their clients' assets?

-Just to give you an idea as to how badly these CEO's screwed themselves;
a)NASA RETURNS INFINATE WEALTH through the satellite for communiciations, mapping and science for roughly $40 billion taxpayer dollars.
b)the TECH sector returns appx. $200 billion/year in PROFITS after a few billion US Taxpayer dollars were dumpted into R&D.
c)AIG takes $180 billion taxpayer dollars and LOSES $65 billion in the last 2 consecutive years.

Wouldn't it be easier to bailout government and Congress's pensions WITHOUT the AIG middlemen?

Obama is wasting our time with this and the gangster bankers are laughing at us.

Where is this Communism sentiment coming from?

I only have 23 minutes before the outage so I have to make this quick.

Just looking around as things shift back to normal I realized that this Obamamination is a freak of nature.

Everyone I know is either in love with this guy because he's black or because he's a partier. Then I noticed something else. All of his backers are pro-drug or prolegalization. I just never thought about it for some reason.

Through this unreal election, I have been swarmed by a bunch of kooks about his candidacy. Not one could give a logical reason on the economy.

I also realized that the Michael Moore/Arianna Huffingtons/Naomi Kleins/other useless hacks have no clue about the difference between capitalism, socialism, keynesian and communism but they blame capitalism for socialism's failures.

Their objective is to appease the commie gurillas, Cuba, etc. who bring them cheer. Their objective is to lie to get what they want. Their objective is not to make the economy any better, because if you were a rich, snorting hack you don't care how the economy affects anybody else.

And it was offensive, I am the daughter of a civilian who almost died at the hands of commies. The scare is real. Look at what North korea is doing to thier own people. Look at Mao, Pol Pot and Stalin. And liberals want to call themselves "humanitarians" and "compationates" when they rally communism?!!! Are they for real?!!!

We're talking about life and death issues, not party favors! They have to be on drugs, there's no other plausible explanation. Nobody has that much incentive to be an A$$h0le.

I would rather legalize drugs than suffer another drug user's inept, nieve, shortsighted, empty, vacant, illogical fallacies on economic systems.

It's like trying to talk to a junkie. They will lie, distort facts, dodge the argument, throw ad hominems and red herrings. They will do whatever it takes to get what they want.

Do your thing, just don't affect me with it please. That's all I ask.

Obama is bankrupting the country. We shouldn't be forced to choose between someone's preference of party favors and a leader that can work a fiscal policy; because as ar as fiscal matters goes Obama doesn't know what he's doing.

The love for Communism comes from the drug trade. Commies and Cokeheads are all one and the same. And they're arguing as they really want something. Their arguements are always ad hominems or red herrings at best. Money controls people, but I believe not pot but cocaine is the next largest influence. It has to be.

Columbia's gurrillas, the Chinese Nationalist movement, Nicaragua, Cuba...all communists. The last time i heard, small Cuban child refugees were floating ashore in Florida.

The market for Coke is estimated to be around $70 billion/year. Pot is only a $30 billion/year market. Tobacco is only $6 billion/year.

It's tiresome to have to second guess everything people say. A dog is smarter on social issues than Obamaphiles. And I talk with respect for human life.

Southern States Poach Businesses Amid Downturn-WSJ

The Southern States got it right.

Southern States Poach Businesses Amid Downturn

By ANSLEY HAMAN
When NCR Corp. started looking late last summer to move from its hometown of Dayton, Ohio, economic development agencies in the South pulled out all the stops in a bid to lure the 125-year-old company best known as a cash-register manufacturer.

Georgia quickly offered more than $100 million in tax and training incentives. State officials connected NCR with six Georgia research universities willing to license new technologies and train workers.

In addition to traditional incentives like tax abatements and fee waivers, local economic development leaders in the suburban Atlanta county where NCR's headquarters would be located negotiated discounts for the company with rental-car companies, airlines and landscapers. The city of Columbus, Ga., 100 miles from Atlanta, applied for $5.5 million in stimulus money to help pay for a new NCR factory. After deciding to build a customer-services center near Atlanta last year, the company last week said it would relocate its 1,250-employee headquarters to the area and open an ATM factory in Columbus.

Bill Nuti, NCR's chairman and chief executive officer, said the decision to move is a long-term strategic step, rather than simply cashing in on incentives. The move will cost millions upfront, but is "a decision that was made in the face of the recession to invest in the company's future."

Major companies have been relocating to the Southeast for decades -- lured by tax breaks, nonunion work forces, and, increasingly, ports, railroads and highway systems. But now Southern states are attempting to leverage the downturn to promote the region as more attractive during hard times -- especially compared to the Rust Belt and other regions where the economy is suffering most.

The Southeast has attracted an array of corporate facilities recently. In February, Asbury Automotive Group Inc., a major chain of national auto retailers, relocated to metro Atlanta from New York. In recent months, Tennessee announced three projects, all valued at more than $1 billion each, by units of Wacker Chemie AG, Volkswagen AG and Hemlock Semiconductor Group. North Carolina last week welcomed a new Apple Inc. data warehouse.

Meanwhile, state economic development officers say they are pursuing a higher number of relocation prospects. "The level of competition on retention, expansion and relocation projects has become more intense," said North Carolina Deputy Secretary of Commerce Dale Carroll.

Development agencies across the Southeast are therefore pushing their recruiting machines into overdrive. Gwinnett County, where NCR is moving its headquarters, revamped its development strategy in 2007 to prevent the slowing of the area's red-hot job growth. Nick Masino, the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce's vice president for economic development, says the organization hired seven new staff and created national and global marketing teams.

Since then, the number of companies the agency is courting soared to 36 this year compared with seven in the first six months of 2007. The Gwinnett Chamber has won five projects this year—including a 75-job expansion of Habasit America, a Suwanee, Ga., belting company, and a 300-job unit of California's YesVideo Inc., which transfers VHS to DVD. The agency says it brought at least 5,000 jobs to the county in the past 24 months. Half the companies it is pursuing are based in the Midwest.

The current flow of companies southward signals a "new form of the migration of the manufacturing from the Midwest," said Ross DeVol, director of regional economics at the Milken Institute, an economic think tank. "If the Midwest can't retain more of the firms like NCR given all the downsizing that's going to occur in the auto industry and the suppliers, this could have devastating effects," he said.

Atlanta officials say they started recruiting NCR, which employs 22,000 people world-wide, in 2007. Negotiations first began around a customer-services center, which NCR announced last October it would build in Peachtree City, another Atlanta suburb.

Worried, executives from the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce that month visited NCR, the area's only Fortune 500 corporation. But NCR provided little feedback, said Phillip L. Parker, president of the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce. The only concern NCR expressed to him over the years, he said, was difficulty recruiting in Dayton, which was last year named by Forbes magazine as one of the nation's "10 fastest-dying cities."

Meanwhile, the Georgia Department of Economic Development was stepping up efforts to win not just the expansion of NCR's area operations—but the entire company. Officials invited NCR executives to tour the Atlanta area, including the Georgia Institute of Technology and a state job-training facility. Development officials also successfully lobbied the Georgia legislature to improve tax benefits available for projects yielding more than 1,800 jobs and either $450 million in capital investment or a $150 million annual payroll.

NCR's move is a huge blow to Dayton, coming after the closure of a General Motors Corp. plant and layoffs at Delphi Corp. facilities. Unemployment in the area jumped to 11.3% in April from 6.4% a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "We were not allowed to even compete for this opportunity to retain this company that had been started and had been very successful in our community for so many years," said Mr. Parker. "I hope they don't wake up in five years and can't even take showers in Georgia," he added, in a jab at Atlanta's recent water shortages.

Write to Ansley Haman at ansley.haman@wsj.com

The Trade Deficit IS a Big Deal, Oil Prices on the Rise

THE REASONS WHY A TRADE DEFICIT IS SUCH A DISASTER TO THE AMERICAN ECONOMY

First of all, most of the wealth that is created here is sent overseas. We actually do more trade with Canada and they and most other countries (except Japan and Saudi Arabia) have been more than fair to us.

Let's look into this.

I have been using banking terms to describe the adverse effects of trade because there's no other term to describe the money supply made available or lost through the current account deficit. The banks create money, not wealth. Refer to the Federal Reserve. When our government prints, it costs us real value in the form of inflation because each dollar is worth less. INFLATION DOES NOT CREATE WEALTH.

The Money Supply (M0) represents wealth. There are only two major places this wealth can come from.

One is real value which is gained through labor and wealth creation. Some argue that this value should be secured with gold. (see the End the Fed movement)

The second comes from the banks in the form of credit, which accrues interest payables. Since the Reagan era, credit has been a used permanently as a source of "wealth". Since Deregulation, the "wealth" is supported through a fraudulent derivative market.

Common sense says that we prefer to spend real value before credit because we don't want to pay interest on borrowed money if we don't have to.

What the trade deficit does is reduce the real value in our money supply.

As of right now that trade deficit floats between $600-$700 billion dollars.

I want to say the multiplier effect (a term affiliated with banks not trade or wealth creation releasing money)---that missing money has the same effect, but the velocity of money probably more accurate to describe the $600-$700 billion dollars. in real value that is missing from our money supply.

Let's say that we had $700 billion dollars more in America's money supply, that same $700 billion will be circulated (change hands) a few times within the course of the year. This could easily add trillions to the GDP & GNP. Which would pay for a few mortgages, student loans, credit card debts, employ a few more people, start ups, opportunity costs, medical bills, etc. As of now that missing wealth was substituted by credit; which charges interest.

This is a lot of non-interest accruing tax revenue.

Government likes it when bureaucracies gouge Americans because it increases their tax revenue.

WHAT OBAMA NEEDS TO DO

The ArmChair Economist is strongly suggesting that Obama address the WTO on trade relations between the U.S. and China.

Obama needs to demand that the WTO stop defending China's trade war against the U.S. That's their job. They're a very corrupt organization, if they don't do their job there is no need for America to support them. If they're going to be preachy about protectionism, they might want to stop blaming the U.S. because we have been free and more than fair to China.

It is utterly absurd to expect the 300 million middle class Americans to sponsor the economic growth for 1.7 billion people in China. Talk to our tycoons, they don't participate in the this Keynesian economics trickle down stimulus game with us anyways.

The Conservatives have tried to play down this issue by saying that the trade deficit isn't a big deal (as long as we get to use credit that we're paying interest on). And they have muffled out the noise about a trade war.

Look, when China imposes restrictions, fees and tariffs against the U.S. imports; they are committing a TRADE WAR against the U.S. It is what it is. My reason for writing this blog in the 1st place for anyone who is kind enough to read (thank you) is because the media is full of krap and nobody should be obligated to buy that garbage.

The democrats aren't even acknowleding this as a concern. Our republicans are out of touch, the democrats are in outerspace.

WITHOUT REAL WEALTH IN OUR MONEY SUPPLY, THERE IS NOTHING TO BACK CREDIT! Which is why our credit default market collapsed to begin with!

The only import that they're buying is debt (and a few small sectors). And unfortunately our Congress is spending so much that we need to sell them more U.S. Treasuries. Again, China buys US treasuries to keep the Yuan valued lower than the USD.



Of course the artificially cheaply valued Yuan is China's main competative advantage in world trade.

How Can China Set Its Exchange Rate Lower than the Dollar?:
China sets the value of its currency, the yuan, to always equal a set amount of a basket of currencies which includes the dollar. When the dollar loses value, China buys dollars through U.S. Treasuries to support it. In this way, the yuan's value is always within its targeted range. As long as the yuan's value is lower than the dollar, China's goods are cheaper in comparison.

How Does the U.S. Trade Deficit with China Affect the U.S. Economy?:
As China buys U.S. Treasuries to support the value of the dollar, and keep its exports cheap, it becomes a large lender to the U.S. Government. At the end of 2007, China owned $477 billion in U.S. Treasuries, 20% of the total $2.35 trillion outstanding. This makes it the second largest owner after Japan. Many are concerned that it gives China political leverage over U.S. fiscal policy, since it could theoretically call in its loan. (Source: U.S. Treasury, Major Foreign Holdings of Treasury Securities)

By buying Treasuries, China has helped keep U.S. interest rates low. Until the Subprime Mortgage Crisis, this helped fuel the U.S. housing boom. If China were to stop buying Treasuries, interest rates would rise, delaying any recovery.

China is, in effect, loaning the U.S. money to buy its products. If China called in its loan, the U.S. economy would slow further, and consumers would not be able to afford Chinese exports. For this reason, China will keep the situation going as long as possible. There is no reason for China to stop buying Treasuries.

However, the U.S. trade deficit with China means that U.S. companies that can't compete with cheap Chinese goods must either lower their costs or go out of business. To lower their costs, many companies have started outsourcing to India and China, causing higher unemployment in the U.S. Other industries have simply dried up. U.S. manufacturing, as measured by the number of jobs, has declined 21% since 1998. As these industries decline, so does U.S. competitiveness in the global marketplace. (Source: BLS, Employees by Industry)

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OIL.
The price of oil went up because the sale of cars increase dramatically recently in China. There are a billion people in China. They're going to drive up demand no matter how much they attempt to conserve.

The HACK Katie Couric totally lied this week by saying that the price of oil this week went up because the economy was improving. Nope! Oil went up because China is now driving. Although I highly recommend staying away from autoinsurance in the Far East.

Look, oil is going up and increasing our trade deficit. Our dollar is going down. The federal deficit is skyhigh. The tax revenue is lower than normal. We haven't created more wealth than we spent.

May I introduce Congress, the Federal Reserve and our POTUS to something called a "BreakEven Point"?

The only "economic recovery" we will see is a resurgence of the sketchy derivative market. Our government committed generational theft to create a dead cat bounce in the real estate market. I'm not a "doomsdayer", we need CONCRETE EVIDENCE of a recovery in the economy. And Americans should not let off the pressure on our government until we see it.

There is no recovery until the deficits are fixed.

Countrywide CEO Mozilo is going to rot in Kenneth Lay's old cell. FINALLY!!!

The SEC is FINALLY going to sue Mozilo of Countrywide for insider trading.
I have just a few comments to start out with.

1. Where are the clients and the shareholders?

2. Where is the CFTC and the ISDA? When do we get to prosecute those two in a court of law? Sorry, but "grilling" them by Congress isn't prosecution.

3. When does the SEC, shareholders or clients get to sue the other CEO's that crashed their financial institutions by selling unsecured debt obligations and held the "economy" hostage for a bailout. These group includes the following; Dick Fuld (CEO of Bear Sterns), Martin Armstrong and Ed Liddy (CEOs of AIG), Killinger (CEO of WAMU), Dimon (CEO of JP Morgan), Mack (CEO of Morgan Stanley), Finke, Dodd, Frank, Schumer, Waters, Raines and everyone else I did not mention?

4. Why is this taking so long? Shareholders and Clients were able to sue Enron and Madoff for damages in less time than it takes for Obama to do a press conference.

5. The CEO's can also be charged with a Pump and Dump scheme. But I think the CEOs have their bases covered.

This is a real mess. On December 21st, 2000 Bill Clinton and Republicans passed the Commodities Futures Modernization Act which created loopholes that allowed debt obligations, aka. derivatives to be regulated without regulation by the SEC so the SEC is doing what they can.

It's too easy to blame the wrong party, which Congress members do when infact Congress indirectly permitted these financial institutions to trade unsecured debt obligations.

The Commodities Futures Modernization Act which
reauthorizes Commodity
Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for five
years, also clarifies the
Treasury Amendment exclusion and specifically grants
the CFTC authority over
retail foreign exchange trading.

Countrywide Chiefs Charged With Fraud
SEC Alleges Mozilo

The Securities and Exchange Commission accused former Countrywide Financial Corp. Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo and two former lieutenants of fraud, and unveiled emails from the height of the housing boom in which Mr. Mozilo warned of his company's "toxic" subprime mortgages.

The civil charges against Mr. Mozilo, former Chief Operating Officer David Sambol and former Chief Financial Officer Eric Sieracki are the first against high-profile executives stemming from the subprime mortgage meltdown. Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are conducting a criminal investigation...

Ballmer threatens to Offshore Microsoft as a response to Obama's new tax

By Ryan J. Donmoyer

June 3 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steven Ballmer said the world’s largest software company would move some employees offshore if Congress enacts President Barack Obama’s plans to impose higher taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign profits.

“It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said in an interview. “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S.”

Obama on May 4 proposed outlawing or restricting about $190 billion in tax breaks for offshore companies over the next decade. Such business groups as the National Foreign Trade Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable have denounced the proposed overhaul.

U.S. tax rules let companies defer paying corporate rates as high as 35 percent on most types of foreign profits as long as that money remains invested overseas. Obama says he wants to end such incentives to keep foreign profits tax-deferred so that companies would invest them in the U.S.

Microsoft reported an overall effective tax rate of 26 percent for 2008 in its last annual report. “Our effective tax rates are less than the statutory tax rate due to foreign earnings taxed at lower rates,” the report said.

Barry Bosworth, an economist in Washington at the Brookings Institution research center, said many software companies such as Microsoft have exploited tax and trade rules in the U.S. and other countries to achieve a low overall tax rate.

Ireland Subsidiary

Typically, he said, a company like Microsoft develops a product like Windows in the United States and deducts those costs against U.S. income. It then transfers the technology to a subsidiary in Ireland, where corporate tax rates are lower, without charging licensing fees. The company then assigns its foreign sales to the Irish subsidiary so it doesn’t have to claim the income in the United States.

“What Microsoft wants to do is deduct the cost at a high tax rate and report the profits at a low tax rate,” Bosworth said. “Relative to where they are now, the administration’s proposals are less favorable, so there will be some rebalancing on their part.”

Ballmer is one of 10 U.S. software company executives pushing back against the tax proposals in meetings today with White House officials including Jason Furman, deputy director of the National Economic Council, and the heads of congressional committees such as House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat.

Expense Deductions

Among other things, Obama proposed limiting expense deductions such as those for employee compensation when companies defer U.S. tax on foreign profits.

In a roundtable discussion today, Ballmer, Symantec Corp. Chairman John Thompson and the heads of smaller companies such as privately held Bentley Systems, an Exton, Pennsylvania-based maker of engineering software, said such policies would hurt domestic investment, reduce shareholder value and increase the cost of employing U.S. workers.

Ballmer said that, while the Obama proposals would preserve expense deductions related to research and experimentation costs, the overall deduction limits for companies that defer tax on foreign profits would raise the cost of employing U.S. workers. Fiduciary responsibility to shareholders would require Microsoft to cut costs, he said, meaning many jobs would be moved out of the country.

Worldwide Employees

Microsoft employed 95,029 people worldwide as of April 21, of whom 56,552 were based in the United States, according to the company’s Web site. The company announced it was firing up to 5,000 people in January while hiring some new workers; the company has shed about 1,000 jobs since then, spokesman Lou Gellos said.

Ballmer estimated that higher taxes under the proposal would reduce profits for companies that comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average by between 10 and 15 percentage points.

“It’s just a question of how much will the Dow come down,” Ballmer said. “It’s not about companies anyway; we’re talking about shareholders.”

In addition to limiting current deductions for companies that defer U.S. tax on their foreign profits, Obama proposed altering a set of rules known as “check the box” that allow companies to shelter foreign profits in offshore subsidiaries that can be disregarded for U.S. tax purposes.

Duck Liabilities

While the rules were designed in 1997 to protect U.S. companies from paying excessive tax to other governments, Obama administration officials say it has evolved into a way to duck U.S. liabilities. Altering the rule, which Obama dubbed a “loophole,” would generate $86.5 billion in new revenue by 2019, the administration says.

The third international tax proposal would change rules governing how companies can claim tax credits for levies paid to foreign governments. Officials say some companies abuse the rule to accelerate tax credits before they could otherwise be claimed.

Obama has said his proposals would protect or create jobs in the United States.

Thompson of Symantec, the Cupertino, California-based maker of Norton anti-virus software and similar tools, said software companies are frustrated by being called tax cheats and compared with companies that moved their headquarters to low-tax countries such as Bermuda.

‘Counterintuitive’

Thompson called the Obama proposals “counterintuitive” to the administration’s other stated goals of fostering an innovation-oriented economy.

“It is a little bit ironic that most of our most significant trading partners and partners globally have taken the tack that they’ll reduce corporate tax rates to stimulate economic growth and not raise corporate tax rates,” Thompson said.

The roundtable was organized for Bloomberg News by the Business Software Alliance, a Washington trade group coordinating the executives’ meetings with policymakers.

Congresswoman Kaptur Grills Liar Federal Reserve Chair Bernanke

Where is the lie? Listen carefully between 5:45-6:20 in the video.

Bernanke signed papers with Finke. How do you not know what legal documents that you signed? In any company that would get you fired, but then again Bernanke never worked in Corporate America.

Finke was the guy at First Boston who invented the Collateralized Mortgage Obligations and made a killing off of it. The Fed had a few Money Managers do a contract bid for the position to oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

So of course, Bernanke picks Finke out of Blackrock. Exactly what qualifies Finke or the position? Except that our government is going to recreate the fraudulent derivative market.

So much for this "era of responsibility" that Obama promised us, at least not before the next bailout.

The Story of Government Motors- A GOVERNMENT MADE DISASTER

This is better than the story about FORD's electrical car patent buyout (to prevent the marketing of electric vehicles).

The story of GM perfectly illustrates what's wrong with America's government's involvment in the private sector. This is the PERFECT reason why politicians need to stop with their conflicts of interest here.

General Motors used the government to kill off any means of competition which sent American consumers looking to foreign made cars for quality. Nobody throughout history thought to bust monopolies! Instead, American were just forced to choose between bad quality vehicles and a trade deficit. People rely on transportation and the car is the only option too many Americans were left with.

The American auto companies are full of corruption because they were never held accountable for their business practices legally or by the effects of the free market. Government socialized it's adverse affects on the taxpayers back then (probably through bribes from the auto and the oil sectors) to now, when taxpayers are forced to prop up GM when shareholders won't.

This again is taxation and robbery. Our current bailout of GM holds the same pattern as the corruption from the company when street cars shared the roads with trolleys. The trouble with history is that we don't ever learn from it.

Great American streetcar scandal

The Conspiracy Revisited, a Rebuttal
by Van Wilkins (Republished from the Summer 1995 issue of The New Electric Railway Journal)
"WWFROM TIME TO TIME THERE APPEARS a letter in the editor's mail box asking about a conspiracy to destroy the streetcar in the United States. More recently two books have appeared which credit this cabal with the disappearance of the beloved trolley. The intrigue has even been the subject of a segment on CBS's investigative news program 60 Minutes.

WWMuch of what has appeared in the media has been based on 1974 Congressional hearings, and a great deal of this has been inaccurate. The expert in the field, Bradford Snell (a Senate staffer active in the aforementioned investigation), has been working on a hook to be published later which will provide a detailed examination of the subject, but in the interim a brief review may be useful.

Defining the Terms

WWThere was indeed a conspiracy among certain bus builders, oil companies, tire manufacturers and others involved in the motor vehicle industry. The scheme was proved to the satisfaction of a court and upheld on appeal, although penalties were minimal. But, and this is a very large "but," no one was ever convicted of plotting to destroy the street railway industry. Rather, punishment was handed down for violating anti-trust laws by conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses, tires, and gasoline.

WWTo understand what happened, one must look at the condition of the industry as it entered the 1930s. Total ridership had peaked in the mid-1920s and went sharply downhill from there--the result of a combination off factors. These included the proliferation of two-auto families, construction of better roads beyond city limits (encouraging urban sprawl), the Great Depression, lack of adequate funds to modernize, aging street railways, and actions by Federal, state and local governments. There was an increase to ridership during World War II, but with the end of the conflict the downward slide resumed.

WWThe primary cause for the decline in transit usage was the automobile, which was proliferating wildly. While prone to breakdown, the car provided a more comfortable ride than did a streetcar built in many cases early in the century and running on worn-out track. Most streetcars were noisy; wooden or hard rattan seats were the norm. For many street railways there was little money to rebuild track or buy new cars.

"We're from the Government"

WWThe Great Depression led to money from Washington for road building as a method of providing employment, but federal policy discouraged funding for the paving of streets or roads which contained streetcar tracks. Local governments pressured companies to substitute buses for streetcars, even in cases where the firm wished to continue to operate streetcars.

WWIn 1935 Congress passed the Public Utilities Holding Company Act. One effect of what came to be called the "Death Sentence Act" was to cause power companies to sell off street-railway subsidiaries. Streetcars thus lost a major source of monetary support. Even before the legislation was enacted, the utilities were seeking buyers for failing operations in smaller cities.

The Disinvestment Begins

WWIn 1933 San Antonio became the first major city in the U.S. to depend entirely on the motor bus for public transit. The city had offered financial inducements to abandon. Larger systems were not immune. In Manhattan, New York Railways had been placed in the hands of a receiver at the end of World War I. The last purchase of new equipment for its 1500-car fleet was in 1914. The company came under the control of bus interests, and with the encouragement of city officials streetcars were abandoned in the mid-1930s. The same officials also forced the conversion of the other two major systems (one with PCCs) in the city.

WWSome systems in large cities bought PCCs in an effort to retain rail operations. In the pre-World War II era, however, only a few companies could fund more than relatively small purchases. In all but the largest cities, the money was not there. Only three U.S. and Canadian cities were able to re-equip entirely with PCCs, though some routes were abandoned in the process. Toronto did so by buying used PCCs at bargain prices.

A Marketing Opportunity

WWThe motor vehicle manufacturers were not stupid; they saw opportunities to sell buses and aggressively pursued them. At smaller systems--some of which were already in bankruptcy or with revoked franchises--the sales pitches fell on receptive ears.

WWSuch systems were acquired by General Motors and several independent groups. In some cases the buyer continued to operate the system. In others, the bus operation was sold and the money used to buy other systems on the verge of abandonment. GM at first directly financed such activities.

WWIn 1936 the auto and truck giant and others began assisting one of these groups--National City Lines--in its efforts to expand operations. Agreement to purchase buses, tires, and fuel only from the participating companies was required. This is the conspiracy that has now passed into American folklore as the agency that destroyed the trolley. In fact it did not.

NCL's Alleged Culpability

WWOver its corporate life National City Lines and related companies controlled a total of perhaps sixty systems. It has been asserted that NCL destroyed five rail systems in these cities, but in fact in a number of cases rail service had disappeared before the takeover. In others the decision to abandon had already been taken and the process was well advanced. NCL acquisitions in the 1930s were in cities of less than 100,000, ranging down to a low of 17,000. The single exception was Tulsa, where the local operator was already in very serious trouble.

WWThe 1940s saw NCL acquisition of some larger systems. Related Pacific City Lines bought the Salt Lake City system in 1944. There, a handful of cars were still running on a remnant of a single route abandoned in 1941 but restored to service as the result of a wartime edict. The decision to abandon all rail operations in favor of buses had been made in the early 1930s.

NCL's "Big Five"

WWMajor NCL-influenced systems included Baltimore, St. Louis, the Los Angeles Railway, and the Key System at Oakland. Philadelphia was acquired in 1954, after the conspiracy trial. For these five a case could be made that major rail lines should have been preserved. There is of course no question that NCL planned to abandon all rail service eventually, but these five are worth a brief look. They illustrate how more than a conspiracy was involved.

WWIn Baltimore the city brought in Henry Barnes, fresh from Denver where he oversaw the conversion of Denver Tramways to bus and trolley coach. Baltimore wanted the streetcars off its narrow downtown streets to improve traffic flow. In St. Louis a combination of freeway construction, paving projects and municipal pressure caused abandonment of much of the system. But, in both cities the last cars ran into the early sixties, long after they had been abandoned in most non-NCL cities.

WWIn Oakland, state authorities wanted Key System trains off the Bay Bridge to provide more traffic lanes. Los Angeles Railway had decided before World War II that retention of just three lines could be justified; NCL continued to operate five. And in Philadelphia streetcars run today because of NCL ineptness in dealing with city authorities.

The non-NCL Cities

WWWhat is perhaps more significant, however, is a listing of major cities where no NCL role has been documented. Aggressive bus salesmen, yes; city officials wanting rail-free streets, yes; transit companies wanting out of rail operations, yes; financial shenanigans, yes: a conspiracy, no. Such locales include Boston, northern New Jersey, Washington, Atlanta, Birmingham, Miami, New Orleans, Chicago, Cleveland, Louisville, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Memphis, Kansas City, Denver, Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. In a few cases some rail survived, usually because of a tunnel, a subway, or some political factor. In Canada, the pattern is the same, and there was no NCL influence there.

WWToo often, writers have confused the Los Angeles Railway with the Pacific Electric , where NCL had no role, although former NCL executives did become involved after the abandonment of almost all of the system. The California Railroad Commission had studied PE in the 1930s and recommended modernization of some lines and abandonment of the rest. There is some evidence that PE was interested in rail operations in the medians of freeways, but owner Southern Pacific could not or would not provide the money. As a result, the system disappeared, with the last lines done in by a public transit authority.

WWIt has been said abandonment in non NCL cities was influenced by officials who had come from NCL operations. It has also been asserted that while there was a "smoking gun" in the NCL cities, other systems were abandoned because of a larger, undocumented conspiracy by auto manufacturers to substitute buses on the premise that they were inferior to streetcars and would drive more riders to the automobile. This would imply that universities turning out traffic engineers and urban planners preaching that rail was obsolete, along with politicians across the country, were also part of the conspiracy.

WWThe idea of a conspiracy provides a simple and comfortable explanation for what was the result of a very complex set of circumstances. We have yet to grasp all the implications, and we repeat the errors of the past by continuing to pander to the automobile."

Oil prices are on the rise; China will soon be driving Hummers!

Here is why the Saudis love Obama. They know full well that alternative energy will not be on the markets tomorrow. Obama plays the environmentalist card to avoid drilling for oil offshore in Alaska. Which is a bad idea, America will now be the only 3rd world country without an oil export.

Here are two reasons why we should have drilled in Alaska. One, the U.S. uses more oil than any other country in the world. Because of the monopolization of autos, thanks to GM... (there's a "conspiracy theory" blaming GM for the lack of any cohesive intercity mass transit network, other than Amtrak.

Yes, both India and China have over a billion people each. America has only approximately 300 million people in it. They will both be increasing the demand for oil regardless of how little they consume.

Now here's the kicker. Government Motors, or GM just sold it's Hummer division to China. No they're not selling Hummers to China, they're selling that part of their business. Had we sold just the Hummers, we would've been in GREAT business. Asians are not known for their wonderful driving abilities. I'm part Asian so no it's not racist for me to say that. But there's a good possibility that out of a billion Chinese, people will be replacing their cars due to damages. Or at least parts.
This is a huge opportunity cost for Corporate America.

On top of that, Hummers consume A LOT of gas. It's not necessarily your 35 mpg gas efficient sudan. No siree. Now a billion Chinese are going to be exposed to and some will be driving gas guzzlers! A miracle would need to occur if China or even India starts driving solar powered vehicles before the cost of gas explodes. They could own the world if they came up with such an invention.

So now that the dollar has lost even more in value compared to the Dubai currency and it will raise prices in US Dollars on top of demand.

Great going Obama! Way to hurt Americans in a bad enough economy.