So what did happen, beause something sure did. It is quite simple. The “greedy” banker CEOs for years resisted making risky loans, because they didn’t want to lose money. They were accused ironically of being greedy racist capitalist pigs by certain politicians. So the gov’t along with the Fed coercively changed some tried and true lending rules, and told bankers to ease lending standards. The politicians told the Federal Reserve Bank to keep interest rates low and open the easy money credit valves, which they did. We were going to make it affordable for everyone to own a home. As the bankers started making risky loans, Fannie and Freddie bought them up. Trying to limit the amount of risk in the loans, they were bundled in huge groups, chopped up, and sold to investors, pension funds, etc. Prices began rising for real estate, and other commodities too, like oil, gold, corn, soybeans, etc. Too much money chasing too few goods. With the credit faucets open and prices climbing, people started making speculative real estate purchases, and many other non-real estate speculative purchases. Creative loans were created to offer even more people loans they couldn’t afford. Eventually, prices rose to a point where homes were no longer affordable with the creative financing. That would’ve been fine except that people couldn’t afford the homes they bought. Once the homeowners couldn’t make the payments, defaults occurred, real estate prices fell, and all the investors that bought the loans were ought huge sums of money. The system started going through a painful self correction. Not having made the mess big enough though, the gov’t decided it didn’t like the painful self correction. It cooked up a scheme to throw more money at it, your money of course.

The real culprit is gov’t intrusion into the market place. The more the gov’t intrudes, the more it has to create exotic rules to run the corrupt system it creates. The more rules it creates, the more it stifles real economic progress, and as a result more people try to get around the rules. Eventually if enough rules/laws are passed we’ll all be criminals. For example, how many of you sold an item on ebay and didn’t report the income on your income taxes. You’re a rule breaker. Or how many of you ordered an item off the internet from out of state, had it shipped to your house, and didn’t pay use tax on it. It generally comes to you sales tax free (unless the retailer has a presence in your home state), BUT almost all states have a rule that if you purchase an item from over state lines, and don’t pay sales tax on it, you will pay use tax on it when it is transported into your home state. There is a form to fill out and you send it in to the state along with your payment. If you didn’t do this, you’re a rule breaker. So don’t get all self-righteous concerning the greedy CEOs, when the real culprit is gov’t intrusion.

You are absolutely correct, that “people hyperventilate over all sorts of supposed problems.” I believe people begin to hyperventilate because they lack knowledge that they should’ve learned in school, rational thought, logic, understanding. For all the panic over carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, you’d think they didn’t understand that there is something called the carbon cycle that exists, so do other natural cycles, such as the water cycle, nitrogen cycle. Earth’s atmosphere in the past at times has had quite a bit more carbon dioxide in it than currently. Furthermore, it has also been hotter and colder than it is now. Climate fluctuates all the time. But it does so slowly over hundreds and sometimes thousands of years. We’ll have plenty of time to adapt to climate changes, whether they are manmade or not, matters very little. Even current projections by the doom and gloom merchants are saying over 100 years, a 1 degree change. Well let’s all get panicky and jump out of buildings, the sky is falling.

We’ve had so many environmental scares it surprises me anybody listens to it at all. First we had a new ice age (we’ll freeze to death), then acid rain (it’ll melt your face off), the ozone layer will disappear (we’ll all be irradiated), and now it’s global warming (we’ll all die of heat stroke). Oh, don’t forget about Y2K. It wasn’t environmental, but it was scare mongering at its finest. Planes will crash out of the air, major cities water supplies will be shutdown, banks will lose all your money, and on and on it went.

I wish I could come up with what’s next, I’d lobby the government and make a boat load of money. Here, I’ll try to come up with the next crisis. The earth’s magnetic field is going to reverse polarity. And until the field finishes its reversal, for a 6 month long period of time, it will allow deadly cosmic radiation to reach the earth’s surface and sterilize all biological life. Life on earth will end. We need to develop a new magnetic shield, with gov’t funding of course, to operate until the magnetic field’s polarity finishes its reversal. The power consumption requirements will be enormous, but it will only have to operate for 6 months. I’m going to need $40 trillion over the next 10 years to get my project done. That’s only 10% of the world’s annual output. We’ll call it the “Save Our Planet Tax.” Yes, it’s worth it! After all, we’re talking about protecting all life on the planet. Are you laughing, I hope so.

Yes, you are wrong. Your writing style, along with the propensity to spout nonsense, helps us to identify you as JeezeLiz in ICouldBeWrongHere clothing.

You keep giving us more irrational nonsense that appears to be indicative of derangement.

ICouldBeWrongHere quote: “I’m in the WRONG forum”

You got that right. Conspiracy nuts belong somewhere else. It’s time for you to take a sound economics course. Concerning energy companies in Iraq, yes of course some of the world’s major oil companies are there. These oil companies have quite a bit of expertise in locating, drilling, and transporting oil. And there IS oil in Iraq. Where else would you expect them to be?

They’d be in Iran if the Iranian gov’t didn’t have such a penchant for kidnapping, torturing, or killing people from western civilization. If foreign gov’ts wouldn’t harass them, they’d be in every place on the globe they can economically drill for oil. And this would mean….yes, that’s right more oil for all of us (humanity as a whole, not just the U.S.) at lower prices. Oh but you say, we’ll run out and then humanity will starve/die in terrible ways. Nonsense. Oil production doesn’t work like that. As oil fields are harvested, they are eventually depleted, or more acurately depleted to a point where oil may still be there, but it isn’t economical with current technology to get. But this occurs over a considerable period of time. Not here today, gone tomorrow. In other words, there would be a slowing of world production. As oil production slows, prices would slowly rise, until it became economically viable to use an alternative fuel source. This is going to be off in the future. Those alive today, will probably not see it, or they will be fairly old. And as technology progresses, the alternatives will become less and less expensive.

In any event, we want other countries to modernize, use oil, build a successful capital society. This will allow for greater division of labor. Geniuses occur in populations of people throughout the world. However, if many of the extremely intelligent people are working to simply grow enough food for tomorrow, they don’t have the time to specialize in a field of study to truly benefit all of humanity. Now on that same spectrum, there are numerous other individuals who would be highly motivated and smart (not genius level), that would also contribute to breakthoughs in science, medicine, business. Which would you rather have, 1 scientist working on a problem, or 100 scientists working on a problem?

-> If you sit in a tightly closed room and just breathe, you will also eventually suffocate and die!

Please hold your breath, so that you don’t pollute the planet’s atmosphere.

The world is an immense recycling center.. all of those awful hydrocarbons were created by the decomposition of plants over millions of years. Many of them naturally come to the surface and evaporate or decompose.

People hyperventilate over all sorts of supposed problems. Oil spills, for instance, are treated as terrible disasters, but crude oil actually biodegrades pretty rapidly.

A few years after the Valdez oil spill, the only areas that showed any eco-damage were the areas where well-meaning eco types Steam-Cleaned the rocks and pebble beaches. Those areas were sterilized and lifeless for years, while the areas left with oil naturally biodegraded and flourished again within a year.

Anyone who watched the attack on Baghdad knows that there was NOTHING blind or random about the attack. Video showed time after time: cruise missiles and laser-guided weapons hitting precision targets, within feet their targets.

There was NO “carpet bombing” of Baghdad, or anyplace else in Iraq.

Jeez, Jeezliz, take a breath! And get over all that Green Freak Environment Worship already, would ya? You greens are all liars and total idiots, as one can see from your having to rename “Global Warming” to “Climate Change” after it became obvious the planet’s actually been cooling this past decade. Since any change in the climate whatsoever is “Climate Change” of course, that means you’re basically trying to outlaw changes in the weather now. While you’re at it, why don’t you just try making laws forbidding the sun from rising in the morning? That’ll sure stop all that Global– I mean, Climate Change!

Incidentally, those eeevil oil companies you bash for supposedly being big cronies with Bush actually gave most of their money to your boy 0; they know which side is REALLY buttering their bread with all that regulatory crap: the same one that brought us Barney Frank and his assurances that everything was fine and Fannie and Freddie didn’t need any closer investigation into their affairs. Also, the neurological pollution that comes from having idiot greens like you in our kids’ classrooms is far worse than anything coal-mining and oil-drilling combined could ever begin to do to them.

When all your pipe dreams about “clean” new sources of energy to replace the old come to naught (as they inevitably will, having done so before), and you’re sitting alone in the silent dark while rolling blackouts plague the whole country, I do hope you’ll remember all your false predictions here. Looking back from what fools like you are planning to do to us, I think we’ll all be seeing George W. Bush’s time in office as a golden age compared to what followed it. See you in the breadlines, Jeezliz!

I’m in the WRONG forum

augh!

This isn’t Liz MacDonald’s blog !

my mistake

Their oil minister DID have problems on who is Hunt oil.

I think all in all – mission accomplished.

Myself ?

I’m counting on people having something to look forward to

but if people don’t have their health ? potential ? to look forward to ?

nothing else matters.

period.

Must you spam these boards with such nonsense. Have you been collecting and saving your posts on other forums then pasting them here? It sure looks like it.

By the way, if you don’t like economic progress, we could go back to burning wood to keep our homes warm, cook, and produce energy, which would release even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We’d also use a lot of trees. The air would be less breathable. I don’t have time to refute all of these inane points, but I will refute the energy, nuclear nonsense.

The attack on nuclear safety is one of hyperventilating fear mongering. Take a physics course dealing with nuclear power and you’ll understand. I’ll summarize. Uranium exists naturally in our environment as 238-isotope (99.3%). It has an extremely long-half life, meaning it is not all that radioactive. To create a sustaining nuclear burn reaction (one used to release a non-exploding energy), uranium has to be enriched from its .7% 235-isotope to 3% 235 isotope. Correspondingly, weapons grade uranium has to be enriched to 90% 235-isotope. Spent nuclear fuel rods primarily go back to 238-isotope and are generally less radioactive than naturally occurring uranium, due to the nature of the fission reaction. The remaining 235-isotope can be safely recycled back into creating more energy, France has been doing this for years. In short, spent fuel rods are handled with gloves. It’s not some super duper dangerous commodity. Yucca mountain is opposed simply for power/control reasons and because the general public has been fear mongered. The old Soviet reactor melt-down occurred and was dangerous because they were using it to covertly make weapons grade material. 3% 235-isotope will no more explode than a jar of petroleum jelly (vaseline) in a medicine cabinet will. Its because of the concentrations of the active items 235-isotope in uranium, and petroleum in vaseline.

All of a person’s lifetime energy requirements in our modern society, would leave nuclear “waste” material that would fit in the size of a pop can. Eventually, with enough scientific progress, no doubt we’ll find ways to properly recycle all that material as well and reuse it until it becomes completely inert. Or we’ll stop performing nuclear fission reactions in favor of fusion reactions which have a potential energy supply that could last into the billions of years.