Fuel Efficient Cars, Not in America.

Following my critique of the media, it seems appropriate that I should now praise parts of the media. About a week ago on the radio they were reporting on the fact that American tax payers will soon be getting their tax rebate cheques as part of President Bush's plan to inject billions into the US economy. However the same day, was a comment regarding Ford who have decided that the fuel efficient model Ka, will not be made in or sold to the American market.

The report on the US tax rebates showed that most people were just going to spend this money to pay off bills or fill up on gasoline. All this will do is boost the profits of the oil companies. What make you think hat Bush is an oil man at heart?

While I am fully aware that rising energy costs are hurting Americans, the US people need to acknowledge that they have had incredibly cheap oil for far to long. Had Americans had to pay anywhere close to the costs that the rest of the world pays for petrol, they would not have the problem of everyone driving around in fuel hungry cars and trucks.

This interweaves the other story that Ford are not going to sell or make the fuel efficient model Ka in the US as they don't think Americans will buy them. As they can provide forty five miles per gallon, it makes me wonder what the thinking is behind this decision. Here at the Dagenham plant where Ford makes the car for the European market, they are at full stretch.

This prompted me to start digging. While I was aware that cars in America are marketed upon how macho they are, I had not realised just how deeply this culture was embedded. However, the real scandal is the way that the automotive industry has resisted change. By changing to the much more efficient models made for other markets, companies like ford could cut in half the CO2 emissions from cars immediately. Further, if the US Government were to force the automotive industry to seriously reduce CO2 emissions, this would boost US industry, create jobs and start the US on the road to cooperating with the rest of the world.

The US needs the boost that greening the Economy would bring. All it needs is leadership as well as inventive and creative thinking. What is so stupid about the current US governments approach is that if the US doesn't take action now, the already weak economy will suffer as Oil prices will continue to rise. Therefore, soon people will not be able to afford to buy gasoline at all to fill and drive there cars that will only do nine or ten miles per gallon.

The US government seems determined to support the oil industry by all and any means, even when that support is and will destroy the US economy.

Where are House Prices Going

While watching CSI, name your own City, I heard a phrase used that's so well describes the type of acquaintance that you only know from a certain situations. It is one of things that I always find extraordinary, that Americans tend to use English language better than most British people. However it is the use of this phase, that is so appropriate for the relationship I had with the person and now talking about.

When I leave us near the coast at the mouth of the River Tyne, I got to know various people that were involved in property investment. It was mainly through drinking in the same hostelries that it got to know these people. Therefore while I thought of them as drinking buddies, in no way were they real friends. Therefore it was rather surprising when a couple of weeks ago, one of them contacted me.

When I first met these people, I was fully aware that they were engaging in conversation mainly because they thought they could extract the urine, however over time they developed a measure of respect for me.

It was because of this respect that had prompted this person to contact me. Because of the credit crunch and uncertainty regarding house prices, he got in touch with me. However what he did to was surprising. As he asked me to look after the rather nice and expensive camera for him. The story he gave me was that he was moving house or moving some of the contents of a property and wanted to ensure that this equipment was safe. Further encourage me to use it, even repeatedly calling me and asking if I had then take any pictures with it. Eventually they did take the equipment out and some of the results I have posted here. It was only after I'd started using equipment did he reveal his real agenda.

Firstly he wanted to discover my opinion of where I thought that house prices would settle. What it told him shocked him. they told him that I thought that house prices would drop by 50 or 60 per cent. The main reason I say this is that historically, house prices have always settled at three to four times average income. As at the moment house prices are seven to eight times the average income, then if that historical rule is true then property is overvalued by 50 or 60 per cent.

He then asked what I would do if I was investing in property at the moment. All hypothetical as I do not invest in property. But I told him straight that I wouldn't. but he insisted that they gave him an answer. So I taught in told him, that the only where we invest will be in and social housing. By that I mean buying properties to enable a people to rent. Not high rents, but reasonable rents that are based on the people's ability to pay.

It was then that he revealed his agenda in fall, as he wanted me to go around the courts and find the people that would close to having their homes repossessed. He would then buy the properties, at a discount, and men and backed to the people. World this all sounded rather fuller if for philanthropic what he was most interested in was obtaining property is cheap. Further he wanted to avoid buying properties from people who he thought would be bad tenants. He has little or no respect for people that don't have money.

The loan of the camera equipment had been a bribe or an incentive as he thought that I would much want to keep equipment so much that I would jump at the chance to help him. He told me that I could keep the equipment as an advance on the earnings a would garner from him.

However as his whole plan was based upon exploiting vulnerable people, and I refused to do this for him.

While they know they will be people who are in a position to exploit the situation of the credit crunch, I am not willing to be a part of that. Further he was assuming that, I think probably correctly, that the government will be providing some form if rent relief or support to help people stay in their homes. And he saw no moral problems with taking some of that money to finance his property portfolio.

Anyway the long and the short of it is, I no longer have the can requirement to play with.
It is such a shame that people can only think about ways of exploiting our fellow man

UK Government buys Fifty Billion Pounds of Bad Debt

Last week in the Guardian was a quote from the banking industry that said:

“The banks will now only lend to people who can repay the loan”

That's like saying that the banks will only employ people that know the difference their Elbow from there... well you know the rest of the phrase!

No other business, industry could, or would, expect the government to bail it out when it made a loss. Further while the banks keep all of their profits when they make them, it will be the tax payer that picks up the tab for all these losses. The UK government has just knowingly bought fifty billion pounds worth of bad debts from the banks. So it is the tax payer that will have to pay for this stupid and reckless lending.

There will be some people that disagree with me, but providing a mortgage of 125% of the value of a property is reckless. While for people struggling to afford to buy a home a loan that allowed the buyer to obtain the property and furnish it may have seemed like a blessing. But that thinking is based upon the assumption that house prices would only go up. While looking at the historical data many people could be forgiven for thinking that was the case, however looking at all the other data should have alerted people to the fact that house prices were artificially high.

There has been direct and deliberate manipulation of the housing market. Builders who have been providing false price and sales data to the Land Registry. Estate Agents who have been manipulating prices by not passing on details of lower offers. Charted Surveyors, the valuers that are not given work unless they provide valuations that match the asking price. All reported in the media over the past five years, but no one wanted to take notice. Thus the value of property has been kept artificially high by direct and deliberate price manipulation add to that the irresponsible gambling by the banks all added to the artificially inflated value of properties.

Then there is the role of the government, for the last ten years and more, the economy has only been growing by promoting consumer spending via borrowing. This has lead to the average person owing more than twenty thousand pounds in personal debt. Yet like any borrowing it now has to be paid back.

While this situation is far from ideal, it is far from a crisis. While it will be difficult for some people, and people don't need to panic. While the paper value of your home has fallen and it will continue to fall, as long as you keep up repayments you will not loose your home. Again while it will be hard, pay off those credit cards and only spend the spare income you have. Look at not replacing all the toys and gadgets that litter your home. Unless a vehicle is vital for work, if you can use public transport or cycle to work, sell the car or cars.

Eventually, once those debts are cleared you will be better off not only financially, but you will have developed a real sense of value of the chattels you own.

This is all part of a change that I have been foreseeing for years. The endless growth of the economy, in the way that it has been occurring, had to end. Where growth will happen now will be in rebuilding of the infrastructure that really matters.

These events are the start of the real green revolution the planet has been waiting for. With the increases in the cost of living that is happening and will continue, the need for people to tighten their belts, will reduce the spending on environmentally damaging activities, such as the rampant consumerism and flippant global travel. With less money to spend on luxury goods like TVs or iPods or any number of manufactured items, we will see less damage to the environment occurring. It will not happen over night, but these events are the start of us humans being re-educated about what really matters.

While events yet to happen will still show us that we need to work with the environment and not against it, the people that start to adapt now will have a head start. This includes using your spare time to grow at least some of your own food. Be this some salad crops in pots on the window seal or two or three neighbours sharing an allotment, you will need to grow at least some of your own food. Food prices are going up and quite soon, this year or next, growing some of your own food will become vital.

The cost of energy will continue to rise, especially petrol (Gas). So learning to do away with the car will become essential. Not having a car will save you at least two thousand five hundred pounds per year, and that excludes the cost of using it. While this is not going to be realistic for everyone, it will be the people that can give up their cars that will cope with the changes that are coming.

There will be people who read this and think this is mostly a lot of nonsense, but weather events will seriously impact food and energy over the next ten to twenty years. This will seriously and adversely effect the conventional economy. Further, the sudden influx of seawater from rising sea levels will disrupt our ability to travel.

The choices we all make now will effect how well we as individuals, our families cope with the changes that have already started.

The State of the Union

Last night I stayed up to listen to George W Bushes State of the Union address. While it did not contain anything that was surprising, there were three aspects that I found frustrating. The first was the Bush stance on Climate Change. While there appears to be a recognition of the reality of climate change, under bush, there will not be any real or substantive action until countries like China and India start tackling climate change as well.

Well China is, while china is doing this in part as the PR for the Olympics, there is also a recognition that a changing climate is already causing problems. Desertification, Drought, Floods and its having an economic impact too. That is why China is building the largest solar power station in the world in the Gobi Desert.

The difference really is that the US has a Gross Domestic Product of fifteen trillion Dollars, while Chinas economy is still only two and a quarter of a trillion dollars. If China can do it I am sure that the US could, and in my opinion should, be doing much more.

The other aspect of the proper gander of this speech was when Bush talked about overseas aid. Because of religious interference, the US refuses to fund or support any project that promotes the use of condoms as a way of tackling HIV/AIDS. Even though the world health organisation and a myriad of other specialists know that the use of condoms is the only was that the spread of HIV/AIDS can be halted. This stance, by Bush, is based upon an ideology that's akin to the belief that the earth is flat. Don't get me started on natural selection!

Over the years of listening to the world service, reading books, and talking to people involved in development, the one aspect of development that has the greatest benefit is family planning. Empowering and educating women actually has the greatest positive effect on the health, economics and productivity of the developing world. Therefore, the US dictating that aid will only be given to peoples and projects that comply with the morality (the word that Bush used in the speech) of the religious right (wing), is not only wrong but adds to the problems that the developing world has. Further, it adds (Rightly or Wrongly) to the impression that America is pushing an anti Moslem agenda.

Lastly was the way that the US has dealt with current financial crisis. The US economy has some serious structural problems. Over recent years it has been on a spending spree, this has been funded by borrowing. Here in the UK we have done the same, so we are not guilt free here. While borrowing can really help people archive more sooner, borrowing has to be repaid. The problem is that this borrowing has come from overseas, predominantly China and South East Asia. That means that now Americans are busy working to boost the economic standing of China, Korea, Japan etc.

This was why in the 1970s in the UK we had to sort out the structural problems of our economy as during the Second World War we had borrowed so much from the US. It was only last year that we finally repaid that money. The US now has a similar problem, with government borrowings of three trillion dollars, that's twenty percent of the US economy, America has to work harder just to pay off the debt.

Further as US business has transported industries and jobs overseas, cutting the taxes of the richer citizens will do little to help this problem. Had Bush given the money to the poorest people in the US then you would have seen that money spent and injected into the US economy and not spent on servicing overseas debt.

I never expected much from Bush and I was not disappointed, given all the problems in the world it would have been great if the speech had not been full of idealogical rhetoric and had more substantive action.

Is America Bankrupt?

While the stock markets have recovered following the falls earlier this week, what has happened is reminiscent of what occurred prior to the stock market crash on Wall Street in 1929. Then, in the years leading up to the crash, the stock market fell and railed several times before it finally plummeted. Then what happened that made that crash so disastrous was that so many people had borrowed money to play the market. So when finally the crunch came, people realised that they had no chance of ever repaying that borrowed money.

Many of the same problems that happened then are there today in the American economy. While there is a great deal of personal debt, two million American families are going to lose their homes due to the sub prime scandal, the real problem is the debt that the US government carries. While the US Treasuries borrowings are now bellow three trillion dollars, it is the government debt that is dragging the US into recession.

While unlike an individual or a business, a country will always be able to borrow more, just like an individual all that borrowing has to be repaid eventually.

It was while listening to the radio, and reading about the background of what's happening that I realised why the federal government in the US doesn't want to face up to the realities of climate change. America is all but bankrupt.

This is not as ridiculous as you may think, for many years the US economy has been fuelled by consumer spending. When Bush came to the presidency one of the first things he did was to cut taxes and gave every American tax payer three hundred dollars (I am sure my American reader will tell me if I have got the amount wrong), as with so many right wing politicians, Bush assumes that its only private spending that drives the economy. While in part this can be true, it is where people spend their money and on what that benefits or hinders an economy. For the most part what Americans (and the British) have been spending their money on is cheap imported luxuries. Further much of this consumer spending has been using borrowed money. The package of tax cuts that have been rushed through will give every American tax payer about twelve hundred dollars, but if everyone just uses it to pay off bills and credit, it will do nothing to stimulate the economy.

This is no different to the UK, we have one trillion pounds (two trillion Dollars) of personal debt here. However, the difference here is our government has not been borrowing anywhere as much as the US has. Moreover, the US has been and still is reliant upon borrowing from the Far East, especially China.

Rather like a Mister Micawber figure, Bush is trying to project an image of confidence that everything is fine while knowing that, metaphorically speaking, debtors prison is just around the corner.

This is the fundamental flaw in the US economy. The UK has similar problems, as like the US we have been living the high life on borrowed money. While there are areas of US business that are very successful, the majority of the business in the US is failing to compete. Further, far to many of the major players on the Dow Jones have exported production and jobs to the Far East, especially China. That means that the US economy and the UK, have relied upon consumer spending to keep the money flowing.

The difficulty with that rational is that eventually the bills need to be paid. Further this growth based economics can only work if everyone fools themselves that tomorrow will always be better. The Value of homes will always rise, that you will always get the next pay cheque or that the next new bit of technology will be just so fulfilling.

The unfettered free market global economy that Bush has been following relies upon everyone consuming more and more, the down side of this is the global businesses that this economic model creates have no loyalty to the country that created the company. When the going gets tough then the businesses will just up and leave to wherever the profit is. This is why Bush will not do anything to tackle Climate Change. Even though under the economic model that the US is following pressing for energy conservation would provide most households with as much as this current tax rebate will, but will do so year in and year out, giving every American more dollars in their pocket.

But as Bush is beholden to big business, anything that reduces income to the energy businesses is an anathema to an oil man. Further the ideology of the neo-cons that taxes must be lowered, fails to answer the difficulty of meeting the costs of government. The war in Iraqi is costing one million dollars a day, and to pay for this tax cut the US government will have to borrow money from the money markets.

Eventually that money will have to be repaid, yet federal taxes, before this tax cut, only raised enough money to cover the merger Medi-Care. That means the US has to borrow more and more money to pay for everything else that the US government has to do.

While I don't want to see anyone suffer, America has to start pulling in its belt and getting real about what it can afford to do. Further, they need to start to realise that investing in real Low Carbon technology will actually boost the economy and not harm it. Had the money that Bush has just given away been used to pump prime green industries, it would help the US become a leader in the new technologies needed around the globe and would move the economy forward. This is what Roosevelt did with the New Deal in the 1930s

America cant continue like this, as eventually America will end up going bust.

The Do Nothing Approach to Climate Change

On Saturday after a busy day, I realised that I needed to get some vegetables. Therefore I went to my local greengrocer. As it was late in the day, I had time for a chat. Sparked by something he said, I suggested a greener option to a minor difficulty. That of him buying a solar panel to recharge the battery for the scales he uses at the markets. Much to my surprise he rejected the idea as it would take over a year to recover the capital cost. Even though it will save him electricity costs, and add the benefit of not having to shut up shop when the battery runs down.

I said that even if it will take a while to recover the cost, with rising energy costs, in the long run he would save. I also went on to suggest that it would help to reducing the effects of Climate Change. His response was surprising and shocking, even though he is aware of the need to take action, and that we are destroying the planet for his children, he saw no point.

He said that unless countries like America, China and India did something on climate change he saw no point in doing anything. He even acknowledged that his children would suffer in the future, and that their future is bleak.

The point of telling you this, is simply that this is the attitude that I face every day. While I no longer seem to face the opposition to the idea of a changing climate, almost everyone I do encounter will not, not can not, but will not take any action that requires effort, thought or costs. Ultimately I agree with his conclusion that we are... (Here you have to play guess the expletive)

The real shame lays in the hands of everyone who refuses to take actions towards making reductions in Climate changing pollution. Even among those people who like to think of themselves as being green, people will not limit their personal freedom to pollute. If they can see it saving them money, they will, or if it adds kudos amongst peers, but real action is non existent.

Well I will continue to limit my impact upon the planet as unless you are part of the solution then you are part of the problem. All this should not have been a revelation for me, as everyone has been doing something similar in relation to consumer credit. In the UK there is one trillion pounds of personal debt. We have all been spending as though tomorrow doesn't matter, well looking at the state of the stock market, tomorrow has arrived. I said it would, long before it occurred.

I have long said that it will be the economic impacts of a changing climate that would be the first time that people really started to take notice, well that time has arrived. Increasing energy costs, increasing food costs, the collapse of (Over inflated) house prices, are all part of the overall picture of our devastating impact upon the earth.

We now need a new economic engine driving our economy, not the push for growth at all costs, but a sensible and equitable use of the earth's resource's. Only via that route will we all discover that we can share in the wealth of this planet and put an end to the conflict that harms us all.