A friend pointed out an article in the lampoon newspaper "The Onion" that reports how the US investors are desperately looking for another bubble to invest in like the Internet, real estate and sub-prime mortgage bubbles among others. See link here: http://http//www.theonion.com/content/news/recession_plagued_nation_demands
While this article is a parody, this is really how our economy works since the powers that be in the US are phasing out the manufacturing sector and some of the service sectors in our economy. Our economy just seems to be one big Ponzi scheme or three-card monte game.
The next bubble was supposed to be the green revolution, an economy that revolves around alternate energy sources. This was one of the platforms that Obama based his presidential election campaign on.
This for some reason has not taken place and the green revolution doesn't seem to be anywhere in sight.
Sure there are all electric cars coming to market like the Nissan Leaf, and Honda has a hydrogen version of the Accord but there is no re-fueling infrastructure to support them. I also saw a report on Nova about new thin solar panel cells and at the time the television program was produced the company that was manufacturing them, United Solar Ovonic, had a two year back log. Now by checking out Google News I have found that this company is laying off workers because their supply is surpassing demand. This doesn't make any sense. If the US Government was really committed to the green revolution this is where they should step in and help create a green infrastructure of electric and hydrogen fueling stations and help green companies like United Solar Ovonic find a market for their product.
This is not happening and investors are not coming to the rescue, because they do not see the money making potential in green technologies. But why? Because as I have stated here before, I think investors and the US government know that whatever green technology comes about oil will be sure to undersell it and ruin it. Even if it green ventures never become truly commercially successful, they could at least help the economy by driving the price of oil way down. This in itself would be a big help to the economy, but investors are not in the altruism business they are in the money making business therefore it will never happen. But at least government should be stepping in to help out, but they are not.
This also is why you cannot expect a free market to operate altruistically, and you need government to step in to be the altruist, but they cannot because big business keeps their hands tied through lobbying. Investors are not going to get the green revolution going because they are afraid they won't make any money and government hasn't stepped in to make sure that the right thing is done.
It is all up to the US Government to get the green revolution bubble going. This should be the priority over having another bailout for failing US banks and business, and it is not only the economy at stake, it is the environment as well.
While this article is a parody, this is really how our economy works since the powers that be in the US are phasing out the manufacturing sector and some of the service sectors in our economy. Our economy just seems to be one big Ponzi scheme or three-card monte game.
The next bubble was supposed to be the green revolution, an economy that revolves around alternate energy sources. This was one of the platforms that Obama based his presidential election campaign on.
This for some reason has not taken place and the green revolution doesn't seem to be anywhere in sight.
Sure there are all electric cars coming to market like the Nissan Leaf, and Honda has a hydrogen version of the Accord but there is no re-fueling infrastructure to support them. I also saw a report on Nova about new thin solar panel cells and at the time the television program was produced the company that was manufacturing them, United Solar Ovonic, had a two year back log. Now by checking out Google News I have found that this company is laying off workers because their supply is surpassing demand. This doesn't make any sense. If the US Government was really committed to the green revolution this is where they should step in and help create a green infrastructure of electric and hydrogen fueling stations and help green companies like United Solar Ovonic find a market for their product.
This is not happening and investors are not coming to the rescue, because they do not see the money making potential in green technologies. But why? Because as I have stated here before, I think investors and the US government know that whatever green technology comes about oil will be sure to undersell it and ruin it. Even if it green ventures never become truly commercially successful, they could at least help the economy by driving the price of oil way down. This in itself would be a big help to the economy, but investors are not in the altruism business they are in the money making business therefore it will never happen. But at least government should be stepping in to help out, but they are not.
This also is why you cannot expect a free market to operate altruistically, and you need government to step in to be the altruist, but they cannot because big business keeps their hands tied through lobbying. Investors are not going to get the green revolution going because they are afraid they won't make any money and government hasn't stepped in to make sure that the right thing is done.
It is all up to the US Government to get the green revolution bubble going. This should be the priority over having another bailout for failing US banks and business, and it is not only the economy at stake, it is the environment as well.
You are simply misinformed! United Solar Ovonic have been selling their latest "new" product since 1998 (previously, they were selling another version, developed with Japanese "partners"). Unfortunatly, they always sold it at a loss. The so-called backlog was never real - for example, $500 million of it turned out to be coming from their largest customer (also money-losing), so it simply vanished once United Solar had to acquire that customer since nobody wanted to fund them anymore. The real solar companies, like First Solar and SunPower were profitable and grew sales year-over-year in the September quarter. United Solar's sales declined 57% year-over-year in the September quarter, losing money again, as usual.
ReplyDeleteSo some companies are still exploiting the bubble while it lasts. Other companies simply don't have the product and the cost structure to do that. United Solar's share in the California solar market (which counts for about 60% of the US solar market) has been about 0.2% (yes, zero point two percent) over the past two years, according to the CSI database. No bubble-blowing can change that fact.