Pope Warns Of Earth's Squandered Resources

Perpetual Freedumb Toward a Devastatingly Lethal Climax - or a Return to Freedom, Life, Liberty, Health, with Limitless, Unbounded Potential for all, in a world of exploding human population, with its myriad needs, wants and desires? "The Pope's more than 20-hour flight from Rome to Sydney provided a bird's eye view of a vast swath of the world that inspired awe and introspection. "Perhaps reluctantly we come to acknowledge that there are also scars which mark the surface of our Earth: erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world's mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption," he said. He recognized the problem of global warming. "Some of you come from island nations whose very existence is threatened by rising water levels; others from nations suffering the effects of devastating drought," he said. He said various poisons were also afflicting the world's social environment and corroding communities. "Among the more prevalent are alcohol and drug abuse, and the exaltation of violence and sexual degradation, often presented through television and the Internet as entertainment," Benedict said"



Science & Technology had the capacity to promise us the latter back in the late 1940's- Life, Liberty, Health, Unbounded Potential for all - with the revolutionary advanced definitions of Space, Time, Mass, Matter, Energy, Gravity (StarSteps) springing forth from an extended view of E=MC2 embracing the Radius of Curvature of All Natural Law.


The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil

Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when lacking a Bill of Rights for Human Life

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.



Pope Warns Of Earth's Squandered Resources
SYDNEY, Australia, July 17, 2008
(AP) The world's natural resources are being squandered in the pursuit of "insatiable consumption," Pope Benedict XVI warned in a speech Thursday that also slammed television and the Internet for exalting violence as entertainment. In a major address before more than 200,000 people gathered in Sydney for the Roman Catholic Church's youth festival, the pope urged his more than 1 billion followers worldwide to resist various types of "poison" that are corroding society, and to care more for the environment. "The concerns for nonviolence, sustainable development, justice and peace, and care for our environment are of vital importance for humanity," Benedict told the crowd massed on an unused wharf in Sydney. They regularly erupted in cheers, giving the event a football-match feel. The pontiff emerged from three days at a secluded vacation spot to engage in a busy round of events for World Youth Day, a six-day festival held every few years to inspire new generations of Roman Catholics. He received a series of welcomes: an official one from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, a traditional one from pelt-clad Aboriginal dancers, and finally a rapturous one from pilgrims who journeyed to Sydney from more than 160 countries to attend. He toured the harbor by boat, cruising past Sydney's twin landmarks - its white-shelled opera house and the bridge nicknamed "the coat hanger" because of its shape. Benedict's speech was his first major appearance at the festival and one of the main events of his 10-day trip. He expanded on the theme that has resulted in his being dubbed the "green pope," noting that during his more than 20-hour flight from Rome to Sydney he had a bird's eye view of a vast swath of the world that inspired awe and introspection. "Perhaps reluctantly we come to acknowledge that there are also scars which mark the surface of our Earth: erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world's mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption," he said. He recognized the problem of global warming. "Some of you come from island nations whose very existence is threatened by rising water levels; others from nations suffering the effects of devastating drought," he said. He said various poisons were also afflicting the world's social environment and corroding communities. "Among the more prevalent are alcohol and drug abuse, and the exaltation of violence and sexual degradation, often presented through television and the Internet as entertainment," Benedict said. At the official welcoming ceremony with Rudd, Benedict praised the Australian government for its "courageous" apology to the country's indigenous Aborigines for past injustices, saying it offered hope to all disadvantaged peoples who are seeking reconciliation. Later, Aboriginal elders and dancers of the Gadigal clan, wearing white ochre body paint and animal pelts, gave Benedict a traditional welcome on what was once their land, now a park, on the harbor. They shook eucalyptus fronds as a symbol of cleansing and good fortune while someone played a didgeridoo, an Aboriginal wind instrument. Aborigines are an often-marginalized minority of about 450,000 in Australia's population of 21 million. They are the country's poorest group, with the highest rates of unemployment, illiteracy, incarceration and alcohol abuse, and a life expectancy 17 years shorter than other Australians. In February, Rudd formally apologized to Aborigines as one of his first official acts after taking power, and made closing the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians a priority of his government. Benedict's comments about Aborigines were not the first time a pope has recognized indigenous peoples. In 2001, John Paul II issued a formal apology to the indigenous peoples of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific islands for injustices perpetrated by Catholic missionaries. Crowds of people thronged Sydney streets Thursday evening, shutting down a large part of downtown during rush hour, as Benedict drove in the popemobile through the city. Security was tight, with thousands of police deployed and dark-suited security guards walking alongside the pope's vehicle. There was no sign of trouble.
MMVIII The Associated Press.

Given a Shovel, Americans Dig Deeper Into Debt

Freedumb, Freedumb, Read All About It! What factors changed Market Supply & Demand Fundamentals to Freakohnomics gone berserk? From cheaper goods and services available to all through continual advances in science, technology and mass production, to 'Whatever The Market Will Bear' depending on how great the need for sustaining Life? The answers lie in Power, Greed, and Stagnant Energy Science. In a world of exploding human population, with its myriad needs, wants and desires, the economy keeps falling, with more and more working people around the world, poorer, lacking basic needs and going hungry. Freakohnomics: The new 21st Century Supply & Demand Economics - absolute greed, absolute power brings on absolute madness - Turns into Freakohnomics gone berserk. Or mafia economics by deliberate Design - the greater the need, the higher the price of all commodities required to sustain Life. The Outcome, economic strangulation and workaholic enslavement of a people was not designed by the lord thy God, nor (for the non-believer) is it a Natural or Nature's Law, nor a Scientific Law

The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil

Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when lacking a Bill of Rights for Human Life

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down along with their retirement savings in equity & stocks, while their taxes, gas, energy and food costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms and many continue to lose their homes and go hungry; as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans).

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.




PROFIT AT ANY COST, FREEDUMB, FREEDUMB
July 20, 2008
Given a Shovel, Americans Dig Deeper Into Debt
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
The collection agencies call at least 20 times a day. For a little quiet, Diane McLeod stashes her phone in the dishwasher.
But right up until she hit the wall financially, Ms. McLeod was a dream customer for lenders. She juggled not one but two mortgages, both with interest rates that rose over time, and a car loan and high-cost credit card debt. Separated and living with her 20-year-old son, she worked two jobs so she could afford her small, two-bedroom ranch house in suburban Philadelphia, the Kia she drove to work, and the handbags and knickknacks she liked.
Then last year, back-to-back medical emergencies helped push her over the edge. She could no longer afford either her home payments or her credit card bills. Then she lost her job. Now her home is in foreclosure and her credit profile in ruins.
Ms. McLeod, who is 47, readily admits her money problems are largely of her own making. But as surely as it takes two to tango, she had partners in her financial demise. In recent years, those partners, including the financial giants Citigroup, Capital One and GE Capital, were collecting interest payments totaling more than 40 percent of her pretax income and thousands more in fees.
Years of spending more than they earn have left a record number of Americans like Ms. McLeod standing at the financial precipice. They have amassed a mountain of debt that grows ever bigger because of high interest rates and fees.
While the circumstances surrounding these downfalls vary, one element is identical: the lucrative lending practices of America’s merchants of debt have led millions of Americans — young and old, native and immigrant, affluent and poor — to the brink. More and more, Americans can identify with miners of old: in debt to the company store with little chance of paying up.
It is not just individuals but the entire economy that is now suffering. Practices that produced record profits for many banks have shaken the nation’s financial system to its foundation. As a growing number of Americans default, banks are recording hundreds of billions in losses, devastating their shareholders.
To reduce the risk of a domino effect, the Bush administration fashioned an emergency rescue plan last week to shore up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the nation’s two largest mortgage finance companies, if necessary.
To be sure, the increased availability of credit has contributed mightily to the American economy and has allowed consumers to make big-ticket purchases like homes, cars and college educations.
But behind the big increase in consumer debt is a major shift in the way lenders approach their business. In earlier years, actually being repaid by borrowers was crucial to lenders. Now, because so much consumer debt is packaged into securities and sold to investors, repayment of the loans takes on less importance to those lenders than the fees and charges generated when loans are made.
Lenders have found new ways to squeeze more profit from borrowers. Though prevailing interest rates have fallen to the low single digits in recent years, for example, the rates that credit card issuers routinely charge even borrowers with good credit records have risen, to 19.1 percent last year from 17.7 percent in 2005 — a difference that adds billions of dollars in interest charges annually to credit card bills.
Average late fees rose to $35 in 2007 from less than $13 in 1994, and fees charged when customers exceed their credit limits more than doubled to $26 a month from $11, according to CardWeb, an online publisher of information on payment and credit cards.
Mortgage lenders similarly added or raised fees associated with borrowing to buy a home — like $75 e-mail charges, $100 document preparation costs and $70 courier fees — bringing the average to $700 a mortgage, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. These “junk fees” have risen 50 percent in recent years, said Michael A. Kratzer, president of FeeDisclosure.com, a Web site intended to help consumers reduce fees on mortgages.
“Today the focus for lenders is not so much on consumer loans being repaid, but on the loan as a perpetual earning asset,” said Julie L. Williams, chief counsel of the Comptroller of the Currency, in a March 2005 speech that received little notice at the time.
Lenders have been eager to expand their reach. They have honed sophisticated marketing tactics, gathering personal financial data to tailor their pitches. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising campaigns that make debt sound desirable and risk-free. The ads are aimed at people who urgently need loans to pay for health care and other necessities.
It is not just financial conglomerates that are profiting on consumer debt loads. Some manufacturers and retailers can generate more income from internal financing arms that lend to their customers than from their primary businesses.
Tallying what the lenders have made off Ms. McLeod over the years is revealing. In 2007, when she earned $48,000 before taxes, she was charged more than $20,000 in interest on her various loans.
Her first mortgage, originated by the EquiFirst Corporation, charged her $14,136 a year, and her second, held by CitiFinancial, added $4,000. Capital One, a credit card company that charged her 28 percent interest on her balances, billed $1,400 in annual interest. GE Money Bank levied 27 percent on the $1,500 or so that Ms. McLeod owed on an account she had with a local jewelry store, adding more than $400.
Olde City Mortgage, the company that arranged one of Ms. McLeod’s loans, made $6,000 on a single refinancing, and EquiFirst received $890 in a loan origination fee.
Such fees and interest rates are a growing burden on Americans, especially those who rely on credit cards to make ends meet.
And recent changes in the bankruptcy laws, supported by financial services firms, make it all the harder for consumers, especially those with modest incomes, to get out from under their debt by filing for bankruptcy.
But with so many borrowers in trouble, some bankruptcy experts and regulators are beginning to focus on the responsibilities of lenders, like requiring them to make loans only if they are suitable to the borrowers applying for them.
The Federal Reserve Board, for instance, recently put into effect rules barring a lender from making a loan without regard to the borrower’s ability to repay it.
Henry E. Hildebrand III, a Bankruptcy Court trustee in Nashville since 1982 and one of the nation’s busiest, has seen at first hand what happens when lenders do not take some responsibility for loans that go bad. “I look across the table at people who are right out of school and have more debt than they can handle, and they are starting out life in a bankruptcy,” he said.
Ms. McLeod used debt to keep going until she was fired from her job in March for writing inappropriate e-mail messages. Since then, she has been selling her coveted handbags and other items on eBay to raise money while waiting to be evicted from her home.
“I think a lot of people in this country have a lot more debt than they let the outside world know,” Ms. McLeod said. “I worked in retail for five years. And men, women would open up their wallets to pay and the credit cards that were in some of the wallets just amazed me.”
Borrowing to Shop
For decades, America’s shift from thrift could be summed up in this familiar phrase: When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. Whether for a car, home, vacation or college degree, the nation’s lenders stood ready to assist.
Companies offered first and second mortgages and home equity lines, marketed credit cards for teenagers and helped college students to amass upward of $100,000 in debt by graduation.
Every age group up to the elderly was the target of sophisticated ad campaigns and direct mail programs. “Live Richly” was a Citibank message. “Life Takes Visa,” proclaims the nation’s largest credit card issuer.
Eliminating negative feelings about indebtedness was the idea behind MasterCard’s “Priceless” campaign, the work of McCann-Erickson Worldwide Advertising, which came out in 1997.
“One of the tricks in the credit card business is that people have an inherent guilt with spending,” Jonathan B. Cranin, executive vice president and deputy creative director at the agency, said when the commercials began. “What you want is to have people feel good about their purchases.”
Mortgage lenders took to cold-calling homeowners to persuade them to refinance. Done to reduce borrowers’ monthly payments, serial refinancings allowed lenders to charge thousands of dollars in loan processing fees, including appraisals, credit checks, title searches and document preparation fees.
Not surprisingly, such practices generated dazzling profits for the nation’s financial companies. And since 2005, when the bankruptcy law was changed, the credit card industry has increased its earnings 25 percent, according to a new study by Michael Simkovic, a former James M. Olin fellow in Law and Economics at Harvard Law School.
The “2005 bankruptcy reform benefited credit card companies and hurt their customers,” Mr. Simkovic concluded in his study. He said that even though sponsors of the bankruptcy bill promised that consumers would benefit from lower borrowing costs as delinquent borrowers were held more accountable, the cost of borrowing from credit card companies has actually increased anywhere from 5 percent to 17 percent.
Among the most profitable companies were Ms. McLeod’s creditors.
For Capital One, which charges her 28 percent interest on her credit card, net interest income, after provisions for loan losses, has risen a compounded 25 percent a year since 2002.
GE Money Bank, which levied a 27 percent rate on Ms. McLeod’s debt and is part of the GE Capital Corporation, generated profits of $4.3 billion in 2007, more than double the $2.1 billion it earned in 2003.
Because many of these large institutions pool the loans they make and sell them to investors, they are not as vulnerable when the borrowers default. At the end of 2007, for example, one-third of Capital One’s $151 billion in managed loans had been sold as securities.
Officials at General Electric declined to comment. Capital One did not return phone calls.
As the profits in this indebtedness grew, financial companies moved aggressively to protect them, spending millions of dollars to lobby against any moves lawmakers might take to rein in questionable lending.
But consumers are voicing anger over lending practices. A recent proposal by the Federal Reserve Board to limit some abusive practices has drawn more than 11,000 letters since May. Most are from irate borrowers.
A Rising Tide of Bills
Just two generations ago, America was a nation of mostly thrifty people living within their means, even setting money aside for unforeseen expenses.
Today, Americans carry $2.56 trillion in consumer debt, up 22 percent since 2000 alone, according to the Federal Reserve Board. The average household’s credit card debt is $8,565, up almost 15 percent from 2000.
College debt has more than doubled since 1995. The average student emerges from college carrying $20,000 in educational debt.
Household debt, including mortgages and credit cards, represents 19 percent of household assets, according to the Fed, compared with 13 percent in 1980.
Even as this debt was mounting, incomes stagnated for many Americans. As a result, the percentage of disposable income that consumers must set aside to service their debt — a figure that includes monthly credit card payments, car loans, mortgage interest and principal — has risen to 14.5 percent from 11 percent just 15 years ago.
By contrast, the nation’s savings rate, which exceeded 8 percent of disposable income in 1968, stood at 0.4 percent at the end of the first quarter of this year, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
More ominous, as Americans have dug themselves deeper into debt, the value of their assets has started to fall. Mortgage debt stood at $10.5 trillion at the end of last year, more than double the $4.8 trillion just seven years earlier, but home prices that were rising to support increasing levels of debt, like home equity lines of credit, are now dropping.
The combination of increased debt, falling asset prices and stagnant incomes does not threaten just imprudent borrowers. The entire economy has become vulnerable to the spending slowdown that results when consumers like Ms. McLeod hit the wall.
That First Credit Card
Growing up in Philadelphia, Diane McLeod never knew financial hardship, she said. Her father owned six pizza shops and her mother was a homemaker.
“There was always money for everything, whether it was bills or food shopping or a spur-of-the-moment vacation,” Ms. McLeod recalled. “If they worried about money, they never let us know.”
Hers was a pay-as-you-go family, she said. Although money was not discussed much around the dinner table, credit card debt was not a part of her parents’ financial plan, and sometimes personal purchases were put off.
When Ms. McLeod married at 18, she and her husband carried no credit cards. She stayed at home after her son was born, but when she was 27 her husband died.
She remarried a few years later and continued as a homemaker until her son turned 13. Between her husband’s job laying carpets and her own, money was not exactly tight.
In the mid-’90s, Ms. McLeod got several credit cards. When the marriage began to founder, she said, she shopped to make herself feel better.
Earning a livable wage at Verizon Yellow Pages, Ms. McLeod finally decided to leave her marriage and buy a home of her own in February 2003. The cost was $135,000, and her mortgage required no down payment because her credit history was good.
“I was very proud of myself when I bought the house,” Ms. McLeod explained. “I thought I would live here till I died.” Adding to her burden, however, was about $25,000 in credit card debt she had brought from her marriage. Because her husband did not have a regular salary, all the cards were in her name.
After she had been in the house for a year, a friend who was a mortgage broker suggested she consolidate her debts into a new home loan. The property had appreciated by about $30,000, and once again she put no money down for the loan. “It was amazing how easy it was,” she recalled. “But that’s a trap, and I didn’t know it then.”
Naturally, the refinance had costs. There was an $8,000 penalty to pay off the previous mortgage early as well as roughly $1,500 in closing costs on the new loan.
To cover these fees, Ms. McLeod dipped into her retirement account. Only later did she realize that she had to pay an early-withdrawal penalty of $3,000 to the Internal Revenue Service. Short on cash, she put it on a credit card.
Soon she had racked up another $19,000 in credit card debt. But because her home had appreciated, she once again refinanced her mortgage. Although she was making $50,000 a year working two jobs, her income was not enough to support the new $165,000 loan. She asked her son to join her on the loan application; with his income, the numbers worked.
“Boy, would I regret that,” she said. The decision would drive a wedge between mother and son and damage his credit profile as well.
Almost immediately after she refinanced, in late 2005, the department store where she worked her second job, as a jewelry saleswoman at night and on weekends, cut back her hours. She quit altogether, and her son moved out of the house, where he had been helping with the rent, to live with a girlfriend. Ms. McLeod was on her own and paying $1,500 a month on her mortgage.
Because the house had been recently appraised at $228,000, she said, she felt sure she could refinance again if she needed to pay off her credit card. “You felt like you had a way out,” she said.
But as happens with many debt-laden Americans, an unexpected illness helped push Ms. McLeod over the edge. In January 2006, her doctor told her she needed a hysterectomy. She had health care coverage, but she could no longer work at a second job.
She made matters worse during her recovery, while watching home shopping channels. “Eight weeks in bed by yourself is very dangerous when you have a TV and credit card,” Ms. McLeod said. “QVC was my friend.”
Later that year, Ms. McLeod realized she was in trouble, squeezed by her mortgage and credit card payments, her $350 monthly car bill, rising energy prices and a stagnant salary. She started to sell knickknacks, handbags, clothing and other items on eBay to help cover her heating and food bills. She stopped paying her credit cards so that she could afford her mortgage.
A year ago she was back in the hospital, this time with a burst appendix. Her condition worsened, and she lost the use of one kidney. She spent 19 days in the hospital and six weeks recuperating. Her prescription-drug costs added to her expenses, and by September she could no longer pay her mortgage.
When her father died in early January, she was devastated. About a month later, on Feb. 14, Ms. McLeod was suspended and soon afterward fired from Verizon.
Toting up her financial obligations, Ms. McLeod said she owed $237,000 on her home mortgage. Of that, sheriff’s costs are $4,350, and “other” fees related to the foreclosure come to $3,000. A house of similar size down the street from Ms. McLeod sold for $153,000 in January.
Her credit card debt totals around $34,000, she said. Each month the late fees and over-limit penalties add to her debt. Ms. McLeod said she would probably file for bankruptcy.
Patricia A. Hasson, president of the Credit Counseling Service of Delaware Valley, said Ms. McLeod would probably wind up having to repay 40 percent to 60 percent of her credit card debt. The owner of her mortgages could come after her for the difference between what she owes on her loan and what her house ultimately sells for. The first mortgage was sold to investors; Citigroup declined to say whether it held onto the second mortgage or sold it to investors.
A sheriff’s auction of her home on June 12 received no bidders, Ms. McLeod said. The bank will soon evict her.
“Oh, I definitely have regrets,” Ms. McLeod said. “I regret not dealing with my emotions instead of just shopping. And I regret involving my son in all this because that has affected him and his finances and his self-esteem.”
Ms. McLeod says she hopes to be living in an apartment she can afford soon and to get back to paying her bills on time.
She does not want another credit card, she said. But even though her credit profile is ruined, she still receives come-ons.
Recently an envelope arrived offering a “pre-qualified” Salute Visa Gold card issued by Urban Bank Trust. “We think you deserve more credit!” it said in bold type.
A spokeswoman at Urban Bank said the Salute Visa is part of a program “designed to provide access to credit for folks who would not otherwise qualify for credit.”
The Salute Visa offered Ms. McLeod a $300 credit line. But a closer look at the fine print showed that $150 of that would go, as annual fees, to Urban Bank.

Hundreds of Super Rich Under Investigation

Freedumb, Freedumb, Read All About It! What factors changed Market Supply & Demand Fundamentals to Freakohnomics gone berserk? From cheaper goods and services available to all through continual advances in science, technology and mass production, to 'Whatever The Market Will Bear' depending on how great the need for sustaining Life? The answers lie in Power, Greed, and Stagnant Energy Science. In a world of exploding human population, with its myriad needs, wants and desires, the economy keeps falling, with more and more working people around the world, poorer, lacking basic needs and going hungry. Freakohnomics: The new 21st Century Supply & Demand Economics - absolute greed, absolute power brings on absolute madness - Turns into Freakohnomics gone berserk. Or mafia economics by deliberate Design - the greater the need, the higher the price of all commodities required to sustain Life. The Outcome, economic strangulation and workaholic enslavement of a people was not designed by the lord thy God, nor (for the non-believer) is it a Natural or Nature's Law, nor a Scientific Law

The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil

Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when lacking a Bill of Rights for Human Life

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down along with their retirement savings in equity & stocks, while their taxes, gas, energy and food costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms and many continue to lose their homes and go hungry; as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans).

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.




Hundreds of Super Rich Under Investigation
Senate Committee Wants To Question Secret Account Holders & Bank Officials
By BRIAN ROSS, RHONDA SCHWARTZ, and AVNI PATEL
July 16, 2008—
Hundreds of rich Americans whose names and secret foreign bank account information were turned over to US tax authorities could face criminal prosecution. A Senate committee is scheduled to convene tomorrow and among those called to testify are foreign bank account holders, including one of the wealthiest men in Los Angeles.
48 year-old Peter Lowy and his family own the giant Westfield shopping center fortune and will control the retail space in the rebuilt World Trade Center in New York. Bob Bennett, a lawyer for Lowy, who is a prominent contributor to both Democratic and Republican candidates, told ABC News that Lowy's name was on the list of secret accounts from a Liechtenstein bank but that Lowy did nothing wrong.
Bennett said Lowy is out of the country tomorrow and will not be available to testify.
For years, the LGT Bank in the tiny European principality of Liechtenstein, tucked between Austria and Switzerland, has been regarded as a safe haven for wealthy Americans trying to hide their money from the IRS. It helps that the reigning prince there, Hans-Adams II, and his family own the bank and strictly enforce the country's bank secrecy laws.
"Liechtenstein is regarded as one of the most secretive places in the world," said John Christensen of the London-based Tax Justice Network.
But all that changed when a disgruntled computer technician at LGT, Heinrich Kieber, downloaded all the names and secret accounts on to two CDs and turned them over to tax authorities in the US and Europe.
"It completely exposed the fact that Liechtenstein is nothing but a place to hide your money from tax collectors, and any other police who might be interested," said Kieber's Washington-based attorney Jack Blum. Kieber is now wanted in Liechtenstein for violating bank secrecy laws there, but his attorney says it is the tax cheats that are the real criminals.
"They are the people who are taking advantage of the rest of us, who are withholding and paying," said Blum. "They're the crooks."
Also called to testify tomorrow are current and former officials of the giant Swiss bank UBS, including the head of the private wealth management Americas office, Martin Liechti, who was briefly detained by US authorities in Miami in May.
In court documents, federal prosecutors say UBS bankers helped set up many of the secret accounts in Liechtenstein and, overall, hid as much $20 billion belonging to US citizens.
"Sums are enormous and UBS appears to have been particularly aggressive in the way they marketed their activities in the US and elsewhere," said Christensen. "So UBS is extremely vulnerable to losing their license in the US."
One UBS banker, Bradley Birkenfield, pleaded guilty last month and admitted to smuggling cash and diamonds for Americans trying to hide their wealth from the IRS.
In federal court documents obtained by ABC News, federal prosecutors allege that Birkenfield's bank trained bankers traveling to the US in "techniques to avoid detection" by law enforcement authorities, "including training bankers to falsely state on customs forms that they were traveling into the United States for pleasure and not business".
Prosecutors say part of the Swiss bank scam was for the bank managers to have a third party who would set up sham entities for the US clients in tax havens, such as Panama or the British Virgin Islands, and pose as the owners of the entities.
"By concealing the US clients' ownership and control in the assets held offshore," the prosecutors say the Swiss bank and its managers "defrauded the IRS and evaded United States income taxes." (click here to read more of the court documents)
"The Americans were probably very shocked when their information wound up in the hands of the Internal Revenue Service," said Blum.
Click Here for the Investigative Homepage.
2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

Elder Statesmen: U.S. Faces Energy Crisis

Freedumb, Freedumb, Read All About It! What factors changed Market Supply & Demand Fundamentals to Freakohnomics gone berserk? From cheaper goods and services available to all through continual advances in science, technology and mass production, to 'Whatever The Market Will Bear' depending on how great the need for sustaining Life? The answers lie in Power, Greed, and Stagnant Energy Science. In a world of exploding human population, with its myriad needs, wants and desires, the economy keeps falling, with more and more working people around the world, poorer, lacking basic needs and going hungry. Freakohnomics: The new 21st Century Supply & Demand Economics - absolute greed, absolute power brings on absolute madness - Turns into Freakohnomics gone berserk. Or mafia economics by deliberate Design - the greater the need, the higher the price of all commodities required to sustain Life. The Outcome, economic strangulation and workaholic enslavement of a people was not designed by the lord thy God, nor (for the non-believer) is it a Natural or Nature's Law, nor a Scientific Law

The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil

Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when lacking a Bill of Rights for Human Life

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down along with their retirement savings in equity & stocks, while their taxes, gas, energy and food costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms and many continue to lose their homes and go hungry; as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans).

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.




Elder Statesmen: U.S. Faces Energy Crisis
WASHINGTON, July 15, 2008

(AP) A bipartisan group of 27 American elder statesmen is sending an open letter to both presidential candidates and every member of Congress saying the United States faces "a long-term energy crisis" that threatens the security and prosperity of future generations if swift action is not taken. The group includes Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and six other former secretaries of state or defense, former senators of both parties and a half-dozen former senior White House advisers and other Cabinet officers for both Republican and Democratic presidents. "We must re-examine outdated and entrenched positions," the group says in the letter to be sent Wednesday to the campaigns of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and to his Republican rival, John McCain, as well as members of Congress and all 50 governors. "Foremost we must rise above a partisan differences and be united in our efforts," they wrote. A copy of the letter was provided Tuesday to The Associated Press. The call to action comes amid widespread anger over high energy costs from $4-plus a gallon gasoline to the certainty of record heating costs next winter and the prospect that America's energy priorities will have to be revamped in coming decades to deal with global warming. Despite volumes of rhetoric, often on largely meaningless proposals, partisan disagreements have stymied action on energy issues in Congress this year. Republicans have hammered away at opening new areas for oil and gas drilling, while Democrats have been largely targeting large oil companies for new taxes. Neither side has signaled a willingness to compromise. That has to change, the elder statesmen wrote, focusing on the next president and members of the Congress that will take office in January. The open letter was the idea of the Institute for 21st Century Energy, a group affiliated with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has embraced largely Republican, pro-business approaches to dealing with energy problems. The chamber, for example, has called for expanding domestic energy development, including opening offshore areas long off-limits, and criticized new taxes on oil companies. But retired Marine General James Jones, the institute's president, said the call to action reflects broad, bipartisan views and does not lean on one party or the other. "There's an energy tsunami coming, and when you see it coming you better get on top of the wave, or you're going to get crushed by it," he said in an interview. Jones, a 40-year military veteran who has had discussions about energy with both Obama and McCain, said he hoped the letter's sense of urgency will influence both campaigns. "Both candidates are still embryonic in their thinking about this," he said. It is not only politicians who are faulted in the critique. "We demand more energy and complain about high prices, but we restrict energy exploration and production. We embrace the promise of energy efficiency, but we are slow to make adjustments in our energy-intensive lifestyles," the letter says. Production of electricity, for example, is taken "almost for granted." At the same time, people oppose new power plants and don't want to invest adequately in energy technology research, the writers say. Thomas "Mack" McLarty, White House chief of staff to former President Bill Clinton, said the letter emphasizes that "the next president is going to have to put energy right at the top of his agenda" and do it quickly. "There will be a window there to build bipartisan consensus to move forward," McLarty said in an interview. The letter includes 13 broad recommendations. They include aggressively promoting energy efficiency and reducing energy consumption, increased commitments to both nuclear energy and renewable energy sources, making coal more environmentally acceptable and moving transportation away from oil as a fuel. Other senders of the letter include former Secretaries of State James A. Baker III and George Shultz, former Defense Secretaries Frank Carlucci, William Cohen, William Perry and James Schlesinger; former senior White House advisers Howard Baker, Robert "Bud" McFarlane, Kenneth Duberstein and Brent Scowcroft; former Energy Secretaries James Watkins and Spencer Abraham; former CIA Director James Woolsey; former Commerce Secretary Donald Evans; former Democratic Sens. J. Bennett Johnston, Sam Nunn and Charles Robb; and former Republican Sen. George Allen.
MMVIII The Associated Press.

'Heading Toward a Meltdown'? World Stocks Plummet on U.S. Worries

Freedumb, Freedumb, Read All About It! What factors changed Market Supply & Demand Fundamentals to Freakohnomics gone berserk? From cheaper goods and services available to all through continual advances in science, technology and mass production, to 'Whatever The Market Will Bear' depending on how great the need for sustaining Life? The answers lie in Power, Greed, and Stagnant Energy Science. In a world of exploding human population, with its myriad needs, wants and desires, the economy keeps falling, with more and more working people around the world, poorer, lacking basic needs and going hungry. Freakohnomics: The new 21st Century Supply & Demand Economics - absolute greed, absolute power brings on absolute madness - Turns into Freakohnomics gone berserk. Or mafia economics by deliberate Design - the greater the need, the higher the price of all commodities required to sustain Life. The Outcome, economic strangulation and workaholic enslavement of a people was not designed by the lord thy God, nor (for the non-believer) is it a Natural or Nature's Law, nor a Scientific Law

The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil

Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when lacking a Bill of Rights for Human Life

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down along with their retirement savings in equity & stocks, while their taxes, gas, energy and food costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms and many continue to lose their homes and go hungry; as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans).

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.




'Heading Toward a Meltdown'? World Stocks Plummet on U.S. Worries

Asia, Europe Stocks Drop on Credit Woes
Asian, European markets tumble as worries mount over US financial woes
By LOUISE WATT
The Associated Press
LONDON
Asian and European stock markets fell Tuesday as investor confidence in the U.S. financial system eroded further despite a government-backed plan to help beleaguered mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
In morning trading in Europe, Britain's FTSE 100 fell 1.27 percent to 5,233.10, Germany's DAX lost 1.80 percent at 6,088.40, and France's CAC-40 retreated 1.51 percent to 4,079.91.
In Asia, every major index suffered declines, with Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index dropping more than 3.8 percent and Taiwan's benchmark losing over 4.5 percent. In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 index dropped nearly 2 percent to close at 12,754.56.
While losses spread across most sectors in Asia, financials were hit particularly hard as investors worried that trouble in the U.S. financial markets would spillover to Asia.
Japanese traders were rattled by a local business newspaper report that the country's top three banks hold a combined 4.7 trillion yen ($44 billion) in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt. Another newspaper report unnerved Taiwan's market with news that at least two leading financial institutions have invested in the mortgage giants, and the country's central bank may also have purchased their bonds.
In China, rumors were circulating that the Chinese government had also invested in Fannie and Freddie bonds.
The two government-chartered companies received a boost Sunday when the U.S. central bank and Treasury Department promised to step in with short-term funding and other aid should mortgage losses mount. Together, the companies hold or back about half the outstanding mortgages in the United States.
A sell-off of regional banks overnight on Wall Street, as well as fears that other American banks might face difficulties ahead, only added to the unease. On Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 45.35, or 0.41 percent, to 11,055.19 after spiking nearly 140 points in early trading.
"Investors are quite concerned we could be heading toward a meltdown in the equities market if there's no rebuilding in confidence, especially in the U.S.," said Alex Tang, head of research at Core Pacific-Yamaichi in Hong Kong.
In Japan, banks and insurance issues got slammed.
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group plunged 5.32 percent, Mizuho Financial Group was down more than 5 percent, and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group plunged 6.11 percent. Earlier in the day, the Bank of Japan kept interest rates on hold, deciding to take a wait-and-see approach amid the current volatility.
"With regard to risk factors, global financial markets remain unstable and there are downside risks to the U.S. and the world economy," the central bank's policy board said in a statement.
A higher yen dragged down major exporters such as auto makers and electronics firms. A stronger Japanese currency reduces the value of exporters' profits when repatriated from abroad.
In Hong Kong, the blue-chip Hang Seng Index plunged almost 840 points to 21,174.77 — its lowest close in nearly four months.
China's biggest lender, ICBC, dove nearly 5.2 percent, and HSBC lost more than 3 percent. Heavyweight China Life Insurance slid 5.3 percent.
In mainland China, the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index fell 3.4 percent to close at 2779.45.
The drop was sharpest for real estate developers, banks and insurers. Among financial companies, China Life and Ping An Insurance both tanked 6 percent. Midsize lender Pudong Development Bank Ltd. dropped 7.1 percent.
The government is due to release closely watched inflation data Thursday, which could add to pressure for an interest rate hike. Analysts expect a decline from May's 7.7 percent but expect the rate to stay above the government's 4.8 percent target for the year.
Elsewhere, South Korea's benchmark slid 3.2 percent, India's Sensex was down 4.6 percent in late trade and Australia's main index lost 2.1 percent.
———
AP Business Writer Jeremiah Marquez contributed to this report from Hong Kong.
2008 The Associated Press. 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

American Energy Policy, Asleep at the Spigot

Freedumb, Freedumb, Read All About It! What factors changed Market Supply & Demand Fundamentals to Freakohnomics gone berserk? From cheaper goods and services available to all through continual advances in science, technology and mass production, to 'Whatever The Market Will Bear' depending on how great the need for sustaining Life? The answers lie in Power, Greed, and Stagnant Energy Science. In a world of exploding human population, with its myriad needs, wants and desires, the economy keeps falling, with more and more working people around the world, poorer, lacking basic needs and going hungry. Freakohnomics: The new 21st Century Supply & Demand Economics - absolute greed, absolute power brings on absolute madness - Turns into Freakohnomics gone berserk. Or mafia economics by deliberate Design - the greater the need, the higher the price of all commodities required to sustain Life. The Outcome, economic strangulation and workaholic enslavement of a people was not designed by the lord thy God, nor (for the non-believer) is it a Natural or Nature's Law, nor a Scientific Law

The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil

Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when lacking a Bill of Rights for Human Life

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down along with their retirement savings in equity & stocks, while their taxes, gas, energy and food costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms and many continue to lose their homes and go hungry; as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans).

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.




July 6, 2008
American Energy Policy, Asleep at the Spigot
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
Correction Appended
JUST three years ago, with oil trading at a seemingly frothy $66 a barrel, David J. O’Reilly made what many experts considered a risky bet. Outmaneuvering Chinese bidders and ignoring critics who said he overpaid, Mr. O’Reilly, the chief executive of Chevron, forked over $18 billion to buy Unocal, a giant whose riches date back to oil fields made famous in the film “There Will Be Blood.”
For Chevron, the deal proved to be a movie-worthy gusher, helping its profits to soar. And while he has warned about tightening energy supplies for years and looks prescient for buying Unocal, even Mr. O’Reilly says that he still can’t get his head around current oil prices, which closed above $145 a barrel on Thursday, a record.
“We can see how you can get to $100,” he says. “At $140, I just don’t know how to explain it. We’re surprised.”
For the rest of the country, the feeling is more like shock. As gasoline prices climb beyond $4 a gallon, Americans are rethinking what they drive and how and where they live. Entire industries are reeling — airlines and automakers most prominent among them — and gas prices have emerged as an important issue in the presidential campaign.
Ninety percent of Americans, meanwhile, expect the pain at the pump to pose a financial hardship in the next six months, according to a recent Associated Press-Yahoo News poll. Stocks now trade inversely to crude prices, and the Dow Jones industrials are in bear-market territory. Old icons have been written off, with Starbucks boasting nearly twice the market value of General Motors, which some on Wall Street say faces the possibility of bankruptcy.
Outside the thriving oil patch, it makes for a bleak economic picture. But it didn’t have to be this way.
Over the last 25 years, opportunities to head off the current crisis were ignored, missed or deliberately blocked, according to analysts, politicians and veterans of the oil and automobile industries. What’s more, for all the surprise at just how high oil prices have climbed, and fears for the future, this is one crisis we were warned about. Ever since the oil shortages of the 1970s, one report after another has cautioned against America’s oil addiction.
Even as politicians heatedly debate opening new regions to drilling, corralling energy speculators, or starting an Apollo-like effort to find renewable energy supplies, analysts say the real source of the problem is closer to home. In fact, it’s parked in our driveways.
Nearly 70 percent of the 21 million barrels of oil the United States consumes every day goes for transportation, with the bulk of that burned by individual drivers, according to the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan research group that advises Congress.
SO despite the fierce debate over what’s behind the recent spike in prices, no one differs on what’s really responsible for all that underlying demand here for black gold: the automobile, fueled not only by gasoline but also by Americans’ famous propensity for voracious consumption.
To be sure, the American appetite for crude oil is only one reason for the recent price surge. But the country’s dependence on imported oil has only kept growing in recent years, undermining the trade balance and putting an added strain on global supplies.
Although the road to $4 gasoline and increased oil dependence has been paved in places like Detroit, Houston and Riyadh, it runs through Washington as well, where policy makers have let the problem make lengthy pit stops.
“Much of what we’re seeing today could have been prevented or ameliorated had we chosen to act differently,” says Pete V. Domenici, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and a 36-year veteran of the Senate. “It was a bipartisan failure to act.”
Mike Jackson, the chief executive of AutoNation, the country’s biggest automobile retailer, is even more blunt. “It was totally preventable,” he says, anger creeping into his affable car-salesman’s pitch.
The speed at which gas prices are climbing is forcing a seismic change in long-held American habits, from car-buying to commuting. Last week, Ford Motor reported that S.U.V. sales were down 55 percent from a year ago, while demand for its full-size F-series pickup, a gas guzzler that was the country’s best-selling vehicle for 26 consecutive years, is off 40 percent. The only Ford model to show a sales increase was the midsized Fusion. A Ford spokeswoman says the market shift is “totally unprecedented and faster than anything we’ve ever seen.”
If the latest rise in oil prices isn’t just another spike — like those of the 1970s and 1980s — but is instead a fundamental repricing of the commodity responsible for much of modern American life, the impact of that change will affect everyone from home builders and homeowners in exurbs to corporate leaders, landlords and commuters in cities.
Although Asian consumers have begun emulating America’s love affair with the automobile, with the commercial booms of China and India playing pivotal roles in increased oil demand, the largest energy appetite in the world is still found in the United States. Home to only 4 percent of the world’s population, the nation slurps up about a quarter of the planet’s oil — and Americans’ daily use is nearly twice the combined consumption of the Chinese and Indians, according to an annual energy survey published by BP, the British oil giant.
Indeed, low-priced gasoline has long been part of the American social contract, according to Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and Republican leader. While in office, Mr. Gingrich battled efforts to modulate demand through tools like increased gas taxes and tighter fuel standards, and he argues that voters won’t support such measures even now.
“They will work if you coerce the entire system and if you pretend the American people are Japanese and Europeans,” Mr. Gingrich says. “Our culture favors driving long distances in powerful vehicles and the car as a social expression.”
Perhaps, but on Capitol Hill, members of both parties now say they are furious with Detroit for fighting so hard, and for so long, against higher fuel-efficiency standards.
Though analysts say automakers who shoveled out highly profitable and highly inefficient road hogs like S.U.V.’s and pickups deserve much of the blame, they also criticize legislators who failed to provide an incentive for consumers to switch to fuel-sipping cars. Some politicians are quick to acknowledge the problem.
“We’ve got to fix it or our standard of living will change within a decade,” says Senator Domenici, who is retiring this year. “Oil was too damn cheap, it’s too high now and it’s going even higher. I hope I’m wrong, but the problem is, we can’t catch up soon enough.”
According to energy policy experts, it was in the late 1980s and early 1990s — during the administrations of President George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton — that things began to go wrong.
Before that point, the country reaped the benefits of the first fuel-economy standards, passed in 1975, known as corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE. Between 1974 and 1989, the efficiency of a typical car sold in the United States almost doubled, to 27.5 miles per gallon from 13.8.
LARGELY as a result, oil consumption in 1990 totaled 16.9 million barrels, basically on a par with the 17 million barrels consumed in 1980, even as the economy grew substantially. Oil prices were in the middle of a long downward slide that would take them from well above $30 a barrel in 1980 to a low of just under $10 in late 1998 and early 1999, interrupted only by brief spike in 1990 after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.
In 1990, Richard H. Bryan, a Nevada Democrat, teamed up in the Senate with Slade Gorton, Republican of Washington, and proposed lifting fuel standards again over the next decade, with a goal of 40 m.p.g. for cars. Amid furious opposition from Detroit, liberal Democrats from automaking states, like Carl Levin of Michigan, joined conservative Republicans like Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who died on Friday, to block new CAFE standards. “It was one of the most frustrating issues in my Senate career,” says Mr. Gorton, who left the Senate in 2001.
Dan Becker, then a lobbyist for the Sierra Club, still remembers his shock when he saw Mr. Levin and Mr. Helms, diametrically opposed on most issues, walk amiably together onto the Senate floor to cast their votes. “This wasn’t East-West, right-left, or North-South,” he says. “But had we passed that bill, we’d be using three million barrels less oil a day now.”
That amount may not sound like much, given total global consumption of 85 million barrels a day, but it’s more than OPEC’s spare capacity now.
Mr. Levin didn’t return calls for comment. But Representative John D. Dingell, the powerful Democrat from Detroit who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, argues — as he did more than a decade ago — that tightening CAFE standards unfairly penalizes domestic automakers while rewarding foreign rivals who make more small cars.
Mr. Dingell, who has defended the automakers fiercely during his 52 years on Capitol Hill, decided to support the stronger CAFE standards last year. But he does not apologize for his longtime stance. “The American auto industry has sold the cars people wanted,” he says. “You’re going to blame the auto industry for that or the American consumer? He likes it sitting in his driveway, he likes it big, he likes it safe.”
A much more effective approach would be to simply raise taxes on gasoline, Mr. Dingell says, because higher prices are the easiest way to change buying habits. Some Europeans agree with this, noting that policy changes engineered through taxation can alter consumer choices without impeding economic growth.
Consumers overseas might not like higher taxes on gasoline, but they’ve adapted, says Jeroen van der Veer, chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, the European energy giant. “A society can work, can function and can grow even at higher fuel prices,” he says. “It’s a way of life — you get used to it.”
In Mr. van der Veer’s native Holland, for example, gasoline sells for more than $10 a gallon, with $5.57 of that going to taxes. Even in Britain, which has substantial North Sea production, gasoline sells for $8.71 a gallon.
A SUBSTANTIAL gas tax increase was considered during the administration of the first President Bush, recalls William K. Reilly, who ran the Environmental Protection Agency at the time. But it was whittled down in 1990 to just 5 cents after Mr. Gingrich and other conservatives in the Republican Party broke with the president.
“This was a stark lesson and people decided the gas tax was the third rail of public policy,” Mr. Reilly says.
Even as Congress idled when it came to tightening CAFE standards or substantially raising levies on gas, the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 made offshore drilling yet another unpalatable option. “That caused a sea change and after that no one had any sympathy for the oil industry,” Mr. Becker says.
In 1990, three months before the effort to raise fuel-efficiency standards failed on Capitol Hill, President Bush issued an executive order making large swaths of the continental shelf off-limits to new exploration. That policy remains in effect today.
When Senators Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, and Frank H. Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, attempted to put together a grand bargain of opening up more of Alaska in exchange for raising auto efficiency in 1998, the two couldn’t persuade enough members of either party to go along.
“It was a no-action policy,” says Lee R. Raymond, the former chief executive of Exxon Mobil, who has had a ringside seat for most of the energy policy debates of the last 25 years. “By the time there is panic, people need to realize this: There is no quick-fix on this. By the time you panic, it is way too late.”
Still, many analysts argue that increased drilling alone is no panacea. They note that many of the oil giants don’t drill in areas to which they already have access. Exxon, in particular, has been criticized as spending too much to buy back its own stock and not enough on exploration. Chris Welberry, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil, defends the company’s record, saying, “We are investing in our business at record levels — around $25 billion this year.”
In any event, added drilling is unlikely to generate sharply lower prices. A recent study by the federal government’s Energy Information Administration estimated that under the best-case scenario opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would reduce prices by $1.44 a barrel by 2027. Drilling in broader swaths off the continental United States wouldn’t affect prices until 2030.
On the taxation frontier, President Clinton did manage to get through a small tax increase on gasoline — 4.3 cents — in 1993, but with oil prices hovering between $10 and $20 a barrel for most of the 1990s, conservation ended up on the back burner.
Indeed, President Clinton did propose a broader tax on energy consumption in 1993, but it died quickly when Senate Democrats rebelled, much as House Republicans derailed President Bush’s gas tax in 1990. Still, environmentalists like Mr. Becker remain disappointed with Mr. Clinton for not doing more in his first term when oil prices were low and Detroit was enjoying a recovery in profits after the lean years of the early 1990s.
Congressional Republicans made matters worse in 1995, when they attached a rider to a huge appropriations bill forbidding the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from spending any money to raise fuel standards. That law, in effect until 2001, made any change in CAFE standards impossible, says Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has pushed for better fuel efficiency.
As Paul Bledsoe, strategy director of the National Commission on Energy Policy, recalls it, “The 1990s were something of a lost decade for American fuel efficiency.” With oil prices low, consumers began snapping up pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, which were governed by less stringent fuel economy standards, thanks to a loophole in the original 1975 law. These carried higher sticker prices and profit margins, and both Detroit and foreign automakers were happy to oblige.
Although oil prices remained low through the 1990s, consumption patterns were taking an ominous turn. By 2000, daily demand reached 19.7 million barrels a day — nearly three million more than in 1990, a 17 percent jump in 10 years that wiped out much of the fuel savings that followed the energy crises of the 1970s.
Since then, global consumption has taken off, rising to 85.2 million barrels a day last year from 76.3 million in 2000.
In recent years, Mr. Reilly says that both the White House and Congress have passed up opportunities to call for higher gas taxes and fuel standards in the name of national security, especially after the Sept. 11 attacks. “We could have, but we didn’t,” says Mr. Reilly, who describes himself as a moderate Republican. “It’s part of a long pattern in which Democrats and Republicans have not wanted to wade into this issue.”
BY 2001, oil prices were slowly creeping up, but few seemed to notice, perhaps because the march was slow and steady. By 2004, crude was at $37 a barrel and the next year it hit $50. With higher prices for oil, an increase in gas taxes was political poison, but Mr. Markey says support for new fuel standards was reawakening.
Nevertheless, his efforts to pass new fuel economy legislation in 2001, 2003, and 2005 went nowhere amid continued opposition by supporters of the auto industry on both sides of the aisle as well as many conservative Republicans. Although the United States had long ceased to be energy-independent — that era ended just after World War II — Mr. Markey says he believes the memory of plentiful domestic supplies created a different mind-set here than in Europe, where oil was generally scarce.
Other veterans of those battles cite lobbying by the domestic automakers as a main factor in the failure of Mr. Markey’s legislation. “The auto companies didn’t see the handwriting on the wall,” Mr. Schumer says. “The auto companies would go to people and say, ‘If you vote for CAFE standards, the auto plant in your district could shut down.’ They got the message.”
Representative Mike Castle, a Delaware Republican whose district includes plants owned by G.M. and Chrysler, adds that “nothing was ever said directly but it would go through the minds of members that Detroit might respond.”
“Sometimes, things don’t have to be said,” he added.
Susan M. Cischke, group vice president for sustainability, environment and safety engineering at Ford, says the recollections of Mr. Schumer and Mr. Castle are “way over the top — you don’t just pull up or put down auto plants.” Instead, she says, when lobbying on CAFE, “we talked with our friends and indicated what it did with jobs. You want support.”
Oil industry insiders say they remained on the sidelines during Congressional debates over CAFE standards, although legislators from oil states tended to vote against more rigorous rules.
In 2007, with oil at $82 and gas nearing $3, Congress finally approved the first big increase in fuel-efficiency standards in 32 years, requiring the fleet average to reach 35 m.p.g. by 2020. That will save one million barrels a day by 2020, but onetime CAFE opponents like Mr. Castle now say they wish that Congress had acted sooner. Since the 1980s, fuel efficiency has flatlined at 24 m.p.g., while vehicle weight has jumped more than 25 percent and horsepower has nearly doubled. In Europe, on the other hand, fuel efficiency currently stands at 44 m.p.g. and is slated to hit 48 m.p.g. by 2012.
“It’s a shame we’re doing this now instead of 10 or 20 years ago,” says Mr. Castle, who supported the legislation last year. “It was always my hope they would just do it without a mandate.” He adds that while he still opposes drilling in Alaska, “Republicans aren’t all wrong when they talk about increasing supplies of oil. There are opportunities in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Senator Domenici, the senior New Mexico Republican, agrees that it’s time to look at new supplies but is even more critical of Detroit. “They all said to us: ‘Don’t change CAFE. It’ll come when it’s supposed to.’ That’s baloney,” he said.
UNTIL last year’s vote, Mr. Domenici was an opponent of new fuel-efficiency standards, a stance he now regards as a mistake. “We were like everybody else,” he says. “We should have been more active on CAFE sooner.”
With Detroit again seeing profits collapse as sales of big cars plunge, Mr. Domenici says he is worried about the survival of the domestic automakers.
“They talked a good research game,” he says. “But let’s face it, little was being done. They are suffering the consequences and could go broke just like the airlines.”
What Congress didn’t or couldn’t do, the free market is now doing in the form of higher gas prices: forcing Americans into more fuel-efficient cars. Ms. Cischke of Ford says that in the last two months, “We have seen more of a shift in the market than in 20 years of CAFE. People are buying what they need.”
Unfortunately, the shift is happening too fast for a company of Ford’s size. That is among the reasons Wall Street expects Ford to lose more than $2 billion this year.
Congress, meanwhile, in its bid to explain the run-up in fuel prices, is examining the role of speculation and the increased flow of investor money into commodities. Most energy economists emphasize the fundamental issue of supply and demand, rather than market manipulation, but financial factors like the weak dollar are also exacerbating the situation. Stephen P. A. Brown, director of energy economics and microeconomic policy analysis at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, estimates that a little more than 20 percent of the price of oil today can be attributed to the dollar’s fall against the euro and other currencies.
Another financial factor behind the price rise that hasn’t been talked about much on Capitol Hill or elsewhere is reduced hedging by oil companies on futures markets, says Larry Goldstein, a longtime energy analyst. In the past, crude producers would offer buyers a portion of their energy output in future years in order to protect themselves if prices pulled back. But energy companies got burned as prices kept rising during the last two years and have since cut back on selling untapped production — forcing prices for energy futures even higher.
Now, the prospect of a perpetual climb in oil prices has become part of market psychology, which is notoriously hard to change. William H. Brown III, a former Wall Street energy analyst who now consults for hedge funds and financial institutions, says investors have become convinced that the White House and Congress are unlikely to do anything dramatic to bring down prices.
For example, a release of supplies from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve after disruptions in Nigeria or Venezuela might have persuaded the market that Washington was on the case and shaken some complacency out of the market. “I’ve been a little surprised at what has not been done or what has not been talked about to get a handle on the consumer situation,” Mr. Brown says.
Others say that although the push to blame market speculators rather than discuss economic realities is likely to intensify on Capitol Hill as the presidential election draws near, they believe that what the world is confronting is a momentous shift in energy supply and demand.
“Speculation and manipulation are two different things,” says Mr. O’Reilly of Chevron. “Most of where we are is because of fundamentals and concern about the future.”
Jad Mouawad contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: July 6, 2008 An article today in Sunday Business about missed opportunities to reduce America’s dependence on imported oil refers to a 1990 effort by Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, to block higher mileage requirements for vehicles and notes that Mr. Helms did not return calls seeking comment. The section went to press on Thursday, before Mr. Helms’s death Friday morning.