dayman

We need a Chris Carter emoticon

Continued foreclosures while we're trying to mount an economic recovery, which hasn't taken off yet btw, is the choice for a quick and strong recovery in prices? The vast majority of these houses will end up on the market anyway? Who is buying? This thing is holding itself back. We need to put a floor on this and keep people in homes and provide some debt relief. More foreclosures dumped isn't going to bounce the housing market back any stronger or quicker with the economy frozen by... foreclosure dumps depressing the housing market...and the thing will continue to feed itself as the housing crisis holds the economy back and the economy sucking prevents the housing dumps from doing anything is it?

By stop poking at you mean continue to allow them to dump thousands of foreclosed houses into the market further depressing the market?

DeMarco sees his mission as preserving the assets of Fannie and Freddy not restoring the housing market despite the $140B they got b/c they went nuts w/ subprime dog ****. Even if not writing down mortgages or refinancing them at lower rates saves F&F today until the real problem is addressed in the long run the value of housing stock will continue to suffer and more mortgages will be valued higher than homes. Something needs to be done no matter what party you associate with the entire economy is sucking and the single biggest source of family wealth is in crisis. The mortgage problem continues to freeze us in place and here we have F&F at the middle of it all again b/c DeMarco is a douche.

Well I would suggest you learn to separate ideas from people.

The interview I saw with him said he had problems with the old news so he did it himself, his way, and saw it get stronger not weaker. And he's a scientist he knows not to assume correlation & causation his point was that in his professional opinion the results of his study so indicated CO2 as THE factor (along with countless other studies) that until some other hypothesis can credibly make the case for something else there simply is no other way to feel about this scientifically. At what point exactly would you start to think as he does? What exactly are you waiting for, what would do the trick? Why are you so skeptical still?

Have you looked at the latest study from Muller? Once he stripped away all the variables he had problems with in some of the other studies he said the CO2 curve matched, exactly, various climate change indicators he saw. That, he says, is when he became a believer. He said he was utterly shocked at how tight the data fit together. Anyway I'm not against you on nuclear. So bet it. But we will need natural gas as a hold over and developing worlds will have no other choice. Lucky for us we 1) know how to build nuclear reactors and can do so with ease 2) consistently rank in the top 3 for studies on national capability for solar and wind power and 3) have well documented **** loads of natural gas to frack for. If these solutions, nuclear, solar, wind, and gas are some tangible solutions to build on moving forward...each with their positives and each with their negatives...there is absolutely no reason we can't find the right blend to power ourselves into a CO2 reducing, independent energy future. The point of me sort of advocating on all this is not to be some prick about climate change or hate on coal and gas pipelines or sniff my own ass. It's just to say that people who staunchly oppose the idea of climate change...and who pride themselves on supporting coal and oil (I'm not saying stop cold turkey tomorrow btw I'm saying we should be moving away and moving fast though)...are complete and utter !@#$ing idiots *sniffs my own ass* ...but these people are often the same people who have nonsensical views in a lot of other arenas anyway so they really get more due than the deserve in terms of being relevant it is just disappointing some political officials still pander to their idiocy.

For users to adopt in many areas of the country yes. And that is driving demand which accelerates the innovation curve that is quickly closing the gap. In other words, incentives spurring demand have worked to increase the rate of development beyond that which the market alone would have seen. You have to approach the entire discussion in a way that assumes it's good to develop clean energy quickly. If you don't then you just won't ever agree. If the attitude is one of fossil fuels until they're gone then we'll do something and CO2 emissions aren't something to factor into the analysis then I agree it doesn't makes sense.

The market if left to itself would not be encouraging innovation in technology at this rate or adopt the mission until it makes absolute economic sense. Just look at how the rate of innovation responds to incentives placed in the marketplace by governments. The free market doesn't really deal w/ tragedy of the commons type situations all that well. It's a wonderful thing, the free market, but there are a few situations where it simply doesn't work that well...moving away from CO2 more quickly than we have to based on supply...for environmental reasons...is not something it is well suited to facilitate.

Oh 3rd you know what the deal is. You know what they are and you know what the deal is, and if you were smart you would see them as opportunity both to solve the CO2 problem, to gain our independence from foreign energy, and to take as stronger position in the world economically. If you weren't aware many of the various technologies are advancing very quickly but the rate of advancement is all about demand...the innovation curve follows the demand. Solar for one....solar actually is competitive now in areas of the US certainly for commercial users (residential as well in some instances though) who can take advantage of the federal and state/local tax subsidies. The increased demand improves the innovation rate ... of course China sort of flooded the market so the companies themselves will hurt for profit until the demand gets closer to industry capacity but the innovation of the technology will continue to march along so long as there are people buying them. And in any event you miss the point in asking the question to begin with. It's not about what magic clean energy source is perfect now, obviously if there was one we would all use it. It's about getting there. Hopefully the military plays a huge role in this, and they may well. Additionally there needs to be public incentives to spur all manner of clean energy commercially. None of this is some great revelation or beyond just basic common sense. Clean energy good, CO2 bad, get to clean energy sooner rather than later good, not do anything to work on that bad. And before some libertarian douche comes in here, no market forces alone won't do the trick well enough IMO there's cause for government to be involved through the military and incentive schemes so we just disagree there this is one area where smart government can help us collectively pursue this better IMO this is not an area where I'm on board with the anti-government movement.

In the immediate future fracking for natural gas that produces 1/3 the carbon emission of coal is the solution b/c it's about the only thing that developing countries...the countries where pollution will increase the most in coming years...can afford. The actual answer is not just fracking, but fracking is apart of it. And of course the voodoo "clean energy" efforts that conservatives on this board seem to hate in lockstep are actually the answer and a big part of the short term mitigation as well as the long term answer.

I think there is a Mitt interview to air on Fox news any moment on "on the record" if anyone is interested in knowing ahead of time.

Those liberals and that climate change talking point what a knee slapper. Every now and then the crying baby is just spot on hilarious.

Big Cat is convincing me climate change is real? I need to be convinced in 2012?

I'm all for supporting the global warming is real movement but God knows I need my air conditioning it was 100 degrees here a few days ago.

Oh ok. I'll stumble over there then. What's the Buzz is a terrible title. Big Cat needs to put down the crack pipe

The stimulus WAS a sugar high. That is what it was by design. Crisis...inject sugar high to avoid falling of a cliff if possible. Bad plan? Maybe. Fair enough. But if the idea is that we needed to do something short term b/c we were heading for quick disaster then what you get is a sugar high. Plain and simple. You can't sit here and blame the stimulus for not being a comprehensive structural fix to all the problems you have with the entire American economy. The stimulus was just what it was called, a stimulus.

My defense of the stimulus is simply to point out that impact studies show it saved us approximately 2% unemployment. That's not good enough b/c I guess it was sold to you guys as a fix for the greatest downturn since the great depression. I guess it wasn't, I'm not shocked. Sorry you guys are. The other point is that the stimulus is 3 things, the smallest of which is what is so often bashed and even that portion had good in it. The tax cuts obviously helped a large amount of people feel the impacts of the downturn less and the local government spending helped them avoid immediate massive layoffs which further helped us fall less. The stimulus wasn't perfect and it didn't fix the entire collapse I don't know why that is so shocking to everybody. But to vilify it when studies show it helped...doesn't make sense. To rage that it it didn't lower unemployment enough when studies showed it did lower unemployment is nothing more than an argument is should have done more.

Except the majority of the stimulus was NOT doing what you hate so much. 70% was giving money to local government and tax cuts.

You would be hard pressed to look at the current GOP agenda in the house and call them anything but anti-government. And I didn't realize liberals suck so much at governing b/c people's money is their private stash I must have missed the conservative money management over the last 30 years from the GOP

So what you are saying basically is we needed a bigger stimulus? Interesting...

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0730/Prominent-climate-change-denier-now-admits-he-was-wrong-video Prominent anti-climate change scientist does a complete turnaround, and human activities are the main cause.

Studies on economic impact v. your gut feeling.

"We're moving in the wrong direction and it's b/c of the stimulus which independent and CBO stuides showed helps. We can't know what would have happened absent stimulus but I don't like what is going on now so the stimulus failed." That's basically what I'm hearing. It's pretty retarded.