IMHO This is the only solution to the economic crisis..... LINK

[Blackhatjack]

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/11/09/the_mini_depression_and_the_ma/

The Mini Depression and the Maximum-Strength Remedy

By Robert Reich

"When Barack Obama takes office in January, he will inherit a mess. What to do? (Because I'm an informal economic adviser, I should warn anyone who reads this that it reflects only my thoughts and therefore should not be attributed to him or to anyone else advising him.)

First, understand that the main problem right now is not the supply of credit. Yes, Wall Street is paralyzed at the moment because the bursting of the housing and other asset bubbles means that lenders are fearful that creditors won't repay loans. But even if credit were flowing, those loans wouldn't save jobs. Businesses want to borrow now only to remain solvent and keep their creditors at bay. If they fail to do so, and creditors push them into reorganization under bankruptcy, they'll cut their payrolls, to be sure. But they're already cutting their payrolls. It's far from clear they'd cut more jobs under bankruptcy reorganization than they're already cutting under pressure to avoid bankruptcy and remain solvent.

This means bailing out Wall Street or the auto industry or the insurance industry or the housing industry may at most help satisfy creditors for a time and put off the day of reckoning, but industry bailouts won't reverse the downward cycle of job losses.

The real problem is on the demand side of the economy."

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[drm604]

1. Makes perfect sense to me.

Hasn't Obama been talking about infrastructure spending as a stimulus?

[Bread and Circus]

2. To go further, the real problem is increased gloabal energy demand that was not met by supply...

That, coupled with nefarious speculation and conspicuous, drove our fuel/energy costs through the roof (at the pump and in our homes).

I agree that we need increased energy production and I wholeheartedly agree with most of Reich's approach (which echoes Friedman, Gore, Obama, et. al.).

Just "increasing demand" aka "increasing consumerism" is a short term non-fix.

What we need is a fundamental increase in domestic energy production leveraged by electric plugin hybrid vehicles.

I've been harping on this for a while on DU (as well as a lot of the "energy/environment" du'ers)

Here's a post I threw up a while back:

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Bread%20and%20Circus/6

The only thing that could radically and effectively change the dynamic are electric cars. For starters, prototypic electric vehicles are insanely fuel efficient (equivalent to 100+ mpg). But more than that, the switch from fossil fuel as being the energy medium for transportation to electricity changes the whole ballgame. The main reason for this is that electricity can be had in many different ways: wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, coal, biomass, etc. This does several things domestically. One, it will drive the value of of many non-fossil fuel energy sources up. Two, it means we have the capacity to generate nearly all of our own energy. It's the only real way to "get off foreign oil". Without electric transportation, proposing such a thing is purely nonsense. Three, control of emissions will be centralized at the point of electricity production which lends itself to better procedures for reduction, filtration, or sequestration. Fourth, it will help "democratize energy", especially if the the mechanics of our electrical grid are changed so that it is bi-directional.