Falling behind
We may have invented the solar cell, but China has taken the lead in manufacturing solar panels – and wind turbines as well, to add a little salt into the wound.
President Obama, in his State of the Union speech last week, sounded an alarm that the United States was falling behind other countries, especially China, on energy. “I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders — and I know you don’t either,” he told Congress.
That’s just rhetoric, Mr. President, Congress wants whatever their corporate masters tell them to want. And in spite of what Justice Alito may have been muttering during your speech, that’s regardless of where those corporate masters may live. Multinationals just follow the money.
Stumble it!
Tags: China, congress, President Obama, solar energy, U.S.A.
February 2nd, 2010 at 7:40 am
They’re hyperventilating over at GE.
February 2nd, 2010 at 11:38 am
After the money was made shorting the mortgage providers short-sellers moved on to alternative energy; solar, wind and ethanol.
This means that alt. energy companies could not raise money from investors (after the initial IPO) because investor’s money went from their pockets to their brokers to the exchange to the short seller’s custodians where it was held as collateral until such time as the stock price collapsed and the short sellers covered. The stock that investors received for their money was borrowed. Since a margin agreement is also an agreement to lend stock investors are, in effect, buying their own stock a second or third time.
The Communists will beat us in alternative energy because US capitalism is busted, broken. It does not work.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:27 am
Dear Needlenose,
My name is Barbara O’ Brien, I am the owner and editor of the mahablog. I have a quick question about your site and couldn’t find an email address. please email me at the above address as soon as you can!
Thanks,
Barbara
February 4th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
bidrec – that’s a great point on the shenanigans of the short-sellers. I don’t know if I’d call modern China ‘communist’ exactly – they can pull off this crap because they’re gaming various things – the yuan exchange rate, WTO, the UN (they still get $ because they are a ‘developing nation!’). Rich Western countries want to cap carbon emissions? China will be there with their bottom-basement labor and sell us the alternative energy hardware to do it! But god forbid China agree to meet any targets, because after all – they are a developing nation! Workers get uppity about wages? Send in the goon squad!
If US startups get a bunch more dough, they’d just offshore the manufacturing to China anyway. China can’t lose unless we stand up to them. The Repugs only complain when Dems don’t stand up to them (remember the Gore ‘China campaign contributions’ fauxscandal back in ‘99?
February 4th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
What question might you have?
February 4th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
My ex-spook friend says China is ultimately a greater threat than Muslim fundamentalism. He says China wants domination over an unimaginable swath of geography and will stop at nothing.
February 4th, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Muslim fundamentalism was never an existential threat. Shrubya & his military-industrial cronies were looking for a threat to fund a massive military buildup.
For that matter, I really don’t consider China an existential threat – for better or worse they are joined at the hip with Western countries and will discover (at the time our leaders choose to grow a spine, or at least our voters choose to grow a brain) they can’t get away with the bad boy routine forever without getting spanked.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Greenboy, to your point about about Chinese labor, I got a Chinese made compact flourescent lightbulb for a dollar. When I opened the package it broke: the base opened. I put it back together again and it worked. But I recognized when it was apart that the little transformer in it was hand wound–for a dollar. As a longtime former member of the IBEW….
Separately, the latest Securities Finance Market Monitor is out (!!!), http://tinyurl.com/yjm4bb5, and I see that of the five most active stocks three are alternative energy; First Solar, which is American and SolarFun and Advanced Battery which are both Chinese. As someone obsessed with the shenanigans of hedge funds I see that the Chinese have not learned the lesson of Fairfax Financial Holdings which is that if you are listed in America you run the risk of being played.
Please look at the Market Monitor archives to see what the corporate masters’ masters’ thought were soft-headed business plans. Stocks that are “active” in the Market Monitor’s sense of the term are stocks that are borrowed and sold by short sellers. The more active they are the higher the cost to borrow. And, the surer the bet. If you want to pile on please call your representative at Global Transaction Services.
The active stocks in the archives may be obvious shorts in hindsight. If you have the patience you will see that their activity preceded bad news, sometimes by years.
Corporate masters’ masters’ twice rather than once to distinguish that vice chairman like Robert Rubin, Phil Gramm, and Harold Ford, Jr all have masters.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
‘Vice chairman’ in my more recent post should be ‘vice chairmen.’
Thank you,
Bidrec