A few of you have gently chided me for not doing any Countdown diaries since the oil prices have gone down. While the giddiness and glee demonstrated by many in the traditional media and elsewhere invites little but ridicule, as demonstrated by this graph below, prepared for the Oil Drum, some serious questions have been asked in various threads and deserve answers.

So, beyond the semi-glib answer that nothing much has in fact happened in the oil markets in the past month (after all, the recent decline is quite smaller, in percentage terms, than several others in the past couple of years), here are a few points worth making.

An installment of the Countdown to $200 oil series

As a preliminary note: yes, I know, I'm due a diary on oil prices. But why? Just go take a look at this to see why I have not bothered yet.

Alan Greenspan, the man who has done more than anybody - even including the Bush administration - to empoverish the middle classes for the profit of the ultra-rich, has been given yet another tribune in a Serious Business Newspaper (in this case, the Financial Times of London) to try to provide justification for his past hackdom. That one is particularly rich in jargon, so I thought it would be worth doing a full translation and commentary.

Follow me below the fold.

In blockquotes: the actual text
In italics: the translation in normal language of his words
In normal: my comments.

Lost in the debate about drilling is a simple truth: blaming oil companies and/or politicians that cater for them (including by supporting more drilling) is, at best, an exercize in finding scapegoats for our own unsustainable behavior.

Oil companies, and drilling politicians are providing exactly what we ask of them: cheap, plentiful oil now, no questions asked.

Even kossacks are unwilling to drop either "cheap", "plentiful", or "oil", as demonstrated many times in the diaries where I proposed to increase gas taxes. So it's no surprise that drilling resonates so much: it seems to provide an easy way to continue with cheap plentiful oil. And even people who know it's an illusion seem to cling to the outside hope that it might actually work.

As if Bear Stearns ($50 billion in loans plus $29 billion in loss guarantees to JP Morgan) and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac ($4 trillion in liabilities dumped back on the government's balance sheet) stories were not enough, investment bankers seem to have come up with a new scheme to loot those smallers banks that are about to go bankrup in droves in the near future, and leave the bill with the taxpayer.

The magic tool is "covered bonds." Here's how it goes.

with thanks to ARGeezer for pointing out the links and the scenario

Some charts just say it all:

This chart was prepared by Friends of the Earth in a report (pdf!) that they have kindly made available to bloggers before releasing it to the traditional media tomorrow morning

You know, the diarists that are around only to crow on bad news, and to cherry pick facts to build up a narrative of failure for America. Some just plain hate America, and some aren't even fromtheus (they're Jealo-us).

No "Countdown to $200 oil" diary lately... I wonder why? Is it because the oil bubble has finally been picked and prices are finally down to where they should have been all along - and will keep on going down as the inevitability of an Obama victory brings speculators to their senses? Is it because the temporary reprieve in average Americans' pain at the pump cannot be used as yet another gloomy backdrop for a story about how we're all going to die, or to be poor, or to get old? Is it because Bush following Obama's prescriptions (talk to Iran, drill at home - oops, that one cannot be credited to Obama) brought prices down by $20 in a few days, showing the hidden reserves of soft power in Washington - the power to move markets by a mere few words?

Doom is so overdone. And the blip in the Dow Jones does not change that.

... for a very simple reason: that's the day when the White House will finally stop digging and making the hole bigger. Which means that things will keep on getting worse until then.

It's only after that point that things have a chance of changing and, finally, start moving in a better direction. But it also means that things on the ground are likely to be worse during Obama's first 100 days than they are today.

And that things that were broken (like trust in the USA, or the Constitution) will still be broken when Obama comes to power, and will not be magically be repaired as he does.

I'm back in Paris, and trying belatedly to organise my thoughts after the last 5 days in Austin. Beyond the obvious pleasure for me to see friends I can meet only once a year, I've been trying to get an general impression of what happened at Netroots Nation. I was much impressed by Hunter's wistful and rather pessimistic musings on Thursday, but came reassured by what transpired throughout, and which, in my view, was eloquently summarised by Van Jones in his keynote speech on Sunday morning (it can be viewed here).

I remember 3 core points from what was a truly inspirational moment:

1. they had their chance, they messed up, "it's our turn (to clean up)"

2. consequently, the netroots need to move from a (successful) force of opposition to a force of proposition

3. energy and climate policy is at the heart of the clean up

Guess who's just been sighted at Netroots Nations?

So why is he here?

"I'm here to build a broader coalition of Republicans and Democrats disanchanted with government, and to reach out to young people"

"Barack Obama and John McCain both represent Big Government"

He also said that he heard that John McCain hates bloggers, and that's why he's here: not everybody hates bloggers.

(quotes and pictures with the help of Shockwave)

Al Gore is now giving a major speech in Washington, setting out an ambitious goal for the USA to produce all of its electricity from carbon-free sources by 2020. While I have not heard the speech yet, I thought I'd comment on the technical feasibility of the plan, and the underlying economics of such an endeavour.

from the Department of Energy's recently published study about bringing wind power to 20% of total generation

The short answer is: while 100% is probably unrealistic, it's not unreasonable to expect to be able to get pretty close to that number (say, in the 50-90% range) in that timeframe, and it is very likely that it makes a LOT of sense economically.

Initially on European Tribune, and also on the Oil Drum. UPDATE: see disclosure below the fold.

Each time I come to the US, it surprises me, even though I know it: I go to a store, buy a $0.99 cent, fork out a dollar bill, and get told I need to pay $1.04.

"Why does the sign say $0.99 when I have to pay $1.04?"
"It's the taxes, I only get $0.99 as announced"
"But I don't care who gets what - the price says 0.99 and I need to pay something different!"
"Go complain to the government"

Maybe the annoyance is about having to dig for change (or, just coming out of the airport with twenties from the ATM, being saddled with tons of change), but I can't help feeling that your system is fundamentally flawed and creates unnecessary grief.

In Europe, governments smartly recongised the problem and imposed that all featured prices must be all-inclusive, ie you pay what's announced, and it's the seller's problem to split that between taxes and his actual revenues.

US Treasury rescue for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

US TREASURY secretary Hank Paulson is working on plans to inject up to $15 billion (£7.5 billion) of capital into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stem the crisis at America’s biggest mortgage firms.

The two companies lost almost half their market value last week as rumours of a government bail-out swept the stock markets, hammering share prices around the world.

Together, the two stockholder-owned, government-sponsored companies own or guarantee almost half of America’s $12 trillion home-loan market and are vital to the functioning of the housing market.

In a recent email:

with Jerome having had all his predictions fulfilled, he's actually out of editorial lines to push.

A good thing too.

I'm supposed to be in Lisbon on Tuesday (to discuss a financing of a 100MW wind farm in Portugal), in Paris on Wednesday (to finalise the documentation of 160MW of wind farms in France) and in Dusseldorf, Germany on Thursday (to discuss the financing of 400MW of offshore wind in Germany). And of course, as a good Frenchman, I should really be spending the next 3 weeks with my family, which is going on holiday in Normandy.

And yet I'll miss all of the above to be in Austin, Texas next week, because it's the only time of the year that I get a chance to meet a few of you guys face to face. Being busy at work has kept me from writing as much as I would have liked to in the past year (but then again, it already feels too much like I'm repeating myself), but it won't prevent me from comng over to see you guys.

Many of you have noted that my diaries persistently focus on bad economic or financial news, and often announce more to come. A few complain that I'm gloating over other people's misfortunes; some point out that it's too easy to be systematically negative, as I'll eventually be right, if temporarily (in a "broken clock" kind of way), but that means little; and many more are seriously scared by all my doom'n'gloom.

I'd like to note, for the record, that bringing up such bad news (the real estate crash, the increasing energy prices, the financial crisis, etc...) has a very real political purpose and is at the heart of what this website is about.

I've been mulling for a while the idea of doing a grand tour of the USA with my family, over a number of weeks (or months), staying over at kossacks' across the country, and visiting their favorite places all over the country.

This would not take place before next summer, or the following year, but I wanted to test the interest of kossacks for such an endeavor, and your willingness to offer me your hospitality for a day or more, given that I would not quite travel alone, bringing alone my wife and 3 kids (currently 9, 8 and 5), and that the whole trip would be liveblogged here on dKos, to see how long such a trip could be stretched.

so - take the poll, and tell me about the things worth visiting near your place!

New York Times, 14 October 2001
''If bin Laden takes over and becomes king of Saudi Arabia, he'd turn off the tap,'' said Roger Diwan, a managing director of the Petroleum Finance Company, a consulting firm in Washington. ''He said at one point that he wants oil to be $144 a barrel'' -- about six times what it sells for now.

As you may have heard, oil prices went above $144 this week.

City of Houston Gives Wind Power a Turn

HOUSTON -- The heart of the U.S. oil patch on Tuesday began using wind-powered electricity for about a fourth of its municipal power needs at a lower price than it is paying for power produced from coal and natural gas, city officials said.

The move shows how renewable energy's prospects are improving at a time of soaring fossil-fuel prices. Long derided as an expensive niche, wind power now is moving closer to the mainstream.

Yes, wind is cheap enough to be competitive head on with coal and gas - even as they aren't taxed for the pollution they cause or the carbon emissions they generate.

Another of my wind diaries.

It is oddly fitting that we touched $100 oil on 31 December and got halfway from $100 to $200 oil on 30 June - so we're on track to reach $200 oil by 31 December this year (in case you're wondering: +42% and again +42% from that level = +100% from the initial level).

It is also fitting that on that same date, the International Energy Agency published one of its gloomiest ever analyses of the oil markets, asserting that oil prices are justified by fundamentals

It said: “Like alchemists looking for a way to turn basic elements into gold, everyone wants a simplistic explanation for high prices,” bluntly adding: “Often it is a case of political expediency to find a scapegoat for higher prices rather than undertake serious analysis or perhaps confront difficult decisions.”