i’m thinking that if any one national govt gets hit with a ‘liquidity crisis’ maybe due to a major bank issue, all the nat govts will get hit by the same crisis within 24 hours.

so i bought german cds because it was less expensive than the others and i think it has a near equal chance of paying off

seems the right locations capture some of the value of higher fuel costs, though this is probably well underway

I will say that if I had the means, I would be out right now getting my hands on some form of alternative fuel vehicle before the stinky stuff really hits the fan. Unfortunately, not only do the vast majority of Americans not have the means to act proactively to protect themselves and their families, most don’t see the risks.

Then again, perhaps I am overly pessimistic?

but yes, even a few million barrels a day won’t dislodge the saudis. more is needed.

this gets to the second comment- alternative fuels that replace crude products are needed to further change the net supply of crude and dislodge the saudis. like pluggable hybrids

but again, something could take take a large chunk out of crude demand like a 30 mph limit aren’t part of any discussion that i’ve seen.

Honda’s Civic-GX NGV (http://automobiles.honda.com/civic-gx/) runs on compressed natural gas, and can be refueled at home using the NG connection already provided in most homes. At current NG prices, it can go about 25 miles on US $1.47 worth of NG, and it is very nearly zero emission. Proven reserves of natural gas dwarf proven reserves of oil; the US alone has 204 trillion cubic feet of proven NG reserve, and the world-wide total is 6,182,000 trillion cubic feet – almost 6 times the total world-wide reserves of oil.

Wider adoptance of these sorts of technologies for transportation, further pushes into the use of plug-in hybrids and full electric “city cars”… could in my opinion considerably reduce our reliance on oil. The big confounds to this in the past have been the relatively cheap cost of oil. Why build infrastructure to support alternative fuels when the mainstay fuel is cheap and plentiful?

For reference:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/06/18/cnrbs118.xml

and…

http://seekingalpha.com/article/82182-high-likelihood-of-a-market-crash

BTW, what do you think of these guys over at seeking alpha? I don’t want to waste my time reading them if its mostly trash.

Thanks :)

One question though, assuming we did adopt a 30MPG policy and reaped an average fuel efficiency of, say, 10%, what would stop the saudi’s from raising prices to gobble this up, too? Would we be sheltered by some force of global demand?