Small silhouette of Doug Wolkon WELCOME TO PLURANOMICS, THE ECONOMICS OF MANY.

India

A Solar Panel: The Neutralizer

Posted by Doug Wolkon on July 11, 2008 at 2:14 am

The real reason that oil consumption has slowed down is once again – the housing market. Think about how much less oil is needed to move all those materials (wood, steel, concrete, appliances, etc.) as well as construction laborers for all those houses and condos we were building. All that consumption from our housing construction has come to a stop, and with it the end of a major consumer of oil. The next oil demand decrease is on its way from both China and India. Continued »

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Yoga & Off-Balance Sheet Financing

Posted by Doug Wolkon on April 13, 2008 at 9:40 pm

The word “balance” has significant meaning here. When you take something “off-balance,” you are doing just that. In other words, balance is good (think yoga or buddhism), off-balance (think checkbook) is not good. On that note, what do you call Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae. Do they qualify as “off-balance sheet financing?” How about the Bear Stearns portfolio. The U.S. government did about 36 hours of due diligence on that one, is that one off-balance sheet too? Continued »

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Recession Smession

Posted by Doug Wolkon on March 10, 2008 at 10:48 am

Dramatic unemployment increases in financial services, construction and autos will be the real shoe to drop. Who will pay for all these billions of dollars of writedowns? Oh, I forgot, the Fed has the ability to actually print more food and oil – yeah right, was Bernanke ever taught the first rule of Economics: Land is Scarce.

So how much of our newly printed paper is currently being bought by our social security system – talk about drinking your own blood. The welfare state will inevitably be forced to solve their huge inefficient costs of entitlements and armed forces. Continued »

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