Here is where there should be a disclaimer over the head of Fred Smith, and every other such person (especially the left leaning groups, but it applies to these business people as well): "AGNEDA WARNING, AGENDA WARNING, AGENDA WARNING: Do not trust anything this person says"! Yes, we finally get to the headline.
You can tell Smith is not worth listening to (even though he is on the right side on drilling, on which you can trust him because it fits his self interest so well to lower the price of oil an fuel), and should just be taken out and shot, because he said this (approximately): "The present financial crisis is because people can't pay for their house loans. The rise in gasoline prices took the money from them that they could have used to make their house payments."
Nope. Not true. More than not true. Anyone who makes a statement this stupid deserves to just be taken out and shot without a trial. I know. If you are trying to get political attention, you have to try to hit people over the head with a 2 by 4 to divert them from other problems. That does not change that the statement was ridiculous (and not the only ridiculous statement, as Smith also misunderstood a question and talking about how the "aviation" industry has been so much better than the rest of the transportation industry in "fuel efficiciency"--the kind of statement that has so many flaws that it also places in question everything else he said, except to the extent you can count on the self interest making him right on domestic energy production). No. High gasoline prices are not good for people's finances. But the idea that lower gasoline prices would have had any substantial impact on people being able to pay back "subprime" loans (problem not limited to loans labeled "subprime"), or the bursting of the housring "bubble", is beyond insane. It is stupid. It makes anything this guy had to say notworth the time to listen to him, because he was willing to say anything to push his agenda (like almost all of these "study groups"--especially the ones on the left).
By the way, this guy's agenda was to push the central planning idea of more domestic energy production, along with a program of electric, "plug in" vehicles pushed by government subsidies. Government subsidies are always involved, or otherwise these people would not need to go to the government at all (okay, with the exception of drilling, where the problem is eliminating government obstacles rather than promoting government subsidies). For example, I heard one "commentator" say that nuclear power will cost money. Should not, or we should not do it. That is, it should not cost taxpayer money. The idea should be to remove obstacles to nuclear power that its opponents have used to block nuclear plants, rather than to provide massive subsidies for nuclear plants. The central planning "solution" remains wrong, even as to things I support (like nuclear power and drilling). If an idea is really good, it can stand economically on its own--perhaps with limited "seed" money--without massive taxpayer support).
Smith wants massive government subsidies for electric vehicles. That Communist, T. Boone Pickens, wants massive government subsidies for wind power, solar power, and natural gas vehicles (until alternative energy is perfected", which begs the question as to how we know when that is if we are massively subsidizing natural gas vehicles). Smith dismisses Pickens (correctly, but for the same reason we should dismiss Smith) on the grounds that natural gas is better used to produce electric power to power those electric vehicles Smith advocates.
You should notice the problem here. Smith is sure he is right (plus has self interest involved), and wants to impose his "solution by central planning. Pickes is sure he is right (plus has massive self interest involved), and wants to impose his central planning "solution". I don't know that either is right, and suggest (correctly) that there exists no way fallible human beings can know the right "solution". There may be an entirely different "solution" (I would almost guarantee there is, in terms of the details, anyway) that is best.
That is the beauty of free markets. They do not rely on fallible human beings. Products are tested in the market, and succeed or fail based on the merit of each respective product. We should be helping free markets work, instead of attempting to destroy them with central planning.
That is why I call Pickens a Communist (nickname, really), even though he is clearly not one in the sense of supporting the ideology of the Communist Party or the old Soviet Union. Pickens is a central planner, who wants to impose his idea of correct policy on the rest of us just like Stalin disastrously imposed his idea of correct agricultural policy on the Soviet Union and killed tens of millions of people (starvation). When a central planning policy goes wrong, it goes very wrong.
Look at the present financial "crisis". It was caused by a central planning policy that everyone should own a house, which was then augmented (as central planning always is) by greed of people wanting to take advantage of that policy (on Wall Street, in banks, and everywhere else). Now we are being told that only central planning can bail us out. If so, that is because Bernanke, Paulson and the rest failed so badly that we now have no good solutions left. So we have to use taxpayer money to "bail out" banks and Wall Street. That, in turn, makes it hard to argue that we should not "bail out" individual homeowners. That, in turn, makes it hard to argue that we should not "bail out" the auto industry, the airline industry, and all of American manufacturing, along with every other distressed person and industry around.
Yes, all of this ultimately is the result of the Smith/Pickens/Paulson/Bernanke idea that they know what is best for us, and all we have to do is adopt their particular central planning solution--even though they have failed to show that central planning has worked in the past, or why it should be different now.
See my previous entry as to Mark Twain and Cooper Indians. Good old boy T. Boone is one of those Cooper Indians, which is why I call him a "Communist". It is no wonder that he has said he has gotten a better reception among Democrats than Republicans. As I said in that previous "Cooper Inidan" entry, letists are the ultimate Cooper Indians--where each government failure merely indicates we need ore government.
The tragedy is that central planners get away with it. Each failure merely creates the need for more central planning, in their view. Bernanke and Paulson failed, and thus they say that proves they need to be given more central planning power. Maybe they did get us in such bad shape, in a failure of their central planning and that of others, that we now have not much choice. If so, it is their disgrace and not their triumph. If we have reached the point that the failure of central planning has forced us to commit to more central planning forever after, then we have committed the ultimate stupidity.
That stupidity will eventually destroy us. In the meantime, take Fred Smith out and shoot him. People willing to say things as stupid as he is saying should not be allowed to live. It is bad enough having to listen to Schumer, Dodd, Frank (Barney), Bernanke and Paulson.
P.S. I hope to post an entry today about the fraud of the Democratic/leftist, Big Lie version of the "all of the above" approach to energy. Democrats, by the way, appear to have given up on stopping offshore drilling. The Federal ban on offshore drilling automatiocally expires unless the present Congress renews it before the election. Democrats are unable to face a vote to revnew the ban, even though they would like to. Thus, the ban will expire. However, this will not result in offshore drilling any time soon because environmentalist groups (lefitists) are going to file lawsuit after lawsuit. In addtion, there is no state revenue sharing or incenttives for states to allow drilling, which means states may set up obstacles. So leftist Democrats are all about deception here.
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