“While many analysts and investors were very happy with the August sales figures, some commented that they were growing concerned that the automakers were beginning to repeat the mistakes of the pre-financial crisis years that contributed to the companies’ financial collapse. Those mistakes included utilizing aggressive financial incentives to spur sales and relying on loans to lower credit-worthy borrowers in order to enable buyers to stretch their monthly payments to afford new car purchases.”
August 2014 sales by U.S. automakers increased 6% from the same month last year, equating to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate (SAAR) of 17.5 million, according to an analysis by Automotive News. For the eight months through August, auto/light vehicle sales are 5% higher than for the same period in 2013.
August’s red-hot pace is a reversal of 2009’s crisis low of 10.4 million, after which the rebound has been a million units annually.…
Continue Reading“A groundbreaking gathering of the most acclaimed thinkers, scholars, and policymakers on our historic energy revolution, the global prosperity it will produce, and the federal policy that threatens it.”
Date: September 25/26, 2014
Place: Hyatt Regency Houston
Contact: REGISTER NOW
Kudos to the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) for hosting a state-of-the-art climate and energy conference in the nation’s energy capital. The global warming establishment, including many government-grant-dependent local university professors, may stay away. But open-minded Houstonians and visitors will get a multi-disciplinary dose of sound physical science, political economy, and resource economics at this two-day event.
TPPF describes the conference as follows:
… Continue ReadingAt the Crossroads is a unique gathering of the world’s foremost experts, brought together to analyze the historical crossroads at which our county sits. The burgeoning opportunities flowing from the energy revolution are now directly threatened by federal regulatory mandates to displace coal, oil, natural gas.
“What proposed groundwater regulation will end up doing is divvying up farm water to new political constituencies such as commercial fishermen, Indian Tribes, environmentalists, tourism real estate developers, and funding for U.C. Davis groundwater studies and basin management. Groundwater regulation will just worsen droughts because there will be more constituencies looking for handouts of free water and not paying for the costs of the imported water system, as farmers do now. For those who say farmers don’t pay full cost for their water, adding a bunch of free-riders will only worsen water subsidization not reduce it.”
Recently, the Washington Post published “Five Myths About California’s Drought” by Richard Howlitt and Jay Lund, two professors at the University of California at Davis as part of its weekly “five myths feature” challenging everything you think you know.…
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