When I read statements like, "Deregulation had led to a 59 percent power rate increase." I cringe because it shows me how rampant the misunderstanding of the electricity industry is. I work in the industry, and there are many credible arguments to be made for why deregulation hasn't worked as well as it should have, however stating that prices have gone up is quite misleading. Electricity doesn't come from thin air. If anyone has looked at the price of Natural Gas or other precursors to electrcity production, all of sudden it might seem like the higher electricty prices may have other causes other than deregulation. I don't want to digress too much on deregulation and what needs to be done to fix it as this is an article on wind generation.

Currently Wind projects are effectively tax subsidies - that's the only way a project can be profitable in comparison to a conventional fossil fuel plant. Some people think this is a bad thing - I do not. Power plants produce pollution, and externality that has historically has not been priced into the cost of power plant. The country has come a long way since the 50s with regards to pollution, but we're still not where we need to be with regard to CO2. The tax subsidies on renewables such as wind offer a back door of pricing in greenhouse gases. By providing a tax subsidy to renewables, the govt is effectively taxing fossil fuel plant construction. This is not the most elegant solution, I'd much prefer a cap and trade system for CO2, but it's something at least. Forward thinking states are also requiring renewable energy credits which is another method for spurring renewable energy.

Given that I work indirectly for the coal industry, I want to take some time defend the broader power industry. It's easy to derride pollution spewing companies, but the first person we need to blame is the person in the mirror. Power companies could build any number of new coal plants, but they would sit idle if we the consumer were not so hungry for power. (that's actually not quite true since they would actually displace gas plants but anyways...) Blame them for not being forward thinking and not trying to do something different. Power is Power, and the more progressive companies will not care about the source of that power. For example my company, a major coal plant owner, is also a major wind developer. Wind is good step, but it hardly can be the only solution. The transmission system is not built for an uncontrollable supply such as Wind and Solar. Both of those power sources will always have to be augmented by more conventional power. IGCC might be part of that solution. More advanced IGCC system have coal entrapments systems that would create an IGCC plant with a zero carbon footprint. I think it's foolish to ignore a technology because it has the word coal in it.

As for NIMBY, I believe much of it could be resolved if consumers actually had incentive embedded in their power prices. If your going to have windmills in your backyard - shouldn't you at leas get cheaper electricty prices? As it is right now - you benefit equally with everyone else. That doesn't seem quite fair in itself. It's too bad the retail landscape for competitive consumer electricty is so piss poor. People just go about and get their bill and pay it, forgetting that there are choices. That's the biggest place that deregulation has failed us. Much of that can tied to limitations in old metering technology. It's time that we take a deeper look into having more price transparency when it comes to electricity, and making the market more competitive, not less.

I hope the scarily insecure men that sometimes troll around here don't jump on this delightful woman. Unlike the other woman she wrote in the other day, this girl's got a delightful self percepttion of her own insecurities and the love she feels for the man she's with. It's because women like her are so much less superficial when it comes to looks that we men with our inner troll sometimes are as superficial as we are.

I'm an optimist, and don't believe the popping of the housing bubble will spell long term gloom for U.S. economy, though I think some time of recession is likely in the works. Economies don't chug along forever without getting a hiccup, but then again i don't think that's a bad thing in the long run.

The problem with subprime is not that they were too greedy, but rather they had short sighted greed. This goes for both the person selling the loans directly, and the organizations themselves. The person pitching the loan is not incentivized to think long term, they are paid when they close. It doesn't matter that loan then goes into foreclosure 2 years later. The captains of the organization while ultimatley responsible in the long term are often caught up in their meglomania and short term lust to grow ever faster that they forget about next year let alone three years. Badly run corporations often run with this kind of myopia.

Tighter regulation on lending practices would likely both prevent both bad loans from being made and make it harder for poorer folk from getting loans. However the question remains in this situation why exactly do we need tighter lending practices? Lending tegulation is best served to prevent lenders from gouging customers, and unscrupulously ripping them off with complicated terms. That is not the case with subprime even with the exotic ARMs. The complicated loan structures weren't structured in way to create greater profits for the lender, but as method deferring cost and risk to a later point - again short term thinking. The interests of the lenders and the borrowers are the same - prevent foreclosure. I don't know how you exactly regulate a longer term view.