I bought my first house at at 14 1/2 percent interest. I was carpooling and it was complete hell. The only people that drove through my town to where I worked insisted on carrying on inane conversations that I cared little or nothing about. I had to leave home too early, sit in traffic, leave work to early, sit in traffic with the end result that got less work done and spent more time on the road than I would have if I drove myself. ah memories, memories.

As for today, I'm burning more gas because I'm looking for more work and I suspect this is the same for others. When things settle down, I'll probably burn less gas because I'll telecommute more or, I have enough money that can afford to buy myself a motorcycle and use a higher efficiency vehicle for three quarters of the year. If electric motorcycles hit $5000-$6000 and 100 mile range, then I might even consider getting one of them otherwise I'm sticking with petrol.

Given all the money with pumped into the system so far, I do expect in approximately 12 to 18 months we'll see inflation climb then drop over a couple of years Fed ratchets up interest rates again climb to the 15% range to try down inflation.

The inflation will bring about a resurgence of using credit which will probably put us back into a position similar to where we were a few years ago. It would take a fairly smart person to put in place the right policies (tax etc.) to encourage people to save during high inflation times and spend during deflationary times. Maybe they should sell "not buying stuff" during inflationary periods or have a special "whip inflation now" savings bond which pays interest 2% above the inflationary rate. I figure the bonds would work better than buttons.

... than i've been making over the past two years. People are for the most part fickle and near sighted. This will play out with how the auto industry reacts and the demands the government puts forth.

Basically, the huge upsurge in the green consciousness movement that allowed it to break out of the little niche "hippy eco lover" market was the fact that prices of gas skyrocketed and affected Joe SixPack and his Ford F250 Heavy Duty. It made him take stock of how much money he was loosing in gas alone. So with the endless onslaught of news about how much higher the price of crude could go caused a panic, which then lead to people looking for alternatives ie. hybrids and electrics.

Now that fear has subsided with gas prices drastically dropping. People will breath a sigh of relief every time they go to the gas pump. That SUV that they were thinking of trading in for a smaller car or more efficient 'green' car has been wiped from their minds. Now its time for them to focus on how to save money without worrying about gas prices.

How does this tie into the bail out? Well, the government will most likely demand that the Big 3 retool their cars and make them meet some quotas as far as hybrids and electrics are concerned. The Big 3 will comply and start pumping out more of these cars. These cars will end up sitting on lots as long as gas remains cheap or gets cheaper. Most of these hybrids and electrics cost more than the equivalent gas guzzler. WHats the incentive to go green? People were only thinking of going green to save some green. Not some altruistic thing to save Gia (mother earth). People could give two shits about long term ramifications of their own pollution because they dont see it impacting them today.

So.. in the end, people will not change their habits. Memories of the gas hike will begin to subside and people will buy newer bigger, more powerful cars. Green will stay a niche in the car arena until the next catastrophe. The Big 3 facing a retooled product line will suffer as a result of being on the wrong side of demand again.

Thats my prediction, but i'm no specialist and hold no degrees therefore just take it for what its worth.. another rant on salon.

The Labor Department reported that the number of new claims for jobless benefits in the United States hit a seasonally-adjusted 573,000 in the week ended Dec. 6 -- a 26-year-high.

Don't look now, but Labor Dept. statistics clearly show that the national unemployment rate is increasing faster than it did during the same period at the beginning of the Great Depression.

That should scare you. Expect to see this mentioned in the "progressive press" in the next few days once everybody else has figured it out. Also expect the Democratic government, under the influence of Wall Street, to provide little more than window dressing to help out US workers.

This is certain to decrease demand and increase the cost to families and government to support unemployed workers, creating a leveraging effect on economic stresses. Worse, virtually all the "economic stimulus" pursued by the Bush administration is supply-side at a time when there is already oversupply, at none on the demand side, further ensuring the current economic malaise will worsen, not improve.

Obama's "economic stimulus" is likely to come to late to prevent the real economy from continuing its slide. That kind of stimulus would have had to begin at least six months ago, and would have made most of the bankster bailouts unnecessary. Wall Street naturally would prefer to have that stimulus funding for itself, so expect it to be far smaller and much later than is currently projected in the MSM. Don't get your hopes up. Workers, and therefore consumers, and therefore economic demand, are increasingly getting crushed, again further ensuring the current economic malaise will worsen.

Investors are strongly cautioned about how they buy into the present fool's rally on Wall Street. A lot of that bailout money is going into equities, which artificially increases stock prices, and not into unfreezing the credit markets, which cannot recover until consumer demand recovers - and consumer demand is still collapsing. Since corporate profits and therefore stock prices are fundamentally dependent on consumer demand, expect stock prices to plunge again no later than summer 2009.

As usual, it gets worse the more you look at it. Even conservative economists and financiers are increasingly predicting the US will go into economic depression within the next couple of years:

Worse than the Great Depression

http://www.prudentbear.com/index.php/commentary/bearslair?art_id=10160

It could easily take twenty years to reach the bottom of the economic downturn, and by then most of the US middle class will be long gone.