The cost of getting rid of Coal

As I covered in a previous entry, coal plants are being retired quickly and before the time they should normally have.  The Demise of Coal

This early retirement system is of course an application of the broken window fallacy where we instead of using the coal plants for as long as possible until they are indeed “broken” we keep breaking them ourselves by forcing the cost of coal plants to ““necessarily skyrocket” and to artificially game the markets in other words to excel those sources of power which the president likes.  This form of cronyism is going to have a huge impact on American’s especially those who are poor or in the middle class.  In other words, everyone is going to pay for the policies enacted by our current president.

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The demise of Coal in the US

Not many people are aware of the scope and depth of new regulations that are being set on industry in general.  This is not just true in the coal industry, but I use coal as an example to show how over-regulating anything creates issues and how these regulations are in other words going to destroy the coal industry in the US.  While most opponents of AGW are focusing on the science or on laws, the current president has set into stone regulations through the EPA and other organizations that make in impossible to make a profit today in opening up new coal plants (and other industry) through mostly blunt instruments that do nothing but destroy the ability of coal to function.

I discussed a little bit about this in how President Obama wants to “bankrupt coal” in a previous blog post as far as how it does not work economically: Right here.

Here is a map of the actual closures slated for the next 10-15 years:

As it should be noted, these closures are spread out in many different areas of the country.

Obama and Krueger attempt to save the economy, part Deux

First off, we were promised the “grand plan on how the president was going to save the economy” at the end of last week or “at the very latest by the start of this week.”  Being Wednesday at midnight I assume the plan is not being released anytime soon (although we are promised Thursday now).  So since nothing is being said, job numbers are still in the toilet and to boot every single one of President Obama’s initiatives have failed to add real jobs to our economy.  As I posted earlier, perhaps this time is different if you believe in unicorn farts saving your face from the effect of ageing and other weird stuff.

Photo source: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-obama-jobs-20110906,0,3610220.story?track=rss

As this photo shows, the president is not having an easy time of things.  I will say one thing in defense of the president: there was nothing he could have done from the start to make our economy any better.  The entire QE (which I discussed in an earlier post to death) episode has probably just prolonged the recession and possibly made it worse.  The only purpose of QE ever is to stop a depression from starting and to “theoretically suffer a longer recession but avoid a depression.”  That is just one of the things the president has tried to turn things around.  And he has tried, but everything he has done has either had little effect or the opposite effect, and to boot instead of focusing on jobs which is what the people of this country care about, he has still maintained his other political agendas which actually as I showed take away from the job market.  The reason for this is that the primary purpose of the president’s political agenda has nothing to do with creating jobs, his purpose is to simply achieve his political goals regardless of the cost.

Alan Krueger and Obama attempt to save the economy

The man who is slated to save the economy as being the head of the jobs commission (CEA) with President Obama:

Photo from: http://swampland.time.com/2011/08/29/alan-krueger-obamas-new-top-economist/

Will he be able to save the country and still keep the president’s motivations and political ambitions as he wants him?  Or the better question I tend to seriously think that applies: Does any president ever believe they can actually “Create” more jobs than they destroy?  Whether you increase defense spending or stimulus spending, you end up in every case destroying more jobs than you could ever hope to create due to the fact that Government is ALWAYS going to be less efficient than private enterprise.