Green Leaf Report

The last couple of months have been amazing…eye-popping…will be studied in business schools for years to come.  We discovered our economy was built on air and second mortgages (popularly known as “home equity lines of credits,” as the commercials smiled our nation into debt).  It feels like half our population was willing to trade their house for a blouse after all.

I can’t argue with our leadership’s frantic attempts to keep liquidity in the marketplace, but this $700B government bailout does feel like a socialist maneuver with a capitalist heart.  We’re borrowing from our grandkids to give money to banks to do..well, to do whatever they see fit.  Because we all trust the banks to support our economy and make the best lending decisions, right?  Trust big business, they’ll see us through…pull us out of this crisis….crap on our shoes and leave our grandkids to repay these loans from China, Russia, etc. (Make no mistake, the money our government is borrowing for this bailout will not be repaid only within America- we’re sinking deeper and deeper in debt to our trading partners, for as long as they’re willing to float us on this one.)

And after all of this borrowing is through, what are we left with? Debt.  Debt and maybe some more McMansions that won’t be abandoned after all in the distant exburb.

So why not skip the banks, or partner with the banks to enforce loaning the money to actionable improvements that will help our grandkids?  My list:

1. Utility scale renewable energy.  Why leave our grandkids with both debt and uncontrollable global warming? Invest directly in wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave-power, and anything else that can both create regional jobs and regionally sustainable power.
2. Fuel efficiency and electric cars.  At this point any bailout of the automotive industry is just more money tossed into a dying business model.  Redirect the companies so that the cars our grandkids drive will actually be able to drive without foreign oil dependency.
3. Energy efficient housing conversions.  This one can redirect all of those construction workers that built so many houses so quickly.  Lets now go back to so many quickly built homes- convert some to apartments, add insulation and solar panels, reduce household energy consumption to a defined level and plant a garden with local fruit trees.

To quote Saturday Night Live, and maybe someone else: ‘It’s all about job creation.’ Let’s create those jobs in the correct place, though; big business doesn’t tend to look long term, and it’s past time for the long term view.