“Where hacks come to spew nonsense” - B2B
Flood warnings have been issued for Long Prairie River in central Minnesota.
River ice warnings issued in Fargo.
Ass-kicking warnings issued for Wayzata, Long Lake, Orono, and Maple Plain. Tuesday Urthel team rides start tonight.
Dump ethanol.
It’s inefficient to produce. The energy required to go from pumping crude from the ground to getting gasoline into your vehicles tank is about 6% of the energy in gasoline itself. The energy required for the production of ethanol is 75%, over 12 times worse than gasoline.
We can’t grow enough corn to make a real dent in our energy supply. Unless you want to see the rain forests of the world continue to be stripped down in order to plant corn fields, ethanol will never be suitable as a real energy source. Last year ethanol required 12% of the U.S. corn harvest but replaced only 2.8% of U.S. gasoline consumption.
It serves as an unnecessary subsidy for the farm and fuel industries. Corn growers are subsidized to grow the crop and tax credits are provided for ethanol producers. This is great for agriculture states and the fuel industry lobby but it is not a good investment in regards to energy efficiency.
We can get there other ways. If we were to adopt automobile fuel efficiency standards to increase efficiency by 20 percent, that would contribute as much as converting the entire U.S. grain harvest into ethanol.
Should we feel sorry for sub-prime mortgage holders who end up losing their homes?
Typically, a holder of a sub-prime mortgage is someone with a credit score that did not allow them to qualify for prime financing. The term “prime” has nothing to do with the prime interest rate, but instead refers to the ‘quality’ of the mortgage product. A sub-prime mortgage usually has higher fees than a prime mortgage as well as a higher interest rate or adjustable interest rate. The higher cost and interest rate are to compensate the lender for taking the risk on someone with a lower credit score.
So, a home buyer with less than stellar credit gets into a home thanks to a sub-prime lender. This is someone who may not have qualified for a mortgage any other way.
The sub-prime mortgage industry is getting hammered due to more borrowers defaulting on their house payments. I don’t feel sorry at all for these lenders as they knew the risk that they were taking and took it anyway. But what of the borrower?
In the Alt-A sub-prime market, in which consumers with slightly better credit than the weakest sub-prime borrowers, late payments and defaults are running at four times the historical rate. Should we be concerned with someone who falls behind on a loan that they may not have qualified for under traditional lending rules? Should assistance be provided to allow someone to keep a home that they would not have otherwise been qualified to purchase?
Is this a case of a predatory industry attempting to take advantage of those with less means in order to make a profit or consumers taking out loans that they never had the ability to repay?
