Too weird Tuesday
The old Republican oil man cozying up to Barack Obama. The young U.S. Senate liberal and president-elect backing off on a windfall profits tax for energy companies. This wasn’t Black Friday. It was Too Weird Tuesday. On the same day this week, Boone Pickens said Obama gets it on energy and the nation could finally get a national energy policy – something that eluded the current president who actually knows something about exploring for oil. Obama meanwhile has backed off on a punitive windfall profits tax because crude oil and gasoline prices have fallen so low. One of the components of a national energy policy should be to avoid punishing companies for doing what they’re supposed to do, which is bring energy sources to the market. But another runup in gas prices next year will likely have the next president salivating for a special tax. Perhaps Pickens can talk him out of it.
Recessed, not depressed
Economic data seems to have caught up with the reality many people have been struggling with for some time: The U.S. is in a recession. Things are tough and may get tougher, but Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke dismisses comparisons with the Great Depression of the 1930s. Bernanke is an expert on the Depression, first signaled by the stock market crash in 1929, and he says there’s no parallel between what Americans are going through now and what they experienced more than 70 years ago. Then, unemployment was 25 percent and real gross domestic product fell by a third. One in three banks failed, and the stock market lost about 90 percent of its value. “During the 1930s, there was a worldwide depression that lasted for about 12 years and was only ended by a world war,” Bernanke says. Small consolation to the worker out of a job, but it rings true when you consider sales figures from Black Friday and the millions spent on entertainment and the latest electronic gizmos.
New kind of homemaking
The next big thing that may cause Christmas shoppers to camp out before Black Friday could be a discounted 3-D printer that actually makes stuff rather than just put ink on a page. Rapid-prototyping, known as “fabbing,” is made possible by a machine that looks something like a laser printer. The gadgets are getting cheaper, dropping from $20,000 to $5,000, but they aren’t yet considered a home appliance. “Fabbers” can be used to make simple things such as replacement parts for appliances, coat hooks and toys. The devices take instructions from a computer and fabricate an item one layer at a time from plastic powder. The National Conference of State Legislatures is already worried that home fabricating will cut into sales tax revenues: If you can make something instead of buying it, it can’t be taxed at the cash register. Even at $5,000, though, it would take a lot of savings to justify the expense of buying a “fabber.” But what would happen if Walmart one day offers the devices as a Black Friday door-buster?
