With apologies to Rod Serling . . . .

The recent failure of the WTO talks in Brussels is the best news that the United States, and the world have gotten in a long time. 

 http://in.ibtimes.com/articles/20080730/wto-trade-talks-failure-india-china-brazil-doha-subsidies-farmer.htm

Everybody can take a step back from the pernicious failed policies of globalization that are harming so many people and decimating the underlying wealth of the US and Europe.

Like an addict waking up in the gutter and not remembering how they got there; whose first thoughts are the next fix, the developed world is waking up to what they have done for the last 30 years.  It took the suicides of thousands of Indian farmers and a billion other farmers around the world saying, “enough is enough.”

The thin blue line of farmer minutemen at Bunker Hill firing the mythical shot is heard again around the world.  The United States, who has given away our jobs, our money, and our homes to fund importation of so much to feed our addiction to junk, may be saved by farmers, again.  It is the only exportable industry that we have left.  The last thing we can sell to the world any more with a competitive advantage.  Except,  the worlds poorest cannot buy it because their own farmers will die if they do.

Enough.  No more “free trade experiment.”  It has failed.  It is done.  We can’t afford it any more.  Nobody can afford it any more.

America has sold trillions of dollars of debt to everybody for the drug of the mall and the big TV and the fashionable car, and the sexy shoes, and the sports logo shirt, the cheap cell phone, while importing slaves to do our dirty jobs.  Now they want our food too for the drug.  When we stood the line on that they blinked.  The addict has a slim chance to detox and live.  Small, small chance.

Detox is very hard.  You have to stop the drug.  You have to admit to yourself that you are an addict.  You have to look at you life with sober eyes and face up to the terrible things you have done to your friends and family while you were using.  You have to start over with your life again.  You have to rebuild your job, your confidence, and the terrible loss of the trust that you threw away when you were stoned.  One step at a time.

The first step is admitting that you let greed and guilt blind you to what you were doing all those years that you bought everything you could from the world.   While you read all those statistics about balance of trade, oil imports, credit card debt, loss of manufacturing jobs.  You have to admit that you worry that you might not have a job next month because it was sent to China or India.  You have to admit that you traded a big car and a big TV for a cheap mortgage on your home with Chinese or Saudi money.  You have to admit that your college educated children can only get a job at Starbucks.  You have to admit that you really care more about illegal immigrants who serve you hamburgers for starvation wages than you do about your own towns high school dropouts.   Dropouts who can’t get any job that pays them any wage they can even hope to live on, because the illegal hamburger server will work for less.  You have to admit as the first step.

There is a small window of opportunity to get sober and get your life and country back with the collapse of the WTO talks.  It will be very hard to take that opportunity.  Very, very hard.

If the world wants to sell the US shirts they have to buy our cotton.  If the world wants to sell us TVs they have to buy our rice.  If the world wants to sell us oil they have to buy our cars.  If the world wants to sell us plastic toys they have to buy our steel.  If the world wants to sell us software they have to buy our computers.  Even Steven.  Tit-for-tat.  Dollar-for-dollar.  Put tariffs on anything that we import for which there is not balanced sales for of things we grow or make here. 

This applies also to American company products that are imported back here with foreign labor.  Tariff Microsoft for Indian software if India does not buy American made pharmaceuticals or  computer chips equally.  Put tariffs on all imported products made by American companies overseas to negate the wage imbalance and apply the money to education and jobs creation here at home.  Enough with our own children not being able to find good jobs here because it is cheaper to import foreign engineers or employ them in their own countries.  Enough with our manufacturing unemployed while China manufacturing booms.

Dump favored nation status and tariff any country that does not buy out products in equal amounts to what  we buy from them.

It means going against 30 years of conventional wisdom and practice by 4 presidents, Congresses, and many US companies.  It means instead taking care of our own first and for everyone to relearn that you only buy things when you can afford them – and need them.

Detox is hard and it is dangerous.  If it is done wrong it will destroy the world’s economy and cause a depression.  If it is done right it will mean a more sustainable and balanced economy where everybody has a chance to work – including Americans again.

It seems that T. Boone Pickens after his “Cartman Moment” with Yahoo – “Screw you guys.   I’m going home.” has taken his money elsewhere where the odds are stacked more in his favor.

 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080729/ap_on_hi_te/yahoo_pickens;_ylt=A0WTUfA_v5BI10YAUSCs0NUE 

It seems that he now wants to “save the planet.” (Line forms to the left behind Al & Nancy & Barbara, & Ahnald & . . .):

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2008-07-08-t-boone-pickens-plan-wind-energy_n.htm 

Great idea!  Large private investment for profit in energy infrastructure is just what Uncle Sam’s doctor advises, in addition to diet and exercise to take those pounds off!  If people can make money on energy investments then that means they will make the investments and new energy projects will get done. 

Oh, wait, he has been at this for a while now:

 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19231397/ 

Profit motives and good ideas for America aside, it is important to look at the costs.  If Mr. Pickens can make a pile of money on a level playing field by investing in the right things at the right time – more power to him.  

If he only waits for sure things like a Microsoft buyout of a struggling Yahoo because his buddy cooked up something and they will both cash out richer, less power to him on that.  (Maybe that is why he took his ball home in such a snit.) 

The cost of a big wind farm in Sweetwater – you gotta love that name!  (You can almost see the ghosts of John Wayne and Jimmy Stuart moseying down from heaven to bless the wind and the grass to make it happen!)  The cost has to include the costs that other people, like taxpayers and rate payers and traditional power station operators have to bear too.  

If Mr. Pickens, with John and Jimmy on each side and a big American flag draped behind him, wants to save us from the guys with sheets over their heads, he has to pay the whole investment as part of the deal.  (A much, much less insane idea than trying to SUE them!) 

Mr. Pickens also has to pay for two more things besides windmills – power grid management and new power plants to back up the wind farm when the wind don’t blow and the grass don’t grow.  

A couple of years back the Royal Academy of Engineering did a cost study of alternatives like wind power.  They concluded that it costs more than nuclear power. 

http://www.nowap.co.uk/docs/generation_costs_report.pdf

You see from the graph that you have to include those other unpleasant costs in wind plants too.  The combination of light and dark bars represent the range in costs of various technologies.  For wind systems light bars are the estimated costs and the dark bars on top of them are the additional cost burdens for standby generating capability. Those standby plants are part of the cost and part of the environmental impact analysis of wind projects.  The investors should pay for them if they plan to reap the profits from the wind.  Cost of doing business.

(The dark bars on coal and gas represent costs for improved technologies with cleaner burning.)

No tax money or rate payer monies should be spent unless there is a plan to pay them back for the investment in the additional power stations and their operating standby costs.  Or, if there are enough existing power stations they should be paid from the wind power proceeds every time they are called on to back it up for their differential costs over normal operations and fuel contracting.  Cost of doing business. 

The other cost is balancing the grid for all the ups and downs of a large wind generation system.  You can’t predict when the wind will blow or not blow and the output is always fluctuating.  EPRI is doing studies, as are others to try to get at least a hours worth of prediction for changes in output, somehow.  

Otherwise you are jerking around the rest of the grid and all the suppliers to it all the time.  The bigger the wind farm the bigger the jerk.  Somebody has to pay for that.  That should come out of the profits of the wind farm. 

Oh, wait?  Mr. Pickens wants more use of natural gas too, along with wind.  You don’t suppose he is covering his wind bet with natural gas chips to sell to the backup stations that will be built – and run anyway even when the wind blows.  Something about eating cake with two faces. 

Oh, and, and, he gets to push clean wind and clean natural gas against nasty, dirty, bad, evil coal plants that he may not have investments in supplying fuel to, from his oil and natural gas investments.  Could that be it? 

Either way, I do wish Mr. Pickens, and Jimmy & John, luck for getting more wind generation going in Sweetwater.  Just pay your fair share along the way.