Do you understand symbolic actions?

As mentioned before, the installation of a small number of solar panels is a tiny project, especially compared to some of the others mentioned, and could have been easily completed long ago. The founder of Sungevity said as much recently : Solar Power at the White House: What Took So Long? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/danny-kennedy/white-house-solar-power_b_3769527.html

I don’t know what PBO’s timeline has been but it could be that he planned to get to energy/climate issues about this time in his second term and used the panels as one part of the signal that he’s now turning his attention to climate change.

Remember, he had to deal with the recession, health care, two foreign wars, the federal deficit, and gay rights. Even the most talented juggler can keep only so many running chainsaws in the air at one time.

My statement btw if you bothered to read it and not (falsely summarize) was that you can’t blame a lending institution that is forced to make risky loans BY THE GOVERNMENT for creating instruments to protect itself (credit default swaps i.e. hedging for the good possibility of those risky loans it was forced to make defaulting).

The market is very good at weeding out ‘monopolies’ almost every one you can mention was created by GOVERNMENT intervention by restricting or eliminating competition in markets or regions or via government contracts.

I do love your ‘that’s ridiculous’ rebuttals though, they are highly informative.

Come on, that’s ridiculous. In fact, your entire comment is ridiculous. Just look at this statement….

“BTW as reprehensible some of the banks acted, you can scarely blame a lending institution forced to make highly risky loans to create instruments to hedge their losses.”

Can’t blame a lending institution for making risky loans? Phufffffffffff……

#2 people know when they can’t afford loans. if you can’t figure out that $25,000 a year can’t but you a million dollar home you have no business applying for a loan. There WERE cases of lender being lied to about when/how interest kicked in, in almost all cases required the borrower intentionally looking away.

The biggest ‘push’ to lend to people who couldn’t afford to borrow came from the government, from people like Bill Clinton and Barney Frank (who suddenly wanted regulations after the fact). Barney Frank said in 1999 there was NO risk of collapse and vehemently opposed regulations to prevent ‘regular’ folk from owning homes. Clinton helped initiate regulatins that MANDATED lending firms and agencies e.g. Fannie Mae to lend a given % of loans to the riskiest lenders in order to MAINTAIN their credit ratings (the lenders that is).

That isn’t a ‘free market'; that is a unnatrual market regulated by politicians to ignore the facts and realities of lending. And EVERYONE cashed in. You can’t just excuse the billions of toxic loans borrowed by people who couldn’t ever pay it back. Everyone is complicit in this, banks, politicians, people who borrowed and every one who bought into the fallacy that we all deserve homes and middle-class lives without working for them.

BTW as reprehensible some of the banks acted, you can scarely blame a lending institution forced to make highly risky loans to create instruments to hedge their losses.

It is a endlessly vicious cycle; we create regulations then blame the free market when things don’t work out as planned, then create more regulations to regulate the free market when things don’t work out as planned.

This cycle would never have started if the GOVERNMENT hadn’t decided to interfere with the lending market due to i’ts misguided notion to make sure ‘every one owned the American Dream’ nor could it have continued if every one didn’t believe they deserved it.

Greed comes in all shapes and forms but the best definitoin I ever heard is ‘the desire for the unearned’.

It wasn’t the “free market”, it was the “too free market”. Surely you understand that a totally free market would end up with essentially everything in the world owned by one gigantic monopolistic company in only a few years?

The myth of the free market is as bogus as the myth that we don’t need laws and regulations to protect ourselves from the greediest among us.

Market forces are very powerful. Control them or they will control you.

I guess when you are talking about the free market you DON’T get that means you, me and every other American who choose to use air-conditioning all summer and heaters all winder and drive big luxury cars and buys petroleum based products like laptops and cell phones hand over fist?

It is far better than a quick “no Keystone” verdict.

You really don’t think we would have seen commercials in 2012 with suffering jobless Americans interspersed with Van Jones and solar panels on the WH?

Frankly I am more concerned about environmentalists who are willing to sacrifice hard fought gains (imagine the state of the EV market if Romney was Presidesnt and had slashed all incentives) for a little symbolism. The short term thinking is mind-boggling.