Here is my quote for the day:

Critic of the Firms Sadly Says 'Told You'

By JOHN D. MCKINNON

July 12, 2008

Wall Street Journal

So how does he feel to be proved correct about the possible risks of a huge government bailout? "Terrible," he said. "I would have preferred that Congress had listened when something could have been done."

The quote is from an article about a guy who has criticized the structure and corruption of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for 25 years, since he served in the Treasury department for Ronald Reagan.

While the housing problems are bad and a clear result of greed and corruption, the quote makes me think mostly about global warming. Money is important but global warming is life and death.

Another article in today's paper details the Bush Administrations battles to prevent the EPA from doing anything about global warming. Sure, the White House now publicly agrees that global warming is real (a reversal of their original position) but apparently it is not real enough to actually do something about. Why? Because change will be expensive.

Maybe someone in 2050 can fix the problem with "scientific advances". Maybe more people need to watch Al Gore's movie and think about that scale with the world on one side and gold on the other...

Will Congress be able to do anything better with a new President?

Administration Releases EPA Report, Then Repudiates It

Blueprint to Reduce Greenhouse Gases Called Too Costly

By STEPHEN POWER and IAN TALLEY

July 12, 2008

Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration published a government blueprint to reduce the U.S. output of global-warming gases, but at the same time rejected the document out of hand -- saying it relied on "untested legal theories" and would impose "crippling costs" on the U.S. economy.

Essentially, the White House presented critics of the report with a prepackaged rebuttal brief, in what is expected to be the Bush administration's last major effort to frame the national discussion on responding to global warming before a new president inherits the issue. The White House argues the Environmental Protection Agency must not be allowed to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, for fear it would be able to block development across the country.

The EPA document was written to respond to a Supreme Court order: The court instructed the agency to decide whether greenhouse gases are a danger to public health or welfare. Instead, the final document took no position on the court's question -- yet escalated the extraordinary battle between the agency and the White House.

The White House rejected an earlier draft that did find a danger to welfare, which would trigger application of the strict rules of the Clean Air Act to regulating greenhouse gases. This time, the agency stopped short of the endangerment finding, but still drew up a road map for using the Clean Air Act. That led the White House to warn of a government "command-and-control" regime that would regulate virtually every aspect of American life from cars to factories, hotels and lawnmowers.