Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Foreclosure Crisis Hits Warp Speed

I read an article about America's foreclosure problem. About 6 million families could be facing foreclosure in the next three years. Recently, we've heard a lot about trying to help people stay in their homes with President Obama's $275 billion foreclosure-prevention package, but like the article said, it hasn't came through yet. NeighborWorks, an organization that helps out in community development said they were having a hard time tracking those that have already been foreclosed because in the past they had just focused on prevention.
A representative for that company says there are two types of people-those who lost their homes because they were unable to keep up with payments on poor mortgages, often with interest rates that were too high or those who are unable to make mortgage payments because they've lost their jobs. This crisis has increased the number of homeless people and those who must live paycheck to paycheck.There is some financial aid coming to those victims but NeighborWorks says it may be too late.
I couldn't imagine losing my house and we have been lucky not to, but it seems like my family has been living from paycheck to paycheck for years. I don't live in a house with a mortgage, because we couldn't afford it in the first place, but I'm scared that the job market is so bad that we are in danger of losing what little we do have.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Unexpected Increase in Factory Orders

I read an article about the unexpected rise in manufacturing orders such as metals, machines and military equipment.The Commerce Department said that orders increased 3.4 percent in February after a 7.3 percent decline in January. Orders for machinery, transportation equipment and computers and electronics rose also.The rise was even better than economists had hoped. Although the recession is still very real, hopeful investors did lift stock markets some 20 percent over the last two weeks. My husband works for a government contractor and has been getting alot of overtime in the past two weeks.
Not only this, but On Monday a report was released saying sales of previously owned homes increased 5 percent after a 10-month decline, which is good news. Unfortunetly, the median price of a new home fell to $200,900, down from a peak of $262,600.
Obviously the economy is nowhere near in good shape, but it is nice to hear some good news.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Clean Coal?

We have all seen the "Clean Coal" commericials and they are actually pretty funny, poking fun at Obama's hope for clean coal technology. Opponents to this, including Al Gore, say that there are more negative issues to this than positive. First of all, they are against mountaintop removal. My family is from the Appalachian mountains in Pikeville so I can relate to this concern. If any of you have seen the documentary "Sludge" about the drawbacks that come from mountaintop mining, you would see the opposition's point also. Secondly, the price of converting coal to clean, not to mention the research that goes into it would be ridiculous!One project announced in 2003 was envisioned to cost about $950 million dollars. The project was to be a 285-megawatt lab that would test advanced clean coal technologies. One of the positive things clean coal is said to do is generate power at lower cost than other fossil fuels. According to the Energy Information Administration, October 2008 electric utilities paid "2.19 per million BTU", as opposed to $6.94 for natural gas and $16.68 for petroleum."According to the article though, a 2008 study estimates that adding this technology would increase the capital cost of a power plant by half and that doesn't even include the costs of transporting and storing the captured CO2 or operating costs. Third, the clean coal technology still releases detrimental gases into the environment.
This new technology is a nice thought and would help the U.S. become more energy independent but personally I don't believe it can ever happen. As Obama said "Why couldn't be do this, because we put a man on the moon!" I think theres more of a chance putting a whole colony on the moon than cleaning up coal emissions.