1. The Washington Post wonders As fuel prices fall, will the push for alternatives lose steam? Of course. I think most Americans have a very short term memory. Energy alternatives were all about maintaining the status quo, rather than about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

   Bill Reinert, one of the Toyota Prius designers… cautioned that designing and ramping up production of a new car takes five years.

   “If oil goes down to $60 or $70 a barrel and gasoline gets back to $2.50 a gallon, and that very possibly could happen,” he said, “will that demand stay the same or will we shift back up?”

   As quickly as the price of oil per barrel has fallen it can rise just as quickly again.

   “Declining oil prices can give us an artificial and temporary sense that reducing oil consumption and energy consumption is an issue we can put off,” said Greg Kats, a managing director of Good Energies, a multibillion-dollar venture capital firm that invests in global clean energy.

   The NY Times reports that people are Challenging the car culture on campus with free bikes.

   “We’re seeing an explosion in bike activity,” said Julian Dautremont-Smith, associate director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, a nonprofit association of colleges and universities. “It seems like every week we hear about a new bike sharing or bike rental program.”

   But I wonder, if such free bike programs will still be around next fall? Somehow, I doubt it.

Four at Four continues with the U.S. economy, stimulus, and national debt, campaign news, and NATO in Afghanistan.

1. So the Washington Post reports that Bush defends the bailout and says the plan was the ‘last resort’. Bush said his administration has been “systematic and aggressive” trying to thaw the credit freeze and urged Americans to be patient with his administration’s efforts.

   “The federal government has responded to this crisis with systematic and aggressive measures to protect the financial security of the American people,” Bush said in a speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington. “… It took a while for the credit system to freeze up; it will take a while for the credit system to thaw.”

   Bush went on to blame Bill Clinton for his and the economy’s problems saying “the roots of the crisis go back ‘more than a decade'”. Actually, many of the problems go back to August 1987, when Alan Greenspan became the 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

   Yesterday, the NY Times reported that the Banks are likely to hold tight to the bailout money. “Since mid-2007, when the credit crisis erupted, the country’s nine largest banks have written down the value of their troubled assets by a combined $323 billion.”

   For every dollar the banks earned during the industry’s most prosperous years, they have now wiped out $1.06.

   Even with the capital from the government, analysts say, the banking industry still needs to raise around $275 billion in light of the looming losses…

   Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. is urging them to use their new capital soon. On Monday, Mr. Paulson unveiled plans to provide $125 billion to nine banks on terms that were more favorable than they would have received in the marketplace. The government, however, has offered no written requirements about how or when the banks must use the money.

   “There is no express statutory requirement that says you must make this amount of loans,” said John C. Dugan, the comptroller of the currency. “But the economics work so that it is in their interest to do so.”

   Marketplace, on public radio, reported that all this Unused cash piling up at the Fed. The banks are not lending and hundreds of billions of dollars in cash are now at the Federal Reserve. The reserve balances “have hit historic highs in the past few weeks” and have “gotten even bigger” from the bailout.

   Now $265 billion are in now at the Fed in reserve accounts and the Fed is paying interest on those deposits. So much for thawing the credit markets.

2. Setting the stage for the next two years at the United Nations, the NY Times reports Three nations win security council seats.

   Turkey, Austria and Japan won nonpermanent seats on the United Nations Security Council on Friday, defeating Iceland and Iran in elections in the General Assembly…

   They join Uganda, for Africa, and Mexico in taking up the five rotating seats on the 15-seat Security Council for the 2009 and 2010 sessions.

Four at Four continues with the Iranian revolution and Obama’s gray hair.

1. The Guardian reports a Draft agreement promises troop withdrawal by 2011.

   US troops will withdraw from Iraq by December 31 2011 and American and British soldiers deployed there in the interim period could face prosecution in Iraq’s courts for serious, premeditated “off-duty” crimes under the terms of a draft status of forces agreement outlined yesterday by officials in Baghdad and Washington.

   “The draft agreement… is intended to replace the UN security council mandate that legitimised the US-led invasion in March 2003, and subsequent occupation…

   It must be ratified by the Iraqi parliament before the end of the year. Passage is far from guaranteed… Some of the deal’s terms may also prove controversial in the US.

2. The Washington Post reports Gen. David Petraeus mounts strategy review to focus On Afghanistan and wider region, including Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq. “The effort in Afghanistan is going to be the longest campaign of the long war,” he said.

   The strategy assessment will begin next month and take 100-days to complete. It’s goal is to create a “new campaign plan for the Middle East and Central Asia… military officials involved said Petraeus is already focused on at least two major themes: government-led reconciliation of Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the leveraging of diplomatic and economic initiatives with nearby countries that are influential in the war.”

Four at Four continues with Bush officials breaking the law, a historic win for Mexican migrant laborers, and a bonus picture.

1. The class war continues with news from NY Times that the “Next Victim of Turmoil May Be Your Salary“. Of course that assumes we all have a salaries, but I’ll let that slide for today.

   What, then, will the next stage of the downturn be about? It is likely to revolve around the worst slump in worker pay since – you knew this was coming – the Great Depression. This slump won’t be anywhere near as bad as the one during the Depression, but it also won’t be like anything the country has experienced in a long time…

   The events of the last several weeks have removed any serious doubt that the economy is in a recession. In a recession, businesses cut back on their workers’ hours, hand out raises that don’t keep pace with inflation and often skip paying bonuses. These cuts in hours and pay are the main way that a downturn affects families, because only a small share of workers actually lose their jobs…

   Every recent recession has brought an effective pay cut of somewhere between 3 and 7 percent for the typical family. The drop typically happens over a period of about three years, lasting longer than the recession officially does, as pay fails to keep up with inflation.

   And in case no one has noticed, the United States of America is going broke because almost no one wants to pay taxes. The LA Times reports our Federal budget deficit hits record $455 billion. “The final accounting for fiscal 2008 produced a larger shortfall than had been projected, reflecting the start of federal efforts to address the economic emergency… The deficit is likely to be even bigger next year as the country copes with the worst financial crisis since the Depression.”

   “The new figure breaks the previous record deficit of $413 billion in 2004 and more than doubles the 2007 deficit of $162 billion. It has focused new attention on government spending, coming just days after the National Debt Clock in New York City ran out of digits to record the overall national debt, which passed $10 trillion.”

Four at Four continues with bank “drama”, emerging economies, and torture.

1. McClatchy Newspapers report according to Iraq’s Sunni vice president, the U.S. and Iraq won’t reach accord on troops this year. “The United Nations mandate that authorizes the U.S. military presence in Iraq will expire on Dec. 31 and without a so-called status of forces agreement, it’s questionable whether the U.S. will have a legitimate right to maintain its troops in Iraq, Vice President Tariq al Hashimi” said. He is concerned violence will increase as the U.N. mandate expires.

   The main point of contention is jurisdiction. Maliki has been pressing for jurisdiction to prosecute U.S. troops when they aren’t on their bases, which the U.S. has so far refused to permit.

   “The impression of the Iraqi people is that American troops from time to time exaggerate their reactions, use excessive force and irresponsible behavior,” Hashimi said. “We would like to put an end to that. When this happens in the future there must be prosecution of those who are exceeding the limit of the authorities given to them.”

   The U.S. government has said that the mandate must be renewed if no agreement is reached, or U.S. forces will withdraw, Hashimi said. But it takes time to pull out more 130,000 troops, presenting a new problem about who’d have jurisdiction during a technically illegal occupation.

   The Washington Post adds that with time running out and Lacking an accord On troops, the U.S. and Iraq seek a Plan B.

   Neither side finds the options attractive. One possibility is an extension of the United Nations mandate that expires at the end of the year. That would require a Security Council vote that both governments believe could be complicated by Russia or others opposed to the U.S.-led war. Another alternative would amount to a simple handshake agreement between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Bush to leave things as they are until a new deal, under a new U.S. administration, can be negotiated…

   U.S. officials do not dispute that the absence of an agreement would probably require an immediate end to combat operations and, at a minimum, confinement to bases on Jan. 1.

   Meanwhile, McClatchy Newspapers report Iraqis are being attacked and killed for returning to their homes. Only a small number of the nearly 5 million Iraqi refugess have made an attempt to return home. Many are being attacked upon their return or having “their homes blown up.”

   Sectarian cleansing has helped to reduce the violence in Iraq to a four-year low, but the small number of returnees who’ve been targeted so far could be a warning that the violence could return, too.

   I wonder if Iraq, like the markets, will implode too before Bush escapes office. The “surge” was designed to buy Bush enough time to get clear, but their are signs of the lid coming off the pot.

Four at Four continues with election day in Canada, Brazil’s dam projects, Paraguay’s landless, protecting forests instead of cutting greenhouse emissions, and a bonus graphic of the stock markets compared under Democratic and Republican administrations.

1. The NY Times reports Senator Barack Obama expands his economic plans to include “proposals to spur new jobs, to give Americans penalty-free access to retirement savings to help them through the downturn, to urge a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures and to lend money to strapped local and state governments.”

   The main new proposals would:

   – for the next two years, give businesses a $3,000 income-tax credit for each new full-time employee they hire above the number in their current workforce;

   – allow savers with tax-favored Individual Retirement Accounts and 401(k)’s to withdraw 15 percent of those retirement savings, up to a maximum of $10,000, without paying a tax penalty as the law currently requires for withdrawals before age 59 and a half;

   – bar financial institutions that take advantage of the Treasury’s rescue plan from foreclosing on the mortgages of any homeowners who are making “good-faith efforts” to make payments;

   – direct the Treasury and the Federal Reserve to create a temporary facility for loans to state and local governments, similar to the Fed’s new arrangement to loan corporations money by buying their commercial paper, which are the I.O.U.s that help businesses with daily operating expenses like payrolls.

   Meanwhile, McClatchy Newspapers report the U.S. Treasury will buy stock in banks.

   Treasury’s new point man for the bank rescue program, Neel Kashkari, gave his first address on Monday, laying out just how the agency will carry out a $700 billion rescue plan passed by Congress last month. He confirmed taking equity positions in struggling banks is near the top of the list.

   “We are designing a standardized program to purchase equity in a broad array of financial institutions,” said Kashkari, said in remarks prepared for delivery. “As with other programs, the equity purchase program will be voluntary and designed with attractive terms to encourage participation from healthy institutions. It will also encourage firms to raise new private capital to complement public capital.”

   And the NY Times reports European nations move on plans to shore up banks and somewhat ominously —

   “Sometimes it does take a crisis for people to agree that what is obvious and should have been done years ago can no longer be postponed,” the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, said in London in a speech calling for the adoption of a new Bretton Woods-style agreement among major countries. “We must now create the right new financial architecture for the global age.”

Four at Four continues with a shift in the military to an “indirect approach” to counter terrorism, an update from Iraq, and Paul Krugman.

1. Here is some of that Good News from Iraq™ that Laura Bush talked about. The NY Times reports As Fears Ease, Baghdad Sees Walls Tumble.

   Market by market, square by square, the walls are beginning to come down. The miles of hulking blast walls, ugly but effective, were installed as a central feature of the surge of American troops to stop neighbors from killing one another.

   “They protected against car bombs and drive-by attacks,” said Adnan, 39, a vegetable seller in the once violent neighborhood of Dora, who argues that the walls now block the markets and the commerce that Baghdad needs to thrive. “Now it is safe.”

   The slow dismantling of the concrete walls is the most visible sign of a fundamental change here in the Iraqi capital.

   Except that’s not the whole story. McClatchy Newspapers explained Assassinations are replacing car bombs in Iraq.

   U.S. and Iraqi officials are seeing a shift in violence in Iraq from mass car bombings to assassinations using magnetic bombs, weapons with silencers and bicycle bombs. As provincial elections approach, some officials worry that assassinations will increase as political parties try to eradicate their competitors.

   “Some of the organizations that are seeking political power are resorting to intimidation and violence,” said Maj. Gen. Michael L. Oates, the commander of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division, whose area of command includes most of southern Iraq. “So you’ll see individual bombs used against a prominent member of a party. I personally think we will see an uptick of that type of violence as we go into the election cycle because . . . the way some people deal with political tension here is to eliminate the other parties by using violence.”

   And sure enough, the NY Times reports a day earlier that a Roadside bomb in Baghdad killed a Shiite legislator. “The legislator, Saleh al-Ugaili, had just left his home in Sadr City and was on the way to Parliament inside the fortified Green Zone when his unarmored sport utility vehicle hit the bomb, according to several witnesses. Mr. Ugaili suffered severe head injuries and died at the hospital. A passer-by on a motorbike was also killed, and two of the official’s companions were wounded. The attack happened near a busy traffic circle known to locals as Al Hamza, almost 200 yards from an Iraqi Army checkpoint.”

   As a result of the assasination, the LA Times reports Shiite fighters clash with Iraqi, U.S. troops in Baghdad.

   Clashes between Shiite Muslim militants and U.S. and Iraqi troops erupted in east Baghdad on Thursday night when groups loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada Sadr accused Washington of orchestrating the assassination of a popular lawmaker…

   Baha Araji, a lawmaker with Sadr’s bloc, accused the Iraqi military of lapses in security and suggested two reasons that the assassins may have targeted Uqaili’s convoy: as punishment for the Sadr bloc’s opposition to renewing a security agreement extending the U.S. troop presence in the country, and to weaken the bloc’s representation in parliament in the upcoming elections…

   In other developments Thursday, a bomb exploded near a minibus in Baqubah, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing a Sunni Arab fighter with the Awakening movement that has worked with U.S. troops against Islamic militants. His wife, daughter and son were also killed.

   A bomb detonated near a restaurant in Tall Afar, killing two people, including a police officer.

   Sorry Laura. I still think you’re full of crap subprime mortgage backed derivatives.

Four at Four continues with tribal wind power efforts, oysters in New York City waterways, and an agreement to protect Sumatra’s rainforest.

1. Here’s a good sign. The Hill reports Bush starts preparing for transition. George W. Bush has “signed an executive order directing his staff to start preparing for” his successor. The Washington Post adds that by “creating a special council to govern the transition to a new administration in January, marking another major step toward the end of Bush’s eight tumultuous years in office.” Bush issued the order 26 days before the election.

   The transition team will be “chaired by White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and will include at least 14 other senior officials, among them the attorney general, the national intelligence director and the national archivist.” According to CBS News, “President Clinton issued a similar Executive Order on presidential transition to his successor… though his came after the election, on Nov 27, 2000.” Bush has created such a disaster leaving the United States in such a mess that he wants to escape responsibility as soon as possible. He’s jumping the gun on the transition. Only 102 days left of Bush.

Four at Four continues with whale-killing sonar at the Supreme Court, oil prices and slavery in Dubai, and plans by the European Union to use the financial crisis as justification to ditch commitment to address the climate crisis.