Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Energy Crisis + Trade Deficit = ??

Although there are some of us old enough to think of Westinghouse as a refrigerator maker, it has actually been in the business of making nuclear plants for quite a long time. A business which, since the era of Hanoi Jane, hasn't been a very good place to be. However, recent Middle Eastern events, together with certain budding relationships, are starting to change people's thinking a bit. For those who have been paying attention to the zeitgeist lately, it's becoming obvious that a lot of folks, even very green folks, are starting to see the light at the end of the nuclear power tunnel.

Start now with a nuclear broth and mix in a massive ongoing trade deficit. As pointed out at Cafe Hayek, a trade deficit doesn't necessarily mean, as is so often erroneously avowed, that we are putting our children into debt; but what it very much does mean is that we are trading other assets for those piles of consumer crap goods we import from Asia. Assets like our companies and our land for example. Even some of our former politicians are for sale I hear. Our trading habits are akin to a spoiled scion of a wealthy family selling off the family jewels to pay for his coke habit. And so the latest asset to be flogged is once-proud Westinghouse (the "W" in WABC or WLS) now going to ertswhile cold-war profiteer Toshiba. So, as Terrye says, if the French can do it, we can certainly do it. Or even better, we can sell our ability to do it to the Japanese for a few more cars.

6 comments:

Kelvin said...

Yes - even the "family jewels" are for sale at the right price !!! Nothing lasts forever & a day any more

chuck said...

Although there are some of us old enough to think of Westinghouse as a refrigerator maker...

Geez, I thought they made air brakes for trains.

Anyway, I don't think nuclear power is the only thing we can do. We have limited ourselves for the last several decades, maybe it is time to also look at all the petroleum resources we have.

I have never understood the trade deficit. It is so huge that, if it was like household debt, the country should have gone under long ago. I keep waiting for someone to explain why that hasn't happened.

Morgan said...

I thought Westinghouse Nuclear was sold to British Nuclear Fuels several years ago, a few years after the US Government blocked its sale to Siemens.

Rick Ballard said...

Knuck,

I look at it this way - I give you a pretty symbol that functions as a medium of exchange as long as I say it does. I also own the symbol factory.

You give me a refrigerator.

Who's at risk?

Unknown said...

I can remember when nuclear reactors scared people...hey, now they are a lot less scarey than the mullahs and their ilk.

We can use more coal too, but we can not do anything that quickly, it all takes time.

As for the trade deficit..if the price of oil could be brought back down to about $35 a barrel it would help alot. If I understand it correctly the deficit is measured not by volume or amount, but by value. So we would be importing less and at least some of what we were importing would be cheaper.

It would seem to me that nuclear reactors and coal gassification plants would help on two fronts: less to import from unstable regions and a better balance of trade.

And yes by God if the Frenchies can do it, we can. How hard can it be?

chuck said...

We could devise giant machines that use the relentless ebb and flow of the freakin' tides to generate pollution free power but there will be tidewater lovers (not to mention lying around on the beach lovers) lined up to fight against it.

Yeah, and it would slow down the earth's rotation and cause the moons orbit to move further out. You thought global warming was a problem? You ain't seen nothing yet.