Last week the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the most ambitious energy and global warming legislation ever debated in Congress.  That is very good news and a good first step.  Of course, since Congress has never been anything close to providing leadership in the areas of alternative energy and climate change, the comparison to past non-action doesn’t mean much.

The other action last week that was a good first step was the announcement by President Obama that a deal had been made with auto manufacturers to impose new mileage and emissions standards for all cars and truck sold in the United States starting in 2012.  While this is very good, it is incremental improvement towards a necessary elevation of mileage standards if we are to gain independence from foreign oil, really lessen oil use  and resultant greenhouse gas emissions.

A growing number of energy, environmental and climate scientists have been providing evidence that even if humanity stopped all greenhouse gas emissions today, there would still be an increase in CO2 particles per million in the atmosphere during the next several years.  So complete stoppage would only start to slow this upward trend.  That is why incremental decreases in fossil fuel consumption will not end or alleviate the global climate change dynamics it will only slightly temper them.  All said, the new mileage and emissions standards are certainly a step in the right direction.  A step that should have been taken a decade ago, so this is just playing catch …

Hydrogen has long been looked at as the ‘fuel of the future’.  The general impression is that it will be a marketplace fuel in the future but not for a decade or more.  Well, surprise, hydrogen is coming into the fuel marketplace today, albeit slowly.

Last week I attended the National Hydrogen Association annual convention in Columbia South Carolina.  In addition to delivering a short keynote address and moderating a panel, I was there to learn as much as I could about this future fuel.   I was fortunate to spend discussion time with, and listen to presentations by, some of the best and brightest from academia, corporations and governmental agencies on the subject of hydrogen.

There is no question that hydrogen is becoming and will be an integral part of our energy equation.  Right now the problem confronting this source of energy is one of scale.  Scale of production, scale of the infrastructure for distribution and scale of production of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.    It is the fuel cell car that has the highest profile in this new energy area and is also the product that consumers are most interested in, particularly due to the recent history of oil prices and the state of the automotive industry.  There were several hydrogen fuel cell cars and even a bus that were available for rides at the convention, and I will write about the wonderful experience of driving three of the cars in my next column.

What I found interesting was how …

The Great Recession of 2008-2010/11 is going to be a very tough time economically.  As I wrote in my Forecast for 2009, this economic collapse brings four words to mind.

The first word is contraction, which is the standard way to view a recession.  Economic activity contracts and we are in a recession, economic expansion represents the end to the contraction.  The contraction was severe in the fourth quarter and will be so in the first quarter and second quarter. Output and consumption are in a deep fall right now and will remain so.

The second word is cleansing which in this context means that old ways of doing business, of looking at only the upside, of embracing debt and extreme leverage must and will be cleansed from both the economy and the way that people think. The casino capitalism of the past 20 years will soon be viewed as an unsustainable exercise in individual and corporate greed.

The third word is reorganization.  To quote from the linked column …

It is interesting that central to the U.S. view of the global economy is the inauguration of President Obama and the passage of a historic stimulus package by Congress.  Given that the world is awash in economic fear the potential for hope and a sense of direction has been hard to find.  Since the current economic meltdown is something we want to change, and since that word has been synonymous with Obama, there is a lot of hope for a good start to his Presidency, and in his stated desire for a $1 trillion dollar stimulus package over the next two years.

As all prognosticators look ahead to this new year, it is clear that the place to look for our financial future for the next couple of years is Washington, not New York .

Politicians of both parties and most U.S. citizens are so scared or nervous about the economy melting down even further that there seems to be wide support for the Federal Government to spend whatever is necessary to get us out of this mess before it becomes even more catastrophic.  I find it interesting that economists of all stripes have come together is a loose consensus that the way out of this dangerous economic situation is massive spending by the government.  I certainly don’t disagree, but I have significant reservations about what Congress will pass and President Obama will ultimately sign.

The position here is that if the U.S., and therefore to a great degree the global economy is …

In my last column I wrote that humanity is in transition from one Age to another and that the global financial collapse is a painful part of that transition.  This occurs during any major historical transition period.  In addition I wrote:

“There are four words that keep coming back to me as I view the landscape of what lies ahead in 2009 and beyond.  They are contraction, cleansing, reorganization and transformation.  It is these four words to keep in mind as you read the forecasts here and look around you”

I repeat that because most of the economic predictions below are about contraction and cleansing.  However I am not a pessimist as I believe that we are in a process of reorganization that can lead to transformation.  Please keep that in mind as you read on.

The U.S. economy has been in a recession for close to a year, with the fourth quarter being one of the worst quarters on record.  During this fourth quarter the global economy joined the U.S.  When all the numbers come in for this quarter they will show a major contraction probably in the range of 4-7%.  In a column in mid-October, I wrote:

“We will witness one of the worst holiday retail seasons in history on a year to year comparison basis.  People who feel that they have no control over the performance of their investments will realize that the only control they have is in the area of spending which they will …