Daily Archives: June 15, 2009

John Gapper Elon Musk thinks that cheap petrol is a tragedy

June 15, 2009 7:16 pm by John Gapper

The American consumer should be paying $10 per gallon for petrol, instead of the current average of $2.62. So says Elon Musk, the chairman and chief executive of Tesla Motors, the Silicon Valley company that makes the Roadster electric car.

Mr Musk reckons that is the price that would compensate for all the externalities of burning fossil fuel, polluting the atmosphere, warming the oceans etc. He made his calculation this morning at the Wired magazine business conference in New York, which I attended. Read more

Posted in Autos, Technology |

John Gapper Barack Obama ducks the regulation challenge

June 15, 2009 2:14 pm by John Gapper

Further to my column of last week, the noises coming out of Washington about Barack Obama’s attempt to remake financial regulation are not encouraging. It is looking increasingly likely that the administration and Congress will fail to address the proliferation of overlapping regulatory bodies.

As the Wall Street Journal this morning notes, the Office of Thrift Supervision, which has been redundant since the Savings and Loans crisis of the early 1990s, may finally get absorbed into the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. But a new body would be created to oversee mortgages and consumer products. Read more

Posted in Finance |