You Mean People With No Money Aren't Spending?

Economists, living in their bubble, managed to be surprised by this.

U.S. consumer credit plunged more than five times as much as forecast in July as banks restricted lending terms and job losses made Americans reluctant to borrow.

Consumer credit fell by a record $21.6 billion, or 10 percent at an annual rate, to $2.5 trillion, according to a Federal Reserve report released today in Washington. Credit dropped by $15.5 billion in June, more than previously estimated. Credit fell for a sixth month, the longest series of declines since 1991.

The credit crunch, stagnant incomes and declines in household wealth are casting doubt on the strength of the economic recovery. The arrival of the government’s “cash for clunkers” program in late July wasn’t enough to keep credit that covers car loans from plummeting by a record amount, as consumers delayed other purchases [...]

Economists had forecast consumer credit would drop $4 billion in July, according to the median of 31 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Projections ranged from declines of $12 billion to no change from the previous month. The Fed initially said consumer credit decreased by $10.3 billion in June.

I'm guessing that cash for clunkers was the only thing bringing anyone out to purchase something on credit. Otherwise, people simply don't have the money after years of wage stagnation and record unemployment. People are learning the "new normal" of frugality out of complete necessity. In the long run, living within means is a good thing; in the short run, it's debilitating to the US economy.

And it's another example of how economists are not living in the real world with their models and charts. They don't see anything wrong with corporations making massive profits off the backs of consumers living on credit, or how that entire system could fold like a house of cards. They viewed capitalism as a shiny object and never saw its potential pitfalls in an unregulated form.

As I see it, the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth. Until the Great Depression, most economists clung to a vision of capitalism as a perfect or nearly perfect system. That vision wasn’t sustainable in the face of mass unemployment, but as memories of the Depression faded, economists fell back in love with the old, idealized vision of an economy in which rational individuals interact in perfect markets, this time gussied up with fancy equations. The renewed romance with the idealized market was, to be sure, partly a response to shifting political winds, partly a response to financial incentives. But while sabbaticals at the Hoover Institution and job opportunities on Wall Street are nothing to sneeze at, the central cause of the profession’s failure was the desire for an all-encompassing, intellectually elegant approach that also gave economists a chance to show off their mathematical prowess.

Unfortunately, this romanticized and sanitized vision of the economy led most economists to ignore all the things that can go wrong. They turned a blind eye to the limitations of human rationality that often lead to bubbles and busts; to the problems of institutions that run amok; to the imperfections of markets — especially financial markets — that can cause the economy’s operating system to undergo sudden, unpredictable crashes; and to the dangers created when regulators don’t believe in regulation.

Of course, their salaries in part depend on them not knowing these facts, as the Federal Reserve has essentially bought off the profession and tilted it toward the principles of the unfettered free market. Ryan Grim's article is a must-read.

...the head of China's sovereign wealth fund: "Both China and America are addressing bubbles by creating more bubbles and we’re just taking advantage of that. So we can’t lose.”

Cash For Clunkers, Consumer Savings, Increased Fuel Efficiency And Jobs

With the cash for clunkers program winding down, we can start to measure its effectiveness. And guess what, it was effective! The program sold almost 700,000 cars, many of which would not have otherwise been sold. It saved consumers money in both purchasing the automobile and long-term gasoline costs. Dealers who were facing hard times due to the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies will now have a boost to get them through. Third-quarter economic figures expect to have a .3-.4 increase in growth (from just a $3 billion outlay). And despite naysayers like Edmunds.com, the most tangible impact of the program is the 39,000 jobs it created:

One auto analyst called the program a success, if only because his research showed that it was responsible for saving 39,000 jobs that otherwise would have been eliminated.

"It's really more substantial than we had thought in terms of stimulus," said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research. "This is companies putting people back to work."

General Motors announced last week that it will reinstate 1,350 workers and add overtime for about 10,000 at three plants, as the automaker replenishes inventory sold during the government program. Honda also said it will increase U.S. production.

The other big winners in the program were Asian automakers. Eight of the top 10 new cars purchased through the program came from Honda, Hyundai, Nissan and Toyota, which claimed the top spot with its Corolla. The Corolla, Honda Civic and Ford Focus are manufactured in the United States.

I don't know how anyone in their right mind could find the program to be anything other than a fantastic success.

...Joe Romm concurs.

Wildly Successful Government Program To End Monday

The Cash For Clunkers program will wrap up on Monday, a couple weeks ahead of schedule, after fueling a buying boom worth close to $15 billion dollars in sales during late July and August, and leveraging a 5:1 stimulus effect into industrial and local economies, so much so that GM has started to hire back workers. Dealers are complaining that they haven't received their money yet, but that's simply a testament to an unexpectedly successful program.

Critics have complained of administrative confusion and haste in committing the money, and some dealers have expressed concern that they were not being reimbursed quickly enough.

But the White House argued that the speed with which the money has been committed is a measure of the program's popularity.

"This is actually a high-class problem to have -- that we're selling too many cars too quickly and there's some backlog in the application process," President Barack Obama said Thursday during an interview on a nationally syndicated radio show.

I'm sure the dealers liked it better when they went a week without anyone coming on their lots. I'm sure they were thrilled with the status quo of playing Minesweeper for 8 hours a day while trying to figure out how to pay the rent. Manufacturing actually rose in July, thanks to this program.

Government stimulus works. It's as simple as that.

They Call It Stimulus

The government institutes a program to encourage the sale of fuel-efficient cars, and factories have to build more fuel-efficient cars.

Higher sales from the government's Cash for Clunkers program have prompted General Motors Co. to boost production at several of its factories, according to company and union officials.

The increases include an extra day of work at the Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant and increased hours at a factory in Orion Township, Mich., said the union officials, who asked not to be identified because the announcement, expected Tuesday afternoon, had not been made.

The Lordstown plant, which makes the Chevrolet Cobalt and Pontiac G5 small cars, is now running at one shift for 10 hours per day from Monday through Thursday, but the company will add the next two Fridays to the schedule, one union official said. Plant spokesman Tom Mock confirmed the increase.

Clearly this is the work of evil government to take over your lives by creating more jobs and boosting manufacturing production. Those miserable, miserable people.

If there in fact is a second stimulus, it all needs to go toward programs like this, with tangible benefits for consumers and workers. The initial stimulus is getting a bad reputation because the "nudge" of adding a few bucks into worker paychecks isn't reaching the consciousness of most workers. Give people something they can touch and feel.

1/2 Percent Bump in GDP Just Like 2,000 People Dying In A Flood

National Public Radio gets grants from the federal government, so keep in mind that your tax dollars pay the salary of Mara Liasson:

Last night, Fox News aired a clip of a woman at a Philadelphia town hall meeting over the weekend berating Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) about health care reform. “What I see is a bureaucratic nightmare, senator. … And you want us to believe that a government that can’t even run a Cash for Clunkers program is going to run one-seventh of our U.S. economy,” the woman complained. “I think that there is anger out there, real anger,” said NPR’s Mara Liasson, responding to the clip. She then called the woman’s concern “legitimate” and compared the Cash for Clunkers program to Hurricane Katrina:

LIASSON: I thought that woman actually asked a pretty legitimate question — especially Cash for Clunkers is like a mini- Katrina here. I mean it’s not good to start a program and not be able to execute it.

Ahem.

The government did start a program in Cash for Clunkers, and they DID execute it, you magnificent fool. They executed it so well that traffic at dealers shot through the roofs and 250,000 eligible cars were sold in a week. They executed it so well that Congress will appropriate more money for it. They executed it so well that $5 billion dollars got circulated through the economy with a $1 billion dollar investment. They executed it so well that carbuyers saw a 69% increase in their fuel efficiency.

And, as long as you're comparing it to Katrina, they executed it so well that NOBODY DIED.

If Cash for Clunkers is a mini-Katrina, Social Security is a mini-9/11. Why does Mara Liasson hate Social Security and our brave men and women who died in a terrorist attack? Sadly, that logic is better than what Liasson used in her original statement.

Let NPR know what you think about this. Liasson made the comment on Fox News, but NPR is the bigger pressure point.

Cash For Clunkers Extension Sails Toward Senate Passage

A rare bit of good news from the Senate, as an extension of cash for clunkers looks primed for passage.

The Senate will approve another $2 billion for the popular "cash for clunkers" program, probably by the end of the week, confident Democrats predicted Tuesday as Republican efforts to block the funding faded.

"We'll pass cash for clunkers. Before we leave here," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "The vast majority will be voting for this," added Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. The Senate is scheduled to begin a month-long summer recess Friday.

Many Republicans, realizing that constituents and auto dealers were pushing hard to continue the program, reluctantly agreed.

"I don't get a sense anyone will block it," said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee.

I don't know who would stand in the way of a wildly successful economic program and the first sustained benefit to the manufacturing base of this country in over 30 years. And the statistics on fuel economy are far, far better than anybody thought they would be. Sure, this is not the entire answer to the climate crisis. That's not its intention. The intention is to leverage $5 billion dollars into the economy, and extending the program would leverage another $10 billion. The fuel efficiency issue concerns adding 10mpg to a not-all-that-trivial 750,000 cars. But that was never the main goal.

The country needs a stable economy and job creation. This program provides it, with a reduction in foreign oil as a side benefit. Win-win.

Going Into Overtime

The successful Cash for Clunkers program is coming down to the wire in the Senate. They have until the end of the week to pass the bill before they head into an August recess. But if they try to change the bill from what the House passed already - which was just a straight extension - the bills would have to be reconciled, and that would require the House coming back from its recess. Otherwise, it'll get signed into law too late for the program to stay in business. What will Sen. Reid do?

The $2 billion cash infusion granted Friday by the House to the overwhelmed cash-for-clunkers program must be accepted by the Senate this week without amendments — or it won’t be signed into law until September.

The House has adjourned for its summer recess, and some Senate lawmakers want to change the bill, which will likely force Reid into a days-long cloture process.

And that's in addition to trying to move the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation, which will probably take multiple days of floor debate, even though the outcome is assured. There's simply no way the Senate can plow through all that by the deadline of Thursday night. It's not possible.

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said his party will push a go-slow approach on cash-for-clunkers so that the program’s solvency and effectiveness can be examined. Without knowing how many claims are still in the pipeline, Kyl suggested a similar mistake could be made again.

“We need to have a time-out to see how much money was spent,” Kyl said. “Before you authorize more money, wouldn’t you like to know how much you’ve spent and how it took to spend it, and what kind of things you might want to do to modify it?” [...]

The GOP staffers pointed to Democrats like Dianne Feinstein of California, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Mark Warner of Virginia, who in recent days have all expressed skepticism about the program. However, Feinstein and GOP Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) indicated on Monday evening they will support the measure. Warner wants the program to have higher mileage requirements while McCaskill has sounded skeptical about how it will be funded.

But other Democrats strike a common refrain: The sudden demand on the cash-for-clunkers program proves it is working.

With Feinstein and Collins singing off after seeing the unexpected increases in fuel efficiency coming from this program, it's safe to say that this has a good chance of passage. But Republicans will obstruct, and slow down, and gum up the works, and try to add amendments and poison pills, all the while saying that they just have to get home for the August recess. And so a program with demonstrable success that has led to the highest light vehicle sales in a year might get scrapped because of the old stopwatch.

What a wonderful political system we have.

Wild Success Of Government Program Shows How Government Can't Run Anything

Amazingly enough, they're getting away with this message.

The government’s “cash for clunkers” program become the latest political flashpoint on Sunday, with Obama administration officials urging the Senate to approve more money for the initiative and Republicans raising concerns about it [...]

Republicans say the problems with the program are another strike against the Obama administration as it pushes for a speedy overhaul of the health care system that would involve a government-run insurance program. They argue that government involvement in any industry is a recipe for disaster.

Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, said the “cash for clunkers” program was an example of the “stupidity coming out of Washington right now.”

“The federal government went bankrupt in one week in the used-car business, and now they want to run our health care system,” Mr. DeMint said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “This is crazy to try to rush this thing through again while they’re trying to rush through health care, and they want to get on to cap-and-trade electricity tax. We’ve got to slow this thing down.”

Let's number the "problems" with the program:

1) it's too successful and too many people want the rebate
2) the government Web site where the rebates get processed is getting killed because too many people are trying to access it
3) the rebates are going to "middle-class people" who may have eventually bought a car anyway
4) car dealers haven't gotten their rebate checks yet after a week

Are these even rational complaints? They boil down to "the program is too good a deal." I would agree, leveraging $5 billion dollars through the economy in a week is a pretty good deal for those on Main Street looking for some economic activity. There is a residual economic effect to selling a quarter of a million cars that increases hiring throughout the country as well.

While the program could stand with a few tweaks, and I stand with Sens. Feinstein and Collins on improving the fuel efficiency standards, the bottom line is that the program has a great economic multiplier effect, has been unexpectedly strong in increasing mileage rates among new buyers, and has been a boon to the middle class, which gets approximately nothing from their government 99% of the time. Republicans are going to carp at anything Democrats do, but what they are objecting to in this case is revealing. They don't like to see successful government programs that work.

Wildly Successful Government Program

Americans have been conditioned by wingnut rhetoric into believing that government cannot possibly work well. I think that ought to be contradicted by the success of the Cash For Clunkers program, which leveraged $4-5 billion into the economy in seven days, got consumers spending again on big-ticket items, and improved fuel efficiency on 250,000 cars well above expectations (preliminary Congressional reports show a 69% increase in fuel efficiency - most people are trading in SUVs with 100,000 miles or more on them for solid passenger cars). The program is working so well that Congress wants to continue it.

Congress is moving quickly to save the depleted cash-for-clunkers program, as the House passed a $2 billion spending measure Friday afternoon that would keep alive a program that has encouraged American car owners to trade in their old gas guzzlers for more fuel efficient vehicles.

Despite some criticism from Republicans who called the legislation another bailout for another industry, the bill easily passed on a 316-109 bipartisan vote.

Under the fast-track bill, Democratic leaders will use funds from a renewable energy loan guarantee included in the stimulus. The bill would extend the program through Sept. 30, 2010. Democrats have portrayed the run on cash for clunkers cash as a great success for the $1 billion program, which allows car owners to turn in older, less fuel efficient cars for a $4,500 rebate to purchase higher gas mileage vehicles.

These are the same Republican stooges who complained that GM and Chrysler were shutting down too many auto dealers. Now the government designs a program that massively helps dealers, achieves fuel efficiency and with a small investment gets a lot of economic activity going, and they scream "bailout." Hypocrites. There's also the fact that this is not even new money, but money already in the stimulus package. They're also whining that the dealers haven't been paid yet, even though the program kicked off a WEEK ago. Apparently they all receive their paychecks instantly for all work they perform.

Sadly, too many people see a government program run out of money and think it failed. No, that means demand was so high that it fulfilled its purpose in a matter of days. I see Claire McCaskill rejecting the idea of "subsidizing auto purchases forever." Apparently "forever"=anything more than one week.

We still have a tough economy. The recession has leveled off into something approaching stagnation. And there is compelling evidence that the stimulus package is responsible for even getting us back to the stagnation point. Consumers still aren't spending and a lot of people still have no job. Until businesses start hiring again government needs to drive economic activity, which is why you're seeing second stimulus packages proposed in the form of extending measures from the initial stimulus.

Except lots of those extensions revolve around corporate tax breaks and not things that put money into the economy. Things like Cash for Clunkers. And Democrats ought to tell the story that this successful government program, going deliberately and directly to Main Street, represents our best hope for economic recovery.

UPDATE: Obama said this today:

Now, one of the steps we've taken to boost our economy is an initiative known as "Cash for Clunkers." Basically, this allows folks to trade in their older, less fuel-efficient cars for credits that go towards buying fewer, more -- newer, more fuel-efficient cars. This gives consumers a break, reduces dangerous carbon pollution and our dependence on foreign oil, and strengthens the American auto industry. Not more than a few weeks ago, there were skeptics who weren't sure that this "Cash for Clunkers" program would work. But I'm happy to report that it has succeeded well beyond our expectations and all expectations, and we're already seeing a dramatic increase in showroom traffic at local car dealers.

It's working so well that there are legitimate concerns that the funds in this program might soon be exhausted. So we're now working with Congress on a bipartisan solution to ensure that the program can continue for everyone out there who's still looking to make a trade. And I'm encouraged that Republicans and Democrats in the House are working to pass legislation today that would use some Recovery Act funding to keep this program going -- funding that we would work to replace down the road. Thanks to quick bipartisan responses, we're doing everything possible to continue this program and to continue helping consumers and the auto industry contribute to our recovery.

So I'm very pleased with the progress that's been made in the House today on the "Cash for Clunkers" program. I am guardedly optimistic about the direction that our economy is going. But we've got a lot more work to do. And I want to make sure that all the Americans out there who are still struggling because they're out of work or not having enough work know that this administration will not rest until the movement that we're seeing on the business side starts translating into jobs for those people and their families.

Absolutely true. Democrats don't accentuate enough positives.

UPDATE: McCaskill backtracks, says she would consider using existing fund for C4C, wants to study program's effectiveness.

UPDATE: Enviro-blogger Adam Siegel, a critic of the C4C program initially, has some thoughts, conceding that the program is working very well but suggesting some tweaks. The best critique of the program is that it props up the car culture, which I don't doubt, but people with 140,000 miles on their Hyundai SUVs probably aren't candidates for biking or the subway, and what's more, this is a successful economic program with definable environmental benefits, not vice-versa.

Cash For Clunkers Looks To Be Success

So the government inaugurated that cash for clunkers program this week. How's it going? Well...

The U.S. government will suspend the popular cash-for-clunkers program after less than four days in business, telling Congress that the plan would burn through its $950-million budget by midnight, several sources told the Free Press [...]

The decision to suspend the plan came after auto dealers warned the government today that it was in danger of losing track of how many trades had actually been made.

The plan offering owners of old cars and trucks $3,500 or $4,500 toward a new, more efficient vehicle has proven wildly popular, with 22,782 trades certified by federal officials since Monday. But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told dealers Wednesday that a vast majority of transactions submitted were being rejected for incomplete or illegible paperwork.

A survey of 2,000 dealers by the National Automobile Dealers Association, the results of which were obtained by the Free Press, found about 25,000 deals not yet approved by NHTSA, or about 13 trades per store. With 23,005 dealers asking to be part of the program, auto dealers may have already arranged the sale of more than the 250,000 vehicles that federal officials expected the plan to generate.

OK, so some problems with implementation. But in general, you're talking about a wildly popular program. I think that the speed of the deals shocked those carrying out the rebates, but I expect that to get ironed out soon enough. And you're basically talking about $1 billion dollars leveraging about $4-$5 billion dollars through the economy within four days and saving an unspecified amount of oil through the sale of almost a quarter of a million more fuel-efficient cars. The fuel efficiency standards could have been higher, no doubt, but taking out a quarter of a million crappy gas guzzlers is great, and $5 billion in economic activity where none would otherwise exist is an excellent mini-stimulus.

I also like DiFi's stand, after Michigan lawmakers vowed to seek additional funds for the program, that she would block anything unless the fuel economy gains were boosted. The taste has been offered to Detroit, and now they'd be hard pressed to say no.

Now, let's offer money to people to paint their roofs white.

Cash For Clunkers

Included in the supplemental war funding bill passed by the House yesterday was a measure providing $1 billion in funding to a program called "Cash for Clunkers," which essentially works like this: the government will offer vouchers of up to $4,500 for car owners to turn in their inefficient vehicles for a new model which improves on that fuel efficiency. Ultimately, the program would spend up to $4 billion to get 1 million "clunkers" off the road.

There's actually been a lot of criticism from environmental advocates over the program, but it seems to me that its primary goal is to induce $10-$15 billion dollars of economic activity. The government offers $4,500 or so to leverage $15,000 or more of spending per car, and that goes to dealers, suppliers and manufacturers. The environmental impact is a secondary characteristic of what amounts to a micro-stimulus. Now, there have been some very compelling articles about how this particular program doesn't go far enough - although I would add that getting vehicles that offer 18mpg or less off the road and putting those people into any kind of car that gets half-decent, even below-average mileage saves a LOT more gas than putting people from a Honda Civic into an electric car. That's just a mathematical fact. So while it seems like nothing switching from a car that gets 18mpg to 22mpg, as the program incentivizes, you save more gas that way than switching from 50mpg to 100mpg. You can see if your car qualifies for the program here.

But again, the primary goal of this program appears to be getting $15 billion dollars cycled through the economy. Hiding that money in holes and allowing people to dig the money up is similarly wasteful, inefficient and inequitable - but it would be precisely what John Maynard Keynes would proscribe. Auto spending is the largest purchase that non-wealthy consumers make outside of housing, and incentivizing that activity would have a stimulative effect. Plus, considering that we own a lot of GM and Chrysler, this would in effect allow the government to pay itself.

Again, the details of this particular cash for clunkers plan may not be ideal. But putting it into the stimulus tells me two things. One, the Administration knows that we need economic stimulus. The economy continues to fall apart, with double-digit unemployment just around the corner, and even a leaky stimulus measure makes a lot of sense right now. If it reduces emissions - and nobody questions that it does, just not enough - that's gravy. The White House probably sees the prospect of a big stimulus unlikely in the short term, and so sneaking this cash for clunkers measure into the war spending bill at least leverages a nice piece into the economy.

Two, I think this means Waxman-Markey, the climate and energy bill, is in a lot of trouble. Despite the fact that it would actually reduce the deficit, the concerns about cost have caught fire on the right, mainly through persistent lies. The bill had to be seriously gutted to get passage out of the Energy and Commerce Committee, leading many on the left to slam it, sometimes in misleading ways, as David Roberts notes (Waxman-Markey does NOT give away 85% of carbon allowances to polluters). But cash for clunkers initially made its way into Waxman-Markey. That the Administration took it out and sped it up does not speak well for their beliefs about its passage in the short term. Maybe they just want to kickstart the auto industry faster, but it seems to me there's a lot more talk about things like painting everybody's roof white than passing a comprehensive climate and energy bill. And that's a big worry.

...so I'm providing the concerns with this iteration of the bill, the trigger point for vouchers can be as lot as 1mpg; there is a sense that poor people who need a car wouldn't be able to get one with such a voucher and should be able to step up with used cars (in other words, buy a used vehicle with better mileage than their current vehicle, kind of a clunkers-for-super-clunkers); and Japanese automakers would have a better time of things with this bill than American ones.

Cash For Clunkers - An Innovative Idea From Washington? The Devil You Say!

I support a 'cash for clunkers' program not because it would help the US auto industry and increase consumer spending. It would really reduce emissions at the low end and green the fleet. And I don't buy the criticism that nobody would participate in the program. Right now, because of the economic downturn, we are seeing cars that would have otherwise been junked remain on the road. Those are precisely the cars targeted. Allowing people to turn them in for cash they can use to buy more efficient vehicles would reverse that bad outcome and have an environmental impact besides. It's benefited Germany, France, Italy and other countries who have adopted the policy. And it looks like the House struck a deal moving this forward.

In a major advance for the so-called “cash for clunkers” program, House negotiators reached a tentative agreement on a plan that would award vouchers of up to $4,500 to vehicle owners who trade in their old cars for more fuel efficient models.

Under the House plan, a car trade-in that improves fuel efficiency by at least 10 miles per gallon would qualify for a $4,500 voucher, as would the trade-in of a small truck that improves efficiency by 5 miles per gallon. The new vehicle must have a minimum fuel efficiency rating of 22 miles per gallon for cars and 18 miles per gallon for small trucks.

A car trade-in that improves fuel efficiency by at least four miles per gallon would qualify for a $3,500 voucher, as would a small truck trade-in with a two mile per gallon improvement.

Those fuel efficiency ratings don't sound like a lot, but improving 10mpg to a low-mileage car saves a lot more gas than improving 10mpg to a high-mileage car, and essentially this program is designed to do just that.

Negotiators plan to stick this inside the larger energy bill, where its benefits can weigh on auto-state lawmakers who might otherwise be tempted to reject the whole thing. So while "cash for clunkers" doesn't solve the problem of reducing fuel consumption completely, it doesn't have to do the whole lift by itself. And as fuel economy standards are finally set to rise, this proposal would actually get those more fuel-efficient cars out the door and onto the road. Hopefully this will help the larger energy bill pass.

...As for increasing biofuels, some harm more than help, but hopefully this can spur innovation so that we can run cars on banana peels like in Back To The Future.