"Investors suffer as US ethanol boom dries up" by Kevin Allison in San Francisco and Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington | October 21 2008
Investors, such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates, are sitting on billions of dollars in losses after buying into the corn-based ethanol industry that George W. Bush embraced as the answer to US energy woes.
Oh, boo-hoo-hoo for Billy boy (idiot)! You wanna buy any mortgages, Bill?
Six of the biggest publicly traded US ethanol producers have lost more than $8.7bn in market value since the peak of the boom in mid-2006 and the beginning of this month, according to an analysis by the Financial Times. The boom followed a 2005 law requiring refiners to mix billions of gallons of the biofuel with petrol.
Investor losses come as taxpayers have paid billions to support the ethanol industry. More than $11.2bn has been spent since 2005 on tax breaks for companies that blend ethanol into petrol. Billions more have been spent on direct state and federal subsidies for US ethanol production.
That is YOUR TAX MONEY TOSSED AWAY AGAIN, Amurka!!!
All over a FRAUD of an issue!!!
“We’re looking at an industry that’s cost $80bn to get to this point,” said Bob Starkey, a fuels analyst at Jim Jordan & Associates, a research group in Houston.
You paid $80 billion just to have them fart in your face and make you go hungry, 'murka!! Whatta deal, 'eh?
However, ethanol has disappointed many who saw it as a wonder product that could reduce the US’s dependence on foreign oil while cutting down on pollution. Worse, a growing number of influential critics now say ethanol is helping raise the price of food.
The industry’s supporters still defend ethanol.
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Pffttt!
Even the PROPAGANDA PAPERS that helped PROMOTE your pffffft say it is COUNTERPRODUCTIVE!!! Of course, the BLOGGERS were LYING, right?
Far from being "Carbon neutral" the processing required to convert the crops to ethanol produced greenhouse gas emissions.
Ethanol contains far less energy than gasoline, so you have to buy and burn more of it to travel the same distance.
And finally, Germany just banned ethanol after discovering that it damages the fuel systems of cars which are not designed to deal with ethanol in the first place.
Yeah, I can see why this hare-brained idea didn't work out. Like most everything connected with the let's-make-a-buck crowd that hijacked the environmental movement, it's an idea that was not thought all the way through." -- Webmaster of Wake the Flock Up
See: Al Gore Gasses Up Massachusetts
