Although the details are slim, thus far the broad outlines of President-Elect Obama's economic stimulus program are disappointing for those who believe that the economic crisis presents an opportunity to radically transform the way America uses and produces energy.

Building roads that lead to malls holding going-out-of-business sales, after all, isn't believable change -- its pork barrel spending and make-work, rather than economic transformation.

And the question of exactly how we're going to pay for a $1 trillion economic stimulus package without bankrupting ourselves or crashing the dollar is a question that no one in Washington seems to be giving any serious consideration.

(As a sidenote: if you're still wondering whether inflation or deflation is the place where we end up, just look at the extra zeros attached to most of the ideas emanating from Chicago and Washington these days. That's the future.)

Nonetheless, one good idea that Obama has proposed thus far (and I eagerly -- okay, not that eagerly -- await some more) is the mass retrofitting of schools and other public buildings for energy efficiency.

In the same spirit of incrementalism, we may wish to look to Germany for ideas on how to virtually eliminate the energy needs of newly-constructed public buildings:

The concept of the passive house, pioneered in this city of 140,000 outside Frankfurt, approaches the challenge from a different angle. Using ultrathick insulation and complex doors and windows, the architect engineers a home encased in an airtight shell, so that barely any heat escapes and barely any cold seeps in. That means a passive house can be warmed not only by the sun, but also by the heat from appliances and even from occupants’ bodies.

And in Germany, passive houses cost only about 5 to 7 percent more to build than conventional houses....

[S]chools in Frankfurt are built with the technique.

Moreover, its popularity is spreading. The European Commission is promoting passive-house building, and the European Parliament has proposed that new buildings meet passive-house standards by 2011.

The United States Army, long a presence in this part of Germany, is considering passive-house barracks....

In Germany the added construction costs of passive houses are modest and, because of their growing popularity and an ever larger array of attractive off-the-shelf components, are shrinking.

But the sophisticated windows and heat-exchange ventilation systems needed to make passive houses work properly are not readily available in the United States. So the construction of passive houses in the United States, at least initially, is likely to entail a higher price differential.

Although not a universal solution (passive buildings don't appear to be an ideal answer to energy efficiency needs in warmer climates, for example), nor a particularly radical one, it does seems that jump-starting an industrial need for sophisticated windows and heat-exchange ventilation systems through public spending would be slightly more visionary than simply laying asphalt, with the added benefit of saving local governments money in the long run.

Here's an amazing read, from Big Picture.

It's a very detailed complaint filed with the SEC, in which the author correctly states that "Madoff Securities is the world's largest Ponzi Scheme."

When was the complaint written?

2005.

What did the SEC do in response?

Nothing.

When the history of this financial meltdown is finally written -- and it is not over yet, not by a long shot -- central to that story will be the role that the Bush administration's SEC played in allowing criminality to become the modus operandi of Wall Street.

George W. Bush likes to quip that Wall Street got drunk, and we got the hangover. It's a good quip, but let's not forget (to expand the metaphor a bit) that the SEC was the bartender, shouting over the din that the drinks were on the house.

It's been years since I've seen such a beautiful act of civil disobedience:

SALT LAKE CITY - An environmental activist tainted an auction of oil and gas drilling leases Friday by bidding up parcels of land by hundreds of thousands of dollars without any intention of paying for them, a federal official said.

The process was thrown into chaos and the bidding halted for a time before the sale of 132 parcels covering 164,000 acres was concluded.

"He's tainted the entire auction," said Kent Hoffman, deputy state director for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Utah....

The FBI was questioning a man who registered for the auction as Tim DeChristopher of Salt Lake City, said the bureau's Utah Energy Team Leader Terry Catlin.

Other bidders at the auction complained about DeChristopher as unfamiliar and bidding in an unconventional fashion, which raised suspicions, Catlin said.

DeChristopher is believed to have won the bidding on 13 parcels and driven up the price of several others. He said he successfully bid on more than $1.7 million in parcels.

"I tried to resist this sale any way I could," said the 27-year-old University of Utah economics student, who added that he only has enough money to pay for a few acres on which he bid.

Well done!

Probably a century too late, in actuality. But this sure looks like fun.

From my alma matter.

Kevin Drum points out exactly why the GOP allowing the Little 3 to (likely) collapse is pure, puerile politics:

If you're just flatly against the bailout, fine. Vote against it. But if the wage cuts, along with the debt-for-equity swap that was also part of the bill, were enough to bring you around, why would you cavil at the cuts happening in 2011 instead of the end of 2009? It's only about an 18 month difference, and cutting wages makes a lot more sense in 2011 than it does in the middle of a massive recession anyway.

There are a number of valid reasons to have been against the bailout, including on ideological grounds.

But to have balked over the amount of money a welder would get paid for the next 18 months is not a valid reason.

From the get go, it was clear that Republican opposition to the bailout was a proxy for their long-standing battle against labor.

But having won many concessions from the UAW and Democrats (another story altogether), they had to twist the knife.

What petty, petty children.

Another shovel appears, as the GOP keeps digging the hole it has made for itself.

Holy shit. The Republicans just wrecked the entire U.S. economy in order to break the back of a union:

The collapse came after bipartisan talks on the auto rescue broke down over GOP demands that the United Auto Workers union agree to steep wage cuts by 2009 to bring their pay into line with Japanese carmakers.

Funny how no one demanded the banksters take a pay cut before we handed out 50 times what the Big 3 were asking for. But oh well.

Anyone who was holding on for a Christmas rally just got a big old lump of coal in their stocking.

The writing was on the wall earlier today, when KB Toys went bankrupt -- two weeks before Christmas.

And it will be in even bigger letters tomorrow, when retail numbers come out and, in all likelihood, one of America's largest commercial REITs goes bankrupt as well.

Dow futures already are down 350. They could turn on a dime, of course, or on a Washington whisper. But the market is not the economy.

The economy, even with a bailout, was heading for a rotten new year, with December unemployment (I would bet) set to rise by 800,000 people. If GM goes belly up, we can double that, at least.

But... but... we're not in a depression because unemployment is still low, the optimists cry.

But the only thing you have to know about the Great Depression is this one quote:

Just when you thought it was over, it was really just beginning.

And so it is, again.

AP:

NEW YORK (AP) -- A former Nasdaq stock market chairman was arrested on a securities fraud charge Thursday, accused of running a phony investment business that lost at least $50 billion before he confessed to senior employees it was a "giant Ponzi scheme," authorities said.

The "giant Ponzi scheme" was the Nasdaq itself, if your 401k 201k is any indication.

To allow to fail or not to allow to fail? That is the question facing Congress as the bigwigs of the Big 3 come groveling again tomorrow.

Angry Bear points to some of the dangers of letting them go under, and concludes by observing:

There are no easy answers any more. We have undoubtably backed ourselves into a corner, with thoughtless tax policies for the rich, incoherent tax policies that might have guided our economic development, and a complete disregard for our manufacturing sector as we celebrated our miserable and miserly banking system that has skimmed, scammed, and leveraged its way to disaster.

No easy answers, yes. And no good ones left, either. GM is done, and the UAW as we've known it is probably done, as well, no matter how much money Congress throws their way.

Updated for the current financial crisis. A key passage:

"I heard the thugs in Washington were trying to take your Rearden metal at the point of a gun," she said. "Don't let them, Hank. With your advanced alloy and my high-tech railroad, we'll revitalize our country's failing infrastructure and make big, virtuous profits."

"Oh, no, I got out of that suckers' game. I now run my own hedge-fund firm, Rearden Capital Management."

"What?"

He stood and adjusted his suit jacket so that his body didn't betray his shameful weakness. He walked toward her and sat informally on the edge of her desk. "Why make a product when you can make dollars? Right this second, I'm earning millions in interest off money I don't even have."

He gestured to his floor-to-ceiling windows, a symbol of his productive ability and goodness.

"There's a whole world out there of byzantine financial products just waiting to be invented, Dagny. Let the leeches run my factories into the ground! I hope they do! I've taken out more insurance on a single Rearden Steel bond than the entire company is even worth! When my old company finally tanks, I'll make a cool $877 million."

Their eyes locked with an intensity she was only beginning to understand.

Heh.

After an extended break, blogging should resume with the usual punctuated infrequency tomorrow.

It won't be quite the same, as the blogosphere has lost one of its most talented voices today.