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There was one part of the speech, however, that no green could fault: Obama's call for the creation of a high-speed rail system as a way to generate green jobs, enhance economic productivity and reduce carbon emissions. On Thursday, Jan. 28, the White House announced the awarding of $8 billion in stimulus funding to kick-start high-speed-rail projects and improve service in 13 corridors across the country. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Tampa, Fla., to announce the projects, which include the construction of an 84-mile high-speed track from Tampa to Orlando...
That's a nice sentiment, but America's antiquated rail system will have to advance a long way just to make it to the present, let alone the future. U.S. intercity railroads are a laughingstock compared with those in most other developed nations - and, increasingly, even those in developing nations like China, which is investing more than $300 billion to build more than 16,000 miles of high-speed track...
Still, the initial round of $8 billion - which Biden referred to as "seed money" during his remarks in Tampa - is just a tiny percentage of what it would cost to significantly overhaul the country's rail system. And there are concerns that by spreading the funds to so many different projects in so many different states, it won't be possible to make a real difference in any one place, as Mark Reutter wrote in a new report for the Progressive Policy Institute. It doesn't help that the one region that could most obviously benefit from truly high-speed...
Nevertheless, high-speed rail is an idea whose time has come - at least for environmentalists. According to Environment America, high-speed rail uses a third less energy per mile than auto or air travel, and a nationwide system could reduce oil use by 125 million bbl. a year. In addition, high-speed rail represents the kind of long-term infrastructure investment that will pay back for decades, just as the interstate highway system of the 1950s has. "This is a down payment on a truly national program," said Biden, who has logged more than 7,900 round trips...
...Beijing's easy-money policies have fueled a potential property-price bubble. According to government data, average real estate prices in Chinese cities jumped 7.8% in December from a year earlier - the fastest increase in 18 months. The credit boom has also sparked worries about the nation's banking system. Many economists expect the large surge in credit to lead to a growing number of nonperforming loans (NPLs). In a November report, UBS economist Wang Tao calculates that if 20% of all new lending in 2009 and 10% of the amount in 2010 goes bad over the next three...