The 1% Have Stolen So Much of Our Money, They Don't Know What To Do With It: Ferrari Fetches $38 Million At Auction

That 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO.

By NBC News
A 52-year-old Ferrari smashed the record for the most expensive car ever sold at auction. The 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO, with a somewhat dark past, was sold Thursday night by Bonhams for $34.65 million, plus fees, bringing the total to $38.115 million. That blew past the previous record, held by a Mercedes-Benz racer that sold last summer for $31.6 million including auction fees. "The market right now is just so strong," said Marcel Massini, a leading Ferrari historian and adviser to collectors. "And this is one of the big prizes in the entire collecting world." Ferrari GTOs are among the holy grails of the car auction world.

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America's Love Affair With Cars On A Downward Trend

#147327209 / gettyimages.com

By ADAM GELLER
The '57 Chevy was still a year away when the launch of the interstate highway system kicked U.S. car culture into high gear. But six decades later, changing habits and attitudes suggest America's romance with the road may be fading.

After rising almost continuously since World War II, driving by U.S. households has declined nearly 10 percent since 2004, with a start before the Great Recession suggesting economics is not the only cause. "There's something more fundamental going on," says Michael Sivak of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute.

The average American household now owns fewer than two cars, returning to the levels of the early 1990s.

More teens and 20-somethings are waiting to get a license. Less than 70 percent of 19-year-olds now have one, down from 87 percent two decades ago.

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Are Car Companies Minipulating Car Gas Mileage to Line the Pockets of Oil Companies?: Average Fuel Economy (25 Miles Per Gallon) Hasn't Changed in 100 Years

"Infinity MPG" (Photo by Christopher)

Fuel Economy: 1908 Ford Model T - 25 MPG; 2013 EPA Average All Cars - 24.7 MPG


"The average fuel economy rating of all new cars and trucks sold in June [2013] was 24.7 miles per gallon. "  ~~   USA Today, 7/8/2013

"Ford's Model T, which went 25 miles on a gallon of gasoline, was more fuel efficient than the current Ford Explorer sport-utility vehicle -- which manages just 16 miles per gallon."  ~~  Detroit News, 6/4/03

"The Prius is the first significant departure from the combustion engine to make any major inroads in the auto industry since Henry Ford invented the Model T in 1908."  ~~  Newsweek, 9/6/04

By Fred Burks, From Want To Know
What happens when we compare technological advances in various fields over the last 50 to 100 years?

In communications, we've gone from the basic telephone of 50 years ago to answering machines, faxes, instant messaging, and wireless cell phones packed with cameras, GPS, and more. Just 50 years ago computers were huge, multi-million dollar monsters capable of only rudimentary mathematical problems. Today, the portable laptop on which I'm typing can perform functions literally millions of times faster and more complex than its ancestors, and connect me instantly to anyone in the world with Internet access.

In engineering and materials science, we have gone from basic woods and metals to sophisticated plastics, fiber optics, nanotechnology, and other high-tech manmade materials and technologies that perform all kinds of functions which would have been considered miraculous 100 years ago. Television, movies, microwave ovens, air conditioning, radar, and gameboys didn't even exist then. In astronomy, biology, medicine, agriculture, genetics, electronics, and most any other field you can think of, we are not only generations, but light years ahead in both knowledge and applications of what was available 100, and sometimes even 50 years ago.

Now consider the areas of energy and transportation, and the oil and automobile industries in particular. Technological progress in these sectors has moved at a snail's pace compared to the fields mentioned above. Most cars and trucks still use the same internal combustion engine on which the Model T depended 100 years ago. And while the Model T boasted gas mileage of 25 MPG in 1908, average fuel economy for 2013 according to the EPA was only 24.7 MPG."

And when it comes to energy, most of the world still depends largely on huge, polluting coal and oil generation plants not much more efficient than those of 100 years ago. How can it be that we've had such dramatic, almost miraculous advances in so many fields, while the energy and transportation sectors have made so little progress? Could it be that greed and the desire for economic and political control by the power elite of the world have kept the profit-rich energy and transportation sectors from developing as rapidly as they might have in a more open climate, where big money and political clout did not suppress technological breakthroughs?

Genius inventors for the past 100 years have made remarkable discoveries of new, more efficient energy sources, only to find their inventions either suppressed or not given the attention and funding needed to break us free of our dependence on archaic coal and oil-based technologies. Consider Nikola Tesla, the genius inventor of AC current, fluorescent light, and laser beams, who has over 700 patents to his name. Tesla proved in 1900 that the Earth itself could be used as a very cheap conductor of electricity. He successfully lighted 200 lamps without wires from a distance of 25 miles.

Why wasn't Tesla's wireless electricity developed and spread around the world? His main financial supporter, banking tycoon J.P. Morgan, withdrew funding with the classic comment, "If anyone can draw on the power, where do we put the meter?" For more on Tesla and his amazing inventions, see PBS's voluminous tribute available here, or the Tesla Society website. A Google search will turn up lots more. Hundreds of other inventions and inventors (including a personal friend of mine) have suffered a similar or worse fate.

Below are short excerpts from a number of major media articles which suggest major suppression of technological advances in the fields of energy and transportation. For an excellent two-page summary of this vital topic, click here. You can also find a wealth of reliable, verifiable information at our New Energy Information Center. By educating ourselves and our friends and colleagues on this crucial topic, we can build a critical mass of informed citizens who demand the release of suppressed inventions and technologies that will pave the way for a brighter, healthier future for us, for our children, and for our beautiful planet. Thanks for caring.

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Austerity in Detroit - Pt 6: The Bankruptcy "Setup" — It Didn't Have To Happen, It Was Rigged by a Cabal of Legislators, Bankers and Politicians

A City Always On Verge of Low Credit Ratings Makes A New Deal With Banks: "If Detroit's Credit Rating Falls, Banks Can Demand Immediate Payment of 25 Years of Interest"  - Guess What Happened?

Wallace Tuberville, Senior Fellow at Demos and author of "The Detroit Bankruptcy,"
explains why he thinks Detroit may have been rigged to fail.

After decades of standing on the precipice of its credit rating falling, bankers somehow managed to sucker Detroit's reckless politicians into a suicide 'deal'. The 'deal' allowed banks to demand immediate payment of 25 years worth of interest if Detroit's credit rating fell. Of course, Detroit's credit rating did fall and the banks demanded their money, and Detroit went into default.

Some think it was a long-planned for setup: 1) The state forces an 'Emergency Manager' (dictator) on Detroit (even though Detroit residents voted against an 'Emergency Manager' in a referendum); 2) The state cuts revenue sharing to Detroit; 3) The state thus rigs Detroit to fail by lighting the fuse on a '25-years-worth-of-interest' bomb. This appears to be a sneaky way to impose 'austerity', privatize Detroit's assets, and 'payback' Detroit's unions for all those years of good pay and benefits — snatching back money paid to workers by stripping their pension checks and benefits.—Ronald David Jackson

Interview: Wallace Turberville, Senior Fellow at Demos.

Interviewed by Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh of DemocracyNow.

RELATED STORIES:

• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 1: Babies Pay for Detroit’s 60-Year Slide With Mortality Above Mexico's
  
• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 2: Detroit and Iraq — Both Are Plundered by the Same Bandits
  
• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 3: Detroit Residents Seek U.N. Intervention as City Shuts Off Water to Thousands
   
• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 4: “Operation Afro-Dilution” — Michigan’s Plan to Flood Detroit with Upscale Immigrants

• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 5: The Revolution Will Be Privatized — They're Bulldozing a Fifth of Detroit

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