A lot of people who bought from 2001-2007 had previously resided in much smaller quarters. Moving meant much more heating and lighting in larger homes.

I wonder if that's what originally motivated Bushco to go for the housing bubble. I'll bet it helped them along a lot.

Hence the bubble burst with oil up 400%?

Heckuva job?

I'm not so sure that the energy situation for homeowners has gotten worse. Much new construction is energy-star, people may have used refinancing to install geothermal HVAC, etc.

Paulson has given up on bailing out the homeowners (it was enough work just bailing out the banks and securities dealers). So folks will just have to be foreclosed on. I guess this means that U-Haul rentals and moving vans will be burning a lot of oil to get people's stuff moved.

Paulson resists Congressional effort to stem mortgage crisis By Greg Robb Last update: 10:16 a.m. EDT March 26, 2008 WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Wednesday continued to resist Congressional efforts to stem the negative consequences to homeowners of the housing market collapse. Opposition from the White House could make it difficult for Congress to pass any legislation to help homeowners battling the mortgage crisis. "We will continue to pursue policies that strike the right balance: that do not slow the housing correction, yet also help avoid preventable foreclosures and unnecessary capital market turmoil," he said in a speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Paulson said the Federal Reserve needs more information from investment banks now that the central bank is lending funds to the institutions

The housing bubble added mostly large homes; even with better energy saving materials, these homes require more heating than homes less than half their size (the national average prior to the boom) and they still use the same proportion electricity to their size; which really increased the demand for electricity.

sovereign is right, the housing boom definitely added to big oil corp profits, and the additional demand doesn't go away with money troubles; these houses will continue to exist and will continue to use up energy.

Paulson is to big banks as Cheney and Bush are to big oil. He doesn't give a fuck about the American homeowner any more than Bush gives a fuck how much Americans are paying at the pump.

Sov,

I think you're intuition about the connection between the housing bubble and oil is correct, but you have the equation backwards. Oil was cheap when the bubble began and cheap oil made for cheap gasoline which meant commutes from the exurbs, while time-consuming, weren't a huge financial burden. The bubble burst as the price of oil soared.

While I agree that Bush is a good friend of Big Oil, it's hard to see him backing the housing bubble as a means to help Big Oil.

Considering Bush has other business interests as well, it's much easier to picture him backing the housing bubble in order to allow his business interests to shovel money into the house of cards and pull their profits back out before the house collapsed.

EVERYTHING Bush has done has contributed to making energy cost more. His other goals seem to involve Mexican land values near the border and China.