America’s Emerging Economic Expansion will be fueled by Natural Gas

American ingenuity and enterprise will again place us at the forefront, and it will be very soon.

Our economy is on the upswing, and this is going to be a significant part of that big boom.

I predict it will be of longer duration, and of significantly greater strength than our economically prosperous period under the Clinton administration.

And THAT is a good thing.

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States Ask Detroit: ‘Build Us A Natural Gas Car, Please’

by Tracy Samilton

Listen to the Story; Morning Edition [3 min 28 sec] Download

August 3, 2012
More than 20 state governors are taking an unusual step to boost the natural gas vehicle industry. Independent of the federal government, they’re asking Detroit carmakers to build them a new kind of car: a midsize sedan that runs on compressed natural gas instead of gasoline.

Honda’s CNG Civic is the only natural gas-fueled sedan currently available in the United States. With so few CNG passenger cars on the road, pumping stations are few and far between. Tracy Samilton for NPR

The governors are hoping to boost demand for natural gas cars with their collective buying power. Combined, the states say they could ultimately buy thousands of CNG vehicles to replace their current vehicle fleets — if those cars were available.

Only a few kinds of vehicles currently run on compressed natural gas in the U.S., and only one, the CNG Honda Civic, is a passenger car. Detroit currently offers no natural gas-fueled passenger cars.

Filling up a natural gas car’s fuel tank is a cinch

BMW Tapped $3.6 Billion in Federal Reserve Funds During Financial Crisis

BMW Headquarters, Munich, Germany - Image via Wikipedia

By Chris Reiter – Dec 2, 2010

Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, the world’s largest maker of luxury cars, secured funds from the U.S. Federal Reserve during the financial crisis to boost liquidity as other sources dried up.

BMW’s largest transaction under the Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility was for $3.62 billion on Jan. 30, 2009, according to data released yesterday. BMW made “intermittent” use of the Fed program for refinancing at a time when other forms of credit were frozen, Mathias Schmidt, a spokesman for the Munich-based automaker, said today.

“We tapped into this program in 2008 and 2009 during the financial crisis