Where’s the peanut butter?!

Today I signed a bunch of paperwork related to mortgages and talked with my lender about how mortgage rates are determined. As with just about everything that any professional field does, there really isn’t that much magic behind getting an approximate sense of how this works. Apparently if you want to know whether you can probably get a 1/8th % better rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage, you should watch the 10 year treasury note. Fixed rate mortgages tend to follow fluctuations in this. I’m guessing the magic threshold varies, but right now I’ve been told that if you witness a 0.070 change in price of this note then mortgage rates might follow suit (up or down, with the note). USNews has more on this. Obviously the tnote doesn’t strictly determine the mortgage rate, but if you look at tnote pricing going back to the 80’s when mortgage rates were 2-3 times higher than they are today, it’s interesting to see that this was also about 3-4 times higher then than it is now.

In Seattle, probably like other major cities around the country, there is an option with electric bills to purchase renewable/green power. You do this by adding some dollar surplus on your bill which creates a buyer incentive for energy producers to produce green power. In principle this is definitely the kind of thing I’d advocate but there are a two things that I wind up scratching my head about…in no particular order:

1. The cost rates - consumers are offered three billing rates that add $3, $6, or $12 a month to electric bills to cover 25%, 50%, or 100% of your energy. Because their FAQ states that the average electric bill is $100 and mine is about $25, I figure that their definition of “100% coverage” really shouldn’t apply to me and I should sign up at the $3/month option which should cover 100% of the production of green power for my use. Or is there something I’m missing about this? Also, I’m not positive but I’ll bet that Jeff Raikes’ house in Laurelhurst uses a lot more energy than my address. I’m not positive but I’d hope that he has a gazillion computers running everything. Does he have a special option to add an equivalent surplus on his energy bill to fully advocate green power for his usage levels, or is the only option that people like me on the low end pay at the 100% rate to get full advocacy for green power from all of Seattle City Light’s customers?
2. What the program actually does - I don’t have the numbers handy but I think something like 80% of the energy produced in Washington comes from hydroelectric dams, mostly along the Columbia river. Since we aren’t building new dams, what does voting for green energy in this way really mean? I don’t know what the revenue from the program is, but it seems like an elective system to buy some green power might hint that they should invest in solar or wind power (since people like me are demonstrating that there is a market for green power), but the program described on my bill makes me feel like I am buying power directly from the dams (or wind or solar), which seems not correct. Also, I have the sense that hydroelectric energy production and my demand are both essentially fixed so I’m not totally sure what happens when I opt in to increasing my bill with green energy other than indicating to power producers that the market for green power exists.

I can’t believe I’m willing to pay $1 for a couple pills of Tylenol, but if you crush ‘em up and put them in a packet with some lemon flavored hot drink mix and call it Theraflu, I will. Couldn’t someone sell a pill crushing kit with some of that drink mix and undercut Theraflu? Because I would totally buy that.

On the one hand, RE-Load make some really, really cool messenger bags.  On the other, I’d have to be on crack and possibly living in the 18th century to consider paying $300 for a messenger bag that I can’t get for two months.  Adjusted for inflation, of course, to 18th century dollars where $300 comes out to “way too much.”