Intel shows off robotic hand with pre-touch object conformation

as a benefit to shareholders:

1. increased liquidity — being listed on the pink sheets means that many brokerage firms have limited access to the markets making it difficult to execute buy/sell orders. by listing on a real exchange, [potential] shareholders would have access to more liquidity
2. increased transparency — because the market is not nearly as liquid as it could be, most tracking tools don’t maintain accurate information such as dividends, volume, etc. i’m not a purely technical trader/investor but i do like to look at historical data when increasing, entering or exiting a position. i have no intention of selling my nintendo shares any time soon but i would really like to have better access to information, information that brokerage firms (such as etrade) would provide were nintendo listed on the NYSE or NASDAQ.
3. higher stock price — because many institutional investors are constrained by the type of listings they’re allowed to invest in, not being listed on an exchange (in the US), prevents many firms from purchasing what is a growth company. even simple index funds are unable to purchase NTDOY because it’s simply not included in an index. the “supply of buyers” in the US (and europe) is limited to individuals (and some hedge funds), suppressing what could (and should be) a higher stock price. just to note, many of the institutional buyers (mutual funds, retirement funds, etc) are also limited by the number of international holdings eligible for purchase. in many cases, the company is limited to 2% or less of their total funds being invested in foreign listings, which Nintendo maintains under the ticker 7974 in japan.
4. increased trading options — meaning options could be sold. one of my primary investment models, as outlined here, is to sell short covered calls on my equity positions. this enables me to receive a higher rate of return even in a stagnant or side-to-side market. heck, even in this “bear” market where gains are quickly eroding. in fact the bear market may be the best condition for me to trade in since i’m able to sell the options short on up days and ride the contract down to zero only to resell the next month. providing more choices, i.e. options, to investors is not a bad thing.

so, what do you think? i’m obviously for it. are there any blaring problems that i should consider?

the person who contacted me was curious about options and how i use them. i’m not sure if there was a single post that caught his eye or a series–forgot to ask. probably for the best.

i spent the first few minutes of our chat on gchat trying to delve into his current trading/investment habits. what was most clear to me was a lack of a plan–not on paper or in his mind. this is actually pretty normal i think. i don’t think i had a plan for a number of years…in fact, i’ve spent the first ten or so years of my investment adventure experimenting with different techniques. as i mention on the about page, i ended up living off swing/momentum trading for quite a while. since then, i’ve come to realize more and more lately that having a plan is extremely important. without the plan, we can’t know how we want to react and handle a situation that [potentially] requires immediate attention–but in most cases doesn’t!! in my case , i was an utter fool for not having a plan. i think a plan that clearly defined my investment goals, technique, approach, paradigm, whatever-you-want-to-call-it, would have put me in a better state of mind for managing my returns. rather than being only marginally better off, i’d be way better off. what a simple way to make myself feel stupid. lol

this brings me to my first rule of investing and trading: have a plan.

the best way i know of to treat a plan seriously is to consider my business. at least for me, it helps eliminate the gitters and anxiety of the stock market. i certainly can’t control mr. market’s offers or immediate need to sell (or buy), so i simply put a plan in place that helps me to be always profitable.

before going further, it’s important that you understand what an option is and how it works; so, if you’re unfamiliar with options click over to wikipedia’s entry, maybe follow up with a bit more reading from the external references and then get back over here. once you have the basics down, you’ll want to understand my plan a bit more–even if it only helps you to understand your own plan.

now, as we all know, an option contract constitutes the right to buy [in the case of calls] and the right to sell [in the case of puts] 100 shares of an underlying stock. i’m not going to recommend anyone purchasing/selling naked options–option contracts where there’s no underlying stock supporting the contract. in those situations, the investor or trader is taking a bit of risk that the contract will expire worthless and therefore have no obligation to own the underlying stock in order to procure the shares of an exercised option contract. besides not fitting in my plan, it seems like undue risk for lop-sided returns. just mon avis.

because my goal entails developing the largest stream of income while maximizing reinvestment potential, i buy underlying shares in the company. i don’t buy 100 shares at once, unless the stock is pretty cheap ($3-$5…i’m not talking penny-stocks), so i can make sure my entry price is actually at a fair value. maybe it’s just old chart reading habits; at the same time it really just comes down to me not wanting to pay full price. that’s a relative number typically so i just slowly build up a position over a month or even quarter. i also add to existing positions in this way.

covered calls:

again, i’m trying to maximize my reinvestment potential. that means i’m going to want my money to be compounding as often as possible (i like every 30-60 days). Luckily, option contracts are expiring once a month. So, depending on the option contract price and my total share number (100 shares to 1000 shares for example), i sell 1 to 10 contracts.

i choose the price that i feel i need to make the transaction, with general pricing metrics in mind. the nice thing about option contracts is they’re based on some pretty rigid mathematical formulas, namely accounting for underlying stock value and volatility. this means there’s not much fudging of the numbers going on. the market price is actually pretty accurate in my mind for that particular day/week. this doesn’t mean i don’t get to choose the price that i’m willing to sell for. it’s just about proper timing and . (so, yeah, you can definitely time the market…it’s just all a question of what we mean by ‘time it’.)

how do i figure my price out?

simple. i just ask myself a couple of quick questions:

what return would i be willing to sell these stocks for if the option contracts are ultimately exercised?

what is the value for the risk i’m taking to sell this option contract?

depending on the volatility of the market and the long-term growth potential of the company (again in relation to the violent swings mr. market creates), i set a % return. i typically want 20% return on the stock itself and 2-5% for the option contract.

so, if my shares are taken in the 30-60 day period, i’ll make 22+%.

again, i always look at where i think the stock is going to end that period at, so i’m not selling in the money options. i’m selling out of the money but not ridiculously out of the money unless i have to extend my reinvestment horizon out. (i’m a fan of 22% returns). the reason for not tending to avoid really-out-of-the-money options is that they are worthless at that point; i’m certainly not going to give someone the right to purchase my stock. i’m a greedy bastard.

reinvestment is of course an issue. so, what happens if the shares are taken?

i’ve never seen a stock that sky-rocketed up and then didn’t come back down to earth. if someone buys my shares because of irrational exuberance, fine. i’ll just buy it off someone other schmuck after the euphoria passed and the price is back down to normal, pocketing/reinvesting the differnce. (my definition of normal of course).

let’s keep in mind that as we implement our plan, the underlying stock may keep creeping up to the point where the stock 2, 3, 6 months before was ‘way out of the money.’ that’s just great in my mind. that means i’m selling even more out of the money options for an even better return. and if the price tumbles from there, i haven’t lost anything on my original investment. sweet.

another obvious concern is that i didn’t enter the position at the right value and the underlying stock goes down even further. so long as my break-even is out of the money, i don’t see a problem with selling the option contract for that exercise price. so long as i’m confident that it won’t end in the money. again, i can also just say, “shit. i didn’t do my homework correctly. i have to sell a LEAP.”

some of my companies are dividend payers, others aren’t. dividends are great because it’s just gravy for the reinvestment program or for starting new positions.

i think of it like this:

options are the monthly dividend and some of the companies pay me quarterly bonuses for good behavior.

i am in the process of getting ready for a trip to africa, so i may have left a step out or glossed over an important/debatable point. leave your comments and i will definitely discuss when i get back. and just for the record, i won’t even dream to think or imply that i’m the first to do this. that’d just be straight up ignant.

on that note i’m going to end this post with a poem that i’ve had posted at my desk for 4 or so years now–i also have a sign that says, “jesus helps me trick people” so go figure on the crazy stuff i have hanging around my desk!! i originally came across the poem in how i raised myself from failure to success in selling by frank bettger, and I think it’s fairly applicable to this post and especially rule one. (author unknown) it’s over my desk so i’ll read it at least every other day; helps me keep focused on the tasks and goals at hand.

There may be nothing wrong with you/The way you live, the work you do,/But I can very plainly see/Exactly what is wrong with me./It isn’t that I’m indolent/Or dodging duty by intent;/I work as hard as anyone,/And yet I get so little done./The morning goes, the noon is here,/Before I know, the night is near,/And all around me, I regret/Are things I haven’t finished yet./If I could just get organized!/I often times have realized/Not all that matters is the man;/The man must also have a plan./With you, there may be nothing wrong,/But here’s my trouble right along;/I do the things that dont’ amount/To very much, of no account,/That really seem important though/And let a lot of matters go./I nibble this, I nibble that/But never finish what I’m at./I work as hard as anyone, /And yet, I get so little done, I’d do so much you’d be surprised,/If I could just get organized.

Today:

OIL: Light, sweet crude oil. Oh how sweet it is! $111 and $110.70 were the highs I last saw. Passing $100 back in January was a benchmark. $110 two and a half months later? That’s 10% in that time frame! Can you beat that in an investment standpoint?

GOLD: That yellow-ish, shiny metal hit a benchmark today. $1001. Based on inflation, it is not at it’s all-time high. Actually, it is just about 50% less in value. If we go into a recession, we’ll be right up there again. Back in 1980 (taking into account inflation) the price of a gold ounce was just about $2,177.

DOLLAR: What’s up Benjamin? WTF. Since January I have been moving money to Euro’s through my ETrade account. And you know what? My buying power is increasing as the dollar continues dropping. I don’t think this will go on forever. But this year? My gut says it is… so far so good. The euro rose as high as $1.5625 and in Asia, 99.75 yen before hiking back to 100.27 yen. Seriously, this isn’t good for America.

Some recent blog posts on the topic:

k5dkz.com
blog.sharenet.co.za
crooksblog.sovereignsociety.com
thetraderblog.com

I also found an interesting post about the new $5 bill at chatterlounge.com. Check it out!

i’ve been a big fan of alternative energy for years; being immensely curious about the potential of starting an energy production company, i was always dismayed at how difficult it is to quickly get estimates for power-production (how can i calculate #s without a basis in input figures?). actually getting site assessment is extremely clostly and Firstlook eliminates a lot of the intial grunt work, especially for entrepreneurs (or even environmentally conscious consumers) looking to compare regional advantages of solar over wind.

keith says that the company’s goal is to provide wind-farmers more information that can leverage their power-production efforts to be more valuable, essentially by providing them models for how “dry” seasons will differ from “wet,” making a great head-to-head with hydroelectic power.

i aslo see this mashable as emensely valuable for developing nations. by eliminating many of the costs for a professional site assesment, a local village could locate where in their region a small solar or wind farm could produce energy for them. there’s not even a need for creating an electric grid and services like this one can really empower a local community. this is a win-win for those nations since they can simply by-pass the infrastructure costs of building a grid from the ground up, by instead focusing locally, rather than nation-wide. once there’s a small bit of power, the local development options can increase quite quickly: from water and agriculture to increased literacy rates (not to mention the internet!!). from my understanding one of the major hurtles to raising the standard of living is satisfying basic necessities, power generation being among those needs since the applications are quite numerous: food preservation to education to water & sewage management.

there’s no information on the site now for non-US countries/regions but it’s still a fantastic start and i’m looking forward to seeing more come from these guys.

also worth a quick note, i’m a HUGE fan of the business model which allows for the basic use of the product for free but then charges for more detailed reports or maps. fantastic! 3TIER’s distribution margins went to zero by being on the internet so content is generally free to produce and distribute and only the most dedicated need purchase the servcie.

founder/ceo Kenneth Westrick may be an atmospheric scientist by training but he’s definitely got the internet figured out! his business plan could be a page right out of seth godin or chris anderson’s play book. go westrick; serious kudos!

Here are my results:

Yodlee -
Yodlee is probably the most established account consolidation software on the net. You enter in all your bank, credit card, bill, travel, and other financial accounts, and you see all the data on one page.

BudgetPulse -
BudgetPulse has the ability to have multiple accounts, track money, and plan budgets. The system provides you with analysis, charts, reports, and RSS feeds with your data. “BudgetPulse, acts like pulse to show our health condition, is a simple online tool that aims to reflect our financial situation.”

Xpenser -
Xpenser is an easy way to keep track of the money you spend, as you spend it. You can add expenses via Email/PDA, SMS, Twitter, IM, Voice, or from your web browser.

WalletProof -
Very similar to Xpenser, WalletProof let’s you set specific budgets and then enter in each expense as you incur it.

SpendView -
The idea behind SpendView is to consolidate, categorize, and track your accounts. It seems to be very similar to Yodlee, but not quite as intense.

billQ -
billQ is a web-based application that gives you an easy way to keep track of your bills, receive reminders before they’re due, and make sense of them once they’re paid. With billQ, you always know exactly what you have to pay, and when you have to pay it.

Wesabe -
Wesabe is an online community of real people, with real financial goals and concerns. You can compare and discuss your finances with other individuals.

Mint -
Very similar to Yodlee as well, but looks much better. Great graphical interface that allows you to view all of your accounts and manage your money in one place.

i’m getting sick of the BS. seriously. “decreasing our energy security”? “increasing our over reliance on uncertain foreign supplies.”? common…just last week Krugman was saying we were no more dependent on oil today than we were in the late ’70s and now we have Republicans claiming that shifting energy policy to renewables is going to cause an increase in reliance upon foreign supplies?  i guess he didn’t take the time to look at the situation from a non-biased, informed perspective.  i guess he also[convienently] forgot about our war in the middle east…oh, right…that was to stop “terrorism”…right…

considering he’s been getting a majority of his funding from businesses this shouldn’t be a big surprise. we live in a nation supported by a few select mega-industries and there’s a lot of vested interest in protecting the “investments” in those mega-industries.

–relevant email to a discussion group i’m a part of–

it’s pretty funny to me actually. i mean on the one hand we want the “beautiful affects” of creative destruction within our economic system–but only so long as it doesn’t affect me or my business or my employer or my investment. as soon as creative destruction threatens an elite’s business segment (such as mega-agriculture or coal mining or healthcare or XYZ-issue * 1000), we don’t want creative destruction to touch us, so “we” put up policy infrastructures to prevent the affects of a market system.

i’m trying to address the contradictory nature of the status quo within the context of our society.

maybe we can’t look to history for help in shaping policies that would be socio-economic solutions to our current malaise of corruption and greed since there really isn’t a precedence for it. … europe, france and germany in particular, aren’t very illustrative examples since the economic recovery and growth they experienced after WWII was simply a result of needing to rebuild everything. germany hasn’t grown much since “everything” was rebuilt, especially now that eastern germany is pretty much back up to snuff. the real benefits to a society, as measured by capitalism, seem best framed by how much destruction occurred from war. chompsky gave a talk two days ago and cited chechnya as being on the road to recovery but he contextualized everything as being a recovery from russia’s bombardments. he deridingly said, “maybe iraq can one day experience the recovery chechnya is experiencing now…but that’s doubtful.”

i think in the case of the US, our best hope for sustained growth would be in moving toward renewables. power-production is a big $$ industry and getting our nation converted over from coal and n.gas would spur a lot (read as “SHIT TON”) of economic development–and make jobs. i think this is pretty appealing and i suspect it’s one reason, among many, that nader is pushing for solar. (as a shareholder in a US-based solar company, that also has the sound of “subsidies” to it…which will benefit me w/ a higher stock price. lol.

–end of email–

hubbert peak has some interesting graphs showing US domestic production of oil:

(the black line is US production; the red is our nation’s demand)

so wtf is mr. herger talking about?  seems suspect to me.

wired magazine has an interview with fred krupp, environmental defense fund’s head honcho, with some amazing quotes: (thanks environmental economics for bringing the wired article to my attention!)

responding to a question about competition from india and china as a result of us implementing mandatory and severe caps on emissions:

Krupp: It’s inevitable that those countries will adopt caps, too. We will gain a competitive advantage by going first. The real question is, do we want to import clean tech from Germany, Japan, and China or export it to the rest of the world?

very important question. i’m not sure what happened to the buzz of the early “2000s” but there were articles flying about that the US was falling far, far, far behind on in educating future engineers.  (for example, anyone remember the world is flat ?) one of our key advantages in the market place now is our head start over developing nations. that being said, china and india have really illustrated that it only takes a single generation to catch up.

in my mind, this becomes not only a question of economic competitiveness but future national security and prosperity.  i’m sure it will only be a bit of time before the “far” right “sees” the light…but i’ll bet that happens AFTER they liquidate their oil holdings–or make a big enough push for those companies to invest in alternatives.

an oldie but definititive goodie:

Look at what’s happening at Royal Dutch/Shell. Five years ago, working with Hamel, the company’s exploration-and-production division set aside 10% of its research budget for “crazy” ideas, proposals that were far removed from its existing operations. Anyone in the division could apply for the funding. And a group of four or five employees — all of them well-known mavericks and nonconformists — were charged with deciding how the money got spent. The strategy was called GameChanger.

Consider the implications. There were millions of dollars set aside for no specific purpose. The accountants hated that. The people making the funding calls weren’t managers, so they weren’t wedded to any existing projects. “Experience shows that in a normal hierarchy, people don’t like ideas that do not support their businesses,” says Leo Roodhart, innovation manager for the Shell group. “These were ideas that by definition didn’t fit with current business thinking.”

GameChanger creates a marketplace within Shell for ideas. Proposals are assessed within one week of application. If they are judged promising, they win seed capital and support. If early results meet expectations, the innovation is marketed within the Shell Group. So far, GameChanger has attracted hundreds of proposals. It has funded 150 projects a year, 10% of which have become commercialized.

another interesting quote, back to wired:

Wired: Why are so many of the leaders of the energy revolution the same folks who led the dotcom boom?

Krupp: It’s the mindset: Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are willing to take risks. And many of the energy technologies are founded in computing sciences. But the energy business is much more capital-intensive than Web apps. And ultimately, clean tech is a much more important revolution. We’re talking about the future of humanity, not how to find a date on the Internet.

i’m going to post on this separately because i feel it’s deserving of its own post but take BP as a counter-example.

the company yesterday admitted to having enough reserves to maintain output at 4 million barrels per day until 2020, without locating new reserves.  basically, the company said it has 12 years of viable operation left. (and here’s why it deserves its own post,) the CEO went on to allude that they may divest some of their alternative energy assets. duh! you just said you can only remain well positioned in business for 12 years and you’re going to sell your next, best-hope for remaining a company? what a dumb ass!!

conclusion:  vested interest will make people do stupid things.  greed connected to those vested interests will drive a person to a slow suicide… too bad the jerk, idiots are taking us all down with them!!

can we please, PLEASE get a real leader–or body of leaders???

maybe i should run for president when i’m finally 35…  

nader has a track record of fighting for the consumer, the little guy, the families forgotten on the tarmac to riches and a higher standard of living.

as readers of the blog know, i got really excited by obama.  i’ve since had time to look over his voting record and of course check other sources.  aside from the fact that having a black man running for president being quite the accomplishment for a still-subtly racist society is pretty exciting, i’m not sure i see myself putting the check next to his name…not now that nader’s back in.  i was emailing my friends just last week (”way before” the announcement) that if nader runs i’m going to abandon the obama-drum-beating and go with my gut and vote nader.  i have one friend in particular who was shaking his head in dismay that i was supporting a dem…i can’t honestly recall if that’s something i said i would never do or not…

reading through some blogs for reactions, i’m still seeing a lot of nonesense comments that illustrate, as mr. nader called it, political bigotry.  tim russert with meet the press is a smart  man for asking and probing into what nader thought the american reaction, and dem’s in particualar,  to his candidacy would look like.  obviously nader thought about this for a while when he responded:

Solon Simmons and other scholars–he teaches at George Mason–have shown that by pushing Gore to take more progressive stands, he got more votes than the votes he allegedly–were withdrawn from for the Green party. Twenty-five percent of my vote, according to a Democratic pollster, exit poll, would’ve gone to Bush. Thirty-nine percent would’ve gone to Gore and the rest would’ve stayed home. Every major–every third party in Florida got more votes than the 537 vote gap. So let’s get over it and try to have a diverse multiple choice, multiple party democracy the way they have in Western Europe and Canada.

…

If the Democrats can’t landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form.

so why is nader running?  (again, from meet the press)

Let me put it in context, to make it a little more palatable to people who have closed minds. Twenty-four percent of the American people are satisfied with the state of the country, according to Gallup. That’s about the lowest ranking ever. Sixty-one percent think both major parties are failing. And, according to Frank Luntz’s poll, a Republican, 80 percent would consider voting for a independent this year. Now, you take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut, shut out, marginalized, disrespected and you go from Iraq to Palestine/Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bungling of the Bush administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts, getting a decent energy bill through, and you have to ask yourself, as a citizen, should we elaborate the issues that the two are not talking about? And the–all, all the candidates–McCain, Obama and Clinton–are against single payer Health insurance, full Medicare for all. I’m for it, as well as millions of Americans and 59 percent of physicians in a forthcoming poll this April. People don’t like Pentagon waste, a bloated military budget, all the reports in the press and in the GAO reports. A wasteful defense is a weak defense. It takes away taxpayer money that can go to the necessities of the American people. That’s off the table to Obama and Clinton and McCain.

The issue of labor law reform, repealing the notorious Taft-Hartley Act that keeps workers who are now more defenseless than ever against corporate globalization from organizing to defend their interests. Cracking down on corporate crime. The media–the mainstream media repeatedly indicating how trillions of dollars have been drained and fleeced and looted from millions of workers and investors who don’t have many rights these days, and pensioners. You know, when you see the paralysis of the government, when you see Washington, D.C., be corporate-occupied territory, every department agency controlled by overwhelming presence of corporate lobbyists, corporate executives in high government positions, turning the government against its own people, you–one feels an obligation, Tim, to try to open the doorways, to try to get better ballot access, to respect dissent in America in the terms of third parties and, and independent candidates; to recognize historically that great is sues have come in our history against slavery and women rights to vote and worker and farmer progressives, through little parties that never ran–won any national election. Dissent is the mother of ascent. And in that context, I have decided to run for president.

what was really appealing to me about obama in the first place is the passion that he puts into his claims that he’s about change.  obviously this message resonates with a lot of people since obama has been steadily destroying hilary in the primaries.  people do want change.

the question i keep coming up against is whether people really want the change that obama says he’ll bring or if they just like the idea of change.   here’s a portion of my comment on “economist’s view” (cited above)

the democrats problems all come down to one thing: they act like liberals–meaning everything they say and maybe even believe is with a “left-wing” tilt but they really can’t reconcile that paradigm with being just as money-hungry, power-grubbing as republicans. essentially, the democratic party is a bunch of rich, elites who like to parade blacks and other disadvantaged minorities around so they can show the people that they have “their” best interests in mind. if they were just honest and real, they may actually be a party but this fissure in their political ideology and it’s foundation is too great to maintain a consistent party…so they keep losing to dough-doughs (like the pun?) remember, they don’t have the civil rights movement (among many other politically charging events) to ride the wave into office.

another way of phrasing this would be: (quoting my friend joe who’s way more informed about politics than myself–and much smarter to boot!)

It also rests on the false assumption that opposition to Bush was the primary political motivation of Nader supporters (as it appears to have been for Kerry).

What this argument fails to realize is that Nader supporters are primarily progressive liberal populists, and they therefore have almost as much to despise about the Dems as the Repubs.

Furthermore, Nader’s platforms tend to emphasize “voting your conscience” or “vote your dreams” by which he means that he endorses ideologically based voting.  He believes, as I do, that one ought to define one’s politics by what one is in favor of to a greater extent than who or what one is opposed to.  At times, in 2004, it seemed to me that Anybody-But-Bush folks defined themselves entirely by their opposition to bush.  They had no discernable stance on any issue except this vague notion “Bush bad.”

Anyway, all that is my understanding of how the forces were aligned in 2004.

I don’t see how they’ve changed that much.  Dems still define themselves as “we’re not them” to the extent that they court the middle.  They’re republican lite.  Non-committal (when not diametrically opposed) to the populist stance on almost every subject.

Plus, none of the old “survivor-like” mentalities are gone.  I suspect that many Democrats still consider Nader supporters to be naive, and to be unknowingly supporting the republicans.

I still know many on the left who marginalize the idea that democrats are not legitimately progressive.  They don’t tend to deny the claim, as those who do are easily refuted.  But it’s just not as important to them as defeating the republicans.

Personally, I think the whole bullshit distinction between democrats and republicans is like the acid-laced kool-aid of our time.

There’s far less difference between them than there is similarity.  Period.

Until the droves of allegedly progressive, allegedly liberal people on the left who support the democrats out of an alleged desire (hope!) for change wake the fuck up and quit drinking the Kool aid, voting, particularly in presidential elections, will remain a meaningless, symbolic, and divisive activity that only serves to perpetuate the status quo.  Things will not change until people realize what the reality is.  And to me, the primary fact that people miss is that there is no two party system!  Just like the spoon in the Matrix.  That shit is just a convincing illusion.  Wake up and smell the oligarchy, succa!

so, what does everyone think?

will a vote for nader be a vote for mccain?  will a vote for nader be a vote for a depression?   would regining in the costs for health care be a good thing?  would unionized clothing makers in malaysia be a bad thing for us?

what would the affects of changing our socio-economic paradigm to transparency, efficient government, reduced corporate influence on policy, etc, etc be on our country and it’s “growth”?  would we need to redefine how we define growth?  nader’s not a communist but i see him coming to office being something similar to a political revolution…

speical thanks to counterpunch for posting the transcript for me.

more reading:

•  http://www.counterpunch.org/colby02262008.html
•  http://www.votenader.org/issues/

well, it’s not too late:  if you’re going to be in the San Francisco Bay Area (and stanford-palo alto specifically), then feel free to stop by the stanford campus for entrepreneurship week.

here’s the link to the site and calendar of events.

i’m aiming to get down tomorrow (tuesday) for the mixer and the panel discussion afterwards,  so long as i’m not too hungry and follow my bodily demands rather than intellectual…  i did attend the mixer last year as well as a couple of lectures, and took the opportunity to discuss where people are in the process of developing their pet-projects.   a pretty good time as well as very educational.

yesterday’s piece still has me wondering about a few things:

That said, I don’t believe we’re really facing anything comparable to 1970s stagflation. For one thing, we’re less dependent on oil: America has more than twice the real G.D.P. it had in 1979, but consumes only slightly more oil.

i’d have to see some real figures before i’d buy this. our imports are still really high and increasing. lots of goods coming from asia among other areas. does this comment take into account the oil required to ship those products to america or is he just measuring our “at the pump” consumption? along the same vein, is he including the oil needed to ship our oil to the US?

the following graph shows a double in oil imports from the mid-to-late ’70s to now, so the doubling in GDP would corespond w/ a doubling of oil imports, making us relatively equal in dependency now as in the ’70s.

(from department of energy, energy efficiency and renewable energy)

these figures aside, i have to wonder if krugman is taking into account the dependency of our food system on oil. aside from food imports from mexico, requiring oil, we ship a lot of food domestically from corn producing states to the processing plants and then from there out to stores across america. i see a lot areas within that supply chain that are extremely dependent on oil and oil prices.

the other big difference between now and the ’70s is the growth rate of nations still industrializing. the global demand for oil is so much stronger. take a look at the two following graphs, also from the DOE:

i see some big differences in oil dependency that krugman is brushing aside.

so, has he gone off his rocker or am i missing something here?

aside from being really funny, i think it illustrates a few major problems within the financial industry. specifically, we’re not as transparent and investor friendly as government and policy officials would lead us “average joe’s” to think.

i have no idea what the solution would be. regulation doesn’t seem good but it’s pretty effective at forcing people to conform…but at the expense of growth? i think it comes back to our general morality; meaning, the business world teaches a hard lesson: lying pays most of the time. it goes against everything our parents told us growing up, and it’s not surprising to me that a few people will ruin everything for the rest of the group. enjoy the comic!

here’s the gist:

The idea is simple. Air would be blown over a liquid solution of potassium carbonate, which would absorb the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would then be extracted and subjected to chemical reactions that would turn it into fuel: methanol, gasoline or jet fuel.

This process could transform carbon dioxide from an unwanted, climate-changing pollutant into a vast resource for renewable fuels. The closed cycle — equal amounts of carbon dioxide emitted and removed — would mean that cars, trucks and airplanes using the synthetic fuels would no longer be contributing to global warming.

this sounds pretty interesting but let’s not forget about all the CO2 we’ve released and left in the atmosphere.

But to stabilize carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere would require drastic cuts in emissions, and similar solutions do not exist for small, mobile sources of carbon dioxide. Nuclear and solar-powered cars do not seem plausible anytime soon.

i’m definitely all about reducing emissions from cars and trucks.  unfortunately, the real problem i have with this type of suggestion is that it doesn’t solve external problems caused by cars and trucks:  roads and suburbia.

besides the ecological impact from habitat fragmentation and strip mining, we have bloated homes and suburban areas where nobody knows one another and nobody walks the streets.  there’s so much attention to building green homes and buildings that i’m getting sick thinking about the hot air being pumped up american-asses about how we’re going to fix this problem.  it’s not enough to fix the buildings–that’s great, don’t get me wrong–but, we need to fix attitudes addressing how we move our body-masses around.

i’m lucky enough to live in a city with plenty of “stuff” in walking distance and an amazing public-transportation system to boot.  when i didn’t live in sf, i had to find creative alternatives to the car (because i’m a tree-hugger like that); not being too creative i used to walk and ride my bike a lot.  ;-)  sometimes i would ride a bike to the grocery store but i mostly walked.  and what’s wrong with that?  well, it seems for the average person we don’t have time to walk or ride bikes.  (well, we do; we’re just not willing or able to allocate the extra few minutes it takes to walk or bike).  so what needs to change?

how we design cities.

unfortunately, we as a people continually insist on moving out further, getting our own piece of the pie.  i can’t really blame everyone for that either; it’s loud in the city.  cars and loud trucks bouncing along roads, horns and sirens blaring, etc.  cars are great for getting around in a hurry but they feed into an all too human tendency:  laziness.  extreme laziness.

it’s really too bad because our entire growth from the 1950s through now has been very suburban-centirc.  we definitely need to make some major shifts toward different social organization structures but i would worry this type of move would not be good for the economy in the short-term and will definitely meet a lot of head-wind resistance.  there are many forms of vested interest in areas like phoenix and las vegas where “spreading out” was the driving force for regional growth, and still is.  (from gas stations and grocery stores to insurance franchises and home depots).  hopefully, with the housing bubble deflating and a bit of sanity returning to people’s perspective on home-investment, we can get a bit more re-evaluation of our housing and city-design priorities.

we’ve really created a silly predicament for ourselves:  continue to depend on suburban areas to house our people, using roads and autos as our main trasnportaiton method furthering our laziness and ego-centric perspective on the world (you have noticed how people act as soon as they get behind the wheel right?  it’s almost as if once we sit in the driver seat a demon takes over our body and pysche making us all really stupid and really impatient).  we also have suburbia to thank for bigger homes and increased energy consumption in the home–it’s not all computer use!   OR we can move to more compact development and walking-cities but leaving deserted ghost towns as relics of a by-gone era.  not much of a choice.

it’s really going to come down to people coming to terms with our actions not being as justified as we think them.  we need to change minds…lots of them.  some people may need to lose a lot of money in the process [gasp] for these changes to come about.  for some reason i’m a doubter…institutions and “customs” don’t change very quickly.

the repurchase plan is probably a factor but the rising price of copper is obviously a better indicator of future performance, especially for a company that manages the entire cycle (extraction, transport, etc). the company has a great track-record of paying out dividends (at least great in my book), and the proletarians seem relatively at peace (i.e. no strikes), so the earnings should pick up again and the dividends right along with it. they have a new mining site opening up by end of 2010 but that won’t impact the bottom line for some time. it is worth paying forward a bit more since that is a strong indication that they’ll be growing but the rise and continued growing demand for copper is at least at the time of writing this a better reason for buying PCU on softness and just holding.

there’s more earnings related information in the southern copper 8k. i also highly recomend readers to check out david tsao’s recent post on southern copper. he points out a number of strong points as well as gives time to potential drawbacks.

all that aside, what do we make of copper demand and the world economy? are we able to remain confident in the greater health of the global economy and will that help the US recover?

i’m also a bit curious how you think castro retiring will affect the world and US policies? think we’ll see some young upstart who’s tied to chavez rise from the back-ground?  (democracy now has a good segment dedicated to this topic.  here’s the link; thanks democracynow!)