Tibet in Turmoil

http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10870258&top_story=1

FED intervention explained

Paul Krugman has written up a nice summary of what the Ben Bernanke is doing.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/08/whats-ben-doing-very-wonkish/

I agree with most of the post except for the last part where Paul says the intervention is a drop in the bucket compared to the broad financial markets.

Steve Walden wrote in

http://interfluidity.powerblogs.com/posts/1204920896.shtml

that "a reasonable estimate for the current market value of bank equity is 2 trillion dollars. The $200B in "equity" the Fed will have supplied by the end of March will leave the Federal Reserve owning roughly 9.1% of the total bank equity."

But the conclusion of the two article is fairly similar, that the Fed is doing more bad than good.

"There are (unfortunately) banks that are "too big to fail", whose abrupt disappearance could cause widespread disruption and harm. These should be nationalized when they fall to the brink. But they should be nationalized overtly, their equity written to zero, and their executives shamed. "

I wonder who is too big to fail... uhmmm... Citi?

25 Green stocks to invest in

http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/2007/10/25green.html?kipad_id=5?kipad_id=5

Who does Obama, Hillary and McCain listens to?

http://biz.yahoo.com/cnnm/080305/030408_economic_advisers.html

McCain - Douglas Holtz-Eakin

"In his view, the sooner the long-term shortfalls in Medicare and Social Security are addressed, the better for the economy. Shoring up both programs would involve tough choices when it comes to spending cuts, Holtz-Eakin has said, a route he believes would be more effective than tax increases. "


Obama - Austan Goolsbee

"
In one of his New York Times columns, Goolsbee points to data showing income for the top 1% of earners rose disproportionately relative to everyone else both when tax rates fell and when they rose.
"Seeing the same pattern ... indicates that tax cuts weren't responsible. It suggests that cuts for high-income taxpayers likely gave windfalls to those whose incomes were already rising sharply because of broader market forces," he wrote.
"

Clinton - Gene Sperling

"With hundreds of millions of new middle-class consumers coming into the world economy, we should be confident that in the long run America will win more than it loses from an open global economy," he writes. "What practical options do we have between simply assuming greater globalization will lift all boats, and resorting to self-defeating protectionism?"

China Syndrome: Bring on the Nukes

http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/03/10/china-syndrome-bring-on-the-nukes/
"Shai Oster’s article in the WSJ today notes that China’s nuclear power sector is growing even faster than expected. The Chinese government is now shooting for 50% more nuclear power than it originally targeted—it now wants 60 nuclear gigawatts. That’s not far from what France has. Of course, in France, all those gigawatts mean 80% of the nation’s electricity supply; the same amount in China might be 4%."

"The WSJ article notes that a pair of local heavyweights, China National Nuclear Corp., and China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding Co., are gearing up to compete. In wind and solar, Chinese firms went from also-rans to global players in record time. Who will count them out when the race goes nuclear?"

"iPhone Bigger Opportunity Than the PC"

"The most famous venture capitalist in the world--the man who declared in the late 1990s that the Internet was underhyped (which it was)--put his stamp of approval on the iPhone today (AAPL). Yes, in part by creating a $100 million Kleiner Perkins iPhone "iFund" to invest in iPhone applications. But mostly by declaring that the iPhone represented a bigger opportunity than the PC."

Actually, I agree. But not with the current version of iphone. It needs a lot of refinement. What would really be revolutionary is if it where able to add tiny projectors that could beam a full size keyboard and a screen onto any flat surface. It'a already under development;

http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10789401

"Lumio, a company based in Menlo Park, California, uses this approach with a fixed holographic pattern to project a “virtual keyboard” onto a tabletop. The image is projected from a small device sitting on a table, such as a mobile phone, and appears as a full-size QWERTY keyboard. A sensor works out when the user's fingers press the virtual keys."

"Symbol Technologies, based in San Jose, California, has built a prototype single-mirror device with a resolution of 1,024 by 678 pixels that is a similar size to Microvision's (about 70 cubic centimetres). That is still far too big to embed in a phone, but Symbol says it expects to be able to reduce the volume to about 8 cubic centimetres, or the size of a large sugar cube. Single-mirror projectors are expected to be small enough to fit into mobile phones by mid-2009."

"Mr Tokman says the big mobile-phone manufacturers have set an upper limit on the power consumption of a projector of 1.5 watts. Given a typical phone battery, this would allow a projector to operate for about 2.5 hours, long enough to watch a film. "

"The first commercial pico-projectors will probably appear in 2009-10, initially as stand-alone devices, and perhaps as plug-in accessories for mobile phones (rather like the plug-in cameras that predated full camera-phones). If they prove popular, projectors could then be incorporated into all kinds of devices."

Shorting Gold

A while ago it occured to me that gold is overvalued, but the momentum keeps accumulating. I decided to be cautious and wait and see. Now Buttonwood agrees with me that it's overvalued.

http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10809383

"John Reade, a commodities analyst at UBS, who reckons that the fundamentals justify a gold price of only $700-750 an ounce, has “thrown in the towel” and now expects bullion to reach $1,025 within a month and $1,075 within three."

Maybe I'll rethink after gold hits $1100.