Clipmarks | deb2012's clips

Investing plan after the election

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:07:30 GMT

clipped by: deb2012

If Obama wins, buy infrastructure, tech, biotech, alt-energy, healthcare (non insurance) plays. You may want to sell oil, but I wouldn't do it, I would also sell defense contractors and possibly health insurers (although they may be beaten up enough with the prospect of a democratic administration).

If McCain wins, buy oil, gold, oil, more oil, some more oil after that, cigarettes, oil, other PM's (silver, copper, platinum), oil, what the heck, how about some oil, defense contractors, nat gas, oil, foreign stocks, oh yeah you definitely need some oil too. Did I forget to mention oil? You want to sell tech, biotech, possibly infrastructure.

Tags: investing, politics, stock market

Juglar cycle, long wave, and Democrats

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:28:56 GMT

clipped by: deb2012

Clip Source: tech.groups.yahoo.com

I have a theory about why markets do so well when Democrats are in
power, besides the obvious influences of Juglar cycles and the long
wave, which work regardless of politics.

Democrats tend to put more money in the hands of more people. They do
this by raising taxes on the wealthy while cutting them for lower wage
earners, as well as raising minimum wages, etc. Let's look at Obama's
proposal - let the Bush tax cuts expire and cut taxes for families
earning $250,000 or less per year. Now you have two groups. Millions
of lower wage earners who have more money and thousands of higher
earners who have less. Which group is likelier to spend the extra
money, thus boosting the economy, and which group would be likelier to
hide extra wealth in some offshore account? My theory is that even
the wealthy who are subject to higher taxation would more than offset
the increase in taxes by investing in the growing economy supported by
those with new found money.

Why are there rich liberals?

Tags: investing, stock market cycles, taxes

Where have all the leaders gone?

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:49:51 GMT

clipped by: deb2012
clipper's remarks: Lee Iococca says:

Clip Source: www.unobserver.com

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo?

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing.

Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debit, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening.

What is everybody so afraid of? That some bonehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?

Tags: politics, leadership

10 reasons to avoid nuclear energy

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 13:58:46 GMT

clipped by: deb2012
clipper's remarks: This issue is also related to water shortage and drought-read the article on this relationship.

Already, wind energy can produce electricity for less than five cents per kWh, and concentrated solar power can produce energy for 11-12 cents per kWh—even at night—and these costs are decreasing. Alternatives do not produce nuclear waste, and they do not face the same extensive safety, regulatory, and construction costs and delays that nuclear does.

Clip Source: www.americanprogress.org

capital costs

4. Unresolved problems regarding the availability and security of waste storage.

5. Nuclear faces concerns about uranium supplies and importation issues.

6. Nuclear reactors require water use amid shortages.

Large areas of the United States already face water shortages, and the effects of global warming are expected to exacerbate this problem. “Elec tricity generation accounts for nearly half of all water withdrawals in the nation,” and nuclear power stations require more water than fossil fuel use does. The only alternative to the water usage associated with nuclear energy is less efficient (and more expensive) dry cooling systems.

7. Safety concerns

mature technology—it will not get cheaper

9. Other clean energy technologies are cheaper, cleaner, and faster to build

10. Nuclear subsidies take money away from more effective alternative energy subsidies.

Read more

The Self-Limiting Future of Nuclear Power

Tags: nuclear, energy

China's plastic bag ban mostly works

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:11:19 GMT

clipped by: deb2012
clipper's remarks: except among smaller vendors

Clip Source: english.people.com.cn

China's ban on free plastic bags has met with a mixed response since it took effect on June 1. However, the ban has been implemented fairly well, especially in supermarkets and large department stores across China.

Some supermarkets have reported an 80 percent drop in bags consumed

The ban is likely to change consumer habits

The ban, in effect, was largely ignored or unheard of among small-time wet market vendors, who said charging for the plastic bags would repel many customers.

"My vegetables are only worth 50 cents- 100 cents a piece. It will be very hard to sell if I have to charge 20 cents for the plastic bag," one Shanghai vendor said.

Tags: environment

The most recent nuclear accident

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:20:34 GMT

clipped by: deb2012
clipper's remarks: more negatives than "just" polluted river

Clip Source: www.spiegel.de

The authorities first told the public about the accident half a day after it happened. It was almost a completely normal nuclear accident: cover up, deflect, stall. Those are the industry's tried-and-true methods.

nuclear reactors constantly emit radioactivity into the air and the water

When it comes to France, a third of its uranium comes from Niger, where it is mined using strip mining and underground mining

The company left thousands dead or ill with cancer.

Some may be interested in Africa about the waste and emissions from the mines in Niger, but the producers and consumers of electricity in the countries that purchase the uranium couldn't care less about them -- not even with the knowledge that the waste will still be emitting radioactivity a few thousand years from now. That is the lasting failure and the lasting scandal."

Tags: energy, nuclear, environment

Understanding the full cost of a nuclear power plan

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 13:46:56 GMT

clipped by: deb2012
clipper's remarks: History has taught us that civilian nuclear programs can -- and do -- lead to the production of nuclear weapons as happened in India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. The presence of nuclear power plants has provoked acts of aggression, even war. Israel bombed nuclear facilities in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. went to war in Iraq at least on the pretext that the country was developing nuclear weapons. The concerns surrounding Iran's nuclear intentions are indicative of the blurred line between civilian and military nuclear activities.

Iran's uranium enrichment program has inspired 14 other Middle Eastern countries to express an interest in acquiring nuclear power programs, a poorly-disguised cover story for nuclear weapons posturing.

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

Nuclear is too slow but, more importantly, far too expensive. The industry's own estimates now put the price tag for a single new reactor at more than $12 billion.

Moody's Investors Services Special Report issued in May 2008 projects that a power company announcing new reactor construction will see its credit rating downgraded by more than 25 percent because of the increasing financial risks that splitting the atom brings to a business profile.

This leaves the American taxpayer to foot the bill, continuing the federal subsidies pattern of decades. Experts at the Rocky Mountain Institute have calculated that the nuclear power industry has been supported by more than half a trillion dollars in federal subsidies since its inception. Renewable energy, by contrast, is a footnote, receiving just a 10 percent share of all energy spending over the past 60 years.

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

If cumbersome construction timelines and obscene costs are not enough to deter nuclear proponents, then the security risks should be

Tags: nuclear, energy

Here's where your money is going!

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:03:24 GMT

clipped by: deb2012
clipper's remarks: oil profits

Clip Source: www.globalconstructionwatch.com

Dubai Will Be Home To The World’s Largest Fountain

Tags: economy, oil, construction, dubai

U.S. occupation

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:26:35 GMT

clipped by: deb2012
clipper's remarks: "Now those that hate the US can condemn the US for its brutal success in defending its interests and those of other free nations around the world. But to instantly brand “Occupation” a dirty word belies the truth of history. The better economic and social system always wins...."

Clip Source: tech.groups.yahoo.com

In these days of transition in Iraq it is important to traverse the mine field of rhetoric on both the Left and the Right and find a reasonable balance. Not a balance that equalizes the rhetoric, but one that accurately predicts the future.

This is not the first time the US has invaded and “Occupied” a country

The three areas the US abandoned – Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam are all Communist states. The only remaining Communists states in the world.

Even Vietnam that has a firm economic footing today lags behind the place it probably would have been had the US developed better and more effective anti-insurgent techniques.

Germany, Japan and Korea were all occupied countries. Each one still has US troops providing protection. Each was criticized as a failure at the time. And each one drew internal protest.

The US occupied Cuba, Puerto Rico, Gram, The Philippines and Hawaii after the Spanish American War.

Tags: history, politics, war

River use banned after French uranium leak

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:32:34 GMT

clipped by: deb2012
clipper's remarks: If you allow your political leaders to move forward on nuclear, you'll see a lot more headlines like this in the future......

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Residents in the Vaucluse, a popular southern French tourist destination, were banned yesterday from drinking well-water or swimming or fishing in two rivers after a uranium leak from one of France's nuclear power plants.

Nicolas Sarkozy has prioritised exporting nuclear expertise worldwide,

The nuclear safety authority said radioactive levels detected in rivers and lakes in the region were decreasing.

Germany's Social Democrat environment minister, Michael Müller, whose party is opposed to nuclear energy, said yesterday that the incident should not be taken lightly. "It's no trifle when active uranium penetrates the soil," he told Agence France Presse.

Tags: nuclear, environment, energy

France the the beneficiary of nuclear growth...

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:30:30 GMT

clipped by: deb2012
clipper's remarks: even though their construction projects aren't going so well. That great sucking sound you hear is proposed or in-the-works nuclear plants blowing their budgets everywhere. French company Areva's first EPR project, in Finland, is two years behind schedule and at least $1.5-billion over budget. Its second, in France's Normandy region, is headed in the same direction, after construction stalled for several weeks recently.

It's not just the skyrocketing price of basic materials, such as concrete and steel, that's driving costs upward. So-called third generation reactors - such Areva's EPR and Atomic Energy's ACR-1000 - are still works in progress. And the two decades during which nuclear power faced desert-like prospects has left the industry grappling with a severe shortage of skilled workers.

Clip Source: www.theglobeandmail.com

Well before any of the planned nuclear plants get built - but possibly long enough after it will be too late to stop them from going up - the economics and logistics of wind energy, solar power and carbon capture will have evolved favourably enough to have changed the game.

"Within three to seven years, unsubsidized solar power could cost no more to end customers in many markets, such as California and Italy, than electricity generated by fossil fuels or by renewable alternatives to solar,"

So why bet on a horse

- nuclear power

- that

leaves behind the most deadly waste known to man - waste for which there is still no permanent disposal solution?

France

has staked its energy present

on splitting the atom

built an entire industrial policy on the idea

State-owned Areva is the world leader in nuclear energy

Mr. Sarkozy will stop at nothing to promote nuclear power globally, sometimes in the most questionable of places, such as Libya and Algeria.

escalating cost of nuclear

led

Buffet to reconsider

Tags: nuclear, energy

The new leader of Coca Cola

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:49:44 GMT

clipped by: deb2012
clipper's remarks: As of today, Coke is run by a Turkish man of interesting background and lineage who started with the company at the bottom.

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Muhtar Kent was born 1952 in New York City, New York, USA as his father Necdet Kent, was the Turkish consul-general. His father was called "Turkish Schindler" for risking his life to save Jews in France during the Holocaust.

After completing the high school at Tarsus American College in Adana, Turkey in 1971, he went to the United Kingdom to study at the University of Hull, and graduated in 1978 from the Department of Economics. Subsequently, he attended the graduate program in administrative sciences at the City University, London and earned his MBA degree at the Cass Business School.

Muhtar Kent returned then to Turkey to attend active military duty. Following his military service, he moved with US$1,000 in the pocket to the United States, where he was accommodated by his uncle in New York City.

found a job at the Coca-Cola Company through a newspaper ad. He toured the country in trucks to sell Coca-Cola, and thereby learned its distribution, marketing and logistics systems

Tags: business

Iran's monkey business

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 22:27:33 GMT

clipped by: deb2012
clipper's remarks: germ warfare or vaccination research?

Clip Source: www.timesonline.co.uk

Hundreds of endangered monkeys are being taken from the African bush and sent to a “secretive” laboratory in Iran for scientific experiments.

Rubibira indicated that finding out what the Iranians wanted the monkeys for would be difficult. “They cannot say, you know. They are secretive. They wouldn’t tell the truth.”

According to US intelligence, the pharmaceutical industry in Iran has long been used as a cover for developing a germ warfare capability.

— America, Russia, China andIran are among the countries still using wild monkeys

Tags: iran

nuclear Eurobarometer

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 22:35:39 GMT

clipped by: deb2012

Clip Source: www.maltamedia.com

Italy registered an increase to 43% of Italians in favour of nuclear energy since the previous 30% registered in winter 2005. Around 46% are “quite or definitely against” nuclear energy.

The most fervid nuclear energy supporters are the Czech Republic and Lithuania with 64% followed by Hungary and Bulgaria with 63%. Sweden and Finland follow closely with 62% and 61% respectively.

Malta registered one of the lowest percentages of interest with regards support of nuclear energy according to a Eurobarometer survey with just 15%. Other low percentages were registered in Cyprus (only 7% in favour), Austria (14%) and Greece (18%).

Tags: nuclear, energy

Auditors: Nuclear plants not following fire rules

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:17:47 GMT

clipped by: deb2012
clipper's remarks: with all the nuke plants planned around the world, is it really realistic to think there will never be a catastrophic accident?

Clip Source: ap.google.com

The Government Accountability Office said there were 125 fires reported at 54 power plants since 1995, an average of nearly 10 a year, although none threatened safe emergency reactor shutdown or posed any significant safety threats. The fires were mostly electrical or maintenance related.

But the GAO study said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been unable to resolve "several long-standing issues

The NRC did not immediately return a phone call for comment.

And the GAO report said the risk-based approach itself faces significant challenges including a shortage of "people with fire modeling, risk assessment and plant-specific expertise" to assure the safety efforts are focused on the right priorities.

Tags: nuclear, energy