Bob Morris @ Feb 18th 2008 22:27 - Category: Energy conservation Tags: Tata Nano;
Tata is planning hybrid, EV, and hydrogen versions for the Tata Nano, their newly announced $2500 ultra low cost car for India. Good! Low cost, low/no emission vehicles is precisely what the planet needs.
Bob Morris @ Feb 18th 2008 21:24 - Category: Unfiled ;
Bob Morris @ Feb 18th 2008 19:23 - Category: Renewable energy, Solar power ;
Japan is working on a plan to capture solar rays in space then beam it to land via laser beam.
Hmmm. How much power would be lost in transmission? How would you insure that no errant planes strayed into the line of transmission? And could this be used as a military weapon too?
Still, what if it did work!
Bob Morris @ Feb 18th 2008 16:13 - Category: Unfiled Tags: Icehotel;
The Icehotel has meter-thick ice walls and is composed entirely from ice. It is beautiful, unique, and really freaking cold at night. However, they do have heated rooms in normal buildings too.
While it might be fun to try the Icehotel for one night (they provide a thermal sleeping bag), I’m guessing the high speed internet access might be problematic if for no other reason than typing is difficult with cold fingers. Yes, I know, I’m a hopeless net addict with no appreciation for the finer things in life.
Bob Morris @ Feb 18th 2008 14:42 - Category: Election 2008 Tags: Clinton, Obama;
It’s pretty clear now that the Hillary campaign wasn’t prepared with a Plan B if its strategy for a Super Tuesday knockout punch didn’t work. Now comes a report that the campaign only recently learned that her “firewall” state of Texas allocates delegates in such a way that even a big popular vote win might not yield a decided edge in state delegates.
One wonders how the Clinton campaign could not have known. Is their announcement an attempt at manipulation and spin or yet another sign of an incompetently run campaign?
To use an analogy from business, Obama seems to be the disruptive technology that changes the rules while Clinton is the established dinosaur that can’t or doesn’t know how to change.
Bob Morris @ Feb 18th 2008 13:29 - Category: Renewable energy, Wind turbines ;
Too many environmentalists say they want clean, renewable energy yet continually block attempts at such. At heart, I think some are Luddites, wanting to banish all that newfangled technology so we can get back to the purity of nature and ride horses for transportation and burn wood for fuel and heat. Oh wait, if billions of people did that, the environmental consequences would be catastrophic - forests would be denuded and horse manure would be everywhere.
“They say they don’t like the looks of the wind turbines, I always ask them if they prefer the look of coal plants belching smoke into the air,” he said. “That argument really is starting to die down.”
Bob Morris @ Feb 18th 2008 10:25 - Category: Credit crisis Tags: Miami condos;
Miami is ground zero for the condo market collapse. “Investors” snapped up overpriced condos as developers continued to build way too many more. Now it’s all come crashing down and some banks are now refusing to fund any condo mortgages in Miami.
A buyer can still get a private mortgage. But it’ll be at double the bank rate (ouch) and with 30-50% down. This for a condo in a building where most units are still owned by speculators who are upside down on their purchase, foreclosures are common, and condo dues aren’t being paid. I’m guessing there will be few buyers for condos in buildings with dozens of For Sale signs and a swimming pool turning green with algae.
The Miami condo market is dead until prices fall much further. The ripple effect from this to their economy at large will be considerable.
Bob Morris @ Feb 18th 2008 08:45 - Category: Unfiled Tags: Venezuela;
Won’t stop oil shipments to U.S.
It was a toothless threat anyway. If Venezuela stopped shipping oil to the US, the US would just buy it someplace else.
Bob Morris @ Feb 18th 2008 07:07 - Category: Energy conservation, Renewable energy, Solar power, Wind turbines Tags: biogas, wave power;
From Greenpeace UK comes the absolutely dazzling and informative EfficienCity, a Flash animation of how a town could be designed to create renewable, clean energy. You can drill down to various sections of town, see how the grids work, then view videos detailing specific methods of power generation and more. Bravo!
Bob Morris @ Feb 18th 2008 00:17 - Category: Credit crisis Tags: CDO, CDS;
Image from NY Times article, Arcane Market Is Next to Face Big Credit Test, an article which is getting huge circulation among financial blogs as it is makes public to the world at large what the financial blogs have been saying for months, that the coming debt crunch could make subprime seem small.
Few Americans have heard of credit default swaps, arcane financial instruments invented by Wall Street about a decade ago. But if the economy keeps slowing, credit default swaps, like subprime mortgages, may become a household term.
Sudden Debt has a clear explanation of this impending debt market crisis.
The investment bank factories synthesized a whole array of artificial goods, ultimately far removed from the income streams of the underlying assets:
1. CDOs and CLOs, i.e. tranched bonds made up of loan packages.
2. CDSs on the above bonds, i.e. credit insurance policies.
3. Hybrid and synthetic CDOs, i.e. bonds made up of the above CDSs.
4. SIVs that issued their own ABCP in order to buy and hold the above “goods”.
5. CPDOs that were structured to own CDS income streams.… and more…
The alphabet soup seems thick and opaque, but don’t let the jargon confuse you. Here is the crucial point: almost all of these “securities” were unfunded debt, i.e. money equivalents created from thin air. All they did was to generate more and more “buying power” to boost asset prices higher, from houses in the Inland Empire of California to share prices in New York, London and Shanghai. In case it is still unclear: it was margin debt.
If you are familiar with buying stocks or commodities on margin, you can immediately appreciate what went on, and why all current attempts to avert a wider crisis will fail miserably for as long as the focus is on the symptoms, instead of the underlying illness. Margin debt cannot be “restructured” with falling asset prices. Period.
In other words, this entire pyramid of bizarre financial instruments was created and paid for with borrowed money. A hedge fund borrows ten million to create CDOs, which they then use as collateral to borrow more money to create even more debt instruments. Some hedge funds and investments can be leveraged 30 to 1 or more on this. That means they’ve bought $30 worth of securities on credit for every actual dollar they have. So, just a few mild breezes could easily knock such a house of cards down. Especially when some of what they bought is now worthless or selling for pennies on the dollar assuming a buyer could be found.
But with margin money, the clock is ticking. If the asset value drops below a predetermined level, the borrower is then forced to sell whatever they can to pay back all or part of the loans and can not hold in hopes of the price coming back.
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