mdmrjsds
Loading...
Symbols:
Loading...
Symbols:
Hedge Fund Jobs
Job Seekers: Search jobs by category, get job alerts by email or live feed, apply online See full list of jobs »
Employers: See all recruitment options, get applications online or by email Post a job »
Trading Center
- Free E-Newsletters
- About Seeking Alpha
- About Us
- Contact Us
- What's New
- Readers Feedback
- Advertise With Us
- Contributors
- Contribute an Article
- Feature Your Book
- Our Contributors
- Anonymous Contributions
- Dispute an Article?
- Legal
- Terms of Use
- Privacy
- Copyright
Latest Comments92 Comments
Turkish Central Bank Surprises Everyone with Interest Rate Decision
Given interest rates of 16%+ I wonder how businesses can survive, let alone grow. Unless inflation is higher. The graph seems to indicate that it isn't as the real value of the currency is rising relative to the rest of the world.
So it seems to me that while the high interest rates will attract investment capital (if it is available, as you point out), they are also making it more difficult for the businesses in Turkey to compete in the international market (as you also point out). As an aside, with the additional step of pegging the lira to the euro they could make Turkey mercantilist like China, accelerating economic growth at the price of lower domestic consumption. Is it your opinion that this policy of high interest rates is to raise currency value as an indication of status rather than looking to expansion of the economy, and thus wealth of the population? You seem to imply this, while not explicitly stating it.
PS I think this whole concept of central bank as economic control is flawed, not only in Turkey but everywhere in the world, but I'm questioning like a Keynesian here.
Market Rallies on Geithner's Appointment: Why?
As you say, the appointment hasn't really changed anything. And the $700 billion stimulus package being bruited about only confirms that the Obama (our Hugo Chaves el norte) braintrust doesn't have a clue either (what do you expect, they're Keynsians too). The underlying problems haven't disappeared and aren't being addressed. And they really exist, they aren't just a lack of confidence, a figment of the imagination.
So there will be a relief rally as people hope that things are going to go back to the way they were. Unfortunately, that can't last long term, because reality is asking for payout. And it only accepts cash on the barrelhead. And there isn't any. About 3 trillion dollars of value has evaporated in the US economy. Who's going to pay? The answer seems to be our descendants and international central banks.
Manhattan Mansions Fall from the Sky - Barron's
> vbierschwale; while I agree with your point, the question that nags
> me is how to have capitalism, which is fundamentally buy low, sell
> high in every aspect from labor to investment, and allow existing,
> established communities to continue and prosper. Might be impossible.
>
> Cheap labor is a natural desire for any capitalist. When labor costs
> negatively impact roi, machines and resources are moved to areas
> where cheap labor can be found. Management clearly holds all the
> cards, and has always been willing to sacrifice communities that
> once provided the labor or outlets for it's profits.
The reason to get to stable or dropping population. Then labor is in the driver's seat as there isn't anywhere to move to for cheap labor. Imagine if every country in the world had the population trends of Japan or Europe. Growth comes from enhancing productivity and new product innovation instead of cutting labor costs by moving. In other words, if there is a shortage of labor, what happens to the price of that labor?
So stable or dropping world population is what we need for capitalism to work for everyone. Can we get there?
While ETFs are should trade at prices that closely match the value of their holdings, some thinly traded ETFs are having a hard time making that happen.
Market makers seem redundant. Like full service gas stations. Sure I charge you 10 cents a gallon more, but I clean your windshield and check your oil. The auction system can still allow those who want the convenience to have it. Just like Ebay has "buy-it-now"... the pseudo market makers could offer that.
For people who want to buy and sell large blocks of shares, they hire a broker to find them, and pay that broker directly for the service, or do them in small lots as auctions.
Maybe companies with more than 1 billion market cap should run the secondary market in their own shares.
The current model is way out of date with the times.
China: Will Rising Unemployment Cause Policy Missteps?
Mitt Romney's NY Times Op-Ed On the Automakers: Dead On
Well, we have what we have. Maybe he'll pull it out. So far he doesn't inspire much confidence. Business as usual. That's *Washington* business as usual.
Six Reasons for Cloudy Skies on the Solar Energy Industry
On Nov 18 02:05 PM frflyer wrote:
[snip]
>
>
> It isn't sustainable in any way. How about peak uranium in ten years
> or so.
> Nuclear power requires enormous amounts of water for cooling. In
> a world facing water problems in the future, we don't need that.
>
> Nuclear power doesn't give us energy independence. We import 65%
> of our oil and 90% of our uranium. And now Russia is being lined
> up as a future source of 20% of our uranium.
>
[snip]
>
> from the Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy
> ""The world’s endowment of uranium ore is now so depleted that the
> nuclear industry will never, from its own resources, be able to generate
> the energy it needs to clear up its own backlog of waste."
> "Shortages of uranium – and the lack of realistic alternatives –leading
> to interruptions in supply, can be expected to start in the middle
> years of the decade 2010-2019, and to deepen thereafter."
> "Every stage in the nuclear process, except fission, produces carbon
> dioxide. As the richest ores are used up, emissions will rise."
I went to the first link I found www.world-nuclear.org/...
on world uranium supply and found this.
* The world's known uranium resources increased 15% in two years to 2007 due to increased mineral exploration.
...Current usage is about 65,000 tU/yr. Thus the world's present measured resources of uranium (5.5 Mt) in the cost category somewhat below present spot prices and used only in conventional reactors, are enough to last for over 80 years. This represents a higher level of assured resources than is normal for most minerals. Further exploration and higher prices will certainly, on the basis of present geological knowledge, yield further resources as present ones are used up. ...
You do your argument a disservice by using exageration. If you are so far off in this, what about any of your arguments?
I have nothing against solar. I only want my lights to come on when I turn on the switch, and my AC to run when it's hot. And I want to pay a reasonable price to have that happen. As soon as solar has a payback period less than 20 years I will probably install it (nanosolar is talking $1/watt, but that is probably vaporware).
It sounds like for you it is a religion or a crusade.
>
>We could power the whole country with these, using less land than we >now use for coal plants and coal mines. And they will compete head on >with fossil fuel plants cost wise.
>salon.com/news/fea...
>Excellent article on solar thermal.
Here is a response to the article at the link you give above that gives a saner viewpoint.
... More Engineers please...
Can we get an Engineer to write one of these articles sometimes instead of someone who has seen many presentations?
"must provide thousands of gigawatts of power..."
Yes, we have a word for this - terawatts. Reminds me of Once Upon a Time in the West - "thousands of thousands!" "They've got a word for that - million".
A 92milex92mile CSP array will also be unfeasibly vast (around 8,400 square miles).
There is no "silver bullet". There is no magical technology, like a plug-in hybrid, that will solve everything (as an engineer working on hybrid vehicles, I have quite a good insight into the difficulties getting them mass produced and into public hands). What we need is a good, diverse mix of technologies - yes, there are large CSP arrays in Spain and other areas of Europe, for instance, but this is diversified with other technologies including nuclear (fast-breeder reactors, very safe and very efficient), photovoltaic, hydroelectric (using various types of generator, not encased solely in huge dams). Likewise, for vehicles, hybrid vehicles operating on a mix of fossil/bio-fuel generators with supplemental "green" mains supply (plug-in, to use the popular phrase) are the most pressing solution at the present, along with a transition to fewer vehicles and more comprehensive public transport network (difficult for some in the US to comprehend). Hydrogen vehicle technology presents an important development, but Honda's FCX-demonstrators aside, this will not be practicable or cheap for the intermediate future.
Fewer random people who read stuff and view presentations writing articles like this please, and more from engineers and scientists working in the field. ...
Extreme Anxiety in the Anxious Index
> Who are the 25% of forecasters that do not see a recession in the
> next quarter? They must be Bush economists.
Actually they are followers of the new messiah. They think that once he waves his arms, the recession will disappear. ;-)
"And lo, they were crying in the wilderness, and he said unto them, I will lead you to the promised land. And they believed upon him, and annointed him, and praised him, crying 'The one has arrived, the one has arrived'."
Is American Express Worth the Risk?
> It is just me, or is it just freaking great that my tax dollars are
> now funding those social parasites known as credit card companies,
> the production of bling Hummer SUV's, and the same "investment" banks
> that moved their headquarters offshore to avoid paying taxes into
> the system they now suck money from.
I'm with you Chris B. I don't see how Amex is *essential* to the functioning of the American economy. If you allow Amex to receive money, there is no ethical way to deny GMAC, and thus GM, access to the same program. Actually, any firm that has a financing arm has to be granted access. So retail is now acceptable as well and Circuit City can suck at the public teat too.
I suspect this is a function of Hank Paulson's connections and favoritism towards finance, not any kind of rational policy. Hey, he's going to be looking for a job in a few months. ;-)
There was another post on Seeking Alpha about creating a new financial system with the 700 billion instead of just giving it to the failed institutions. seekingalpha.com/artic... Put them into chapter 7, and sell off their assets to the new institutions. Just like it is difficult to get union workers to think non union, it is difficult for these managements to think different business model. Better to just put them back into the job market and salvage the going concern parts of their business under new management (lop off three or four tiers, say all headquarters management levels).
Or they go into Chapter 11. Their boards of directors' made mistakes. Who selects the board of directors? Executive management, who also made mistakes. So the creditors force out executive management and the board of directors and everyone else pays. That's capitalism.
Obama's Green Obsession: More Harm Than Good?
Anyone who has studied thermodynamics (by that I mean understands thermodynamic efficiencies), realizes that it is energy that is the key to everything in the economy. The Austrians will tend to appeal to these folks because they are closer to the truth of reality. Their insistence on gold as a medium of exchange is close but flawed, and misses the point that you have made above, that capital is energy stored against entropy. The rest of their analysis is in line with thermodynamic understanding. And the universe, as far as we know, is in line with thermodynamic understanding. Probably our economic policies should be too. ;-)
Of course, Keynesians point to success of their policies. But those successes are all short term (years or decades, not centuries) and not sustainable. That is, they look at only part of a system, disregarding the flows across the system boundaries. They think they have discovered perpetual motion because they are adding energy without realizing it. Economic theory will eventually catch up with reality. Politics keeps it from seeing that connection, but it only slows it down. There are enough smart people there that eventually they will find their errors.
This would be much quicker if so many economists (all?) weren't scientific illiterates themselves.
I'll state it directly for those who still haven't got it. Economics can't contradict the principles of science, the underlying laws that our corner of the universe seems to run on. If it appears to, then you haven't understood the system, or aren't examining the complete system. Financial hijinks can appear to make something out of nothing, but it really doesn't. As we are currently discovering.
Energy is conserved, entropy increases.
The End of the Economy As We Know It?
> Until a society is willing to except a limitation on individual wealth,
> the boom bust cycle will continue to repeat itself. Trust cannot
> be achieved in a society that worships its wealthy class.
>
I suggest that it is a limitation of *inherited* wealth that is required. Let everyone make as much money as they can during their life. And let them give their children as much education and life training as they desire. But tax any wealth passed to their children at 95% or 99% so that the children have to make it on their own. This removes the concentration of wealth, and the formation of webs of corruption that we see so prevalent in our culture today. I don't think we worship the wealthy, it is the wealth that everyone is worshiping, the lifestyle it buys.
Of course, this also requires that corporations be isolated from the political process, as it is easy for the officers to subvert them to their own ends. They need to be forbidden from any participation in the political process. That doesn't mean their officers can't participate with their own money and on their own behalf, just that resources of the corporation can't be used.
What SW Richmond has described above is owed partly to the influence of these two factors on our political economy.
Would their lack fix all the problems with our system? No, there are other factors that need to be fixed as well.
Governance of corporations is out of the control of their shareholders, and they are no longer under control.
Our congress has become unresponsive to the voter. We have taxation without representation.
Our money supply is managed to the benefit of the financial class. The mechanism needs to be redesigned.
We have an unsustainable entitlement system. We have to learn to live within our means.
Our legal system is a morass, incapable of being navigated. We need twighlight clauses on all laws so they have to be reexamined periodically for relevance. And laws should be enforced to intent, not letter. The job of congress should be to debate the intent of a law and state it plainly. Let the legalese be written by subcontracted lawyers.
And many more. Just because the founding fathers had the vision to create a system that lasted this long doesn't mean it is perfect and doesn't need revision as society and technology change. We've come to worship things the way they are, as if they are sacrosanct. That way lies decay and stagnation.
Our misfortune stems from the fact that the people who should lead that effort, our congress, is decadent and incompetent and subverted. We need some sort of plebiscite process to force congress to act when enough of the populace are aroused enough to demand it through petition.
Currently our alternatives are to continue as things are or armed insurrection. The plebiscite allows middle ground.
Should We Really Bail Out the Big Three Automakers with $73.20 Per Hour Labor?
Our management compensation is way out of whack because our corporate governance is way out of whack. If you have the people skills to get to the CEO slot, are you going to put members on the board that won't give you exactly the pay you want? Yeah, sure you are.
Check out congress. They give themselves a non taxable income with a pay raise every year, 100% pay in retirement, 100% gold plated health coverage for life. Members of congress may disagree with each other on lots of things, but they agree on one thing: looking after members of congress. So we have a congressional governance issue as well as a corporate governance issue.
Unions did good in their time, but they are anachronisms in the workplace now. All of the good they forced has been taken over by the government. We're all union members now, the government is our union. Are there problems with union governance? There sure are. I've worked in union shops and what 'work at ford' says above is true. Too many workers, work to rule, no drive. I've spoken to people who worked at autoworkers during their hayday. People clocking in and then going to sleep in the warehouse for the rest of the day, etc.
What is happening is that we are competing, at all levels, with workers who are more desperate than we are. Both the illegals here who will live and work under conditions we would never tolerate, and with workers in places where people have too many babies they can't afford and are even more desperate than the illegals here.
And just like the union workers have taken it on the chin from that competition, the time is coming when the management workers will take it on the chin. Why pay someone who is so incompetent they cost their company billions of dollars exorbitant rates of pay when you can hire offshore workers that can't do any worse for 10% of the amount?
And as long as people in those third world countries don't limit their population growth so the desperation eases, there is nowhere to hide. It is going to happen. It is as assured as watching a tsunami wave sweep in towards shore.
The American way of life and standard of living was predicated on a lack of competition both in production and access to raw materials. That is now ending. And so our way of life has to end.
That doesn't mean we can't have a decent way of life, and a decent country. We still have a lot of innovation, of educated workers, of industry, and research. But it means there is no going back to the glory days where we lorded it over the world, and were able to indulge in excess.
Now, eventually the people in those places where they breed without restraint will get some clue and realize they don't like watching their children suffer, that they want to do right by their children, and will limit their population growth. At that point, among other good things that happen, the supply of labor becomes constrained again, and workers wages go up. Then there will be a boom that will make anything in history look like it was playacting. And all sorts of positive effects will occur; the end of war, and poverty, and hunger.
But that is a ways off yet. And we might not get there.
Nuclear Energy and the Next American President
What you didn't spell out, probably as being too obvious, is that when CF is very low, you need huge amounts of redundant capacity. So a wind facility at 17% CF has to have 5 times the capacity of a nuclear faciltiy at 85% CF. That costs. And there is still a reasonable chance it will not be there to meet requirements. If the wind doesn't blow, it doesn't generate no matter how much capacity it has.
My question to those who tout wind and solar is, "Are you willing to go without power when they aren't there, when they can't meet the capacity?"
What is really needed is not solar and wind on the grid, but a means of converting the electricity from such resources into liquid fuel, easily portable and that directly displaces imported oil. Even methane, natural gas, would be better than intermittent electricity. Then the intermittence doesn't matter. When there is wind or sun, they produce fuel, when there isn't, they don't. And no one is inconvenienced.
Developed countries are developed because the per capita usage of energy is high. There is no way that the three quarters of humanity that don't have a developed lifestyle are going to get to developed status and stay there without the use of nuclear. At least, I don't see a way. And it appears from their actions that India and China don't see a way either. Maybe fusion power will finally get here and change that.
Don't Follow the Wall Street Crowd - Prepare for Market Rollover
www.ers.usda.gov/publi...
Of course, there have been so many other changes in so many dimensions in the US since then that any comparison with 1930 is almost irrelevant for policy purposes.
When Can You Trust Economics Papers?
What I'm saying is that economics is not a science, so its conclusions must be judged and used accordingly.