Wednesday - September 10, 2008

Secret investments reveal China’s stealthy advance into UK.  Should Brits be worried?

Secret investments reveal China’s stealthy advance into UK Plc

The Chinese central bank, one of the most secretive in the world, is amassing shares in many of Britain’s blue-chip companies.
Malcolm Moore in Shanghai and Mark Kleinman in London report

It was a bitterly cold January day in Beijing, and events at home meant Gordon Brown was entitled to believe the chill would endure. The crisis engulfing Northern Rock, the mortgage lender which months earlier had been forced to seek emergency funding from the Bank of England, would soon need to be resolved; and as far as the media was concerned, Brown was being poorly served by the fact that Sir Richard Branson, one of a clutch of private-sector bidders for the bank, was spending the trip to the Chinese capital in close proximity to him.
# Revealed: Chinese bank’s £9bn raid on British shares

But for the beleaguered Prime Minister, it was not all bad news. As he toured Beijing, taking in the still unfinished Bird’s Nest stadium, Brown was anxious to emphasize what little upside he had to grasp: Britain’s burgeoning trade links with the Middle Kingdom.

“The greatest benefit to China is that we, Britain, will continue to oppose protectionist forces and will remain the foremost advocates of the openness in the world economy, essential not only to China’s prosperity but to the world’s,” he said.

“The biggest benefit to Britain is that we strengthen our place as the destination of choice for Chinese business and Chinese investment. I hope to see Britain benefiting from a large share of investment from China’s £1bn sovereign wealth fund.”

Brown may have been confused about the numbers (the fund in question was capitalised with about $200bn of the country’s vast foreign exchange reserves when it launched last year), but the sentiment was clear: Britain was wide open to Chinese investment.

Little did Brown know how right he was. Since his January visit, when the FTSE100 opened 2008 at 6456.9, Britain’s blue-chip index has fallen nearly 19 per cent to close last Friday at 5,240.7. And while many investors, spooked by the deepening economic gloom in Britain and abroad, have taken fright from equities, Beijing has been piling in.

In total, investment entities either controlled by or affiliated to the Chinese government now own stakes in at least half of the FTSE100, and probably considerably more. 

(FTSE-100, Brit stock market)

An analysis by The Sunday Telegraph reveals today that the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, owns shares in many of Britain’s household corporate names, including Cadbury, HSBC, the London Stock Exchange, Marks & Spencer and Tesco.

These previously secret investments are in addition to known stakes in BG Group and Drax Group, the energy companies, and Legal & General, Old Mutual and Prudential, the insurers.

In total, the stakes held by the People’s Bank are valued at about £9bn, according to the share prices of the companies concerned last week.

Many of the shareholdings are held through nominee accounts registered in locations including Hong Kong and are technically held by State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), the body which sits within the central bank and has the responsibility of managing the forex reserves accumulated from China’s decades-long exports boom.

A number of other FTSE100 companies say privately they believe the People’s Bank of China to be an investor but have not established the paper trail which leads to the shares’ ultimate owners. Smiths Group, the FTSE100 engineering firm, was this weekend trying to establish with the assistance of JP Morgan, the investment bank, the provenance of a small shareholding believed to be owned by the Chinese government.

Even allowing for the investments which can be established, however, China’s central bank is now a common name among the ranks of ‘institutional’ investors, like the giant pension funds, fund managers and hedge funds, which litter the FTSE.

At £9bn, SAFE is now thought to rank among the top 25 investors in the London stock market, underlining China’s status as a global economic powerhouse

Such ownership of British stocks is nothing new, even among the investment bodies of Middle Eastern and Asian economies which in recent times have become known as sovereign wealth funds.

The Kuwait Investment Authority, for example, has been an investor in BP since the 1980s, while the two principal investment funds of the Singaporean government have become major shareholders in companies including British Land and Standard Chartered.

I have added below just a few of the comments posted by readers of The Telegraph. 

I’ll gladly welcome the Chinese, after all, their food tastes better
Posted by Aaron Powell on September 10, 2008 10:34 AM

In my professional opinion, it’s about time that an eastern country began to call the shots, especially one as industrious as China.

The dominance of the west is fading and politicians and economists alike are beginning to realize the overcasting shadow of China’s rise to power.

Clearly, it’s time for the baton to be handed to China, their country boasts a rich heritage and sooner or later, the nationalists in their government will be ruthless in elevating China to a level superseding what any previous superpower would have dreamed of.
Posted by Anthony Liu on September 10, 2008 10:25 AM

Prudent farm workers saving their cash while the Land owner gets lazy and complacent ? What a lot of nonsense. The Chinese are rich for the same reason that Britain became rich in the halcyon days: through the use of SLAVE labor. You can never compete with that.
Still, if a little pilates at lunch time keeps them all content, who am I to comment.
Posted by Matt on September 10, 2008 10:21 AM

The British, of all countries, shouldn’t fear foreign investment, as the British are the 2nd largest foreign investors in the world. Indeed, many a mining company making billions off the Chinese economic boom is British owned.

Being such an integral part of the globilised economy is what has given the UK its much famed 60 quarters of growth. Long may that continue!
Posted by Cuthbert on September 10, 2008 5:30 AM

you don’t get it people, I’m of Asian descent and have traveled extensively in Asia and know first hand how vengeful and vindictive the Chinese are. they are still looking for payback for Britain controlling china all those colonial years ago. if you don’t stop them now they will eventually enslave your little island. this is dead serious and no joke.
Posted by Rex on September 10, 2008 4:00 AM

This article’s headline and main gist smacks of either ignorance or prejudice. The list just simply indicates a very diverse portfolio, with small percentage holdings in each. Why should you ALWAYS perceive China’s investments as suspect? Just because it’s officially ‘communist’ and thus a potential ‘enemy’ with ‘evil intentions’? Shame on the Daily Telegraph for persisting in such ideological crusades.
If anything, the very fact that China’s private and public sectors are embracing money and capitalism should be great news to all. Once they have a stack in the Capitalist world, they will be further from their self-proclaimed ‘communism/socialism’, and be more integrated into the international framework.
Perhaps, the reason why China’s central bank is dabbling in such investments is that unlike other more skilful and experienced international players, they are still new to the CLEVER idea of forming a separate investment company, which other countries’ governments have done?
Posted by Edwin Heng on September 7, 2008 7:18 AM

http://tinyurl.com/6ndc53

   Tuesday - August 19, 2008

Dollar surge will not stop America feeling the effects of a global crunch.

Hold on ter yer ats me buckeroos. We’re in fer a bumpy ride.

Not that I really fully understand all this stuff to be honest.  I have to have it explained to me half the time.  So ok, 3/4s of the time.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Last Updated: 11:07pm BST 17/08/2008

Two alerts landed on my desk this weekend from the elite markets team at Goldman Sachs. One was entitled “The Dollar Has Bottomed!”. Those betting on an imminent disintegration of American economic and political power may have to wait another cycle. Rival hegemons are falling like ninepins.

The US dollar index hit an all-time low in March. It crept slowly upwards in the early summer before smashing through layers of resistance over the past month.

The surge against sterling, the euro, the Swiss franc and the Australian dollar is one of the most spectacular currency shifts in half a century. “Something fundamental has changed,” said the bank. Indeed.

US industry is now super-competitive, if small. Mid East funds are drawing up shopping lists of Wall Street takeover targets. Airbus and Volkswagen are shifting plant to America to escape crushing labour costs.

US exports have risen 22pc over the past year, outstripping Chinese growth. The US non-oil trade deficit has shrunk by two fifths since 2002. It is now running at $300bn a year. This is 2.1pc of GDP.

The other note advised clients to “Take Profit on Globalization Basket”, especially on Eastern Europe currencies. Goldman Sachs has quietly dropped its talk of $200 oil. Even Russia’s petro-rouble is now deemed suspect.

The twin missives more or less sum up the dramatic change in mood sweeping financial markets since it became evident that the entire bloc of rich OECD countries has succumbed to the delayed effects of the credit crisis.

Japan contracted by 0.6pc in the second quarter, Germany by 0.5pc, France and Italy by 0.3pc. Spain recalled the cabinet last week for an emergency summit. New Zealand and Denmark are in recession. Iceland contracted at a catastrophic 3.7pc in the second quarter.

“The whole decoupling thesis has started to come apart at the seams,” said David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC. “Canada is frozen over. We have Arctic conditions in Sweden, and the UK is falling off the white cliffs of Dover.”

The UK economy is not my brief, but I see that hedge funds are circulating a report from the US guru Jeremy Grantham predicting a very bad end to Gordon Brown’s debt experiment.

“The UK housing event is probably second only to the Japanese 1990 land bubble in the Real Estate Bubble Hall of Fame. UK house prices could easily decline 50pc from the peak, and at that lower level they would still be higher than they were in 1997 as a multiple of income,” he said.

“If prices go all the way back to trend, and history says that is extremely likely, then the UK financial system will need some serious bail-outs and the global ripples will be substantial.”

For months the exchange markets ignored this impending train crash, just as they ignored the property bust in Europe’s Latin Bloc, or the little detail that UBS alone had just lost the equivalent of 8pc of Switzerland’s GDP. All they cared about in the currency pits was the interest rate gap: US low, Europe high.

Now the paradigm has flipped. The Fed may have been right after all to slash rates to 2pc. The European Central Bank may have panicked by tightening in July. Note that the elder Swiss National Bank did not do anything so rash.

Bulls now believe America is turning the corner. Financial stocks are up 20pc since early July. Some “monoline” bond insurers have risen 1,200pc in a month as fears of Götterdämmerung give way to sheer intoxicating relief, and a “short-squeeze”. Such are bear-trap rallies.

Regrettably, I remain beset by gloom. The US fiscal stimulus package that kept spending afloat in the second quarter is running out fast. There is nothing yet to replace it. The export boom cannot keep adding juice as the global crunch hits. My fear is that the US will tip into a second, deeper leg of the downturn, setting off a wave of savage job cuts. This will start to feel more like a real depression.

The futures market is pricing a 33pc fall in US house prices from peak to trough, based on the Case-Shiller index. Banks have not come close to writing off implied losses on this scale.

Daniel Alpert from Westwood Capital predicts that a mere 28pc fall would alone lead to a $5.4 trillion haircut in US household wealth, and leave lenders nursing $1.25 trillion in losses. So far they have confessed to less than $500bn.

Meredith Whitney, the Oppenheimer’s bank Cassandra, predicts a gruesome 40pc fall in prices. If so, expect prime borrowers facing negative equity to start throwing in the towel en masse. “I do not think we are near the end of writedowns. I continue to see capital levels going lower, and stocks going lower,” she said.

So no, this painful ordeal is far from over. We are not witnessing a dollar rally so much as a collapse in European and commodity currencies. The race to the bottom has begun in earnest.

http://tinyurl.com/5fnwpz

OK so should I be buying dollars or pounds?  Hey ... you watch this.  Any slump and the Qs (QQQQ) drop, right?  BUY and hold till the next earning season and sell.  I think.  Buy hi and sell lo. No, that doesn’t look right. There a tax advantage in that?
Been one of those days today. All day long. Puter problems and lightheaded from the searches and the pounding on keys. Might help if I actually knew what I was doing.

   Saturday - August 02, 2008

IMMIGRATION ANYONE?

with h/t to barb for sending me this and Drew who told me where the embed was.  Missed it cause it looked greyed out. Anyway, some of you folks may have seen this already.  For those who haven’t, watch it ....  and boy oh boy do the Brits know about this sort of thing.

The quality isn’t perfect but the sound is all ya need.

The following comment is from Drew

A local hospital has forced itself into bankruptcy because they were bleeding money from all the illegals using the place. They might re-open as a private special treatment center, but as a hospital they’re gone. They will also open a non-emergency emergency room, ie a clinic, for all the pore, starvin, and illegals.

   Saturday - June 28, 2008

Heinz mayonnaise advert with two men kissing (freekin GAK)

Just what the hell were these ppl thinking?
And the photo published in all the papers are disgusting.  GAK, indeed.  Story is from The Daily Mail

Heinz mayonnaise advert with two men kissing set to become most complained of the year
By Paul Revoir Last updated at 8:52 AM on 24th June 2008

A mayonnaise advert showing two men kissing has been withdrawn after it led to more than 200 complaints.

Heinz confirmed last night that it had withdrawn the television commercial for its Deli Mayo following ‘consumer feedback’.

The ad was launched a week ago yesterday and had been due to run for five weeks.

Heinz said it was no longer aired after last Friday.

Nigel Dickie, of Heinz UK, said: ‘It is our policy to listen to consumers. We recognise that some consumers raised concerns over the content of the ad and this prompted our decision to withdraw it.

‘The advertisement, part of a short-run campaign, was intended to be humorous and we apologise to anyone who felt offended.’

The advertising watchdog has yet to confirm if it will investigate the Heinz commercial, one of the most complained about commercials this year.

Viewers said it was ‘offensive’, ‘inappropriate’ and ‘unsuitable to be seen by children’, while some parents were angry that they had been forced to explain same-sex relationships to their youngsters who asked them about the ad.

The commercial shows a family scene with a young boy and girl getting ready to go to school.

They refer to a man making sandwiches in the kitchen as ‘mum’.

He is dressed like a delicatessen worker and has a New York accent.

Their father enters the kitchen, grabs a sandwich and says to the man: ‘See you tonight, love’.

The ‘mum’ then shouts back ‘Hey, ain’t you forgetting something’, before the two men kiss.

‘Mum’ then tells him: ‘Love you. Straight home from work sweetcheeks.’

It finishes with the slogan: ‘Heinz Deli Mayo – Mayo with a New York Deli flavour.’
http://tinyurl.com/4mp6r8

   Monday - June 16, 2008

Fuel shortages spread as tanker drivers’ strike, gas stations running dry.

Due to past and VERY bitter experiences with unions, I am not too quick to defend them and simply wish they’d go away.
But ... I’m not 100% certain they are to blame for this crises.  More research needed to refute or back up what I’m hearing, so will not make personal comments on this topic.

In our area, there are gas petrol stations with signs out saying that the pumps aren’t working. In other words, they haven’t anything to sell anymore as ppl topped up just before the strike or just after it started.  So far no lines as there isn’t anything to line up for in some areas.

Fuel shortages spread as tanker drivers’ strike enters fourth day
By David Millward, Transport Editor
Last Updated: 3:44PM BST 16/06/2008

Motorists are facing increasing fuel shortages with queuing spreading to several parts of the country as the strike by Shell’s tanker drivers entered its fourth day.

Fuel rationing was imposed by some garages in the South West, while drivers were facing difficulties filling up in parts of Wales, Worcestershire and in the South East.

Alarmingly Shell was not the only retailer to see its pumps running dry. Esso’s garage in Barry, south Wales, was completely out of fuel.

There were long queues reported at the service station at Junction 30 of the M5 near Exeter. 

According to the AA there was also confusion with some garages running out of diesel, while others were unable to supply unleaded petrol.

Elsewhere, a garage in the Gorton area of Manchester has raised prices by 14 pence a litre, charging motorists 129.9 pence for unleaded.

Its prices were on a par with half a dozen remote forecourts on Shetland and the Isle of Wight, which have traditionally charged far more than the national average.

“The impact of the strike is really being felt today particularly in Wales and the South West. In some localised areas motorists are struggling to find fuel,” said Edmund King, the AA’s president.

In the South West the fuel situation was described as “dire” by Ray Holloway, president of the Petrol Retailers Association.

This led several independent retailers to impose limits as low as £10 as they wait for new stocks to arrive, according to the UK Petroleum Industry Association.

“It’s been happening at rural areas,” said a spokesman. “Supplies have been getting quite low away from major centres like Truro.”

The problem had been caused by picketing at a Plymouth refinery which meant that supplies were not only being blocked to Shell forecourts, but other garages were getting embroiled in the dispute.

According to the latest Government figures 647 garages – including 249 Shell outlets – have either run dry completely or had to turn away motorists looking for diesel or petrol.

That number is expected to rise today as the strike by 641 drivers hits home.

Next weekend could be even worse unless a deal is reached between the drivers’ union, Unite and the Shell’s contractors: Hoyer UK and Suckling Transport.

The two sides have restarted talks raising hopes that the dispute, in which the union has submitted a 13 per cent pay claim, could be settled before the next four-day walkout on Friday.

If agreement is not reached, there are fears that next weekend could be even more difficult because of an overtime ban which will run between the walkouts.

http://tinyurl.com/3l82f3

   Thursday - June 12, 2008

FUEL SHORTAGE AND HI-PRICES?  HAS A CERTAIN RING TO IT, SOMETHING FAMILIAR.

Petrol protests go global
By Fiona Govan, Madrid Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:07AM BST 12/06/2008
Protests over rising fuel prices have spread across the globe.

Spanish authorities got tough as the trucker strike entered its third day, deploying riot police to lift blockades at the border with France and clear roads around the capital.

With supplies unable to get through the country was gradually brought to its knees as petrol pumps ran dry and supermarket shelves emptied.

Car manufacturing plants warned that if the stoppage continues the entire industry and its daily production of 13,000 vehicles will grind to a halt because parts for assembly are not reaching factories.

But unions representing self-employed lorry drivers rejected a government package to help the industry and vowed to continue nationwide protests over rising fuel prices.

Two protesters died – one in Spain and another in neighbouring Portugal – as they tried to stop traffic crossing the pickets lines.

Protests were also staged elsewhere in Europe and across Asia. Around 50,000 Polish lorry drivers held one-hour protests across the country although without blocking roads, the organisers said.

And Dutch truckers announced plans to block roads at 18 points across the country for 30 minutes on Thursday.

In Thailand truck drivers voted to begin strikes next week and block roads to the capital with 400,000 lorries unless the government helps them pay for soaring fuel costs.

While in Hong Kong about 500 minibuses, lorries, garbage trucks and coaches staged a go-slow protest, crippling traffic in a demonstration calling for fuel taxes to be scrapped.

Communists burned tyres and blocked roads in parts of eastern India angered by fuel price rises but elsewhere in the country calls for strikes were largely ignored.

In South Korea truckers voted to strike on Monday, ignoring a $10.2 billion (£5 billion) government aid package designed to cushion the impact of soaring fuel prices.

http://tinyurl.com/58n8cs

   Thursday - June 05, 2008

Today’s economics lesson

So, who’s making the ‘windfall’ profits?

   Friday - May 30, 2008

Stimulus checks not stimulating

Here is a somewhat informative article from the Houston Chronicle. Amid all the factoids on consumer spending, consumer confidence, etc, was this throwaway line that got me just a bit angry.

The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, which excludes food and fuel costs, slowed in April, today’s Commerce report showed.

Emphasis added.

I wonder how the inflation number would change if those food and fuel costs were included? Why is this their preferred measure of inflation? I measure inflation by how much the price of things go up during a specified time period, especially food and fuel costs!

I’m a bit peeved. Maybe someone here can explain this to me.

   Thursday - May 22, 2008

Yeeeee Haaaaaw !!!

Out-friggin-standing. ht/t to Kim’s.

  FREE GUN WITH EVERY PURCHASE !!!

Now that’s what I call an American company! Woo hoo!!!

A Missouri car dealership is triggering interest by offering customers free guns or gasoline with any purchase, and despite the skyrocketing price of fuel, patrons are going for the guns.

“We are aware of the gasoline and crime problem in America,” states an ad on the website of Max Motors. It goes on to note it “wants to be part of the solution and not part of the problem.”

“What we’re doing is giving everyone who buys a new or used vehicle a free handgun,” said Mark Muller, the dealership’s owner. “We have guns to display, but we can’t actually give them a gun, so what we do is give them a coupon for a local gun dealer here in town so they can pick out any gun they want. We recommend a semi-automatic.”

The certificate is good for either $250 at Alton Arms or for $250 worth of gas. Muller told WND no one has chosen the gas so far.

Wait, stop cheering for just a second. It gets even better!

“Six people came by – a bunch of long hairs who think the ‘60s are still going on, and who obviously don’t have jobs,” Muller said. “We all went out there with our cowboy hats on and told them we’d stomp ‘em, and they left.”
...
When asked if Sen. Barack Obama’s recent comments about people clinging to guns and religion inspired the promotion, Muller said yes.

“My next promotion is to give away a free King James Bible to any Muslim that converts to Christianity,” he said.

The only thing I can find wrong with this promotion is that it isn’t big enough. $250 doesn’t get you much of a gun. I don’t know how close to the bone this dealer’s deals really are, but $500 would get you a much better pistol. 

   Friday - May 16, 2008

Turn Out The Lights, The Party’s Over

As the price of crude oil hits $127 a barrel - $3.02 per gallon unrefined!! - the US Senate voted overwhelmingly to suspend adding oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Noted economic genius and all-around math whiz Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, feels that this move, which will free up a whopping 70,000 barrels daily, a whole 0.35% of the 20 million barrels of oil we consume a day, will drop the price of gasoline 24 cents a gallon. What a fucking moron.

Meanwhile Our Friends The Saudis have just told Boooooosh that they won’t be increasing production anytime soon.

Questions are bubbling up about whether labeling polar bears a threatened species the other day wasn’t really a move to lock another door against drilling in ANWAR. Gee, ya think?

Every single state governor’s plan to build more nuclear generators has been met with extraordinary objections by the No Nukes crowd.

Here in St. Cloud’s Here in New Jersey, Democrat Senators Bob Menendez and Frank Lautenberg are both running commercials on TV lauding themselves for “saving the Jerey shore” by defeating (R-TN) Lamar Alexander’s bill that would have allowed drilling off the coast of Virginia. Thanks a lot, asswipes.

Turn out the lights
The party’s over
They say that all
Good things must end
Call it a night
The party’s over
And tomorrow starts
The same old thing again

Good night you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.

   Thursday - May 01, 2008

Life on the other side of the looking glass

Did I miss the memo going around that says it’s now time for the Democrats to see reality and the Republicans to live in dreamworld? That’s how this story from Cybercast News Service seems to me.

Kennedy Links World Food Shortages to U.S. Ethanol Policy

Senators Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) told Cybercast News Service on Wednesday that they believe there is a connection between federally mandated consumption of ethanol, a gasoline additive made from corn, and world food shortages.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandates that increasing amounts of ethanol be used in the United States to dilute gasoline. The law called for 4 billion gallons of ethanol to be used in 2006, 6.1 billion gallons in 2009, and 7.5 billion gallons by 2012.

As the demand for corn has increased because of increased ethanol consumption, the Washington Post reported this week, the number of acres used to grow wheat in the U.S. has contracted, contributing to a shortage of wheat on the world market and an overall increase in world grain prices.
...
When Cybercast News Service asked Lieberman if he thinks federal laws that mandate escalating domestic ethanol consumption ought to be repealed, he said such a solution ought to be considered.

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) expressed a different view.

“I don’t see the link between hunger and our requirements that ethanol be mixed into our gasoline,” Craig told Cybercast News Service . “We are still exporting food to the world. The world hunger movement is also tied to the environmental movement. Environmentalists have decided that ethanol is bad and so liberals are arguing that it’s connected with food and therefore it is all bad. There has to be a balance.”

“Ethanol today has brought the price of gas down by 20 cents,” Craig said. “American consumers may be paying a little more for food but they are also paying a little less for gas because of ethanol in the market. It’s a worthwhile trade. Let’s lower the subsidy on ethanol, and let the market stabilize, but our country is better off today because we are producing ethanol.”

What the heck? What planet is old Larry from anyway?

It takes a lot of corn to produce ethanol. Ask any moonshiner. There is only so much farmland; it’s the old “Guns & Butter” lecture from Economics 101. Grow more corn and you have less space to grow other things like wheat. Selling the corn to the government or the distillers at a premium increases the demand and the price. Higher corn prices means less corn for your money, and if you have almost no money, then you go hungry. Given a fixed demand level for wheat, growing less wheat also causes the price to rise, and once again, if you don’t have much money then you go hungry. Which is why there are food riots in Haiti, Mexico, Pakistan, and other poor areas around the world.

And ethanol has lowered the price of gas? Says who? As crude oil continues above $110 a barrel, and the price of regular gas hits $3.50 a gallon, I’m not seeing any savings at all. And where is this ethanol stuff anyway? I’m not seeing any signs on the pumps at the gas station. I’m not seeing a special little truck following the gas tanker around, yet I remember hearing that ethanol couldn’t be added to the gasoline pipe network because it would rot out the pipes, and therefore had to be added at the local level. And if there has been a miraculous technological advance that has made the distillation of ethanol calorically efficient I haven’t heard of it. It still takes more energy to heat the mash to get the alcohol out then the alcohol itself provides. And what are they using to fire the stills? Oil. D’oh!

And ethanol is suddenly out of favor with the enviro squad?  Come on, the stuff is made FROM PLANTS. You can’t get any greener than that. WTF, I guess I’ve been hiding under my rock again if I missed that one.

The whole ethanol thing is a dumb idea. Especially if you have oil and gas you can drill for. Like we do. 

   Wednesday - April 02, 2008

Meanwhile, In India

Hey college kids, need a summer job? The Times of India has a great idea - go to America and earn up to Rs 3L! Sure, it’s doubtful that you’ll be doing anything really career oriented, but you can come over here and earn $8-$12 an hour bussing tables or driving a cash register. And you’ll go home with nearly Rs 2L, because The Times breaks down the expenses for you. Rs 3L means 3 Lakh Rupees. Lakh is a term that means 100,000. Right now 300,000 rupees is a bit over $7500, and that’s a decent amount of money in India.

The Times also points out that this isn’t a crazy scheme, but a program run by the US Government. I guess we don’t have enough kids of our own who want summer jobs, so we have to troll for them offshore. Hey, as long as you can speak English, Uncle Sugar will help you get a job. Amazingly, the program is dragging so badly that our government had to hire promoters to put the word out in India.

NEW DELHI: If you are a college student, here is something that could make your summer vacation memorable. There is a US government programme under which you can travel to USA and fund your trip by working there.

The work & travel’ programme is a US government initiative under which regular college students across the world can visit the country on temporary jobs during summer vacations—that is, from May to August. The scheme aims to enable students to “understand and experience American culture and life”.

Now, the US department of state’s Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) has hired two agencies in India—Kareer Krafters and Taurus International—as partners to administer the J1 visa programme meant for this purpose.

Any graduate or PG student can apply under the scheme. The applicant will be screened by the designated companies for suitability to visit the US alone. Vipul Mehta, MD of Kareer Krafter, said one of the prerequisites is a working knowledge of English.

Mehta said there is huge demand for students for doing summer jobs under the programme. “There are enough opportunities to absorb 40,000-50,000 students,” he said. However, as the scheme is virtually unknown in the country, only around 500 students were sent from India in 2007. So far, almost everyone who has applied got the visa, he added.

Students are normally offered unskilled jobs in retail outlets, tourist camps, entertainment park and restaurants, said Col Kulvinder Singh, MD of Taurus International. Students are paid $8 to 12 per hour. Wages for semi-skilled students from vocational courses like hotel management are higher.

So I guess your kid should have no problem finding employment this summer.

   Monday - March 17, 2008

Is today another Black Monday?

No, this has nothing to do with Obama. The US dollar is in freefall, hitting a 13 year low against the Yen, the Fed is rumored to be ready to cut interest rates again, possibly tomorrow, possibly by a full point, JP Morgan just swallowed up Bear Sterns for $2 a share, after cobbling together a buyout deal over the weekend (BS stock was at $170+ a bit over a year ago, and closed Friday around $30). The stock market took a moderate tumble but recovered, and now it’s come out that former NJ Governor Jim “proud to be a gay American” McGreevey admits to having bi-sexual 3-ways with his wife and his limo driver multiple times, after “fancy” dinners out at TGI Fridays. Yet even this latest dirty scandal isn’t enough to push the financial horrors off the front page.

I wish I understood this financial stuff better. I don’t understand the Bear Sterns situation at all. Ok, they made some bad mortgage deals. But I saw their financial statements this time last year, and they have more assets than many small countries. But what do I know?

Latest poll from CNN says 3/4 of Americans think we’re in a recession of some severity.

Michelle Malkin is keep on top of most of this, as are the newswires.

Is this the edge of the cliff? I hope not. Are we in for at least a few months of hurt? Probably. Will things miraculously improve overnight if we elect a Democrat? You betcha, since a large part of being in a recession is actually believing that you’re in a recession, and having the media tell you so every half hour. But if, in these dark times, we can find the audacity to hope ...

   Monday - January 07, 2008

Standard of living in UK better than in USA

Standard of living in UK better than in USA

By Lucy Cockcroft
Last Updated: 9:06am GMT 07/01/2008

For the first time in more than a century the standard of living in Britain is higher than in America, according to a new report.

Analysts at the respected Oxford Economics consultancy say that increasing incomes, free healthcare and longer holidays make the average Briton better-off than his or her US counterpart.

The GDP per head in the UK is expected to exceed that of the USA in 2008

They predict that gross domestic product (GDP) per head in the UK, an indicator of average incomes, will be £23,500 in 2008, compared with £23,250 in America, reflecting the strength of the pound against the dollar and the steady growth of the British economy.

Adrian Cooper, managing director of Oxford Economics, said: “The past 15 years have seen a dramatic change in the UK’s economic performance and its position in the world economy.

“No longer are we the ‘sick man of Europe’. Indeed, our calculations suggest that UK living standards are now a match for those of the US.

“The UK has been catching up steadily with living standards in the US since 2001, so it is a well-established trend rather than simply the result of currency fluctuations.”

Back in the early 1990s Britain’s GDP per capita was 34 per cent below that in America, 33 per cent less than in Germany and 26 per cent lower than in France.

Now, average incomes are not only above those in America but they are more than 8 per cent higher than in France where it is £21,700 and Germany, with a predicted £21,665.

The British financial services boom and soaring house prices have led to an uninterrupted expansion, credited with boosting the UK’s strength. And in contrast America and many European countries slid into recession in the early part of this decade.

However the average British person may not feel richer than their US cousins as goods and services there are often vastly cheaper. So, despite earning less, the average American can buy more.

The report authors also warn that a significant fall in the pound against other currencies could push Britain back down the ladder.

Citigroup, the most accurate forecaster of Britain’s economy last year, predicts the slowest rise in consumer spending this year since 1992.

Michael Saunders, Citigroup’s UK economist, said: “After the credit-fuelled boom in domestic demand and asset prices, the UK economy now faces a hangover, with slowing credit growth, falling property prices and tightening lending standards.”

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