David Lentz

SunPower's Rose: How Important Is High Efficiency in PV?

The fraction of how much of their electrical consumption homeowners who install PV systems will want to provide is largely dictated by their goals (getting off the grid vs lowering costs and exposure to future electricity rate hikes) and their electric utility's policies in supporting customer-generated electricity.

In many areas supplied by Duke Energy, they adopt the policy of welcoming customer-generated electricity -- so long as it does not exceed the amount the consumer is purchasing. It will "bank" excess electricity credits, but will never, ever send out a check to the consumer to pay for the excess electricity generated, at any rate of compensation. All that the PV customer is permitted to do is reduce, but not exceed their own electricity consumption. Duke regards itself primarily as a supplier of electricity, and not at all as a broker of electricity. Their customers have no incentive whatsoever to invest in sufficient capacity to generate more electricity than they use. Such policies have the effect of scaling back homeowner investments to the level of supporting electric vehicle recharging, or reduction of the electricity draw during peak load periods.

OTOH, if a homeowner's goal is to get completely off the grid, using it either not at all or only as a backup after whatever energy storage facilities they invest in are depleted, then the profile of how much they are willing to invest in a PV system changes a lot. But I suspect that most will fall into the supplementary power only category, at least until regulatory agencies force the utilities to accept roles as electricity brokers and not just electricity producers.

Options Trader Friday Outlook: Up, Up and Away

There is a chasm between those who apparently believe that the turbulence of the recent past was a "random storm", turbulence in the dynamics of market capitalism, and those who believe that there were specific practices (mostly corrupt, all insanely risky) followed by the larger players in our markets. Whichever is correct, there are consequences.

The United States of Bananamerica is now saddled with a mountain of debt that is simply unbelievable to those who understand what numbers with 12 zeroes before the decimal point imply. Unemployment seems to be fixed at the current levels for several years to come -- no one can truthfully point to a date when the number of jobs will increase, as a declining number of jobs has been our national trend for many years now.

And IF it should be the case that this recent turbulence was due to specific causes, and NOT "just a random fluctuation in the markets", what has changed to prevent the exact same thing from occurring next year, next month, next week, or on Monday? Have the banksters pulled back from the brink and are now using smaller amounts of leverage? Nope. Are they shying away from the ultra-high-leverage CDS casino? Not a chance -- they are rolling the dice to gamble their way out of their pit of toxic losses. Have they at least brought compensation in line with performance? (Don't make me laugh)

In a consumer-driven economy, how does it manage to grow when unemployment seems anchored at the current levels for as far as the eye can see? When residential mortgages continue to be devoured in a firestorm of foreclosures, that the goobermint seems to have not the slightest inclination to address? And how are small businesses, the bedrock of our commercial economy, to survive when CRE has a problem similar to the residential real estate markets, and they are unable to pry operating capital loose from the grip of the banksters?

None of this indicates in any what, shape or form that traders cannot manage a decent living. Just don't expect a rip-roaring bull market that has any degree of momentum or underlying substance to it. Things can and will turn on a dime.

Postal Service Set to Lead the Way in Deploying Electric Fleet

Question: What exactly, are "V2G services". Examples, please.

Is the iPhone Slowing AT&T's Network?

"Is the iPhone Slowing AT&T's Network?"

Or the alternative view,

"Is AT&T's feeble attempt at a broadband cellular network inadequate to the task?"

Either way, we are looking at the same coin. In a static, regulated-market-share market, AT&T could merely raise prices on its unlimited data plan (or raise prices on other parts of its network, milking its captive landline customers, for instance). But in a competitve marketplace, AT&T must either beef up the services it is selling or lose market share.

If losing market share to Blackberry, Android phones, and the Palm Pre is not satisfactory to Apple, they have only one choice -- expand the iPhone empire to other carriers.

I suspect that at this point, it is beyond the capabilities of AT&T to beef up its networks fast enough to stem the rise of competing smartphone market shares, and that means Apple will open up iPhone distribution.

Same theme as the above article. I'm not as confident that the first non-AT&T iPhone carrier will be Verizon, it will instead be whomever offers the best deal on coverage (subscribers) + bandwidth + iPhone subsidies. It could easily be T-Mobile (except for the part about subscribers), or (my favorite alternative) Apple could simply buy its own carrier.

Sprint looks ripe for the picking, especially with its beachhead in WiMAX. Apple could easily buy Sprint with a cash+stock offer.

Balance Sheet Wars: U.S. Solar Companies vs. Chinese Government

A good point, and applicable far beyond the solar industry. So long as the bulk of our national capital is tied up attempting to preserve the existence and lifestyles of the fat cat banksters who destroyed the global economy, there is not going to be sufficient working capital for operate the rest of the US economy.

Prospects for Electric Cars

You sure are misinformed about the need to drill for oil.

Why drill, when there is oil (and natural gas) filling every available storage facility on the planet, with wells being shut down (and refineries soon to follow) in order to keep retail prices high.

get a clue -- not a slogan


On Aug 31 08:12 AM BlueOkie wrote:

> We sure spend a lot of time finding a means to NOT drill for oil.
> How do you produce electricity? NG, Coal, etc.
> What about brown outs if everyone goes to the electric car? What
> happens to the batteries when they are not longer useable? Dump them
> where? I'm not sure people have thought this thru yet. Electric
> cars/ vehicles do have a place but not for the general public yet.
> 240 mile range is a joke in some parts of the country. It is not
> as if you have a electric gas station everywhere. Maybe a few wind
> farms will help.
> Drill baby, drill.

AT&T, Apple Can't Win Fight Against VoIP

Check out GOOG's available cash and then check Sprint's market cap. It's a doable purchase, easily done via a combination of stock and cash.

If/when that happens, ATT will use every trick in its (very large) book of bribery and political influence to block it. But eventually, ATT will face genuine competition, if not from Google or Verizon, then from a foreign telecom company willing to spend the money to install technology that is far superior to the penny-pinching inadequate band-aids that ATT touts as being "technology".

Wireless makes it easy to put up a national network in a very short time that negates the 50-year-old copper infrastructure (plus a little fiber) that ATT continues to milk for all its worth, all the while charging some of the highest rates on the globe to its captive customers.

On Aug 01 05:17 PM nmelendez wrote:

> When Google comes out with it's own network plus apps, Apple and
> AT&T are gonna be toast. An i am not even mentioning sprint,
> palm and vonage.

AT&T, Apple Can't Win Fight Against VoIP

Last timer I checked, ATT was a regulated utility, granted EXCLUSIVE rights to certain markets and being guaranteed profits in exchange for agreeing to abide by some form of public control. If they want to compete in the open markets, abandon those rights and compete with Verizon on to-your-home connections.


On Aug 02 10:35 AM daniel3582 wrote:

> Am I missing something here? Didn't ATT spend years and years
> and tens of billions of dollars to build a wireless network from
> the ground up? What right does Google or the US government have to
> come in and tell them what to do with it?
>
> I'm really searching for a good answer here... feedback appreciated.

Bonds Signal Fed Should Start Raising Rates Soon

I've been hearing the "deflation is dead" story throughout this year. When one looks at the statistics that supposed "prove" that case, and step back an look at a 2-3 year interval of data, it always becomes clear that what has been mistaken for an upturn is merely statistical noise.

So long as the economy continues to shrink, with retail sales trending lower and unemployment higher, deflation is still alive and well in the economy. It may not be the roaring force that it was a while ago, but it is by no means dead. If it were, we would see gold quickly jump past 1000 and head skywards. But when we look at the broader monetary aggregates, we see M2 (and if you look at shadowstats.com, the reconstituted M3) trending lower.

Deflation isn't dead, it's just catching its breath. For the Fed to kill deflation, they would have to either print so much money that they would also kill the dollar, or else they would have to go after the banksters, and erase the hoard of toxic debt (masked by the mark-to-model rule) via bankruptcy. Neither seems likely to occur.

Jack Lifton: The Technology Metals Age

Nice exposition of the ideas, but aside from penny stock CRMZF.PK and SQM, no specific investment vehicles were mentioned. Surely there are some ETFs that are heavy in miners of these materials?

And what's that about electric motors in cellphones? ("everything that’s got a small motor in it (a cell phone, Blackberry, etc.)" ???)

They might have some small magnets somewhere in them, but not the kind that contain the materials that this article is about. Motors in cellphones?

Also, there are several photovoltaic solar technologies, not all of them require the materials mentioned here. The point is that there will be alternatives to many of these predicted scarcities, so they may not be the opportunities they are presented to be.

I know of no alternative to the neodymium used in motors and generators, but that does not mean that there is not one, or that one will not be discovered. The point is that you have to be really on top of these materials scarcities issues, aware of alternative technologies and watching for new alternatives.

To reiterate -- a nice article describing a likely future, with few useful ways to invest in it.

2009: Expecting a Massive Rally

So, to be clearer, you think we are about to see a significant "tradeable rally" in a bear market, that might last several months, perhaps over a year in duration?

What is your target stance heading into this rally? I.e., what is your recommended equity-bonds-cash allocation?

It's one thing to move from a 100% cash position to a 20% equity, 80% cash position, and something quite different to move from a 10% stock, 40% bonds, 50% cash position to a 60% stocks, 40% bonds position.

What kind of allocation changes are you proposing here?

Personally, I don't believe that the markets move randomly, the tides in the markets are a reflection of the monetary tides at work in the economy. I see zero possibility of any significant improvement in the economy, as unemployment continues to crank up in pace with a continually shrinking global economy. The dollar is about at the end of its ability to support the deficit borrowing by the state, and we are seeing not just corporations and a corrupt finance sector imploding, but now whole states are on the brink of fiscal collapse.

If there were a ray of hope somewhere, something to indicate that we had at least reached (or even approached) rock bottom, then yes, I could see a "tradeable rally" before the markets took their next step down.

But the fact is, the economy of the 1930s got its big half-time rally when the debt overhang fueling the boom collapsed, a LOT of companies and banks imploded, and people thought the worst was over. It was only after they saw that the economy was continuing to shrink (deflation at work!) that the steam ran out of that rally.

In our current situation, the debt bubble has not yet begun to deflate -- not even a little, despite all the mortgage failures and (non-bank) corporate bankruptcies. The Fed and Treasury have simply been too adroit at preventing any of the hot air inflating our debt balloon from escaping, creating new debt even faster than bad debt has imploded. We now stand at a total debt-to-GDP ratio of about 3.6, as compared to 2.6 at the peak of the debt bubble at the start of the Great Depression. BTW -- their "tradeable rally" did not occur until after their debt bubble popped, perhaps in part due to assets fleeing crashing debt instruments.

Our deflation continues, and the global and national economies continue to shrink. The pressure is mounting on our own debt bubble.

Somehow, I can't see a lengthy period of relative stability wherein stocks could rally. Maybe an inauguration honeymoon Obama rally, up until the unemployment continues to soar, past 10% (U3), and many companies begin to go bankrupt, with the economy no longer large enough to support them all. The Fed is down to being able to only print money, driving rates lower is not an option. That will undoubtedly lead to inflation, and countering the deflation as designed. But with a beaten and broken consumer demographic, we are not going to see jobless millions thronging to the malls to celebrate, buying up the few rapidly-increasing-in-... goods that remain. Combating inflation by raising rates will carry a (too-steep) price in terms of additional unemployment, so the Fed is going to be helpless and we will finally see our debt overhang begin to erode away, with bonds failing along with the companies, municipalities, and states that have issued them and are unable to service their debt.

Stagflation will be the only item on our economic menu for a couple of decades (maybe more) to come. And while we will certainly get small rallies along the way, I seriously doubt that any of them will last more than a quarter.

Happy New Year.

S&P 500 at 600: Is It Possible?

The thing that is strangling the economy is an excess of debt, with the debt-to-GDP level still FAR beyond what it was even at the most extreme point in the Great Depression.

I do not know how far down the markets will drop to, but until the debt overhang begins to recede (and it normally does so in cases like this in a very abrupt and painful manner), the direction for the markets remains lower.

We need to lose roughly (no pun intended) half our debt, through some combination of write-downs and pay-downs. But the Fed+Treasury are intent upon trying to inflate the old economy back to its former grandeur instead of managing a graceful national bankruptcy.

That plan won't work.

MacWorld to Follow Floppy Disk Into Extinction

One might look upon the series of "Special Event" webcasts/keynotes this past year as a test run to see how product rollouts do when they are not bunched together in January (AFTER the biggest shopping period of the year is over).

I've thought for years that Apple was nuts to announce new products in January -- instead of just before Thanksgiving. I'm glad to see them making some changes to do away with that practice. I'm sure it was a problem within Apple to target product rollouts to a specific extravaganza in January.

Much better to serve the food as soon as the cooking is done, rather than trying to artificially target a predefined serving time.

The American Crisis and the Case for an Inflationary Depression

I gotta chuckle at the recommendation to shelter assets in Swiss Francs, what with Switzerland preparing to follow Iceland into default.

Doesn't this guy read the news?

Even Rubin Couldn't Outmaneuver Risk

This is a theme that resonates in SOooo many situations, not just investing.