Gyoza Mimi

Dollar's Purchasing Power Annihilated - The Chart They Don't Want You to See

Tyler,

What was the methodology used for calculating the purchasing power? Correct me if I am wrong, but it appears that today we can buy a lot more carrots, bananas, autos and movie tickets than in '20s, even with unemployment benefits money. No?

Oil Stocks: Where Can You Find Black Gold?

@Michael66

You list a lot of items that in bulk sound like a major change. However, many of them insignificant on global scales, others simply irrelevant at the current oil prices and many more are years, if not decades, away from mass adoption.

1. New oil has been found in Canada, Montana, North & South Dakota and in the ocean near Brazil. Each of these oil fields has more oil than Arabia.
>> Is it so? Do you mind positing the reference? So far, Arabia has more oil then Canada, which is #2 in the world. The problem with Canada is most of its oil is in tar sands that are expensive to develop. At $40/barrel no company will go to Canada for oil extraction because it costs over $65/barrel to break-even. If oil goes even lower for a long period of time, Canadian companies will exit the market and the oil flow to the US will drop.

Unless you can post a credible reference, this point is result of wild imagination. There are many reasons why it is impossible to believe in this claim, but I leave it to you to prove otherwise. #1 - Not true

2. New natural gas has been found in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. This is the largest find in North America.
>> How does it affect oil sales? I don't see that many new cars sold with propane-based engines. Nor I see massive switch in the plastic industry or any other industry that uses oil. Point #2 - irrelevant.

3. New methods of injecting CO2 and surfactants into oil wells is being used to double their output.
>> Any links? Will it affect oil production significantly? Point #3 - questionable and possibly insignificant

4. Production of bio-fuels is beginning to reach critical mass. Bio fuel is being produced from many plants and algae. The production potential per acre in some cases is astounding. Many countries are racing to produce bio fuels.
>> At the expense of the food. Many now realize that corn has potentially worse impact on the environment than oil. And there is limited acreage of land on which you can plant sources for biofules. It may play a role in the future, but this is years, if not decades away. #4 - will not have impact in the short and medium-term

5. Virtually every restaurant in the US and all food processing plants are now selling their used oil to bio-diesel producers. Every pork, cattle, turkey and chicken processing plant will soon sell their fat to bio-diesel producers. One pork processing plant in Oklahoma is producing 30,000 gallons of bio-diesel per day from pork fat.
>> That is pure funny. All the oil you can squeeze out of all bacon in a year (if you use all the bacon) will not suffice a day of gasoline demand. Drop in a bucket. By reducing output by 2-3%, Saudi Arabia will have greater impact than all of the animal fat-to-gasoline companies combined. #5 - insignificant

6. There are 99 nuclear reactors in various stages of planning and construction around the world at this time. Several hundred more are expected to be built in the future. Much of the energy they produce will replace oil.
>> Reactors will be coming on-ling within next 10-20 years. Are you going to sit and wait for all of them? Also, that requires a major change in auto technology. Are we ready for it? Do we have enough R&D capital? Even so, #6 is years, and many reactors decades, away from now.

7. Every company in any form of transportaion business is replacing older equipment such as trucks, airplanes, train engines, ships, etc. with new more fuel efficient equipment. Airlines and railway companies are experiencing 20% to 25% better fuel econony with the new equipment.
>> At the same time, India and China becoming industrialize, which will offset any advancements in fuel-saving tech. #7 - not very relevant for it will kick in in years and will be offset by increase in demand from India and China

Airlines are flying airplanes with bio-fuel. They are finding the bio-fuel is cleaner and performs better than jet fuel.
>> This is a sheer lie. There was a test fly done by Virgin. But no airline has it in even medium-term plans to fly on bio-fuel. Not for the next 15-20 years.

8. Cities and counties throughout the US are selling the rights to capture methane gas from landfills. This is a huge source of gas available at very little cost or risk. The gas is displacing crude oil.
>> Good comment, except don't rely too much on garbage to power your car - there will be enough to heat some homes, but far from enough to make a splash on the transportation arena #8 is insignificant

9. Coal is being transformed into a clean burning liquid fuel. The CO2 produced as a byproduct is sold to oil companies for injection into oil wells.
>> A mass production is years away #9 is irrelevant at this point, for it this industry is at the early stages of experimenting

10. Solar, wind and ocean energy is displacing oil as an energy source. Three new wind turbines are being erected every day in the US.
>> And when will that turbine power your car? Tomorrow? May be in 30 years, once electric cars were developed you will enjoy the benefits. For mow, #10 is irrelevant.

With a little scrutiny, Michael66, you will find that your points are mix of fantasy, rumors, "nice-to-have" ideas, plans for the distant future and insignificant developments. As good as it sound, after thinking a little about it you will see that all your facts and fictions combined will have absolutely no effect on the oil prices for the next 5-10 years, and then it will be a gradual change. Factoring increase in Chinese and Indian demand, you may get actually increase in oil consumption in the next 20 years, despite all the advancements.

What Were the People of California Thinking?

Makes me remember Alexander Tyler (written in 1787):

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

What Type of a Corner is the Economy Turning?

Cetin,

Post after post you solidify my believe that you are just a bot used as a test of a system developed to decompose and comprehend articles. The comprehension side is quite sophisticated. The creative side is lacking, but overall, good job.

On the creative side, you need to add a function to your scanner to review articles from other sources. For instance, about POT, sales of the crop nutrient reached a virtual halt and POT cuts its forecast - this is available freely everywhere. Yet, you trumpeting the rise of POT among other stocks you don't seem to have any idea about.

Aleynikov's Code Dump Uncovered

Outstanding job, Tyler!

Employment: Minimum Wage, Maximum Stupidity

The minimum wage notion is geared towards those who don't typically have a great understanding of the supply/demand relationship and things like marginal revenue/cost. Their ignorance makes minimal wage an indicator of the wealth that can be received, but not the jobs that will be lost. It in turn translates well into a potent political driver, especially in a predominantly blue-collar states. Well, the whole vicious circle is more or less inevitable.

TARP Utilization: Is Obama Above the Law?

It poses an interesting question: is it legal for the creditor (the government) and borrower (TARP companies) to enter in a collusive agreement to pump the markets in order to get money from fools (retail investors drawn by the strong never-ending rally) and repay the original creditor?

Boomers in Trouble: The Unheralded Economic Mega-Trend, Part 1

What is applicable to Boomers applies equally well to any other generation that had any soft of savings. It is just happen that as the generation at their earning peak, boomers have the most savings of all generations. The upcoming structural change will affect spending and investments habits of all all money-earning generations, not just boomers. I am not quite sure why you singled this generation out in that regard.

What's interesting about boomers is their investment horizons. This generation is too close to the retirement to suffer such massive losses, which are unlikely to be fully recouped over the next 10-15 years, considering the economic situation.

The Next Bull Market Is 4-8 Months Away

Two comments on your observations:
1. 300-day velocity would take 4-8 months before it crosses zero if it doesn't encounter the double-deep as it did in 2002-2003. If it shoots straight up, it might cross the zero-line in 4-8 months. However, if it will follow by another deep or a flat, it can stay under water for another year-year and a half.
2. Same thing for the 500-day RSX. If the current slower rate of descend is indeed the bottom, then yes, it is a good buying opportunity. If the pattern repeats that of Dot.com, then we are approaching early 2002 levels, and 2003 is way ahead of us.

Such charts work way better in hindsight.

Why Isn't Microsoft's Strategy Working Anymore?

Very shallow analysis focusing on typical hearsay.

Vista is a disaster! In what respect? Please don't say it crashes every 5 minutes, because tests show it is more stable than Apple OS. It is virus prone - Apple OS can be hacked in 30 minutes (sometimes seconds) or less and it less protected from the viruses than Vista is. It has horrible UI - it's a matter of opinion, I cannot see anything in Apple besides the home screen. Not to mention that professional software simply works on Windows and not on Apple.

Productivity suites. Did you notice that Office beats everything on any platform? It is rather foolish to think that Google will be able to capture any significant share of the market - free StarOffice failed, despite having by far more sophisticated featureset than Google offers. And the privacy issues that plagued Google - not a single CIO in his right mind will ever permit using Google for corporate documentation.

Gaming: MS isn't doing so badly with xBox, beating PS3 so far.

Subscription services: iTunes is not the only thing that requires subscription, as you might know. Please check xBox subscription numbers. Or even better, please check the revenues generated from corporations subscribed to the MS tech support. Sorry, but iTunes is peanuts comparing to these numbers.

MS is mighty string on the corporate arena. Check the server offerings. MS is growing and not without the reason. MS products in the server universe beat competition hands down.

Where MS is lacking is consumer area beyond the OS and productivity suites: Zune, WinMo, Internet search. It is a tip of the iceberg (in many respects, revenue-wise, technology-wise and efforts that MS invests), but as a tip it is the only thing that shows above the water. And unfortunately, most of the analysts never bother to look underwater, building their "analysis" on the 5-8% of company's offerings that they know of.

The Mysterious Case of the Vanishing Bull Volume

Well, the capital for The Ten have to be raised somehow.

Fear vs. Cheer in the Markets

The market is going through a massive pump-and-dump scheme. I find very little to cheer about.

Google's Android Will Become the Default Mobile Platform

Seems like the article was written after listening to the energizing prophesies of Google marketing team.

There are no factual information, no rational in this article at all, so it is very difficult to argue about it. "This is the coolest thing since the sliced bread" doesn't really work as a discussion starter.

Please elaborate on why you think it is the way of the future.

Derivatives: A $700+ Trillion Bubble Waiting to Burst

People have been ringing alarm bells over huge nominal value of the derivatives, stating there are no money in the world could cover the losses. True, because for the most part these $700 trillions can be just as well round down to 0 without any loss to the underlying indexes. Just like those penny stock options - by paying something like 1 cent you can buy May Google calls with a strike price of $1,000,000. Pay $10 and you have derivatives that will have nominal value of $1,000,000,000 (that is one billion) under your control. While nominal value of that is a billion, the real value is close to 0. Let's start ringing alarm about me being on the hook for a billion dollars, while I spend $10 on the worthless options, and worrying about this bubble bursting.

Spiraling Federal Debt: It's Likely to Get Worse

Good article, but the math is off. 10% inflation for 10 years will raise prices 160%, not 100%.