Chris V

Maxwell Technologies: A Stock Pick for Solar, Wind and Hybrid Lovers

There's been some action with Zenn/EEstor as well, lately. Zenn is a Canadian electric car manufacturer, and owns a 10.7% stake in EEstor, a stealth-mode start-up capacitor manufacturer which is supposedly close to making a big announcement. In the past couple days, there has been an interview with the CEO of Zenn here: gm-volt.com/2009/07/20.../
...and an apparently leaked interview with the CEO of EEstor here: video.yahoo.com/search...
Also, lots of discussion of it all here: theeestory.com/

Short version: Either we have a disruptive technology coming very soon now, or we have a very strange scam on our hands.

Disclosure: long ZNNMF

James Kwak’s Response to My AEI Post

For those not aware, the clip is from "High Fidelity", and it's very funny. Probably my favorite film with Jack Black in it.

Lonely Geithner

In general, I give Obama a lot of credit for the speed and quality of his tactical thinking -- he figured out in a few days how to win the media war of words over the stimulus package, and managed to save it and push it through.

But in retrospect, I think both the choice of Geithner and his subsequent performance have been pretty underwhelming. And I'm surprised he's been allowed to continue being this underwhelming for this long. But I'm pretty sure this fiasco isn't being ignored -- I bet there's a lot of private talk going on, and the next thing we hear will be the new plan.

Pondering Debt Deflation

I'm not an economist, so if my ideas have some massive downside which I haven't considered, or a practical reason why they can't be implemented, it wouldn't surprise me. My ideas are driven largely by how I, as a consumer with a bit more debt that I'm really comfortable with, would respond to these ideas. These ideas necessarily involve, much like the ability to declare bankruptcy, a bit of moral hazard. But ultimately, I think our need collectively to get out of this mess is greater than the need to meet out punishment which is commensurate with guilt. So, on to the ideas (some of which are incompatible with one another):

1) Government-mandated wage increases (essentially, forced inflation). Simply put, the government mandates that all employers, public and private, increase salaries by, for example 1% per month for 18 months. This gradually increases income relative to (fixed rate) debt load. Cost of goods can be increased as necessary to cover the increased labor costs. We'd have to figure out a way to help retirees and others on fixed incomes so they don't fall further in the hole, though.

2) Cap interest rates on all debt at the rate of inflation plus 5% or so. This makes it possible to make some headway on debt rather than paying so much money to interest that people continually get further behind.

3) The government makes an offer to mortgage lenders: all usurious loans get converted into "reasonable", fixed rate loans, and all loans get a 20% haircut. In return, the government guarantees all loans. Mortgage lenders are free to take the deal, or to sit on assets of unknown value.

4) Print money, and give it to people. If it's good enough for "Helicopter" Ben, it's good enough for me.

Why Live Nation Shouldn't Merge with Ticketmaster

For some time, I've considered it my personal duty as a consumer to boycott Ticketmaster because of their excessive fees. If they're the only source of tickets to an event, I simply won't go. I'm sure they understand that most people will be disgusted but still pay, while a small minority will be disgusted enough not to. I try to increase the size of that small minority whenever I can.

If this merger goes forward, then it creates a larger entity with which I won't do business. More interestingly, it might also cause a number of performers who are ok with LiveNation but hate TicketMaster to jump ship as well.