New Directions

Well folks it has been a little over ten months since my last post and many things of great significance in the world have come to  pass in the political, financial and geological areas. My predictions of gold were a tad off and the Euro did not sink as I had foreseen.

One thing is clear to me now and that is an American resurgence of manufacturing in the field of robotics. Personally I have been bitten by the Arduino bug. The question to watch is if Americans will have the backbone and foresight to hold Corporations accountable for keeping manufacturing in America.

The great significance of this is not the issue of jobs but more importantly and actually fundamentally important is the issue of sustaining the technological know how with its sustaining ecosystem which was present in America until the 1980′s .

I will talk about more details hidden in between the media coverage. It’s all about LEADERSHIP, PERSONAL LEADERSHIP AND ACCOUNTABILITY.

This is the new direction that this blog  will pursue. Thank you and please check this site again in a few days(…Wednesday)

A new leadership

After a week of helping with Sundance in a very minor capacity life has turned upside down in so many ways. Old friends and dreams have a new meaning or better yet they try to extract or inject meaning from life thus generating a thick cloud of ideas and intentions that they believe are real. So they live as I had until a week ago in a world apart from reality, taking cue from real events then trying to stuff meaning and logic.

“How clear is the Moonlight of Wisdom…” when we do not make things up when we stand clear out of our own way when we take our agendas out into the bonfire we can see life clearly and easily we can pause to decide upon a choice and commitment to a course of action. It is so freeing when we trust Life that life we have observed with clear eyes…

Life is sweet even when it appears to suck.

How will Euro vrs.$Dollar, Gold & Dow end in June?

Where will the Euro, the Dollar, the Dow and gold end up in June?
Will Au(Gold) hit 1400, or the Euro find parity with the Dollar? Will the Dow dip below 900?

• Au(gold): Many in the gold trade believe that Au will hit US$1300/oz. On Friday June 4 Au closed below 1200 but by late afternoon it was clear how poor the financial markets had performed that Au rallied $20.00 in a short time. Perhaps the traditional competition of Au versus the US$dollar has changed because gold is becoming the safe investment and trade of our time. Debbie Carlson of Kitco.com reports that Mike Daly, gold specialist for PFGBest believes gold has decoupled from other markets: “It’s really become the beast. But gold doesn’t care what other markets are doing. It doesn’t even care what crude oil is doing. The world knows what gold is. It might not know what an S&P is, but they know gold and they want it.” As more investors look into the American economy and realize how weak the economy is because of poor manufacturing base, high unemployment and higher government debt both at federal and local levels, gold will be in more demand. BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster will end in political controversy inability to reign in BP and more US federal bailout, more debt.  Yes, there are good chances that Au(gold) will hit US$1400/oz. by June 30 2010.

• Euro/US$: “However, a word a caution, when market analysts and the wider media begin to forecast the collapse of any market or instrument this is the point at which it generally rallies” writes http://www.euro-vs-dollar.com/ on response that a long predicted decline of the Euro to levels below 1.20 can be quickly contradicted when the general media gets a whiff of the now stale scent. What is driving the Euro to levels of near parity with the US$? Looking at screen shot of a chart from Nov-07 to the present we can see the Moving Averages hug the 1.25 to 1.40 zone. The Euro will hit below 1.10 by end of June but will still rebound as it has done before this time to a 1.36 level by end of the year 2010, as long as Germany remains in the Euro zone. France has threatened to leave while Germany wishes to expel Greece and highly indebted countries from the Euro zone but is this a probable situation considering the history of Europe’s banking system. Probably not for long, restructuring is more likely and a painful one. After centuries of quarreling and warring World War II left Europe under the protection of the USA, this artifice freed all these European estates to allocate funds into commerce and industry which before were used to keep up military  campaigns. NO the Euro will not hit 1.00 by end of June more like 1.06 because the Dollar is weak and BP’s oil spill will be cleaned with taxpayers dollars this will keep from the Euro’s long slide into parity before July. The real question is will Germany introduce/go back to the Deutsche Mark? probably Yes, regardless of cost. Under a Euro Zone 1.3 because the expulsion of Greece does not solve the insolvency of 3 major countries: Spain, Italy and Ireland their collective expulsion is not practical nor wise, the Deutschmarks is.

• Will the Dow dip below 900 by June 30th? Summer is a slow season for trading but 9,000 is not far from 9,939 when considering that the Dow has dropped near 1,200 points since May. Yes it will dip below 900 by June 30th.

Memorial Day

Memorial day is not about politicians nor war, is about remembering and reflecting on those who join and serve. Regardless of political and religious ideals about war it is real and it is in this world for the USA fortunately is not here in Turtle Island because of our military. What’s more important: honoring the memory of those who gave the last sacrifice or the winner of American Idol?

Please watch video Arlington Field of Honor

dji DROPS -376.36, -3.60% ?

The Global Dow is open now in Asia and is rebounding well and so is Gold. In the USA the Dow fell over 37x.xxpoints and is my guess by looking at all the smoking guns and all the bodies around that the culprit is Congress approving the bill for banking reform.
Lets wait and see how the market reacts on the NYSE floor. The bill heads now towards the Senate for reconciliation.

Euro parity

PPP: Purchasing Power Parity is a 4 centuries old concept that tries to decide the absolute value of a unit of goods across international boundaries such as bushel of wheat.

At the closing of Wend. 19-May-2010 The euro rose from to $1.2429, up 1.8% from $1.2204 in late North American trading Tuesday and recovering from 0.5% drop intraday, when it fell to a fresh four-year low of $1.2143. Down 14% from beginning of the year.

The Euro moves towards parity according to Kit R. Roane a Fortune magazine contributor Based on IMF estimates of 2008 GDP and purchasing power parity among the various currencies, the euro zone is the second largest economy in the world. There are marked differences between PPP and market exchange rates.
The Euro’s rapid decline could be caused by the €1 trillion bail out of Greece and shoring up of weaker EU economies such as Portugal, Italy and Spain.
Germany’s surprising ban on short selling pressured traders to short the Euro, in a report by William L. Watts of MarketWatch, Steven Barrow, currency strategist at Standard Bank said: “If the market can’t vent its frustration by selling euro-zone government bonds or [credit default swaps], it will sell the euro, no matter that the market already seems very short.”
The ban prohibits market participants from naked short selling of euro-zone government bond markets and from purchasing credit default swaps, or CDSs, on government debt unless they own the underlying bonds.

Some believe that the discrepancies in regional economies and vastly percentages of debt

The ripples from a weak EU economy quickly affects markets in Asia and North America, slowing down the recovery from this recession.

Why are we talking Euros? Because results of this week’s primaries did not capture Wall Street trader’s attention the Euro has. We pour money along Germany to saving Greece while England may not have to, considering that the UK has no stake in the euro the crisis affects the U$A strongly straight into our pocket books.

How will the iPad Xplatform affect your productivity?

Sitting at Java’s catching my breath or coffee is better when reading the news. The iPad promises an experience closer to flipping real pages than the iPod touch …did you know that newspapers come in color now? Really!

When using technology not everyone needs an expert just as a sick person doesn’t need to be a pharmacist to take an aspirin. Will the iPad and similar technologies make you more productive and help you be more efficient? That is the question that matters.

How do people perceive the iPad as product? Who will buy them? Style snobs or tech snobs? common sense folk or dreamers? Many think that spending $200 on a pair of sneakers is not fiscal conservatism Jordan or not …yet defying the financial downturn these companies $ell their wares.

On the iPad technology race I hope Google will enter this competition. In the meantime I can read fine with the iPod Touch small color screen, I read Bloomberg, Financial Times, S.J. Mercury, NY Times, There is an App, Fluent News that allows me to read Newspapers from all over the world. Comics(Witchblade, Abyss, Atomic Robo..) Have posted blogs, do: Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Buzz. Have answered my e-mail both Yahoo and Gmail, sorry Hotmail, read Alice in Wonderland, Federalist Papers, an O’Reilly book,Sutras, Bible and couple more. Carry Fitness workouts with pictures, draw pictures, paintings and have made silly animations.

I have spread sheets about my workout results and many other things, my Google calendar is kept up to date because of the iPod, all sync with home computers. Maps allow me to map & manage my jogging routes. Have an App that maps where my contacts live or are. If i need to meet someone they can quickly be found if address given, watch TED, the Colbert Report(the Word), NASA, Last FM, …and so much more. I am more productive and in more control of my “TO DO” lists and Schedule’s than before. Efficacy++ in my life with the iPod Touch than with my laptops(Mac or Ubuntu). I love my Ubuntu and am not ditching it! but sometimes it gets in the way.

Multi tasking? Got a desktop & 2 laptops to answer the logistics of the next World evacuation to Tatooine. When am on the go ..am on the go …i do not multi task then, my home computers do if i need to.

iPhone/XPlatform Revolution

Iditarod Leadership by Chris Fuller. This free iPod App(Application) is one beautiful thing in every sense of the word: Looks, design and content . This App is powered by Tapstack and uses the leadership premise that “If you are not the lead dog the view never changes”, well our society will not function properly if everyone wants to be the chief, and Mr. Fuller seems to understand this (  Mr. Fuller has a website that zeroes his work to be of service to Team Leaders and works on that level/scale) He points ” Thermometers in business are those people who consistently communicate issues or problems (what the Temp. is) without adjustment or solution of the issue or dilemma.  Leaders need to be Thermostats, people who fully understand the reality as it exists today AND take ownership of the situation. They are fully engaged in creating and implementing the solution”

Well Apple has done this very well with the iPod Touch and the iPhone, through Apps the computing world has been revolutionized beyond the turning back point. The iPod Touch/iPhone has become a standard platform for How OS(Operating Systems) will behave by providing focused solutions  to the user.

I no longer depend on a laptop to stay connected while on the-go, It is easier and friendlier to use, has a faster browser, one is able to quickly  sync PIM(personal Information Managers: Contacts, iCal, Pocket Informant, Bento, many more) and mail, news content is tailored to my needs from Bloomberg, Y! Finance or CNN Money to TweetDeck or Facebook Apps to WordPress, PDF readers ESPN or  SI to WindFinder.

Is easy to read any of Shakespeare’s plays or Alice in Wonderland free as well Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. All beautifully displayed in vibrant colors.

This is the 4th time that Apple and Steve Jobs in particular taps the secret vein of changing history. 1st he did it with Steve Wozniak and Espinoza to create the   Apple II computer and by allowing 3 party vendors to have access to its design they became the beneficiary of a wealth of opportunities.

Actually what happened is that they opened the gate for a “Watershed of Technologies” like the airplane industry, to develop and connecting with higher education was a shrewd move the 2 Steve’s knew from how DEC(Digital Equipment Corporation) had given away free PDP-11 to power house Universities like MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Cornel created and cemented a  sub-industry   dependent on a need neglected by IBM.

The 2nd instance was marked by the introduction of the MacIntosh, a computer that was an improvement on the Lisa which used a then revolutionary concept in  OS: real windows, a technology borrowed!?   ;-)  from Xerox.

The 3rd instance was the introduction of the iPod. A device that invented by Tony Fedell, an independent inventor, a man from Rochester NY who wanted to improve how a device interacted with Napster.

The 4th of course is the iPhone/iPod Touch, an invention that has already changed the computer industry. In my opinion is the platform best suited to deliver Cloud Computing.

I forsee the Cloud devices being an improved iPodTouch with a screen that has about 35-50 square inches more in real estate or about 2-3 inches wider and longer and the providers being Apple and Google with an Android OS.

Newsweek Magazine published an issued devoted to the impact that the iPod Touch/iPhone will have in businesses, new industry and employment. In an article: “There is gold in them iPhones” the explanations continue

Also in an article about the diversity and wealth of Apps “There’s an App for that” Daniel Lyons points out how mind-blowing and how real this explosion of technological talent is. There is humor also like the App that caters to populist outrage with an App that allows you to stop the crooked bankers from escaping.

The advantage of the iPod Touch over the iPhone is that you are not tied down to the ball and chain of monthly payments, you buy it once and you’re done with it. Buy the Apps you need that’s all. There are Apps from totally free to free lite versions of full Apps to 99 cents Apps all away through 4.99 to 12.99; with few exceptional special purpose Apps $25.00 (books for professionals)

Really ! what are you waiting for? Get yours soon.

E TU BRUTUS ?? !!!

The hyenas in Europe smell the blood of a wounded lion the US of A.

A general review of the latest news condensed for the convinience of the discriminating reader with not enough time this week.

A real test of leadership.

Awaits all American citizens and especialy its Energy Business leaders who will be in difficult positions  as they will manouver energy transactions and face competition in the comming frenzy for Lybian contracts and oil, in very adversorial now openly anti-American territories.

Our Political Leaders will have to summon a backbone balanced with sober thinking in the tribulations ahead.

Those who can effectively unite America for the love  and gratitude felt will become the Grizzly Bears and those who separate it by unifying small fractions on the bases of fear and hate will become coyotes who shall have a popular start and a pyrrhic victory.

The Dagger

With the knife on our back the bleeding begins and it is the time to watch which EU country will try to take the first bite. Will it be Berlusconi, Sarkozy or Zapatero?

The release of mass murderer by Scotland’s Authorities.

Pan Am Flight 103 was Pan American World Airways’ third daily scheduled transatlantic flight from London’s Heathrow Airport to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. On Wednesday 21 December 1988, the Boeing 747-121 named Clipper Maid of the Seas was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members. Eleven people in Lockerbie,  Scotland, were killed when large airplane sections fell down over the town.  As a result, history has named the event as the Lockerbie Bombing.

In 2001, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, a Libyan, was found guilty and convicted of involvement in the murder  caused by the bombing and sentenced to life imprisonment. On 20 August 2009, the Scottish Government released him on “compassionate grounds” to return to Libya, he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer and told he had a life expectancy of less than 3 months. Does he really have cancer, It is irrelevant.
The first stab came from the UK. How:

As we can tell by what The WSJ wrote : “Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, meanwhile, owns a $16 million mansion in London’s northern suburbs and maintains close links with Britain’s leading business figures. Earlier this summer he was a guest at the villa owned by the Rothschild banking family on the Greek island of Corfu. Another guest was Lord Peter Mandelson, Britain’s business secretary and a close ally of Prime Minister Gordon Brown.”
Mr. Mandelson is no other than Peter Benjamin Mandelson, Baron Mandelson, PC (Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council is a body of advisors to the British Sovereign. ) who had to resign twice under Prime Minister Tony Blair under the shadows of impropriety:
First resignation: In December 1998, it was revealed Mandelson had bought a home in Notting Hill in 1996 with the assistance of an interest-free loan of £373,000 from Geoffrey Robinson, a millionaire Labour MP who was also in the Government, but was subject to an inquiry into his business dealings by Mandelson’s department. Although Mandelson alleged he had deliberately not taken part in any decisions relating to Robinson, he knew he should have declared the loan as an interest, and he resigned on 23 December 1998
Second resignation: In January 2001, it was revealed Mandelson had phoned Home Office minister Mike O’Brien on behalf of Srichand Hinduja, an Indian businessman who was seeking British citizenship, and whose family firm was to become the main sponsor of the “Faith Zone” in the Millennium Dome. At the time, Hinduja and his brothers were under investigation by the Indian government for alleged involvement in the Bofors scandal. On 24 January 2001, Mandelson resigned from the Government for a second time insisting he had done nothing wrong.
He made several speeches outlining his strong support for the European Union. He was close to two Shadow Cabinet members, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, each regarded as potential future leaders
Mandelson became a close ally and trusted adviser to Blair. He was Labour’s election Campaign Director for the 1997 general election, which Labour won by a landslide.
Some early background, He was educated at Hendon County Grammar School. at St Catherine’s College read Philosophy, Politics and Economics and in the late 1970s became director of the British Youth Council thus became a delegate in 1978 to the Soviet-organized World Festival of Youth and Students in Havana, Cuba and several future Labour cabinet colleagues. Elected to Lambeth Borough Council in September 1979 and retired in 1982 not pleased with the course of Labour politics.

Other evidence suggesting the British government, rather than its weaker Scottish partner, was the driving force behind Megrahi’s release has emerged in the form of a letter Ivor Lewis, a junior minister at the British Foreign Office, wrote to Mr. MacAskill on Aug. 3. In that letter, parts of which have been leaked to the British press, Mr. Lewis tells Mr. MacAskill that there is no legal reason not to accede to Libya’s request to transfer Megrahi into its custody under the terms of an agreement reached between Mr. Blair and Gadhafi senior in 2004 to strengthen U.K.-Libyan diplomatic ties. This agreement was negotiated in the wake of the historic nuclear deal.
The Stabbing dagger was last seen in the hands of Italy.
Libya is the biggest provider of crude oil to Italy by far and its sovereign wealth fund may yet prop up some large Italian companies, but Silvio Berlusconi is discovering – like Gordon Brown of the UK – that to deal with Muammar Gadhafi can be a double-edged sword.
When he flies to Tripoli on Sunday, the Italian prime minister will be the first western head of government to greet the Libyan leader since the homecoming of the convicted Lockerbie bomber which has sparked a furore in the US and the UK. Oil and business ties are expected to top the agenda when Mr Berlusconi joins Colonel Gadhafi to celebrate the accord they forged a year ago under which Italy said it would pay $5bn (€3.5bn, £3bn) during 25 years as reparations for its colonial rule, which lasted from 1911 to 1943.
In return, Libya made a deal about boat people leaving its shores and is to give Italian companies priority in infrastructure projects, such as Finmeccanica’s aerospace(see stock below) venture with a Libyan fund and its award last month of a €541m railway signals contract. Libya’s sovereign wealth funds seek stakes in Italian companies, including a possible 10 per cent holding in Eni, the energy company controlled by the Italian government.
Before he flies to Libya this evening, Mr Berlusconi has a related but potentially more important meeting closer to home, with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state.
Is reminds me of the movie “The Godfather” when Michael is at the Cathedral baptizing his son while he has his men whacking the competition.

Finmeccanica FNC:MIL
11.36EUR   +0.04 +0.35%    1.70m 8.37        -16.98
Last Price Today’s Change   Shares Traded   52 Week Range
Latest Finmeccanica FNC:MIL stock quote

Enersis S.A. (ADR) (Public, NYSE:ENI)
17.91             -0.13‎           (-0.72%‎)
Latest ENI stock quote
From their official website: Finmeccanica and Libyan Investment Authority sign a Memorandum of Understanding for a strategic cooperation in Africa and the Middle EastOriente

Finmeccanica, the Italian leading aerospace, defence and security company and the Libyan Investment Authority (“LIA”), the Libyan sovereign wealth fund, and Libya Africa Investment Portfolio (“LAP”), an Investment Fund owned by LIA, share the view that Libya and the Middle East and Africa countries will offer, in the near future, significant investment opportunities in a broad range of industrial sectors in which Finmeccanica is present at a global level and they intend to leverage on their joint capabilities to access new markets working with local customers and partners.

In this context, Finmeccanica, LIA and LAP have today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the development of a strategic cooperation in Libya and other countries in the Middle East and Africa regions. Under this MoU investment opportunities will be pursued in the aerospace, electronics, transportation and energy sectors for civil applications.

Japan’s dilema

The WSJ page A16 World News of Aug-27-09 dedicates a 1/2 page to  what the article’s heading calls: Likely Japan Leaders to Focus on Asian Ties

Focusing  on Yukio Hatomaya of the opposition Democratic Party and the meaning of his comment on America: ” The era of U.S. led globalism is comming to an end and we are moving away from a unipolar world toward an era of multipolarity”

This from the man that may become Japan’s Prime Minister.

wow it reminds you of that song “where have all the cowboys gone” because we haven’t seen any since Ronald Reagan.

—oo0oo—

Lighter side

Nobel Economics

“Economics is the only field in which two people can share a Nobel Prize for saying opposing things.” Specifically, Myrdal and Hayek shared one.

Detroit Auto makers can’t win even with Goverment baby-sitting

We as citizens need to learn how to identify winners in business, the companies, the technologies and the industries’ consistent performers.

A newspaper headline reports the sad story that clearly reveals signs of a pathological habit of losing as a group. Detroit and Michigan as a general population has criticized Government intervention and crusaded the values of the free enterprise system.

What is becoming clear is that they are not our best American warriors to win this economic war since their Free market skills lag far behind their political talk.

We need to focus on the many successful companies, smaller and less talked about but the hugely successful businesses such as Microwave Data Systems of Rochester, New York. Their success is not in fame but $$ and the professionalism developed by their workforce

Toyota Tops List of $$-for-Clunkers (clik 4more)

(NYT). “While American government officials hailed the month long program, which ended this week, as an overall stimulus to the economy, the biggest winner was Toyota, which accounted for 19 percent of all sales and had two of the top three best-selling models. The cash-for-clunkers program turned out to be a boon for Asian automakers and the small cars they specialize in.

The Transportation Department said Wednesday that participants in the clunkers program bought 690,000 new vehicles. About $2.9 billion of the program’s $3 billion was distributed in government vouchers, which were worth $3,500 to $4,500 toward new-car purchases.

Detroit’s three automakers — General Motors, Ford and Chrysler — accounted for 38.6 percent of the vehicles sold. That figure is substantially less than the 45 percent combined market share that the Detroit companies posted in the first seven months of the year.”

Clearly is not that they do not want to win but that they don’t know how in this new world that clearly was created with the help of greedy CEO’s.

America, greedy CEO’s do not represent nor portrait the American Free Enterprise System nor American Capitalism because they do not capitalize companies in America.

—oo000—

CHANGE=Δ

Subject	Change	%Change	Value
DJI	4.23	+0.04%	9,543.52
NASDAQ	0.20	+0.01%	2,024.43
S&P 500	0.12	+0.01%	1,028.12
OIL	-0.21	-0.29%	$71.22
Gold	0.30	0.03%	945.50
Nat Gas	-0.06	-2.23%	2.84
US $	0.0004	+0.0006%	1.00
CSCO	-0.07	-0.32%	22.0
YHOO	-0.14	-0.93%	14.93
GOOG	-3.37	-.071%	468.00
AAPL	-1.99	-1.17%	167.41
MSFT	-0.09	-0.37%	24.55

On the Lighter side

Once upon a time at a conference of Economists The Critical Question was asked and the results were typical it is said
Q: How many conservative economists does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer1: None. The darkness will cause the light bulb to change by itself.
A2: None. If it really needed changing, market forces would have caused it to happen.
A3: None. If the government would just leave it alone, it would screw itself in.
A4. None. “There is no need to change the light bulb. All the conditions for illumination are in place.
A5. None, because, look! It’s getting brighter! It’s definitely getting brighter !!!
A5. None; they’re all waiting for the unseen hand of the market to correct the lighting disequilibrium.