Post Tagged with: "cars"
Green Energy – Too Many Subsidies, Too Little Performance
Any politician who talks of a green, utopian US – where wind and solar produce most of our energy, electric cars put power back into the grid, green fields of corn produce clean fuels, and millions of Americans work in green technology factories – is creating a fanciful vision so far detached from reality it should really be called a lie. Such tales are designed to encourage a public that is increasingly despondent about the future, but the policy moves that have been made in support of these fantasies have cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars
Nonlinear Thinking: Drone Valet Parking Attendents
If this doesn’t convince you we’re on the elbow of the technology exponential curve, nothing will. Stay tuned, it’s going to be interesting next 20 years!
News Links: Euro Zone Economy Shrinks
News links for 5 December 2011 featuring stories on Europe, the sovereign debt crisis, and shadow banks,
How do we know that China is overinvesting?
For years I have been arguing that the Achilles heel of the Chinese growth model is the unsustainable rise in debt that comes as a necessary consequence of capital misallocation fueled by bank lending. Capital misallocation, I argued, was the nearly inevitable consequence of high investment growth over many years in a system in which price signals are severely distorted and there is political incentive to maximize economic activity in the near term. If capital misallocation is funded by debt, the increase in debt is necessarily unsustainable
India getting hit by European slowdown
Over the past couple of days I have noticed a lot of posts on the FT’s emerging markets blog about a growth slowdown in India that is occurring as a direct result of the worsening outlook in Europe
Macro Notes from the GM Sep Sales Call
We forgot to post this yesterday. The macro issues raised by GM in their September sales conference call. All are direct quotes from GM management
Notes from a Private Briefing with the Bank of Japan
The Bank of Japan held a private briefing with a small group of analysts from leading financial institutions in their NY rep office. The Director-General of the Research and Statistics Department led the presentation. This column summarises insights from that meeting
Brazil Resorts To Protectionism
Brazil is reportedly imposing trade barriers on auto parts imports and a variety of other products. Imports of 27 products will reportedly have tighter licensing requirements that can take up to 60 days to approve. These are called non-tariff barriers to trade (NTBs) in trade theory. This development is noteworthy, as protectionist policies were not seen during the depths of the financial crisis. We need to see more details, but a rise in protectionism is never good. It would appear that a strong real is feeding into cheaper imports which are putting domestic Brazilian firms under pressure
Fukushima Daiichi Disaster Prompts Closure of Another Plant
As workers continue to battle with the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant, more impacts from the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl are starting to arise. The latest impact will hit car manufacturers, with plants in central Japan hit the hardest: power firm Chubu Electric has agreed to shut its Hamaoka Nuclear Plant until it can build better defenses against the kind of massive earthquake and tsunami that hit on March 11, and Hamaoka provides power to at least 15 auto plants
3000 billion tons of coal off Norway’s coast
Andy Lees writes: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/11901 suggests that Norway is sitting on 3trn tons of coal on the Norwegian shelf which compares with today’s 900bn tons of proven world reserves. “By injecting oxygen we can ignite the coal where it is. This will produce a mix of gas which we can recover and use for energy production.
China and U.S. – Driving in Different Directions
Traffic jams like this one in Beijing are likely to get much worse. Photo: China Daily In 2009, China’s auto sales surpassed those of the U.S., reaching 13 million units (cars and light trucks). This came as The Great Recession drove U.S. auto sales to a level far below the record of 17.4 million sales
Car Sales Rise $23 Billion
by Annaly Capital Management Okay, so this wasn’t the exact headline after GM’s record setting capital raise this week. Including over-allotment option, the offering of common and preferred stock should bring the total dollars raised to $23 billion, making it the biggest IPO ever done. Of that amount, approximately $4.8 billion will be netted by