tom Andersen

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    • Mon Oct 20th 15:49 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Singing the Praises of Financial Innovation
      It is time for new ways to finance. We let the banker boys take billions per month - for what? Give me the financial version of eBay. Of the trillion dollar bailout, no thought has been given to starting 5 new companies at say 10 billion each with new ways to finance houses cars and companies.

      One thing for sure, if given the opportunity, wall street will do it again.
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    • Mon Sep 8th 21:22 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Fannie/Freddie Bailout 'Disastrous Fiasco'
      The only answer now for the Federal Government, now that they own all the mortgages and the printing presses is obvious: RUN THEM PRESSES! A 10+% annual inflation rate for the next 5 - 10 years will make all the mortgages be back in black. They own both sides of the paper now.

      The problem with letting Fannie and Freddie go bankrupt is that, for example, even in a company that is only 10% under water, the act of bankruptcy will usually devalue things by 50% - and the difference goes to - you guessed it - Wall Street vultures. Plus, there are not enough lawyers, paper, and time in the entire country to do such a deal.
      View article »
    • Tue Sep 2nd 22:00 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Solar Breaks Oil Price Dependence
      Look at First Solar. The market cap, 20 billion, and it will produce panels that would produce less power than a 0.06 billion dollar nat gas generation plant that you can almost order from a catalog. There are no US contracts for it, as only the Europeans have the stomach to pay $0.60 per kwh for power where nuclear and coal are about 1/10th the cost. When the global recession deepens subsidies like these will fall away long before basics like health care and defense spending. US government income will drop substantially next year across all levels of government. Solar as it exists is a bubble. This is electronic tech, though, someone may have a breakththrough - a 10x cheaper way to do it, but all the companies around today will have spent way too much money to be competitive at 5c/kwh.
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    • Fri Aug 8th 13:06 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The Year Ahead For US Wind
      The main benefit of wind power to a large corporation is NOT in the paltry, low quality, electricity, or the raw PTC 1.5c / kwh, which is connected to production, but rather in the luxurious tax breaks that you get. I think that these tax breaks will go the way of the dodo when government income drops like a stone in 2008/9.

      From an investment point of view, wind is only about government tax breaks. I for one would not put a dime this kind of endeavor, given the fickle nature of our politicians.

      "During a December 15, 2004, teleconference, Ed Feo - Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy, LLP pointed out that 2/3 of the economic value of wind projects come
      from tax breaks.9
      "
      FPL group paid no federal tax in 2002 and 2003, with 2 billion in net income. When governments come up 10 - 20% short on revenue next year it will be hard to continue these subsidies.

      See:
      johnrsweet.com/Persona...
      View article »
    • Thu Aug 7th 10:21 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Wind's Our Future, but Natural Gas Is Now
      pachanguero,

      I said get rid of or lower income taxes! That is an increase how? Income taxes are an accident of WW I. They really don't make sense. I should be able to keep all the money I make, and invest it all if I desire. Tax consumption.
      View article »
    • Thu Aug 7th 09:42 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Wind's Our Future, but Natural Gas Is Now
      One nice thing about natural gas - when electricity prices rise waaay up, individuals will be able to buy nat gas furnaces that make electricity while they heat your house. 'Micro cogen' - like this Honda:
      world.honda.com/news/2...
      These could charge your car too. Good for the northern states.
      T. Boone just wants to make money - but with current incentives and tax breaks, all the money that he will make from wind will come directly from taxpayers - which he does not make clear on his site, and which is dishonest.
      View article »
    • Thu Aug 7th 09:28 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Wind's Our Future, but Natural Gas Is Now
      It should not be the governments job to 'push' individual pet technologies. It actually turns out that wind power is great - for Goldman Sachs and other big cats like Florida Light and Power. The real money in wind is in the corporate tax breaks, not the actual power, which costs at least 20c/kwh (about 4 or 5 times coal and nuclear, 10x of hydro).
      Instead of taxing peoples incomes, we need to tax carbon, packaging and consumption. Tax what you don't want to happen. Then let real economics take over. The real way to lower imports is to keep the cost of gasoline high - through (carbon) taxes if necc. Fat chance of that happening, though! Politicians have little of the bravery that would be required to overhaul the tax system.

      With a hefty carbon tax in place, we would not have to argue the merits of wind/solar/nat gas/oil/coal sequestration etc... - Just let real innovation take over. The only innovation in the current system is in the halls of Wall Street. We all know where that eventually takes us.
      --Tom
      View article »
    • Thu Aug 7th 09:16 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The Only Chart True Investors Need to See
      Look at 1962 - 1982: - 20 flat years. Looking at that chart, if anything, it shows that the market needs a breather like that again. I for one won't wait for 12 more years for the uptick! (We are flat since 2000).
      --Tom
      View article »
    • Tue Aug 5th 20:51 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Solar and Cash: The Big Boys Have an Answer - Do You?
      Looks like a classical bubble. Solar costs right now about 5x what coal and nuclear costs, (Typical price for electricity is 5 - 9c for production, 5c for delivery). Hydro Quebec makes electricity for under a penny. Going to the FS website does not tell you how much it all actually costs them (ie YOU as taxpayers) to buy all this fun stuff. But look at the financials, then divide that by the total sales of panels in watts, and it starts to become clear. Don't forget that the panel output is peak on a sunny day, so divide by 4 or so for realistic power output.

      2008 - '400MW' of solar panels - ie about 80MW of actual power on average, which at wholesale electrical prices, say 5c/kwh is 0.05*80000*24*365/1e6 = 36 million dollars of electricity produced by their products for stuff installed this year (being optimistic). 22 Billion in market cap to produce as much electricity as a $60 million nat gas plant.

      Ok - so everyone is betting that they can reduce costs by a factor of 5? The press releases all mention single digit increases in efficiency, or modest drops in prices. Even if they figure it all out in 5 or 10 years, someone else with lower costs will come along and take all the business.

      With the economy being what it is, everyone is looking for something positive. Follow it up, but don't hold on!

      --Tom
      View article »
    • Tue Aug 5th 09:26 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Winners and Losers from the Mortgage Mess
      Ah - taxes on real estate are about to sky rocket - along with service cuts, etc. Cities need the same amount of money year to year. So if you get 5% of houses paying no tax, and property values drop 40%, tax rates have to roughly double. In addition, tax shortfalls at other levels of government will continue to passed down to real estate - it can't move out of the way. This will become apparent soon.
      View article »
    • Tue Aug 5th 09:12 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      GM May Hit $200 Before Oil Does
      We have not even got to the point where the governments start crying due to the overwhelming budget shortfalls that they will be getting. This will cause another whole spin - down.
      View article »
    • Sat Jan 12th 18:43 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Cool Hand Bernanke Protects a Bankrupt Fed
      The slide has already begun. US Real Esate prices are less than 50% of what they were three years ago, when measured in world currencies. 10x? That will not happen anytime soon. Eventually, though, inflation is always catching us. Perhaps another factor of 2 over the next few years. At this point I think that the Asians, oil barons and others will buy much of the US. They won't buy intangibles, but rather companies and land. This sort of thing happened to the UK. The pound dropped as low as parity to the US. It is $2 now. They did alright in the end. But not many people spend like americans can.
      View article »
    • Mon May 28th 18:42 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Why Globalization Is Boosting Inequality in Developing Nations
      One problem with these and other 'widening gap' stories is that once you are 'rich' being 10x or 20x richer does very little for your quality of life, etc. So what really matters is how the poorest people in any county are doing, not how the rich keep getting richer. As the article clearly states the poverty levels in China and Mexico are both falling. The old 'compare the top 10% to the bottom' makes little sense. It is literally impossible to eat more than a few times a day, and what is the difference between a 500 sq ft apartment and a 5000 sq ft house for a single person? Not much really.
      Every single indicator of poverty goes down in almost all developing nations every year.
      View article »
    • Tue Mar 13th 18:30 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Viacom's Lawsuit Could Mean YouTube's End Game
      YouTube will...
      Make a new company in Sweden, or Vietnam, or Canada, or Russia or.....almost anywhere.

      Companies are getting sued out of America.

      --Tom Andersen
      View article »
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