Author: Serkadis

The latest addition to the Audi Sportback range, the A5, has crossed several oceans and seas and is now available in Australia as well, with prices starting from AU$78,400 for the 2.0 TFSI and going as high as AU$89,100 for the 3.0 TDI model.

It seems that once again Audi has managed to successfully combine conflicting traits – blending emotional design with a car that is functional in terms of space, even offering a very large rear tailgate for ease of access. It looks beautiful. It drives … (read more)

Luxor News Blog (Jane Akshar)

Jane has been taking notes at the Mummification Museum’s lecture series again.

I might have misled people last week saying this lecture was going to by about Ankhtifi and it wasn’t but it put him and Moalla in context in Egyptian history. There is a very good website http://www.yale.edu/egyptology/ae_moalla.htm but Colleen said to ignore the part about the town site as she has changed her conclusions and the website has not yet been updated. I must admit I do like being on the edge of new thoughts and discoveries like this.

Moalla is situated about 40 kilometres south of Luxor where the gebel (mountain) descends to the Nile. It is between El Kab/Hierakonpolis and Luxor so has been neglected archaeology as teams have concentrated on these two sites. It is the third nome of Egypt and famous for the tomb of Ankhtifi which was originally published in 1950 and is currently being excavated by Liverpool University under Mark Collier.

Her study area is the area outside a necropolis of 2 kilometres with 1000 tombs dating from the Vth and VIth dynasty until the XVIII dynasty. There are considerable Nubian burials from the second intermediate period. Some of site has been lost to recent quarrying.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Talk about a great day for Thomas Friedman to be talking about China’s bulletproof economy.

Shanghai was down 3.1% last night, as fears continue to grow that the government is serious this time about limiting bank leverage.

As we noted yesterday, PBOC chief Zhou Xiaochuan officially assumed the mantle of the new Ben Bernanke, after increased reserved requirements at banks shook the global markets.

If China’s actions do produce a hard landing (for stocks, real estate etc.) policymakers will largely have themselves to blame, as to some extent they’ve become the boy who cried wolf.

For two years at least, we’ve been treated to regular headlines along the lines of “Chinese regulators mull heightened lending rules to curb excessive…” and they’ve never really done anything, basically signalling to the world that their concerns are a total lie.

Well, maybe they actually want to do something about the bubble now. But it’s coming as a total surprise.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Thomas Friedman Tries To Give Short-Selling Advice To Jim Chanos
• January 12, 2010: THE DAY BERNANKE GOT REPLACED
• China Sneezed And Brazil, Australia, The Commodities Industry, And The US Market All Just Caught A Cold

Google has made a lot of waves with the announcement that it may pull out of China if it won’t be able to run an unfiltered search engine in the country. Part of the decision, though definitely not the sole reason, was a recent attack targeting Gmail, originating from China, on which you can read a more detailed overview in the Security section…. (read more)

Ferrari were the last of the championship’s big guns to announce the unveiling of their Formula One challenger for the 2010 season, so they recently confirmed that this will happen on January 28th, three days before the first test of the off-season kicks off in Valencia.

According to a press release from the Maranello squad, the new 2010 car will be codenamed Ferrari 281 and will be test driven by both Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa on the Ricardo Tormo circuit in Valencia.

The new car p… (read more)

Leave Jay Alone! ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel poked fun at the drama going on at NBC by donning a salt and pepper wig and slapping on a prosthetic chin to impersonate former Tonight Show host Jay Leno! Dressed as Jay Leno, Jimmy took the stage and stayed in character for the duration of his show — he even snatched Jay’s trademark “Headlines” segment.

“My name is Jay Leno and let it be known that I am taking over all shows in late night,” Kimmel cracked in his opening monologue, adding that ABC stands for “Always Bump Conan.”

How do you call a car made in Italy, named locally Lancia, but with an American face on it? Well, apparently, you may call it Chrysler Design Study, as the American manufacturer calls the Chrysler-Lancia mutant showcased this week at the 2010 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS).

What exactly the study was supposed to spawn is not all that clear, as the car is nothing but a Lancia Delta (about 90 percent of it) who went to plastic surgery and received Chrysler’s nose and lips.

T… (read more)

Saleen Performance Vehicles launched a new mobile application and two new websites at the 2010 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit this week, that are meant to keep Saleen owners, enthusiasts and media up to date with the latest vehicles, photos and news from the Michigan-based company.

The mobile app reportedly is the first vehicle configuration application on the mobile market and enables users to check out the vehicles, configure a Saleen Performance Vehicle, see the … (read more)

Pocos movimientos como la amenaza de salir de China por parte de Google al dejar de ejecutar la censura que exige su gobierno van a ser más comentados dentro del sector tecnológico. He tenido que leer el anuncio en su blog oficial varias veces antes de creérmelo: la misma empresa que aceptaba la censura en las búsquedas bajo el argumento que “mejor para los chinos con un google censurado que sin él”, de pronto denuncia ataque a cuentas Gmail de disidentes, a su infraestructura y a la de varias empresas importantes del sector (se habla de Adobe) y afirma que hasta aquí hemos llegado y que dejará de censurar los resultados de las búsquedas. No todos los días una empresa que cotiza en bolsa amenaza al gobierno chino – al que apuntan sin decirlo explícitamente – y le echa un pulso público a sabiendas de que esto puede suponer salir del mercado con mayor futuro del mundo.

En seguida he empezado a buscarle tres pies al gato, a buscar el interés comercial en hacer este movimiento por parte de Google. No lo he encontrado. Llevamos tiempo discutiendo que Google lleva siguiendo la lógica de las empresas que cotizan en bolsa y que tienen que responder ante sus accionistas, o creces en tu mercado o entras en otros nuevos para seguir creciendo. Esto le está llevando a una estrategia “muy Microsoft”, entrar a saco en sectores (navegación, sistemas operativos, ofimática, móvil) integrando productos y bajando los precios para sacar a competidores… con la imagen de “gigante dominador” que este tipo de prácticas traen. Pero el pulso a China supone ir contra la lógica de las empresas que operan en bolsa, a corto y medio plazo no hay ganancia, sino perder años irrecuperables, no sólo de ingresos sino de porcentaje de un mercado que sus competidores van a conquistar. Por mucho que me esfuerzo en entender los réditos económicos de esta estrategia, sólo veo tres elementos que muy a largo plazo puedan aportar valor a Google:

• Renuncian a un acuerdo que iba contra su estrategia de siempre – aportar valor al usuario por encima de otros factores – y contar con que cuando vuelvan lo hacen en las condiciones necesarias para desarrollar su negocio de búsquedas ¿Esperaban que las cosas en China iban a mejorar rápido en términos de libertad de expresión y por eso aceptaron en su momento? Sea como fuere, como apunta Mariano, el argumentario de Google en China no se sostenían y las fricciones iban a ser cada vez mayores como ha sucedido.
• Este tipo de ataques pone en cuestión otro de los pilares de la estrategia de Google: el cloud computing, datos y servicios a la red con seguridad. Si tienes como socio al gobierno chino y sospechas que es quien está detrás de los ataques a tu infraestructura, algo tienes que hacer para que este cambie su postura.
• Mejoran la imagen mundial de la compañía, un valor intangible pero que lleva tiempo en franco declive.

No creo que nada de esto vaya a consolar a los accionistas que quieran rentabilidad por encima de todas las cosas, y tampoco sabemos como va a evolucionar la historia (sin ser un experto en China, tengo la impresión de que su gobierno no es muy amigo de los desafíos públicos), pero hoy Google ha dado un paso muy pocos se atreverían a dar.

Conan O’Brien made fun of his career “options” in his monologue for a second consecutive night, hours after declaring that he “cannot participate” in the “destruction” of The Tonight Show brand by agreeing to move his broadcast to 12:05 AM to accomodate The Jay Leno Show.

“My name is Conan O’Brien and I may soon be available for children’s parties,” O’Brien said after first calling for his audience to stop applauding because “I may not have that much time.”

Conan then reprised a Monday gag by inviting Deal or No Deal host Howie Mandel and a bevy of models holding suitcases to reveal more career “options.”

Among his choices:

-Join the cast of the next “Twilight” movie as a rare albino werewolf.

-Play a gay neighbor on an untitled Ed Asner project.

-Move to FOX but Seth MacFarlane does O’Brien’s voice.

-Star in a new infomercial about super-absorbent hair – the Con-wow.

-Two tickets to see Jay Leno perform stand-up at the Luxor in Las Vegas.

We’ll never hold a candle to Matt Taibbi when it comes to picking apart Thomas Friedman columns. But since his latest one is about China, whether it’s a bubble, and whether Jim Chanos is right to bet against it, we figured we had to make some comment.

Right near the top, it starts with what we’re sure Taibbi would agree is an instant classic of a Friedmanism:

China’s markets may be full of bubbles ripe for a short-seller, and if Mr. Chanos can find a way to make money shorting them, God bless him. But after visiting Hong Kong and Taiwan this past week and talking to many people who work and invest their own money in China, I’d offer Mr. Chanos two notes of caution.

First, a simple rule of investing that has always served me well: Never short a country with $2 trillion in foreign currency reserves.

How on earth can Friedman say that’s always served him well?

Has he really considered shorting various countries, but then always passed up when considering their $2 trillion in foreign currency reserves? What other country has this ever applied to? (And since we don’t  think it’s ever applied to another country in history, how could this possibly be a rule, or a guide to whether or not China is a bubble).

Here’s his next reason:

Second, it is easy to look at China today and see its enormous problems and things that it is not getting right. For instance, low interest rates, easy credit, an undervalued currency and hot money flowing in from abroad have led to what the Chinese government Sunday called “excessively rising house prices” in major cities, or what some might call a speculative bubble ripe for the shorting. In the last few days, though, China’s central bank has started edging up interest rates and raising the proportion of deposits that banks must set aside as reserves — precisely to head off inflation and take some air out of any asset bubbles.

And that’s the point. I am reluctant to sell China short, not because I think it has no problems or corruption or bubbles, but because I think it has all those problems in spades — and some will blow up along the way (the most dangerous being pollution). But it also has a political class focused on addressing its real problems, as well as a mountain of savings with which to do so (unlike us).

So… China has, let’s count ’em: too-low interest rates, easy credit, a manipulated currency, scads of hot money, a housing bubble, a stock bubble, corruption, a pollution problem, and various other issues that “will blow up along the way” and this is a good thing?

It sounds like he’s arguing Chanos’s book here.

After a few more paragraphs, filled with the requisite anecdote about a reverse-expat he knows who came back to China, Friedman concludes with:

But, hey, some people said the same about Enron. Still, I’d rather bet against the euro. Shorting China today? Well, good luck with that, Mr. Chanos. Let us know how it works out for you.

We’ll just say that if you had any doubt about how mainstream the anti-Euro sentiment has become in the last month or so (with all the problems in Greece, Ireland, etc.) this should clear that right up for you.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• CORRECTION: Jim Rogers Never Said That Chanos, Specifically, Couldn’t Spell China Ten Years Ago
• Jim Rogers: Jim Chanos Couldn’t Spell ‘China’ 10 Years Ago
• Why Thomas Friedman Wants China-Style Authoritarianism In The US

Although we all believed that Volvo is 99 percent sold, it appears that Ford is also willing to listen to other offers it might receive from various interested parties around the world. At least, this is what Volvo CEO Stephen Odell told the Dagens Industri newspaper, claiming that Ford would negotiate with any other bidder if it submits an offer.

"I know that Ford is open to talking with others," he told the newspaper according to Reuters. "Those who say that the door is close… (read more)