Citi's latest failed share offering makes it pretty clear how speculators have been pumping the shares lately. Sure, we've been discussing this for some time, but here it is, visualized.
Citi shares have been punted all over the place since August, even breaking $5 at one point. Yet when actually presented to large institutional investors for the latest offering, Citi was only able to price its shares at $3.15. Thus the real money has spoken, and has killed the speculators. Everything above the yellow area shown below represents froth, which has been blown away. Right now Citi shares are down 7.5% to 3.19.
All hail the drift king, Valentino Balboni – Click above to view the video after the jump
Fate is a funny thing. It was our destiny to get a ride with Valentino Balboni in a Lamborghini LP550-2 Valentino Balboni during rush hour traffic in Los Angeles. Lucky? Absolutely, though we may have crested 50 mph once… maybe. Would we have preferred to have been in the passenger seat of this here limeade green Valentino Balboni as Lamborghini’s legendary test driver literally hoons the rear tires off the car? Dear God, yes!!
The following video is actually a pretty good demonstration of the difference between RWD and AWD vehicles. You’ll see the Mr. Balboni flinging the LP550-2 around a corner, the rear sliding out a touch before he applies just a dab of oppo’ to get the V10-powered, rear-wheel drive mini-monster back in line. This is followed by an AWD LP560-4 which simply can’t break traction and sort of gracelessly shunts and shutters its way around the corner. Faster, no doubt — but not nearly as fun to watch. And then there are sparks and smoke and trust us you’ll love this. Watch the video, after the jump.
Last April we ran a profile of the leading doomsayers -- the folks who aggressively argued that the economy was going to hell in a handbasket.
Of course, back in April that seemed very possible, and so many of these folks were riding huge waves of fame.
Since then, things have improved markedly, but it's hard to switch gears when you're mostly known for being negative.
And so we've updated our survey to introduce you to the brave holdouts. Despite the rally, they're warning us, Cassandra-like, that all is not well! The recovery is a mirage, and if we don't change our ways fast then we're screwed.
There has been an effort made by some to try to connect the totally unrelated issues of network neutrality and unauthorized file sharing together. There is no connection between the two, but that won’t stop busy lobbyists from doing their best to drum up such a connection. Copycense points us to the news that Grover Nordquit’s group has decided to push this line of nonsense by parroting claims by the Songwriter’s Guild of America (SGA) that accepting net neutrality is akin to encouraging piracy. How? That’s not clear, because there’s really no connection at all. The best they can say is that net neutrality would prevent efforts to crack down on file sharing (except, every plan for net neutrality has explicitly had exceptions for such things). I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I am not in favor of laws mandating neutrality, but the arguments made by those against it are so over-the-top ridiculous that it’s actually making me wonder why. There are reasonable arguments against mandating neutrality, but these groups don’t make them.
That it’s the SGA making these arguments initially shouldn’t come as a surprise. The group has a rather antiquated view of business models and modern technology, and its boss has declared in the past that songwriting would not occur without copyright — an obviously incorrect statement. The SGA has become a caricature of itself in the last few years. Rather than admitting that the market is changing and working with songwriters to help them adapt, it has basically decided the only reasonable strategy is to go crying to the government for more protectionism, and greater mandatory licensing fees. This is an odd group for the anti-net neutrality types to team up with, since most of them claim their reasons for being against net neutrality is to get away from government meddling in the internet industry. And then they go and team up with the SGA, who’s entire purpose is to encourage more government meddling in the music business? Politics makes strange bedfellows indeed…
Separately, it’s probably worth noting that ITIF, a “think tank” in DC and which has been a huge anti-net neutrality voice, has just come out with a poorly researched, poorly argued, joke of a report on “reducing digital piracy.” In it, they promote kicking people off the internet (based on accusations, not convictions) under a three strikes regime, and also that ISPs should filter and monitor their networks to try to stop infringement. Apparently, ITIF is not a big fan of your privacy… but it’s own… well, just try to find out who funds ITIF? That’s secret. Funny how that works. Otherwise the report repeats a bunch of sweeping claims that have no support in reality, and does not back them up. It states, repeatedly, that you can’t compete with free, even as many smart businesses do that every day. The report advocates DRM, and amusingly fails to mention the massive failure of every DRM system to date, and the harm it has done to legitimate users. But, of course, it saves most of its focus on supporting “technical measures” from ISPs to inspect your content and stop you if they think you’re doing anything wrong. Welcome to the big brother state. The report also supports ACTA, even though it admits it doesn’t know what’s included. Basically, it’s “recommendations” straight from the entertainment industry, with no basis in reality. And, with a nice “net neutrality” tie-in. Those ties seem likely to get closer, which is unfortunate. Funny that those who keep claiming they want the government to “stay out” of the internet, are so keen to have them very actively involved when it comes to copyright.
While Ohio is rusting away, and the New York Fed is saying it sees a backslide, Philadelphia sees an outlook of booming economic times, driven in part through the manufacturing sector.
One can only dream that said manufacturing includes cheesesteaks:
Federal Reserve Board: Activity in the region’s manufacturing sector is expanding, according to firms polled for December’s Business Outlook Survey. Indexes for general activity, new orders, and shipments all remained positive this month. Indicative of improvement, the overall level of employment and average work hours among reporting firms increased this month. The general activity index increased to 20.4 this month from 16.7 in November.
In this month’s special questions, firms were asked about their expectations for changes in various categories of input and labor costs for the coming year. Similar to responses in previous years, the largest annual increase is expected to be for health benefits (8.6 percent). In contrast, other labor costs (wages and non-health-care costs) are expected to rise only 1.3 and 1.6 percent, respectively.
The 5th annual Hydrogen Student Design Contest has just been announced by the Hydrogen Education Foundation, which is the charitable arm of the National Hydrogen Association.
The theme of the contest is Designing a Hydrogen Community and this year’s graduate and undergraduate students will be challenged with the task of planning and designing the basic elements of a hydrogen community in Southern California.
Three key areas will be addressed by this contest including hydrogen production, early markets, and fueling stations. Students must come up with a means to supply the community with hydrogen, of which 33-percent or more must come from renewable resources.
Students must also come up with a market analysis to identify potential early adopters in their community for the hydrogen they will be producing. According to the contest rules, “Early markets for hydrogen include back-up power, portable power, and materials handling vehicles. Students will identify at least five businesses or other organizations in the community that could be customers for hydrogen in these early markets.”
The third and last challenge is for students use the “cluster model” for hydrogen fueling stations and plan and design such stations that meet customer demand. One would think that a college campus, corporate campus, business or governmental fleet or master planned home community would all be possibilities for such a project.
The winning team will present their findings before the experts who appear at the NHA Hydrogen Conference and Expo on May 3-6, 2010 at Long Beach, CA.
On Wednesday night, Chevrolet held a media preview in Motown to discuss and show off some of what will be coming up at the Detroit Auto Show next month. Unfortunately, we were not allowed take any photos or video at the event, although General Motors officials did say we could write about anything that was discussed.
The presentation kicked off with an introduction to new Chevrolet general manager Jim Campbell who just assumed his role a week ago. Campbell and Mike Simcoe, director of exterior design, then spent the next half-hour showing off the same batch of new Chevrolets that we were shown in the GM design dome last August. All of these cars including the forthcoming Orlando MPV, Cruze, Camaro convertible, Volt and the all-new 2012 Malibu are promised to be in U.S. Chevrolet showrooms within the next 24 months. The Orlando remains pretty true to the 2008 concept, with the only real changes being to the details of the light clusters – just don’t look for it at the Detroit show.
Anchoring the entr- level end of the Bowtie’s lineup will be the Spark and Aveo. Campbell reaffirmed that the Spark will be coming to the U.S. in 2011, putting to rest – at least for the moment – rumors that the program had been canceled. The bigger news is the next Aveo which will get its first public viewing at next month’s show. Read on after the jump for more details and observations.
Commodities strategist Al Abaroa was on CNBC last night. Of interesting note, Abaroa believes gold will “super spike” next year:
The Pragmatic Capitalist: Gold has one more super spike left, to above $1,300 in the first-half of 2010, before losing its luster, says Al Abaroa, commodity strategist from Options Pro Corp, speaking to CNBC’s Lisa Oake and Sri Jegarajah. Abaroa also gives his take on natural gas and the agricultural sector.
While out driving, I noticed an older couple coming out of their house near the local high school. Both of them were dressed in red and white velvet, with long stocking caps on their heads. He had a smart-looking white beard and little gold reading glasses and carried a large red bag stuffed with toys. Mr. and Mrs. Claus smiled big smiles and waved as they climber into their car, which I am pleased to note was a Prius. Santa rolls environment friendly.
When Google started building Chrome, it made the decision to start from scratch. While this meant that there were a lot of things to do, it also meant that the developers had the freedom to make everything the way they envisioned it from the start, something that Firefox developers, which is built on Mozilla’s legacy, itself based on Netscape, didn’t benefit from. One of the biggest decisions was making individual tabs and extensions run in their own process to insulate them from each other for security and stability purposes. This is one of Chrome’s big selling point, but Firefox is catching up having enabled experimental multi-process plugins support in the latest nightly builds.
“Yesterday I landed multi-process plugin support in mozilla-central. By default, this capability is disabled, because there are still some serious bugs. But if you are willing to suffer some temporary instability, we could really use some help testing Minefield nightlies with out-of-process plugins (OOPP),” Mozilla’s Benjamin Smedbergs wrote.
The feature is very early on in the development process and is limited in its scope for the moment. Currently, it works on Windows and Linux and the multi-process capability is limited to plugins, i.e. Adobe Flash and the likes. It’s not particularly stable either, but if you’r… (read more)
The European PlayStation Store’s getting one hell of a beefy update today. The Gran Turismo 5 Time Trial Challenge races onto the starting position for the PS3, and on the PSP side gamers are getting the Metal
2010 Land Rover Freelander 2 Sport – Click above for high-res image gallery
Another week, another special edition for the UK. New for 2010, the Land Rover Freelander 2 Sport attempts to be equipped as regally as its name suggests, with either a Santorini Black or Lago Grey paint job decked out with color-keyed exterior trim, a rear spoiler, and 19-inch diamond-turned alloy wheels.
Inside is where the thrills reside, with a two-tone interior in, ahem, “Ebony & Storm,” and your choice of cloth interior or a “sports styling pack” in Lago Grey leather. Somewhat ironically, the Sport comes with a 2.2-liter diesel four that churns the wheels through a manual transmission, and it gets even better gas mileage with the fitment of stop/start technology.
The model goes on sale next month and starts at £26,695 ($43,581 USD, but bear in mind that UK market prices are higher than those of the U.S.) on-the-road. No word yet on whether North American consumers will get a shot at this model under the LR2 nameplate, so for now, content yourself with our high-res gallery below and the official press release after the jump.
Fedex shares are under pressure today since the company surprisingly issued cautious guidance for the next quarter, below analyst expectations. Just after becoming more bullish just a few days ago.
FedEx: FedEx expects earnings per share of $0.50 to $0.70 per diluted share in the third quarter, and $3.45 to $3.75 for fiscal 2010, which reflects the current market outlook for fuel prices and a continued modest recovery in the global economy.
It's quite a U-turn. This latest guidance is well below analyst estimates of $0.84 for the quarter. Yet we need to be clear that this guidance that was raised across the board just recently. According to Yahoo Finance, 11 out of 11 FedEx analysts (tracked by Yahoo) increased their guidance in the last seven days.
So what happened? Analysts became too bullish on FedEx just a few days ago, upped their numbers, the shares rallied, and now it's been laid bare as pretty silly.
But...while the question as to whether FedEx shares are cheap or expensive remains open to debate, investors as a whole shouldn't read too much into FedEx's guidance slip-up.
That's because beneath the market noise today for FedEx shares, FedEx's underlying data from the latest quarter shows a continued recovery in both their U.S. Express and Ground package volumes.
Check out the chart below -- here's a V-shaped recovery.
Growth of FedEx Express U.S. package volumes has accelerated. (Note that FedEx's fiscal Q2 2010 represents the quarter ending November 30th, 2009: essentially the 4th quarter of 2009)
While not shown as a graphic, FedEx Ground volumes also grew 3.7% in the latest quarter.
Thus from a broader U.S. economic perspective, the latest FedEx results were positive. The chart above is clearly a 'V'. Hopefully it continues to be.
The AT&T Cotton Bowl and Samsung Mobile America formally announced today Samsung Mobile’s sponsorship of the halftime show of the 2010 Classic on January 2nd. The Samsung Jack Halftime Show will showcase the Ole Miss and Oklahoma State bands as well as a finale that includes 11 high school marching units from across the country and the world famous Kilgore College Rangerettes, who are making their 60th consecutive appearance at the AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic.
“The AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic is a tradition and Samsung Mobile is proud to be a part of the excitement as the game moves to the brand new Cowboys Stadium,” said Paul Golden, Chief Marketing Officer, Samsung Mobile. “The Samsung Jack Halftime Show is a great opportunity for all the students to showcase their musical talents and is sure to be fun and entertaining for their nearly 100,000 fans at the big game.”
“The pageantry is what helps make college football unique and great, and it’s evident Samsung Mobile appreciates and embraces that through our collaboration,” Rick Baker, President of the AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic said. “What great memories Samsung Mobile is creating for thousands of students through the Samsung Jack Halftime Show!”
Samsung Mobile, as part of their sponsorship, will showcase the Jack, one of their most popular handsets offered exclusively through AT&T. The slim, ergonomically designed Windows Mobile device will be featured in large displays in both Cowboy Stadium Plazas before the game and during the Samsung Jack Halftime Show.
Fans are encouraged to come to the game early to participate in Samsung Mobile’s interactive games and win great prizes, including the Samsung Jack. Gates to the Cowboys Stadium Plazas open at 10 a.m. CST, and doors to the stadium will open at 11 a.m., two hours prior to kickoff of the 74th AT&T Cotton Bowl.
Starve for what they never provide,
Make me wonder how we ever survive
My hero’s not yours, you probably arrested
Your schools probably neglected them, they small thoughts you probably infected them,
Feed us what you feed us you can lay us next to them.
Ya feel me? Whether it’s a song, a poem, a letter or even simply a conversation, there are moments of immense lyrical power that speak to our experiences in direct ways. They’re articulated in a way that makes it seem like there’s no other way of saying the same thing.
These brief lyrics are in one of my favorite songs from a Minneapolis based hip hop group called Big Quarters made up of Brandon Allday and Medium Zach. The track is called Song for Brown Babies, I wonder why I dig it? It highlights the hopelessness of our educational system and the irony of the larger economic and political systems at play.
Those connections between systems and our daily struggles was one of the main purposes of the Media Justice Leadership Institute. It was held in Washington D.C. last week as 18 organizations from 9 regions across the country came together to talk about media justice. In the room were media makers, artists, organizers, musicians, poets….needless to say a creative group.
We began the week with visits to the Federal Communications Commission to push some of our commissioners to do the rights thing in regards to “Universal Broadband and Net Neutrality”. Don’t worry if you’re lost, I was too. Our delegation was made up of mostly People of Color, and speaking for myself I was pretty nervous since it’s not something I’d ever done. At least not in Washington D.C. In front of the “federal government.” We were given our talking points the night before on both issues and the following day prior to heading off to the capitol we practiced. I was the first person chosen to stand up and deliver some of the talking points. I crashed and burned, but the feedback I received from the group was helpful. We practiced with several people and as the hour went by you could definitely see the improvement.
That day we met with Commissioner Clyburn, Commissioner Cobbs and staff from Chairman Genachowski’s office. By the time our last gathering of the day came, we all had our talking points down. “Our communities are becoming increasingly dependent on the internet.” We weaved in the real life stories occurring in regions, like the kid in New Mexico that bikes 17 miles on dirt roads to get to the nearest place where there’s internet access. It was cool, but it was clear we were in their turf, you need only look at our outfits that day to know.
The rest of MJLI was focused on training and planning for our upcoming campaign on Broadband. (Which I’m certain you’ll hear about real soon.) But we culminated our time together with a talent show. I’ll be honest leading up to the talent show I wasn’t really all that excited about it cause I was going to be doing a puppet show. But once I saw the puppets made I was ready to go. For me personally, my favorite part of MJLI was the talent show, because it showed the immense creativity and endless possibility of 20 people in one room.
One of the highlights was a song written by our partners in the Bay Area. The song was called Broadband in Yo Face it was performed over music made famous by Lady Gaga’s Poker Face. I don’t go koo koo for Gaga, but Broadband in Yo Face brought the message we delivered to the FCC three days before that to a space I could connect to….music. Many of us realized that the song was too special and too good not to record it. So we busted out our Zoom recorder and at 1 a.m. recorded Broadband in Yo Face.
This song articulates the issue of broadband and net neutrality in a way that makes it seem like there’s no other way of saying the same thing. Big ups to everyone who worked on recording and producing. A special shout out to Brandon Allday from Big Quarters who mixed it up for us on Pro Tools. Enjoy!
China, once a proud holder of United States post-World War II debt, is getting scared.
For years the People’s Republic has bought U.S. Treasuries, eventually becoming the largest holder of U.S. debt ($799 BILLION to be exact!). Those days are long gone, though.
During 2009, China hasn’t been buying many Treasuries and has been unloading dollars in a way that makes Geithner shiver at night.
And other big U.S. debt carriers like Japan may follow suit if confidence is lost.
This presentation, courtesy of RBS, takes a deeper look into China’s holdings and associated volumes since 2005. Get ready for shock and awe.
In light of the numerous troubles we can identify today (Citi, the dollar, Greece, etc.) a decline of 1% or less in the market, after the huge move we’ve had this week, would definitely constitute a win.
We’ve already heard it once on CNBC, and we expect to hear a lot of that today.
Of course, if the wheels come off, then it doesn’t matter.
Konami today announced another Yu-Gi-Oh game for the Nintendo DS: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s World Championship 2010: Reverse of Arcadia. The game follows a story arc from the animated series involving the reprise of the Dark Signers and their
Google and Amazon have just announced a joint program which should come in handy for bloggers wanting to earn some money from their posts. Earlier this year the Google-owned Blogger introduced a Monetize tab to enable its users to easily add AdSense ads to their blogs. Now, it’s taking it one step further by partnering with Amazon to integrate the company’s Amazon Associates program with Blogger. This will allow users to easily ad links to products as well as earn a referral fee if any purchases are made from those links.
“Today we launched a third option: direct integration with Amazon Associates to search Amazon’s product catalog and add links to products that earn you commissions when your readers buy products you recommend,” Blogger’s Rick Klau wrote. “[Y]ou can search the Amazon product catalog without leaving the Blogger interface and insert links to the products you find into your posts. Not only is the process of linking to products more efficient, but Amazon makes it easy for you to earn money whenever your readers actually buy the products you write about.”
Blogger users interested in the new option will find it in the Monetization section which already features AdSense advertising options, as well as AdSense for Feeds. There is now a third tab, Amazon Associate… (read more)
When Google started building Chrome, it made the decision to start from scratch. While this meant that there were a lot of things to do, it also meant that the developers had the freedom to make everything the way they envisioned it from the start, something that Firefox developers, which is built on Mozilla’s legacy, itself based on Netscape, didn’t benefit from. One of the biggest decisions was making individual tabs and extensions run in their own process to insulate them from each other for security and stability purposes. This is one of Chrome’s big selling point, but Firefox is catching up having enabled experimental multi-process plugins support in the latest nightly builds. 
Google and Amazon have just announced a joint program which should come in handy for bloggers wanting to earn some money from their posts. Earlier this year the Google-owned Blogger introduced a Monetize tab to enable its users to easily add AdSense ads to their blogs. Now, it’s taking it one step further by partnering with Amazon to integrate the company’s Amazon Associates program with Blogger. This will allow users to easily ad links to products as well as earn a referral fee if any purchases are made from those links.