Author: Serkadis

	Even the most efficient cars can’t compete with bees in MPG fight What’s the mpg of a bee drinking honey? Insane.		The future is uncertain: CAP says residual values of electric cars are up in the air How much is that battery in the window?
	Prius braking problem is apparently quite difficult to recreate It’s still a serious problem, but it doesn’t happen all the time.	Other news: Study: 466 million electric two-wheelers by 2016 Infographic: eight cities and their commuting patterns Fisker hires Lambesis as ad agency of record; we expect the sex will sell

AutoblogGreen for 02.22.10 originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 22 Feb 2010 05:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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China’s foreign trade rebounded strongly in January, jumping 44.4% year over year.

But while exports leaped 21%, imports actually soared an even higher 85.5%. This means that China’s trade surplus actually shrunk by nearly 64%. It’s just a month’s data and there could be a partial seasonal excuse, but given relative economic weakness globally vs. China, perhaps this is pointing to a longer-term contraction of China’s surplus and continued progress towards a domestic consumption-driven economy. Note that January’s trade surplus of $14.16 billion, even if annualized to $170 billion (though we realize China trade is seasonal), is tiny relative to China’s $4.33 trillion GDP.

Chart via China Daily:

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See Also:

• If Chanos Thinks China Is Dubai ‘Times One Thousand’, Then Who Will Be Their Abu Dhabi?
• China Announces Even Tighter Restrictions On Loan Growth
• Forget Empty Housing Developments, Check Out The Massively Empty Cities Of China

(This gues post originally appeared at the author’s blog)

Nothing would derail the Fed’s great reflation/recovery experiment like higher interest rates.  Several notable investors including David Einhorn (see Einhorn’s thoughts here) and Julian Robertson (see Robertson’s thoughts here), have expressed their concerns over the potential for higher interest rates.  The great Richard Russell of the Dow Theory Letters has long feared a spike in interest rates.  In a recent note he explained that the end of quantitative easing has bond investors worried over the future of interest rates.  Russell believes higher rates are the next big move in the bond market:

 “Older subscribers may remember that I said that the Fed could continue its “quantitative easing” (printing money) until the bond market says it can’t. Below is a daily chart of the 30-year Treasury bond. The bond market doesn’t like what it sees. I view the pattern on this chart as a huge, down-slanting head-and-shoulder top with the bond sitting right on support. The bond appears weak, and if support is violated, interest rates will be heading higher. And that’s the last thing the Fed wants at this time.”

Source: Dow Theory Letters

Read more market commentary at The Pragmatic Capitalist >

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See Also:

• If You Thought The Yield Curve Was Steep Now, Then You Haven’t Seen Anything Yet
• Citi: China Sold Their Treasuries Because They Want To Buy Tons Of Gold
• Ten Year Treasuries Nose Dive At Auction

With several of its member states in trouble, how long is it before the ECB goes into full-on printing money mode?

A few months ago there was talk that its chief Jean-Claude Trichet might actually beat Bernanke out of the gate and start raising rates again, but that was when the conventional wisdom was that the dollar was doomed and the Euro was the new dollar.

Now everything’s turned around (perception-wise), as Bernanke is normalizing, and the ECB is dealing with the reality that several of its member countries are in recessions, and desperately need cheaper money.

SocGen’s Albert Edwards has been warning of global competitive devaluations for sometime, so when is it going to happen? When does the ECB start printing like crazy, and in the process call Bernanke’s bluff (just watch the dollar soar when it becomes apparent how divergent the central banks on the opposite sides of the Atlantic have become)?

Spring, summer… what’s your guess?

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See Also:

• RBS’ Bob Janjuah: Commodities Are King ‘Cause Bernanke Can’t Print Them
• Stiglitz: The US And UK Should Keep Printing And Spending, As There’s No Chance Of Default
• The Euro Isn’t Going To Dissolve, It’s Just Got A Long, Long Way To Fall

It’s really amazing sometimes to see the entitlement mentality of newspapers — who for years built business models on the fact that there was a scarcity of news sources out there. Now that they’re finally facing real competition, rather than adapt, many seem to whine and ask the government to step in for them. Over in the UK, news publications have long been upset about the BBC, since its funded by the public, and they’ve been known to complain about competition from the BBC for years. So it’s no surprise that they’re demanding the BBC’s new iPhone app be blocked. They claim that the app “will undermine the commercial sector’s ability to establish an economic model in an emerging but potentially important market … This, over the long term, will reduce members’ ability to invest in quality journalism.”

Really? So the newspapers are basically admitting they’re too clueless to compete in the marketplace? Sure, the BBC is publicly funded, but it’s just one publication out there. Certainly newspapers can create their own services that attract an audience that competes with what the BBC is offering (or is focused on areas the BBC won’t do). This is basically newspapers admitting they’re too lazy to compete. Technically, the newspapers are complaining that this is a “new service” that needs approval, but the BBC correctly points out that all it did was create an app out of its existing web content.

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New York Times (John Noble Wilford)

Tut’s case may be one of the earliest established by genetic tests, but malaria was probably a common scourge then, as it still is. Last year, at least 250 million people contracted the disease, the United Nations estimates, and almost half the world’s population is at risk, mainly in poorer tropical lands. The wasting fever is expected to kill 700,000 children this year.

Malaria courses relentlessly through narratives of history and literature. It blighted the greatness that was Rome, though it may have saved the city from a sacking by Attila the Hun, who may have turned back out of fear of the fever raging there. Archaeologists digging in cemeteries near former marshes around Rome have uncovered evidence of widespread outbreaks of the disease in the empire’s waning years.

News from the Valley of the Kings (Kate Phizackerley)

Reading what has been written in press reports, it’s tempting to conclude that the DNA testing of Tutankhamun’s family has resolved everything. I don’t think that’s the case. I want to spend some time on looking at the family tree and chronology because I think it turns up some questions. It also highlights why some margin of error may need to be read into some of the results.

For instance if we take what is being said then we would have:

* Akhenaten reigned for 17 years (I’ve used his ascension as origin)
* His daughter Ankhesenamun (KV21A) was born in year 4 and was aged 21 – 25 at death
* His son Tutankhamun was born in year 12, ascended the throne at 9 and died aged 19.

As can be seen, that would give us two interesting things. There would be an inter-regnal gap between Akhenaten and Tutankhamun suggesting that there must have been another Pharaoh, possibly two. That’s even if we discount co-regencies. But, if there was an intervening Pharaoh, why should be believe that the mummy in KV55 is Akhenaten rather than this other Pharaoh (Smenkhare?)?

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Gold’s action hasn’t been particularly jawdropping of late unless you consider what it’s been up against.

Last week there were two events that were bad for gold: Bernanke tightening and the IMF dumping, and yet it held strong, and in recent action it’s staye solidly above the $1110 line, which had been the scene of so much trench warfare.

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See Also:

• IMF Announces Gold Liquidation, Sending Bulls Hiding In The Corner
• Gold Laughs In Bernanke’s Face, Shorts Freaking Out
• Citi: China Sold Their Treasuries Because They Want To Buy Tons Of Gold

drhawass.com (Zahi Hawass)

The issue of returning stolen artefacts to Egypt is very important to me. I have worked for years on returning pieces that were illegally taken from Egypt, and there are many great institutions that support and assist me in my quest. Recently, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York brought a piece of a naos back to Egypt, and we replaced it in its original location in Karnak Temple.

In Karnak is a temple dedicated to the god Ptah. Inside this temple there is a naos built by the Middle Kingdom pharaoh, Amenemhat I. A piece of it, weighing 27 kilograms, was removed around the turn of the 20th century. Auguste Mariette photographed it at the end of the 19th century, but a photograph taken by French Egyptologist Georges Legrain shows the piece was missing in 1902.

The matter remained unresolved until the piece was offered to the Metropolitan Museum in New York by an antiquities collector, who claimed to have bought the piece in the 1970s. The Met officials recognized where the piece must have come from, and acquired it, thinking to bring it back to Egypt. My friends at the Museum did not tell me at first what they were planning, but they convinced the collector to let them have it. The museum curator brought the naos piece to Egypt and we kept it in the Cairo Museum.

Recently we brought the piece to Luxor and installed it in its original location, with the press watching.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Ask any gamer what’s the most popular game of all time and one answer you’re not likely to get is Farmville. But, like it or not, Zynga’s Farmville, which has been clogging our Facebook news feeds for months now, is by far the game played by the most people in history with the sole exception of, perhaps, the 25-year-old Tetris. The soci… (read more)

Suite101 (Karen Dabrowska)

In a small street on London University’s sprawling campus is a small museum which houses 80,000 artefacts from ancient Egypt.

The unassuming building in Gower Street has one of the greatest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology in the world. It illustrates life in the Nile Valley from prehistory through the time of the pharaohs, the Ptolemaic, Roman and Coptic periods to the Islamic period.

The collection is full of ‘firsts’: One of the earliest pieces of linen from Egypt (about 5000 BC); two lions from the temple of Min at Koptos, from the first group of monumental sculpture (about 3000 BC); a fragment from the first kinglist or calendar (about 2900 BC); the earliest example of metal from Egypt, the first worked iron beads, the earliest example of glazing, the earliest ‘cylinder seal’ in Egypt (about 3500 BC); the oldest wills on papyrus paper, the oldest gynaecological papyrus; the only veterinary papyrus from ancient Egypt, and the largest architectural drawing, showing a shrine (about 1300 BC).

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Brittle Voice

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

For more information about the site there’s a summary on Wikipedia

.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

To understand China’s future, look to what happened with Dubai, and then multiply by one thousand according to Jim Chanos during a January speech at the London School of Economics.

Bloomberg:

Such undertakings figured in warnings hedge fund manager Jim Chanos delivered in January that China is Dubai times a thousand. The costs of wasteful investments in empty offices and shopping malls and in underutilized infrastructure will weigh on China, Chanos, president of New York-based Kynikos Associates Ltd., said in a speech at the London School of Economics. “We may find that that’s what pops the Chinese bubble sooner rather than later.”

If that’s the case, then how might the nation be bailed out once the bubble pops? There’s no Abu Dhabi backing China.

But see, this is why the analogy doesn’t really work. China can probably bail itself out, by simply taking on massive amounts of debt in order to inject even more stimulus into the economy.

China’s government can do this because it doesn’t have the debt problem of Dubai, thus it has lots of room to play a developed-nation style game of passing the buck to future generations every time a crisis hits by simply using added debt to dull the economic pain. So its far different than Dubai — China can probably keep stimulating its economy on its own, even against economic reality, for quite some time to come.

The worst danger would be that, during a China crash, a newly debt-funded Chinese government reduces its purchases of U.S. treasuries from the long-time debt-funded U.S. government. That’s how a China crash could translate into a U.S. debt crisis.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• China Announces Even Tighter Restrictions On Loan Growth
• Citi: China Sold Their Treasuries Because They Want To Buy Tons Of Gold
• Jim Chanos’s Brilliant Lecture On The China Bubble

With the Olympics presently going on, if you don’t know by now, you’ll certainly hear at least a dozen times starting here, that today is the 30th Anniversary of the “Miracle on Ice“. On February 22, 1980, to hear Glenn Beck tell it, a flock of young Republicans, pictured here, overthrew Jimmy Carter, “History’s Greatest Monster” [and maybe that’s the way Al Michaels would tell it now too].

In actuality, of course, it was the defeat of the Soviet hockey team — truly a world power — by a young American team coached by Herb Brooks — America, at that time, being a small but plucky country of no prior consequence — at least that’s what Glenn Beck tells me.

Brooks had many sayings — like most great coaches — a pertinent one he made as his team, having beaten Soviets, were on the verge of blowing the gold medal by falling behind Finland. It has resonance to the Obama Administration and the Democrats to a variety of things, but mostly health care reform:

“If you lose this game, you will take it to your fucking grave….YOUR FUCKING GRAVE!”

Do you believe in political miracles?

Eh, probably not.

Golman Sachs recently polled over 800 clients at their Global Macro Conference in regards to asset classes they liked and the risks they worry about most.

A full 38% selected Equities as the asset class they are ‘most positive or overweight’, while just 18% chose Commodities, 15% Cash, 14% Alternatives (hedge funds/private equity), 10% Corporate Bonds, and 5% Government Bonds. This seems to be the exact opposite of retail investor beliefs, if we use fund flow data as a proxy for retail investors’ view on asset classes. (money has flowed out of U.S. equity funds and into bond funds over the last year based on Investment Company Institute data, a recent Citi chart shown below)

In terms of risk, 31% selected a ‘Double Dip’ as their largest concern. Inflation in developed markets such as the U.S. was chosen by just 17%, the lowest rated risk within the survery. Yet inflation in developing markets was a far larger concern — 30% are worried about ‘Emerging Market Inflation’ (ie., probably Chinese inflation). Only 22% listed Developed Market Deflation as their largest worry.

The most favored stock market for 2010, as the potential ‘best performer’, is China (29%), followed by the U.S. (22%). Only 2% believe Europe will be #1.

We admit it, it’s worrying so many pros are loving stocks over government bonds these days, even if retail investors remain overwhelmingly bearish on stocks and long bonds. A true contrarian is piling into U.S. treasuries it seems, given that only 5% of pros chose it as their favorite asset class. Which means we’ll pass on being contrarian for now.

Add my twitter for a hand-picked stream of posts like this: @vincefernando

(Via Goldman Sachs, Weekly Kickstart, 19 Feb 2010)

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See Also:

• Goldman: Here’s The One Way We Could Have A Double-Dip Recession
• Goldman Withdraws Lawsuit It Filed Against 7 Poached Executives
• Goldman: Guess What, You’re About To Get Hired Again

The HTML5 standard is evolving, albeit slowly, and, perhaps more importantly, web browsers have been implementing support for many of the features described in the proposed web standard. There is still plenty to do but it has gotten to a point where it is a viable alternative to proprietary plugins or technologies. Google, one of the big supporters of HTML5, thinks that… (read more)

And with that Japan joins the competitive devaluation currency race, in which both the SNB and Federal Reserve have a substantial head start (the euro and the fat Brussels bureaucrats are in a ouzo daze, with no clue what the hell is going on).

Speaking before lawmakers BOJ governor Masaaki Shirakawa, who recently said Japan was powerless to fight deflation on its own, has changed his tune, and today said that Japan will print the kitchen sink if it has to to beat “stubborn deflation.”

In a speech before the Lower House Budget Committee Shirakawa said that not only will Japan continue monetizing its debt (at least unlike Bernanke, he admits it), but that they will happily accelerate this action if it means killing the Yen and creating a glimmer of hope for inflation. Carry traders everywhere rejoice.

Continue reading at Zero Hedge »

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See Also:

• Yuan Soaring On Hints Of A Hike
• Here’s Why It’s Different This Time

Jamere Holland has been dismissed from the University of Oregon football team for a series of bizarre Facebook postings. Holland posted to Facebook twice after Oregon suspended linebacker Kiki Alonso after Alonso received a DUI on Saturday.

Holland’s Facebook profile was set to public, meaning his wall posts were visible to anyone and everyone. Here was his first FB post rant:

After a well meaning fan informed Holland that his Facebook post’s were public to everyone, Holland responded with this posting:

This isn’t Holland’s first struggle with authority, he didn’t play in this past Rose Bowl against Ohio State after being declared academically ineligible, and he transferred to Oregon from USC after butting heads with Pete Carroll. I’m guessing Oregon might have simply suspended Holland over these Facebook missives if he were a model student-athlete otherwise, but given his past it probably wasn’t a hard decision to simply cut bait. Although maybe not even if he were squeaky clean, it’s hardly a good idea to drop some f-bombs directed at your coach in a public arena. Remember kids, Facebook is serious business.