Category: News

Filed under: Concept Cars, Coupe, Hybrid, Geneva Motor Show, Infiniti, Luxury

When we first laid eyes on Infiniti’s Essence concept at this year’s Geneva Motor Show, we were, quite frankly, smitten by its voluptuous lines. We apparently weren’t alone, as Infiniti exec Ben Poore has reportedly told Motor Trend that reaction to the concept was “phenomenal.” When the Essence was unveiled, Infiniti told the audience at Geneva that the vehicle was concept-only and that future vehicles would be influenced by its stunning design. We were a bit disappointed by that news, because, of course, the world can never have too many stunning twin-turbo V6 hybrid coupes capable of a combined 592 brake horsepower.

But while we were let down by Infiniti’s initial decision on Essence, we’re at least encouraged by the fact that Poore recently told MT that that the concept is “only a show piece… for now.” Could that mean that we could have a production vehicle based off of the Essence in the future? We hope so. Will it have a twin-turbo 3.7-liter V6 with a lithium-ion backed disc-shaped electric motor? Perhaps not, but we wouldn’t exactly be disappointed if it did.

[Source: Motor Trend]

REPORT: Infiniti still mulling production Essence coupe originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This blog that I’m writing today is partly in reaction to a post that appeared in sustainablog titled, “Will Hydrogen Power Suck the Lakes Dry?” and partly because this is one of the most frequently asked questions I get. For some reason, people think that going to a hydrogen based economy will cause a water shortage.

According to the National Hydrogen Association, “Conversion of the current U.S. light-duty fleet (some 230 million vehicles) to fuel cell vehicles would require about 110 billion gallons of water / year to supply the needed hydrogen.

“For comparison, the U.S. uses about 300 billion gallons of water/year for the production of gasoline, about three times the amount needed for hydrogen. Domestic personal water use in the United States is about 4800 billion gallons/year.”

So, no, creating hydrogen for cars or using hydrogen in power plants will not suck the oceans, lakes and rivers dry. But, the estimates of water usage for hydrogen production could actually be lower than projected.

I’ve talked before about whether the steam emissions from hydrogen cars will contribute to greenhouse gases. In the same blog post I talked about how research was underway to recycle this steam back into the fuel cell.

There are also a number of patents such as this one that talks about water recycling in fuel cell systems. On a larger scale at hydrogen power plants, there are also patents for closed loop and semi closed loop systems for recycling water.

The U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) also lists four different methods for high temperature steam recycling at hydrogen power plants. If hydrogen were created at the pump through electrolysis and fuel cell cars captured and stored extra water from the fuel cell reaction, this could be dispensed right back at the hydrogen stations for recreation of compressed H2 gas.

As people learn more about hydrogen, naturally questions and especially fears arise. Fears of hydrogen cars blowing up like atomic bombs or fears of either running out of water or water emitted from fuel cells contributing to greenhouse gases are common. But as these fears are dispelled many people come to see that hydrogen is the clean, green fuel of the future that will solve many environmental problems along with our dependence on foreign fossil fuels.

Yesterday, I mentioned one criticism of Bernanke’s tenure as Federal Reserve chief — that he isn’t focusing enough on curbing unemployment. Another common one is that he (and his predecessor) failed to pop the real estate bubble before it grew too large. Didn’t some of those brilliant economists at the Fed fear that a gigantic housing bubble was forming? Should they have taken the initiative to pop it before it grew large enough to bring about a massive financial crisis?

These questions were asked to Wall Street Journal economics editor David Wessel in an interview with the Big Think as part of its special series on the financial crisis called “What Went Wrong?” The series consists of several weeks of interviews of figures in the financial industry.

In answering a question about how the Fed failed to see the housing bubble, Wessel touches on the broader question of how it should act when it notices a bubble forming:

I think that when you go back and look at what was going on inside the Fed, there were people who warned that this was a housing bubble. But, they were not convincing and the reigning view at the Fed was, even if it is a bubble, we shouldn’t interfere with it. We should let the markets do their thing and if it bursts, it will be as Bernanke and Paulson said in late 2007 even, it’ll be contained. And they were comforted by the fact that when the tech stock bubble had burst earlier in the 2000’s, it had done a lot of damage to people who had bought a lot of internet stocks, but it hadn’t really done a lot of damage, lasting damage, to the economy. And so they looked at it as they looked at that. So, it was not only a failure of analysis, it was failure of ideology in the best sense, a world view that led them to believe that even if there was a housing bubble, they shouldn’t do anything.

Of course Bernanke and everyone else who was taken seriously at the Fed were wrong that a housing bubble wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But I think Wessel’s point about what the Fed learned form the tech bubble misses something. I believe it goes beyond the Fed’s observation that the tech bubble did not causing much lasting economic destruction.

In fact, the Fed played a part in popping the internet bubble. Consequently, many blamed the Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan for causing the recession that followed. And the anger in the market that resulted from that action might have been what prevented the Fed from treating the real estate bubble far less aggressively. I don’t think the “failure of ideology” was based on theory or principle, but on appeasing the market. (See the end of this post for additional analysis of these two bubbles and the Fed’s actions.)

But really, there was an even graver problem here: ideology might have been trumped if the Fed’s analysis was better. An industry specific equity bubble is fundamentally different from a housing bubble — not realizing that was its “failure of analysis.” For starters, all investors know growth stocks contain a lot of risk, but real estate was historically touted as the safest of assets, almost never decreasing in value. There also wasn’t a trillion dollar asset-backed market based on tech stocks, with its highly-rated bonds having complex structures that investors didn’t fully grasp.

When tech stocks went bad, investors lost money, some dotcom’s failed, and that was it. It didn’t really affect Main Street. But you can’t get much more Main Street than houses. Yet, Wall Street was even more deeply entrenched due to mortgage-backed securities and other structured products. And then investors panicked, because they didn’t understand those assets or know how much of banks’ portfolios were bad from toxic securities. That’s why a housing bubble turned out to be far more dangerous than a sector-specific equity bubble.

Clearly, the Fed miscalculated just how interconnected the housing market was and the kind of fallout that would result when prices declined nationally by over 30%. But that’s a justified correction, given how irrationally home values had risen. The Fed should have behaved like it did with the tech bubble, and prevented the housing bubbles from inflating as soon as home prices were clearly increasing far more rapidly than history has proven to be reasonable. Unfortunately, I think the Fed was uncomfortable doing so, because it did not want to be held responsible for causing another recession. In the retrospect a little recession in 2005 would have been quite a bit less painful than a financial crisis three years later. Of course, hindsight is always 20-20.

—

Additional analysis of the two bubbles:

In mid-1999, the Federal Reserve began slowly raising the Federal Funds Rate as the internet bubble inflated. Eight months later, the internet bubble began to pop. At that time the Fed continued raising rates another point from 5.5% to 6.5%, where it left it for six more months. During that time period, the Nasdaq lost over 50% of its value. The diagram below shows this:

Of course, many people were quite angry with the Fed. Some blamed Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan for causing the recession that followed. Let’s compare what happened with the tech bubble and the housing bubble. Here’s a similar graph with S&P/Case-Shiller’s U.S. national housing price index versus the Federal Funds Rate:

(I apologize for the smoothness of the Fed Funds curve — it should be a step function. But since the housing index was only quarterly, I couldn’t get it any more exact in Excel.)

As you can see, the housing bubble was allowed to take off to a far greater extent than the internet bubble did. From Q1-2002 through Q2-2004, the Fed was decreasing the rate or leaving it constant. Meanwhile, the index shows housing values having increased by 30% over that period — in just nine months. For the next six months rates increased, but still remained relatively low, not to exceed 4% until December 2005 — as the index increased an additional 22%. But as the internet bubble grew in 1999 through mid-2000, rates started at 4.75% and increased to 6%, then left at 6.5% for six months even after the tech market’s collapse.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Bob Farrell’s 10 Rules For Investing
• 10 Brands That Will Disappear In 2010
• Goodbye!

---

A friend and I were talking the other day and the subject of music came up when I expressed that a Teen Panel had voted healthy and unhealthy songs for teens. I thought it was interesting that teens were doing this, she was concerned about censorship.

This got us talking about different things dealing with both of these and I thought I’d come to you and hear your opinions.

–  How do you feel towards censorship? (especially with music and shows) As far as I’m concerned as a parent we must watch what we teach our children, this includes the things that could influence them.

Now that you’ve answered (or thought about) the above how many of you pick what your kids are allowed to watch and listen to? I will not lie, when we had cable certain shows were not allowed on television. I can’t stand shows that teach kids about things I don’t even want to talk with them about and the same thing goes for the language used. When Miley Cyrus started doing all her “bad girl” moments I banned her from my tv. We even ban certain music in our house, so yes I do censorship, but I also call it a “parent’s right.”

–  Do any of you ban certain shows or music in your house?
–  Should teens/preteens/younger be able to listen to whatever they want?
–  If you do, isn’t this considered censorship in a way?  What do you think?

Post from: Blisstree

How do You Feel Towards Censorship?

Looking at this chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one can see that worker productivity has shot up during 2009 as more and more employees were forced to pick up the work left by their fired co-workers:

BLS: Nonfarm business sector labor productivity increased at an 8.1 percent annual rate during the third quarter of 2009. This was the largest gain in productivity since the third quarter of 2003, and reflects a 2.9 percent increase in output and a 4.8 percent decline in hours worked.

In the third quarter of 2009, nonfarm business productivity was revised down from 9.5 percent to 8.1 percent, reflecting a downward revision to output and an upward revision to hours.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• JP Morgan To Hire 1200 Loan Officers (JPM)
• The 10 Hardest Cities In Which To Find A Job
• Jobless Claims Down, Productivity Soars!

Well, here’s another anti-IE6 (Internet Explorer 6) article to go with the 254,000 I found on Google recently. While many of IE6’s detractors are web designers or web developers, we can certainly put on the board some greater flaws in Microsoft’s browser than the extra amount of working hours put by professionals to optimize websites for it.

In the past, several security vulnerabilities plagued the browser in the eyes of a lot of industry experts, many of them actively recommending some of IE’s rivals as more secure browsers to use.

There are many news articles across the web, which report on vulnerability flaws. For example, this one on The H Security, or Computer World. Let’s not even explore our Security or Microsoft news sections that are full with all kinds of Internet Explorer 6-related stories.

In the past few years, IE6 has revealed many security flaws that had serious consequences on user privacy. From ActiveX holes to SSL certificates, from drive-by installs to code injections, IE6 managed to get itself time after time, year after year in Secunia’s Security Report.

But all bad things lead to something good. While constantly trying to improve on its browser’s security, Microsoft’s later products have been recognized as some of the safest environments for Internet browsing these days, as an NSS Labs… (read more)

Discover four tips that can help those with Hepatitis C avoid additional liver damage from the high percentage of toxins found in wintertime indoor air.

by Nicole Cutler, L.Ac.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, a growing body of scientific evidence indicates that indoor air is more seriously polluted than outdoor air – even in the largest and most industrialized cities. Because pollution is toxic to the liver, those with Hepatitis C are especially vulnerable to polluted indoor air. Furthermore, the time typically spent indoors during the winter increases someone with Hepatitis C’s vulnerability to indoor air toxins during the colder months.

Depending on the health issues of each individual, exposure to environmental pollutants poses varying degrees of risk. Unfortunately, those with Hepatitis C are more susceptible to liver damage from environmental toxins because:

· Their liver isn’t working as efficiently, so toxins normally processed by the liver remain in the body longer than usual. With toxins lingering in the body longer, those with Hepatitis C are more likely to incur cellular damage from the toxins.

· When toxins cause injury to liver tissue, healthy livers typically rejuvenate quickly. However, those who already have liver damage from Hepatitis C are likely to have a much harder time recovering from toxin-causing injury.

The primary causes of indoor air quality problems in homes are from sources that release gases or particles into the air. Another prime culprit of indoor air pollution is inadequate ventilation – by not bringing in enough outdoor air to dilute emissions from indoor sources and by not carrying indoor air pollutants out of the home.

Homes contain many sources of indoor air pollution, including:

· Combustion sources like oil, gas, kerosene, coal and wood
· Tobacco smoke – and its toxic aftermath
· Building materials and furnishings like asbestos-containing insulation and cabinetry or furniture made of certain pressed wood products
· Household cleaning and maintenance products
· Central heating and humidification devices

As a result of dropping temperatures outside, many of us spend greater amounts of time indoors. Due to the fact that windows and doors are usually sealed tight during the winter to conserve energy, the concentration of indoor air pollution always increases during this time. Since those with Hepatitis C are more susceptible to indoor air pollution, the following four tips can help minimize the toxins breathed in each day:

Tip 1. Plants – NASA researchers found that common houseplants effectively purified the air in spacecraft. Household plants can remove common chemicals from the air, such as formaldehyde, benzene and carbon monoxide. Peace lily, bamboo, palm, English ivy, mums, golden pothos, nepthylis, spider plant, snake plant, aloe, philodendron and gerbera daisies are among the top air-purifying plants.

Tip 2. Low VOC Paint – Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are plentiful in paint and are a known lung, liver, kidney and central nervous system toxin. If repainting a room is on your to do list this winter, choose one with low VOCs.

Tip 3. Replace Heating System Air Filter – Replacing a standard air filter with one that is pleated and electrostatic will capture more pollutants from a furnace’s forced air. Experts suggest using a minimum efficiency reporting value (MERV) rating of 10 or higher.

Tip 4. Choose Cleaners Wisely – Cleaning products are known to harbor some of the most hazardous chemicals known. While several environment-friendly companies now offer toxin-free cleaning products, there are also many ways to make your own safe and effective cleaners.

Because many are cooped up inside, winter is definitely a time for those with Hepatitis C to be aware of indoor air pollution. The increased demand that indoor air pollution puts on the liver is best averted by reducing the amount of airborne pollutants in your space. Simple steps like adorning your living area with several houseplants, using low VOC paint, putting a new, pleated, electrostatic air filter in your heating system and using toxin-free cleaners all add up to improved indoor air quality. By reducing indoor air pollution, those with Hepatitis C can emerge in the spring unscathed by wintertime indoor air.

References:

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/simple-steps-to-clean-your-indoor-air.html, Simple Steps to Clean Your Indoor Air, Retrieved October 17, 2009, care2.com, 2009.

http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/insidest.html, The Inside Story: A Guide to Indoor Air Quality, Retrieved October 17, 2009, United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2009.

http://www.hepatitis-central.com/mt/archives/2009/04/cleaning_safety.html, Cleaning Safety for Hepatitis C, Nicole Cutler, L.Ac., MTCM, Natural Wellness, 2009.

Paul, Nina L, Gina Pollichino, Living with Hepatitis C for Dummies, Wiley Publishing Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2005; 158.

Montreal is really moving up on the gaming density. As of THQ’s latest announcement, the city will be home to yet another development studio. This won’t be just another studio, for the publisher, plans have it that

Filed under: LA Auto Show, Coupe, Budget, Sedan, Etc., Kia

With a brief press release and a trophy handoff at the LA Auto Show, car pricing authority NADAguides.com has heaped the first of what we could be many accolades upon the stylish and affordable 2010 Kia Forte and Kia Forte Koup by naming the duo their Car of the Year for 2009. Citing the pair’s “best in class” features and stylish interior and exterior design, the group said these Kia compacts were standout vehicles in a pretty impressive field. Other contenders for the crown included such significant and praiseworthy vehicles as the Ford Fusion Hybrid, Mercedes-Benz E350 and Nissan 370Z Roadster.

In our own review of the Kia Forte, we praised its styling, build, layout and performance, and especially its budget-minded pricing, so we see where NADA is coming from. Sometimes, we have to scratch our heads a bit when one of these sorts of awards are announced, but in this case, we certainly think the cars are deserving.

[Source: NADAguides.com]

Continue reading LA 2009: 2010 Kia Forte and Forte Koup crowned NADAguides.com COTY

LA 2009: 2010 Kia Forte and Forte Koup crowned NADAguides.com COTY originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yesterday David Bodamer noted how final November retail numbers were clearly a disappointment, as analyst estimates proved way to optimistic.

Deutshce Bank retail analyst Bill Dreher takes a stab at what happened, and though he kind of blames the weather, he’s clearly not comfortable with that excuse.

—–

Despite the month of November having the easiest compares of the year, every sub-sector
of Broadline retailing missed consensus expectations, including the Discount Stores (TGT),
Warehouse Clubs (COST & BJ), Drug Stores (WAG & RAD) and Department Stores (DDS, M,
JCP, and SKS).  

Going into today, we expected several department stores to post November sales that
missed Consensus estimates, and in particular we looked for weakness from Macy’s & Saks
(see “November Sales Update” published Tuesday). 
In addition, while JCP and SKS were very much in-line with our expectations and
management’s guidance, they missed consensus estimates and the print was poorly
received, with the stores down 3% and 5%, respectively, today.  

Weather was commonly considered the culprit, as most of the country did not have
seasonally appropriate temperatures.  We understand how weather would limit apparel sales,
and we can even appreciate how the unseasonably pleasant weather would cause a modest
flu season limiting the Drugstore comps.  

What causes us to be incrementally concerned are the misses from the Warehouse clubs
and Target; how did the weather contribute to these sales misses? Food deflation clearly
would aggravate the sales sluggishness for these retailers, but that doesn’t seem to be
enough to explain the results.  Perhaps we will need to wait for Kroger results this Tuesday
for additional color on this food inflation & Wal-Mart pricing umbrella issues.  

The overall take away from today has to be incrementally negative. Unless Wal-Mart achieved
some surprisingly massive market share gains across all these sub-sectors of retailing,
today’s widespread sales weakness is a negative indication on overall consumer spending.  

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Final November Retail Sales Are A Huge Disappointment

Friendster, the social network which started it all, just got significant revamp with a design focused more on its demographic core at the moment, ahead of a possible sale by the end of the year. Barely a day after it revealed its new design, Reuters reports that the social network will be sold to an Asian investor for more than $100 million and the deal should be announced by the end of the year.

The company has been looking to sell for a while now, the latest rumor comes from last summer, but it had similar intentions as early as 2005. The social network became extremely popular very quickly after being launched in 2002. It didn’t last long though and soon MySpace, and later Facebook, would come fast from behind to steal the glory. Friendster is still pretty much alive, but its popularity in most parts of the world has dwindled to the point where its more of a historic footnote.

Friendster claims it has 75 million registered users at the moment, though how many of those are active users is a mystery, and that 90 percent of its current traffic comes from the Asia-Pacific region. This last part is the key part, as the social network is still going strong in this region and so far has managed to stay ahead of Facebook and other social networks. It’s not clear how long it can keep this u… (read more)

Press Release
December 4, 2009                                                      Contact: Frank Murray, 542-4835

The Columbia Basin College Autobody program will unveil the new Kadlec Regional Medical Center inpatient rehabilitation vehicle at a ceremony Monday, Dec. 7th, at 1 p.m. 

CBC received a donation of one of the Pasco Auto Wrecking’s ‘Cash for Clunkers’ vehicles.  The former SUV will be used to help patients rehabilitating from strokes and other disabilities to enter vehicles, adjust mirrors, put on seatbelts, and other procedures often taken for granted by most people operating a motor vehicle.

Seventeen CBC Autobody students worked on the project for about two weeks.  The vehicle will be transported to Kadlec on Monday, disassembled outside the medical center, and then reassembled inside the rehabilitation gym.

A CBC Autobody Advisory Board member told CBC Instructor Rhody Hayes of the Kadlec request and Hayes contacted Pasco Auto Wrecking which generously donated the vehicle.

Over the last couple of years, the movie industry has pushed hard for stricter and stricter laws for anyone caught “filming” a movie in the theater. Of course, these days, with more and more people having portable video cameras either in their mobile phones or other devices, the likelihood of these sorts of laws being abused or misused only grows over time. Take, for example, the case of 22-year-old Samantha Tumpach, from Chicago, who took her sister out for a surprise birthday party at a movie theater recently. While there, she used her new camera to tape parts of the event, including her, along with friends and family, singing happy birthday to her sister. But, in the course of all this, she also caught two small segments of the film itself, less than four minutes, total — hardly a representative case of “pirate” or “camcording” activity. Still, the theater pressed charges, and Samantha was arrested and spent two nights in jail — and may now face three years in jail as a felon. Good thing Hollywood got those laws, so they can get young women celebrating their friends and families’ birthdays put in jail.

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Want to invest like the former Merrill Lynch champ? Here’s how:

——-

1. Markets tend to return to the mean over time

When stocks go too far in one direction, they come back. Euphoria and pessimism can cloud people’s heads. It’s easy to get caught up in the heat of the moment and lose perspective.

2. Excesses in one direction will lead to an opposite excess in the other direction

Think of the market baseline as attached to a rubber string. Any action to far in one direction not only brings you back to the baseline, but leads to an overshoot in the opposite direction.

3. There are no new eras — excesses are never permanent

Whatever the latest hot sector is, it eventually overheats, mean reverts, and then overshoots. Look at how far the emerging markets and BRIC nations ran over the past 6 years, only to get cut in half.

As the fever builds, a chorus of “this time it’s different” will be heard, even if those exact words are never used. And of course, it — Human Nature — never is different.

4. Exponential rapidly rising or falling markets usually go further than you think, but they do not correct by going sideways

Regardless of how hot a sector is, don’t expect a plateau to work off the excesses. Profits are locked in by selling, and that invariably leads to a significant correction — eventually.  comes.

5. The public buys the most at the top and the least at the bottom

That’s why contrarian-minded investors can make good money if they follow the sentiment indicators and have good timing.

Watch Investors Intelligence (measuring the mood of more than 100 investment newsletter writers) and the American Association of Individual Investors survey.

6. Fear and greed are stronger than long-term resolve

Investors can be their own worst enemy, particularly when emotions take hold. Gains “make us exuberant; they enhance well-being and promote optimism,” says Santa Clara University finance professor  Meir Statman. His studies of investor behavior show that “Losses bring sadness, disgust, fear, regret. Fear increases the sense of risk and some react by shunning stocks.”

7. Markets are strongest when they are broad and weakest when they narrow to a handful of blue-chip names

Hence, why breadth and volume are so important. Think of it as strength in numbers. Broad momentum is hard to stop, Farrell observes. Watch for when momentum channels into a small number of stocks (“Nifty 50” stocks).

8. Bear markets have three stages — sharp down, reflexive rebound and a drawn-out fundamental downtrend

I would suggest that as of August 2008, we are on our third reflexive rebound — the Januuary rate cuts, the Bear Stearns low in March, and now the Fannie/Freddie rescue lows of July.

Even with these sporadic rallies end, we have yet to see the  long drawn out fundamental portion of the Bear Market.

9. When all the experts and forecasts agree — something else is going to happen

As Stovall, the S&P investment strategist, puts it: “If everybody’s optimistic, who is left to buy? If everybody’s pessimistic, who’s left to sell?”

Going against the herd as Farrell repeatedly suggests can be very profitable, especially for patient buyers who raise cash from frothy markets and reinvest it when sentiment is darkest.

10. Bull markets are more fun than bear markets

Especially if you are long only or mandated to be full invested. Those with more flexible charters might squeek out a smile or two here and there

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Stocks Are 40% Overvalued, Says Smithers
• UBS: There’s A "Buffet Bubble" In Railroad Stocks That Could Burst Any Day Now (UNP)
• Why Merrill Thinks The Tech Run Is OVER

Yesterday I covered the different types of sushi, and one of these was the temaki, or hand roll. This cone-shaped wrap of seaweed sheet (nori) is filled with vinegared rice and various ingredients. In this post I’ll explain how to make one.

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Filed under: LA Auto Show, Sedan, Etc., Marketing/Advertising, Jaguar, Celebrities, Luxury

On Wednesday night, as part of the run-up to the LA Auto Show, Jaguar held a sizable soiree at SoCal’s Milk Studios to show off its latest wares to the public and press, with a heavy focus on its 2011 XJ flagship.

With the British automaker’s latest model taking center stage, Mike O’Driscoll, Jaguar’s managing director, discussed the finer points of the super saloon before announcing that rapper Jay Z will feature the XJ in his upcoming music video, “On to the Next One,” a track from his new album The Blueprint 3. The 60-second trailer we saw didn’t set our hearts on fire, but with Jaguar’s renewed focus on “making Jaguar Jaguar again” and its push to appeal to a broader swath of the world’s elite, the collaboration – although slightly awkward and mildly forced – could pay itself forward. It’s just a shame about Jay Z’s new logo being painted on the flanks of the luxury sedan.

Jay Z vandalizing 2011 Jaguar XJ for ‘On to the Next One’ video? originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We love the idea of building a dish-drying rack into an upper cabinet. We especially love this design, which provides a seamless stainless steel backsplash and countertop below the cabinet.

• Read the full post at Apartment Therapy

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As shown by Calculated Risk below, despite today’s positive jobs data, we still have a very long way to go until unemployment returns to normal levels. Yet this can be read in a positive light as well — we still have much room for improvement when it comes to market expectations. The chart shows how the expectations hurdle has been set extremely low.

Calculated Risk: The second graph shows the job losses from the start of the employment recession, in percentage terms (as opposed to the number of jobs lost).

For the current recession, employment peaked in December 2007, and this recession is the worst recession since WWII in percentage terms, and 2nd worst in terms of the unemployment rate (only early ’80s recession with a peak of 10.8 percent was worse).

Check out more of CR’s charts here.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Did Today’s Jobs Report Kill The Dollar-Stocks Correlation?
• The Backward Revisions To September And October Are Great News For Jobs
• Gold Plunges Below $1200 After Jobs Data

Take Two Interactive’s stock is down 33% (35% earlier) to $7.15 a share.

Turns out Take Two’s exclusive deal to produce Major League Baseball games just finished and has not been renewed.

The deal is similar to the one Electronic Arts has with the NFL and the Madden franchise. CEO Ben Feder says baseball games are “very difficult” to sell properly.

And to add insult to injury, the company’s 2010 outlook is very grim.

Here’s the breakdown of Take Two’s earnings from Brendain Sinclair at GameSpot.com:

For the final quarter of its 2009 fiscal year, which ended October 31, Take-Two had forecast adjusted earnings per share of $0.30 to $0.35 on sales of $350 million to $375 million. Today the publisher lowered the earnings per share range by $0.25 and cut $25 million from its sales projections. Final numbers for the quarter are expected to be announced later this month.

Take-Two also gave investors its first outlook for the current fiscal year. For the 12 months ending October 31, 2010, the publisher expects sales of $1 billion to $1.12 billion, with an adjusted net loss per share between $0.40 and $0.60. Between $30 million and $35 million of that net loss (equal to $0.38 to $0.44 per share) will come from the company’s Major League Baseball business.

Read the whole thing >>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Will EA Go After GTA IV Creators? (ERTS, TTWO)
• Can Video Games Save Investors? Not Today
• Take-Two Takes Itself Off The Table (TTWO)