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by Jesse Jenkins

Politicians talking about clean energy jobs like to claim “they can’t be shipped overseas.” From President Obama’s State of the Union to Rep. Ed Markey stumping for the climate bill he co-authored with Rep. Henry Waxman, the promise of new “green jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced” is an all too common refrain.

The only problem with it is that it’s wrong on its face.

America is already exporting clean energy jobs—or seeing them created abroad in the first place.  After pioneering wind and solar power, electric cars, and nuclear plants, America turned its back on the public investments in cutting edge technology that catalyzed these innovations, forfeiting cleantech industries to foreign countries who did not make the same mistakes.  The cap-and-trade program at the heart of the climate bill authored by Rep. Markey may help create more clean energy jobs overseas, but it won’t bring those jobs back to America.  Conventional responses to today’s competitiveness challenge won’t cut it.  Here’s what will …

Most clean energy jobs can easily be shipped overseas (or created there in the first place)

Unless our vision of a prosperous American clean energy economy revolves solely around jobs retrofitting homes to be a bit more efficient or installing (Asian and European built) solar and wind farms or high-speed trains, the reality is that the global cleantech sector is increasingly competitive, and the United States is already ceding thousands of jobs in clean energy manufacturing and innovation.

According to one study from the Renewable Energy Policy Project, 70-75 percent of the total labor required for a typical wind turbine or solar panel is ‘upstream’ of the installation and maintenance—the only jobs that truly ‘can’t be outsourced’—mostly in manufacturing the various component parts.

That’s bad news for the U.S., which now lags behind competitors in Asia (and Europe) in the production of virtual all clean energy technologies, from wind to nuclear power and from high-speed trains to plug-in hybrid cars and the advanced batteries that power them, as the Breakthrough Institute and ITIF‘s comprehensive report, “Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant” documents.

So forget the notion that clean energy jobs can’t be outsourced.  Recent research by the office of Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) showed that in the last five years the U.S. trade deficit in renewable energy goods has ballooned by 1,400 percent to $5.7 billion in 2009.  Roughly 70 percent of the renewable energy systems and components installed in America are now manufactured by workers overseas, according to estimates from the Apollo Alliance.  And even the American Wind Energy Association, the industry’s trade group, concedes that about 50 percent of the components installed in American wind farms are manufactured abroad.

Outsourcing clean energy innovation

If things don’t change, cleantech scientists and researchers will be the next to follow the cleantech factory worker overseas.  Jobs in clean energy research, innovation, and new product development—traditional areas of U.S. leadership—are already on their way abroad as high tech giants and startups alike shift innovation activities to be close to vibrant clean energy manufacturing centers and markets overseas.

Applied Materials, the leading producer of the equipment used to manufacturing solar cells, recently opened the world’s largest and most advanced solar energy R&D center in Xi’an, China, creating hundreds of high-tech jobs there and shipping out their Chief Technology Officer and Silicon Valley luminary, Mark Pinto, to oversee the project.  IBM recently announced a $40 million investment in a new “energy and utility solutions” lab in China that will perform cutting edge work on smart grid and other clean technologies.  And U.S. technology powerhouse GE is putting their Chinese research centers in the lead developing new clean tech products like wind turbines and power control electronics.

In the realm of startups, the United States still leads in total venture capital (VC) investments in cleantech, according to research from the CleanTech Group, which closely monitors the sector.  But the North American share of VC funding fell from 72 percent in 2008 to 62 percent in 2009, a four-year low for the region, with North American cleantech startups raising $3.5 billion in VC funding that year, down 42 percent from 2008.  It was Chinese firms that dominated initial public offerings (IPOs) in cleantech sectors, however, with 17 Chinese companies securing $3.4 billion, or 72 percent of global IPO proceeds in 2009.

Competing for clean energy industries: what works (and what won’t)

So the fact is, not only can clean energy jobs be shipped overseas, they already are—or are being created abroad to begin with.

That’s why it’s concerning (to say the least) to see this kind of rhetoric about ‘green jobs that can’t be outsourced’ proliferate.  If American politicians are serious about creating clean energy jobs in the United States—the kind of high tech and manufacturing jobs that are central to both a vibrant American middle class and a prosperous national economy—they need to focus on developing and enacting a robust and comprehensive clean energy competitiveness strategy.  It’s time to explicitly recognize that American clean energy jobs, like any other high tech or manufacturing-based sector, need to be proactively created and retained.

The problem, however, has been that insofar as our nation’s politicians and pundits have even acknowledged America’s clean energy competitiveness challenges, they have, with a few exceptions, responded with conventional thinking, calling for carbon prices or tariffs or protectionist measures that will do little to restore America’s competitiveness or create hundreds of thousands of U.S. clean energy jobs.

A carbon price could certainly help create demand for cleantech products, but at the levels considered by Congress, such demand would be modest.  More to the point: that demand could easily be satisfied by continuing to import foreign-built clean technologies, so we can’t count on carbon prices or cap and trade to bring clean energy jobs back to America.  In the end, carbon prices are absent from China, Japan or South Korea’s effective clean energy competitiveness and jobs strategies.  Why do we think carbon prices will be central to ours?

Carbon border tariffs or protectionist ‘Buy American’ provisions may also help somewhat, but each treats the symptoms, not the causes of America’s lagging competitive position in clean energy markets. 

Instead, what the United States needs to build a competitive clean energy sector capable of supporting hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs across the clean energy value chain is a comprehensive set of sustained public investments in cleantech research and innovation, education and workforce training, advanced manufacturing, and market creation (more on that strategy here).

This is how America has always sparked the innovation and high-value manufacturing that creates long-term jobs and built enduring industries that have formed the foundation for generations of economic prosperity. The primary reason the United States led in aerospace, communications technology, information technology, computing and the major new energy technologies of the later 20th century (gas turbines, nuclear, wind, and solar power) is because the U.S. government made a series of smart investments on the cutting edge of each of these technology fields to catalyze entrepreneurship and innovation.

We love to valorize private sector entrepreneurs, and it is true that the private sector is where much of this innovation ultimately happens. But we simply do not see entire new high-tech sectors emerge without the kind of direct, proactive, and comprehensive suite of investments in innovation, education, infrastructure, manufacturing, and market creation that led to each of the 20th century U.S. technology booms mentioned above.

We don’t see the Silicon Valley high tech boom of the late 1990s without the more than three decades of government investments in the region’s communications technology, IT and computing sectors that preceded that heyday of private sector entrepreneurship.  We don’t become world leaders in commercial aviation or aerospace technologies unless the U.S. government takes the lead in procuring and improving jet engines or fully commits itself to the Space Race.

The irony is that while so many in our class of political ‘elites’ seem to have forgotten the real history of American technology leadership, policymakers in China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Denmark etc. have all taken these lessons to heart.

The simple fact is, smart public investments at the leading edge of emerging technology sectors is how new industries are born and how the U.S. stays competitive.  If American policymakers want to create and retain new clean energy jobs and industries, and aren’t satisfied with simply ‘capturing’ the 25-30 percent of the value chain involved in retrofits, installations and maintenance, then we cannot afford to ignore this history any longer.

Originally posted at the Breakthrough Institute

See also:

”A Clean Energy Competitiveness Strategy for America”
”Winning the Clean Energy Race: A New Strategy for American Leadership”
”Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant: Report Overview”

Related Links:

This Earth Day we need more than a celebration, we need a clean energy revolution

A Clean Energy Competitiveness Strategy for America

Focus the nation on jobs and the clean energy race

Filed under: Classics, Bugatti

You might remember a story from last summer about the recovery of a vintage Bugatti from a lake in Italy. The story was both fascinating and sad, and definitely one worth recounting.

The tale begins, or so we’re told, in Paris in 1934 when a Swiss man acquired the car from legendary racecar driver Rene Dreyfus in a game of poker. The man headed home in his new car, but when he arrived at the Swiss border, he was required to pay customs on the car. Not having enough money, the man left the car at Lake Maggiore. By law, the Swiss officials were supposed to destroy the car, and they apparently did so by pushing it into the lake.

A little more than thirty years later, the Bugatti was discovered by a local diving club in the summer of 1967. The car became a local attraction for divers who would plunge more than 170 feet to see the remains at the bottom of the lake. It would seem that the Bugatti would forever remain there until a tragedy changed its fate. A young local man, Damiano Tamagni was brutally beaten and killed, and the diving club decided that they would try and retrieve the car and sell it to benefit the foundation created in his name to combat youth violence. It took more than thirty volunteers and nine months, but the Bugatti was finally lifted from the lake on July 12, 2009.

From there the Bugatti was put up for auction for the highest bidder. At Bonham’s Retromobile sale in Paris earlier this year, the Type 22 Brescia brought a top bid of £228,000 – around $350,000 USD – much higher than the pre-auction estimate. The winning bidder? None other than the Mullin Museum in Oxnard, CA. The museum has decided to not restore the Bugatti and display it in its current condition.

We were overjoyed to see the Type 22 Brescia in person at the museum’s grand opening last week, and were fascinated with the different parts of the car that survived three-quarters of a century submerged underwater. The right side of the body is completely gone, but other items like the tires and some of the gauges are perfectly intact. You can see the car in detail in the high-res gallery below.

Photos by Drew Phillips / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.

Pics Aplenty: Recovered 1925 Bugatti Type 22 Brescia in detail originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 21 Apr 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By Tim Shoemaker

Washington Examiner columnist Tim Carney articulates clearly just how Goldman Sachs will benefit from the financial “reform” bill currently under consideration in the Senate.

There’s a rule of thumb in Washington: Whenever politicians open up a legislative or regulatory debate, the side with the best lobbyist usually wins. Goldman’s clout is not measured so much in terms of lobbying dollars — though I’m sure the firm pays generous fees to its K Street soldiers, notably Dick Gephardt, John Breaux, and Tony Podesta — but in its direct pipeline to the corridors of power.

Carney highlights several administration officials with close ties to Goldman combined with the $950,000 Goldman executives donated to Obama for America to show that Goldman Sachs will get the regulation they really embrace.

Politico quoted a Goldman lobbyist Monday saying, “We’re not against regulation. We’re for regulation. We partner with regulators.” At least three times in Goldman’s conference call Tuesday, spokesmen trumpeted the firm’s support for more federal control.

Goldman reported on the conference call that it holds 15 percent “Tier 1 capital,” meaning it is very liquid and not very risky. Goldman can play it safe, you see, without needing a regulation. But regulations prevent smaller competitors from taking the risks needed to compete with Goldman (and every competitor is smaller).

Read the rest.

We’ve all seen this before.  Corporatism at its finest.  Big business is using government to establish regulations meant to “reign in” the excesses of big business.  While in reality, the regulation makes entry into the market place more difficult, resulting in competition being stifled.

By Matt Hawes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWt8hTayupE

(This is a guest post from FXIS Market Insights.)

The naughties (00’s) are often referred to as the lost decade culminating in the financial tsunami of 2008/09.  Total returns (including all dividends) on the S&P 500 were about –9% (-22% in nominal terms) for the entire decade.  With those numbers, it has become difficult to find a rationale for the “Buy and Hold” strategy that has been indoctrinated to the average investor for decades.

But despite the poor performance of stock markets over the past decade, there is ample evidence suggesting that stock picking and other active investing strategies are bound to run into substantial headwind over a longer period of time.  As Tom Lydon of www.etftrends.com suggests in his post: How to Become a Better ETF Trader:

According to a recent TrimTabs study, ETF investors are so bad at picking the right time to buy or short-sell the equity markets that those doing exactly the opposite of what ETF players did in the past 10 years would have ended up making sevenfold profits, reports Oliver Ludwig for Index Universe. 

The likelihood that a similar scenario would apply to most other active trading strategies in general is high and the rationale for that is quite simple: With more frequent transactions, trading approaches the realm of a zero sum game and the probability of outwitting other investors is by definition 50/50 minus transaction costs.  Unless you are an above average investor (trader), you won’t beat the crowd.  Although this may seem an oversimplification in terms of stock trading, an active investment strategy should on average under-perform the market by the amount of transaction costs incurred. 

So we have established that “Buy and Hold” didn’t work in the past decade and that market timing is also a particularly challenging task.   How can one improve the odds and what is the right strategy?

Tom Lydon suggests a few simple rules:

• Implement a simple strategy. Studies have shown time and again that there’s a direct correlation between how complicated a strategy is and how often you’ll use it. Keep it simple, silly.
• Have a stop loss. “It’s easy to buy and hard to sell,” goes the adage. Make selling easier by knowing when you’ll do it. And then do it.
• A simple strategy we suggest is trend following by using the 200-day moving average to determine when you buy and sell. You’re buying when a trend is there, and only when the trend is there. This allows you to check your emotions at the door.

Of these 3 basic trading tips, the third one is the most concrete example of a relatively simple and verifiable trading strategy. Brokerage firms often provide free access to research and trading analytics.  But these days, there are also free online resources available that let you back-test whether the proposed strategy would have worked for any given ETF. Let’s take this 3rd rule for a test drive then…

As a example, please consider www.etfreplay.com (no affiliation with the author) which has a tool allowing you to back-test a strategy using moving averages:  http://www.etfreplay.com/backtest_ma.aspx

Enter the ticker symbol SPY (the ETF for the US benchmark S&P500), use the suggested 200-day moving average and select “Trade On: Day of Cross”.  Choose your time frame, in this case, the past decade and hit the button to run the Back-test.  Here are the graphical results:

The proposed strategy seemed to have worked quite well with a more than 3:1 ratio favoring the 200 day moving average over the buy and hold period (Note: Returns are calculated from date of first backtest buy). 

There are  a few caveats however, again pointing towards a difficulty with regard to timing and money management.  For starters, the first trade did not occur until January 2002 which means staying on the sidelines for 2 years, had we implemented the strategy in January 2000.   That would have required a lot of patience!  Perhaps more difficult even for seasoned traders is the necessity to stick to a strategy during times when patience and conviction are severely tested.  The first 6 trades of this strategy were all losing money, albeit small percentage losses.  But the fact that the majority of the trades (77%) were losing trades can shatter the guts of the most confident traders.  Sticking to a strategy when the first few trades aren’t working isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

In closing, I’d like to note that as with any trading strategy, simulated results from a backview mirror perspective are always to be taken with a grain of salt.  While the proposed strategy appears to have worked for the benchmark S&P 500 it may or may not work for other indices or other ETFs.  Please also note that this is just one example of an easy to implement trading strategy – there are many others.  In terms of an overall financial plan, a tailored asset allocation may be much more important and prove more successful over time than a serious of specific investments or individual trades, no matter what timing or trading strategy may be adopted.  Usual disclaimers and general investment risk disclosures apply here as well. 

Having said that, there are more and more trading tools available now that allow individual investors to test and verify if a given investment strategy could work, something which was available to only professional traders until recently.  Overall, the easier and often free access to professional trading tools and investment analytics should make for better informed and more educated investors.  But don’t take my word for it, test it yourself. 

Join the conversation about this story »

Ryan McBride wrote:

Christoph Westphal is leaving his CEO job at Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, the Cambridge, MA-based developer of drugs that target genes linked to the aging process, to get back into the venture capital game, according to an e-mail Westphal sent to friends and colleagues as well as Xconomy.

Westphal says in his note that he is taking over as head of SR One, Glaxo’s venture capital arm. He’s also working with fellow Sirtris alumni Michelle Dipp and Rich Aldrich on a new Boston venture firm, Longwood Founders Fund, according to the note. (Last week the Boston Globe reported that Glaxo is backing Longwood Founders Fund, which appeared on our radar back in February.)

Still, Westphal isn’t relinquishing all of his ties to Sirtris. He is going to be keeping a close eye on the advancement of Sirtris’s drugs for diseases of aging as co-chair of the Sirtris scientific advisory board. George Vlasuk, who was named president of Sirtris last year and has been in charge of its day-to-day operations, will replace Westphal as the firm’s CEO, according to Westphal’s e-mail.

Westphal’s career move could be viewed as a return to his roots in the life sciences industry. He first joined Sirtris as a co-founder and interim CEO in 2004, while he was a general partner at Polaris Venture Partners in Waltham, MA. (He eventually left Polaris to lead Sirtris full-time.) During his days as a venture capitalist at Polaris, he was a founder of other high-profile biotech firms in the Boston area such as Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ALNY), Momenta Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:MNTA), and Acceleron Pharma.

Glaxo is now giving Westphal the keys to its own corporate venture fund, at a moment of big change at SR One. Westphal is becoming president of the fund, taking over the responsibilities previously held by Russell Greig, a 30-year Glaxo veteran. Greig left SR One last month, according to this report by the In Vivo Blog. That departure created an opening at the exact moment when corporate VC arms are gaining prominence as traditional venture firms falter, In Vivo noted.

The SR One position can be one of the plum jobs in biotech venture investing. According to the SR One website, the firm operates as an independent unit of GSK and has invested $600 million since 1985. The fund invests in companies all over the world, and some of its portfolio companies in the Boston area include Aileron Therapeutics, Genocea Biosciences, and Concert Pharmaceuticals.

[Disclosure: Xconomy’s brand new life sciences columnist, Sylvia Pagán Westphal, is married to Christoph Westphal. Sylvia had no involvement in this story, we swear!]

UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS

Si bien la imagen precedente no es el modelo final del BMW M1 sino una representación, ya nos podemos dar una idea y comenzar a imaginar lo que será el paso más alto en la línea del Serie 1 que BMW ya tiene en preparación. El M1 va a llenar el hueco de la Serie 1 con este modelo que estará en vistas de competir directamente con el Audi S3.

A pesar de que todos quisiéramos que el M1 llevara el motor V8 del Serie 3, la realidad es que podría desarrollar una variante más deportiva que el seis en línea del 135i. Se dice que el citado motor estaría llegando a los 330 caballos, aunque no es toda la potencia adicional que podría esperarse de un “M”, ya que apenas sobrepasaría el 135i tradicional por 30 CV. Además queda pendiente su designación, ya que no sería llamado M1, sino 1-Series-M.

Yendo al video propiamente dicho, vemos que el prototipo probablemente sea una versión mejorada del 135i, al menos por fuera, pero queda el interrogante de la motorización. Este seis cilindros tiene un bonito sonido a través de las curvas del Infierno Verde, pero aún no se puede asegurar si estamos ante alguna mejora sustancial del motor.

Vía | Left Lane News

Video | 1Addicts

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Harrisburg, Pennsylvania needs a lot of help. The picturesque capital city with a population of around 48-thousand has an unemployment rate of 8.6 percent and more than a quarter of its families are living in poverty. While the city comptroller is suggesting the town file for bankruptcy, Mayor Linda Thompson tells Fox that she is keeping that last on her list of options.

Amidst all the gloomy news in Harrisburg, hope is rising – in the form of a minor league baseball player named Stephen Strasburg.
Michael Reinsdorf, Chairman of the Harrisburg Senators baseball team, grins with pride when asked about his star player, “they say he comes around once in a lifetime.”

21-year old Strasburg has been called the most talented pitching prospect of all-time and was the first overall pick in the 2009 baseball draft by the Washington Nationals with a fastball which has been clocked as high as 102 mph.
He reportedly received a $15.1 million contract with the team and has been sent to start his career with the Nationals’ minor league team in the struggling city of Harrisburg, sending ticket sales out of the park.

A record crowd of 7,895 waited through a two-hour rain delay, followed by a 20-minute power outage, almost all of them to see Strasburg pitch last week in his first home game in a newly renovated 42 million dollar stadium. The sell-out crowd has Mayor Thompson optimistic that the success will help area businesses, “hopefully at the end of the day, people will empty out into our streets and support our local businesses in terms of dining and entertainment in the evening so that we can boost the evening economies and just create an atmosphere of excitement.”

Fans like Brian and Trish Anthony were thrilled with the performance of their flamethrower star, and even more thrilled with the prices. Tickets at Metro Field range from 5 to 30 dollars and beers go for 2 bucks. “It’s affordable entertainment for a family, and you don’t break the bank doing it. Especially in these times, that’s pretty important”, Brian said.

Strasburg may get pulled up the ranks by the Washington Nationals to play in the Majors at any time. While his time with the Senators is uncertain, the future of Harrisburg already looks brighter according to Reinsdorf, “I think that this will bring a lot of pride to not only people of Harrisburg but to the surrounding areas. I think it will bring a lot of people into the city and obviously that’s a good thing”.

What do you think? Have you heard of any small towns in America looking at creative ways out of the fiscal gutter?

Let me know in your comments below!

Eating out is supposed to be a good thing, whether it’s romance, business, family, friends or just enjoying a nice al fresco meal on your own. But how many times has your pleasant evening been tainted or even ruined by a fellow restaurant patron who does something that just gets under your skin? That’s why the Chicago Tribune has put together this list of 10 of the most irritating people you can encounter while dining.

1. People who sit far from their table and won’t move up when you need to squeeze by.
2. People who stuffing tiny bottles of jam into their pockets or purse.
3. People who bring their own salt.
4. People whose conversations are so loud everyone in the restaurant can hear them.
5. People who linger forever over empty glasses of wine even though they can see others are waiting for a table.
6. People who chew with their mouth open.
7. People who talk loudly on their cell phone.
8. People who take a ton of flash photos in the restaurant
9. People who let in all the cold air from outside (or let the cool air out during the summer) by holding the door open for too long.
10. People who use a cloth napkin to blot their lipstick and people who blow their nose into their napkin at the table.

Do you agree with the Tribune’s list? Who did they miss?

Ten at 10: Most Annoying Habits of Restaurant Diners [Chicago Tribune]

Haaretz reports on comments the undersecretary of defense for policy, Michele Flournoy, made in Singapore about Iran:

The U.S. has ruled out a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program any time soon, hoping instead negotiations and United Nations sanctions will prevent the Middle East nation from developing nuclear weapons, a top U.S. defense department official said Wednesday.

“Military force is an option of last resort,” Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy said during a press briefing in Singapore. “It’s off the table in the near term.”

And just wait for segments of the conservative movement and the Republican Party to freak out, as Bill Kristol did over Adm. Michael Mullen’s similar disinclination for an Iran attack over the weekend. Yet if the lesson of the Bush administration’s experience at the United Nations ahead of the Iraq war is any experience, the only way the Security Council will unite around a sanctions package is if the international community doesn’t believe it’s setting the stage for an American attack. The same goes for a post-Security Council resolution coalition of Iran’s major trading partners that the Obama administration is waiting to assemble. There’s a surprising amount of international willpower for sanctions aimed at stopping Iran’s illicit uranium enrichment activities. There’s absolutely none for seeding the bed for an attack, and the prospect of one will drain away the willpower for sanctions. Hence Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ aggressive pushback on The New York Times’ leak of his January Iran memo, and hence Flournoy’s comments in Singapore.

As I browse through the App Catalog on a day to day basis, I’m sometimes drawn to the applications that endeavor to improve on the ease of use and functionality offered by webOS. Call it a morbid fascination really, as none of the applications I’ve come across in this space so far have actually improved much of anything, and end up being little more than just the waste of a few dollars. We visited the ActiveCard (2.99 in the App Catalog) application a few months ago, and found it to fit the status quo in this regard quite well.

You may be familiar with TealPoint Software, the company that got itself into hot water with Palm early last year when they mimicked the webOS interface on Palm OS devices with TealOS . Since then, the company has stocked the virtual shelves of the App Catalog with a number of apps, ranging from shopping list managers to world time clocks. The app we’re looking at today, TealSpeed ($4.99 in the App Catalog), a speed dial and launcher, is one of those applications that aims to enhance the functionality of the UI employed by webOS. Does it make the grade?

read more

Next Friday, the 30th (the Friday before finals for us college kids), the Spartan Dischords will take the stage again for our big end-of-the-year show: Eating Out! The show is at the Pasant Theatre. Tickets are only $5 for students and can be bought online here or at the Wharton Center Box Office.

Tickets are going fast so, when buying online, you may want to check the left and right sections of the Pasant for better seats! You have to click the grey left/right buttons in the box under the seating graphic to see them though. Tricky internets…

Talking Points Memo reports that Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, says Republicans are close to supporting Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-Conn.) financial regulatory reform bill. “We’re very close to a deal and there will be a substantial number of Republicans that go along with it,” Shelby says. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had last week convinced all 41 Republican Senators to sign on to a letter opposing the bill on the grounds that it would create “perpetual bailouts” for Wall Street firms. It now seems Republicans will not filibuster the popular bill.

Additionally, the Senate Agriculture Committee passed Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s (D-Ark.) derivatives reform bill out of committee. All of the committee Democrats, plus Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), agreed to the plan, which Wall Street stringently opposes.

Gizmodo nearly broke the Internet with its exclusive review of a lost new iPhone. Is it possible that the Gawker Media technology blog also broke the law? Slate’s Brian Palmer says

Yes. California’s Uniform Trade Secrets Act
prohibits the theft or disclosure of legitimate commercial secrets. The
state law does not distinguish between rogue employees, corporate
spies, and the media, all of whom can be liable under the act. Nor does
it matter that Gizmodo obtained the information secondhand–what’s
important is the fact that the prototype was a secret and the tech blog
either knew or should have known that it was acquired improperly. Both
of these conditions seem to be satisfied, according to Gizmodo’s own account of what happened.

Here’s the story: Gizmodo’s source allegedly found the iPhone prototype at a bar, asked around to see if it belonged to somebody, called Apple HQ to leave a message, and then sold the device to Gizmodo for $5,000. He didn’t hand it to the bar tend. He didn’t tell the police. Gawker Media had a legal responsibility to ensure that the seller rightfully possessed the property. They did not. And if sued, they might have to pay, which would make this purloined iPhone the most expensive Apple product in history.

Daily Finance’s Jeff Bercovici concludes: “What Gawker Media did here was egregious. I doubt Steve Jobs will sue, but if he does, he will have justice on his side.”

[JURIST] Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday urged Kyrgyzstan’s interim government to begin a comprehensive investigation into the violence between April 6 and 8 that resulted in the overthrow of president Kurmanbek Bakiyev. After conducting witness interviews and examining photo and video evidence, HRW concluded that the violence was fueled by the actions of both security forces and demonstrators and called on the government to officially request assistance from the international community to “help to safeguard against accusations of bias” in the probe. HRW claims that authorities committed several violations of international law, which stipulates that lethal force may only be used as a last resort, citing in particular the alleged shooting of an unarmed man seeking to negotiate. The interim government is currently planning to try members of Bakiyev’s family and administration on charges that include corruption and human rights violations.
Kyrgyz interim leader Roza Otunbayeva said last week that Bakiyev should stand trial for the recent violence. Despite the pledge to bring Bakiyev and his allies to justice, so far only former defense minister Baktybek Kaliyev has been arrested. It is believed that Bakiyev is currently in Belarus, and interim officials have said they will seek extradition to bring him before their courts. The protests, prompted in part by a drastic increase in utility costs, led to at least 84 deaths and many more injuries. Earlier this month, Otunbayeva launched the interim government after the violence forced Bakiyev to flee the capital. The protests came just one week after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Kyrgyzstan to protect all forms of human rights, including “free speech and freedom of the media.”