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Call it a froth indicator. Sotheby’s
(BID) is a stock that shoots skyward when the mood turns bullish. It
did so in 1999, at the height of the dotcom bubble. It did so again in
2007. And right now, it’s once again repeating its levitation act.

The Money Game blog is not impressed. It calls the auction house “the
ultimate bubble stock” and notes that it’s “infamous for timing major
market peaks and troughs.” In early March, the blog noted that
Sotheby’s had regained its pre-Lehman levels. Since then the shares
have gained another 10%.

You can read Sotheby’s rise as a sign of irrational exuberance, but the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column
sees it as an opportunity. It notes that Sotheby’s derives much of its
profits from sales of art and that art sales “move in close tandem with
the global money supply.” Given the ultra-loose state of money supplies
at the moment, the column sees more gains ahead for Sotheby’s.

Freelance business journalist Ian McGugan blogs for the Financial Post.
 

We’ve written about Paul Scott many times on these pages. In fact, just a couple of days ago he was featured prominently in a piece about treating electric cars fairly in the new fuel economy and emissions rules recently enacted by the federal government. Personally, I’ve met him and his wife, Zan Dubin Scott, a few times and they are just two of nicest people you’ll ever meet.

As the Vice President of leading EV advocacy group, Plug In America, Paul has been a tireless supporter of shifting away from our conventionally-powered transportation sector in favor of plug ins. You may recognize his name from the movie “Who Killed the Electric Car?”, in which he was featured as a driver of one of the original RAV4 EVs.

So it makes me happy to learn that Paul Scott and his organization have been given a $25,000 grant from Nissan to expand their work in getting Americans ready for the coming onslaught of EVs and speed their mass adoption.

(more…)

The iPad has replaced the borrowed puppy as the lure of choice for bachelors on the make. Jim Colgan from The Takeaway took the latest Apple gadget out for some field testing and found himself besieged with admirers. Ok, really they were admiring the new tablet, but some of that adoration washed over on to its owner. To wit: “two women emerged from behind him and screamed and pointed. They all wanted a go.” Here is the recording of different reactions to the iPad on the streets of New York, recorded using an iPad:

Does the iPad Turn Too Many Heads? [The Takeaway]

Se acaban de filtrar las primeras imágenes del restyling (lavado de cara) del actual Audi TT. Debemos mencionar que todos los cambios estéticos estarán presentes en las diferentes versiones de este deportivo.

Viendo detenidamente las imágenes, los cambios estéticos son mínimos aunque apreciables. Audi publicará toda la información sobre este modelo en los próximos días. Tal y como se puede ver, el difusor ha sido rediseñado completamente.

En lo que respecta a la motorización, seguirá sin cambios por lo que podremos elegir entre un motor 3.2 V6 Quattro o un gasolina 1.8 TFSI.

Related posts:

1. Mitsubishi Montero recibe un lavado de cara
2. Audi R8 e-Tron Concept, imágenes filtradas
3. Audi S5 Sportback, imágenes oficiales

Cato’s Mike Cannon thinks Ben Bernanke’s comments on budget deficits should have come weeks ago. And he thinks he knows why they did not (excerpts):

If Bernanke really wanted to warn the American public about the dangers of rising budget deficits, then a congressional debate over creating two new entitlement programs would be the most important time to deliver that message.  … Had Bernanke delivered his populist warning before January 28, it could have jeopardized his confirmation by the Senate to a second term as Fed chairman. Had he done so between January 28 and March 21, he would have suffered a storm of criticism from Democrats (and possible retribution when his term came up for renewal in 2013) because his sensible, responsible warning would have made moderate House Democrats more skeptical about ObamaCare’s new entitlements.

Bernanke’s behavior thus reveals why ObamaCare’s cost would exceed projections and would increase the deficit. Knowledgeable leftists, notably Tom Daschle and Uwe Reinhardt, recognize that Congress is no good at eliminating wasteful health care spending because politics gets in the way. (Every dollar of wasteful health care spending is a dollar of income to somebody, and that somebody has a lobbyist.) The Left’s central planners believe they can contain health care costs by creating an independent government bureaucracy that sets prices and otherwise rations care without interference from (read: without being accountable to) Congress. ObamaCare’s new Independent Payment Advisory Board is a precursor to what Daschle calls a “Health Fed,” so named to convey that this new bureaucracy would have the same vaunted reputation for independence as the Federal Reserve.

Politics affects Bernanke’s behavior and the Fed’s behavior. Politics will defang the Independent Payment Advisory Board, and many of ObamaCare’s other purported cost-cutting measures.

Me: This is worrisome. Too much of policy, whether it is  future a Health Fed or the deficit commission, is based on the ability of outside panels to end run Congress —  and of Congress to ultimately cede power.

Edith Thouin of ABN Amro doesn’t think this is going to be a jobless recovery, but it is going to benefit some industries over others.

• 0:30 There is a pickup in job growth in the U.S. and Europe, and the services and care sectors are benefiting
• 1:00 Emerging markets are demanding goods from the West, and this will lead to job growth
• 2:30 The building and construction industry will not return anytime soon, those jobs are lost
• 3:50 This will not just be an Asian job recovery, but a U.S. and European one as well

From CNBC:

Join the conversation about this story »

Seven US states district attorneys are investigating the evil Monsanto for abusing “its market power to lock out competitors and raise prices on seed”. According to the Organic Consumers Association:

The states are probing whether Monsanto violated laws by offering rebates to seed distributors for excluding rival seeds, imposing limits on combining the product with other genetic modifications, or offering cash incentives to switch farmers to more expensive generation of seed varieties.

The state investigations add to pressure on Monsanto. The US Justice Department is investigating the company’s marketing practices, and DuPont Company has accused Monsanto of anti-competitive practices in licensing litigation.

Maybe anti-trust laws will finally bring this agricultural giant down!

It’s finally happening. Gas producers are starting to crack.

With the natural gas to oil price ratio running at a nearly-unprecedented 21-to-1 ($86.80 per barrel for crude versus $4.12 per mcf for gas), gas producers are throwing in the towel. And switching over to the “dark side”. Oil exploration.

Up until now, many die-hard gas producers had been sticking to their guns and continuing to drill gas plays. Particularly shale gas, where producers claimed economics are still attractive. Even at current depressed gas prices.

But times are changing. Last week reports emerged that gas-major Chesapeake Energy has leased 700,000 acres in the Rocky Mountains. The aim? Drilling for oil.

Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon was quoted as saying bluntly, “The economics just compel you to look for oil rather than natural gas right now.”

Elsewhere, other gas producers are making similar moves.

Last week, Texas-focused gas producer SandRidge Energy announced a $1.5 billion dollar takeover of oil producer Arena Resources. This comes after SandRidge CEO Tom Ward recently admitted to analysts at a major energy conference that producers can make “10 times the money” drilling oil wells as opposed to natural gas.

Even shale plays are taking on a “wet” flavor. The Eagle Ford shale has become the darling play in America, with most analysts acknowledging its superior economics. The reason? Largely, the liquids that generally come along with gas from Eagle Ford wells. Which fetch oil-like prices (or better).

As gas producers continue to seek oil entry opportunities, there will be steady upward pressure on prices for oil assets (which have already appreciated significantly this year).

There may also come opportunities in purchasing unloved gas properties. But only for those companies with the foresight and financial fortitude to hold on for the months or years until prices turn.

Join the conversation about this story »

One of the central flaws of safety net programs is that they become most necessary during recessions when states are least able to afford the influx of beneficiaries. Today, the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group, reveals the extent of the problem as it pertains to jobless benefits, reporting that 33 states have fully exhausted their unemployment benefit funds.

Tops (bottoms?) on the list are California, which is down $8.4 billion; Michigan ($3.8 billion); New York ($3.0 billion); Pennsylvania ($2.8 billion); and Ohio ($2.2 billion).

As of March 31, states have borrowed nearly $39 billion from the federal government to plug the hole.

Andrew Stettner, NELP’s deputy director said that the crisis has resulted from more than just the recession alone.

“While the recession has certainly made things worse, this funding crisis has been developing for years,” he said in a statement. “Decades of poor financing policies at the state and federal level have helped dig the hole we’re in today.”

In the wake of the explosion at the Upper Big Branch coal mine earlier this week, Mike Lillis dug through federal records and wrote a piece, published this morning, about the dozens of other mines owned by Massey Energy that pose significant safety risks.

Tonight, at 6 pm, he’ll be on The Ed Show on MNSBC, discussing Massey’s safety record (or lack thereof) with Ed Schultz. He’s scheduled for the top of the show, so be sure to tune in early.

There’s no way around it.  As much as we try to keep our cell phones with us, somehow we still manage to leave them places.  We leave our handsets on the counter at home, in the taxi, on the airplane, and in (yikes) bathrooms. 

Check out  a couple of interesting and scary figures about lost phones:

• Over 85,000 cell phones were lost in Chicago taxis in 2005
• Disneyland collects over 300 phones a week
• 8,701 mobile devices were left in Washington/Baltimore taxis over a 6 month period in 2006

Unfortunately, things will only worsen as the number of smart phones grows.  Thankfully companies like iTag are around to help us find out phones and recover them.

Founded in 2007, California-based iTag helps users locate, protect, and recover your lost handsets.  Their free Android application recently landed in the market and it’s making waves.  It was recently selected as a finalist in the CTIA Emerging Technology Awards in Mobile Applications.

If you find yourself with a missing cell phone, you can view its location on a map using iTag’s secure website.  Using some of the tools at your disposal, you can make your phone ring even if it was set to silent.  This is handy for those times when you can’t figure out which room you left your Nexus One in.  One of the best features is that it sends you an alert should someone find your phone and swap the SIM card out.  Included in that message is the phone number associated with the new SIM.

Other options and features in iTag:

• If someone replaces the SIM card, the new number (or number of the thief) is sent to the web site.
• If the battery is about to die, the location is sent to the web site.
• If you can’t recover your phone, iTag backs up the information and allows you to erase all the personal and sensitive information on your phone.
• You can click a button on the website to make your phone ring even if the phone is set to vibrate or silent. This is useful if you cannot locate your phone in your house or car.

Scan or click the barcode with your Android handset to download iTag for free out of the Android Market!

Scan/click to download iTag!

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Recently, my coworkers and I have started tracking the internet chatter about acid rain. We were curious about what the world was saying about this iconic environmental issue. Acid rain is taught in most schools across the country so imagine our surprise when we found a pretty significant number of people who thought the problem of acid rain has been solved.

So…what really did happen to acid rain? It was a big problem in the 80s and early 90s, but now we don’t hear much about it. This year marks the 20th anniversary of EPA’s Acid Rain Program—a program that requires power plants across the country to reduce SO2 (sulfur dioxide) and NOx (nitrogen oxide), the pollutants that form acid rain.

Because of our program, we’ve seen power plant emissions of SO2 and NOx plummet. Many sensitive lakes and streams in the East are starting to recover from the effects of acid rain. And the days of dying forests and lakes totally devoid of fish are, increasingly, a thing of the past.

The success of the Acid Rain Program has been impressive: 63 percent lower SO2 emissions, 70 percent lower NOx emissions, and 100% compliance! We’ve come a long way but, unfortunately, acid rain is still a very real problem in some parts of the country and it is one that EPA is committed to continuing to address.

So – whatever happened to acid rain? We’d like to tell you what we’ve been doing about acid rain, but more importantly, we’re very interested in hearing what YOU guys think. How did you first learn about acid rain? What did you know about the Acid Rain Program and what EPA has been doing over the past 20 years to try to solve the issue?  How has acid rain affected your community?  What more do you think EPA should be doing  to address this issue? Tell us what you think and please join us over the next few weeks as we continue our dialogue documenting the past 20 years of the program on Facebook , and Twitter .

About the author: Josh Stewart is the Communications Intern with the EPA’s Clean Air Markets Division. Josh is currently working on his Master’s Degree in Political Management at The George Washington University.

Now that we have the iPad people are looking for ways to have it standing on it’s own without the need for you to hold it.
And yes you can get a simple book stand that will do but does it work?

Griffin now offers the A-Frame witch is specially designed for the Apple iPad and will offer a safe home for your iPad in horizontal and vertical mode. This Stand is great for on you desk or maybe in the kitchen for showing cookbooks.

I would say before you buy anything else go see the A-Frame Multi-position Tabletop Stand for iPad

Meanwhile, in Canada, Jon Quach is at a Motorola launch event.

They seem to be becoming less popular lately, but not too long ago “stealth” startups were a growing fad in the Internet entrepreneurship sector. A team with a big idea would insist on keeping their business a secret from the public and even from investors until the last possible moment in an effort to ward off any fast moving idea vultures that might swoop in and copy their idea. Others went stealth to create a buzz around their mysterious and unknown project. Some argue, however, that being stealthy limits a startup’s opportunities for funding and feedback, among other things, so is there a better way to go about this?

Sponsor

Investor and Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon wrote Tuesday about his idea that instead of going into “stealth mode,” startups should instead just try to “underhype” themselves, a process I’m going to call “flying under the radar.” I call it this because “stealth,” like “stealth bomber,” implies the ability to be undetectable and virtually invisible, while “flying under the radar,” means you are perfectly visible, but are strategically flying in a manner as to go unnoticed.

“The companies I’m referring to … are publicly launched, acquiring users and generating revenue,” writes Dixon of “underhyped” startups. “They are modeling themselves after Groupon, where the first time the VC community / tech press gets excited about them, they are already so successful that it’s hard for competitors to jump in.”

Startups that can fly under the radar get all of the benefits of stealthiness but without the costs. By quietly building a stellar product and garnering a loyal audience without tipping off the press or major VCs, startups can be assured that they are providing the best product while protecting themselves from a quick copycat company. Instead of closing your company off to a select group of individuals, these startups can be completely open to public feedback and user testing, as well as VC scrutiny, something most stealth startups can’t do.

“Unless you are extremely lucky or extremely brilliant your product won’t be a great match for your customer’s needs until you have spoken to them about it and iterated a bunch of times,” wrote Nic Brisbourne of DFJ Esprit last December. “With regard to VCs in particular, being stealthy stops them from letting you know if they have seen many other startups in your space and the extent to which your plan might or might not need to morph to become an attractive investment.”

It would seem that the costs outweigh the benefits when it comes to going stealth. In a 2006 OnStartups post, Dharmesh Shah argued that going stealth could unintentionally convey to investors that the company lacks focus, commitment, solutions, or direction. So before you decide to keep your super secret project under lock and key, think about hiding in plain sight by flying under the radar instead.

Discuss

We’ve talked in the past about the differences between open and closed platforms in driving innovation and adoption. Unlike some, I’m not against inherently closed platforms. I just don’t think that they will survive long-term. In fact, I think that closed platforms often do a very good job of defining initial markets, and convincing people to leap into those markets. However, in the long term, it usually seems that the open platforms, which may start out a lot less polished and useful, not only catch up, but surpass the closed platforms. It’s not difficult to understand why this happens. When you have a closed platform, the company putting it out has to account for everything — and thus, initially, it’s a lot more advanced and well thought out. However, with an open platform, the initial offering is often chaotic and messy and difficult for new users to understand and adopt. But over time, with many more people able to work on that platform and to innovate on that platform, it gets better and better and better. And it becomes more difficult for the closed platforms to catch up.

Does this always happen? No. But it’s happened enough that you have to have a good reason for why it won’t happen in any particular market. Of course, one of the examples that people have used for where this has not happened is in the video game market. There, it’s the closed platforms — PS3, Xbox and the Wii — that have continued to dominate, while the more open PC platform has languished in comparison. There could be a variety of reasons for this — including the fact that there is a fair bit of competition between the three platforms and the fact that no one has really built a credible open competitor (the PC may be too general purpose). But, apparently, some still think the era of the closed video gaming console is unlikely to last much longer — and at least one prognosticator is certainly someone who knows the business quite well.

Hideo Kojima, the creator of Metal Gear Solid surprised a lot of people by saying that the video game console is dying, and the future is a much more open solution, that involves games that you can play on any device: computer, mobile, TV, etc.

“In the near future, we’ll have games that don’t depend on any platform,” Kojima said at a news conference announcing the latest installment in a game saga that began in 1987.

“Gamers should be able to take the experience with them in their living rooms, on the go, when they travel — wherever they are and whenever they want to play. It should be the same software and the same experience,” he said.

Who knows if this is true or not, but it would certainly fit the pattern we’ve seen elsewhere…

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The scene at Denver International Airport (DIA) is business as usual today.  The media relations team for DIA says the security incident last night involving Denver bound United Flight 663 has not impacted operations at here at DIA. “Airport personnel are cooperating with federal law enforcement officials leading the investigation”, according to a statement released last night.

Lines at check-in appear to be normal.  The security screening lines looked a little heavy this morning, but security lines now seem to have normalized for this time of day.  Passengers and people passing through the airport do not seem too concerned now that more is known about the situation.  One woman bluntly described the diplomat’s behavior as “stupid”.  Others say they think it’s wrong to invoke diplomatic immunity, they’re not sure what should be done for handling the man and they’re not afraid to fly.

Filed under: Hybrid, Sedan, Mercedes-Benz, Reviews, Luxury

When pondering the idea of any near-$100,000 hybrid luxury sedan, one has to wonder, “What’s the point?” The only hybrids that sell in any significant numbers are the Toyota Prius and Ford Fusion, and for good reason. Both allow drivers – and particularly hyper-milers – to squeeze every last mile out of each gallon of fuel.

Obviously, anyone with the financial wherewithal to purchase a 2010 Mercedes-Benz S400 Hybrid is unlikely to be motivated by the technology’s fuel savings. Similarly, if someone wants to make a social statement by driving a “green” vehicle, they will likely want their ride to be instantly recognizable as a hybrid.

So the cost-no-object camp is divided. They can either drop their coin on an all-electric Tesla Roadster or, in spite of their bank balance, go with a lowly Toyota. Which begs the question: Is there something in between? We tested Mercedes’ newest hybrid to find out.

Continue reading Review: 2010 Mercedes-Benz S400 Hybrid, who is it for?

Review: 2010 Mercedes-Benz S400 Hybrid, who is it for? originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 08 Apr 2010 11:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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