Financial topics

[aedens]

MIT has it developed also for electrical grid applications. It can be scaled to include consumer markets. We had a link pages
back on the application for battery applications also. I will try to find it later since GE also it appers was going to do something with it.
It was in a TED lecture.

http://www.ted.com/talks/donald_sadoway ... nergy.html

This can be scaled without much problems.

[Reality Check]

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/2012 ... /212250356

That article raises many interesting issues.

What is the pay differential between the "home health care worker" at 900 dollars a month and the city employees who are not losing their job?

How many $900 dollar per month city workers could be hired to replace all the city employees not losing their jobs?

What happens when one day the state government, with or without federal government concurrence, just decides to stop paying for home health care?

The person receiving the "care" is going to suffer, maybe even die much sooner, but the $900 a month job is also going away as well.

Nothing in Obamacare will allow the $900 a month worker to be able to afford to go to the doctor for an illness any more often, in fact just the opposite.

What the government "gives", the government can take away.

[Reality Check]

http://www.ted.com/talks/donald_sadoway ... nergy.html

This can be scaled without much problems.

The problem is, and remains, cost. Technology that costs many times the current cost for doing the same thing another way is never going to be a commercial success as long as you can get the same benefit for a fraction of the cost doing it another way.

The fact that something can, or can not, be scaled is irrelevant. Production of gasoline and Diesel fuel from coal was proven scalable by the Germans in World War II and by the United States Department of Energy in the 1970s in Ohio.

Production of gasoline and Diesel fuel from coal has never been a commercial success, because drastically cheaper alternatives, already available commercially, exist.

The same is true of electricity generated from Solar Energy today. The laws of physics matter, and given the inefficiencies of capturing even a small fraction of the solar energy that strikes a given square meter of the surface of the earth, and the inefficiencies of actually converting the small percentage that can be captured into electricity, the numbers do not add up.

Before one can start dancing about a "new" solar technology, the best case theoretical efficiencies of this "new technology", must be compared to the proven efficiencies of industrial scale "reflecting and focusing" technologies of solar energy used in melting salts in huge solar power station designs. If, as has been the case, a "new solar technology's" best case theoretical efficiency is many times less efficient than that older and proven "reflecting and focusing" solar technologies, then the numbers are still not there.

Keeping in mind that the most efficient solar technology ( industrial scale reflecting and focusing ) is not cost competitive, it is easy to conclude that a "new" solar energy technology that is many times less efficient, even if given the benefit of the doubt of the best case theoretical efficiency for the new technology, is also not cost competitive.

[Reality Check]

Governments have been subsidizing solar power in principally two different ways.

The state of Oregon uses the up front cost method to subsidize small investors. Oregon pays thousands of dollars toward the installation of small scale solar panels at homes and businesses.

The state of Washington uses the opposite method, it subsidizes each kilowatt hour of electricity generated by these small systems over many years ( yes it is an accounting nightmare subject to fraud and political manipulation ). Of course the state can also simply change it's mind and end the subsidy at any time leaving the original investor high and dry ( usually the individual home owner or business owner who took out a mortgage to finance the project ).

Washington began the subsidies because many companies related to solar were started in Washington state so it was part of both a green push and a support your economy push. These companies were successful but immediately after out growing their government provided incubators moved to Canada, China, or first Canada and then China.

Today the subsidies in Washington state are bigger if the company that you bought the solar technology from is a Washington State company so many of the Chinese companies now have Washington state subsidiaries with the minimum presence necessary to get the subsidy.

The most cost effective small installation solar equipment is no longer sold in Washington state because the non-metal, non-glass, constructions ( read cost effective plastic ) tended to catch fire and burn any buildings near, or attached to them, to the ground. Building codes in Washington state now rule out all but the most expensive equipment for installation ( both new construction and remodeling add ons ) on, or near, most homes and businesses.

[vincecate]

Doug Noland has a good article titled "Recalling John Law".

http://www.safehaven.com/article/28169/ ... g-john-law

[aedens]

https://www.nfpa.org/catalog/services/L ... src%3DC929

free for those who have a clue how things work

[aedens]

I was thinking about ~62 ttt and was off. This county is run by retards for retards.
http://www.truthinaccounting.org/

[OLD1953]

Merry Christmas

This has enormous potential. Even just allowing for updates on business card phone numbers would be a huge thing. Peel and stick flexible circuits are going to be cheaper than the solid silicon substrate too, note that the silicon wafer is usually undamaged and can be reused, thus enabling a large process savings. There will likely be production devices using this tech within two years or less, IMHO, the potential profit increase is just too big to pass up.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1440 ... olar-cells

Wow, this is like saying the challenge to making wind power cost effective is cheaper bearings in the wind mills.

The headline on this marketing press release calls this process high efficiency, then goes on to define "high efficiency" to mean not any worse than one of the competing low efficiency soloar technologies.

Seven and one half percent efficient, as this press release is "claiming" the "new" technology is, remains just one of the gargantuan challenges to cost effective, durable - ( as in it just keeps on working for decades, not just a few years before it has massively reduced capacity and massive maintenance costs ) that solar energies true believers are unable to wish away.

The suggestion that the cost of the "solid silicon substrate" is the reason that solar power is prohibitively expensive is like claiming expensive bearings, and not lack of sustained winds 24x7, is the reason wind power is prohibitively expenive.

Wasn't refering to the test device, was refering to the statement that this could be applied to any type of circuit. A process savings of about 40$ per etching is nothing to be sneezed at. While it obviously can't be applied to the newer 3D substrate etchings (at least I don't see how it can) the possibility of multilayer circuits is there at least in potential by overlaying these molecule thick circuits, and clamping a high dissipation circuit between two heat sinks directly can't be overlooked either. Currently we slice up the silicon substrate and clamp a heat sink to the top side of the circuit. This offers both savings and a chance to increase the heat dissipation, both of which are major items in solid state circuit design/fabrication.

[aedens]

We are bracing for impact locally since thousands are being laid off. We have postioned equity in light switch sectors so we can try to keep the lights on with the facts we do not deny upcoming. The unintended consequences will be staggering for some. The velocity of money flow is porportional to the denial of the logic to actual market condition seen. As noted it will be apparent by early february and do note a few more of learned tenure views of late January. They own it now and they are not prepared since even the streets see it. I refuse to go through life confused as the RINO locusts. Good intentions will still lead to the same gates. Anyway will look for the clouds to clear and to date we are steady on output and finishing capex that was needed. Falk notices correctly also negative cash flow activities for at least 5 years while their stock price kept climbing, highlighting that if you hit the key signals investors are naively prioritizing, they can be fooled, just not forever. To preserve parasites is to poison the well and mimic of logic that we can discuss the beta separation that already sailed in a few segments another direction from demographic realities we can and all do see anyway. I would rather defend a position for now since it will not matter anyway for now since who can measure risk and course of edicts as Mises notes?
In a nutshell I will see in a few quarters if we need to adjust then. In the real world we watch wages for young people that are dropping faster than ever before and they can't even afford to rent anymore. And that will show how the future of the housing market will look. The rest who are wasting time listening to pressitutes we note ongoing from the kids that even they say are going to be wiped out. Are we early to note this? No, they are backfilling grannies house as soon as possible. Buying is for idiots and the rest is plantation economics ongoing since they are so happy about enclavements in metro we paid for locally. Are they over paid in DC ? You bet your ass they are and half pay would be a damn good start.

As it was noted before San Francisco is a city of paradoxes. It prides itself on inclusivity, but is the exemplar of the exploding gap between America’s rich and poor. Preservation of affordable housing is enshrined as a top priority in the City’s general Plan, yet housing is historically unaffordable.”
You are the center of global slave labor technology, income inequality is accelerating out of control, and you have an inclusive business plan, so you fail to see that the Fed fails every time it doubles down on its own rigged roulette wheel, as both the buyer and the seller of last resort, despite leverage from all the derivatives held by the entire elite class, as one false assumption after another, holding the empire up, falls into a growing abyss. That’s it, throw some more worthless pension paper into the black hole, and wonder why it acts like fertilizer. Do you really think intelligent kids are chomping at the bit to get Apple Empire TVs, Google Automated Empire Transportation, Facebook Behavior Empire Monitoring, & PayPal Monetary Empire Micromanagement, in a closed-loop technology circle controlled by assholes likes as Ron Conway, Henry Kissinger and the rest of that sick cabal type? The city casino would not look so appealing if the table with straps connected to a power source was easily recognized at the entry, but the shoes are a dead giveaway.

In other words, we don’t all want to show up at the skating rink at the same time to stand in line to skate in the same circle, as the empire is determined to have us do, and pay it with our energy for the privilege, regardless of the monetary policy creating artificial supply and demand. h/t kev

http://www.uscc.gov/researchpapers/2011 ... 062811.pdf

[OLD1953]

China's energy plan isn't a secret, it's just not what the European Greens want to hear. They are going to build a large number of the gas moderated pebble bed reactors I referenced here as under development in China a couple of years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/busin ... d=all&_r=0
That's carbon free power and they'll happily tell the WWF and Greenpeace to stuff their "not sustainable" talk. Right now the EG's are dithering all over the place, they don't want to admit a "primitive" country is the world's largest emitter of CO2, but China's solidly on track to emit double the "actual" US CO2 emissions next year. It's kind of amusing to track how unreal that discussion has gotten. But then they say France, which emits less than almost any other country in the EU is "actually" emitting far more because their nuclear is "not sustainable".
(When I say actual I mean what's actually emitted by real burning of real fuels, not imaginary adjustments made to imaginary numbers by EG elves.)

The development path of gas moderated pebble bed reactors is US developed, sold to Germany after TMI, Germany had a working reactor which they shut down after Chernybol and sold the plans to China, which doesn't care if people get edgy over the word "nuclear".

Has the interview with Wells Fargos CEO been referenced here? I can't get to some sites from here, but this is interesting, as he's saying people are seeking security and lower interest on debt now.

http://www.marketratesinsight.com/Blog/ ... -More.aspx