Archive for August 21st, 2008
Posted by: admin in Today News
How to earn money from blogging - New York Daily News
It’s an appealing fantasy: Begin a blog. Watch it take off. Then, quit office life, sit at home, and live off the advertising revenue. But just like Olympic medals, money-making blogs also elude most people who seek them, despite success stories such
Godwin Ijediogor and Samson Ezea - Nigeria Guardian
T HE Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), whose board include representatives from the nine oil-producing says of Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Imo, Ondo and Rivers, was set up to develop social and physical
Motion picture Review: The Thaw of the Heart in “Frozen River” - Oregonian
From the opening scene, in which a woman in a bathrobe dangles her legs from her vehicle and weeps as she smokes, we know that ” Frozen River ” isn’t going to be a lark. The debut of writer-director Courtney Hunt is a small, grim and sometimes airless
Albemarle Scientists Named ‘Heroes of Chemistry’ - MSN MoneyCentral
BATON ROUGE, La. , Aug. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Twelve scientists from specialty chemical maker Albemarle Corporation ALB and ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company XOM were honored by the American Chemical Society (ACS) in a special
Smoking on the huge screen translates into real-life addictions - Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Tobacco promotions and depictions of smoking in movies cause teenagers to begin smoking, a study has found. The report by the National Cancer Institute found the tobacco industry spent more than $US13 billion ($14.7 billion) on smoking-related
Onstream Media to Provide Comprehensive Internet Video Services for - MSN MoneyCentral
- WorldVibe Entertainment Group’s Es Mi Planeta Subsidiary Contracts for a Comprehensive Suite of Digital Media Services - POMPANO BEACH, Fla. , Aug. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Onstream Media Corporation ONSM , an on the web service provider of live
ExCops Real Life Experience in the World of Affiliate Marketing - pressbox.co.uk
“I invite you to read my real-life experience with starting an income on the web, and the good, and perhaps not so good experiences I faced, until Finally” About 3 years ago, I decided to begin some kind of on the web business in hopes of supplementing my
Aviation is a good news story for Menzies but the risks are high - Daily Telegraph
It has been more than a decade since John Menzies sold off its eponymous chain of book and newspaper sellers. At the time it marked the end of a story that had been running for more than 150 years, but business is no place for sentimentality, as the
Colleges and Universities - Chicago Tribune
Drew Weatherford stood inside Doak Campbell Stadium and imagined what the place would feel like and sound like when Florida State was back again, winning large — what life would be like when the Seminoles were his team and he their quarterback. He was
Sir John Major is in danger of becoming a national treasure - Daily Telegraph
Listening to Sir John Major on the radio these days is like settling into a nice warm bath. With his polite but pointed criticisms of the Gulf war and his pronouncements on sport, the monarchy, and life in general, the man is in imminent danger of
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Filed under: International markets, Products and services, General Motors (GM), Oil
 With great fanfare, General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) announced it was spending $500 million developing the Chevrolet Cruze, a so-called next generation compact vehicle. Investors, who have seen the value of GM’s stock slip 60 percent this year, could not have cared less. Shares of the company, which for now is the largest automaker, shut down for the day.
Granted one automobile is not going to revive General Motors’ fortunes, but the Chevrolet Cruze clearly is a step in the right direction. For one thing, it’s got a nice design though it certainly didn’t blow me away. The automaker clearly is trying to build on the popularity of the Chevrolet Cobalt whose sales are up 16 percent year to date. It aso underscores how General Motors is trying to be more efficient.
“The Chevrolet Cruze was designed and engineered by our global teams in Europe and Asia Pacific and will be manufactured in those regions in addition to the assembly plant here in Lordstown, Ohio,” said Chief Executive Rick Wagoner in a press release. “Our goal for the Chevrolet Cruze is to lead in fuel economy in this very competitive automobile segment.
But it’s also taking a gamble here.
As the Wall Street Journal points out, “The auto maker believes growing demand for nicer, well-equipped small vehicles coupled with a dramatic redesign for the Cruze will be enough to command sticker prices well beyond the $15,000 base price of a compact Chevrolet Cobalt.”
For Wagoner to keep his job, he’s going to have to sell lots of them along with the company’s pick-ups and SUVs, which the company and consumers are less enthused about.
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Filed under: Bad news, Products and services
 Nintendo Co., Ltd. (ADR) (OTC: NTDOY)’s Wii game console continuet to burn up the sales charts, selling hundreds of thousands every month. In fact, the lower-priced and graphically-inferior Wii has blown through nearly each sales expectation since its release nearly two years ago. Last month, the Wii was responsible for 49% of all game consoles, and it’s sold nearly 30 million since its November 2006 launch. Wow.
But, with success comes a big target on the back. Nintendo has been named in a patent lawsuit claiming the Japanese gaming company. Hillcrest Technologies states that Nintendo has violated various patents it holds dealing with the wireless, dimension-aware gaming controller that ships with every Wii console.
The “Wiimote,” as it has been dubbed, uses gyroscopes, Bluetooth wireless technology, and is incredibly simplistic on the surface (there are a minimum of buttons, unlike the competition). But inside the Wiimote, the technology making it possible to swing it like a tennis racket is quite complex. Hillcrest’s claim rests primarily on wireless technology it invented to allow the physical motion of a controller to select items on a viewing monitor. Hillcrest has already licensed its technology to several gaming companies, but the question remains: why did it take almost two years to bring the lawsuit against Nintendo? Something smells here.
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Lucas123 writes “After Iran’s first attempt to launch a satellite on Sunday fell noticeably short of the Earth’s atmosphere (though Iran claimed it made it into orbit), government officials stated they intend to put a man into space within 10 years. The long-range ballistic technology used to put satellites into space can also be used for launching weapons. Iran states it has no intention to use the technology for launching nuclear warheads.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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stylemessiah writes “The winner of several Eureka Science Awards in Australia is a crafty chick who devised a way to create solar cells inexpensively using a pizza oven, nail polish and an inkjet printer. This was developed to address the high cost of cells and in particular for the world’s poorest regions. She wanted to give the ~2 billion people around the world who don’t have electricity the gift of light and cheap energy. This could have profound (and a good profound) implications for education and health in those in the poorest regions in the world. And it all started with her parents giving her a solar energy kit when she was 10…”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Posted by: in Housing
Filed under: Forecasts, Economic data, Oil, Housing, Federal Reserve, Recession
The Philadelphia Fed Survey of Manufacturing in the tri-state area came in at -12.7. This was an improvement from the prior month’s reading of -16.3, and slightly ahead of expectations. Initial unemployment claims were 432,000, which was also an improvement from the prior week’s reading of 445,000, and better than expected.
Despite these improvements, these numbers are still quite negative. We may be in the process of forming a short-term bottom. Much of this will depend upon what happens to oil prices. If oil prices stabilize or continue to drop in the near future, this will offer some much needed relief to our consumer-driven economy. However, if the current drop in oil is only a minor correction, the economic news will get worse.
- Even if oil stabilizes and if the economy starts to form a bottom, I don’t believe that we’ll experience a substantial rebound. There are too many economic pressures which won’t be resolved overnight:
The housing crisis is very similar to the one experienced in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This took a decade to resolve.
- The current banking and credit crisis also resembles the Savings and Loan debacle of that earlier era. This eventually required massive intervention by the Federal government in the form of the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) to mend the financial system.
Those people anticipating a quick recovery like 1998 will be sorely disappointed.
Doug Roberts is the Founder and Chief Investment Strategist for ChannelCapitalResearch.com, and is the author of Follow the Fed(R) to Investment Success: The Effortless Strategy for Beating Wall Street. He previously held executive positions at Morgan Stanley Group and Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.
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Posted by: in Housing
Filed under: Federal Natl Mtge (FNM), Politics, Housing, Recession
 I’m not sure that Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) will make it through the month as public companies. Barron’s quoted an anonymous senior official — who sounds an awful lot like Hank Paulson to me — that unless Fannie and Freddie could raise at least $10 billion each, the government would bail them out while wiping out common shareholders and eliminating the preferred dividend. Since then, investors have been dumping shares of Fannie and Freddie like there’s no tomorrow.
Who wins and who loses if Fannie and Freddie’s shareholders are wiped out? As I stated on CNBC’s Power Lunch this afternoon, the winners are investors who shorted Fannie and Freddie years ago and are now reaping enormous profits. I also think that some Wall Street investment banks will win massive as they get the job of selling off Fannie and Freddie’s pieces. The losers are their biggest common and preferred shareholders — including some well known mutual funds.
The winners are:
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Jim Rogers, Rogers Holdings - Rogers originally shorted Freddie and Fannie in March 2006 and appeared on Bloomberg on November 20, 2007 to discuss why he did it and where he thought their stocks would go.
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Doug Noland, Prudent Bear - As I posted, since the late 1990s, Noland’s research has concluded that Freddie and Fannie would “shudder” when the US credit bubble eventually burst. Noland has profited from the short bets he made — but he states it is emotionally painful to watch them fail.
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Doug Kass, Seabreeze Partners - Reuters reports that Hedge-fund manager Doug Kass successfully shorted “everything related to housing” in 2007. He’s still betting Fannie and Freddie will keep falling. His Seabreeze Partners Short fund is up 24.08%, excluding fees, according to Reuters.
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Lawrence Kam, Sonic Capital - I don’t know what happened to Kam but in June 2003, the New York Times quoted him as saying, ”On an economic basis, [Fannie and Freddie] made no money last year.” It reported that Kam was short Fannie. Kam might have been right — but perhaps was too early with his call.
The losers are some of the biggest mutual fund houses. I’ve listed their names, the number of shares of Fannie and Freddie that they own and, in parentheses, the percentage of their Fannie and Freddie shares each owns. Data are from MoneyCentral (the numbers are as of the end of June in most cases and as of the end of March in others).
Fannie
- AllianceBernstein: 134,168,536 (12.5%)
- Capital Research Global Investors: 114,960,864 (10.7%)
- Fidelity Management and Research: 49,660,300 (4.6%)
Freddie
- Capital Research Global Investors: 64,658,000 (10.0%)
- Legg Mason Capital Management: 53,282,704 (8.2%)
- AllianceBernstein: 41,028,316 (6.3%)
Large holders of Fannie and Freddie preferred shares are mostly insurance companies. CNNMoney reports that these include the following:
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Wilmington Trust (NYSE: WL), which CNNMoney reports is “a small Delaware lender [which] took an $8 million hit in the second quarter on the decline of the value of its holdings of Fannie and Freddie preferred shares.”
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Of all these winners and losers, I think the biggest loser ought to be securitization. That process of packaging thousands of loans into securities and selling them off to investors is so deeply flawed that I think it ought to be ended.
Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also instructs management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.
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Posted by: in Housing
Filed under: JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Federal Natl Mtge (FNM), Wells Fargo (WFC), Housing, Cramer on BloggingStocks
 TheStreet.com’s Jim Cramer says the common would be crushed on a government takeover, but everything else would be saved.
The most important positive that must occur in this economy is for housing to cease going down. It is even more important than oil going down, because it cuts to the core of consumer confidence and credit.
House prices are coming down, but that’s not enough. We also need lower mortgage rates, and the spread between the mortgage rates and Treasuries is so high that it’s hard to make case that you are getting any sort of bargain at all on the money you are trying to borrow. It should be a great time to purchase a home — no demand, plenty of supply — but mortgage rates are just too high.
But we all know how they would go down and go down big — if Treasury took over Fannie (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer’s Take) and Freddie (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer’s Take) this weekend. If you back off Fannie’s and Freddie’s bonds, you get a decline in rates of mammoth proportions. It might make sense to buy a house simply because the rates would be so low.
I believe that’s one of the reasons Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) (Cramer’s Take) and JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) (Cramer’s Take) rallied yesterday. The possibility of the long national housing price depreciation ending– with the congressional housing legislation, the decline in housing starts, the tax credit for buying, the 30% to 40% declines in many markets and now an end to the Fannie/Freddie chaos — could be in our grasp.
Sure, the common-stock shareholders would be crushed. But if they make the bond holders whole — and that’s all, but that must happen — you are going to see good things occur, not bad.
It’s time people started thinking that way.
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RELATED LINKS:
Cramer: The Only Real Future for Fannie, Freddie
Fannie and Freddie Test Their 25-Year Lows
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Jim Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com’s sites and serves as an adviser to the company’s CEO. At the time of publication, Cramer was long JPMorgan.
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