Item #2: Oil and Geopolitics
If the U.S. really wanted to take down Iran's regime, all it needs
to do is
drop the price of oil to $25/barrel. That would trigger "regime change"
in Iran
and Venezuela as well, and cripple Russia's grander goals as well.
Item #3: Investment idea A
Legendary oilman T. Boone Pickens was recently mentioned in the
Wall Street
Journal as recommending the retrofitting of gasoline-burning vehicles to
natural
gas.
"Foreign Affairs" published an article in their January 11 issue
which
states the same case" "The Good News about Gas" by John Deutch.
FA's website is mostly subscription only, but you can probably read
the
issue at a library for free.
I don't know of any companies which manufacture conversion kits
(from
diesel/gasoline to compressed natural gas), but it's something to keep
an eye
out for.
Item #4: Investment idea B
Knowledgeable correspondent Bart D. recently alerted me to the key
investment insight that many commodities that could potentially become
scarce
are off the radar screen of most investors.
Everyone knows about gold, silver, oil, rare earth metals, but as
Bart
noted:
"The commodities landscape is has very diverse terrain and the
speculative
herd has by no means explored every corner of it. They tend to
flock to
the big and flashy and easy to get to stuff ...
I urge serious commodity investors to have a good look through the
wealth
of information in the USGS website
http://minerals.usgs.go
v/ds/ 05/140/#data...
there is data there that is as honest as you'll find ... and provides a
veritable 'travellers guide' to reaching the good investment features of
the
commodity landscape. You can't just pick up the phone and book a
tour to
them though ... you gotta get there on your own
initiative!
My
favourites are the agricultural nutrients ... Phosphate and Potassium
... they
must be used and they ARE in long term decline in terms of the cost of
processing declining grades of ore body. Then there are little known
minerals/metals such as Boron and feldspar."
Item #5: bogus GDP numbers
What if spending borrowed money wasn't included in the GDP (gross
domestic
product)? Since the U.S. government is borrowing $1.5 trillion a year to
fund
its spending, then if borrowed funds were excluded, the GDP would shrink
by
11%.
If your household ran up credit cards to the max in order to spend
freely,
is that "spending" really the same as cash that was earned and
spent?
To make those two radically different types of spending
equivalent--that
strikes me as a conceptual conceit intended to obscure reality.
Item #6: adverts as the future of films?
(The site is French but Google will translate.)
This clip was certainly interesting once, but it would be annoying
for any
sequence longer than a few minutes. Nonetheless the splicing of
different genres
offers up an interesting palate of options for future films, both
amateur
(YouTube) and professional.
If none of these items struck your fancy, try the Dow set to
piano
music (via G.F.B.):