2010 on track to be Earth's warmest year on record
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2010 UN AÑO CALENTITO
Check out this article that I saw in USA TODAY's iPhone application.
WHICH BATERIES?
Bloomberg News, sent from my iPhone.
Tesla Pins Profit Hope to Lower-Cost Battery Strategy
Dec. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Tesla Motors Inc., the electric carmaker backed by Toyota Motor Corp. and Daimler AG, said cheaper batteries will make its Model S sedan profitable with much lower sales than Nissan Motor Co. seeks for its Leaf car.
The $57,000 electric Model S, which uses cells similar to those in laptops, is designed to make money for Palo Alto, California-based Tesla at 20,000 annual deliveries, Chief Technology Officer J.B. Straubel said in an interview. Nissan Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn has said combined battery- car sales for Nissan and affiliate Renault SA may need to reach 500,000 vehicles a year to be profitable without government aid.
Nissan's choice of a larger type of lithium-ion battery means "they will have a cost challenge that will be more difficult to solve," Straubel said yesterday in an interview. "It will require a lot higher volume before they really get to a cost point that is internally sustainable."
Tesla, which has yet to post an annual profit, has delivered $109,000 rechargeable Roadsters since 2008, powered by thousands of small lithium-ion cells similar to those used in portable computers. The Silicon Valley startup says such cells, supplied by Panasonic Corp. and other manufacturers, will remain more cost-effective for the foreseeable future than the larger lithium batteries in the Leaf and General Motors Co.'s $41,000 plug-in Volt, which both went on sale this month.
Not Comparable
Tesla's battery packs may cost as little as $200 per kilowatt hour, compared with about $700 to $800 per kilowatt hour for so-called large-form cell lithium-ion packs, Martin Eberhard, a Tesla founder and former chief executive, said in an interview last month. Straubel declined to confirm Eberhard's estimate or discuss the cost of Tesla's battery packs.
Nissan's electric-vehicle strategy can't really be compared with that of Tesla, said David Reuter, a spokesman for the Yokohama, Japan-based company's North American unit. He didn't elaborate.
"The Nissan Leaf product program will be profitable over its life cycle," Reuter said. He declined to say how long the product cycle would be for the $32,780 Leaf.
The company has been developing its lithium-ion battery technology over the past two decades, "so a lot of the investment has already been amortized through many years," Reuter said.
Tesla fell $1.23, or 4.4 percent, to $26.50 at 4 p.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market trading in New York. The shares have risen 56 percent since they began trading June 28. Nissan fell 1.5 percent to 773 yen of the 11 a.m. trading break in Tokyo. The stock declined 4.6 percent in 2010.
Higher Prices
While the Model S's higher price will make it easier to turn a profit with fewer deliveries, Tesla's Straubel said cheaper batteries are the main reason. Sales of the sedan are planned to begin in 2012.
Tesla's challenge is to ensure high quality in its battery packs and vehicles as it tries to expand from supplying about 1,000 Roadsters a year to making 20,000 or more of the Model S, said Brett Smith, who specializes in alternative propulsion vehicles at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
"There's a method to their madness," Smith said. "Tesla is using cells that, while not exactly the same as those in laptops, can be made on existing lines that already mass-produce them."
As a result, Tesla didn't have to spend as much for battery research and development and lithium-ion cell production, Smith said. "Especially for a small manufacturer, there's a logic to what they're doing," Smith said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alan Ohnsman in Los Angeles at aohnsman@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kae Inoue at kinoue@bloomberg.net
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Parece que no esta muy claro el porque pero Los Angeles tendra el menor numero de homicidios en 4 decadas y eso son buenas noticias
LA is on track to register is best year on decades about violent deaths, and that in a middle of a economic crisis, something to study....... so try to replicate and improve
Check out this article that I saw in USA TODAY's iPhone application.
Homicides in Los Angeles fall to lowest level in four decades
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SKYPE IS BACK
I usually got surprised of skype not having a lot more atentionin the media or valuation when is involved in corporate operations.........it's back from the down we commented (facebook) two days ago
A story from AP Mobile:
Skype CEO: 21 million Skype users back online
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SANTA ROBBING THE BAR ACUSATION WAS FALSE
A story from AP Mobile:
RI Police: Santa didn't rob bar; bartender charged
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CRISIS
During big crisis the heart is either broken or strengthened
En las grandes crisis el corazon se rompe o se fortalece
Honoré de Balzac
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elEconomista.es iPhone elEconomista.es Edición iPhone
El Cisne Negro de Nassin Taleb ha sido uno de los lubros mas interrsantes de los ultimos años, el nuevo promete, ademas lo que leo en esye resumen se parece mucho a mi analisis habitual, grandes empresas y gobiernos se entienden para sacar provecho de los demas miembros de la sociedad atraves del poder regulatorio y redistributivo de los estados, en claro perjuicio de las pymes y ciudadanos de clase media que financian con sus impuestos a estas castas; socialismo para banqueros osea
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CUIDADIN - CAREFULIN
I thought you might find this article on Seeking Alpha interesting:
S&P's Most Overbought Close in More Than a YearSp500 in high overbought territory ........... how far ahead is correction?
INNOVACION EN TELECO
Interesting development for not developed areas where a eolic-solar antenna can allow remote areas to have mobile comunications and even internet
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COMO CAMBIA EL CUENTO
in Spain there's a say that states " is easier predicate than giving bread". how things must currently be in USA for the everybody love him - OBama scores worst than Bush.
PODEMOS ARGENTINIZARNOS?
O tal vez ya lo estamos....
Bloomberg News, sent from my iPhone.
Shrinking Euro Seen by Creditors Crying for Argentina
Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Nine months before Argentina stopped paying its obligations in 2001, Jonathan Binder sold all his holdings of the nation's bonds, protecting clients from the biggest sovereign default. Now he's betting Greece, Portugal and Spain will restructure debts and leave the euro.
Binder, the former Standard Asset Management banker who is chief investment officer at Consilium Investment Management in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has been buying credit-default swaps the past year to protect against default by those three nations as well as Italy and Belgium. He's also shorting, or betting against, subordinated bonds of banks in the European Union.
"You will probably see at least one restructuring before the end of the next year," said Binder, whose Emerging Market Absolute Return Fund gained 17.6 percent this year, compared with an average return of 10 percent for those investing in developing nations, according to Barclay Hedge, a Fairfield, Iowa-based firm that tracks hedge funds.
He's got plenty of company. Mohamed El-Erian, whose emerging-market fund at Pacific Investment Management Co. beat its peers in 2001 by avoiding Argentina, expects countries to exit the 16-nation euro zone. Gramercy, a $2.2 billion investment firm in Greenwich, Connecticut, is buying swaps in Europe to hedge holdings of emerging-market bonds, said Chief Investment Officer Robert Koenigsberger, who dumped Argentine notes more than a year before its default.
'Fiscal Traps'
"The currency rigidities and fiscal traps that bound Argentina in 2001 and the periphery of Europe today are quite similar," Koenigsberger said in e-mailed responses to questions. "We view such hedges as systematic risk protection as opposed to betting on a restructuring per se. The decision will be political, not economic. A purely economic decision would have Greece already in default, and several other nations close behind."
Bonds from Greece and Ireland tumbled since German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Oct. 29 proposal to force debt holders to share the cost of future bailouts. Yields on 10-year Greek notes climbed 128 basis points, or 1.28 percentage points, since Oct. 28 to 11.69 percent, and yields on Irish bonds rose 122 basis points to 8.03 percent. The yields compare with 7.7 percent on dollar bonds sold by Jamaica, which restructured local-currency debt in January and was declared in default by Moody's Investors Service.
Five-year credit-default swaps for Greece jumped 12 basis points to 917 yesterday, above Argentina's 640, making it the second most-expensive credit insurance in the world after Venezuela, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The contracts pay the buyer face value in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent should a borrower fail to adhere to its agreements.
Financial Rescue
Portugal will likely follow Greece and Ireland in seeking a financial bailout from the EU and International Monetary Fund, and some nations will abandon the euro within five years as their economies diverge from Germany, El-Erian, the chief executive officer at Pimco, said in an interview on CNBC on Nov. 30.
"Unless we see something that deals with the balance sheet, expect this contagion to continue to go up," said El- Erian, whose company runs the world's largest bond fund in Newport Beach, California. "Be cautious towards the euro."
El-Erian sold Argentina's debt in 2000, helping Pimco's Emerging Markets Bond reap a return of 28 percent in 2001, outperforming 98 percent of its peers, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. El-Erian, 52, wasn't available to comment, said Mark Porterfield, a Pimco spokesman, in an e-mail.
Dollar Peg
Argentina started struggling to finance its debt in 1999 as the one-to-one peg to a rising dollar squeezed exporters and Brazil, the country's largest trading partner, devalued the real. Interim President Adolfo Rodriguez Saa announced the default in December 2001, after more than 25 people died in riots that toppled the government over spending cuts and the seizure of retirement savings.
The 50 percent appreciation in the euro against the dollar since 2002 has hurt manufacturers in Greece and Portugal, whose economies grew less than 1 percent a year in the past decade. The shortfall in the current account in the two nations amounted to about 10 percent of gross domestic product, triple the ratio for Argentina in 2000. Portuguese workers staged the country's first general strike in 22 years last week to protest government austerity measures.
Higher Debt
Greece's debt totaled 127 percent of GDP in 2009, the second highest in the developed world after Japan, followed by 116 percent in Italy. Argentina's public debt was 62 percent of its economy in 2001, according to data from the IMF.
The budget deficit in Greece, at 15.4 percent of GDP, is the widest among developed nations, followed by 11 percent in Spain and 9.3 percent in Portugal. Those levels compare with 6.4 percent in Argentina in 2001.
Domingo Cavallo, Argentina's economy minister who resigned in December 2001 as the country defaulted on $95 billion, says holders of European government and bank obligations may be forced to take a cut on their investment with the euro intact. The IMF and the EU should buy all the debt of Greece and Ireland at market prices in an "orderly" restructuring, while Portugal and Spain improve their competitiveness through labor and tax reforms, he said in a telephone interview.
'Rapid Way'
"If they don't do something additionally in a more rapid way, that may destroy all the governments simply because people in these countries will not stand the deflation and depression accompanied by the fiscal adjustment," said Cavallo, 64, the chief executive officer of DFC Associate LLC, a consulting firm in Buenos Aires. "There will be a political crisis to come in an extreme way as happened in Argentina."
Potential defaults haven't been recognized by foreign- exchange traders. The number of bets that the euro will weaken versus the dollar in the futures market were less than 7 percent of those placed in May when Greece was rescued, data compiled by Washington-based Commodity Futures Trading Commission show.
The EU, IMF, the U.S. and China will do whatever it takes to avoid an Argentina-style default and a breakup of the euro, according to Simon Nocera, a former IMF economist who manages emerging market bonds as the co-founder of Lumen Advisors LLC in San Francisco.
'Status Quo'
"I don't think the situation will blow up or someone leaves the euro," said Nocera, who started cutting his Argentine debt in 2000 when managing $6 billion at Dresdner RCM Global Investors. "The status quo is of great interest not only to Europe, but also to the U.S. and to China. It's an entirely different ball game than a simple default in Argentina."
The European Central Bank has purchased as much as 17 percent of the combined public debt of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, according to a research report by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. on Nov. 29. Chinese President Hu Jintao said on Nov. 8 that his country is "available" to support Portugal.
"After you have a wave of international banking crises, inevitably within a few years, there will be a wave of sovereign debt crises," said Kenneth Rogoff, a professor at Harvard University who was the chief economist at the IMF from 2001 to 2003, and who predicted "major" bank failures months before Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. went bankrupt in September 2008. "It's hard to see an end game that doesn't involve at least some of the countries restructuring."
The EU and IMF forecast the Greek economy will shrink 4.2 percent this year and 3 percent in 2011, while Portugal's may contract 1.4 percent next year because of tighter spending. Ireland cut spending and raised taxes by 6 billion euros even as the economy contracted 11 percent over the past three years.
"It's not so much that the Europeans or Germans will stop providing funding for Greece," said Consilium's Binder. "Probably Greece will eventually throw up their hands and say: 'We cannot keep the political pressure of this policy mix because it creates social discontent.'"
To contact the reporters on this story: Ye Xie in New York at yxie6@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Papadopoulos at papadopoulos@bloomberg.net
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