Thursday 29 April 2010

give us our daily sun...

...and everything will be okay!

While the subjects we blogged on recently are all but sustainable and immensely inefficient (for us normal people, at least, and unless you are involved with rats over banksters) we would like to remind you (and ourselves) that there are indeed real and proven ways to boost efficiency and narrow the gap on sustainability; here is one we "follow" and are about to install in the North of Scotland!


PV [photovoltaic] panels (do not mix those up with thermal solar cells for heating up water) are mounted on a tracking device that follows the sun's path (altitude and azimuth) from East to West and from dawn to sunset; with other words, it awaits sunrise in the East looking vertically into the fire following it until it sets in the West, every day, summer and winter, year in, year out.

The below chart explains the difference between fixed PV panels (fixed slope type), a system that would follow the sun over one dimension (single axis) and the system that makes the most out of the "sun's shine" and follows same over both dimensions, altitude and azimuth.


The overall electric output of the PV panels increases by 40 to 55%!

Now, that is what we call "efficiency meets sustainability"!

Or, to go with Oscar Wilde:

Everything will be okay in the end.
If it is not okay,
it is not the end!

Carpe diem!

evil to him who evil thanks...

Telegraph: Spain hit as "Greek" illness spreads over Europe

rats over banksters!

What on earth has changed during the last month or so in reference to the "standing" of Portugal or Spain that made the rating agencies wake up just yesterday and degrade both countries' rating level within 24 hours just when the pressure on politics had mounted up on the Greek problem?

Obviously the pressure on politics to install a bail-out-package for Greece, more accurately the Club-Med-bond loaded banksters by degrading Greek bonds to junk status was not enough.

Spain’s credit rating was cut from AA-plus to AA. S&P blamed its high borrowings and the expectation of a “protracted period of sluggish activity”.
Credit Suisse analysts said that British banks had £25 billion of exposure to Greece and Portugal but £75 billion to Spain.
In Tokyo, Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council, ended a news conference with the Japanese Prime Minister by reciting a haiku: “The sun is rising/sleeping yet in Europe/still the same sun.” he said. He declined to explain.


Evil to him who evil thanks the rats for the assistance given to the banksters, again, by these ever so independent rating agencies!



Carpe diem!


Tuesday 27 April 2010

Oh Lord, won't you buy me ...


a Greek sack for free?

No, this bail-out package for Greece is not meant to heal Greek or any other nations' problems but is round two of the bank-bailout series where following the too-big-to-fail philosophy is the less worse of the bad choices - for the immediate moment and the financial system, the banks.

We all have to admit that the available options from sacking Greece to lending vast sums of third parties' new € debts to Greece seem of little attraction. Alone, whoever installed the EURO is responsible for these catastrophic choices we face today but were all warned off 10 and 12 years ago, already. So much for the competence of the politicians and the influence of the lobbies, then; and today?

Sacking Greece (and others) is the only way out; this path will also be hard, expensive and even disastrous, but at least it will be a decision with a defined reset date while trying to cover up the incompatibility of the EUROzone is not going to work at all; it will destroy the last remains of what once each were pretty strong European economies; the ongoing global fight for the weakest currency and the lowest costs is not going to help either.

"A long and hard disease causes certain death": I am sure this is also an old Chinese saying and very true.

Carpe diem.



Sunday 25 April 2010

and the winner is...

definitely not Europe!

If you want to know who sucked up all those jobs:


To put it into a relation: Europe's population totals just about 500 million. China tripled its industrial jobs over 30 years and still has a huge reserve of at least 500 million rural workers waiting to be participating in what for them will be a (much) better life.

That idea of transferring our economy into a so-called "service and finance economy" sounds so simple but in reality is naive as can be: not only did the "finance" part turn out to be just one bulk of convoluted Ponzi schemes; the "You cut my hair, I cut your grass!" service philosophy failed as well: where in this globalised world is the added value in short hair or cut grass?


Yes, in China, if anywhere!

Carpe diem!


Saturday 24 April 2010

more good news...

before it gets worse!

The rate national debts and related cost rocket versus the rate of shrinking GDPs, shrinking tax revenues and exploding social cost is just frightening:



Is it not wonderful Greece is now going to be saved? To finish off the rest will be a piece of cake! With cream, please.

Carpe diem!


Friday 23 April 2010

banks lent $3.8trillion less since 2008...

accelerating the downward spiral:

ET The Economic Times:
Bank lending shrinks by 1.9 trillion in 2009: BIS


Lending fell by $1.9 trillion in 2009 and has contracted by $3.8 billion since September 2008 - or 11 percent - according to BIS, the coordinating body for the world's central banks. The statistics - the only ones to chart cross-border lending around the world - show it is taking time for lending to pick up.

Well, whether and when it ever will pick up again depends upon the banks' will to switch from gambling on currencies and commodities betting against themselves and the rest of the world and find their way back to the roots providing finance to industry and trade. As this is a boring business, margins are small, risky too (as no government backs it up, yet) it is much less attractive than the "fast buck" in the world's casinos.

The decrease in lending at such a rate is a killer to all systems that make our economies. At the same time Greece, even though it tried ever so hard, can no longer hold it off:

FT: Greece to seek activation of EU/IMF aid

So the EURO now breeches all the set rules, all laws once set in stone in Maastricht.

Carpe diem!

Wednesday 21 April 2010

gold-, leh- or mobsman

... banksters, what else?!

"Lehman's failure is a story in large part of fraud!"





More? Here Professor Black explains "controlled accounting fraud".






Carpe diem!


Tuesday 13 April 2010

here comes mr. currency...


Bloomberg: Soros says Pound Devaluation is Option for next UK Government

With other words, George, you say the gamble on Greek bonds is settling down for the time being,; so let's call the next candidate, shoot at it, maim it and then go for it?

Now, that makes sense!

Carpe diem!


europe is comitting suicide

Dr. Michael Hudson on Ireland; what will he have to say on this illegal €30bn bail-out package for our Greek friends?






Carpe diem!


Wednesday 7 April 2010

going once, going twice, out!

... the next Greek auction might be the last!



After all the effort covering up the EURO's debacle, one playing the tough German guy, sorry: lady, others playing the old time friends in need Greek bonds are hitting the 7% mark again. That's about 4% more than German bonds are paying.

That is not to say that German bonds are any more secure than the Greek ones; during the last three months app. eight billion EUROs were transferred from Greek saving accounts into British and Swiss bank accounts - and that is just what is known and traceable.

Once Greece will be giving in the artificial currency will be history; the implosion of all the fatal balance sheet constructions and bends won't survive the urgent desire of all so-called Club-Med countries to follow Greece into a then strong "Bond of the Weak". Mind you, France does have a substantial Mediterranean coastline.

So, every Sunday evening you go to bed with the same odd EURO in place will be one of the very last ones.

Update 08-04-2010: 
today the 10y bond cost Greece 7.4%; Spanish money is leaving Spain the rumours say.

Carpe diem!

labour for less people and money...

... less jobs paying for more jobless?





Are we on the right path when we try to outsource labour to where it is cheapest and in parallel try to eliminate labour per se?

Carpe diem!

Saturday 3 April 2010

MSTYV = PIIGS

It is never too late to find out interesting things even about something that is going to be history, soon.


Every EURO coin has a national side; an EURO banknote does not, but you can still find out, which of the EURO countries printed it. Was that done to allow for a cheap exit?

M stands for Portugal, S for Italy, T for Ireland, Y for Greece and V for Spain. May be it makes sense to check what you have and get as the EUROs of those countries might soon be traded separatelly and most probably at a fraction of the likes of X (Germany), U (France) or P (Netherlands) which will make it easy to lead us down the garden path.

The letter "J" was set aside for notes printed by the U.K. - I wonder whether we will ever have to watch out for those?!


Carpe diem!