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Hi Dear One,
It looks like the plunge downward is taking a "little breather" - but I'm not counting on anything significant until the Volume kicks in. All we can do is guess, but I can't help but think that Freddie and Fannie were the last of the BIG obstacles to deal with and so in that sense I would not be surprized if the volume started picking up.

I got a GPS to start the trip and was very pleased with it. We rekindled relationships with many of our friends and past neighbors and relatives and went to Rohobeth Beach and had a lot of fun.

Brian's family could only afford to send one child to college and his entire family (including siblings) chose him. He graduated with a degree in Chemical Engineering and did well enough to start off in a big company with a very good position. He needed to sign some papers acknowledging that even though many of the products they make are more harmful than beneficial - "he would always testify that they were all harmless". He refused and subsequently never worked for the big chemical industries. He is a large man with a thick beard (no mustash) - and always wears white shirts, black pants and black suspenders. His wife wore a head covering the first 5 years of there marriage and also dressed amish. They have always been our poorest friends - but by far the richest in terms of faith, love, generousity, and a genuine spiritual peace and joy. Brain helped me put the ceiling in the Music Room.

Paul was the president of ADM when he lived near us. He and his wife (who was good friends with my wife) moved to KY in the area of the thorough bread Race Horses. He now has at least 750 acres of the most beautiful property you could imagine. Rolling hills and fields with lots of barns.

We started our trip by visiting with Brian's family and ended with spending a few days with Paul and his family.

Well - I can say in all sincereity that I missed you and many of the MB Board family and am looking forward to getting back to work next week.

Hope everyone is doing well and GL in the TSP stuff.
 
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PART I
July 24, 2008
The Energy Challenge
Gassing Up With Garbage
By MATTHEW L. WALD
After years of false starts, a new industry selling motor fuel made from waste is getting a big push in the United States, with the first commercial sales possible within months.
Many companies have announced plans to build plants that would take in material like wood chips, garbage or crop waste and turn out motor fuels. About 28 small plants are in advanced planning, under construction or, in a handful of cases, already up and running in test mode.
For decades scientists have known it was possible to convert waste to fuel, but in an era of cheap oil, it made little sense. With oil now trading around $125 a barrel and gasoline above $4 a gallon, the potential economics of a waste-to-fuel industry have shifted radically, setting off a frenzy to be first to market.
“I think American innovation is going to come up with the solution,” said Prabhakar Nair, research chief for UOP, a company working on the problem.
Success is far from assured, however. Some of the latest announcements come from small companies whose dreams may be bigger than their bank accounts. They are counting on billions in taxpayer subsidies. Big technological hurdles remain, and even if they can be solved, no one is sure what unintended consequences will emerge or what it will really cost to produce this type of fuel.
“We desperately need it, and I personally think it’s not there yet,” said Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. “You have to look at starts with a grain of salt, especially starts where they say, ‘It’s around the corner, and by the way, can you pay half the bill?’ ”
Still, the incentive to make fuel from something, anything, besides oil and food is greater than ever. Moreover, the federal government is offering grants to help plants get off the ground and subsidies for one type of fuel of $1.01 a gallon, twice the subsidy it historically offered to ethanol made from corn.
Potential controls on global warming gases would heighten the appeal of these fuels, since many of them would add little new carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
Tellingly, the type of companies placing bets on the field has started to expand. The earliest were small start-ups founded by people with more technological vision than business experience. Now some of the giants of global business, including Honeywell, Dupont, General Motors, Shell and BP, are taking stakes in the nascent industry.
The dream of making fuel from plants is almost as old as the internal combustion engine. Henry Ford himself was fascinated by the idea, and it re-emerges in periods of fuel scarcity and high prices. These days, advancing technology has made the notion more plausible.
Virtually any material containing hydrogen, carbon and oxygen could potentially be turned into motor fuel. That includes plastics, construction debris, forest and lawn trimmings, wood chips, wheat straw and many other types of agricultural waste.
The potential fuels include ethanol, which can be blended with gasoline, or other liquids that could displace gasoline or diesel entirely. Government studies suggest the country could potentially replace half its gasoline supply in this way — even more if cars became more efficient.
The government is pushing to get the industry off the ground. Legislation passed last year mandates the use of 36 billion gallons of biofuels a year by 2022, less than half of it from corn ethanol. Almost all the rest is supposed to come from nonfood sources, though the requirement could be waived if the industry faltered.
“One has to say upfront that what Congress has done is remarkable in its bravery,” said David Morris, vice president of the Institute for Local Self Reliance, a group in Minneapolis that advocates biofuels.
Much of the new money flowing into the field is coming from Silicon Valley, where the venture capitalists who gave the world the Internet revolution see an opportunity to do something similar with the fuel supply.
At Solazyme, a start-up in South San Francisco that hopes to commercialize a process for making fuel from algae, President Harrison F. Dillon said, “When we founded the company in 2003, we couldn’t find a venture capital firm that had heard of the concept of a biofuel.” Now he is backed by two such firms.
Venture capital investment in the first half of this year hit $612 million, up from $375 million in all of 2007, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters. Every few days brings another announcement. PFC Energy, a Washington consulting firm, counts projects worth perhaps $1.5 billion that will total more than 300 million gallons of capacity by 2011, if they all get built.
That is small in the scheme of American fuel demand, but it would presumably set the stage for substantial growth if those first projects prove that the economics can work.
One of the first companies to bring a plant online is KL Process Design Group, in Wyoming. With experience making corn ethanol plants, it has built a small plant meant to use pine wastes from a nearby national forest. The company is still testing its production line but hopes to begin commercial sales of ethanol late this year.
“We’re still learning and tweaking, and hoping for a little bit of capital infusion,” said Tom Slunecka, a vice president of the company.
Range Fuels, of Denver, is building a commercial-scale plant in Soperton, Ga., with help from the Energy Department. That plant will take pine chips and turn them into ethanol, with commercial sales expected by late 2009 or 2010.
Some companies want to use garbage. On Friday, a company called Fulcrum BioEnergy said it would start construction later this year on a $120 million plant at the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, in Storey County, Nev., to make 10.5 million gallons of ethanol a year from 90,000 tons of garbage. Operation would begin in early 2010.
In Montreal, another firm, Enerkem, plans to use arsenic-contaminated utility poles from the provincial electric company. On Wednesday, the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission approved a plan by BlueFire Ethanol to build a $30 million garbage-to-ethanol plant on 10 acres next to a landfill in Lancaster, Calif.; construction will start soon, the company said.
A handful of small companies has long made a diesel replacement from waste oil, or sold kits to individuals to do the same. One company in Carthage, Mo., even turns turkey guts into fuel. The goal of the emerging waste-to-fuel industry is more elaborate, however: to take bulky, solid feedstocks and transform them into high-grade motor fuel.
History provides plenty of warning that it will not be easy. A company called Verenium in Lafayette, La., has cut ribbons three times in one locale since 1998 on plants that would supposedly make fuel from sugar cane waste, and has yet to sell a drop because of problems converting laboratory success into smooth, commercial-scale operation.
A bigger operation, Iogen, has been running a demonstration plant in Ottawa since 2004 that can turn wheat straw into ethanol. It was expected to build a plant in Idaho but has suspended work to focus attention on a plant in Saskatchewan. “It would be our view that there are substantial challenges in scaling up a big new biochemical process,” said Brian Foody, the president.
-----CONTINUED-----
 
Part II.
The Energy Challenge
Gassing Up With Garbage
The Energy Department early last year picked six projects as most likely to succeed, and offered each of them tens of millions of dollars. Iogen’s Idaho project was among them; so was a plant in Kansas proposed by a Florida company, Alico, that has also been abandoned. Still, increasing interest from big companies — ones with a track record of solving technical problems — suggests that a waste-to-fuel industry may not remain out of reach forever.
General Motors has invested an undisclosed sum in two companies, Coskata, of Warrenville, Ill., and Macoma, of Lebanon, N.H., that aim to turn crop wastes into ethanol.
DuPont, one of the world’s largest chemical companies, has joined forces with a company called Genencor, announcing plans to commercialize a process for making ethanol from the nonedible parts of corn and sugar cane. They plan to invest $140 million over three years.
In making their announcement, the companies estimated the worldwide market for fuels made by methods like theirs would eventually reach $75 billion, dwarfing the scale of today’s biofuels produced from food crops like corn and sugar cane.
 
RPT-GLOBAL MARKETS-Asia stocks slide as financial crisis deepens
Tue Jul 29, 2008 3:07am EDT
By Kevin Plumberg

HONG KONG, July 29 (Reuters) - Asian stocks fell around 2 percent on Tuesday, after Merrill Lynch, the third-largest U.S. investment bank, announced a $5.7 billion write-down related to bad debt, draining confidence in the shaky financial sector.

Coming a day after one of Australia's top banks said it would write down more than $1 billion in credit-related losses, Merrill's news increased fears that a year-old financial crisis that has battered markets has further to run.

European stock markets opened nearly 1 percent lower.

Worries that financial sector troubles will further undermine the global economy kept the U.S. dollar trading below Monday's one-month high against the yen. Gold prices rose for a fourth day and Japanese government bonds climbed, pushing the benchmark 10-year yield down to the lowest level in three months.

"Equity markets are capitulating on expectations of a deepening of the global banking crisis. Asian and emerging markets are experiencing capitulation due to risk aversion," Sean Darby, chief Asia strategist at Nomura in Hong Kong, said in a note to clients.

Japan's Nikkei share average finished 1.5 percent lower, weighed by shares of high-profile exporters such as Honda Motor Co and Canon Inc, as investors continue to punish companies dependent on overseas demand.

After the market closed, Nomura Holdings Inc., Japan's largest brokerage, posted a surprise quarterly net loss, hurt by a dearth of new share offerings.

Shares in the rest of the Asia-Pacific region fell 2.2 percent, according to an MSCI index. The index last week briefly broke above a downward trend that stretched back to May 19, but has since fallen for three consecutive days.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng .HSI fell 2.4 percent, while Taiwan's TAIEX index ended down 3 percent.

South Korea's KOSPI dropped 2 percent, led by Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and LG Electronics Inc, consumer-oriented companies which last week issued grim views of the global economy.

Australia's benchmark S&P/ASX 200 slid 1.5 percent, with shares in Commonwealth Bank of Australia and National Australia Bank both down around 4 percent.

Merrill Lynch said it will take a $5.7 billion third-quarter write-down as it unloads huge amounts of risky debt, and will raise $8.5 billion by selling new stock, a move that could dilute the value of existing shares.

The Wall Street investment bank and brokerage announced its plans less than two weeks after posting a $4.9 billion second-quarter loss, hurt by more than $9 billion of write-downs.

NERVOUSNESS AND SECOND GUESSING

"Worries about what's coming out of the woodwork next is going to see investors take a bit of time to feel more comfortable about the financial sector," said Tony Russell, senior equities adviser at ABN AMRO Morgans in Australia. "There will be a lot of nervousness and second guessing."

The benchmark 10-year Japanese government bond yield fell 2 basis points to 1.545 percent, after earlier hitting its lowest since late April at 1.525 percent.

Corporate credit investors in Asia also began to price in a slightly higher chance of default as equity markets weaken and turmoil in the global financial sector persists.

The Asia ex-Japan iTRAXX high-yield index, a key measure of risk aversion, widened by 10 basis points to 535, while the equivalent investment-grade index widened by 2 bps to 138, according to BNP Paribas.

Asian credit spreads remain well below the record highs hit in March in the run-up to the meltdown of U.S. investment bank Bear Stearns, but are still at more than double the levels at the beginning of the year.

Gold, still considered by many as a safer alternative in times of heightened market volatility and inflation, edged up to nearly $931 an ounce. Lately, gold has followed the movements of oil prices closely.

Oil prices rose briefly above $125 a barrel CLc1, after militant attacks cut Nigerian output and uncertainty deepened about Iran's nuclear ambitions.

The U.S. dollar was relatively steady against the yen at 107.48 yen after climbing to a one-month high on Monday, above 108 yen. The euro was unchanged at $1.5734.

For many investors, focus for the rest of this week will be on a busy calendar of U.S. economic indicators, including the July employment report. In addition, Asian companies announcing their results include Mizuho Financial Group and TSMC, the world's biggest contract chip maker. (Additional reporting by Geraldine Chua in SYDNEY and Rafael Nam in HONG KONG, Editing by Dhara Ranasinghe)
Click to expand...
They can spin all the reports they want, it's not over yet, and the rest of the world sees it.
 
I have my own private struggle. Being in the (G) and seeing August just
in front of me. L2R, do me a favor. Don't let me make a impulse mistake.
Keep me honest. With limits, I'm like a crack addict waiting for the pipe.
:nuts:
 
luv2read said:
I haven't used my July IFT's yet. That gives me 4 in a row...very tempting...
Click to expand...


L2R,

Not to be nosy but where would you be in the tracker keeping all those IFT's to yourself. :D SB and myself have been spending our's and maybe not to good use. :notrust: You can see how well SB and myself have been doing. :D


May the force be with us.:cool:
 
Hey Precious,
I thought about you when "The NEWS" was flooding reports of the next President with a $500 Billion Deficit in 2009.

It got me laughing because I pictured you doing your aggressive investigation and saying "$500 Billion!! How did they ever come up with that" :(:mad::mad:

If our Deficit was 500B - we would have every reason to celebrate.
 
nasa1974 said:
L2R,

Not to be nosy but where would you be in the tracker keeping all those IFT's to yourself. :D SB and myself have been spending our's and maybe not to good use. :notrust: You can see how well SB and myself have been doing. :D


May the force be with us.:cool:
Click to expand...
Pm'd you on this one NASA.

Steady,

If they say $500B, you know that's a lowball - they've admitted it doesn't include the $80B for Iraq/Afghanistan war effort. What else is left out? Wait for the REAL number. EWWWWW!
 
Last night @ 7:00 The History Channel show "Modern Marvels - Environmental Tech II" featured the compressed air car. Look for the program to be shown again. They always repeat.

http://www.history.com/schedule.do?action=daily&NetworkId=&linkDate=200807291800&timeZone=EST#

Here's a couple more episodes this week you might find interesting:

Wednesday July 30 07:00 PM Modern Marvels: Corn
Why is corn the largest agricultural crop in the world? Corn has fed the masses from ancient times to this day. Corn is not only a vegetable and a cereal grain; it is a commodity as well. Visit Lakeside Foods in Reedsburg, Wisconsin and see how tons of corn are harvested and canned within hours. Then it's off to VeraSun Energy in Charles City, Iowa, to discover how corn is converted into fuel. Take a look to our past and you will understand that without corn we probably wouldn't be here.
TVPG | Visit the website

Thursday July 31 09:00 PM Modern Marvels: Secrets of Oil
Rubber, Plastic, Nylon, Aerosols, Resins, Solvents, and Lubricants--none can exist without oil. If we stopped driving our cars tomorrow, America would still need five million barrels of oil a day. Visit Vulcan Materials, where oil tanks are emptied into massive double-barrel mixers to make asphalt and then continue to the Rolls Royce Aerospace Facility where complex jet fuels are blended. Travel back to the 1870's to see how an unemployed whale oil salesman turned a greasy oil-drilling by-product into a household staple: Vaseline. Finally discover how cutting-edge recycling techniques can breathe new life into used motor oil, and where a number of renewable fuels and technologies take aim at oil sovereignty.
 
luv2read
i saw part of the show, did they say that the air car is in production? the cost was very cheap $7000 for car $15000 for the van.
 
GUCHI said:
luv2read
i saw part of the show, did they say that the air car is in production? the cost was very cheap $7000 for car $15000 for the van.
Click to expand...
$4,000 for the Air Compressor (there are no Air Stations)
$$$$$ for Electricity:cool:
 
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