Nearly every economic and corporate development over the past few months has been translated into a reason to buy stocks. But underneath the elation over Dow 10,000 lies the palpable feeling that this rally is to be “rented,” not “owned.” As cool weather descended upon the Northeast U.S., risk appetites started to ...read more

The phrase, “surviving a game show” just became more serious. According to USA Today — I know, not the most hard-hitting rag out there — contestants on shows like America’s Got Talent and Deal or No Deal have undergone a dramatic change in the past year. Instead of dreaming of building a ...read more

Investors often assume dangerous, unnecessary risks by owning stocks on the basis of sloppy economic and financial analysis. For each stock you own, you should frequently reassess the reasons for owning it. Also, you need to remain on the lookout for signals that the future operating environment for a particular ...read more

Yesterday in Part I, I discussed how the publicly traded geothermal companies are not delivering what we hoped for as returns. I described how geothermal power is the beneficiary of a lot of government benefits, from renewable-energy mandates to tax breaks. Thus, the geothermal companies (including five companies in the ESI ...read more

The great financial minds in Washington are at it again, starting another war.  As usual, it is "for our own good" and will make twenty-eight per cent. of the adult population miserable while destroying a large industry and reducing tax revenues sharply.  Does legislation get any better than that? This time ...read more

I’ve had this ongoing project of reading as much as I can about the 1930s and the Great Depression. I favor the first-person accounts, stuff written by people who were there -- like Damon Runyon. Some of his early stories written in the 1930s reflect on the mood of the era. ...read more

As I predicted, the president lifted the funding ban on embryonic stem cells.  First, though, please indulge a rant... "It's not the lie. It's the coverup" is the old political adage. Usually, in politics, it's much better to admit a mistake and move on. I wish to heaven we could learn that ...read more

The Inauguration is over. It’s PRESIDENT Obama now. So let’s get back to work. What can we discern about the incoming Obama administration? I had a long talk with an old friend who is a self-described “rabid Democrat.” Let me rephrase that. He’s a rabid Democrat in the way that Pittsburgh ...read more

A recent dispatch from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences didn’t give us the next big development in stem cell therapies.  It didn’t tell us how the car of 2020 will be powered.  Instead, John Coates and his team of Cambridge researchers turned the powerful lens of science ...read more

Lately I’ve been discussing concept of scarcity in the energy and natural resource sectors. In one recent note, I discussed how the idea of scarcity has transformed from a “geological” basis to an “above ground” basis. In another note I discussed how the financial system of the world has broken ...read more