Sunday, July 5, 2015

Greece: flashback from a 2012 "miliondollarway" post: Greece teetering. Here we go again.

Speaking of which, Greece that is. How is the referendum vote going? According to the World Clock, it's almost 6:00 p.m. in Athens. Certainly the polls are coming to a close. No exit polls? Where's Christiane Amanpour? For that matter, where's John Kerry?

As the New York Times sees it -- a day of reckoning:

No matter which way the Greek vote goes, the European Central Bank on Monday will face a series of agonizing decisions. Greece’s future in the eurozone may well depend on how far the central bank is willing to go to prop up struggling Greek banks and prevent a total economic collapse.

If Greeks vote yes — agreeing to accept unpopular dictates from other eurozone nations and international creditors in return for more aid — the central bank would have a much easier time justifying emergency loans and other steps to keep the banks from failing. No economy can function properly without banks; if they topple, so will the economy.

But if Greeks vote no, Mario Draghi, the president of the E.C.B., may be confronted with a difficult choice. The central bank’s rules would probably require it to stop providing cash to Greek banks. But Mr. Draghi might be tempted to find a way around those rules, because choking off financial support would thrust untold hardship upon ordinary Greeks and might send the country on its way out of the euro currency union.

Well, that pretty much sums it up. If the Greeks vote "yes" the ECB will helicopter in cash to save Greek banks; if the Greeks vote "no" the ECB will helicopter in cash to save Greek banks. 

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Batteries Ain't The Answer

France: renewables power grid pilot shows limits of batteries in Europe.

A major pilot project by Europe's largest power network operator to integrate power from rooftop solar panels into the grid has shown that battery storage of renewable energy is not yet economically viable in Europe. 

The conclusion is a sobering one for proponents of sun and wind energy because as more of it comes on tap, better storage will be needed to keep the power produced when it is sunny and windy so it can be used at other times.

The 30 million euro "Nice Grid" pilot is one of the biggest in a European Union-backed "Grid4EU" scheme in which France's EDF, Italy's Enel, Spain's Iberdrola Czech Republic's CEZ, Sweden's Vattenfall and Germany's RWE are testing the power grids of tomorrow. 

That was pretty well known (or at least predicted) by anyone following the battery story. What surprises me is that Reuters would post the story without more spin. 

Though batteries are not yet viable in Europe, they will continue to pursue this route, because Europe, like Minnesota, doesn't mind spending money if it makes them feel good.

This is a wake-up call for the US. I wonder if the California rate changes are a response to what the state is seeing developing in Europe as more and more folks place solar panels on their roofs. 

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Al Jazerra On America

Al Jazeera’s digital media platform AJ+ posted a Fourth of July-themed video mocking Americans as fat, cheese-eating, gun-toting, pill-popping, racist porn watchers.

I will agree with four of those, maybe five. And as Jack Nicholson famously said, two out of three ain't bad.

Gun-toting? Compared to the Mideast? Compared to ISIS? Good grief. LOL.

I'm still trying to figure out what's wrong with cheese-eating. And I'm a bit confused on that last one: are US porn watchers racist or are racists porn watchers. I do know that the terrorists who have attacked America were huge porn watchers; whether they were racist or not, I don't know. 

Speaking of cheese, I see Fidel Castro -- yes, that Fidel -- recently visited cheese-making facilities in Cuba. I can't make this stuff up.

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Dueling Banjos

The United States has its Al Jazerra.

Texas has its Los Angeles Times.

North Dakota has its StarTribune.

And, Williston has its Dickinson Press. This is really good news. Although it's hard to say, it appears the new Williston waste treatment plant is coming along ahead of schedule. Had the state of North Dakota released the money a bit sooner, the project would have been complete by now. But regardless, with workers working from 3:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. seven days a week, the project appears to be on schedule, and could open, at least partially up to a year early. What fascinates me is that the water treatment plant is being built to handle a city of 60,000, and expandable to 100,000.

With regard to the possibility of coming on-line a year earlier, I'm reminded of other big projects, like the "Big Dig" in Boston that was delayed by a decade and is still an issue decades later. And North Dakota weather -- nine months of the year -- isn't exactly conducive for huge outdoor projects that require a lot of cement. Yes, I'm pretty impressed by this project. 

The bad news: had the state released the money earlier, and had the plant come on line sooner, perhaps those two fish in the year-old photograph (actually it's more than a year old) would not have died. Well, of course, these two fish would have died sooner or later, but perhaps not in that exact location.

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Dueling Banjos

The reason I said Texas has its Los Angeles Times is because of the amount of space the newspaper seems to devote to Texas. I kind of forget about the LA Times until I make my annual pilgrimage to the Golden State.

By the way, the LA Times is more left-leaning, more slanted than the New York Times. It makes the NYT look like a Rush Limbaugh publication. Okay, not that bad. But the Los Angeles Times certainly has an interesting perspective on economic issues. Perhaps that's why no one is seen reading it here at the Starbucks I visit almost every day. In Boston, everybody seemed to read the Boston Globe.

But I digress.

In addition to businesses moving from California to Texas, it appears sports stars are doing the same thing. This was the headline story in the sports section yesterday: the Los Angeles Clippers and their fans have been dealt a  huge blog. Their franchise player has fled the state to join the Dallas Mavericks. From another source:  How Do L.A. Clippers Survive Losing DeAndre Jordan to Dallas Mavericks? My brother-in-law disagrees with me and he is probably correct, but I will suggest that state income taxes played at least some role in the decision. The state income tax on annual income exceeding $1 million is over 13%. Jordan was offered a 5-year, $109 million package.

The Texas state income tax on annual income exceeding $1 million is ... 0%.

Even I can do the math.

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Sad

This was a topic at our Fourth of July party last night. I was unaware of the story. From The Los Angeles Times:

A month after toy lovers got word that FAO Schwarz would be closing its famous toy store here — yes, the same store where actors Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia played "Chopsticks" on the giant floor piano in the movie "Big" — came word that Apple would move into the vacated palace of childhood dreams.

The Apple move will be temporary while its own lavish store next door on Fifth Avenue undergoes renovation, a spokeswoman said last month. The FAO Schwarz closure, though, is permanent, illustrating how New York City real estate prices bend for no one, not even the country's oldest and most beloved toy store.

With that in mind, the costumed toy soldiers stationed outside FAO Schwarz's front doors have been especially busy lately, greeting locals lamenting that they waited so long to visit and tourists grateful that they got here before July 15. That is the day the giant piano will fall silent, the thousands of stuffed animals will cease to gaze upon wide-eyed shoppers, and the swaddled baby dolls will be removed from their glass cases and packed into boxes.

"It's the day when childhood ends," Judith Chapman said wistfully as she stood on the busy plaza outside the main entrance after ducking inside briefly to pick up some candy for herself. Chapman, who lives in New York, remembered visiting FAO Schwarz as a child, back when she found the realistic baby dolls under glass more cute than creepy, and when you didn't risk public shaming by following a visit to the toy store with a ride on a horse-drawn carriage in nearby Central Park.

Our California friends spent the last few weeks in NYC taking care of their grandson and helping the family move back to California now that their son-in-law has completed his "training" there. They said that they enjoyed getting the opportunity to visit FAO Schwarz before it closed.

The short-sightedness of some civic leaders never fails to amaze me.

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Winds

For those interested in the cyclone winds in the western Pacific, this dynamic link.

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China

I don't follow the Chinese stock market as a rule, and I certainly don't understand it. But to help me put it in perspective:

the top graph is the Shanghai Composite Index, recent; the bottom graph is the US Dow Jones Composite Index. We know where the US Dow Jones ended; it will be interesting to see where the Shanghai Composite settles.

Disclaimer: I often make simple arithmetic errors. To determine percent decline: (Peak - Trough)/Peak in percentage.