Gisele Bundchen wants to remain the world’s richest model and is insisting that she be paid in almost any currency but the U.S. dollar. Like billionaire investors Warren Buffett and Bill Gross, the Brazilian supermodel, who Forbes magazine says earns more than anyone in her industry, is at the top of a growing list of rich people who have concluded that the currency can only depreciate because Americans led by President George W. Bush are living beyond their means. Even after the dollar lost 34 percent since 2001, the biggest investors and most accurate forecasters say it will weaken further as home sales fall and the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates. The dollar plummeted to its lowest ever last week against the euro, Canadian dollar, Chinese yuan and the cheapest in 26 years against the British pound. ‘We’ve told all of our clients that if you only had one idea, one investment, it would be to buy an investment in a non- dollar currency,” said Gross, the chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach, California, and manager of the world’s biggest bond fund. “That should be on top of the list,” said Gross, […]
TOKYO — Masaya Igarashi wants $200 headphones for his new iPod Touch, and he’s torn between Nintendo Co.’s Wii and Sony’s PlayStation 3 game consoles. When he has saved up again, he plans to splurge on a digital camera or flat-screen TV. There’s one conspicuous omission from the college student’s shopping list: a new computer. The PC’s role in Japanese homes is diminishing, as its once-awesome monopoly on processing power is encroached by gadgets such as smart phones that act like pocket-size computers, advanced Internet-connected game consoles, and digital video recorders with terabytes of memory. ‘A new PC just isn’t high on my priority list right now,’ said Igarashi, who was shopping at a Bic Camera electronics shop in central Tokyo and said his three-year-old desktop was ‘good for now.’ ‘For the cost, I’d rather buy something else,’ he said. Japan’s PC market is already shrinking, leading analysts to wonder whether Japan will become the first major market to see a decline in personal computer use some 25 years after it revolutionized household electronics — and whether this could be the picture of things to come in other countries. ‘The household PC market is […]
After a week of new records for crude oil prices, the question is: How high can they go? In the past 10 weeks, the price of crude oil has shot up $25 a barrel, closing at $95.93 in New York on Friday, an all-time inflation-adjusted peak. Unlike earlier spikes in oil prices, which came on the heels of war in the Middle East, this latest ascent does not appear to be linked to any one conflict or to any physical shortage. Instead, traders who treat oil like any other commodity are widely thought to be driving prices upward, bolstered by a weak dollar and money flowing out of stock markets and other investment vehicles. So far U.S. consumers have not felt the full impact. Sluggish U.S. gasoline demand over the past two months has made it hard for oil giants to pass through higher costs; refinery profit margins, which hit records in the spring, have been squeezed. But if high crude oil prices persist, they will flow through to the gas pump. Yesterday, the Lundberg Survey reported that the average retail price of regular gasoline is up 16 cents in the past two weeks to $2.96 a […]
HONG KONG — When the state oil and natural gas company PetroChina makes its debut Monday on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, China’s booming stock markets will be on the verge of another milestone. Soon after the Shanghai listing, analysts expect PetroChina to surpass the U.S. energy behemoth Exxon Mobil as the world’s largest company by market value. PetroChina shares, already traded in New York and Hong Kong, are expected to be seized on by a market awash with cash and investors eager for new opportunities. At the close of markets Friday, PetroChina was valued at $460 billion, making it the world’s second-most-valuable company, worth about $26 billion less than Exxon Mobil. The ebullience with which Chinese investors have dived into the markets of Shanghai and Shenzhen, unleashing the huge savings in personal bank accounts, has made China home to the world’s most expensive companies. China has the biggest bank, insurance company, telecommunications carrier and airline by market value. By that measure, it has five of the world’s 10 largest companies. The prices set on the Chinese exchanges, still largely isolated from the rest of the world by regulatory barriers that limit the amount of foreign money […]
Today’s SR is devoted exclusively to petroleum, our dependence on it, and the failure of our cowardly Congress, as well as our President or Vice President, both of whom are beholden to the petro industries, to make any serious attempt to rectify this situation. I have chosen three aspects that are not well-known, to demonstrate that there are going to be many consequences to our addiction that have received very little consideration. We have the money, or credit, to spend $10 BILLION a month on Iraq, but no money for health care, or doing anything that will free us from the addiction that is warping our lives as individuals, and as a society. Only concerted citizen action over many months is going to change this.
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
