Monday, October 25, 2010

Glut in shipping market likely to continue

AOK - Seems unlikely this will be contributing to inflation soon. On the other hand, over at least the medium terms the low elasticity of supply is likely to make oil shipping charges & availability another contributor to oil price & economic volatility ...

Supertankers Face Two-Year Losing Streak as Frontline Shuns Oil
By Alaric Nightingale

Oct. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Supertanker owners are facing the longest stretch of unprofitable rates in 17 years as the supply of new vessels increases nine times faster than demand for oil.
Shipping companies are making $3,155 a day for a single voyage, 90 percent below the $30,900 Frontline Ltd., the biggest operator, says it needs to break even.

Global Nuclear Power Industry - A Current Overview

AOK - Carbon emissions concerns, galloping emerging market demand for electricity and worries about the stability of future petrocarbon supplies are driving a resurgence of interest & investment in nuclear power

Syria re-establishing itself as a power-broker

AOK - a quick history of the roots of the three-way alliance and an analysis of how Syria has re-positioned itself to once again be a critical player in Middle Eastern affairs.

Syria, Hezbollah and Iran: An Alliance in Flux

By Reva Bhalla, October 14, 2010 | 0916 GMT
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Beirut on Oct. 13 for his first official visit to Lebanon since becoming president in 2005. He is reportedly returning to the country after a stint there in the 1980s as a young Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officer tasked with training Hezbollah in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. A great deal of controversy is surrounding his return. Rumors are spreading of Sunni militants attempting to mar the visit by provoking Iran’s allies in Hezbollah into a fight (already the car of a pro-Hezbollah imam who has been defending Ahmadinejad has been blown up), while elaborate security preparations are being made for Ahmadinejad to visit Lebanon’s heavily militarized border with Israel.
Rather than getting caught up in the drama surrounding the Iranian president’s visit, we want to take the opportunity provided by all the media coverage to probe into a deeper topic, one that has been occupying the minds of Iranian, Syrian and Hezbollah officials for some time. This topic is the durability of the Iran-Hezbollah-Syria alliance, which STRATFOR believes has been under great stress in recent months. More precisely, the question is: What are Syria’s current intentions toward Hezbollah?

AOK - A well-written piece pulling a lot of the current bank & mortgage issues together.

An update on asymmetric information and corporate governance in bank bailouts

Edward Harrison | October 21, 2010 2:00 pm |

"Last June I wrote a post on the topic of corporate governance that pointed to one of only two outcomes as the likely result of the bank bailouts. Outcome number one was bank prudence and low credit growth in the face of uncertainty. Outcome number two was a reckless heads I win, tails you lose mentality that permeated the 1980s leading to the S&L crisis. To date, we have mostly seen outcome number one, which (if you can believe it) is the thing you would like to see. But this necessarily means slow growth until the uncertainty about earnings and litigation passes.
Let me take this opportunity to update you on my thinking in the wake of the foreclosure crisis.
Regulatory forbearance means under-performance or excessive risk

Bill Dahmer - Thoughts from a Warm Island: Mexico and other Emerging Markets

Mexico has not really been on my radar, so it is good to read something about it. Anecdotally, I have one friend who is Mexican who recently moved from Austin back to Mexico. She seems to love it. No poverty where she is. At least not in the photos she posts on FB. My step-brother on the other hand is a Drill Push and has been working down in Mexico for a number of years now. He thinks it is the biggest SNAFU going. So the truth is probably somewhere in between.

Giraffe Thoughts ...