Kleiner Perkins, Google, Amazon, Netscape back Electric Car

clipped from online.wsj.com The race to develop an electric car is heating up and drawing increasing interest from the same venture-capital investors who helped build Silicon Valley. The latest entrant is expected to be announced today at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit when Fisker Automotive Inc. unveils an $80,000 battery-powered luxury car it aims to begin delivering in late 2009. The Fisker Karma, a so-called plug-in hybrid, can go 50 miles on electricity before a small gasoline engine kicks in to generate electricity The company has backing from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, perhaps Silicon Valley's best-known venture-capital firm and a backer of household tech names such as Netscape Communications, Amazon.com Inc. and Google Inc. Mr. Fisker's vision is to sell 15,000 electric cars a year. Mr. Fisker believes his company is a couple of years ahead of bigger rivals because the design of the car has been finalized. The Karma, Mr. Fisker said, will use lithium-ion batteries

Gold on its way to $2,130 an ounce?

Gold stocks anyone?

clipped from www.bloomberg.com Gold rose beyond $850 an ounce in London, breaching the record set more than a quarter-century ago Prices advanced 31 percent last year, the biggest gain since 1979, when U.S. inflation was more than 13 percent. Unless the world suddenly becomes a wonderful place to be, the gold price will continue to move higher,'' said Jeremy Charles, global head of precious metals in London at HSBC Bank Bullion also advanced for a seventh consecutive year in 2007 as investors sought an alternative to the declining value of the dollar. Gold rallied 12 percent in the fourth quarter, climbing to a 27-year high since mid-September, when the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates. JPMorgan Chase & Co. predicts gold will strengthen to $950 within six months. Based on 1980 dollars, the January 1980 record of $850 is the equivalent of about $2,130 today, according to an inflation calculator on the Web site of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

My Favorite Cheap Vacation

You really need to put this on your list. Cheap accommodations, fantastic food and clean, clean water. The views and architecture are unreal. People are very friendly.

clipped from information.travel.aol.com Location: Croatia What to See: Visit the region of Istria first, as this is the most accommodating for tourists. Here, you can visit historic Roman towns such as Porec and Pula, as well as medieval castles and national parks. Hostels in most Croatian locations start around $10; if you can afford a little more than that, travel to the island of Brac where you can stay at the charming Villa Adriatica Hotel for around $65 a night. It's worth every cent for those who like their creature comforts. More Cheap Vacations

Ohio Begs Lawyers: Help With Foreclosure Crisis

Does the Chief Justice’s call to action resonate with you? Is the mortgage crisis, as Ohio’s state treasurer says, the defining issue of our time?

clipped from blogs.wsj.com How bad is the housing crisis in Ohio? So bad that the state’s chief justice is begging lawyers for help, and the state treasurer urges, “To anyone who wants to make a difference in the world, this is a defining issue of our time.” Foreclosures have spiked in the Buckeye State, clogging the court system. And yesterday, Chief Justice Thomas Moyer urged lawyers to offer pro bono services to distressed homeowners, according to this NLJ story. “This is more than a legal issue; this is a social issue,” Moyer said, according to a news release. “People’s lives are being seriously affected and the legal community must respond with action.” Ohio has among the highest foreclosure rates in the country. In 2007, foreclosure filings are up nearly 68% from last year, according to RealtyTrac. But does the Chief Justice’s call to action resonate with you? Is the mortgage crisis, as Ohio’s state treasurer says, the defining issue of our time?

Mars in the Path of Asteroid D Day January 30

clipped from news.aol.com Mars could be in for an asteroid hit. A newly discovered hunk of space rock has a 1 in 75 chance of slamming into the Red Planet on Jan. 30, scientists said Thursday. "These odds are extremely unusual. We frequently work with really long odds when we track ... threatening asteroids," said Steve Chesley, an astronomer with the Near Earth Object Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In 1994, fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smacked into Jupiter, creating a series of overlapping fireballs in space. Astronomers have yet to witness an asteroid impact with another planet. The asteroid, known as 2007 WD5, was discovered in late November and is similar in size to an object that hit remote central Siberia in 1908, unleashing energy equivalent to a 15-megaton nuclear bomb and wiping out 60 million trees. If the asteroid does smash into Mars, it will probably hit near the equator close to where the rover Opportunity has been exploring the Martian plains since 2004.

Epix Soars 50% On Alzheimer's Data

clipped from blogs.forbes.com EPIX Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: EPIX - News), today announced compelling top-line results from a Phase 2a two-week clinical trial of its novel 5-HT4 agonist, PRX-03140, in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The results show that patients receiving 150 mg of PRX-03140 orally once daily as monotherapy achieved a mean 5.7 point improvement on the Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale cognitive subscale (ADAS-cog) versus a 0.2 point worsening in patients on placebo (p= 0.005). Patients on a 50 mg dose of PRX-03140 showed a 1.1 point improvement on the ADAS-cog. After reviewing these data, Serge Gauthier, M.D., Director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Unit at McGill University, stated, “There is such an urgent and undeniable need for additional safe and effective treatments for Alzheimer’s patients. Findings like these data are not only encouraging and compelling – they appear to represent a step forward in our ability to understand and combat the effects of Alzheimer’s.

Dumbest Business of 2007

See this one, Jessica Simpson and others by following the link.

clipped from money.aol.com Made (Badly) in China Grand Prize Winner During 2007, Mattel recalls almost 20 million items made in China because of lead paint and tiny magnets. Pet food makers recall more than 360 million cans of tainted food from China. Chinese-made lunch boxes given away to promote healthy eating among children are found to contain lead. And so on ... and so on ... and so on. · See More China Messes

Start-Up Sells Solar Panels at Lower-Than-Usual Cost

clipped from www.nytimes.com Nanosolar, a heavily financed Silicon Valley start-up whose backers include Google’s co-founders, plans to announce Tuesday that it has begun selling its innovative solar panels, which are made using a technique that is being held out as the future of solar power manufacturing. The company, which has raised $150 million and built a 200,000-square-foot factory here, is developing a new manufacturing process that “prints” photovoltaic material on aluminum backing, a process the company says will reduce the manufacturing cost of the basic photovoltaic module by more than 80 percent. Nanosolar, which recently hired a top manufacturing executive from I.B.M., said that it had orders for its first 18 months of manufacturing capacity. The photovoltaic panels will be made in Silicon Valley and in a second plant in Germany. Nanosolar has focused on lowering the manufacturing cost Nanosolar claims to be the first solar panel manufacturer to be able to sell solar panels for less than $1 a watt

Would You Marry for Money? (And If So, How Much?)

Tell the truth, would you marry for money?

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Robert Frank’s wealth column ooks at the growing number of men and women who want to tie the knot for assets, rather than love. According to a survey by Prince & Associates, a Connecticut-based wealth-research firm, the average “price” that men and women demand to marry for money these days is $1.5 million. The survey asked people nationwide: “How willing are you to marry an average-looking person that you liked, if they had money?” The column sites an infamous personal ad posted on Craigslist this summer, in which a twentysomething New Yorker who described herself as “spectacularly beautiful” wrote that she was looking for a man who made at least $500,000 a year. She’d tried dating men earning $250,000, but that wasn’t “getting me to Central Park West,” she said. (One investment banker replied that since his money would grow over time but her beauty would fade, the offer didn’t make good business sense.)

Hot Christmas Toys #1 Hannah Montana In Concer

clipped from money.aol.com Analysts expect the Hannah Montana In Concert Collection Doll from Play Along, a division of JAKKS Pacific, Inc., to be at the top of the sales list this holiday season.

Pictures of Pent Up Housing Demand

clipped from www.minyanville.com Pictures of Pent Up Housing Demand

Lame Ducks in Bali

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Frustration with U.S. negotiating tactics at the climate conference burst wide open Thursday, with countries from Germany to Tuvalu blaming the U.S. for torpedoing a new climate-change deal. Europeans have threatened to skip the U.S.-sponsored global warming fest in Hawaii in January in retaliation for the slow-go tactics of U.S. negotiators. But another crew of Americans, skippered by Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, and John Kerry, are getting a hero’s welcome. “People are turning away from the official delegation and they’re starting to face toward the future,” he says. They can’t afford to wait around for the next president.” America’s official negotiators are seen as an increasingly irrelevant nuisance International frustration peaked after the U.S. team blocked language that would establish concrete targets for greenhouse-gas reductions. Sen. Kerry promised the U.S. would take the lead fighting climate change — eventually.

The Housing Bubble

The chart on House-Price-to-Rental Ratio is one of the best illustrations I have seen of the current housing bubble. In many places it is now substantially cheaper to rent then own. In fact, in many places the cost of ownership is more then 150 percent of the cost of renting after calculating in the tax benefits.

Comments?

clipped from online.wsj.com HOME OWNERSHIP U.S. home ownership rates from 1900 through the current year HOUSE PRICE-TO-RENTAL RATIO Reflecting the booming real-estate market since 2000, the ratio of home prices to rent expenditures has risen sharply. Ratio of OFHEO house price index to personal consumption expenditures on rent Source: Congressional Budget Office; Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight; Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis COMMERCIAL PAPER Earlier this year, many mortgage-backed assets held by SIVs went bad suddenly. Assets could be downgraded from top to bottom overnight. Asset prices stop falling when markets conclude that all the bad news has been factored in. Overnight commercial paper interest rates, daily through Nov. 20, 2007 PRICES OF SUBRPRIME MORTGAGE TRANCHES Source: Markit ABX.HE index published by Markit

A New Way for Doctors to Get Sued?

I would be interested in hearing comments to this one.

clipped from blogs.wsj.com A man taking several prescription drugs passes out at the wheel, drives off the road and hits and kills a 10-year-old boy. Can the boy’s mother sue the doctor who prescribed the drugs? The answer is yes at least according to a ruling made yesterday by Massachusetts’s Supreme Judicial Court, reported in the Boston Globe. The mother’s lawyers allege that the doc failed to warn his patient about the side effects of the medications and the potential danger of driving while taking them. The patient was reportedly 75 years old and had emphysema, high blood pressure and metastatic lung cancer. He had prescriptions from his doctor for a handful of drugs whose side effects include drowsiness, dizziness, and fainting He reported no side effects in the months before his accident In a dissent, Justice Robert J. Cordy wrote that the ruling “introduces a new audience to which the physician must attend — everyone who might come in contact with the patient.”

Straight Dope on Baseball’s Drug Problem

The complete Q and A is available at the source site. The Health Blog.

clipped from blogs.wsj.com If you’re ever going to talk to the guy who wrote a book called Performance-Enhancing Substances in Sports and Exercise, today’s the day. As the clock ticked on the release of the big Mitchell report on doping in baseball, the Health Blog managed to get Charles Yesalis on the phone. Yesalis, a professor emeritus of health and human development at Penn State, has been studying doping in sports for years. Here are the highlights of our conversation. How did performance-enhancing drugs get into baseball? It goes back to World War II. Immediately afterward, professional baseball players who served in the Army brought back amphetamines. It was absolutely rampant. It was mainly to deal with the long season — the mental wear and tear. It was also to help them recuperate from hard nights on the town. I think stimulants are clearly still involved as a significant aspect of the game. What about steroids? How much benefit does an athlete need from a drug to improve performance?