Integrated Man

Gates Gets Energy

Bill Gates gets energy, almost.

In today's Politico, he addresses the need for a concerted long term energy policy.  He comes closer to the speech that Obama has yet to give, and has possibly lost the opportunity to give.  But Bill, too, has yet to go the distance. He has yet to tell the public what it must know. In the face of dwindling long term supply of fossil fuels and increasing world demand, energy innovation and evolution is not an option but a necessity. Without it, economic and ultimately civil failure is not an option but a probability.

Are We on Frack?

I  read an article in the New York Times on the recent East Coast earthquake of 2011, August 23rd. You may remember that it didn't put the big numbers on the board (Magnitude 5.8) that the West Coast typically enjoys, but it had a much larger audience (like most of the eastern seaboard). Its damage was more symbolic than substantive.  It put cracks in the Washington Monument and National Cathedral, compromising structures we typically think of as enduring and eternal, perhaps more so than the underlying institutions they symbolize.

Warren Buffett's Last Mission

Dear Mr. Buffett

You don't know me from Adam. I'm utterly inconsequential in the scheme of things.  So I hope you'll forgive my audacity in proposing one last mission in the public interest before you depart this existence. 

I am emboldened by your prior efforts to encourage your peer group to pledge their wealth to the public good, and more recently to call attention to yourself as a justification for the nation to call upon the rich to carry their fair share of the tax burden.   But there is one more mission in which your unique position and skills at unadorned truth-telling might yet have critical impact.   Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to inspire the business and investment titans of the US economy to get off their fear or apathy and earn their money by taking risks on the US economic revival.  Only you can do this.  No one else in the business community has your stature and ethical capital; and beyond the business community the President and Chairman of the Fed are a distant second and third.

Strategic Reserves, Strategic Reservations

They pulled the trigger.  Was it a bang?  Or a Pop? More importantly, will the projectile of a joint release from the IEA members' strategic petroleum reserves prove to be a ricochet that produces a self-inflicted wound?

Much of the immediate commentary in the business press since yesterday's announcement has been superficial and unenlightening. 

End Game

When my daughters were growing up, and coming to me for advice on some crucial problem in their lives, I would put them through a three question drill to clarify the issue (not necessarily resolve it):

1)    What's the worst outcome you can anticipate?

2)    Are you prepared to accept it?

3)    If not, what are you capable of doing and willing to do to prevent it?

Again, these questions do not resolve the issue, but they set the boundaries of possible consequences and responses.  It seems that a lot of adults in high places need to ask these questions on some critical issues.

Libya, The War Powers Act, and the Rule of Law

One of America's glaring hypocrisies is to lecture the world on the 'Rule of Law' as we contrive infinite stratagems to bypass, bend, fold or mutilate it, if we do not just outright ignore it.  Libya and the War Powers Act is an excellent case in point.  The only humor in this is that the Administration's contention that the US is not engaged in hostilities is more absurd than Anthony Weiner's assertion that he could not positively affirm the identity of his personal 'real estate' in a photo that he took.

Intelligence

Intelligence has two distinct definitions. It can refer to the possession of information, or the possession of the capacity to use it effectively. The two do not necessarily cohabit; most certainly, not often enough.  Like the time we outsourced the liquidation of a monster in the caves of Tora Bora to locals of ambivalent motivations. 

Oil Prices: Blame it (and everything else) on the Algorithms

Those darned Algorithms! Turn your back and they'll raise unmitigated hell.  Take oil for example. CNBC on-line carries the article: "Algorithms, not demand, driving oil prices sky high?" 

My first question is: Why single out oil?  The equity markets seem to be on auto pilot as well.  Many reasonable analysts and economists without a stock to sell or an apparent axe to grind have argued that stocks are seriously inflated. The self-styled prophets of profits have ingeniously concocted a double barreled deceit, suggesting that:

-    oil prices are rising because of heightened market risks; but

-    stock prices are rising because they've already 'discounted the risks'.  That is, the stock market would be yet higher if not for those pesky energy risk scenarios in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Nigeria, Iraq, Japan, Australia,...

Beware the Avatar!

The following interesting piece happened across my screen this morning, courtesy of Forbes.com newsletter: "Should Artificial Intelligences be Granted Civil Rights?"  

At first thought, this seemed the logical extension of the Supreme Court's illogical extension of campaign funding privileges to corporations.  The next stop will be voting rights. And then came a whole flood of equally preposterous possibilities that spawn in the toxic political/cultural/social environment that provides our off-cable reality shows.

Energy: A Few Unanswered Questions

Context is everything.  Nothing exists in a vacuum. Yet many of the issues relating to energy options are discussed as absolutes, devoid of context. Many options are sold as virtues, un-netted by their offsetting potential liabilities.  This suggests either genuine ignorance by supposedly enlightened people, or self-serving disingenousness. Either way. It leads to bad policy, and worse consequences.

A few examples to illustrate: