YOUR MONEY and TECHNOLOGY

Steve Jobs rolls over again and again and again

If there was any doubt Apple has lost its Mojo or the bloom is gone, this year’s early September’s (back-to-school) extravaganza release of  new devices has been widely acknowledged as a major disappointment.

Any myth that Apple is cutting edge and the leader and 'great innovator' was laid to rest.

'Evolution' and ‘S’ series upgrades were the company’s buzzwords. 

So what's new?

iPhone get upgrades to processor and cameras and some gimmicks. Oh, yes, it now has an Android devices app so your iPhone can work with them.

The upgrades match what Android competitors already have but it is nice for Apple to recognize most people buy Android devices and Apple needs to be able to link to them.

iPad gets a larger 12.9 inch big brother -- to compete with Android competitors already on the market

The new tablet also comes with two Apple firsts-- a keyboard cover and stylus.  Too bad both ideas have been part of Microsoft’s Surface line up for years and are widely available from other manufacturers and third party accessory suppliers.  

And it must have shocked Apple launch attendees and linked worldwide audiences when Tom Cook called up Microsoft employees to demonstrate the wonders of the stylus.

Apple TV box, which has been underperforming and marginal for some 7 years, has now been totally redesigned and refocused to allow for video gaming. And Apple, for once,  is allowing independent third party game creators access to the new OS operating system.

Also, the Apple TV box will come with sensors for body movement recognition.  

So Apple has finally realized the existence of PlayStation and Wii and Xbox.

What innovation!!!!
 

Apple Watch, whose sales have disappointed experts and which has been ridiculed by early adopters as flawed and hard to use,  will no longer need to be teetered to a nearby iPhone to operate.  Think Samsung Gear S and Google’s Android Wear.   Most notably, it is getting new, designer wrist bands from Hermes and new finishes including rose gold.   Wow!!! What great breakthroughs!!!

All these new devices will be priced to ensure Apple continues to have windfall profits as it refuses to accept anything less than a 50% profit -- unlike all others who accept 30% or far less.

Finally, the new operating system which will run the new Apple TV, the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus  and the new iPad Pro and any new programs or apps designed for these devices will not be backward compatible. 

If you want a new feature, sorry, no upgrades allowed. Just pull out your wallet and throw away your year old or older unit into the garbage!!!

So much for saving the environment!!!!

But why, you may ask, does the title of this blog focus on Steve Jobs?

I have argued in the past Jobs was a brilliant marketer and Paris/Milan quality 'designer' but really not an innovator or inventor. 

·  But Steve Jobs hated the idea of a stylus and often ridiculed it.  Now it is an Apple 'highlight'.

·    As far as Jobs was concerned, the original iPad was the one and only 'perfect size', but now there are many and growing. 

·    Apple Watch’s focus on optional real gold finishing and designer outsourcing to Hermes or anyone else, and diverse wrist bands as a key selling point, would not have been acceptable to the Zen Buddhist and control obsessed Jobs.

·    Also, Steve Jobs (while still healthy) had one fundamental rule: never release a product until all the bugs and flaws have been solved; it must be perfect from day one on the market.

Today Apple is the most valuable company in the world and hugely profitable. It has millions of loyal users who worship Steve Job's iconic brand.

But Steve would not be happy with the companies 'progress'.

He would be rolling over in his grave at every one of last Wednesday's 'great breakthroughs'.

Your Money and GAIA

Uncle Sam is on a Roll Again

Last Friday the US unemployment rate was reported as 5.1%. 

As economists consider  5.0% full employment - as maternity leave, illness and other factors always cause some workers to be off -  this is the best employment numbers since April 2008, just  before the Financial Crisis --- so the real US economy is back in high gear.

Why now? 

1. Globalization has peaked, as a recent article in the Globe and Mail noted, and new markets and rapid increase in international trade is a thing of the past.  We have reached more or less world trade equilibrium.  

China and its supposedly endless demand for foreign resources and goods is crashing or slowing down as should have been anticipated: a country with men in space is no longer a 'developing" nation but a fully developed one.  China has completed its 'economic great leap forward' and is more like Europe’s France or Italy or Spain  as an economy. So rapid growth and raw materials import demand will decline as China has given up on being the world’s cheapest factory and moved upscale in its products; and now caters to over 300 million of its own middle-class citizens.

India, the world’s second most populous country is booming as well and sends probes to Mars like any other, respected first world country:  with deep expertise in science, engineering and technology.

The revival of Britain’s Jaguar luxury brand and the even more august Land Rover lineup is due to India’s Tata Group which has over 100 companies in over 100 countries around the world (See tata.com).

Europe - if it can sidestep the crisis and flood of illegal immigrants from war torn and politically corrupt Arab Middle East and Africa --  will start to roll again to meet 5 years of pent up demand after prolonged austerity and high unemployment.

Socialist overly generous 'benefits' will continue to be reined in and working for a living will return to the mindset norm. 

2. PEAK OIL has been a sham for decades but is still promoted by the Nuclear Energy industry and wind and solar powered 'environmentalists' who ignore production costs and environmental degradation at the manufacturing level.  

Technology has always found ways to extract more oil and natural gas and the planet is awash in both. EVERYWHERE!

A recent estimate predicts oil and gas reserves still untouched in the Arctic Circle are 4 times greater than all no known world reserves.

Through fracking technology, US oil production now exceeds that of Saudi Arabia!!!!   Even at $40 a barrel the US industry seems to be viable and surplus oil supplies -- not shortages -- are the norm.

Yes, the days of $80 a barrel oil let alone $120 or $200 a barrel are gone as they should be - unless OPEC or some major player suddenly creates a boycott situation again. 

The most cost intensive oil on the planet, Canada’s tar sands, is still profitable at US $80 a barrel so any oil price above $80 has been a windfall to nearly all producers and government royalty collection.  (Saudi Arabia’s break even point is under US$30 a barrel!!!)

And the open-market hasalways been a legal, market-manipulation scam as 'investors' are allowed to buy oil - with almost free money thanks to the Federal Reserve near zero interest rates - and store it for up to a year at costs of approximately $2.50 a barrel per year!!

Put simply, as world supply stayed up and up, these 'investors' got cold feet and flooded the market with oil; and so the price dropped suddenly by some 2/3.

So where do we stand in 2016 and thereafter?

USA will lead the world economy for the next decade thanks to OIL. OIL,OIL and natural gas!!!!

1. Cheap oil and natural gas prices will continue to revitalize the US economy and industry and make the cost of living drop and allow more consumer spending on 'frills' such as a new vehicle, renovations, travel, etc.

2. US interest rates will rise as the Fed. will return to its proper focus in good times: limiting inflation by raising rates and encouraging savings.

3. Taxes will rise somewhat to pay for the excess 3 trillion dollar extra debt the Fed.’s “monetary easing” added: a short term parachute that should have ended by 2010 but has continued for some 5 more years adding to the burden of the next two generations of tax payers.  But high employment and a booming economy should generate a lot of tax revenue to help.

4. SUV and truck sales will continue to dominate and subcompact and electric cars will be built for the few and to meet 'overall gas consumption' government mandated numbers. 

5. The stock market will continue to fall.  Wildly overvalued stocks have been pumped higher and higher on almost free money from the Federal Reserve’s super low interest rate and “monetary easing’ policies. Now that the Fed. will be raising interest rates due to full employment and interconnected, almost automatic, rising inflation,

stock ‘plays’ and short term ‘gambles’ will again be reined in or face chapter 11.

Then, when the stock market  return to its senses, slow and steady growth will begin again for companies that make and sell real products that people need -- and which pay dividends.  

Yes, soon the good times will roll again in North America; all thanks to human ingenuity and Gaia's great gifts of OIL and natural gas!!!

GAIA

Good News - Bad news

The constant wailing and hand ringing by those in fear of Climate Change and man’s involvement need to take a deep breath and step back from the edge of the cliff.

Good News first: trees rejoice

The Globe and Mail carried an article entitled ”We are making the world Greener”, Aug 29, 2015 F2, which reported that 20 years of space microwave monitoring of biomass – i.e., living plant volume on Earth, found that after a decline between 1998 and 2002, between 2002 and 2012 “something surprising happened: The trees started growing back.”

Specifically, deforestation in the Amazon and Indonesia has rapidly declined while the vast forests of China and Russia are blooming, as well as the grasslands of Australia and Africa.

China alone has committed to replanting 400,000,000 hectares by 2050.  Germany has allotted $830,000,000 to help Brazil protect the Amazon and similar programs by other First World nationals and organizations have been very successful.

But the real key, according to the article and analysis, are two words anathema to tree huggers and those who glorify back to the land, labour intensive organic farming.

Yes, the two identified key factors are urbanization and replacement of small scale farming with agri-business.

Put simply, people in cities do not chop down forests and small scale farming -- using 1000 year old techniques -- is inefficient and wastes land.

Bad News: natural forest fires rage on

Annual summer forest fires are burning throughout the USA and Western Canada – nearly all having been attributed to lighting and natural forces.

Yes, campers and arsonists are not the culprits; but nature, GAIA, is doing what she often does on her own:  burn off old growth to make room for new growth that will regenerate in the open air and reach full height in 10 to 20 years.

Human efforts have been unable to stop these raging fires and we again must rely on GAIA to bring quenching and heavy rains.

Notice the pattern?

The human ant is too weak to stop what GAIA starts and only with her benevolence can the vast flames be stopped.

And during these forest fires – uncaused by humans – the amount of ‘stored carbon’ released from trees and shrubs and other plant matter is humungous!!! 

 

But is anyone, any environmentalists really counting this added air born carbon and combustion gases?

After all, like the constant and unending eruption of above ground and underwater volcanoes, no one bothers to track or calculate their carbon footprint.

When scientists seriously start to do so, the impact of the human ant – who is now blamed for all carbon in the atmosphere – will be returned to our real status of ants in the gigantic and resilient and ever cycling world that is the Earth or GAIA.

FYI:

According to http://www.livescience.com/1981-wildfires-release-cars.html

Another new study, detailed in the Nov. 1 issue of the journal Nature, found that over the past 60 years, forest fires have had the greatest direct impact on carbon emissions from the boreal forests located in the higher latitudes of Canada, Alaska and Siberia, both by the amount of carbon released as the forests burn and the emission of carbon dioxide from the soil as the sun reaches through the empty branches and promotes faster decomposition.

Fires that become large enough can release huge pulses of the gas into the atmosphere very rapidly.

"A striking implication of very large wildfires is that a severe fire season lasting only one or two months can release as much carbon as the annual emissions from the entire transportation or energy sector of an individual state," the authors of the NCAR study wrote.

And according to https://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htmt

        "Human additions of CO2 to the atmosphere must be taken into         perspective.

        Over the past 250 years, humans have added just one part of CO2 in         10,000 to the atmosphere. One volcanic cough can do this in a day."