GLG News by Mr. Jack Lifton, Co-founder and Director
GLG News is now G+ Insights
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G+ is a community for professionals, academics and entrepreneurs to connect through online discussions and in-person meetings. You will continue to see G+ Insights (formerly GLG News) here as well as on the G+ website, where you can share and discuss the G+ Insights you read.
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August 20, 2008
Chrysler Sues Johnson Controls For $15M In Overcharges | online.wsj.com
In just this year Cerberus' accountants may have inadvertently exposed the seamy side of cost cutting in the American OEM automtoive industry: 1. Overcharging by non-competitive politically correct suppliers, 2. Underbidding by suppliers desparate to keep their own factories open, and now 3. Short-weighting of exchange traded commodities. Doesn't this expose the corrupt core of OEM automotive cost accounting in general?
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Is Palladium Overpriced Even At Less Than $300/Ounce?
August 18, 2008
Timminco CEO Blamed For Norilsk Woes | www.financialpost.com
If we believe the news out of Russia then there must be palladium aplenty residing in the vaults of, or under the control of, Norilsk, the world's largest palladium producer.
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August 14, 2008
Hybrid race heats up for carmakers | www.ft.com
General Motors may not actually have a plan to compete with Toyota in the hybrid market. General Motors engineering and purchasing was disastrously shortsighted in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and its product planning group remains so even now. All of GM's product planning and sourcing errors were made under the rule of Rick Wagoner. GM's board of directors either doesn't understand carmaking or fears for its own reputation and job, or that it has no one to turn to, if it now jettisons Wagoner and his team. GM is thus doomed to fail and the money being wasted chasing the short term lithium rainbow is just accelerating GM's demise.
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The Age of Dollar Priced Metals Is Drawing To a Close and Perspective is The Key To Objectivity
August 13, 2008
Metals prices dive as dollar rallies | business.timesonline.co.uk
Is it ridiculous to assume that a marked change in the value of the US dollar in relation to the resource backed currencies of all or even some of the BRAC countries, Brazil, Russia, Australia, and Canada, will not affect the immediate dollar price of the natural resources produced in those countries..
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August 12, 2008
Stocks Gain as Oil’s Fall Continues | www.nytimes.com
Gold has no utilitarian value whatsoever. Oil, however, is intrinsically the single most valuable commodity in the world and will remain so until the production of electric energy and the fueling of ordinary passenger and freight carrying vehicles in a nation no longer uses more oil than that nation using the oil can produce for itself. It is simply not possible today for a nation to be economically self sufficient without either producing or burning oil for energy. The possession of gold or even of any utilitarian commodity without oil is today without real value.
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August 8, 2008
Mercedes May Cancel Hybrid SUV Plan Due To Chevron Dispute | www.informationweek.com
Mercedes is leading the green charge in European luxury cars. It is bringing its Bluetec diesel engines to the market to improve fuel efficiency and lower emissions for its premium cars. Mercedes also keeps talking about a plug-in hybrid using a 'lithium' battery that is supposed to be coming soon. So, why is Mercedes thinking of canceling an SUV hybrid targeted for the US market because it won't be getting the nickel metal hydride vehicles it made a prepayment for from now moribund Cobasys?
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Obama, Like GM, Does't Lack Inexperience In The Management of Scientific and Engineering Enterprises
August 6, 2008
Obama: 1 million plug-in hybrid vehicles by 2015 | www.autobloggreen.com
Liberal politicians and overpaid executives seem to have exactly the same solution to all problems whether they be environmental, cultural, or scientific: Throw somebody elses's money at them. Isn't it obvious that the presently touted solutions to old problems may not be the correct ones? Isn't it obvious that simply downsizing vehicles, building public transportation, and encouraging multiple passenger driving, should be the very first way to go to reduce fuel consumption? Isn't it also obvious that the indulgence of the American consumer in his/her fantasy of large fast cars as a measure of self-esteem along with telling gullible people that they always need the newest version of a car are the actual impediments to rationalizing transportation? After doing all of those things perhaps we will still have time to advance our technology through innovation. Americans need industrial and political leaders not judas goats as managers and elected officials.
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Ford Executive Inadvertently(?) Sinks The Chevrolet Volt; The Lady's Logic Is Tough To Refute."
July 24, 2008
Ford mass plug-ins at least 5 years away | uk.reuters.com
As James Carville might say to GM's Bob Lutz, "It's the battery, stupid, we don't have enough reliability and longevity data to put it on the market. That'll take at least five years after we finally choose a specific technology based in great part on initial reliability and longevity testing which is not yet completed!" Toyota and Honda have chosen the nickel-metal-hydride battery equipped hybrid for mass production while continuing to evaluate lithium technologies for future plug-in hybrids.
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July 22, 2008
China urged to spend FX on mines, resources | uk.reuters.com
Reuter's has now reported the official statement of a ranking official of China's Ministry of Economics, http://gateway.andohs.net/player/?sid=826&nid=2920 , to the effect that China's treasury must follow Chinese 'private' business and use its immense reserves of US dollars to obtain ownership of natural resources and of their sources of production overseas. China admits that it stands to lose more by simply holding American currency and dollar denominated negotiable instruments than any other nation in the world if the US dollar declines. But never before has the global economy been faced with a buyer of China's demand and wealth, as a competitor for natural resources. The Chinese nation and its treasury are primarily ranged against foreign private companies. Has the struggle I have in the past referred to as "The Gold War' begun?
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July 21, 2008
Wind Power: Turbine Time | www.economist.com
Wind turbines can be used to produce electricity but in order to do so they must use permanent magnets and batteries. Building even the 'modest' 17 gigawatts of wind power generated electricity that Texas alone projects would add so much demand for rare earth metals as to be impossible to carry out in the face of present growth in Chinese domestic demand for rare earth metals.
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Toyota Solves Hybrid Problems In a Remarkably More CLever Way Than General Motors Does
July 9, 2008
Toyota to add solar panels to some Prius hybrids | www.washingtonpost.com
In order to maximize the range of a hybrid or all electric car it is important to minimize the drain on the battery from any load but that of the drive train.
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Short Selles of Solar Cell Raw Materials Stocks Seem To be Wriitng The News
July 7, 2008
Solar power: Supply and demand tables start to turn | www.ft.com
This article seems mostly nonsense to me. It is poorly researched and seems to conflate different solar technologies and their problems with one another in a purposefully confusing way.
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Germanium And Gallium Byproducts Of Zinc Mining Go from No value To Value Added
July 7, 2008
SRA agrees germanium and gallium leachate supply deals | www.semiconductor-today.com
Minor metal byproducts of major 'base' metals, which were discarded as waste or for which the mine did not get paid by the refiner are rapidly growing in importance and may represent enough added value to allow for the re-opening of marginal mines.
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July 1, 2008
Wipers, Stereo Raise Price of Chevrolet Volt to $35,000 | blog.wired.com
Is GM planning to introduce and sell the Chevrolet Volt in November, 2010, at a loss? Probably. Even 'Maximum' Bob Lutz admits that the car might sell at a loss 'for many years.' The irreducible costs are not in the raw materials for a lithium ion battery. Lithium is actually rather cheap. They are instead in the manufacturing costs for the battery and in the cost of re-engineering the car's electrical accessories so that they don't drain the battery to where the vehicles' performance is compromised.
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Aren't GM's, And Ford's and Chrysler's, Problems All The Same: Bad Management From The Top Down?
July 1, 2008
GM's Maximum Bob: Don't tell me how to make an E-car | latimesblogs.latimes.com
For the last ten years as the center of the OEM automotive industry's growth has shifted to mainland Asia we have heard nothing but failure-excusing buzz words from the 'leaders' of the OEM American automotive industry. Legacy costs, health care, and, just now, as they finally admit it, raw material costs, are mantras endlessly repeated without a moment's hesitation by the highest paid managers in American OEM automotive history as the companies they mismanage continue on in the longest profitless period in American OEM automotive history. Isn't it obvious that Wall Street has simply abandoned the American OEM automotive industry to its own devices and fate?
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The North American Minor Metals Market Disaster in the Age of Minor Metals
June 23, 2008
UPDATE 2-Toshiba looks to procure metals from Kazakhstan | uk.reuters.com
Survival of their nation's industrial base and industrial independence has sent Japanese companies on a hunt for critical natural resources. When will American's wake up to the damage to out domestic economy that ignoring this issue has already caused and the impending disaster if we do nothing about it?
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June 23, 2008
Deepening gloom at General Motors | money.cnn.com
The market capitalization of the Detroit Two (Chrysler having been privatized by Cerberus is no longer a public company with a transparent market 'cap.') is a grand total of less than 20 billion dollars with GM accounting for an astonishingly tiny 8 billion of that. Toyota, which is in fact the world's largest viable car company due to the fact that its profit alone is more each year than GM's market capitalization has a market cap of more than $160 billion. There is no reason, other than nostalgia, for GM today to be in the Dow Jones Industrial Average at all. It has the smallest market cap, in fact, of any of the 30 members of the average, and the market cap of the two largest, General Electric and Microsoft are each more than 25 times the market cap of GM. Exxon Mobil, another DJIA member, made more profit last quarter than GM's market cap. The steady march of GM to bankruptcy is simply now unavaoidable, Volt or no Volt.
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Rhenium, Without Which There Would Be No Modern Jet Aircraft, Is A Byproduct Of Molybdenum Mining
June 20, 2008
Minor metal prices soar on demand for more fuel-efficient jet engines | www.ft.com
Luckily for the free world the US is the world's largest producer of the metal molybdenum. Rhenium is contained as trace element in both the primary molybdenum ore mined in North America-which is responsible for 40% of North American molybdenum production-and in the molybdenum itself contained as a byproduct in America's copper ores. Because the US is self sufficient in molybdenum it is also probably self sufficient in rhenium, approximately 40 tons of the world's annual production of 125 tons of the metal are recovered in North American mining operations. But there is a chance that there is much more rhenium in North America.
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June 19, 2008
Electro-Shock Therapy | www.theatlantic.com
The GM EV1 battery powered car, which used lead-acid batteries, went 90 miles at 60 miles an hour on an overnight charge. It was discontinued nearly 20 years ago for lack of customer interest, said GM, at the time. What advantage does the 2010 or 2011 Chevrolet Volt have over this 20 year old technology?
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June 17, 2008
Lithium-ion batteries power converted Priuses | www.autoweek.com
It is impossible to believe that either Toyota or lithium battery developer A123 think its a good idea to modify an existing Prius into a plug-in hybrid by having a dealer install a system based on an A123 battery. Toyota cannot stop its independent dealers from charging gullible environmental activist drivers of the Prius for charging them $10,000.00 to void their car's warranty absolutely. A123 has clearly not thought this through. If 1000 'conversions' are carried out and one fails due to battery failure then the Chevrolet Volt program could be an instant failure before it starts. In addition each Prius sitting in a dealer shop waiting for lithium battery or plug-in system repair will be indistinguishable from a failed Prius based on existing reliable nickel metal hydride battery technology. Finally, the complaints of the owners, not only about the huge costs and delays in getting service but in not getting the promised mileage will be national headlines.
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