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Archive for the 'Economics' Category
USA: Largest Wind Energy project approved
With prices of oil and natural gas skyrocketing, Texas, home to some of the largest US petroleum industry conglomerates, is already planning ahead of current boom times for a future that could turn this state into one of the World’s biggest producers of alternative energy.
Following Oil Billonaire T. Boone Pickens’ declaration of “going green” and his initial purchase of about 670 MW wind turbines from GE earlier this year, regulators have now (preliminary) approved a plan to invest about USD 5 Billion into the electrical grid infrastructure connecting new alternative / wind energy projects in the wind-rich West and the Panhandle to the urban areas of Texas.
According to the approved plan…
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Data-Visualization: Oil prices 1861-2008
If every “close encounter” with a petrol station these days gets you into a bad mood and you slowly start believing these gas prices are from another planet, this diagram might not be helping either.
Forbes Magazine brushed up a chart with data from the Commodity Research Bureau and the US Department of Commerce showing the development of oil prices from 1861 to 2008. Data is charted in real prices (constant 2008 Dollar) and nominal.
When you look at this diagram it shows…
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US Credit Crisis: Fed borrowing shown as a chart
If you would like to see the “official version of how much money the Fed is pumping into banks and financial institutions recently, have a look at the chart below.
The gray shaded areas are times officially recognized as recessions. The underlying data is available at the St. Louis Fed web site together with a charting application that allows you to further customize the range and other parameters.
To better visualize the substantial change we have split the data into two charts:
The larger chart shows the borrowing from the FED for the period 1919 to 2007 and the smaller one data for 2008 only. As you can see during these almost 90 years borrowing remained continuously within a range of almost none to max 8 Billion USD per month.
Since the beginning of 2008 the numbers have drastically changed and are now at about 155 Billion USD per month. The monthly figures for 2008 in detail…
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Data Visualization: Impact of the Subprime Crisis
We always love the data visualizations from the New York Times. Their designers are really doing an outstanding job.
Yesterday they have published another great one on a topic that is very hard to visualize - a graphic showing how regions throughout the United States are hit differently by the Subprime Mortgage crisis and the level of foreclosures resulting from that.
More information and the full size graphics at the “New York Times”.
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Shopping: Bear Stearns Memorabilia at Ebay
After the whole company went for a fire sales price to competitor J.P. Morgan many of the Bear Stearns employees that now fear loosing their jobs have started to part themselves from their valued memorabilia of the once highly reputable Wall Street firm.
When you search…
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Recession: The Movie
The trailer for the latest movie from the producers of “The Iraq War”. Now playing at a theater near you.
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Visualizing the size of the banking crisis
Sizing the issue at hand seems to be the first problem. Banks keep the so called derivatives off their balance sheets (because when looking at it with a sense of black humor these instruments are a bit like the banks’ own print run of casino chips - As long as others exchange them freely for real money that’s what they are worth. When that situation changes their value changes too - well, worst case to nothing or - better said, whatever someone is willing to pay for the illusion of value)…
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Data-visualization: Charting The Banking Crisis
The web log “And Still I Persist” has made two interesting implementations available that demonstrate how data-visualization tools similar to “Gapminder’s Trendalyzer” can be used to show patterns in vast amounts of data.
They used OSG’s Boomerang technology to show changes in banks’ mortgage portfolios based on the data the banks have reported to the FDIC. The first chart / animation shows the amounts of 90+ days late mortgages and the second one visualizes the changed amounts in mortgages that…
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OLPC: Negroponte getting USD100 laptop ready for delivery
Nicholas Negroponte’s OLPC project is taking up speed with selected manufacturer Quanta Computer now having started the test production of the low-cost laptop intended for students and children in developing countries. Initial test run outputs should be available next month. Quanta has earlier selected its new plant in Changshu, China to produce the computer [...]
