Sunday, September 21, 2008

Climateer Investing Readers are Scary Smart

We have received a lot of emails in the last few days on recent events in the financial markets. Some very bright people with some very interesting insights. Here's one example. In the post immediately below, I point out the coincidence of section 8 of the WWII Army regulations covering the discharge for being crazy and section 8 of Secretary Paulson's proposed bailout plan:
Sec. 8. Review
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
A reader points out that section 8 is also a federal welfare program designed to subsidize the cost of housing, "Which is where a lot of people are going to turn unless policy makers get a handle on the freeze-up in credit markets"

A note for new visitors.
The focus of this blog is making money from climate and weather. This gives us a very large canvas: agriculture, commodities, fossil fuels, solar, wind; policy, politics, science, finance, investing, psychology, sociology, technology and on and on. Reality, perceptions etc.
(pretty much whatever we think may be of use to our readers)

Because the financial events of the last eight months will impact directly on prices and policy prescriptions, they get our attention. The last ten days we've focused on this aspect, sometimes to the exclusion of other facets. Here are a couple posts from last spring explaining our thinking:
April 14, 2008
Green Energy Sings the Blues: Credit Crunch Hits Clean Tech, Too

This is the second and last 'I told you so' post.
(today)
I've gotten feedback on some of the macro-econ. posts that say (paraphrased):

"All I want is inside information that I can trade for 1,000% overnight moves."
Ah yes, making money while you sleep, the great reward of capital.

More valuable is to hammer on the interconnectedness of everything with Chairman Mao as our guide:
...The reason, to paraphrase Chairman Mao's statement "The guerilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea" is that climate/energy investments swim in the larger sea of the markets....
Here are a few of our Mao reiterations (this one has the 56th stanza of Tennyson's"In memorium")....

March 6, 2008
A change in the climate: credit crunch makes the bottom line the top issue

We've tried to stay ahead of this curve by paraphrasing Chairman Mao:

This is probably a good place to mention some of the thinking behind this blog.

Although one of the foci of the blog is alternative/renewable energy, it is not exclusive of the wider world.
To paraphrase Chairman Mao, "The markets are the sea in which cleantech/greentech swims". Everything is connected and being able to make the connections is one of the talents/skills/gifts that capitalism rewards, sometimes handsomely....Source
We began making this point in August '07 when the market started exposing the frauds and fools on Wall Street. As usual Warren Buffett explains it better:
"It's only when the tide goes out that you discover who's been swimming naked"...
I'll try to post some more of the emails this week. CI has some sharp readers.
Thanks