Page 1934 - Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Where The Economist "Big Mac" Index Finds Currency Value.

My former employer, The Economist, once the ever tolerant editor of my flabby, disjointed, and juvenile prose (Thanks Peter and Marjorie), has released its ?Big Mac? index of international currency valuations (click here for the link).

Although initially launched as a joke three decades ago, I have followed it religiously and found it an amazingly accurate predictor of future economic success. The index counts the cost of McDonald?s (MCD) fat and sodium packed premium sandwich around the world, ranging from $7.20 in Norway to $1.78 in Argentina, and comes up with a measure of currency under and over valuation.

What are its conclusions today? The Swiss Franc, the Brazilian Real and the Euro are overvalued, while the Hong Kong Dollar, the Chinese Yuan and the Thai Baht are cheap. I couldn?t agree more with many of these conclusions. It?s as if the august weekly publication was tapping The Diary of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader for ideas. I am no longer the frequent consumer of Big Macs that I once was, as my metabolism has slowed to such an extent that in eating one, you might as well tape it to my ass. Better to use it as an economic forecasting tool, than a speedy lunch.

The Big Mac in Yen is Definitely Not a Buy

January 3, 2013 ? Quote of the Day

Diary

?At some point in 2013, knuckles are going to be turning white and we?ll see whatever rabbits Ben Bernanke is going to have to pull out of his hat?, said David Rosenberg of Gluskin, Sheff in Associates

Trade Alert - (SPY) January 2, 2013

Trade Alert

As a potentially profitable opportunity presents itself, John will send you an alert with specific trade information as to what should be bought, when to buy it, and at what price. Read more

Trade Alert - (FCX) January 2, 2013

Trade Alert

As a potentially profitable opportunity presents itself, John will send you an alert with specific trade information as to what should be bought, when to buy it, and at what price. Read more

January 2, 2013

Diary, Summary

Global Markets Comments

January 2, 2013

SPECIAL ENERGY ISSUE

Featured Trades: (OXY), (BP), (OIL),
(NATURAL GAS), (UNG),
(NSANY), (BP), (XOM), (PGE)

Occidental Petroleum Corporation

BP PLC

iPath S&P GSCI Crude Oil Total Return Index ETN

United States Natural Gas Fund, LP

Nissan Motor Co. Ltd.

Exxon Mobil Corp.

Take a Look at Occidental Petroleum (OXY)

Diary

There are a lot of belles at the ball, but you can't dance with all of them.

While a student at UCLA in the early seventies, I took a World Politics course which required me to pick a country, analyze its economy, and make recommendations for its economic development. I chose Algeria, a country where I had spent the summer of 1968 caravanning among the Bedouins, crawling out of the desert half starved, lice ridden, and half dead. I concluded that the North African country should immediately nationalize the oil industry, and raise prices from $3/barrel to $10. I knew that Los Angeles based Occidental Petroleum (OXY) was interested in exploring for oil there, so I sent my paper to the company for review. They called the next day and invited me to their imposing downtown headquarters, then the tallest building in Los Angeles.

I was ushered into the office of Dr. Armand Hammer, one of the great independent oil moguls of the day, a larger than life figure who owned a spectacular impressionist art collection, and who confidently displayed a priceless Faberge egg on his desk. He said he was impressed with my paper, and then spent two hours grilling me. Why should oil prices go up? Who did I know there? What did I see? What was the state of their infrastructure? Roads? Bridges? Rail lines? Did I see any oil derricks? Did I see any Russians? I told him everything I knew, including the two weeks in an Algiers jail for taking pictures in the wrong places. His parting advice was to never take my eye off the oil industry, as it is the driver of everything else. I have followed that advice ever since.

When I went back to UCLA, I told a CIA friend of mine that I had just spent the afternoon with the eminent doctor (Marsha, call me!). She told me that he had been a close advisor of Vladimir Lenin after the Russian Revolution, had been a double agent for the Soviets ever since, that the FBI had known this all along, and was currently funneling illegal campaign donations to President Richard Nixon. Shocked, I kicked myself for going into an interview so ill prepared, and had missed a golden opportunity to ask some great questions. I never made that mistake again.

Some 40 years later, while trolling the markets for great buying opportunities set up by the BP oil spill, I stumbled across (OXY) once more (click here for their site). (OXY) has a minimal offshore presence, nothing in deep water, and huge operations in the Middle East and South America. It was the first US oil company to go back into Libya when the sanctions were lifted in 2005. (OXY's) substantial California production is expected to leap to 45% to 200,000 barrels a day over the next four years. Its horizontal multistage fracturing technology will enable it to dominate California shale. It has raised its dividend for the eighth year in a row, by 15% to 1.60%. Need I say more?

The clear message that has come out of the BP oil spill is that onshore energy resources are now more valuable than offshore ones. I decided to add it to my model portfolio. Energy is one of a tiny handful of industries I am willing to put my money in these days (technology and commodities are the others), and BP has handed me a rare opportunity to get in as the tightwad that I truly am.

Oh, and I got an A+ on the paper, and the following year Algeria raised the price of oil to $12.

-

A Faberge Egg

The True Cost of Oil

Diary

I received some questions last week on my recent solar pieces as to whether I minded paying more money for ?green? power. My answer is ?hell no,? and I?ll tell you why. My annual electric bill comes to $1,500 a year. Since the California power authorities have set a goal of 33% alternative energy sources by 2020, PG&E (PGE) has the most aggressive green energy program in the country (click here?for ?The Solar Boom in California?). More expensive solar, wind, geothermal, and biodiesel power sources mean that my electric bill may rise by $150-$300 a year.

Now let?s combine my electricity and gasoline bills. Driving 15,000 miles a year, my current gasoline engine-powered car uses 750 gallons a year, which at $4/gallon for gas costs me $3,000/year. So my annual power/gasoline bill is $4,500. My new all electric Nissan Leaf (NSANY) will cost me $180/year to cover the same distance (click here for ?Getting Something for Nothing?). Even if my power bill goes up 20%, as it eventually will, thanks to the Leaf, my THE total plunges to $1,980, down 56%.

There is an additional sweetener, which I?m not even counting. I also spend $1,000/year on maintenance on my old car, including tune-ups and oil changes. The Nissan Leaf will cost me nothing, as there are no oil changes or tune-ups, and my engine drops from using 400 overcooked parts to just five. We?re basically talking tire rotations only for the first 100,000 miles.

There is a further enormous pay-off down the road. We are currently spending $100 billion a year in cash up-front fighting our wars in the Middle East, or $273 million a day! Add to that another $200 billion in back-end costs, including wear-and-tear on capital equipment, and lifetime medical care for 3 million veterans, some of whom are severely torn up.

We import 9.1 million barrels of oil each day, or 3.3 billion barrels a year, worth $270 billion at $82/barrel. Some 2 million b/d, or 730 million barrels/year worth $60 billion comes from the Middle East. That means we are paying a de facto tax which amounts to $136/barrel, taking the true price for Saudi crude up to a staggering $219/barrel!

We are literally spending $100 billion extra to buy $60 billion worth of oil, and that?s not counting the lives lost. Even worse, all of the new growth in Middle Eastern oil exports is to China, so we are now spending this money to assure their supplies more than ours. Only a government could come up with such an idiotic plan.

There is another factor to count in. Anyone in the oil industry will tell you that, of the current $82 price for crude, $30 is a risk premium driven by fears of instability in the Middle East. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, every available tanker, and thousands of rail cars are all chocked full with unwanted oil. This is why prices remain high.

The International Energy Agency says the world is now using 87 million b/d, or 32 billion barrels a year worth $2.6 trillion. This means that the risk premium is costing global consumers $950 billion/year. If we abandon that oil source, the risk premium should fall substantially, or disappear completely. What instability there becomes China?s headache, not ours.

If enough of the country converts to alternatives and adopts major conservation measures, then we can quit importing oil from that violent part of the world.? No more sending our President to bow and shake hands with King Abdullah. Oil prices would fall, our military budget would drop, the federal budget deficit would shrink, and our taxes would likely get cut.

One Leaf shrinks demand for 750 gallons of gasoline, or 1,500 gallons of oil per year. That means that we need?20.4 million?Leafs on the road to eliminate the need for the 2 million barrels/day we are importing from the Middle East. The Department of Energy has provided a $1.6 billion loan to build a Nissan plant in Smyrna, Tennessee that will pump out 250,000 Leafs a year by end 2012. Add that to the?million Volts, Tesla S-1?s, Mitsubishi iMiEV?s, and other electric cars ?hitting the market in the next few years. Also taking a bite out of our oil consumption are the 1 million hybrids now on the road to be joined by a second million in the next two years. That goal is not so far off.

Yes, these are simplistic, back-of-the-envelop calculations that don?t take into account other national security considerations, or our presence on the global stage. But these numbers show that even a modest conversion to alternatives can have an outsized impact on the bigger picture.

By the way, please don?t tell ExxonMobile (XOM) or BP (BP) I told you this. They get 80% of their earnings from importing oil to the US. I don?t want to get a knock on the door in the middle of the night.

January 2, 2013 -- Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

We have been pretending that we?re too big to fail. We?re not too big to fail, You can jump off of a 90 story building and feel fine for the first 89 stories. It?s the sudden stop at the end that tells you you?re not.? said Tom Friedman, New York Times columnist and author of Hot, Flat and Crowded.

An Evening With the Chinese Intelligence Service

Evening VIP

I normally avoid the diplomatic circuit, as the few non committal comments and soggy appetizers I get aren?t worth the investment of time. But I jumped at the chance to celebrate the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the People?s Republic of China with San Francisco consul general Gao Zhansheng.

Happy Birthday China!

When I casually mention that I survived the Cultural Revolution and interviewed major political figures like Premier Deng Xiaoping, who launched the Middle Kingdom into the modern era, and his predecessor, Zhou Enlai, modern day Chinese are enthralled. It?s like going to a Fourth of July party and letting drop that I palled around with Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.

Five minutes into the great hall, and I ran into my old friend Wen, who started out her career with the Chinese Intelligence Service, and had made the jump to the Foreign Ministry, as all their best people did. She was passing through town with a visiting trade mission.

When I was touring China in the seventies as the guest of the Bank of China, Wen was assigned as my guide and translator, and we kept in touch over the years. I was assigned a bodyguard who doubled as the driver of a tank like Russian sedan. The Cultural Revolution was on, and while the major cities were safe, we ran the risk of running into a renegade band of xenophobic Red Guards, with potentially fatal consequences.

I asked Wen when China was going to float the Yuan? She explained that this is something China knew it had to do, but it wasn?t going to be rushed into by some opportunistic foreign politicians. If it moves too soon, millions will lose jobs, creating political instability, something the central government wants to avoid at all costs. Many of the largest scale employers were only marginally profitable, and a hike in the renminbi of only a few percent would force them out of business. I pointed out that that was exactly what was happening in the US.

Worth More Than Meets the Eye

I warned that if the Middle Kingdom waited too long, Washington would force them into an appreciation through punitive import duties and anti-dumping actions, as we did with Japan 40 years ago. It was Nixon?s surprise ban on textile imports in 1971 that finally persuaded Japan to float the yen, then at ?360. If that didn?t convince the Chinese, then imported inflation would. The longer China delays, the bigger the pop when their currency is finally set free.

Wen then went on the offensive, claiming that Chinese workers were being exploited by American companies keeping wages low. The product that China made for $1, and sold to the US for $2, was then sold by Wal-Mart (WMT) for $20, which kept all the profits. She pointed out that the Walton family had a combined net worth of $100 billion, more than the total worth of the lower 40% of the US population. This could never happen in China.? I told her that by selling the product at $20, Wal-Mart wiped out another US company that used to make that product domestically and sold it for $40, throwing those people out of work.

Modern Times in China

I then asked Wen what were her country?s plans for its massive foreign exchange reserves, now at $3.7 trillion? She agreed that this was a problem because the reserves were pouring in so fast, at an embarrassingly high rate of $10 billion a month, and that it was the most rapid accumulation of wealth in history. While it had more than enough Treasury bonds, any attempt to sell might cause their value to collapse and freeze relations with the US. I suggested China should start hedging its gigantic holdings without selling them, or some managers would be facing a firing squad in the future.

China has therefore begun directing new reserve inflows into other instruments, like gold, Japanese government bonds, and ultra-high yield PIIGS bonds in Europe. While the Europeans were more than happy to take the money, the Japanese were complaining that China?s modest purchases were driving up the yen, further depressing their own economy. We all know what has happened to gold.

China tried to recycle its surpluses by buying foreign companies that produce the natural resources it desperately needs. But takeover attempts were fought tooth and nail as a foreign invasion, or on national security grounds, such as the attempt to buy California?s Unocal in 2005 and Australia?s Oz Minerals in 2010. It was now using a strategy of buying low profile minority stakes in foreign resource companies. China took a big stake in the Petrobras (PBR) secondary equity offering.

Check Out This tasty Little Morsel

I asked her about the real estate bubble in China that was causing so many foreign investors to lose sleep. She said it was true that sales were slow at some luxury buildings in Beijing and Shanghai, but the great majority of developments were aimed at working people, and were filling up as soon as they came on the market. The 40% down payment demanded by the People?s Bank of China headed off the rampant speculation that brought the American financial system down. Buyers of second homes were required to pay entirely in cash.

Rooms With Views

Wen then complained about the aggressive military stance the US was taking towards China, ringing it in with the Seventh Fleet. Holding a knife so close to the country?s foreign supply line jugular vein made them nervous. China was basically indefensible. All it would take was the sinking of a few grain ships, and 100 million would starve within a year. President Bush was rattling his saber as soon as he moved into office, until 9/11 diverted his attention to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Wen told me there is a school of thought in Beijing that as the country?s economic power grows- it is passed Japan to become second in GDP last year? that the US will increasingly perceive it as a military threat. This would lead America to mete out the same hostile treatment to China as it did Russia during the cold war.

Walking Softly, But Carrying a Big Stick

I assured her that the Seventh Fleet was there to watch and listen, but to do nothing. It was really in position to provide a security blanket for allies, like Japan and South Korea, but nothing more. China wasn?t engaging in the belligerent behavior that Russia was at the height of the cold war, like blockading Berlin, basing missiles in Cuba, stationing fast attack nuclear submarines off our coasts, and invading Afghanistan.

I argued that if China truly has no expansionary intentions, the more we know about you, the better. It is always prudent for a potential adversary to conclude you are not a threat, and that no action is needed. The more you help the US do that, the better. China is decades behind the US in military technology, and you really have nothing we want. Little more than 200 nuclear weapons without an ICMB or submarine delivery systems were hardly viewed as a major threat.

Wen seemed perturbed that I was aware of her country?s nuclear stockpiles, and asked how I knew this. I said that former CIA director Leon Panetta told me (click here for ?Lunch With the CIA?). She said ?Oh.? I asked what was that test downing of a satellite in space about, anyway? She didn?t answer.

In any case, with our military fully committed fighting two wars in the Middle East, we lacked the resources for an Asian offensive if we were so inclined, even against a piddling, mismanaged, rogue state like North Korea. But looking at the world for the next 30 years, who is the Pentagon going to model and war game against, but China, with its 2.5 million man army?

Wen countered that the People?s Liberation Army was purely a defensive force. With a 12,000 mile land border, an 11,000 mile coastline, and dubious neighbors like Russia, Iran, and India, they have no other choice. Its ability to project force over great distances, as the US can, is virtually nonexistent. Its 1979 invasion of Vietnam was about reclaiming ten miles of lost territory. China got involved in Korea only after general Douglas MacArthur threatened to rain atomic bombs on the mainland, losing 2 million men, including Chairman Mao?s son. China could have done a lot more in the Vietnam War, but didn?t, limiting its participation to a supply, logistical, and advisory role.

That?s a Lot of Border to Defend

I then warned that if you really are worried about the Pentagon, you should stop hacking into our computers. She replied that the US started this by emptying out Chinese mainframes many times, and they were only responding in kind. I said yes, but that China was targeting private companies, like Google (GOOG), Hewlett Packard (HPQ), and Oracle (ORCL) that without military grade software, were unable to defend themselves. The Chinese agencies involved then used the data to their own commercial advantage.

What Did You Say the Password Was Again?

By the time Wen married, China had already adopted its one child policy. As much as she wanted more children, she understood the government?s need to adopt such a drastic policy. Without it, the population today would be 1.6 billion, not 1.2 billion, and all of the money that went into buying capital goods would have been spent on food imports instead. The country would have stagnated at its 1980 per capita income of $100/year. There would have been no Chinese economic miracle. She was very proud of her one son, who was a software engineer at Microsoft (MSFT) in Beijing.

Her husband, a mid level official at the Ministry of Commerce, fared less well, dying of lung cancer at a relatively early age. The US and Europe had exported their worst polluting industries to China to take advantage of lax environmental controls, turning the air in Beijing into a choking haze. Sometimes her son would come home from school coughing and wheezing so badly that he couldn?t play outside. The two packs of cigarettes a day her husband smoked didn?t help either.

Imported From the USA

I asked if she recalled our first trip together and a dark cloud came over her face. We were touring a section of Fuzhou when three policemen marched up. They started shouting at Wen that we were in a restricted section of the city where foreigners were not allowed. They started mercilessly beating her with clubs.

I was about to intercede when my late wife, Kyoko, let go with a blood curdling tirade in Japanese that froze them in their tracks. I saw from the fear in their faces that she had ignited their wartime fear of Japanese authority and the dreaded Kempeitai, or secret police, and they beat a hasty retreat. To this day, I?m not exactly sure what Kyoko said. We took Wen back to our hotel room and bandaged her up, putting ice on the giant goose egg on her head. When I left, I gave her my copy of HG Well?s A Short History of the World, which she treasured, as the book was then banned in China.

Wen mentioned that she was approaching the mandatory retirement age of 60, and soon would be leaving the Foreign Service. I suggested she move to San Francisco, which offered a thriving Chinese community and home prices that had recently dropped by half. She laughed. No matter how much prices had fallen, she could never afford anything here on a Chinese civil servant?s salary.

Wen told me that China was grateful for the billions of dollars that foreigners had poured into her country as a result of my writings. I replied that I was simply trying to show my readers where to make some money, nothing more. It was pure opportunistic self-interest. One of my recommendations, for Chinese search engine Baidu (BIDU), was up more than tenfold in less than two years, (click here for the call). Did she happen to know about any more future Baidus? Wen said that she wasn?t that close to the stock market, but that she would get back to me.

I asked Wen if she still had the book I gave her nearly four decades ago. She said it had become a family heirloom, and was being passed down through the generations. As she smiled, I notice the faint scar on her eyebrow from that unpleasantness so long ago.

In view of Wen?s comments, I think you have got to buy the Chinese ETF (FXI), which is the principle lagging emerging stock market this year, once the ?RISK ON? trade comes back into favor. You also better revisit my stock picks in the area, including Baidu, China Mobile (CHL), and China Telecom (CHA).

The Great Race for Battery Technology

Diary

One hundred years from now, historians will probably date the beginning of the fall of the American Empire to 1986. That is the year President Ronald Reagan ordered Jimmy Carter?s solar panels torn down from the White House roof, and when Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping launched his secret ?863? program to make his country a global technology leader.

The End is Near for the US

Some 26 years later, the evidence that China is winning this final battle is everywhere.? China dominates in windmill power, controls 97% of the world?s rare earth supplies essential for modern electronics, is plunging ahead with ?clean coal?, and boasts the world?s most ambitious nuclear power program. It is a dominant player in high-speed rail, and is making serious moves into commercial and military aviation. It is also cleaning our clock in electric cars, with more than 30 low cost, emission free models coming to the market by the end of 2012.

Our only serious entrant in this life or death competition is the Tesla Model S-1,which I will be writing on in greater depth in a future issue. ?The stripped down basic version costs $58,000 with a 140 miles range. For $100,000 you can get a souped up 300 mile range. General Motors? (GM) pitiful entrant in this sweepstakes, the hybrid Chevy Volt, has clearly been a marketing disaster. They are easily being overtaken by superior, cheaper technologies offered by multiple Chinese models, Japan?s Nissan Leaf, and a third generation Toyota plug-in Prius.

Tesla Model S-1 and Avid Passengers

This is all far more than a race to bring commercial products to the marketplace. At stake is nothing less than the viability of our two economic systems. At the moment, China?s state directed socialism is winning. By setting national goals, providing unlimited funding, focusing scarce resources, and letting engineers run it all, China can orchestrate assaults on technical barriers and markets that planners here can only dream about. And let?s face it, economies of scale are possible in the Middle Kingdom that would be unimaginable in America.

Nissan Leaf

The laissez faire, libertarian approach now in vogue in the US creates a lot of noise, but little progress. The Dotcom bust dried up substantial research and development funding for technology for a decade. A ban on government funding of stem cell research, for religious reasons, left us seriously behind in that crucial field. An administration that believed that global warming was a leftist hoax, coddled big oil, and put alternative energy development on a back burner. Never mind that the people supplying us with 2 million barrels of crude a day are trying to kill us through whatever means possible. But Americans are finally figuring out that we can?t raise our standard of living selling subprime loans to each other, and that a new direction is needed.

Toyota Prius

Mention government involvement in anything these days and you get a sour, skeptical look. But this ignores the indisputable verdict of history. Most of the great leaps forward in US economic history were the product of massive government involvement. I?m thinking of the transcontinental railroad, the Panama Canal, Hoover Dam, the atomic bomb, and the interstate highway system. If the government had not funneled billions in today?s dollars into early computer research, your laptop today would run on vacuum tubes, be as big as a skyscraper, and cost $100 million.

Meet My New Laptop

I mention all of this not because I have a fascination with obscure automotive technologies or inorganic chemistry (even though I do). Long time readers of this letter have already made some serious money in the battery space. This is not pie in the sky stuff; this is where money is being made now. I caught a 500% gain hanging on to Warren Buffet?s coat tails with an investment in the Middle Kingdom?s Build Your Dreams (BYDFF) two years ago. I followed with a 250% profit in Chile?s Sociedad Qimica Y Minera (SQM), the world?s largest lithium producer. Next came Xide Technologies (XIDE), with a 70% pop. These are not small numbers. I have been an advocate and an enabler of this technology for 40 years, and my obsession has only recently started to pay off big time.

We?re not talking about a few niche products here. The research boutique, HIS Insights, predicts that electric cars will take over 15% of the global car market, or 7.5 million units by 2020. Even with costs falling, than means the market will then be worth $225 billion. Electric cars and their multitude of spin off technologies will become a dominant investment theme for the rest of our lives. Think of the auto industry in the 1920?s. (BYDDF), (SQM), and (XIDE) are just the appetizers.

All of this effort is being expended to bring battery technology out of the 19th century and into the 21st. The first crude electrical cell was invented by Italian Alessandro Volta in 1759, and Benjamin Franklin came up with the term ?battery? after his experiments with brass keys and lightning. In 1859, Gaston Plant? discovered the formula that powers the Energizer bunny today.

I Don?t Look 151 Years Old, Do I?

Further progress was not made until none other than Exxon developed the first lithium-ion battery in 1977. Then, oil prices crashed, and the company scrapped the program, a strategy misstep that was to become a familiar refrain. Sony (SNE) took over the lead with nickel metal hydride technology, and owns the industry today, along with Chinese and South Korean competitors.

BYD F3

We wait in gas lines to ?fill ?er up? for a reason. Gasoline has been the most efficient, concentrated, and easily distributed source of energy for more than a century. Expect to hear a lot about the number 1,600 in coming years. That is the amount of electrical energy in a liter (0.26 gallons), or kilogram of gasoline expressed in kilowatt-hours. A one kilogram lithium-ion battery using today?s most advanced designs produces 200 KwH. Stretching the envelope, scientists might get that to 400 KwH in the near future. But any freshman physics student can tell you that since electrical motors are four times more efficient than internal combustion ones, that is effective parity. The additional savings that no one talks about is that an electric motor with five moving parts has no maintenance cost versus the endless bills generated by the 300 overcooked parts in a gasoline engine.

This kind of performance doesn?t come cheap. Lithium-ion batteries currently cost $1,000 per KwH to produce. That means that the 600 pound, 24 KwH battery pack that will power my soon to be delivered Nissan Leaf costs $24,000, more than two thirds of the vehicle?s total $32,000 price tag. Hence, the need for government subsidies to get private industry over the cost/production hump. Nissan, Toyota, Tesla, Fisker, and others are all betting their companies that further progress and economies of scale will drive that cost down to $300 per KwH. That will make electric cars cheaper than conventional hydrocarbon powered ones. Take crude up to $150-$200/barrel, which I believe is a virtual certainty in coming years, and the global conversion to electric happens much faster than anyone thinks.

Yes, it seems to be all over for the US but the crying, unless Nobel Prize winner and Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu has anything to say about it. In a desperate attempt to play catch up, President Obama has lavished money on alternative energy, virtually, since the day he arrived in office. His stimulus package included $167 billion for the industry, enough to move hundreds of projects out of college labs and into production. However, in the ultimate irony, much of this money is going to foreign companies, since it is they who are closest to bringing commercially viable products to market. Look no further than South Korea?s LG, which received $160 million to build batteries for the Volt. Also, Finland?s Fisker, which scored $528 million to refurbish an abandoned GM Pontiac and Saturn plant in Joe Biden?s home state of Delaware in order to build its hybrid electric Karma vehicle.

Karma

Fortunately, the US, with its massively broad and deep basic research infrastructure, a large military research establishment (remember the Darpa Net), and dozens of still top rate universities, is in the best position to discover a breakthrough technology. The Energy Department has financed the greatest burst in inorganic chemistry research in history, with top rate scientists pouring out of leading defense labs at Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Argonne National Labs. There are newly funded teams around the country exploring opportunities in zinc-bromide, magnesium, and lithium sulfur batteries. A lot of excitement has been generated by lithium-air technology, as well as much controversy.

In the end, it may come down to whether our Chinese professors are smarter than their Chinese professors.? In 2007, the People?s Republic took the unprecedented step of appointing Dr. Wan Gan as its Minister of Science and Technology, a brilliant Shanghai engineer and university president, without the benefit of membership in the communist party. Battery development has been named a top national priority in China. It is all reminiscent of the 1960?s missile race, when a huge NASA organization led by Dr. Werner Von Braun beat the Russians to the moon, proving our Germans were better than their Germans.

Anything for a Green Card

Consumers were the ultimate winners of that face off as the profusion of technologies the space program fathered pushed standards of living up everywhere. I bet that?s how this contest ends as well. The only question is whether the operating instructions will come in English?or Mandarin.

Its Easy, Just Read the Manual