Wednesday, February 18, 2009

A rare update

Started tapping in old names into Facebook from a pocket book I kept while traveling Australia in 96/97 and later on Thailand in 01. Great fun...a few people actually showed up. It will be interesting to see if they bite :)

Here is a nice view of the US stimulus package. Quite extraordinary how tax cuts make up one third of it. Much of it due to republican obstructions, of course - but really a world apart from the philosophy of the Europeans. I saw economist Paul Krugman comment on it today. I cannot believe how republicans still manage to push the image of fiscal responsibility...it's as if they're completely blind to historical facts.

Other than that, Vestas came out with a great annual report. The newspapers focused almost exclusively on the modest remarks made by Engel on possible layoffs. Really, it was just a realistic perspective on the credit crisis...very far from the actual results the company has achieved. I am hoping to save enough to buy Vestas stock before long. With a unprecedented 3-year PTC* extension and a US energy secretary named Chu, I don't see how Vestas stock is not some of the best long term investment one can do. Don't believe the stockbroker hype!

I got to shake hands with the Danish Prime Minister the other day during a government visit to our virtual reality center. Good fun, even if I kept to the shady background. Those VIPs are always a lot shorter than television suggests. The minister of finance is so much shorter than his partying record would suggest. Much respect to Bushwick Bill!
I also got an impression of the political skills of those people, when the PM afterward gave 3 or 4 almost identical interviews to the attending news media. He's a human sampler! I wouldn't be able to resist spicing things up a bit for the 2nd or 3rd journalist.

* Production Tax Credit - a US tax credit provided for producers of renewable energy.

Friday, February 06, 2009