User 169775's Comments Stream Stats
- 60 Comments, 0
, 0 
- Total Comment Stream rating - = 0
- Free E-Newsletters
- About Seeking Alpha
- About Us
- Contact Us
- What's New
- Readers Feedback
- Advertise With Us
- Contributors
- Contribute an Article
- Feature Your Book
- Our Contributors
- Anonymous Contributions
- Dispute an Article?
- Legal
- Terms of Use
- Privacy
- Copyright
Will Toyota Lose Its Edge?
I can go one better than 98101-- My Prius has no alternator, starter, or timing belt to go bad, and since it uses regenerative braking, it does not need a brake job until 100,000 miles. Try that in a regular car! :-)
GM Looks Beyond Oil
Trying to recover fissionable material from spent fuel rods requires an enormous amount of equipment and chemical reactants, all of which will be radioactively contaminated over the course of the fuel reprocessing and will end up as nuclear waste that requires long-term storage.
Check out the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State where they have industrial plants that produced Plutonium for the U.S. nuclear weapons program by recovering Pu made from Uranium-238 in breeder reactors. Those facilities are so badly contaminated with radioactivity that they cannot be safely demolished when the DOE stopped producing weapons-grade Plutonium there. Those facilities will remain hot zones for thousands of years.
What the nuclear physicists and engineers need to do is figure out how to produce energy via nuclear fusion. That presents a much smaller danger in terms of radioactive waste.
Visa and Mastercard: The Mortgage Brokers of the Credit Card Industry
Mastercard, Visa: Q1 Earnings May Be Fine, But Guidance Will Be Weak
2008 Beijing Olympics: Ctrip.com to Get the Gold
Visa of course has had its blockbuster IPO back on March 19, and while the stock might be a bit overvalued right now, it is sure to benefit from the Beijing Olympics because of its status as an Olympic Partner. The implications can be huge:
- Visa as an Olympic partner is the exclusive payment system of the games. They won't take Mastercard, American Express or any other credit card at the Olympics.
- Visa's publicity exposure will be immense-- Their TV commercials and brand placement will be on the TV sets of over a billion Chinese people during that time period, which may lead to an increase in Visa cards issued in China and rise in transactions (which is how Visa makes money).
- Travelers these days find it more convenient to use credit cards rather than traveler's cheques or buy local currency.
Something to consider.
Visa: The Most Successful New Stock in Years?
Personally, I would be inclined to hold until after 4th Quarter to see what effects the Beijing Olympics will have on Visa.
The Prius Conundrum
- Gas gets more and more expensive over time. The more expensive gas gets, the more I save over a comparable car (in the Prius's case, its most directly compares to a 4-cylinder Toyota Camry in size.)
- I got a $3200 Federal Tax Credit for buying my Prius back in 2005.
- AND THIS MOST PEOPLE DON'T TAKE INTO ACCOUNT-- The Prius has LOWER maintenance costs than a regular car. My Prius does not need a brake job until 100K miles because it uses regenerative braking, and since it does not have a multiple-gear shifting transmission, it does not need a tranny fluid change until 60K miles. It does not have a starter or alternator to go bad, and it doesn't have a timing belt either.
After driving the Prius, normal cars just feel so primitive.
Exxon Mobil Diversifies Into the Hybrid Car Market
Obvious motive there, that is why nobody with a brain cell takes that "report" seriously.
CNW Marketing wanted to accuse Toyota of pollution by using nickel in its batteries, which is complete BS considering that:
- Stainless steel manufacture uses thousands of tonnes of nickel per year.
- Ditto manufacture of jet engines with high-temperature nickel alloys.
- And the U.S. Mint uses more nickel per year to mint its coins than Toyota can ever use to manufacture Prius batteries.
Funny thing is, even GM is hopping onto the hybrid bandwagon these days, using the same nickel metal-hydride batteries as the Toyota hybrids in cars such as the Yukon Hybrid, the Malibu Hybrid, and the Saturn Vue Green Line.
Pot, Kettle, Black!
Green Awareness Among Online Auto Shoppers
I don't doubt if it's true or not... I just find it funny since Saturn does not exactly have the greenest cars on the market, considering GM's "hybrid" system in the Saturns are just a regular drivetrain with an extra large alternator and battery pack, and doesn't get much better mileage than its all-gasoline counterpart.
Visa: The Most Successful New Stock in Years?
As far as floats go, Mastercard has 160 million shares floated while Visa has 440 million Class A shares.
Options for Visa are trading right now, but the short interest as percentage of float is very small (I don't think it's even 1%), so no, the shorts are not keeping this stock down. Visa's share price isn't going to change very much until after the first couple quarterly reports come out so investors can better evaluate thie company's performance.
Visa: The Most Successful New Stock in Years?
Actually, Visa does not charge the customer per transaction. The price a consumer pays for a purchase is the same, cash or credit.
And when is the last time you ever saw anyone buy anything with cash on the internet? Plastic will never totally replace cash, but Credit cards are necessary in this day and age.
Visa: The Most Successful New Stock in Years?
Visa IPO Aftermath: Europe’s in Trouble, China’s Buying in Bulk
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Virtually all of the cards issued in that network in China are Visas or Mastercards.
Visa, Mastercard Risk Ramped Up Competition
Microsoft has been sued continuously for the past 15 years for anticompetitive practices everywhere in the world. They are still here and still profitable.
Mastercard faces many of the same litigation Visa is undergoing, and that has not prevented its equity from rising 400%.
It seems to me all you need is a team of lawyers who know how to obfuscate and drag things out, which every multinational corporation has legions of on retainer.
Credit Cards by Country
Vast majority of people in China and India are subsistance farmers?
Sorry dude, you must be living in the 1980s. Ever wonder why almost everything you see on Walmart's shelves is labeled "Made in China"?
The chief economic engine driving China today is manufacturing, not subsistence farming, which is why the latest UN population report says 40% of China's population live in urban areas.
Visa stands to get a huge market share boost during the Beijing Olympics this year-- They are the exclusive payment system for the Olympics (sorry, they don't take Mastercard or American Express), and Visa's commercials and branding will be flooding Chinese TVs this summer.
Maybe that's why Visa chose to go public during these troubled times.