This is a guest contribution by Damien Hoffman, editor of the very popular Wall St Cheat Sheet blog.

Rogers is one of the most respected investors in the world. I had a chance to chat with him the other morning to get more details about some of his recent comments in the media …

Damien Hoffman: Jim, you were in the media a few times last week and I want to follow up on a few points you made. You said on Bloomberg that Nouriel Roubini did not do his homework regarding the asset bubbles about which he is now warning. Can you explain what homework he did not do?

Jim: All of it. How can you talk about a bubble when assets such as

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This in from the Wall Street Journal on the somewhat disturbing, political dimensions of Russia's Nord Stream pipeline.  Approved just last week by Finland and Sweden after ecological concerns were overcome, the project is now ready to get off the ground, or rather under the ground.  For the pipeline will traverse the Baltic Sea floor to Germany, rather than crossing overground through former Eastern bloc countries; a divisive move, Alexandro Peterson suggests:[ . . . ] The Nord Stream project is part of an exclusionary agreement between Moscow and Berlin--nicknamed in circumvented Warsaw the "Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact," after the 1939 Soviet-Nazi deal to carve up Poland. It would have been much cheaper to build an overland pipeline ...

I'm grateful to the commenter John who guided me toward this link for the report sponsored by the Swedish Ministry of Defence on energy security and the North European Gas Pipeline, otherwise known as Nord Stream.  I was a little too hasty and did not see the link in the New York Times story.  One reason I may have missed this one is that it was published in back in 2006 - meaning we would certainly have to add to the quoted number of times (55) that Russia has cut energy supplies to apply political pressure.  At any rate, here is the section from the paper that details the methodology of coercive energy policy.

Russia's Coercive Energy Policy in Aggregated Terms

If these cases are penetrated and put in a wider context, a pattern emerges, namely that the energy lever can

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Earlier this year, Clenergen Corp. announced its first major power purchase agreement with the Power Trading Corporation (NASDAQ: PTC) of India for the purchase and sale of 71 MW of power, which is to be generated by Clenergen’s new biomass based power project in Tamilnadu. This purchase agreement has a value of up to $80.0 MM USD per year for 15 years, totaling to $1.2 Billion.

Clenergen India’s Honorary Chairman Dr. Arvind Pandalai, who has helped formulate various policies of the Government of India over a 32 year career, believes that his home country is the ideal place for Clenergen to initiate its global agenda. He stated, “The expertise of Clenergen’s management team and the strength of its proposition at a time when India and the rest of the world is demanding cleaner, more accessible electricity are truly compelling.”

The residential and business

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This post is a guest contribution by Niels Jensen*, chief executive partner of London-based Absolute Return Partners.

It is not universally appreciated, but the last 25-30 years have, in general, been staggeringly good to most investors. Technology induced productivity enhancements combined with favourable demographic trends, minimal government involvement, accommodating labour unions and the globalisation of international trade have all contributed to a benign inflation environment and strong economic growth, leading to arguably the biggest bull market of all times in both bonds and equities.

So much for the good news. The long lasting tail winds have finally turned around, and we now face, and will most likely continue to face, head winds for years to come. The list is long, but some of the most important factors contributing to this change include:

The demise of the Anglo-Saxon consumer driven growth model:

The Anglo-Saxon consumer is exhausted; he

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Yesterday on Foreign Policy Christian Caryl published one of those "Russia-more-isolated-now-than-ever-thanks-to-their-own-policies-of-confrontation" type of articles.  We are beginning to see this topic come around and around ever since the Ukraine smackdown, but the trend has been building over the past number of years - I would say well before the war with Georgia.  What I like about Caryl's piece is that he points out that it certainly doesn't have to be this way, and that Russia's missteps with its neighbors could be easily corrected should the leadership ever get it right.

Russia's ability to get in its own way remains a cause for much head-scratching in the region. "When they tried to stop NATO enlargement, whom did they discuss it with? The United States and Germany," notes Kadri Liik, Director of the International Center for Defense Studies in Tallinn, Estonia. "But in fact

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Capstone Turbine Corp., the world’s leading producer of microturbines for localized generation of electricity, today announced an order for three of their large C800 microturbines, capable of generating 800 Kw of electrical power, for use with a major wastewater treatment facility in Brazil. The total order is valued at over $2 million and represents the company’s first sale of the C800 in South America.

The order comes from Fluxo Servicios de Petroleo, Capstone’s distributor in Brazil. It is for a wastewater treatment plant serving millions of residents in two cities. The plant treats 4,500 liters of sewage per second, and will use the microturbines in a combined heat and power application. The microturbines will run on methane generated during the treatment process. In addition to producing 2.4 megawatts of electricity to power the plant’s equipment, any excess heat will help maintain the proper temperature in the plant’s onsite waste digester.

Darren

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The world may be headed for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production. The scenario may come true according to Dr. Fatih Birol, the chief energy economist at the respected International Energy Agency (IEA). The IEA is charged with the task of assessing future global energy supplies by countries of the OECD – Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Recently, the IEA conducted the first-ever assessment of the world’s major 800 oil fields, which cover three quarters of global reserves. The IEA found that most of the biggest fields have already peaked and that the rate of decline in oil production is now running at nearly twice the pace as calculated just two years ago. On top of this, there is a problem of chronic under-investment by both oil companies and oil-producing

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Profiting From Oil – Peak or Not

Tony Daltorio, The Investment U Research Team

It seems like the only times that the financial media talks about oil is when they mention either demand destruction in the United States or an inventory buildup of fuel, etc. in the United States.

The financial media is doing a real disservice to millions of investors in two ways.

The first is by ignoring the rest of the globe when it comes to demand for oil. For example, China imported a record amount of oil in July – 4.6 million barrels a day, up 42% from last July.

This record monthly figure is well above the previous peak of 4.1 million barrels of oil a day set in March 2008, when the financial media said that China was simply stockpiling oil ahead of the Olympics.

The second

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Oil has risen to over $70 a barrel for the first time in a month.  Bulgaria's new government will continue to support the South Stream gas pipeline, but is as of yet undecided on whether to abandon its nuclear power plant, which was set to be constructed by Atomstroiexport.  Oil and Gas Eurasia reports that the country's Economy and Energy Minister, Traicho Traikov, has pledged Bulgaria's determination to continue to work both on Nabucco as well as the Russia-backed pipeline.  Russia increased its gas exports by 20% in July compared with June as prices fell.  The New York Times looks at the questions surrounding Ukraine's recently brokered loan from international lenders as doubts surface about whether the money will suffice to ward off a winter gas crisis.  The $1.7 billion loan is considerably smaller than the $4 ...