Everybody has probably already heard about the first exercises of the CSTO rapid reaction force in Kazakhstan today, where President Dmitry Medvedev wanted to make sure he was the most well dressed autocrat to show up to the party.  I do often wonder if the Kremlin hired the same people George W. Bush used to use to stage manage these kinds of Hollywood-esque media performances.  From Reuters:Dressed in combat fatigues, the leaders of Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan looked on as the force carried out a mock attack to destroy "insurgents" who had taken control of a chemical plant. Smoke rose from a dew-drenched firing range in the Kazakh steppe, revealing paratroopers landing from helicopters and storming a building ...

China is Investing Billions in Renewable Energy One firm has already built China’s largest wind turbine manufacturing factory. And it’s working with the Chinese Science Academy to develop new wind, solar, and geothermal technologies… for which it will own 70% of the rights. But this company’s business reaches far beyond the Chinese border, with operations in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe. It’s first quarter net income increased by 294% over a year ago. Click here for the full report.

A $15 billion deal for liquefied natural gas (LNG) involving Australia, China and global-oil heavyweight Exxon-Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) has prompted many investors to worry that China may be using its global-markets muscle to “paper over” cracks in the global economy.

In reality, however, this mega-deal is a harbinger of what’s to come, and highlights the road that global investors must travel in their journey …

“They were hunters. They stayed here during the Ice Age, probably hunting reindeer,” said the archaeologist in charge of the site. “But who were they?”

“They were Cro-Magnon…they were like us…human. They wore jewelry. They drew pictures. They cooked meat. And they used this cave over a period of 30,000 years…”

Yesterday afternoon, we drove up the valley to a limestone cave owned by friends. There, a group of 20 scientists, archeologists and volunteer workers are digging down through 30,000 years of history, about 20 feet worth of dirt, rock and sediment, 5 centimeters at a time.

We’ll come back to the pre-historic world in a minute. First, let’s catch up on what is going on in the world of finance, right now.

Yesterday, most of the news and commentaries concerned either the death of Edward Kennedy or the life of Ben Bernanke. We do not speak ill of dead, not here at The

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After earning hefty profits on its commodities trading for nearly 18 years, heavyweight trader Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) now finds itself on the hot seat, defending this crucial source of revenue. And while that may not be good for Goldman, it’s also bad for investors.  Let me explain…

It all started back in 1991, when J. Aron & Co., Goldman’s commodities-trading division, recommended that a large institutional client invest about $100 million in commodities.  The vehicle “du-jour” was Goldman’s own investment vehicle, the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (now the S&P GSCI Commodity Index).

The GSCI is a 24-commodity dollar-weighted index, comprised of 70% energy (oil and natural gas), 8% industrial metals (aluminum, copper, lead, nickel and zinc), 3% precious metals (gold and silver), 14% agriculture (wheat, corn, soybeans, cotton, sugar, coffee and cocoa) and 4% livestock (cattle and hogs).

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DrStockPick.com Stock Report!

Monday August 17, 2009

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UnitedHealthcare, a UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:UNH) company, announced it will launch the Connected Care program in Colorado, giving patients in certain rural locations expanded access to physicians and specialists using advanced telehealth technology. The Colorado program is among the first in UnitedHealthcare’s work with Cisco (NYSE: CSCO) and others to build a national telehealth network.

Harbin Electric, Inc. (Nasdaq: HRBN), a leading developer and manufacturer of a wide array of electric motors in the People’s Republic of China, today announced that it closed the sale of an additional 937,500 shares of common stock at the public offering price of $16.00 per share, pursuant to

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Has the massive Obama stimulus plan put us on a collision course with virulent inflation?

It sure looks that way.

Let me explain …

When the U.S. Commerce Department on Friday said the U.S. economy contracted at a 1% annual pace in the second quarter, the report was actually seen as good news: It was a slower decline than in each of the two prior quarters, and economists had expected a contraction of 1.5%.

“This is good news,” Nariman Behravesh, an economist with IHS Global Insight Inc. (NYSE: IHS), told The San Francisco Chronicle.

But here’s the wild card: Although government spending did increase during the April-to-June quarter, only about 7.7% – $60.4 billion – of U.S. President Barack Obama’s stimulus package had actually made its way into the U.S. economy by June 30, the quarter’s official conclusion. Of that total, the largest component went to U.S. states to …

Has the massive Obama stimulus plan put us on a collision course with virulent inflation? It sure looks that way. Let me explain …

When the U.S. Commerce Department on Friday said the U.S. economy contracted at a 1% annual pace in the second quarter, the report was actually seen as good news: It was a slower decline than in each of the two prior quarters, and economists had expected a contraction of 1.5%.

“This is good news,” Nariman Behravesh, an economist with IHS Global Insight Inc. (NYSE: IHS), told The San Francisco Chronicle.

But here’s the wild card: Although government spending did increase during the April-to-June quarter, only about 7.7% – $60.4 billion – of U.S. President Barack Obama’s stimulus package had actually made its way into the U.S. economy by June 30, the quarter’s official conclusion. Of that total, the largest component went to U.S. states to help defray the jump in

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As we all know, the depression is over. The stock market seems to think so… with the Dow up 32 more points on Friday… and apparently eager to go higher. Oil rose above $64. And gold is trading at $937 this morning.

Friday, two more banks – the Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) and Citigroup (NYSE:C) – announced impressive results. Between them, they made $5.4 billion in the last quarter.

These follow announcements earlier in the week from JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) and Goldman (NYSE:GS). As reported in this space, Goldman set the pace by reporting that it has managed to earn more than $1 billion per month in the 2 nd quarter of this year. It said it did so by helping clients raise money… refinance… and restructure.

Goldman made so much money that it has set aside more than $11 billion so far this year in compensation for its

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Do you remember the first time you saw a rain drenched Peter Finch scream, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”? We do. We were too young to see Network in the cinema (the movie came out the year we were born: 1976). Instead, we watched it late one night on TV. And we’ll never forget the moment when Finch’s character, news anchor Howard Beale, arrives in the television studio in his tan raincoat with a deranged look on his face and begins to speak to camera.

I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there’s nobody anywhere who seems ...

Remember the good 'ole times from back in the summer of 2006?  Russia was about to host the G8 Summit, Anna Politkovskaya and Stanislav Markelov were still alive and working hard, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky had only been in the gulag 2.5 years and undergone only one show trial.  Earlier that spring, the Council on Foreign Relations also published quite a critical paper entitled "Russia's Wrong Direction" which ruffled some feathers, but would later of course turn out to be quite prescient.The report was chaired by former Congressman Jack Kemp, who expressed optimism that the G8 Summit to be held in St. Petersburg that summer could be a useful forum to get things back on track and enlist Russia's help on ...