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It is indeed an old adage that while goods things are to be preferred over bad things it is possible to get too much of the former. Looking at recent comments from the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia it is not difficult to imagine how these, albeit old and worn, pearls of wisdom may well have inspired Mr. Stevens in his effort to tiptoe the thigthrope between signalling the intention to raise rates into an expected economic recovery on the one side and trying to prevent the Aussie shoot of on helium into the sun with wings of wax on the other.

(quote Bloomberg)

Australia’s central bank Governor Glenn Stevens signaled a surge in the nation’s currency to near parity with the U.S. dollar has given him scope to slow the pace of future

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Luke Harding has two pieces on Russian climate change in today's Guardian: an audio report on Northern-Siberia's seasonal shifts, and a special report on the Yamal peninsula.  Rumors abound that China, Japan, Russia and France have been in secret talks on using an alternative to the dollar for oil trading, but OPEC's Secretary General says that, even if there were to be a shift, it would be a long process, and that 'tradition' would make it difficult.  Serbian oil monopoly NIS, majority owned by Gazprom Neft, has signed a $100 million loan with Bank of Moscow on the back of Medvedev's Belgrade visit.  Italy, Russia, and Turkey, have signed a joint statement on the construction of the Samsun-Ceyhan oil pipeline linking Turkey's Black Sea coast and Mediterranean coast (the New York Times has a special report today ...

When Freshwater Meets Seawater, Look Out!

by Robert Williams, Publisher

Get this. Energy is now being generated from the collision of seawater and river water. It’s called osmotic power. And the world’s very first plant to generate such power is expected to open next month at Tofte, outside of Oslo by Norway’s state-owned electricity company, Statkraft.

It’s ingenious. The power is generated by energy retrieved from the difference in the salt concentration between seawater and river water.

How’s it work?

Both components – saltwater and freshwater – are funneled into separate chambers, divided by an artificial semi-permeable membrane. The salt molecules in the seawater pull the freshwater through the membrane, increasing pressure on the seawater side.

The pressure comes in the form of a 120-meter water column or waterfall that can be utilized in a power-generating turbine. (Read the entire article

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Your co-editor is in Oslo, Norway, after a brief spell in his native Dublin. The contrast is stark.  The Irish economy soared during the good years, helped by low European interest rates and an unusually bubbly property boom.

The fall from grace has been spectacular. Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s recently downgraded Ireland’s sovereign debt to AA with a negative outlook.

The problem is the Irish government is doing its best to emulate Team Obama’s ‘solution’ to the financial crisis: prop up failed banks with capital injections and transfer banks’ bad loans to the taxpayer. As a result, Ireland is expected to see its national debt climb to more than 120% of annual GDP – a level even higher than other AA-rated eurozone countries.

By contrast, in Norway the financial crisis feels like a distant event. Your co-editor has been mightily impressed by how well everything works here. And the Norwegians,

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Alex#8217;s Notes: This makes me think back to something I read recently #8220;The borrower becomes servant to the lender#8221;. Apparently Norways frugal ways have allowed it to thrive in the current environment. ***** Thriving Norway Provides an Economics Lesson Espen Rasmussen for The New York Times Published: May 13, 2009 OSLO — When capitalism seemed on the verge of collapse last [...]div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=TfUHf1lwExk:ZU2OCaYtMxo:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=TfUHf1lwExk:ZU2OCaYtMxo:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?i=TfUHf1lwExk:ZU2OCaYtMxo:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=TfUHf1lwExk:ZU2OCaYtMxo:7Q72WNTAKBA"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=TfUHf1lwExk:ZU2OCaYtMxo:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?i=TfUHf1lwExk:ZU2OCaYtMxo:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=TfUHf1lwExk:ZU2OCaYtMxo:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=TfUHf1lwExk:ZU2OCaYtMxo:l6gmwiTKsz0"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?d=l6gmwiTKsz0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?a=TfUHf1lwExk:ZU2OCaYtMxo:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/YourFinancialFuture?i=TfUHf1lwExk:ZU2OCaYtMxo:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a /div

Erling the frenetic A portrait of a journalist against the background of a fortunate country Grigory Pasko, journalist Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда. The Norwegian television journalist Erling Borgen is sanguine and choleric in one package. He is large and emotional. He knows how to captivate people with his non-indifference to life. He stirs up public opinion with his documentary films, forcing people to think about things that lie on the surface. Norwegian video journalist Erling Borgen (photo by Grigory Pasko) Like, for example, the marble embankment along the waterside in Oslo or the Millennium Square in Bergen. To force people to think – in all of history this has been a not-easy matter, and at times even dangerous. But Erling is ...

Sankta simplicita Grigory Pasko, journalist Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда. There exists such a legend. When on the campo dei Fiori in Rome they were burning Giordano Bruno at the stake, the bonfire suddenly began to die out: either the wind began to blow, or the firewood had gotten damp. From the crowd of onlookers observing the execution, to the pyramid of firewood on which Giordano was tied, there suddenly lunged a sweet little old lady and carefully put an armload of dry straw into the dying flame. The fire flared up with new strength. Looking at this scene, Giordano exclaimed: "Sankta simplicita!" (Holy simplicity!) (It is possible that this story took place at the execution of Jan Hus… In the given instance not this is important). Recently in Oslo the Norwegian Helsinki ...

Sankta simplicita Grigory Pasko, journalist Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда. There exists such a legend. When on the campo dei Fiori in Rome they were burning Giordano Bruno at the stake, the bonfire suddenly began to die out: either the wind began to blow, or the firewood had gotten damp. From the crowd of onlookers observing the execution, to the pyramid of firewood on which Giordano was tied, there suddenly lunged a sweet little old lady and carefully put an armload of dry straw into the dying flame. The fire flared up with new strength. Looking at this scene, Giordano exclaimed: "Sankta simplicita!" (Holy simplicity!) (It is possible that this story took place at the execution of Jan Hus… In the given instance not this is important). Recently in Oslo the Norwegian Helsinki ...