Companies featured in this edition of the newsletter: ACTC, CUR, CVM, DKAM, ENZ, IMUC, MFGD, NXOI, OMCM, ONEZ, PSID, XSNX

Markets continued to carry momentum during the early stages of last week, as the absence of significant economic news led to a continuation of the upward trend characterizing the past few weeks, until an earnings miss from Dell on Thursday led to a selloff in the technology sector which caused the major indices to end the week mixed. All told, the Dow ended the week in positive territory, gaining 47 points to close at 10318, up 0.5% on the week and 17.6% on the year. The Nasdaq surrendered 1.0% to close at 2146, paring its YTD gains to 36.1%, while the S&P 500 and Russell 2000 lost 0.2% and 0.3% respectively, reducing their yearly gains to 20.8 and 17.1.

Things got off to a strong start on Monday, with the

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This post provides links to a number of thought-provoking articles I have read over the past few days that you may also find interesting.

• Matt Taibbi (Taibblog): An inside look at how Goldman Sachs lobbies the Senate, September 29, 2009.

Samuel Brittan (Financial Times): A cool look at the current deficit hysteria, October 1, 2009. In the early Victorian period the debt ratio was nearly 200 per cent and almost reached that level again in the early 1920s.

• Edmund Conway (Telegraph):  An inconvenient truth: financial crises are inevitable, October 1, 2009. The IMF’s new early warning system to avoid crises such as the credit crunch is doomed to disappoint.

• Edward Harrison (Credit Writedowns): The recession is over but the depression has just begun, October 1, 2009. This post discusses why we are in a depression, not

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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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Events, particularly these days, tend to outrun the best laid plans to anticipate research trends. And it might seem that this was true in the case of this conference, sponsored by UCSC's Santa Cruz Center for International Economics, the Journal of International Money and Finance, and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The conference was planned last year, at a time when most academic researchers were aware and concerned about the incipient economic slowdown, and whether the major economies would "de-couple", and in turn how these factors would impact the constellation of global imbalances.

As it turns out, the papers were all, in my opinion, remarkably germane to issues we're concerned about right now: how the composition of debt determines vulnerability to crises, the effect of capital controls on capital flows, the role of the IMF, and the usefulness of macroeconometric models to predict exchange

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eDOORWAYS Corp (EDWY.OB) has created a new portal that takes the best of existing websites, such as MySpace, Craigslist, and eBay, to the next level. The company envisions that the portal will become an interactive global community of experts, consumers, and service provides that will streamline the way people find new products and services.

Founder Gary Kimmons has over 30 years of creating market-driven concepts. He first earned a Bachelor degree in Behavioral Science from William Marsh Rice University and a Masters degree in Management Science from Stevens Institute of Technology at Rutgers. Kimmons spent the early portion of his career in human resources. He was the Director of Training and Development at Smith International from 1978 to 1981, then moved on to serve as a Human Resources Manager at Reading & Bates Corporation from 1981 to 1987. Between 1988 and 1992, Kimmons

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Trading on the OTCBB, mPhase Technologies, Inc. focuses on developing and commercializing a new battery technology. Headquartered in Little Falls, New Jersey, they do this through their wholly owned subsidiary AlwaysReady, Inc. They base their technology on a well-patented phenomenon known as electrowetting. This phenomenon provides a unique way to store energy and manage power.

Research groups at several universities including MIT, Rutgers, and the University of Wisconsin are now publicizing their work on electrowetting and superhydrophobicity and superlyophobicity. They are working to create “smart” structures on metal, ceramic, or polymer surfaces that resist getting dirty, fogging up, or forming ice. These structures can find use on displays, lenses, as well as other applications.

mPhase Technologies Inc. is looking to use this phenomenon in their Smart NanoBattery. They are looking to manipulate the liquid electrolyte via a proprietary silicon structure - a porous membrane - coupled with

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eDOORWAYS Corp. (EDWY.PK) is on a mission to connect consumers with goods and services through its unique Internet portal. The company was founded by Gary Kimmons, an innovative leader with over 30 years experience in creating market-driven concepts for companies.

Kimmons earned a bachelor degree in Behavioral Science from William Marsh Rice University and a Masters degree in Management Science from Stevens Institute of Technology at Rutgers. Early in his career, Kimmons worked at First City Bank and Bell Telephone Laboratories. He then became a corporate management development specialist with Geosource.

Starting in 1978, Kimmons served as Director of Training and Development at the Smith International. In 1981, he moved on to be the Human Resource Development Manager at Reading & Bates Corporation. Between 1988 and 1992, Kimmons served as President, CEO and founder of Gary Anthony, INC., a company marketing specialized business products

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