Is There Wisdom in the Crowd?

Back in the 1960s, a clever but financially disadvantaged fellow placed a small ad in a national magazine that read something like: Money needed. Please send $1 to the address below. Do it today! No specific need was given, and nothing was promised in return, so that fraud could not later be charged.

Yet within a few months, thousands of dollars arrived in his mailbox, a considerable sum in those days. Or so the urban legend goes.

P2P Money

A half-century later, many things have changed, but one thing remains unchanged: People still need money, and they have not ceased to innovate ways in which to get it.

We have written extensively in this space about many of the P2P Internet connections that are transforming the planet... in commerce, in education, in the job market, and with business and social networking. The list of possibilities is truly endless. For yet another example, the world of money has been given a Red-Bull jolt by a fast-growing phenomenon known as "crowdfunding."

Previously,

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Demand for clean energy gives Chinese nuclear companies ample opportunities in overseas markets

 

Unsatisfied with being just a market and testing ground of new reactor technologies for developed countries, China is now looking to be an energetic developer of nuclear power plants around the world with ambitions that are poised to reshape the global nuclear industry.

Such trends became more visible after the Fukushima disaster in March 2011, as many Western nations like Germany, Italy and Switzerland decided to shelve nuclear energy plans due to safety concerns. The lingering financial crisis has also prompted many Western nations avoid overseas nuclear projects, thereby opening the doors for China in the global nuclear energy market.

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Another Layer of Bureaucracy for Oil and Gas Exploration in the US?

On May 11, 2012, the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) published proposed regulations governing "Oil and Gas; Well Stimulation, Including Hydraulic Fracturing, on Federal and Indian Lands." BLM is a latecomer to this party. Its belated meddling lacks practical or economic justification. Instead, the proposed BLM rule would drive oil and gas developers off federal and tribal lands. Complying with the rules is too complicated and costly. Producers can realize a much faster and much better return on their capital investment by developing oil and gas reserves on adjoining private lands.

Federal and tribal lands hold large reserves of oil and natural gas. At a time when the United States desperately needs to move toward, not away from, energy independence, it makes no sense to let bureaucratic meddling effectively place these valuable domestic reserves out of reach. The problems with BLM's approach are myriad.

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Japan's leaders give up on quitting nuclear power

Although Japan's 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster set much of the public against nuclear power, politicians are not convinced.

TOKYO

In mid-September, Japan said it would close all 50 of its nuclear reactors by "the end of the 2030s." Days later, the administration backtracked in the face of opposition from the main business lobby and some senior lawmakers in Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's own Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).

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A Romney Victory – Worth a Punt

The presidential elections in the United States are down to the last knockings and the race is far from decided. The polls are conflicting at best and misleading at worst. If it is indeed ‘neck and neck’ or ‘too hard to call’ or ‘within the margin of error’, then in a two horse race, both contenders should be even money.

Now,

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The Age of Personalized Medicine Is Near

By Chris Wood, Casey Research

Today, personalized medicine seeks to move away from the one-size-fits-all, trial-and-error approach that has defined drug R&D and patient treatment basically since the time of Galen of Pergamon in the 2^nd century AD. It increasingly focuses on matching the biological characteristics of each person with the best treatment options available and dosing for them, and in the future even perhaps the development of specific drugs for specific patients.

Truth be told,

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Forsys Metals sees uranium price soaring on demand spike

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Namibia-focused uranium project developer Forsys Metals believes that the price of uranium would top $83/lb by 2014 as nuclear power producers vie to secure long-term supplies.

Forsys CEO Marcel Hilmer on Friday told Mining Weekly Online he expected the price of uranium oxide (U3O8) to spike in the near term, as the current global supply of U3O8 was already significantly below the demand of about 170-million pounds a year.

The company is developing the Valencia and Namibplaas uranium projects, in Namibia, and Hilmer pointed out that the timing of advancing the projects was of critical importance, placing the company in a position to capitalise on the expected upturn in demand for the radioactive yellow product.

“I do not know of any other commodity, which could at the least, expect a 60% increase in demand,”

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Putin Is the New Global Shah of Oil

By Marin Katusa, Casey Research

Exxon Mobil is no longer the world's number-one oil producer. As of yesterday, that title belongs to Putin Oil Corp – oh, whoops. I mean the title belongs to Rosneft, Russia's state-controlled oil company.

Rosneft is buying TNK-BP, which is a vertically integrated oil company co-owned by British oil firm BP and a group of Russian billionaires known as AAR. One of the top-ten privately owned oil producers in the world, in 2010 TNK-BP churned out 1.74 million barrels of oil equivalent per day from its assets in Russia and Ukraine and processed almost half that amount through its refineries.

With TNK-BP in its hands,

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One Chart Explains Why Government Debt Is Dragging on the Economy’

By Dan Steinhart, Casey Research

The US has too much debt. This is no longer a controversial statement. Some may believe other problems are more urgent, or that we need to grow our way out rather than slash spending. But even the most spendthrift pundits acknowledge that the debt-to-GDP ratio of the US must decrease if we are to have a stable, prosperous economy.

The private sector has reacted to this over-indebted reality as you would expect: by deleveraging. Since 2008, households and businesses have extinguished of 67% of their debt when measured against GDP. Some paid debt down purposefully, and others defaulted. For our purposes,

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Mega Uranium Limited Up 52% in One Day

The shares of Mega Uranium Limited (TSX: MGA) put on 52% on the news that Queensland is set to re-commence uranium mining. Mega has two projects in Queensland, the Georgetown Project and the Ben Lomond uranium-molybdenum property are situated there.

The Ben Lomond project contains an NI43-101 compliant Indicated Resource of 1.33 million tonnes @ 0.27% U3O8 (7.9Mlbs U3O8) and an Inferred Resource of 0.6 million tonnes @ 0.21% U3O8 (2.8Mlbs U3O8).

The Georgetown Property

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