India Inc Set to Raise Rs.50k Crores Through IPOs in 2010.
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Domestic companies seems set to get on with the huge fund raising exercise this year with plans to raise over Rs 50,000 crore via public offers, driven by the sharp recovery in the stock market.
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Almost 50 companies have already filed the draft prospectus with the market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI).
This depicts at the healthy prospect of the strong IPO market after the encouraging revival of IPO market in 2009.
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Indian companies had raised about Rs 20,000 crore through IPOs in 2009.
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Market Experts feel that fund raising can go up to Rs 50,000 crore this year since Government has already planned to sell shares in a host of public sector companies by way of IPOs and follow-on public offers (FPOs).
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Five companies aiming to raise over Rs 300 crore have already received the regulator’s clearance for the IPO, if draft prospectus filed with the SEBI is anything to go by.
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“The IPO pipeline looks strong in 2010.
Also the way the government is pushing ahead with the disinvestment plan, fund raising can go up to Rs 50,000 crore by the end of the year,” SMC Capitals Equity Head Jagannadham Thunuguntla said.
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As part of its disinvestment plans the government intends to raise over Rs 20,000 crore by way of FPOs of NMDC, SAIL, NTPC, and REC.
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Some of the prominent private companies which have their IPOs lined up, beside this, include Jindal Power, BPTP, Reliance Infratel, Emaar MGF etc;
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“Of the total IPOs that are in the pipeline, as many as 16 are from real estate sector. However, their success is a bit doubtful as the appetite for realty IPOs are currently less,” Thunuguntla added.
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Primary market fund raising in 2008 saw 30 IPOs mopping up Rs 17,000 crore, but shares of many these companies gave the investors modest-to-good returns.
Jeffrey Gitterman is an award-winning financial advisor and the founder and CEO of Gitterman & Associates, LLC www.gittermanassoc.org. In these challenging economic times, Jeff recently started Beyond Success www.beyondsuccessconsulting.com, a consulting firm, coaching and seminar training company that brings more contemporary spiritual, holistic and ethical values to the business world.
He has been a top requested and keynote speaker at numerous national conferences for the financial, insurance and spiritual capitalism markets, directly engaging with 10 to 15,000 business professionals annually. His first book, Beyond Success: Redefining the Meaning of Prosperity, was published in May by AMACOM, the publishing house of the American Management Association.
Over the past several years, Jeff has been featured and interviewed in several national and local print, TV, and radio programs, including Money, CNN, Fortune Small Business, New Jersey Business Journal, Financial Advisor, News 12 New Jersey, and The Dr. Pat Show. He also serves as chairman of the advisory board to the Autism Center of New Jersey Medical School, an organization that raises significant monies each year for autism research and support services.
Gitterman recently read an article about Max Planck, who won a Nobel Prize for his work with atoms. After years of study and research, Planck eventually said that he could only know one thing–that some invisible force holds together energy to create this minute solar system, and he must assume, based on his research, that some higher intelligence is behind this force.
Gitterman was born with some understanding that the world was made of energy. He didn’t buy the story that kept showing up in front of him, whether it was his parent’s story, his schoolteacher’s stories, or the stories in the news. He just didn’t buy it. He saw the world as energy. And Gitterman actually saw that the only thing that was really important was the joint flow between human beings and how that energy was working and processing.
And what he saw in the eyes of everybody he looked at as a kid, until he got older and met some people with wisdom, were people who were looking to take energy from others. The reason for that, he thought, was that most people felt a big void within themselves. Gitterman loves the fact that the word “a-void” means to turn away from something. We all spend our lives avoiding the void. And in truth, the void is us. It’s us at our purest essence. It’s us in the silence; it’s us in the quiet. That was something he kind of lived in; he lived in the void. But then he would come out and see these people who were miserable, wanting and lacking. They weren’t producing anything in their lives; they couldn’t get enough money, they couldn’t get enough of anything no matter how much they stole, borrowed or tried. They couldn’t get enough into their lives.
He also recently learned that the root word for money in the Hebrew language is flow. That really blew him away, because it was something that he had thought about for much of his life.
“There is nothing you can do to create money because money is just a flow, and it’s the flow of energy that is the root of capitalism. Capitalism and money in and of themselves are just neutral. There is no inherent action to either of them.
There is nothing we can do to create energy either, as the only thing we can really do with the flow of energy is allow or block it from coming into our lives. When I talk about energy, I often use the metaphor of a laser. While sunlight in its natural form is a source of warmth, it doesn’t have much power because it’s spread out in so many directions. But when it’s focused and concentrated through a magnifying glass, it suddenly becomes far more powerful. And when the power of light is condensed to a much greater degree, it becomes a laser that can cut through steel.”
So if everything is ultimately made of energy and this energy is just kind of flittering around, what focuses that energy? Attention focuses energy. But most of us don’t have control of our attention. Most of us know what we want, but few of us know what we want to give. And our attention has to be grounded in serving based on our unique creative expression in order for it to have power. That doesn’t mean you can’t have money, but Gitterman can show you plenty of people that are miserable and have more money than they know what to do with. So for us as a society, the measure of money as success is really our own fault.
“I’m going to bring this back,” Gitterman writes. “Some people have intentions that serve the world, and others don’t. Then there is everyone else. And what happens to our energy if we have no vision for ourselves? We get swallowed up into people around us whose intention is stronger than ours.
Marianne Williamson, although it is often credited to Nelson Mandela, has a quote in her book, A Return to Love, that talks about the fact that we all play too small. On an energetic level, when we play too small, we give our energy to others around us who want it. And believe me, people want it, because they’re trying to accomplish things. It’s just happening at an energetic level where we’re not seeing it. So we follow along while someone else has a vision of the world that doesn’t suit ours, whether it’s people on Wall Street, in the government, or whatever. And if we’re just witnesses, we fall in blindly and give up our intention to the people that have a vision for the future that they want.”
Gitterman continues; at the surface level, we can’t see this going on, but on an energetic level it’s happening. And that’s why so many of us feel drained and filled with void. Because we literally have had the energy sucked away from us so someone else can realize their vision and goal.
“My financial services company is based around a model I’ve been teaching for several years called the Four Pillars of Success. These pillars are relatively simple, but if practiced with sincerity can have dramatic results:
“PILLAR ONE is that we have to have some practice rooted in silence. I don’t care what it is. I stand for all religions and spiritual practices: whatever it is that allows you to get in touch with your Source. Because in my mind and on an energetic level, it’s almost like we’re an electrical appliance, or a hybrid car; one of the old ones that you had to plug in. At some point in the day we’ve got to plug in. I recommend at least 5 to 15 minutes every day. I don’t care if it’s sitting in the shower if that’s the only place you can find any quiet, because that’s actually where I get mine. Fifteen minutes every morning in the shower with the water running, in the quiet, because I have an autistic child that starts talking at 6 a.m. when he wakes up and doesn’t stop until 10 p.m. when he goes to sleep, and that’s about the only 15 minutes of silence I can find. So we have to have a practice rooted in silence, and from a scientific measure, we’re just recharging our energy. Otherwise we go out in the world and have nothing to share.
“PILLAR TWO is that we have to have an idea of what our unique creative expression is in the world: i.e. what each of us feels we have been placed on this earth to do. And it doesn’t have to be right. Because as Norman Schwarzkopf once said in a seminar I saw him give, was that the worst thing he saw in the army was that no one was making any decisions. The only way to know that anything is right is to make a decision, and if it’s wrong, correct it. I would say the same thing for individuals, because most of us spend our entire lifetime waiting for someone to tell us what our unique expression is, or kind of knowing what it is but waiting for someone to come and reinforce it. So pick something, literally, that you sense is your unique expression, and seek to build a life around it that offers something to the world.
“PILLAR THREE is that you have to have a forward vision, three to five years out, of what your unique creative expression looks like in the world. The way I teach people to do this is to have a two to three minute movie that you can play in your head all day long, especially as you go to bed at night. A two-minute movie of you and what a day in the life of you looks like: the house you live in, the car you drive, where and what you do at work. Are you singing to an audience? Are you best plumber in the world? Are you the best insurance salesman, doctor, accountant or basketball player? What does that vision look like three to five years out in a perfect day in the life of you? And then give it up to the universe because in all likelihood that vision, while it may come true, will find reasons to change and grow as you make it bigger and better. We need to give our energy a direction to move in. It’s critical that we do that. Otherwise, we flounder. It’s like getting in our car without a navigation system and driving around with no idea where we’re going.
“PILLAR FOUR is that what we do has to be grounded in service. There is nothing to get. If I can leave you with any message, it’s that. There is nothing to get. There’s no money to get; no love to get; no sex to get; no happiness to get. There’s nothing to get that isn’t already in us. The world shows up and reflects what we are. If we have lack in our life, it’s because we’re holding on to lack within ourselves. If we’re seeing things we don’t like, it’s because we’re seeing things within ourselves that we don’t like. There is nothing outside in the world that we could possibly get that could fulfill us except to fulfill our own dreams of who we are.
So what is success?
“If I had to give a definition, I would say success is to be aligned with our unique creative expression in service to the world as much as possible. I’m going to say that one more time. To be successful is to be aligned with our unique creative expression as much as possible in service to the world.
“I used to have a radio show called Beyond Success: Redefining the Meaning of Prosperity, where I talked to many people who in my mind were successful, and those were mostly people who got to do what they loved to do all the time. That could be a ski bum who skis 300 days a year and manages to do that on a $20,000 a year job in a ski shop in the off season. Or it could be someone like William McDonough and Michael Braungart, who wrote Cradle to Cradle, a phenomenal book about how to create products that have no waste. In the book they talk about a guy who created a wrapper that disintegrates and leaves plant seeds in the soil when you throw it on the ground. It’s being marketed in India right now. They also talk about another guy who created the seats in the new double-decker airbus airplane that are 100 per cent edible. There’s no carcinogenic runoff at all and they could literally be digested without doing any harm. Not that you would want to eat the seats, but they were created because of the runoff that is currently in most of the plastics in cars and airplanes.
“There are two other things that I really like to think about. One is the computer and the other is the Internet. I have no real knowledge of how either of these work, but I think everything that’s showing up is a forerunner for what’s going to happen to human consciousness in the future.”
There is a book out at the moment called Consciousness by mathematician Norbert Wiener that talks about this very phenomenon. At one point you had a hard drive sitting on your desk and that was it. There was no communication with the outside world. That’s how individuals mostly still operate today, ego based minds where at some level, there might be a universe out there that we’re all connected to, but there’s no real communication between individuals and that universe. Wiener goes on to say that the Internet is a forerunner for what consciousness is going to look like some time in the future, where we will all literally be connected through a neruo-net, and the Internet is showing us the way for how that is going to happen.
We’re obviously not there yet and I’m not saying we shouldn’t get out there and vote, or speak out against things that aren’t appropriate, but if we’re not aligned with our unique creative expression and bringing that to the world in service, then we’re not transforming the world. The world again is literally a reflection of us, and if we don’t know what we’re doing, and feel filled with void and lack, is it any wonder that the world shows up like that as a reflection?
“It is my hope that these ideas will leave you thinking about you, what you’re doing here and how you’re aligned with your energy. It’s my sincere belief that this is what will truly change the world.”
For quite a long time, Gitterman was very unsuccessful – he had debt, depression – the whole nine yards. But then one day, he came to the realization that he needed to change his attitude from “what can I get from others” to “what can I give to others” in every personal and business interaction he had. Very soon after he did this, he became very successful in a relatively short period of time.
Around the same time that he had the above realization, he also realized that money and wealth cannot remain static – and by this I mean it cannot be hoarded and kept for oneself – but instead needs to be shared with others in a constant state of flow. In turn, the more he was able to help others acquire wealth without being concerned with what was in it for him, the wealthier he became.
Jeff’s book, Beyond Success; Redefining the Meaning of Prosperity, promotes four central or CORE concepts:
Connecting to Source
Everything in this world is a movement of energy. The more aligned we are with what we call the Source energy of the universe (others might call it God, Higher Intelligence, etc. , the more we can accomplish. In order to do this, we need to have some daily practice of silence/meditation. It doesn’t matter what technique you use – but take some time each day to quiet your mind and senses so that you can develop more control over your thoughts and interactions throughout the day. You will be able to think more clearly and function more effectively.
Owning your Unique Expression
There is something specific that each of us is here to do. Enacting our unique purpose in the world is a greater source of fulfillment than the possession of any object. Are you working in a job/industry that truly represents what you feel you are here to do in this world? If not, perhaps its time to start thinking about how you could move towards combining your true passions in life with your career.
Redirecting your Attention
Investing our attention towards the future gives us the energy to become who we hope to be. Have a clear sense of vision as to where you want to be in 3-5 years. Create a 2-3 minute “movie” in your head as to where you would like your life and your career to go. Much of the book is based on the idea that our thoughts are the foundation for the results in our lives, therefore we must learn to focus our thoughts in the direction we would like to see our lives and careers go. The only way to see if this is really true is to put it into practice with sincerity and for an extended period of time and see if it is actually so.
Expanding your Awareness
The key to true success is to find a way to give. Giving is not an afterthought to success but rather the foundation. Find a way to give to others rather than look for what you can get in all of your dealings and interactions. It may seem like a cliche and somewhat of a paradox, but it does seem to be true that the more you give the more you will receive. Again, the only way to see if this is really true for yourself is to put it into practice and see if it is actually so. Our sense is that you will be amazed as to how your life will change and your career will grow if you do.
Since success often comes with a great deal of responsibility, Gitterman leads a very full and busy life. In addition to being the founder and CEO of Gitterman & Associates www.gittermanassoc.org and Beyond Success Consulting www.beyondsuccessconsulting.com, Gitterman is married to his lovely wife Leslie and has four children: Justin, Joelle, Jake and Gianna. On a day-to-day basis he is running both companies and enjoying life with his family. Jeff’s son Jake is autistic, and he also serves as the chairman of the advisory board to the Autism Center of New Jersey Medical School, an organization that raises significant monies each year for autism and research support services.
The back of our business cards read, ” To be successful is to be aligned with our unique creative expression in service to the world.” To this Gitterman would add that silence and stillness are far too underrated in our society. Take some time every day to be silent and still in whatever way works for you. Identify what you believe your purpose in this world is, and find a way to offer that purpose to others in service. In turn, you will be so busy doing what you feel you are meant to do, that happiness and abundance will find their way to you on their own.
It is easy to let your winter gardening plans to over load your summer abilities. When considering raising a flock of chickens or a few rabbits, Don’t Forget Properly managed gardens require a great deal of your time and effort. Soil preparation begins as soon as the soil can be worked. The amount of time and effort expended is dependent on garden size and whether you will be using hand tools, garden fork, shovel to till the soil or if you have power tools such as tillers or garden tractor.
Have a plan. First decide what you ‘really’ want to grow. Grow what you like to eat! Don’t plant a row of cabbage if you only eat one head of cabbage every three months! My summer garden plan is a simple one. I plant what I like to eat fresh from my garden, no cooking for me thanks.
Cucumbers, bush goose neck squash, bush tomato’s, peppers both hot and mild sweet bell pepper. I plant a few radishes, white, red and yellow onions and beets. Garlic was planted back in late November.
No zucchini, lettuce or other cool weather vegetables. Most cool weather vegetables do not do well here in our dry hot spring and summers.
Crop planting. Do Not, I say again do not crowd your plants. Your big, empty garden can become over grown and untenable in a short time if you over plant and crowd your plants. Lets start small and work up from there. First if you buy seed, follow planting dated, spacing and depth instruction on the package. Remember the 2-3-4 rule. Width of 2 fingers is about 1 – 1 1/4 inches, 3 fingers cover about 2 inches and 4 fingers will give you about 3 inches. This is an easy way to properly space seeds when planting. Small seeds are difficult to plant one at a time but it is worth the effort to do so.
Larger plants like pepper need a minimum of 24 inches between plants, bush tomato’s require 36 inches minimum and vining tomato’s as much as 5 or 6 feet between plants even when staked or caged to allow easy access for harvesting and to allow for good air circulation. Cucumbers allowed to vine on the ground can take up as much as 8 feet of garden space for each vine. I think a better way to manage cucumbers id to grow them on a 6 foot or taller trellis. I purchased two 52 inch tall stock panels and use three T-post to support them. At end of season you can easily disassemble them and they require little space for winter storage.
Melon’s can easily take up to 10 or more feet of space. The real question is how large is your garden and is it really worth giving up that much space for a few melon’s?
Nice people are not good gardeners! You must be unforgiving. Diseased and non-producing plants should be ripped out! Replant with something that requires a shorter growing season. By July you should be thinking about what plants need to be pulled up and developing your fall garden plans. Removal of used up plants is a good thing. It helps control the number of damaging garden insects and helps control spreading disease to healthy plants. Depending on your planting zone, you may need to start planting you fall garden by late July or early August.
Patricia Cohen, the ex-wife of the hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen, has a new lawyer representing her in the civil racketeering lawsuit she filed against Mr. Cohen.
Gaytri Kachroo has taken over the case from Paul Batista, a New York lawyer. In various federal inquiries and hearings, Ms. Kachroo represented Harry Markopolos, the whistle-blower who spent a decade trying to warn authorities, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, that Bernard L. Madoff was running an extensive Ponzi scheme.
Ms. Cohen approached Ms. Kachroo soon after her case was filed in mid-December in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. “She felt her case wasn’t getting the attention it required,” said Ms. Kachroo, who is not a litigator but is a corporate lawyer with her own practice.
After reviewing the documents and learning of new facts that were not included in the original lawsuit, Ms. Kachroo said she decided to accept the case. “I think we have a very strong case, especially in light of the facts that we’ve uncovered,” she said. She declined to elaborate on those facts, but said they would be included in a new or amended complaint.
Mr. Batista, Ms. Cohen’s previous lawyer, said: “I wish her well. I’m surprised as I felt I gave her all the attention her case deserved.”
As in other divorces involving prominent business figures, the case threatens to turn a spotlight on private business dealings.
Ms. Cohen asserts that Mr. Cohen hid millions of dollars in marital assets when the two divorced more than 20 years ago. She says he lied under oath about his net worth, conducted mail and wire fraud, and concealed from her and the Supreme Court of New York millions of dollars he held in 1990, thus reducing her divorce settlement.
She also accused him of conceding to her in 1985, while they were married, that he had received inside information about the takeover of RCA by General Electric. Mr. Cohen runs SAC Capital Advisors, a hedge fund that manages $13 billion.
Ms. Cohen’s lawsuit, which seeks $300 million, was filed under a civil version of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, that is often used against organized crime and almost never used in divorce cases. It allows plaintiffs to seek triple damages.
Jonathan Gasthalter, a spokesman for Mr. Cohen, said: “Changing counsel does not change the fact that this is a completely irresponsible filing, entirely without merit.”
Lawyers say RICO cases have to meet unusually high statutory standards and such cases face a four-year statute of limitations. Ms. Kachroo said that she believed Ms. Cohen had plenty of time within the statute of limitations based on when she discovered the facts that underlie the case. “We have longer than people think we do,” she said.
Ms. Kachroo has 120 days from the time the case was filed to submit a new complaint or amend the current one; she can change venues as well. She will determine her next move soon.
Mr. Cohen is estimated to be worth $6 billion.
Billionaire’s Ex-Wife Hires New Lawyer in Civil Suit
Barron’s had a good editorial by Panos Mourdoukoutas, chairman of the economics department at the C.W. Post campus of Long Island University. His editorial, titled “Right Models, Wrong Sectors” claimed that Greece adopted a semi-Soviet, semi-Latin economic model, one which established a mixed-market system which tried to blend the best of both free markets and government. Unfortunately, according to Mourdoukoutas, government’s role was not well applied. Reading it, I wonder if he was writing purely as a critique of the Greek government or as a warning to the U.S government.
“…the Greek economy shares many similarities with the economic models established by the former Soviet Union and Latin American nations.
With the model of the former Soviet Union, the Greek economy shares the extensive presence of government in the business and professional lives of Greek citizens, controlling directly or indirectly more than 50% of the economy.
Though the Greek government is democratic, it runs the economy by borrowing the worst features of the former Soviet Union and the authoritarian regimes formerly common in Latin America.
The government is present in utilities, telecom, transportation, energy and banking, as owner, financier, entrepreneur, and manager, keeping afloat inefficient enterprises, employing hundreds of thousands of people, deciding what kind of products and services should be produced and how and when they should be delivered.
The government is present in the pension fund industry, as manager of employer-employee contributions, deciding who will retire, when they will retire, and what pension they will receive.
The government is present in the commodity markets, as regulator and gatekeeper, deciding who will pursue what kind of business, how they will pursue it and for how long; and in the resource markets; and in labor markets, setting labor compensation packages and employment conditions.
With the model associated with Latin America, the Greek economy shares a lack of a fair and transparent regime that sets the rules of the economic game, a vague interpretation of the law and frequent disruptions of business and public lives by the frequent protests of political minorities.”
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“…the Papandreou government nurtured a culture of vested rights and entitlements that included employment security, job security, 14 months of salary per calendar year, and the right to strike and protest against every effort of business modernization.”
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“The extensive presence of government in the economy constrains the efforts of Greek citizens to improve their own lives and the lives of fellow-citizens. The presence of government in publicly owned corporations and banks as entrepreneur and manager turns them into welfare agencies, rather than true enterprises, relying on taxpayers for their survival. The presence of government in the pension-fund sector as manager of employer-employee contributions turns pension funds into a ruling party revolving credit of line, to be periodically renewed by taxpayers. The presence of government in the economy as industry-gatekeeper limits the opportunities of the Greek people, creates, government fiefdoms, and breeds corruption.
The extensive absence of the government from the commons, most notably its failure to create a fair and transparent regime, constrains the ingenuity and creativity of the Greek people and the ability of citizens to better their lives. It replaces the ancient Greek culture of merit and fairness with a culture of nepotism and patronage.
Vague interpretation of the law and frequent protests by unions and left-wing radicals raise the risks associated with the pursuit of genuine business opportunities. They reinforce government bureaucracy and corruption, and above all, limit the ability of the government to develop a sound taxation system to finance its large presence in the economy.”
The concept of a nurturing Big Government which would see to the needs of all its citizens is a very tempting one. But the reality is that humans are not totally altruistic. We just haven’t evolved to that point yet. Power can be very intoxicating, and the more power we delegate to others (the government), the more risk we put ourselves in. There are very few people that can resist the temptations of a powerful office, especially when special interest groups are intent in gaming the system to their advantage. It’s no secret how much money gets showered on politicians. Very intoxicating indeed.
If there’s anything to be learned from the example of Greece, it’s that the promise of socialism, even if only partially adopted, is likely to excite in the short-run. But in the long-run, it is counter-productive, leading to incredible waste of resources and prevents its citizens from reaching their full productive potential. In the end, citizens slowly lose their liberties and, because of a learned dependency on Big Government, become slaves of the state.
The MacRib Test run of problems in 2008 for the 3Fs (Food, Fuel, and Finance) will culminate in widespread problems in 2010.
Maybe this can be expressed in a Pythagorean Theorem as Food^2 + Finance^2 = Finance^2. The mystery will be the final shape of the triangle. There is no known constant other than it contains a right angle.
I’ve already detailed my concerns over Finance as given in my post Financial Implosion Ahead in 2010 among others in the economics category of my blog.
I will briefly focus on food this morning by rewinding to the headlines of 2008:
Families have been warned that the prices of basic foods will rise steeply again because of acute shortages in commodity markets.
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The price of rice, which has almost tripled in a year, rose 2 per cent on the Chicago Board of Trade yesterday as the United Nations food agency gave warning that millions faced starvation because aid agencies were unable to meet the additional financial burden.
Bob Watson, the chief scientist at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, puts the rise in the price of commodity crops such as wheat down to a number of factors: higher demand for grain to feed livestock in China, where increasing affluence means more people want to eat meat; drought in Australia for three years, meaning it has had to import wheat; market jitters brought on by the sight of several countries stopping exporting grain; speculators seeing a chance to make money; and, of course, the sudden extra demand for food crops such as maize for use in biofuels, in both Europe and the United States.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24316114
Tight supplies may ultimately force Americans to adjust diets
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Now, news that some wholesale clubs appear to be seeing a run on food staples such as rice is raising the question of whether Americans could ever face a situation many of us can’t even fathom — a shortage of the food we take for granted.
The good news: Experts say the short answer is no.
“I really don’t see any chance of that,” said Jerry Bange, chair of the World Agriculture Outlook Board for the Department of Agriculture.
Still, that doesn’t mean Americans aren’t facing any food woes. The price of staples such as corn, wheat and rice have skyrocketed in recent years, and the cost increases are not expected to abate any time soon. For Americans, that means higher prices for everything from bread to meat, since cattle and other animals are raised on a grain-based diets.
Americans also are seeing the tightest supply of wheat since 1946, and soybean supplies also are uncommonly low. Although there is by no means a shortage, the situation could become problematic if weather patterns make for poor crops in the coming seasons.
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Food prices are rising, and supplies are tightening, for a number of reasons. These include a growing middle class in the developing world that is buying more food, an increase in the price of fuel used to produce and transport food and a move to plant more crops for ethanol and other biofuels instead of food. Weather also has been a factor, and a weak U.S. dollar has affected the situation.
…. “A number of us as consumers will have to adjust our food consumption patterns,” Hurt said.
– Bill Simmons talks about “Invictus” and “Blind Side.” I probably won’t see either movie (although I’ll definitely get the book for Blind Side). The important thing was he had a bunch of links to previous sports movies, which inspired me to add “61*”, “The Rookie”, and “Bang the Drum Slowly” to our Netflix queue. Given my love of baseball and Robert DeNiro, the fact I’ve never seen “Bang the Drum Slowly” is kind of a shock. Looking forward to them.
– Watched TNA’s Knockout New Year’s Eve. I thought for a long time that Michaels vs. Taker was my match of the year. Well, I was wrong. AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe vs. Christopher Daniels was amazing. Kurt Angle vs. Desmond Wolfe was a better pure wrestling match, but the triple threat was absolutely breathtaking. My first chance to see it and I was blown away. The ladies put on a good show too, but the ability to see three great matches I didn’t get to see the first time was well worth the time.
– Definitely going to pick up some kind of baseball game this year. I would LOVE a Head Coach style sim with real major league players. I typically only play 20 or 30 games before I get bored — I can’t remember the last time I finished a season in a baseball video game. Probably High Heat, come to think of it. Or Triple Play, a game that had no impact on reality (Say hello to 200 homers for Jim Thome in one season!) but was fun because every game was high scoring.
– My first Rise to the Throne game has gone well. I chose England (a safe choice to learn the new mechanics) and I’ve already conquered Ireland, Scotland and started colonizing Canada. Loving most of the new features. I inadvertently conquered most of Norway, but the herring-munchers kept rising up every time I left. Since Sweden was my ally, I sold most of Norway back to them, but got practically nothing in return. Such is life. Portugal has surprisingly colonized a lot of North America, mostly because Spain inherited France, which distracted them from the New World. Since Portugal is my ally too, not much I can do, but it means I’ll have to start kicking some Indian ass to expand.
– Actually enjoying Sorel’s Reflections on Violence. I never thought I’d like the writing of a socialist, but he’s remarkably clear and concise. His central argument — the only way socialism will succeed is through proletarian violence — makes logical sense. Parliamentary socialists are remarkably easy to co-opt and get distracted by shiny bourgeois things. Got seven books out of the library for my prelims this fall — three are done (John Stuart Mill, Nietzsche, and Freud). Sorel’s half done, after him it’s Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Gobineau). Only 40+ to go…
– The Browns are playing very well, but since it coincided with me not shaving, I have a playoff beard until the Browns lose again. Basically, I have to shave on Monday one way or the other. Mike Holmgren will be a good fit in the front office. I don’t think he’ll keep Mangini, but I’d personally like to see Mangini have one more year; he did a pretty good job in the draft and with Holmgren, I think next year will be even better. I must say that since Derek Anderson “won” again, I sincerely hope that we don’t screw with Brady Quinn again next year. Please, let him keep the starter’s job for one full season, just leave him alone. I don’t even want us to draft a QB in the draft unless he’s second day.
It is easy to let your winter gardening plans to over load your summer abilities. When considering raising a flock of chickens or a few rabbits, Don’t Forget