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Wednesday, June 4, 2008

One Block off the Grid Launches

Great idea. Hopefully this will catch on Nationally as a trend.

One Block of the Grid is a competition in San Francisco to see which district can get the most San Franciscans to commit to getting solar energy on their homes, and they officially launch today, on the heels of the San Francisco Solar Incentive Program’s passage yesterday.

Health Costs After 65: Ouch, Even With Medicare

I talk to baby boomers in their late 50s and 60s all the time about medicare. They really don't have a clue about the program often assuming medicare has them covered.

I learned with my mother who is now 91 that theout of pocket costs just go up and up as you age and as benefits from Medicare decline. My mother who has lived a very healthy life now suffers from Alzheimer's. Prior to the onset of the disease she had never had a major illness or operation in her entire life.

Boomers will be shocked to learn what the term "donut hole " means.

Follow the clip link to read this very informative article.

clipped from www.usnews.com

These days, there's one milestone birthday plenty of people look forward to: the one when they become eligible for Medicare and can leave all their healthcare worries behind. That's the hope, anyway. But the reality is that turning 65 takes care of only a little more than half of subsequent medical expenses. Now a new study from the Employee Benefit Research Institute shows that a couple without employer-sponsored retiree coverage can expect to need anywhere from $194,000 to $635,000 to cover healthcare premiums and out-of-pocket costs during retirement.

A Tour of Risky Web Sites

Just over 4% of all Web sites are dangerous, according to a new report. But all bad sites aren’t created equal: Cyber bad guys are more likely to build their sites where it’s easy to do so.

clipped from blogs.wsj.com

McAfee found that 5% of addresses that ended in .com are risky, which is about average. The real risk comes from Web sites within more obscure domains, like .info, where 12% of the sites are risky. Also, sites registered in different countries have different degrees of risk. Nineteen percent of sites that end in .hk, the domain for Hong Kong, are risky, according to the report. Among the reasons: In order to encourage people to register .hk sites, Hong Kong allowed people to sign up for multiple sites at a time without filling out multiple applications, offered a two-for-the-price-of-one sale on .hk sites, and promoted the .hk domain overseas.

What's Really Pushing Gas Prices? Subsidies.

At its hearings Tuesday on "energy market manipulation" (no assumptions of innocent till proved guilty, there), the U.S. Senate's Commerce committee was champing at the bit to regulate, well, anything really that had to do with oil trading.

clipped from www.forbes.com

Several of its witnesses dutifully pointed the finger at oil market speculators, though billionaire financier George Soros provided a reality check on how effective regulating them would prove (see "Soros Tells Congress To Pop An Oil Bubble").

Half the world's population benefits from energy subsidies, which translates into a quarter of the world's gasoline production, they say in a note to clients. Though three-quarters of the world's gasoline consumption is taxed, those taxes vary hugely around the world, resulting in a spread of prices at the pump from five cents a liter in Venezuela to $2.70 a liter in Turkey. (It is about $1 a liter in the U.S.)

At the end of 2006, when oil was trading at $60 a barrel, only 10.4% of the world's gasoline consumption was taxed. That has now risen to 22%, Jen and Bindelli calculate, and oil has similarly more than doubled in price.

EF Hutton: In "Cap-and-Trade Craziness" what energy resource does Larry Kudlow NOT mention?

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Squawk Box
In "Cap-and-Trade Craziness" what energy resource does Larry Kudlow NOT mention?
Answer: geothermal

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The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crash of 2008 and What It Means

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Early Alzheimer's patients speak up for others

Those in early stages of disease increasingly lobby for better care, research.
To me this is very uplifting. My mother refuses to believe she suffers from Alzheimer's or dementia. This makes the situation much more difficult to handle. I am sure I am not alone in this.

Follow the link the clip to read the complete story.

clipped from www.msnbc.msn.com

Don Hayen has a handy way of deflecting the instant pity that comes when he reveals his Alzheimer's disease: "But I haven't lost my keys all day," he quickly jokes.

Hayen is part of a growing new movement in Alzheimer's: Patients diagnosed early enough to still be articulate and demand better care and better research. They are giving a voice to a disease whose victims until now have remained largely silent, and powerless.

It is a shift with big ramifications.

Monday, June 2, 2008

A Return of That ’70s Show?

Paul Krugman often has interesting opinions and insight. Right now he sees no real problem with inflation and gives his opinion in this article.

Agree? Disagree?

clipped from www.nytimes.com

But where are the unions demanding 11-percent-a-year wage increases? (Where are the unions, period?) Consumers are worried about inflation, but you have to search far and wide to find workers demanding compensation in the form of higher wages, let alone employers willing to accept those demands. In fact, wage growth actually seems to be slowing, thanks to the weakness of the job market.

And since there isn’t a wage-price spiral, we don’t need higher interest rates to get inflation under control. When the surge in commodity prices levels off — and it will; the laws of supply and demand haven’t been repealed — inflation will subside on its own.