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Daniel Weiss discusses the American Clean Energy and Security Act and President Obama's clean cars program, and how they will affect our economy and our environment.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, currently with a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee, is intended to create new jobs, save Americans hundreds of billions of dollars in energy costs, reduce global warming and pollution, and wean the country off imported oil.

Madoff secretary says she thinks he's not cooperating with investigators to protect others

Bernard Madoff's longtime secretary said Wednesday that she believes the disgraced financier is not cooperating with authorities in order to protect others, and that he was a flirtatious boss who frequented massage parlors.

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Exchange-traded fund upstart XShares is taking on the industry giants by focusing on concentrated health, retirement and real estate funds.?

An exchange-traded fund (or ETF) is an investment vehicle traded on stock exchanges, much like stocks. An ETF holds assets such as stocks or bonds and trades at approximately the same price as the net asset value of its underlying assets over the course of the trading day. Most ETFs track an index, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the S&P 500. ETFs may be attractive as investments because of their low costs, tax efficiency, and stock-like features. In a survey of investment professionals conducted in March 2008, 67% called ETFs the most innovative investment vehicle of the last two decades and 60% reported that ETFs have fundamentally changed the way they construct investment portfolios.

A new firm thinks it has found a way to turn inventions from the nation's biggest research institutions into cash.

By: Jonathan Fahey, Forbes.com

After ten years of research, David Martin, a materials scientist at the University of Michigan, came up with a polymer that could help deaf people hear and blind people see. His poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene), or Pedot, could coat the electrodes used for stimulating and recording from the brain, making them smaller, more sensitive and more effective at treating deafness, blindness and Parkinson's disease, among other conditions.

By Jim Kim, FierceFinance

In 2006, JPMorgan designed some complex derivatives to allow clients to enhance their bets on funds run by the Fairfield Greenwich Group, which basically existed to invest with Bernard Madoff. The deal called for the bank to invest some of its own money with Madoff.

“Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley” (Opinion- WSJ: 12/22/08, by Michael S. Malone) is “on point”, but doesn’t address some of the additional culprits, the VC industry being partially responsible as well, because of their own culpability/cupidity.

Big questions will forever hang over the spectacular demise of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. The collapse of America's fourth-largest investment bank easily ranks as the single largest bankruptcy in history and one filled with staggering superlatives. Assets at the time of filing on Sept. 15 were $639 billion. Liabilities were $613 billion, or nearly 20 times the previous bankruptcy record set by WorldCom Inc. Lehman owed $150 billion in bond debt alone, more than the entire Russian debt default a decade earlier. Credit default swaps underlying Lehman's debt reached up to $400 billion.

By: Matt Kelly, Compliance Week

President-elect Barack Obama presented his economic team to the world this week. A new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commissioner was not part of the picture. That says a lot.

By Nick Hodge

Each day news stories break that smart investors treat as a series of "dots."

They absorb these dots, and connect them in such a way that trends emerge.

And if you've been paying attention, you'll have recognized a serious trend emerging.

Here are a few of those big dots:

The global economic crisis has cut funding for biotechnology companies to the lowest level in a decade, triggering bankruptcies and threatening development of drugs based on biomedical breakthroughs.

In the past month, at least five biotechnology businesses have sought bankruptcy protection, according to company news releases, and others may be heading toward a similar fate. Those at highest risk have experimental compounds moving into costly human research. Peptimmune Inc., a 6-year-old closely held firm, says it’s struggling to pay for clinical trials of its promising multiple sclerosis drug.

By Jim Kim, FierceSarbox.com

EDITORS NOTE:

Chances are you've gotten used to the old saw that Sarbanes-Oxley makes it cost prohibitive for small companies to go public on the U.S. markets. But I've always thought the languishing market for initial public offerings wasn't so simply explained. A recent study by David Weild and Edward Kim (no relation) of Grant Thornton, noted in IBD, has added some important nuance to the debate. They argue that the ills of the IPO market go further back than commonly thought. Specifically, the number of IPOs in a single year from 2000 to the present never exceeded the number of IPOs of any year in the 1990s, not even 1991, a recession year.

The tricky strategy of all-you-can-eat.
By Martha C. White

For a while this summer, it looked like the moderates might win out in the tug of war for the minds and stomachs of American diners. The culinary arms race of ever-larger portions had started to taper off, supersize became a dirty word, and commodity prices—including those of many basic ingredients—were skyrocketing.

But then consumers began slamming the brakes on spending. Restaurants, by nature a discretionary splurge, are feeling the pinch. Third-quarter same-store sales were down 2.5 percent at full-service restaurants, according to market research firm Technomic.

IEA Report All But Proves Peak Oil, Stokes Renewables

By Nick Hodge

If you've been reading these pages for any healthy chunk of time, you know where we stand on oil.

There's a finite amount of it. We've used about half. And the other half or so will be increasingly expensive and difficult to extract and refine, ultimately resulting sustained supply shortage scenario.

Those in the know would call this Peak Oil.

The Solar Stocks that Will Rise Above the Market Madness

By Nick Hodge

A record was set this week for the creation of the most efficient solar panel ever.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have successfully transformed 40.8% of the light that goes through their cell into energy.

FINANCIAL DISASTER!
We were warned a year ago, but did not listen . . .

The Comptroller General of the United States proclaims that our current standard of living is unsustainable unless drastic action is taken. He warns that funding shortfalls for the Medicare program is five times worse than Social Security, and it will take $8 TRILLION to pay for what is promised today to beneficiaries, of which we have ZERO!

This unrealistic "promise" is fiscally irresponsible and is mortgaging the futures of our children and grandchildren.

Watch as the federal government's dirty little secret is revealed!

Executive Summary
In today’s complex and dangerous world, U.S. law enforcement officials, first responders, and the private sector need timely, relevant, and actionable intelligence to secure the Nation against potential threats. Some of this intelligence can be produced with open source information – publicly-available information that can be disseminated quickly to an appropriate audience to meet a specific intelligence requirement. These unclassified intelligence products, derived from aggregated and analyzed information available from sources such as newspapers,periodicals,the Internet, scientific journals, and others can provide law enforcement with the actionable intelligence they need to enhance their capabilities and make tactical decisions about where to deploy their limited resources.

For the complete article, click here.

America has been failed by its government, and the nation now faces economic and security catastrophes unless its leaders change their ways, Wharton management professor Lawrence G. Hrebiniak concludes in his new book, The Mismanagement of America, Inc. He directs his severest criticism at the government's supervision of the Social Security Trust Fund and an intelligence infrastructure in which various agencies are no better at communicating with each other than they were before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

A corporation is a legal personality, usually used to conduct business. Corporations exist as a product of corporate law, and their rules balance the interests of the shareholders that invest their capital and the employees who contribute their labor. People work together in corporations to produce. In modern times, corporations have become an increasingly dominant part of economic life. People rely on corporations for employment, for their goods and services, for the value of the pensions, for economic growth and social development.

Are you starting to feel nostalgic for the 1980s?

While we're not seeing a huge spike in overtly hostile bids, we are seeing a lot of skirmishing. The list includes: Yahoo-Microsoft, InBev-Anheuser-Busch, and Electronics Arts-Take Two, among others. The sense is that the time to strike strategically may be now, with financial sponsors on the sidelines. In addition, Chinese companies have become increasingly aggressive. Since 2005, Chinese companies have launched 10 unsolicited takeover bids.

Zangani interviews Raymond King, Senior Manager - Global Business Development for TSX Group, a North American exchange and the world's largest exchange for small and mid cap companies.

Raymond discusses the TSX business model, and talks about the value proposition it offers both American and international companies, including those from Italy.

The Middle East has been growing date palms for centuries. The average tree is about 18-20 feet tall and yields about 38 pounds of dates a year. Israeli trees are now yielding 400 pounds/year and are short enough to be harvested from the ground or a short ladder.

Israel, the 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world's population, can lay claim to the following:

The cell phone was developed in Israel by Israelis working in the Israeli branch of Motorola, which has its largest development center in Israel.

Most of the Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed by Microsoft-Israel.

The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel. Both the Pentium-4 microprocessor and the Centrino processor were entirely designed, developed and produced in Israel.