Thought Garage

"Europe has been the largest solar energy market for years, but it has ceded some of the spotlight this year to India as India becomes a new frontier for American manufacturers." -  India: The Next Solar Frontier - Forbes

If you haven't watched this video earlier, most probably you wouldn't know how Silicon Valley got started in the first place. Or its just me. [Recorded: November 20, 2008] Today, Silicon Valley is known around the world as a fount of technology innovation and development fueled by private venture capital and peopled by fabled entrepreneurs. But it wasn't always so. Unbeknownst to even seasoned inhabitants, today's Silicon Valley had its start in government secrecy and wartime urgency. In this lecture, renowned serial entrepreneur Steve Blank presents how the roots of Silicon Valley sprang not from the later development of the silicon semiconductor but instead from the earlier technology duel over the skies of Germany and secret efforts around (and over) the Soviet Union. World War II, the Cold War and one Stanford professor set the stage for the creation and explosive growth of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley. The world was forever changed when the Def...

I had long believed that Capitalism and particularly the Private Sector is a key to a country’s growth and economic well being.  But looking at what Private Sector has done to US, I started having second thoughts on the whole idea. Read the following excerpt from TIME magazine that reveals Private sector failed to create any new jobs in US while still reaping profits and expanding its markets. Myth No. 3: The private sector will make it all better There is a fundamental disconnect between the fortunes of American companies, which are doing quite well, and American workers, most of whom are earning a lower hourly wage now than they did during the recession. The thing is, companies make plenty of money; they just don't spend it on workers here. Half of Americans say they couldn't come up with $2,000 in 30 days without selling some of their possessions. Meanwhile, companies are flush: American firms generated $1.68 trillion in profit in the last quarter of 2010 alone. But many...

In multiple interviews, Peter Schiff, explains that US Economy foundation is weaker and 'the game is over America'.  He also predicted in detail what markets are affected, credit crunch and how it will lead to recession, only to be laughed away by rest of the Pros on TV.  We all should have watched it earlier :-((

Good news for first time home buyers. You may defer tax up to $7,500 in your next year tax filings and you get 15 years to pay that tax amount. First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit at a Glance The tax credit is available for first-time home buyers only. The maximum credit amount is $7,500. The credit is available for homes purchased on or after April 9, 2008 and before July 1, 2009. Single taxpayers with incomes up to $75,000 and married couples with incomes up to $150,000 qualify for the full tax credit. The tax credit works like an interest-free loan and must be repaid over a 15-year period. For more visit http://www.federalhousingtaxcredit.com/index.html .

There is a silver lining to the economic turbulence in Indian markets. Net effect of the economic turbulence is that top 10 firms in fact notched up their market valuations. Breaking its six-week long losing trend, country's top 10 club added over Rs. 20,000 crores to the combined market valuation in the past week, even as Reliance Industries and Infosys suffered losses. The top 10 companies together gained Rs. 23,273 crores in market cap last week, while country's most valued firm Reliance Industries alone lost Rs. 24,063 crores from its valuation. Also IT bellwether Infosys' valuation declined to Rs. 6,371 crores in the past week. At the end of Friday's trade, the total market value of the 10 most valued firms, comprising six from public sector and four private sector entities, stood at Rs. 10,15,150 crores, up from Rs. 9,91,877 crores a week ago. ... As per the elite list of top 10 firms, RIL is followed by ONGC (Rs. 1,58,619 crores), NTPC (Rs. 1...

Why not bail out failed home owners, the root cause of the whole sub prime mess and financial blackout? Bailing out businesses will not help home owners, as the original problem is still left out, and only fixing side effects.

There was a significant hike in the prices of rice in US. Some varieties of rice is just not available any more in most Asian grocery stores. I heard that American top leaders including George Bush blaming India and China for the shortage saying that people from those countries are eating more as the middle class is becoming wealthy. As stupid as it looks, even if that is true it only expose the real issue behind US's own terribly huge consumption. [ Image Credits: Photo by Genemoo @ Flickr] Read the other post where I learnt that the problem with what and how America eats is a lot bigger and worse than it appears What is wrong with what Americans eat . I am trying to decipher the hidden meaning of these Market signals, and I found some surprising and totally shocking information on who consumes the most grains in the world. If I just say it, you probably won't believe it. So , I found this article that substantiate in real numbers. I put the information represented in th...

T-Mobile surpassed 30M mark in total subscribers by adding almost 1 million subscribers in the last quarter itself. T-Mobile USA amassed 981,000 net additions in the first three months, three quarters of which were post-pay customers. Another 1.1 million subscribers were added when its purchase of SunCom was consolidated on February 22. T-Mobile USA currently has a total of 30.8 million subscribers. The calling plan MyFaves was doing especially well in the US, with 5.5 million customers at the end of the quarter. SMS and MMS usage was also up from the same quarter last year, with 33 billion messages sent in Q1 2008 Earnings: Deutsche Telekom First Quarter Stable; T-Mobile Hit By Currency Declines - washingtonpost.com

If you have watched Al Gore's  Inconvenient Truth, you will remember the graph showing Fuel efficiency in USA and China and other countries. USA is far behind China as of now and will reach today's China fuel efficiency standards by 2020. That's lame for USA, otherwise dubbed as the high tech world with lots of innovation. If you also think that its lame and quite inefficient, think again. Consumer Reports argue that the new standard to raise fuel efficiency to 35Mpg by 2020 is not realistic, based on where we are today.  So, cars in USA might not even reach there and ask for extension to that deadline. Who knows? The new standards require all new passenger vehicles sold in the United States by 2020 to average 35 mpg. That's reported to be about a 40 percent increase over the current standards of 27.5 mpg for cars and 22.2 mpg for pickups, minivans, and SUVs. However, in our testing, reaching a real-world 35 mpg would require a bigger jump than that. The curr...

Mobile Web is increasingly gaining momentum in US and more Americans are now using Mobile devices to quickly search web.  While most men eagerly look up Sports on their Mobile devices, weather concerns most women followed by News and Entertainment. About 23 Million Americans have been reportedly using Mobile web. As per M:Metrics, here are the top 10 categories of news and information accessed by Cellular Subscribers in US: Weather News Sports Entertainment News Maps and Directions Movies Information Finance Information Business Directory Financial Account Access Travel Source: M:Metrics News

US Q3 2007, Best Selling Consumer Handsets: Note that 4 of the top 10 phones are by Motorola and not surprisingly Nokia is no where in the picture. The Strategy Analytics ProductTRAX program released its Q3 list of top selling consumer handsets in the US market. Motorola, with its RAZR and KRZR, and LG, collectively accounted for seven of the top best selling consumer handsets. Motorola RAZR V3 Motorola RAZR V3m LG VX8300 Apple iPhone LG Chocolate VX8550/8500 Motorola MOTOKRZR K1m Samsung SGH-A707 LG VX5300 Sanyo Katana II Motorola V323i/V325i Over Half of Mobile Phones Sold in Usa are 3g Models