Veggie-Heavy Stress Reduction Regimen Shown to Modify Cell Aging

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

Veggie-Heavy Stress Reduction Regimen Shown to Modify Cell Aging

The fountain of youth may simply be a healthy diet and reduced stress after all, not a magic pill or expensive cosmetics. Comprehensive lifestyle changes, including more fruit and vegetables as well as meditation and yoga, were shown to reverse signs of aging at the cellular level for the first time in a study published today. Adopting a diet rich in unprocessed foods combined with moderate exercise and stress management over five years increased the length of telomeres, the ends of chromosomes linked to aging, according to a study of 35 men published in the Lancet medical journal. No previous study has shown the effect of lifestyle changes on telomere length, the authors said. Read more of this post

Filed under Health

Singapore’s greedy maid employment agencies

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

The greedy employment agencies

September 17th, 2013 |  Author: Contributions

While drinking tea at Katong shopping centre, I watched a brand new Bentley driven by a maid agency owner. At Katong shopping centre, there are full of maid agencies. The money from slave trade is good. Most of these owners owned 3 or 4 condos. How they make that kind of money to own such luxuries? Readers, a very cruel way: For 8 months, the maid works for free. The money goes to the agencies. Suppose the maid salary $500, if one month the agency closed say 1000 deals, that work out to $500,000 per month, around the areas, you can see vultures of Bangla and Indian workers trying to exploit these poor Indonesia maids. They know, the maids are vulnerable, as for 8 months, they have zero incomes. These maids were forced into part time prostitution. Read more of this post

Filed under Life

How Poverty Takes Over the Mind

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

How Poverty Takes Over the Mind

Suppose you got no sleep last night and you have to take an intelligence test today. If you’re like most people, you’re not going to do so well on that test. Now suppose you are struggling with poverty and you have to take the same intelligence test. How, if at all, will your test score be affected? Harvard University economist Sendhil Mullainathan and Princeton University psychologist Eldar Shafir offer a clear answer: You will probably do pretty badly. In a series of studies, they found that being poor, and having to manage serious financial problems, can be a lot like going through life with no sleep. The reason is that if you are poor, you are likely to be preoccupied with your economic situation, and your mind has less room for other endeavors. This claim has important implications for how we think about poverty and for how we select policies designed to help poor people. Read more of this post

Filed under Life

For Daisy Group founder Matt Riley, speed has been essential to building his business

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

September 17, 2013 4:52 pm

A fast route to success

By Andrew Bounds

Quick builder: Matt Riley was impatient on leaving school and eager to create a company

It is a long way from Nelson, in the northwest of England, to the City of London. But Matt Riley travels fast. In fact, the motorcycle-riding telecoms entrepreneur – whoseDaisy Group has just announced its first dividend four years after floating on Aim, the London Stock Exchange’s junior market – does everything quickly. His plain, windowless office, where the only decor is a sign proclaiming “cash is king” and a pyramid of baked bean tins, won in weekly football betting contests with staff, looks like it could be vacated at a moment’s notice. Read more of this post

Filed under Life

Personal Branding for Introverts

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

Personal Branding for Introverts

by Dorie Clark  |   1:00 PM September 17, 2013

I had just finished a talk at a leading technology company when an engineer approached me. “I liked your ideas about personal branding, and I can see how they’d work,” he told me. “But most of them aren’t for me — I’m an introvert. Is there anything I can do?” What he didn’t realize is that (like anestimated one-third to one-half of the population) I’m one, too. Despite the common misperception that all introverts are shy, and vice versa, they’re two very different phenomena. (Author and introversion expert Susan Cain defines shyness as “the fear of negative judgment,” while introversion is “a preference for quiet, minimally stimulating environments.”) I actually like giving talks to large groups (that day, there were 180 people in the room and another 325 watching online). I’m happy to mingle and answer questions afterward. But at a certain point, I’ve learned through experience, I have to get away and go somewhere by myself. Read more of this post

Filed under Life

DNA Double Take: Your DNA and identity are not as entwined as once thought. In fact most people have multiple genomes floating around, from mutations and remnants of pregnancies or twins

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

September 16, 2013

DNA Double Take

By CARL ZIMMER

0917-sci-GENOME-popup

From biology class to “C.S.I.,” we are told again and again that our genome is at the heart of our identity. Read the sequences in the chromosomes of a single cell, and learn everything about a person’s genetic information — or, as 23andme, a prominent genetic testing company, says on its Web site, “The more you know about your DNA, the more you know about yourself.” Read more of this post

Filed under Life

Does It Count as a Family Dinner If It’s Over in Eight Minutes? Parents Know About the Benefits to Children of Eating Together, But Many Are Looking for Ways to Make the Meal Last

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

September 17, 2013, 7:00 p.m. ET

Does It Count as a Family Dinner If It’s Over in Eight Minutes?

Parents Know About the Benefits to Children of Eating Together, But Many Are Looking for Ways to Make the Meal Last

DIANA KAPP

Dinner hour? Try dinner 20 minutes. Back to school for many families means back to the packed lineup of sports practices, music lessons and other after-school activities which on some nights can last into early evening. Add homework and parents’ long work hours, and it’s a wonder families ever have time for a sit-down meal. Yet many parents insist on maintaining regular family dinners and feel guilty when they fail, given the list of child-development benefits researchers say are associated with the ritual. These include better grades, healthier body weight, lower rates of cigarette and alcohol use, stronger relationships with parents and better overall mental health.

PJ-BQ601A_DINNE_G_20130917221816

Read more of this post

Filed under Life

Vending machine market in China poised for explosive growth

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

Vending machine market in China poised for explosive growth

Staff Reporter

2013-09-18

In early 2011, Huang Heng, a 24 year old from central China’s Hubei province, decided to leave his job as a migrant worker and profit from the summer heat by installing six automated vending machines inside the factory of Great Wall Motors in Baoding in northern Hebei province. The outcome of his venture far exceeded his wildest expectations as he sold 200 beverage cans on the first day, jumping to 300 the following day. Two and a half years later Huang now owns 120 vending machines, costing 30,000-35,000 yuan (US$4.900- US$5,700) each, while his total investment tops 4 million yuan (US$653,400). “I can recoup my investment for a machine in one and a half years on average,” Huang told the Chinese-language Global Entrepreneur magazine. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

Shanghai Free Trade Zone details to be delayed

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

Shanghai Free Trade Zone details to be delayed

Updated: 2013-09-17 23:48

By WEI TIAN in Shanghai ( China Daily) Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

Preferred Shares for China Banks Supported, but Direction from Gov’t Lacking; There is divergence, for example, over whether preferred shares should be classified as equity or bond investment for accounting purposes

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

09.17.2013 18:06

Preferred Shares for Banks Supported, but Direction from Gov’t Lacking

Financial institutions already preparing for launch, sources say, but are waiting for regulators to clear up range of issues

By staff reporters Wen Xiu, Zhang Yuzhe and Zheng Fei

(Beijing) – Despite overwhelming support for preferred shares in the banking industry, there is no consensus yet over how the financing instrument should be designed and regulated. Many banks have been preparing to launch preferred shares, but they need regulators to clear away legal ambiguity, sources from banks said. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

History and the rise of Shandong set challenge for Japan’s car makers in China

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

History and the rise of Shandong set challenge for Japan’s car makers in China

5:26pm EDT

By Norihiko Shirouzu and Kazunori Takada

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – A year after their China sales were battered by protests in a territorial dispute, Japan’s big automakers are finding it tough to bounce back in the world’s biggest market. Demand for cars is rising fastest in provinces where anti-Japan sentiment historically runs deepest – a legacy of Japanese occupation around World War Two. In relatively more Japan-friendly parts of southern China such as Guangdong, Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T: Quote,Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Nissan Motor Co (7201.T:Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Honda Motor Co (7267.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) are returning to sales levels near those seen before a diplomatic row last September over a group of rocky, uninhabited islets in the East China Sea. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

Chinese Internet Riled Up Over Detention of Corruption-Busting Microblogger

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

September 17, 2013, 9:40 PM

Chinese Internet Riled Up Over Detention of Corruption-Busting Microblogger

OB-UR401_crt_ya_DV_20120921123930

An image posted to Sina Weibo in Sept. 22 shows identified luxury watches worn by disgraced former Chinese official Yang Dacai. A number of Mr. Yang’s watches were identified with the help of microblogger Wu Dong, known online as Boss Hua.

China’s top social media site lit up Tuesday night following reports that one of its most celebrated corruption busters had been taken into police custody amid a renewed government effort to exert more control online. The official newspaper of China’s military, Liberation Daily, reported on its verified feed on Sina Corp.’s Weibo microblogging site that the microblogger known by the pen name “Boss Hua Has Lost His Golden Cudgel” was being interrogated by police in Beijing’s eastern Chaoyang district, though it did not say when or why he was taken away. A policeman answering phones in the Chaoyang district police station said he had no knowledge of the case. Calls to the station’s propaganda office rang unanswered Tuesday night. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

China’s Bosses Size Up a Changing Labor Force

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

China’s Bosses Size Up a Changing Labor Force

By Christina Larson September 16, 2013

John Liu is the 31-year-old founder and owner of Harderson International, a small factory in southern China that applies paint and decals to ceramics and glass. His showroom includes samples of tinted perfume bottles made for Ralph Lauren and Kate Spade. A 2006 graduate of Wuhan University in central China, Liu is not much older than the 20-somethings and late teenagers who come to work on the assembly line. But generational cohorts in China are extremely compressed, and Liu sees a vast gap in expectations between himself and those a decade younger. “When I finished school, I felt I needed to find a good stable job quickly and earn money,” he says. “But living conditions in China have improved quickly. Young people now don’t have to work so hard to earn a living, and many have parents who will support them. … A lot of those born in the 1990s can’t stand this kind of repetitive work, so they choose to stay home or do very simple cashier work, even though it pays less.” The upshot is that, for a small factory, it’s “getting harder to find workers.” Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

China’s Shadow Bankers Seek Their Place in the Sun

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

September 17, 2013, 11:30 AM

China’s Shadow Bankers Seek Their Place in the Sun

China’s trust companies are feeling hurt and unloved. If you ask them, they’ll tell you their hard work has been a little misunderstood. “People say the trust firms are the ‘bad boys’ of the financial sector. I think it’s a misunderstanding,” said Li Zhenhua, secretary general of the China Wealth Management 50 Forum, a financial industry group. “There have been rarely any material defaults and we’ve been offering high returns with close-to-zero risk,” Mr. Li told a briefing on the trust sector’s track record this year. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

‘Shanghai’ in Name Adds $45 Billion in Value Amid Bubble Concern

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

‘Shanghai’ in Name Adds $45 Billion in Value Amid Bubble Concern

Zhang Guangdi has watched the market value of his Shanghai International Port Group Co. (600018) shares jump 130 percent since Aug. 22, when China’s commerce ministry said the government approved a free-trade zone in Shanghai. The 67-year-old retiree says he’ll probably sell the 2,935 yuan ($480) stake when the zone, part of Premier Li Keqiang’s plan to liberalize yuan trading and relax government regulation, opens at the end of this month. The port operator is valued at 25 times profit, a 121 percent premium versus the Shanghai Composite Index (SHCOMP), according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

Bathed, not bred: Vendors warn of fake Yangcheng Lake crabs

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

Bathed, not bred: Vendors warn of fake Yangcheng Lake crabs

Staff Reporter 

2013-09-18

CFP443438175-123415_copy1

Mitten crabs — known locally as hairy crabs — are a seasonal delicacy in China especially around the time of the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls this year on Sept. 19. The area most famous for producing the crabs is Yangcheng Lake, to the northeast of Suzhou in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, and the name is sufficiently well known for some vendors to try to pass crabs bred elsewhere as genuine Yangcheng Lake produce, reports our Chinese-language sister paper Want Daily. More than 2,000 households are estimated to make a living selling Yangcheng Lake crabs, producing about 2,000 tonnes of the crustaceans a year. Genuine Yangcheng Lake crabs will go on sale from Sept. 17 this year, which means crabs which have gone on sale so far claiming to be from the area are not so, according to an association officially approved to oversee the trade in crabs from Suzhou. The crabs that have gone on sale so far are from outside the area, say Yangcheng Lake crab farmers, who say unscrupulous vendors raise their crabs elsewhere before taking them to the lake for a dip in the water before selling them at a higher price than they would otherwise fetch. This year’s harvest of Yangcheng Lake crabs is estimated to be down by about 20% this year due to hot weather, creating higher prices for a more limited supply. Customers who are buying their crabs at a cheaper price are likely to be buying specimens which have only “taken a bath” in the lake, local breeders said.

Filed under Life, Macro Trends

A Troubling Future for China’s Once-Raucous Internet

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

A Troubling Future for China’s Once-Raucous Internet

At some point after his Aug. 23 arrest for allegedly soliciting a prostitute, Chinese Internet celebrity Charles Xue began losing his 12 million followers on Sina Weibo, the country’s most popular microblogging site. The abandonment of Xue, a billionaire investor and online activist, has been subtle but unmistakable: At 12:36 p.m. on Monday in China, he had 12,054,441 followers; 10 seconds later, he had 12,054,435; after another 10 seconds, he was down to 12,054,430. In five minutes, 50 followers had cut their online ties. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

China’s Choking Cities Means Job Cuts at Steel Town

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

China’s Choking Cities Means Job Cuts at Steel Town: Commodities

Zhang Fei sums up one of the headaches for China’s Premier Li Keqiang in his efforts to refocus the country’s economy. The 40 year-old contractor, who’d just earned 160 yuan ($26) for four hours work at a local steel mill, is leaning on his red motorcycle in grimy army fatigues and battered running shoes on Galaxy Street. That’s a 10-mile strip lined with forges, welders, tire repair and auto-painting shops, as well as restaurants, a school and a hospital. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

China will strictly control the construction of new photovoltaic manufacturing projects to curb excess capacity in the world’s biggest maker of solar panels

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

China to Strictly Limit Building of More Photovoltaic Capacity

China will strictly control the construction of new photovoltaic manufacturing projects to curb excess capacity in the world’s biggest maker of solar panels. New solar manufacturing that “purely” expands capacity will be strictly banned, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in a statement on its website today. Annual spending by companies for research and development and upgrading equipment combined must be no less than 3 percent of revenue and no less than 10 million yuan ($1.6 million), according to the statement. Chinese authorities have pledged to cut overcapacity in industries from steel to paper as policy makers seek to reduce the economy’s reliance on investments and exports. A global oversupply of solar panels led to a 20 percent plunge in average prices last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The government’s previous backing for the solar industry has left at least one factory producing photovoltaic products in half of China’s 600 cities, according to the China Renewable Energy Society in Beijing. China’s solar industry now accounts for seven out of every 10 solar panels produced worldwide, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Sarah Chen in Beijing at schen514@bloomberg.net

Filed under Macro Trends

Needhman on Investing Using Peter Lynch’s One Up on Wall Street as Guide

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

Needhman on Investing Using Peter Lynch’s One Up on Wall Street as Guide

ValueWalk Staff

Lynch devotes an entire chapter to the tenbagger.  A tenbagger is a stock that goes up tenfold.   ”The most fascinating part of any of these fast-growth retailing stories…is how much time you have to catch on to them.” Lynch cites Wal-Mart (WMT), the Body Shop and Toys R Us (now private) as examples in which an investor had years to buy the stock and still achieve tenbaggers. Lynch loved small cap stocks for their tenbagger potential.  We are also big believers in small caps.  Except during unusual market conditions, Chris Retzler’s Needham Small Cap Growth Fund (NESGX) has 80% of its assets invested in small caps.  As of September 30, 2012, the Needham Aggressive Growth Fund (NEAGX) had 61% of assets in small (between $250 million and $2 billion market cap) and micro cap (under $250 million) and the Needham Growth Fund (NEEGX) had 47% invested in small or micro caps equities. Read more of this post

Filed under Investing Process

Jim Chanos: “If you start to look at acquisitions as capitalized R&D, suddenly these companies look a lot more expensive.”

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

JIM CHANOS: These Are The Kinds Of Companies We’re Looking At Right Now

LINETTE LOPEZ SEP. 17, 2013, 3:02 PM 3,513 3

Jim Chanos, founder and Managing Partner of Kynikos Associates, speaks at the 16th annual Sohn Investment Conference in New York on May 25, 2011. Jim Chanos isn’t going to tell you exactly what he’s researching at his world renowned short-selling firm, Kynikos Associates, but he’ll give you an idea — a small one — of what he and his team are thinking about. He did that today on Bloomberg TV’s “Market Makers” with Erik Schatzker and Stephanie Ruhle. Chanos says he’s looking at large companies that are growing by making a lot of acquisitions. “Some of them don’t even have profits, they’re having to do bigger and bigger deals,” said Chanos, adding, “They’re trying to buy their way into growth and it’s fooling this generation of analysts.” Read more of this post

Filed under Investing Process

Jade sales slump big time in Asia; “The bubble of low to middle end jade has burst first given the little fear of raw material shortage. By the end of the year, the prices will start to drop from the sky.”

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

Jade sales slump big time

Wednesday, Sep 18, 2013

The New Paper

Prized as a magical imperial stone, jade is a status symbol of the super rich in Asia. But rocketing prices in the top-end of the market have left traders in Hong Kong struggling to find buyers. The price of raw jade has risen over the past eight years. Driven up by the appetite of wealthy Chinese, the rising cost of jade is also being fuelled by fears of a shortage in supply from Myanmar, the key source. “Consumers cannot accept the current high prices, therefore, no deal is reached,” Hong Kong jade dealer Li Kwong-kei told AFP at the Hong Kong Jewellery and Gem Fair last Friday. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

Sony-Microsoft Battle Broadens to Romance Games at Tokyo Show

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

Sony-Microsoft Battle Broadens to Romance Games at Tokyo Show

Sony Corp. (6758) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) are battling more than just each other as they showcase new consoles at the Tokyo Game Show. They’re also fighting for the attention of players of romance fantasies like “Kiss of Revenge.” Role-playing games, cloud-based gaming and vendors hawking products for costume-wearing fans are taking up more floor space as the show opens tomorrow in the birthplace of video-game machines. A record 342 exhibitors will attend the last major trade event before the holiday shopping season. Read more of this post

Filed under TMT Trends

In Arrival of 2 iPhones, 3 Lessons

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

September 17, 2013

In Arrival of 2 iPhones, 3 Lessons

By DAVID POGUE

We can draw three lessons from the arrival of Apple’s two new iPhone models, the 5C and 5S.

LESSON 1 Apple may have set its own bar for innovation too high. Year after year, Steve Jobs used to blow our minds with products we didn’t know we wanted. Now, two years after his death, we still expect every new iPhone to clean our gutters, cook our popcorn and levitate. So when the hardware revisions are minor each year, we’re disappointed. And sure enough, after Apple showed off its two new iPhone models last week, its stock dropped. Analysts shrugged that they contain nothing “transformative.” The blogger-haters had a field day. The budget model, the new iPhone 5C, comes in five colors ($100 for the 16-gigabyte model with a two-year contract, $550 without). It’s essentially identical to last year’s iPhone 5, except that its back and sides are a single piece of plastic instead of metal and glass. Actually, “plastic” isn’t quite fair. The 5C’s case is polycarbonate, lacquered like a glossy piano. Better yet, its back edges are curved for the first time since the iPhones of 2008. You can tell by touch which way it’s facing in your pocket. It’s a terrific phone. The price is right. It will sell like hot cakes; the new iPhones go on sale Friday. But just sheathing last year’s phone in shiny plastic isn’t a stunning advance. Read more of this post

Filed under TMT Trends

Freelancer.com’s Matt Barrie turns down $US400m payday

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

Freelancer.com’s Matt Barrie turns down $US400m payday

PUBLISHED: 1 HOUR 39 MINUTES AGO | UPDATE: 0 HOUR 32 MINUTES AGO

02ef9ec2-2002-11e3-a398-0273aaa06f7e_mattbarrie--646x363

“I don’t think I’m ready to sit by the beach just yet,” says Matt Barrie, chief executive of Freelancer.com. Photo: Fairfax

JESSICA GARDNER

Freelancer.com chief executive Matt Barrie has turned down offers to sell the online job outsourcing marketplace in favour of a domestic public listing before the end of the year. The company was recently linked to a $US400 million ($428 million) bid from Japanese company Recruit Co, which would have given Mr Barrie a $US200 million pay day. Mr Barrie wouldn’t comment on the offer but said he has decided to turn down a number of different deals in favour of a public float. “We had a number of things in front of us including active terms sheets from VC [venture capital], private equity and banks, [as well as] offers, at varying stages of completion from more than one party to sell the company 100 per cent,” he said. “After careful consideration of these options we’ve decided to take the company public on the ASX [Australian Securities Exchange] and will do by end of year.” Mr Barrie said his goal was to build Australia’s “first big global consumer internet company.” “Out of all the options [listing on the ASX] gives us the best opportunity to achieve that while staying masters of our own destiny.” A trade sale of Freelancer.com would have brought Mr Barrie significant wealth, given he owns 50 per cent of the company. But he said that route would have left him unfulfilled. “There are almost 9 million people on Freelancer. eBay has almost 9 million people just in Australia alone. It’s such early days.” “I don’t think I’m ready to sit by the beach just yet.”

Filed under TMT Trends

No Flight of Fancy, the Jetpack Is Coming—From New Zealand; “Think of it like a motorcycle in the sky,”

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

September 16, 2013, 10:41 p.m. ET

No Flight of Fancy, the Jetpack Is Coming—From New Zealand

But Figuring Out What It Is and What To Do With It Is Still Up in the Air

REBECCA HOWARD

As New Zealand’s Martin Aircraft Company prepares to launch a jetpack for consumers next year, aviation authorities across the globe are figuring out just how to classify the new aircraft. WSJ’s Rebecca Howard reports from Christchurch. CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand—As standard gear for James Bond and Buzz Lightyear, jetpacks have long captured the public imagination as a way to dodge traffic jams and Cold War villains.

Read more of this post

Filed under TMT Trends

Happy Chuseok

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

2013-09-17 16:06

Happy Chuseok

Bernard Rowan
Last week, several colleagues and I were traveling by car to a meeting in downstate Illinois, and while returning home in the afternoon, one noticed the moon in the daytime sky.
“There’s the moon!” she exclaimed, to which someone replied, “Oh, well, yes, that’s the moon.” Our underwhelming notice of astronomy aside, we talked about the lengthening nights and shorter days, and about the autumnal equinox. I got to thinking, however. I really should have said, “Chuseok is coming.” Read more of this post

Filed under Life

Scans of people’s knees are less likely to reveal a problem when the referring doctor has a financial stake in the imaging center or the equipment used, suggesting some tests may be unnecessary

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

Doc financial interest may influence MRI referrals

3:53pm EDT

By Andrew M. Seaman

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Scans of people’s knees are less likely to reveal a problem when the referring doctor has a financial stake in the imaging center or the equipment used, suggesting some tests may be unnecessary, according to a new study. When doctors have a financial interest in the imaging facility, their patients are 33 percent more likely to get a test result that shows nothing wrong, compared to patients of doctors with no financial interest, U.S. researchers found. Read more of this post

Filed under Health

The US might be drowning in oil, but the world is still dependent on Saudi Arabia; Record Saudi Arabia oil output fills supply gap

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

September 16, 2013 5:45 pm

Record Saudi Arabia oil output fills supply gap

By Ajay Makan

The US might be drowning in oil, but the world is still dependent on Saudi Arabia. Indeed, Saudi Arabia is pumping out more crude than at any time since at least the 1970s. In neighbouring Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates meanwhile, oil production levels hit record highs. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

Naptha Is The Key Ingredient For A Saudi Petrochemicals Boom

September 18, 2013 Leave a comment

Naptha Is The Key Ingredient For A Saudi Petrochemicals Boom

THE ECONOMIST SEP. 17, 2013, 6:59 PM 661

Although plans are well advanced for constructing one of the world’s biggest combined cycle petrochemicals plants in the kingdom, being built by the Sadara Chemical Company (a joint venture between the state oil company, Saudi Aramco, and Dow Chemical of the US), in reality the petrochemicals sector has mostly taken a back seat in the country’s rapid industrialisation of recent years. This is primarily due to the shortage of ethane-rich associated gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs), which are both linked to crude oil production. However, this may well change if a new strategy planned by Saudi Aramco bears fruit. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

← Older posts

Newer posts →