EconomicsGlobal: Investors: Wall Street Journal & Money Morning send out warning Alert on 'phantom stocks'

Money Morning email newsletter, WSDaily (Mar,2k11)
This ain't the Wall Street Journal! Posted by EconoMix

The brutal reality is that investors aren't the only ones licking their lips over the opportunity to make millions in China.

So are the scam artists!

As the old saying goes, "A fool and his money are soon parted." And China represents the perfect opportunity to do just that.

Specifically, buying shares of "Phantom Stocks" - hyped up Chinese companies with literally no means of ever turning a profit - must be avoided at all cost.

Fortunately, the Wall Street Daily team just released a new report, called...

China Scam Alert:
Don't Let These "Phantom Stocks" Torpedo Your Portfolio

Because of our global focus, we recommend thatMoney Morning readers give the report a read and take action, accordingly.

To get this urgent report, you just need to opt in here. It's completely risk-free, and doesn't cost you a cent.

Bottom line, the most informed investor always wins. So I urge you to give Wall Street Daily's scam report the attention it deserves.


As the old saying goes, "A fool and his money are soon parted." And China represents the perfect opportunity to do just that.

Specifically, buying shares of "Phantom Stocks" – hyped up Chinese companies with literally no means of ever turning a profit – must be avoided at all costs.

No worries! Our free report will tell you...

• What a "Phantom Stock" is and how to spot one BEFORE you get blown up.

• The two ways scammers trick you.

• How to detect red herrings.

• How to safely buy Chinese shares.

• An appendix of audited Chinese companies.

EconomyUSA: Energy: Massive solar in desert opposed by ultra-Enviros

Woudn't you know, but a 3,600-acre desert wilderness of Federal land in northern California is about to be "planted" with 346 thousands of billboard-size solar panels, and it's being viewed by alarmed species-chauvinists who are bitterly opposed to destruction of the habitat of a "rare turtle" ("desert tortoise," no Latin species name is given) in the Ivanpah Valley.  No more soup for the Piutes of the neiborhood, but they're long gone anyway.

The other rascal of the piece is Bright-Source Energy, Inc, out of Oakland, regarded by other Enviros as equivalent to the "robber barons" of Nineteenth Century industrializing eastern states of the USA.  So we're told by Tiffany Hsu, reporting in Los Angeles T+mes (Oct23,2k100:

[It's] just another "Big Solar" corporation chasing down profits on the public dime.

"It's the old centralized robber-baron monopoly model," said Sheila Bowers, an activist with the advocacy group Solar Done Right. "This is the worst way to go about getting clean energy — it's slow, it's remote, it's devastating to the environment, and taxpayers are footing most of the bill."

Construction of the facility, perched on the eastern edge of San Bernardino County, is expected to be completed in 2013.Chevron Corp., BP, Morgan Stanley and Google Inc. are all among the investors.  The billion 37 million Fed loan guarantee is justified by the project's advocates becawz "without the government support, the solar thermal industry might struggle against cheaper technologies such as photovoltaics."

-- EconoMix 

EconomicsCanada: Housing: Slow growth

Canada, the world's tenth largest national economy, has slid into the "no-growth" category. In the thinking of most economists, entrepeneurs, and business leaders regards growth as the criterion of success in economic relations. Retired prof Dr Bob Goudzwaard, the outstanding reformational economist over recent decades, has long argued to disestablish "growth" as the preceived norm for any business (?) and certainly any national economy. A market situation where the goal of growth has been abandoned comes in conflict the orthodox economic mainstream, of course; but market, growth, and the economists geared to such considerations call the Goudzwaard approach into question, as we see from the inevitable joblessness that arises from no-growth.

Growth is a necessity for the country's economic well-being. The following data leaves us wondering which choice to make in these unsettled days.

The Canadian leading index of 10 economic components has averaged 0.9% growth per month over the past 12 months. Growth rarely exceeds 1%.

The slowdown was caused largely by a 4.1% drop in the housing index, which is composed of new housing starts and house sales.

The mid-summer slowdown in house building and house sales is said to be at least a warning sign in regard to the presumed health of the Canadian economy's maintenance and development.

I'm trying to assimilate the green-movtivated research by Goudzwaard (his disseration written for his doctorate was an early exploration of "unpriced scarcity" -- clean water, breathable air, etc).

-- EconoMix

EconomyUSA: Investors: Market Watch portrays May's volatility in this apt pix

Do you carry a left-goudzwaardian hate for capitalists, particularly investors?

Then, I give you occasion to rejoice and be exceeding glad as you feast your eyes on this one. But maybe you can glimpse the real pain in the face on this excellent bit of webcomic satire.  You see, the volatility of the markets last month created an enormous amount of anxiety and worse, as investors last month -- the good, the bad and the ugly among them -- tempted to cope with their shortfalls.  Of course, some clever lads made a killing, by luck or purposeful exploitation knowing when and where to reap stunning profits off the misery of others -- and the others not being only investors, small investors particularly, but also the noninvestors in the workforce and out of it, impacted severely by an unstable world and domestic market.

The month of June 2k10 will find rW attempting to monitor the general pattern of the markets (via MarketWatch and other financial newshorses), monitoring as well as the proposed American legislation to reform and better regulate the American domestic financial industry.  We're not laissez-faire, neither are we anticapitalist as some goudzwaardian reformational folk seem to be.  We're rather centre-goudzwaardian ourselves, but know that the stock markets are integral to the advanced differentiated society we live in, and that sphere sovereignty is conceptually and practically (as a life-practice) prior to the capitalist vs socialist debate so prominent in some corners today.  Let's get out of the corners!

A reformational investors club, anyone?

A Christian labor/labour union, anyone?

A round of beers at the local pub, anyone?, to discuss these pressing concerns that plague us and have us looking over our shoulders to see if the sky is falling.  Don't jump at the start of the next crisis or when your bank fails.  Remember the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is there as a safety net (thank God for regulation in that respect at least?).  Yes, we need strong reform and wise regulation of our financial institutions, because everyone, not just investors, are hurt in the purse and wallet when malfeasance spreads in societal spheres mentioned, hurt as well as our bank accounts, when the volatility heats up.  Somebody is making a killing, and somebody is getting killed.

Oh by the way, aside from the semiotics of the cartoon pix, the webcomic satire, the analytics of the situation also appear on MarketWatch today in a synthesis regarding developments by Steve Goldstein, "US stock futures jump on China, Europe, BP jitters" (June1,2k10).

-- EconoMix

Full disclosure:  I own no stocks in any company, my pension is small, and I am to be (ac)counted among the poorer of the sisters and brothers reformational in the h+ly industrialized West.  Not poor from the standpoint of reformationals in Africa and Latin America, for instance.