In work published last spring in Advanced Materials, [MIT, chemical-engineering professor Paula] Hammond used an elegant, inexpensive process to reduce methanol crossover in a commercial fuel-cell membrane, increasing the efficiency of a methanol fuel cell by more than 50 percent. [Kristini Grifantini, MIT Tech Review, N/D 08]

Bidders will gather in Chicago for a live auction of patents, trademarks, copyrights and domain names. For the first time, a government agency, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, will auction off exclusive licensing rights to more than 40 patents or applications. Ocean Tomo will broker the sale.  [Wall Street Journal, Oct 30]

Investment Goes On. Intel Capital announced its first "clean-tech" initiative in China, a $20 million equity investment in Trony Solar Holdings Co., one of China's biggest makers of solar energy and wind power equipment.  [AP, Oct 28, 08]

Cash Poor Biotechs. Many small biotech firms are expected to file for bankruptcy this year, potentially damaging the drug pipeline that big pharmaceutical companies rely on. ...  cancel drug trials, lay off workers or sell out to large companies ...  In the U.S., 38% of 370 small biotech companies are operating with less than a year's worth of cash, and nearly 100 publicly traded biotech companies have less than six months' cash, according to the Biotechnology Industry Organization  [J Whalen and R Winslow, Wall Street Journal, Oct 29]

Bogle and Buffet Say Buy.  But, Stocks are truly cheap only relative to their values over the last 20 years, a period that will go down as one of the great bubbles in history. If you take a longer view, you see that the ratio of stock prices to corporate earnings is only slightly below its long-term average. And in past economic crises — during the 1930s and 1970s — stocks fell well below their long-run average before they turned around.  [David Leonhardt, New York Times, Oct 29]

Internet-connection speeds climb at about 50% a year. But the batteries that run these devices can't keep up. Their power is rising at only about 10% a year. ... The last real breakthrough in the field came in 1991, when Sony introduced rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. ... Lately, some power engineers are pressing ahead with an alternative -- a hybrid technology based on a fuel cell that recharges a small battery whenever it gets low. ... The slow pace of battery improvement isn't for lack of trying. The battery market invests heavily in improvement, and venture capitalists have thrown millions at start-ups promising to power everything from fork-lifts to heart-pumps with small, safe, long-lasting portable power. Fuel-cell makers hope their devices will soon begin to grab some of the $71 billion-a-year world-wide battery market, which is growing 4.8% annually, according to Cleveland market researcher Freedonia Group. Rechargeable batteries account for two-thirds of the market. [William Bulkeley, Wall Street Journal, Oct 28]

The quest for stimulation, challenge, testing (we are good at tests), exploration and discovery is a core part of American culture--read Emerson, Twain and William James. It is unlikely to be shattered by the latest recession. [Edmund Phelps, Forbes, Nov 11]

much of the banking industry has lost the expertise it needs for making loans for innovative ventures, as in the golden age of U.S. and European capitalism. Our banking industry must be redirected to serving the needs of business. President Calvin Coolidge famously declared that "the chief business of the American people is business." Not anymore. As the politicians describe it, the business of America is now homeownership. [Edmund Phelps, Forbes, Nov 11]

Step Up Silicon Valley. We have, today, an economy Washington will not be able to handle--and that Wall Street certainly can't handle. It is you, Silicon Valley, who needs to step up to the plate. Remember the Clinton years? Sure, Bill Clinton takes credit for the prosperity, but anyone who pays attention knows that '90s boom was Silicon Valley's doing. Valley-inspired entrepreneurship washed away most of the $300 billion deficit that haunted the U.S. economy early in the decade.  [Sramana Mitra, Forbes, Oct 10]

Knowledge is about the past; entrepreneurship is about the future. ....  If creativity was not unexpected, governments could plan it and socialism would work. But creativity is intrinsically surprising and the source of all real profit and growth.   [George Gilder, Forbes, Nov 10]

Cleaning It Up. Microsoft has just been awarded a patent for technology designed to automatically detect and remove “undesired words or phrases” from all manner of digital communications, ranging from YouTube broadcasts to internet chat and songs. The patent describes a system that listens out for phonemes (word fragments) likely to be part of a swearword. If it thinks it hears a forbidden phrase, the software either fades out the offending syllables or simply replaces the rude word with a similar-sounding but clean alternative lifted from earlier speech without a second’s delay. [Mark Harris, The Sunday Times, Oct 26]

Q.(for Guy Kawasaki) “Reality Check” includes a venture capital aptitude test in which you opine on the types of people who are best qualified for careers in venture capital.  A. Ideally, a venture capitalist would add value beyond writing a check. This includes experience with difficult situations and insights into building a company. Consulting, investment banking and accounting do not provide you with “on the firing line” experience. You’re always the “outside expert” who zooms in, interviews a few people, creates a PowerPoint presentation and then tells people what they should do.  Unfortunately, analysis and ideas are easy. Implementation is hard. A consultant can tell you to reduce your work force by 10 percent, but figuring out who to lay off and looking people in the eyes when you do it is much harder.  [Marci Alboher, New York Times, Oct 26]

Tougher Tech Finance. Troubles are brewing in the technology-financing business, the credit that greases many technology sales.  Defaults on tech financings, loans that allow companies to purchase computers, software and other products, have spiked this year. The problems are surfacing after years in which such loans flowed freely.   Now the banks and specialty lenders that most tech companies rely on to finance customer sales are retrenching, and financing terms are getting tougher.  [Wall Street Journal, Oct 27] If your tech idea needs early-stage finance, you can always apply for free-money SBIR. Just be prepared for long waits, slow money, government inspection, no marketing help, and stiff competition from established SBIR junkies who do decent research but have few market prospects.

Mr. Grantham calls 2009 earnings estimates "laughable." "We are in the teeth of the biggest financial crisis since the Depression and the early days of the broadest economic slowdown since 1982," he said. "There are still claims earnings will be well above average, and it does not compute."  [Annalena Lobb, Wall Street Journal, Oct 27]

consumers are beginning to regard payments on home equity, credit card, auto and other loans as discretionary outlays. .... The recession will probably be the deepest since the 1930s, especially as it spreads globally in its fourth phase. ... commodity prices are collapsing as global demand falls and as those who thought commodities were a legitimate investment rush out even faster than they charged in. The dollar is rallying as everyone flees to Treasury bills.[A Gary Shilling, Forbes, Nov 10]

if innovation policies are to be effective, it's critical that they be based on an accurate understanding of the U.S. innovation system-in particular, an understanding of where U.S. innovations come from. This report does this by analyzing the sources of award-winning innovations over the past few decades. [LARTA Vox, Oct 16]

The world of finance capitalism was different after Franklin Roosevelt laid hands on its architecture in the 1930s. Out went rampant insider trading, in came the Securities and Exchange Commission .... Out went runs on banks, in came the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation .... Out went indiscriminate home repossessions, in came the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation .... Capitalism survived, in a new form. .... Now, Gone are the investment banks and the swaggering masters of the universe who did so much to make capital available to entrepreneurs; they are now subsumed in bureaucratic bank holding companies, ... The capitalism that will emerge from our current trials will be a New Capitalism, not socialism or some other ism. The balance of power between government and the private sector will shift a bit to government; the balance between cash and debt in businesses and households will shift to cash; other nations will be richer, relative to the United States, not a bad thing.  [Irwin Stelzer, The Sunday Times, Oct 26]

Transport officials have slashed train overcrowding – by tripling the number of standing passengers deemed 'acceptable'.  [Adam Smith Institute, Oct 22]

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will give $100 million in small doses to researchers doing novel medical-research experiments -- part of a new way to use the Web to reach medical researchers who might be missed in a traditional grant-selection process.... will grant 104 scientists and experimenters in 22 countries $100,000 each for research into areas that include how to prevent or cure HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. [Robert Guth, Wall Street Journal, Oct 23]

Love-Hate Subsidies. Investors, such as Bill Gates, are sitting on billions of dollars in losses after buying into the corn-based ethanol industry that George W. Bush embraced as the answer to US energy woes.  Six of the biggest publicly traded US ethanol producers have lost more than $8.7bn in market value since the peak of the boom in mid-2006 and the beginning of this month, according to an analysis by the Financial Times. The boom followed a 2005 law requiring refiners to mix billions of gallons of the biofuel with petrol. ... ethanol producers that have gone public since 2005, have seen the value of their holdings plummet as much as 90 per cent from their flotation price, in spite of billions of dollars of government support for the industry. [Kevin Allison and Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Financial Times, Oct 21]  Subsidies, SBIR being one, sound good as a government incentive to some desired societal goal. But unlike free market incentives, they have no underlying economic support (otherwise they wouldn't be needed) and can evaporate in a political heartbeat.

THE BAD NEWS: Job cuts are sweeping through the Triangle's technology companies.  THE EVEN WORSE NEWS: The looming global recession is only beginning to have an impact.  [Raleign News & Observer, Oct 23]

As for current credit woes, smaller biotech firms could be hurting. If they can't access credit markets, or if health care-focused hedge funds shutter, small-cap biotechs could find cash the rarest of compounds. But big biotech firms, with their substantial cash-flow, are generally unaffected. On the brighter side,  "People need their drugs" and biotech firms have numerous blockbusters already on pharmacy shelves.  [Jeff Opdyke, Wall Street Journal, Oct 22]

Fewer Buyers. one U.N. agency predicts the financial crisis will wipe out 20 million jobs around the world  [Foreign Policy morning brief]

Sun Microsystems warned of a much larger-than-expected quarterly loss on lower revenue, as the computer maker begins to suffer from the economy's meltdown. ... Texas Instruments slid after the bell as it warned "weak order trends" would lead to lower revenue in the fourth quarter as consumers and corporations cut down on spending. [Wall Street Journal, Oct 21]

I went to an ATM today, and it asked to borrow a twenty till next week. [Calculated Risk blog]

Can the U.S. and global economies get off the slow-growth track? Yes, but it won't be easy. One key is that U.S. companies have to pay more attention to sustaining productivity growth and innovation at home rather than resorting to outsourcing as their main source of cost savings. That would boost wages and incomes for U.S. workers and reduce the need for the U.S. to take on huge debts to pay for foreign-made goods. [Michael Mandel, Business Week, Oct 27]  The government can do its part by pushing its SBIR money into companies and technologies that have an economic future IF the technology really works as envisioned. Money for rocket plume models will do none of it. On the other hand, don't hold you breath to see whether the DOD can see that as part of its government function. Old habits and incentives die hard.

Forget Adam Smith, Whatever Works. Advanced Micro Devices decided to spin off its manufacturing operations into a new company in which the government of Abu Dhabi will own a 50% stake. The venture will build a $4.5 billion silicon wafer plant in Albany, N.Y. The state of New York, which already has invested more than $1 billion in nanotech research and development, worker training, and a state-of-the-art clean room in Albany, will kick in $1.2 billion in tax benefits and outright cash rebates to cover construction and equipment costs. For struggling AMD, one of the last U.S. chipmakers that still manufactures its own wafers, the financial help from New York and Abu Dhabi "was incredibly important," says AMD executive chairman Hector de J. Ruiz. Few private investors in the U.S. are willing to risk such huge sums on a high-tech plant that won't produce returns for at least five years. "In a large economy like the U.S., it is impossible to be successful and thrive if you do not make something, especially in industries in line with your core strengths. The government will have to realize it must play a role," says Ruiz. [Pete Engardio, Business Week, Oct 27]

Over the past 30 years, economists have devoted great intellectual energy to proving that such disasters cannot happen. ... We Forgot Everything Keynes Taught Us   [(Keynes's biographer)Robert Skidelsky, Washington Post, Oct 19]

The prospects of renewable-energy companies soared with oil prices, but the global credit crunch and the easing of energy costs have brought them back to earth with a thud. With banks reluctant to lend and their stock prices tumbling, many green-energy concerns are struggling to find the long-term funding they need to expand in a capital-intensive industry.  In the past three months, global renewable-energy stocks tracked by New Energy Finance, a London-based consultancy, have dropped about 45%, [Tom Wright, Wall Street Journal, Oct 20]

James W. Benson, 63, a serial entrepreneur who invented one of the first full-text computer index and search systems that allowed people to search more easily through federal acquisitions regulations, died Oct. 10 ... Mr. Benson started Compusearch and ImageFast Software Systems, both of McLean, in the 1980s. He turned from computers to space in the 1990s, founding the California firm SpaceDev, which helped build the hybrid rocket engine that launched the world's first privately built manned spaceship into suborbital space. [Washington Post, Oct 16]

Pick a Tech Fix. In 2002, the nation’s high-technology balance of trade went south, and it never came back. By 2007, the annual gap between high-tech exports and imports had grown to $53 billion. The gap this year is expected to be the largest ever — approaching $60 billion. ... McCain would encourage innovation by cutting corporate taxes and ending what he calls “burdensome regulations” that he says inhibit corporate investment. But Mr. McCain has also repeatedly gone up against business if he sees a conflict with national security, for instance, in seeking to limit sensitive exports. ... Obama looks to the federal government to finance science, math and engineering education and the kind of basic research that can produce valuable industrial spinoffs. [W Broad and C Dean, New York Times, Oct 17] 

“We continue to see a vortex of selling, led by a levered, scared hedge fund community stepping on each other trying to get in front of the other guy to liquidate, based upon the real investment losses that they’ve experienced, coupled with the threat of year-end redemptions,” says Doug Kass, president of Seabreeze Partners [David Gaffen, Wall Street Journal Market Beat, Oct 15]

Investors are recognizing that the financial crisis is not the fundamental problem. It has merely amplified economic ailments that are now intensifying: vanishing paychecks, falling home prices and diminished spending. And there is no relief in sight. .... said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “I don’t think there’s a way we can get out of this without a full-fledged recession and a lot of people losing their jobs. All we can really talk about is ameliorating it, making sure the people who are hit have support.” [Peter Goodman, New York Times, Oct 16]

a third of all the potatoes in the United States. But its economy is increasingly being driven by technology and green manufacturing companies, big and small. Most of those companies have settled in the Boise Valley, an area of about 600,000 people, where they have received an enthusiastic response from city officials and technological and business assistance from Boise State University.  [James Flanigan, New York Times, Oct 16]

Uncertain. Intel cautioned that the outlook for spending on technology products is uncertain. [Wall Street Journal, Oct 15] Life and economics are usually uncertain. Also uncertain: MasterCard reported last week that spending on consumer electronics and home appliances dropped 13.8 percent in September compared with a year ago. That number is by far the largest recorded since MasterCard began tracking the category in 2003, and twice the largest previous monthly drop in such spending. [M Richtel and S Rosenbloom, New York Times, Oct 15]

MasterCard reported last week that spending on consumer electronics and home appliances dropped 13.8 percent in September compared with a year ago. That number is by far the largest recorded since MasterCard began tracking the category in 2003, and twice the largest previous monthly drop in such spending.

A Less Free Market. Dow Drops 18% on Week, Worst Ever.  Paulson said the U.S. will move ahead with plans to buy equity stakes in financial institutions. ... The U.S. is weighing two dramatic steps to repair ailing financial markets: guaranteeing billions of dollars in bank debt and temporarily insuring all U.S. bank deposits.  If the two moves come to fruition they would mark the government's most extensive intervention yet in the financial system, as officials ponder increasingly far-reaching measures to stem the sprawling crisis.  [Wall Street Journal, Oct 10]

Unless you are in your late 80s and were an adult as World War II ended, stocks are cheaper, adjusted for tax rates and interest rates, than they've been at any time in your adult life. [Ken Fisher, Forbes, Oct 27]

[recession] promises to be deep and protracted because consumers and banks both need to cut their reliance on borrowed money. Assets at U.S. commercial banks have soared over the past decade and are now equal to about 79% of gross domestic product. That is the highest level in 20 years. ...  Investors and banks have money. But they are refusing to invest it because prices aren't realistic. Alternatively, they feel that they can't adequately assess real value because it is unclear which banks have enough capital to survive. [David Reilly, Wall Street Journal, Oct 11]

almost 30 years after Freeman Dyson described the almost unspeakable urges of the nuclear geeks creating illimitable energy out of equations, his son, George Dyson, has written an essay (published at Edge.org) warning about a different strain of technical arrogance that has brought the entire planet to the brink of financial destruction. George Dyson is an historian of technology and the author of “Darwin Among the Machines,” a book that warned us a decade ago that it was only a matter of time before technology out-evolves us and takes over. [Richard Dooling, New York Times, Oct 12]

In the middle years of this decade, we had negative real short-term interest rates. And that really means free money, which really distorts the system. Capitalism is premised on the idea that capital is a scarce commodity rationed with a price mechanism. It wasn't just a handful of clever guys on Wall Street who figured out what to do with the free money. People all over the housing and financial-services industries figured out ways to lever themselves up way too far. That's the engine that led us this far astray. [Peter Fisher, Business Week, Oct 20]

about as important as the manoeuvrings of a flea in the fur of a mouse on the back of an elephant hurtling towards the rocks below  [Patrick Hosking, The Times (London), Oct 11]  Not about SBIR, but it could approach Congress's distraction level.

the U.S. economy is still the most flexible in the world and our "innovation machine" is alive and well [Burton Malkiel, Wall Street Journal, Oct 13]

The trouble with high finance is that nobody speaks English. Jargon defeats clear thinking. [James Grant, Business Week, Oct 20] When four well-versed financial observers named a fantasy bailout team, only one name showed up on two of the lists: Alexander Hamilton.

Micron Technology will cut about 15% of its global work force the next two years as it battles slumping memory chip prices. [Wall Street Journal, Oct 9]

one line currently making the rounds is that the only things anyone wants to buy right now are Treasury bills and bottled water ... we have a globalized financial system in which a crisis that began with a bubble in Florida condos and California McMansions has caused monetary catastrophe in Iceland. We’re all in this together, and need a shared solution.  [Paul Krugman, NY Tines Oct 10]

moving to cash right now is just fine as long as you know precisely when to get back into stocks (even though you didn’t know when to get out of them). [Ron Lieber, NY Times. Oct 9]

"But what we've seen in the last few days suggests we'll see even more trade deterioration," said Paul Bingham, the group's trade economist. Mr. Bingham said a global recession is now all but certain, which will take a bite out of all types of trade.   U.S. export growth was already slowing before financial markets went into a tailspin, as a result of more-modest economic growth in many regions of the world and an upswing in the value of the dollar. A stronger dollar makes U.S. products less competitive in foreign markets. [Timothy Aeppel, Wall Street Journal, Oct 8]

Iceland: Who Cares? Ripples from the financial collapse in Iceland struck savers and governments elsewhere in Europe on Wednesday, in what economists say may be just the first painful jolts from the small nation to the global economy.  As Iceland nationalized a second big bank and abandoned a brief attempt at pegging its tumbling currency, Britain and the Netherlands sought to protect hundreds of thousands of their savers who have money in frozen Icelandic bank accounts. [J Whalen and C Forelle, Wall Street Journal, Oct 9]  Globalized =  Interlocked.

The Dow is now 35% below its record finish a year ago, on Oct. 9, 2007.

John A. Rogers of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and colleagues have come up with a novel method for creating extremely thin solar cells that can be combined in flexible, even partially transparent, arrays. Described in Nature Materials, it could be called the rubber-stamp approach. The technique involves creating a series of precisely spaced “microbars” on a block of single-crystal silicon. These bars, which have a thickness of a few micrometers, have doped regions that create p-n junctions, the main feature of most photovoltaic cells. [Henry Fountain, New York Times, Oct 7]

Is this a final "Crisis of Global Capitalism" -- to borrow the title of a book by George Soros written shortly after the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98? The crisis that kills capitalism has been said to happen during every major recession and financial crisis ever since Karl Marx prophesized the collapse of capitalism in the middle of the 19th century. Although I admit to having greatly underestimated the severity of the current crisis, I am confident that sizable world economic growth will resume before very long under a mainly capitalist world economy. [Gary Becker, Wall Street Journal, Oct 7]

Once again, investors who placed their hopes in technology have been burned. In 1999, they bet on fledgling technology firms because of the promise of what they could be. In 2008, investors put their money in technology because of the promise of what they were not. The results haven't been as desired.  [David Gaffen, Wall Street Journal, Oct 7]

Go, Go, Gone? “It’s the beginning of the end of the era of infatuation with the free market,” said Steve Fraser, author of “Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace,” and a historian. “It’s the end of the era where Wall Street carries high degrees of power and prestige. And it’s the end of the era of conspicuous displays of wealth. We are entering a new chapter in our history.”  [Tim Arango and Julie Creswell, New York Times, Oct 5]

Tomorrow. It is too simplistic to blame greed for the financial mess. The fault is a broader human trait: the reluctance or inability to consider the downside of a situation that has so many attractive features. The financial products at issue were profitable, and people were getting houses. Any problems that arose would be taken care of tomorrow. Wonderful invention, tomorrow! Kenneth Viste, BOISE, IDAHO  [Time, Oct 13]

Small businesses are turning to angel investors, suppliers and personal credit cards as the financial crisis spreads to Main Street and access to commercial bank loans becomes more restricted. ...  Some businesses, meanwhile, are finding sympathetic suppliers will help get them over the financing hump. Jorge Marinez and his two partners went this route after getting turned down by seven banks over eight months. [Wall Street Journal, Oct 2]

A government report said that orders to U.S. factories plunged by the largest amount in nearly two years as the credit strains smashed manufacturers with hurricane-like force. [AP, Oct 2]

The financial and economic news since the middle of last month has been really, really bad. And what’s truly scary is that we’re entering a period of severe crisis with weak, confused leadership. .... growing evidence that the financial crunch is spreading to Main Street, with small businesses having trouble raising money and seeing their credit lines cut. And leading indicators for both employment and industrial production have turned sharply worse, suggesting that even before Lehman’s fall, the economy, which has been sagging since last year, was falling off a cliff. [Paul Krugman, New York Times, Oct 3]

The centennial of Henry Ford's creating the American middle class with an auto that auto workers could afford to own. The innovations: assembly line manufacturing and paying workers well above the prevailing wage of the time.

A number of banks have called for a suspension of the rules in favour of being able to use their own internal estimates of the final values of their holdings when the underlying debt matures – a move that would bolster their reported balance sheets. [Financial Times, Oct 1] My bank's worth whatever I say it's worth.

From student loans to businesses, there's just no liquidity, ... said Chris Colarik, a portfolio manager for Glenmede Investment Management  [Geoffrey Rogow, Wall Street Journal, Sep 30]

The United States ranks 16th and 20th among nations in college and high-school graduation rates, respectively; 60th in the proportion of college graduates receiving natural science and engineering degrees; and 23rd in the fraction of GDP devoted to publicly funded nondefense research. The number of U.S. citizens receiving Ph.D.s in engineering and the physical sciences has dropped by 22% in a decade. U.S. high-school students rank near the bottom in math and science.  [Norm Augustine, Science, Sep 19]

And it's an ill wind that blows no one good. For months, vulture funds and other yield-hunting investors have been poised to buy distressed commercial real-estate assets from ailing institutions. Now, some of them think it may soon be time to pounce. because banks and other sellers of the soured securities and mortgages may be more willing to do deals with them because, unlike the government plan, they aren't insisting on provisions such as a limit on executive compensation. [Lingling Wei and Peter Grant, Wall Street Journal, Sep 29] That's the classic problem of agency where management looks out for itself at the possible expense of the banks' owner-shareholders.

Barriers to entry for robotics companies are dropping. Technology costs less, more college graduates are entering the workforce with robotics experience, and seasoned employees are leaving established robotics companies to form their own startups. It’s a smaller-scale version of the Internet ecosystem created by alumni of Google and Amazon.com, says Cory Kidd, CEO of MIT robotics spinout Intuitive Automata Inc. ... Three local companies have been launched or announced by entrepreneurs with robotics roots cultivated at Bedford-based consumer and military robot maker iRobot (Nasdaq: IRBT). Most recently, Rodney Brooks, co-founder and former CTO of iRobot, started work on Heartland Robotics in Cambridge, whose products Brooks said will help physical laborers the way the PC helped office workers. Roomba inventors Joseph Jones and Paul Sandin, meanwhile, launched Harvest Automation, a Groton company making robots to work at greenhouses. And ex-iRobot executives Tom Ryden and Grinnell More started North End Technologies, a startup company quietly working in Nashua, N.H., on a product that incorporates robotics into its multimedia technology.
Another example is the work of Eliot Mack and Phil Mass, engineers on the Roomba, who left iRobot in 2004 to found Cinital LLC, which makes special-effects technology for film and television studios. Cinital moved from Cambridge to Pasadena, Calif., this year and changed its name to Lightcraft Technology LLC. [Brendan Lynch, Mass High Tech, Sep 12]

The solar power industry is experiencing growing pains over how power is financed and distributed. In the end, larger companies may gain the upper hand, and the incentives could decrease or even disappear. .. “I think probably what we’re going to see is the gradual disappearance of the very small one-, two-, three-person company that does everything,” said Dave Ljungquist, associate director of project development at the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund.  ..... Bill Condit, the chief operations officer of Trinity Solar in Freehold, N.J., which evolved from a heating and air conditioning company, said the suspension of the rebate program was a worrisome reminder of the solar hot-water boom and bust of the mid-1980s. At that time, too, generous rebates and tax credits spawned dozens of small solar companies. Almost all went out of business when the programs abruptly ended.  [Jan Ellen Spiegel, New York Times, Sep 25]

Got Cash, Sitting on It. Corporate America waded into the darkest days of the credit crisis with more cash than ever before, a sign many of the US’s biggest companies have been bracing for signs that Wall Street’s problems will infiltrate the rest of the economy.  Excluding utilities and financial institutions, members of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index ended June with a record $648bn in cash and short-term securities  [Justin Baer, Financial Times, Sep 23]

US exports of high-tech hardware slid 3% in 2007 while imports rose by a like margin, creating a $118 billion tech trade deficit, according to a new American Electronics Association report. [Tom Abate, SF Chronicle, Sep 23]The trade gap in our most valued industry means a need for capital import to balance the national accounts. If you were a foreign account with capital, what American item(s)would you buy? An SBIR firm with little market value or a Treasury note?  If the note, maybe the government should do the same.  What an interesting test: a firm wanting SBIR has to show that it is a better investment than a Treasury note. How many firms do you think would pass the test?

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a simple, two-step chemical process to convert plant sugars into hydrocarbon fuels. The compounds created during the process could also be used to make other industrial chemicals and plastics. [Pachi Patel-Predd, MIT Tech Review, Sep 22]

A steady drumbeat of cutbacks in Oregon's high-tech sector has reduced the number of technology jobs in the state to its lowest point in nearly three years. The most recent cuts came Tuesday, when Hillsboro-based Lattice Semiconductor Corp. announced it will lay off 125 employees in a major restructuring -- about 14 percent of its work force -- including 20 who work in Oregon. [The Oregonian, Sep 17]

Will Tech Survive The Wall Street Meltdown?  We're mostly worried about companies for whom Wall Street represents a significant part of their customer base. Blackberry-maker RIM (RIMM) should be OK, ...Dell (DELL) is in trouble ... Meanwhile HP (HPQ) is acquiring EDS, shedding 24,600 employees in the process. ... Looking for optimism? Talk Rupert Murdoch: "Hard times are good for big companies."  [Eric Krangel, Silicon Alley Insider, Sep 20]

Last spring, on a research vessel cruising through the North Sea, Swiss scientists examined tiny vials of bacteria mixed with seawater for hints of fluorescent light. By analyzing how brightly the bacteria glowed, and with which colors, they were able to diagnose and characterize the early aftermath of an oil spill. ... Jan Van der Meer, an environmental microbiologist at the University of Lausanne, in Switzerland. He announced his team's results last week at the Society for General Microbiology's autumn meeting in Dublin. [Jocelyn Rice, MIT Tech Review, Sep 18]

A £10 ($18) test to detect faulty genes that cause breast cancer could be on the market within a year. Up to one in ten cases of the disease are caused by inherited faulty genes and women who carry either of them have an 80 per cent chance of developing the condition during their lifetime. [Telegraph.co.uk, Sep 17]

A week in which the artist Damien Hirst sold a “Golden Calf” for several million pounds, while one of the world’s largest banks was collapsing, is an apt time to reflect on our world’s curious economic system. ....  raise an entire institution – the unfettered financial world, for example – to the role of an idol and you are not critical of anything it does, either. That has more serious consequences. When outsiders try to show you its flaws, you will not genuinely listen to their arguments.  [David Boudanis, Financial Times, Sep 19]

The good news is that tech spending will be better than expected this year. The bad news is that next year things will be worse, said Forrester Research. [Information Week, Sep 16]

SO far, San Diego remains a fertile breeding ground for entrepreneurs, despite the problems in the broader economy. That is due in large part to a nonprofit organization, Connect, that was created 23 years ago to bring together people knowledgeable about business and investment capital with researchers at the universities and research institutes in San Diego. “In 2007, we helped 54 companies start up, and there are 150 in the queue,” said Duane Roth, chief executive of Connect. [James Flanigan, New York Times, Sep 18]

Boulder did not become a start-up hub due to incentive-based tax policy to lure businesses, or special incubators, or mass investments in technical education (though some of these things were tried). Instead, it began with a group of individuals who moved to Boulder for various lifestyle reasons, but all the while were committed to working together to develop a local software and Internet industry.  [Ben Casnocha, The American, Sep 10]

The cold wind blowing from Wall Street is sending shivers through the state's high-tech industry, as start-up companies and their venture backers brace for a slowdown in spending on technology and a prolonged freeze on initial public offerings. [Boston Globe, Sep 17]

What are your biggest obstacles to innovation? One of the big challenges is our ability to predict the outcomes. If you make a discovery in research and it’s at a very basic level, it is not at all easy to predict how that discovery translates into a medicine for human beings that is safe and effective. The balance in a company like Genentech is to make something that people can trust, to really innovate, and to take enough risks so that we can do something substantially better for patients. [Susan Desmond-Hellman, The American, Sep 9]

A Stuttering Start. the joint ventures and startups [spun from Sandia and Los Alamos] suffered from too much red tape. They also faced a drop in federal subsidies, the bursting of the tech bubble, and the task of coaxing scientists to think in business terms. "Without market signals, the labs have shown a predictable capacity to be overtaken by bureaucracy," says Carl J. Schramm, president of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which focuses on entrepreneurship. The casualties, Schramm says, are "speed, effectiveness, and inventiveness."  [Pete Engardio, Business Week, Sep 22]

Doing Better Now. The labs aren't simply collaborating. They're spinning off new tech companies amid the mesas and deserts of New Mexico. An industrial park on 240 acres abutting Sandia's sprawling Albuquerque compound boasts 27 startups that employ 2,184 people and have attracted $234 million in investment capital. All of these companies were founded by former Sandia scientists or rely on technology licensed from the lab. Los Alamos has helped spawn 54 spin-offs since 1997  [Pete Engardio, Business Week, Sep 22]

Growth Medicine . Can the new field of "innovation economics" help the U.S. economy get back on its feet? Facing low-cost foreign competition and floundering financial markets, the U.S. can prosper only by creating and adopting new technologies that spur growth and create jobs, say the disciples of innovation economics.   Business Week, Sep 22]

In his new book, The Subprime Solution, Yale University economist Robert J. Shiller says regulators suffered from an "inability to believe that there could ever be a housing crisis of the proportions we are seeing today."  [Peter Coy, Business Week, Sep 22]  Isn't hindsight great?  If the regulator had suggested an incipient collapse and a stiffening of regulation, he would have been pilloried by Congress in support of the vested interests.

What does the great credit crunch do to the case for competitive capitalism? ...  Even if in the end we suffer no more than an average post-second- world-war recession it will still look like a narrow escape owing to the readiness of leaders such as Hank Paulson, the US Treasury secretary, not merely to jettison free-market principles but to take risks with prudence to bail out US corporate bodies. There will be no “glad confident morning” for free-market principles for a long time to come. ... I welcome a short and well-written book, The Origin of Financial Crises (Harriman House £16.99) by George Cooper, which attempts to relate apparently esoteric financial issues to elementary economic theory ... Nothing that has happened suggests that governments are any good at picking winners, that freeing international trade is a bad thing or that consumer choice should be overridden. But we need to be reminded of the dictum of Keynes that “money will not manage itself”.  [Samuel Brittan, Financial Times, Sep 12] 

Jeff Rubin and Benjamin Tal of CIBC, a Canadian bank, issued a memo a few weeks ago saying that a reversal of the great migration of manufacturing operations to China might already be under way. The cost of shipping a standard 40-foot container from Shanghai to America’s east coast, for example, has jumped from $3,000 in 2000 to about $8,000 today. The extra cost of transporting goods halfway around the world, Messrs Rubin and Tal wrote, is wiping out the often slim margins of Chinese exporters. What is more, if oil and shipping prices stay high, many Western companies that now outsource their manufacturing to China might decide that it makes more sense to shift production closer to their customers at home.  [The Economist, Aug 9]

Flee the Bear. Russia's stock markets slumped to their lowest levels in more than two years as falling oil prices and geopolitical tension sapped confidence. ..  A perception that Russia's political behavior on the world stage has become more unpredictable  [Andrew Osborne, Wall Street Journal, Sep 10]  Capital does not like the certainty that nationalism and political power trump any considerations of what little law exists there anyway. .... The response: With stock prices plunging to two-year lows, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sought to boost investor confidence, predicting an impending rebound. But his assurances had little impact amid concerns about the outlook for Russia's economy. [Greg White, Wall Street Journal, Sep 11]

New genetically modified bacteria could slash the costs of producing ethanol from cellulosic biomass, such as corn cobs and leaves, switchgrass, and paper pulp. The microbes produce ethanol at higher temperatures than those used to produce yeast, which is currently employed to ferment sugar into the biofuel. The higher temperature more than halves the quantity of the costly enzymes needed to split cellulose into the sugars that the microbes can ferment.  [Pachi Patel-Predd, MIT Tech Review, Sep 19]

A promising way to use the sun's energy more efficiently is to enlist it to split water into hydrogen gas that can be stored and then employed at any time, day or night. A cheap new nanostructured material could prove an efficient catalyst for performing this reaction. Called a nanonet because of its two-dimensional branching structure, the material is made up of a compound that has been demonstrated to enable the water-splitting reaction. Because of its high surface area, the nanonet enhances this reaction.  Researchers led by Dunwei Wang, a chemist at Boston College, grew the nanonets, creating structures made up of branching wires of titanium and silicon.   [MIT Tech Review, Sep 10]

Corning down 13% [Sep 3, 08] a more than three-year low... after the company lowered its third-quarter sales and profit guidance to reflect a bigger-than-expected drop in orders for glass used in flat-screen televisions and computers. [Investors Business Daily]

The US does still lead the world in the number of researchers (1.3 million), but the European Union is close behind (1.1 million), and China is coming up fast (0.93 million) . The trends are discouraging. The U.S. global share of new doctorates in science and engineering slipped from 52% in 1986 to 22% in 2003; the U.S. share of scientific publications declined from 38% in 1988 to 30% in 2003 . Although the United States led the world in magnitude of total research and development (R&D) investment in 2007 ($353 billion), with about a third of the total, China led the world in the growth rate of its R&D, by 2007, and was expected to pass Japan for second place .  .... However, the government continues to believe, wrongly, that market forces are sufficient to bridge the "valley of death" between basic research and commercial innovations without public policy support  ...  Competitive advantage is, more and more, coming down to talent and imagination in business organization and service, going beyond traditional emphasis on science- and engineering-based product innovations. Scientists and engineers should be steeped in the realities of how the global system for creating, exploiting, and rewarding innovations works most effectively. [Lewis Branscomb, Science, Aug 15]

Unlike the mirrors and lenses in conventional solar concentrators, Baldo's glass sheets act as waveguides, channeling light in the same way that fiber-optic cables transmit optical signals over long distances. The dyes coating the surfaces of the glass absorb sunlight; different dyes can be used to absorb different wavelengths of light. Then the dyes reëmit the light into the glass, which channels it to the edges.  [Kevin Bullis, MIT Tech Review, Sep 5]

By adding carbon nanotubes to a stretchy polymer, researchers at the University of Tokyo made a conductive material that they used to connect organic transistors in a stretchable electronic circuit. The new material could be used to make displays, actuators, and simple computers that wrap around furniture, says Takao Someya, a professor of engineering at the University of Tokyo. The material could also lead to electronic skin for robots, he says, which could use pressure sensors to detect touch while accommodating the strain at the robots' joints. Importantly, the process that the researchers developed for making long carbon nanotubes could work on the industrial scale. [Kate Greene, MIT Tech Review, Aug 14]

IBM researchers are detailing what IBM calls a significant breakthrough in the field of nanotechnology that could lead to new developments in processor technology and the field of photonics. The IBM researchers are detailing how they were able to control light emissions from carbon nanotube transistors, which could lead to new ways to develop and power new processors. [Scott Ferguson, eWeek, Sep 3]

Tricky Business, Medicine.  A potent substance used in spine-repair surgery to promote bone growth has been linked to life-threatening complications in dozens of patients.  Many of the complications involving the product, Medtronic's "Infuse Bone Graft," have occurred during "off label" uses, when surgeons use it in ways that haven't been approved by the FDA. [D Armstrong and T Burton, Wall Street Journal, Sep 4]

Two Protons Walk Into a Black Hole ... It remains to be seen whether comedy classes will help CERN scientists explain their work to the public. CERN's in-house science writer has already made a rap video about the LHC and posted it on YouTube, where it has been viewed some 900,000 times. ...  learning to improvise will help them think creatively about some of the toughest questions of physics, such as why gravity is so much weaker than the other fundamental forces, and why 95% of the universe seems to be missing.  [Alexandra Alter, Wall Street Journal, Sep 4]

Silicon Returns. New Energy Finance, a research firm, expects the output of silicon for the solar industry almost to double next year. .....  participants in the industry expect prices to fall by more than 40% next year, and over 70% by 2015.  ...  HSBC predicts that the solar industry will grow by 45% a year until 2012. Such searing expansion is bound to cause more growing pains. [The Economist, Aug 30]

Solar, a Century Idea. Solar panels are one of the least cost-effective ways of combating climate change and will take 100 years to pay back their installation costs, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) warned .... The solar power industry accused Rics of failing to take account of the rising cost of energy and other financial benefits of renewable power in its figures. Jeremy Leggett, of Solar Century, said: "They are grossly irresponsible."  [Martin Hickman, The Guardian, Sep 3] Can't compete? Get a subsidy. Works for SBIR companies.

the credit crisis refuses to lie down and die. The authorities have bombarded it with interest-rate reductions, tax cuts, special liquidity schemes and bank bail-outs, but still the creature lumbers forward, threatening new victims with every step. Global stockmarkets are suffering double-digit losses this year, and credit markets are once again gummed up. [The Economist, Aug 30]

Paying Respects. When the cortege of the great railway engineer Robert Stephenson passed through London to his funeral at Westminster Abbey, the whole route was lined with crowds. In his homeland on Tyneside, the towns fell silent at noon. On the Thames, Tyne, Wear, and Tees, all shipping lay still, with flags at half-mast. [Science Museum, London]

CodeWeavers CEO Jeremy White, whose software lets Mac and Linux users run Windows programs, pledged to make available its $39.95 program for free if Bush: reduces gas prices to $2.79 per gallon; reduces the average price of milk to $3.50; creates at least one net job in the U.S. this calendar year; returns the median home price in the Twin Cities to $233,000; or brings Osama bin Laden to justice. [Andrew Noyes, Tech Daily Dose, Aug 28]

Economists often parade their theories as if they were as absolute as a mathematical proof, concealing the subjective assumptions on which they rest. ... 'There is nothing like a fact,' he wrote, 'facts are ten times more valuable than declamations'.  [Douglas Hurd, Robert Peel: A Biography, 2007] Would that Peel could meet the parading theorists and declaimers of SBIR.

Those who believe in free markets have now received another rude shock: We have not yet sunk into an "official" recession, but it has been more than half a year since any new jobs were created, and, meanwhile, our labor force continues to grow. ...  Too much energy has been spent trying to make an easy buck; too much effort has been devoted to increasing profits and not enough to increasing real wealth, whether that wealth comes from manufacturing or new ideas. [Joe Stiglitz, The New Republic, Sep 10]

Because renewable energy technologies are going to constitute the next great global industry. They will rival and probably surpass information technology. The country that spawns the most E.T. companies will enjoy more economic power, strategic advantage and rising standards of living. We need to make sure that is America. Big oil and OPEC want to make sure it is not. [Tom Friedman, New York Times, Sep 3]

Collaborative research, particularly federally funded R&D, is playing an increasingly significant role in producing the top innovations each year, according to a new analysis released by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). Where Do Innovations Come From? Transformations in U.S. National Innovation System, 1970-2006 shows a dramatically diminishing role for the largest firms acting independently to fuel future technological advances.  Read full article here  [LARTA, Aug 7]

According to NSF data, companies spent in aggregate $247.7 billion on R&D expenditures performed in the U.S. in 2006. Leading the nation was California, with $58.4 billion in industrial R&D.  [SSTI, Aug 27]

Ten Startups to Watch:  Instant Voicing by Pinger Founded 2005, Funding $11 million;  Sharing, Privately by Pownce  founded 2007 funding undisclosed; Cell-phone Streaming by Qik founded 2006 funding $4M;   Traffic Master by Dash Navigation founded 2003 $71M; Crisis Sourcing by Ushahidi founded 2008 funding undisclosed;  Partial Recall by QTech founded 2004 $5M; Are You ... Influential? by 33Across founded 2007, $1M;  Semantic Ads by Peer 39, 2006, $11M;  Mashups Made Easy by Mashery, 2006, $5M; Video Packet-Switching by Anagran, 2004, $40M. [MIT Tech Review, J/A08]

Silicon Valley is known worldwide as a center of high-tech innovation, but a new report warns that a widening wage gap is putting pressure on middle-income earners and grinding down those at the bottom. ...  Auerhahn is the principal author of "Life in the Valley Economy," a 128-report that likens Silicon Valley's economy to a barbell or an hourglass - great jobs at the top for software engineers and biotech scientists, and lots of low-paying jobs at the bottom for janitors and home health aides. But it's tough times for those in the middle to bottom.  [San Jose Mercury News, Aug 26]

Scientists at Harvard University recently announced a much anticipated milestone in regenerative medicine: the creation of stem cells from patients with a variety of diseases. The cells, which can be encouraged to develop into cell types damaged by disease, such as the insulin-producing cells in diabetes or neurons in Parkinson's, are poised to give scientists an unprecedented view of disease. [Emily Singer, MIT Tech Review, Aug 27]

Innovation Anniversary: first oil well drilled, Titusville PA 1859. drilled to a depth of 21.18 m (69 1/2 feet). It was not until the next morning, on August 28, when the driller, "Uncle Billy" Smith, noticed oil floating in the hole they had pulled the drilling tools from the night before. By today's standards, it was a pretty unremarkable hole, probably producing 20 barrels or less of oil per day. [The Paleontological Research Institution]

Bayer CropScience is facing scrutiny because of the effect one of its best-selling pesticides has had on honeybees.  A German prosecutor is investigating Werner Wenning, Bayer's chairman, and Friedrich Berschauer, the head of Bayer CropScience, after critics alleged that they knowingly polluted the environment. ... In the U.S. diet, about one in three mouthfuls comes from crops that bees pollinate.  Scientists are looking at viruses, parasites and stresses that might compromise bees' immune system. In the past two years, Congress has earmarked about $20 million to boost research.     [Sabine Vollmer, Raleigh News & Observer, Aug 27]

Wind Power Pipes Clogged.  The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not. The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads.  “We need an interstate transmission superhighway system,” said Suedeen G. Kelly, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.  [Matthew Wald, New York Times, Aug 27]

Posilac is an government-approved animal pharmaceutical used by U.S. dairy farmers to increase dairy cow’s milk output. Though it has been used by dairy farmers in the U.S. since 1994, the use of the hormone has become controversial in recent years after some dairy wholesalers began to label some brands of milk as being free of rbST. Monsanto has tried to get regulators to force the stop the practice of using such labels, arguing that FDA tests show no difference in milk from cows that have been given Posilac and those that have not.  Monsanto gave up the fight and sold the business to Lilly for $300M. [Doug Wong, St Louis Post-Dispatch, Aug 20]

I think that San Francisco’s probably the most successful place for biotechs — for the large biotechs. I think the New Jersey area’s probably the most successful for pharma, but I think what Boston has is that it is world-class in biotech. [Christoph Westphal, Mass High Tech conference, Aug 22]

 despite an uncertain economy, worldwide information technology spending is on track to reach $3.4 trillion in 2008 — an 8% increase over 2007, according to the research firm Gartner.  Of all spending categories, software and services are set to show the healthiest growth — with projected increases of around 10 percent each. This is partly because companies are in the middle of an upgrade cycle that will continue beyond the end of the decade, Gartner explains. [Phyllis Korkki, New York Times, Aug 24]

What next for the dollar? Expect a soaring dollar compared with the pound and the euro to continue to be the big news story during coming months. [Komal Sri-Kumar, Financial Times, Aug 26]

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have created the first integrated circuit that uses nanowires as both sensors and electronic components. With a simple printing technique, the group was able to fabricate large arrays of uniform circuits, which could serve as image sensors.  [Lauren Rugani, MIT Tech Review, Aug 13]

Think Dry.  Since 1995 Dow has reduced the amount of water it uses per tonne of output by over a third. Nestlé cut its water consumption by 29% between 1997 and 2006, even as it almost doubled the volume of food it produced.  [The Economist, Aug 21]

Smart Meters Imperfect. San Francisco-based Pacific Gas & Electric Co. is in the midst of the biggest smart-meter rollout in the country. It plans to install some 10 million advanced electric and gas meters by 2012. Yet just two years into the program, the company is already saying it will have to spend $600 million to complete the project, on top of the $1.7 billion already budgeted. .... PG&E says the smart gadgets came up short. Among other things, they were supposed to send information to the utility over the power lines. But that proved too costly. PG&E is now planning to replace them with sleeker wireless models. .... politicians and consumer advocates. They say the company is adopting expensive, unproven technology just so it can raise rates.  [Business Week.com, Aug 14]

Amateur Competition. In the garage of his house, Frank Sanns spends nights tinkering with one of his prized possessions: a working nuclear-fusion reactor.  Mr. Sanns, 51 years old, is part of a small subculture of gearheads, amateur physicists and science-fiction fans who are trying to build fusion reactors in their basements, backyards and home laboratories. ...  a loosely knit community www.fusor.net that numbers more than 100 world-wide   [Sam Schechner, Wall Street Journal, Aug 18]  Don't snicker too loud, one of them may actually stumble on a key.

plantsdoitsocanwe writes "An international team of researchers led by Monash University has used chemicals found in plants to replicate a key process in photosynthesis, paving the way to a new approach that uses sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The breakthrough could revolutionize the renewable energy industry by making hydrogen — touted as the clean, green fuel of the future — cheaper and easier to produce on a commercial scale." This was a laboratory demonstration only and the researchers say they need to bring up the efficiency.  [slashdot.org, Aug 17]

Exports are the bright spot this year in an otherwise bleak economy. But the world is not suddenly snapping up made-in-America goods like aircraft, machinery and staplers. The great attraction is decidedly low-luster commodities like corn, wheat, ore and scrap metal. This helps explain why manufacturing jobs are continuing to disappear by the tens of thousands and factories are closing even during a miniboom in exports. While the surge in commodities is a welcome relief, it is an unreliable prop for an industrial power.  [Louis Uchitelle, New York Times, Aug 18]

The American Wind Energy Association has blown off Minneapolis for its 2009 convention because demand for exhibition space has far outstripped the capacity of the city's Convention Center ... expects to host at least 13,000 attendees and 800 exhibitors  ...   could end up in Orlando or Las Vegas -- alien territory for the wind industry  [Neal St Anthony, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Aug 8]

George Orwell was obsessed - not too strong a word - with the habits of totalitarian states and the attempts by those in authority to control information, manipulate opinion and conceal or distort the truth; every reader of Nineteen Eighty-Four knows this. So it is likely that he would have approved the open democracy of the internet, and been happy to make use of it, if only to express opinions that newspaper editors might have fought shy of. ... [He] started keeping a diary on August 9, 1938, and maintained it on a more or less daily basis till shortly before his death in 1950. Now the trustees for the Orwell Prize have decided, 70 years after his first entry, to post the diaries on the internet, a day at a time, an enterprise that should therefore continue till 2019 or 2020.  [Allen Massie, The Telegraph, Aug 8]

Adapting. The U.S. economy is starting to figure out how to curb its legendary appetite for energy. ... With shipping costs surging, companies are rethinking overseas production, slimming down packaging and retooling distribution networks. ... Whether this newfound energy austerity alters the fabric of American life in a lasting way will depend partly on what happens to oil prices over the long term.   [J Lahart and C Dougherty, Wall Street Journal, Aug  12]

Will the Internet change China or will China change the Internet? Events in Beijing leave little doubt it's the latter. More interesting, though, is that many Asian governments may be following China's lead. It could be an ominous sign for Asia's economic outlook. Reporters Without Borders calls China the "world champion'' of cyberspace censorship. Journalists in Beijing were reminded of that when they couldn't access Web sites such as Amnesty International. The International Olympic Committee pressured China to allow access to blocked sites. Yet Reuters reported that the IOC had agreed to let China block them in the first place. China's attempts to filter what its 1.3 billion people read or view may serve as a model of sorts for the region. [Bloomberg, Aug 8])

A new electrolyte for solid-oxide fuel cells, made by researchers in Spain, operates at temperatures hundreds of degrees lower than those of conventional electrolytes, which could help make such fuel cells more practical. Jacobo Santamaria, of the applied-physics department at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, in Spain, and his colleagues have modified a yttria-stabilized zirconia electrolyte, a common type of electrolyte in solid-oxide fuel cells, so that it works at just above room temperature  [MIT Tech Review, Aug 4]

what some economists call a neighborhood effect — putting factories closer to components suppliers and to consumers, to reduce transportation costs — could grow in importance if oil remains expensive. A barrel sold for $125 on Friday, compared with lows of $10 a decade ago.  ... the Canadian investment bank CIBC World Markets, calculates that the recent surge in shipping costs is on average the equivalent of a 9% tariff on trade. [Larry Rohter, New York Times, Aug 3]

the era in which free trade is organized around rules set in the West — with developing nations following along — definitely appears over, and few are mourning its demise. Even in America, where for years free trade advocates assumed their own country would be the biggest winner, advocates of the system are on the defensive. .... the Chinese realized quickly that Japan’s downfall came in part because it never created a culture of innovation. The Chinese know they do not want to be assembling low-cost goods for long — and so they are experimenting with companies like Lenovo. ....  When the Chinese finally took the so-called Doha round of trade talks off of life support last week, teaming up with India to say they would not stop protecting farmers in order to get tariffs reduced on their expanding industrial exports, it was no surprise.  This wasn’t about tariff rates. It was about a fundamental shift in power — sophisticated manufacturing capacity, know-how and capital — that the United States, emerging from its own preoccupation with two wars, is just beginning to appreciate.  [David Sanger, New York Times, Aug 3]

Less costly methods for producing oxygen from water have been developed by researchers in the U.S. and Australia, possibly setting the stage for more use of fuel cells to produce energy. ... chemist Daniel Nocera of MIT added cobalt and phosphates to neutral water and then inserted a conductive-glass electrode. .. raises the possibility of using solar energy to generate the electricity in daytime and using excess power to get oxygen from water ... Bjorn Winther-Jensen at the Australian Centre for Electromaterials Science, developed an electrode that consists of a conducting polymer on a Goretex membrane. They report that the large surface area of the membrane allows oxygen production at rates close to those of platinum electrodes. ... Nocera said he expects [using expensive Pt] to be overcome by ongoing research. [Randolph Schmid, AP, Jul 31] in Friday's edition of the journal Science

Shell Oil Co. has donated $100,000 to the Houston Technology Center to support the acceleration and commercialization of emerging technology companies in energy, information technology, life sciences, nanotechnology, and aerospace technologies, the center is announcing today.  .. one of the largest single contributions to the business incubator and accelerator. In nine years of operation, HTC has provided input to more than 1,000 entrepreneurs and coached more than 200 companies, helping them raise more than $500 million. [Houston Chronicle, Aug 1]

BYD for Build Your Dream —  little-known company has grown into the world’s second-largest battery producer in less than a decade of existence. Now it plans to make a great leap forward: it has built a 16-million-square-foot auto assembly plant here and hired a team of Italian-trained car designers; it plans to build a green hybrid by the end of the year. No longer content to be the home of low-skilled, low-cost, low-margin manufacturing for toys, pens, clothes and other goods, Chinese companies are trying to move up the value chain, hoping eventually to challenge the world’s biggest corporations for business, customers, power and recognition. The government is backing the drive with a two-pronged approach: using incentives to encourage companies to innovate, but also moving to discourage low-end manufacturers from operating in southern China. That step would reverse one of the crucial engines of this country’s spectacular economic rise. [David Barboza, New York Times, Aug 1]

researchers at UT Austin and VPI have engineered a chlorine-tolerant membrane that filters out salt just as well as many commercial membranes. The researchers say that such a membrane would eliminate expensive steps in the desalination process and eventually be used to filter salt out of seawater. The results appear in the most recent issue of the journal Angewandte Chemie. [Jennifer Chu, MIT Tech Review, Jul 30]

Amgen up 12% [Jul 28, 08] A trial of the biotech giant's bone-loss treatment, previously seen by Wall Street as a glowing, but risky, prospect, eased fears about its safety. After the bell, Amgen boosted its outlook for the year. [Wall Street Journal, Jul 29, 08]

Doubled Electricity. By improving the electronic properties of a common thermoelectric material--a type of semiconductor that converts heat into electricity--researchers have doubled its performance, making it more practical for generating electricity from waste heat ... the researchers, including Joseph Heremans, a professor of mechanical engineering and physic at Ohio State University, added trace amounts of thallium to lead telluride, a thermoelectric material that's been generating electricity onboard deep space probes for decades. [Kevin Bullis, MIT Tech Review, Jul 24]

Great minds think (too much) alike. Is it good that ONLINE databases of scientific journals have made life easier for scientists as well as publishers. Maybe not.  James Evans, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, found that the opposite is happening.  as more journals become available online, fewer articles are being cited in the reference lists of the research papers published within them. Moreover, those articles that do get a mention tend to have been recently published themselves. Far from growing longer, the long tail is being docked.  [The Economist, Jul 19]

Computing in 100 BC. After a closer examination of a surviving marvel of ancient Greek technology known as the Antikythera Mechanism, scientists have found that the device not only predicted solar eclipses but also organized the calendar in the four-year cycles  .... sometimes called the first analog computer, was recovered more than a century ago in the wreckage of a ship that sank off the tiny island of Antikythera, north of Crete. Earlier research showed that the device was probably built between 140 and 100 B.C  [J Wilford, New York Times, Jul 31]

A new way to make advanced lithium-ion battery materials addresses one of their chief remaining problems: cost. Arumugam Manthiram at the University of Texas at Austin  demonstrated that a microwave-based method for making lithium iron phosphate takes less time and uses lower temperatures than conventional methods, which could translate into lower costs.  [Kevin Bullis, MIT Tech Review, Jul 29]

Build It, They're Coming. The surge in Internet video is being matched by a transoceanic building boom [$6.4B], a big change from several years ago, when telecom companies were going belly-up from overbuilding their networks. [David Talbot, MIT Tech Review, J/A08]

Yadda, yadda, yadda; forget it. World trade talks collapsed after seven years of on-again, off-again negotiations, in the latest sign of India’s and China’s growing might on the world stage and the decreasing ability of the United States to impose its will globally. [S Castle and M Lander, New York Times, Jul 30]  Happy words about trade advantages aren't enough in a world of individual nations seeking economic gain.

"Please sir, I want some more."  like college graduates whose parents want them married or out in the workforce on their own. Instead, they've come home to hit up mom and dad for more money to go to grad school.   .. the venture-backed start-up world in the summer of 2008, when the prospects for cutting the cord look mighty daunting. ...The window for initial public offerings is closed tighter than at any time since the 1970s. Technology and life sciences companies are fetching smaller sums from buyers. [Robert Weisman, Boston Globe, Jul 28]

Banks struggling to recover from multibillion-dollar losses on real estate are curtailing loans to American businesses, depriving even healthy companies of money for expansion and hiring. [Peter Goodman, New York Times, Jul 28]  Just the kind of help SBIR advocates need;  since private capital won't support good small businesses, government should. Never mind that most of the companies supported are creating no wealth, just doing government jobs.

Check Your Assumptions. But behind the political pyrotechnics is a simple truth: Executives at IndyMac, like many people on both Wall Street and Main Street, apparently never dreamed that home prices might fall.  [Vikas Bijaj, New York Times, Jul 29]

Sell the roots, lose the land.  farmers should resist the urge to harvest their crop residue and sell it for ethanol production, a federal researcher says. Leaving wheat residue on the ground helps preserve soil while harvesting the residue would speed erosion ... But farmers are rushing to cash in on the high prices [Nicholas Geranios, AP, Jul 24] A proposal to build the nation's first commercial ethanol production plant using yard trimmings, paper, wheat straws and other green wastes was approved yesterday by Los Angeles County officials. [Daisy Nguyen, AP, Jul 24] Beware the urge to maximize in the short run. The farmers' urge mimics the national financial urge to fix problems in the short run without a view to the long term. With handout programs for every affected interest, and tax cuts for all, where do we find long term stability?

A pixel that uses a pair of mirrors to block or transmit light could lead to displays that are faster, brighter, and more power efficient than liquid crystal displays (LCDs). Researchers at Microsoft Research who published their novel pixel design in Nature Photonics say that their design is also simpler and easier to fabricate, which should make it cheaper. ]Pachi Patel-Predd, MIT Tech Review, Jul 21]

Power transmission in Texas from where the wind blows free to where the people live got a big boost with a $4.93 billion wind-power transmission project, enough for 3.7 million homes on a hot day when air-conditioners are running ... Transmission companies will pay the upfront costs of the project. They will recoup the money from power users, at a rate of about $4 a month for residential customers. [Kate Galbraith, NY Times, Jul 19]  Which means more transmission lines along, more wind generators, and more openings for technology improvements.

One barrier is that Santa Clara County is an expensive place for manufacture. The valley is to lose yet another public company as Catalyst Semiconductor, a fabless maker of programmable semiconductors based in Santa Clara, has agreed to be acquired by ON Semiconductor of Phoenix, AZ  [San Jose Mercury News, Jul 17, 08]

Internet Gotcha? A new book by two researchers explains how companies' reputations can be tarnished by the [unmediated, 24/7, often anonymous] cacophony of Internet commentary, and how they can fight back.   .... "Groundswell - Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies," published this spring by Harvard Business School Press, Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li lay out the threats and opportunities. [Robert Weisman, Boston Globe, Jul 20]

the second leak at an Areva [French] nuclear power plant in two weeks. [NY Times, Jul 19]  It doesn't take many nuclear leaks to scare the public about nuclear power because radioactive material in the open is dangerous and hard to collect.

In Winner Take All: How Competitiveness Shapes the Fate of Nations, longtime Silicon Valley executive Richard J. Elkus Jr. demonstrates how, through complacent government and misguided business practices, the U.S. has surrendered its lead in one key market or technology after another, from cameras and video displays to HDTV. As a result, he says, the country has lost its competitive edge—and it will take a new mindset and gutsy investment to get it back.  ... reminiscent of arguments made in the mid-1980s, when the U.S. fretted about competition from Japan.  .... The author also believes the strategy must be built on agreement that certain technologies and markets seem likely to be vital to the nation's future and must receive investment even if there won't be an immediate payoff for shareholders.  [Steve Hamm, Business Week, Jul 28]  Another advocate for government program for innovation that would soon become a playground for lobbyists and vested interests, all of which would get a piece of a political pie. The results would likely be in the eye of the beholder because in a complex economy, economic cause and effect are not easily joined. Everyone wanting a handout could always find some argument of a national need suffering from  a market failure. When a politician cites market failure, hold on to your taxpaying wallet.

"From small beginnings there developed a tangled web of wishful thinking, scientific misjudgment, institutional lapses and human failings," the committee wrote. "Each strand could have been resolved separately, but knitting them together produced a crisis." as A Purdue University panel has found two instances of misconduct by a researcher who claims he produced nuclear fusion in tabletop experiments. [Deanna Martin, AP, Jul 18]

"Cheer up," he said, "things could be worse." So I did, and sure enough, things got worse. Even to many economists who recently thought the gloom was overblown, the situation looks grim. The economy is in the midst of a very rough patch. The worst is probably still ahead. ... But, despite what some doomsayers now proclaim, this is not the Great Depression, when unemployment spiked to 25 percent and millions of previously working people woke up in shantytowns. Not by any measure. ... From 1985 to 2002, the average American home sold for about 14 times the annual rent for a similar home, according to Moody’s Economy.com. By early 2006, home prices ballooned to 25 times rental prices. Since then, the ratio has dipped back to about 20 — still far above the historical norm.  [Peter Goodman, NY Times, Jul 19]

After John M. Haake started his Bridgeton-based company, Titanova Inc., in February, he wanted an adviser who could help him navigate the maze of starting a business. Through a free mentoring service called InnovateVMS  (Clayton, MO, an upscaling close-in burb) , Haake met more than one business counselor.   He met seven.  The service, modeled after a program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, matches startup businesses with teams of experienced business leaders who can serve as mentors. It was launched about 14 months ago by Innovate St. Louis, a regional group aimed at innovation and entrepreneurship. [Angela Tablac, St Louis Post Dispatch, Jul 17, 08]

In partnership with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the state University at Albany, IBM announced plans Tuesday for a $1.5 billion expansion in nanotechnology research and development that will create about 1,000 jobs, including at least 325 at UAlbany. [Danielle Sanzone, Troy Record, Jul 17]

Salary.com, a leading provider of on-demand compensation and talent management solutions, announced the results of its 2008 Salary Value Index (SVI). ... ranks the best and worst American cities in which to build personal wealth.... the complete list of the 2008 Salary Value Index cities, Best Cities 1. Plano, TX, 2. Aurora, CO, 3. Omaha, NE, 4. Minneapolis, MN, 5. Albuquerque, NM. Worst Cities 1. New York,2. Washington, 3. Los Angeles,  4. Honolulu, 5. San Francisco.

"There seems to be something in the water in Washington where people think market manipulation is the reason oil prices are rising and stocks are falling," said Peter Morici, a professor at the business school at the University of Maryland. "Stocks are falling because the global capital markets are downgrading the U.S. economy because the banks are broken."  [Wall Street Journal, Jul 16]

Manufacturing Revival. The economic forces working in favor of U.S. manufacturing include a weaker dollar, which is helping drive sales for exporters and their suppliers. Rising transportation costs are encouraging companies to buy and produce more goods closer to home. An infrastructure and mining boom abroad is boosting orders for the huge cranes made by Manitowoc Co., one of the [Wisconsin] town's oldest companies. At the same time, rising labor costs in some countries are starting to make outsourcing less attractive. ... Still, Nationally, only about 10% of the U.S. work force is currently employed in manufacturing. That's down from a peak of about 42% in the early 1940s, and about 18% in the 1980s.  [Timothy Aeppel, Wall Street Journal, Jul 18]  If only 10% are making things, what are the rest doing? Selling mortgages to each other?

Oil is Still for Capitalists. No commentator seems to know that oil exploration is already subject to "use it or lose it" provisions -- and that petroleum exploration typically goes forward when companies feel they'll make a profit, and doesn't when they don't.  Neither pundit nor politician knows anything about the oil business. [Econopundit blog, Jul 8]  [B]oth parties are responding (unsurprisingly) to the American public’s great sensitivity to short-term prices for gasoline (in the summer) and home heating oil (in the winter). No doubt high prices are causing a lot of hardship. ...But market prices are high today for a reason. What is the market failure that would call for government intervention in the oil market? [Jeff Frankel, Economist's View blog, Jul 15]

We apologize for the delay, but, hey, you're calling India for free. WSJ's daily cartoon Pepper and Salt shows a man holding a telephone in front of a computer monitor.

The 10 Emerging Technologies of 2008:  Modeling Surprise, Probabilistic Chips, NanoRadio, Wireless Power, Atomic Magnetometers, Offline Web Applications, Graphene Transistors, Connectomics, Reality Mining, Cellulolytic Enzymes. [MIT Tech Review, M/A08]

Roughly $4 billion of Whirlpool's 2008 $19 billion in revenue results came from their innovation areas. [Industry Week, Jul 16]

over two-thirds (67%) [of companies with sales $20M to $5000 M] said their company’s international sales are growing faster than their domestic revenue. “We’re fast approaching a tipping point among U.S. companies as a growing number of them derive a significant portion of their revenue overseas, said Christopher P. Davies, senior executive VP for North America [of HSBC bank] [bank press release]

While NFIB is relatively small—600,000 members compared to AARP’s 38 million—it is remarkably powerful. Fortune has frequently named it the most powerful business lobby in Washington, and in 2005 Republican members of Congress identified it as the most powerful congressional lobby.... Small business owners occupy a Norman Rockwell-space in the American imagination. But as our analysis suggests and experiences in Washington and the nation’s state capitals repeatedly reveal, the appeal of small business has been appropriated by a powerful interest group that does not fully represent the views of small-business owners.  [Nicole Kazee, Michael Lipsky, and Cathie Jo Martin, Boston Review, J/A08]

Free Market Speculators - Good and Bad.  During the tech-stock bubble in the late 1990s, shorts were overwhelmed by the thundering herd of irrationally exuberant bulls. Then, it was difficult to bet against new tech-stock offerings because shares were in limited supply and costly to borrow. Stocks ended up being clearly overpriced for long stretches. In that case, and during the housing bubble, the speculators made everybody feel good, but were the bigger menace to the markets and economy, pumping up tech shares and home prices to unsustainable levels. Very few people complained about speculators then. Trying to stop them now could lead to still more market folly.  [Mark Gongloff, Wall Street Journal, Jul 17] The arguments about short sellers also apply to oil futures traders - they provide liquidity and amplify manias.

speculative manias are an apparently inescapable feature of our entrepreneurial capitalism. "America, from its inception, was a speculation," Aaron M. Sakolski wrote at the beginning of his 1932 classic of economics, The Great American Land Bubble. I know that the railway, automobile, and airplane industries were all built in fits of speculative excess. Most of the companies of those eras no longer exist; but the best are still around. Similarly, I remember that the best of the dot-com companies survived the crash and continue to influence our lives. [Jason Pontin, MIT Tech Review, J/A08]

Different This Time.  John Kenneth Galbraith pointed out on numerous occasions that, just as each generation of teenagers believes it invented sex, each generation of spivs (sorry, 'financial executives') believes that it has created a 'New Economics' based on deregulation. Always it ends in massive state bail-outs. [Eric Skelton, Cardiff, The Times, Jul 16]]

Laptops Selling. Intel easily beat analysts' expectations as it  reported a 25% jump in profit and record sales in the quarter, fueled by strong sales of processors for laptop computers. [Wall Street Journal, Jul 16]

Spend and Borrow, Borrow, Borrow. “We were betrayed,” said Mr. Liszewski, who was still not sure he could believe the news that the company had agreed to be sold. “The good Lord was sold out for 30 pieces of silver. We were sold out for $70 a share.” August A. Busch IV, the scion who runs the family brewery that makes Budweiser and Michelob and dates to before the Civil War, had vowed that there would be no sale on his watch. But in the end, sentiment and tradition were no match for a $52 billion offer from the Belgian beer giant InBev. [Dirk Johnson, New York Times, Jul 16]  It's not a national security problem, this time, it's only a beer company in beer-land St Louis that shows the consequences of the rise of the Euro against the ever-devaluing dollar. Since the people from whom we borrow to prop up our spending have to buy something with the dollars they accumulate; why not a profitable beer company?  Which national icon is next for the next $200 billion we borrow to support our Iraq dream?  Eventually the voters will realize that a national dept is not just an Washington abstraction.  

There seems to be a general feeling, as a Hastings Center working group put it, that “behavioral genetics will never explain as much of human behavior as was once promised.” [David Brooks, New York Times, Jul 15]

Intel Capital is boosting its investments in clean technology startups as a way to develop new sources of power for Intel processors. The chipmaker's corporate venture arm, one of Silicon Valley's largest, said this week it put 24 million euros in a German company, Sulfurcell, which converts sunlight into electricity by using modules coated with a thin metallic film. .... its  third clean technology investment in less than six weeks [Deborah Gage, San Francisco Chronicle, Jul 11]

A Boston University spinout looking to reduce the mechanical components of electronic devices to the nano level has landed $8 million in its Series A round of funding. Sand 9 was founded by Pritiraj Mohanty, a physics professor at BU, and Matt Crowley, a former principal at BU’s Community Technology Fund, and it aims to bring to market a nanomechanical resonator that investors claim could change the performance and capabilities of wireless electronics, including cell phones and GPS devices.  [Mass High Tech, Jul 11]

In the 1990s, a cancer drug called TNP-470 dramatically increased life span for some patients and led to complete cancer regression in others. But when neurotoxicity was detected in some patients, clinical trials were halted. This is a common problem: many drugs that show great promise in the lab fail in clinical trials due to unforeseen toxicity. Nanomedicine, however, promises a way to make safer, more effective versions of such drugs. Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston have created and tested in mice a safer version of TNP-470. "This is one of the first examples of nanotechnology resurrecting older drugs that we're aware of," says Piotr Grodzinski, director of the National Cancer Institute's nanotechnology programs.  [Katherine Bourzac, MIT Tech Review, Jul 11]

Ate His Own Cooking.  DeBakey pioneered numerous cardiovascular procedures, including the coronary bypass and the artificial-heart transplant. In 1954, he devised a technique to repair arteries using a Dacron tube he made on his wife’s sewing machine. In 2006, he became the oldest survivor of the procedure he invented. .... I scheduled my last operation when I was ninety.   [Cal Fussman, Esquire, Jul 12]

Boys Love Toys. What’s wrong with a hypersonic aircraft? Nothing, except there’s no real explanation for how this technology will defend against future threats, or perhaps more to the point, why this technology was selected over other investments, such as alternative-energy initiatives (which are also funded, but not at that level). As one longtime defense analyst lamented to me, the danger of the Pentagon’s current approach to technology is that without a clear prioritization, everything seems worthy of investment. In that case, what we’ll get is what we have: a military equipped to deal with a future threat that may never exist, while often lacking the tools to cope with the present. [Sharon Weinberger, Foreign Policy, Jul 08]

Attitudes Have Consequences. More and more foreign firms whose homeland currency outweighs the U.S. dollar have been setting up in Massachusetts, particularly in the life sciences sector. [Mass High Tech, Jul 11] For Euro companies, it's a no-brainer. In addition to Harvard and MIT, it's about the closest American place to Europe both geographically and attitudinally. Why would a French science-based company, for example, locate in the state whose representatives changed the pommes-frites to Freedom Fries? Or in a state that denies evolution?

All of the money [China] has absorbed from its net exports has helped the country build up a mountain of foreign-exchange reserves, now totaling about $1.8 trillion. That mass of reserves now looks too big for anyone's good -- it's a source of inflation in China and uncertainty for the global financial system. [Wall Street Journal, Jul 11]  What would be the political response if China used a big chunk of that money to buy farmland in Iowa on which it grew crops that it exported home?  Investors from China, which imports huge amounts of soybeans and crude palm oil, are purchasing farm land in Africa and Southeast Asia.  Korea and Saudi Arabia doing likewise in other countries. [T Wright, M Fam, and P Barta, Wall Street Journal, Jul 11]

An Innovation Competitor? A self-described "chemistry nerd," Dow Chemical CEO Liveris sees a day when Dow scientists will create must-have products craved by customers around the world, just as it did back in the 1960s, he says. .... his grand plan to turn his staid company into a hot-shot high-tech innovation machine. ....  Coaxing a high-tech butterfly from a commodity-chemical cocoon is far from easy, experts and competitors say [L Eaton and A Campoy, Wall Street Journal, Jul 11]

Going Nowhere. this newspaper, and most of Wall Street, has declared that stocks have officially entered a bear market now that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is 20% below its record high of last October. I think that's poppycock. We've been in a bear market for years; the Dow was almost 600 points higher in early 2000 than it is today. What about that 10% yearly return that U.S. stocks supposedly provide with near-certainty? To earn a 10% long-term return, according to Morningstar, you need to have bought at least 19 years ago and held on ever since. [Jason Zweig, Wall Street Journal, Jul 12]

Andy Says Go Electric. Energy independence is the wrong goal. Oil, like all other goods, flows toward the highest bidder. Consequently, talking about "independence" in a global economy ruled by market forces is a contradiction. As national policy, we must protect the U.S. economy from interruptions in the supply of such a critical commodity -- whether those interruptions are related to natural or political causes. I believe that the appropriate aim is to strengthen our energy resilience to adjust to such changes. We can do this by increasing our reliance on electricity. [Andrew Grove, Washington Post, Jul 13]

This is the summer of our discontent. Only 14% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States, the lowest figure recorded by Gallup’s pollsters since they began asking that question almost 15 years ago. Consumer confidence is at its lowest level in 28 years, according to the respected Reuters/ University of Michigan survey. And not many Americans are expecting things to improve soon. [Irwin Stelzer, The Sunday Times, Jul 13]

As professors Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff lay out in one of two recent papers on crises, the current one follows "a well-trodden path laid down by centuries of financial folly." Crises are often preceded by a buildup of asset prices and borrowing. The "deleveraging" that follows creates pernicious feedback loops -- firms reduce debt, selling assets and raising equity, which pushes asset prices lower, forcing them to reduce more debt and sell more assets. It's probably one reason these things come in waves. A common psychology of denial and acceptance is another reason for the waves, as is the mystery of price discovery in such uncertain environments. .... Whatever the policy response, history suggests this won't be finished soon. New waves of market turmoil and economic pain should come as no surprise.  [Jon Hilsenrath and Mark Gongloff, Wall Street Journal, Jul 14]  It was another great boom while it lasted.