Archive for August, 2009

How do you feel about money?

August 26th, 2009

The recession is teaching us all some hard new lessons about respecting money.

We all know that the love of money is the root of all evil. Yet we think of it as unclean:

o We call it filthy lucre,

o Too much of it means you are stinking rich

o Too little and you are dirt poor.

We don’t talk about money openly and we treat it as if it is a vulgar subject. We routinely ask strangers what they do for a living, but would never dream of asking how much they earn. And that applies equally to family and close friends.

It’s not always like that

Some cultures feel differently about money. When I tell people that I write about money for a living, it evokes little interest and they don’t pursue the conversation. I wonder if it would be the same if I said I was a sports or travel or food writer.

Now there’s a change

The recession has brought the subject of money out into the open and is making us love the stuff more than we did before. Most of us now believe that money is more important than it was prior to the recession. This thinking is also reducing how we value possessions. Money is a great tool and also a measure of value and a form of exchange. It buys food and clothes for us and our families; it keeps a roof over our heads, pays our bills and if we’re lucky, buys a few treats as well. So why is it so notoriously hard to earn and unbelievably easy to spend?

A lesson from the recession

Along comes a recession and changes our attitudes towards money. It teaches us to look after it and how to use it and invest it wisely. If we weren’t caught by the recession or by investing in one of the huge money frauds, we know how lucky or clever we were compared to others.

Charity keeps going

Surprisingly, research shows that people are maintaining their charitable donations and are helping family in these difficult times. It is a fact that charitable donations in the US doubled after the 1930s Great Depression because people witnessed the trauma of poverty.

More money lessons

One of the tough lessons of the recession is that of staying out of debt. Moreover, it is teaching us that saving money is good, and borrowing too much is dangerous.

We will always feel funny about money but until somebody develops an entirely different social structure, or we return to a barter system, we just have to learn to live with money. We should learn to love it, not because it’s money but for what it can do for us if we use it properly.

One of these days, man should start work on evolving a new financial system. That’s probably got about the same chance of success as developing a substitute for water!

Posted in Finance | No Comments »

Guess what’s dropping in price!

August 26th, 2009

Solar panels, that’s what!
And according to the manufacturers, they will continue dropping in price for the next 2 years as the global demand increases. With all fuss about greenhouse gases and the environmentalists’ yelling, the demand for solar power is soaring around the world.

What’s going on in the solar energy world?
The world is in the midst of an explosion of knowledge and production in solar energy. It was never completely ignored, but it seems to have been pushed onto the backburner for years. I had the feeling that everyone know that we could make energy from the sun but that making it from the moon, Lunar energy, would be was more of a challenge so we concentrated on that. Now in the greenhouse gas crisis, solar is the energy of the future.

The cost of solar panels
The lower the cost of the solar panel, the lower the cost of the energy it produces.
The main raw material of the panels is silicon and the price of silicon is relatively high, despite having fallen sharply since last year. There are other factors as well. These panels, which are known as PV (for photo-voltaic) panels, convert sunlight directly into 12 volt electricity. In order to make this electricity usable it has then to be converted to 120 or 220 volts before one can run the washing machine or TV set. These energy conversion devices have a price too.

Photovoltaics
PV production has been doubling every 2 years, increasing by an average of 48 percent each year since 2002, making it the world’s fastest-growing energy technology. Photovoltaics is not a new technology – remember those little solar powered calculators and watches that came onto the market years and years ago – they were the forerunner of the PV age. Since those days many new devices have been invented to generate low voltage electricity. One sees many of them along the sides of highways – a pole with a small solar panel on the top supplying power to an emergency telephone is a common sight.

The solar power competition
The competition in the energy business is fierce. Coal and gas remain at the top of the power generating list. Both of these are bad news for the environmentalists, but they are tried and tested materials and firm favorites. Most countries are still doubtful about solar. Many countries, of course, cannot use solar because of the few days in the year when there is plentiful sunlight. The UK and the Northern countries of Europe have this problem. Countries of the Middle East, Africa, India and Australia are the countries that fall right into the solar energy market.

The storage problem
One major problem in the solar energy business still waiting to be solved is the matter of storing electricity. It’s all very well producing electricity while the sun is shining. But the storage of energy for use at night-time when the sun isn’t shining is still not cheaply available.

Posted in Economy | No Comments »

The Unemployment Antidote

August 25th, 2009

My wife and I took a drive to the other end of town yesterday. We had heard that a new mall opened and we wanted to take a look for ourselves. We live opposite an established downtown mall which we frequent for all our needs so we felt guilty at even looking another mall. It was an eye-opener.

Mall design keeps moving

Mall design is continually on the move as marketing and shopping psychology reports roll in and every new mall make last year’s or last month’s look old-fashioned. Just the drive down into the underground parking level was an experience. The concrete floor has been painted in bright shiny colors with the parking and no-parking slots clearly marked. The slots are wide and the aisles are wide. There are speed bumps in the aisles to dampen the speed merchants. We even found a space near the escalators.

Where’s the supermarket?

The lower shopping level was teeming with children on their last week of vacation, the shops were busy and generally the place was humming. “I need something at the supermarket,” said my wife and we looked for one. Not one in sight, almost unheard of for a modern shopping mall. “The supermarket is the magnet used to pull the people through and past all the other stores,” I remembered from the old days.

A supermarket eatery

We found it outside, completely detached from the mall. And what a supermarket! Called simply Eden, it specializes in everything organic, meaning that everything is expensive. We bought the one item we wanted and then spied the eatery as we were walking out. We stopped and looked at the menu. 7 or 8 different kings of soups and a variety of light foods and salads. We sat down at the counter and ordered a soup for each of us. It was delicious and very, very reasonable. While we ate I looked around me. Everywhere were older employees, each with a young trainee in tow, being shown and taught the ropes in this or that department.

The new staff

New supermarket means new staff, right? This pace was crowded out with green-shirted staff members, rushing around, helping customers, moving goods, packing shelves. Many of the youngsters were probably recent school leavers on their first jobs. Many of the veteran staff teachers looked well into retirement age. A great mix, I thought to myself and how lucky for both ages that a new mall and a new supermarket have come on stream at this tough time in the economy. How lucky that all ages are respectably employed. Whatever anyone says, employment is healthy. Employment brings money and money brings more money. It’s good for everyone.

Keeping it going

What’s needed now is the customer base to keep the mall profitable and to keep all the satellite stores and the supermarket afloat. Times are changing and this is a time for great optimism. This mall and the supermarket will be future winners.

Posted in Economy, Employment | No Comments »

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