- Cars top 5 million on Belgian roads Thu 30/08/07 - The number of cars registered in Belgium has topped 5 million for the first time. This total has risen sharply over the past decade. The latest figures show that 5,048,723 cars are registered in our country. If buses, vans and lorries are included, the figure approaches 6 million. In addition a further 375,000 motorbikes are registered here.

Interesting fact to know: there are 10.4 million Belgians.  In case some foreign army want to invade Belgium: we'll simply put our cars in the street, nobody can get through this mess. You are warned.

The struggle of man against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.(Kundera)

SL Capital Partners LLP

But of course only a monomaniac like me sees this example of a "Capital Partnership" as further evidence that the "Open Corporate" UK LLP is in the process of making the Limited Liability Company redundant.

 Explaining the rationale behind the restructure, SLI said as private equity investors make capital commitments for long periods of time - at around 14 years - they want some guarantee on who will manage their money over the period. By giving investment managers a stake in the business, they are more likely to stay, it added.

Odd, isn't it, that people are more likely to stay if they participate in a business?

It is hoped the new structure will encourage investment managers to write more business, as they will take a 40 per cent share in the profits, as well as help retain existing clients.

SLI will, of course, benefit from LLP being successful as it is the majority owner.

Doesn't take the brains of a rocking-horse, really, does it?

IMHO any business that does not use this structure will be at a disadvantage to one that does.

Watch this space.

What are all those dots? People who are receiving farm subsidy payments under the Farm Bill.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Market insight: There can be no return to `normality'

... disparate viewpoints are unsurprising in a financial system where risk has been diced and sliced to the nth degree in overstructured products.

The whole essence of complex investment vehicles such as collateralised debt and loan obligations is that they drive a giant wedge between portfolio perception and economic reality.

(...)

Credit conditions have, after all, tightened across the board. Parts of the credit markets remain closed.

(...)

The whole of the US housing market is a gigantic Achilles' heel for the financial system as recent numbers for housing starts confirm.

How this will affect players in the global financial system is impossible to predict because a peculiar feature of this 21st century financial crisis is its opacity. Nobody knows where risk has ended up, which is why confidence and liquidity drained away in the first place. (...)

US home lending has been a huge driver of global demand. It is now going into reverse, with analysts such as Bill Gross of the Pimco fund management group expecting house price deflation in the US of up to 10 per cent in the absence of governmental intervention to prop up the market. On present policy, it is hard to see how the change in mortgage market conditions can fail to precipitate an economic slowdown.

(...)

The large chunk of corporate profits attributable to finance in the US and UK is also a bear pointer. While central banks have so far succeeded in keeping the financial show on the road, the problems of the housing market and the flakiness of the accountancy for complex financial instruments means that there is a drip feed of bad news yet to come.

Big Questions for Big Oil

In such circumstances [higher oil prices], one would expect such commentators to be bullish about the prospect for independent oil companies (IOCs) such as Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell and BP. Rising oil prices have pushed these companies' profits sky-high over the past five years. Yet a growing number of industry voices suggest that the era of the vertically integrated supermajor may be over, and that IOCs have been unable to adapt to the new global business environment.

Second-quarter results in late July saw Shell, BP, ConocoPhilips and Exxon Mobil all report declining output. Jeroen van der Veer, the chief executive of Shell -- the only firm to post an overall rise in net income on the back of record refining revenues -- said the company was "rejuvenating" itself through production from unconventional projects such as Canadian tar sands and LNG projects in Qatar. Such marginal activities are now having an effect on the balance sheet as returns from traditional operations -- namely, sub-surface crude oil and gas production -- begin to disappoint.

IOCs are facing both structural and cyclical challenges. Depressed oil prices throughout the mid- to late 1990s caused a period of low investment in new exploration by IOCs and nationalized oil companies (NOCs) alike, which has left many firms reliant on a relatively smaller number of "superfields" that are beginning to dry up. As the oil price has steadily risen, several governments -- most notably in Russia and Venezuela -- have responded by expropriating foreign-owned oil and gas fields for their own state-run firms, usually under the guise of environmental transgressions or tax irregularities.

(...)

Total, which was competing against Statoil and Chevron for the [Shtokman] contract, had little choice but to accept these punitive terms since IOCs' business models are predicated on developing access to new reserves. Yet paying for the privilege diverts cash away from R&D, an area in which IOCs need to invest heavily if they are to compete with oil services providers. Throughout the postwar period, IOCs have pioneered advances in exploratory and extractive technologies. But their recent underinvestment within a highly cyclical industry means the services providers, funded by huge contracts from newly cash-flush NOCs, are now set to lead the research field. Recent figures suggest that while Exxon Mobil plans to spend $650 million on R&D in 2007, Schlumberger will spend $720 million, further squeezing IOCs' future technological advantage.

So what is the future for IOCs? A further round of mergers is unlikely because of stringent Western competition rules, as BP and Shell once concluded. Ironically, the paradox of the high oil price is that all the major IOCs are beginning to divest their noncore assets, such as refineries and consumer-distribution infrastructure, even as their profits in oil and gas production should be rising.

With NOCs undertaking ever-more challenging exploration -- Pemex, the Mexican state oil company, recently leased three semisubmersible drilling rigs which can operate in 5,000 feet of water -- competition between oil services providers and IOCs to provide technical support will intensify. Such competition is likely to radically reshape the oil industry over the next two decades. Total's deal over Shtokman may represent the beginning of the end of the supermajor.

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"Digging up the prime peat to sell to the Scots, so they can sell their whiskey at ever higher prices to the Japanese industrymen," he sloughed.  "And now all the smokers have to go outside to light up... why are scientists so mufferfookin' blind!"

i didn't know how to respond, but Nosti was on the case.  "Don't answer that," he predicted.  So i didn't, and it came true.

We sat quietly for a moment, interrupted only by the seals begging smokes, as we both sat spellbound watching the future volcano that was Pt. Reyes erupt with a fury only future generations would understand.  I drifted off, sadly watching the demise of the Bay Area i'd grown to love... too painful to watch as the lava damned the Golden Gate.

The sting of his palm across my face brought me back to the beach.  "Wake up, you Mars square in the seventh house Aschloch!"  so i did, once again a testament to his predilective perspicacity.

To this day i remain stunned as Nosti spun a detailed description of the Ley Lines running beneath the very center of the European Tribune, and how they too would erupt, coalescing power around the very spot from which the Peak Oil drop would be drilled.

Nostradamus sprang up, shaking the sand from his monstrous appendage as the seals quaked in fear and the hippy virgins began streaming down to the beach from Bolinas.  "The days of ET are numbered,"  he chirped, "for the very statistics have turned against them."

The heavens thundered as he pointed his member at their membership, and i was rocked across the cliffs by the mighty, angry Winds at about 29 meters per second, well beyond cut-out speed, falling panting before the base as the fiery seas clutched at my legs.

The fire dissolved into a soft, luscious licking around the corners of my mouth.  "Did you have another of those mysoginist Limantour Beach dreams, my love?"

I surrendered into the arms of my 26 year old lover, as she whispered, "Tell me again the part about the appendage and the volcano."

Skennah Kowa

I told Bush; don't play chess with the freakin' Russians.

Provides some experimental evidence that Bush won in '04 because of 9-11.

you are the media you consume.

Такого, как Путин!

MOSCOW (AFP) -- Stuffed rabbits singing a pop song proclaiming their love for Russian President Vladimir Putin are selling like hot cakes in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.

Lyrics:
http://russmus.net/song.jsp?band=Poyushchie_Vmeste&album=0&song=0

Video:
http://www.siberianlight.net/2007/08/29/i-want-a-man-like-dobby-err-like-putin/


"This is nothing compared to how Putin rigged Eurovision."

Never been there that I didn't feel peaceful.

"I said, 'Wait a minute, Chester, You know I'm a peaceful man...'" Robbie Robertson

I'd go on a little more about this, including a free way to find out about your lucky geography spots are,  if I was sure I wasn't going to be censored for it.