--Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. --Charu Saxena.

GM Bankruptcy `Not Impossible,' Merrill Analyst Says (Update3)

By Greg Bensinger and Jeff Green

July 2 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp., battered by the slowest U.S. sales market in 15 years, faces the possibility of bankruptcy and may need to raise as much as $15 billion, a Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst said.

The ``dramatic drop-off'' in sales probably will continue through 2009, forcing GM to find additional funding, analyst John Murphy, who cut the Detroit-based automaker's shares to ``underperform'' from ``buy,'' said in a report. ``Bankruptcy is not impossible if the market continues to deteriorate.''

Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seat belts.  It's going to be a bumpy ride.

Somewhere in cyberspace, the ghost of de Chardin is smiling.

Every three months or so, the euro goes up brutally by 10-15 cents, and stabilises around there. It looks like we're soon due another jerk up.

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

City of Houston Gives Wind Power a Turn

HOUSTON -- The heart of the U.S. oil patch on Tuesday began using wind-powered electricity for about a fourth of its municipal power needs at a lower price than it is paying for power produced from coal and natural gas, city officials said.

The move shows how renewable energy's prospects are improving at a time of soaring fossil-fuel prices. Long derided as an expensive niche, wind power now is moving closer to the mainstream.

Houston's push also underscores how far renewable energy has to go. Wind power has taken hold more in Texas than in many other states, both because the western part of the state is breezy and because Texas has enacted a mandate designed to boost wind-power generation. The federal government has rejected calls to implement that kind of mandate nationally.

Under a five-year contract, Houston will pay a fixed price of 7.5 cents per kilowatt hour for the wind-generated electricity, 21% lower than the 9.5 cents per kilowatt hour it pays for conventional power.