I'll add a few points since there's little new (PalmOS) Treo news lately. If you don't like the topic set up a filter or hit the delete key now.
On Sat, 12 Jul 2008, L . . . wrote: > a couple of things > > 1. I thought the value of the dollar was no longer based on the gold > standard and instead was based on the strength of the GDP, the outstanding > money in the system and the amount of debt. True, $1 of gold today is not $1 of gold tomorrow. There are other factors at play in determining the value of the USD including trade imbalance, interest rates, foreign investment, budget deficit, etc. > 2. What about the role of foreign investment in propping up the banks - like > from China and Dubai? They're also propping up our government spending. A lot of our budget deficit is borrowed from overseas banks. > 3. I agree with you about the value of the dollar impacting what we see as > the price of oil, but it seems like our currency has been relatively stable > versus the Euro and Pound for the past 2 years, yet both our oil prices as > well as their oil prices have been increasing as well. So doesn't that point > more to demand? Or does it mean that they are experiencing similar economic > problems? If only that were true. Sadly the dollar has been in a fairly steady decline since the beginning of 2006 and even before that it was sliding with only a brief increase during 2006. Today 1 Euro = $1.60. In January of 2006 1 Euro = $1.20. See for yourself: http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?from=USD&to=EUR&amt=1&t=5y > 4. What about the idea that we need more refineries more than we need more > oil? It seems to depend who you ask. I've heard reports saying that refineries were running at between 65% and 95% of capacity. Think about it this way: what changed drastically in the last two years? It wasn't the consumption of the American consumer - that has been a slow, steady rise. China and India, on the other hand, are growing their energy needs at 20% a year or more. What happened recently was that demand finally outstripped supply and basic economics kicked in. Read up on Hubert's Peak (wikipedia has a good page on it) for more detail. OPEC can try to set all the price caps they want, but if supply is limited there's little they can actually do about it. > and finally > > 5. Is now a good time to buy PALM shares? :) [OBTreo] I would say no. The iPhone2 just came out, RIM has the Bold and Thunder coming and all we hear from Palm is crickets. I'm an avid Palm fan, but I really think they're on life support now. The market that was theirs to lose has been lost. My aging, dying Treo is likely to be replaced by a Bold later this year. The iPhone still doesn't support A2DP and a removable battery so that's a deal breaker for me. -Jason ----- --- There are no absolute statements. I'm very probably wrong. --- "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
