Uber’s plan for a world with fewer cars

Electric vehicles are a massive part of the efficient transportation evolution, self-driving cars will be too, but shared transportation is critical in lowering urban congestion and increasing capital efficiency ie., less cars need to be bought, less car loans and much less spending on maintenance and repairs– huge savings for consumers.

Uber didn’t start out with grand ambitions to cut congestion and pollution. But as the company took off, co-founder Travis Kalanick wondered if there was a way to get people using Uber along the same routes to share rides, reducing costs and carbon footprint along the way. The result: uberPOOL, the company’s carpooling service, which in its first eight months took 7.9 million miles off the roads and 1,400 metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the air in Los Angeles. Now, Kalanick says carpooling could work for commuters in the suburbs, too. “With the technology in our pockets today, and a little smart regulation,” he says, “we can turn every car into a shared car, and we can reclaim our cities starting today.”  Here is a direct video link.

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What’s up with copper?

Weak demand and epic global supply, but as with oil, a falling U$ and speculative trading have been goosing copper prices over the past month.  The higher prices rise, the more incentive to producers to ship even more excess supply…a self-defeating circle in the end.

Barclays Commodities Analyst Dane Davis weighs in on the copper rally. Here is a direct video link.

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TSX back into resistance box

After all the usual suspects at central banks failed to hike rates at recent meetings, risk markets in North America are bouncing today. (Treasury yields are not so far agreeing with the inflation hopes of stocks, and are moving lower.) Apparently inaction is the new easing? Except in truth, inaction is not easing, and with everyone hoping to weaken their currency to boost sales, no one is likely to gain traction.

The Canadian TSX has rebounded back into the resistance box which was marked on March 7 below, as oil has bounced on talk of talks about the potential for maybe some agreement on a production ‘freeze’ at record levels from OPEC next month? Maybe? Not likely. But even if there were an agreement, the members have a bad history of cheating, and cash flow desperate people have a tendency to do just that. Then there is the little issue of the existing record global inventories and weakening demand…
TSX Mar 17 2016

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