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Nov 12, 2009
anks are the problem here
anks are the problem here. While big businesses have been able to raise money through bond offerings underwritten by JPMorgan Chase ( JPM - news - people ), Barclays ( BCS - news - people ) and gemstone jewelry Goldman Sachs ( GS - news - people ), and have been able to access the commercial paper market, small businesses have been effectively shut out. Most small businesses use lines of credit or even the founder's credit card to borrow and those lines, says Hatzius, are being tightened by banks who may still have years of unrecognized balance sheet losses to work through.
The big/small divide means that the small business job creation engine has stalled. Unemployment will remain well above its 5% long-term average, depressing consumer demand and also potential wage inflation. That lack of demand and confidence will further keep a lid on the housing market, which already suffers from over-supply. It could also drive rents down. The same lack of pearl necklace demand will mean that the U.S. will use just 75% of its manufacturing capacity, rather than the usual 90%. All that slack spells no inflation despite the weakening dollar and potential rising commodities prices.
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Also, says the Hatzius team, the recession probably ended in June and since World War II, there has never been substantial inflation in the first 18 months of an economic recovery. That means that the Federal Reserve won't raise interest rates until at least 2011.
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The Goldman team thinks that the U.S. deficits, which went from 3.2% of GDP in 2008 to 11% of GDP in 2009, will remain at elevated levels but wonĄŻt cause near-term problems. It becomes an issue after 2011. First, the Fed will withdraw monetary stimulus from the system but then the federal government will have to restrain economic activity. This might not be because there's robust growth but rather because the private credit market starts growing again. Governments want to avoid competing with private industry for credit.
The Lawrence R. Klein Award annually recognizes the most accurate of the 50 economic teams that contribute to the Blue Chip Economic Indicators newsletter and is sponsored by the W.P. Carey School of pearl earrings Business at Arizona State University. Nobel laureate Lawrence Klein of the University of Pennsylvania and known as the father of macroeconomic modeling presented the award.
Posted at 06:39 pm by Whoyg2961
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Business? That's easily defined," wrote Alexandre
Dumas. "It's other people's money." Utility companies appear to have
taken Dumas' words to freshwater perl jewelry heart when it comes to the smart grid.
Power companies across the U.S. have installed millions of home
smart meters, devices that promise to intelligently cut power use, trim
electric bills and ultimately cut greenhouse gas emissions.
However, at the outset, the only sizable economic benefits are
likely to be for the utilities themselves, not consumers, who are
paying for wish pearl the gizmos through higher utility rates. Mother nature is likely to get a fraction of the promised benefit.
Utilities get a good deal on smart meter investment. The meters
send power usage information directly to power companies via the
Internet or wireless networks, replacing human meter readers. Utilities
can also use the meters to remotely turn off power when a customer
moves out or fails to pay bills, or gemstone jewelry automatically reroute electric power when a storm knocks out power lines.
Posted at 06:38 pm by Whoyg2961
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Such operational savings cover
Such operational savings cover about 70% of smart meter investment, according to the California Public Utilities Commission. California's three major utilities have installed a million smart meters since 2006 and plan to pearl necklace have all homes wired by 2012.
But "the power companies are spending on rate payers' account," says Nancy Brockaway, a utilities attorney and former counsel with the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission. Rate payers foot the bill for the meters through higher utility bills. "Utilities don't have much skin in the game," she says.
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The author is dead wrong. Competitive retailers in pearl earrings Europe - where I just spent four months - and Texas are dying to offer dynamic pricing to differentiate their offers. And in California and Maryla....
What do consumers get for their smart grid investment? Apparently, not much.
"In terms of energy efficiency and conservation, just installing a smart meter isn't going to have much effect," says Greg Guthridge, a smart-grid consultant with Accenture.
Utility customers only save money when smart meters help them to cut their energy use. A good way to do that is by raising the price of freshwater perl jewelry electricity when demand is high, such as during the middle of a summer day, when high rates of air-conditioning use push the electric grid to capacity.
Posted at 06:38 pm by Whoyg2961
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Under such a scenario, known as dynamic or real-time pricing, it's expected that customers will turn up the temperature of their air conditioners a few degrees to save money. Consumers might chose to wish pearl run their washing machine late at night when demand is lower and save even more. Smart meters feed pricing information to power customers through online power monitoring programs such as diverse offerings from Tendril and General Electric ( GE - news - people ).
Dugg on Forbes.com
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Smart Meters: Not So Sharp For Consumers
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But utilities have signed up few customers for real-time pricing. Just 1% of smart meter-equipped homes in freshwater perl jewelry California have such programs, according to the California PUC. In Illinois, ComEd, part of Exelon ( EXC - news - people ), plans to put 8,000 customers on real-time pricing among the 131,000 homes it plans to equip with smart meters by next year.
"You'd be led to believe that you put in real-time pricing and a nice Web site and immediately get a 15% reduction in energy use," says Accenture's Guthridge. "But reality is quite different," and big hurdles remain in getting customers, most of whom are accustomed to pay little attention to their power bills, to micromanage their energy use and accept energy market price risk.
About half of U.S. homes are on equalized billing programs that even out power bills month to month and are the antithesis of real-time pricing programs. "These customers have zero ability to connect their usage to real-time pricing," says Guthridge.
Smart appliances could automate some efficiencies. For example, advanced thermostats could turn down ventilation systems based on price signals from utilities, while dishwashers would know to operate only in pearl necklace the wee hours of the morning. But in a Catch-22 scenario, shelling out for such appliances would only raise consumers' price for harvesting cost savings.
Posted at 06:36 pm by Whoyg2961
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And demand response will likely be a tough sell in freshwater perl jewelry
very deregulated electricity markets such as Texas, where customers can
choose from dozens of power retailers that compete by offering the
lowest, most predictable energy prices.
One possible solution to get more homes on dynamic pricing: Make it
the default energy billing system, as it is for commercial and
industrial customers in most parts of the country.
Not all customers need to sign up for advanced pricing schemes for
overall savings from operations and lower energy use to exceed the cost
of smart meter programs, says Val Jensen, VP of marketing and
environmental programs at ComEd. But it isn't yet clear how many
customers will have to sign up for pearl earrings the smart grid to get to that point.
ComEd is working hard to make sure that smart meters benefit
everyone involved. The 131,000-home smart grid test it is runnning in
Illinois will offer customers a variety of dynamic pricing options,
with the goal of understanding which options customers feel most
comfortable with. Once ComEd identifies dynamic plans that seem to
stick, it will petition the Illinois Commerce Commission with
recommendations for system-wide rollout.
Until smart pricing evolves to match smart meters, consumers are
unlikely to cut their energy use much, and greenhouse gas
reductions--an additional advantage that has been promised to result
from the smart grid--will likely be minimal.
An October report from the consulting company Brattle Group
estimates that in Europe, it would cost 51 billion euros to wire the
continent with smart meters. The overall benefits of such a program
could reach 67 billion euros in operational efficiencies and energy
savings if dynamic pricing becomes the gemstone jewelry
default. That's an unlikely scenario in Europe, where energy markets
are deregulated and there is little political will to force people off
of comfortable utility programs. Without dynamic pricing, the payback
for smart meter investments could be as low as 14 billion euros, the
Brattle report concludes.
In the meantime, utility customers will see little reduction in
their energy bills. "Meter benefits will depend on who steps up with
pricing plans," says Exelon's Jensen.
Posted at 06:35 pm by Whoyg2961
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