Fuel cells are often touted as the power source for tomorrow’s vehicles. They typically burn the element hydrogen for their energy. But chemist Douglas MacFarlane of Australia’s Monash University champions a common alternative substance: ammonia. An ammonia molecule is one nitrogen atom bonded to three hydrogen atoms. It stores about twice the energy of hydrogen. And MacFarlane has developed a...
Insert joke of choice here
Amazon created its “Rekognition” face-recognition software to be used by law enforcement agencies to flawlessly identify people. So the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) decided to test it. The ACLU assembled a database of 25,000 publicly available photos of people. Then it showed Rekognition random photos of people and asked the software to find photos of those same people in...
New energy
Another sign of fossil fuels’ demise: The Republic of Ireland is taking steps to become the world’s first country to forsake them. The nation’s lower legislative body, the Dáil Éireann (the House of Representatives) passed a measure mandating that the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, which invests government funds in economic development, rid itself of investments in fossil fuel companies within...
How vulnerable are equity markets?
Very. As trend forecasters, we stay focused on facts. We track the current events that form future trends and make our forecasts based on qualitative data, and not the static that drives business news cycles. How will markets perform? It’s not about trade wars and tariff threats. It’s not about porn stars or playboy models allegedly having affairs with the...
Has gold hit bottom? Here’s the trend.
It’s no mystery. Gold, which has lost nearly 14 percent of its value since mid-April, has been declining sharply as U.S interest rise and the U.S. dollar strengthens. Also, the Federal Reserve has signaled two more interest rate hikes this year and possibly three next year. Thus, higher rates will push up bond yields, making gold a less attractive investment...
Debt striking close to home
U.S. household debt is at an all-time high. Showing steady declines between 2008 and 2013, consumer debt hit an astounding $13.2 trillion at the end of the first quarter 2018. And household debt is rising at a rate 60 percent higher than the increase in wages. Moreover, personal loans are the fastest growing consumer debt category, according to a report...
Three trends that can change it all
Beyond the hyped-up business media headlines on what drives markets and economies on any given day, when the noise clears, there are three trend indicators that are among the major determinants of economic performance: Interest rates, the U.S. dollar and oil. Interest Rates. It was record low interest rates that juiced global equity markets since 2009, and it was aggressively...
State of middle class: Standing still
Twenty years ago, the Five-O model predicted that the middle class would devolve. At the crux of Celente’s forecast was the wage and purchasing power trend line that would emerge early in the 21st century as the global economy adapted to the Five-Os. As evidenced by a series of economic reports, from unemployment rates to GDP numbers that show roaring...
WORLD ECONOMIES ON EDGE
Each time the Gross Domestic Product numbers are reported in a country near you, economists are “puzzled” why the GDP keeps rising but wages keep falling. It’s no surprise. It’s a decades old “Five-O” formula trend that conventional economists fail to understand and Banksters and multi-nationals benefit from. To understand the emerging trends in today’s global economy and what they...
Crash? Recovery?
Jonathan Cho CONTRIBUTING WRITER Blockchain. Distributed ledger. Crypto. These have become the new sexy words for the past year. They promise outsized gains so long as you’re willing to HODL, which either means “hold on for dear life” or was a typo in a crypto online forum turned into an industry-wide meme — a joke essentially. But that a joke...