Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category
July 18, 2008 12:22PM
By Robert Ray
Americans are not rich, America is rich.
Most of the people live in rural communities, not urban bubbles.
One can drive for 500 miles in America and not hit a city with over 200,000 people.
I set out on a 1500-mile trip this past week. Chicago to Wichita, Kansas and back. My goal was to talk with Middle America, take a pulse, find out if people are changing their lifestyle because of inflated gas, food and a generally slumping economy.
For the most part, most people I meet in this country are nice. They will look a perfect stranger in the eye and answer a question. Most are honest; some embellish and in between one deciphers the truth of it all.
The Midwest is a laboratory for the thought of America.
People in the middle have a full circle of beliefs and opinions representing the entire country. There are little interior motives to the mindset in the heartland, most folks just think it and say it the way they internalize it. I suppose that is why their opinions are so valuable in presidential campaigns. But, more interesting is the economy in the rural region of America.
Rural America is not rich, not fancy and certainly not unaffected by America’s current economy. In fact, possibly more than any other group of people they are being hammered by gas prices and food inflation. And did I mention a surging series of job layoffs in the manufacturing sectors, that’s the icing.
All around America…big, medium and small businesses are treading. Men and women’s salaries are not increasing relative to the price of life.
THE PRICE OF LIFE.
Stunning that there is a price, and even more disturbing is standing in front of a person who you know is hurting…a person who has a family that just can’t find a solution or means to and end for the stress being caused by money. What an insignificant significant word.
I would venture to say that most Americans at least 3 times a month ask themselves “How the hell am I going to make this happen.”
Anyone reading this who thinks I am being negative is not the majority. You are lucky in money, but maybe not in life.
These people you watch that I interviewed are just being honest. Their word is important to deciphering the impact of America’s current economic storm. We all want money but in the end we all just need people.
July 16, 2008 7:00PM
By Robert Ray
The buzz of crickets on the prairie, the whisper of a breeze through my ears and the passing sound of a 40 story turbine cranking revolutions to the velocity of the earth’s wind….indeed, a Kansas wind farm.
We have spent the day with Pete Ferrell, a fourth generation cattle rancher, 7 thousand acres he owns here in southeastern Kansas. Pete’s a tall man, 6’4, slender, wears a cowboy hat, ripped jeans, talks with a strong command of scary western guy voice…made my forehead sweat around the edge of the hairline when we met.
Pete pulled up in front of the Beaumont Hotel on Tuesday night, about 9pm. Dusk had settled the air so his image was silhouette as he slowly cranked open the door on his pick-up truck. “Pete Ferrell, good to see you, I’m Robert Ray.”
“Robert, how are you? Tell me the game plan for tomorrow, I’m a busy rancher and I got too much to take care of”
You see, Cattle Ranchers make New Yorkers look like turtles in creepy parking lot carnival races. Pete gets the damn job done and his time is money. Pete is also a “wind evangelist” of sorts. He has been preaching the gospel of alternative energy in the form of wind power for over a decade.
Some people in these parts hate the sight of the massive white blades hovering over the prairie. Others embrace them and find beauty and hope they make waves in the battle for powering the United States. I sensed both views while in the region. On the side of I35 south were two signs. The first read “Yes to Wind Power,” the second “No, to nuke power.” This really means a lot to this region and you have to realize that the State of Kansas has their Oil Museum right here in the Flint Hills of Southeastern Kansas.
There is one certain in life; wind will never stop unless there is no Planet Earth.
Each wind turbine costs 2 million dollars to construct; not including labor after the structure is set. But, each turbine can power up to 250 homes so the return may exceed the cost.
There is no irony that Pete Ferrell is preaching wind farm gospel to America. After all, windmills were built out here in the American West in the late 19th century to promote development and economic engines…basically, business in the great American West was pushed through wind energy, not whiskey and saloon brawls, although that is the preferable and noted hooligans history of business on the Great Plains. I wish it were true.
At present time only 1 percent of America is powered by wind based mechanisms.
There are nearly 19,000 turbines in action in the United States and 93,000 worldwide.
Pete Ferrell’s ranch has 100.
The United Kingdom has a proposed plan to use offshore wind farms to generate enough power to light every home by 2020.
Cowboy Pete, an American enterpriser and guy who gets the damn job done
June 27, 2008 9:28AM
By Robert Ray
10:57 PM
Definition of Money: Money is a good that acts as a medium of exchange in transactions. Classically it is said that money acts as a unit of account, a store of value, and a medium of exchange. Most authors find that the first two are nonessential properties that follow from the third. In fact, other goods are often better than money at being intertemporal stores of value, since most monies degrade in value over time through inflation or the overthrow of governments.
Well, there it is, the definition of money.
I spent the day at the Morningstar Convention in Chicago. You may have seen our broadcast, and if you did I hope you gained insight from the dynamic interviews conducted by Dagen McDowell and Jeff Flock.
This convention/conference is all about cash and advice about cash.
At about 2pm today I thought of something, the definition of money. Before I tell you why I must ask you to pause…please look away from the screen…look at something in the room that means a lot to you…did you find it?…Ok, now that you have located your item or object, please ask yourself, is it worth a transaction that will include another person or major corporation or is it just worth something to you, only you?
A unit of account, a store of value or a medium of exchange? Which one is it?
At 2:04pm today I realized that the world revolves around cash. But, I know that the human spirit revolves around people, not loot. Having said that, today Crude Oil hit another all time high, the Dow Jones went south, Presidential campaign debt was mulled over, and don’t forget that people in the Midwest are still trying to figure out what in hell they are going to do with their business or farm operation that was destroyed buy the flooding.
There is not one aspect of your life that does not include cash. Not one. Even if you are naked with no clothes lying in the middle of a desert with no possessions you still had to come up with some sort of greenback to get there or get something on the way.
You may have used some of these words on your way to the desert where you are naked;
Argent, bankroll, bequest, bill, blunt, boodle, booty, brass, bread, capital, cash, cent, change, chattel, chips, clink, coin, coinage, currency, cush, dinero, dough, dump, finances, funds, gelt, gilt, gold, gratuity, greenbacks, green stuff, grig, handsel, hansel, hard cash, income, jack, jake, kale, legacy, legal tender, lettuce, livre, long green, loot, lour, lucre, mammon, mazuma, medium, mina, moola, moolah, moss, oof, ooftish, pelf, proceeds, profit, property, purse, rebate, reimbursement, resources, revenue, rhino, riches, rocks, scratch, specie, stipend, swag, tender, tin, wad, wampum, wealth, wherewithal, windfall.
Holy cripes…Have a sip, i just did.
So, when I realized that the world revolved around cash I realized the world will never be simplistic and thus I and you must find that small object in the room that means only something to us and our inner thoughts…..look at it one more time…it’s nice, especially in a society that’s kicking bucks.
June 26, 2008 10:26AM
By Robert Ray
5:53pm
From covering natural disasters in the Midwest to advice on my 401(k) plan at the Morningstar investment conference it’s been a roller coaster two weeks. Gotta tell you, this business news stuff aint so boring after all. I mean who says that business is stodgy or blah? Well, I beg to differ because you see the American Economy and people’s money will never be boring because those are two topics that will be talk points until the planet stops spinning. That’s a long time.
We have a terrific two-day of live broadcast coming from McCormick Place in Chicago.
Dagen McDowell will be anchoring and interviewing key investment advisors and Jeff Flock will roam the convention floors in search for the most interesting investment advice on the planet.
The space of the convention floor is enormous, about 5 football fields. This morning the place was totally empty and now at 6pm it is bustling with booths and people chatting a low roar. Our crew here at Fox Business Network is the best in biz, these guys have been erecting our set, lighting and camera testing, what a job! And not to mention the hard working people in the trades…the carpenters, electricians, all folks in a great business roles that make the end result shine.
So if you have the time check out the broadcast in the next couple days, and if you can’t make it to the tube you can always watch our special behind the scenes segments right here on this very website that you are staring at. Hope you enjoy one of the many media platform we will provide of this exciting conference that is all about cash. On that note, I have to go to the ATM now and check the balance in my checking account.
June 24, 2008 8:34AM
By Ashley Webster
The Jeddah Energy Meeting may not have generated any surprises, at least not the kind that woud cool down prices on the oil markets, but the city itself is surprising for a reporter who is visiting Saudi Arabia for the first time.
To be honest it reminded me of Phoenix, there’s certainly not as much fake greenery and swimming pools, but like Phoenix there’s lots of desert brown, heat and strip malls. Of course Jeddah sits on the Red Sea so the heat has some humidity thrown in as well but bottomline this Saudi City is more westernized than I had imagined. How westernized? Can you believe Chuck E. Cheese? Baskin-Robbins? Burger King and of course McDonald’s? I was amazed to see some of these great American gastronomic exports in a country so culturally different to the United States.
It is heartening to know that with so much conflict in the world we can speak the same language… namely the love of cheeseburgers and fries. Jeddah is one of the more liberal and westernized cities in Saudi Arabia, strict religious laws are slighly looser here and the local population seem to enjoy the contact with western tourists and businessman. I was stopped on several occasions and told that the Saudi people are not all bad and are not all terrorists as the western media would have everyone believe. It was a common theme and the people I talked to wanted to make sure they made that point.
As I head back to London and the cool, rainy weather I will remember both the warmth of the desert and of the people who live there. There may not be enough oil to go around but I’m happy in the knowledge that there’s a never-ending supply of cheeseburgers.
June 22, 2008 4:53PM
By Ashley Webster
In the end the Jeddah energy meeting came down to just over three hours of discussion. It feels like a lot of hullabaloo for so little actual work. Representatives from 38 countries, the major oil companies and the majority of members belonging to OPEC descended on the Red Sea town amid cries for crude oil relief.
I don’t think anyone expected a major revelation to emerge on how to stabalize the oil markets and reduce prices but I couldn’t help getting the impression that much of this exercise was clearly an effort by Saudi Arabia to appear sympathetic and proactive about the impact of high oil. Sure, we heard the Saudi’s say they will up production by another 200,000 barrels a day in July. Of course we heard about the need for long term investment from producers to ensure greater future capacity. We even had British Prime Minister Gordon Brown asking OPEC to invest in wind power but in the end we got what we expected… more talk.
The Saudi’s maintain that the high oil prices are the result of market speculators who have poured cash into oil futures as a hedge against the weak dollar. U S Energy Secretary Sam Bodman says the speculators aren’t to blame, it’s a simple case of supply failing to keep up with demand. Then of course you have government subsidies, militant attacks in Nigeria, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, the plight of the lesser spotted hedgehog and so on.
I think the truth is we can blame a little bit of everything and if nothing else this three hour meeting may have confirmed that a quick fix is just not possible at least not in three hours.
June 22, 2008 4:17PM
By Ashley Webster
Since arriving in Jeddah as part of the traveling media circus I have spent countless minutes, if not hours, waiting in line for one reason or another. On this day, the big day of the Jeddah Energy Meeting, all journalists were ordered to assemble at the Westin hotel where we would then be bussed to the Hilton, en masse, to the conference itself.
I would call it a sea of humanity, although I realize there are those of you out there who believe journalists are anything but human, nevertheless we were crammed into the hotel lobby. With the air conditioning struggling to stay at the bearable level we shuffled sweatily toward a security x-ray machine and metal detector before being led back outside to board the bus.
I was one of the first journalists aboard the very first properly air-conditioned bus and I knew it was too good to be true. After driving with purpose toward the conference our bus was turned around at the Hilton and before you knew it we were back at the Westin. Totally perplexed we were bundled out of the bus and back into the Westin lobby where we again stood in line for the x-ray machine with sweat running down our faces.
It turns out our bus was turned around because we did not have a proper security guard traveling with us. Naturally the other two buses did and those journalists were happily dug in at the Hilton by the time my poor, over x-rayed group limped into the conference.
The early bird may get the worm but apparently early journalists get the shaft. Such is life.
June 22, 2008 3:08AM
By Ashley Webster
The day of the hurriedly assembled oil summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia is upon us and for the hundreds of journalists from all over the world who are here to cover the event the big question remains… will it matter? We’ve already heard from U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman who says OPEC has to open the taps to help relieve a tight market that has pushed crude oil prices as high as $140 a barrel. Is it that simple? Not according to Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Saudi Deputy oil minister who is calling the oil price issue “complicated” and says the problem is “multifaceted and multidimensional”. Those are big words which simply mean.. we don’t really know. Is it a supply problem? Are the emerging markets proving to be too thirsty for the oil market to handle? Is it the fault of speculators who are driving prices ever higher? It depends on who you talk to and who you believe, others say it’s a combination of all those factors.
It is hoped this collective gathering of oil producers and consumers will generate a coordinated plan to calm the oil market, restore confidence over supply issues and provide an overall appearance that something is being done. But without Venezuela and a solid consensus among OPEC what will be achieved? We’ll see what revelations emerge from here in Jeddah later today and more importantly how the oil market reacts on Monday.
As they say in our business… stay tuned.
-Ashley
