Sunday, November 8, 2009

Gas After Drinking Soda

Millenovecentoottantanove

Simon Lord

Ershad Ali, a farmer, the small village of Tikuria, in ' upazila (the basic level Bangladesh Public Administration) of Haluaghat in northern Bangladesh. As 70% of his countrymen, is not equipped with electricity, forced to meet its energy needs by kerosene lamps and stoves, so as hazardous pollutants. Like many in his village, however, Mr. Ali has a great resource: a mini-herd of six cows on pasture.

So it is sufficient to Grameen Shakti (literally "Energy Village") to ensure that as many Bangladeshi Ershad a loan of 30,000 taka (just over € 290, repayable at an annual interest rate of 5.8%) to build a biogas plant, technically biodigester said: you dig a tank of variable width and depth, supported by a lattice structure made of wood, from which a radial plastic pipe, and finally, cover everything with a tarp. The pit is then filled on a regular basis with a mixture of manure and water.

Moha MMED Delawar Hossain, who worked for Grameen Shakti, said: "When we design a new facility, we take into account both the available resources that the size of the household: for example a family of five or six individuals enough a cavity of 1.2 cubic meters if the individuals are from 8 to 10 opt for a hole of 1.4 cubic meters ". "Although at first the system only includes the use of cattle manure, we later discovered that the addition of poultry manure increased the yield of the plants. So the owner receives not only enough gas to cook three times a day, but manages to earn 2,500 taka by selling the amount of gas in excess to their communities, "says also connects Fazley Rabbi.

Grameen Shakti, which has already astonished the world with his campaign to install solar cream he low-cost (to date more than 100,000 plants across the country), is part of the family Grameen company, which builds on the revolutionary success of the system of micro-credit (thanks to the vision of Muhammad Yunus), has now expanded into 25 different areas, which include, in addition to energy, including education and health. Moreover, the process implemented by the energy company Bengali could be accelerated by a grant coming from the World Bank, which has pledged $ 9 for every reduction of one tonne of CO2 emissions. This should help non-profit society to become economically self-sufficient, partly due to a return to that already obtained from the sale of its solar panel systems, in which the market is still the undisputed leader.

are currently present in Bangladesh, more than 30,000 biodigester plants, but the horizon is the most optimistic lot far, estimated at 4 million potential installations around the country. Tikuria is among the best performing villages in this sense, with no less than 50 biogas plants, so that the largest funder of environmental projects, the ' Infra-structure Development Company Ltd (IDCOL) recently decorated the plate "Biogas Village , in accordance with their specific standards. Now 40% of the population in the village receives energy through the system, reducing damage to the eyes and respiratory tract from the combustion of kerosene and at the same time reducing the risk of contracting infectious diseases.

"It is the dream of all the alchemists" says the student of economics and Bengali bloggers Benjamin "they always try to turn lead into gold, while showing some ignorance of monetary policy (that is, a world of gold is only a world in which the value of that disappears)! Certainly that would be very seduced by the idea of \u200b\u200btransforming something common and useless a valuable resource like energy. "

The system introduced by Grameen Shakti is also very valuable from a social perspective, since it is based, such as micro-credit, on the cooperation of small to medium groups of families, that to overcome the limit costs decide to engage the private financial resources for a common purpose and benefit, creating what would venture to establish a social network energy. The maintenance service is also composed entirely of female staff trained: this avoids the stalemate on the ground that the local culture does not allow women (who usually are the only present for intervention) to interact directly with the technicians males, except in the presence of her husband.

short, Grameen Shakti is to be a small revolution, which will help the poor to be a bit 'less and at the same time make the world a less polluted. Thus it is important to the company the recognition of Yunus's recent ceremony Ashden Awards (held in London in summer 2008) for the "outstanding result" .


References:

The Financial Express - Biogas dreams up fires in rural Bangladesh http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/2009/05/30/68188.html
Benjamin In Bangladesh! – Grameen Shakti http://learnfromthepoor.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/grameen-shakti/
Studyunus.net - Grameen Shakti wins green energy award http://studyunus.wordpress.com/2008/06/22/grameen-shakti-wins-green-energy-award/
PBS Broadcast – Energy e2 http://www.pbs.org/e2/episodes/202_energy_developing_world_trailer.html

Friday, November 6, 2009

Guinness Dark Stool Color

Energy Crisis and Beyond: They are really too big to fail? Conrad Schumann

Elementi Quantitativi
Vincenzo Poll
"Pestis eram Vivus, moriens your terminal was" Martin Luther

Following the publication by the European Commission forecasts for the next two years, it appears now that the economy will move towards a slight recovery after the crisis in which she had entered in September 2008. Now that the danger of a long depression seems to have gone will be the question on those elements that have caused the financial crisis in a way that, as Obama said in his speech about reform the regulation of finance, which back "the days of irresponsible and uncontrolled excesses that have been the cause of the crisis" (1).

Many will remember the failure of Lehman Brother , the investment bank founded in 1850 and now known as the most illustrious victim in the financial world. The failure of this institution has brought down the public's attention on the theme: "The banks are too big?" And of course the policy of "too big to fail".

Just this policy would be the basis for many of the problems underlying the crisis in that it created and still perpetuates one of the most major cases in the history of what economists call moral hazard. The objective of a series of articles would be to analyze the consequences of the size of banks and some possible policy proposals to solve this problem. But first we must understand if they are really great.

I'm really so great?
When it comes to this subject is not often faced with the quantitative definition of the problem. In fact, the problem arises to understand what it means to be big in the world of finance and economics in general.

An easy comparison can be made between the current assets of some banks and the GDP of their home countries.

As you can see in some countries in fact the assets of individual financial institutions are even higher than the GDP of the state itself. Stands out in particular RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) who is now 70% owned by the government, which already plans to write a scissor kick to the budget of this colossus. It seems strange to the relatively low number of notorious American banks like GS and Bank of America. A case must be made a few clarifications: First, the GDP of the United States is vastly greater than that of all other states considered (it is even, alone, about one-fifth of global GDP); Second, even if relatively some of these smaller institutions play a major role in certain international markets (their failure would have a huge burden because of the so-called systemic risk, which will be discussed in another article), and thirdly is not considered that many activities of U.S. banks are, or were out budget and make up what Mauro Guerra called "Shadow Banking" (3). Measurements (to come very rough) can therefore be misleading. The table has more than a few flaws such as not considering the results after the acquisition (I have an aggregate budget of Merrill Lynch to that of BOA, I do not want to ...) and featuring a large no. Switzerland is not present because the relationship is simply too big ...! Only UBS in 2008 for assets held more than three and a half times, a relationship that has fallen to just under three times in 2009.

Once saw this we might ask: but governments are able to cope with the failure of institutions, at least protecting the creditors? The thing seems pretty complicated ...
using the past as a proxy for banks' losses on those who are not shareholders and comparing these values \u200b\u200bwith the General Government Revenue we obtain the following result (which is not taken into account with UBS in Switzerland because the relationship and 12).

As you can see, while using all their income, governments could never individually cover losses on the liabilities of banks, which would cause serious damage to the financial system. Of course this is a case practically only theoretical because it is absolutely inconceivable that all the assets of a bank has zero value of the blue, and perhaps most telling is a comparison with certain types of activities. However, it should take into strong consideration the estimate of potential losses of a bank is extremely difficult to assess and that even today the instrument used (VAR or Value At Risk) has proved quite ineffective (3). Moreover, the graph we can suggest the scale of which would be necessary to have to deal with a small default on debt. For example, If Banco Santander would not be able to repay 10% of its debts, the government should commit around 20% of his income if he decided to cover the loss. A pretty impressive figure.

stability at risk
The greatness of any of these banks and makes it impossible to treat them like many other institutions of the financial system. The risk that they would cause to the economic stability of those countries in which they operate would be enormous in case of a normal bankruptcy proceedings. Lord Turner, chairman of the Authority for the Financial Regulator, has recently argued that "a part of the financial sector is useless from a societal perspective and is destabilize the British economy "(4). The harmful effect that such institutions could have on the "political and economic life of the country" had already been pointed out almost a century earlier by the jurist Louis Brandeis to the principle of the "curse of bigness" (5). Should not be overlooked, in addition to purely quantitative effects, even the psychological aspects of the failure of these institutions. The panic that follows the failure of a giant can lead to messy leaks from the market with devastating effects on both the quotations on the budgets of other institutions that are more healthy.
is therefore natural to ask what are the problems that the presence of these institutions can be created in the system Financial but I think it's worth to dedicate a separate article.

(1) Barack Obama Speech on Financial Sector Reform, available at http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/SoleOnLine4/Finanza% 20e% 20Mercati/2009 / 09/testo-discorso-obama-14092009.shtml? UUID = 5408f550-a14f-11de-a8df-36fb8db592ee DocRulesView & = & Education fromSearch
(2) Mauro Panzera Fabio War and "The Shadow Banking and the four islands of 'world economy. " In LIMES Supplement number 4 / 2009.
(3) Various solutions are being proposed for new risk index, among these is worth remembering the covariates, the risk index sitemi, Tobias Adrian and Markus K. Brunnermeier "enough hatching" on the site of Princeton
http://www.princeton.edu/ ~ markus / research / papers / covariance
(4) An interview with Prospect magazine, reported sentence in "Forget Tobin tax: is there a better way to curb finance," William Buiter, Financial Times, 1/9/2009.
(5) The New York Times, Eric Dash 20/06/2009:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/weekinreview/21dash.html?_r=3 & th & emc = th
(6) With regard to the data: • To
data banks have used the semi-annual reports of the institutes of 2008 and considered
06/11/2009 • To the governments I referred to the dataset of the Worl Economic Outlook International Monetary Fund in October found at
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2009/02/weodata/index.aspx data of GDP at current prices are in U.S. dollars.


Thursday, November 5, 2009

Uninterruptible Power Supply Rental Jersey City



Filip Stefanovic

There are some snapshots that have marked the world, at one step by condensing entire chapters of recent history, who does not remember the militia fell in Spain, the photographs of Capa's D-Day, or the Americans hoisting the flag atop Mount Suribachi?

image more than any other is associated with the Cold War is certainly that of Conrad Schumann.

Schumann, born March 28, 1942, was the first and perhaps most famous fugitive of the German Democratic Republic was born in today's Saxony, enlisted in Bereitschaftspolizei, SWAT teams and riot police guarded the construction of the Berlin Wall. It was August 1961, and under the incredulous eyes of the soldiers Berliners NVA (Nationale Volksarmee, Army Nazionalpopolare) planted the first stakes and barbed wire stretched between the tears of those you could see forever torn from their loved ones, relatives, friends ...

Perhaps it was not only the desire for freedom, a peaceful and normal life out of the yoke of communist dictatorship, perhaps it was the courage of unconsciousness, of those 19 years hidden under his uniform and helmet fell eyes, to give young Conrad the courage to take the running and jumping, that hot August 15, 1961. The photographer Peter Leibing had the foresight and luck able to capture the miracle, the boots crushing barbed wire, rifle on shoulder, arms outstretched to soar, his face tense, holding their breath, as if to see how it turns out, if breathing or if it will resume Instead hit the back by his companions.

is a picture full of meaning not only because it paints the historical reality of an era, the inner drama of the Cold War symbol of the city and its citizens, but because it goes beyond the political moment, conveying a universal message and eternal: the quest of freedom, the fight against all forms of limitation of human life, unique and precious, that too many times, in too many parts of the world was crushed by the will and the strength of a few. It is a photograph that does not triumph over the East and West, but only a man and his will to choose, to their own lives and their future, without hindrance or stakes imposed by a power-down.

The flight was successful, but you can not talk about a happy ending: in exile from home, Conrad lived all his life in Bavaria, not far from their family and fortune, working at Audi in Ingolstadt. Throughout his life he received letters from family members in which they begged him to come back to them, finding out only after the collapse of the GDR have been always written by the laying of the Stasi. Fall of the wall is returned to talk about Conrad and his story, and he admitted what he had to suffer for his choice, he was also an alcoholic for ten years: "Only since November 9, 1989 [fall of the Wall, ed], I felt truly free"

In 1990 he was finally able to return to visit in Saxony, sadly discover that many had never forgiven his action, both among the friends of the family, and thirty years later not addressed even the word.

put an end to their sufferings June 20, 1998, with a noose around his neck in the orchard behind the house, leaving no message. " I'm still proud of what I did, there was no chance even if I ran a great danger and I cut each deck with my past: I lost my family, friends, work, everything, "he once said . But not always be sure you have made the right choice is enough to drive away the ghosts of the past.

And after all, what changes? Conrad Schumann has achieved immortality long ago, at age 19, one meter above the ground, over the barbed wire: it has taken off like a hawk, and is no longer landed.