Liberty

I don't know... It's a very cyclical industry, so being conservative with cash is a must. From memory, last time they issued shares was above 4$. edit: fixed typos caused by typing on a smartphone..

Wasn't that more of a liquidity thing than a "failing because your assets are worthless and you have no long-term earning potential anymore" situation, though? I think the government made money on most of the bailout and got out of most things it injected capital into. That's different from nationalizing institutions that have no real profitable business and leaving the taxpayer money into them to be destroyed over time... That's my understanding, anyway. Saying "they were failing" hides that fact that there are many ways to fail, some less recoverable than others (f.ex. The difference between John Malone getting a margin call because he was over-stretched - bad but if he can get through he still owns good productive assets - and someone else running a business into the ground because the fundamentals are terrible and that can't easily be fixed, so that even if you save them, it's just temporary and they'll keep destroying value).

Not day to day, but he had the original idea, is chairman, the largest shareholder, is helping with strategy, and those who run it are his cousins. So he's pretty involved, as much as he's gracious about giving credit to others.

Wait, what? What do you mean solar cycles?

True, but it can make sense to reinvest the extra margin into growing the business (other countries next?) and having a bigger margin of safety so that if there's a bump in the road they are more financially resilient (both Tesla and SpaceX came a hair from bakruptcy in 2008-2009, I don't think he wants to go through that with Solarcity too) IMO. And maybe if they are more financially successful they'll attract more competitors to their model (like how Tesla is making everybody else invest more into EVs and up their game) and that'll do more for solar than if they are alone eeking out razor thin margins, walking along the edge of the precipice. Musk if very long-term oriented and wants his companies to catalyze whole industries, not do everything by themselves.

IMO they charge the way they do because the average person doesn't think about it the way you do (and not just about this), they think about how much perceived utility they get. So when Apple charges $100 to double the flash storage in a device, if you know component prices that seems like a lot. But if you don't, you might think "hey, twice as much storage is a lot of extra utility, it's worth a hundred bucks". Most Solarcity customers probably think that a solar system twice as powerful costing twice as much makes perfect sense. That's why they can price like that. Same with car manufacturers charging thousands for fancy wheels and sunroofs and spoilers, etc.. People who buy these things see the car being X thousand bucks cooler in their minds, not the hundreds the components cost and the negligible extra labor required.

Firefly is not really like BSG, though BSG was a little influenced by Firefly (especially noticeable in the 'camera work' out in space). Firefly doesn't sound that interesting on paper; it's the quality of the writing and the ensemble cast that makes it so enjoyable. So trying to interest you by describing the setting or plot is a bit pointless. I need to re-watch Six Feet Under someday... If you haven't seen The Wire and The Sopranos, these are shows on that level IMO.

Thanks Sanjeev! :)

I was going to ask about that :D

Apple Confirms iPhone Trade-In Program Launching Today at U.S. Retail Stores http://www.macrumors.com/2013/08/30/apple-confirms-iphone-trade-in-program-launching-today-at-u-s-retail-stores/ Not a bad idea at all. Reduces friction in the upgrade cycle, and they can refurbish the phones they get for resale in developing countries.

http://www.shos.com/Files/SHOS_2nd_Quarter_Earnings.pdf SEARS HOMETOWN AND OUTLET STORES, INC. REPORTS SECOND QUARTER 2013 RESULTS AND ANNOUNCES STOCK REPURCHASE PROGRAM "The Company announced that its Board of Directors authorized a $25 million repurchase program for the Company's outstanding common stock" Down over 12%.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-29/amazon-takes-the-tax-fight-to-the-supreme-court

Nice way of putting it!

Don't think it's insider. Probably just a pre-arranged transaction. Appears you were right, the company confirmed to me that Raymond James is their broker for the debs and Blackmont for the common.

Since everybody's reading about Walmart these days, here's an interesting piece: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-27/why-walmart-will-never-pay-like-costco.html

Apple Acquires Swedish Firm AlgoTrim, A Company That Does Mobile Media And Data Compression http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/28/apple-reportedly-acquires-swedish-firm-algotrim-a-company-that-does-mobile-media-and-data-compression/

There's always a limit, but that limit is pushed farther and farther away with a combination of these things. Dynamic pricing can reduce demand when there's less supply. Same for demand response technologies. Better interconnection can help because the wind is usually blowing somewhere or the sun shinning somewhere, it's rare that it's absent all over (in other words, if you look at your backyard, the sun and wind are very intermittent -- but if you zoom out a lot and look at it from space, average production is a lot more constant over large areas). Later, liquid metal batteries can help store many MWh of power for when you need it, and same with plug-in vehicles that can act as grid-storage (V2G technologies are looking into that). Thankfully, the sunniest days are usually those with the highest demand in power (A/C), so that helps, and offshore wind can be extremely stable if sited well (a lot less intermittency than onshore wind for the most part). Concentrating solar thermal located in deserts can be very predictable because it's pretty much always sunny, and with molten salt you can store heat so it generates power even at night. So there's definitely a limit, but by the time we reach it, technology might have pushed it farther back and so on, so I don't think it'll be a limiting factor too soon. Personally, I'd like to eventually see baseload shift to LFTR, more hydro, and EGS geothermal, but that's a bit off in the future..

I'm no expert, and it's possible that the thesis is broadly correct, but I want to comment on one thing: I think that's a dangerous assumption to make. http://i.imgur.com/Kafa6hP.jpg The graph stops in 2012, in 2013 it's under 1.00, close to 0.75. I think all the rapid growth in wind and solar we've seen so far is nothing compared to what it'll be once the price is solidly competitive without subsidies, and that doesn't even mean that subsidies will be entirely cut (after all, it can be worth paying to avoid pollution - the price of coal doesn't include the price of smog/climate change/mercury poisoning/coal ash leakage/etc) or that a price won't be put on carbon. And wind's even cheaper than solar in many cases, and the US hasn't even really started to exploit its offshore potential, or to do a serious efficiency push by changing incentives (some can be done with more efficient building codes/appliances/lighting/etc, some with effective behavioral science techniques ( )). It's usually cheaper to reduce power usage (aka negawatts) than to build new power plants. With the right incentives for utilities, a lot of that could start happening. You could see things really change, especially if you combine smart grid technologies* that allow the power grid to handle intermittency much better with upcoming things like grid-scale liquid-metal batteries ( ) and some good old interconnection between regional grids (high current DC lines to minimize losses) to ship power from places that are in surplus to those in deficit (which could include places with large hydro reservoirs, like Quebec and Norway, acting as buffers). Another exciting thing that is just starting out is graphene-based solar. Graphene is basically carbon, and because it can generate more than one electron per photon absorbed, it could potentially have conversion efficiency of 60%+. That's not for tomorrow, but imagine a solar panel 3X more efficient than the top-of-the-line commercial panels available today, made of nothing more exotic than carbon. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/511751/research-hints-at-graphenes-photovoltaic-potential/ *f.ex. dynamic pricing and demand response (ie. if you have millions of smart hot water heaters and thousands of large refrigerated warehouses that go down a couple degrees/up a couple degrees during peak time within safe parameters, nobody notices but you shave off the summit by a lot, and even if you pay people for that, it's less expensive than new power plants, etc.) Anyway, all that is not saying that there might not money to be made with coal, especially if you don't pay much for the assets, but I think the competition from non-polluting sources will probably move very non-linearly into the field and could seriously disrupt it, surprising conservative grid operators who haven't seen much change in decades. After all, cloudy Germany has 400 MW of solar capacity per million of population while the US only has 25 MW of capacity per million pop, and the US on average is A LOT more sunny. But I'm not expert, this is just what I've gathered from reading. YMMV.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/merrill-lynch-in-big-payout-for-bias-case/?hpw&_r=0

I saw that documentary a few weeks ago. Enjoyed it. Total dedication to a craft.

Thank you! :)

I'm sure they wil pass more of the savings to customers as soon as they'll have more competition forcing them to. Have you looked at what other companies are offering?

I ordered the Manual of Ideas book yesterday (a sunday). I got it today. That's with free shipping, and I'm in Canada. I don't even know how they did it, there's no mail on weekends here. That's why Amazon keeps getting my business. They have good selection, good prices, and they keep surpassing my expectations.

Lenovo imitating the Apple store format in China: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-25/lenovo-taking-page-from-apple-chases-samsung-in-china.html

Likes aren't always "organic". Many companies buy them either via advertising or through less above the board sources. Many ways to game the system (Youtube had similar problems with numbers of views being artificially inflated, f.ex.).