Analytical Wealth

The usual "Mixture" of news stories and other items I think you may find interesting; as I didn't publish a mix-tape last week this version will be  mixture of the old and the new.

Here is a look at the "Nano" from Tata motors AKA the world's cheapest car, which is about to go on sale in India today.  To be sure the car has a lot of challenges ahead of it, in the form of slim margins, production issues, unknowns around product adoption and the debt load of Tata itself. Still the car stands a good chance of catching on, as 3rd world citizens used to scooters and motorbikes will probably be quite interested in a similarly priced car that can seat 4-5 people.

Staying on the subject of the Nano here is a look at their plans to launch the car in the U.S. In my view the car has be a significant step up from the Indian version to make it here in the U.S., because a Hyundai Accent is practically a luxury car compared to the Tata Nano. Especially when more established companies are probably going to be marketing their own subcompacts here in the U.S., and will be doing so with the benefit of well established brands.

Speaking of small cars here is a look at the recent trend of their being a glut of small cars at dealerships, as people once again turn to larger cars as gasoline prices continue to fall. I think the other issue here is that as cars in general have become cheaper in the wake of the economic downturn, the cost savings from having smaller car has decreased substantially.

Still this is only a temporary trend as oil is a finite resource for which the demand will exceed production capacity once the economy recovers, so any automaker who behaves as if the trend towards smaller cars is over will face a rude awakening in the next 18-24 months. 

Checking in on the row over the AIG Bonuses: it appears that 75% of the bonuses were returned by their recipients, perhaps now our government can stop pretending to be clued into the public and can get back to work on the big picture. Speaking of which most of the politicians pretending to be upset about the AIG bonuses knew about them well in advance, thus making their so called outrage nothing more than a manufactured reaction to the populist rage on same.

After all can we really expect an organization that happily votes in raises for itself to be fiscally responsible, and/or truly upset over what down at AIG?

Here is an amusing yet useless little data point courtesy of the WSJ: on CBS Sports' March Madness web site the boss button (makes the page appear to be a data point) was used 1,500,000 times on the first date of the tournament.

While Spain's publically traded banks have held up fairly well during the credit crunch, the same can't be said for their unlisted banks that are owned by various regional banks. Here is a look at the struggles facing those institutions, and the steps the Spanish government is considering taking to rectify the situation. 

Here is an interactive graphic from the NY Times that looks at how the Biotech and Pharma sectors have been performing vs. the S & P 500, it's a pretty cool widget as you can manipulate the time periods and get total return over the course of the past week, month, quarter and year.

Here is the formal criminal complaint and the SEC complaint related to last week's arrest of Madoff's auditor, I anticipate several more of these arrests as you cannot engineer a fraud of this magnitude without help. 

Disclosure: at the time of publishing the author didn't own a position in any of the companies mentioned in this article; the ideas expressed are solely the opinions of the author and shouldn't be viewed as financial or investment advice.