I'm sure I won't be the only to be intrigued by the juxtaposition of Daimler paying Cerberus almost a billion dollars to take Chrysler off its hands today; and last Friday's announcement that Tesla Motors had raised another $45-million. The comparison could hardly be more stark.

Some cynics will say that no-one ever learns, and that the auto industry, like airlines and race horses, remains a plaything for the bored and monied. Optimist that I am, I prefer to think about how a new auto industry is already emerging, in fits and starts, from the ashes of the old one.

More here and here.

I'm participating in an online bookclub this week over at TPM on Dan Gross's Pop!: Why Bubbles Are Great For The Economy. Fellow natterers include Andy Kessler, Barry Ritholtz, Dan Altman and others. As I understand it, the first posts should be up shortly.

I have a short post over at Geekdad about my older son and I's current infatuation with the Planet Earth series on Discovery Channel HD. In particular, the last episode on the making of Planet Earth is absolutely fascinating.

Couple things worth reading to help empty the link box:

• Video of MIT symposium on emerging technlogies (MIT)
• The polysilicon shortage is causing non-solar semi firms to do multi-year buys, which will not end well (Marketwatch)
• Huge influx of Chinese capital could drive global stock boom (Marketwatch/Hulbert)
• Reuters blog from its current industry summit ongoing on technology & media (Reuters)
• Is GSTrUE a Liquidnet for IPOs? This may be the most important post you will read this week (Roger)

There is a new report out from Forrester trumpeting the end of the paid video download market. Cynics like me might say that there would have to have been a market first before we could herald the end of it, but nevertheless it's good stuff. Here is the nut:

Like a flightless bird, the paid video download market in its current evolutionary state will go the way of the dodo, despite the fast growth and the millions being spent today. Television and cable networks will shift the bulk of paid downloading to ad-supported streams where they have control of ads and effective audience measurement. The movie studios, whose content only makes up a fraction of today’s paid downloads, will put their weight behind subscription models that imitate premium cable channel services. What’s left of the paid download market will then evolve into IP-delivered video on demand that has more in common with traditional pay-per-view than online download business models today.

There is some interesting data in this report, and I'll try to get back to it later when I have a moment.

Vanity Fair is publishing snippets from Ronald Reagan's presidential diaries. Here are some favorites so far:

Wed. Feb. 11 Intelligence reports say he Castro is very worried about me. I'm very worried that we can't come up with something to justify his worrying.

Mon. May 18 ...  Met with [Paul] Volcker of the Fed. Reserve. Int. prime rates went to 20 today. This is "chicken little" stuff in the money mkt. based on pessimism that Cong. wont give us what we're asking so inflation will go up.

While I won't suggest it's representative, it is interesting to see how few of these excerpts are about money and the economy. There is one mention of Paul Volcker, as above, and one mention of Wall Street, in a Gorbachev-ian context. Granted, there are a couple of mentions of taxes, but that's about it.

A week or so ago I argued with Herb on CNBC that a little insider trading is an acceptable price for keeping insider trading payoffs down, and reducing the cost of market oversight. He disagreed, but I was still right. (And now I'm sure he'll disagree even more strenuously.)

Anyway, another side of this overdone insider trading issue is that it is actually much harder to do well than it looks. Case in point: A release today from the SEC highlighting how it caught an Oracle vice president in the deed, who had been receiving "tips" from his wife, an executive assistant to Larry Ellison.

But there is a twist. The guy made some money based on insider trading, but not that much. Despite, for example, knowing about the Oracle/Siebel deal in advance, and despite investing almost $500k based on his inside info, he only made $82k. Granted, that's non-zero, and it's still illegal, but the thing that intrigues me is that insider trading is made out to be this sure-fire path to riches, and, as this example shows, it's much harder to make big money at it than how naive observers characterize it.

[Update] Two points to make my argument clearer.

1. It is easy to make money buying expiring out of the money options the day before a deal is announced. It's just hard to keep that money after the SEC show up at your house a few weeks later.
2. Far more inside info than we all like to think turns out to be valueless. Maybe the market knew about the deal, maybe the market didn't like the deal, maybe the product was a bomb, maybe some other news intervened, maybe the deal fell apart, etc. There is only one way to make money on inside info -- the markets thinks the news is as important as you do -- and there are lots of ways to lose money on inside info.
   

I have a new front-loading LG TROMM uber washer/dryer combo that is just too waaay too much fun. Lots of flashing lights, nifty knobs, chimes, communication thingies, and cool geegaws, all juiced up with minimal water usage and less current draw than your average laptop. Makes laundry almost fun.

While I won't do it, at least for now, I would really like to do a teardown. What CPU is in this thing? How much program memory? How does it do load sensing? Is there an accelerometer involved? Inquiring launderers want to know.

Good video (at least for we wonks) from an MIT get-together about the future of nuclear power. Direct link.

Lots of link catch-up to do in energy today, with some outstanding content:

• Great all-energy week at Marketwatch continues, with good stuff on residential solar (Marketwatch)
• Worldwide solar energy production is up 24-fold measured in MW over last decade (Navigant)
  
• Depletion levels in Saudi Ghawar field much worse than known (TOD)
• Cheap gas is bad for America (WSJ/Energy Roundup)
• Nanomaterials leading to possible manifold increases in battery and solar cell efficiency (EETimes)
• Good hot-or-not list of cleantech investing areas (Inside Greentech)
  

Whoa, flickrvision. It's a Twittervision-style solipsism stream, but for people who can't read.

Also check my friends at Poly9's 3-D version of Twittervision. The horror, the horror.

Interesting idea. The new site iminlikewithyou (IILWY) is sort of like Google Image Labeler crossed with eHarmony. Participants entertain one another via an ad hoc game, and if you're good at the game then the service hooks you up for a chat with the winner. You had to know human computation would eventually get used for more prurient stuff.

[via R/WW]