The past few weeks have not been good ones for products manufactured in China and financial instruments created in the United States.  The “Made in China” brand is now an un-trustworthy brand to millions of American consumers.  New, mortgage backed debt instruments, highly rated by U.S. bond rating agencies are now being questioned in financial capitols around the world.

In an earlier column entitled “Made in China” I discussed certain historical forces and timelines that are to some degree at cause for the recent rash of dangerous products being produced in China.  In a historically …

In prior columns, here and here I have written about the transformative power of the cell phone.  Currently there are more than 2.1 billion cell phone accounts in the world and more than 220 million in the US.  More people have cell phones than have computers or use the Internet.  Globally, there are some 15 to 20 million news cell phone accounts opened up every month.

The cell phone has obviously changed the way we communicate.  We are all available all the time no matter where we are.  Text messaging is a new form of communication that did not …

In this sixth installment of our on-going series of interviews with some of the leading thinkers and scientists on the subject of energy, we interview Howard Bloom.

Facing and solving the multiple issues concerning energy is the single most pressing problem that we face as a species. There is a lot of media coverage about energy, alternative energy and global warming, but what has been missing is the knowledge and point of view of scientists, at least in the main stream media. If you have missed the first five interviews, please scroll down the right side of the page and click …

It feels like we are moving through a watershed moment in both the U.S. and global financial markets. When the mortgage securities market collapses as though it was the tulip bulb market centuries ago in Holland it is truly time to take pause and look at what has been allowed to occur.  Mortgages, secured by real estate, have long been considered as a secure type of investment, unlike say junk bonds.  Now the marketplace is saying that they cannot value them so no one is either buying them or allowing them to be used as loan collateral.  Wow!

In the new …