Energy agency warns of global oil shortage

LONDON – THE world economy faces a tight oil market in the next five years. This is due to a combination of accelerating consumption and output falls in mature areas, such as the North Sea, and long delays in new production projects.

The warning yesterday by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the energy watchdog, comes as oil prices surge above US$76 a barrel, to within US$2.50 a barrel of last summer’s all-time high of US$78.65.

The IEA said in its Medium Term Oil Market Repot that ‘oil looks extremely tight in five years’ time’ and there are ‘prospects of even tighter natural gas markets at the turn of the decade’.

The IEA forecast that demand will grow at an annual rate of 1.9 per cent during the next five years, to reach 95.8 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2012. China and other emerging countries will lead the increase in consumption.

The new forecast sees oil production growth in the next five years outside the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) at 1 per cent, roughly half the rate of demand growth projections.

The widening gap between demand and non-Opec supply will force Opec, the oil cartel which controls about 40 per cent of global oil output, to sharply increase its production between this year and 2012.

The IEA estimates Opec would have to supply about 36.2 million bpd in five years, up from today’s 31.3 million bpd. That would reduce the cartel’s spare capacity to 1.6 per cent of global demand, down from 2 per cent this year.

‘Despite four years of high oil prices, this report sees increasing market tightness beyond 2010, with Opec’s spare capacity declining to minimal levels by 2012.’

FINANCIAL TIMES

Three Reasons why the Value of Gold will rise significantly in 2007


PRODUCTION DOWN, DEMAND UP.

Every major gold mining country has reported slumping mine production of gold in 2006. As a result of mine strikes, environmental disputes and increasing production costs, global production is continuing to sag and shows no signs of significantly reversing this trend in the near-term. South Africa’s gold-mining output has repeatedly disappointed and this also includes major declines in production in Peru and slumping output in Australia.

“We may see the occasional quarter or monthly production figures that show a spike in production, but the trend is for global production to remain flat to falling in the future,” said research report from Blanchard quoted by Dow Jones in January 2007. “There have been no new world-class discoveries in the last decade, coupled with slashed exploration budgets and industry consolidation.”

BEATING PLOWSHARES INTO GOLD:
CHINA ENTERS ITS GOLDEN ERA.

Gold ownership for Chinese citizens was legalized in 2004. A system for selling bullion to the largest population in the world is slowly getting off the ground. Once this is established, the effect on gold demand will be staggering. Meanwhile, India, already the world’s largest consumer of gold, is experiencing an 80 percent growth in gold investment following a loosening of trade restrictions.

“Chinese gold consumption is expected to rise 17% this year,” news service Bloomberg quoted China Gold Association chair Cheng Fumin of 2007. “China is the world’s third biggest consumer of the precious metal and is expected to use 350 metric tons this year, up from 300 tons in 2005, owing to an increase in demand for bullion as an investment.”

CENTRAL BANKS ARE BEGINNING TO DIVERSIFY INTO GOLD.

The effect of central bank policies on the price of gold has always been significant. Today a new era of central bank purchasing is set to begin as the world’s key banks look for diversification of their foreign exchange reserves away from U.S. dollar dominated holdings. The Russian central bank has begun adding gold to reserves, following a commitment to do so in 2006. Other Asian banks are rumored to be planning a similar move. This trend in central bank buying is extremely critical and will have a profound and immediate impact on the gold market in 2007.

“The price of gold will continue to go up and probably very substantially. In the long run, it’s very clear that central banks are basically increasing the supply of money and the supply of gold is obviously very limited.”

— Dr. Marc Faber, January 8th, 2007

Good Harvest

Our tendency is to be interested in something that is growing in the garden, not in the bare soil itself. But if you want to have a good harvest, the most important thing is to make the soil rich and cultivate it well.

Shunryu Suzuki

Banking

“OK. If I am being honest with you then, yes, let’s whisper it, but the truth of the matter is that all of us are overpaid. There is nothing magical about what we do. Anybody can do it.”

– Allen Wheat, CEO of Credit Suisse First Boston

Rajah & Tann adds four new lawyers to its stable

This follows on the heels of many high-level moves in the legal industry
By WEE LI-EN
Business Times

FOLLOWING a series of recent high-level movements among law firms, Rajah & Tann (R&T) has strengthened its practice with four new senior additions to its team from a rival firm.

The R&T recruits are leading telecommunications and information technology lawyer Andrew Ong, mergers and acquisitions lawyer Christina Ng, finance and securities lawyer Evelyn Wee and medical science lawyer Lim Wee Han.

R&T has recently been beefing up its practice with high-level additions to its firm. Former High Court judge Sundaresh Menon re-joined the firm last month, along with 12 other lawyers from international law firm Jones Day.

The firm’s four new lawyers are expected to join in the third quarter of the year.

The four are directors of a 32-member board at Drew & Napier (D&N), each with a long career at the firm.

According to D&N’s website, Ms Ng joined D&N in 1990 and heads its Indonesian and Thai desks, and Ms Wee joined D&N in 1989. Mr Lim joined D&N in 1992 and co-heads its medical science practice group.

Mr Ong, who heads the info-communications and technology business group at D&N, said yesterday in a statement: ‘I am extremely privileged to have been a part of Drew & Napier’s renown. After so many delightful years at Drew, I leave behind many good friends and colleagues as well as the fondest memories one could hope for.’

Yesterday, managing director of corporate and conveyancing David Ang said that despite the departures, Drew ‘will grow from strength to strength’.

He said of his departing colleagues: ‘We fully understand their plans to pursue their careers elsewhere. We will remain friends.’

D&N has itself just admitted four lawyers to its board from within the firm and is poised for further growth.

The new lawyers are Cheryl Tan, Adrian Tan, Kelvin Tan and Valerie Kwok.

There have been many high-level movements in the legal industry recently. It was reported last month that top criminal lawyer Subhas Anandan is leaving Harry Elias Partnership (HEP) for KhattarWong while Singapore’s first specialist judge Tan Chee Meng and co-managing partner of HEP is also leaving the firm for personal reasons.

Secondhand Books for Sale

Collect at IFC Mall, Hong Kong or buyer bears shipping costs.

Military and Leadership

Elite Forces – The world’s most formidable secret armies
Richard M Bennett
HK$110 [SOLD]


The Marine Corps Way – Using Maneuver Warfare to lead a winning organisation
Jason A Santamaria et al
HK$110

Semper Fi – Business Leadership the Marine Corps Way
Dan Carrison and Rod Walsh
HK$80


Be Know Do – Leadership the Army Way
Frances Hesselbein and General Eric K Shinseki (USA Ret.)
HK$110 [SOLD]


Commandos – The Inside Story of Britain’s most elite fighting force
John Parker
HK$60 [SOLD]



Business

Never Wrestle with a Pig
Mark H McCormack
HK$60


Magnetic Service – secrets for creating passionately devoted customers
Chip R Bell and Bilijack R Bell
HK$110


Rain Making – The Professional’s guide to attracting new clients
Ford Harding
HK$80 [SOLD]

How to be a Rainmaker
Jeffrey J Fox
HK$60 [SOLD]


The McKinsey Way
Ethan M. Rasiel
HK$100 [SOLD]


Principle-Centred Leadership
Stephen R Covey
HK$60


What Color is Your Parachute? 2005 Edition
Richard N Bolles
HK$100


iCon – Steve Jobs, the greatest second act in the history of business
Jeffrey S Young and William L Simon
HK$100


Goldman Sachs – The Culture of Success
Lisa Endlich
HK$80 [SOLD]

Financial Accounting, 9th Edition
Needles & Powers (recommended by CFA Institute)
HK$480 (HK$840 new)


Spirituality

The Places that Scare You – A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times
Pema Chodron
HK$80


The Miracle of Mindfulness
Thich Nhat Hanh
HK$70


How to Free Your Mind
Thubten Chodron
HK$80


The Art of Happiness
HH Dalai Lama and Howard C Cutler
HK$70 [SOLD]


Advice From a Spiritual Friend
Geshe Rabtem and Geshe Dhargyey
HK$80


Remarkable Healings
Shakuntala Modi M.D.
HK$70


Through Time into Healing
Brian L Weiss M.D.
HK$70


Travel and Sport

Shenzhen – A Travelogue in China
Guy Delisle
HK$100 [SOLD]


Buenos Aires – Lonely Planet
3rd Edition – 2002
HK$60


The Fundamentals of Hogan
David Leadbetter
HK$100


The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Travel
Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht
HK$70


Pain

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

~ Kahlil Gibran ~

Dragon-I

After dinner drinks at Dragon-I with lawyers qualified in New York, Shanghai, India, Japan, New York, Indonesia, Singapore, England, Hong Kong and Beijing.

The Power of Myth

We have only to follow the hero’s path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god.

And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves.

Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence.

And where we had thought to be done, we will be with all the world.

Joseph Campbell
The Power of Myth

How to stretch

In the easy stretch spend 10 – 15 seconds holding the stretch. Push the stretch until you feel a mild tension. Remember to relax as you hold each stretch. The feeling of tension should slowly reduce as you hold the stretch position. You should feel the stretch, but without pain. If the tension does not subside, ease off slightly and to an amount of tension that is comfortable for you. The easy stretch reduces muscular tightness and tension and prepares the tissues for the developmental stretch.

The developmental stretch
Now move slowly into the developmental stretch. Do not bounce. Move a little bit further until you again feel a small amount of tension and hold the position for 10 – 15 seconds. Stay in control. The tension should decrease, if it does not, lessen the tension slightly. If the stretch tension increases as you hold the stretch or it is painful, you are stretching too far. The developmental stretch fine tunes the muscles and increases your flexibility.

Breathing
Your breath should be slow, rhythmical, and under control. If you are bending forward during a stretch, exhale as you bend forward and breathe slowly as you hold the stretch. Don’t hold your breath while stretching. If a position changes or prevents a natural breathing pattern, then you are not relaxed. Ease up on the stretch to resume your natural breathing.

Counting
In the beginning, silently count the seconds as you hold each stretch, this will help you to hold the proper tension for the right amount of time. In a while, you will be able to stretch by how it feels, without having to count the time you hold the stretch.

Warming up
Before you stretch, you should do a few minutes of warming up (ie. walking, swinging arms) to loosen the muscles and related soft tissue. This will get the blood moving. It is important to warm up and stretch properly.

It is possible to injure yourself while stretching when:
• you are in too much of a hurry (not relaxed)
• you push too far, too soon (overstretching a cold muscle)
• you are not paying attention to the feeling of the stretch

If you are running, cycling or doing some other activity: warm up by doing the activity you are about to do, but at a lesser intensity for about 2 – 5 minutes. THEN STRETCH.

Cooling down
You should cool down after exercise by doing a scaled down version of the main workout. Get your heart rate back down towards a resting rate. Then stretch to prevent muscle soreness and stiffness.

Stretching © 2000 by Bob and Jean Anderson. Shelter Publications, Inc.

Lactic Acid

Muscle tension
Muscles, in the course of their work, use oxygen and nutrients and produce carbon dioxide and waste products. The principle waste product of muscle metabolism is called lactic acid. Nutrients and wastes are transported to and from muscles by the blood circulation, and so the efficiency of this transport system is dependent upon good blood flow. Poor or insufficient blood flow causes an accumulation of lactic acid producing tension in muscles.

Muscle pain
There are many types and causes of muscle pain, but all of us are familiar with the stiff achy feeling of a muscle which is reacting to an unusual level of exercise, a chronic strain or build-up of stress-related tension. This achiness is caused by the development of lactic acid residues in the muscles tissue, compounded by the fact that a tight muscle clamps down on its supply blood vessels and impedes drainage of its own tissue.

Massage
Massage acts on the tight achy muscle in several ways. It helps relax tension and spasm and promotes the release of lactic acid from the tissue. This relaxing action automatically enhances the function of the supplying blood vessels. In addition, massage actively increases the rate of blood flow to and from the area.

Epsom salts
Because of the high magnesium content, epsom salts bath can be helpful any time you are suffering from achiness and muscle strain. It is an excellent idea for the evening after you have had a massage because it helps to clear out released lactic acid. Without this, there may be a temporary generalized soreness following the massage treatment of a particularly tight area.

Instructions for taking a bath
Epsom salts are readily available at your local pharmacy. Use 2 to 4 cups in a full bath, the temperature of which is as hot as you can comfortably tolerate. You must soak in the bath for a minimum of 20 minutes, without adding any bathing solutions or oils and without using soap, as these substances will alter the chemistry of the water. After soaking for 20 minutes, you may wash or rinse off as you wish.

To replace the fluid you lose as perspiration, keep a glass of cold water beside you and sip it during the bath. If you like, you may also wring a towel in cold water and wrap it around your neck. As with any hot bath, make sure you get out of the tub slowly and carefully.

Liar's Poker

“I have this theory,” said Andy Stone, seated in his office at Prudential-Bache Securities.

“Wall Street makes its best producers into managers. The reward for being a good producer is to be made a manager. The best producers are cutthroat, competitive, and often neurotic and paranoid. You turn these people into managers, and they go after each other. They no longer have the outlet for their instincts that producing gave them. They usually aren’t well suited to be managers. Half of them get thrown out because they are bad. Another quarter get muscled out because of politics. The guys left behind are just the most ruthless of the bunch. That’s why there are cycles on Wall Street – why Salomon Brothers is getting crunched now – because the ruthless people are bad for the business but can only be washed out by proven failure.”

Michael Lewis, Liar’s Poker

Top 50 Superclubs

List of Top 50 superclubs as voted by international DJs:

1 Space (Ibiza)
2 Fabric (London)
3 Pacha (Ibiza)
4 The End (London)
5 Warung (Itajai)
6 Panorama Bar (Berlin)
7 DC10 (Ibiza)
8 Amnesia (Ibiza)
9 Pawn Shop Lounge (Miami)
10 Zouk (Singapore)
11 Stereo (Montreal)
12 The Arches (Glasgow)
13 Turnmills (London)
14 Space (Miami)
15 Digital (Newcastle)
16 Ministry Of Sound (London)
17 Womb (Tokyo)
18 Guvernment (Toronto)
19 Cocoon (Frankfurt)
20 Pacha (New York)
21 D-Edge (Sao Paolo, Brazil)
22 Cavo Paradisco (Mykonos, Greece)
23 Sirena (Maresias, Brazil)
24 Crobar (Chicago)
25 Fuse (Brussels, Belgium)
26 Pacha (Buenos Aires)
27 Basics (Leeds)
28 Club Kristal (Bucharest)
29 Coco Rico (Riccione, Italy)
30 Cielo (New York)
31 Rex Club (Paris)
32 Robert Johnson (Frankfurt)
33 Yellow (Tokyo)
34 Tenax (Florence, Italy)
35 Weekend (Berlin)
36 Privilege (Ibiza)
37 The Cross (London)
38 Sankeys (Manchester)
39 Home (Sydney, Australia)
40 Pacha (Sao Paolo, Brazil)
41 The Key (London)
42 Babyface (Shanghai, China)
43 Honey Club (Brighton)
44 Se One (London)
45 Alter Ego (Verona, Italy)
46 Spundaue (Los Angeles)
47 Trilogy (Dubai)
48 Venue (Athens, Greece)
49 T Bar (London)
50 Ageha (Tokyo)

Nothing Exists

Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen, visited one master after another. He called upon Dokuon of Shokoku.

Desiring to show his attainment, he said: “The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all, do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is Emptiness. There is no realisation, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received”.

Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing. Suddenly he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe. This made the youth quite angry.

“If nothing exists”, inquired Dokuon, “where did this anger come from?”

George Soros

On Terror: “How can we escape from the trap that the terrorists have set us?” he asked. “Only by recognizing that the war on terrorism cannot be won by waging war. We must, of course, protect our security; but we must also correct the grievances on which terrorism feeds…. Crime requires police work, not military action.”

On the Bush Administration: “An open society is a society which allows its members the greatest possible degree of freedom in pursuing their interests compatible with the interests of others,” Soros said. “The Bush administration merely has a narrower definition of self-interest. It does not include the interests of others.”

On the Bush Administration: “The supremacist ideology of the Bush Administration stands in opposition to the principles of an open society, which recognize that people have different views and that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. The supremacist ideology postulates that just because we are stronger than others, we know better and have right on our side. The very first sentence of the September 2002 National Security Strategy (the President’s annual laying out to Congress of the country’s security objectives) reads, ‘The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise.'”

On Philanthropy: “I’m not doing my philanthropic work, out of any kind of guilt, or any need to create good public relations. I’m doing it because I can afford to do it, and I believe in it.”

On Stock Market Bubbles: “Stock market bubbles don’t grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but reality as distorted by a misconception.”