LIVING OFF DIVIDENDS & PASSIVE INCOME

India’s Tata Motors just unveiled its 100,000 rupee car today. According to today’s exchange rate, that works out to $2,551. Its a small car, with a 624 cc engine and seats 4 adults comfortably. (If you’ve ever sat in a rickshaw, you’d have a slightly lower standard of comfort).

This is good news of hundreds of millions of Indians who currently drive scooters and motorbikes and can now afford a car. The Nano costs about twice as much as a mid-range bike does. So you can expect it to wildly popular, especially in India and South East Asia.

Even though its very fuel efficient, at 76 miles/gallon in the petrol version (diesel version is expected to give you 92 miles/gallon) compared to the 195 miles/gallon you’d get from a scooter (& more from some bikes), its a rather large step down. This means that India’s consumption of oil is set to increase.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, the rush to produce ethanol has resulted in sharply higher prices for corn. Corn is used to feed cattle and pigs and as a result of the price increase, farmers are feeding their pigs trail mix, candy and Top Ramen noodles!

Besides trail mix, pigs and cattle are downing cookies, licorice, cheese curls, candy bars, french fries, frosted wheat cereal and peanut-butter cups. Some farmers mix chocolate powder with cereal and feed it to baby pigs. “It’s kind of like getting Cocoa Puffs,” says David Funderburke, a livestock nutritionist at Cape Fear Consulting in Warsaw, N.C., who helps Mr. Smith and other farmers formulate healthy diets for livestock.

California farmers are feeding farm animals grape-skins from vineyards and lemon-pulp from citrus groves. Cattle ranchers in spud-rich Idaho are buying truckloads of uncooked french fries, Tater Tots and hash browns.

The BMW just unvieled it’s new concept car, and its rumored to be the new 8-series. Very nice!

The CS feels like an evolution of that philosophy with sharper edges and swoopier surfaces all around. Underhood we’ll find a 6.0-liter V12, which is essentially the M5 5.0-liter V10 with two extra cylinders. That’s a nice modular motor for BMW if that ends up being the case, with 10-cylinder, 12-cylinder, and V8 versions used across the Motorsport models

Ok, who wants to buy me one?

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