Good morning

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The headlines:

1. Bill Clinton nominates Obama at Democratic Convention.

   Link: Hillary, he’s cheating again.

   The Democrat Convention. And Bill Clinton telling the world that Obama “inherited a deeply damaged economy, put a floor under the crash, began the long hard road to recovery, and laid the foundation for a more modern, more well-balanced economy that will produce millions of good new jobs”.

   What. Ever.

   Some images:

   

   

   And unemployment in America is at, like, an all-time high by modern standards.

   And. AND. Where is this “floor”?

   I may not be with Mitt Romney on the social issues. But when it comes to the economics, Obama does not appear to be solution-driven.

   I’m just observing that the data speak for themselves.

2. The tumble of Nokia’s share price.

   Link: has anyone actually seen a Lumia?

   Behold:

   

   And we’re left asking: what happened yesterday?

   Answer: Nokia unveiled two new phones. The Lumias 820 and 920, which look like this:

   

   No one seems to be able to explain why everyone reacted so dramatically. The phones, I read, aren’t too bad.

   And it was hardly like Nokia could announce an iPhone 5. Because then Apple would have organised a Californian jury to drub the Nokia share price into the cents range.

3. Indian tycoon on the loose.

   Link: Mozambique’s natural gas.

   Venugopal Dhoot, a mobile-phone billionaire, controls Videocon Industries, which in turn owns 10% of Mozambique’s Rovuma-1 offshore block, where the amount of gas discovered exceeds the entire gas reserves of Libya*.

   That investment originally cost $75 million (presumably including the costs of sinking the hole). Mr Dhoot is looking for a “$3 billion” payday, which analysts are calling a bit steep.

   Thus far, I can’t really tell what all this news is doing to the Videocon share price, which looks like it suffers from the financial version of borderline personality disorder:

   

   *Presumably, it also exceeds the entire gas reserves of countries like Zimbabwe, which have no gas at all. But I assume that Libya does have some natural gas reserves**.

   **UPDATE: I did some research in the CIA factbook, which is a book of many useful facts. As of 1 January 2011, Libya had the 22nd highest proven natural gas reserves in the world. Mozambique was 52nd. Zimbabwe was 144th. That said, most of the list was countries with 0 reserves numbered alphabetically. So actually, there were about 103 countries tying for 105th place.

4. With less than a week to go: Apple’s competition.

   Link: “Look – we also have cool phones! And one of them’s a Lumia!”

   The only important part of this story is that the next Apple media event is scheduled for next week Wednesday.

5. Today’s ECB Governing Council Meeting.

   Link: what’s at stake.

   Wrote about it here.

That’s all for now.

Have a good day.