Wealth Today

Dow’s CEO, Andrew Liveris, blames the US Government’s long-standing policy of inaction towards the rising energy crisis for the company’s recent hike in prices on all products across the globe by up to 20%. Dow claims a 42 percent increase in cost of their energy and “feedstock” (the raw petroleum from crude oil) for the first quarter compared to a year ago. My concern : Dow’s extensive list of products and services is a far reaching bohemeth and this price increase will gouge into the pockets of other industries that are already hit hard by the increase in fuel prices.

This time, though, AMD will let the battle be decided by the clout-swinging suits instead of the cutting-edge Samurai-style technology touting ninja-neers. AMD has filed suit against Intel in a statement of anti-trust, alleging that Intel intervened and was able to sway decisions against AMD’s favor in many attempted business and marketing negotiations. Analysts expected this kind of response over 6 months ago. If the result of the complaint is in AMD’s favor, will it be enough to dig them out of this hole? Likely. They expected some losses this year as it acquired ATI, and have a new product launch planned this summer. While the move didn’t mangle Intel in today’s market, it didn’t look good. Intel seems adamant that they will come out ahead in the long run. On the other hand, AMD has already produced their statement of how they will continue to be successful as the move to integrated CPU and GPU architecture over the next generations of product lines. It is yet to be seen, but I am not convinced the outcome of the suit will make significant changes for AMD or it’s stock. We will also have to pay attention to how it will affect the consumers to see how that will play out.