U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) increased by 2.9 million barrels from the previous week. At 366.0 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are above the upper boundary of the average range for this time of year. Total motor gasoline inventories decreased by 0.2 million barrels last week, and are below the lower limit of theThat last line: "inventories increase by 15.1 million barrels" is a biggie. Please note table 1, first compilation "Total Net Imports" for the year is down 4.5% for the first 148 days of 2009 compared to the same period from 2008. For all of 2008, imports were down 8% from 2007.
average range. Finished gasoline inventories fell last week while gasoline blending components inventories rose during this same time. Distillate fuel inventories increased by 1.6 million barrels, and are above the upper boundary of the average range for this time of year. Propane/propylene inventories increased by 1.9 million barrels last week and are above the upper limit of the average range. Total commercial petroleum inventories increased by 15.1 million barrels last week, and are above the upper limit of the average range for this time of year.
Should this trend continue, and I think it will, industrial production and real economic output will decline at the same time that money supply increases from the Federal Reserve buying Treasury paper... will lead to one heck of a blow off.
You see, it is all about ratios. The absolute number of dollar units means little without its relationship to the economic out put of the system. If GDP contracts and money supply remains the same, well... that's inflationary. If GDP contracts and money supply increases dramatically...
This is not to say that one more wet-your-pants, sh*t-the-bed kind of deflationary scare is not in the offing - in fact, I am betting that it is - but my bet is that it will be the last.
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That 50% of my fellow citizens said that torture was acceptable in certain circumstances is beyond my comprehension. Only the pea-brained fail to make the connection that torture, besides being unconscionable, is a 2 way street? If one side tortures, the other side will do the same to you and yours.
I have ALWAYS had a very dim view of the mentality of people in Law Enforcement ("The Authorities") of all stripes. Anybody that WANTS to carry a firearm and a club (and is willing to point that firearm at someone for say, smoking pot), and walk around in an outfit that by all appearances looks like they are about to invade Poland should be summarily disqualified from working in Law Enforcement as they are mentally deficient as a human being. Law enforcement personnel should be DRAFTED from the general population, with extra effort deployed in drafting philosophy students from the major universities, and rotated out of Law Enforcement after a several year stint. After all, ANYONE working in a sewage plant and given enormous powers will shortly stink to high heavens.
Think about who the people carrying out the torture are: They are the "Authorities". Did they kiss their wife and kids good-bye that morning, drive to the office, warm up with some Nazi S.S. videos to set the mood and then step into the torture chamber ready to physically harm a helpless and restrained human being (enemy or no)? Do we want these torturers then walking around in society? WTF??!! I know that I am not the only one that sees a problem with this, but the fact that half of our society DOES NOT does not leave me with a warm and fuzzy.
This is not to say that Law Enforcement is not necessary. It is. But it is important to recognize that while it is necessary, it is also an "evil" of sorts, a necessary "evil" that we have let run amok. How many Law Enforcement personnel and citizens have to die each year in confrontations that just were not very important? Clearly, thousands - but my bet it was the half that think torture is a good idea that also find this acceptable.
To the nit wits that think torture is acceptable:
The U.S. has hundreds of thousands of people serving in our military overseas. Your inability to engage in abstract thought has left them vulnerable to the only fate worse than death.
I would have made a shitty politician.
BTW, I will be back to my usual assaults on the ridiculous sensitivities of the Left shortly, but the Left got this one spot on.
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The world ain't coming to an end - even if the US$ gets mushed, and people have to walk more, and have to grow a victory garden, and give up their cell phone and cable T.V., and can't afford a car, and have to live in smaller homes, etc... - unless people insist that they would rather the world come to an end than make these compromises.
I am not a doomer. There will still be a stock market, a fish market, a meat market, an Ag market, etc... The sun will come up, the surf will roll in, wine, women (or men, or.... whatever) and song will still be the stuff we live for... but you ain't getting that pension you were promised, so you "are going to have to make other arrangements".
We are going to have a currency crisis, an entitlement crisis, an energy crisis... those are not really crisis's. Not enough food to go around, now that would be a crisis - as it is in fact a crisis in many parts of the world. Well, each country is going to have to look out for itself first in this regard, and the U.S. should spend a great deal more of its resources on food security than it is doing at the moment. The U.S. has spent multiples of THOUSANDS more on securing its financial system than it has on its food system.
Does that sound proportional to you?
The fertilizer industry has been warning the American political establishment for some time that the U.S. food system has zero room for error - crop failure, drought, storm, whatever.
All those other issues? They only affect your convenience. That just ain't the case with food.
Mentatt
24 comments:
Two points ...
I read somewhere that the "torturers" of the world were not the criminally-minded; mean & cruel to children, ponies & bunnies; unbalanced no-self-control no-self-worth products of this world's rotten governments. The people who torture were the "true-believers" -- the Nazis who really did believe Hitler was right, the South Americans who really believed the communists would destroy their way of life, etc. That's how the torturers lived with themselves ... they really believed the crap that was shoveled. And you can't argue "torture effectiveness" with these kinds of people. They see one path only.
Also, I don't see why we would immediatley risk losing our cell phones and electricity. While the reserve amounts of coal are in dispute, there is still a LOT of it left, including here in the U.S., and if we can't mine any more, Russia (hugely underutilized)and Australia have massive spare coal capacity. 50% of electricity in America comes from burning coal. Another 20% is nukes and 20% is burning natgas. The electricity problem is more a problem of electricity transmission, and more (expensive) wire would fix that problem.
Purchasing coal from Russia nd Australia assumes that the US dollar still has some value. At the point that coal is really needed won't these nations want something of value for their commodities?
Anon, that's what floating currencies are for. The Australian dollar tends to follow commodity prices, so if there's an inflationary blowout in the USD, the AUD would skyrocket against it - the rouble may as well.
Its not so much that these countries would want something of value (other than the USD) for their coal, but rather than the coal would become way to expensive for the US to be able to afford it.
Greg - good post today, thanks.
Bureaucrat:
Never said there was systemic risk to phones or cable, just that many will not be able to afford them.
The price mechanism works for food too. Famine is rarely an absolute shortage of food; it's almost always a shortage of money to buy food. If the money is there, private enerprise will quickly step in to establish a market to fulfill that need.
Like Katrina; if they'd been rich people left there after the floods, a lot more 'help' would have made it through! (and not just from the government)
Re: oil. If the US demand isn't generating the price rises, could it be that China et al is still increasing it's consumption? Of are we seeing the Export Land model in action?
Torture is wrong. Period. End of story. I just don't understand how GDub and Darth Vador and now Obammy can think it is right, no matter how they justify it. The fact that they do scares me.
All cops are either facists and/or Corrupt. They are now Militaristic facists, who will kill you at the drop of a hat, or a joint. Don't pay your taxes or refuse to answer the census takers questions and find out.
Old Fart
Donal:
I think the rise in Oil prices is that the money the Fed pumped into the system to inflate housing prices is going elsewhere.
Old Fart:
My objection to Law Enforcement, or as I refer to them "The Authorities" (and this includes the judiciary and prosecutors) is that because of the way the system is managed, there is an "us against them" mentality... and the "them" is us.
Law Enforcement is/has become more concerned with its own agenda, rather than the people's agenda. Sound familiar? Same in politics.
Now ask yourself... is this true of the Military, which primarily populated by non careerists who identify themselves as AMERICANS - whereas Law Enforcement identifies themselves as "Cops" or "On The Job", complete with a "Blue Wall Of Silence".
Society would be far better served with 2, 3, or 4 years stints - not careers, and by also placing a tie moratorium, say 5 years, after a prosecutor leaves office before he can run for public office.
We have criminals in our society. We need people to protect us. But we need a means of protecting ourselves from our protectors.
Alan Deshowitz posed a hypothetical situation:
Some creep has kidnapped your daughter and buried her in a plywood box. She has about an hour's worth of air. You have the creep in hand. He knows where she is, be he's not talking....
Looks like Anon at 7:07 am has been an avid "24" watcher. It would be a better idea to listen to what professional interrogators have to say on the subject.
It is only the armchair warriors who say torture works.
Also, I think energy decline will be a slow slide into things not working all the time. A lot of places in the world only have electricity for 12-16 hours per day. They've got pothole filled roads, dirty streets, intermittent telephone use with bad connections and so on.
As globalization is bringing the pay of the US worker down to global averages, so too will the living standard decline.
The strong sense of community obligation in Europe will probably restrain that decline more than in the US.
Donal:
You are absolutely correct about the price mechanism for food.
Still, here in America we have 11% of the population receiving assistance to buy food. What if the price mechanism led to 30%, and the financial system could not afford it?
It is a rather complex issue.
Look at the price of Milk. i really thought the price would rise... wrong! Turns out, the consumption of cheese in restaurants was a much greater percentage of total dairy consumption and restaurant sales fell sharply...
There are a great many data points here... if we could actually figure it out... $$$!!
Well, let's go all the way then ....
If you are so absolutely sure that a crime has been committed or will be committed by person A, let's put him (or her) on the rack and make his joints unasable for the rest of his life. Make him unable to work again, ever. I mean, like the TV shows, everyone knows exactly who, what, where, when and why crimes are committed. Everyone has the wisdom of "God." Alan Dershowittttts is a sad excuse for a lawyer who comes up with hypotheticals that in reality are never encountered. He's an Israel apologist who is of little use to anyone.
"If one side tortures, the other side will do the same to you and yours."
Then wouldn't you rather the jihadis waterboard their captives, rather than saw off their heads as they are doing now?
And following your logic, since they've been beheading their captives since 632 A.D.,how come we aren't beheading them?
Seems like I've struck a nerve. Easier to slam Dershowitz than answer the question.
Waterboarding provided information that prevented a 9/11 scale attack on Los Angeles. Was it worth it? This is a very similar situation to Dershowitz's.
The trouble is that if you live within the media hologram, torture is seen in the abstract. It will never affect you, but might help stick it to Mr bin hussein Ahmadinejad-chavez or whataver the mad villian of the day is.
Good idea for the philosophy student cops. Like most good ideas though, it will never happen.
You should see the cops here, they ARE the actual descendants of the Nazis, my first weekend here in Salzburg, I took a short trip over the boarder to the stunning mountains of Berchtesgaden, one time home of Hitler on my 50cc scooter. Coming home, a couple of miles from the border a police car went past, did a U-turn and came back and pulled me over, for doing 70kmph in a 70kmph zone. Apparently 50cc scooters are not allowed faster than 50kmph and mine was a little tricked out to keep up with the speed limit. I got put in the back of the police car, scooter impounded and 1500 euro fine.
pfff
On the other point, perhaps the people with the real money, (fueling this oil price rally which appears as of today to be fairly parabolic), are peak oil away, so are just going to skip the starter (another big price dip) and go straight on to dessert , with new oil price heights.
I had relatives on both sides in WW2. Not so abstract.
When government tortures in secret, you can't believe what anybody says about anything. We don't know if any real information was ever "extracted" by anyone that was helpful for anything. Stop believing the government.
Signed, a Federal employee :)
bureaucrat:
Precisely! You want the folks that thought up the DMV running another torture facility?
A man at my church was killed in the WTC. His wife got back a wedding band and a small piece of bone. We live over 200 mi. from NYC. Even this far away you meet many people with lost loved ones. If waterboarding prevented this in LA. Good.
GWB decided to protect Americans, and took the heat. He didn't burn that much political capital for no benefit. American lives were saved. This at the expense of dipping someone in water who thinks that blowing up women and children will earn him 72 virgins and a 1000 year orgasm. Obama will take the moral high ground, and when the bad thing happens, he'll challenge us to try to prove the negative.
"GWB decided to protect Americans, and took the heat."
ahahaha, man are you serious????
AFTER the planes hit Bush was still reading The Pet goat UPSIDE DOWN in a kids classroom.
http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/bush-911.htm
Without going into the whole 911 thing, there is an enormous amount of evidence that he either KNEW the attacks were going to happen or worse.
Love your blog.
Will check out your Jeffers Farm blog... I'm growing a somewhat large urban garden this summer, and am preparing for the future possible move to a homestead.
Torture: Americans feel that they are God's chosen people at this time and place. May God preserve us from the consequences of that belief, and may He give us the wisdom to remove this pernicious belief from our collective mind.
Love your blog.
Will check out your Jeffers Farm blog... I'm growing a somewhat large urban garden this summer, and am preparing for the future possible move to a homestead.
Torture: Americans feel that they are God's chosen people at this time and place. May God preserve us from the consequences of that belief, and may He give us the wisdom to remove this pernicious belief from our collective mind.
(In Illinois, we don't have a DMV. We have the Secretary of State's Office doing drivers licensing. And from the looks of it, it's a pretty well-run operation. I've been there a couple of times. They are never in the news [news = always bad]. Bureaucrats can do a really good job if the taxpayers stay out of the friggin' way. :))
Former US servicemen and women are against authorized torture in any form. Ask 'em. Waterboarding is used in SERE training, and I assure you, it ain't fun. It was also the most popular form of interrogation during the Spanish Inquisition.
Let's go to the experts-
Sun Tzu says:
"Treat the captives well, and care for them. This is called 'winning a battle and becoming stronger.'"
And just for emphasis, one ancient Chinese commentator on this passage, Chang Yu, adds:
"All the soldiers taken must be cared for with magnanimity and sincerity so that they may be used by us."
Rather than helping our cause, we've sunk to the level of our enemies.....instantly losing the "moral superiority" required to win (per Sun Tzu), and aiding them in their goals of recruitment and hatred. Guess it's not terrorism when we do it!
Finally, the simple fact is that you can't gain good intelligence from captives if you brutalize and torture them. Because the tortured will say anything to make the torture stop, and because the torturer does not know the truth (or they would not be asking the tortured), they do not know the truth when they hear it.
The CIA even admitted to as much, and most experts agree....is well known that confessions obtained under severe duress, like under torture, are very unreliable.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/13/interrogation.hearing/
Go read Koestler's award-winning "Darkness At Noon" for the Soviet's take on the matter.Pointless.
The "LA 911" was a hoax, pure propaganda put forth by those attempting to justify their actions post-facto. Try again please.
Thank you for your comments, folks.
I am quite sure that I am not sure of anything. This has led me in matters of life and death to take life - and admiration for the sanctity of life in all matters - death penalty, abortion, torture, excessive prison sentences, dropping bombs from the sky, pointing firearms at "criminals" that have done nothing violent... I will take the side that means LIFE.
Doesn't mean that I am more or less right than you. That is just my playbook.
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