A funny thing happened today. Total U.S. commercial petroleum inventories declined by over 15 million barrels, and the price of Oil didn't do much.
Kind of comports with my view that the U.S. is no longer the axe in the price of Oil... that is, the U.S. is no longer the price determinate for the world Oil market any longer.
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In the nothing to do with Energy department...
Some times I despair for my fellow man (woman). The one wild card in all of our lives that we can so little about are the crazies running amongst us, waiting to go off like a bomb.
We have nuts going into school board meetings and firing 9mm handguns at their innocent and unarmed fellow man... and we have well known WABC Weather Girl Heidi Jones fabricating an attempted rape... Our government has raided religious groups and their supporters blew up a federal building killing innocent children... a man flies his plane into an I.R.S. building... Going "Postal" is now broadly understood in the lexicon.... Good grief. What's next?
We lack civility in our political discourse, we glorify violence in the media we allow our children to consume, we reject the sanctity of Life from abortion, to street violence, to war, to capital punishment... everybody is a victim and everyone seems to belong to a group that hates somebody with a passion.... and we wonder that people are going off half-cocked because somebody did them wrong?
Rational, and other wise law abiding citizens barrel down my street here in South Florida (20 mph zone) at 60 mph and are furious when I don't get out of their way... seemingly oblivious to the consequences should they hit one of my kids...
Sometimes I think I'm the only normal person left... is it just me, or have we gotten meaner? Well, mean people suck.
Maybe.... just maybe... the answer is not more government control, regulation, and tax extraction to fix all of these things.... maybe, just maybe, people would not be would so tightly wound that they are ready to shoot me over a parking space if they weren't so frantic in their lives... maybe we need to stop growing GDP and start growing GNH - Gross National Happiness. It seems for every attempted government solution we wind up with 2 new problems to solve - and 4 new taxes to pay for the solutions.
Forget "Power Down"... how about "Frantic Down"?
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Governor-elect Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown says he's shocked. Shocked, I say!
What a cluster f*%!! the California Body politic must be. Their perfect storm liberal economic policies, and a lack of anyone else to blame, have left them in a uniquely awful position.
California absolutely, positively will default on either its bonds or its pension obligations... they just might call it something else AND blame Republicans in the American Southeast. How's that you say? Well, it can't be the Liberal Elite's fault... They are the ENLIGHTENED ONES... It MUST be those troglodyte Republicans in the Old South....
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Markets zig and zag... they don't zig and zig (forever). At these prices I like Nat Gas more than Oil, Platinum more than Silver, and 7-10 Treasuries more than equities... but I reserve the right to change my mind on a dime... if I am wrong, I am gone.
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18 comments:
It should be no surprise to anyone that the massive amount of U.S. debt (that we caused), both public and private, that has slowly strangled everyones' financial situation, added with the loss of American jobs, has made everyone a little more grumpy and sullen. We have an uneven health care system, less vacation time, our (retirement) benefits are bound to be cut, the top 1% getting richer and richer, and so I just watch these videos of Greece today going on and say ... now there's a population that knows how to fight back! :)
Bur,
Fight against whom? The the enlightened liberal elite that we elected? Those billionaire men of the people who line their pockets with our tax dollars and mortgage payments? Those who would convince us that there is something for nothing? Those who take $1.00 in taxes, give back $.75 and expect us to be happy? Those who tax the middle class until saving is impossible and then tell us that raising taxes will improve the distribution of wealth?
Hell, you support all of that stuff Bur. It is Socialism and Corporate Fascism. Why would you fight against those you voted for? Is that what happens when the shades come off and it is blindingly apparent that there is not something for nothing? You riot against those you elected? Haven't we all known for a long time that there really isn't something for nothing? These bastards would make P. T. Barnum blush, and you libs vote for them ad nauseum, and are surprised that they have lied.
SHEEESH!
Regards,
Coal Guy
I think the hatred of the last 50 years has finally come to it's boiling point. Those who have given and tried to relieve the pressure have finally given up and realized it is pointless. One side will never be satisfied and the other has nothing left to give.
Everyone feels it, both general sides know where this is going eventually and way too many are looking for a fight now.
Perhaps an outside catalyst will come along or be invented to defuse the whole thing. Yet as it stands now we are close to violence I fear.
A way to deal with the crazies is to isolate yourself from them as much as possible. I guess it would be worthwhile to move the family for good from Sur de la Florida and leave the crazies behind.
Nutty people are everywhere... but it seems that there is something in the water (environment) that has taken us up to near the boiling point.
And of course I can remove myself as much as possible... but are my kids not going to to school/vacation/doctors visits, etc...?
Coal Guy and Pioneer and I seem share the vision that the government's overwhelming intrusion into our lives is making us nuts... that and those UFO's, ET, and Tinker Bell... AGGHGHGGHGH!!
And yes, South Florida is a miasmic environment... every time I go back to rural Tennessee my faith in people is restored... but we do what and live where we must....
I'm all for a return to civilized discourse- like Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton!
DaShui:
I think the discourse would be so much more civil if dueling were still legal...
“An armed society is a polite society.”- State trooper conducting range qualifications while the state legislature was debating concealed carry permits.
I think it is all about unrealistic expectations. The media, government, business all are making promises they can't keep and setting unrealistic expectations. It causes endless frustration. It is one thing to do without and understand your situation. It is another thing entirely to to have that same thing promised a hundred times and then be denied. Therein lies the problem.
Regards,
Coal Guy
Greg,
So what are the chances that one of those nuts harming your family or that at least one of your children becoming nutty? Have you determined exactly what would have to happen to make you move your family out of there?
It seems to me that there are far fewer nuts living near your farm in Tennessee, so what ever that toxin is, that area has a lot less of it. The only practical way I know of for a small group to deal with a environmental toxin that is spread over a large area is to get as far away from the danger zone as possible.
The expectations wouldnt have been so unrealistic if we hadnt gutted our ability to maintain real jobs in this country (I saw "the Apartment" from 1960 last night -- the workplace in that was a trip!) , plus giving the superrich the ability to get even superricher via massive tax cuts. :) There is LOTS of taxable wealth in this country. We just chose to follow the mantra "we want our benefits and we dont want to pay for them." Classic baby boomer-era delusions.
K:
We are moving from here upon my eldest's graduation from high school. Still, there are nuts, and drunks, and red necks, and Borderline Personalities/radical feminists in Tennessee, Cal, Indiana, Florida, Mass....
China rising .. yeah, right ..
From Jim Chanos, "guesting" on CNBC last week ...
The overdependence on new real estate in China, when the demand isn't there, will cause the nation to eventually "hit a wall," hedge fund manager James Chanos told CNBC Friday.
“Construction is 60-plus percent of GDP, compared to exports of 5,” said Chanos, who is the founder and president of Kynikos Associates.
“The problem is that consumption as a percentage of Chinese economy has declined in the last 10 years, from 40 to 35 percent. It’s all real estate,” he said. After the US, China has the world's second largest economy...
China has built new cities that are now essentially empty, he added. Despite the overbuilding, said Chanos, construction continues at a good clip, with 12 million to 15 million residential units this year. The units, priced similar to those for US residents, are intended for Chinese who earn about $3,500 annually and are in the bottom 20 percent of wage earners. Ironically, many of the Chinese who've moved to cities from the country are construction workers, he noted.
“When construction is 60 percent of your economy, and you are building lots of things that people don’t need, the state may let this get out of control,” he said.
Bur:
That is an interesting data point. I would need to understand the source of the 60% of the Chinese economy bit... if you a link please post here so i can review.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/40605908
I was hoping to know where Chanos got his data point from.
If you have anything, let me know.
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