mheslep said:I think we should expect to see oil imports increase, especially middle eastern oil, given current policy: deep water drilling moratorium, and proposed bans or tariffs on Canadian tar sands oil.
mheslep said:I think we should expect to see oil imports increase, especially middle eastern oil, given current policy: deep water drilling moratorium, and proposed bans or tariffs on Canadian tar sands oil.
edward said:Current policy?? Perhaps you would care to share a link on proposed Tar sands tariffs.
Forbes said:Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, wrote lengthy letters on July 2 to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Elizabeth Orlando, the State Department's Keystone XL project manager, in which he vehemently opposes approval of TransCanada Corporation's application to move ahead with the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
...
In one swift move, Mr. Waxman has elevated the oil sands debate to a new level. It is one thing for the city of Bellingham, Washington to ban oil sands products from its municipal fleet. It's quite another for the chairman of a powerful House committee to declare war on one of Canada's most valuable resources.
How would it get to the US?edward said:It would still be an imported source of oil.
Just as I don't know that the ban is permanent, you don't know that it will end up being temporary.edward said:Of the thousands of wells in the gulf the deep water moratorium has affected only 33 exploratory wells that I know of. And that isn't permanent.
Those 3,000 wells, at least the older ones don't produce like they used to. They new wells punch well above their weight in production, as we've unfortunately seen from the DeepWater well.edward said:Over 3,000 wells are still active in the gulf. That doesn't mean that they are owned by American companies. We import BP oil from the Gulf.
Yep, and a couple days later:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39612.htmlJuly 13th said:Interior Secretary Ken Salazar reissued a moratorium on deepwater offshore drilling Monday, after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the White House’s appeal of a lower court decision to halt the drilling ban.
mheslep said:http://blogs.forbes.com/investor/2010/07/14/liberal-california-politician-holding-oil-sands-hostage/
How would it get to the US?
In Canada the pipeline will extend approximately 327 miles from Hardisty, Alberta southeast through Saskatchewan before entering the United States in Morgan, Montana, where it will continue on southeast for 836 miles through South Dakota and Nebraska. In Steele City, Nebraska the pipeline will connect to the 296-mile long Keystone Pipeline before resuming in Cushing Oklahoma, where it will continue on to its final destination at existing terminals in Nederland, Texas.
Who are these people? You? Because I can't imagine why anyone would prefer importing oil from the Middle East over importing it from Canada.edward said:Emphasis mine. I can see where some Americans might not want a Trans USA Canadian owned Pipeline. That would lock us into importing from Canada.
russ_watters said:Who are these people? You? Because I can't imagine why anyone would prefer importing oil from the Middle East over importing it from Canada.
russ_watters said:Yes, I can certainly see nimbys and tree huggers opposing an oil pipeline - any oil pipeline - but that's not the same as an objection based on locking us into importing from Canada. You made it sound like people would object to importing oil from Canada.
Major oil companies such as Shell are also coming under shareholder pressure to pull out of the Canadian projects. Earlier this year, Shell announced it was scaling back its expansion plans for the tar sands after a revolt by shareholders. Producing oil from the Alberta tar sands causes up to five times more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional crude oil, according to the campaign group Greenpeace.
So much for the recovery.Economic woes may force more than 1 million American households to lose their homes this year.
Nearly 528,000 homes were foreclosed in the first six months of 2010. As lenders work through a huge backlog of borrowers behind on their mortgages, even more home repossessions could occur before the end of the year.
According to RealtyTrac, Inc., a foreclosure listing service, the number of households facing foreclosure in the first half of the year climbed 8 percent when compared to the same time frame last year. In June, 1 in every 411 households received a foreclosure filing.
The fastest growing group of foreclosures involved homeowners with good credit who took out conventional fixed-rate loans. Many of these borrowers have fallen behind in their mortgages due to unemployment or reduced income.
. . . .
Astronuc said:Lenders may foreclose on more than 1 million homes this year http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynewspoint/20100715/ts_ynewspoint/ynewspoint_ts3125
So much for the recovery.
My old place finally sold. We paid ~$60K for it over 20 years ago, and sold it in 2006 for over $120K. The people that bought it were single-income home-schoolers and they defaulted pretty promptly. The bank finally unloaded the place for about $80K, so they took a pretty good bath on it.edward said:The foreclosed houses aren't selling. Banks are sitting on thousands of them.
turbo-1 said:My old place finally sold. We paid ~$60K for it over 20 years ago, and sold it in 2006 for over $120K. The people that bought it were single-income home-schoolers and they defaulted pretty promptly. The bank finally unloaded the place for about $80K, so they took a pretty good bath on it.
However, now that banks have so many foreclosures on their books, many foreclosure auctions are simply being postponed for no apparent reason. While more homeowners than ever are applying for assistance, even more sheriff sales are being delayed. In addition, lenders are often incompetent enough to proceed with a public auction of a home even if the borrowers are negotiating for a loan modification or other plan.
This indicates that the banks are voluntarily postponing some sheriff auctions in order to avoid having to declare the loans as losses and then declaring the properties as assets at their true market values. Banks have gotten away for years with overestimating values of homes in order to inflate the values of the loans on the properties and the securities made up of these mortgage debts.
Yes, I understand, and my point was that Chairman Waxman intends to block it (insanely in my view) and not for any American xenophobic reasons. So, I'll say it again:edward said:Here is the propsed route for the keystone pipeline.
me said:I think we should expect to see oil imports increase, especially middle eastern oil, given current [or pending] policy: deep water drilling moratorium, and proposed bans or tariffs on Canadian tar sands oil.
email I received 2 minutes ago said:The Senate just passed Wall Street reform. The bill will become law the moment President Obama signs it.
Precious little, I fear. I understand that there are some provisions for consumer-protection for borrowers and individual investors, but Wall Street will still continue business as usual.OmCheeto said:What will this do to the economic recovery?
Well the more direct question is what will it do to financial stability in the future? The answer, given 2500 pages of gimmicks and special interest insertions, I think, is who knows? Random crap shoot, thank you Congress.OmCheeto said:What will this do to the economic recovery?
mheslep said:Well the more direct question is what will it do to financial stability in the future? The answer, given 2500 pages of gimmicks and special interest insertions, I think, is who knows? Random crap shoot, thank you Congress.
edward said:The foreclosed houses aren't selling. Banks are sitting on thousands of them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/b...pagewanted=2&_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&src=igwNY Times said:The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, spoke just as forcefully against the legislation. “The American people don’t seem to like this government-driven solution to the financial crisis any more than they like the Democrats’ government-driven solution to the nation’s health care crisis,” he said.
Citing a study by the United States Chamber of Commerce, a leading business group, Mr. McConnell said the bill would require 70 new federal regulations through the new consumer financial protection bureau, 11 new regulations through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 30 new regulations through the Federal Reserve and 205 new regulations through the S.E.C.
“All told, this bill would impose 533 new regulations on individuals and small businesses,” Mr. McConnell said. “That will inevitably lead to the kind of confusion and uncertainty that will make it even harder for struggling businesses to dig themselves out of the recession.
mheslep said:Minority Leader McConnel:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/b...pagewanted=2&_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&src=igw
So the economy has recovered and it's back to normal. What a relief. I was really worried.The chief executives of the 50 firms that laid off the most workers so far during the economic crisis enjoyed salaries that are 42% higher than the average pay of chief executives of other S&P 500 companies, according to a new study.
As MarketWatch's Steve Goldstein notes in his story today, that CEO list was topped by ex-Schering Plough chief Fred Hassan, who earned $49.65 million in 2009. After their merger, his company and Merck laid off a combined 16,000 workers.
By way of comparison, women's median weekly wage is $704, which translates into about $36,600 per year. Men's is about $44,770.
It's true that those CEOs, possibly as a result of the layoffs, may have been directly responsible for pushing their company's stock price higher, probably benefiting many, many investors. See Goldstein's story for more data on that.
But the wage differential still staggers: $44,770 -- assuming you still have a job and that it pays the median wage -- versus $49,650,000. That executive's pay is more than 1,100 times higher than the worker's. Sure, it matters what industry you work in, and what your skills are, and maybe how educated you are, and how many people you're responsible for. But does it matter that much?
. . . .
brainstorm said:There seems to be little capacity left to comprehend how an economy works when it's not a long-term subsidiary of appreciation-driven fiscal stimulus. Nowhere in economic theory, that I am familiar with, does it say that persistent appreciation of property values is a requirement for supply and demand to function properly.
What is happening, however, is that the long trend of property-market appreciation has resulted in psychological resistance to imagining the deflationary trend could be anything but temporary. Couple this with the fact that there are extreme precedents for fiscal stimulus to ensure re-inflation, including pre-wwii new-deal programs, leading up the the creation of the military-industrial complex, and Freddie/Fannie as dispersion mechanisms to ensure the widespread distribution of government-stimulated income.
People are simply no longer capable of believing that government WON'T intervene in some way that re-establishes persistent inflation and therefore appreciation of their properties.
Eventually, either the economy will have to adjust to reset all costs of property-ownership to make them attractive as hobby property OR something will have to happen which makes it likely for them to generate income either as rentals or sales.
Of course, for people to occupy multiple residences, other factors also come into play such as the ability to structure employment around seasonal migrations, etc. Presumably if people could afford to work someplace warm in the winter and/or migrate someplace cooler for the summer, they would. But this would also create a heavy burden on infrastructure, including oil-supply distribution, unless a highly space-efficient and fuel-efficient form of long-distance transit became dominant. I'm thinking this would either involve electric trains running on nuclear power or something more radically energy-conservative such as nomadism where people spend several months/year hiking between destinations.
Sustained nomadism is actually not as an obscure a possibility as it may sound, considering advances in IT that could allow people to work en route using portable media, for example, or planning a work schedule that would allow them to work a few weeks in each city over a series of intermediate destinations. This would, of course, involve radical innovations in management and human-resources, etc. People would have to have places to stay, en route, for example, which would require maintenance and housekeeping on a scale that would exceed the capacity of existing motels and campgrounds, especially with current standards of housekeeping (fresh towels and sheets every day!).
Molycorp (MCP) recently offered stock publicly. The stock price has more than doubled. It'll be interesting to watch.Astronuc said:This is a growing concern. Chinese companies are accumulating substantial resources, and in some cases, near monopolies.
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news...new-energy-dependency-chinas-metals_print.htm
mugaliens said:Being out on the road is expensive, and hiking across country is far more expensive than driving it due to the cost in time, food, and gear. For example, I can travel from here to California in three days, costing me about $100 in hotels and food, with vehicle costs being the most expensive at about $276 in gas, oil, tires, and other direct wear-and tear items. Assuming an average, $50,000/yr in wages, the time cost comes to another $450 to $600, depending on the days travelled!
Total cost: nearly $900, and that's just one-way! $1,800 round-trip.
If I were to hike there instead, the cost in time alone would be more than $25,000. Add in meals, shoes, gear, etc., and you're looking at a $35,000 trip, minimum, one way, for a $70,000 RT cost.
Yet I can fly there and rent a car for a week, staying in a hotel, for just $750 RT. Peanuts, by comparison.
Nomadic lifestyles are NOT cheap. It's one of the reasons our world was only able to support (or we were able to support ourselves) a million humans in hunter-gather mode, while it can support 7,000 times as many humans in agrarian mode.
brainstorm said:they would be generating plenty of body-heat, which would reduce the need for heating and a/c, which would save loads of energy.
CRGreathouse said:How would generating lots of body heat reduce the need for AC?
Yes apparently the Chinese have implemented an export quota on Rare Earth's, saying it was a matter of their 'sovereignty', blah, blah. Well the WTO prohibits extra-treaty export quotas. The US&Europe could easily make the argument that banning the import of Chinese manufactures was a matter of their sovereignty, blah, blah, if that was all that mattered.Astronuc said:Just some examples of interesting developments in the global economy. It certainly does look like China is putting the squeeze on RE supplies, but that's only because they control about 97% of the global production. They had good forsight, and the rest of the world more or less ignored the obvious.
Astronuc said:Molycorp (MCP) recently offered stock publicly. The stock price has more than doubled. It'll be interesting to watch.
Shares in junior miner Rare Element Resources were up as much as 28 percent on Monday, as buzz around the sector continued to boost miners with rare Earth properties in the United States.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN1828089520101018
Glencore is a privately held company which produces and markets commodities. They have mining and minerals subsidiaries.
http://www.glencore.com/pages/group_structure_metals.htm
Just some examples of interesting developments in the global economy. It certainly does look like China is putting the squeeze on RE supplies, but that's only because they control about 97% of the global production. They had good forsight, and the rest of the world more or less ignored the obvious.
Now interestingly, the US government doesn't seem too concerned about folks who park supertankers (very large crude carriers) off-shore in order to put upward pressure on oil prices.
Is there really a difference between a government or a private corporation manipulating the market for one or more commodities?
The GAO report lists the mine at Mountain Pass, California as perhaps the largest non-Chinese rare Earth deposit in the world. That same mine almost slipped out of U.S. hands unnoticed during a Chinese bid for the U.S. oil company Unocal in 2005.
Unocal had purchased the Mountain Pass mine owner, Molycorp, back in 1978. But that fact went mostly unnoticed during the media and Congressional uproar over the possible threat to U.S. energy security, which eventually led the Chinese company to withdraw its bid.
Do you have a source for the figures on Chinese stimulus? First, what I'd seen earlier was not 'massive' by the US standard, and second any reporting on Chinese government spending is only as accurate as the Chinese government allows it to be.CAC1001 said:It is in China's best interest for America to recover. They need us to buy all their stuff. The only reason their economy has been continuing to grow as of late is because they implemented a massive stimulus into their economy,
mheslep said:Do you have a source for the figures on Chinese stimulus? First, what I'd seen earlier was not 'massive' by the US standard, and second any reporting on Chinese government spending is only as accurate as the Chinese government allows it to be.
Yes they say it was about $586B, and that's over a couple years.CAC1001 said:It was about $586 billion. China has a $4.9 trillion GDP (as of 2009), so $586 billion is about 12% of their GDP. By "massive," I meant in proportion ot the size of their overall economy.
Why? That is, why would spending drive demand more in a communist government / ~capitalist market country?Also, in China, stimulus probably has a much better chance of working than in a place like the United States.