Daily Digest
Daily Digest 3/20 - The End Of QE2, Long-Term Investing Charts, Possible New Oil Spill In Gulf
by Daily Digest
Sunday, March 20, 2011, 9:48 AM
- Mauldin: The End of QE2
- Interview With Charles Ferguson: Inside Job
- Liberty Dollar Creator Convicted In Federal Court
- Long-Term Investing Perspective: Five Charts
- Bahrain Hospitals Under Siege As Soldiers Maintain Manama Crackdown
- Oil Markets Cope with Libya and Japan Crises
- Oil Spill Reported Near Deepwater Drilling Site in Gulf
- Possible New Oil Spill 100 By 10 Miles Reported in Gulf Of Mexico
- Nuclear Meltdowns 101
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Economy
Mauldin: The End of QE2 (JRB)
The Fed committed to buying $600 billion of Treasuries between the beginning of QE2 in November and the end of June. June is 3 months away. What will happen when that buying goes away? The hope when QE2 kicked off was that it would be enough to get the economy rolling, so that further stimulus would not be deemed necessary. We’ll survey how that is working out, with a quick look at some recent data, and then we go back and see what happened the last time the Fed stopped quantitative easing.
Interview With Charles Ferguson: Inside Job (woodman)
Come hear from the filmmaker of this year's Academy Award-winning best documentary feature film. Could the global economic meltdown of the last few years have been prevented?
Liberty Dollar Creator Convicted In Federal Court (Jamie D.)
Charges remain pending against William Kevin Innes, an Asheville man who authorities said recruited merchants in Western North Carolina willing to accept the “barter” currency, according to court records. Innes was indicted along with von NotHaus in 2009.
Long-Term Investing Perspective: Five Charts (pinecarr)
Every picture tells a story, and so does every chart. Some readers press on to the next blog as soon as they see a chart here, while others patiently wade through the wordy ravings in hopes that the next entry will bring the refreshing clarity of some charts.
I earnestly recommend that even the chart-phobic glance at these five charts. There is a big story told here in these representations of data.
Bahrain Hospitals Under Siege As Soldiers Maintain Manama Crackdown (pinecarr)
Doctors arrested or prevented from working as martial law in tiny Gulf state approaches second week.
Energy
Oil Markets Cope with Libya and Japan Crises (guardia)
Clear price signals from spot markets have allowed oil supply to be allocated efficiently. Refining capacity has either been turned down in the Mediterranean or turned up in Asia in response to the different crises. Nascent markets such as LNG, which promises to make natural gas trade global, can learn much from how the oil market has responded. Oil is, physically, an extremely flexible substitute for other forms of energy. It can be stored and easily transported. And, beyond its physical characteristics, oil is traded in large enough spot market volumes to allow strong price signals to determine where supply should go.
Price signals encouraged Saudi Arabia to boost production and partly offset the loss of more than 1.2mn b/d of light sweet Libyan crude exports because of civil war. Roughly 200,000 b/d of extra Saudi loadings are going west this month compared with January, according to consultancy Oil Movements. Price signals quickly encouraged Mediterranean refiners to cut runs or bring forward maintenance to limit demand.
Environment
Oil Spill Reported Near Deepwater Drilling Site in Gulf (pinecarr)
The Coast Guard is investigating reports of a potentially large oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico not far from the Deepwater Horizon site. According to a knowledgeable source, the slick was sighted by a helicopter pilot on Friday and is about 100 miles long. A fishing boat captain said he went through the slick yesterday and it was strong enough to make his eyes burn. According to the Times Picayune, the Coast Guard has confirmed they are investigating a potentially large 100 mile slick about 30 miles offshore. They are going to a site near the Matterhorn well site about 20 miles north of the BP Deepwater Horizon site, according to the paper. The Matterhorn field includes includes a deepwater drilling platform owned by W&T Technology. It was acquired last year from TotalFinaElf E&P.
Possible New Oil Spill 100 By 10 Miles Reported in Gulf Of Mexico (pinecarr)
As if earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear meltdowns and war was not enough, the Examiner now discloses that a replay of the BP oil spill could be in the making, sending WTI to the (super)moon, the economy collapsing, and Ben Bernanke starting the printer in advance of QE 666. To wit: "The U.S. Coast Guard is currently investigating reports of a potentially massive oil sheen about 20 miles away from the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion last April."
There are no definitive reports yet, but we should now for sure within hours, if the Keppel FELS built TLP is indeed the culprit: "According to Paul Barnard, operations controller for the USCG in Louisiana, a helicopter crew has been dispatched to the site of the Matterhorn SeaStar oil rig, owned by W&T Offshore, Inc." And if preliminary reports are correct, BP will have been the appetizer: "Multiple reports have come in of a sheen nearly 100 miles long and 10 miles wide originating near the site."
Nuclear Meltdowns 101 (pinecarr)
I am no nuclear expert, and that is probably a good thing. I did do a lot of reading about Chernobyl back when it happened. And now I am, as I was then, and as I am sure many of you are, getting really fed up with incomplete, inaccurate, misleading and generally unsatisfactory explanations that are being offered for what is going on at Fukushima. Either information is not available, or it is a flood of largely irrelevant technical minutia designed to thrill nuclear nerds but bound to bamboozle rather than inform the general reader. And so, for the sake of all the other people who aren't nuclear experts and have no ambition of ever becoming one, here's what I have been able to piece together.
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