Today, in the mail, I found a fresh letter straight from the Department of the Treasury. It turns out I am lucky enough to qualify for oh-so-wonderful economic stimulus rebate. What makes it even better, is that I should absolutely expect to receive my rebate by May 16th. As in Friday, May 16th, 2008. As in 3 days before today.
In reality, it’s a good thing that my rebate is late; I’m just really not sure how to fulfill my role as a stimulator.
A couple things:
1 - I’m getting really sick and tired of people blaming oil prices on speculators. As far as I can tell, this widespread fascination and belief is pretty much akin to Big Foot. There’s no real evidence to support the belief, but since no other explanation is palatable, the explanation about speculators holds. And it holds well, I think, because upset people can blame some small, mysterious group of nefarious rich people.
Today a column on MarketWatch showed great “evidence.”
A boom in speculation and trading by investment banks and hedge funds has put our energy markets on steroids. Contract volume in the futures markets has risen by a third in just the last year. Oil closed at a record high of $125.96 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Friday. That’s double the price two years ago, a difference clearly caused by market manipulation.
He used the word “clearly” so he must be right.
2 - Refineries aren’t the problem. The EIA breaks down gasoline costs and shows to what extent refining contributed to the cost of gasoline. Right now, it’s about 8%. Yes, in the summer, the cost of refining can go from the ~26 cents it is now to maybe even 90 cents. But if we average it out over the last few years, refining has contributed only about 44 cents to the cost of every gallon. Reckoning that refining isn’t going to be free any time soon, we can build all the refineries we want, but we’re not going to save tremendous amounts of money as a result, at least not at current trends. So good luck convincing refiners to build gobs of new capacity (and it’s capacity we need, not “refineries,” per se) so that they can ramp up production, collapse premiums, and try to make up hundreds of millions of dollars in investments while operating at cost.
Some dolt writing at Foxnews was the motivation for the 2nd bullet point. He, like many, is willing to list refining capacity as a problem even though he admits that he has no fucking idea about anything relating to refining other than that it exists and, shockingly, costs money.
Although, there was a comment at the Coalition of the Swilling which, at least approached the refining issue in a better way.
I’m more concerned about supply than price, truth be told. Refining is a genuine bottleneck in the system. Witness the problems in the gasoline supplies post-Katrina.
I think that is a valid point, and it may even be worthwhile to pursue. However, we’re talking about an insurance policy. We’re talking about adding a premium to every gallon of gas just to be better prepared in case of an emergency. We’re talking about paying to either create huge stockpiles of refined product, or we’re paying for refineries to be built and not run. That may sound bad, but it is actually fairly analogous to the electrical grid. At any hour of the day, generators are being paid to be ready, but to not run. So, all in all, it’s not a bad idea, but it’s definitely not free.
Congress have moved to regulate previously unregulated electronic exchanges. Woopee.
“We are bringing sunlight to these dark markets,” Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said at a press conference today in Washington.
Good luck finding me a state with 2 Senators that I hate more than New York’s.
Congressional action comes in a year of record prices for crude oil futures contracts, which reached $126.98 a barrel on May 13. Backers of the measure also pointed to allegations that hedge fund Amaranth Advisers LLC tried to manipulate natural gas markets by moving to exempt exchanges after reaching position limits in the New York Mercantile Exchange, which is a regulated market.
[side note: Spot oil prices are also similarly high, so if anyone is manipulating the market, they must have a whole lot of storage.]
“This is not news,” Kevin Book, senior analyst for Friedman Billings Ramsey & Co., said in a telephone interview. “The leading indications that Intercontinental Exchange would see greater regulation go back to September 2006” when Amaranth Advisers gave notice it lost $6 billion in natural gas markets.
Profitable business, that market manipulation.
I for one feel much better at night knowing that Congress is working hard to keep unscrupulous hedge funds from losing billions of dollars.
This may be right up Doug’s alley, but I figured I’d post to get additional responses.
I’m wondering if there is a good reason to get a battery backup for my cable modem and wireless router. I would like to think that if the power were to go out, my battery-powered laptop would be able to connect to the internet through my battery-backed-up router and modem. However it looks as though there’s a good chance that my cable will go out if the power goes out. If that’s true, it means that the backup is probably unnecessary. And it probably also means that I don’t need to think any more about getting battery backups for my TV.
Anyway, does anyone have input or experience with this kind of thing?
What are white people like me supposed to do when they go to Florida? Get a stupid sunburn.
Mission accomplished.
I managed to burn my forehead & face without getting too much of the racoon-eye thing going on. I also burned my back & shoulders. Also, I somehow ended up with an inverted flip flop tan. Yes, instead of having red feet with white stripes, I have white feet with red stripes.
From this I think I’ve learned some lessons for preventing sunburn:
1 - Base tans can be helpful, but they didn’t help my face very much.
2 - Body hair can be a good sunblock. Maybe it doesn’t do well on it’s own, but it may help fight against number 3…
3 - “Ultra-waterproof” also appears to mean “rubs off on everything,” where “everything” includes flip flops which apparently sucked the sunblock right off my feet and contributed to my burn.
Now, 3 days after having spent less than 3 hours in the sun, my forehead is finally starting to peel. I’m looking forward to spending the next few days making piles of dead skin. The excitement is overwhelming.
Rachel and I got back to NoVa from Miami last night. I intend, but don’t promise, that I’ll post some of the amusing parts of the trip later on. For now I wanted to make a brief comment about American Airlines and airlines in general.
This is the first time I’ve flown on American (not that I fly much in general). American got my business because they offered the primary service I wanted at the best price. That service was a direct flight from the DC area to Miami that departed after business hours on Friday. I fully understand that many people are not big fans of American and have horror stories about them (just as I understand that such lack-of-appreciation and volume of horror stories exist for just about every airline). However, American did one thing right that made me wonder why the other airlines didn’t do the same: they gave me a full can of pop. Delta and United give you a tiny cup with some ice and then proceed to pour a tiny drink from the can.
I never really understood the motivation for the tiny beverages. Is it because giving someone 12oz instead of 6 6oz instead of 12 saves 6oz of weight per passenger on the plane? Is it because if we get a full drink we’ll have to use the bathroom more? Or is it because it seems practical to save 25 cents per passenger on pop?
I have no idea what the answer is. But I’m pleased because it seems that American managed to make me happier by offering less service. I guess it’s a simple rule: a little good service is far better than a lot of bad service.
