The budget, partisans and Bin Laden » Times Record News
The teabagging cheat-sheet:
Dear Buster: It is difficult to defend the Republicans during the Bush administration, as they virtually did nothing to rein in Congress’s addiction to spending over his two terms. Unfortunately, President Bush did in fact leave President Obama a deficit of about $450 billion, but not the $1.3 trillion figure Obama bandies about. Not to make excuses, but Bush’s deficit included two wars and the economic fallout from the 9-11 attacks.
via The budget, partisans and Bin Laden » Times Record News.
The Real Estalker: Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud Flips Out In Turin
The Real Estalker: Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud Flips Out In Turin.
“Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure,” says whistleblower | The Guardian
Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower | Environment | The Guardian .
Awww, man! I was just getting used to $70 barrels.
The Top 20 Reasons Not to Move to Dubai in no particular order! By Tia O’Neill
The Top 20 Reasons Not to Move to Dubai in no particular order! By Tia O’Neill.
Your Homework: Are Banks Fixing Home Prices?
I am in the process of writing a post about the Corporate Personhood debate that’s come up with a recent Supreme Court ruling. But this morning while I was out jogging, and noticing yet another empty 3/1.75 home listed at just under a million, a thought occurred to me.
According to a number of people who know more about this stuff than I do, recent regional real-estate inventory numbers are artificially suppressed because bank-owned properties, which would normally be on the market, are not being listed to prevent “excessive supply” which would consequently drive down prices even more than they are already.
In other words, banks are only listing a small number of the homes that they have repo’d. The remainder are sitting empty, or being used for Malibu beach parties. There’s nothing wrong with that part. It is the right of a bank to do what it will with the property it owns. It is under no obligation to sell or hold individual real estate holdings.
But when all of the banks operate in concert and do this with such a large majority of the homes, doesn’t that qualify as collusion? Isn’t that kind of what OPEC tries to achieve with oil? And what deBeers used to do with diamonds?
And shouldn’t I get a second bathtub for that price?
I think the logic in this is pretty simple. It’s going to take a seriously quantum rebuttal to refute this proposal.
And no, you don’t get to go using fancy fake math on this one. I want to see all of your work and you must be able to explain it as simply as my assertion. No extra credit.
The Power of Christ Compels You – To Get the F*$% Out of My Way!
Last night I was heading back from a quick post-workday trip to run some errands. This was somewhere around 5:15. Exciting stuff. I had to hit up the locksmith to get a copy of the laundry room key. And I desperately needed to pick up some toilet paper.
Like I said, action packed.
Anyway, keys and TP in hand, we headed back to my apartment in Ocean Park, taking the Colorado to Main St. route through south Santa Monica. This is the very northernmost part that goes in front of the city hall and the municipal courthouse. It was just around the start of rush hour.
We were waiting to turn left behind a half-dozen cars at the intersection of Main Street and Colorado Avenue. Right when the light turned green I heard what sounded like a little honk come from behind me. I glanced in the rearview and saw a little A3 back there. I wasn’t holding them up and, not having anywhere to go, I just proceeded through the intersection with the rest of the traffic.
I always closely match the speed limit through that part of Main Street, mostly because it sits right in front of the Department of Public Safety, which is the closest thing to a police station we have in the city, but also because there is one of those DIY radar guns sitting across from city hall. If one were to get pulled over, the I-didn’t-realize-how-fast-I-was-going excuse goes right out the window.
Apparently, that was not nearly speedy enough for the woman in the car to my rear. I normally don’t even like bumper stickers that close. Right as we started passing in front of RAND the honking restarts. I’m treated to the added bonus of flashing high beams. Like we’re on the autobahn and she’s going to pass me at twice my speed. The posted speed limit through here is 30 mph. I might have been going 3 mph slower than that.
At this point, I’m thrilled to let this woman pass me. I pull into the center turning lane (as if I were going to turn left into a driveway) and she zooms past me. Zoom zoom zoom. Around the corner and four-hundred feet away. All the way to the limit line at the next intersection. Where the light has turned red.
I pulled up next to her. She’d pulled the sun visor down and to the left to partially block her face. I tried my best to establish communication, but it was useless. She was not having it. I did get the opportunity to appreciate the nice crucifix she had dangling from her rear view mirror. It appeared to be made of wood and humble.
The Prices of Crude Oil and Automotive Gasoline
I’ve been wrestling with a thought experiment for the last couple of months and I think I’ve finally made some headway in resolving it.
This all started when a barrel of crude oil was hovering around $100 per barrel. Round numbers like that make doing the math on this problem a lot easier. From what I’ve read the best refining processes in the US can yield roughly 22 gallons of automotive gasoline from a barrel of crude oil. The price of oil differs around the globe, but there is generally less than ~$2 per barrel in deviation. So crude oil pumped in West Texas might bring a dollar or two more than it would in the North Sea.
There are numerous costs added into the equation between the time the oil arrives at the refinery and the time we buy the gasoline at filling station. There’s the cost of the refining process, the delivery, the marketing; there are numerous additives blended into the fuel, both to make their emissions less toxic, and to aid in their combustion within the engine. In California and several other states there are summer and winter varieties of fuel which, depending on the mean ambient air temperature, reduce the emissions’ impact on air quality.
The Federal government charges an excise tax on gasoline, as do many state governments. These add up to about $0.36 per gallon in California. There’s another $0.25 per gallon sales tax in California. That adds up to roughly $0.61 in taxes
So getting back to the original formula there are 42 gallons of crude oil in a barrel. At $100 per barrel, that comes out to about $2.38 per gallon for crude. That same barrel of oil will yield about 21.6 gallons of gasoline. So, with oil at $100 a barrel, the cost of just the raw the ingredient of gasoline, crude oil, composes $4.63 of the cost of a gallon of gasoline.
Wait, what?
I’m looking at my commodities ticker right now and it says West Texas crude is going for $117.83. I drove by a gas station this morning and it said $3.84 for 87 regular unleaded, of which I’m paying fifty-five cents in excise taxes. I don’t get it.
Okay, some of those are June calls, the speculation market for what the price will be sixty days from now. Well, assuming it takes the oil two months to get from the ground to the pump, the prices for January and February were $92 and $95 respectively. That would still mean the raw materials cost in gasoline is $4.38.
I found this great page on the California DoE website that breaks down the price of gasoline. Among other things, it states that the constituent price of the oil in one gallon of gasoline for the week of April 21, 2008 is $2.80. It also lists the refinery cost and profit for the same period as $0.28.
So, assuming the refineries are paying $2.80 for the crude oil in a gallon of gasoline, how much does a barrel of that oil cost them?
So, 42 gallons in a barrel at $2.80 per gallon means the barrel of oil costs $117.60.
Wait, what? It looks like the Department of Energy of the State of California is getting this number just by dividing the price of a barrel of oil by 42.
I am so confused.
Why?
Last night I was asked why I have a fascination with movies like, “Why We Fight” and books like F. William Engdahl’s A Century Of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order.
I didn’t know the answer when I was first asked the question. But I think I’ve come closer to
knowing the answer. It’s because ”Why?” is the most important question you can ever ask.