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Wow! 243,000 New Jobs Created in January
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US oil supplies at a 36½ year low, SPR at a 39 year low; oil+products supplies at an 18½ year low
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China cancels America's credit card
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New York Post Claims Census Falsifies Unemployment Figures
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Getting It Wrong on the BLS Employment Report
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Ben! Say It Ain't So! America Could Be Like Greece?
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Wow! 243,000 New Jobs Created in January
- 50230 reads
US oil supplies at a 36½ year low, SPR at a 39 year low; oil+products supplies at an 18½ year low
- 184234 reads
China cancels America's credit card
- 27559 reads
New York Post Claims Census Falsifies Unemployment Figures
- 950018 reads
Getting It Wrong on the BLS Employment Report
- 96941 reads
Ben! Say It Ain't So! America Could Be Like Greece?
- 30698 reads
The Golden Rule
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Will the NY Attorney General Bring Doomsday Charges Against Wall Street? If So, How Long Will He Survive?
- 1216133 reads
New York Post Claims Census Falsifies Unemployment Figures
- 949880 reads
How Many Jobs Are Needed to Keep Up with Population Growth?
- 361831 reads
VAT or Value Added Tax is Getting a Look in D.C.
- 345332 reads
U3 and U6 Unemployment during the Great Depression
- 321030 reads
The war on the middle class
- 315199 reads
House discusses 401k/IRA confiscation
- 314238 reads
Tax Cuts for the Rich Do Not Generate Jobs
- 279657 reads
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Added links to even more spill cams in the update. These are around the gulf, a few on the ROVs, one permanently on the leak itself. I periodically check into spillcam to see what's going on. This has become addictive, with a "oh man, what a bitch" being uttered by me as I watch these manuevers.
It's about 2:50am PST and it's very difficult to be sure what's going on via the videos. The press half the time cannot get the difference between a top hat and a cap in their reports, so well, it looks like you need to watch the video itself for a blow by blow.
Right now it's cap #4, enterprise camera and it looks like they've got a few things hooked up midstream, but not over the main leak yet from what I can tell, like preprocessing for that. Looks like they had trouble with a locking pin and it's just unreal to watch a mechanical arm try to fit a dinky pin in a hole.
The thing that's disheartening is when one looks at the camera with the leak, there is still pipe hanging off of it and it looks like a lot of pipe.
Why they didn't resharpen the diamond saw and try that again I don't know, but the public pressure is almost as bad as the PSI of the spill.
I thought they were going to do a second cut with some "shears" which wouldn't give a smooth cut but it looks the same to me, the actual leak with the pipe, so I don't know what's going on there.
It also looks like white crystals are forming on the cap and these robot arms are almost putting ribbon around it. I'm hope that is the methanol line, which looks like it's tied into a knot around a handle at the moment, to reduce the hydrate formulation.
Anyone else obsessed with this have at it.
It's almost funny (except for the lack of real jobs of course).
Needless to say, when I write up those reports I will parse out the census jobs, temp jobs as well as the changes in populations and even the "birth/death" model adjustments, but because team Obama needs a good number, frankly I wouldn't be surprised either to see a blow out headline buzzer than when one looks into the statistics, is an illusion. We'll see.
This isn't good, they are abandoning the clean cut across the pipe due to the destruction and stuckness of the diamond saw. That means they cannot get a tight fit and seal due to the rough cut, unless of course there is a better saw but I don't think that's the case.
so is Kuwait or the Gulf War, but in most things there is a limited amount of oil, say what is in the tanker, and so on. I've found very little info on underwater wells or wells in general and of course zero a mile under the sea. You would think we could find an Academic study at minimum on this scenario, which is scary and to me implies maybe someone didn't bother to do a study.
Not good.
Its difficult to find good info on it most of it seems like a rerun but this is from 1981. I'm sure there is more detailed info out there but this gives some detail.
IXTOC
I find this discussion bullshit. They should not be advertising criminal charges all the while demanding BP fund clean up plus fix the leak.
Seriously, it's political and I'm wondering why BP should even bother given that level of pressure. I'm not saying they are not criminal, of course they are....but expecting them to solve this beyond belief engineering challenge plus fund and hire workers and so on....while the news is breathing down their necks to put them in jail...
well, what kind of motivator is that? i.e. criminal charges means individuals, i.e. employees.....so if you're looking over your shoulder, running around trying to grab an attorney to not be the fall guy....that's not going to help someone focus in on engineering analysis and obtaining information that is accurate and fully disclosed.
I'm not impressed, they should seize BP if they are going to do criminal charges now.
It's questionable if the relief wells in the Ixtoc I actually worked or if the well just ran dry. I have a tendency to belief they worked but do not know the details of that particular oil field Ixtoc was in, I think it was an exploratory well.
I overviewed a tad on Ixtoc I in this post, but everyone believing it's "all over" once they hit 18,000 feet with a relief well is probably seriously wishful thinking..
which is why they need to keep the engineers on maximum and keep analyzing, working on solutions, even if this "buzz cut" works.
BTW: the saw is unstuck! Which is very good news. I guess they don't have a second top side. These things cost $100k a pop and to have to fly in plus ship out yet another one is more delay and obviously getting one permanently stuck where they are trying to do a clean cut is more bad news.
There are more "solutions" out there, one which was sinking a barge, but frankly that looks like more junk complicating analysis and due to the velocity of the gusher, I wonder if it would actually sink fully and be enough to counteract the force, plus buoyancy in the water.
So, I think one major point is to only quote strong experts who know about underwater engineering and oil engineering on top of it...
everybody and their brother thinks they can solve this out there. Some solutions are easily dismissed with simply thinking about it for 5 minutes, others, it's more difficult to analyze...
but I find MSNBC and CNN putting on some of these "solutions" on air that clearly will not work just adding more noise into the system.
So, hopefully this site, if we're talking about these technical details, we can screen them out.
I mean even the experts are adjusting, typical in engineering as they learn more, find out more facts and so on....
but hopefully we're not adding to the noise in the signal to noise ratio on the spill.
And Prof. Kaku is known as an "optomist."
This is actually a major promise by the Obama administration, which they have reneged on repeatedly. It's also a very important international corporate tax adjustment to force investment and job creation in this country by multinationals. Does it make sense to allow multinationals to seemingly follow their business by some tax advantage agenda instead of good old fashioned let's make some stuff and some profits?
We just saw Apple blow past Microsoft by focusing in making cool stuff people want. IBM quality has degenerated in my opinion.
Yet on the blogs, it's all about not extending UI! While one may demand UI being extended, that's no problem considering the absurd amount of long term unemployed, ignoring this is a huge mistake!
Restructuring the tax code to incentivize job growth and investment in America is a critical issue and this is a good first step.
have skyrocketed. There are a lot of warnings on holding ETFs that track gold, yet my understanding of the most popular, GLD, is they hold physical gold on a 1:1 to back up the ETF.
Which is true?
I'll bet Glenn Beck has a field day with this news. I was channel surfing yesterday and saw him declare that TV was brand new in 1968. Wow....I guess those inventions in the 1920's just don't count!
This is even more bad news. The reason top kill failed, or is reported anyway, is a ruptured disk in the pipe, uh, 1000 feet into the sea bed, i.e. below the sea floor in the pipe.
That's some seriously messed up stuff to have the pipe below the sea floor busted.
Forget the BP evilness, absurd criminal charges while expecting the ones being indicted are supposed to fix this ASAP instead of running for cover to avoid jail, and the rest, it seems continually the technical issues just keep piling up. Not good.
I don't know how long this has been but last night I thought it was stuck. This is really bad because a diamond saw is one of the strongest things in the world.
I don't know if any more EPers are paying attention to what is going on and the technical details but it seems The Oil Drum has a professor posting and they are trying to watch it real time, although they made some errors already.
Right now you can see a wire saw going through the main pipe, which of course is gushing oil.
It looks like they are pulling out some engineers in this latest attempt. They have 7 different versions of the cap to try, which is wise, for there is no doubt the fitting, the pressure and "robot arms" and unpredictable flows, I don't think they have even taken a physical measurement....but frankly this is the first time I felt this is moving more towards engineering and taking in the variables into account. Previously I felt it was solutions being put together without thinking things through at all. Esp. that top kill.
BP cut the riser, has been working on it all day. Although I'm not sure if they are running this live at all times. If you want to geek out though it's kind of amazing they can do this 1 mile deep. Now can they place a cap on it is the real question but I didn't think they could control a saw as well as they have.
Its obvious the government there has no stomach for real change with tax increases for the wealthy so this would lay on the workers to strike till the economy busted flat out. Then default would begin and the banks would not be paid and change would begin. So they start over with a clean slate and no ability to borrow for awhile.
Dump the debt.
It makes no sense except to the lenders to to deeper and deeper into debt to pay back loans you don't have the cash flow for. Then you pass laws for a balanced budget and never put yourself into a position to be dictated to again.
This is the end game for increased borrowing and increased spending while lowering taxes - complete capitulation to the banks. We have been on this course since the early 1960's.
Everything else is maintaining the current status quo and thats not a positive for real people. If countries cannot extricate themselves from the banks and cannot tax the wealthy more this will be the result worldwide. I give this same scenario 10-14 years before we are in the same boat.
but I need to update the "reads" section with all of your book reviews (and a couple I did too). Be nice to automatically display all reviews in one page, let me think about that one.
I think there are some liberties taken there but that aside changes in the structure of society take place in war and revolution. In war the rich get richer while the poor fight and long term successful revolutions? Well US & France would be the last ones most likely.
Western society is structured to prevent another revolution. The first thing the founding Fathers put in place was the ability to suspend civil liberties in a national emergency, what happened to England will not happen here. The masses believe there is a fair and real system of government in place through which real change can be forged. That's a lie.
Change we can believe in will come at the flash of a gun muzzle before it comes from the votes of a politician here or anywhere. Sorry though the MTV generation will never revolt. Too busy with their Iphones made by suicidal labor overseas. Does that make the Chinese surfs for the average American?
Letting it all fail could bring revolution - that would be the only hope for change.
It's not like suddenly labor got a bunch of dough. The reason they are at risk is bailing out the banks. It's derivatives, CDSes, LBOs and other financial "products" that went South. That and then they spent even more money "Stimulating" the economy yet not doing direct hires in those economies, just like the U.S.
So, sure maybe there is a little clean up but it really appears the IMF isn't interested in the least in addressing the real cause of the debt. I need to reseach this out and pie chart it because well, the EU just announced another &euro195 billion dollars in direct losses....due to the banksters, it's about half a trillion euros already. I'll bet money pensions don't come anywhere near that amount.
Is that an economics argument for the situation in Greece or Spain? I mean its a good spin but what does one thing have to do with the other?
You are making a social justice argument based on happenings in another country.
If they need to borrow more money and no one will give it to them because they are considered a bad risk but they will loan them money if they cut costs or raise taxes then that is what they have to do unless they default which is what I have said they should do but no one agrees with me. Everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too.
Raising taxes on the wealthy does the same thing so why don't they do that? Probably for the same reason that taxes did not go up here in 2009 when we had 60 Democrat Senators here. There is no effort being made to do so anywhere.
This will come down to a struggle between those that have and those that do not have its inevitable. If a place like Greece with a long history of strikes and riots caves into the banking cartels then this will happen everywhere.
Once the Euro is strong the attention will turn to the US and then we will experience the same thing. We still have the wrc that allows us to print but when attention focus's on US debt we will lose that. When other countries stop buying the dollar and our debt AND then the Fed prints the effects of monetization will start to show. Zimbabwe 2. Any guess on inflation in Europe this year or next?
I'm not in disagreement that the deck is stacked here. These bailouts were about protecting the wealthy and the banks bottom lines. BUT no one wants to experience and pain to change things so things will continue as they are and go the way the banks want them to. There is no will to REALLY change the status quo there or here. People are too soft for any real change.
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