Tag Archives: Hot Topics

Why Less Oil Production and Higher Gasoline Prices? I mean the obvious answer is Demand is outstripping Supply. Oil companies and refineries are not the charitable type either. No oil/natural gas pipeline would have helped either. Digby had the answer up on Hullabaloo (15th) which I read first so credit goes there first. Digby did reference Dean Baker at CEPR (14th) which I am reading right now to add his comments momentarily. And we do have...

The same as turning Medicare over to commercial healthcare, having a nine-member panel and a critic of the VA in charge does not bode well for Veteran Healthcare. Denis McDonough is not a veteran and it is hard to imagine how he would relate to many of us. Senators Joe Manchin and Michael Rounds penned a letter to President Joe Biden, enjoined by other senators in a bipartisan request to maintain quality veteran care across the nation in VA...

RJS, Focus on Fracking; Summary; Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a 20-year low; US distillates exports at a 45 month high leaves domestic supplies at an 8 year low The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending April 8th indicated that after a near record decrease in our oil exports, we were able to add surplus oil to our stored commercial crude...

Some History 2014: A frenzy of hospital mergers into ACOs as detailed by Philip Longman and Paul Hewitt could leave many families having lesser amounts of healthcare paid for by healthcare insurance due to healthcare industry consolidation leading to higher prices. We have seen this happen with higher prices for insurance plans, increased deductibles, and less covered. I think we have all experienced this in the last couple of years,...

This comes by way of New Deal Democrat who was doing some research and ran across a not so recent Krugman article via the late Economist’s View blog. Krugman’s prescient words of things to come? Hat tip to New Deal democrat and a thank you for sending this to me. “The Great Illusion” Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times So far, the international economic consequences of the war in the Caucasus have been fairly minor, despite Georgia’s role...

Is there an honest newspaper, magazine, etc. that people will read? People do not read any more. They will listen to some pundit on TV telling them how bad they have it. No gasoline lines to wait in, so you can’t complaint about that. Your drive-in maybe took 20 minutes to get that burger, you had to mask up at times, etc. Wow, really rough! Go back to 2008 when Republicans minimized any aid to citizens. The nation spent a few years getting out of...

April 10 2022 Natural Gas PricesRJS, Focus on Fracking, Summary; US natural gas prices hit 13 year high on falling production, falling inventories Oil prices ended the week lower for the fourth time out of the last five weeks, as the IEA countries joined the US in an unprecedented release of emergency oil reserves . . . after falling 12.8% to $99.27 a barrel last week after China locked down their largest city and Biden announced an...

Under the guise of “protecting” citizens, the Texas legislature, instead of having the gas companies eat their losses from Winter Storm Uri last year, have floated a $3.4 billion bond package to have the taxpayers fund it. The sales pitch is that the gas companies, three large and a smattering of smaller operators get made while whilst the citizens tax dollars fund the bailout over time. As most of you know, Texas doesn’t have income taxes, and...

RJS, MarketWatch 666, Summary: US Trade Deficit Virtually Unchanged in February, Near Record High US trade deficit ticked lower February, as both our exports and imports increased, but the value of our exports rose slightly more than the value of our imports did . . . the Commerce Department report on our international trade in goods and services for February indicated that our seasonally adjusted goods and services trade deficit fell by...

The current situation is that Russia has abandoned the effort to capture Kiev. Russian forces have been withdrawn from North Central Ukraine and are now operating on an arc from Kharkiv (North East) to Kherson (South Central). So far, Ukraine has won amazing victories and Russia has suffered astonishing defeats. The extreme surprise suggests that we can learn a lot from the war so far. What have we learned ? I will include things that we...