Quantcast
Channel: The Rolled Up Newspaper http://downpuppy.blogspot.com/
Browsing latest articles
Browse All 54 View Live

2008 predictions, random bad things edition

Seems to me that a lot of planning & campaigning for 2008 is going on that assumes nothing much is going to change. It might be time to explicitly consider some things that are likely to change,...

View Article



Mortgage plan : 1-888-995-HOPE 9 (Updated)

And that's about all. The Great Big Plan to solve the debt crisis is a phone number. Supposedly, 1.2 million people are eligible under guidelines agreed to by the loan servicers, to call up & get...

View Article

Reality, CBS Style

A diary yesterday detailed the "demotion" of the lunch lady on the finale of Survivor 15.Turns out that's not exactly what happened.

View Article

Credit crisis : The really big picture

Over the years, the amount of paper assets in the US economy has grown faster than the real economy. The income to the holder of a paper asset is a payment from someone else. The total share of...

View Article

EIA weekly petroleum storage : last exit before $100?

A real quick diary - because I wanted to get the last entry in before $100 oil.Not a guarantee, of course, because prices don't follow inventory in any predictable manner, but if they did, this one...

View Article


Gas, natural

This weeks EIA natural gas storage report showed a withdrawal of 165 BCF, leaving storage at 3008. It looks like we'll make it fine through another winter. So this is background.(Gasoline went back...

View Article

Remembering Internet Rubbish of 2007

Jerome a Paris has reminded us of what blogs do best : Allow people with subject expertise a place to say things that are bloody obvious but hidden by Big Media. Oil's getting tight, Bush is a crook,...

View Article

EIA weekly oil, $100 should stick around

Last weeks oil report from the EIA was the final push that brought $100 in. This weeks should keep the punch flowing. Total stocks are down 6 million barrels, in a report that looks like most winter...

View Article


EIA weekly oil - Ready or not

Another week, another large drop in oil in storage. This time, the refineries were cranking away (despite the holidays), making gasoline and heating oil. Which meant steep falls in crude, propane,...

View Article


This week's oil & gas numbers: Waste heat

Both the oil & gas figures were released this morning, due to the holiday. Natural gas storage declined by 155 bcf, as expected due to the cold. Oil had a flat week. Neither report surprised much ,...

View Article

A billion here, a trillion there: Debt & misinformation

At least a thousand times I've seen an article mix up billions with millions. Reuters ramped it up 1000x by giving Countrywide a $1.48 billion loan servicing portfolio. To make up for that, they gave...

View Article

EIA oil weekly : 4998

In a flat inventory report this week, the highlight for me was the domestic production number: 4,998,000 barrels a day. This is the first time I've seen it under 5 million barrels a day without a...

View Article

Wheat, $11.53, panic

A few months ago wheat passed the all time high around $8 per bushel.For the last week, the market has been essentially shut down. It has a 30 cent limit - every day, it opend up 30 cents, and just sat...

View Article


Fair value valuation of the super senior credit default swap portfolio

Today's headline is about AIG. Any idea what they're talking about? AIG is an insurer. Any idea what they insure?Me neither, & I've spent way too much of the past year trying to understand this...

View Article

35 years into a realllllly slow crash

Hey all you zombies out there! In 1973 when OPEC took over the oil market and the end of Western Civilization began, were you paying attention? In 1979, with the turn of the screw, could you stand on...

View Article


A year & a day in the death of our Earth

Searching around yesterday for more info on the CW Networks in depth exploration of agriculture & culture, The Farmer Wants a Wife, I discovered that it's been a year since I made a bunch of...

View Article

Obama Kitchen Cabinet Poll

Are we getting too detailed in the advice we give candidates? Are you starting to wonder if they would be better off not listening?Of course not! We all have something unique to offer.

View Article


Last diary before $4 gasoline

The AAA says the US average is still $3.975, only tying yesterday's record, but with the July future up 4 cents around $3.40, it's spitting close. Taxes and shipping should keep retail gasoline about...

View Article

2 reasons gasoline is only $4.05

If you ask :Why isn't oil $200 instead of $137? one answer is Russia. The second largest exporter in the world is still a large exporter because it's oil industry went downhill when the country fell...

View Article

The Boston Globe has no mirrors

An opEd in yesterdays paper, The Dumbing Down of Voters, by Rick Shenkman, a media hanger on hustling a book shaped object, got under my skin. After a few graphs of wind about how dim we are in...

View Article

Is the service economy imploding?

With bank failures, retail bankruptcies and pullbacks like Starbucks, it looks like all the gloomy things predicted are starting to happen. Yeah, yah - I know - gloomy & pointless.I want to get...

View Article


Gasoline's slide, is it ending? (Update: +7.25 cents)

All through the dip in oil & gasoline prices (gasoline has fallen about 35 cents since it peaked, I've been waiting to see whether whether we're moving into glut or shortfall.With a bit of an...

View Article


Boys and girls, together?

Once gender equality seemed clear & simple. It still is, once you get past the details. But life, and everything, they say, is in the details.So forget what they say. This is about kids soccer....

View Article

Meanwhile, in Hispanola, a nightmare

While old white people told lies in Minnesota, the US government took on $5,000,000,000,000 in new debt, & the Governer of methland read from a teleprompter, its been raining in Haiti. A lot.Fay...

View Article

Is Reality on Vacation?

To some extent, the McCain Take it to 11 Noisefest is managing to obscure the various ongoing disasters visited upon us by His Beneficence George 43rd.Not that anything is getting fixed, of course. So...

View Article


Remember the oil crisis?

The collapse in oil prices might be over. After dropping from $147 to $95, oil is back pushing $110. That could all turn again - Gustav & Ike have left us with more immediate problems. Some are...

View Article

Wasted

As we face the fall of the mountains of debt we built around the world over the last 30 years, its useful to remember the source : Our trade deficit.And the source of our trade deficit : Overhead, due...

View Article

Afghanistan, 1000 dead

A short diary, to note that as the occupation (or whatever it is) of Afghanistan continues to decay for the 5th straight year, the 1000th coalition soldier died.Our occupation must and will end. I have...

View Article

Gasoline down 50%. Good news?

On July 17, retail gasoline hit its 2008 peak of $4.114/gallon. Yesterday it was $2.047, & still falling fast.The fall has happened in 2 parts. First, there was the penny a day decline up to...

View Article



Brian Williams : In the Mold of Yancy?

With all the fuss in the last few days (Must Read: Glenzilla) about networks pushing war propaganda, I happened to reread a 1954 Philip K. Dick story, The Mold of Yancy. It's a reasonably good tale...

View Article

Time to fill the tank

The relentless fall in oil & gasoline prices seems to have relented. After gasoline (retail US Average) fell 60% from $4.117 in July to $1.65 2 days ago, it's risen 2 days in a row, to $1.663,...

View Article

BREAKING: Wind

down by riverrun, past Adam & Steves in the days when the 20 mule team Borat came from out of the land of oranges on the day of locusts a danger was found. It was the focus of evil in the modern...

View Article

Great Malls of Cleveland

He knew that he should have hated and feared the mall. And yet the mall was of the land and the market, an ancient thing always with us. Dead Malls, healthy malls, sprawling mediocrity, grandiose...

View Article


Working dumber

Americans work long hours, with good skills and fine tools. That the results aren't all that great is a function of how the whole thing is organized. We've slipped from an Economy that's a function of...

View Article

I've been to Georgia & California

but I didn't do it!10 or 11 of the last 16 bank failures were from one state or the other. Are there reasons those 2 states are in the lead?A fun mapCalifornia is obvious. Huge state, huge real estate...

View Article

The Athens of America can't be Great Swamp Erie da da Boom

With conventional newspapers collapsing all around, I went to the freebie boxes to see what alternatives are available.22 papers and nothing to read is a bit of an overstatement.But not much. Days of...

View Article


The natural gas glut

In 2008, the US pumped the most natural gas since 1974. As a result, storage is overflowing every fall, and gas costs $4/1000 CF at henry Hub. In energy terms, this is equal to oil at $24/barrel, less...

View Article


A sense of place

I've lived in Somerville over 21 years now. It's the epitome of the dense grid, the example on the right in Yglesias post.In local terms, I'm still a barney. A newcomer, an out of towner, a displaced...

View Article

BR5-49 vs The Derailers

As we slide into poverty & decrepitude but not into the embrace of a dictator, unless I'm mistaken, it's time again to take charge of our own lives.Forgetting not for a minute that every lever...

View Article

A Hole in the Center???

Hard as it is to believe, "A Hole in the Center" is really the title of a column in the New York Times.The Hole in question is Ross Douthat. (Although its not pronounced Douthat. However you would...

View Article

Social equality & the Trickster

I've been spending a lot of time at National Parks lately. A lot of people have, actually. Among other reasons, they're free to very cheap to visit. The nice folks in the ranger hats are government...

View Article


A Parade, a miracle, horse manure

I've cancelled the paper 3 times this year, & it still arrives. So there's no point in threatening to cancel it again over the drivel in Parade. But really, when you call an article What Should You...

View Article

Do as I say!

There have been a few things this week that have me thinking about the need a lot of people feel to control other peoples actions.Steven D wrote an impeccable diary on Tasers a few days back. Turned...

View Article


Haddock, tripe & the Boston Globe

The Globe, in its accelerating trip down the drain, has finally got its paywall working. Thus, unless I happen to get a paper (a rare event - they get thinner & duller every year) it's not worth...

View Article

Looking backward, 2036 edition (w/pole)

We see the projection a lot: The Social Security Trust Fund will be exhausted in 2036! Benefits will be reduced 25%!If you're like most people, you grunt and move along. Because really : 2036? Won't...

View Article


AP Scaremongering Social Security, again

Stephen Ohlemacher's AP Goosebumps series on Social Security hit part 3 todayPart 1 was where he turned a 5/1 payback into less than 1/1 by hiding the adjustments.Part 2 was mostly a snooze.This weeks...

View Article

Maybe the problem with the New York Times..

..is just that they’re inbred idiots They hired an editorial writer without reading her Twitter feed & noticing it was full of Nazis 7 hours later, she’s gone xThe following is attributable to...

View Article

Tough, skeptical, hardbitten reporting & a pony

(Ack! The frontpager about the Pruitt interview dropped while I was writing this. Oh, well)With journalism jobs disappearing everywhere, surely the survivors are the best of the best, experts at...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

The liberation of Trump Ocean Club, Panama?

There’s a weird dispute in Panama where the owners of a condo tower under a Trump management contract is trying to get out of the contract, the Trump Organization is resisting and Panamanian police are...

View Article


The evolution of self-driving trucks

There’s a pattern to self driving truck news. First, people recognize the possibility that truck drivers can be replaced by programs. Real time progress mixes with future projection. People add good...

View Article

Browsing latest articles
Browse All 54 View Live




Latest Images