Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

http://pics4.city-data.com/ctrends/ctr15576.png

What do you guys make of Utica's seeming resistance to downward trend?

Everyone's just buying from everyone else. It's a little game they play.

we gonna die

Is it just me or do investors have an extra hard time believing the Dow can go below a nice round number like 12000?

good god, these finance write-downs are going to blow the country up.

we gonna die

-- Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved, Friday, June 6, 2008 2:59 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&refer=home&sid=a47LjRtOU3c0 (from April)

Today:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=avumSU7sV7hs
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=atvukb5100PY

Nice knowing you, transport industry

From yesterday's House Committee on Energy & Commerce hearing

Mr. Chairman and Members of the sub-committee:

My name is Steve Williams and I am the Chairman and CEO of Maverick USA in Little Rock
Arkansas.

I have also served as a three time chairman of the Arkansas Trucking Association and am a
former chairman of the American Trucking Associations. I am on the Executive Committees of
the American Transportation Research Institute and the Transportation Research Board of the
National Academies of Science.

My company, Maverick USA, operates the second largest company-owned flatbed fleet in the
United States. We employ nearly 2,000 people and operate more than 1,500 tractors. My
company serves the steel, building material and the flat glass industries.

In 2007, despite revenues of $300 million we lost money for the first time in our 27 year history.
Our fuel bill increased by $12,000,000 between 2006 and 2007, and we were not able to recover
this increase due to a weak economy.

The national average price of diesel fuel on June 16, 2008, was $4.62 per gallon. If this price
remains constant for the rest of this year, our company’s fuel bill will increase from $66,923,000
last year to $114,954,000 this year, a 72% increase in one year.

The fuel crisis is having a dramatic effect on the trucking community. Tom Albrecht, an
industry analyst with Stephens, Inc., wrote on June 10, 2008, that these fuel prices could force 14
percent to 16 percent of the trucking industry to cease operations.

Not only will this further reduce capacity from the market, it will make the used truck market
even worse. There are few domestic buyers for used equipment and over the last year we have
been forced to wholesale our tractors to Russia and Vietnam.

the rest is here:
http://energycommerce.house.gov/cmte_mtgs/110-oi-hrg.062308.EnergySpec.shtml

whaddya know, decades of underinvestment in transport infrastructure actually has consequences

Energy Speculation: Is Greater Regulation Necessary to Stop Price Manipulation? – Part II

Whoot! for the coming US command economy.

no no tracer it's all because we didn't drill in ANWR when we should have, and we're letting the chinese drill sideways from cuba to florida to access the massive offshore reserves that nobody's been interested in until last month

the gop drill drill drill grandstanding is kind of amazing at this point

THEY PUT PEE PEE IN YOUR MIRKSHAKE!

DRILL G*DDAMN IT, DRILL THE FUCK OUT OF STUFF OR WE ALL GONNA DIE

OUTTA MY WAY LITTLE MAN, DADDY'S GOT A DRILL

GLAGLGLGLAGALGALGGAHHAGHAGHAAGLGAGL

Spoken like a true descendant of John Henry.

you know, i think cheny et al really thought iraq was gonna forestall this shit

they had the best of intentions

The Romans would have handled this better. Conquered nations should be paying tribute, not breaking our budget.

Has there been any mention in the media that any new drilling would be sold on the global market rather than just the US market? I know it's just another checkmark in a *very* long 'con' column, but it seems like opponents to drilling would mention it more often.

we gonna die

apocalypse homie laid out his theory today:

-oil hits $200/barrel by the end of the year
-energy prices go up and summer 09 is another long hot summer inna 68 stylee
-o gets got, riots
-old ppl dieoff in the northeast as energy gets too expensive to handle extremes of summer & winter
-us economy tailspins, rest of world follows
-http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6305075379.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Hoosteen did you forget you started this
"Is It Thunderdome Yet?" A Rolling Looming Apocalypse Thread

no sir just thought given crackpot homie used some numbers it might loosely fit in here but i forget this is interesting egghead thread not hoos paranoia jpeg thread carry on apologia

it was the use of the mad max graphic that betrayed your true intentions

yr apocahomie has concatenated two unrelated but plausible events in $200 barrel oil and obama getting offed. but while a few americans might riot, the vast majority would bury the dead, grit their teeth, put their heads down and pull their yokes even harder. no mad max to be found in that scenario.

we're talking literal yokes

Oxen - The Next Big Investment Opportunity?

hot damn, you know what always outperforms in an apocalyptic post-empire economy? indie fucking rock, I'm gonna be rich

As long as you're getting paid in Canadian dollars and Euros, eh.

need to call my manager about promoting in "emerging markets"

I'll eat rats before I'll tour Europe again

or perhaps just set myself up as an expert in building tiger economy fanbases

oh smack Tom you wanna talk turkey you know how to find me

you'll eat rats and you'll like it

building tiger economies (by strategy)

stockpiling Gulden's for when push comes to shove on this rats question

Get a little Bollywood cameo and you'll be set to blow up in India.

India is already halfway to an oxen-based economy already! Lucky fuckers.

can oxen be used as an alternative to oil

There's a fortune to be made in the dung alone!

it's time to consider all the options

Whale oil is a fuel from another age

the future!!!

i've been reading nothing but economics books lately (the soros book on the credit crisis isn't bad, amateur philosophizing aside), and this firedoglake piece feels so otm to me it's scary: http://firedoglake.com/2008/06/24/a-bright-shining-depression/

that article is fairly interesting until you get to

But what really needs to be done, which is to bring insolvent firms under government stewardship and either wind them down or reinflate them, goes against everything the past thirty years has stood for. It's just not the sort of thing neoliberals and neoconservatives, with their touchingly childlike faith in "free" markets, believe in, understand or can even seriously consider.

and then you just go "oh right, firedoglake"

I mean they go from seemingly being critical of bernanke for eating bear stearns because in their world that somehow lets everybody else off the hook to saying in their conclusion that what really needs to be done is to do more or less exactly that with every company that isn't doing well. That's some sneaky communist bullshit.

link is fucked?

just google "shining depression"

I'm also kind of thinking a lot of the stuff about the Japanese economy since the bust is straight pulled out of his ass