17 replies to this topic

[stocks]

North Dakota - All up and down the line, there are jobs that are begging to be filled.

Let me give you a rundown on what I found. When we went into the “office” of the rig there was a young man who looked to be in his early 30s. He was a “tool-pusher,” which means he ran the rig. Clearly very smart and trustworthy, but he didn’t have a college degree, just lots of oil-field experience. He works 28 days, 12 hours a day straight and then takes two weeks off to go see his wife and kids. When working he lives in a small room at the rig. He makes $350,000 a year. The kid is one of those millionaires and billionaires that Obama wants to tax.

A starting salary on the rig is $120,000 a year, with no experience. But you work your tail off for very long hours. The consultant who oversaw the rig operation for the investors made around $250,000. (By the way, he could tell me to the dollar what his costs were for the well during the hour we were there. There were very sophisticated cost controls.)

An oil-truck driver makes $150-175,000 a year. All that oil has to be taken by truck to a railroad terminal and loaded onto railcars, to form 100-car trains that take the oil to refineries around the country. Loren took us to his new train terminal, where the trucks were lined up to empty their tanks and go back to another well for a load. All up and down the line, there are jobs that are begging to be filled.


http://www.mauldineconomics.com/

[stocks]

The Not-So-Golden State

50 Years ago the standard of living in California for the average family may well have been the highest in the world.

Today, despite the world-conquering success of Silicon Valley and the continued flourishing of Hollywood, it's crowded and, consequently, wages haven't kept up with the very high cost of living. It's still a great place to be rich, but it's not at all a good place to be average. And the average, as measured by, say, school achievement scores, has slipped toward the bottom of the fifty states. One big reason for that is the enormous influx of unskilled immigrants.

In contrast to America, countries like Canada and Australia treat immigration the way Harvard treats college admission or the New England Patriots treat the NFL draft: as a way to get the talented that can benefit the institution and keep out the untalented. Here in America, we increasingly treat immigration as if it were a sacred civil right possessed by 7 billion foreigners.




Read more: http://communities.w.../#ixzz2GS1mxuZl
Follow us: @wtcommunities on Twitter

[stocks]

America's Red State Growth Corridors

Low-tax, energy-rich regions in the heartland charge ahead as economies on both coasts sing the blues.

Trends point to a U.S. economic future dominated by four growth corridors that are generally less dense, more affordable, and markedly more conservative and pro-business: the Great Plains, the Intermountain West, the Third Coast (spanning the Gulf states from Texas to Florida), and the Southeastern industrial belt.

Cheap U.S. natural gas has some envisioning the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge as an "American Ruhr." Much of this growth, notes Eric Smith, associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute, will be financed by German and other European firms that are reeling from electricity costs now three times higher than in places like Louisiana.

Korean and Japanese firms are already swarming into South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee. What the Boston Consulting Group calls a "reallocation of global manufacturing" is shifting production away from expensive East Asia and Europe and toward these lower-cost locales. The arrival of auto, steel and petrochemical plants—and, increasingly, the aerospace industry—reflects a critical shift for the Southeast, which historically depended on lower-wage industries such as textiles and furniture.


http://online.wsj.co...=googlenews_wsj

[stocks]

Niall Ferguson is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University

So, the central question of the "great degeneration" is whether our institutions, corporations and governments, are degenerating. There are four symptoms of degeneration:

•Breakdown of the contract between generations.
•Excess regulation
•Rule of lawyers
•Decline of civil society


While a large portion of the U.S. will continue to languish due to regulatory and fiscal policy – there are four growth corridors:

•Great Plains
•Third Coast Region
•Intermountain Region
•Gulf Coast

However, the boom in these areas is not due to just the location of natural gas but rather pro-business regulatory and tax policies. If the current Administration was paying attention they would take the time to emulate the state governments that are growing versus declining. (The problem is that these are all red states)



http://advisorperspe...egeneration.php

[stocks]

Unions Lose Race for LA Mayor

What’s most interesting about the race was the role of unions. Garcetti’s opponent, City Comptroller Wendy Gruel, enjoyed the support of city unions, but this became an albatross that may have cost her the election.

Los Angeles faces a $100 million budget gap and, like most blue cities, is currently grappling with the exploding cost of public pensions. It seems that voters in LA considered these financial woes, took a look at the candidate the unions loved, and decided to go the other way.

Voters in more and more cities have been turning away from candidates seen as under the thumb of labor.



http://blogs.the-ame...e-for-la-mayor/

[stocks]

Jimmy Carter (the Synfuels president) April 18, 1977:

The oil and natural gas we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running out.

Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.

Report: U.S. energy industry flirting with all-time high crude-oil production record

In yet another testament to just how big a thank-you the Obama administration owes to the oil-and-gas industry and particularly
hydraulic fracturing for helping to spur onward what has otherwise very largely been a paltry excuse for an economic “recovery,”
the Energy Information Administration released their 2014 energy outlook report on Monday — and the United States has not only
far and away surpassed the EIA’s own forecasts of yesteryear but is on track to hit new production records.

The EIA said on Monday that it had revised sharply higher its estimates of future US crude output to about 9.5m barrels a day in 2016.
That is very close to the previous peak in US production of 9.6m b/d in 1970 and almost double its low point of 5m b/d in 2008. …

A year ago, the EIA was predicting US crude production of about 7.5m b/d in the second half of this decade, a level that has already been surpassed
this year. …

http://hotair.com/ar...uction-records/

Edited by stocks, 17 December 2013 - 10:29 AM.

[diogenes227]

Cool map.

SHOW ME DUH MONEY!

[stocks]

Unions Lose Race for LA Mayor

What’s most interesting about the race was the role of unions. Garcetti’s opponent, City Comptroller Wendy Gruel, enjoyed the support of city unions, but this became an albatross that may have cost her the election.

Los Angeles faces a $100 million budget gap and, like most blue cities, is currently grappling with the exploding cost of public pensions. It seems that voters in LA considered these financial woes, took a look at the candidate the unions loved, and decided to go the other way.

Voters in more and more cities have been turning away from candidates seen as under the thumb of labor.

http://blogs.the-ame...e-for-la-mayor/

City of LA. Bankruptcy inevitable.

The Los Angeles 2020 Commission presented a catalog of failings that it said were a unique burden to the city: widespread poverty and job stagnation, huge municipal pension obligations, a struggling port and tourism industry and paralyzing traffic that would not be eased even with a continuing multibillion-dollar mass transit initiative.



Read more at http://globaleconomi...zk56bVKKJXMe.99