panic

The first tentative tentacles, like feathers of frost on a window pane, begin to explore the farthest reaches of the best minds on Wall Street, as one or two of them first being to perceive, that there may not be quite enough gas or enough pipelines to deliver it, to keep them from freezing to death deep in the recesses of their steel-and-glass enclosures in Manhatten .... ..and all the money in the world won't be worth a book of matches in the coming crisis ....

natty update

Natural gas spot prices "seems" to be holding the zone between $4 and $4.50.

I say "seem", because although at the moment the country is still well-supplied, there have been numerous reported local crises where utilities have been forced to pay $20, $40, even in one case $100 per million cubic feet, while many others have switched temporarily to kerosene.

The problem at the moment is all the NIMBY folk who rationalize their behavior with all this hocus pocus about global warming.  Their real motivation to blocking all pipeline construction has been pure antisocial selfishness.  The country does not have enough pipelins for a good distribution system.  Worse, as reported recently in The Washington Post, some local pipelines are aging and decrepit to the point of resembling sponges more than tin cans.  Twelve manholes were discovered to have a concentration of leaked gas sufficient to explode.  After reporting this to the local gas company and then going back to recheck four months later, all twelve were STILL ready to explode.

The one "polar vortex" (after many weeks of below average temperatures) brought about a serious depletion in the national inventories.  Any investor with a grain of imagination can look at the chart and project the serious potential for the little blue line to get down so low that spot shortages, so far isolated to unimportant districts likie New York City and Boston, could become more widespread.

Now, going back to the weather map and only looking at the forecasts for the next ten days, we have , surprise surprise, ten days of continuing very cold, below-average temperatures, continent-wide.

Some of my fellow investors have reported patterns of trading similar to the patterns of paper gold and paper silver and, dare we say it, the LIBOR.  Somebody or some entity takes the opportunity, when trading is thin, as say, at 4:00 in the morning Eastern Standard Time or, fifteen minutes BEFORE the weekly inventory report comes out, to sell large blocks and blow away people's stops.  This sort of activity has the effect of maximum loss for the entity doing this.  One does have to wonder.

The U.S.S.R had centrally-dictated pricing for most of its existence.  They successfully eschewed inflation.  However, they successfully eschewed a smooth supply chain and ready availability of key products.  When a shipment of right shoes did arrive people had to line up for several blocks to hope to get one.  Without ever knowing if they would ever have a chance for left ones or not.

It indeed is beginning to look to me that there could be some serious shortages later on in February.  Since all that coal generating capacity has been shut down and can't be restarted, we could have some critical brown outs, black outs, and empty gas pipes leading to burst pipes, frozen homes and offices, numbers of dead homeless folk and older people and babies and, one can only hope, some Wall Street traders and Central bankers getting "stiffed" ...

Thank God I heat with wood.  There seems to be a good supply. 

God Created Satan

well?  If not He, then whom?  Is God all-powerful, almighty, omniscient, able to do anything? Is He not the Creator of ALL?

Pastor made this crucial, critical point last night.  He said it in ways quite differently than I would but that's just a cultural distinction.  The message is paramount, and it sure seems to me like a whole lot of US citizens, particularly leaders and spokespeople, are missing it these days.

He was reading from near the end of Luke and presented the passage 22:31   "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat."  He emphasized the verb "asked".  He stressed that Satan cannot do any smallest thing without god's full permission.  He referenced the book of Job, wherein the whole premise is that Satan has gone to God and challenged Him and God grants him permission to attempt to torment and sway Job's heart.

For what it may be worth, I would challenge the anthropomorphism of the character of Satan and simply state that above all other gifts, the very most sweetest that God gives us is our personal sovereignty,  our freedom and independence to choose.  Who among us would joyfully bow down to God and sing His praises to eternity if it were servitude, slavery, without recourse?  Every one of us needs to know that sin is a possibility.

The recent policies of the US Government reveal a total insanity based on the failure to grasp this simple fact of life.  The government, the leaders, the media, all want to suggest that Satan can be defeated by the government.  It wages a "war on poverty", a "war on drugs", a "war on terrorism' (I'll save this one for another thread, the majority of people worldwide recognize that the US government itself is the premiere terror organization of all time, and we can go on an on and on about denial and projection, blaming other nations for our own faults,  about paranoia, manipulation, waste, fraud, and abuse.) and most recently, a war on climate, which ought to be so hilariously funny that people would pay their taxes gladly just for the entertainment of it all but somehow some folks just miss that ....

Wanna guess who is gonna win, when our govenrment makes war with God and condemns His creation?  Anyone wanna make book here, give me odds?

I was glad to hear it from Pastor.....very glad, for these are dark times ....

monthly dry shale gas production

Obviously,
its tapering off.

Do you think one "polar vortex" is going to change that?

Callipygous

     A persistent pen pal introduced me to this new vocabulary word recently.

    Now, there are several blood relatives of mine who price themselves upon their extensive epistulary repertoire.  My minister also occasionally indulges upon solipsistic soliloquoys of language.  Sadly, none of them are likely to want to use this particular one.  So, my dear reader, I must inflict it upon you.

    Since it is an adjective, let me just present to you a link representing the underlying noun in question....

callipygous

Lead Paint

     I get so annoyed about this, sometimes its a wonder that I can function at all.  The common belief is that capitalism spawns innovation which constantly improves our standard of living.  I would so love to trust big business.  My experiences keep on telling me that the opposite is happening.  If anyone can tell me how the innovation of reducing the width of toilet paper by 1/2 inch improves my standard of living then please, please step up and say so.

      But there are much more insidious examples.  It was actually the announcement that incandescent bulbs have been made illegal that got me going this morning.  Evidently the coal mining companies needed some means to sell all the mercury that they take out of their product, so they invented a new kind of light bulb that uses it and now they foist it upon us in the name of energy conservation.  So amusing.  But we'll have to save that subject for another post.

     Consider the following news item:


http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/eh/lead/topics/braceletrecall.html

     Now read those words again.

This is the first documented death of a child from lead poisoning in Minnesota.

In 2004, approximately 1,500 children had blood lead levels of 10 ug/dL or greater and 122 with 20 ug/dL or greater. (in Minnesota)

(that is one to 12 parts per 10,000,000, in case you do not speak french.)

Lets not even go here, for now ....

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2011/08/31/Solar-power-brings-lead-pollution-threat/UPI-81811314829387/?st_rec=31531317414510

Granted, lead does much more damage to young, developing bodies than to adults.  But just for the record, I live in a house which is over 120 years old.  The house had been abandoned when I bought it and not maintained properly for decades before that.  I have torn down walls, removed most of the old plaster, and hauled tons of material to the land fill.  I have sanded every floor, removing 50-year old paint.  Read that again. I have spent easily 100 hours sanding floors.   Lead paint is extremely durable.  That's why they used lead.  It makes a much better quality paint than anything on the market today.
If you use lead-based paint then it makes a hard, durable finish which will stand up to years and years of cleaning, brushing, and pounding, without peeling, flaking, or scraping.  It makes good paint.

Granted, toys should probably not be made with it.  children's jewelry probably should not be made with it.  Probably not cribs, either.  Granted, there are some folks who would love to say that I am mentally deficient, but there's actually fewer of them than there were twenty, thirty, forty years ago.

Recently I had the windows replaced.  Because of the lead in the paint, the company that did it was required to put a red plastic tape border around the house warning everyone (besides me) to stay away, and the workers had to wear those paper breathing masks and they put little plastic drop cloths down under the windows and then they charged me over $600 extra.  Most of the money goes for the training instructors and the special licenses and the government fees.  All of it was a total waste of effort, obviously.

One child has died in Minnesota from lead poisoning, in 20 years of statistics.  Obviously, they don't count bullets .....