Saturday, September 7, 2013

Saturday News, Views, And Links; New Frontier Plans To Build Rail/Industrial Park In Williston

Updates

September 10, 2014: see KUMV story below about the new rail terminal east of Williston. Today it was announced that ground-breaking any day now and that initial operating capability scheduled for March, 2015, about 7 months from now. 

Original Post
Active rigs: 184

Huge news: rail industrial park planned for Williston (sent to me by a reader, thank you). KUMV-TV is reporting:
New Frontier is about to build the East Valley Rail and Industrial Park in Williston. Oil, construction, and other major suppliers in the oil patch will be able to purchase products from around the country, and have them shipped via railroad straight to Williston. 

WSJ Links

Earlier this week I pointed out (again) the poor jobs report. Today, that's the lead story, front page, top story in The Wall Street Journal: tepid jobs report muddies Fed plans
The disappointing jobs report released Friday leaves Federal Reserve officials without a clear-cut signal of an economy on the mend, creating a dilemma for the central bank as it contemplates pulling back on a landmark bond-buying program designed to stoke growth.
Many investors have grown convinced in recent months that Fed officials would take a first step toward reducing the $85-billion-a-month bond-buying program at their Sept. 17-18 policy meeting. The program has become an almost-daily obsession in markets, and the prospect of it shrinking has pushed long-term interest rates higher while stocks have seesawed. 
Friday's jobs data did little to move the needle in either direction. Employers added a steady, if unspectacular, 169,000 jobs in August, and the unemployment rate fell to 7.3% last month. That's notable improvement from the 8.1% unemployment rate when Fed officials launched the latest stimulus program late last year, but job growth has been anemic in recent months, below the 200,000-a-month level some officials want to see. 
The IBM story, moving its retirees off its health care program was also in the front section, telling folks just how big a deal this story is.  For investors this is all great news. Folks who invest in blue chip companies will see expenses for those companies go down. Their health care costs will be spread across the entire US population. The gap between the "haves" (investors) and "have-nots" (non-investors) will continue to widen.
International Business Machines Corp. plans to move about 110,000 retirees off its company-sponsored health plan and instead give them a payment to buy coverage on a health-insurance exchange, in a sign that even big, well-capitalized employers aren't likely to keep providing the once-common benefits as medical costs continue to rise.
The move, which will affect all IBM retirees once they become eligible for Medicare, will relieve the technology company of the responsibility of managing retirement health-care benefits. IBM said the growing cost of care makes its current plan unsustainable without big premium increases.
Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on anything you read here or anything you thought you might have read here. 

Crude oil settles at 28-month high - Syrian tensions. Key words: growing US - Russian impasse.

2 comments:

  1. I think there is a long-term problem in this country with job growht. It will continue to be weak as long as it is to the advantage of corporations to hire outside this country to take advantage of lower labor costs rather than to hire Americans.

    In my book, Job Creation Tax Plan, I suggest a new income tax structure for corporations that will create a strong incentive for companies to invest their profits in expanding their domestic operations and hiring more Americans. The way it will work, to summarize, is to lower income tax rates for corporations that are hiring Americans, increasing their payrolls year by year, and if necessary raise taxes on corporations that are making large profits, but investing those profits in exporting jobs to other countries and are laying off American workers, or not hiring.

    This will create a necessary incentive to help create jobs, but will also empower growing companies to grow faster, producing jobs at a faster rate, because companies that are hiring Americans will have more after-tax profits to invest in their own growth.

    The challenge is to build public awareness of this proposal.

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    Replies
    1. That's part of it. I write a lot about the job situation because I feel strongly that the Federal government puts a lot of obstacles in the way of hiring -- the new health care plan is the latest example.

      Thank you for taking time to write.

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