Slump In Oil Price Now Bigger Economic "Blow" Than Ebola -- November 27, 2014

Updates

November 28, 2014: related links today -

• "Breakeven points" for drilling in every oil project in the world
• at 52 seconds into this video, the reporter's estimate of the worldwide breakeven cost for oil
• WTI could hit $50/bbl

Original Post

 
That didn't take long. I thought of that -- about Africa -- this morning on my bike ride, but didn't have a chance to post it. Now it's being tweeted: slump in oil price now bigger economic "blow" than Ebola.

Analysts said Saudi would have had to cut production by a million bopd to stem the slide in oil prices; I disagree. Two million barrels of oil have to be taken off the table every day -- I think it can be done: a half-million off-shore; 3/4 million less from Africa; a half-million from North Sea, Norway; 1/2 million, maybe even a million from marginal plays in US -- that's a solid 2 million bopd.

These two sites, over at "Data Links" will be closely watched over the next six months:

• EIA: Oil imports into the US
• EIA: Oil imports into the US from Saudi Arabia

I can "argue" Saudi Arabia's decision both ways, but it's not surprising. The one thing that I think all can agree on: for a "production cut" to have been effective in stopping the slide in prices, the cut would have had to have been substantial. Most pundits said one million bopd. I don't think so; I think the Saudi cut would have had to have been two million bbls.

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Ferguson -- Parting Thoughts

The other day I posted my "parting thoughts" on Ferguson and had not planned to re-visit it, but in light of Schumer's comments another thought arises.

It is ironic that the racial protests came within 72 hours of Obama announcing amnesty for 5 million Hispanics.  

There's a lot of inaccuracies in that statement, but that's how a lot of folks see it.

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Global Warming

From CBS-Minneapolis-Local: this could be the coldest Thanksgiving since 1930.

Minnesotans woke up to subzero temperatures on Thanksgiving Day and if the mercury doesn’t make it up into the double digits, the day could be one for the record books.

And the warmists concede: the "average temperature" of the world depends on where you place your thermometers, and if there is not a thermometer where you need one, just make up a number. (I can't make this stuff up.)

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TrainWreck

The Los Angeles Times is reporting:

California's health exchange is leaning on insurance agents to enroll thousands of people in Obamacare coverage. Trouble is, some agents haven't been paid for months.

In some cases, agents are owed thousands of dollars in commissions for getting folks signed up earlier this year. And they said they still face long waits on the phone to get simple issues resolved for customers.

Their experiences could sap much of the enthusiasm among Covered California's most effective sales force. The exchange's 12,000 certified insurance agents brought in 40% of individual enrollment in the first year, or more than 500,000 people.

Most of these agents will return to their original calling as used car salesmen. I imagine one or two could enter politics, following in the footsteps of our VEEP.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in the November 22 - 23, 2014, issue of The Wall Street Journal that caught my eye.

• "The Viking Makeover," The Age of the Vikings, Anders Winroth, 320 pages, $30
• Two new translations of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, one by Marian Schwartz (764 pages, $35); one by Rosamund Bartlett (847 pages, $30)
• "Greek Gifts," Why Homer Matters, Adam Nicolson, 297 pages, $30 (I just finished reading a book on Homer this past week; the second time I've read that particular book)
• "The Greatest Show on Dirt," Fat Tire Flyer, Charlie Kelly, 258 pages, $30
• "Shaken and Stirred," two books on the cocktail renaissance, drawn from Manhattan bars, Death & Co, David Kaplan, Nick Fauchald & Alex Day, 299 pages, $40; Liquid Intelligence, Dave Arnold, 416 pages, $35
• "The Incentives to Murder," The Mystery of the Invisible Hand, Marshall Jevons, 342 pages, $25
• "In Praise of Gental Apologias," True Paradox, David Skeel, 175 pages, $15

Death & Co:

Jillian Voss made a variation on the Hemingway daiquiri with three kinds of rum, vermouth, kirsch, maraschino, grapefruit liquor, and acid phosphate.

The Mystery of the Invisible Hand

The author, Marshall Jevons, does not exist. This is the fourth in a series of books written over the past many decades; the murder mysteries are the result of a long collaboration between two academic economists, Kenneth Elzinga and William Breit, who met at the University of Virginia in the late 1960s. The authors worked under the pseudonym Marshall Jevons -- atribue to two great 19th-century British economists, Alfred Marshall (1842 - 1924) and William Stanley Jevons (1835 - 1882). Breit died in 2011, and Mr Elzinga completed this final volume alone.

Fat Tire Flyer

The invention of the mountain bike might be the most intriguing story in the history of the bicycle. It is certainly the most unlikely. Around 1973, young hippie bike bums in California began riding pre-World War II, single-speed "cruiser bikes" downhill, at full tilt, on dirt trails -- for fun. The aged bikes, nicknamed "clunkers," were cheap and dispensable. Riders hammered them until they broke and then bought another one.

The greatest concentration of riders actively modifying clunkers was in Marin County, north of San Francisco. There fortune threw together a critical mass of athletic, inquisitive, competitive cyclists. None of them had gone to college. Few had proper jobs. They included Joe Breeze, a racing cyclist who also built frames, and Gary Fisher, an ex-Category I road racer and excellent mechanic. Later, Tom Ritchey, a junior road racer and accomplished frame builder, joined the scene, ...  yes, I'm going to order a copy from Amazon...and it's already sold out over on Amazon.com!!!