Quiet, Quiet Friday -- July 25, 2014

Common Core Mathematics

Number of significant shooting wars (Ukraine, Israel-Gaza, Iraq): 3

Number of political fundraisers in past two days: 2

Number of speeches on US economy: 1

Number of speeches on worldwide atrocities: 0

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Approval rating: 39% (compare at wiki) (source)

President's "approval average" is now lower than that of President George W. Bush and lower than that of Richard M. Nixon.

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Global Warming! Everyone's Blaming The Weather

Don spotted this. Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. reported second-quarter 2014 net loss of $2 million, or a penny per share compared with a net income of $133 million or 82 cents per share in the year-ago quarter, hurt by a double-digit decline in sales. The loss was narrower than the Zacks consensus estimate of a loss of 8 cents per share. Cliffs is blaming part of the loss on the weather (reminder -- this was springtime, not winter):

Iron ore pellet sales volume was 4.3 million tons in the second quarter, compared with 5.7 million tons in the year-ago quarter. The decline was due to reduced vessel shipment availability due to the freeze on the Great Lakes [no doubt due to global warming -- LOL] resulting in a delayed start of the 2014 shipping season, as well as lower export and other spot sales.

Back in April, this story over at nwittimes:

The winter from hell has caused the shutdown of blast furnaces that normally burn around the clock at U.S. Steel Gary Works.

U.S. Steel has temporarily idled its blast furnaces and steelmaker operations at the massive steel mill, the largest in the nation, because ice on the Great Lakes has choked off access to vital raw materials. Gary Works, which stretches along seven miles of Lake Michigan's south shoreline, gets iron ore — an essential ingredient in steelmaking — from lake freighters that have not been able to navigate treacherous conditions that include 40-inch-thick shelf ice and stacks of ice chunks that reach as high as 14 feet tall.

Great Lakes ice cover had hit the highest point in 35 years this winter and is currently at 65.7 percent. Most problematically, Lake Superior is more than 80 percent frozen, which is preventing ships from hauling ore from Minnesota's Iron Range to Northwest Indiana steel mills.

A big "thank you" to "anon 1" for providing the link.

Active rigs in North Dakota:

	7/25/2014	07/25/2012	07/25/2011	07/25/2010	07/25/2008
Active Rigs	192	208	179	138	76

RBN Energy: update on power plants switching from coal to natural gas.

Natural gas prices for the nearby CME NYMEX futures contract at the Henry Hub in Louisiana have fallen by 38 percent from their high in February of $6.149/MMBtu to yesterday’s close at $3.847/MMBtu (July 24, 2014). Over the same period the price of CME NYMEX Appalachian coal has stayed virtually flat at $60/ton. So far falling gas prices have not increased power burn – the consumption of natural gas by power generators switching from coal. But natural gas prices in the Marcellus at Dominion South Point have fallen by nearly 60 percent since February to $2.46/MMBtu making natural gas a cheaper fuel than coal for power burn in that region. Today we discuss prospects for coal to gas switching this summer.

The Wall Street Journal

US says Russia firing into Ukraine.  And the point would be? The US "feels" a lot like a paper tiger; a lot like Germany, Britian ... mostly talk these days. Not a criticism, just an observation. There's really nothing the US can do militarily -- send troops into the Ukraine? Into the Gaza Strip? Back into Iraq? Hardly. Although the Obama administration is quietly sending more "advisers" back into Iraq.

The question for the day: the market is down a bit today -- what is more concerning: Amazon reporting a loss everyone knew was coming (but coming in worse than expected) or the bad numbers regarding new home sales.

This is interesting. Insurers are trying to reverse a long slide in sales of life insurance to the middle class, but it's proving a tough sell.

This is even more interesting. For folks who thought those radioactive "socks" in the Bakken were a problem this should get their attention: garbage heating up underground at a St Louis landfill is said to be heading toward a section of the site where thousands of tons of radioactive waste from the US nuclear weapons program is buried. Sort of like the North Dakota burning coal seams.

Obama urges action on "inversions." The good news for investors: it's all talk.

Well, isn't this surprising? "Shrapnel damage found on Malaysian Airlines flight 17 aircraft" suggesting that the plane was shot down. Really?

What happened to ethanol? US corn farmers face a cash crunch. Tumbling corn prices are sowing fears that many US farmers will suffer their first losses in years and the agricultural economy could face its first sustained slump in a decade. ObamaNomics?

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XLIV

"He had delusions of adequacy." - notable quotes; Walter Kerr.

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Penthouse Living, San Pedro, CA

As "they" say in Monopoly: "just visiting"