But we will press on.
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Ethanol
- US with about 200 operational ethanol plants
- spread across the US
- increase in capacity year-over-year was 326 million gallons (per year)
- 16.542 billion gallons in 2018
- 16.868 billion gallons in 2018
- percent increase, year-over-year: 2%
- this year four-week average, 08/23/19: 9.777 million bbls/day
- last year (2018) four-week average, 08/24/18: 9.553 million bbls/day
- year-over-year increase: 2%
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Japanese Beef
A reminder for me. Wagyu beef was on the menu at local restaurant we visited yesterday; I keep forgetting "definition" of wagyu. From wiki:
Wagyu is any of the four Japanese breeds of beef cattle. In several areas of Japan, wagyu beef is shipped carrying area names. Some examples are Matsusaka beef, Kobe beef, Yonezawa beef, Mishima beef, Ōmi beef, and Sanda beef.
In recent years, wagyu beef has increased in fat percentage due to decrease in grazing and an increase in using feed, resulting in larger, fattier cattle.
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Recession Fears
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Recession Fears
Overblown. The Wall Street Journal.
The yield curve is upside down, leading to worry about recession. Stocks declined last week after the 10-year Treasury yield fell below the two-year Treasury yield. Yet while an inversion of the yield curve has preceded all postwar recessions, not all inversions signal imminent recession. The curve was flat for most of the 1990s, and even inverted briefly in 1998, without a recession. Today, given the economy’s underlying strength, fears of immediate recession are overblown.
U.S. gross domestic product grew 2.1% in the second quarter, and the Atlanta Federal Reserve forecasts 2.2% annualized third-quarter growth. The generally accepted definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. GDP consists of four components: consumption, government spending, net exports and business investment.
It should be noted that the mainstream media has a new definition of recession: GDP trending to less than whatever "they" want the GDP to be. Their definition of "recession" does not need to be:
- rigorous
- accurate
- based on generally accepted criteria
- based on negative GDP growth
- based on any period greater than a day
I posted this mostly to note the generally accepted definition because one knows that will change over the next 24 months.
On another note, like the states, my hunch is that there will be winners and losers in the global economy.
Reminds me of the joke about two hikers in the wood confronted by an angry bear.
A few "facts" from the linked article:
Consumption looks strong.
Through July, retail sales have increased this year, consumer confidence has rebounded, and productivity—output per hour worked—has experienced some of the largest increases in decades.
When a recession occurs, weekly unemployment claims are first to tick up. They aren’t rising, and there are more openings than unemployed people. Given this labor-market strength, an increase in consumer spending—which accounted for 68% of GDP in 2018—is far likelier than a decrease.
Government spending accounted for 18% of GDP in 2018 and grew 3% during the first half of 2019 amid growing deficits. Net exports reduced last year’s GDP by 3.3%, down to 3.1% so far this year.Today's jobless report, pending:
- prior: 209K
- revised: 211K
- consensus: 213K
- actual: 215K
Closing The Loop
A reader recently pointed out, with regard to oil and gas permits in North Dakota:
- permits > spuds (brilliant)
- PNC (canceled permits significantly greater than 1%): accurate
- permits: cheap and easy (tells me all I need to know about the source). Permits are neither "cheap" nor "easy." I assume the cost to prepare a greenfield oil and gas permit application runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. I wouldn't even know where to begin if I were tasked with preparing a permit.
