Biggest Decrease in First-Time Unemployment Claims Since July -- Two Months Ago -- The Economy Has Turned The Corner -- Happy Days Are Here Again -- Bloomberg; UPDATE: not so fast! GDP Revised Downward!

Updates

Later, 10:25 am: despite the horrendous news that US GDP was revised downward, and the durable orders drop was the worse since the throes of depression, the stock market hangs in there. For example "T" flirts with its 52-week high, and pays almost 5% in dividends. For longer-term holders, the rate is even higher. As noted below, Americans in general are content/satisfied: they are upset about the refs in the NFL (but that's been settled) and polling suggests "we" are content with "four more years."What a great country.

Later, 10:08 am: oh, oh! Not good! OMG! Less than an hour or so after we get this wonderful news that  the job market has turned the corner and happy days are here again, we get the depressing news that:

• 2Q12 GDP was revised downward to 1.3% (economists expected no change at 1.7%); personal consumption was revised downward to 1.5% (again, economists expected no change at 1.7%)
• durable orders drop 13.2%: worse since the throes of the 2009 recession;
• fiscal cliff worries mostly to blame: what a great country!

But Americans are content/satisfied. Polling shows continued support for four more years. The middle class that invests is in a sweet spot. The middle class that saves is hurting. Don't save for college; invest for college. 

More good news: why men are failing in this new economy. In 12 of the 15 fastest-growing industries, there are more female employees than male employees. Why? Because women are better educated: for every two (2) men with a college degree, there are three (3) women with the same degree. The gender ratio balance has shifted partly because of the 6 million manufacturing jobs lost during the recession — an industry that was heavily employed by men.

"The manufacturing sector is never going to come back exactly the way it was," she notes. "We can safely assume that era is over. What the "man-cession revealed," she says, "was deeper trends in the economy. [Trends] that allow women to adapt themselves more easily to what's going on."

The link takes you to a pitch to buy a book. 

Original Post

Remember: the magic number is 400,000

One thing Bloomberg and I have in common: eternal optimists!

Here's the lede in today's job report:

Fewer Americans than forecast filed first-time claims for unemployment insurance payments last week, a sign the labor market is getting back on track. 

Applications for jobless benefits decreased 26,000 to 359,000 in the week ended Sept. 22, the lowest since July, Labor Department figures showed today. Economists forecast 375,000 claims, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey.

This is huge!  This is the lowest number since .... drum-roll ... July. Yes, July of this year. About two months ago. No wonder everyone is feeling upbeat about the economy.

Let's see what else is in the report.

Deep in the article:

A Labor Department official today said claims related to Tropical Storm Isaac were not enough to have a material influence on the data.

Hmmm...I seem to recall that "bad" jobs data a few weeks ago was blamed on Tropical Storm Isaac -- and wasn't it a hurricane (in fact, I was curious about that last week, and a google search was not helpful -- some sites referred to the tropical storm as a hurricane, others as a tropical storm -- yes, I know a hurricane is a tropical storm).

The four-week moving average for jobless claims dropped to 374,000 from 378,500.

So, there you have it. Outstanding news. Happy days are here again.

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Notes to the Granddaughters 

One of the sights we enjoy when in southern California: the container ships in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, in the San Pedro Harbor.

A few data points regarding intermodal shipping from Simon Winchester's Atlantic, pp. 350 - 352

• "invented" American trucking executive Malcom McLean (obviously Scottish-Irish background)
• mid-1950s; like Harold Hamm, MM started out as a truck driver
• standard-sized containers; contents untouched by human hands at the port
• truck-rail-ship
• largest: the Danish MV Emma Maersk, 170,000 tons; 15,000 containers;
• first ship, 1956, US Navy tanker, the Ideal-X, Newark to Houston, 58 containers
• prior to intermodal shipping: $6/ton to load cargo
• with intermodal shipping: sixteen cents (on the Ideal-X, on first day)
• McLean's first company: Pan-Atlantic Steamships; later sold to a tobacco company, then to a railroad firm, and finally to Maersk
• Maersk: fleet of seven of the biggest ships ever built;
• McLean died in 2001 

News Links -- Thursday -- The Origin of The Term "IVY League"

Ivy League 1954: "Ivy League" an official designation for athletic conference that included Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth, and Cornell; eight of the oldest and most prestigious all-male academic institutions in America; 1930s" IV League (as in Roman numeral IV (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia), 1930s.  Google dress codes, WSJ.

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The original MDW wrote about this when Apple introduced the iPad: airlines handing out iPads. Google airlines entertain table ideas, WSJ. Other iPad uses we will see (which MDW also blogged about several years ago) or examples of new uses already being seen:

• iPads replace hard-copy menus
• iPads replace entertainment/turn-by-turn map user interface on automobile dashboards
• car salesmen use iPads on the lot; the iPad is given to the customer when she signs
• real estate use iPads at open houses (in California, they already do)
• Belly.com is using iPads at checkout counters across the midwest and the eastern seaboard
• iPads embedded in walls next to doors in hospitals, university rooms (names, scheduling, notices)
• an iPad embedded into the cabinet door above the baking area in the kitchen

For those who have never visited an Apple store, there is an iPad next to each product being featured; in a typical Apple store there are probably 40 iPads for that purpose only. More stores will follow suit.

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For investors only (disclaimer: this is not an investment site). Five stocks for the next five years -- SeekingAlpha.com. The list includes two of my favorites and long term holdings: CVX and COP.

Magnum Hunter Resources Shutting in 400 Wells In Kentucky

Link here to a Rigzone.com story.

Magnum Hunter Resources has shut in 1.7 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of production from 400 natural gas wells in Kentucky due in part to low natural gas prices. 

The company said Wednesday it shut in production at the beginning of this year's third quarter after determining production would be uneconomical due to low gas prices and the cost of blending stock to reduce ethane content for transportation purposes.

It's getting bad out there. And no decision by the US government on whether to export natural gas overseas where US natural gas selling at $2 can garner $16. I can't make this stuff up.

And it's gonna get worse -- Bloomberg.

Natural gas pipelines coming into service by year end may boost deliveries from the Marcellus shale deposit in the U.S. Northeast by 30 percent, extending a supply glut that helped send prices to decade lows.  

As much as 2 billion cubic feet of gas a day are set to flow from the lines in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, bound for markets along the Eastern Seaboard, based on government and pipeline-company projections. About 1,000 Marcellus shale wells sit uncompleted, mainly because of a lack of pipeline infrastructure, according to the Energy Department.

Later, another article from a reader: rush to liquids backfires for natural gas producers.


Highway 61 Revisited, Bob Dylan cover, Million Dollar Bashers

GE, Hess, Natural Gas Turbines -- For The Archives

Link here to Investors.com.

General Electric (GE) said its power and water division secured contracts worth $1.2 billion for its new heavy-duty gas turbines on Wednesday. The shift to gas powered turbines comes as natural gas hits are near decade-lows amid a North America production boom and Japan's shift away from nuclear power. 

Of the 19 turbines order, six are for Chubu, a Japanese utility's 2,300-megawatt plant and eight are for a Saudi Electric Co. project in the capital of Riyadh. The rest of the turbines are for companies in the U.S. including the Cherokee project near Denver owned by a Xcel Energy subsidiary. Hess Corp. (HES) ordered two gas and one steam turbine.

This is being posted for archival purposes.

No comment tonight. I'm too tired out. But I'm posting it for archival purposes and bragging rights, if deserved later on. A big "thank you" to Don for sending me the link.

Will This Be The Smoking Gun to Regulate Fracking? Fracking, Benzene, the EPA, Wyoming, And All That Jazz

Updates

September 29, 2012: USGS report shows no evidence linking hydraulic fracturing to water -- Encana

Original Post

Benzene levels are almost nil in water sampling around fracking site in Wyoming -- the most recent data:

Benzene is a hydrocarbon commonly associated with oil and gas development. Last year's testing by the EPA showed benzene at almost 50 times the recommended EPA limit. The new data released Wednesday by the U.S. Geological Survey show benzene at 3 percent of the recommended EPA limit.

But no one is willing to "really" comment on the findings. Test after test, year after year, nothing to show that fracking is an issue, but this test -- benzene at 3 percent of the recommended EPA limit. If I'm reading that correctly, the study seems to suggest that if the EPA allows up to 100 units of benzene in a given sample, only three units are showing up.

The fact that neither side is willing to "really" comment on this suggests that the EPA will continue to test until they get the results they want.

I wonder how Dimock, Pennsylvania, is doing these days? But I digress.

But back to the benzene story. A cut and paste from the article:

Benzene is not among the chemicals the EPA pointed to last year in making the link to hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking.

"...making the link." What link? Any college chemistry student is seeing where this is leading. Unlike hydrocarbons which have a "fingerprint" which rules in / rules out the source of a contaminant, benzene, a simple C6H6 molecule has no identifying "fingerprint." So, I guess another way to look at this is "guilt by association" but with 3% of EPA recommended limits, there's not even an association, must less a link.

And here the same story in the WSJ; EPA using results to say fracking is a problem. Encana dismisses EPA statement; says the results have not been vetted by outside source.

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On another note, I have to chuckle. I get a lot of criticism when I post non-Bakken articles, but the vast majority of comments I get are to posts about non-Bakken issues. And that's one reason (but not the "real" reason) why I post them.  I don't post most of those comments that criticize the blog (the comments are generally poorly written, lots of misspellings, bad grammar, and language that I prefer not to see anywhere, much less on the blog). But riding around Boston this evening, I "mused" over the Rigzone article I posted earlier: Musings: Energy, Unemployment, and the Health of the US Economy.

It starts out:

Most people are aware of President Barack Obama's "all-of-the-above" energy strategy, which provides a number of popular talking points about him being open to all forms of energy while campaigning, but in reality means only a few energy sources will be favored. Those favored energy sources seem to be only "green" ones. 

On the other side of the issue is the Republican standard-bearer, Mitt Romney, who is advocating for increased development and use of domestic fossil fuel resources while mandating that very expensive green energy sources need to achieve commerciality on their own and without government mandates and subsidies. America's domestic oil and gas production is growing dramatically suggesting to some students of the energy business that the country is on track to eventually achieve self-sufficiency. 

The definition of self-sufficiency seems to mean different things to different people, but on balance it suggests the U.S. will be importing significantly less energy than in the recent past and may actually begin exporting meaningful energy volumes assuming government regulatory barriers are removed and no new ones erected. Just how much energy the country may wind up exporting is an open question, since it depends on the growth of our productive output, our increased consumption and legal barriers being lowered. The answer to the question of how much energy consumption may grow is tied to the economic outlook. 

A key ingredient for predicting the economy's growth rate lies in understanding how the health of our labor market will influence future activity. The traditional measure of the labor market's health is the unemployment rate, which, following the latest monthly employment report showed the U.S. economy with 12.5 million unemployed workers, or an 8.1 percent unemployment rate. Despite the high rate, the unemployment rate for August improved by two-tenths of one percentage point from what was reported in July. 

Compared to a year ago, the unemployment rate has declined by one full percentage point, but part of the improvement is a reflection of changes within the dynamics of the American labor force combined with some private sector employment growth. We will examine some of these labor force dynamics later in this article.

The conclusions may surprise you. Go  to the link and read the entire article.  But I love the opening paragraph: the president's "all-the-above" menu includes only those energy sources he favors.