cynical and disgusted

Producer Price Inflation Is Not Dead

TIPS offer nice coupons right now but to get 2.5% you need to invest for 20 year based on the january 30 auction. To get your money back you have to either wait till maturity or sell them on the open market. However, if interest rates rise, you won't get full value if you sell before maturity.

An interesting, certainly more flexible, and possibly better paying alternative is I-bonds. These savings bonds currently pay only 0.7% plus inflation. But, you can sell them back to the government at full values (less three months interest anytime after 6 months. If you buy I bonds today you will get 5.64% for the next 6 months. You can get your money back in a year and still make more than 2.8%.

5 Ways to Diversify Away from the Dollar

I don't know what drunken sailors have ever done to you to earn such an insult. When it comes to spending, drunken sailors are complete pikers as compared to the current administration.

The current administration has rung up 4 trillion dollars in debt in the last 7 years. 720 Billion in the last twelve months.

An Energy Policy That Makes Sense, Revisited

Who is responsible for the current energy crisis? Clearly it is the energy policy (or lack thereof) that has been in place for more than 40 years.

The US has been a net importer of oil for nearly 40 years. Predictions that we would become a net importer were around for nearly a decade prior to that. Despite this, we have had a domestic energy and economic policy that has encouraged the consumption of energy.

For many years we have not taxed gasoline nearly as heavily as other developed nations. Cheap gas encouraged the purchase of millions of automobiles a year. This kept the automobile industry busy churning out more and bigger cars, trucks, and SUVs. The automobiles were accommodated by new highways. This kept the highway construction industry busy building new ways for people to leave the cities and settle in the suburbs. The suburbs of course were busy enjoying a building boom, thus keeping the construction industry busy building 4000 square foot homes, shopping centers and office malls.

The end result of this is an infrastructure that demands we use much more energy than can possibly be produced domestically: natural gas to heat huge homes, unleaded gas to drive SUVs to work and shop, and jet fuel to fly us to destinations that could be well served by bus/train. We have been left with empty broken cities, mass transit that is inadequate, and non-existent rail service.

It was a good plan. The democrats must have figured that when prices got high enough they could finally fund the development of alternative energy. The republicans figured that this would be the opportune time to abandon environmental protections. Unfortunately either of these solutions as well as changing the infrastructure to be more energy efficient are many years and additional trillions of dollars down the road.

In the meantime, we can blame the Chinese and Venezuelans. We know that they use too much energy because their governments subsidize energy prices. Blaming third world countries for using too much energy is the ultimate in audacity. It is ludicrous.

In Light of Peak Oil, Financial Diversification Is a Bad Idea

What peak oil?

Consider Saudi Arabia is producing well below their maximum achieved rate of 10.5 Million BPD. Iraq is well under their maximum of nearly 4 mbpd.

OPEC in general is below 30 mbpd, down from a peak of nearly 35 mbpd.

Venezuela, Mexico, Norway, England, and Nigeria are all below their maximum production levels.

Iran indicates that they will produce less in the future. Perhaps, Mahmoud and co. know that they have reached a peak, and rather than just admit it and let it drop, they are going to politicize the future reduced output and keep the world thinking that they have more than they do.

Russia recently reported a 1% year on year drop in production. While it may be too early to call that a peak, as the drop is very small, it doesn't bode well.

It is also interesting to note that the US has also hit a peak (a few decades ago). But, we all know that if we just let the oil companies drill a little more that would not have occurred.

Each of these countries has peaked for different reasons; revolution (Nigeria, Iraq), incompetence (Russia, Mexico), environmental wackos (US), just plain wackos (Venezuela), economic choice (Saudi Arabia and Iran) or admittedly running out of oil (England and Norway). The bottom line is it sure is beginning to look a lot like Hubberts peak oil scenario.

Brazil: Let the Feeding Frenzy Begin

Brookfield asset Management is benefitting greatly from Brazil exposure through its Brascan subsidiary. It's a canadian company and will probably not feel the bump until next quarter's earnings.

The Cheap Oil Syndrome: 3 Stocks to Benefit

First, let me point out that it is true that the "radical greens" have increased the price of energy throughout this country. However, having visited china recently, I have seen first hand the cost of not having environmental regulation.

Second, It is probably not true that we are experiencing high oil prices due to the lack of production of oil or other energies. We produce a huge amount of energy. We consume and waste more than any other nation. Our sole national energy policy for the past half century (since it became obvious that we were going to become an oil importer) has been to encourage consumption with new highways, new construction building homes further into the farmlands, and the puchase of new out sized and inefficient vehicles.

Currently Mexico has seen it production capacity decrease, as has Norway, England, US, Iraq and just this week Russia. Interestingly Saudi Arabia's production is more than 1.5 million bpd below its peak production - though they claim that planned. How many of the worlds biggest producers will go through the same thing before we realize that it is inevitable and stop blaming oil companies, Arabs, or environmentalist and come up with a plan to help us conserve and use alternative sources.

Chesapeake Energy: Strong Production Gains Push Stock Near 52-Week High

Perhaps you could have taken a moment to point out that the analysts expectations have historically been low. This trend is still firmly in place.

Last year they made 3.20 and a 15% increase would be 3.68. A further 15% for 2009 leads to 4.23 - a far cry from 3.13.