oiler1930

Stagflation and Peak Oil: How Related Are They? (Part II)

The article and comments address some of my own worries. Not mentioned above is finding a shelter for liquid funds when banks are hosting the vultures they let loose with excessive lending, too low capitalization, and making excessive loans to poor risks. I have set up an account with Treasury Direct Investment (go to Treasury.us and select TDI). I am currently pushing money in excess of FDIC limits of $100,000 into T-bills, and building up a rolling inventory of same, so there will be weekly rollovers. This does not give any long term rates, more like 2%, but for safe parking, it works; also, there are no fees imposed at this time, no brokers etc.

In addition to the two plays for oil, futures and equity ownership, there is a third, to buy your own leases or to invest with honest operators, who may still be in the majority. There are almost as many scams in the oil mining sector (it really is a mining activity) as there are in gold mining. I live in the Illinois basin, and raise 3/1,000,000ths of the daily refinery input nationally. It is a lot of fun when you learn the business; it has taken me 15+ years to get here.

I think that the housing uproar has a long way to go before prices, in real terms, rise. Suburbanization has made major commuters of most of us; in the 1930's, factory hands lived close to their work, and walked it both ways. In my time, I have car-pooled to work, and did not feel the need to be able to come and go as I pleased. When I rode a bus to work, I would wait in the morning and calculate the percentage of cars passing with more than one head showing; scores were one to three people.

Ownership of gold is attractive now, as it was in the 1920's; acquiring bullion is a nice idea, but about 1934, Americans were required to surrender all their gold, while for silver, that went out the same way around 1965. As compensation, we were allowed to own gold and silver as bullion or as coins.

What are the chances of confiscation again?

The thermodynamic comments were of interest. A variation on the three laws, 1) You can't win; 2) you can't break even; and 3) you can't get out of the game. When applied to wind and solar energy, both are ephemeral; solar weakens substantially at sunset, and weakens under dense cloud cover, requiring rechargeable batteries, while wind does not blow steadily. I have priced both sources, and currently cannot justify investing in either for the production of power at currently prevailing prices for electricity.