SAR #13169

Global capitalism is on track to become less global.

Planning Ahead: Philadelphia has chosen to close 23 schools and lay of thousands of school employees in order to fund a $400 million prison that will house 4000. The City of Brotherly love, being prepared. The mayor wants to privatize the entire school system and merge it with the private prison network.

The Rest Of The Story: The Bakken Booster's Club points out that North Dakota’s Bakken produced record amounts of oil in April - 727,149 barrels a day, up 1.2% m/m and up 33% y/y. What is not mentioned is that in the last six months an additional 822 producing wells were required to increase production by 43,291 bbl/d. Each successful new well added 52 bbl/d to production. In the six months ended 11/12, each new well added 140 bbl/d, and before that it was 148 and prior to that each new producer added 214 bbl/day to the total output. Notice a trend? Drilling more, getting less...

Observed: “U.S. policy for the past 30 years has been aggressively dedicated to shifting income share away from the poor and middle class and into the pockets of the already rich.”

Against All Odds: Bernanke, from behind the curtain, continues to claim that the Fed can back out of the enormous heap of bonds that QE has vacuumed up without upsetting the applecart. He apparently did not notice the beating Treasuries took when just the rumor of possible “tapering” of the Fed's QE purchases made the rounds last week. Either he is simply in denial, or he doesn't plan to stick around to see how this turns out.

Pass The Sun Block: Summertime temperatures in the mid and high northern latitudes over the past few years “are unprecedented in the past 600 years” both in magnitude and in frequency. “The summers of 2005, 2007, 2010 and 2011 were warmer than those of all prior years back to 1400.”

The Difference Between Gold And Paper Money: Paper money has value only because most people expect most other people to accept it in exchange for goods and services. Ditto for gold. There is no thing – found in nature or created by man – that has value independent of the value humans attach to it. There is no pristine money. Money, be it paper or gold works as money as long as most people keep the faith. And not much longer.

Stirred, Not Shaken: A comprehensive survey of Antarctic ice shelves found that over half of their ice loss results from melting from below as the ocean warms, not ice calving (icebergs falling off) nor a rise in air temperature.

Teaching Point: In 2009, the British set up fake internet cafes to intercept communications from attendees and reporters covering the G20 summit. No warrant needed.

The Parting Shot:

Prairie Rose, Rosa setigera