Thursday, May 6, 2010

Open Thread



Your turn.

6 comments:

  1. This just in by way of the Dallas News and the Washington Post:

    Few people are more apocalyptic than Matt Simmons, retired chairman of the energy investment banking firm Simmons & Co. International, and a veteran of 41 years in the industry. Simmons, who will speak at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston this week, has been famous in recent years for warning that the industry is running out of oil. Now he sees a disaster on an epic scale as the pressurized subterranean reservoir known as the Macondo field, estimated to hold 50 million barrels of oil, continues to vent into the gulf.

    "It really is a catastrophe," Simmons said. "I don't think they're going to be able to put the leak out until the reservoir depletes. It's just too technically challenging."

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  2. "Few people are more apocalyptic" ... interesting that the greek word translated apocalyptic means "revealing" instead of "doomer".

    He is simply revealing a reality. He could be correct.

    I was listening to an oceanographer who said it is "150 atmospheres of pressure" down at 5,000 feet, and that the oil will become condensed and sticky as it moves toward the surface through the pipe attached to the heavy metal box planned as an enclosure of the leak.

    He said if it plugs the pipe it could explode. They are pumping water and chemicals into the iron box to mix with the oil to help prevent the coagulation.

    I hope big time that it works.

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  3. The Greece brush fire is now seriously threatening the entire EU. And from there...

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    ...this could all unfold and jump the pond with the speed of a Santa Ana brush fire.

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  4. disaffected,

    Ouch! It reminds me of the United States of Europe compared to the United States of America ... if one of our states goes down bad, the bad spreads.

    "This is a greek problem" is like us saying "This is a California problem", when it is a united problem.

    Our arrangement, however, is older and more mature than theirs in many respects, so if they live through this financially it may strengthen them.

    But those two articles you mention do cast some doubt on the outcome.

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  5. Their banking/investment arrangements are essentially ours, as we've long been the "model" for those systems worldwide. As the globalists are all too happy to proclaim, "we're all connected now." Indeed we are, for better or (more likely) worse.

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  6. BOSTON (MarketWatch) -- Financial stocks were the U.S. market's hardest-hit sector Thursday in across-the-board selling that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunging nearly 1,000 points before bouncing back to close with a loss of about 3%.

    It's likely that the steadily worsening news about Greece was what finally triggered the down move, he added.

    Indeed, investors' fear that Greece could become a sovereign version of failed investment bank Lehman Brothers boiled over on Thursday and drove the U.S. market selloff, according to one noted investment strategist.

    "The dam burst today," said Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research. The massive selling "displays a widespread concern that Greece might be the next Lehman, and markers are getting ahead of it," Yardeni said.


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