The Bakken Boom - A Stripper's Perspective

I liked this part:

Mineral extraction economies activate this neural mechanism: wildcatting, prospecting for gold — gambles that may pay off. Today it’s no longer the individual who makes these scores, of course, it’s corporations, but the work and opportunity draws those with nothing to lose but the trying. California in 1849, Colorado in 1859, Montana in 1883, Texas and Oklahoma in 1912, Alaska in 1970, North Dakota in 2008 — every time there’s a mining boom, it plays out thusly: Someone finds a valuable resource. People hear about it and flock to the area. These people are mainly men. The newly populated area is lawless and lacks the civilizing influence of family life. Among the first women to show up are prostitutes. For a while, everyone makes money and has fun. Or some people do, some gambles pay off. Then the resource dries up or its price drops, and the gamble isn’t profitable anymore, and the town eventually dries up or turns into a tourist attraction — or San Francisco, if it’s lucky. Because our brains are wired to want to continue taking that chance, everyone keeps gambling, no one thinks the boom will bust. It will. It always will.
Williston is booming right now. I’ve worked there since 2007, and oil has changed the town both completely and not at all.... Despite boom–bust history being part of the landscape, there is surprisingly little reservation about the boom among the Williston workers. After all, the price of oil is always rising. But the price of oil always falls. My home state of Texas has been through this cycle more than once, and the differences in attitudes between the two places is striking. The Eagle Ford Shale play is close to as active as the Bakken, but housing construction has been slow in coming because they feel it could stop at any time. Not the people I meet in North Dakota, most of whom aren’t natives. Most of them think it’s just going to get bigger. There’s so much oil in the Bakken, and the technology now is so much better, that it will keep going for 20, 30, 40, 50 years, they say. The only dissenting voice I encountered was that of one old-timer who’d seen the initial drilling of the 1950s.

There will be a bust.  Maybe it won't be sudden, but it will come.  Also, if you want some insights into how the stripping economy works, check out the article.

1921 Electricity Usage

Alexis Madrigal:

It's hard to remember a time when not everyone had electricity, and when those that did used it sparingly. That's because from about 1900 to 1965 or so, the electric power industry pushed the price of electricity down and down and down. By the end of their incredible technological (and corporate) surge, electricity cost very little and Americans used a lot of it.
And because it was cheap and the government had intervened in rural areas through outfits like the Tennessee Valley Authority, electricity became very evenly distributed across the land (though, even now, the price per kilowatt hour varies substantially).
In 1921, however, that was not true. The use of electricity did not basically track population. Instead, there were wide regional variations in access to and consumption electricity. In essence, the entire south used relatively less electricity than the rest of the country.
Nowadays, that's not true.  Texas, Florida, Alabama, and Georgia are all among the top ten states for electricity production (along with Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, New York, Washington, and Ohio). Which is not what you see on the map above. Credit low prices, air conditioning, and increasing populations.

And credit the Rural Electrification Act of 1935.

Rockin' with Dirt Farmer

Never heard of them, but I like the name, and this ain't bad:

Dirt Farmer - She Shakes from Oh Yeah Wow on Vimeo.

JP Morgan Looks To Divest Commodity Manipulation Business

A little bit of news coverage and Congressional questioning gets JP Morgan to at least go through the motions of getting out of their most recent scam:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM -0.80% announced today that it has concluded an internal review and is pursuing strategic alternatives for its physical commodities business, including its remaining holdings of commodities assets and its physical trading operations.

To maximize value, the firm will explore a full range of options over time including, but not limited to: a sale, spin off or strategic partnership of its physical commodities business. During the process, the firm will continue to run its physical commodities business as a going concern and fully support ongoing client activities.

J.P. Morgan has built a leading commodities franchise in recent years, achieving a top-ranked revenue position. The business has been consistently named as a top client business in Greenwich Associates' annual client surveys and was recently named Derivatives House of the Year by Energy Risk magazine.

Seriously, though, what's to keep Glencore or one of the other major commodity players from doing the same thing?  Do they really expect regulations to be written to stop them from hoarding metals?  I'm guessing this is just show.

The Best of Hans Moleman

Drinking has ruined my life. I'm only 31.

In Which I Agree With Jim Jordan

Slash the NSA.

Powered By Oats

The University of Iowa is, at least partially:

One afternoon about 10 years ago, the Quaker Oats processing facility in Cedar Rapids contacted administrators at the University of Iowa. The oatmeal, granola, and cereal manufacturer generates thousands of tons of oat hulls each year, and it wanted to know if the university was interested in purchasing the waste product—significantly cheaper than coal—to use as a fuel in its campus power plant.
After spending $1 million on two years of testing and other preliminary work, U of I started processing oat hulls in 2003, combining them with coal and burning the mix as fuel. The deal with Quaker Oats has saved the school up to a half-million dollars each year, depending on the market price of coal. The institution plans to quadruple the amount of biomass it uses as a fuel by 2020, with a goal of making it 40 percent of the fuel mix.
"One of the big themes is, let's get our energy local," says Ferman Milster, principal engineer for renewables at the university's Office of Sustainability. He estimates that the university's goal of upping its local biomass purchases could return about $6 million annually to the local economy.
This change in U of I's energy infrastructure was made easier by the school's district energy system—a centralized boiler that delivers heating and cooling services to the campus. Now common on college campuses, these utilities are still found in some municipalities, often dating to the early 20th century, when towns were built around a dense urban core. It's far less common today to see towns installing the same infrastructure. Recently, however, the small town of West Union, Iowa, decided to give it a try, investing in a district energy system that will tap geothermal energy to lower heating and cooling costs for downtown businesses. The $2.5 million project is a collaborative effort, funded by grants from EPA, state government, and the U.S. Energy Department.

I've been by that Quaker Oats factory in Cedar Rapids.  It is massive.

Dust Bowl Redux

Via Big Picture Agriculture, this is depressing:

“We had eighteen months of no rainfall,” says Ogden, whose curly gray hair, ready smile and blue eyes make him look startlingly like the actor Gene Wilder. “We sold a lot of equipment last year. When you’ve had people who have worked for you, it’s hard to let them go.” As he considers what will happen to his family if his farm fails, he starts to cry. “I’ve got college degrees, but with my age it’s going to be hard to find something in this job market.”
Ogden’s friend Matt Rush is also struggling to make ends meet. He recently took a job with the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau in Albuquerque, four hours from home. He, too, cries as he considers his prospects. “This is who we are,” he says. “When your livelihood becomes your identity, you can’t just stop.” He pauses, tries to talk himself into optimism. “It’ll take a while to get her Sunday clothes on,” he says, referring to the land. “But she’ll look good. It’s so wide open. You can see the sun coming up and the sun going down. You can see every star in the heavens at night. When it’s green, it just feels so alive to me. When it rains, you can see it in everybody’s faces—how relieved they are. Contributions go up in church on a Sunday after it rains.”  Eddie Speer homesteads a small farm outside Lubbock. His wells have almost run dry; his wife, Laura, worries that she might not have enough water for cooking, washing the dishes and bathing. “We wake up every morning, and if we didn’t know God was taking care of us, we couldn’t get through the day,” he says. “We pray for rain—in church and privately. We ask God to bring rain and bless our farms.” .....I want Speer’s prayers to be answered. But I fear that Ed Moore might be more realistic. Moore looks over the land on which he rides his 15-year-old Appaloosa, Lady, at the end of each workday. You can almost see the sigh forming in his chest. “I don’t think we’ll ever run out of water [entirely]. But it’ll get so expensive we’ll have to quit,” he says. He stops to gather his thoughts. “You ask about this land. I don’t have a clue why I love it. It’s flat. Very hard to make a living. If I were really smart, I’d go somewhere where the average rainfall is forty inches. But this is home. And I don’t like to fail.”

That is so sad.  I think Ed Moore is right.  The rain-fed Midwest is where it's at.  Hopefully it stays rain-fed.

This Year's Ohio State Fair Butter Sculpture Is...

the State Fair youth choir?  Yep:




Didn't know there was a State Fair Youth Choir.

The Most Important Driver of History

Via Ritholtz:

The big ball could say luck, also.