If you're wondering
May. 20th, 2008 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdI posted about this behind a filter, but I've been so quiet lately because I've been distracted by Anna's recurrent breast cancer. Time for another endless series of doctor visits (already in progress), plans, surgeries, and other horrors. For those who don't know, this makes the sixth straight year of major medical adventures, and it's starting to wear on me, a lot, by which I of course mean KILL EVERYONE.
I've got a lot of things sitting around in tabs, I may and may not post links to them but probably will. Anna and I are going to do a lot of Folklife this weekend, kind of as a big blowoff before her next round of surgeries, a phrase that when I type it makes me kind of shake a little. Um, I guess as a picosummary I'd say that shit is in fact going down, particularly in that oh look, a lot of those AAA ratings are suddenly discovered to be errant, including one of the bond insurers which is suddenly now rated "junk" instead of AAA.
Oh, and I don't have the link handy, but treasury flows went deeply negative last month; the previous month was barely positive, as was the month before that. This matters because if foreign governments join foreign investors in mostly not buying US treasury bonds, the US is fucked, by which I mean against the wall. The big negative report for a single month - around US$50B - isn't a big deal by itself, particularly since there were other factors involved, but if we get two or three months of that shit in a row, watch for T-bill rates to jump through the sky to try to draw investors. And that means you're looking at a bond market collapse, and suddenly the US government has to pay four or five or six times as much to finance its deficits, and everything goes to hell.
Don't panic yet - like I said, we've seen big negative spikes before, I talked about one last year that was massive, much moreso than this one - and it didn't snowball. It probably won't this time, either; that flow will probably jump back up with the April report. But Mr. Gaeta has started the clock.
I've got a lot of things sitting around in tabs, I may and may not post links to them but probably will. Anna and I are going to do a lot of Folklife this weekend, kind of as a big blowoff before her next round of surgeries, a phrase that when I type it makes me kind of shake a little. Um, I guess as a picosummary I'd say that shit is in fact going down, particularly in that oh look, a lot of those AAA ratings are suddenly discovered to be errant, including one of the bond insurers which is suddenly now rated "junk" instead of AAA.
Oh, and I don't have the link handy, but treasury flows went deeply negative last month; the previous month was barely positive, as was the month before that. This matters because if foreign governments join foreign investors in mostly not buying US treasury bonds, the US is fucked, by which I mean against the wall. The big negative report for a single month - around US$50B - isn't a big deal by itself, particularly since there were other factors involved, but if we get two or three months of that shit in a row, watch for T-bill rates to jump through the sky to try to draw investors. And that means you're looking at a bond market collapse, and suddenly the US government has to pay four or five or six times as much to finance its deficits, and everything goes to hell.
Don't panic yet - like I said, we've seen big negative spikes before, I talked about one last year that was massive, much moreso than this one - and it didn't snowball. It probably won't this time, either; that flow will probably jump back up with the April report. But Mr. Gaeta has started the clock.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-21 07:36 am (UTC)*hugs* to both of you.
Post when you can - The Economic stuff scares me. The Beautiful Flowers and other photos inspire me.
Thank you for being you.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-21 10:29 am (UTC)For treasuries, it's more like selling $100 bills 10 years from now, and central banks paying $69 for them, right now, but later paying only $45. I've seen worse, but only when I was in high school, and it wasn't my problem then.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-22 06:54 am (UTC)Interesting idea about the bond market collapse (I love total chaos scenarios), but what are the chances of foreign governments not buying US treasury bonds? For example, isn't China buying them up at a loss to keep it's own exports booming? Or, if it gives them political leverage over the US, wouldn't they use it to their own ends -- let us buy into your port infrastructure, state blah-blah's road/bridge system, or real estate in New England for our rich citizens or we'll squeeze you by letting the bonds slip a tad?
- paul
0.18 probability of hyperinflation, quoth S.
Date: 2008-05-22 02:54 pm (UTC)Looks to me by all local indicators that stagflation is the way we ++are++ going, anyway, and that the translation to hyperinflation is much less likely, which is pretty well what he's saying, too. p(e)=0.18 is 'really not very likely', but of course bloody ugly if it does happen, and therefore worth guarding against.
We're looking at middle-term accumulation of predictably-needed and non-substitutable imports like light bulbs....
Oh, BTW: is that very noticeable bright lamp in your kitchen ceiling one of the Ott-lights? Meant to ask, keep forgetting, memory like a sieve y'know.
Also, proxy indicator for oil forecast? Forward sales of type G-5 for September 30th: $175.50/tonne FOB Roberts Bank, in Panamax lots. That suggests expected higher oil prices yet. Mind that that price is still denominated in USD, so it isn't, umm, a real hard-currency price. CAD is 1.014 USD this morning. ^_^
Re: 0.18 probability of hyperinflation, quoth S.
Date: 2008-05-22 04:23 pm (UTC)We don't have a single noticeable bright lamp in our kitchen, so I don't know what you mean. We have a six-can array of in-ceiling flood-style lights over the larger kitchen area, plus a two-can mini-array of the same over the sink. We use 14w (650 lumen) cf floods in them, bought normally at Home Depot, the Commercial Electric R-30 model.
The Otts that we use here are in the overhead in the music living room (where people were setting up for music, go fig) and I don't remember that we had them turned on. We mostly only use them in winter, to extend daylight, with the skylights open; the light blends exactly as well as you'd hope.
So noted on coal. We're due for a bit of a correction in oil before going higher though.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-23 04:03 am (UTC)0. In discussion, he noted slight price deflation in substitutable items but also noted that these are largely subject to deferral and demand destruction; I think that's why he did not break that out as a subcase from his Case C (status quo).
1. Likely consequence of my cataracts (left eye bad, right eye nuisance); bright lights from point sources bloom severely in my visual field, like age-related halation but worse. Noted brightness above central cooker island, which is why I thought maybe Ott-lights.
2. Don't think they were on; lots of light came in big Millenium Falcon window by front door.
3. Saw oil drop two bucks today; suspect it'll yo-yo a bit and then keep climbing. Suspect that real headaches will come from capacity controls (supply management through discretionary offlining of refinery trains and cracker lines) on gasoline production Stateside. Worthy of note that most of catalysts used in cracker lines come from offshore, with minimal domestic catalyst production (for non-downstreamers here, cracker lines used to be called 'cat crackers', 'cat' being short for 'catalytic').
Thus and so...
Know what you need, honey?
Date: 2008-05-22 05:26 pm (UTC)First Ever Ladies Society for Temperance of Oil & Dickwaving Mid Century Supper Club Dinner Party.
3 Phases: 1. Choose your photo. 2. Procure ingredients from suggested locations. 3. Show up with prepared dish, and something else actually edible.
You and me both.
Date: 2008-05-22 08:02 pm (UTC)Who'll host, you or me? I'm more than happy to, but you have the more theme-appropriate house. Or course, that's all details. We should probably work on pictures and recipes first. I want to make those terrifying technicolour tribble foods.
food bits
Date: 2008-05-23 04:06 am (UTC)