Oil, Employment

The AP reports today:

"Benchmark crude fell as low as $49.75 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, levels last seen on May 18, 2005, when oil hit $46.80 a barrel."

Oil for less than $50. That happened fast. Four months ago it was $147, so it's fallen by about two-thirds in a very short amount of time.

Also, unemployment hit a 16-year high last month, and the four-week average is at a 25-year high.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Creating a PostgreSQL Database, the Use of Database Templates, and Simple Command Line Tool Commands

A PostgreSQL server installation includes database templates. These are used when creating new databases. By default, template1 is copied when you create a new database. This makes it easy to create copies of a customized database design. You can customize template1, and then easily make as many copies as you like, and they will all start out with the same objects, such as tables, languages, etc. Specify template0 to create a standard, out-of-the-box database with no custom additions that may have been added to your server installation. Make sure that you do not make any changes to template0. Create a database using template0, from a command line A database can be created in various ways. Here we will create one from the command line, using the tool PostgreSQL createdb. By default, the logged in user will be the owner of a newly created database. While logged in as user postgres, from a command line, create a database named exampledb, using template0: bash-4.2$ createdb...
Read more

Library Book

On the way home from work I stopped by the library to pick up a book I ordered last week, The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the World's Smartest Person in the World , by A. J. Jacobs. It's about the author's quest to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. First, I feel compelled to say that if you're not taking advantage of the fact that you get to use your library membership to order books online and have them dropped off at your local branch, do it! Start doing it right away. I contend that this is the second most crucial use of my tax dollars, after paying firemen. A blurb by P. J. O'Rourke, found on the back of the book: " The Know-It-All is a terrific book. It's a lot shorter than the encyclopedia, and funnier, and you'll remember more of it. Plus, if it falls off the shelf onto your head, you'll live." [Hours later, about fifty-nine minutes of which I spent replying to my grandmother's email, the rest, I'm n...
Read more

Date Dimension Table Definition

A few weeks ago I found this definition of a date dimension table, created by a smart person named  Nicholas Duffy . I'm placing it here so I can find it easily. DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dim_date; CREATE TABLE dim_date ( date_dim_id INT NOT NULL, date_actual DATE NOT NULL, epoch BIGINT NOT NULL, day_suffix VARCHAR(4) NOT NULL, day_name VARCHAR(9) NOT NULL, day_of_week INT NOT NULL, day_of_month INT NOT NULL, day_of_quarter INT NOT NULL, day_of_year INT NOT NULL, week_of_month INT NOT NULL, week_of_year INT NOT NULL, week_of_year_iso CHAR(10) NOT NULL, month_actual INT NOT NULL, month_name VARCHAR(9) NOT NULL, month_name_abbreviated CHAR(3) NOT NULL, quarter_actual INT NOT NULL, quarter_name VARCHAR(9) NOT NULL, year_actual INT NOT ...
Read more