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

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

Indie Rock Records as an Investment, Using Japan's Guitar Wolf as an Illustrative Example

Here's an example of how expensive obscure albums can be. I suppose if you had the ability to guess right, you could outperform any stock market index by purchasing selected indie rock albums. The supply tends to be relatively low, so if the thing goes out of print, a little demand can go a long way. I heard a track tonight off my latest pickup (thanks to the U.S. Postal Service for another musical delivery), a 1999 Matador Records comp (Everything Is Nice), by a low-fi punk rock band from Japan called Guitar Wolf, liked it, went to Amazon to check the price and some reviews, and found that I can have a used copy for a mere $152.80. Hmmm. I think I'll wait for a re-release -- which raises the point, of course: what happens to the value of the out-of-print original when and if the re-release comes out? Amazon link for reference: http://www.amazon.com/Planet-Wolves-Guitar-Wolf/dp/B0000036XO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294362983&sr=8-1
Read more

Install the JDK Development Version on CentOS

If you want access to Java tools like jar and javac, install the development version of the JDK. # yum install java-1.7.0-openjdk-devel Add the bin directory to your PATH so you can run the Java programs from anywhere. # PATH=$PATH:/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.7.0-openjdk-1.7.0.25.x86_64/bin View the classes in a jar file. # jar tvf dt.jar      0 Mon Jul 01 09:51:04 EDT 2013 META-INF/     71 Mon Jul 01 09:51:04 EDT 2013 META-INF/MANIFEST.MF      0 Mon Jul 01 09:51:00 EDT 2013 javax/      0 Mon Jul 01 09:51:04 EDT 2013 javax/swing/   4486 Mon Jul 01 09:51:04 EDT 2013 javax/swing/JSliderBeanInfo.class   3342 Mon Jul 01 09:51:04 EDT 2013 javax/swing/JFormattedTextFieldBeanInfo.class   3025 Mon Jul 01 09:51:04 EDT 2013 javax/swing/JMenuBarBeanInfo.class
Read more