I'll give the real Republicans (versus the corporate agenda ones) some due on this....this is the best map I could find in the US of refineries. It sure seems that if one wants to have a domestic oil production supply they should be redistributing the supply chain so it's less vulnerable to natural disasters and regional issues (assuming they aren't causing man made environmental disasters!)

I think I saw the same documentary you did on the death of the suburbs. They were built completely on an oil/highway/car economy, no doubt...but that said, in today's telecommunications world enabling distributed work centers to not force people to live in cities is possible.
Obviously, alternative energies and widespread deployment and adoption are critical but I don't see the answer to aggregating large populations in cities. This is due to quality of life issues to the distribution of energy and the local obtainment of energy. In other words, let's say every principality was tapping into their local alternative energy. In some areas that might be wind, others wave power, yet another might be biomass, regionally dependent. If alternative energies were tuned for what is practical in that locality, along with telecommunications enabling remote work.....the desired lifestyle of the burbs, which was to have some damn grass, some quiet and smaller communities, it is possible.

On a gas economy it is really stupid but so is demanding people go into some artificial cube, require them to be there 8-5, for many work types.

It looks like we are going to get another fall spike in oil prices, just like in 2005. The difference is that the economy is in much worse shape to handle it this time around.

Corporate America can hire H1/H2B Visa workers and claim the credit proposed by Republican Platform. and they are shameless enough to do so. They would not have to send the work to Asia.

Much of the new hiring in the last year by Big Tech was H1B.
In fact with 44K Jobs lost, 65K H1Bs were added. In that context, the credit will accelerate job destruction.

Unless you have an offshore broker, you cannot do commodity plays Monday. Tuesday, you can expect equities to go south,
except energy stocks. Commodities are an easy one.

Because oil prices will move up again, and stay higher for a while, XOM etc will move up. Options are the cheapest play.

That garbage aside, all of us will hurt this winter because of energy prices, just as with Katrina, if these models are correct.

of increased gas prices is unlikely to do much as the second wave of mortgage resets hits this fall.

I think that Rita did go through the fields to the left, but I'm honestly much more worried about the LOOP. If it gets hit, that's going to knock a huge amount of oil off the market.

Remember that an effect like what we had with Katrina takes gas up to about $5 gallon.

Even if it's the same scale of damage, the price increase is likely to be higher, because the past three years have driven a lot of the prices elasticity out of the oil market.

Simply put, in 2005 there where a lot of people who rethought unneccesary trips to the big box in bfe when prices rose.

The demand that's left is things like people driving to work, things that they are going to do no matter what the price of gas is. Which means that the same shock has doesn't create demand destruction of the same order, so you ahve people bidding up the price of gas. $6/gallon gas seems at least plausible in this context.

And if there's permanent damage and it takes years not months like it took after Katrina to get back to the way things were before the storm, then we are in for a ride. I'm lucky, I can walk everyplace that I need to. (Work, groceries, etc.) I only need my car to get home from school, and that's less than 100 miles.

I deliberately choose live someplace I can walk because of the possibility of something like this happening.

Wow, thanks middle. This is a very good analysis on the impact, which clearly the United States does not need right now. It will make landfall just in time for Tuesday to be a massive spike up (for they will be able to est. the damage by then) for Tues. market open. Expect a nightmare.

Didn't Rita go through those fields to the left? But that was a 2 not a 3.

Natural News also has a well cited article with a list of layoff notices where the jobs are clearly offshore outsourced.

In the hapless interview with Roger Mudd of CBS, Ted Kennedy did his infamous Ralph Cramden "Hummida, Hummida, Hummida" when asked why he wanted to be POTUS. Kennedy wanted to start with the 'Major Medical'. He meant to include all the the non-routine care. That is an appropriate place to start for a combined government/not-for-profit care.

It is easier to understand Health Insurance when you divide the care into distinct components: emergency, routine, and medicinal. Government or non-profits can handle the emergency care. Private Insurance or Self-Insurance can do Medical and and third insurance is needed for treatments (medicine, drugs,equipment).

I favor keeping all but emergency care private for the sake of economic incentive. Having worked for the nation's largest private insurer, I cannot be in favor of an entirely private system. I witnessed entire floors of business analysts create Routine Denial Systems: the answer is always no.

One more angle on Insurance. In the 30's and 40's a fellow by the name of Walter Annenberg ran the Numbers racket for he mob. Some of his clients included Washington's most powereful like J.Edgar Hoover who used to make bets on the Numbers.

Annenberg, like Joe Kennedy, was smart enough to get out of the rackets before he was dead or in jail. So what new racket did Annenberg choose? Insurance! Like the Numbers racket, the sucker puts down a bet and the house makes a predictable take, like all forms of gaming. Wall Street calls the percentage-take the Claim Payout Ratio. Heaven help any company whose Claim Payout Ratio exceeds 79 percent.

By 1970, Walter Annenberg was appointed by Nixon to the Court of St. James, U.S. Ambassador to the U.K. As Eliza Doolittle sang 'Go to St. James so often, I will call it St. Jim."