American Economics Thread

delft

Brigadier
From Chicago Tribune:
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Editorial:
Chicago's rail hub is a train wreck. Here's the fix.

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MAY 16, 2017
Chicago, the City that Works ... and Conveys. Our metropolis has many distinctions, one of them its status as the country's pre-eminent rail hub. Every day, 1,300 freight and passenger trains move through Chicago. Coal from Wyoming, oil from North Dakota, families vacationing on
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— Chicago is the national nexus.

Behind that fame, however, there's infamy. America's leading nerve center for rail movement is also its leading train traffic choke point. It takes a freight train as much time to get from New York to Chicago as it takes to get through Chicago. The ripple effects slow Amtrak and
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service almost daily. And no point of congestion in Chicago — in the country, for that matter — is worse than the tangled knot of freight and passenger lines known as the 75th Street Corridor.



Every day, as many as 90 freight trains and 32 passenger trains converge into the 75th Street Corridor on the Southwest Side. At one junction, five rail lines merge into two. At another, north-south rail lines cross east-west lines, creating the equivalent of a street intersection — for trains instead of cars. It's not just cargo and commuters that back up. Motorists cope with long waits at rail crossings.

Transportation planners, city and state officials and railroad executives have rued the 75th Street problem for years. One fanciful plan calls for a rail beltline that would leapfrog Chicago's gridlock by circumventing the metropolitan area. Planners, however, dismiss the idea. The $2.8 billion price tag is daunting, and it appears the railroads aren't interested.

As far back as 2005, an initiative called CREATE (Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency) began planning to relieve congestion around and in Chicago, including at the 75th Street Corridor. CREATE is a partnership of federal, state and city transportation officials, Amtrak, Metra and freight rail companies. Twelve years later, though, the 75th Street Corridor is as congested as ever. Why?

One word: money, as in not enough of it. Solutions will be expensive — two flyovers and a grade separation, along with a series of other improvements. Overall price tag: $1 billion. Right now, the goal is to finish design work and begin construction. That would cost $473 million, and CREATE's plan was to divvy up the bill: 41.7 percent paid by state and local governments, 34.8 percent by the feds and 22.5 percent by the freight railroads.


To get the federal share, the state, Chicago and Cook County last year teamed up to ask the Obama administration for a $160 million grant. But that request required a commitment from the railroads for their share. The railroads wouldn't budge, says U.S. Rep.
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, D-Chicago, a strong advocate for fixing the 75th Street bottleneck. "There had been discussions with the railroads, and they did not want to participate in any grant applications," Lipinski tells us.

Lipinski and state and local officials kept pressing the railroads to pay their share, and in the waning days of Obama's presidency, the railroads agreed. But with one foot out of the White House, Obama bequeathed the grant request to the
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administration. It's still pending but, so far, President Donald Trump hasn't shown much enthusiasm for rail projects. His preliminary 2018 budget proposal calls for big spending cuts to mass transit — and projects to unclog freight rail traffic.

It's important that the railroads' appetite for funding CREATE projects doesn't wane. Many CREATE projects call for grade separation work that creates overpasses to eliminate intersections between rail and car traffic. Lipinski says the railroads balk at funding those projects because they don't perceive a direct benefit to their operations. One project already completed, CREATE's $142 million Englewood Flyover project, separated north-south Metra trains from an east-west rail line used by freight trains and Amtrak. The railroads put up $3 million — just 2 percent of the price tag — while federal and state taxpayers shouldered the rest.

CREATE, however, is supposed to be a public-private partnership, not solely a government endeavor. Lipinski says the railroads should shell out more money for CREATE projects. We agree.

Yes, it's natural for businesses to want to focus their money on infrastructure that mostly benefits them. Yet CREATE projects will benefit the rail companies as much as they benefit the region and the nation. Solving the 75th Street bottleneck will do more than help motorists and Metra commuters, it will shave shipping costs through faster travel times for rail cargo. Grade separations at crossings will allow freight rail to move faster through this metropolis.

Why the urgency? As bad as the bottlenecks are now, they're only going to get worse. Daily volumes of rail cars passing through Chicago are projected to more than double by 2045, the
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says. The railroads can avoid tomorrow's worse gridlock by paying their fair share now.
There have been an improvement. A few years ago a manual switch in the path of all trains going through Chicago was replaced by a mechanical one about halve a century after manual switches became extinct in the Netherlands.
This is an extreme example of US not keeping their infrastructure up to date and so "saving" many billions of dollars, wasting very many more billions of dollars.
 

Equation

Lieutenant General
Today's oil prices are helping US drillers beat OPEC. Goldman's Jeffrey Currie explains how
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May 17, 2017
OPEC [/a], according to Jeff Currie, head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs.

U.S. companies that rely on expensive drilling methods have become more efficient, frustrating OPEC's two-year effort to end a crude glut by pumping at maximum capacity to wash out high-cost producers. Even after OPEC relented and cut its own production to balance the market this year, resurgent American output has helped push global crude stockpiles to historic highs.

(New York Mercantile Exchange: @CL.1) prices in a band between about $44 and $55 a barrel. Currie believes prices won't break out until investors see "real, observable inventory draws."" style="margin-bottom: 1em;">That has kept U.S. oil (New York Mercantile Exchange: @CL.1) prices in a band between about $44 and $55 a barrel. Currie believes prices won't break out until investors see "real, observable inventory draws."

While that's the stated goal of OPEC's deal with other exporters to remove a combined 1.8 million barrels a day from the market, Currie thinks the cartel has another aim in mind.

"Power Lunch"[/a] on Wednesday.

U.S. crude oil price structure" style="margin-bottom: 1em;">U.S. crude oil price structure

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OPEC wants oil for immediate delivery to trade at a premium to crude sold for future shipment because the current market structure — contango — benefits the cartel's competition.

In contango, today's oil prices are cheaper than prices in the future. That works somewhat in U.S. drillers' favor because they heavily hedge their production, Currie explained, meaning they lock in a future price for delivery.


OPEC meets next week to decide whether to extend its six-month deal to cut output. Currie said the market has largely priced in an extension through March 2018 floated by Saudi Arabia and Russia earlier this week." style="margin-bottom: 1em;">"OPEC is too big to hedge, so they get the lower spot prices. What they're after is to flip that curve," he said.

OPEC meets next week to decide whether to extend its six-month deal to cut output. Currie said the market has largely priced in an extension through March 2018 floated by Saudi Arabia and Russia earlier this week.

Asked why oil hadn't rallied further on the growing consensus around rolling over the policy, Currie said, "The market has worn thin on patience."

"If you look at what's happened since the beginning of the year, [the market has] tried to trade the OPEC production cuts, the big draws in the U.S. inventories, and it got stung once in April and again in May," he said.

OPEC might fail [/a]to drive down inventories to that level this year.
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PiSigma

"the engineer"
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Too many mistakes in that article I don't even know where to begin.

But the drilling cost for US E&PS have not beat OPEC in anyway. There is a reason why OPEC announce a cut and oil rises.

Other than the best plays in the Permian and Eagle Ford where cost of break even is probably around $35-40, Bakken is still very high in the mid $50s. The Permian also have plenty of areas where break even is probably $50.

Also shale have an extremely fast production drop off rate of a year to two, which makes it very capital intensive.

OPEC break even is normally less than $15, less than $10 in KSA or Iraq.
 

Equation

Lieutenant General
Too many mistakes in that article I don't even know where to begin.

But the drilling cost for US E&PS have not beat OPEC in anyway. There is a reason why OPEC announce a cut and oil rises.

Other than the best plays in the Permian and Eagle Ford where cost of break even is probably around $35-40, Bakken is still very high in the mid $50s. The Permian also have plenty of areas where break even is probably $50.

Also shale have an extremely fast production drop off rate of a year to two, which makes it very capital intensive.

OPEC break even is normally less than $15, less than $10 in KSA or Iraq.

Don't forget that Iranian oil will be in the market as well. That glut of oil can continue to bring oil prices down. The advantage that the US have is fracking drilling technology that can squeeze out old dry oil wells and hard to reach shale places that are abundance with oil.
 

PiSigma

"the engineer"
Don't forget that Iranian oil will be in the market as well. That glut of oil can continue to bring oil prices down. The advantage that the US have is fracking drilling technology that can squeeze out old dry oil wells and hard to reach shale places that are abundance with oil.
Iranian oil have actually very little impact on pricing since it was already accounted for over a year ago.

It is actually very hard to get cracking to work on old wells, since the production methods are so different..different sand, different reservoir rocks, different chemicals. Old conventional wells can be reborn with new conventional extraction methods but not fracking.

Also there is a huge decrease in Venezuelan crude production right now as well.

The opec and non-opec cut is very easy to achieve because there is normally less production in spring anyway due to turnaround and maintenance cycles. But there is also less demand in spring, which is why you don't see storage going down fast in the US. But floating storage have been going down quite a bit.

In the summer, KSA consume a lot more of what they produce, with a summer driving season on 3 big continents and real production cut (not just maintenance), we should start to see storage go down a lot faster.

But OPEC will probably cheat to keep oil below $60, to disencourage US from going all out on crack.
 

Blackstone

Brigadier
From Chicago Tribune:
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There have been an improvement. A few years ago a manual switch in the path of all trains going through Chicago was replaced by a mechanical one about halve a century after manual switches became extinct in the Netherlands.
This is an extreme example of US not keeping their infrastructure up to date and so "saving" many billions of dollars, wasting very many more billions of dollars.
It's only the tip of the iceberg, and sadder still is things will get worse, far worse before it gets better. Economic rent-seeking elites, aided and abetted by public employee unions and the lame stream media, have created a permanent underclass of poorly educated and ill informed voters addicted to bread and circus the elites peddle them like drug pushers. The vicious circle is a rot from within, and it's the only force capable of bringing down the greatest country in human history.
 

Yvrch

Junior Member
Registered Member
The quality control problems in China's food production and that food export causes food price inflation in the source country are both well documented, they are fair concerns.

I intentionally delay my response back to you as it seems the subject seems a bit more direct to you. I don't want to rub you the wrong way unintentionally and unnecessarily.

That being said, your fair concerns are part and parcel of the deal. These are risks both sides can manage to minimize, but would be really hard to bring them down to zero, with zero here implies exported foods remain more or less at the same price, or better get cheaper, and imported foods are of acceptable quality to your taste.

But that's the part I'm a bit confused.
Everybody wants trade as they want it, pick all the good ones and reject the yucky ones; essentially making trade associated with a kaleidoscopic range of adjectives with negative overtones, like "unfair","disastrous", etc. In a way it reflects the amount of skin in the game I believe. It's the first time in history that a sizable portion of Western population feel the negative sides of globalization. Basically globalization is moving along a path Western nations cannot control 100% like in previous version of globalization, aka, colonization.

In the previous versions, weaker Eastern and other colonized nations didn't have any control over the process. Nobody heard or cared about the local populations' suffering.

Now East is slowly driving the globalization and gradually reversing the course in their favor. It's going to hurt them a little, but much much milder than what our fore-bearers suffered at the onslaught of previous globalization.

This is a long time coming.
 

dingyibvs

Junior Member
It's only the tip of the iceberg, and sadder still is things will get worse, far worse before it gets better. Economic rent-seeking elites, aided and abetted by public employee unions and the lame stream media, have created a permanent underclass of poorly educated and ill informed voters addicted to bread and circus the elites peddle them like drug pushers. The vicious circle is a rot from within, and it's the only force capable of bringing down the greatest country in human history.

Are you surprised? Rot from within has been the only force capable of bringing down any great nation throughout human history.
 
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