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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (343861)	7/21/2007 6:40:19 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576250

You get that from a Kinkos in Abilene ?

To: tejek who wrote (343861)	7/21/2007 6:42:59 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576250

"Excuse me, the Daily Kos is made up of liberals, not republicans. They don't spin things; just tell the facts." Did you read that in a Jason Blair article ?

To: tejek who wrote (343861)	7/22/2007 10:20:56 AM
From: SilentZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576250

dailykos.com It's Harry Potter time at the bookstore, but here's a story better suited to Lemony Snicket. It's the plot of a thousand old TV shows: wife discovers that the husband is worth more dead than alive. Scratch one husband. There's a business version, too, where some unscrupulous store owner takes a torch to his own place. Of course, the guys hauled in by Columbo or Mannix were just generated by the imagination of some screenwriter. In real life, it's hard to think that a business could profit from a disaster -- could actually pull in more bucks when their own facilities were wrecked. And a situation where the bigger the disaster, the bigger the dollars that rolled in, is too ridiculous even for TV. Though that would make you feel a little differently about the hurricane season, eh? Thing, is, there's this odd little situation with the oil industry. A couple of years ago, Katrina delivered what looked like a devastating bunch of lemons to their Gulf Coast facilities, but the optimists in the petro biz turned it into record-setting lemonade. Far from being hurt by the storm that drowned an American city and turned thousands into nomads, the oil companies racked up their best quarters ever. Of course the reason for those record profits was a restricted supply of oil that just barely kept up with demand, allowing companies to raise their prices over, and over, and over. So it's a good thing that last year the hurricane season was quiet. Some of the big political concerns overseas have died down, and it doesn't look like we're going to bomb Iran for at least another week. So with no disasters in the past year, the market should be much better. Only it's not. Oil refineries across the country have been plagued by a record number of fires, power failures, leaks, spills and breakdowns this year, causing dozens of them to shut down temporarily or trim production. The disruptions are helping to drive gasoline prices to highs not seen since last summer’s records. Yes, there have been some serious disasters at oil refineries, including one refinery flooded by heavy rains, and some fires that have been blamed on lightening strikes. Still this year's "invisible hurricane" includes an astounding outbreak of clumsiness featuring more mishaps than a whole season of Gomer Pyle. I'm far from the first to notice this, and far from the first to point out that the industry seems to discover some new issue each time the supply restrictions seem about to ease. Some critics of the industry have theorized on Internet blogs that the squeeze on gasoline and other refined products points to a deliberate effort among oil companies to bolster profits by keeping supplies tight. But experts point out that the companies have little incentive right now to hold back on fuel supplies. Thank goodness we have industry experts to correct the wild-eyed fantasies generated on those Internet blogs. Otherwise, people might think that something was going on just because the oil industry is making a higher profit while shipping less product. Without the experts, bloggers might make the mistake of thinking companies came off rather well by cutting production and making more profit, instead of running their refineries full out, depleting their remaining reserves, and selling at a lower price. Without the experts we might think it odd that the supply is always dead on the point to justify increased prices, but never so low as to generate the kind of shortages that could lead to investigations. I guess I'm no Columbo, because if I was to see an industry that blames many of the problems on failures of old equipment -- equipment they haven't replaced in decades -- at the same time they're sitting on mountains of cash, I might tend to get suspicious.