Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Non-Tech : Farming -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tommaso who wrote (1338)	6/18/2008 9:54:21 AM
From: Cogito Ergo Sum	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4448

hbpetfs.com note last letter: HAD (Down) is up today HAU (Up) is up today LOL.. makes me wonder.. There is a wrinkle to trading these ETFs. I've noticed that they sometimes trade against the wind.. which happens I assume as they are only proxies and have a 'life' of their own. I really noticed this a lot when short term scalping / hedging with the HOD (ultra short oil on TSX) which is the same etf family. The Black Swan EDIT They are relatively new and volume is crap BTW.. HAU 2,249 shares HAD 100 shares...... They are thinner than twiggy was.. positively anorexic ..

To: Tommaso who wrote (1338)	6/18/2008 11:18:36 AM
From: Cogito Ergo Sum	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4448

Posted by: earthfarm Date: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 11:14:31 AM In reply to: None Post # of 2602 ETHANOL TARRIFF: Midwest floods may send gas up 15% Soaring corn prices could increase the price of ethanol, driving up demand for oil and sending gas prices even higher. Some think it's time for Congress to act. By David Goldman, Last Updated: June 13, 2008: 4:37 PM EDT NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Continued flooding in Iowa and Illinois - the nation's top two corn-growing states - is inciting fears that the cost of the high-priced crop could soar even further, driving up ethanol and gas prices, too. Days of heavy rain across the Midwest Corn Belt region have wreaked havoc on the crop, sending front-month prices to $7.08 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade Friday. Corn futures have risen for seven straight trading sessions. Since ethanol - a mandated ingredient in U.S. gasoline - is produced domestically with corn, rising crop prices could send already-record gasoline prices even higher. "The floods in the Midwest will have a major impact on ethanol," said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Alaron Trading in Chicago. Gasoline in the United States is comprised of only about 6% to 10% ethanol, as mandated by federal and state governments. But Flynn believes gas prices could jump 10% or 15% if corn were to hit $10 a bushel and crude oil maintains its current high level. With the national average of gasoline at a record $4.07 a gallon, according to AAA, a 15% increase would translate into an additional 61 cents. "Crude oil is still the predominant factor why gas prices are high, but don't think that 6% to 10% isn't going to matter," Flynn said. But others disagree, saying ethanol has not historically kept pace with corn prices. "Ethanol has historically been more closely tied to the price of gasoline than corn," said Geoff Cooper, director of research at ethanol trade group Renewable Fuels Association. "The value of the product is its ability to displace gasoline, not on the cost of its input." Congress' ethanol quandary But as Congress continues to search for a way to relieve Americans' pain at the pump, members may look to change their ethanol policies if gas prices spike another 50 or 60 cents. "Congress is going to have a hard time justifying mandating the use of ethanol in gasoline if we lose one-third of the corn crop," Flynn said. But simply relaxing ethanol mandates may not be enough. According to the latest short-term energy report released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, use of ethanol has reduced U.S. oil demand by 440,000 barrels a day. If the nation consumes less ethanol, crude oil usage - and prices - could rise as well. "For every drop of ethanol that we're not using, we'll be using (more oil-based) gasoline," noted Flynn. Flynn argued that the market should determine ethanol's price, saying the root of the problem was Congress' rushing the use of ethanol in the first place. "The problem with ethanol is that it was driven by the government and not by market forces," Flynn said. "Ethanol would have come on naturally had the government not acted." Reducing the ethanol tariff Another potential solution that is gathering support in Congress is reducing or eliminating the foreign ethanol tariff. The import tariff of 54 cents a gallon on ethanol keeps the price of imported ethanol high in an effort to support domestic farmers. Much of imported ethanol is made from sugar cane, which is cheaper to produce than domestic corn-based ethanol. Energy industry experts say lifting the tariff entirely will likely lower gas prices by 10 cents a gallon, but legislation that proposed canceling the tax found little support in Congress. As a result, Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Judd Gregg, R-N.H., recently introduced a compromise bill to reduce the tariff to 45 cents. "The need for inexpensive and cleaner-burning fuels continues to grow, and yet U.S. refiners are forced to pay a 54-cent tariff on ethanol imported from Brazil and other foreign sources," Feinstein said on the Senate floor last week. "This makes no sense, given the record oil prices and the limited supplies of domestic ethanol." Gregg noted that ethanol cannot be transported through pipelines, which makes the domestic product hard to come by in some states. As a result, many non-midwestern states are forced to use foreign ethanol and pay the tariff at the pump. "States outside the Midwest, especially ... coastal states, are at a huge disadvantage when it comes to accessing domestically produced ethanol due to shipping challenges," said Gregg on the floor. "Imported ethanol from Brazil and other friendly nations can be provided to these coastal states more easily and at a lower cost." First Published: June 13, 2008: 12:22 PM EDT money.cnn.com Got agricultural exposure?

To: Tommaso who wrote (1338)	6/18/2008 11:18:50 AM
From: microhoogle!	Respond to of 4448

jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com ____________________________________ A catastrophe for Iowa farmers will not be just a catastrophe for Midwestern Americans. In the Iowa floods, we'll see more evidence of how the problems of weird weather (climate change) combine and ramify the problems associated with peak oil. In this particular case they lead to an inflection point sometime around the 2008 harvest season, which will also be our time of political harvest. These are not your daddy's or granddaddy's floods. These are 500-year floods, events not seen before non-Indian people starting living out on that stretch of the North American prairie. The vast majority of home-owners in Eastern Iowa did not have flood insurance because the likelihood of being affected above the 500-year-line was so miniscule -- their insurance agents actually advised them against getting it. The personal ruin out there will be comprehensive and profound, a wet version of the 1930s Dust Bowl, with families facing total loss and perhaps migrating elsewhere in the nation because they have no home to go back to. Iowa in 2008 will be an even slower-motion disaster than Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Beyond the troubles of 25,000 people who have lost all their material possessions is a world whose grain reserves stand at record lows. The crop losses in Iowa will aggravate what is already a pretty dire situation. So far, the US Public has experienced the world grain situation mainly in higher supermarket prices. Cheap corn is behind the magic of the American processed food industry -- all those pizza pockets and juicy-juice boxes that frantic Americans resort to because they have no time between two jobs and family-chauffeur duties to actually cook (note: reheating is not cooking). Behind that magic is an agribusiness model of farming cranked up on the steroids of cheap oil and cheap natural-gas-based fertilizer. Both of these "inputs" have recently entered the realm of the non-cheap. Oil-and-gas-based farming had already reached a crisis stage before the flood of Iowa. Diesel fuel is a dollar-a-gallon higher than gasoline. Natural gas prices have doubled over the past year, sending fertilizer prices way up. American farmers are poorly positioned to reform their practices. All that cheap fossil fuel masks a tremendous decay of skill in husbandry. The farming of the decades ahead will be a lot more complicated than just buying x-amount of "inputs" (on credit) to be dumped on a sterile soil growth medium and spread around with giant diesel-powered machines. Like a lot of other activities in American life these days, agribusiness is unreformable along its current lines. It will take a convulsion to change it, and in that convulsion it will be dragged kicking-and-screaming into a new reality. As that occurs, the US public will have to contend with more than just higher taco chip prices. We're heading into the Vale of Malthus -- Thomas Robert Malthus, the British economist-philosopher who introduced the notion that eventually world population would overtake world food production capacity. Malthus has been scorned and ridiculed in recent decades, as fossil fuel-cranked farming allowed the global population to go vertical. Techno-triumphalist observers who should have known better attributed this to the "green revolution" of bio-engineering. Malthus is back now, along with his outriders: famine, pestilence, and war. We're headed, it seems, toward a fall "crunch time," and that crunching sound will not be of cheez doodles and taco chips consumed on the sofas of America. I think we're heading into a season of hoarding. As the presidential campaign moves into its final round, Americans may be hard-up for both food and gasoline. On the oil scene, the next event on the horizon is not just higher prices but shortages. Chances are, they will occur first in the Southeast states because oil exports from Mexico and Venezuela feeding the Gulf of Mexico refineries are down more than 30 percent over 2007. Perhaps more ominous is the discontent on the trucking scene. Truckers are going broke in droves, unable to carry on their business while getting paid $2000 for loads that cost them $3000 to deliver. In Europe last week, enraged truckers paralyzed the food distribution networks of Spain and Portugal. The passivity of US truckers so far has been a striking feature of the general zombification of American life. They might continue to just crawl off one-by-one and die. But it's also possible that, at some point, they'll mount a Night-of-the-Living-Dead offensive and take their vengeance out on "the system" that has brought them to ruin. America has only about a three-day supply of food in any of its supermarkets. The yet-more-ominous thing here is that shortages of food and oil are two fiascos that are pretty clearly predictable for the second half of the year. That's bad enough without figuring in the "unknowns" that could kick up American hardship a few more notches.The hurricane season just got underway -- obscured for the moment by the bigger weather story in Iowa. The fate of the banks is a train wreck still waiting to happen. As it occurs -- also heading into the high political and hurricane seasons -- we could find ourselves not only a nation wet, hungry, and out-of-gas, but also completely broke. I'm sorry that Tim Russert will not be here to talk us through it all.