U.S. Economy

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
Re: The Invention Of 'The Economy'




U.S. employers added a robust 288,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate fell
to a six-year low of 6.1%
, the government reported Thursday.

The net job growth in June exceeded analysts' expectations and signaled a strengthening
labor market as the economy moves past a weak first quarter.

Adding to the bright news, the Labor Department revised up the payroll gains for the prior
two months by a total of 29,000 jobs -- to 304,000 for April and to 224,000 for May.





 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
There goes Obama cooking the books again!


BTW, can any of the libertarians, republicans, conservatives, free marketeers, right wing nuts, neo confedrates... point to any policies that the so called loyal opposition has done to spur economic growth during the Obama administration?
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
There goes Obama cooking the books again!



BTW, can any of the libertarians, republicans, conservatives, free marketeers, right wing nuts, neo confedrates... point to any policies that the so called loyal opposition has done to spur economic growth during the Obama administration?




:hulksmash::hulksmash::hulksmash: - - gotta stop that Black Guy before its too late !!!


 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
10365857_10152553395229916_3905576194427088389_n.jpg
 

Upgrade Dave

Rising Star
Registered
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/no-job-loss-most-states-094500529.html

No job loss in most states that raised minimum wage


No job loss in most states that raised minimum wage

When the Congressional Budget Office, earlier this year, released a report finding that the Obama administration’s proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would cost jobs, the White House was furious.

The CBO, said members of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, were relying too much on older research on the subject, and not enough on the most recent findings.


In an angry blog post, CEA Chair Jason Furman and economist Betsey Stevenson wrote, “Seven Nobel Prize winners and more than 600 other economists recently stated that: 'In recent years there have been important developments in the academic literature on the effect of increases in the minimum wage on employment, with the weight of evidence now showing that increases in the minimum wage have had little or no negative effect on the employment of minimum-wage workers, even during times of weakness in the labor market.'”

The CBO defended its numbers, and to many, the CEA response looked like a knee-jerk reaction – members of the president’s administration defending a preferred policy move in the face of evidence that it might not have the real-world effects the president had promised.

However, it turns out, the administration might have had a point
Beginning in January of this year, 13 states individually increased their own minimum wages, creating a sort of natural experiment in which the remaining states could serve as a control group. All that was left was for someone to do the math, and the Center for Economic and Policy Research, building on research conducted earlier in the year by Goldman Sachs, delivered that in a report last week.

Of the 13 states that raised their minimum wages, all but one saw job growth in the first five months of 2014. To be sure, that’s a small achievement in an environment where the national economy is adding something on the order of 250,000 jobs per month.

The really interesting finding is that the states that raised the minimum wage saw job growth that was, on average, higher than states that did not. The 37 states that did not raise the minimum wage at the beginning of this year saw employment increase by .68 percent. Those that did raise the wage saw employment increase by .99 percent.

Four of the top ten states in terms of employment performance were states that raised the wage, including Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and Florida
The biggest outlier was New Jersey, which was not only the worst performing of the states that raised the wage, but the worst performing state altogether, with a net decline in employment of .56 percent.

The takeaway number from the CEPR report, however, is that evidence appears to be accumulating to suggest that the CBO’s take on the impact of the wage was overly pessimistic.

“While this kind of simple exercise can't establish causality, it does provide evidence against theoretical negative employment effects of minimum-wage increases,” wrote CEPR’s Ben Wolcott.
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator


No job loss in most states that raised minimum wage


No job loss in most states that raised minimum wage

When the Congressional Budget Office, earlier this year, released a report finding that the Obama administration’s proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would cost jobs, the White House was furious.



And, apparently there is more good news about the economy . . .





US deficit falls to lowest level since 2008​


Bolstered by a strengthening economy and job market, the U.S. budget deficit has continued to shrink, reaching its lowest level for the fiscal year to date since 2008.

The deficit declined to $366 billion for the period from October 2013 through June 2014, according to the Treasury Department. That’s 28% percent lower than the deficit for the same nine months last year. The government had a small monthly surplus of $71 billion in June.

The recovery has helped lower the deficit by bolstering tax revenues and reducing the need for social programs, says Gus Faucher, senior economist for the PNC Financial Services Group. “This is more a reflection of the improving economy than anything else.” The falling deficit is also linked to the discretionary spending cuts that Congress and the White House have passed since 2011, along with a handful of tax increases.

Those cuts have concerned some policy experts who believe that such deficit-reduction measures were poorly timed and have hampered the overall pace of the recovery. At the same time, deficit hawks warn that Washington’s recent budget reforms – which barely affect entitlements or the vast majority of the tax code – do little to change the nation’s long-term deficit outlook.

“The deficit will further decline over the next couple of years as the economy continues to improve. Over the longer run there’s still the issue of how to pay for the retirement of the Baby Boomers with Social Security and Medicare,” says Faucher.



http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/us-deficit-continues-shrink


 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator

U.S. Economy Grew at 4% Rate in Second Quarter,
Beating Expectations




The New York Times
July 30, 2014


The United States economy rebounded in the spring after a dismal winter, the Commerce
Department reported on Wednesday, growing at an annual rate of 4 percent for the three
months from April through June.

In its initial estimate for the second quarter, the government cited gains in personal
consumption spending, exports and private inventory investment as the main contributors
to growth. The increase exceeded economists’ expectations and further cemented their
views that the decrease in America’s overall output during the first quarter was most
likely a fluke tied in large part to unusually stormy winter weather as well as other anomalies.
Any dip in gross domestic product outside of an official recession is considered rare.

Economists had been hoping for a full reversal of the first quarter’s decline.
The consensus forecast for G.D.P. was 3 percent.

During the first quarter, output shrank by 2.1 percent, less than had been reported,
according to the Commerce Department’s newly revised G.D.P. figures, also released
on Wednesday. The department had previously said first-quarter output decreased 2.9 percent.


“The really ugly G.D.P. report for the first quarter was likely the result of mostly
one-off events,” Bob Baur, chief global economist for Principal Global Investors, wrote
in a note to clients before Wednesday’s release.



http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/31/business/economy/us-economy-grew-4-in-second-quarter.html?_r=0



 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
Bombing oil fields in Iraq. Middle Eastern conflicts and gasoline is still going down in price. :hmm:


source: American Press

Gas prices falling, headed below $3 in much of US


Last Modified: Thursday, September 25, 2014 1:48 PM

NEW YORK — The price of a gallon of gasoline may soon start with a "2'' across much the country.

Gasoline prices typically decline in autumn. This year they're getting a big push lower from falling global oil prices. By the end of the year, up to 30 states could have an average gasoline price of under $3 a gallon, according to a forecast from GasBuddy.com.

Already the average in Springfield, Missouri is below $3. Several other cities are on the brink.

The national average is $3.35 per gallon, a dime below last year at this time and near its low for 2014.

Lower fuel prices help the economy by making goods cheaper to ship, making travel more affordable, and leaving a few extra dollars in drivers' pockets.
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator

The Unemployment Rate Finally Falls Below 6 Percent​


141970046-we-are-hiring-sign-is-displayed-on-a-table-during-the.jpg.CROP.promo-mediumlarge.jpg



The economy added a solid 248,000 jobs in September, while the unemployment rate dipped below 6 percent for the first time since July of 2008. This is obviously happy news. The labor market is continuing to move along at a decent clip.


new_jobs.png.CROP.promovar-mediumlarge.png




But with good news comes tension. As the unemployment rate continues to fall, you can expect to hear more calls for the Federal Reserve to finally raise interest rates to head off inflation. At this point, that still seems premature. The unemployment rate has dropped, in part, because Americans have left the workforce. At 62.7 percent, the participation rate is at its lowest point since 1978. Some of that is due to retiring baby boomers. But there are still a high number of discouraged workers who want jobs but have stopped looking for employment because they simply don't see any opportunities. Long-term unemployment is improving, but still severe. Meanwhile, hourly wages are up just 2 percent over the year—from August to September, they didn't rise at all—another sign that employers aren't having any trouble finding ready and willing workers.

So there are still Americans sitting out the jobs recovery, and companies still aren't handing out the kind of raises that would create inflationary pressure. The market's getting healthy. But it's certainly not so red hot that Janet Yellen needs to cool it down.


Jordan Weissmann is Slate's senior business and economics correspondent.


http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox...yment_rate_finally_falls_below_6_percent.html


 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
source: CNBC

US gasoline prices hit four-year low after drop in oil futures

U.S. gasoline prices are the lowest in four years following a drop in crude oil futures, the nation's largest motorists group said.

The average price at the pump dropped to $3.33 a gallon on Thursday, down 10 percent from this year's high, and the lowest for the month of September since 2010, according to the AAA.

With crude oil futures hitting their lowest levels since 2012 on Thursday, the price at the pump is expected to fall even further. AAA is forecasting the national average for gasoline will drop below $3 in the coming months, rivaling 2009 prices.

"We are seeing prices go down for a number of reasons. It's the end of the summer season, and there's a huge amount of domestic production that is helping drive crude oil prices down, and there were no hurricanes,'' AAA spokesman Robert Sinclair said in a telephone interview.

The drop at the pump is not only good news for consumers, said Jeff Lenard, vice president of strategic industry initiatives at the National Association of Convenience Stores.

"The margins for retailers get wider when gas prices go down and the margins get more narrow when prices go up,'' he told Reuters, noting that the wide margins are short-lived because of stiff competition.

The current margin of about 26 cents a gallon, which is a gross margin and not profit, reflects dropping gasoline prices.

Lenard added that retailers benefit from consumers spending less money on gasoline and more on items such as potato chips and soda, which have higher margins.
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
There doesn't appear to be a "burning issue" out there of the kind that tends to turn-out the troups :(
 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
There doesn't appear to be a "burning issue" out there of the kind that tends to turn-out the troups :(


People don't seem to understand that he gains we have made can disappear with the change in the composition of the congress.




source: USNews


Poll: Slackers aren't the only ones dazed and confused by some big US political issues

85
FILE - This March 26, 2012 file photo shows Glynn McGehee, an aide of Republican Rep. Tom Price of Georgia holding up a poster that mocks the organizational complexity of the health care law being argued in the Supreme Court in Washington. Most Americans say the issues facing the country are getting harder to fathom an Associated Press-GfK poll shows. And it's not just people who’ve tuned out politics who feel that way. The citizens paying attention, those who vote regularly, are following news about November's midterm election, or feel a civic duty to stay informed, are the ones most likely to say that issues have become "much more complicated" over the last decade. Nearly three-fourths of Americans find the health care law hard to understand. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)


Confused by the federal health care law? How about the debate over NSA surveillance? The way the Federal Reserve affects interest rates?

You're far from alone.

Most Americans say the issues facing the country are getting harder to fathom.

It's not just people who've tuned out politics who feel perplexed. Those paying attention — people who vote regularly, follow news about November's midterm election, or simply feel a civic duty to stay informed — are most likely to say that issues have become "much more complicated" over the last decade, an Associated Press-GfK poll shows.

Why are things such a muddle?

Karla Lynn of Lavaca, Arkansas, blames politicians who would rather snipe at each other than honestly explain the nation's problems in straightforward terms.

"They'll spin everything," said Lynn, 61, a retired product developer. "You've got to wade through so much muck to try to find the truth."

It's a big swamp to wade through.

David Stewart blames the deluge from social media, partisan blogs and 24-hour news sites for complicating things. At one time people would only see a news story about a violent group like the Islamic State, he said, but now they watch the militants' videos of beheadings online.

"People get a little overwhelmed by all the information about what's going on in the world," said Stewart, 40, a salesman at a home improvement store in Georgetown, Kentucky. The father of three said it takes time from an already busy life to go online and sort out "what's fluff, what's been engineered, and what's actually true and believable."

The issue that stumps Stewart most? President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. It can sound like a tragedy or a godsend, depending whether Republicans or Democrats are talking about it.

Nearly three-fourths of Americans find it difficult, according to the AP-GfK poll, and about 4 in 10 say it's "very hard" to understand.

One obvious reason: The law really is complex. Politicians even say so.

Republicans were condemning "Obamacare" as a regulatory morass even before it passed. When the federal website enrolling people crashed last year, Obama himself pointed to the enormous size of the undertaking. "It's complicated," he said. "It's hard."

Politicians do try to make issues sound simpler. They like to invoke your own family budget when talking about the national debt.

But in the AP-GfK poll, confidence in dealing with household problems didn't offer much help in understanding national matters. For example, most under age 30 said it's easy to protect your privacy and financial information online. But most young adults think it's hard to understand the National Security Agency's data collection programs. Americans over age 50 find both personal computer security and the NSA issue difficult.

The interest rates you pay? Wealthier people are more likely to find rates on personal loans easy to understand. But the poll shows no difference by income in comprehending the Fed's interest rate policy.

And then there are the international problems that ensnare the U.S.

In his speech to the United Nations last week, Obama spoke of terrorists in Iraq and Syria as the type of danger that threatens a faster-paced, interconnected world.

What began 13 years ago as a U.S. campaign to destroy al-Qaida has evolved into battles against numerous offshoots.

"Right now, in my estimation, the problems are much more variegated and much more complex and diffuse than they've ever been," said Bruce Hoffman, a Georgetown University historian who has studied terrorism for four decades.

Among Americans strongly interested in political news, nearly 6 in 10 say political issues facing the United States are "much more complicated" than a decade ago.

Of course, creating Medicare and waging the Cold War weren't easy, either.
Perhaps nostalgia blurs people's judgment of current troubls?

Sheila Suess Kennedy, director of the Indiana University Center for Civic Literacy, thinks there's more to it.

"Not only are we dealing with a more complex environment, we are dealing with a more ambiguous environment," Kennedy said. "People want 'this is good and this is bad.' Increasingly we live with 'there's black and there's white and there's a whole lot of gray.'"

The AP-GfK Poll was conducted July 24-28 using KnowledgePanel, GfK's probability-based online panel designed to be representative of the U.S. population. Results from online interviews with 1,044 adults have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

Respondents were first selected randomly using phone or mail survey methods, and later interviewed online. Some question wording used in this survey comes from the General Social Survey, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. People selected for KnowledgePanel who didn't otherwise have access to the Internet were provided with the ability to access the Internet at no cost.
 

Greed

Star
Registered
The Bacon Boom Was Not an Accident

The most important article I've read all year.

The Bacon Boom Was Not an Accident
By David Sax
October 06, 2014

If you are going to spend your entire life in the pork industry, you could scarcely hope for a better name than Joe Leathers. Leathers, who proudly inserts the nickname “Bacon Belly” between his first and last names, is now a retiree in Kansas City, Mo. But he has been a pig man since the beginning. “My whole career has revolved around the pork industry,” says Leathers, who was born in Austin, a southern Minnesota town where the pork-producing corporation Hormel (HRL) has been based since 1891. It’s where Spam was born. “If you didn’t work for Hormel, you didn’t work,” he says.

Leathers began at age 21, back in 1970, wielding a knife on the killing floor of Hormel’s giant slaughterhouse for three and a half years, dispatching and dismembering hogs into the bellies, chops, and loins Americans ate. Over his three and a half decades in the business, he sold pork, bought pork, marketed pork, and managed the people and the pigs at the core of the pork business. In all that time, nothing prepared Joe “Bacon Belly” Leathers for Bacon Mania.

In the past decade, bacon has grown into an industry generating more than $4 billion in annual sales. It has moved from a breakfast meat to a food trend touching an incredible array of consumer goods, both edible and not, from bacon-heavy fast-food burgers and bacon-infused desserts at fine dining restaurants to bottles of bacon-distilled vodka and even a sexual lubricant formulated to smell (and taste) like bacon. More than cupcakes, ramen, or kale, bacon has become the defining food trend of a society obsessed with food trends.

Food trucks, barely in existence prior to 2008, now employ tens of thousands and generate more than $2 billion in revenues. The rise of specialty coffee and the Starbuckification of most coffee drinkers has shifted the production of the entire coffee-growing business to Arabica beans. Greek yogurt has shot up from an ethnic outlier to the default yogurt, remaking the dairy case, while trendy craft beers have triggered a bull market in hops, doubling prices over the past 10 years.

In terms of economic impact, nothing beats bacon. While most food trends tend to trickle down from the gourmet market into the mouths of mass consumers, that wasn’t the case with bacon. Bacon mania was sparked not in the kitchens of fancy restaurants in New York or Chicago, but in the pork industry’s humble marketing offices in Iowa, where people like Joe Leathers engineered a turnaround for an underappreciated cut of pig.

Bacon has been a staple of the American diet since the first European settlers, but until recently it was consumed in a predictable, seasonal pattern. The bulk of sales came from home consumers, diners, and pancake houses, which fried it up along with eggs for breakfast. “For a long time bacon was sold 80 percent at retail and only 20 percent in food service,” says Leathers, who worked selling and marketing pork to both supermarkets and restaurants over the decades. In summer, sales would spike along with the annual tomato crop—peak season for Cobb salads, BLTs, and club sandwiches. When the tomatoes ran out by October, bacon retreated to the breakfast table till the next summer. The pork belly futures contract was born at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1961 as a result of this cycle: Farmers with an excess supply of pork bellies sold them to cold storage warehouses, thus locking in a price long before tomato season hit. Pork belly traders made money speculating on the spread between the price of bellies on those contracts and the price they got when they finally sold the frozen meat to a smokehouse, where it was made into bacon.

All of this changed in the 1980s when powerful health and diet trends transformed the American food industry. Based on evidence that saturated fat and cholesterol were at the core of everything from heart health and obesity to cancer rates, eating lean became the collective mantra, and the food world responded by marketing to fat phobia. Diet sodas became the rage, margarine replaced butter everywhere, and the words “Fat Free” could sell a car. Bacon, which is essentially two-thirds fat, was doomed. “First the fat scare began, and then the nitrate scare,” recalls Leathers. “That was big. That was really the first food scare. I’ll bet you bacon sales fell off 35-40 percent.”

“Pork took a real beating during that period of time,” says Stephen Gerike, director of food service marketing for the National Pork Board, a trade association in Des Moines, and a former colleague of Leathers’. The pork industry’s response to fat phobia was to try to latch onto the popularity of ultralean boneless-skinless chicken breasts, then the darling of the meat case. “The emergence of boneless-skinless chicken breast on the market, well, it hadn’t really existed before that,” says Gerike. “Boneless-skinless breast was a phenomenon of the ’80s. That’s why we came out with our ‘Pork: The Other White Meat’ campaign.”

The Pork Marketing Board worked with advertising and marketing firms to position the pig as a sort of four-legged chicken—a healthy part of any low-fat lifestyle. The Other White Meat campaign launched in 1987 and was so successful at selling lean pork cuts, it actually hurt the rest of the pig. “The parts of the pig that were not white, middle meat, suffered from that period of time,” Gerike says. “Bacon was the big victim.” Bacon was sacrificed for the good of the hog, as producers chased the lean diet trend by drawing a line from pork loin to chicken breasts. “The common wisdom at the time was that the big guys would continue to market, sell bacon,” says Robin Kline, who worked with the Pork Board for more than a decade and now runs Savvy Food Communications in Des Moines. “But for the good of the entire industry, moving all the rest of that lean product was really what we defined as our job for the pork industry.”

As warehouses accumulated unwanted piles of frozen pork bellies, prices dropped, dipping as low as 19¢ per pound. The U.S. government encouraged meatpackers to sell bellies as a cheap export to the Soviet Union and as food aid to impoverished African states. “I was on a trade mission to sell bellies to Poland,” Leathers says. “We just had freezers full of bellies. There was such little demand that the U.S. was literally giving them away.”

No one in the pork business even dared mention bacon’s name. It was porcine non grata. Tim Maiers of the Illinois Pork Producers Association characterized the pork belly as a “drag on the carcass” at the time. Because the belly was the largest single cut on the pig, the corresponding price of hogs slumped, and farmers tried to salvage what they could from leaner loins and chops by breeding thinner, more muscular pigs.

By the end of the 1990s, pork farmers were hurting and began vocally pushing their industry representatives to do something, anything, to stir up demand for bellies. “Honestly, all of us marketing folks at the Pork Board were still wearing our narrow lean, lean, lean hats and talking about the Other White Meat,” Kline says. “But we had industry members saying, ‘You know, we’re getting a lot of sizzle around bacon out there. Shouldn’t we be talking about it?’ We all kind of get tunnel vision, and some of us marketing folks got really paranoid about it. We were talking about the Other White Meat. We didn’t want to jump on the fat side of things.”

A few Pork Board marketers, who worked with companies on the food service side of the industry (as opposed to retail), figured it couldn’t hurt to at least try to kick-start bacon sales. They came up with a plan to reposition bacon as a “flavor enhancer” to the restaurant industry, because there was a greater chance of diners accepting bacon when they ate out.

The desire was there. For years, fast-food outlets had been offering extra-lean burgers and sandwiches. At the same time, they were responding to the increased liability from food poisoning lawsuits (especially after the deadly 1993 E. coli outbreak at Jack in the Box) by cooking all their burgers to well done. Lean hamburgers tended to taste like dry cardboard. “Remember when McDonald’s came out with the McLean? Well, that was a flop. It was a burger that had zero flavor,” says Leathers. “Now, if they were to put bacon on that, it would have been a huge success.” Adding a single slice of bacon to those sandwiches not only improved the taste and mouthfeel by multiples, but bacon’s low cost meant that they could be sold at a premium, tacking a healthy profit margin—Leathers estimates 50 percent to 60 percent—onto burgers.

The first chain to do this was Hardee’s, which at the time had a much larger share of the market than it does today. Larry Cizek, the retired head of food service marketing at the Pork Board, remembers sitting poolside in Orlando at an industry conference in the early ’90s, having a drink with Bob Autry, then president of Hardee’s. Cizek was complaining about trying to get restaurants interested in bacon, because everyone wanted lean products. “Well,” Cizek recalls Autry saying, “everyone says that you have to have the lean stuff on your menu, but by God, I only sell three, four lean sandwiches a day!” Cizek began telling Autry about the Sisyphean task of trying to move pork bellies, and Autry said, “I’m gonna come up with a sandwich with grease dropping down their chin and we’ll see what they say!”

The answer came in 1992, with the debut of the Hardee’s Frisco Burger, a line of sandwiches featuring bacon. It was to be a momentous event for fast food, and bacon’s fate, in America. “That’s the first time a chain ever put bacon on everything. It was tremendously successful,” says Cizek. “People would buy it, regardless of health cares. It just went.”

The rest of the industry watched Hardee’s bacon-driven success with growing interest, but wasn’t ready to jump in. “Hardee’s bacon offerings didn’t kick off any groundswell in the industry,” says Paul Perfilio, the Pork Board’s national marketing manager. “It set them apart with customers and they had quite a following. Other chains tried it through the 1990s—[Burger King], Jack in the Box, Arby’s. But it was all limited time offers. It never really stuck.” The main reason was that Hardee’s prepared bacon by cooking it from raw in each location, something larger chains were hesitant to do. Bacon created smoke, and tons of grease that could burn, coat every surface, and take up space in cumbersome traps, which had to be cleaned and the grease disposed of daily. The restaurant chains wanted bacon; they just wanted it without the costly mess.

In response, the Pork Board and its members began funding research to find the easiest, cleanest way to get bacon into more fast-food chains. Perfilio traces the origins of precooked bacon to the Department of Defense in the 1960s, and a man named Howard Dunham, who worked for the pork-producing giant Swift. This was simply bacon cooked, wrapped in paper, and sealed in a can. What the bacon folks were looking for in the ’90s was something a bit more sophisticated and simpler. “Unfortunately, these precooked bacon products were cooked in tunnel-driven microwave ovens,” says Perfilio. “When that happens, you start to lose flavor in reheating it. Everybody went to this stuff, but the volume was never consistent, because the consumer really didn’t care about having a sandwich with precooked bacon. They just wanted a sandwich with bacon that tasted good.”

The early 1990s was a time of great advancements in precooked bacon technology. Pork producers, food labs, and agricultural schools such as Iowa State University began investing substantially in precooked R&D. Hormel and Swift worked on microwaveable precooked slices for home consumers, while Chicago’s OSI and the now-defunct Wilson Foods poured their efforts into bacon spirals that would fit perfectly atop a hamburger, a neat solution that clients like McDonald’s (MCD) required before they adopted the meat widely.

The Pork Board lobbied restaurant chains to develop bacon-based menu items, and subsidized recipe development and market research. Some of these were wild shots. Leathers recalls a prototype for Burger King (BKW) that was a fried pork patty (almost like a giant pork nugget) topped with bacon, which died in the final stages of corporate recipe testing. “We followed the old rule ‘Keep It Simple,’” Leathers says, noting that while they occasionally played around with ideas like “bacon balls” or “deep-fried bacon strips,” the Pork Board directed its efforts toward having restaurants “put it on a burger.” Though the money spent by the National Pork Board on this effort was relatively small—a few hundred thousand dollars, spread over a decade, by one estimate—the investment paid off better than anyone could have imagined. “McDonald’s had more positive influence for the turnaround of bacon when they started adding it to sandwiches” such as the Bacon Double Cheeseburger and Quarter Pounder BLT, says Leathers. “Man, if you put two, three strips of bacon on their sandwiches, that’s a ton of bacon.”

“There started to be more of an awakening of the marketing departments of a lot of restaurant chains to offer more indulgent products,” says Perfilio. “Portions got bigger in everything. Fast-food chains saw they could offer a number of different sandwiches with not only bacon as a topper, but all kinds of other things. Around 2000 is when bacon became the third condiment behind salt and pepper.”

Burger King unleashed a Whopper with bacon, Wendy’s (WEN) shot back with the Baconator, and then the whole industry went all in. “It went from putting bacon on a cheeseburger to adding bacon as an a la carte item,” says Maiers, of the Illinois Pork Producers. Today, more than two-thirds of American restaurants offer at least one dish with bacon.

Quickly, the fortunes of the lowly pork belly improved. “I can tell you that it does not take much of a change to materially affect the cost of the product,” says Steve Nichol, a meat trader with Midwest Premier Foods in Iowa. He notes that the impact of a single fast-food chain adding a slice of bacon to one sandwich on the menu was enough to kick pork belly demand into high gear. “When chains like Burger King and McDonald’s started really adding [bacon] to sandwiches on a regular basis, that’s when the market changed for the product. It went from being a very, very cyclical item to something that was consistent and growing. … If you increase demand of the product by just one-tenth of 1 percent, you push the price up much higher.” Pork bellies, long dormant, began moving up in price, from under 30¢ per pound in 1989, to almost a dollar in 2006. Sensing this momentum, the National Pork Board began using the catchphrase, “Bacon Makes It Better.”

The trend, which was still largely confined to hamburger chains, began to branch out. Though chefs had been wrapping tenderloins and scallops in bacon for years, a new generation led by Mario Batali and David Chang began openly praising pork belly and featuring it in dishes that drew tremendous media attention. Other chefs put bacon into cookies and jams, each new menu appearance inviting more praise, attention, and sales. Burger King will top your Whopper with as many strips of bacon as you can afford (someone in Japan ordered 1,050) and sell you a bacon ice cream sundae for dessert. Denny’s (DENN) introduced an all-bacon Baconalia menu in 2011, featuring BBQ Bacon Mac ’n Cheese Bites and other dishes that were really just piles of bacon with some other ingredients. Baconalia was such a hit, South Park made fun of it.

The Internet, which was being conquered by Facebook and Twitter and the foodie blogosphere, devoured the bacon trend like a hungry dog. Some sites focused on selling “I ♥ Bacon” T-shirts and bacon bandages and other sundries, while others became forums for macho doomsday bacon recipes, with home chefs competing over how many pounds of bacon they could wrap and stuff around and inside another food object. Publishers handed out bacon book deals. There was a cable show called United States of Bacon.

All of this trickled down to the meat case in the average supermarket. Sales of good old-fashioned bacon increased dramatically, and vastly more variety appeared in the form of brands, cuts, flavors, and sizes. “Before, you could hardly find it,” says Leathers, who remembers his reaction to looking at the bacon aisle in a supermarket recently. “‘God, this is amazing how much linear footage is devoted to bacon.’ It’s high profit for a retailer. [Bacon has a] long shelf life, and it turns fast. You don’t see that with bologna, sausages, and ham. You see it with bacon.” By 2008, bacon had completed its journey from an ignored, unwanted meat to a viral meme—the edible equivalent of cat videos. That year, according to the website Babycenter, 11 out of every million babies born in America were named Bacon.

With each bacon lovers festival and Bacon baby conceived with bacon-flavored lube, the price of pork belly futures rose. At one point in 2010, futures jumped from 90¢ per pound to a record $1.40 in just four months. Bacon prices rose from about $3 a pound in 2005 to around $5.40 today, according to government statistics.

This incessant demand drained the volatility out of the pork belly futures market, and trading on belly contracts slowed to a trickle. In 2012, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange ceased the trade in pork belly contracts, due to lack of volume. The shouts of the belly pit, where broad-chested men once made great fortunes on fatty pig parts, fell silent. “[Bacon’s] the reason the market died,” says Steve Meyer, president of Paragon Economics, a market research firm specializing in the pork business. “That market had a well-deserved reason for volatility. It was a speculators playground because it was so vulnerable. As the volatility shrank, the volume of the trades shrank.”

Despite frequent cries that we have reached peak bacon, the trend now looks like a permanent shift in dining habits. Sales in the U.S. are still growing about 10 percent a year, according to Marketresearch.com, a grocery industry website. That rate can’t continue—there is such a thing as too much bacon, even for Americans—and consumption will settle down at some point, maybe even decline some. Health concerns could flare up again, or pork belly prices could rise above $2 a pound.

Bacon, in Joe Leathers’s opinion, is just too useful and tasty to die. “It’s great in soup, sandwiches, salads, with eggs, you can wrap it around a roast or onions,” he says. “People just realized that. But I just wonder if people fully understand whether bacon is related to pork.” He ponders a moment. “I doubt it.”

http://www.businessweek.com/article...y-americas-favorite-food-mania-happened#r=rss
 

TheDynasty

Certified Genius
BGOL Investor
The stock market is not a good barometer of the overall health of the economy. Commodities are better predictors than stocks.. Copper, oil, gold, etc.. Matter of fact, the decline of Oil is a predictor that we're heading into a period of deflation, even though I think there's manipulation behind it. If Oil stays low like this.. It's going to hurt ALOT of people.
 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
The stock market is not a good barometer of the overall health of the economy. Commodities are better predictors than stocks.. Copper, oil, gold, etc.. Matter of fact, the decline of Oil is a predictor that we're heading into a period of deflation, even though I think there's manipulation behind it. If Oil stays low like this.. It's going to hurt ALOT of people.

. If Oil stays low like this.. It's going to hurt ALOT of people.

Sure will!


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Greed

Star
Registered
As prices fall at the pump, some U.S. lawmakers eye gas tax hike

Sure will!


chevron-shell-BP-exxonMobil-gas.jpg


kochbrothers.jpg
wall-street.jpg

saudi_princes.jpg
Typical short-sightedness. Enjoy your bipartisanship.


As prices fall at the pump, some U.S. lawmakers eye gas tax hike
Reuters
By Susan Cornwell and Timothy Gardner
January 7, 2015 6:26 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As U.S. gasoline prices plunge to the lowest level in more than five years, some U.S. lawmakers see a golden opportunity to bump up taxes at the pump to help pay for the repair of crumbling roads and bridges.

Fuel taxes have been flat for more than 20 years, starving the Highway Trust Fund of revenue used for rising infrastructure repair costs. Lawmakers have fueled the fund with last-minute short-term injections of cash, but want to find a more permanent fix.

Last July, before a similar deadline, Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee and Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut proposed raising federal gasoline and diesel taxes by 12 cents a gallon over two years from the current 18.4 cents.

The idea failed to take hold, for the same reason similar proposals failed in the past: the idea of raising taxes on consumers has been anathema to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, particularly for conservatives who have signed pledges not to hike taxes.

Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, the new chairman of the Senate Environment Committee, said on Wednesday a gasoline tax, or "user fee," as he prefers to call it, was one of the measures "on the table" as his panel works on a new transportation bill this year.

But Inhofe stopped short of supporting such a fee. He said it was unlikely the measure could gain enough support for the Senate to pass it soon. Even if it did, fuel prices could be on their way up by the time legislation passes, he said.

Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said he favored increasing the gas tax but that it should be coupled with relief for consumers through tax credits or other means.

"I think now's the time to do it, but we ought to do it in a thoughtful way," Durbin told reporters.

President Barack Obama has said he wants to work with Republicans to fund infrastructure through a corporate tax reform package. The White House has made clear Obama is not advocating an increase in the gasoline tax but is willing to look at it if there is a groundswell of support for the move.

Obama told business leaders last month he would talk to Republican leaders to see whether proposals for a gas tax hike "have any legs," but he acknowledged that "votes on a gas tax are really tough" for lawmakers.

http://news.yahoo.com/u-senates-no-2-democrats-favors-increase-gas-210423100--business.html
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
Re: As prices fall at the pump, some U.S. lawmakers eye gas tax hike


A new year, a warming economy


With the US economy growing faster than it has in more than a decade,
the recovery may finally be broadening to include Main Street America.



122414USeconomyheatsup_standard_600x400.jpg


As 2015 is about to dawn, the US economy is starting to heat up.

Really heat up.


And, just as importantly, the benefits of that improving economy may finally be beginning to reach beyond those who were already well-off.

Among the year-end economic good news:

  • The US economy grew at a 5 percent rate in the third quarter of 2014, improving on an already robust 4.6 rate the previous quarter. It was the best rate of growth in 11 years, including several years before the 2008 recession.

  • The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the broader S&P 500 hit all-time highs Dec. 23, with the Dow crossing the 18,000 mark for the first time ever. The benefits of rising stock prices extend beyond the wealthy into the lives of millions of middle-class Americans, who hold stock funds in their IRA or 401k retirement plans.

  • The price of oil is down some 46 percent since its June peak of around $115 per barrel. That’s pushed gasoline prices dramatically lower – and analysts now predict they’ll stay down in 2015. The average driver will save about $550 on gasoline next year, down about 20 percent from this year, according to government forecasts.

  • American consumers are more optimistic about the economy than anytime in the past eight years, according to an index monitored by the University of Michigan.

While that good news gives reason for gratitude, the economic upswing still must broaden if it is to improve the lives of all Americans. The wealth gap in the US today between upper-income families and the middle class is the widest in 30 years, according to a December report from the Pew Research Center. The median net worth of upper-income families is nearly 70 times that of lower-income families in the US, also the widest margin in 30 years, the center found.

But the surging economy now may be poised to reach deeper into the US workforce.

"There is a positive feedback loop going on,” says economic analyst Mike Jakeman. "Job creation is running at the strongest rate for 15 years. More people in work means more income, which means more private spending, which means more business investment, which means more hiring."

In addition, many low-income Americans will be getting a modest income boost in 2015. Millions of retirees will see a 1.7 percent bump in their Social Security checks beginning in January, as a cost-of-living adjustment kicks in. And many who work for the minimum wage, such as those at fast-food and retail chains, could see their incomes rise too: Twenty-one states are scheduled to raise their minimum wages in early 2015.

In the dawning new year the US will inherent many unsolved problems, such as the need for healing of racial mistrust and bitterness. A better economy can actually provide part of the solution. Joblessness and poverty are among the underlying causes of many social frictions, which often improve as economic prospects brighten.

The economy today is far from perfect. But, all in all, it represents the best economic news for Americans for many a new year.


http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2014/1224/A-new-year-a-warming-economy



 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
Re: As prices fall at the pump, some U.S. lawmakers eye gas tax hike

Typical short-sightedness. Enjoy your bipartisanship.


As prices fall at the pump, some U.S. lawmakers eye gas tax hike
Reuters
By Susan Cornwell and Timothy Gardner
January 7, 2015 6:26 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As U.S. gasoline prices plunge to the lowest level in more than five years, some U.S. lawmakers see a golden opportunity to bump up taxes at the pump to help pay for the repair of crumbling roads and bridges.

Fuel taxes have been flat for more than 20 years, starving the Highway Trust Fund of revenue used for rising infrastructure repair costs. Lawmakers have fueled the fund with last-minute short-term injections of cash, but want to find a more permanent fix.

Last July, before a similar deadline, Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee and Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut proposed raising federal gasoline and diesel taxes by 12 cents a gallon over two years from the current 18.4 cents.

The idea failed to take hold, for the same reason similar proposals failed in the past: the idea of raising taxes on consumers has been anathema to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, particularly for conservatives who have signed pledges not to hike taxes.

Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, the new chairman of the Senate Environment Committee, said on Wednesday a gasoline tax, or "user fee," as he prefers to call it, was one of the measures "on the table" as his panel works on a new transportation bill this year.

But Inhofe stopped short of supporting such a fee. He said it was unlikely the measure could gain enough support for the Senate to pass it soon. Even if it did, fuel prices could be on their way up by the time legislation passes, he said.

Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said he favored increasing the gas tax but that it should be coupled with relief for consumers through tax credits or other means.

"I think now's the time to do it, but we ought to do it in a thoughtful way," Durbin told reporters.

President Barack Obama has said he wants to work with Republicans to fund infrastructure through a corporate tax reform package. The White House has made clear Obama is not advocating an increase in the gasoline tax but is willing to look at it if there is a groundswell of support for the move.

Obama told business leaders last month he would talk to Republican leaders to see whether proposals for a gas tax hike "have any legs," but he acknowledged that "votes on a gas tax are really tough" for lawmakers.

http://news.yahoo.com/u-senates-no-2-democrats-favors-increase-gas-210423100--business.html


]Typical short-sightedness.
:lol::lol:

You have got to take your comedy show on the road!


Are you more comfortable with the cost of buying gasoline going to the already obscene oil corporate profits or tax revenue?
 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
source: USA Today


Saudi prince: $100-a-barrel oil 'never' again


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Saudi billionaire owner of Kingdom Holding Company Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, center left, speaks to the media during a press conference in Obhor on Nov. 4 2014.

Saudi billionaire businessman Prince Alwaleed bin Talal told me we will not see $100-a-barrel oil again. The plunge in oil prices has been one of the biggest stories of the year. And while cheap gasoline is good for consumers, the negative impact of a 50% decline in oil has been wide and deep, especially for major oil producers such as Saudi Arabia and Russia. Even oil-producing Texas has felt a hit. The astute investor and prince of the Saudi royal family spoke to me exclusively last week as prices spiraled below $50 a barrel. He also predicted the move would dampen what has been one of the big U.S. growth stories: the shale revolution. In fact, in the last two weeks, several major rig operators said they had received early cancellation notices for rig contracts. Companies apparently would rather pay to cancel rig agreements than keep drilling at these prices. His royal highness, who has been critical of Saudi Arabia's policies that have allowed prices to fall, called the theory of a plan to hurt Russian President Putin with cheap oil "baloney" and said the sharp sell-off has put the Saudis "in bed" with the Russians. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: Can you explain Saudi Arabia's strategy in terms of not cutting oil production?

A: Saudi Arabia and all of the countries were caught off guard. No one anticipated it was going to happen. Anyone who says they anticipated this 50% drop (in price) is not saying the truth.


Because the minister of oil in Saudi Arabia just in July publicly said $100 is a good price for consumers and producers. And less than six months later, the price of oil collapses 50%.


Having said that, the decision to not reduce production was prudent, smart and shrewd. Because had Saudi Arabia cut its production by 1 or 2 million barrels, that 1 or 2 million would have been produced by others. Which means Saudi Arabia would have had two negatives, less oil produced, and lower prices. So, at least you got slammed and slapped on the face from one angle, which is the reduction of the price of oil, but not the reduction of production.


Q: So this is about not losing market share?


A: Yes. Although I am in full disagreement with the Saudi government, and the minister of oil, and the minister of finance on most aspects, on this particular incident I agree with the Saudi government of keeping production where it is.


Q: What is moving prices? Is this a supply or a demand story? Some say there's too much oil in the world, and that is pressuring prices. But others say the global economy is slow, so it's weak demand.

A: It is both. We have an oversupply. Iraq right now is producing very much. Even in Libya, where they have civil war, they are still producing. The U.S. is now producing shale oil and gas. So, there's oversupply in the market. But also demand is weak. We all know Japan is hovering around 0% growth. China said that they'll grow 6% or 7%. India's growth has been cut in half. Germany acknowledged just two months ago they will cut the growth potential from 2% to 1%. There's less demand, and there's oversupply. And both are recipes for a crash in oil. And that's what happened. It's a no-brainer.


Q: Will prices continue to fall?

A: If supply stays where it is, and demand remains weak, you better believe it is gonna go down more. But if some supply is taken off the market, and there's some growth in demand, prices may go up. But I'm sure we're never going to see $100 anymore. I said a year ago, the price of oil above $100 is artificial. It's not correct.


Q: Wow. And you said you are in agreement with the Saudi government to not give up market share?

A: This is the only point I'm agreeing with the Saudi Arabian government on oil. That's the only point, yes.


Q: Should the Saudis cut production if they get an agreement with other oil producing countries to take oil off the market?

A: Frankly speaking, to get all OPEC countries to approve and accept it, including Russia and Iran, and everybody else, is almost impossible You can never have an agreement whereby everybody cuts production. We can't trust all OPEC countries. And can't trust the non-OPEC countries. So it's not on the table because the others will cheat. The past has proven that. When Saudi Arabia cut production in the '80s and '90s, everybody cheated and took market share from us. Plus, remember there is an agenda here also. Although Saudi Arabia and OPEC countries did not engineer the reduction in the price of oil, there's a positive side effect, whereby at a certain price, we will see how many shale oil production companies run out of business. So although we are caught off guard by this, we are capitalizing on this matter whereby we'll live with $50 temporarily, to see how much new supply there will be, because this will render many new projects economically unfeasible.


Q: What about the theory of the pressure on the Russians? There's a theory that the U.S. and the Saudis have agreed to keep prices low to pressure Russia because of what Putin has done in Ukraine.


A: Two words: baloney and rubbish. I'm telling you, there's no way Saudis will do this. Because Saudi Arabia is hurting as much as Russia, period. Now, we don't show it because of our big reserves. But I'll tell you Saudi Arabia and Russia are in bed together here. And both are being hurt simultaneously. And there's no political conspiracy whatsoever against Russia. Because we are shooting ourselves in the foot if we do that.


Q: You said the price of oil will dampen the shale revolution in America. How?

A: Shale oil and shale gas, these are new products in the market. And we see big ranges. no one knows for sure what price is the breaking point for shale. Wells have a higher production cost. And very clearly these will run out of business, or at least not be economical. At $50, will it still be economically feasible? Unclear. This is a very much developing story.


Q: Some people believe this crash in oil will create a lot of new mergers in the energy industry. Do you agree?

A: No doubt about that. For sure there'll be a lot of consolidation in the market. Because many small and medium-sized companies can't afford this. Because they are very much dependent on the price of oil. Big companies like Exxon and Chevron are weathering the oil market crash because they are integrated vertically. But no doubt there'll be some mergers and acquisitions coming in one to two years.


Q: Let me switch to the terrorism in Paris. Terrorists killed the cartoonist who joked about the prophet Mohammed. What is your opinion on this?

A: What took place is a horrendous crime that no one can permit and accept. And unfortunately these small minority people are ruining the name of Islam. Now the whole world — Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists — have to come together and be united, and be sure to eliminate those minority of the Muslim community. Those that hijacked our religion and try to eliminate them not only militarily. That's happening right now against ISIS (the Islamic State) by the Americans and their allies. But also mentally, educationally and culturally, also. This is a disease we are getting at now. This really will put us in the Middle Ages unfortunately. It feels like the Middle Ages right now. But I think that the world is united. I just heard, for example, (U.S. Secretary of State) John Kerry giving a speech in French, which was very nice of him to do. It was a calming process for the French people. My foundation is in communication with the presidential palace in France and the French government, to see what we can do to ... (support) these families and these victims, innocent victims that were under attack. And then we have to show that Islam really is united with Christianity, and Judaism, and other religions in the world to limit this disease from from Earth.


Q: Back to finance. Interest rates have gone down. The 10-year yield dropped below 2%. The Federal Reserve ended quantitative easing. But markets seem to be thinking the other way, that rates are going lower.

A: You are talking about the last two weeks. And remember, the last two weeks were a Saudi panic situation, price of oil collapsing. The stock market collapsing. So don't use this as the barometer indicator, the last two weeks. This was a panic situation. The Fed is navigating rates higher slowly.


Q: The stock market started the year off with heavy selling. What about some of your other investments, in media, banking and in technology? Such as Twitter or jd.com. Would you put new money to work in this market today?

A: Clearly the year began with a sell-off because there are so many events that came together. People are taking profits because 2014 was very good. And also, they had this oil crisis, whereby everyone was caught off guard by this major crash in the price of oil. But I think the U.S. economy is doing really very well. Especially relative to the rest of the world. The big question right now is what happens to Germany. Because Germany really is the anchor of all Europe. Also, Japan, and India, and China. These are the three major countries that the world depends on. So, there are opportunities. But also many risks here. If Japan, China, India and Germany improve 1% or 2%, this would be a major improvement for growth globally.


Q: Do you think the European Central Bank should come up with stimulus?
A: There's a struggle right now between ECB President Mario Draghi, who is pushing for a stimulus, and Angela Merkel of Germany, who is worried about having inflation. We're seeing a clash over there between these two ideas. But I think that Draghi is preparing the market for a stimulus. Yes.
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
<iframe width="900" height="1500" src="http://www.factcheck.org/2015/01/obamas-numbers-january-2015-update/" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 

Greed

Star
Registered
Re: As prices fall at the pump, some U.S. lawmakers eye gas tax hike

:lol::lol:

You have got to take your comedy show on the road!


Are you more comfortable with the cost of buying gasoline going to the already obscene oil corporate profits or tax revenue?
Oil profits aren't obscene, your government subsidies of those oil profits are obscene.

Besides, your assertion was only the rich like the Kochs and Saudis would be hurt by falling oil prices. Well, the government you voted for doesn't agree with your assessment. Maybe they took a different Econ 101 class.
 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
Re: As prices fall at the pump, some U.S. lawmakers eye gas tax hike

Oil profits aren't obscene, your government subsidies of those oil profits are obscene.

Besides, your assertion was only the rich like the Kochs and Saudis would be hurt by falling oil prices. Well, the government you voted for doesn't agree with your assessment. Maybe they took a different Econ 101 class.


Oil profits aren't obscene,
:lol:Typical.

Besides, your assertion was only the rich like the Kochs and Saudis would be hurt by falling oil prices.
My heart bleeds!

If you have become dependent on the oil speculation of the last 15 years and now are afraid that the cash cow is now going to dry up, too bad!

The oil based economy has fuck up the world.

We did have a more stable and less warlike world before the Bush/Cheney and the corporatists regime decided that oil was going to be the thing the economy was based on.

And you constantly pushing the right wing meme of Obama wars, Obama drones have finally exposed yourself as supporting these wars by defending the very reason why Bush/Cheney and the corporatists have created these wars.

Well, the government you voted for doesn't agree with your assessment.
But I do vote.

Unlike the bitching and moaning by the sideliners.


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thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
Sorry to disappoint you, but check this out.


source: USA Today


28 states now average sub-$2 a gallon gasoline



Sub-$2 gasoline is a reality in 28 states.

The national average for regular-grade gasoline is $2.05 a gallon, down from $2.13 last week, $2.45 in mid-December and $3.29 in January 2014, according to gasbuddy.com and the AAA.

Gas prices - which some forecasters expect to soon average below $2 in the continental U.S. - have slid in tandem with the prolonged slump in global crude prices, down 60% since mid-2014 on surging production and slowing demand.

Monday, benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude fell 1.17 to $47.52 a barrel and Brent crude dropped $1.30 to $48.87 on word that Iraq's daily output hit 4 million barrels a day in December, its highest ever. Separately, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said his country has no plans to cut production. A forecast by investment bank J.P. Morgan that Brent crude would average $49 a barrel this year also dampened prices.

U.S. consumers are likely to continue benefiting.

Tom Kloza, senior analyst for the Oil Price Information Service, expects gas prices to average $2.45 for the year, slashing the nation's gasoline bill $120 billion from 2014's $460.5 billion.

Cheapest metropolitan area: Kansas City, Mo., at $1.67 a gallon. Missouri also boasts the nation's lowest average price, now $1.76. How other sub-$2 states stack up:

Oklahoma: $1.76
Kansas: $1.79
Texas: $1.83
New Mexico: $1.85
Colorado, Idaho and South Carolina: $1.87
Louisiana: $1.88
Mississippi: $1.89
Tennessee: $1.90
Arkansas, Michigan: $1.91
Arizona, South Dakota, Alabama: $1.92
Iowa: $1.93
Nebraska, Utah: $1.94
Wisconsin: $1.85
Minnesota, Indiana, New Jersey: $1.97
Virginia, Ohio, North Dakota, Wyoming: Georgia: $1.99
 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
Remember when the right wingers/Conservatives claimed that President Obama was cooking the books. Where have they been during the so called Trump economic boom numbers?
 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
source: Business Insider




American billionaires have gotten half a trillion richer during the pandemic, but the country's racial wealth gap has grown, too

Taylor Nicole Rogers
Jun 4, 2020, 1:08 PM

5ed921623ad8617da10ba245

The net worths of Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Tesla's Elon Musk, and Zoom's Eric Yuan have grown by billions since March.

 
Top