In most cases, mining tar sands involves drilling two horizontal wells, one above the other, into the bitumen layer; injecting massive gouts of high-pressure steam and solvents into the top well, liquefying the bitumen; sucking up the melted bitumen as it drips into the sand around the lower well; and then refining the bitumen into “synthetic crude oil.”
A new form of European union - FT.com - 1 views
What If We Never Run Out of Oil? - Charles C. Mann - The Atlantic - 0 views
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Economists sometimes describe a fuel in terms of its energy return on energy invested (EROEI), a measure of how much energy must be used up to acquire, process, and deliver the fuel in a useful form. OPEC oil, for example, is typically estimated to have an EROEI of 12 to 18, which means that 12 to 18 barrels of oil are produced at the wellhead for every barrel of oil consumed during their production. In this calculation, tar sands look awful: they have an EROEI of 4 to 7. (Steaming out the bitumen also requires a lot of water. Environmentalists ask, with some justification, where it all is going to come from.)
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To obtain shale gas, companies first dig wells that reach down thousands of feet. Then, with the absurd agility of anime characters, the drills wriggle sideways to bore thousands of feet more through methane-bearing shale. Once in place, the well injects high-pressure water into the stone, creating hairline cracks. The water is mixed with chemicals and “proppant,” particles of sand or ceramic that help keep the cracks open once they have formed. Gas trapped between layers of shale seeps past the proppant and rises through the well to be collected.
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Q&A: a third way for Greece in the form of a parallel currency - FT.com - 0 views
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June 15, 2015 2:00 pm DownloadQ&A: a third way for Greece in the form of a parallel currency
Rise of the Robots - NYTimes.com - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Search Rise of the Robots
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The most valuable part of each computer, a motherboard loaded with microprocessors and memory, is already largely made with robots, according to my colleague Quentin Hardy. People do things like fitting in batteries and snapping on screens.
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Robots mean that labor costs don’t matter much, so you might as well locate in advanced countries with large markets and good infrastructure (which may soon not include us, but that’s another issue)
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The Eurozone's Delayed Reckoning by Nouriel Roubini - Project Syndicate - 0 views
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For starters, the European Central Bank’s “outright monetary transactions” program has been incredibly effective: interest-rate spreads for Spain and Italy have fallen by about 250 basis points, even before a single euro has been spent to purchase government bonds.
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The introduction of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which provides another €500 billion ($650 billion) to be used to backstop banks and sovereigns, has also helped, as has European leaders’ recognition that a monetary union alone is unstable and incomplete, requiring deeper banking, fiscal, economic, and political integration.
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But, perhaps most important, Germany’s attitude toward the eurozone in general, and Greece in particular, has changed. German officials now understand that, given extensive trade and financial links, a disorderly eurozone hurts not just the periphery but the core.
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Fear of Fracking by Jeffrey Frankel - Project Syndicate - 0 views
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CAMBRIDGE – Against all expectations, US emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, since peaking in 2007, have fallen by 12% as of 2012, back to 1995 levels. The primary reason, in a word, is “fracking.”
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Just ten years ago, the natural-gas industry was so sure that domestic production was reaching its limit that it made large investments in terminals to import liquefied natural gas (LNG). Yet fracking has increased supply so rapidly that these facilities are now being converted to export LNG.
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Natural gas emits only half as much CO2 as coal, and occupies a rapidly increasing share of electricity generation – up 37% since 2007, while coal’s share has plummeted by 25%.
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Big Banks' Tall Tales by Simon Johnson - Project Syndicate - 0 views
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In the second narrative, the world’s largest banks remain too big to manage and have strong incentives to engage in precisely the kind of excessive risk-taking that can bring down economies. Last year’s “London Whale” trading losses at JPMorgan Chase are a case in point. And, according to this narrative’s advocates, almost all big banks display symptoms of chronic mismanagement.
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But a great myth lurks at the heart of the financial industry’s argument that all is well. The FDIC’s resolution powers will not work for large, complex cross-border financial enterprises. The reason is simple: US law can create a resolution authority that works only within national boundaries. Addressing potential failure at a firm like Citigroup would require a cross-border agreement between governments and all responsible agencies.
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I had the opportunity to talk with senior officials and their advisers from various countries, including from Europe. I asked all of them the same question: When will we have a binding framework for cross-border resolution?CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe answers typically ranged from “not in our lifetimes” to “never.” Again, the reason is simple: countries do not want to compromise their sovereignty or tie their hands in any way.
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Read, I, Pencil | Library of Economics and Liberty - 0 views
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Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me.
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Not much meets the eye—there's some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, a bit of metal, and an eraser.
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a cedar of straight grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon
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" Articles EconLog EconTalk Books Encyclopedia Guides Search "I, Pencil: My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read" A selected essay reprint Home | Books | Read | Selected essay reprint Read, Leonard E. (1898-1983) BIO Display paragraphs in this essay containing: Search essay Editor/Trans. First Pub. Date Dec. 1958 Publisher/Edition Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. Pub. Date 1999 Comments Pamphlet PRINT EMAIL CITE COPYRIGHT Start PREVIOUS 4 of 5 NEXT End "
Why We Lie - WSJ.com - 0 views
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"I was amazed at how quickly and easily this guy was able to open the door," Peter said. The locksmith told him that locks are on doors only to keep honest people honest. One percent of people will always be honest and never steal. Another 1% will always be dishonest and always try to pick your lock and steal your television; locks won't do much to protect you from the hardened thieves, who can get into your house if they really want to. The purpose of locks, the locksmith said, is to protect you from the 98% of mostly honest people who might be tempted to try your door if it had no lock.
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What we have found, in a nutshell: Everybody has the capacity to be dishonest, and almost everybody cheats—just by a little. Except for a few outliers at the top and bottom, the behavior of almost everyone is driven by two opposing motivations. On the one hand, we want to benefit from cheating and get as much money and glory as possible; on the other hand, we want to view ourselves as honest, honorable people. Sadly, it is this kind of small-scale mass cheating, not the high-profile cases, that is most corrosive to society.
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It has shown rather conclusively that cheating does not correspond to the traditional, rational model of human behavior—that is, the idea that people simply weigh the benefits (say, money) against the costs (the possibility of getting caught and punished) and act accordingly.
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European Banks Unprepared for Pandora's Box of Greek Exit (Bloomberg) - 0 views
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Lenders in Germany, France and the U.K. had $1.19 trillion of claims on those four nations at the end of 2011, Bank for International Settlements data show.
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Lenders in Germany and France saw an increase in deposits of 217.4 billion euros, or 6.3 percent, in the same period.
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To prevent contagion, countries in the euro area would have to form a full-fledged political and fiscal union immediately and implement uniform guarantees on bank deposits throughout the region, Thomas Wacker and Juerg de Spindler, economists at Zurich-based UBS, said in a separate note. They said such a response can be ruled out.
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The Tragedy of the European Union and How to Resolve It by George Soros | The New York ... - 0 views
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It took financial markets more than a year to realize the implications of Chancellor Merkel’s declaration, demonstrating that they operate with far-from-perfect knowledge
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the financial markets began to realize that government bonds, which had been considered riskless, carried significant risks and could actually default. When they finally discovered it, risk premiums in the form of higher yields that governments had to offer so as to sell their bonds rose dramatically. This rendered commercial banks whose balance sheets were loaded with those bonds potentially insolvent.
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That created both a sovereign debt problem and a banking problem,
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Worried Banks Pose Obstacle to Forming Financial Union - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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French loans to Spanish banks plunged 34 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 compared with the previous quarter, according to the latest data from the Bank for International Settlements.
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For Italian banks, French bankers cut their exposure by 16 percent. German banks have also been increasingly wary of their Italian and Spanish peers, reducing lending to them by about 19 percent last year
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In the last six months, as fears about Spain and Greece have intensified, Spanish and Italian banks have been by far the biggest users of the European Central Bank’s program of cut-rate, three-year loans to banks that cannot find money elsewhere.
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Has the U.S. Economy Been Permanently Damaged? : The New Yorker - 0 views
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Although the study uses some sophisticated statistical methods, its basic point is straightforward: in the long term, economic output (G.D.P.) is constrained by the quantity and the quality of economic inputs (labor, capital, and technology). If the growth rate and quality of these inputs decline, the potential growth rate of G.D.P. will fall, too—it’s just a matter of arithmetic.
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With hiring rates down, many workers have given up searching for jobs and have dropped out of the labor force.
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With budgets tight, corporations and government departments have cut back on investments in new plants and machinery, computer hardware and software, and research and development.
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Utilities Switch Off Investment in Fossil Fuel Plants - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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workers at the large power station known as Keadby 1 are preparing to shut it down at the end of the summer, with the loss of about 40 jobs.
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fluctuations in global energy markets have made the natural gas power plant unprofitable
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EZ crisis and historical trilemmas | vox - 0 views
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The big difference in the EZ is that nations cannot go off the euro as they went off the gold standard
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A major part of Lenin’s analysis, for instance, was devoted to the demonstration that Russia had become a quasi-colony as a result of the large scale capital imports, and that the foreign creditors in effect controlled Russia’s foreign policy.
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The linkages of these issues can be summarized as a series of impossible trinities or trilemmas.
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TARGET2 as a scapegoat for German errors | vox - 0 views
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This coincided with the bubble years in peripheral Eurozone countries (2003-07). The effect of this is that Germany accumulated large net claims on Eurozone countries, which at the end of 2011 amounted to €634 billion.
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Since 2009, when the TARGET2 balances started to take off, current account deficits of the peripheral countries as a whole declined from 9.1% of their GDP to 4.5%. These declines were mainly due to deep recessions in these countries.
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the German banking system was lending the money to other Eurozone countries to allow them to buy surplus German products – a highly risky affair.
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Soros: German elections mean euro crisis over, but EU might not survive - The Tell - Ma... - 0 views
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The euro crisis has already transformed the European Union into something radically different from what was originally intended. The EU was meant to be a voluntary association of sovereign and equal states that surrendered part of their sovereignty for the common good. It has turned into a relationship between creditors and debtors that is by its nature compulsory and unequal. When a debtor country gets into difficulties the creditor countries gain the upper hand.
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Only the creditors are in a position to prevent this outcome but they do not seem to show any inclination to do so.
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In the end, it’s up to Germany to take the initiative to provide a fix, said Soros, who has advocated some form of joint debt liability, or euro bonds.
Russia Steps Up Economic Pressure on Kiev - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Russia Steps Up Economic Pressure on Kiev
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Russia is now asking close to $500 for 1,000 cubic meters of gas, the standard unit for gas trade in Europe, which is a price about a third higher than what Russia’s gas company, Gazprom, charges clients elsewhere. Russia says the increase is justified because it seized control of the Crimean Peninsula, where its Black Sea naval fleet is stationed, ending the need to pay rent for the Sevastopol base. The base rent had been paid in the form of a $100 per 1,000 cubic meter discount on natural gas for Ukraine’s national energy company, Naftogaz.
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Mr. Yatsenyuk raised the pressing need to build an interconnector pipe allowing for a so-called reverse flow from the European Union into the Ukrainian gas system. “We need reverse flows of gas from the European Union to support Ukraine’s energy security,” Mr. Yatsenyuk said.
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Europe's dangerous addiction to Russian gas needs radical cure - FT.com - 0 views
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Europe’s dangerous addiction to Russian gas needs radical cure
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“It really boils down to this: no nation should use energy to stymie a people’s aspirations,” Mr Kerry said in Brussels, just as Russia’s Gazprom raised the price it charges Ukraine for gas.
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Bernstein Research has calculated that to do so, Europe needs to eliminate 15 bcm of residential and industrial gas demand, invest $215bn and incur $37bn of annual costs in the form of higher-priced energy. That works out as $160 for every single person in Europe.
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