Skip to main content

Europe Cluster&uck-- Zero Hedge Comment today

..(I)t seems that more of the Eurozone is starting to get cold feet over how to proceed with this classical defection from a game theory set up. As a result, the entire EU has delayed the December tranche of the Greek payment until January. Presumably this is to teach Greece a lesson, although it is unclear what it will actually end up achieving. As Greece can not fund itself outside of the ECB framework, as its banks are insolvent, and as it does not have the capital to exist in isolation, this action is comparable to the EU pointing a gun at its head and telling itself it has to stop lying or else.


So the clock has been set -- Greece goes down in December unless Europe changes its tune.  the problem is the first sentence; Austria has thrown the gauntlet (As has Finland vis-a-vis Ireland), who will be next?    


On related news today Obama, at the request of the Republicans, has agreed to delay a November 19th meeting on the Bush tax cuts to November 30th (it could be delayed further).  making the whole tax cut more problematic is Moodys' comment of yesterday -- prolongation of the Bush tax cuts would lead to a downgrading of U.S. debt.


The odds of the Bush tax cuts being renewed:


November 2:  100%
November 10:  85%
November 17:  50%
November 18:  40%


If the two sides cannot even sit down to talk, there is high likelihood that the tax cuts will die in the reconciliation -- furthermore, since the Republicans will refuse to raise the debt ceiling this is going to be difficult.

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b) ground beef requires process
Post a Comment
Read more

21st century milk parlour

When we first looked at building our farm in 2018, we made a few money-saving decisions, the most important is that we purchased our milk herd from a retiring farmer and we also purchased his milking parlour equipment.  It was the right decision at the time.  The equipment dates from around 2004/05 and was perfectly serviceable, our installers replaced some tubing but otherwise, the milking parlour was in good shape.  It is a mature technology. Now, we are building a brand new milk parlour because our milking cows are moving from the old farm to the new farm.  So we are looking at brand new equipment this time because, after 20 years of daily service, the old cattle parlour's systems need to be replaced.  Fear not it will not be destroyed instead good chunks will end up on Facebook's marketplace and be sold to other farmers for spare parts or expansion of their current systems. All our cattle are chipped, nothing unusual there, we have sensors throughout the farm, and our milki
Post a Comment
Read more

So we sold surplus electricity one time last summer...(Update)

I guess that we will be buying an additional tank for our methane after all.   Over the past few months, we've had several electricity utilities/distributors which operate in our region come to the farm to "inspect our power plant facilities, to ensure they conform to their requirements".  This is entirely my fault.  Last summer we were accumulating too much methane for our tankage capacity, and so instead of selling the excess gas, that would have cost us some money, we (and I mean me) decided to produce excess electricity and sell it to the grid.  Because of all the rules and regulations, we had to specify our overall capacity and timing for the sale of electricity (our capacity is almost 200 Kw) which is a lot but more importantly, it's available 24/7, because it's gas powered.  It should be noted that the two generators are large because we burn methane and smaller generators are difficult to adapt to burn unconventional gas, plus they are advanced and can &qu
Post a Comment
Read more