Peak Oil!

And, yes, the headline is sarcastic. Here's a clip from the LA Times this morning regarding the finding that the United States now has larger oil reserves than Saudi Arabia. The ol' USofA has 264 billion (with a B) barrels of proven reserves while Saudi Arabia has 52 billion fewer barrels.

So first, I'd like to thank everyone involved in the fracking revolution. Second, the next time someone talks about Peak Oil, the least they get from me is a snear.

Now, if we can only get nuclear energy going again ...

Vote Properly!

Dale Franks at Questions and Observations has an excellent observation about the recent Brexit vote's causes and effects at Vote Properly, You Virulent Racist. Here's what I consider the money quote.

"By the way, free trade doesn’t require agreements and treaties. It just requires that government not interfere with trade. If there’s a treaty involved, you can be virtually certain that some industry is being protected."

Amen, brotha!

Baby, Please Don't Go!

It's difficult to say anything pithy yet about the Brexit earthquake that struck yesterday. I may post about it later when the dust begins to settle. I will say that it will be a loooonnnnng process and will fill the news for a couple of years.

The one thing I wanted to mention is how unexpected it was to the average American adult. I'll use my wife as an example. She is the definition of a low-information voter. (I love you, honey!)

As is my wont, yesterday morning I had CNBC on the iphone and television and it was full of the Brexit news. My wife watches the occasional evening news a few times a week and that's the limit of interest. Her comment? "What's all this about?"

I suspect the vast majority of Americans said the same thing. The earth moved and they didn't even notice.

Just a Touch

In  my long, long hiatus, I've kept a jaundiced eye on the global warming question. I occasionally note that the long-term trend of global temperatures does not show a current warming trend out of line with the historic record. This image, which I took from Power Line , tells an interesting story all on its own.

For instance, I knew about the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age but I was unaware of the Minoan Warm Period. All of these occurred within recorded history.

I find it quite interesting. (It may work best to click on the image so that it expands. If it's still tough to read, then please take the link to Power Line where I got it.)

Why So Quiet?

This entry will be brief. I can tell from this site's tracking tools that I still get an occasional viewer. Considering that I haven't made an entry since November of 2013, I find that remarkable and to those who still come, thanks for checking out my musings.

So, why no entries for so long?

1. I'm an avid cyclist and I had a couple of bad accidents that took me off my legs for a while. I'm back, mostly.
2. I have two beautiful daughters and the older one (along with her husband) has blessed me with a grandson.
3. My job has taken me off on long projects with a lot of travel. Since my last post I've worked in Tacoma, Chicago, Shreveport, Montgomery AL, Kansas City, Montreal, and western Nebraska

Over two years ago, the conversations were mostly about digging out of the great recession. Now the hot topics include the 2016 elections in the U.S.

One of the things I'll be commenting on soon is the continued evolution of the world's oil markets. The development of fracking and horizontal drilling has truly revolutionized production and has almost made the United States energy independent. 

But that's just a conversational place marker. I'll be returning with what I hope are some interesting things. It may be hard to believe - and sometimes it's hard for me to believe it - but I do have readers. God bless you.

I'll be back.

IT - Really?

This blog is supposed to be about information technology and capital. More specifically, it's supposed to be about the use (and abuse) of capital and information technology. For the last couple of years, I've been exclusively posting about capital markets and finance. I'm going to try to return to information technology when I can and this post is as good a place as any to start.

Clay Shirky (at http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2013/11/healthcare-gov-and-the-gulf-between-planning-and-reality/) has an excellent post about the testing failures of the recently rolled-out Healthcare.gov. My purpose in linking this is not to wax philosophic about Obamacare but to use it as an illustration of a management problem I've seen for all of my 30-plus years in IT.

Clay makes some excellent points about non-IT management's willful blindness to requirments, testing, and adaptation. Here's my favorite.

Failure is always an option. Engineers work as hard as they do because they understand the risk of failure. And for anything it might have meant in its screenplay version, here that sentiment means the opposite; the unnamed executives were saying “Addressing the possibility of failure is not an option.

What is Clay getting at here? Let's pause for a moment and think about one of my favorite analogies for a go-live for a large system, the Valley of Despair. I have a chart graphic somewhere, but not at my fingertips, that shows the productivity losses at the cutover to a new system and the long, usually gradual, climb back to productivity and eventually to improved productivity. This slide into chaos is the Valley of Despair. (If you've been part of a large project, you know of which I speak.)

My own personal favorite was a company president's response when we were discussing the impending go-live of an enterprise system. I described to him the challenges his people would be facing and the struggles they'd have in getting productivity back to normal. Then I used the term Valley of Despair. His response was, "We're not going to have one of those ... are we". It wasn't a question.

It was also a blindingly obvious example of executive management refusal to deal with truth.

Clay's web post has some excellent observations on this management behavior. Don't think about his post as a critique of Obamacare but rather think of it as a warning on management and management's view of information technology. Read the whole thing.

What's Going on in China?

Walter Kurtz at Pragmatic Capital has been watching short-term interest rates in China and is sounding the alarm.

This graphic is the equivalent of the US Federal Funds rate (or the overnight rate banks charge each other). One of the classic signs of an impending recession is when short-term interest rates are higher than long-term rates. It's a sign a central bank is stiffening; although in this case it may be that their central bank is simply looking the other way. 

You do hear stories of empty cities built with cheap money and that Chinese authorities want to curtail this speculative activity. This is one way to do it.

Now, can they do it without triggering a recession. This bears watching.