Newly released data from Baker Hughes Inc. shows another 48 oil/natural gas rigs taken out of production. The count now stands at 1,310 still active. Down 461 rigs from this time last year.
Category / Financial
Lots of Erections at the Pentagon
The unfortunate part of government spending is taxpayers don’t get to know what is being spent until it gets spent. CBS News uncovered some “dysfunctional” spending from the pentagon in a recent report:
According to the Military Times, data from the Defense Health Agency indicate the U.S. Department of Defense spent $41.6 million on Viagra and $84.24 million total on drugs for erectile dysfunction in 2014.
Since 2011, the bill for covering drugs like Viagra, Cialis and Levitra for active and retired military personnel and eligible family members totalled $294 million — nearly as much as four U.S. Air Force F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, says the Military Times.
The DoD first began covering the cost of Viagra prescriptions in 2012, and currently another seven types of erectile dysfunction medications are paid for under the federal agency’s health plan. Of the 1.18 million prescriptions filled in 2014, 905,083 were for Viagra, at a cost of $41.6 million. Cialis was the second most commonly prescribed ED drug, with 185,841 prescriptions totaling $22.82 million. Revatio, the priciest ED drug, was prescribed the least with 1,699 prescriptions in 2014 for a total cost of $2.24 million.
You can read the rest of the article here.
Lent Season Also Means Big Sales
Lent season has kicked off for millions of Americans and in the food business world this means big dollars flowing as millions seek fish for their meals. Here some info I found at QSR Magazine:
Like most other quick-service chains, Long John Silver’s recognizes that Lent is a good season to leverage the attention on fish menu items, even as the brand’s core identity is built on year-round seafood. “During Lent, we see 25 percent to 40 percent increases in our weekly unit volumes,” St. Clair says. “The awareness that gets generated this time of year helps throughout the year.”
Since 2008, Arby’s has brought the wild Alaska Pollock fish sandwich back every year during Lent. Last year, Arby’s sold 11.8 million Reel Big Fillet sandwiches, compared with 8.7 million in 2012. “Our customers have come to expect it, and we are gaining more interest every year,” Metzler says.
Metallica’s “Black” Album Still on Top
They maybe old but their music lives on. In May 2014 it was reported that Metallica’s “Black” Album was still selling 3,000 copies per week. Not bad for an almost 25 year old heavy metal album.
Today I wandered over to BillBoard.com to see their Top 200 album weekly rankings and sure enough their album sales are still in the thousands per week:
Here is the band in Russia in front of roughly 500,000 people.
U.S. Beef Herds Will Expand in 2015
One area of economic data I follow is where corn is being sold to. Recent data has pointed to farmers raising cattle which means an expanding beef market. I did some research and found this forecast at FarmandDairy.com:
U.S. Department of Agriculture semiannual report that cattle numbers have increased by slightly more than 1 percent following seven years of decline.
The most significant expansion has been in beef cows, which were up 2 percent from the previous year, the USDA said.
There were 610,000 new beef cows added nationally. Hurt said the expansion is likely to continue through most of this decade.
One reason for the expansion is prices farmers are getting for beef:
“These were led by record-high cattle prices in 2014 with finished cattle averaging near $155 per live hundredweight and Oklahoma 500-550 pound steer calves averaging $250,” Hurt said.
Oil Rig Production Continues Plunge
Oil rig production continues its plunge and gas prices are starting to show that. Here is the latest data on oil rigs:
The number of active U.S. land rigs plunged by 98 this week in one of the biggest declines in the past three decades as fallen oil prices continued to pummel the industry’s drilling ambitions.
Baker Hughes’ 71-year-old U.S. rig count, one of the industry’s go-to indicators of future oil production and demand for rigs, was down by 406 drilling units compared to Feb. 13, 2014. The last time the rig count fell by 98 was in January, 2009 – the two declines are tied for the biggest drops since 1987.
H/T Fuel Fix
Environmentalists Became Their Own Disaster
Entering the arena of “predictions” is tricky. When making a prediction you must have valid evidence that something is about to happen or is just happening along with a time frame. Environmentalist and their followers take it to another extreme. They had a nice run in the early to mid 2000’s but more and more evidence grows that a lot of the data they showered the public with was very manipulated.
The bloggers over at Economic Policy Journal put a post up having a little fun of the dire predictions from environmentalists over the dedcades. Here is the full write up but I’ll post some of the predictions below.
In 1971, Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich, who is perhaps best known for his 1968 book The Population Bomb, said in a speech at the British Institute for Biology. “By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people,” he claimed. “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000 and give ten to one that the life of the average Briton would be of distinctly lower quality than it is today.”
In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted in its global-warming report, that the planet would see “warmer winters and fewer cold spells, because of climate change.”
In the years. 2007, 2008, and 2009, Gore publicly warned that the North Pole would be “ice-free” in the summer by around 2013 because of alleged “man-made global warming.”
Inflation Alert: Notre Dame Tuition
Univeristy of Notre Dame is raising their tuition again. Get ready to pay according to the Indianapolis Star:
The University of Notre Dame is raising undergraduate tuition by 3.7 percent to $47,929 next school year.
The university says with average room and board rates of $13,846, the annual cost of attending Notre Dame will be $61,775.
The school said the 3.7 percentage increase in tuition and fees is the lowest at Notre Dame since there was no increase in 1960. Tuition had increased 3.8 percent for three straight years.
For the “there is no inflation” crowd, in just the last four years tuition has now increased 15.1%.
Robots Being Trained to Fight Fires
Via The Washington Free Beacon:
The US Navy has begun to test the firefighting abilities of a humanoid robot it has been developing for several years. The Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot (SAFFiR) walks on two legs, operates a fire hose, and even wears a track suit. The Navy is hoping SAFFiR can one day supplement its traditional human firefighting teams.
“This is a program that’s been going on for about five years basically to develop a humanoid capable of fire suppression,” Thomas McKenna said in an Office of Naval Research (ONR) video about the project. “There’s substantial losses incurred when you have a major fire and you can’t suppress it at an early stage.”
John Farley of the Naval Research Laboratory said that he sees the robot’s quick learning curve as a likely lifesaver.
Hoosier Econ 