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Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund [VITPX]
Sheila Bair’s Bank Shot
By JOE NOCERA
Published: July 9, 2011
Sheila Bair
Ruven Afanador for The New York Times
Sheila Bair in March with Ben Bernanke, left, and Timothy Geithner.
Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg News
‘They should have let Bear Stearns fail,” Sheila Bair said.
It was midmorning on a crisp June day, and Bair, the 57-year-old outgoing chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation —the federal agency that insures bank deposits and winds down failing banks — was sitting on a couch, sipping a Starbucks latte. We were in the first hour of several lengthy on-the-record interviews. She seemed ever-so-slightly nervous.
Long viewed as a bureaucratic backwater, the F.D.I.C. has had a tumultuous five years while being transformed under Bair’s stewardship. Not long after she took charge in June 2006, Bair began sounding the alarm about the dangers posed by the explosive growth of subprime mortgages, which she feared would not only ravage neighborhoods when homeowners began to default — as they inevitably did — but also wreak havoc on the banking system. The F.D.I.C. was the only bank regulator in Washington to do so. During the financial crisis of 2008, Bair insisted that she and her agency have a seat at the table, where she worked — and fought — with Henry Paulson, then the treasury secretary, and Timothy Geithner, the president of the New York Federal Reserve, as they tried to cobble together solutions that would keep the financial system from going over a cliff. She and the F.D.I.C. managed a number of huge failing institutions during the crisis, including IndyMac, Wachovia and Washington Mutual. She was a key player in shaping the Dodd-Frank reform law, especially the part that seeks to forestall future bailouts. Since the law passed, she has made an immense effort to convince Wall Street and the country that the nation’s giant banks — the same ones that required bailouts in 2008 and became known as “too big to fail” institutions — will never again be bailed out, thanks in part to new powers at the F.D.I.C. Just a few months ago, she went so far as to send a letter to Standard & Poor’s, the credit-ratings agency, suggesting that its ratings of the big banks were too high because they reflected an expectation of government support. If a too-big-to-fail bank got into trouble, she wrote, the F.D.I.C. would wind it down, not bail it out.
As an observer of the financial crisis and its aftermath, I have frankly admired most of what she tried to do. She was tough-minded and straightforward. On financial matters, she seemed to have better political instincts than Obama’s Treasury Department, which of course is now headed by Geithner. She favored “market discipline” — meaning shareholders and debt holders would take losses ahead of depositors and taxpayers — over bailouts, which she abhorred. She didn’t spend a lot of time fretting over bank profitability; if banks had to become less profitable, postcrisis, in order to reduce the threat they posed to the system, so be it. (“Our job is to protect bank customers, not banks,” she told me.) And she was a fierce, and often lonely, proponent of widespread mortgage modification, for reasons both compassionate (to help struggling homeowners stay in their homes) and economic (fewer foreclosures would help the troubled housing market recover more quickly).
I thought something else as well: with her five-year term as F.D.I.C. chairwoman drawing to a close — her last day was July 8 — she never really got her due. The rap on her was always that she was “difficult” and “not a team player.” There were times, in Congressional testimony, when she disagreed with her fellow regulators even though they were sitting right next to her. Her policy disputes with other regulators were legion; in leaked accounts, Bair was invariably portrayed as the problem. In “Too Big to Fail,” for instance, the behind-the-scenes account of the financial crisis by the New York Times business columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, Bair is described as one of Geithner’s “least favorite people in government.” As Paulson, Geithner and the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, raced to bail out banks and companies like A.I.G., Bair resisted, fearing that they were being overly generous by putting the interests of bondholders over those of taxpayers. I couldn’t help recalling that the last female financial regulator to be labeled difficult was Brooksley Born, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the mid-1990s. Fearful that derivatives were becoming a threat to the financial system, Born wanted to regulate them but was stiff-armed by Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin.
It wasn’t just that the men controlled the narrative; it was also that Bair was a classic Washington policy wonk, far more comfortable discussing the fine points of regulation than backroom politics. Interviewing her could be an exercise in frustration. She was only too happy to talk about capital requirements, say, but even off the record she wouldn’t tread where most journalists, myself included, wanted her to go — into the boardrooms at Treasury and the Fed where decisions were hashed out. In 2009, The New Yorker published a short profile of her in which she refused to be drawn out about one of the many bureaucratic fights over too-big-to-fail. Her response was classic Bair: “It’s a very difficult task to try to balance all the different perspectives and come up with a package,” she said diplomatically, “and every compromise is going to have people who are unhappy about various parts of it.” You can almost hear the author sighing.
Bair, in April 2009, with Lawrence Summers and President Obama.
Gerald Herbert/Associated Press
Not long ago, I approached her with the idea of doing an extended exit interview. I thought it was important to get her perspective on the last five years. I also thought, to be honest, that her impending retirement might loosen her tongue a little. After thinking it over, she agreed to talk to me, with the stipulation that nothing be published until she left office.
And so there we were, talking about Bear Stearns, the investment bank whose near failure marked the beginning of the crisis. Even knowing that her views of the financial crisis were at odds with many of the others who were involved, I was taken aback: I had never heard anyone involved in the crisis criticize the government’s decision to help Bear Stearns avoid certain bankruptcy.
For a moment, Bair seemed a little surprised, too, by the words that had tumbled out. She took a sip of her latte and looked straight ahead, deep in thought.
“Do you really think they should have let Bear fail?” I asked.
When she put her drink down, her hesitation was gone. “Let’s face it,” she said. “Bear Stearns was a second-tier investment bank, with — what? — around $400 billion in assets? I’m a traditionalist. Banks and bank-holding companies are in the safety net. That’s why they have deposit insurance. Investment banks take higher risks, and they are supposed to be outside the safety net. If they make enough mistakes, they are supposed to fail. So, yes, I was amazed when they saved it. I couldn’t believe it. When they told me about it, I said: ‘Guess what: Investment banks fail.’ ”
I first met Sheila Bair in November 2005, during one of her rare breaks from government service. A longtime aide to Bob Dole, the Republican senator from Kansas — Bair grew up in the small town of Independence, Kan., and attended the University of Kansas — she had also been a commissioner on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and an assistant secretary in George W. Bush’s Treasury Department. In 2002, she left Treasury to join the faculty of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she taught regulatory policy at the business school. Three years later, she invited Senator Paul Sarbanes, the former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, to speak to her class. His visit to Amherst happened to coincide with a column I was writing about him. I sat in on the class.
At the time, all I really knew about Bair’s background was that she was a Republican. Which kind quickly became clear. She and Sarbanes, a Democrat from Maryland, obviously shared a great deal of mutual respect and affection, despite spending their lives on different sides of the aisle; she turned out to be a member of that dying breed, the Republican moderate. In our recent talks, she described herself as someone who believes in “regulations that reinforce economic incentives.” That came through, too; she praised Sarbanes’s signature law, Sarbanes-Oxley, which established new accounting rules to combat corporate fraud — and which most Republicans still denounce nearly a decade after its passage.
She also pushed the O.C.C. to issue its voluntary guidance, even though it would help only marginally. The vast majority of subprime loans were issued by institutions outside the regulated banking system, out of the reach of the O.C.C. or the F.D.I.C. But those nonbanks depended on the regulated banks for their own financing. As a way to get at the unregulated lenders, Bair came up with the idea of applying the government’s subprime guidance to any company that was financed by a regulated bank. The banks, she says, “fought us tooth and nail.” She lost.
At the same time, she was fighting a rear-guard battle on another critical banking issue — so-called capital requirements, the amount of capital banks must hold as a cushion against losses. Banks always want their capital requirements to be as low as possible, so they can take more risks, which can enable them to make more money — and reap bigger bonuses for executives. In 2004, an international group called the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision proposed rules that would allow banks to hold capital on a “risk-weighted” basis, meaning that assets with lower risk would require less capital. (As it turned out, triple-A-rated mortgage bonds stuffed with bad subprime mortgages were considered very low risk under the Basel proposal. That is why so many banks loaded up on them in the years leading up to the crisis.) To make matters worse, the Basel II accords, as they were called, permitted banks to evaluate their assets with their own internal risk models.
Most European countries quickly adopted Basel II. In the United States, the Federal Reserve was strongly in favor of doing so, too, as was the O.C.C. But the F.D.I.C., fearing that lower capital requirements and the self-selection of risk models would increase the risk of bank failures, opposed Basel II. This meshed perfectly with Bair’s own instincts, and once she arrived at the F.D.I.C., she became the standard-bearer in opposing the new rules. The Fed, in particular, pushed her to sign on; it didn’t need the F.D.I.C.’s approval, but it is politically important for all the regulators to be aligned when instituting such an important change. Instead, Bair conceded, “we dragged it out and dragged it out.” She dragged it out so long, in fact, that the financial crisis arrived before Basel II was ever implemented in the United States.
Foot-dragging is not the sort of bureaucratic tactic that draws praise or even much notice. But I’ve long believed that her opposition to Basel II has been a hugely underappreciated factor in helping to save the financial system when the crisis came. The European banks, lacking adequate capital, were crushed by the financial crisis. Big banks in places like Ireland and Iceland collapsed. Germany doled out hundreds of billions of dollars to shore up its banks. Even today, banks in Europe are in far worse shape than they are in the U.S. American banks didn’t have enough capital, either, but they had a lot more than their European counterparts, and for all their ongoing problems, they are much healthier institutions today.
By the summer of 2007, the subprime bubble had burst. Just as Bair expected, the default rate on subprime mortgages was rising quickly. Looking ahead, it wasn’t hard to see that all those adjustable-rate mortgages written in 2006 and early 2007 were going to reset in a year or two. During the bubble, when housing prices were rising, homeowners avoided the higher rates by refinancing. Now that was no longer possible. Disaster loomed, as millions of Americans would no longer be able to make their mortgage payments. Yet only the F.D.I.C. seemed to take this possibility seriously — and to fear the consequences. Paulson and Bernanke, for their parts, maintained that the damage from the bursting of the subprime bubble would be “contained,” as they liked to put it.
That fall, Mark Zandi of economy.com published a survey of mortgage servicers. “It showed that like 1 percent of those reset mortgages were being restructured,” Bair said. “They would just push people into foreclosure.” Bair was furious and felt that she had been lied to. All those promises made in the spring turned out to be nothing more than “happy talk,” in her words.
So she turned her attention to the Treasury Department, hoping to persuade Paulson and others to put the weight of Treasury — an agency with far more clout than the F.D.I.C. — behind her push for mortgage modification. Although there were sporadic efforts at Treasury to do something for homeowners, they never seemed to gain any traction.
There are certainly arguments against modifying mortgages. One is that doing so creates moral hazard — if some people struggling to stay in their homes get lower monthly payments, then everybody will want a similar deal, and they’ll stop making their mortgage payments even when they can afford them. Another is that many people in default will end up redefaulting on a modified mortgage. A third rationale is that the foreclosure process itself is necessary for any eventual recovery of the housing market. Lastly, designing a mortgage-modification plan that works for a large number of people is excruciatingly difficult, maybe even impossible. I have heard all these arguments from Treasury officials over the years.
In the cool light of day, however — with two million Americans having already lost their homes and another two million in serious default, and with one out of every five homes worth less than the homeowner’s mortgage — this thinking has been shown to be horribly shortsighted. Had the federal government emphasized mortgage modification early on, it could have prevented a lot of pain and might have helped stabilize the economy a lot sooner.
Bair, however, has always thought there were other reasons behind the general resistance to modifying mortgages. The government, she said, “thought maybe I was overstating the problem and that it wasn’t going to be that big a deal.” As for those in the industry, she added: “I think some of it was that they didn’t think borrowers were worth helping. There was some disdain for borrowers.”
In October 2007, she made a calculated decision to go public. In an op-ed article in The New York Times, she called on mortgage servicers to reset adjustable-rate mortgages en masse. “These borrowers would still be required to make their monthly payments,” she wrote, in an implicit response to the moral-hazard argument. She concluded: “Avoiding foreclosure would protect neighboring properties and hasten the recovery.”
Although she made no mention of the Treasury Department, everyone in the bureaucracy knew that it was her real target. It was now official: Sheila Bair was difficult.
That reputation was only made worse by the financial crisis.
The essential brief against her was that she refused to adopt the all-hands-on-deck mind-set required to deal with the unfolding emergency. At every step along the way, whenever she was asked to participate in one rescue program or another, she balked. As Sorkin put it in “Too Big to Fail,” the other regulators viewed her as parochial and small-minded and thought her “only concern was to protect the F.D.I.C., not the entire system.”
When I asked Bair about the charge that she cared only about the interests of her agency, she scoffed. “First of all,” she said, “protecting bank depositors is important. So is protecting the taxpayer.” As she saw it, there were too many times when she was the only one trying to do both. (When I spoke to Paulson, he defended Bair’s work during the crisis: “Sheila came to play every day,” he said. As for the criticism that she cared only about bank depositors, he added, “That was her job.”)
“They always had the view that the F.D.I.C. was not in the same league as Treasury and the Fed,” she told me. “As a result, we were rarely consulted. They would bring me in after they’d made their decision on what needed to be done, and without giving me any information they would say, ‘You have to do this or the system will go down.’ If I heard that once, I heard it a thousand times. ‘Citi is systemic, you have to do this.’ No analysis, no meaningful discussion. It was very frustrating.”
Too often, she felt, their requests were excessive, putting taxpayers at risk while bailing out undeserving debt holders. For instance, during the peak of the crisis, with credit markets largely frozen, banks found themselves unable to roll over their short-term debt. This made it virtually impossible for them to function. Geithner wanted the F.D.I.C. to guarantee literally all debt issued by the big bank-holding companies — an eye-popping request.
Bair said no. Besides the risk it would have entailed, it would have also meant a windfall for bondholders, because much of the existing debt was trading at a steep discount. “It was unnecessary,” she said. Instead, Bair and Paulson worked out a deal in which the F.D.I.C. guaranteed only new debt issued by the bank-holding companies. It was still a huge risk for the F.D.I.C. to take; Paulson says today that it was one of the most important, if underrated, actions taken by the federal government during the crisis. “It was an extraordinary thing for us to do,” Bair acknowledged.
Citigroup was another example. No bank needed more federal assistance than Citi — it required three separate bailouts. And yet, in Bair’s view, no bank was treated as solicitously, especially by the New York Fed. She felt pressured by the Fed to allow Citi to buy a failing Wachovia — which she suspected was a kind of backdoor way to strengthen Citi by giving it access to Wachovia’s stable deposit base. To make the deal work, the New York Fed even agreed to absorb some of Wachovia’s losses. When the F.D.I.C. accepted the Citi offer, Geithner felt that a deal had been made. But before Citi could close the deal, Wells Fargo, a much stronger bank, made a better offer — one that didn’t require government assistance. Bair leapt at it. Geithner was furious, complaining that Bair’s action was sending the wrong signal at the wrong time: that the federal government couldn’t be trusted to stick to its word. Bair didn’t care; she clearly got the right outcome for taxpayers and bank depositors, even if it didn’t help Citigroup.
As she thinks back on it, Bair views her disagreements with her fellow regulators as a kind of high-stakes philosophical debate about the role of bondholders. Her perspective is that bondholders should take losses when an institution fails. When the F.D.I.C. shuts down a failing bank, the unsecured bondholders always absorb some of the losses. That is the essence of market discipline: if shareholders and bondholders know they are on the hook, they are far more likely to keep a close watch on management’s risk-taking.
During the crisis, however, Treasury and the Fed were adamant about protecting debt holders, fearing that if they had to absorb losses, the markets would be destabilized and a bad situation would get even worse. “What was it James Carville used to say?” Bair said. “ ‘When I die I want to come back as the bond market.’ ”
“Why did we do the bailouts?” she went on. “It was all about the bondholders,” she said. “They did not want to impose losses on bondholders, and we did. We kept saying: ‘There is no insurance premium on bondholders,’ you know? For the little guy on Main Street who has bank deposits, we charge the banks a premium for that, and it gets passed on to the customer. We don’t have the same thing for bondholders. They’re supposed to take losses.” (Treasury’s response is that spooking the bond markets would have made the crisis much worse and that ultimately taxpayers have made out extremely well as a consequence of the government’s actions during the crisis.)
She had a second problem with the way the government went about saving the system. It acted as if no one were at fault — that it was all just an unfortunate matter of “a system come undone,” as she put it.
“I hate that,” she said. “Because it doesn’t impose accountability where it should be. A.I.G. was badly managed. Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns were badly managed. And not everyone was as badly managed as they were.”
Grudgingly, Bair acknowledged that some of the bailouts were necessary. There was no way, under prevailing law, to wind down the systemically important bank-holding companies that were at risk of failing. The same was true of a nonbank like A.I.G., which the government wound up bailing out just two days after allowing Lehman Brothers to fail. An A.I.G. bankruptcy would have been disastrous, damaging money-market funds, rendering giant banks insolvent and wreaking panic and chaos. Its credit-default swaps could have brought down much of the Western banking system.
“Yes, that was necessary,” Bair said. “But they certainly could have been less generous. I’ve always wondered why none of A.I.G.’s counterparties didn’t have to take any haircuts. There’s no reason in the world why those swap counterparties couldn’t have taken a 10 percent haircut. There could have at least been a little pain for them.” (All of A.I.G.’s counterparties received 100 cents on the dollar after the government pumped billions into A.I.G. There was a huge outcry when it was revealed that Goldman Sachs received more than $12 billion as a counterparty to A.I.G. swaps.)
Bair continued: “They didn’t even engage in conversation about that. You know, Wall Street barely missed a beat with their bonuses.”
“Isn’t that ridiculous?” she said.
John Podesta, who headed the Obama transition team, was another Democrat that Bair had known forever. In one of her early conversations with him, she volunteered the name of Paul Volcker as a possible Treasury secretary. Volcker was most famous for taming inflation as Federal Reserve chairman in the 1980s, but he was also someone who didn’t think like a big banker. On the contrary, he was highly critical of the banks. “I just thought there had been too many people who had been too close to the financial situation for too long,” Bair told me. “I thought we needed a fresh perspective.”
Instead, Obama turned to Geithner. It was no secret by then that Bair and Geithner had a frosty relationship; inevitably stories leaked out that Geithner was trying to push her out. But the stories were wrong: Bair’s support for mortgage modifications made her enormously popular with Democrats; when she told Podesta that she would step down early if that’s what the president wanted, he said no: Obama wanted her to stay. (For his part, Geithner told me: “Even though we didn’t always agree, I greatly admire Sheila for her early recognition of the severity of the crisis and for her creative use of the F.D.I.C. to stem the panic.”)
What has been discouraging is that the Obama administration hasn’t done much better on the loan-modification front than the Bush administration did. Early on, the president told his staff to talk to the F.D.I.C. about how to set up a loan-modification plan. The F.D.I.C. had a wealth of experience, in part because it operated IndyMac for nine months until a buyer was found. It used that time to work on mortgage modifications with IndyMac borrowers and came up with a template for a program it felt could work nationwide. “They did talk to us,” Bair said of Obama’s staff, “but I always had the sense they were talking to us because the president wanted them to.”
Getting the banks to make large-scale mortgage modifications is no different today than it was in 2007 — next to impossible. The servicers still lack the economic incentives to modify mortgages; it’s easier in most cases for them to foreclose, which also generates fees, while modifications don’t. As Bair herself discovered during the IndyMac experience, changing that attitude requires dogged effort. “I ended up having calls with our servicers every Friday, to get a status report on what they’d done that week on loan modifications, just to keep the pressure on,” Bair said.
Without question, it is difficult to get mortgage modifications right. But many Democrats originally voted for TARP because it contained a provision mandating that $50 billion of the $700 billion in bailout money go to mortgage modification. The Paulson Treasury ignored that part of the law — and the Geithner Treasury has barely touched that $50 billion.
Still, a Democratic administration had to do something. Bair offered up the F.D.I.C.’s ideas, which involved, among other things, some government insurance protection for redefaults that took place after three months. She was sure her plan had better economic incentives for servicers than anything else under consideration. But the Obama administration went with a plan that didn’t fundamentally change the incentives, and that was not much different from what the Treasury under Bush did after the financial crisis.
When Bair was shown the plan, literally hours before it was announced by the president, she told them, “That’s fine; I’m not going to speak out against this, but don’t expect me to marry up to it either, because I don’t think it will work.” She told me: “They wanted my name and reputation on it.”
Sure enough, the Home Affordable Modification Plan has not exactly been a rousing success. Although some 700,000 homeowners have gotten modified mortgages through the program, that number is dwarfed by the millions of foreclosures that have taken place and the millions of homeowners in default today. Too often qualified borrowers have sought HAMP modifications only to be turned away by their servicers. Foreclosure remains their preference.
“I think the president’s heart is in the right place,” Bair told me. “I absolutely do. But the dichotomy between who he selected to run his economic team and what he personally would like them to be doing — I think those are two very different things.” What particularly galls her is that Treasury under both Paulson and Geithner has been willing to take all sorts of criticism to help the banks. But it has been utterly unwilling to take any political heat to help homeowners.
The second key issue for Bair has been dealing with the too-big-to-fail banks. Her distaste for the idea that the systemically important banks can never be allowed to fail is visceral. “I don’t think regulators can adequately regulate these big banks,” she told me. “We need market discipline. And if we don’t have that, they’re going to get us in trouble again.”
In the early wrangling over what became the Dodd-Frank bill, “resolution authority” was not a prominent part of the agenda. Then in March 2009, A.I.G. filed documents showing that it had set aside $165 million in bonuses for its traders. The public anger over these bonuses was enormous. One day in the middle of the furor, the president summoned Bair to the White House. When she arrived at the Oval Office, Geithner and Lawrence Summers, Obama’s top economic adviser, were sitting on the couch — and the seat next to the president was empty. That was where she was supposed to sit.?As the president vented his frustration over the A.I.G. bonuses, Bair saw her opportunity. “This doesn’t happen with our process,” she told the president. “We have a resolution process that we’ve used for decades, and when we put a bank into receivership, we have the right to break all contracts, we can fire people, we can take away bonuses and we don’t get into this kind of problem.” The president quickly signed on to the idea of having Dodd-Frank include the ability to resolve giant bank-holding companies and other systemically important financial institutions like A.I.G.
That was the easy part. Dealing with the Treasury Department was, as usual, the hard part. The original white paper the administration produced that outlined the financial reforms it wanted from Congress included a section calling for the government to be able to legally “resolve” the big banks. It had the F.D.I.C. running the process, which clearly made the most sense; the agency had been doing it for so long, it had the process down to a science. That’s why bank depositors scarcely notice when the F.D.I.C. shuts down their bank on a Friday and reopens it under new management on a Monday morning.
Weeks passed. About an hour before the president was set to announce the reform package, F.D.I.C. officials, including Bair, were shown the latest copy of the white paper. According to Bair, “The resolution authority had completely changed.” While the F.D.I.C. still had an important role, its authority had been seriously diluted — now the Treasury and the Federal Reserve would also have to sign off before a bank could be wound down. From Treasury’s point of view, this was completely reasonable. After all, any wind-down would require short-term lending from the Treasury, so it wanted some say in the process. But Bair felt strongly that this was yet another example of her — and her agency — being undercut by other regulators.
So she fought back; and in typical Bair fashion, she did so publicly. When called to testify before the House Financial Services Committee about the new resolution authority, she bluntly told Barney Frank, then the committee chairman, that, as she put it to me: “It still doesn’t resolve the large bank-holding companies. We would like the authority to do that.” In the final Dodd-Frank bill, Treasury’s oversight role was diminished — and the F.D.I.C. had the authority to manage a failing too-big-to-fail bank.
Even so, there are many people who remain convinced that the government will never have the nerve to let an important institution actually fail. Indeed, the big banks currently have a much lower cost of capital than their smaller brethren precisely because the bond market doesn’t believe they will ever be allowed to fail.
Bair has spent much of the last year trying to convince the country — and Wall Street — that the F.D.I.C. is up to the task. Most people remain unconvinced. But she insists, thanks to the new resolution authority, “I think we are in a lot better shape than we were.” The truth, of course, is that nobody can possibly know what the government will do. The only way to find out is to have an institution fail — not exactly a prospect to relish. But that will be a problem for someone else, not for Sheila Bair. She has done her part.
“I didn’t start off being assertive and going public with concerns,” Bair said as our second interview was winding down. “But we were being ignored, and we had something to bring to the table. There’s been speculation: maybe it was gender or that I’m not an Ivy League person. It could be; everybody has their biases. But I found I had to become assertive when they just wouldn’t listen.”
My own view is the country would have been far better served if more people in positions of power had been willing to listen to her as the financial crisis unfolded. Hers was a voice of common sense, trying to protect the taxpayer, the bank depositor and the homeowner. If other regulators had taken her early subprime concerns seriously — to cite just one example — the financial world might be a different place today.
“We always saw ourselves as the champion of the little guy,” she continued. “The other regulators never saw the pain of a bank closure, because that was our role. We were the ones that saw people losing their jobs when we had to shut down a little bank. They never understood the unfairness of the way little banks were treated versus big banks. Some of the other regulators have an institutional mind-set that the big banks have to always be with us.”
Which brings me back to where we began, with Bear Stearns. As I’ve thought about it in the weeks since our interviews, I’ve come to the view that she was absolutely right. “I think that the Bear deal set up an expectation for government intervention that was not really helpful,” she told me. Letting Bear Stearns fail would most likely have sent the right message to the rest of Wall Street, while there was still time, and without creating the kind of chain reaction that the Lehman failure caused. “I’ve always thought,” she said, “that it was really important for everybody to have to play by the same set of rules.”
That didn’t happen in 2008. Fighting the good fight, Bair has tried to make sure that it will happen the next time there’s a crisis.
Favorite boyhood waterfalls
APPLE, INC
New wave of commercial foreclosures looms
STAFF PHOTOS / E. SKYLAR LITHERLAND Buy photo
Orion Bank foreclosed on the Pan American Professional Center in North Port in January.
By Michael Braga
Published: Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, October 24, 2009 at 9:53 p.m.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20091025/ARTICLE/910251027/2107/BUSINESS&tc=email_newsletter#
Land at 5150 N. Tamiami Trail near the Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport was to be developed -- until the developer defaulted on the loan.
Banks have foreclosed on more than 400,000 square feet of office space, more than 400 hotel rooms, more than 1,250 condominum units, more than 100,000 square feet of warehouse space and more than 150 acres of raw commercial land in Sarasota and Manatee counties since November.
This is prime commercial real estate that about 80 investors bought and developed during the real estate boom with loans totaling nearly $300 million.
With those investors unable to make interest payments, the properties will soon be taken over by banks -- a prospect that few in the financial community look forward to.
Just as the housing market starts to recover and the national economy tentatively emerges from the deepest recession since the 1930s, banks across the country are bracing for another wave of foreclosures.
Nationwide, $1 trillion in commercial real estate loans comes due next year. Many borrowers are unlikely to be able to refinance, causing defaults that could lead to more bank failures and could even knock the economy back into recession.
The only hope of averting a wave of defaults: a resurgence of investor buyers. Most observers think those buyers are waiting for fire-sale prices before they jump in.
Paul Kasriel, Northern Trust's chief economist, predicts the new wave of foreclosures means the growth the U.S. economy saw in the third quarter will not be matched again until the last quarter of 2010.
"This tsunami will not be as big as the first one," said Kasriel, meaning the wave of residential foreclosures. "But it will wash over the financial system and cause a lot of damage."
Office and hotel defaults
The big office complex that Peter Shipps erected on Tamiami Trail in North Port is a symbol of overbuilding during the boom.
Thinking that Southwest Florida would benefit from a sustained population increase, bankers willingly lent money without developers having to pre-lease the space.
Shipps, a successful Venice builder and developer, approached Naples-based Orion bank with a plan to build five Class A office buildings. Orion lent him more than $10 million for the first phase.
But just as Shipps' first two buildings came out of the ground, the real estate market entered its prolonged slide. He was unable to lease enough space to make interest payments and defaulted on $7.3 million in January.
"They are great buildings in a great location," said Chad Maxwell, a North Port commercial real estate agent. "They just created too much space on the market."
The worldwide recession only made things worse, said Stan Rutstein, a commercial agent with Re/Max in Bradenton.
"Every doctor's office, every attorney's office, every imaging center and every dentist's office cut back," Rutstein said. "People have left the market, tourism is down and businesses have cut back staff. It's pretty bloody."
A large of amount of office space built is sitting empty. Vacancy rates hover around 14 percent in downtown Sarasota, 20 percent in Lakewood Ranch and 30 percent in Venice and Bradenton, according to Manatee and Sarasota counties' economic development organizations.
The fortunes of local hotel developers also plummeted.
In 2005 and 2006, there was a mini-boom in hotel acquisitions and developments. A group led by Harvey Birdman paid $10 million for the 178-room Holiday Inn on Tamiami Trail near the Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport in April 2005. Reliance Realty Partners out of Stamford, Conn., invested more than $30 million in a vacation rental and marina project on Holmes Beach. Bernard LeBlanc's family bought the 160-room Holiday Inn on the U.S. 41 bypass in Venice for $10 million in August 2006.
All three have since defaulted, on more than $50 million in loans.
Another beat-up segment is office condominiums.
During the boom, these 1,000- to 2,000-square-foot spaces sold as fast as they came to market at ever-increasing prices. Condos that started selling for $55 per square foot soared as high as $155, said Carl Wise, a commercial real estate agent who founded Sarasota's Preferred Commercial.
But their owners are now defaulting in large numbers.
"They're in a terrible place now," Wise said. "They are losing their shirts and will continue to do so."
Banks swamped
Banks that lent money to commercial developers and investors are suffering along with their customers.
"I talked to one banker back in June and he said he had a stack of foreclosures two feet thick in his office," said Jeff Button, a commercial agent with the Sarasota's Kleiber Group. "And that's just one bank."
Analysts expect Florida community banks to be hit especially hard because they tended to make a lot of commercial property loans. Southwest Florida already has seen five banks go under -- Bradenton's Flagship National Bank, First Priority Bank and Freedom Bank and First State Bank of Sarasota and Community National Bank of Venice. They may not be the last.
In the meantime, the problems will be felt in the broader economy.
Banks have the capital to make loans. It just makes no sense to chase after commercial real estate when values are dropping, said Bill Sedgeman, chairman of Community National Bank of Manatee.
"What's coming to us now are people who are underwater on their mortgages," Sedgeman said. "They owe more than the properties are worth."
The only way banks can refinance them is if customers are willing to bring cash to the closing table.
Their properties are now sometimes worth only a third of the value they had when the loans were made, so they will have to repay some of what they borrowed. But few borrowers can come up with the cash. So banks will have to foreclose and sell off the properties.
With more and more properties coming onto the market through foreclosures, commercial property values will continue to drop.
Until buyers start taking more properties off the market than are coming on, banks will not lend, Sedgeman said.
"We need to have buyers and we don't have buyers," Sedgeman said. "The reason we don't have buyers is that our economy is so construction-oriented. Until construction gets started again, we won't have jobs and without jobs there will be no tenants for commercial space."
Awaiting private investors
With banks out of the picture, cash-rich private investors and private equity funds will rule the day.
But those investors are unlikely to buy until prices fall to 10 to 20 cents on the dollar, said Rutstein, the Bradenton agent. That is when the powerful private equity money from the Related Companies, Steve Roth of Vornado Realty Trust and Granado Real Estate will get involved.
"Buyers are not going to adjust prices," Rutstein said. "There's no reason. There's more supply than demand and every week supply gets bigger. The most used word in commercial real estate these days is 'carry.' 'What will it cost me to carry this property and for how long?' These are unknown questions.
"The price has to be right and we really haven't come to terms with the right price at the moment."
Generational wealth
The only good to come of all this turmoil: "People who have money will be able to create generational wealth," said Chad Maxwell, a North Port commercial real estate agent. "They will be able to buy properties for far less than the cost of construction."
In Southwest Florida, the residential market will gradually strengthen, allowing home builders to begin construction again. As the economy improves elsewhere, retirees will show up in greater numbers. Those builders and their subcontractors will expand staff. Offices and warehouses will start to fill. The growing population and rising employment will boost consumption.
Once all that happens, commercial real estate lease rates will stop falling, analysts said.
But how long will it take?
"In the old days, you could make a reasonable guess," said Ian Black, a Sarasota-based commercial real estate broker. "Even now, investors are willing to come back in the market. But there is still a tremendous gap between what people are willing to pay and what banks will let properties go for."
What President Obama Can Teach America's Kids
by Bill O'Reilly
published: 08/09/2009
These are tough times for American children for a couple of reasons. The rise of the machines means that kids can now be exposed to material on computers or cellphones that is far beyond their emotional IQ. While high-tech can be a tremendous educational tool, explicit images and conversation easily found in cyberspace can rob children of their innocence and, in some cases, put them in actual danger. Even if parents are vigilant in monitoring the machines, kids can still get the bad stuff at school and on the playgrounds, as computer access is just about everywhere.
The disruption of the traditional American family is also adversely affecting millions of children. Right now, almost 22 million American kids are living with one parent; more than 80% of those are being raised primarily by Mom. Just 50 years ago, a child living without a father was somewhat of a rarity. Now it’s an epidemic.
Thus, our modern age presents vast challenges to children, and they need to learn lessons quickly in order to prosper. And who better to teach them than the President of the United States?
As has been widely chronicled, Barack Obama had a tough childhood filled with instability and loneliness. However, that did not stop him from rising to become the most powerful man in the world. His breathtaking achievement presents five important lessons for all children.
Lesson One: Forgiveness
President Obama was just 2 when his father abandoned him and his mother in Hawaii. Four years later, his mother took her little son to Indonesia after she remarried. However, the home was somewhat chaotic as they tried to adjust to their new surroundings. So when Barry, as he was called, turned 10, he was sent back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents while his mother stayed abroad.
That kind of situation could ruin a child. But President Obama betrays no bitterness. In his books and speeches, he speaks lovingly of his mom. He admits she was somewhat “reckless” but also says he felt he was “the center of her universe.”
As for his absent father, the President says the void he left motivated him to succeed. So, it is obvious that he is not wallowing in past pain. He does not harbor bitterness toward his parents. Instead, he accepted his situation and saw it as a challenge. He forgave his folks and embraced a positive outlook.
Lesson Two: Respect
Even though his mom and dad apparently put their needs ahead of his, he speaks of them in mostly affectionate terms. He finds a way not to demean them.
Patricia Saunders, a clinical psychologist who works with children in New York City, says: “ Barack Obama dealt with his family situation by understanding it. He put his own ego aside and made a decision to act respectfully toward his folks. That maturity has served him very well throughout his life.”
Lesson Three: Persistence
Barack Obama had few advantages as a child but decided to fight the good fight. That is, he got up when he was knocked down.
For example, in 2000, he lost his run for Congress in Illinois. He could have given up and gone into the private sector where high-salaried jobs awaited him. But he preferred public service. So, just four years later, he ran again, this time winning a U.S. Senate seat.
Psychologist Ruth Peters, who counsels children in Clearwater, Fla., believes that all the hard knocks Obama took in his young life prepared him for both defeat and victory.
“Some people shrink when they are faced with adversity,” she told me. “Others seem to gain momentum and are challenged when they fail. The President did not use his difficulties as an excuse to quit. He used them as motivators to persevere.”
But determination must be coupled with a very specific discipline in order to succeed in life. And that is the fourth lesson from the President.
Lesson Four: Hard Work
A child does not go from taking English lessons in Indonesia to editing the Harvard Law Review without doing some tough work. The President earned his present job by performing in school and, later, in his various jobs. He was smart enough to lay a foundation for success. Early on as a kid, he understood the big picture.
“Barack Obama loves his work,” Saunders says. “And this is a great example for children. They must understand that work is very important and will ultimately define their lives.”
Lesson Five—perhaps the greatest lesson the President can teach children: In America, anything is possible
This is something of a cliché, but never has it been more vividly illustrated. Barack Obama, a youngster in Hawaii without his parents around, has toughed it out and become one of history’s great stories, no matter what happens going forward. What he has achieved in his 48 years is simply astounding.
Consider the odds. The United States is a nation of more than 300 million citizens. Only one person is currently the Commander in Chief. That man had no fatherly guidance, is of mixed race, and had no family connections to guide him into the world of national politics.
That adds up to one simple truth that every American child should be told: “If Barack Obama can become the President of the United States, then whatever dream you may have can happen in your life.”
It all depends on lessons learned.
PARADE Contributing Editor Bill O’Reilly is the author of the best-seller “A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity” and anchor of “The O’Reilly Factor” on the Fox News Channel.
Photo by Erin Patrice O'Brien For PARADE
The Coming Great Depression
Why Government Is Powerless
http://www.contrahour.com/contrahour/2009/01/martin-armstrong-the-coming-great-depression.html
Honoring a Coach and an Upset
The former coach Paul Dietzel being greeted by Rollie Stichweh at a reunion Friday at West Point. Dietzel’s 1964 Army team beat Navy, 11-8. [Chang W. Lee/The New York Times]
By GEORGE VECSEY
Published: July 19, 2009
West Point, N.Y.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/sports/ncaafootball/20vecsey.html?emc=eta1
They beat Navy. They beat Roger Staubach. Forty-five years later, that is worth celebrating, all over again.
The old boys from the United States Military Academy brought back their coach, Paul Dietzel, and his wife, Anne, last weekend to commemorate one of the great upsets of college football — Army 11, Navy 8 — in November 1964.
By that time, Vietnam was looming over the men who played in that game, and it looms over them still. But the main reason to get together was to celebrate their coach, who prepared them and cajoled them into stopping one of the greatest college players ever.
This was when Army still had some leftover cachet as a football power, from the 1940s. Recently, Army has not been able to recruit enough talent, but its new coach, Rich Ellerson, has some ambitious plans, including a rematch with Notre Dame in Yankee Stadium in 2010, to be announced Monday. The echoes of Dietzel’s epic victory are still heard along the Hudson.
Dietzel, 84, still paints and talks up his recent book, Call Me Coach. There are many traces of the charismatic young man who left Louisiana State University — where he had won a national championship in 1958 — to return in 1962 as head coach at West Point, where he had served two tours as an assistant.
Anne Dietzel estimated that they have lived in 25 different homes. Once, she said, she asked a contractor how the heating system worked in her new home, and the man asked if her husband was around, so he could explain. Her husband was off recruiting linebackers in Ohio, she said; the contractor had best explain it to her.
He inherited the men in the room, now in their mid-60s, with charming wives and bad knees and successful careers. He is still Coach, a man who had control of every detail, except in his own household. Bill Zadel, the big tackle, was lying in the infirmary with a leg injury in 1964, when Coach paid a visit. Dietzel was so sweet, so solicitous, that Zadel allowed as how he was already feeling a bit better. That’s good, Zadel, Coach quickly said, because you’re playing both ways on Saturday. He played nearly 60 minutes against Navy, too.
Coach did have a light side. One summer, the Nashville Banner reporter Fred Russell was visiting camp, driven in a jeep by the assistant coach Bill Battle. Suddenly, there were explosions in the woods up ahead, and Battle urged Russell to seek cover, because live ammunition was unexpectedly being fired. That night, before the Rita Hayworth movie on base, everybody was treated to another film — Fred Russell diving into the underbrush.
Dietzel also kept tabs on missed bed checks and youthful pranks. The worst thing that could happen was to be addressed as “Son,” said Rhesa H. Barksdale, one of the team managers, now a federal judge in Mississippi and Louisiana, who arranged the weekend with Dietzelian precision.
No stranger to military life, Dietzel had flown B-29 missions in the Pacific as a 20-year-old, before playing center for Miami of Ohio, the so-called cradle of coaches, on the same squad with the future coaches Bo Schembechler, Bill Arnsparger and Ara Parseghian. He was an acolyte of Sid Gillman, Red Blaik and Bear Bryant before winning the national title at L.S.U.
After his first season in 1962, Dietzel converted Rollie Stichweh from halfback to quarterback, and Stichweh nearly beat Staubach as a junior, only to run out of time near the end zone. In 1964, playing quarterback and safety, Stichweh tried again. The old boys like John Johnson, Frank Cosentino and Vince Casillo still recall Dietzel’s game plan, to pressure Staubach from the wings, not let him move around.
Stichweh, who played 55 minutes that day, remains a lifelong friend of Staubach’s. They played in the same backfield in the East-West game, and Stichweh ran for a touchdown. Staubach served his hitch and became a great pro quarterback, but there were no all-pro players at Army.
As seniors, Stichweh and Zadel and the others began to hear of former cadets being killed or injured in Vietnam. “It began to get personal,” Stichweh recalled. By 1967, Stichweh was a captain in the 173rd Airborne on Hill 875 near Dak To, up near the Cambodian border. He said that playing football was only one part of the academy’s preparation to perform under pressure.
“By the time I was at Hill 875, it was already baked into your soul,” he said.
Zadel was a Marine officer a few kilometers away, but they did not know how close they were. Stichweh learned his first daughter had been born when he received a message scribbled on a shoe box, dropped in a package from a helicopter. They both survived and came home, Stichweh to become a top executive at the consulting company Towers Perrin and Zadel to become a highly successful businessman.
For a while, the teammates consoled themselves with the assurance that they had been fighting to advance democracy in Asia.
“That was my story at cocktail parties,” Zadel said the other night, adding that he had changed his mind after learning about the misgivings of President Lyndon Baines Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara, who died July 6.
“I read the excerpts from McNamara’s book,” Zadel said, referring to McNamara’s belated admission that the war was in vain. “I was incensed.”
Stichweh said that every Memorial Day he visited the cemetery at West Point to honor his 26 classmates, including a member of his wedding party, who died in Vietnam, all of them, he said, after McNamara began to experience “his own little epiphany.”
Those comments were made in private; Stichweh and I have known each other for almost half a century. At the dinner, Stichweh was gregarious, as always, noting how Dietzel had come through a broken family, married well, lived his Christian faith.
In his remarks, Dietzel wept a few times and made people laugh many times. A few people at the academy had been upset when Dietzel left with a record of 21-18-1 after the 1965 season. He negotiated for more control at South Carolina, but his record there was a mediocre 42-53-1. That is old business; the academy is home; the memories are mostly fun.
On Friday, Dietzel recalled how, after becoming head coach, he had been summoned to the home of Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the commandant, and later the commander in Vietnam.
“You could say Westmoreland was a little stiff,” Dietzel said, kindly, recalling how his assistants had been aching for a beer, just to relax. Then Katherine Westmoreland, the vivacious wife of the general who was known as Kitsy, told the coaches she had some good advice about how to succeed at the academy.
With that, Dietzel said, she turned her back to them and hiked up her dress, revealing — in a dignified fashion, of course — black panties, with two words printed on them: Beat Navy.
It took them a few years, but they did. Forty-five years later, that is worth celebrating.
E-mail: geovec@nytimes.com
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FINANCINGS
Total amount raised $35,684,000
2004: $1,950,000
2005: $16,734,000
2006: $17,000,000
Cash on hand: $13,000,000
http://www.netcastdaily.com/broadcast/fsn2009-0509-3b.mp3
Industrialinfo Radio
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INTRODUCTION
Bulldog Resources Inc. is a Calgary based emerging oil and gas company which commenced operations in December 2005 as a result of the Plan of Arrangement between Bulldog Energy Inc. and Crescent Point Energy Trust. Bulldog will pursue an aggressive growth strategy utilizing a balanced approach of exploration & development drilling, strategic property and corporate acquisitions in focused areas.
Bulldog Resources common shares are listed for trading on the TSX Exchange under the symbol BD. Bulldog Resources common shares began trading on December 5, 2005. After closing the common share private placement on April 4, 2006, Bulldog has 24,959,202 common shares outstanding.
CORPORATE STRATEGY
The business of Bulldog Resources is to create sustainable and profitable per share growth in the oil and natural gas industry in Western Canada. The company will also consider international projects should attractive, accessible opportunities be identified. Bulldog Resources will pursue an integrated growth strategy involving growth through the "drill bit" complemented with strategic acquisitions. The Company's undeveloped land inventory will be derived from a combination of land acquisitions, farmins and joint venture participation agreements. Acquisitions will complement its active drilling programs where exploitation, development drilling and exploratory drilling opportunities exist. Bulldog Resources will initially focus on pursuing medium depth (1,000 to 1,500 m) light oil reservoirs in Southeast Saskatchewan where this management team has demonstrated excellent success.
Bulldog Resources business strategy is summarized as follows:
identify and access undeveloped land that has the potential for light/ medium gravity oil or natural gas prospects;
create internally generated geological and geophysical oil and natural gas prospects;
develop a drilling portfolio of low to medium risk opportunities;
operate prospects, when possible, to increase control over both the timing of operations and amount of expenditures;
where involved in non operated prospects develop a strong relationship with the operating company;
focus on projects with short term "on stream" development characteristics to create immediate cash flow and shareholder returns
This strategy involves acquiring properties, consolidating ownership by acquiring additional interests in its properties, and developing its properties through well and facility optimization, completions and development drilling. Once established in an area, Bulldog Resources pursues additional development and exploratory drilling in the surrounding area.
Bulldog Resources management and directors have significant industry experience in producing areas throughout Western Canada and internationally. We have the capability to expand the scope of the Company's activities as opportunities arise. A key element of Bulldog Resources ultimate success is its continued ability to select opportunities that will promote value creation within the Company.
In reviewing potential property acquisitions, the Company considers the following criteria:
the ability of the Company to enhance the value of a property through additional development and exploratory drilling, completion and tie in of capped wells, additional exploitation efforts, including improved production practices, and improved marketing arrangements;
the quality of production and reserves, in terms of product type, production rates, stability of production, reserve life index and operating cost;
the compatibility of a property with management's organizational skills and capabilities and the Company's existing portfolio;
the availability of existing infrastructure and the ability to expand that infrastructure for increasing production;
the potential for multi zone hydrocarbon opportunity;
the degree of control gained over operations and development, and the potential for the Company to become the operator; and
the ability to efficiently bring a property's production to market in the near term.
The board of directors of the Company may, in its discretion, approve asset or corporate acquisitions or investments that do not conform to these guidelines based upon the board's consideration of the qualitative aspects of the subject properties including risk profile, technical upside, reserve life and asset quality.
MANAGEMENT
Ken McKay, P.Geol.
President & Chief Executive Officer, Director
Bulldog Resources is led by Ken McKay, a professional geologist with 24 years experience in exploration, exploitation, property evaluations and corporate finance in western Canada and internationally. Bulldog Resources is Mr. McKay's third start up of a junior oil and gas company.
In 2001, Ken co-founded Bulldog Energy Inc. as President and Chief Executive Officer. Bulldog Energy Inc. was a public company trading on the TSX Exchange. Bulldog Energy completed a $4.2 million initial public offering in December 2001 and commenced operations in January, 2002 with 13 Bbls/day of oil production. Bulldog Energy's management team and experienced board of directors successfully grew the Company to a production base of over 2,100 BOE per day. On October 3, 2005, the date of announcement of the transaction, the value of the operations sold to Crescent Point Energy Trust was $118 million.
Mr. McKay arranged and executed five financings raising approximately $31 million into Bulldog Energy. He was directly involved on all project, capital allocation, strategic and corporate decisions.
In 1995, Mr. McKay founded private Big Sky Resources Inc. ("Big Sky") with equity of approximately $350,000. Under Ken's leadership and direction as President and Chief Executive Officer, Big Sky assembled the team, projects and capital which grew company production to approximately 1,000 BOE/D (10:1) prior to its sale to Vermilion Resources Ltd. in August, 2000 for approximately $33,000,000 in cash, Vermilion shares and assumed debt.
From March 1994 until January 1995, Ken was an independent geological consultant. From 1992 until 1994, he was employed by Shell International Petroleum in the Hague, Netherlands as production geologist and team leader responsible for an integrated petroleum engineering study on Nembe Creek Field, Nigeria.
From 1982 until 1992, Ken held geological positions focusing on exploration and exploitation in western Canada at PanCanadian Petroleum Ltd., Bow Valley Industries Ltd., and Paloma Petroleum Ltd.
Ken graduated in 1982 with a Bachelor of Science in Geology from the University of Calgary.
Bruce McKay, C.E.T.
Vice President Production & Chief Operating Officer, Director
Bruce McKay brings 30 years of engineering, operations and corporate experience to Bulldog Resources.
Bruce was previously the Vice President Production & Chief Operating Officer, Director and Co-Founder of Bulldog Energy Inc. from incorporation in July 2001 to its successful sale to Crescent Point Energy Trust in November 2005.
He was integral in growing Bulldog Energy to over 2100 BOE/D. Bruce was responsible for all the engineering and operations functions of Bulldog Energy and was instrumental in corporate acquisitions, property acquisitions and corporate strategies. Bulldog Energy focused its operations in Southeast Saskatchewan where it exploited existing oil pools and discovered and developed many new light oil pools. Bruce's efforts and abilities allowed Bulldog Energy to drill and operate all of its major projects with below average costs.
From March 1990 to March 2001, Bruce worked for Fletcher Challenge Energy Inc. ("Fletcher Challenge") in Calgary. As the General Manager, Drilling and Field Services, he was responsible for all the company's drilling & completion, construction, facility engineering & pipeline functions. He was instrumental in helping grow the company from an initial 3000 BOE/D to 40,000 BOE/D. He also participated in corporate initiatives in New Zealand and Venezuela. Fletcher Challenge was sold to Apache Canada Ltd. in March 2001.
From 1972 to 1990, Bruce held various senior engineering and operations positions with Dome Petroleum Ltd., Newscope Resources Ltd. and Esso Resources Canada Ltd.
Michael Flanagan, P.Land
Executive Vice President, Land
Mike Flanagan is a professional landman who brings 24 years of diversified land and contract experience in the oil and gas industry to Bulldog Resources.
Mike was previously the Vice President Land and Co-Founder of Bulldog Energy Inc. from October 2001 to its successful sale to Crescent Point Energy Trust in November 2005. He was integral in growing Bulldog Energy to over 2,100 BOE/D. Mike was responsible for all land and contract functions of Bulldog Energy and was instrumental in corporate acquisitions, property acquisitions and corporate strategies. Mike's efforts allowed Bulldog Energy to capture a focused and prospective land base for our drilling programs.
From December 1997 to April 2000, Mike served as Vice President Land at CrownJoule Exploration Ltd. ("CrownJoule") a TSX listed startup company During Mikes tenure at Crownjoule production more than doubled from 500 BOE/D to over 1,200 BOE/D (10:1). CrownJoule was acquired by BelAir Energy Corporation in May 2000.
From 1994 to 1997, Mike held the position of Land Manager at Canor Energy Ltd. ("Canor"). This private company, funded almost entirely on cash flow, doubled its reserve base through the drill bit. Through Mike's efforts, Canor was actively involved in the start-up of a private sidecar company whose assets grew to $25 million in its first year of operations.
Prior to Canor, Mike held the positions of District Landman (1988 to 1990) and Land Manager (1990 to 1994) at Canada Northwest Energy. Mike started his career at Husky Oil Operations Limited in 1982, where he served as a Surface Landman, Contract Landman and Negotiating Landman.
Mike received his Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Calgary in 1981 and is a professional member of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Landmen.
Rob Kraft, C.A.
Chief Financial Officer
Rob Kraft joined Bulldog Resources in December 2005 and is a Chartered Accountant with 21 years of financial management experience in both public and private oil and gas companies. Rob's background and experience covers all aspects of the financial management and administration of public oil and gas entities including financial reporting, treasury, taxation, capital markets, risk management, investor relations, acquisitions and divestitures and corporate financings.
Previous to Bulldog Resources Rob consulted with Kaiser Energy Ltd. ("Kaiser"), a private oil and gas company, assisting Kaiser's corporate sale process resulting in the successful sale of the Company to Petrofund Energy Trust in December 2005. Previous to Kaiser, Rob was the Chief Financial Officer of Flowing Energy Corporation ("Flowing") from June 2004 to April 2005. Flowing was a public junior oil and gas Company with a production base of 3,200 BOE per day. Flowing was purchased by Daylight Energy Trust in April 2005. For the three years prior to Flowing, Rob was the Chief Financial Officer of Taurus Exploration Ltd. ("Taurus"), a private oil and gas company with a production base of 7,300 BOE per day. During the period 1984 to 2000 Rob held various senior financial positions with Bonanza Resources Ltd, Poco Petroleums Ltd., Paragon Petroleum Corporation and Northrock Resources Limited.
Rob articled with Coopers and Lybrand, Chartered Accountants where he qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1982.
>Good post. In order for China to expand so massively, it had to first comb the world for secured natural resources. It has don just that on all continents; even if prices rise, China will pay the price, so long as they are first in line. Afterall they have a ton of American dollars sold for the junk that Americans has bought and continue to buy on credit.
I early await for the end of the Olympics. I have been saying that China will play Mr. Nice Guy, but after the Olympics, there is a new sheriff in town; the former sheriff is too busy reading People Magazine, Star, el al.
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PEAK OIL - EPOCHAL EVENT OF OUR LIVES
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The title of this board, Peak Oil - Epochal Event of Our Lives, purposely includes the word epochal, meaning without parallel.
Why will Peak Oil be without parallel?
Look at past events in the Middle East, which interrupted the supply of oil throughout the world and especially in the United States. These disruptions were geopolitical events and were ultimately resolved with diplomacy.
Peak Oil, on the other hand, will be a geological event, something that mankind has never faced before and certainly cannot control. It will inevitably occur when mankind has consumed half of nature's oil, which is a finite resource.
Illustrated below is Hubbert's Curve, which shows the growth, peak, and decline of worldwide individual and regional wells. This sequence will occur while world population dramatically increases and as Asia, in particular, accelerates its industrialization.
HUBBERT CURVE
Regional Vs Individual Wells
Peak Oil will adversely affect many aspects of our lives. For example, over the last 100 years, gas powered engines have contributed to the discovery and expansion of the automobile and airplane industries. Recently the population of the United States reached 300 million and vehicles now total 225 million. Future population growth, with a corresponding increase in vehicles, will further deplete oil supplies.
Agriculture has changed from numerous labor and animal-intensive family farms to a machine-intensive industry controlled by corporations. Further, much of the increased productivity of farm soil emanates from petroleum-based fertilizers.
Farming and transportation are just two segments of society that must adjust to prospective oil declines. The critical question is how will our entire society adjust to a worldwide oil scarcity.
M. King Hubbert, a Shell geologist, predicted in 1956 that oil production in the United States would peak in 1970. In hindsight, it did. He also predicted worldwide oil reserves and oil production would peak between 2004 - 2010.
Mr. Hubbert's warning was given, yet it has been largely ignored. Oil discoveries and plentiful oil reserves in Alaska and the North Sea made many people complacent. In addition, new technologies were developed, so that oil was sucked up from the earth as if by giant straws. Although oil was abundant in the 1980's and 1990's, reserves in this century are in demonstrable decline.
China, in particular, recognizes the potential shortage of oil. It canvasses the world making oil deals to secure its energy future. It is also currently building 30 nuclear reactors and 7 hydroelectric dams to supplement its energy needs.
Sadly, the United States lingers behind. Its attitude seems to be that oil will always be abundant, probably because it has been in the past. Even with the dramatic crude oil price increases of the past three years, there still is a reluctance to confront this potential problem.
PURPOSE OF THIS BOARD
One purpose of this board is to provide I-Hub members with a repository of Peak Oil articles. Hopefully these will stimulate interest in the topic and I invite readers to post their thoughts.
Another important purpose of this board is to help people in preparing for or coping with the Peak Oil event. To this end, various links by category have been supplied below.
Good luck!
sumisu
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TABLE OF CONTENTS :
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GETTING READY FOR PEAK OIL & SUSTAINABLE LIVING : A companion #board-9881 titled "PEAK OIL - SUSTAINABLE LIVING" was spun off from this board to provide an archive of postings and sources of information which will aid the community to adopt and survive in a world of declining energy resources. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PEAK OIL READING LIST FROM JIM PUPLAVA http://www.financialsense.com/resources/peakoil.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PEAK OIL SITES, BLOGS, & ORGANIZATIONS
Peak Oil Clock http://sydneypeakoil.com/peak_oil_clock/
Peak Oil News & Message Boards http://www.peakoil.com/
The Oil Drum http://www.theoildrum.com/
Energy Bulletin: Peak Oil Primer and Links http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php
ASPO-USA http://www.aspo-usa.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=35
Association for the Study of Peak Oil&Gas http://www.peakoil.net
Dry Dipstick http://www.drydipstick.com
Beyond Oil, The View from Hubbert's Peak by Kenneth S. Deffeyes http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/index.html
Simmons & Company International http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/research.aspx?Type=msspeeches
National Petroleum Council http://www.npc.org
Life After the Oil Crash http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
The Coming Global Oil Crisis http://www.oilcrisis.com
The View From The Peak http://www.theviewfromthepeak.net
Energy Balance http://tinyurl.com/42awvh
Energy Outlook http://energyoutlook.blogspot.com/
Global Public Media - Public Service Broadcasting For A Post Carbon World http://globalpublicmedia.com/
PeakOilDesign http://peakoildesign.com/
Post Carbon Institute http://www.postcarbon.org/
NEI Nuclear Notes http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/
PLENTY http://www.plentymag.com/
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NARRATIVE LINKS
Peak Oil FAQ #msg-33046927
Peak Oil Report by Peak Oil Associates International #msg-32147901
Evolutionary psychology and peak oil #msg-30634038
Roscoe Bartlett Discusses His Special Order Speeches #msg-29893771
OIL SHOCK AND ENERGY TRANSITION by Andrew McKillop, May 7, 2008 #msg-29196735
Energy Bull Market Fundamentals Remain Strong, Chris Puplava, 2008 http://tinyurl.com/5nze3h
The Truth About Oil by Vasko Kohlmayer, 05 08 08 http://tinyurl.com/3guotj
The Gospel According to Matthew, by Mimi Swartz, 02/01/08 #msg-26286577
Another Nail in the Coffin of the Case Against Peak Oil, Matt Simmons, Nov 2007
http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/Another%20Nail%20in%20the%20Coffin.pdf
Megaprojects update: Just how close to Peak Oil are we? 10/18/07 Chris Skrebowski: Trustee of the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre http://tinyurl.com/33rl3q
Crisis, what energy crisis? Euan Mearns, The Oil Drum: Europe. 07/03/07 Over 50 links to Oil Drum articles from the past year are provided which combined provide a comprehensive overview of the issues surrounding peak oil and energy decline. http://www.energybulletin.net/31608.html
On the Precipice: Energy Security & Economic Stability on the Edge - by Daniel Davis 07/17/07 http://www.aspo-usa.com/assets/documents/Danny_Davis_On_the_Precipice.pdf
Evolutionary psychology and peak oil: A Malthusian inspired "heads up" for humanity. by Dr. Michael E. Mills http://www.drmillslmu.com/peakoil.htm
Peak oil: Facts converge with theory http://tinyurl.com/2gtud4
11 incontrovertible truths of oil production & peak oil arguments by PeakEngineer, 05/23/07 #msg-19902674
Peak Oil, Carrying Capacity and Overshoot: Population, the Elephant in the Room, © Copyright 2007, Paul Chefurka http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Population.html
CRUDE OIL Uncertainty about Future Oil Supply Makes It Important to Develop a Strategy for Addressing a Peak and Decline in Oil Production, GAO Report, 03/29/07 http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07283.pdf
DIE OFF - a population crash resource page http://www.dieoff.com/index.html
Portland, Oregon City Council unanimously creates a peak oil task force - 05/10/06 http://www.portlandpeakoil.org/
Testimony before the Australian Senate by Dr. Samsam Bakhtiari, a senior expert employed by the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), 07/11/06 http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/S9515.pdf
The Hirsch Report - February 2005 #msg-10310387
The Financial Sense Energy Resource Page http://www.financialsense.com/energy/main.htm
Financial Sense Big Picture Archive http://www.financialsense.com/fsn/2006.html
OIL: A TRAVELOGUE OF ADDICTION by Chicago Tribune, 07/29/06 (Suggested viewing: Open link and click on Watch documentary, left-hand column). http://tinyurl.com/h78ve
Exploring emotional reactions to peak oil by Kathy McMahon http://www.energybulletin.net/19718.html
Denial Of Energy Crisis Is A Conditioned Response, By Dave Wheelock #msg-25561271
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Hubbert peak theory From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
A Tribute To M. King Hubbert http://www.mkinghubbert.com/
Outlook for Fuel Reserves http://www.mkinghubbert.com/files/hubbert_1974.pdf
Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels by M. King Hubbert, 1956 Published on 8 Mar 2006 by Energy Bulletin. Archived on 8 Mar 2006. http://www.energybulletin.net/13630.html
Shell Execs Briefed on Peak Oil in 1956 #msg-29389791
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President Carter's Address to the Nation On Energy Policy (April 18, 1977) Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y6pPF_lzsU
Transcript: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_energy.html
Energy Policy and Conservation Executive Order 12003, July 20th, 1977
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=7842
Carter's Brave Vision on Energy by David Morris, Monday, October 10, 2005 by the Minneapolis Star Tribune
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1010-27.htm
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CONGRESSMAN ROSCOE BARTLETT is leading efforts to change U.S. energy policy to address the challenges of peak oil. U.S. oil production peaked in 1970 and is in permanent decline. World oil production will also peak - perhaps disastrously soon. http://bartlett.house.gov
Congressman Roscoe Bartlett video on Peak Oil in 7 parts. . .
The House of Representatives formed a Peak Oil caucus in 2005 with 8 members: #msg-30864250
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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ON PEAK OIL
"Tapped Out" by Paul Roberts, August 2008 http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/06/world-oil/roberts-text
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FSN/JIM PUPLAVA AUDIO INTERVIEWS
Financial Sense Newshour (FSN] show on 09 27 08
ASPO presentations by:
Robert L. Hirsch, Senior Energy Advisor, MISI
Matthew R. Simmons, Chairman, Simmons & Company Int.
Chris Skrebowski, Editor, UK Petroleum Review
http://www.netcastdaily.com/broadcast/fsn2008-0927-3b.mp3
FSN: W.D. Lyle Jr., Ph.D. & L. Scott Allen, Ph.D., August 30, 2008. "A Very Unpleasant Truth" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2008/Lyle.html
FSN: Matthew R. Simmons, August 9, 2008. "Energy: It's Still Cheap" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2008/Simmons.html
FSN: Chris Nelder [coauthor, Brian Hicks], 8/02/08. "Profit From The Peak: The End of Oil and the Greatest Investment Event of the Century" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2008/Nelder.html
FSN: Michael T. Klare, 6/21/08. "Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2008/Klare.html
FSN: Steve LeVine, 03/29/08. "The Oil and the Glory: The Pursuit of Empire and Fortune on the Caspian Sea" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2008/LeVine.html
FSN: Energy Roundtable: Jim Puplava, Matthew Simmons, Robert L. Hirsch, & Jeffrey G. Rubin Discussion - 02/02/08 http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/roundtable/2008/0202.html
FSN: Richard Heinberg, 09/22/07. "Peak Everything: Waking up to the Century of Declines" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2007/Heinberg.html
FSN: Matthew Simmons, 08/18/07, "All the Canaries Have Stopped Singing" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2007/Simmons.html
FSN: Matthew R. Simmons, 11/25/06, - Critique of the CERA Report http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2006/Simmons.html
FSN: Richard Heinberg, 10/21/06 - "The Oil Depletion Protocol" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2006/Heinberg.html
FSN: Matthew R. Simmons, 09/30/06 http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2006/Simmons.html
FSN: Jeremy Leggett, 07 08 06 - "The Empty Tank"
http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2006/Leggett.html
FNS:Paul Kruger, 06 03 06 - "Alternative Energy Resources" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2006/Kruger.html
FSN: Peter Tertzakian, 04/15/06 - "A Thousand Barrels A Second" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2006/Tertzakian.html
FSN: The Last Oil Crisis; 03/04/06 http://www.financialsense.com/fsn/BP/2006/0304.html
FSN: Energy Roundtable - Jim Puplava, James Kunstler, Richard Heinberg, 02/18/06 http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/roundtable/2006/0218.html
FSN: "Zapata" George Blake, 02/04/06 - "Everything But The Kitchen Sink!" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2006/Blake.html
FSN: Ahead Of The Trend: Interview with Zapata George Blake, 01/14/06 http://finance.banks.com/intersearch?Account=banks&GUID=272396&Page=MediaViewer&Ticker=BJS
FSN:"Energy, The Big Story of 2005" (Select December 24 - Part 1) http://www.financialsense.com/fsn/2005.html
FSN: James Howard Kunstler, 10/01/05 -"The Long Emergency" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2005/Kunstler.html
FSN: Matthew R. Simmons, 08/06/05 -"Twilight In The Desert" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2005/Simmons.html
FSN: Kenneth S. Deffeyes, 05/21/05 - "Beyond Oil: The View From Huppert's Peak" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2005/Deffeyes.html
FSN: Michael T. Klare, 01/15/05 - "Blood and Oil" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2005/Klare.html
FSN: Matt Savinar, 10/23/2004- "The Oil Age Is Over" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2004/Savinar.html
FSN: Dennis Meadows, Co-Author, 10/09/04, "Limits to Growth: The 30-year Update"
http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2004/Meadows.html
FSN: Julian Darley, Author, 09/25/2004- "High Noon for Natural Gas" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2004/Darley.html
FSN: Richard Heinberg: 08/07/04 -"Powerdown" & 02 23 03 - The Party's Over http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2004/Heinberg.html
FSN: Paul Roberts: 05/29/04- "The End of Oil:On the Edge of a Perilous New World" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2004/Roberts.html
FSN: Stephen Leeb, 05/08/04 - "The Oil Factor: Protect Yourself--and Profit--From the Coming Energy Crisis" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2004/Leeb.html
FSN: Lutz Kleveman, 01/24/04 - "The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia"
http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2004/Kleveman.html
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OTHER AUDIOS & VIDEOS
Peak Oil - Chris Martenson http://www.chrismartenson.com/peak_oil
Twilight In the Desert http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfEO3PCEeis
Peak Oil - Robert Hirsch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSbfvZiJ9g0
Peak Oil - Crude Impact #msg-30619202
CNN Special Investigation - OUT OF GAS #msg-30188572
Oil and the 'New International Energy Order' - Michael Klare, 04 14 08 http://tinyurl.com/59947u
"A conversation with John Hofmeister" - Charlie Rose, 03 25 08 http://tinyurl.com/23o8py
Video: A High-Risk Barrel, September 28, 2007 http://novakeo.com/?p=1054&jal_no_js=true&poll_id=10
Matt Savinar - Coast to Coast, 10/07 http://klrietmann.bingodisk.com/bingo/public/Savinarc2c111.mp3
A Crude Awakening http://tinyurl.com/yp88uu
Matthew Simmons on Peak Oil, ASPO Conference at Boston University 10 27 06 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-429585738009344102&q=peak+oil'
Peak Oil, Richard Heinberg, 09/11/06 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2141508903056009420
Peak Oil: Gas Prices, Supply Depletion & Energy Crisis: From NewCulture.org, 07 27 06 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMQd5nGEkr4&mode=related&search
The Long Emergency: Surviving Catastophies of the 21st Century, 10 30 05 http://tinyurl.com/2g6p35
Real Oil Crisis - 11 24 05 (Video Presentation) http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1515141.htm
The End of Suburbia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug&feature=related
World Made By Hand (Video Promo) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbEe8v4YpgA
T. Boone Pickens on CNBC [discusses alternative energies] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylI4iQ-5iXg
Dr. Al Husseini, retired head of exploration and production for Saudi Aramco, interview with CNBC on 03/27/08: http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=697807590&play=1
RICHARD HEINBERG on OUR POST-CARBON FUTURE http://tinyurl.com/636juw
Megan Quinn Bachman - Peak Oil, Community & The Future in four parts:
Calm Before the Storm, Richard Heinberg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajqgOCxGEAo
Running on Empty: Life Without Cheap Oil http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqg3P3wOV60 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A 10% Reduction in America's Oil Use in Ten to Twelve Years An Overlooked, Practical, and Affordable Approach Using Mature Existing Technology by Alan S. Drake, May 2006 • Rev. October 2006 http://www.lightrailnow.org/features/f_lrt_2006-05a.htm
Electrification of transportation as a response to peaking of world oil production by Alan S. Drake 12/19/05 in Light Rail Now http://www.energybulletin.net/14492.html
Public Transport Industry Issues http://www.lightrailnow.org/industry_issues.htm#electrification
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COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS & NEW URBANISM
The Community Solution http://www.communitysolution.org/
WORLD CHANGING http://www.worldchanging.com/about/
How to Wean a Town Off Fossil Fuels http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/005135.html
A Community Solution to Peak Oil: An interview with Megan Quinn http://www.energybulletin.net/5721
Sustain Lane | The Healthy, Sustainable Living Community Resource http://www.sustainlane.com/
Culture Change http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php
Communities, Refuges, and Refuge-Communities by Zachary Nowak http://www.energybulletin.net/21172.html
Karavans - Moving Toward a New World of Self-Sufficiency, Sustainability, and Genuine Community http://www.karavans.com/peakoil.html
New Urbanism http://www.newurbanism.org/
The New Urbanisn http://www.newurbannews.com/AboutNewUrbanism.html
Online NewsHour - New Urbanism http://www.pbs.org/newshour/newurbanism/
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OTHER NATIONS - STATUS FOR PEAK OIL
Closing the 'Collapse Gap': The USSR was better prepared for peak oil than the US - by Dmitry Orlov, 12/04/06 http://energybulletin.net/23259.html
The power of community: How Cuba survived peak oil - by Megan Quinn, 02/25/06 http://www.energybulletin.net/13171.html
"Flush With Energy" By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN August 10, 2008 #msg-31394853
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FSN: Lutz Kleveman, 01/24/04 - "The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia"
http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2004/Kleveman.html
FSN: Michael T. Klare, 01/15/05 - "Blood and Oil" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2005/Klare.html
FSN: Michael T. Klare, 6/21/08. "Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2008/Klare.html
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CANTARELL OIL FIELD & DEPLETION
Cantarell Field by Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantarell_Field
Cantarell, The Second Largest Oil Field Is Dying, by G.R. Morton, 08 14 04
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/1651
Cantarell Decline Perspective, Jim KIngsdale's "Energy Investment STRATEGIES" 07 08 08
http://www.energyinvestmentstrategies.com/2008/07/08/cantarell-decline-perspective/
A Storm Called Cantarell by Sean Brodrick, "Money and Markets' 09 03 08
#msg-31902352
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Export Land Medel by Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_Land_Model
What the Export Land Model Means for Energy Prices By: Doug Casey, Casey Research LLC, 06 04 08 http://www.321energy.com/editorials/casey/casey060508.html
An Update on Mexico Export Land Model by GraphOilogy 01 22 08
http://graphoilogy.blogspot.com/2008/01/update-on-mexico-export-land-model.html
Oil Outlook: "Export Land Model" by Jeff Rubin on CNBC, October 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ed9jsKAOHU
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CHARTS OF INTERESTDepiction of U.S. Oil Production
The U.S. produced less oil in 2006 than it did in 1950. This production fits a curve that would make M. King Hubbert sigh and nod sagely. He was the first to trace the patterns of Peak Oil, and he saw this chart coming half a century ago. Source and worthy explanation of following charts at: http://www.peakoil.com/sample
USA National Gas Temperature Map http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx
Peak Water(H2O) #board-12656
Peak Natural Resources #board-12910
https://plus.google.com/110498838702425947978#110498838702425947978/posts
Figure 1 (New York Times) 
