Posted on 08/05/2003 6:20:01 PM PDT by Beck_isright
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:15:31 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
That's different from saying that the economy is - or isn't - improving. It is like saying it can't improve. And the idea that the nation's business cycle is "broken" is a lot more troubling than what you are hearing economists and politicians arguing about these days.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
"There are three types of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics." Mark Twain
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Christian Marxism close to the Maryknollers and Berrigans. And by the way, it wasn't an economic summit. It was a sales meeting.
Ummm, I might need have stayed up too late and need to get some sleep, but I was under the impression that high unemployment numbers mean that there are going to be less, if any, jobs for them to go back to, if they had jobs in the first place.
A good analysis. President Bush is also using deficit spending, government works (a war or two was a positive but not a planned help)to bail this economy out of its hole. In retrospect the Federal Reserve overshot the Y2K concerns and pumped far too much money into the economy resulting in a stock market melt-up. Then when they cut back (and increased short-term rates to 6.5%)they precipitated a stock market crash that wiped out trillions in the stock market.
Not only is a steep yield curve a harbinger of a recovery (but not always) but the Federal Reserve can only control the short term rates between member banks and the central bank. This means long term rates can be influenced by short term rates, but eventually market forces determine how much long term rates will be.
Historically real rates (minus inflation) are about 2% or at most 3%. Long term rates above this are factoring in an inflation finagle factor. Right now, I would see the increasing rates as beneficial for lenders and savers such as old people. When long term rates were lower, in some instances the real inflation rate for what you actually buy was greater than the interest rate; hence, there was little emphasis on saving and people who received money from savings were losing principal rather than receiving interest. Long term rate increases are appreciated by some and decried by others: if an economy is to survive, lenders must receive something above inflation for the use of their money.
What the future holds is anyone's guess. No one has ever been consistently successful at predicting long term interest rates as is witness by the failure of Nobel Prize winning economists and the Long Term Capital Management fiasco.
You may have the advantage of superior knowledge; however my brief explanation was taken from one of those 'Discovery Channel' documentaries, filtered by my admittedly faulty memory. They over-rode interlocks, all right, and were running unauthorized tests...but they were pulling rods, just as I said, and as I clearly recall the documentary.
What mechanism would cause prompt criticality via starting cooling pumps?
--Boris
"Events leading to the accident (IA86, IA86a)
"The Unit 4 reactor was to be shutdown for routine maintenance on 25 April 1986. It was decided to take advantage of this shutdown to determine whether, in the event of a loss of station power, the slowing turbine could provide enough electrical power to operate the emergency equipment and the core cooling water circulating pumps, until the diesel emergency power supply became operative. The aim of this test was to determine whether cooling of the core could continue to be ensured in the event of a loss of power.
This type of test had been run during a previous shut-down period, but the results had been inconclusive, so it was decided to repeat it. Unfortunately, this test, which was considered essentially to concern the non-nuclear part of the power plant, was carried out without a proper exchange of information and co-ordination between the team in charge of the test and the personnel in charge of the operation and safety of the nuclear reactor. Therefore, inadequate safety precautions were included in the test programme and the operating personnel were not alerted to the nuclear safety implications of the electrical test and its potential danger.
The planned programme called for shutting off the reactor's emergency core cooling system (ECCS), which provides water for cooling the core in an emergency. Although subsequent events were not greatly affected by this, the exclusion of this system for the whole duration of the test reflected a lax attitude towards the implementation of safety procedures.
As the shutdown proceeded, the reactor was operating at about half power when the electrical load dispatcher refused to allow further shutdown, as the power was needed for the grid. In accordance with the planned test programme, about an hour later the ECCS was switched off while the reactor continued to operate at half power. It was not until about 23:00 hr on 25 April that the grid controller agreed to a further reduction in power.
For this test, the reactor should have been stabilised at about 1 000 MWt prior to shut down, but due to operational error the power fell to about 30 MWt, where the positive void coefficient became dominant. The operators then tried to raise the power to 700-1 000 MWt by switching off the automatic regulators and freeing all the control rods manually. It was only at about 01:00 hr on 26 April that the reactor was stabilised at about 200 MWt.
Although there was a standard operating order that a minimum of 30 control rods was necessary to retain reactor control, in the test only 6-8 control rods were actually used. Many of the control rods were withdrawn to compensate for the build up of xenon which acted as an absorber of neutrons and reduced power. This meant that if there were a power surge, about 20 seconds would be required to lower the control rods and shut the reactor down. In spite of this, it was decided to continue the test programme.
There was an increase in coolant flow and a resulting drop in steam pressure. The automatic trip which would have shut down the reactor when the steam pressure was low, had been circumvented. In order to maintain power the operators had to withdraw nearly all the remaining control rods. The reactor became very unstable and the operators had to make adjustments every few seconds trying to maintain constant power.
At about this time, the operators reduced the flow of feedwater, presumably to maintain the steam pressure. Simultaneously, the pumps that were powered by the slowing turbine were providing less cooling water to the reactor. The loss of cooling water exaggerated the unstable condition of the reactor by increasing steam production in the cooling channels (positive void coefficient), and the operators could not prevent an overwhelming power surge, estimated to be 100 times the nominal power output.
The sudden increase in heat production ruptured part of the fuel and small hot fuel particles, reacting with water, caused a steam explosion, which destroyed the reactor core. A second explosion added to the destruction two to three seconds later. While it is not known for certain what caused the explosions, it is postulated that the first was a steam/hot fuel explosion, and that hydrogen may have played a role in the second.
| We are in the start of recovery. For those of you that don't realize it, we suffered a devastating terrorist attack in the middle of a recession. Sure there is some bad news, but it is a mixed bag. Usually, news stories about the economy are 6 six months behind what is really happening. Remember how long it took the media to declare a recession last election (wait they didn't even though we were in one for months), or how long it took someone to figure out the recession ended last October? Terrorist attacks and inherit recession was a double whammy that effected almost all industries. During the last boon of the 90s there were 20 million jobs gained/created. We lost somewhere around 3 million jobs during this recession and recovery period. Again, the numbers are looking up in almost every other regard, in fact, it is projected that the increase in GDP will be around 6.5%. Company profits are up, durable goods are up, stock market up, tax rebates are in the mail, consumer confidence up, home sales up, consumer and business spending up, etc... Businesses, which cut spending on equipment and software in the first three months of this year, boosted such investment in the second quarter at a sizable 7.5 percent rate. That marked the biggest increase in three years. And, after six straight quarters of slashing spending on new plants, office buildings and other structures, businesses boosted this spending by 4.8 percent in the second quarter. The US service sector surprised experts with a fourth consecutive month of growth in July that helped fan hopes of a recovery, according to Institute for Supply Management. Demand for U.S. manufactured goods rose at the sharpest rate in three months in June as a solid rise in orders for long-lasting items joined with a small gain in demand for other goods, the government said Monday. Indeed, the survey shows that the percentage of CEOs saying they're worse off now than they were 6 months ago has dropped from 51% to 26%. Unemployment typically lags the rest of the economy, since employers usually wait until a recovery is guaranteed before they hire new workers. Everything I stated above combined, will create millions upon millions of jobs like the last recovery. There are hundreds of cities in the United States with unemployment under 4.0 % (considered by many to be full employment). You take the poorly managed California out of the national equation and the recovery looks 10 times better. California has 10 of the top 25 cities with the highest unemployment. |
| Lowest Unemployment | |
| Metropoliatan Area | Unemployment Rate |
| Bryan-College Station, Texas | 1.7 |
| Columbia, Mo. | 1.8 |
| Fargo, N.D/Moorhead Minn. | 2.0 |
| Charlottesville, Va. | 2.1 |
| Gainesville, Fla. | 2.2 |
| Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, Ark. | 2.3 |
| Madison, Wis. | 2.4 |
| Sioux Falls, S.D. | 2.4 |
| Lubbock, Texas | 2.6 |
| Portland, Maine | 2.6 |
| Santa Fe, N.M. | 2.6 |
| Athens, Ga. | 2.7 |
| Bloomington-Normal, Ill. | 2.7 |
| Grand Forks, N.D. | 2.8 |
| Iowa, City, Iowa | 2.8 |
| Knoxville, Tenn. | 2.8 |
| Rapid City, S.D. | 2.8 |
| Stamford-Norwalk, Conn. | 2.8 |
| Bloomington, Ind. | 2.9 |
| Champaign-Urbana, Ill. | 2.9 |
| Danbury, Conn. | 2.9 |
| Enid, Okla. | 2.9 |
| Lincoln, Neb. | 2.9 |
| Bismarck, N.D. | 3.0 |
| Fort Walton Beach, Fla. | 3.0 |
| Sarasota, Fla. | 3.1 |
I hope that I'm just really out of touch, but until some of these other issues show some sustained improvement, I'm not ready to sign onto the recovery bandwagon.
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