At the Same Time NYC Obesity Czar Wages War on Sugar, He Plans to Scale Back the War on Drugs

NY Times reports that "Bloomberg Backs Plan to Limit Arrests for Marijuana."

He just can't make up his mind about the Nanny State, can he? 

And a great comment below from Moe "NYC will be like hell for Mary Jane users. Easier to partake, yes ,but no obesity-inducing snacks?? Cruel world."

April Jobless Rate Falls to 0.7% in the ND Oil Patch

The state of North Dakota reported last week that the jobless rate in both the city of Williston and in the surrounding Williams County fell to an eye-popping low of 0.7% in April (see chart above), the lowest jobless rate ever recorded in North Dakota history, and possibly the lowest jobless rate in history for any city or county in the entire United States. Also in April, there were ten North Dakota counties with jobless rates below 2%, and all of those ten counties are on the western edge of the Peace Garden state in the oil-rich Bakken region (see map below).  If there were ever any doubts about the potential that domestic energy production has to create shovel-ready jobs, the 0.7% jobless rate in the heart of the Bakken region in North Dakota seems like pretty convincing evidence that those doubts are without any foundation.
  

Click map to enlarge.

Markets in Everything: U.S. Food Trucks in Paris

NY Times -- "In France, there is still a widespread belief that the daily diet in the United States consists of grossly large servings of fast food. But in Paris, American food is suddenly being seen as more than just restauration rapide. Among young Parisians, there is currently no greater praise for cuisine than “très Brooklyn,” a term that signifies a particularly cool combination of informality, creativity and quality. 

All three of those traits come together in the American food trucks that have just opened here [in Paris], including Cantine California, which sells tacos stuffed with organic meat (still a rarity in France), and a hugely popular burger truck called Le Camion Qui Fume (The Smoking Truck), owned by Kristin Frederick, a California native who graduated from culinary school here."

HT: Fred Dent

Can Taxpayers Control the Entitlement State?

"A single election rarely determines a democracy's fate, but some matter more than others. Tuesday's recall election of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is one that matters a great deal because it will test whether taxpayers have any hope of controlling the entitlement state and its dominant special interests.

Students of democracy from Alexis de Tocqueville to Mancur Olson have pointed out that the greatest threat to self-government comes from the tendency of democracies to become barnacled with special interests that vote themselves more benefits than society can afford. This is the crisis of the modern entitlement state, which is unfolding from California to Illinois, Greece, Italy and even Washington. Wisconsin is a critical test of whether democracies can reform before the crisis becomes debilitating."

~Today's WSJ 

 Related: Intrade odds for Gov. Walker to win tomorrow are currently at 92.2%.

Chart of the Day: Education Matters

One interesting perspective on the sub-par "jobless recovery" is a comparison of changes in employment since January 2008 based on education level, see chart above, here's a summary:  

1. College-educated workers have fared relatively well during and after the Great Recession, and employment levels for workers with a bachelor's degree or higher remained fairly stable even during the worst period of job losses (2008-2010).  As of May 2012, employment for college-educated is at an all-time high of 46.355 million workers, and that is 6.3%, and almost 3 million jobs, above the January 2008 level.  During the first five months of 2o12, employment of workers with a college degree has increased by more than one million jobs at an average rate of 231,000 new jobs per month. The jobless rate for this group of workers fell in May to 3.9%, the lowest rate since December of 2008.    

2. Employment for workers with some college or associate degree is 2.4%, and 837,000 jobs, below January 2008.  The jobless rate for this group in May was 7.9%, slightly below the 8.2% national average, but the highest in 7 months for workers with some college, and up from 7.2% in January.

3. Employment for workers with a high school diploma (but no college) is almost three million jobs and 8% below January 2008.  The May jobless rate for this group was 8.1%.

4. Employment for workers with less than a high school diploma is 1.36 million jobs, and 12% below the January 2008 level. The jobless rate for this group rose in May to 13% from 12.5% in April, and has remained above 12% in every month since January 2009.

Bottom Line: The workers having the most difficult time finding jobs in the "jobless recovery" are those workers with only a high school degree and those workers with less than a high school degree.  Those workers with at least some college have been faring much better, especially those with a bachelor's degree or higher.  Perhaps one explanation is that there are so many unemployed workers seeking employment (above 12 million in every month since January 2009), that many employers have the luxury of being selective and hiring college-educated workers for jobs that traditionally didn't necessarily require a college degree.

And while lacking a high school diploma has always been a liability for workers, that liability has gone from a minor liability to a major setback as we move increasingly into a knowledge-based, 21st century economy.  Comparatively, college-educated workers are doing quite well in an increasingly globalized, information-based economy, and it's the less educated workers that are struggling, and will continue to struggle, to find employment and keep a job.  Whatever the explanation, it's clear that "education matters," and having at least some college has insulated many of those workers from the worst effects of the Great Recession and the subsequent "jobless recovery."

Sunday Energy Links and Charts

1. Over the last two years, crude oil production in North Dakota has more than doubled, from 277,640 barrels per day in March 2010 to 575,490 barrels per day in March of this year.  At the same time that oil production has been skyrocketing in North Dakota, oil imports from Nigeria have been declining, to the point that for the first time ever, North Dakota oil production has exceeded oil imports from Nigeria in each of the first three months of this year (see chart, data here). And for the last five months that data are available (November - March), North Dakota oil production has also exceeded imports from Colombia (see chart).

Update: By the end of the decade, it is estimated that surging oil production in North Dakota could double again to more than one million barrels per day, putting it on par with production in Texas and imports from Mexico.  

2. "Chesapeake Energy Corp. said it drilled the largest oil gusher in the company’s 23-year history at a “significant” discovery in the Anadarko Basin of Texas and Oklahoma. The Thurman Horn 406H well in the Hogshooter formation produced 5,400 barrels of crude a day during its first eight days of operation. The output was more than twice that of some of the best performing wells in the Eagle Ford shale of south Texas, which Chesapeake counts as its most valuable holding."  [MP: Peak what?]

3. Oil and gas cash boosts PA farming -- "The oil and gas boom in western Pennsylvania has provided a much-needed infusion of capital to farmers in that area. “It’s had mostly a good impact,” said Steve Quillin, local Farm Bureau president. “Just driving around, we saw farmers making improvements and updates to their properties.”

Money from oil and gas leases has allowed agriculture to expand. The influx of cash has prompted some older farmers to retire, but their farms have been absorbed by others or have been rented."
 

4. Edward G. Rendell, governor of Pennsylvania from 2003-2011:

"Throughout my tenure as governor, I witnessed Pennsylvania become an epicenter for natural-gas development. This influx of jobs and investment spurred an unprecedented economic boom for our state and, thanks to a resource found right here in Pennsylvania, this economic revitalization continues. Cheap, clean, and abundant energy is available to heat our homes, fuel our cars and trucks, and power our state’s economy. It’s not a campaign slogan, it’s reality."

5. The Economist -- "America's “unconventional” gas boom continues to amaze. Between 2005 and 2010 the country’s shale-gas industry, which produces natural gas from shale rock by bombarding it with water and chemicals—a technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”—grew by 45% a year. As a proportion of America’s overall gas production shale gas has increased from 4% in 2005 to 24% today. America produces more gas than it knows what to do with. Its storage facilities are rapidly filling, and its gas price has collapsed. Last month it dipped below $2 per million British thermal units: less than a sixth of the pre-boom price and too low for producers to break even.

Those are problems most European and Asian countries, which respectively pay roughly four and six times more for their gas, would relish. America’s gas boom confers a huge economic advantage. It has created hundreds of thousands of jobs, directly and indirectly. And it has rejuvenated several industries, including petrochemicals, where ethane produced from natural gas is a feedstock."

Update:

6.  The chart below shows monthly imports of crude oil from January 2000 to March 2012, on a three-month moving average basis (to smooth out monthly volatility).  U.S. imports of crude oil fell in March to an average of 10,672,670 barrels per day, the lowest level since February 2000, slightly more than 12 years ago.

Obesity Czar Bloomberg's War on Sugar

"Mayor Bloomberg believes that government has a duty to educate its citizens and even to "nudge" them in the right direction. But the real lesson here is that a government that pays most health-care bills will soon be dictating the everyday behavior of its people. An America that needs government to protect its citizens from 20-ounce sodas has bigger problems than obesity."

~WSJ editorial yesterday