Captive Government
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By Gegner
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June 9th, 2010
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Greetings good citizen,
Here we are in the third year of the slow motion collapse of the US Empire and we are reminded by no less an authority than the NY Times that our legislators are either totally clueless (or hopelessly corrupt, pick one, or both, it doesn’t matter!)
Recent ‘financial reform legislation’ (that didn’t even ‘suggest’ restoring Glass-Steagal) has had zero impact on the banking industry…but we knew that already BECAUSE it passed! Same thing with Health Care reform, nothing has changed.
Funny, for a guy who ran on ‘change’, nothing has, which is not to say that the steady ‘downhill march’ has even skipped a beat! (That’s the thing Bobo promised to put a stop to…that is what is meant when I say nothing has changed…because those hits just keep on coming!)
This should lead us to ponder what it will take to effect genuine change…or worse, how we/our children will deal with the decidedly negative changes those who have ‘captured’ our government are implementing.
Put the chips on the table good citizen and the ‘answer’ is staring you in the face, we have a ‘bad’ government; that is what needs fixing!
The ‘insidious’ thing about the persistent unemployment situation is that our kids don’t remember a time when it wasn’t ‘always like this’.
But let’s not kid ourselves, good citizen. If not for the ‘information age’ that put all of this data at our fingertips, we’d be as ignorant as our children remain.
By ‘default’ the captive government proves a captive media. (In fact, the capture of the government facilitated the capture [consolidation] of the media.)
Just because you disagree doesn’t make you right. Which is another way of saying what you believe does nothing to alter the truth!
“You can fill a person’s head with a great deal of nonsense and they are still capable of functioning adequately.” Conservatism is proof of this. (That is a ‘semi-famous’ quote but I have no clue as to the ‘true’ source…naturally, sans the ‘conservative bit’ at the end, I added that.)
Um, I keep hammering on this particular topic because all roads lead to this particular junction; make no mistake about it, we HAVE HAD a revolution, actually a ‘bloodless coup’ is a more accurate description: Those the government were supposed to be ‘protecting’ us from have taken over the government. Unfortunately, there is no simple way to ‘dislodge’ the interlopers.
Which leads us back to…ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE?
But first let us proceed with tonight’s offering for another ‘feeble admission’ that our ‘captive government’ isn’t worth the cost of electing our corrupt representatives.
These guys took over on the premise that the government wasn’t ‘the solution’ but ‘the problem’…and they have yet to ‘waste’ an opportunity to prove that point.
The current disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is but one more fine example of ‘What the fuck are you gonna do about it…punk?’
Fed Finding Status Quo in Bank Pay
By ERIC DASH
Published: June 8, 2010Federal regulators reviewing the compensation policies of major banks are finding that the industry has not adequately adjusted its pay practices to reduce risk-taking. [We are left to wonder what it would take to put an end to reckless/predatory practices if legislation can’t solve the problem?]
The Federal Reserve, six months into a compensation review of the country’s 28 largest financial companies, has found that many of the bonus and incentive programs that economists say contributed to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression remain in place, according to people briefed on the examinations.
"We found that many banks have not modified their practices from what they were before the crisis," said Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman said during a House committee hearing on Wednesday morning. "We will be pushing banks to move as quickly as possible to restructure their compensation packages so that they will not be engendering excessive risk-taking. We will do that very quickly." [Don’t hold your breath good citizen…worse, this makes us wonder why bail-out money was provided with this specific contingency stipulated, complete with a ‘drop-dead’ provision for failure to comply? But let’s not forget whose government this really is…it sure ain’t your’s or mine!]
Officials have found, for example, that risk managers at several of the biggest banks still report to executives who have influence over their year-end bonuses and whose own pay might be constricted by curbing risk. In many cases, risk managers do not have full access to the compensation committee of the banks’ boards.
The review also revealed that banks tend to set similar bonus formulas for broad sets of employees and often do not adjust payouts to account for risks taken by traders or mortgage lending officers. Bank executives and directors, meanwhile, are often in the dark on the pay arrangements of employees whose bets could have a potentially devastating impact on the company.
The Federal Reserve’s examination is focusing on the structure of compensation arrangements, not their amounts, and the results have not been made public. However, some preliminary findings emerged from interviews with government officials and bank executives who have been briefed on the review. [What do you suppose the likelihood is of this information EVER being made public? Slim to none would be a fair estimate!]
Last month, the Fed sent letters to the chief executives of each of the 28 banks detailing officials’ concerns about their institution’s pay practices. The letters ordered them to promptly make changes. [Left unaddressed is the ‘or what’ part of the puzzle. No threat = no change!]
Bank officials are now in negotiations with federal officials over the steps they must take. The Fed is not expected to release its official report until next year, though it may provide new details when it releases a final set of pay guidelines that it has been working on at the same time. Those are expected in coming weeks. [Um, nobody should miss the irony here…how much ‘flexibility’ will ‘guidelines’ have? What (if anything) will be the penalty for non-compliance?]
The Fed’s review is the latest in a flurry of federal efforts to rein in banker pay and is occurring as Congress works to reconcile bills passed by the House and the Senate that will further tighten the government’s grip on the financial industry. Other agencies are also forging ahead with mixed success on compensation initiatives announced earlier this year, when it seemed that everyone in Washington was hoping to turn the politics of pay to their advantage. [Funny how that statement takes on a whole new meaning when viewed from the perspective of who ‘owns’ the government!]
Kenneth R. Feinberg, President Obama’s pay czar for banks bailed out by the government, is combing through the compensation awarded from October 2008 to February 2009 to the 25 highest earners at each company that received bailout money. He plans to publicize the results within the next three weeks. [Mark your calendars good citizen but don’t hold your breath, it’s not going to happen.]
Only about 180 of the 420 companies that accepted bailout money were subject to his review, and Mr. Feinberg has no authority, other than the threat of public embarrassment, to renegotiate compensation arrangements that he finds objectionable. [Why the ‘big void’?]
Other government efforts have run into delays. The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, proposed a global bank tax, partly based on executive compensation, at several recent meetings with finance ministers from the Group of 20 large economies. But that initiative has failed to attract broad support and faces resistance from Australia and Canada, whose banks generally withstood the crisis. [Which begs a different question: should Timmy boy be tackling ‘global policy’? He is an ‘appointee’, not an elected official and therefore does not answer to the people…but who does since the ‘Reagan Revolution’?]
Separately, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has pushed back a board vote on a controversial plan that would tie a bank’s pay practices to the fees it pays to the agency’s insurance fund. Under the proposal, lenders that use long-term stock to reward employees and those that adopt provisions to claw back compensation would pay less money into the fund, while riskier pay practices could lead to higher assessments.
The banking industry opposes the plan, arguing it could increase compliance costs and conflict with other regulatory efforts on compensation. The F.D.I.C. vote, which was expected to take place at the agency’s June meeting, has been put off until at least late summer, according to people with knowledge of the agency’s plans. [After the destruction of the global economy is assured, it won’t matter what they decide!]
The Federal Reserve’s review started in early November, when senior officials informed the chiefs of the major banks and their compensation committees that they might need to change their pay practices ahead of new rules. The banks were required to respond to a four-page questionnaire, inquiring about policies like the golden parachute payouts for senior executives and the pay scales of lower-level mortgage bankers. [What do you suppose the ‘penalty’ was for non-compliance, a nasty e-mail?]
The Fed, just as it did with the bank stress tests in the spring of 2009, analyzed thousands of pages of answers it received to compare the results and identify patterns.
Um, if this were a ‘personal undertaking’ what do you suppose the ‘odds of success’ for this venture would be? I’d put them at ‘Doomed from the start!’
Even the ‘fake’ policy moves are toothless, rendering them worthless and a waste of time and energy. This is substantially worse than ‘window dressing’, even ‘for show’ policy has ‘imaginary’ teeth.
Sadly, that’s another disturbing truth. All of this crap at one time or another, WAS illegal. Naturally, once you ‘own’ the government, you get to ‘erase’ any inconvenient laws or even to pretend they weren’t violated, creating a huge advantage.
But sadly, once the ‘shit hits the fan’, the ‘let’s pretend’ game becomes more difficult to play…because you’ve screwed so many people!
The down side of playing ‘fuck-fuck’ is most people aren’t willing to accept ‘just kidding’ as an explanation for having their trust violated.
So, yeah… the road is a lot rockier than it appears…
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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I started typing you a reply when all of a sudden a story started to write itself, Geg. I think I will develop it further, but here's the first sketch:
I tried to capture the government once.
They told me my limited personal fortune wasn't enough to buy them.
They laughed and said "others have as much as you" and "you can't buy the government unless you have way more than others have".
They told me to come back when I had heaps and heaps of limitless personal fortune.
Then, and only then, would they be mine.
But I discovered it was impossible to self-earn an overfortune, due to inescapable natural limits.
So I convinced everybody to separate reward from sacrifice.
To this day, everyone still believes in my list of clever rationalizations for unequal pay for equal sacrifice - phoney as they are.
That belief allowed me to legally steal time and thus wealth from others, and I soon had possession of a great, steep mountain of money.
I did capture the government with it.
But, there was a problem I hadn't seen coming: nobody else was happy for me to have power over them courtesy of their own money I'd grabbed, so I was under constant attack from everyone poorer - and from other rich people, too, who lusted for my position.
I was forced to erode my overfortune trying to protect it.
The attacks didn't stop until it was gone.
It was so much trouble, so much hard work, such a desperate struggle trying to keep that overfortune! It devoured my happiness, and all those hours spent are never coming back to me.
I don't own the government anymore.
And these days I wonder why I ever thought that having an overfortune was a way to be happy.
I think I wasn't thinking at all.
That's pretty clever, unfortunately our 'real life' owners are in cahoots and have, can't exactly say they've 'chosen' but they have certainly 'accepted' one of their number as the leader.
Which is to say you should read up on the 'John Jays', the 'philosophical' leader of the Hamiltonian branch of the founders.
There are indeed 'rich' people who 'have all they want and want no more'. The readily admit they have 'enough' but they aren't interested in 'diminishing' by one tiny bit the source nor the scope of their holdings.
They do not 'begrudge' the success of others but they hold that the 'failure' of less astute is not their concern. They are perfectly willing to acknowledge that the 'poor have always been with us' while refusing to take any responsibility for perpetuating that outcome.
This is exploitation and the 'satisfied' see the poor as 'too stupid' to save themselves...so there's nothing to be done.
If the poor were to 'lawyer up' and contest the claims of the exploiters, the exploiters would have the laws strengthened instead.
This is, don't doubt for a second, the 'death before dishonor' crowd, so I don't see a way to peacefully resolve this puzzle.
Sigh. At this point, Gegner, I'm giving up on ever getting you to realize that you keep raising the same completely inconsequential objection over and over and over. I guess you'll never get it: it doesn't matter what the 1 fucking percent think one teeny tiny little bit - because they are 1%.
Strange, I've long ago accepted that you will never comprehend the very simple principle of 'Gold Rules' (Those who has the Gold makes the rules!)
The fact that one percent of the population has managed to pull this off is 'immaterial', it has nothing to do with nothing.
Crush them like a bug? First you have to herd the cats!
I have proven that I understand money is power better than any other human being on the planet. Someday maybe you'll catch on.
You equate education with herding cats.
I don't.
Carry on with your navel gazing.
The men on earth in my day are not men at all. They are little itty bitty perpetually frightened boys, toddlers cowering in their assigned corners, licking their velvet chains, waiting for some crumb to drop from above from their master’s table while they desperately seek out one distraction and excuse after another to avoid growing up and getting real and accepting responsibility. They lie down flat on their weak backs while they shovel their money to their masters as fast as they can, begging the universe to please believe there is nothing to be done. The infant-men at the top are frightened to death of hard work, the ones who bovinely accept having men over them are pathetic cowards to their cores. Whiney babies. Spineless complainers. COWARDS. There is nothing but repugnant cowardice in a boy who lets rich boys send him off to kill women and children to keep the master boy ensconced on his illegitimate throne. Coward psychopaths eagerly obeying warmonger psychopaths: the description of all males today. “Men” today are stupid, no-courage observers only, terrified to step up to the plate and become rulers of their own lives. Scardy-cat adult infants, to a man. And they fill me with disgust. I can’t even pity them anymore, they are so utterly revolting in their universal, murderous cowardice. Only the egalitarians are exceptions, only egalitarians stand up and say I will equalize wealth so power is equalized. Only egalitarians are bold and brave and have self-respect and accept reality and responsibility, only they have the first clue what life is for and about, only they will do the work to remove the ability for a bunch of worthless male assholes who don’t even have any clothes to hold illegitimate power over the whole of the human race – while a world of little frightened boys all around them sit in their dirty diapers crying “but but but…those with the gold rule!”
The oppressive patriarchy of cowardly boys can kiss my ass forever. I am Global Empress of my own life and I will still be standing proud and fearless when the worse than useless coward boys have disappeared right up the ass of their own mind-numbing, cowardly acquiescence to the wealthpower inequality that is all they love.
I am the only one with the guts and the brains and the clear vision and the courage and the sanity and the goodness to go to the root of all problems and dig it out once and for all. Fairpay justice is the non-negotiable price of survival. EVERYTHING else is navel gazing, EVERYTHING else is Nazism, EVERYTHING else is stratospheric ignorance, EVERYTHING else is intelligence as useful as stupidity, EVERYTHING else is the last epic failure to be real and mature and practical and serious and sober. EVERYTHING else is murdering the planet and everything on it by default, default to the mis-named pleasure principle that gives nothing but pain.
Boys of earth, I am not unaware that your cowardice and your evil love to grab and have other-earned wealth will kill me off, too, but I will only die once after having lived. As for those horses I’m surrounded by who were led to water but refused to drink, your lives will continue to ascend to heaven like a series of continuous sighs.
Cowards.
Pathetic, reprehensible, disgusting, repugnant, unworthy, despicable, bovine, fatalistic, panicky, lazy cowards. You sit on your thumbs, continuing the carnage all the while congratulating yourselves on your brilliance, utterly relaxed in the fact that you dare leave behind you children to suffer what you help preserve for them: the maw of poverty and deprivation unto starvation gaping below them, the extreme power above them to crush them like ants. And you are proud, not ashamed of this you do, of this sin you commit. Your hands are tied to the blades of your masters’ design, and you are all so ready to commit the crime of inequality.
Go to hell you mindless, heartless, soulless mental midgets.
So, all it's going to take is a little 'education' and all will be well. You know, politicians claim 'more education' will solve all of our economic woes, and they have been claiming this for decades.
They also claim we suffer from an 'education deficit' that justifies their issuing thousands of H1B visas every year.
So, will the public ever be 'smart enough?'
If facing reality is a 'sin' then I plea guilty.
'Fairpay' is a relative term and you can be sure most employers sincerely believe they already 'overpay' their employees.
Worse, compensation goes a lot deeper than 'dollars per hour', so what are you going to 'tie' compensation to that will keep it 'fair'? What do you do with guys like Gates, Jobs and Buffett who don't even draw paychecks?
Remember 1978? There's 'fairpay' for ya, in your face!
(here's your chance to prove your point!)
"Fairpay is a relative term"
Let me guess; God whispered that in your ear while you were dreaming?
Honest to god, why don't you just go officially join the Republican'ts? I'm sure part of their creed is that it just isn't isn't isn't isn't isn't isn't isn't possible to define fairpay. I'm sure they need the whole world to deny it's simple to define fairpay - which I've done for you so many times using perfect logic and bulletproof reasoning. Your useful idocy and denial of reality will fit right in with the Can'ts, and you can help THEM promote the no-think that it's just impossible to define fairpay, instead of doing their work for them here, underhandedly.
Throwdown. Pick one:
A. I am in favor of unlimited personal fortunes.
B. I am in favor of limited personal fortunes.
And oh yeah you better believe I've just set you up to expose either your fundamental irrationality or your hypocrisy.
Either way, only cowards can see a wealthpower inequality factor residing in the billions and fail to outright call it legal theft, fail to say with no equivocation that wealthpower giants are in possession of other-earned wealth, and fail to go get their money and power back using the only tool that can do that.
Your "explanations" that explain nothing are boring. Now answer the question: A or B, which is it.
Like YOU, I choose 'C'! Are you just sandbagging or are you really ignorant regarding how 'Fairpay' and 1978 are related?
(Watch me 'backdown' now...you really have me on the run! That name calling is showing YOU have the upper hand here!
IF you'd read 'A Simple Plan' you'd know THE ONLY WAY to insure 'pay justice', but you choose to remain ignorant...fine with me.
Worse, your ranting about 'pay equality' proves you think you know what 'money' is...but you obviously don't understand it!
Sadly, you have a lot of company in that dismal boat.
A or B
there is no C
you either want to draw a line nowhere or you want to draw a line SOMEWHERE
stop weaseling out and answer the question
I'm not the one 'weaseling', you first! 1978, explain?
Gegner, everything is related to this infantile refusal to define fairpay. In 1978 people did not define fairpay. What else do you want to know?
The reason you keep refusing to answer A or B is that you know I can take your answer to its logical conclusion (since I've already done so in my writings) and that will prove I'm right about defining pay justice.
By the way, I've read your plan. It isn't simple, it certainly isn't doable while people still majority support unequal pay for equal sacrifice, you don't give people the rational arguments that destroy their support for pay un-justness, it isn't sale-able, it does nothing to show people they are not acting in accord with what they believe.
Your entire article above is you saying what I've said a million times in distilled and condensed form: governments have been devoured by superwealth and cannot save us as they are now.
But here's the deal: all you do at the conclusion of your hair on fire pieces is moan there's nothing people can do because them with the gold rules. money is power? big fat duh. or you say it's time to panic, apparently thinking less and not more coolheadedness will help us out. it's absurd.
I, on the other hand, point out over and over that governments won't change until the people change their ideas, doing my best to focus on what's in people's heads because that is what is driving everything that is going on.
You just can't seem to come to grips with the reality that education alone can do what has to be done, that only a grassroots growth in awareness and maturity and rationality and practicality can drive us to survival, justice, peace, prosperity, happiness.
It's incredible that you can go on eternally bemoaning that money is power, including the power to buy governments, and never proceed from that knowlege to the wisdom: the answer is don't allow superwealth: allowing superwealth when you know for certain it buys governments is a 100% failure to be rational.
You keep bringing up stuff I've covered/answered in detail in my book chapters and collapse piece and libertarian expose etc as if i hadn't covered them already. why do you do that?
Have you noticed your, er, 'idea' is selling just as well as mine is?
You have 'left out' how this 'pay justice' scheme differs from what's going on in Zimbabwe right now.
The answer is don't allow 'superwealth'?
Should we get that on the ballot and put it to a vote?
Ever ask yourself why every 'alternative' party can't seem to muster the votes to get a foothold in Congress?
And remember, it is you who object to (literally) fighting for change.
As far as 'saleability' goes, if we have to hold off until we concoct a concept that everybody loves things will never change!
Um, did you conduct a poll to determine that most people support the current system? I tend to think most people would support a fairer arrangement but they know they won't be asked what their preferences are so they go along with the way things are.
Hell, I go along with the way things are, I don't have a frigging choice!
When things go to hell, and they will, then it will be time to talk about what can be done differently.
Paychecks all around is 'pay justice', allowing ANYBODY to earn their living from the sweat of somebody else's brow is 'unjust' (and ultimately unworkable, as history has repeatedly shown.)
The 'solution' is not in paying everybody the same. Do that and you'll end up with a society of bouncers and lifeguards and nothing will get done.
I'm going to assume that you don't know what is significant about 1978 as you have failed to answer.
In 1978, EVERYBODY'S paycheck doubled...and in the months that followed, the price of everything quadrupled!
This is precisely what would happen if you paid people more. Give people more money today and prices will go up, permanently!
You'd think after being ripped off that badly that people would have been rioting in the streets but...nobody did nothing. Just like nobody is doing anything now.
Like I said, if protesting worked, there would protests 24/7, there would be protests protesting the protests!
Worse, it would eventually 'devolve' into rioting and looting. The 'veneer of civilization' is, all things considered, mighty thin.
As long as people can 'get by' they will put up with a considerable amount of nonsense...don't kid yourself that anyone likes this crap, they don't...but they'll put up with it.
Nope, the scale is finally tipping to the point where people, a lot of people are going to find themselves on the outside with no place to go and nobody to help them...
Then we'll see the shit hit the fan.
From a 'practical' point of view, you will never see the people who run things 'voluntarily' give up anything.
If we are to see change, there's going to be a fight, at least those with deep pockets do not deny this.
Every sentence you wrote, every misrepresentation of my views and solutions, every coy avoidance, every bit of your nonsense: i've already covered it all in the book chapters etc.
sorry about your reading comprehension problem and the poverty of your horizons and your irrationality about majority power and your cowardice that prevents you from speaking truth plainly. you could have campaigned for pay justice and made sense and made a difference. you chose to walk away without having a reason to. you are responsible for the evils done courtesy of your choice.
here. read this - and while you're reading, keep it in the forefront of your consciousness that the only reason it happened at all is because people were allowed to chase limitless profits to put in their unlimited treasure chests and that it (cutting corners to increase profits) NEED not have happened and WOULD not have happened if there were no overfortunes to chase after:
prepare to cry yourself to sleep every night starting now:
mother-of-a-post/thread from The Oil Drum.
re:sea floor leaking/shattered and possible collapse.
Quote dougr June 13, 2010 - 3:17am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
OK let's get real about the GOM oil flow. There doesn't really seem to be much info on TOD that furthers more complete understanding of what's really happening in the GOM.
As you have probably seen and maybe feel yourselves, there are several things that do not appear to make sense regarding the actions of attack against the well. Don't feel bad, there is much that doesn't make sense even to professionals unless you take into account some important variables that we are not being told about. There seems to me to be a reluctance to face what cannot be termed anything less than grim circumstances in my opinion. There certainly is a reluctance to inform us regular people and all we have really gotten is a few dots here and there...
First of all...set aside all your thoughts of plugging the well and stopping it from blowing out oil using any method from the top down. Plugs, big valves to just shut it off, pinching the pipe closed, installing a new bop or lmrp, shooting any epoxy in it, top kills with mud etc etc etc....forget that, it won't be happening..it's done and over. In fact actually opening up the well at the subsea source and allowing it to gush more is not only exactly what has happened, it was probably necessary, or so they think anyway.
So you have to ask WHY? Why make it worse?...there really can only be one answer and that answer does not bode well for all of us. It's really an inescapable conclusion at this point, unless you want to believe that every Oil and Gas professional involved suddenly just forgot everything they know or woke up one morning and drank a few big cups of stupid and got assigned to directing the response to this catastrophe. Nothing makes sense unless you take this into account, but after you do...you will see the "sense" behind what has happened and what is happening. That conclusion is this:
The well bore structure is compromised "Down hole".
That is something which is a "Worst nightmare" conclusion to reach. While many have been saying this for some time as with any complex disaster of this proportion many have "said" a lot of things with no real sound reasons or evidence for jumping to such conclusions, well this time it appears that they may have jumped into the right place...
TOP KILL - FAILS:
This was probably our best and only chance to kill this well from the top down. This "kill mud" is a tried and true method of killing wells and usually has a very good chance of success. The depth of this well presented some logistical challenges, but it really should not of presented any functional obstructions. The pumping capacity was there and it would have worked, should have worked, but it didn't.
It didn't work, but it did create evidence of what is really happening. First of all the method used in this particular top kill made no sense, did not follow the standard operating procedure used to kill many other wells and in fact for the most part was completely contrary to the procedure which would have given it any real chance of working.
When a well is "Killed" using this method heavy drill fluid "Mud" is pumped at high volume and pressure into a leaking well. The leaks are "behind" the point of access where the mud is fired in, in this case the "choke and Kill lines" which are at the very bottom of the BOP (Blow Out Preventer) The heavy fluid gathers in the "behind" portion of the leaking well assembly, while some will leak out, it very quickly overtakes the flow of oil and only the heavier mud will leak out. Once that "solid" flow of mud is established at the leak "behind" the well, the mud pumps increase pressure and begin to overtake the pressure of the oil deposit. The mud is established in a solid column that is driven downward by the now stronger pumps. The heavy mud will create a solid column that is so heavy that the oil deposit can no longer push it up, shut off the pumps...the well is killed...it can no longer flow.
Usually this will happen fairly quickly, in fact for it to work at all...it must happen quickly. There is no "trickle some mud in" because that is not how a top kill works. The flowing oil will just flush out the trickle and a solid column will never be established. Yet what we were told was "It will take days to know whether it
worked"...."Top kill might take 48 hours to complete"...the only way it could take days is if BP intended to do some "test fires" to test integrity of the entire system. The actual "kill" can only take hours by nature because it must happen fairly rapidly. It also increases strain on the "behind" portion and in this instance we all know that what remained was fragile at best.
Early that afternoon we saw a massive flow burst out of the riser "plume" area. This was the first test fire of high pressure mud injection. Later on same day we saw a greatly increased flow out of the kink leaks, this was mostly mud at that time as the kill mud is tanish color due to the high amount of Barite which is added to it to weight it and Barite is a white powder.
We later learned the pumping was shut down at midnight, we weren't told about that until almost 16 hours later, but by then...I'm sure BP had learned the worst. The mud they were pumping in was not only leaking out the "behind" leaks...it was leaking out of someplace forward...and since they were not even near being able to pump mud into the deposit itself, because the well would be dead long before...and the oil was still coming up, there could only be one conclusion...the wells casings were ruptured and it was leaking "down hole"
They tried the "Junk shot"...the "bridging materials" which also failed and likely made things worse in regards to the ruptured well casings.
"Despite successfully pumping a total of over 30,000 barrels of heavy mud, in three attempts at rates of up to
80 barrels a minute, and deploying a wide range of different bridging materials, the operation did not overcome the flow from the well."
http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?cat ... Id=7062487
80 Barrels per minute is over 200,000 gallons per hour, over 115,000 barrels per day...did we seen an increase over and above what was already leaking out of 115k bpd?....we did not...it would have been a massive increase in order of multiples and this did not happen.
"The whole purpose is to get the kill mud down,” said Wells. “We'll have 50,000 barrels of mud on hand to kill this well. It's far more than necessary, but we always like to have backup."
Try finding THAT quote around...it's been scrubbed...here's a cached copy of a quote...
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... clnk&gl=us
"The "top kill" effort, launched Wednesday afternoon by industry and government engineers, had pumped enough drilling fluid to block oil and gas spewing from the well, Allen said. The pressure from the well was very low, he said, but persisting."
"Allen said one ship that was pumping fluid into the well had run out of the fluid, or "mud," and that a second ship was on the way. He said he was encouraged by the progress."
http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20100 ... /100529348
Later we found out that Allen had no idea what was really going on and had been "Unavailable all day"
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl ... ith_coas...
So what we had was BP running out of 50,000 barrels of mud in a very short period of time. An amount far and above what they deemed necessary to kill the well. Shutting down pumping 16 hours before telling anyone, including the president. We were never really given a clear reason why "Top Kill" failed, just that it couldn't overcome the well.
There is only one article anywhere that says anything else about it at this time of writing...and it's a relatively obscure article from the wall street journal "online" citing an unnamed source.
"WASHINGTON—BP PLC has concluded that its "top-kill" attempt last week to seal its broken well in the Gulf of
Mexico may have failed due to a malfunctioning disk inside the well about 1,000 feet below the ocean floor.
The disk, part of the subsea safety infrastructure, may have ruptured during the surge of oil and gas up the well on April 20 that led to the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig, BP officials said. The rig sank two days later, triggering a leak that has since become the worst in U.S. history.
The broken disk may have prevented the heavy drilling mud injected into the well last week from getting far enough down the well to overcome the pressure from the escaping oil and gas, people familiar with BP's findings said. They said much of the drilling mud may also have escaped from the well into the rock formation outside the wellbore.
As a result, BP wasn't able to get sufficient pressure to keep the oil and gas at bay. If they had been able to build up sufficient pressure, the company had hoped to pump in cement and seal off the well. The effort was deemed a failure on Saturday.
BP started the top-kill effort Wednesday afternoon, shooting heavy drilling fluids into the broken valve known as a blowout preventer. The mud was driven by a 30,000 horsepower pump installed on a ship at the surface. But it was clear from the start that a lot of the "kill mud" was leaking out instead of going down into the well."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 57716426...
There are some inconsistencies with this article.
There are no "Disks" or "Subsea safety structure" 1,000 feet below the sea floor, all that is there is well bore. There is nothing that can allow the mud or oil to "escape" into the rock formation outside the well bore except the well, because it is the only thing there.
All the actions and few tid bits of information all lead to one inescapable conclusion. The well pipes below the sea floor are broken and leaking. Now you have some real data of how BP's actions are evidence of that, as well as some murky statement from "BP officials" confirming the same.
I took some time to go into a bit of detail concerning the failure of Top Kill because this was a significant event. To those of us outside the real inside loop, yet still fairly knowledgeable, it was a major confirmation of what many feared. That the system below the sea floor has serious failures of varying magnitude in the complicated chain, and it is breaking down and it will continue to.
What does this mean?
It means they will never cap the gusher after the wellhead. They cannot...the more they try and restrict the oil gushing out the bop?...the more it will transfer to the leaks below. Just like a leaky garden hose with a nozzle on it. When you open up the nozzle?...it doesn't leak so bad, you close the nozzle?...it leaks real bad,
same dynamics. It is why they sawed the riser off...or tried to anyway...but they clipped it off, to relieve pressure on the leaks "down hole". I'm sure there was a bit of panic time after they crimp/pinched off the large riser pipe and the Diamond wire saw got stuck and failed...because that crimp diverted pressure and flow to the rupture down below.
Contrary to what most of us would think as logical to stop the oil mess, actually opening up the gushing well and making it gush more became direction BP took after confirming that there was a leak. In fact if you note their actions, that should become clear. They have shifted from stopping or restricting the gusher to opening it up and catching it. This only makes sense if they want to relieve pressure at the leak hidden down below the seabed.....and that sort of leak is one of the most dangerous and potentially damaging kind of leak there could be. It is also inaccessible which compounds our problems. There is no way to stop that leak from above, all they can do is relieve the pressure on it and the only way to do that right now is to open up the nozzle above and gush more oil into the gulf and hopefully catch it, which they have done, they just neglected to tell us why, gee thanks.
A down hole leak is dangerous and damaging for several reasons.
There will be erosion throughout the entire beat up, beat on and beat down remainder of the "system" including that inaccessible leak. The same erosion I spoke about in the first post is still present and has never stopped, cannot be stopped, is impossible to stop and will always be present in and acting on anything that is left which has crude oil "Product" rushing through it. There are abrasives still present, swirling flow will create hot spots of wear and this erosion is relentless and will always be present until eventually it wears away enough material to break it's way out. It will slowly eat the bop away especially at the now pinched off riser head and it will flow more and more. Perhaps BP can outrun or keep up with that out flow with various suckage methods for a period of time, but eventually the well will win that race, just how long that race will be?...no one really knows....However now?...there are other problems that a down hole leak will and must produce that will compound this already bad situation.
This down hole leak will undermine the foundation of the seabed in and around the well area. It also weakens the only thing holding up the massive Blow Out Preventer's immense bulk of 450 tons. In fact?...we are beginning to the results of the well's total integrity beginning to fail due to the undermining being caused by the leaking well bore.
The first layer of the sea floor in the gulf is mostly lose material of sand and silt. It doesn't hold up anything and isn't meant to, what holds the entire subsea system of the Bop in place is the well itself. The very large steel connectors of the initial well head "spud" stabbed in to the sea floor. The Bop literally sits on top of the pipe and never touches the sea bed, it wouldn't do anything in way of support if it did. After several tens of feet the seabed does begin to support the well connection laterally (side to side) you couldn't put a 450 ton piece of machinery on top of a 100' tall pipe "in the air" and subject it to the side loads caused by the ocean currents and expect it not to bend over...unless that pipe was very much larger than the machine itself, which you all can see it is not. The well's piping in comparison is actually very much smaller than the Blow Out Preventer and strong as it may be, it relies on some support from the seabed to function and not literally fall over...and it is now showing signs of doing just that....falling over.
If you have been watching the live feed cams you may have noticed that some of the ROVs are using an inclinometer...and inclinometer is an instrument that measures "Incline" or tilt. The BOP is not supposed to be tilting...and after the riser clip off operation it has begun to...
This is not the only problem that occurs due to erosion of the outer area of the well casings. The way a well casing assembly functions it that it is an assembly of different sized "tubes" that decrease in size as they go down. These tubes have a connection to each other that is not unlike a click or snap together locking action. After a certain length is assembled they are cemented around the ouside to the earth that the more rough drill hole is bored through in the well making process. A very well put together and simply explained process of "How to drill a deep water oil well" is available here:
http://www.treesfullofmoney.com/?p=1610
The well bore casings rely on the support that is created by the cementing phase of well construction. Just like if you have many hands holding a pipe up you could put some weight on the top and the many hands could hold the pipe and the weight on top easily...but if there were no hands gripping and holding the pipe?...all the weight must be held up by the pipe alone. The series of connections between the sections of casings are not designed to hold up the immense weight of the BOP without all the "hands" that the cementing provides and they will eventually buckle and fail when stressed beyond their design limits.
These are clear and present dangers to the battered subsea safety structure (bop and lmrp) which is the only loose cork on this well we have left. The immediate (first 1,000 feet) of well structure that remains is now also undoubtedly compromised. However.....as bad as that is?...it is far from the only possible problems with this very problematic well. There were ongoing troubles with the entire process during the drilling of this well. There were also many comprises made by BP IMO which may have resulted in an overall weakened structure of the entire well system all the way to the bottom plug which is over 12,000 feet deep. Problems with the cementing procedure which was done by Haliburton and was deemed as “was against our best practices.” by a Haliburton employee on April 1st weeks before the well blew out. There is much more and I won't go into detail right now concerning the lower end of the well and the troubles encountered during the whole creation of this well and earlier "Well control" situations that were revieled in various internal BP e-mails. I will add several links to those documents and quotes from them below and for now, address the issues concerning the upper portion of the well and the region of the sea floor.
What is likely to happen now?
Well...none of what is likely to happen is good, in fact...it's about as bad as it gets. I am convinced the erosion and compromising of the entire system is accelerating and attacking more key structural areas of the well, the blow out preventer and surrounding strata holding it all up and together. This is evidenced by the tilt of the blow out preventer and the erosion which has exposed the well head connection. What eventually will happen is that the blow out preventer will literally tip over if they do not run supports to it as the currents push on it. I suspect they will run those supports as cables tied to anchors very soon, if they don't, they are inviting disaster that much sooner.
Eventually even that will be futile as the well casings cannot support the weight of the massive system above with out the cement bond to the earth and that bond is being eroded away. When enough is eroded away the casings will buckle and the BOP will collapse the well. If and when you begin to see oil and gas coming up around the well area from under the BOP? or the area around the well head connection and casing sinking more and more rapidly? ...it won't be too long after that the entire system fails. BP must be aware of this, they are mapping the sea floor sonically and that is not a mere exercise. Our Gov't must be well aware too, they just are not telling us.
All of these things lead to only one place, a fully wide open well bore directly to the oil deposit...after that, it goes into the realm of "the worst things you can think of" The well may come completely apart as the inner liners fail. There is still a very long drill string in the well, that could literally come flying out...as I said...all the worst things you can think of are a possibility, but the very least damaging outcome as bad as it is, is that we are stuck with a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more. There isn't any "cap dome" or any other suck fixer device on earth that exists or could be built that will stop it from gushing out and doing more and more damage to the gulf. While at the same time also doing more damage to the well, making the chance of halting it with a kill from the bottom up less and less likely to work, which as it stands now?....is the only real chance we have left to stop it all.
It's a race now...a race to drill the relief wells and take our last chance at killing this monster before the whole weakened, wore out, blown out, leaking and failing system gives up it's last gasp in a horrific crescendo.
We are not even 2 months into it, barely half way by even optimistic estimates. The damage done by the leaked oil now is virtually immeasurable already and it will not get better, it can only get worse. No matter how much they can collect, there will still be thousands and thousands of gallons leaking out every minute, every hour of every day. We have 2 months left before the relief wells are even near in position and set up to take a kill shot and that is being optimistic as I said.
Over the next 2 months the mechanical situation also cannot improve, it can only get worse, getting better is an impossibility. While they may make some gains on collecting the leaked oil, the structural situation cannot heal itself. It will continue to erode and flow out more oil and eventually the inevitable collapse which cannot be stopped will happen. It is only a simple matter of who can "get there first"...us or the well.
We can only hope the race against that eventuality is one we can win, but my assessment I am sad to say is that we will not.
The system will collapse or fail substantially before we reach the finish line ahead of the well and the worst is yet to come.
Sorry to bring you that news, I know it is grim, but that is the way I see it....I sincerely hope I am wrong.
We need to prepare for the possibility of this blow out sending more oil into the gulf per week then what we already have now, because that is what a collapse of the system will cause. All the collection efforts that have captured oil will be erased in short order. The magnitude of this disaster will increase exponentially by the time we can do anything to halt it and our odds of actually even being able to halt it will go down.
The magnitude and impact of this disaster will eclipse anything we have known in our life times if the worst or even near worst happens...
We are seeing the puny forces of man vs the awesome forces of nature.
We are going to need some luck and a lot of effort to win...
and if nature decides we ought to lose, we will....
Reference materials:
On April 1, a job log written by a Halliburton employee, Marvin Volek, warns that BP’s use of cement “was
against our best practices.”
An April 18 internal Halliburton memorandum indicates that Halliburton again warned BP about its practices,
this time saying that a “severe” gas flow problem would occur if the casings were not centered more carefully.
Around that same time, a BP document shows, company officials chose a type of casing with a greater risk of
collapsing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/us/06 ... at_issue...
Mark Hafle, the BP drilling engineer who wrote plans for well casings and cement seals on the Deepwater
Horizon's well, testified that the well had lost thousands of barrels of mud at the bottom. But he said models
run onshore showed alterations to the cement program would resolve the issues, and when asked if a cement
failure allowed the well to "flow" gas and oil, he wouldn't capitulate.
Hafle said he made several changes to casing designs in the last few days before the well blew, including the
addition of the two casing liners that weren't part of the original well design because of problems where the
earthen sides of the well were "ballooning." He also worked with Halliburton engineers to design a plan for
sealing the well casings with cement.
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill ... gs_bp_ce...
graphic of fail
http://media.nola.com/news_impact/other ... 050710.pdf
Casing joint
http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/files/OGL00001.gif
Casing
http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/files/OGL00003.gif
Kill may take until Christmas
http://preview.bloomberg.com/news/2010- ... il-leak-...
BP Used Riskier Method to Seal Well Before Blast
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/us/27rig.html
BP memo test results
http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_1 ... mail.Reg...
Investigation results
The information from BP identifies several new warning signs of problems. According to BP there were three flow
indicators from the well before the explosion.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/documen ... nal.Inve...
BP, what we know
http://energycommerce.house.gov/documen ... e.Know.pdf
What could have happened
1. Before or during the cement job, an influx of hydrocarbon enters the wellbore.
2. Influx is circulated during cement job to wellhead and BOP.
3. 9-7/8” casing hanger packoff set and positively tested to 6500 psi.
4. After 16.5 hours waiting on cement, a negative test performed on wellbore below BOP.
(~ 1400 psi differential pressure on 9-7/8” casing hanger packoff and ~ 2350 psi on
double valve float collar)
5. Packoff leaks allowing hydrocarbon to enter wellbore below BOP. 1400 psi shut in
pressure observed on drill pipe (no flow or pressure observed on kill line)
6. Hydrocarbon below BOP is unknowingly circulated to surface while finishing displacing
the riser.
7. As hydrocarbon rises to surface, gas break out of solution further reduces hydrostatic
pressure in well. Well begin to flow, BOPs and Emergency Disconnect System (EDS)
activated but failed.
8. Packoff continues to leak allowing further influx from bottom.
Confidential
http://energycommerce.house.gov/documen ... .Have.Ha...
T/A daily log 4-20
http://energycommerce.house.gov/documen ... lling.Re...
Cement plug 12,150 ft SCMT logging tool
SCMT (Slim Cement Mapping Tool)
Schlumberger Partial CBL done.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/documen ... 018441.pdf
Schlum CBL tools
http://www.slb.com/~/media/Files/produc ... integrit...
Major concerns, well control, bop test.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/documen ... 018375.pdf
Energy & commerce links to docs.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.p ... w=articl...
well head on sea floor
http://nca-group.com/bilder//Trolla/A.% ... HP002%20(2).jpg
Well head on deck of ship
http://nca-group.com/bilder//Trolla/DSC_0189.JPG
BP's youtube propoganda page, a lot of rarely seen vids here....FWIW
http://www.youtube.com/user/DeepwaterHorizonJIC
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum ... 097505/pg1
I used to cover the energy business (oil, gas and alternative) here in Texas, and the few experts in the oil field -- including geologists, chemists, etc. -- able or willing to even speak of this BP event told me early on that it is likely the entire reserve will bleed out. Unfortunately none of them could say with any certainty just how much oil is in the reserve in question because, for one thing, the oil industry and secrecy have always been synonymous. According to BP data from about five years ago, there are four separate reservoirs containing a total of 2.5 billion barrels (barrels not gallons). One of the reservoirs has 1.5 billion barrels. I saw an earlier post here quoting an Anadarko Petroleum report which set the total amount at 2.3 billion barrels. One New York Times article put it at 2 billion barrels.
If the BP data correctly or honestly identified four separate reservoirs then a bleed-out might gush less than 2 to 2.5 billion barrels unless the walls -- as it were -- fracture or partially collapse. I am hearing the same dark rumors which suggest fracturing and a complete bleed-out are already underway. Rumors also suggest a massive collapse of the Gulf floor itself is in the making. They are just rumors but it is time for geologists or related experts to end their deafening silence and speak to these possibilities.
All oilmen lie about everything. The stories one hears about the extent to which they will protect themselves are all understatements. BP employees are already taking The Fifth before grand juries, and attorneys are laying a path for company executives to make a run for it.
LINK-
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6593#comment-648967
It's time to put the 10 year olds in charge of the country - all countries.
When I talk to 10 year olds about the definition of pay justice and the guiding principles, they get it like they get breathing.
you know what? You can call together a conference of all the world's most renowned and learned and respected experts in every field of science and study and task them with finding out everything it's possible to find out about mangoe fruit...
and they can conduct all manner of measurements and experiments on and about mangoe...
and in the end, they will know less about mangoe than that little girl over in the corner with the big grin and the mangoe juice dripping down her chin.
perhaps this is quite beyond your comprehension, Gegner.
i hope someday you learn to think fearlessly.
i hope someday people are not all dead to themselves and to life anymore.
oh. and you're simply wrong that my plan's elegant inflationary solution won't work. can you say 'historically proven'?
Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt: “…Prices do not benignly adjust to a contraction in the money supply; this has been shown historically. When the money supply contracts, workers get laid off, businesses shut down, and the economy goes into a recession or a depression. It's a fallacy to think you can control prices by controlling the money supply – or even that you can control the money supply ("you" meaning, of course, the central bank). In the 1970s and 1980s, when Milton Friedman's monetarism was popular, attempts were made to regulate prices by regulating the money supply, and they didn't work. Some major recessions resulted, and Third World countries got locked hopelessly in debt from a radical increase in interest rates, but the money supply couldn't be controlled.
The Federal Reserve doesn't create money; banks do. The Federal Reserve just responds by providing the reserves they need after the fact if they come up short. And adding money to the system doesn't raise prices – not if workers and materials are available to make goods. If you add money to the system, the money will go looking for goods, and merchants will respond by making more. Supply and demand will go up together and prices will remain stable. An increase in interest rates is more likely to raise prices. Merchants raise their prices to cover their costs, and interest is a major cost.
That’s from here: http://www.thedailybell.com/496/Ellen-Brown-Web-of-Debt.html
Now from here: http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/bankrupt-germany.php
… Zarlenga writes that Schacht proceeded in his 1967 book The Magic of Money "to let the cat out of the bag, writing in German, with some truly remarkable admissions that shatter the 'accepted wisdom' the financial community has promulgated on the German hyperinflation."6 Schacht revealed that it was the privately-owned Reichsbank, not the German government, that was pumping new currency into the economy. Like the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Reichsbank was overseen by appointed government officials but was operated for private gain. What drove the wartime inflation into hyperinflation was speculation by foreign investors, who would sell the mark short, betting on its decreasing value. …Speculation in the German mark was made possible because the Reichsbank made massive amounts of currency available for borrowing, marks that were created with accounting entries on the bank's books and lent at a profitable interest. When the Reichsbank could not keep up with the voracious demand for marks, other private banks were allowed to create them out of nothing and lend them at interest as well.7
According to Schacht, then, not only did the government not cause the Weimar hyperinflation, but it was the government that got it under control. The Reichsbank was put under strict government regulation, and prompt corrective measures were taken to eliminate foreign speculation, by eliminating easy access to loans of bank-created money. Hitler then got the country back on its feet with his Treasury Certificates issued Greenback-style by the government.
Schacht actually disapproved of this government fiat money, and wound up getting fired as head of the Reichsbank when he refused to issue it (something that may have saved him at the Nuremberg trials). But he acknowledged in his later memoirs that allowing the government to issue the money it needed had not produced the price inflation predicted by classical economic theory. He surmised that this was because factories were sitting idle and people were unemployed. In this he agreed with John Maynard Keynes: when the resources were available to increase productivity, adding new money to the economy did not increase prices; it increased goods and services. Supply and demand increased together, leaving prices unaffected.