From Bloomberg……

Crude oil tumbled, capping the biggest weekly drop since the Persian Gulf War in 1991, as rising stockpiles at Cushing, Oklahoma, leave little room to store supplies for delivery next year.

Supplies at Cushing, where oil that’s traded in New York is stored, rose 21 percent to 27.5 million barrels last week, the highest since May 2007, the Energy Department said on Dec. 17. OPEC’s biggest output cut in more than a decade this week failed to stop a price drop as the recession sapped demand.

“At this stage it’s not what OPEC is doing that moves the market; instead it’s the big builds at Cushing,” said Nauman Barakat, senior vice president of global energy futures at Macquarie Futures USA Inc. in New York.

Crude oil for January delivery fell $2.35, or 6.5 percent, to $33.87 a barrel at 2:46 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest settlement since Feb. 10, 2004. Futures declined 27 percent since Dec. 12, the biggest weekly drop since January 1991. Prices have fallen 77 percent from the record $147.27 a barrel reached on July 11.

From Bloomberg….

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today ordered all state workers to take two days of unpaid leave each month to conserve money amid a record budget deficit and a legislative impasse over how to fix it.

The furloughs will begin in February and will last through June 2010, Schwarzenegger said in an executive order. He also ordered all departments to cut 10 percent of their workforce costs, through firings if necessary.

“Every California family and business has been forced to cut back during these difficult economic times, and state government cannot be exempt from similar belt tightening,” Schwarzenegger said in a letter to state workers.

The unions do not like this. They argue (proably correctly) that it violates collective bargaining agreements and they plan to sue. If they are correct, this order to should be overturned. A contract is a contract and rule of law is our most important resource. That goes out the window, and nobody will have anything for long.

The flip side of this is that Governor would be 100% within his rights to lay people off. That would mean cutting back on services, but he could do it.

But would the unions really rather 10% of the workforce laid off as opposed to everyone taking a 10% effective pay cut? The sad answer is yes.

Unions exist to serve the interests of people who have jobs. The 10% who lose their jobs will not be union members for very long. The 90% who keep their jobs will not have lost anything. From the stand point of a Union official there is no contest. They might protest long and hard against lay offs. But when push comes to shove, they always seem to go for layoffs as opposed to any other type of cut in payroll costs.

And that is one of the biggest problems with unions in a nutshell. Unions generally don’t have a problem with high rates of unemployment as long as their members are well paid and well treated.

From the Wall Street Journal….

The Bush administration’s plan to provide up to $17.4 billion in loans to GM and Chrysler will keep the two companies in business but pushes the problem on to President-elect Barack Obama and the next Congress, Mr. Jackson said.

“This is a punt. The congress punted to the president and the president punted it to Obama. But at least we got something. Without it [a bailout], it’s lights out for these companies.”

The difficulty of getting auto loans is a big reason auto sales have fallen so dramatically in the last two months and pushed GM and Chrysler into such deep financial holes, Mr. Jackson said. Many dealers around the country confirmed they are losing sales because even consumers with good credit aren’t being approved for loans.

As I have said before; if the consumers have money, the automotive industry will survive even if the Big Three go bankrupt. But the flip side of this is also true. If consumers don’t have the money to buy cars, it does not matter how much money is spent bailing out the Big Three.

From Newsday…

Proposals to shave pension entitlements for new employees emerge in every fiscal crisis, prompting resistance from public-service unions and from the lawmakers responsive to them. Each pension tier marks an effort at what policy-makers call fiscal reform. Over the years the state has had four such tiers. The constitution bars cutting pensions to those already on the job or retired.

Earlier in the decade, calls for a fifth tier for rookies failed. But this new push could carry unusual momentum. The clearest reason is the severe fiscal crisis fueled by Wall Street’s collapse and the search for savings in every corner. But also, a certain political wind is blowing. Mention public pensions these days and scandalous abuses come to many local minds such as school board pensions for non-employees or hearty Long Island Rail Road retirees collecting for phantom disabilities. Into all that figures the decline and thinning of pensions in the teetering auto industry and other businesses.

New York State is actually in a fairly good position in regards to its pension. At least, compared to many other states.

But local governments all over NY state are getting killed by pension costs. The problem is that they will go bankrupt long before this fifth tier has any effect on pension costs. It will be at least 10 years before the state realizes any savings from this “fifth tier” and many local governments are going to be killed by pension costs in the next 10 years.

From the Houston Chronicle….

An insurance company with a potential $25 million liability from a 2007 Houston office fire is claiming smoke that killed three people was “pollution” and surviving families shouldn’t be compensated for their losses since the deaths were not caused directly by the actual flames.

Great American Insurance Company is arguing in a Houston federal court that the section of the insurance policy that excludes payments for pollution — like discharges or seepage that require cleanup — would also exclude payouts for damages, including deaths, caused by smoke, or pollution, that results from a fire.

I don’t see how arguments like this can be appear in court with out the judge laughing them out of court. The fire caused the smoke. If you cover damages as a result of a fire, that covers the damages caused by smoke. End of story.

From the Reuters….

U.S. crude prices dropped more than 9 percent to $36 a barrel Thursday as slumping demand and swelling U.S. inventories offset OPEC’s record supply cut agreement.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries on Wednesday agreed to cut output by 2.2 million barrels per day from January to counter oil’s collapse from record highs above $147 a barrel in July.