Steve Bull's Blog, page 183
October 6, 2022
War Breaks Out As “OPEC+ Takes On The Entire West”
This time, it’s war.
One day after we wrote that “OPEC Is Taking On The Fed“, the oil cartel did just that when it announced that it was cutting output by 2mmb/d the despite a furious diplomatic campaign by the White House hoping to avoid the inevitable, and warning that any cut would be seen as a “hostile act” by the Soros administration. Of course, despite Biden’s fondest wishes that OPEC+, which of course counts Russia among its members, would help Demcrats win the midterms by keeping the price of gas low, this was not going to happen…
… and not just for political reasons, but also due to the Fed’s increasingly challenging monetary policy. Yesterday, we summarized the dynamic as follows:
Fed hiking rates to crush oil demand and send US economy into recession fast.OPEC+ cutting supply to offset reduced US oil demand and send US economy into recession even faster so Fed is forced to cut rates.This morning, Rabobank’s Michael Every expanded on this, laying out the feedback loop OPEC and the Fed find themselves in:
Fed pivot is possible against a backdrop where oil prices march higher on supply destruction in response to demand destruction as monetary policy is tightened…
So what happens next? For one answer we go to Goldman Sachs which overnight expanded on the “OPEC+ takes on the Fed” concept and revised it to “OPEC+ takes on the West” (available to pro subs in the usual place)…
…. in which Goldman writes that the OPEC+ cut represents a return to the Old Oil Order, where core-OPEC acts under the rational behavior of a dominant producer with pricing power: “In that sense, while exceptional, this cut is also logical as it maximizes the group’s revenues today with minimal sacrifice of future profits.”…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Who is Giorgia Meloni, the Leader of the Italian Right?
The Right-Wing victory in the Italian election of this September has generated worries that Italy could be returning to some form of Fascism. But, as it is normally the case, things are much more complex than what you can gather from a few newspaper articles. Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the Right, has no possibility nor intention to return to the dark times of Mussolini’s “Fasci da Combattimento.” She faces an extremely difficult task and I argued in a previous post that she was given a chance to become prime minister with the specific purpose of acting as a scapegoat for the unavoidable troubles that Italy will face this winter. You can find a more detailed analysis in the post below, written by the Italian historian Franco Cardini. I tend to agree with most of the points he makes although, as usual, the future always surprises us and, recently, it has surprised us a lot! EVERYTHING LOOKS BAD, BUT MAYBE IT’S WORSE…They will say, as usual, that I have a weakness for Giorgia Meloni, but she does what she does because she cannot and will not do anything else. It’s her time: she is in the business of politics, she knows that her bus is passing, and it is unlikely for her to have such an opportunity again. It was a beautiful victory: not only, and not so much, for the response of the ballot box, however negatively conditioned by the very high number of non-voters that no politician worthy of the name can ignore or underestimate, but for having played all his opponents with a masterful move. She was the ugly duckling of Parliament, perpetually slapped with the sword of Damocles by the renewed accusations of fascism that she could strike her at any moment. But she managed to score a masterful blow, built little by little and day by day.…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
October 5, 2022
“Please Don’t Panic Buy”: France Taps Strategic Reserve After Gas Stations Run Out Of Fuel
There are “emergency” reasons to drain one’s petroleum reserve – like, for example, approaching midterm elections that give you absolutely no right to drain a country’s strategic reserve but you do it anyway in hope of picking up some votes from idiots who don’t realize that gas will soar to record highs right after the elections – and then there are emergency reasons.
The Biden administration, of course, is dealing with a the quote-unquote emergency…
… while France is about to get hit with a bad case of the real deal.
Several days after we learned that gas stations in France have run out of gasoline due to long-running oil refinery strikes, today the French government said that France has tapped its strategic fuel reserves to resupply petrol stations that have run dry, amid ongoing strikes by workers that have stunted refining production and blocked gasoline deliveries.
Government spokesman Olivier Veran acknowledged “tensions” but said there was no shortage of fuel stocks on a national level. He urged consumers not to panic-buy, which of course is the surest way to encourage panic buying, long lines, rationing and all the ugly scenes from those black and white photos of the 1970s.
In the hardest-hit Hauts-de-France region, authorities didn’t even bother with rationing and banned outright the sale of petrol and diesel in jerry cans and other portable containers.
“We are obviously monitoring very, very closely the situation together with the operators and, here and there, when it was necessary, we have used our strategic stocks to enable the stations to be supplied,” Veran told reporters.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Europe’s Permanent Energy Crisis Gets Worse
The pipeline explosions I wrote about last week were neither a beginning nor an end to Europe’s economic woes. The “invisible scissors” cutting all ties between Europe and the rest of Eurasia were already active since months — if not years — and did not stop for a minute ever since. However, now they’ve become busier than ever.
Itincreasingly looks like that the rather cruel metaphor I brought up in April, is now becoming a reality in front of our eyes — in a strictly figurative sense of course. As I wrote back then:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Back in the age of shoguns and samurai, there was a rather bloody way a noble warrior could restore honor for himself or for his family by committing a form of voluntary ritual suicide. What contemporary societies rarely grasp, is that the person in question had to die no matter what. He had to choose between falling into enemy hands (and being tortured — then executed resulting in the loss of his and his family’s honor), or performing this rather painful ritual by himself.
After several decades of magical thinking and self-delusion Europe has now found itself in the same situation. Leaders of this once prosperous peninsula of Eurasia have now decided to severe themselves from Russian fossil fuel supplies: starting with coal in August, then moving on to oil and gas. Lacking its own adequate supplies of energy carriers tough this act will effectively self-terminate the EU economy — an act equivalent to a ritual suicide; a desperate attempt to restore the continent’s lost honor.
October 4, 2022
Are We In the Midst of a Silent Mass Extinction?
Genetic diversity in deer mice creates differences in coat color. NICOLE BEDFORDAre We In the Midst of a Silent Mass Extinction?A new modeling technique aims to help scientists and policymakers detect declines in genetic diversity based on habitat loss.
Nearly one fifth of the genetic diversity of the planet’s most vulnerable species may already be lost, an analysis published today (September 22) in Science finds. If accurate, it would mean that many species are already below a conservation threshold proposed last year by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) a part of the United Nations Environment Programme.
Calculating lost genetic diversity
Moisés Expósito-Alonso was in his back yard in Menlo Park, California, last year reading a monograph on the unified theory of biodiversity—“kind of a nerd thing to do,” he says—when an idea dawned on him. He kept seeing concepts related to biodiversity and realized that those concepts should also relate to the genetic diversity of a given species.
Expósito-Alonso, an evolutionary geneticist and ecologist at Stanford University, says that one equation in particular caught his eye: the species-area relationship (SAR), a function that predicts that species-level biodiversity becomes richer as habitat area expands. Essentially, it says that “when you explore ecosystems, you continuously find more species because you find more little niches to which different species have adapted,” he says. And as humans have increasingly carved up ecosystems for our own purposes, the SAR holds that the reverse is also true—shrinking habitat areas diminish species biodiversity. Researchers have used the SAR to estimate extinction rates, and it has been cited in policy-making decisions, Expósito-Alonso says; so, he began to wonder if a genetic diversity equivalent existed that could analogously predict how habitat loss reduces genetic diversity.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Greenwald: No One Talks About Ending Ukraine War For Fear Of Being Labelled A ‘Traitor’
It’s a “dangerous delusion” to dismiss Putin’s nuclear threat
Journalist Glenn Greenwald noted Monday that talks to deescalate or end the conflict in Ukraine are virtually nonexistent because the legacy media and political elites have nurtured an atmosphere where to do so is considered ‘unpatriotic’.
Speaking to Tucker Carlson, Greenwald stated “There is a very real threat of a nuclear exchange, or even a direct confrontation with Russia and the United States. And over what? Over who governs and rules, not even Ukraine, but the Donbas, the eastern region in Ukraine, where a majority of people actually identify as ethnic Russians and want to be part of Russia.”
Greenwald continued, “Yet there’s almost no debate about whether we should be sending huge amounts of money there and risking the lives of American citizens through the possibility of a nuclear war.”
“Because everyone knows that the minute you step up and step out of line, there’s a hoard of people ready to call you unpatriotic, or a traitor, or an admirer of Vladimir Putin, as I know is being done with our very segment right this minute by all those Media Matter people and all those other people online,” the journalist continued.
“It’s a really repressive atmosphere and squashing a debate that we absolutely have to have,” Greenwald further urged.
Greenwald and Carlson also warned that it is foolish not to take Putin at his word that he is willing to deploy Russia’s nuclear arsenal.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Power Grid Collapse In Bangladesh Leaves 140 Million People In Dark
Bangladesh’s national power grid collapsed Tuesday afternoon, plunging 140 million people, or nearly everyone in the country, into darkness, AFP reported.
Reuters spoke with officials at the state-run Bangladesh Power Development Board, who said power transmission failed in the eastern part of the country and then tripped power plants nationwide, cutting off power to the capital, Dhaka, and other major metro areas.
Bangladesh Power Development Board official Shameem Hasan said engineers are investigating ‘glitches’ in the power system. He said restoring the system could take several hours once issues are resolved.
“We are trying to restore the system,” Hasan said.
Bangladesh is one of the world’s largest garment exporters after China. The country is also an emerging outsourcing destination for business operations, such as call centers…
*Developing…
Is the United Kingdom on the Road to Economic Collapse?
There’s trouble across the pond and it’s only going to get worse as winter quickly approaches.
While it’s most fashionable to talk about the dire economic situation currently taking place in the US, the situation in Europe is so much worse.
There are talks of massive energy bill hikes and even the lights literally going out across Europe. This is the product of the toxic combination of a misguided sanctions war against Russia and Europe’s decision to transition towards inefficient green energy sources.
As a result, folks across the pond are going to be in for a rough winter.
If you’re an America, you should feel safe knowing that our situation could be much worse…at least for now.
Now for residents of the United Kingdom, that’s a different story.
The UK is now facing inflation levels that haven’t been seen in decades. On top of that, energy and food prices have been soaring lately.
Liz Truss, the UK’s new prime minister, is now tasked with trying to get the country’s economic house in order.
Truss is currently proposing a plan to cut taxes (good), while raising spending (bad). It’s basically a moderate form of Keynesianism, which does not resolve any of the UK’s structural economic problems.
Instead of cutting spending and red tape, while also getting the UK’s monetary house in order, Truss’s new economic proposal worsens the country’s fiscal situation and will only further ignite inflation.
What’s taking place in the UK is not unique to the island. Most economies in the West are over-taxed, over-regulated, and feature central banks who have no regard for monetary restraint.
It’s small wonder why these countries are in such dire straits.
Will the UK be one of the first high-profile victims of the economic doom spiral engulfing the West?
Check out George Gammon’s most recent video on why there’s nothing but bad things coming to the island nation.
P.S. – The West is experiencing an existential economic crisis.
#241. Behind the crisis
As you would expect, both the mainstream and the specialist media have been giving us minute-by-minute, blow-by-blow coverage of the financial crisis which began with the British government’s 23rd September “fiscal event”.
Unfortunately, this coverage and analysis is founded on a conventional school of economic thought which insists – rather, simply assumes – that all economic events can be explained in terms of money alone.
This assumption is fallacious. The fact of the matter is that we can immerse ourselves entirely in monetary theories and financial analyses until the proverbial “cows come home” without understanding more than the surface manifestations of the underlying situation.
As a corrective, let’s remind ourselves of something that ought to be self-evident. This is that the economy is a system which delivers those material products and services which together constitute prosperity. Money is simply a proxy for these products and services, a means of exchange and distribution which does not, of itself, determine the availability of this material prosperity.
This ‘money-only’ fallacy delivers false comfort, in at least two ways.
First, it enables us to explain away the current crisis in terms of idiosyncrasies – there’s a surface narrative which assures us that, if we can avoid the kind of bungling in which the new British leadership has become enmeshed, we can similarly avoid the kind of crisis now unfolding in the United Kingdom.
We might, indeed, be persuaded that even Britain can find a way out of this crisis through ‘rationalization’, which, in this case, might mean ‘finding rational people to manage its economic affairs’.
Now that growth has reversed
The second source of false comfort is the mistaken assumption that finding the right blend of fiscal and monetary policies can deliver the nirvana of perpetual growth.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
