Steve Bull's Blog, page 189
September 21, 2022
Putin Announces Partial Mobilization In Ukraine War Escalation, Says West Wants To “Destroy Russia”
In a nationwide address that was delayed from its prime-time Tuesday delivery and ahead of votes in four Ukraine regions to join Russia, on Wednesday morning Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial military mobilization, while vowing to use all means necessary to defend Russia and pledged to annex the territories already occupied by Russia, raising the stakes in the seven-month-old conflict.
Calling the moves “urgent, necessary steps to defend the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Russia,” Putin said that Russia is fighting the full might of NATO. The US and its allies, he said, are seeking to “destroy” Russia.
The partial mobilization means that reservists will be drafted into military service, Putin said, starting immediately. The Armed Forces will draw on military reservists only, and those who have completed national service, the president said promising that they will be provided with additional training along with all the benefits due to people involved in active duty.
The measure is “sensible and necessary” under the circumstances, Putin stated, adding that he has already signed an order for the call-up to start immediately.
In his speech, Putin accused Kiev of backing away from peace talks, acting on direct orders from its Western allies. Instead of negotiating, the Ukrainian government has beefed up its military with NATO-trained troops, many of whom are neo-Nazi extremists, he said.
Putin also accused the west of using “nuclear blackmail” against Russia noting that “if its territorial integrity is threatened Russia will definitely use all the means at its disposal.” to defend Russian territory. “This is not a bluff.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
A Natural Gas Shortage Is Looming For The U.S.
Last week, the media rushed to report that natural gas prices in the United States had fallen sharply after trade unions and railway companies reached a tentative deal that averted a potentially devastating strike.
Indeed, natural gas prices fell by nearly a dollar per million British thermal units, helped by a respectable build in inventories. And yet, inventories remain below the seasonal average, exports are running at record rates, and producers are beginning to struggle to meet demand, both at home and abroad.
Reuters’ John Kemp wrote in a recent column that domestic and international gas consumption had risen to record highs, and shale producers—the ones that account for the bulk of U.S. natural gas output—were having a hard time catching up with this demand.
Meanwhile, although higher on a weekly basis, inventories remained at the second-lowest for this time of the year for the last 12 years, Reuters’ market analyst noted. He also added there were no signs of any improvement in the level of inventories despite the rise in prices.
None of this suggests lower prices for natural gas are coming to either the United States or international markets as the northern hemisphere heads into winter. On the contrary, the latest figures suggest more financial pain for gas consumers. And they confirm, to an extent, forecasts made earlier this year.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
September 20, 2022
Water. Food. Energy.
Unless you have spent the past summer under a rock on a remote island, you have probably heard about the severe droughts besetting Asia, Europe, and the United States. Rivers turning into mere trickles. Crops failing or delivering less than half of their usual yields. Power plants shutting down due to a lack of cooling or fuel. The less advertised side of the story is that we have mostly done this to ourselves.
Drought is a sure killer for civilizations. A few years, let alone decades of persistent drought, have forced many civilization to their knees. The Akkadian Empire. The Mayans. The Tang Dynasty… The lack of water have forced people in the past to leave their settlements or die in trying to make a living where crops grew no longer.
Our current version of agricultural civilization is no different in this regard either. We rely heavily on agriculture to grow food, which in turn relies heavily on predictable rainfall patterns and a nutrient rich soil to grow crops. The only reason there are this many of us on the planet at the moment is that we’ve managed to break — or at least weaken — this link between land food and water, and the bond between locations where food is grown and where it’s consumed. At least, for a while.
The magic ingredient — of course — was energy, and in our current civilization’s case this meant: fossil fuels. As I wrote many times, energy is the economy, but not only that: energy is agriculture. There is an intricate and inseparable connection between food, water and energy.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Majority Of Hungarian Gas Stations To Run Dry Next Week
Hungarian gas and oil giant MOL will only be able to deliver a quarter of the needed fuel from 19 September, Hungarian media reported.
According to Daily News Hungary. Szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu acquired a letter in which MOL informed its partners that they could only deliver 25% of the contracted fuel amount. The cited reason for shortfall is “to maintain the predictability of fuel orders and the supply in Hungary, MOL explaned. The oil and gas giant’s announcement concerns gasoline and diesel deliveries, too.”
Similar to other European countries, the Hungarian government decided to maintain price caps on fuel and essential foodstuffs until the end of this year. Regarding the possible fuel shortage, Gergely Gulyás, the prime minister’s chief of staff, said on yesterday’s government info that “there might be problems at the petrol stations.” However, they trust in the sustainability of their decisions. Gulyás added that people could thank MOL that the government can maintain the fuel price cap scheme. As a result, gasoline and diesel prices will remain at HUF 480 per litre (EUR 1.19/l) in Hungary until 31 December. Of course, the trade off is that soon there will be no gasoline and diesel.
MOL announced today that their refinery in Százhalombatta is operating again at full capacity because it successfully finished the scheduled maintenance work. The second maintenance phase will begin on 9 October, they added. But that will be a smaller-scale project affecting only the diesel-producing facilities. After finishing the procedure, it might take some time to ramp up diesel production. However, according to the Hungarian press, “fortunately demand decreases in autumn and winter, mitigating fuel shortage.”
We doubt that this year demand will be falling any time soon. In fact, with shortages looming, prepare for just the opposite.
Who Is Really Spreading Misinformed Disinformation?
Ne’er has there been more fertile ground that exemplifies how those in charge of the narrative are either (1) grossly incompetent, (2) saying what they need to simply to suit their own agenda, or (3) both – than the topics of Covid, inflation, Trump’s non-existent Russian collusion and Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Because I have written extensively about these issues over the last year, I had been putting aside a collection of quotes from the “authorities” on each topic. I thought this morning I would release all the quotes I had put aside as one giant compendium showing just how important it is to automatically agree with whatever our masters in the mainstream media/government suggest to us.
Given that we now know almost definitively (in my opinion) that Covid came from a lab, that inflation is here to stay, that Trump didn’t collude with Russia and that the laptop was definitely authentic, enjoy this trip down memory lane.
“You’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations.” – Joe Biden, July 2021“Fact: Covid-19 is NOT airborne.” – World Health Organization, March 2020“Now we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person. A vaccinated person gets exposed to the virus, the virus does not infect them, the virus cannot then use that person to go anywhere else,” she added with a shrug. “It cannot use a vaccinated person as a host to go get more people. [Vaccines] will get us to the end of this.” – Rachel Maddow, March 2021“When people are vaccinated they can feel safe that they won’t get infected, whether they’re outdoors or indoors.” – Dr. Anthony Fauci, May 2021“From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual. It’s very rare.” – Maria Van Kerkhove, PhD, head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, March 2020…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
September 19, 2022
OPEC Update, September 18, 2022
The OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) for September 2022 was published recently. The last month reported in most of the OPEC charts that follow is August 2022 and output reported for OPEC nations is crude oil output in thousands of barrels per day (kb/d). In most of the OPEC charts that follow the blue line is monthly output and the red line is the centered twelve month average (CTMA) output.
Figure 1
Figure 2OPEC output increased by 618 kb/d in August after being revised higher in July 2022 by 37 kb/d and June 2022 output was revised up by 5 kb/d compared to last month’s MOMR. The bulk of the August increase in OPEC output (69%) was from Libya(426), with smaller increases from Saudi Arabia(160), Kuwait(37), and UAE(33). Nigeria had a decrease of 65 kb/d. The rest of the OPEC producers had small increases or decreases of less than 20 kb/d with a total increase of 25 kb/d for all 8 nations.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
September 18, 2022
Strike, Strike, Strike
The mounting social inequality is fueling protests around the globe. The global ruling class is determined to prevent these protests from employing the weapon that can bring them down — strikes.
Strike, Strike, Strike – by Mr. Fish The ruling oligarchs are terrified that, for tens of millions of people, the economic dislocation caused by inflation, stagnant wages, austerity, the pandemic and the energy crisis is becoming unendurable. They warn, as Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and NATO Secretary GeneraJens Stoltenberg, have done, about the potential for social unrest, especially as we head towards winter.
Social unrest is a code word for strikes — the one weapon workers possess that can cripple and destroy the billionaire class’s economic and political power. Strikes are what the global oligarchs fear most. Through the courts and police intervention, they will seek to prevent workers from shutting down the economy. This looming battle is crucial. If we begin to chip away at corporate power through strikes, most of which will probably be wildcat strikes that defy union leadership and anti-union laws, we can begin to regain agency over our lives.
The oligarchs have spent decades abolishing or domesticating unions, turning the few unions that remain — only 10.7 percent of the workforce is unionized — into obsequious junior partners in the capitalist system. As of January 2022, private-sector unionization stood at its lowest point since the passage of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. And yet, 48 percent of U.S. workers say they would like to belong to a union.
As a result of crushing conditions workers have been subjected to for years, the nation is facing its first major rail strike since the 1990s…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Escalation: Recent Events Suggest Mounting Economic Danger
A common refrain from people who are critical of alternative economists is that we have been predicting crisis for so long that “eventually we will be right.” These are generally people who don’t understand the nature of economic decline – It’s like an avalanche that builds over time, then breaks and quickly escalates as it flows down the mountain. What they don’t grasp is that they are in the middle of an economic collapse RIGHT NOW, and they just can’t see it because they have been acclimated to the presence of the snow and cold.
Economic decline is a process that takes many years, and while you might get an event like the market crash of 1929 or the crash of 2008, these moments of panic are nothing more than the wreckage left behind by the great wave of tumbling ice that everyone should have seen coming far in advance, but they refused.
In 2022 the job of warning people is far easier than it used to be because we are well past the midpoint of the process of decline. But, believe it or not, I still get people today who claim that we analysts are “doom mongers.” The power of willful ignorance is truly amazing. It’s enough to make a person blind to stagflationary crisis, supply chain disruptions, quickly inflating prices, stock market carnage, bond market instability, record consumer debt, and international conflict.
At this point, I think if a person can’t see the dangers ahead they are probably a waste of time and space and are destined to be buried in the ice; there’s nothing that can be done for them…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
In Brief: Trading safety, An inflection point, The crisis of under-consumption, A reign of decline
Trading safety
Within the inner sanctum of one of the world’s oldest and most esteemed universities, an ageing professor sits in a battered leather armchair. Oblivious to the day-to-day sensations within the room – the slow tick and tock of an antique grandfather clock, the shimmering particles of dust caught in the beam of sunlight making its way through the sash window, or the odour of the worn, dusty and tea-stained carpet – our professor meditates upon the deeper mysteries of the universe. In the adjacent reception sits a dragon secretary, whose main role in life is to guard the inner sanctum and to ensure that none of the mundane workings of a modern university be allowed to disturb the professor’s haven of tranquillity.
After three decades of neoliberal governments turning universities from bastions of knowledge and inquiry into the individual units of a cargo cult-based Ponzi scheme, this vision of a university may be but a reflection of a lost past. It is, however, a metaphor for the way in which the human brain works – just like the dragon secretary – to prevent any of the millions of pieces of data that flood in through the senses from disturbing peace of mind.
When the mechanism – which psychologists call the “Affective Signalling System,” which causes us to seek pleasure and avoid danger – works properly, any sudden change in the environment will be allowed to enter the conscious mind. This is a safety mechanism wired in by ancestors who needed to know if that rustle in the grass or snapping of a twig might indicate the presence of a predator hungry for a hominid meal. And even within that tranquil inner sanctum, the odds are that our professor will notice immediately if the old grandfather clock stops ticking.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
