Debt Rattle September 8 2022
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Joan Miró The farmer’s wife 1923 • Western Elites’ “Sanctions Fever” Will See European People Freeze – Putin (ZH) • EU Gas Price Cap Plan Is ‘F
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle September 8 2022]The European division of Russia’s oldest tour operator Intourist started offering winter tour packages to Russia for EU citizens. Package includes: unlimited hot showers, daily visits to Sandunovskaya Banya, and a heated room with electricity.
Almost fell out of my chair laughing…genius…
I have three of the six growing right now (early spring) -potato, cabbage, beans- and have tomato starters ready for when the ground warms up, plus corn saved from last year’s harvest ready to go into propagation trays in a few weeks and pumpkin seeds ready for planting a little after that. Pickling the last of the beetroot using homemade vinegar, and eating carrots as they mature.
Nectarine, almond and early plum are in blossom, and peach and midseason plum will blossom in a few weeks, followed by apple, pear and pomegranate. Grape vines are just starting to shoot. Looking forward to the first crop of pepinos.
Trials establishing macadamia from the nuts (which grow splendidly in Taranaki) failed, I suspect because it is just a bit too cold here.
Experimenting with tamarillos under frost protection.
Windbreak come shade house nearing completion. Greenhouse recently completed and partly planted.
Most people around here have done nothing to prepare, but I was told today that the group I abandoned months ago because they had the wrong focus are now firmly focused on food production.
Across the ‘ditch’:
Okay, that didn’t work. Try again
There is much focus on Europe, but many countries outside Europe have enduring far worse for a long time.
It’s the 50 year old Hillary. Sometimes we see the 70-year old one. Sometimes the 40 year old. Explain, anyone?
““Counter-Offensive” – You Keep Using that Word (Schryver)”
Lira’s take is that he expected Rus to suddenly jump west to engage the remaining Ukr forces. Morbidly, they no longer have to. Dug in and in complete control of their surroundings, Ze is throwing cannon fodder – every existing Slav, as Biden directs – to be shot by Russia, in front of Russian HQ in E. Ukraine. So they can have borscht and hot tea in the mess, get a night’s sleep, then get up, go to the perimeter fence and shoot more Slavs Ze has helpfully delivered to them. Can we understand this? This is their counteroffense. This is their master plan. And this is not going to be good for all those Ukrainian jokes going forward.
“The report did not identify those responsible for shelling the plant.”
Just too hard! It’s probably a team of Sasquatch, driving jeeps and using mortars who are shelling it. Because if it’s not the Russians, then….aliens…?
“Truss becoming PM Signals ‘Crisis of Democracy’ in UK – Moscow (RT)”
They are going to destroy women leaders forever. Truss. Birx. Merkel. Ardern. HRC. With this round, in 10 years we will say women make terrible leaders. Women are terrible scriptwriters. Women are terrible comedians. Heck, women are terrible mothers. Women are therefore incapable, second-class humans, and things should be run by men. That is not great! But if women like Truss don’t have the sense to hide like the men did, won’t stand up to it, and they are willing to march forward into machine gun fire in Hollywood wokeness, kill their babies and castrate their own children for the cause, what can I say in their defense?
Like pedos taking the gay community: not good. Please fight this with all you have. They may be able to install women leaders over our objections, but if women don’t make noise about it, it’s going to look like they’re just gender-racists, and approving all.
“Renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner says his analysis shows there is big trouble coming for the U.S. dollar. The dollar’s reserve currency status is on its way to being a thing of the past. Nenner explains, “The dollar is still up. We have a target on the dollar of 113 (on the USDX). It’s now around 110, but it’s not going to be surviving as the major currency. People don’t trust what is going on in the United States.”
“I have told you for years that the dollar is not going to crash, but now it is time. In a year or so, they will really be getting into trouble with the dollar.”
“Nenner predicted in May that a “Third of the global population will be killed in next war cycle.” “We are going to continue on this pace for war, and it is going to explode in the second half of 2023.” –USAW
“UN Education Agency Launches War on ‘Conspiracy Theories’;
“I can’t think of anything more dangerous to free speech and free thought…” …Than free speech and free thought.“We remain skeptical when it comes to issues surrounding a gas price cap, but we are generally ready for talks in the European framework,”
More memes that won’t end: Germany will TALK? Someday? Form a committee? Someday? Okay, let me know when the weird face-sounds you make cause gas to appear in my shop.
Talk about being a cult: far worse. They’re a cargo cult.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult“Crooke goes on to show that pulling people together into a global entity would be facilitated by a global enemy, such as pollution, global-climate-change and ecosystem destruction.”
We have quotes of them in 1979 saying they didn’t care if it was true: they would lie and make up an ecological emergency because “the ends justify the means.” Founder of Greenpeace has addressed that this was made up for this express purpose for decades. No one cares. Or we just say, THIS expert, who was there, confirming quotes we have on paper, doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But RussiaRussiaRussia, WMDs, THOSE experts who were wrong every day for 25 years and killed +6M people are right this time.
Even normies, or those posing as normies like Time Pool, are now saying, “I can’t prove INTENT, but if all your ACTIONS kill humans, after saying, publishing, there should be LESS humans, does it matter? You’re killing humans.” Next step is we stop saying it’s an accident, like some of us have been saying for decades, because: obvious.
“the fact that most of them never did have the benefits of resource extraction and exploitation.”
Yes. “Privilege”. “1st world problems”. “We consume 25% of the resources.” Uh, no. In Gary Indiana the houses fell down and the forests are growing back in. YOU in Elizabethtown and D.C. used 25% of all resources. That you took from us in Flyoverland at gunpoint. I’m not feeling no privilege and no shame. GFY.
“Belgian PM argued that hardships are worth it as the bloc will “leap 20 years forward”
The “Great Leap Forward”? Are these guys for real??? And I just read they need to cut oil this week to “Flatten the Curve”. AYFKM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward let me fast forward: Section 3.1 Famine. 3.1.1 Deaths by Famine. 3.2 Deaths by Violence.
“Flatten the Curve”. This HAS to be an international IQ test. And Europe is failing it.
Speaking of: what did Italy use before candles? Electricity. Yes, Italian cafes have moved to candles, which are cheaper than light bulbs. Wait long enough and all my hyperbole comes true. That’s why it’s not hyperbole.
“The WEF has played this as a segue into CBDC (central bank digital currency) with smartphone wallets, and medical-passports, inherently social-credit-scoring.
At this point unpayable gas and electric bills could also provide a transition into CBDC, and let governments decide who freezes and starves.”Yes, and it will work there. For a while, maybe 3 ½ years, the first half of the Tribulation, who knows? That’s been their plan since 1910 or earlier tho. That’s why they had to add, encourage, force, “overshoot”, “Complexity” which adds “Fragility.” Otherwise you can’t get enough deaths, or too little supporting infrastructure. 60M deaths in WWII wasn’t enough: they needed way, way more to get this through.
“How will the blame not fall upon the national governments, elected officials and unelected bureaucrats?”
Doesn’t this show you they cannot be running things, but must be a layer further up?
“the scope that they were looking for was every single document generated during the Trump administration — that just seems too inexcusably overbroad”
My Hyperbole again. Which is just true. Trust me, I wish it wasn’t.
OffGuardian, I believe several of those experiments were discredited as fabricated. (e.g. Milgram) Like the rest of science. And that was back in the 60s!
The dentist – although entirely in the wrong – is trying to scam a copay out of you because he’s been scammed and “going broke” (in relative terms) by the Government’s Medicaid scamming HIM. This is how the fish stinks from the head. Ex, many doctors go to cash-only, no Medicare because they need 5 more employees just to chase the gov’t around and make them pay. 160+ days late and maybe never. It’s not a law and accounting office; Drop it, and you can have 1 Dr + 1 Nurse, and do actual medicine again. The government has the money, so why? “Where’s my money, Brian? Where is it???”
“Too hard on the family” is of course relative. The Dentist is scamming because he thinks it’s too hard on HIS family. Maybe his daughter’s college costs. The working poor get the least of anyone. No one cares if it’s too little for THEIR family. And you can make a million and go bankrupt way faster. What about THEIR family? Shouldn’t we save their family from bankruptcy? I’m not smart enough to know who has it harder than someone else. I don’t think that can be written down in a bureaucratic formula.
Yes was going to ask again why people follow American news and markets. If you’re not an American, who cares? I’m disappointed I have to follow it, but I have no choice when I live here.
[..] More than 5,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the invasion, according to a tally of confirmed deaths updated this week by independent Russian media outlet iStories.
The figure is over three times higher than the official death toll of 1,351 which was last updated by the Russian Defense Ministry in March.
While Russia is believed to have suffered significant military losses since its February invasion of Ukraine, the exact number of killed soldiers has been subject to intense speculation with Western officials estimating the number to be over 15,000 and Ukrainian officials claiming it to be more than 42,000.
iStories has verified the deaths of 5,107 soldiers.
Looks like iStories might have a math problem.
My way or the highway
If Russia stops fighting, there will be peace.
If Ukraine stops fighting, it will cease to exist as an independent nation (for the US to scam/get rich/exploit)• NATO Will Pay A Price But We Must Stay The Course On Ukraine (Stoltenberg)
—————.
Winter is coming.
Experiment:
Test what/who will freeze and stop functioning
Close the tap of oil and gas and disconnect the electricity
Find out who will get mad with anger and rebel,• Putin Comments On IAEA Report (RT)
• Charles Gave: Europeans Are “Mad With Anger And it Will Worsen” (SN)
————
How LOW can you go?waste/consumption-driven growth model 70%
out of poverty/sustainability-driven model 45%———
Read more …
JOHN PILGER: Silencing the Lambs — How Propaganda Works
September 7, 2022
In my lifetime, the United States has overthrown or attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, mostly democracies. It has interfered in democratic elections in 30 countries. It has dropped bombs on the people of 30 countries, most of them poor and defenceless. It has attempted to murder the leaders of 50 countries. It has fought to suppress liberation movements in 20 countries.The extent and scale of this carnage is largely unreported, unrecognised, and those responsible continue to dominate Anglo-American political life.
Today, the most profitable wars have their own brand. They are called “forever wars” — Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and now Ukraine. All are based on a pack of lies.The news from the war in Ukraine is mostly not news, but a one-sided litany of jingoism, distortion, omission. I have reported a number of wars and have never known such blanket propaganda.
When will real journalists stand up?
An inspirational samizdat already exists on the internet: Consortium News, founded by the great reporter Robert Parry, Max Blumenthal’s The Grayzone, Mint Press News, Media Lens, DeclassifiedUK, Alborada, Electronic Intifada, WSWS, ZNet, ICH, CounterPunch, Independent Australia, the work of Chris Hedges, Patrick Lawrence, Jonathan Cook, Diana Johnstone, Caitlin Johnstone and others who will forgive me for not mentioning them here. TAE and Raúl Ilargi Meijer
Read more …
———–
We the Silent Majority
We’re not statesmen or diplomats and we don’t know Russia’s battle plans, nor are we ever going to be president of anything. We’re famous, but unknown, who are we?We’re the (retired) silent majority!
Our political system is broken, our multicultural societies are in chaos, inflation is soaring, we’re bankrupt and awaiting possible mass civil protests in the near future; that’s if the fools in charge don’t lead us into a nuclear conflict first.
keep reading ….
“Belgian PM argues hardships are worth it as the bloc will leap 20 years forward.”
Or as Hannah Arendt wrote: “There is hardly a better way to avoid discussion than by releasing an argument from the control of the present and by saying that only the future will reveal its merits.”
-The Origins of TotalitarianismIn war, truth is always the first casualty. We’ve seen that repeatedly with regards to the Ukraine, nobody has any idea what is true and what is not. Isn’t it funny that Corona was exactly the same? The war started in early 2020 when we blew up that Iranian general, or at least that is how i think the history books of the future will tell it.
What a mess. I don’t even know what to say anymore. Does any of this even seem real to anyone anymore?
I attended an event last night for the women’s group at my current job. Many were practically orgasmic while talking about the omicron version of the vaxx booster that’s now available, literally giddy about getting it as soon as possible. All were vaxxed, boosted multiple times, and several have also have covid..some more then once. It’s was really, really bizarre and frankly creepy. It’s a cult. I’m so totally confused.
RE: EU will propose a “mandatory target for reducing electricity use at peak hours” in order to “flatten the curve.”
How stupid are they??? Do they really think we will jump thru hoops to flatten their freeking curve? Surely that brazen “ask” will wake a few folks up.
@Dr D: “It’s the 50 year old Hillary. Sometimes we see the 70-year old one. Sometimes the 40 year old. Explain, anyone?”
It is a “campaign” to position her for future leadership (under grave circumstances). The younger pics are designed to show strength, dynamism, and involvement. They want the whole Hillary to be remembered. Just goes to show how much power she wields + the degree that TPTB want her in the wings.
Today’s art is classic Miro. Notice how the architectural elements/lines frame the characters and drive you through the painting. One very cool cat. I think the hare is in trouble. As for the farmers wife, she looks tired and determined, obviously she spends too much time on her feet. Her headlights are on high, a revealing peek inside the artist’s mind.
Contentment, compassion, and tolerance are the three pillars of spirituality. God can’t be seen in a form sitting in heaven but can be experienced in loving every person….We can only do one thing, and that is to keep our mind positive in the present.
– Baba Hari Dass, Everyday Peace Letters for Life.LOVE to All.
@Kassandra: “What a mess. I don’t even know what to say anymore. Does any of this even seem real to anyone anymore?”
No it doesn’t. It’s a very large cult, confusing, disorienting.
China strikes me as being well-poised to do an internal domestic reset, especially with all the de facto war-time footing going on. (Depending, of course, on ample energy imports. Today, this seems to be a minor problem but in ten years, China could be an industrial engine sans fuel.) Technically, China can fix its economic issues, so long as it enough fuel and the other thing, popular belief that Xi et al still retain the mandate of heaven.
The latter looks especially problematic but energy scarcity will soon catch up and those two will race neck-and-neck to a state-collapse finish line, I suspect.
“According to CBS News, Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, ethnic Ukrainian Chrystia Freeland is being considered for the post of NATO Secretary General.”
What could be improvement to NATO.
@slimyalligator, who asked about ivermectin prophylaxis, which is different for COVID than it is for intestinal and other parasites, and not well studied in regards to cancer…
Ivermectin prophylaxis was much studied in 2020 -2021 in healthcare workers, particularly, but also in countries with COVID outbreaks.
Basically, the more one keeps one’s ivermectin level up, the better it works. The blood level and the intracellular levels are different, but both important. Keeping the blood level up for the period of time the virus is incubating requires dosing at least twice per week. If one has a known, high-level exposure, then daily treatment exposure-prophylaxis will work best.
Even monthly and twice-monthly prophylaxis has shown benefit in studies, perhaps due to sustained levels inside of cells. Serum levels drop after a day, but intracellular levels drop slowly after a week.Adequate blood/serum levels of ivermectin will help reduce initial viral infection in the nose and throat, by impairing viral infection of cells. That’s really good.
There is still benefit to having ivermectin inside the cells, where it impairs viral replication, so weekly dosing is not bad in improving outcomes and reducing infection incidence.One might look at FLCCC, ivermectin information: https://covid19criticalcare.com/ivermectin-in-covid-19/
I have not reviewed studies recently, but did so a lot in 2020 and throughout 2021, and the results seemed to keep saying the same things to me.
An initial loading-dose of ivermectin serves to get the blood and intracellular levels up. This should be 0.4 mg/kg of body weight (1 mg per 5# body weight is pretty close).
This has also become a recommended daily dose. There is such low toxicity to ivermectin that potentially-lethal dosing is hard to determine, but somewhere in the range of the dose to treat a herd of horses for parasites, based on the total body weight of the herd.Taking 1 mg per 5# body weight once or twice per week long term would be quite protective against severe illness and moderately protective against any illness. If caring for a sick family member, one should highly consider daily dosing for 7-10 days.
All of this assumes keeping adequate vitamin-D levels in the normal range, though upper normal looks better, and normal zinc levels, but not taking over 25 mg of zinc supplement daily long term.Drinking green-tea habitually seems to reduce initial viral binding in the nose and throat, also.
The current strains of COVID have much lower untreated morbidity and mortality, similar to average seasonal flu.
Decisions about any form of prophylaxis will hinge on cost, availability and special risks a person might have (or not).
Eat a diet based on fresh vegetables, avoiding smoked meats, food additives, tobacco and more than minimal alcohol to limit cancer risks. Start as a kid.Most recent from Mr. Vighi if anyone is interested
@Kassandra: I’m sorry about the cult. You are not a member. Do they choose death at some subconscious level? It’s just a question that keeps coming up in my mind.
@Zerosum: The VP (Clinton would have accepted) is the insurance to the elites that the POTUS will do what they want, or be replaced by the VP, who is always acceptable to them, like LBJ.
Chrystia Freeland is a rabid Galician-Ukrainian, so her positions are predictable.@Dr. D: Thanks for looking at yesterday’s thoughts.
@Boscohorowitz: Xi Jinping usually has a smug, aloof, looking a little away appearance when posing with other national leaders. The recent picture of him with Modi and Putin is illustrative. It speaks to his pro-forma position not being heartfelt. It’s hard to read somebody like Xi, but he seems like a high-functioning man, son of high CCP officials (“princeling”), narcissistic tendencies. He is clearly obsessive about maintaining power, presumably obsesses on threats, and is less far down that road than Stalin went.
I think Xi is in for the duration, but subject to errors of hubris. I suspect he’s not very subject until he really feels like he’s clearly winning.
The temptation to betray Russia after winning at home and prevailing globally, comes to mind as a set-up for him.Regarding the dentist…the dentist is not required by law to accept Medicaid. Only children receive full dental coverage in Arizona from Medicaid, so there are plenty of non-insurance covered folks to get the $220 per filling from. (Adults on Medicaid get a $1,000/year emergency dental benefit only — and if you’re not in considerable pain, it isn’t considered emergency.). When a provider signs up to accept Medicaid, they are contractually agreeing to accept the Medicaid reimbursement schedule as payment-in-full, so the provider was in breach of contract.
Additionally, if the dentist didn’t feel like doing the filling that day — because it wasn’t economically feasible on Saturday, etc., then the office should have declined offering the appointment — no one forced them to accept the appointment. Or, the office could have been up front about telling me that they would charge more than was legally allowed, informing me when the appointment was made — I would have been annoyed, but would have looked for a different provider, not wanting to deal with the hassle. Instead, the dentist chose to deceive me, to offer 1/4 of the service and then demand the extra payment.
This was very foolish on the part of the dentist. I have 3 kids in high school. The children’s dental office that they have gone to for about 10 years I recently discovered only does fillings and “procedures” during high school hours. I had decided to find the kids a new dentist. If the dentist office that did the filling hadn’t pulled this shenanigan, asking for extra payment on the filling, I had planned at the completion of the visit to make an appointment for my daughter’s next exam and cleaning, which was due in a week and a half. It is likely that I also would then have made appointments for my sons as well, and the dental office would have had 3 new regular patients. Perhaps the dental office made very little on that particular filling, but they make sufficient income from routine exams and cleanings (under insurance) to stay in business.One thing that the medical insurance system (or public medicine system) does relatively well is induce people to bother with routine prophylactic medical and dental care as a means of finding problems when they are small, rather than waiting until they are large and more difficult to address. A standard fee-for-service medical/dental system does not do this: the patient doesn’t want to bother paying for care when there is no pain, and the medical provider will usually make more money from price-gouging people who are in pain or in life-threatening situations. In a fee-for-service system, the inducement for a provider to provide prophylactic care is based upon the individual ethic of the provider: is the provider primarily motivated to provide care because of an intrinsic desire to help people and positive feelings emanating from knowing patients are leading healthy lives, or rather motivated primarily from the money derived from the work? With fee-for-service, the patient seeks prophylactic care because of habit or duty or education or fear of what may happen without it — but such care is not compelled. In an insurance system/public medicine, the costs are lower for the insurer/government/public when prophylactic care is received. Now, the provider’s primary motivation is largely irrelevant, as the provider has become a cog in a larger system. For the patient in the insurance/public system, prophylactic care is a “free benefit” and a duty — avoiding prophylactic care is akin to squandering a resource.
I am not trying to analyze which medical system is intrinsically better (fee-for-service or insurance/public), only to illustrate that different systems lead to different outcomes.
If we want people to get prophylactic care, the service needs to be free or almost free and the people require education to understand how this benefits them. If we want to attract medical professionals to medicine that have high ethics and are invested in their patients having good health, then the profession needs to not be one of the best paid professions — I believe that doctors should be well-compensated…but, let’s face it, if young people are selecting a medical specialty based primarily upon a large future earning potential, their medical ethics are compromised before they ever receive their license.
@Kassandra said: “What a mess. I don’t even know what to say anymore. Does any of this even seem real to anyone anymore?”
I think that many books will be written about this time period. What a lesson it has been on the fragility of the human ego and how easily it can be manipulated. For years we mixed fairly easily with family, friends, and co-workers only to have many of them turn on us while under the influence of mass media propaganda campaigns with their so-called authority figures. Contradiction is everywhere apparent, but invisible to the Covid pod people. This applies equally to the pod-army of Trump haters who were the early adopters.
I guess this is why I was so impressed with Prof Desmet’s mass formation theory when it first appeared on the scene over a year ago. It’s been very satisfying watching the exposure of his ideas grow geometrically since then, culminating with his new book and a slot on Tucker Carlson Tonight.
For LIGHT relief, anything can be connected to anything ..
“I have the impression that Zelensky took Salvini as a model; the same beard, the same style of dressing in sweatshirts, the same populist rhetoric. Not the Nutella, though.”
🙂
Zelensky’s look reminded me of Jimmy Savile.
Both show-men, TV stars, and riding the train to épater les bourgeois that is, create images that will shock the complaisant middle class and get them going oooohhh ahhhhh.
Edgy! Cool!
look at the first pics of Savile here:
More info related to TAE’s Epoch Times article today about the Fauci, et al, communications with social media regarding covid censorship. This one straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, as Brownstone authors are plaintiffs in the suit. Of note:
“The Constitution never allowed an exception for an administrative bureaucracy answerable not even to voters to collaborate with large-scale private corporations to obtain the same result by other means. It’s still a violation of free speech.”
I’m left wondering why any administrative bureaucrat has privacy privilege for work-related communications. Unless they’re involved in highly sensitive state secrets (CDC? FDA? What – Trump gave them the nuclear codes??) it seems they should have the same expectations of privacy we have when communicating with employer-owned equipment and services. Which is … none.
Burning Candles instead of using light blubs.
Just one slight problem here. The paraffin used in candles consists of hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons come mainly from oil. Beeswax can be used but there really aren’t enough bees in the world to light up Europe. There are also plant based waxes too. There are also glue factory horses too.
Candles have a brief advantage over electricity. In the beginning candles are priced at the old price before they too will sky rocket in price. But at least you cut out the hopelessly incompetant government monopoly on electricity generation.
Candles can also be very romantic but I don’t think TPTB would approve of more babies being produced. Oh, never mind this, I forgot TPTB have already covered this base with their vaccines providing automatic abortions (miscarrages) in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy.
If you put a candle inside an opened metal can, it does serve as a very nice hand warmer. And if you are not extremely careful, you can also very nicely burn down your dwelling.0
As for hillary the evil hunch back bow legged witch, notice all the cosmetics surgery done on that face that could never hide the evil within. That is why TPTB like her so much. There is no evil she wouldn’t gladly do for power. When in power her evil only grows more so.
“In war, truth is always the first casualty. We’ve seen that repeatedly with regards to the Ukraine, nobody has any idea what is true and what is not. Isn’t it funny that Corona was exactly the same? The war started in early 2020 when we blew up that Iranian general, or at least that is how i think the history books of the future will tell it.”
Agreed. I think the main war is on the little people, worldwide, though. A provisional model.
If Xi is willing to seriously even think about double-crossing Russia, he’s already way too stupid for the job. But aren’t they all?
There is quite a bit of useful stuff in this recent Patrick Lawrence piece, ‘Unmaking History’:
Bits and pieces; I don’t aree with all of it as to what’s going on. “trust, but verify” 😉
“What a mess. I don’t even know what to say anymore. Does any of this even seem real to anyone anymore? ”
Comic-book Zelensky was a big signal, IMO. They want us to know..
“whatcha gonna do about it, proles?” good question
@ Mr. House:
Thanks for the link “A System on Life Support.” The other issue not addressed, maybe because it’s speculation at this point, is that the West sanctioning Russia and trades in dollars is speeding up a new monetary arrangement in other parts of the world where the US dollar will not be needed for trade in oil. I’m not sure the US imagined that would happen, or that it could end the US$ as the world’s reserve currency. If the US$ is demoted or displaced as the world’s reserve currency, then katie bar the door. Losing reserve currency status will magnify inflation several fold I think.
Oilprice.com says this:
‘Is The Oil Market Really Broken?
By Irina Slav – Sep 04, 2022, 6:00 PM CDT
Hedge fund manager Andurand tweeted this week that oil markets are completely broken.
The degree of oil price volatility has changed but the sources of this volatility have not.
The good news for traders that dislike volatility, is that extreme volatility does not last.
Join Our Community“The oil futures market is completely broken. Moving down $10 in a day for no apparent reason,” tweeted hedge fund celebrity Pierre Andurand this week. Indeed, volatility these days is not what it was just a couple of years ago. Yet it may be a little excessive to claim the market has broken in an echo of the EU’s claims that the gas market there no longer serves its purpose.
The degree of oil price volatility has changed but the sources of this volatility have not. As always, it’s about fundamentals, the economy, and geopolitics.
Fundamentals served traders a surprise last year as economies began to reopen after the pandemic lockdowns. Demand for oil, which BP had stated peaked in 2019, surges so fast and so much everyone got surprised by higher prices.
Meanwhile, over time, the supply risks began to emerge like rather nasty rocks from retreating water. The oil industry as a whole had been reducing its investments in big new production additions in anticipation of the energy transition to renewable power. The results of this underinvestment, as OPEC officials have called it, was bound to manifest itself sooner or later. It did, in the form of even higher prices and heightened price volatility.
Then there was central bank policy in the face of looming inflation, in big part resulting from higher energy prices. The Fed, the ECB and others decided to go all in on the tightening and interest rates flew higher in evidence that fighting fire with fire is a dangerous game.
For those who follow oil price news, the image of a seesaw would be fitting …
Oil falls one day because of concerns about the economy as central banks try to fight inflation with higher rates in the United States in Europe, and as China’s government pours billions into industry to stimulate growth, which goes with oil demand.
Related: European Comission Calls For Price Cap On Russian Natural Gas
Then, oil falls on the next day because an OPEC official suggests that the cartel might reverse production growth plans and opt for cuts instead. Or, a G7 leader says the discussions of a price cap on Russian oil are progressing.
Indeed, G7 finance ministers agreed today to implement a broad price cap on Russian oil, even though Russia already made it clear it would not take it lying down. In fact, Deputy PM Alexander Novak said it directly yesterday.
“This is completely ridiculous,” Novak said, as quoted by Kommersant. “We will simply stop supplying crude and fuels to countries that introduce a price cap because we will not work in non-market conditions.”
This is geopolitics territory now. Sanctioning the world’s largest exporter of crude oil and oil products may have seemed a good idea to signal what can only be described as ‘virtue’ at the time, but it has since become clear Russia isn’t just surviving–it’s not suffering losses and is both producing as much oil than before the war in the Ukraine began and bringing in more revenues for its war coffers.
Meanwhile, politics is a big reason why U.S. shale drillers are going about production growth a lot more slowly and cautiously than they normally do, contributing to oil price volatility.
With the Biden administration unwavering in its support for the energy transition, the industry has seen it as less risky to avoid rushing into production growth just because Washington begs it to do so.
Incidentally, the U.S. is not the only government supporting fossil fuels despite climate change pledges. In fact, a study by the IEA and the OECD found that government support for oil and gas rose almost twofold last year. This means support for fossil fuels from governments seemingly dedicated to a transition to low-carbon energy. If these are not mixed signals, it would be interesting to see what are.
The extreme swings in prices, then, have a perfectly rational background. The price of oil can swing on a single news report quoting anonymous sources. It would just swing harder now because of the excessive sensitivity of traders with so much going on around oil.
The good news for those traders who, unlike most in that field, dislike volatility, is that extreme volatility does not last, just like extreme weather. It will take a while until that faceless market made up of thousands of people like Pierre Andurand calms down. The wild swings could become the new normal or they could even out over time.
It’s really an either-or situation, a zero-sum game. Central banks’ rate war on inflation will either work or it won’t. Price caps on Russia will either be imposed, which would result in yet another jump in prices, or quietly shelved, which would stabilize prices. That is, until OPEC decides to cut, which could happen as early as next Monday.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com’
You can be certain that those who are manipulating the market are creaming off daily profits to maintain their country estates and superyachts.
Mentioning superyachts, I have lost track of how many hundreds of millions the NZ government has handed over to multibillionaires to support Americas Cup extravaganzas. The pretext for handing out $30 million at a time has always been to ‘stimulate economic growth and development and create employment’.
Now that growth is negative, I suppose the government will have to throw even more fake money at the dying economy. And send yet more money to Ukraine to support ‘freedom and democracy’.
It rather sickens me to see little Ukrainian flags plastered all over the mainstream media web pages. Not that I spend much time there. But is useful to keep up with what lies are being promoted nationally, to understand the behaviour of the sheep’.
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