This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Dis and Dat
$120 oil is here
Crude oil from the “light end of the barrel” hit $120 this morning.
Forget what Bernanke and the MSM are telling you. They keep showing the
WTI price. Even supposedly smart guys like Mark Zandi have said recently
that $100 oil is not a problem for the US. Wrong. The US
needs light crude for the gulf refineries. And consumers will be paying
$4 a gallon before Zandi or his pal Bernanke can catch their breath.
More Pirate Stuff
The Somali pirates hit another civilian sailing boat of the coast of
Oman. This is even worse than a few weeks ago when the bad guys captured
two elderly couples that were delivering bibles. This time they have
four adults and three kids. They also got two other merchant ships in past five days.
The family and crew are Danish. What they were doing in these waters and
not part of a convoy is a mystery to me. They were asking for trouble.
The pirates have already issued a warning that if there is an assault by
special forces they will kill everyone. This can easily get stepped up a
notch or two. It’s unlikely that there will be a repeat of the
disaster of a fortnight ago.
A recap of that action is that there were 4 large US Navy vessels
surrounding the boat with the four Americans. They had an FBI hostage
negotiator on board. They got two of the pirates onboard the Navy ship
and the Feebs promptly told them they were not going to let them get to
shore. They could free the hostages, take they boat and go free or there
would be a bad end.
Not surprisingly the pirates were not pleased with this and fired off a
rifle grenade. The Navy does not take kindly to that sort of thing so
all hell broke lose and the hostages were killed before a Ranger team
could get onboard. A complete balls up in my opinion.
US amphibious forces have left the area to patrol off Libya. So don’t
look for US troops to get involved. This time it will be NATO Special
Forces that get to play hero. Hopefully they will do a better job at
negotiating a deal than the FBI. That or they do a better job than our
Rangers did (I think we should have had the SEALS do that job).
Junk for Sale
The FDIC is having a big sale up in Michigan. They are auctioning off homes and property they got from failed banks.
Part of me feels that this is fine. We have to clean out the problems.
So as unpleasant as it is to have the FDIC driving down real estate
prices up in Michigan it something that has to be done.
There is another part of me that looks at this as a measure of how
desperate things have become. Is it really necessary for an institution
as significant in our economy as the FDIC to be selling dreck like this?
There has to be a better way.
Irrelevant Dollar
About two weeks ago Tyler Durden first made the observation the
dollar was becoming irrelevant. At the time I disagreed. There is too
much history to say that this is not so. Now a few weeks later I have to
agree with TD. The dollar has become irrelevant.
That there has been no significant adjustments in FX rates while the
Middle East has boiled and burned is sort of unfathomable. There should
have been some flight to quality move. But there wasn’t. For me this is a
warning sign. I have to wonder what the dollar will do when/if there
isn’t a crisis someplace that keeps it stable.
Sometime ago I recommended a long dollar Yen position. Two months later
and it is back to where it started and I/you have nothing to show for
it. I still think that the Yen is the worst reserve currency out there,
but as far as recommendations go, I have to take this one off the
table. It has done nothing for anyone, beside waste time and focus.
Sorry for the blank.
»
- advertisements -
Did Hillary loan them one of her spares?
Shit! At least she's got 'em. Can't say the same for her boss. He makes Jimmy Carter look tough.
I have to start following your humor more closely.
My hero, you made me laugh out loud.
well, there goes my suntan at the beach this year.
enso update? NOAA saying perhaps neutral by May/June - Bastardi suggests the fall
http://twitter.com/BigJoeBastardi
Today is March 2. A 100 tank car train left Stanley North Dakota loaded with Bakken oil headed to St. James Louisiana...delivered price was $104.60 a barrel....burlington northern rail road is charging $6 a barrel for freight...........bypassing cushing oklahoma because it is full.........and with limited oil out of the offshore rigs it pays to haul it all the way across the continent.........wow.
I thought this was gonna be a word problem:
If the price of oil increases at X/day and the train travels at Y/hour, and the distance from Stanley to St James is Z, what is the net profit when it passes through Cushing? Show your work.
A: Two part answer;
1.) A bazillion if Goldman.
2.) Zero for Knukles, who is not allowed to take delivery of the silver he purchased.
How does this compare with delivered WTI?
1) I am fascinated by the pirate story. Complete and utter lawlessness. Billions involved. You don't see that very often.
2) I have mentioned before that I have a friend in the biz. Connected. He's convinced that something has to break soon. Some type of military action. By the end of March. So I'm just trying keep ahead of the news.
So Bruce......
About a week ago I heard on NPR a quick story that has not been repeated. The story said that the brains behind the pirates are three men in Europe (I thought Germany or France was mentioned).
Do you know anything about this? Or, is this like the story about the Japanese guys with, what was it, 100 million in US bonds on the border with Italy that got nabed and unheard of since?
Chiasso. Over $100B.
They let them go without identifying who they were.
No updates.
Bruce, let the dollar die and you will be able to study piracy more directly. For the less astute, yes, I am suggesting that piracy in numerous incarnations will appear all over the globe, including here. This will be the case so long as people still require food and energy for survival, but then there is this issue of robots...
Welcome to the Fed's 4th mandate: kill the dollar to pave the way for the SDR as the 'new' reserve currency. Actions speak louder than words and there is NOTHING about the Fed's actions to indicate they seek anything other than this. TD and Bruce are now both right. Bless you both.
+1. For all of the talk/news/strategies about pirates, I never see any lessons learned from the past. People prefer to repeat history rather than learn from it.
A case in point are the pirates during the Spanish gold era. Originally Spain would send individual ships to gather the gold they looted from the New World. So, pirates started attacking those, and would occasionally get one.
Spain responded by grouping the Treasure ships in convoys, along with appropriate military protection. That absolutely worked. Unfortunately, you now had a bunch of hungry pirates around. So they started attacking the cities. Spain relented, and sent the ships off individually again. The attacks on the cities stopped.
I'm simplifying, of course. But I think you get the point. And it strikes me that we're just repeating this pattern today, but on a bigger scale.
are you talking boats and guns or Wall Street and Washington? silly me I answered my own question you said billions not trillions
When you get to trillions you wear spats. Not a bandanna.
fucking right
<sigh>
Back in the good old days (five years ago) the millionaires wore bandanna's and the billionaires wore the spats.
How do I get off this crazy machine without killing myself?
Ya can't win them all Bruce. That aside your commentary is always excellent and one of my first reads. No apologies needed though I do like that you offered one.
Is this pirate thing just sticking in your craw (not saying it shouldn't) or do you think it's going to get much bigger and that's why you're commenting on it? Or is there another reason entirely?
The Danish family were more than a thousand miles, 1000 miles, from Somalia, on the their way from the Seychelles, to a location far south of Africa from Somalia.The pirates had never struck this far out from their own country before. Take a look at the map, and see exactly how big this area is.
( why my reply to the above article turned up here i have no idea)
Seychelles are a big Somali pirate hotbed.
http://is.gd/a06c2J
The only solution is for shipping to travel in convoys also to traverse the area during the monsoon.
The other approach is to circumnavigate from West to East and stay in the South latitudes. Somalis probably have spotters in Seychelles.
Another problem is the 'go it alone' aspect of Western response. There needs to be coordination in the short term between navies and equipment suitable for protecting convoys put to use. Large surface naval vessels prowling around are not useful, instead there must be smaller, fast vessels for escort duty.
110' long Island class Coast Guard cutter would be ideal.
http://is.gd/7kUGrD
In the longer term there must be redevelopment in Somalia and Yemen. Coordination between these countries and Kenya and Saudi Arabia can put an end to piracy the way coordination and development put and end to piracy in the Straits of Malacca ten years ago.
That area was as dangerous for shipping as the Arabian Gulf is today.
Echo CD. Bruce is a proverbial "straight arrow" which is the most you should expect from anyone providing analysis at these rates.
it's all right. try again later.
http://covert2.wordpress.com
If you would remove the picture of the muscle bound "lady" from your site I would visit more often. I would say the same if it were a "man".
I assume you have photo shopped that image. If not I don't want to know. :>)
That's nasty.
Ditto, and it's immaterial whether or not this is a clever piece of psychology, but you've certainly engendered trust by your honesty. You can't buy that.
As for the pirate thing, you may recall CPL's comments:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/shipping-news-%E2%80%93-floating-storag...
which I found to be particularly good.
Love me some CPL, especially describing the on-goings of Internet piracy for a "good cause," or project Anonymous.
Pretty cool.
Slightly on topic...
Earth's magnetic field was violently 'rocked' by the sun yesterday... making earth's magnetosphere 'ring' like a bell.
This event was followed immediately by the Japanese earthquake.
From NASA on the 10th just before the quake...
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/News031011-xclass.html
And here's a nice little scientific research summary explaining the connection between earthquakes and the sun's triggering mechanism.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/753717276h869880/
Coincidence? Think again. Better start getting used to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and global cooling for the next 20-30 years... it's baked into the cake.