asiablues's blog

The very same banks that taxpayers bailed out, and saved from going completely belly up, are actually making consumers pay once again in the form of higher Oil prices, and the resultant higher gasoline prices at the pump

There is too much cheap money sloshing around markets these days. This is not a good thing for true market based price discovery, and ultimately leads to the creation of market bubbles.

The news is only going to get worse for WTI longs, as the next couple of weeks will bring the total storage at Cushing close to the max capacity of 44 million barrels due to the fact that more traders took delivery on WTI on the last CL rollover.

Certain indication from the Fed that QE2 could end early would bring considerable unwinding, disproportionately biased towards commodities, as nobody on Wall Street is currently positioned for that.

As it has turned out, the 'long war' threat from Gadhafi may not be as emply as some might think.

A surging yen currency is certainly the worst news for Japan's export-dependent economy. This dire predicament is enough to get the central banks of the G7 to step in and initiate a coordinated yen intervention not seen for over a decade.

Japan's 9.0 earthquake is most likely a non-event for the crude oil, but the nuclear power basically has met its Deepwater Horizon.

A recent debate between Rick Santelli of CNBC and James Bullard, the St. Louis Fed, inspired this analysis - Would the US economy be doing better without the QE2 initiative?

With crude prices bid up so much, traders are left with a dilemma - to be in the crude oil trade, players basically either have to take delivery, or rollover.

Should the U.S. ban oil imports [except Canada] for energy security and independence? At least that's the policy proposed by a study group at Yale.

Time to short OJ?

Even though the U.S. petro product prices are busy chasing Brent, it does not change the fact that there’s a product glut in the U.S. with a flat demand outlook. So, unless there’s a whole lot of surprise hidden new demand to support current price levels, prices will have to come down.

An interesting take at measuring global fiscal risk and why France and Germany are more screwed than Greece and Japan

WTI’s premium disappeared about a year ago and in recent days it has been trading at more than a $10/bbl discount to Brent mainly due to rising inventory levels at Cushing OK. Some believe WTI may be undervalued by at least $12.

Lightening the weight of food in inflation calculation still rendered China's consumer inflation at +4.9% year over year. The more telling number is the producer wholesale inflation, which spiked 6.6% year-over-year in January.