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We Live In A New World And The Saudis Are The First To Get It
Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
There are many things I don’t understand these days, and some are undoubtedly due to the limits of my brain power. But at the same time some are not. I’m the kind of person who can no longer believe that anyone would get excited over a 5% American GDP growth number. Not even with any other details thrown in, just simply a print like that. It’s so completely out of left field and out of proportion that you would think by now at least a few more people understand what’s really going on.
And Tyler Durden breaks it down well enough in Here Is The Reason For The “Surge” In Q3 GDP (delayed health-care spending stats make up for 2/3 of the 5%), but still. I would have hoped that more Americans had clued in to the nonsense that has been behind such numbers for many years now. The US has been buying whatever growth politicians can squeeze out of the data and their manipulation, for many years. The entire world has.
The 5% stat is portrayed as being due to increased consumer spending. But most of that is health-care related. And economies don’t grow because people increase spending on not being sick and/or miserable. That’s just an accounting trick. The economy doesn’t get better if we all drive our cars into a tree, even if GDP numbers would say otherwise.
All the MSM headlines about consumer confidence and comfort and all that, it doesn’t square with the 43 million US citizens condemned to living on food stamps. I remember Halloween spending (I know, that’s Q4) was down an atrocious -11%, but the Q3 GDP print was +5%? Why would anyone volunteer to believe that? Do they all feel so bad any sliver of ‘good news’ helps? Are we really that desperate?
We already saw the other day that Texas is ramming its way right into a recession, and North Dakota is not far behind (training to be a driller is not great career choice going forward), and T. Boone Pickens of all people confirmed today at CNBC what we already knew: the number of oil rigs in the US is about to do a Wile E. cliff act. And oil prices fall because global demand is down, as much as because supply is up. A crucial point that few seem to grasp; the Saudis do though. Good for US GDP, you say?
What I see more than anything in the 5% print is a set-up for a Fed rate hike, through a variation on the completion backward principle, i.e. have the message fit the purpose, set up a narrative that makes it make total sense for Yellen to hike that rate. And Wall Street banks (that’s not just the American ones) will be ready to reap the rewards of the ensuing chaos.
And I also don’t understand why nobody seems to understand what Saudi Arabia and OPEC have consistently been saying for ever now. They’re not going to cut their oil production. Not going to happen. The Saudis, probably more than anyone, are the guys who know what demand is really like out there (they see it and track it on a daily basis), and that’s why they’ll let oil drop as far as it will go. There’s no other way out anymore, no use calling a bottom anywhere.
In the two largest markets, US demand is down through far less miles driven for a number of years now, while domestic supply is way up; at the same time, real Chinese demand is way below what anybody projects, and oil is just one of many industries that have set their – corporate – strategies to fit expected China growth numbers that never materialized. Just you watch what other – industrial – commodities fields are going to do and show in 2015. Or simply look at prices for iron ore, copper etc. today.
OPEC Leader Vows Not To Cut Oil Output Even If Price Hits $20
In an unusually frank interview, Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, tore up OPEC’s traditional strategy of keeping prices high by limiting oil output and replaced it with a new policy of defending the cartel’s market share at all costs. “It is not in the interest of OPEC producers to cut their production, whatever the price is,” he told the Middle East Economic Survey. “Whether it goes down to $20, $40, $50, $60, it is irrelevant.” He said the world may never see $100 a barrel oil again.
The comments, from a man who is often described as the most influential figure in the energy industry, marked the first time that Mr Naimi has explained the strategy shift in detail. They represent a “fundamental change” in OPEC policy that is more far-reaching than any seen since the 1970s, said Jamie Webster, oil analyst at IHS Energy. “We have entered a scary time for the oil market and for the next several years we are going to be dealing with a lot of volatility,” he said. “Just about everything will be touched by this.”
Saudi Arabia is desperate alright, but not nearly as much as most other producers: they have seen this coming, they’ve been tracking it hour by hour, and then made their move. And they have some room to move yet. Many other producers don’t. Not inside OPEC, and certainly not outside of it. Russia should be relatively okay, they’re smart enough to see these things coming too, and adapt accordingly. Many other nations don’t and haven’t, perhaps simply because they have no room left. Anatole Kaletsky makes quite a bit of sense at Reuters:
The Reason Oil Could Drop As Low As $20 Per Barrel
… the global oil market will move toward normal competitive conditions in which prices are set by the marginal production costs, rather than Saudi or OPEC monopoly power. This may seem like a far-fetched scenario, but it is more or less how the oil market worked for two decades from 1986 to 2004.
Whichever outcome finally puts a floor under prices, we can be confident that the process will take a long time to unfold. It is inconceivable that just a few months of falling prices will be enough time for the Saudis to either break the Iranian-Russian axis or reverse the growth of shale oil production in the United States. It is equally inconceivable that the oil market could quickly transition from OPEC domination to a normal competitive one.
The many bullish oil investors who still expect prices to rebound quickly to their pre-slump trading range are likely to be disappointed. The best that oil bulls can hope for is that a new, and substantially lower, trading range may be established as the multi-year battles over Middle East dominance and oil-market share play out. The key question is whether the present price of around $55 will prove closer to the floor or the ceiling of this new range. [..]
… the demarcation line between the monopolistic and competitive regimes at a little below $50 a barrel seems a reasonable estimate of where one boundary of the new long-term trading range might end up. But will $50 be a floor or a ceiling for the oil price in the years ahead?
There are several reasons to expect a new trading range as low as $20 to $50, as in the period from 1986 to 2004. Technological and environmental pressures are reducing long-term oil demand and threatening to turn much of the high-cost oil outside the Middle East into a “stranded asset” similar to the earth’s vast unwanted coal reserves. [..]
The U.S. shale revolution is perhaps the strongest argument for a return to competitive pricing instead of the OPEC-dominated monopoly regimes of 1974-85 and 2005-14. Although shale oil is relatively costly, production can be turned on and off much more easily – and cheaply – than from conventional oilfields. This means that shale prospectors should now be the “swing producers” in global oil markets instead of the Saudis.
In a truly competitive market, the Saudis and other low-cost producers would always be pumping at maximum output, while shale shuts off when demand is weak and ramps up when demand is strong. This competitive logic suggests that marginal costs of U.S. shale oil, generally estimated at $40 to $50, should in the future be a ceiling for global oil prices, not a floor.
As Kaletsky also suggests, there is the option of a return to an OPEC monopoly and much higher prices, but I personally don’t see that. It would need to mean a return to prolific global economic growth numbers, and I simply can’t see where that would come from.
Meanwhile, there’s the issue of ‘anti-Putin’ sanctions hurting western companies, with an asset swap between Gazprom and German chemical giant BASF that went south, and a failed deal between Morgan Stanley and Rosneft as just two examples, and that leads me to think pressure to lift or ease these sanctions will rise considerably in 2015. Why Angela Merkel is so set on punishing her (former?) friend Putin, I don’t know, but I can’t see how she can ignore domestic corporate pressure to wind down much longer. Russia is part of the global economic system, and excluding it – on flimsy charges to boot – is damaging for Germany and the rest of Europe.
Finally, still on the topic of oil and gas, Wolf Richter provides another excellent analysis and breakdown of US shale.
First Oil, Now US Natural Gas Plunges off the Chart
It’s showing up everywhere. Take Samson Resources. As is typical in that space, there is a Wall Street angle to it. One of the largest closely-held exploration and production companies, Samson was acquired for $7.2 billion in 2011 by private-equity firms KKR, Itochu Corp., Crestview Partners, and NGP Energy Capital Management. They ponied up $4.1 billion. For the rest of the acquisition costs, they loaded up the company with $3.6 billion in new debt. In addition to the interest expense on this debt, Samson is paying “management fees” to these PE firms, starting at $20 million per year and increasing by 5% every year.
KKR is famous for leading the largest LBO in history in 2007 at the cusp of the Financial Crisis. The buyout of a Texas utility, now called Energy Future Holdings Corp., was a bet that NG prices would rise forevermore, thus giving the coal-focused utility a leg up. But NG prices soon collapsed. And in April 2014, the company filed for bankruptcy. Now KKR is stuck with Samson. Being focused on NG, the company is another bet that NG prices would rise forevermore. But in 2011, they went on to collapse further. In 2014 through September, the company lost $471 million, the Wall Street Journal reported, bringing the total loss since acquisition to over $3 billion. This is what happens when the cost of production exceeds the price of NG for years.
Samson has used up almost all of its available credit. In order to stay afloat a while longer, it is selling off a good part of its oil-and-gas fields in Oklahoma, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado. It’s shedding workers. Production will decline with the asset sales – the reverse of what investors in its bonds had been promised. Samson’s junk bonds have been eviscerated. In early August, the $2.25 billion of 9.75% bonds due in 2020 still traded at 103.5 cents on the dollar. By December 1, they were down to 56 cents on the dollar. Now they trade for 43.5 cents on the dollar. They’d plunged 58% in four months.
The collapse of oil and gas prices hasn’t rubbed off on the enthusiasm that PE firms portray in order to attract new money from pension funds and the like. “We see this as a real opportunity,” explained KKR co-founder Henry Kravis at a conference in November. KKR, Apollo Global Management, Carlyle, Warburg Pincus, Blackstone and many other PE firms traipsed all over the oil patch, buying or investing in E&P companies, stripping out whatever equity was in them, and loading them up with piles of what was not long ago very cheap junk bonds and even more toxic leveraged loans.This is how Wall Street fired up the fracking boom.
PE firms gathered over $100 billion in their energy funds since 2011. The nine publicly traded E&P companies that represent the largest holdings have cost PE firms at least $12.7 billion, the Wall Street Journal figured. This doesn’t include their losses on the smaller holdings. Nor does it include losses from companies like Samson that are not publicly traded. And it doesn’t include losses pocketed by bondholders and leveraged loan holders or all the millions of stockholders out there.
Undeterred, Blackstone is raising its second energy-focused fund; it has a $4.5 billion target, Bloomberg reported. The plunge in oil and gas prices “has not created a lot of difficulties for us,” CEO Schwarzman explained at a conference on December 10. KKR’s Kravis said at the same conference that he welcomed the collapse as an opportunity. Carlyle co-CEO Rubenstein expected the next 5 to 10 years to be “one of the greatest times” to invest in the oil patch.
The problem? “If you have an asset you already own, it’s probably going to go down in value,” Rubenstein admitted. But if you’ve got money to invest, in Carlyle’s case about $7 billion, “it’s a great time to buy.” They all agree: opportunities will be bountiful for those folks who refused to believe the hype about fracking over the past few years and who haven’t sunk their money into energy companies. Or those who got out in time.
We live in a new world, and the Saudis are either the only or the first ones to understand that. Because they are so early to notice, and adapt, I would expect them to come out relatively well. But I would fear for many of the others. And that includes a real fear of pretty extreme reactions, and violence, in quite a few oil-producing nations that have kept a lid on their potential domestic unrest to date. It would also include a lot of ugliness in the US shale patch, with a great loss of jobs (something it will have in common with North Sea oil, among others), but perhaps even more with profound mayhem for many investors in US energy. And then we’re right back to your pension plans.
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What is a "pension plan"?
So let me see if I got this straight. If my plan was:
Then I would be about to celebrate the JOY of deflation.
However if my plan was:
Then I would be about to experience the PAIN of deflation.
Did I miss something?
Regards,
Cooter
It was only a matter of time before we saw oil prices come down. I see a lot more people walking around and riding bikes now than what I had seen just a few years ago.
I think the worst part of the deflated oil prices are going to be the job losses in the shale oil industry. I know a lot of people in the Pacific Northwest who work in that field who will most likely find themselves unemployed over the next year. If they're smart they'll start learning how to farm or raise a garden. At least that's something that can sustain people.
-John
http://naturecoastpermaculture.com/2014/12/unemployed-try-wwoofing-work/
Every dollar spent on Obamacare (insurance but no care) is a dollar that is not spent on oil. QED.
Getting it is an understatement.
They're bankrupting every last oil and Geo-political competitor.
okay, i get the angst of workers and high yield investors (less so) ...but aren't we forgetting the elephant in the room? Can someone tell me how much derivative gambles were made on the price of oil....and when can we expect to see this come home to roost in the congress>
How manys Trillions, and when is/are the trigger dates?
Its a big club and we aren't in it.
And we just can't see it coming...sad really.
No One could have seen it coming
sarc
Mike Maloeys' $10 oil prediction doesn't sound so ridiculous now
It's all just peachy....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=iesXUFOlWC0
That's true too!
Actually world petrolium consumption is rising by about 2% per year. That was based on 2013 numbers. 2014 is not in. The developed world is flat to a slight downtrend, of course asia and oceana are increasing by 4% per yer. How many months and years can saudi pump oil out of the ground at these rates?
You were also the "Greater Fool" if you bought any asset, commodity or 'store of value" that has come way down in price... because it experienced Deflation, not Inflation.
If you bought High, you better hope you won't have to sell Low.
If you drank the wrong Kool Aid, you're sick to the stomach right about now.
Shorthand for a Wall Street sex slave.
Gets fucked over repeatedly for no money.
We curtailed some pumpin' folks.
What is a "pension plan"?
It's an arrangement whereby hard-working honest people hand over their hard-earned money to parasites who promise to provide them with a comfortable retirement but who in fact loot and blow said money.
That's why the word pension is an anagram of " no penis".
Ask a government employee
a ski mask, a gun, and a bank.
And - of course - prison.
"Three hots and a cock."
my roomate's ex-wife makes $76 every hour on the laptop . She has been out of work for ten months but last month her income was $13335 just working on the laptop for a few hours. read... WWW.WORKS3.COM
Sounds like a great opportunity.
Please send me your SS#, date of birth, bank rounting numbers and mother's madien name so I can get started right away.
who cares at this point ??????????????????
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CtjhWhw2I8
The iOil ETF, under $85,- a barrel is not included in the stock price, didn't you read the manual?
Regards, Blackrock.
Hardly anyone talks about Canada, the most expensive oil in the world and Canada's #1 export by far.
Canada is fukked.
Don't be silly – the citizens can always borrow against their valuable homes.
Overpriced homes for sure.
So... how are those brown-nosing, business-savvy Torries working out for ya?
Harper given you the Wealth Effect, or got you Harp-ooned?
Canadians make me chuckle: they moan about the inept, incompetent or corrupt Liberals, and then promptly elect inept, incompetent and corrupt Conservatives.
Now why does that two-sided coin seem strangely familiar?
It's actually a 3 sided coin (NDP would be the edge) in kanada, but like the u.s. system, every party is bought and paid for.
"You are free to choose your entre... from these 3 unique and steaming piles of shit"
actionjacksonbrownie,
you forgot the PQ and the green!
I'm sure Canada's housing bubble will do nicely too.
I can hear the air leaking as we speak about out of the canadian housing bubble
www.ViewLasVegasRealEstate.com
I can hear the air as we speak leaking out of the canadian housing bubble
www.ViewLasVegasRealEstate.com
I agree that Canada is fucked, but ,'on average', US fracking is more expensive than the oil sands.
Excuse the pun, but conventional extraction will resurface. Thousands of old wells ready for low budget enhanced recovery. Tarsands are for chumps.
From someone in the industry, not even close..... Canada is dead country walking..... for now
"We live in a new world, and the Saudis are either the only or the first ones to understand that."
It's always the imponderables that get you in the end. Don't be too sure these desert rats have it all figured out.
Some of the Saudi royals were pretty smart cookies at my school, once they perfected their English.
Do not underestimate them,an easy and foolish thing to do with anyone.
Very smart indeed.
Minus their oil income they would be running camel races for tourists.
And without the tourists they would be fucking sheep.
I guess that is why one of the world's great tongue twisters is, "THE SHEIK'S SIXTH SHEEP IS SICK."
Every sixth virgin is sick also.
The down voters have proven their ignorance because if they googled the tongue twister that I have quoted they would find that it's even in the Guiness Book of Records.
It's actually "The 6th sick shiek's 6th sheep's sick"
Actually it's :
"The sixth sick Shiek's sixth sheep's sick"....from the Guiness Book of World Records.
Jim Willie thinks China "asked" the Saudi's to do this...strategically that makes some sense. No question they are leaning east.
< I see someone else jumped in with the correct twister...nice>
Goats by day, sheep by night.
I guess that is where we got the expression "herd mentality"" from.
No tourists in Saudi Arabia, only workers from Bangladesh, Yemen etc. There is nothing to see in SA, only royal fags.
You could say similar about the oligarchs here.
I deal with them and they really are pretty helpless in a lot of ways.
Real privilige/money of any sort corrupts, and dissipates you over time..
Seems your comment is more motivated by bigotry than philosophy though.
Not bigoted at all my friend because up until the time the world found a use for their oil they weren't exactly world leadrers in anything. Or am I wrong. But definitely not bigoted although I am not impressed that they have an oppressive political system.
I would actually value the down vote if one of you could actually enlighten me as to why I am wrong. After all we are here to learn as well and not just score up votes.
You're not wrong. Oudinot is wrong; he's a victim of a strange but populous variety of propaganda videos and articles touting "Arab Contributions". There aren't any Arab contributions; and in case you're confused about this; Mohammed himself was a murderer, a thief, a child molester, an adulterer; etc. He basically rode at the head of an outlaw biker gang on horses and camels that raped and murdered and stole their way around the middle East. The religion bullshit is just a paint job.
All religion bullshit is a paint job.
By the way, the Arabs gave us modern mathematics and the first systematic go at medicine and astronomy.
Not that any of those things are particularly important.
And this was the first thing to pop into my mind. What have done for me lately?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9uizdKZAGE
Actually almost all of those mathematicians, astronomers and medical doctors you refer to were either arabicized Persians or Jews. Look it up. Arabs are first and foremost progeny of Bedouins.
All religion bullshit is a paint job.
By the way, the Arabs gave us a fair bit of modern mathematics and the first systematic go at medicine and astronomy.
Not that any of those things are particularly important.
Obviously you're not familiar with the period of the Abbasid dynasty...most Americans (i.e you) don't. But just in case more thoughtful readers are browsing my posts I suggest they count how many Arabic words they are in the periodic table, the contribution of Arabic-language writers in mathematics (take a guess where algebra comes from genius), or thinkers like Al-Haytham or Ibn Khaldun (world first sociologist) or the fact that during the 4th crusade guns were used against the crusaders by Mamluke army. One book I recomend is Dmitri Gutas' book on the Greco-Arabic translation movement. And gentleman if the Arab's hadn't bothered to translate works of classical Greece there would be no renaissance in Europe because they were its midwives.
SAT 800
Best change your identity because someone issued a jihad on you for insulting the almighty one. (The truth hurts) I have a nice lake and forest in the Baltics you can hide out in during the warmer seasons. Good luck
yeah, you are real wrong. Just the usual bigotry sheeple unconsciously accrete watching MSM.
The Arabs invented the idea of zero as well as our current numbering system , inter alia..
I would wager your average Arab's knowledge easily surpasses the average American's knowledge.
And America doesn't have 'an oppressive political system'"? Now that's funny!!!
Incorrect. Arabs did not invent zero. It came from India - from vedic scriptures from India and Kerala in particular which are so advanced that will blow your mind. This was the reason the ancient money changers fled to India when they were prosecuted by the Romans.
Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Josephson, Muller or even Einstein have learnt Sanskrit and imbibed vedic knowledge to help answer their questions.
Arabs have zilch contribution - even Mecca was originally a vedic temple.
Exactly correct. persians, in Iran for instance, regard Arabs as ignorant sheep fuckers. Anyone who thinks they "invented" anything; has been watching the disinformation videos. There are BBC productions on U-tube that rave on about "Arab Contributions"; but the only way I can usderstand them, they are demonstrably false, is as part of the current somewhat mysterious determination of the British Government to commit cultural suicide for its people by Arab worshipping. I don't really know how this pays off for anyone.
Prove its demonstrably false - cite a credible source (i.e. a reputable scholar) or if not demonstrate this falsehood by citing your authority - I take it you have a degree in Middle Eastern history? - on the subject. Dimitri Gutas' book on the Greco-Arabic translation movement is, unlike your diatribe, is peer-reviewed. We also have the works of George Makdisi, in fact if you can't bother reading either of these two go to google scholar and type in 'discovery' and 'Abbasids' in the search engine and see what comes up.
No the Arabs synthesized Indian and Greek thought. Take negative numbers - the classical greeks knew about it but couldn't accept as a rational idea, the Arabs found the concept and utilised it to figure out debt. Same with Algebra, Islamic inheritance law deals with alot of fractions algebra emerged during the Abbassid period to solve this problem. Bullshit you say? This information is pretty mainstream in fact you can youtube lectures by Yale scholars on this subject. go ahead and inform yourself instead of the unsubstianted crap you find on blogs.
Mecca was a vedic temple - where you get that from? Some Hindutva conspiracy site?
Arabs have zilch contribution - I'd upvote you if I thought you did that intentionally.
El Khwarizmi invented the zero. And also Algebra.
Under the Arabs the greatest thinkers were Persians who had knowledge of both Aristotle (thanks to Syrac Jews who translated Aristotle) and also thanks to Justinian's decision to banish the "pagan" NeoPlatonism school of philosophers of Athens (to promulgate dogmatic Orthodox religion, circa 530 AD), who all ran away to Sassanid Persia (Emperor Khusro) thus bringing Greek enlightenment from both schools of thought.
That input of Platonist, Aristotelian cum Eucledian cum Pythagorian culture nurtured Persian astronomy, maths and philosophy; which flourished under Abbasids and Seljuks (Nizam ul Mulk's Nizamayyah university); from 600 to 1100 AD.
The House of wisdom, the tale of 1001 nights; all in Abbasid Baghdad.
The Persians learned Chess from India and the Umeyyad Arabs (those who invaded Spain) learned to make the finest steel, Damascan, based on raw iron ingots imported from southern India which contained minute elements of Impurities that allowed the steel to be formed.
Legend has it that Durandal, Roland's famous sword was of Damascan steel conquered from the Arabs by Charlemagne's armies.
Hybridization of cultures is an awesome crucible.
yes he did forget that math and astronomy thing didn't he
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/how-islamic-inventors-changed-the-world-469452.html
TY, davyjones, a perfect christmas present.
Don't paint me as a bigot because I am not a bigot.
No doubt the average Arab compares well to the average American but that does not mean much.
Both live under oppressive regimes so that does not say much for both peoples.
As for inventing the zero, Bernanke sends his thanks.
As for the numbering system, you forgot that it's the Hindu-Arabic numbering system.
The Arabs are not inferior as human beings but as a society thay have not exactly inspired the world.
Their IQ's suck; and emotionally they're about 12 years old. they ripped off the numbering system from the Brahmans, the elite IQ social caste of Hindus, when they were raping and pillaging in India.
The Arab conquest didn't go beyond Sind so what do you mean 'raping and pillaging india'. It were Turkish warlords who dominated India during the medieval period.
KanKKK, i hope you show up more often, your comments are spot on. i'd love to hear your opinions on iran, iraq and SA? oil? russia/china/EU/obamanation?
If it weren't for the Arabic translation of Greek works - see Dimitri Gutas book - they would be NO RENAISSANCE IN EUROPE. That's what the west is grateful for. The Arabs in the fields of mathematics and medicine were great synthesizers (e.g. Greek and Indian ideas) and use that knowledge for practical effect.
"...were..." It is not AD1400, Islam and China and India are not the heights of civilisation any longer, we have moved beyond and surpassed them.
I am still waiting for someone to use German rocket tech to get back to The Moon.
So far only one nation had the vision and ability to do that, and that is pathetic indeed.
50 years is long enough for someone else to take a weekend trip there.
"we have moved beyond and surpassed them."
Yeah ~ we're so advanced, we've progressed up the ladder to the Kim Kardashian phase (whose 'moon' millions of modern day geniuses visit on a daily basis). While the cream of the crop of mathematical whiz kids write HFT algos designed to steal artificial digital wealth, & where teenage zombies have their noses buried in miniature Tycho Monoliths all day long never taking a second to observe the nature around them (because SURELY the nature around them has no intellect whatsoever and humankind, which has only existed in a microscopic sliver of time, is so ragingly far superior & is therefore not worthy of observation)
Considering the above, I'd be of the opinion that it's a pretty useless endeavor to waste time getting into a pissing contest about who 'invented' anything before considering the application of the invention in question.
Or to put it another way, I seriously doubt sharks & alligators give a flying fuck about algebra or binary code (but both species are likely to figure out a way to live on this rock long after humans have used religious zealotry, algebra, & binary code to nuke themselves into oblivion)
Goodbye & thanks for all the fish!
perhaps you know of a german engine that could do the job, but how do you get a person to survive the trip>? and how do you deal with extreme temperature differences between the shadow areas and the areas next to them in the light on the surface of the moon. some of the "heights of civilization" are the heights to which we lie.
,
Numdum: Without the Arabs Avicenna and Averoes (check in wiki, they are Arab philosophers in medieaval times)we would not enjoy Aristotle, Plato (look up in your wiki, these men are the pillars of Western philosophy) and , indirectly Platos ideas were morphed into the Greek Fathers (Origen, Tertullian et al) who wrote the New Testament.
When Europe broke down in the 5th, 6th centuries, the civilized Arabs (with some help from my Irish forebearers) read, annotised the Greek giants.
Peter Bigot: Your ignorance is overwhelming; and you are certainly a bigot the way you describe Arab culture without knowing fuck all about them.
Instead of a swarmy, defensive, ill considered retort as above, why don't read Avicenna, Averroes, inquire into the Arab kingdom of 10th century Spain? You will change your small mind, and lose your ugly bigotry.
"The unexamined life is not worth living"
That's Plato whose dialogues and the Republic were cherished and disseminated by Arab scholars whom you do not know one thing about.
"One should take a miscarriage of justice towards oneself, rather than excutes a miscarriage of justice towards another"
Plato's main thesis in the Gorgias dialogue (405 BC?) ; kinda sets up the Jesus quote of 'turning the other cheek'.
I repeat what I said elsewhere and that is that as individuals they are no better or worse than other individuals but as a society they leave much to be desired.
And if you have to go back 10 f...ing centuries to find their last contribution to mankind then just goes to show what a black hole they have lived in.
As for translating Aristotle and the rest of the classical treasure, that is known and acknowledged but it is not a creation of their own per se. I wonder how much Aristotle they teach in their schools these days.
Don't defend them to me when the right of a Christian to practise their faith openly is disallowed in Saudi Arabia.
I repeat, the judgement I make is not about them as individuals but as a PRESENT DAY society.
And by the way it was Muslims who put the final torch to the magnificent library of Alexandria so I guess we should be really grateful that they translated some of the Aristotelian et al texts for us.
Peter Bigot: Actually, Ceasar in 48 BC destroyed a good part of the Alexandrian library. He was in a desperate situation militarily beseiged by Cleopatra's brother and torched the l;ibrary to use a defense.
Yes, you are right , fanatical Muslims in the 7th century did torch the rest of library, but , then, Savonrola, a fundamental Christian, had book fires in Florence in the late 15th century.
You are a fool to be so black and right on moral history comparing religions, cultures; but then you, obviously, have not read much history.
Not sure about your reading comprehension.
Wasn't his response about Saudi royals?
The Saudi oligarchs were put into power by the Western oligarchs and the only reason they are still in power is the backing of the CIA/DOD.
We'll see how clever they are when the tribbles decide they've outlived their usefulness and want the Saudi gold and $$, 'Smart' guys who 'Get It' would have an exit and defence plan, the House of Saud have neither.
Also the British.
The British seem to be committing cultural suicide, vis a vis, their Arab ass kissing; why I don't know.
'The British'
Covers a lot of groud.
I find such sweeping generalizatons usually emanate from bigoted minds.
Very often, bigots don't see their own bigotry.
Are you bigoted against SAT 800s?
I'm thinking 'yes', (because the '1 + 1 = ' answer apparently hasn't been solved yet)
Are you gordon brown in disguise?
Cunt.
Exactly correct; and easily verified history.
When ISIS beheads people; it's a really baaad thing! When the Saudis do it it's, well. OK. It's not because of all the oil they have. Nothing to do with it.
yes, terrorists = people with oil who aren't willing to work backroom deals with us
Yes, but they are still crafty and cunning.
The traditional English Language expression is "low cunning"; a kind of low IQ, Feral cautiousness and a willingess to exploit any perceived weakness in another; not at all a complementary adjective.
@Winston, I don't underestimate them. Crafty and cunning would be the terms I'd use rather than 'smart'. To me smart implies/includes some forms of moral judgement. Towards that end, I think the Saudi's are rather deficient.
YMMV
I don't know about them being "Smart cookies". Replacing profits (Actual losses) for market share, works as long as you drive your competitors out of business without driving yourself to the poorhouse too. It's the sort of marketing strategy done by supermarkets and their loss leaders, except none of their customers are going to make up for the losses in revenue by picking up an impulse buy at the checkouts. So good luck with that strategy to the Al Sauds, the fucking morons.
My take from observation and observation only, is that the Saudis don't fart unless they are told to by their handlers in Washington and Tel Aviv. This is one shitty loss making sandwich and they are being told to eat it all up for as long as it takes to crush the rouble into rubble (Sorry, had a sip or dozen before I started). It's kind of like the new Jack Ryan film, Shadow Recruit, in reverse, which is just what you would expect from Langley and their Kosher brethren.
We have always been told that rising oil prices enabled the US to shove more US dollars down the collective throat of the world.
So can anyone tell me where the excess dollars will now go?
STAWKS.
excess dollars (shackles) will be converted into sheckles
"So can anyone tell me where the excess dollars will now go?"
MIC
Thank you to both of you for your answers and perhaps in the short run they might be the correct answers. But somehow I don't think that that is a sustainable paradigm, particularly if the money is to go just to stocks.
Nobody knows, Peter; but you show thoughtfullness in asking it. I'm afraid it's one of the many questions that are going to get answered by reality; whether we like it or not; most of the possibilities are not very attractive.
To Belgium, where they buy USTs.
New game: Circle-jerk Ponzi.
Especially Belgian dentists
If they are surviving at $50 a barrell and can survive at $25 a barrell, one has to wonder how much freakin' money do they have stashed away.
They can live like this until they are the only ones pumping oil.
Everyone else should stop selling oil and form a new cartel which will sell only if the price is (for example) $80. they will of course have to agree how much oil in percentage terms they will each supply to meet whatever demand there is.
Don't write my idea off as simplistic.
Then Saudi makes a killing at 79.99.
That is true, but would still be preferable to losing money or making far less by being forced to sell at $50 a barrel.
It gets back to how much money do you really need, and what is the end goal of all that money. You might need to get your doctrite to understand, but at least you can sleep at night not worrying about the price of a bbl of oil.
"Everyone else should stop selling oil and form a new cartel which will sell only if the price is (for example) $80"
I think they recently tried that approach with Obamacare.
"Then Saudi makes a killing at 79.99."
They will make a real killing at $666.
Too simplistic because it doesn't work. The proof is OPEC
As your name states, you're the boy who never grew up, aren't you?
I'm sorry, but the idea is simplistic, and impossible.
Peter Bigot: That's the stupidest, simplistic comment yet.
You have no idea how the oil patch works. You can't cap a conventional, old well; say in Saudi wells, as the wells would be ruined by the saline water which they use to pump out of thier diminishing geological structure.. So one would have to keep pumping, find a place to store millions of barrels of oil per day.
And, don't you think that the market will know about the $80 cap? They would not allow the market past $79.99/bbl.
According to figures from Al-Jazeera America, it currently costs $31.38 to extract a barrel of oil in the United States versus $16.88 in Saudi Arabia.
For every barrel of oil pumped in SA, the moon worshippers have to spend over $100 on social programs funded by that barrel of oil. This too can't last, a race to the bottom I guess.
It hammers their welfare budget and reduces their ability to bribe the peasants to accept their tyranny: That, by the way is what I'm sure Putin is considering; financing for Anto-Wahabist groups in Saudi Arabia.
I bet they bought a shit load of Gold.
It's in some tent way out in the desert.
We alrealdy know lthey bought a shit-load of Gold. When Nixon started auctioning off the contents of Ft. Knox in publicly anounced auctions; the Saudi's used D.Bank as a ghost bidder to buy one whole auction at a higher opening price than anyone expected. Nixon was trying to "punish the dollar speculators"; he gave up in confusioin and embarrassment at this proof that the market would absorb all the US Gold while the price continued to rise. This was a very interesting time. I would imagine a lot of it is in the tunnel to nowhere; a train tunnel drilled into a Swiss Mountain that has an entrance, with a full size railroad track entering it, a blast proof door, and no exit.
I was thinking more like in a Rothschild wine cellar that's equipped with an Einstein~Rosen bridge to Nibiru. LOL
This article explains nothing. Or am I missing something?
We have all missed something and that is that the heading to this article has a double meaning......"and the Saudis are the first to get it". Think about that.
I thought about that as well. I don't know if the header intentionally has a double meaning or if it is purely coincidental. But the Saudis might be the first "to get it" indeed if they continue pissing off other oil producing countries (Opec and non Opec).
you're not alone. This article fails to explain (or deliberately ignores) the geopolitics behind all of this..because the math, geology, costs and resource left in Saudi oil fileds does not match the article's logic.
This article definitely has it wrong on world consumption. Note the last word in the title of the article below - "records." Anyone who has followed peak oil and world oil production plus consumption knows that WORLD consumption would rise while western consumption would fall. It also knows that the classic producing countries would need to keep (increasing) percentages of their production. While the (unavoidable) rising cost in energy (measured in energy not dollars) will definitely set back economies, nothing fully explains the Saudi moves without the criminal collusion with the US and the amazing coincidence with all the rhetoric flying between putin and the podium president.
http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/2014/07/10/world-sets-new-oil-production-and-consumption-records/
Yes. It's economic warfare directed against Putin's Russia. Not very subtle or complicated. It's interesting that the Prez. and his "advisors", (owners?); are willing to kill off an important US Industry to try this move in global power chess; which is far from being a known checkmate. Apparently, they really are crazy.
Would you cut off your shale hand if you thought you could replace it by grabbing Russia's resources? Quite a risk/reward conundrum there. What if we through in global dictatorship, would you do it then?
Yeah, didn't think so. You have a conscience.
So Peakers are wrong based on your post because:
1) World consumption is not rising
2) Rising cost of energy DNE
Saudis can not pump below cost - no one can. Any business that does that dies in 6 weeks, the cash burn is very much like a rapidly expanding singularity. Even if the USA were colluding, there is not enough money to pay the Saudis to lose money. We are talking trillions per year, much more than the global CBers are pumping into the world.
This proves that Peak Oil DNE, that the marginal cost of Saudi extraction is very low, indeed, that the Sauds are going for market share (a long term strategy, not tactic), that the Sauds have decades upon decades of oil left to get revenue out of the ground.
It's probable that they discovered that Ghawar is abiotic, and that it is so large that their current daily rate of extraction can be sustained indefinitely with no drop at all.
In similar news, they've recently discovered that the Skittles that pour out of a unicorns @ss are also abiotic.
Unlimited #GROATH in a finite world IS possible. Al Gore is quite displeased because he was sure that the internet that he invented would run on solar & wind power & was just about to launch his line of the PINWHEEL ACCESSORY attachment for recharging smartphones.
Damn the Saudi's to hell!
"abiotic"
is that another term for no debt limit?
"Are we really that desperate?"
no...but they are...
DEATH TO MONEYCHANGERS...
Maybe the USA should go back to Santa on the USD.
http://allday.com/post/1906-there-was-a-time-when-santa-claus-was-on-us-...
TO STEM THE FREE-FALLING RUBLE, which crashed yesterday on a scale not seen since its collapse in 1998, the Bank of Russia has raised a key interest rate from 10.5% to 17%. So far this year the ruble has lost half of its value against the dollar. This drastic move demonstrates that plunging oil prices are hammering Moscow far more than are the tepid, half-hearted sanctions imposed by the West after Putin’s seizure of Crimea and his machinations to effectively make Ukraine a Russian satrap.
The bank’s move also demonstrates that Russia, like almost every other country in the world today, is clueless about monetary policy. Earlier this year its central bank shelled out $75 billion to shore up the shaky ruble on foreign exchange markets. The interventions flopped. The Bank of Russia then let its currency float—or, more accurately, sink. But yesterday’s precipitous plunge forced Russia to do something dramatic, hence the huge hike in interest rates to attract traders to buy the ruble and earn interest that’s exponentially larger than anything else in the current universe. Of course, that high price for borrowing money will squeeze Moscow’s weak economy even more.
This gambit will fail unless Moscow shows that it has suddenly experienced an epiphany about how to strengthen its currency. After all, who wants to buy something whose falling value will quickly wipe out any interest income? Zimbabwe dollars, anyone?
Russia has been floundering in part out of ignorance and in part because it believes the Keynesian superstition that cheapening one’s money will increase exports and thereby goose up the economy.
As monetary expert Nathan Lewis pointed out in his most recent Forbes.com column, no country in history has ever achieved durable, broad-based prosperity by devaluing its currency. Yet even before Putin marched into Crimea and Ukraine, Moscow wasn’t hiding its intentions to engineer a “slight” weakening of the ruble to boost exports and help out the slowing Russian economy. (That, by the way, was the thinking of the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve in the early 2000s, when we adopted a weak-dollar policy. The result was the housing bubble and a false commodities boom.)
Russia’s mistake when it tried to prop up the ruble earlier this year was two-fold.
–Intentions. The government, from Putin on down, should have repeatedly declared that the ruble should be as good as gold and that the central bank would vigorously work to keep the ruble firmly fixed to the dollar at a set rate. If markets think you are in any way tentative, traders will attack. Russia’s “sort of” approach was lethal.
–No sterilization. Russia committed a disastrous mistake, which has been repeated ad nauseum by central banks since World War II: When it bought rubles in foreign exchange markets, it promptly reissued them back into the domestic money market. What the Bank of Russia took with one hand, it gave back with the other. In other words, the supply of rubles was left unchanged. Russia’s monetary base (bank reserves and the currency in circulation) didn’t shrink. Economists call this idiotic, self-defeating exercise “sterilization.” During a crisis, when traders smell a weak currency, it’s imperative that the monetary base be reduced. This can be done by using reserves, such as the dollar and the euro, to buy in the currency under attack. A central bank can also use domestic assets like government bonds to achieve the same result: It sells bonds and takes the currency used to pay for them out of circulation. Traders quickly sense that such a move can’t be resisted. A country like Russia—even as beleaguered as it currently is—can marshal assets that can beat back any speculator.
What’s so weird is that Russia did precisely this back in early 2009, when the ruble was wobbling. The Bank of Russia reduced the monetary base, and the ruble’s slide was halted.
Of course, the Russian economy has other major structural problems in addition to the imploding ruble. But it’s within Moscow’s means to salvage its currency. However, doing so would take knowledge, which this interest rate hike shows it lacks.
You are deranged, or a neocon piece of filth like Noodleman
Putin has not "marched into Crimea and Ukraine"
It's amazing, isn't it ? People who imagine they're intelligent just repeat whatever Time-Life-Inc. tells them on the tube. It's not that hard to find out that it's an historical fact that Russia didn't march into anyplace. The Crimea voted, in a completely aboveboard manner, approved by the UN, to join the Russian Federation; that's their right; and it's a move that makes sense; that's where they're going to be doing business, not with Paris, for Christ's sake.
No man, it is not amazing this time around. He does not think he's intelligent. He is working his shift and that is all there is to this case.
Deleted
This comment is from one of the few here that actually understand monetary policy and how it works....
The sterilazation thing is huge.....
They fuked up and will have a hard time getting out of it.....
But they still can if they really want to.....
Which I doubt because it would throw putin under the bus.....
Wait did the towel heads figure out how to refine the shit?
Who's got Vlad's suicide watch tonight?
I down voted you because you are parroting a comment made a number of times already.
In any case the American people (of which i gather you are one of ) have been suicided by your successive governments for the benefit of some NWO, the 1% and in the fake belief of American exceptionalism.
Russia may well be beaten into submission but I think we are in for more surprises before the finish line.
Bob, a parrot mimics someone or something else. However, the comment you responded to is my original comment (which I repeat at every opportunity).
My dear friend, repeating a comment, even if it is original, is not worthy of a thinking human being. Either let it go for a while or change your name to Amerikian Parrot.
Merry Xmas.
You are not new here. Why do you not recognize the shill for what he is? He's an agent taking payment to post crap on forums like this in order to sow disinformation and deceit. He probably gets a bonus for every time he can get someone to argue with him.
Just downvote and move along. There really is nothing to see with this guy.
Edit: Just to be clear, he is not your friend. He is a paid agent of your enemy.
Can't do it. I got Murka's suicide watch tonite.
All Putin has to do is announce that in the face of American aggression he will not sell energy to any member of NATO.
There is no good reason for the House of Saud to sell oil for a penny less than the next lowest producer can get it out of the ground. Well no purely economic reason anyway.
Are we seeing the end of the Bush Saud neo-con "you for me, I for you, all for King US Oil " era?
Has the fickle waywardness of the Empire, the incoherence of the philosophers of WS, now brought so much chaos to the region that even the petromonarchs can see further than the hubristic US Oligarchs of "uber alles" Bushist clan?
Caramba ! where is Don Diego de la Vega to save Pax Americana ?
Does he have the long shadow of Jebb B. Now being groomed to be Potus in place of Demo-Potus, half breed son of imperial Rome?
We need Zorro to save the frack n drill baby drill platoon of neo-con full moon.
Watch out for the bedouin wolves pack on the prowl, white fangs n all, ready to howl on a full moon spawn, that can turn into eternal night for lone star husky sledge dogs on a rocky mountain snow run!
Shades of Jack London !
If the US shale oil industry shuts in, then where are we going to get our oil?
We stopped importing oil from the middle east decades ago, and now we get it from domestic, mexico, venezuela and canada. Those guys have expensive oil too, so they are also likely to reduce production. I would like to us make an effort to use NG in place of gasoline, so we didn't need so much oil in the first place. Same amount of energy, but less oil. Right now NG is about 5 times cheaper than gasoline or diesel and cleaner. We can then use shale gas to replace the lost shale oil and western hemisphere imports, and stay independent of the 'blood oil'.
Natural gas would obviously get more expensive, but that would make shale gas wells profitable. No one could really mess with us over this because NG is not a global market. Our price is independent of prices in the middle east, asia or europe.
My two cents worth.
Three things.
1. Producers will not/cannot produce in the long term at prices below their production cost.
2. The global recession we've enjoyed for the past 6 years has reduced marginal demand to a point where the Saudi's as the lowest cost provider can utterly destroy all the oil ponzi schemes like fracking or Canadian oil sands, it's the same old pump and dump: in the past 18 months I've heard numerous ads on right wing shout radio aimed at "accredited investers" : something that meant something a couple of decades ago and now means any small buiness guy.
3. It is serendipitous that the timing was politicaly useful in the looting of Ukraine, start of the new cold war with Putin.
Expect lots of bond defaults and bankruptcy's, and then the customary buying up of the hard assets by the big guys.
Pump, dump, consolidate, rinse, repeat.