A funny thing happened today. Total U.S. commercial petroleum inventories declined by over 15 million barrels, and the price of Oil didn't do much.
Kind of comports with my view that the U.S. is no longer the axe in the price of Oil... that is, the U.S. is no longer the price determinate for the world Oil market any longer.
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In the nothing to do with Energy department...
Some times I despair for my fellow man (woman). The one wild card in all of our lives that we can so little about are the crazies running amongst us, waiting to go off like a bomb.
We have nuts going into school board meetings and firing 9mm handguns at their innocent and unarmed fellow man... and we have well known WABC Weather Girl Heidi Jones fabricating an attempted rape... Our government has raided religious groups and their supporters blew up a federal building killing innocent children... a man flies his plane into an I.R.S. building... Going "Postal" is now broadly understood in the lexicon.... Good grief. What's next?
We lack civility in our political discourse, we glorify violence in the media we allow our children to consume, we reject the sanctity of Life from abortion, to street violence, to war, to capital punishment... everybody is a victim and everyone seems to belong to a group that hates somebody with a passion.... and we wonder that people are going off half-cocked because somebody did them wrong?
Rational, and other wise law abiding citizens barrel down my street here in South Florida (20 mph zone) at 60 mph and are furious when I don't get out of their way... seemingly oblivious to the consequences should they hit one of my kids...
Sometimes I think I'm the only normal person left... is it just me, or have we gotten meaner? Well, mean people suck.
Maybe.... just maybe... the answer is not more government control, regulation, and tax extraction to fix all of these things.... maybe, just maybe, people would not be would so tightly wound that they are ready to shoot me over a parking space if they weren't so frantic in their lives... maybe we need to stop growing GDP and start growing GNH - Gross National Happiness. It seems for every attempted government solution we wind up with 2 new problems to solve - and 4 new taxes to pay for the solutions.
Forget "Power Down"... how about "Frantic Down"?
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Governor-elect Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown says he's shocked. Shocked, I say!
What a cluster f*%!! the California Body politic must be. Their perfect storm liberal economic policies, and a lack of anyone else to blame, have left them in a uniquely awful position.
California absolutely, positively will default on either its bonds or its pension obligations... they just might call it something else AND blame Republicans in the American Southeast. How's that you say? Well, it can't be the Liberal Elite's fault... They are the ENLIGHTENED ONES... It MUST be those troglodyte Republicans in the Old South....
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Markets zig and zag... they don't zig and zig (forever). At these prices I like Nat Gas more than Oil, Platinum more than Silver, and 7-10 Treasuries more than equities... but I reserve the right to change my mind on a dime... if I am wrong, I am gone.