Watch this link at yahoo's tech ticker internet show.
Did you catch it? How do you like that? The flippin' MSM is now speaking clearly about Peak Oil in the past tense.
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Front Month Corn got creamed from its highs last night. Just whacked. I read with interest the attempts by certain political operatives to lay high grain prices on "climate change", "global warming", or my favorite "global weirding". Not that I reject the science behind anthropogenic climate change... I don't. But if that was the culprit behind high crop prices then these markets would be in terrible Contango (much higher prices for later delivery months) when in fact these markets are in steep Backwardation (much lower prices for later delivery months).
For example: Front Month Corn (March 2011) is $6.71 per bushel tonight; Corn for December 2012 delivery is trading right now at $5.09. One would think that if the problem was climate change the December 2012 Corn would be somewhat higher than next month's $6.71. Likewise, if the problem was all the Bernake Bucks being printed then December 2012 corn should be $6.71 plus the rate of expected inflation... but that's not the case. Ergo, something else is driving crop prices... that doesn't mean that markets don't f*** things up now and then.... they do... but you can't hang your hat on the market being wrong, any more than guessing next growing season's weather.
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No regime in the MENA is safe. All are in play, and any one of these can go off on a moment's notice. The peak in conventional crude production is almost certainly behind us, and the peak in exports is without any question (at least to my mind). It then follows that the mother of all Oil shocks could come at anytime.
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Recently, some high profile Peak Oil aware money managers postulated that perhaps the housing market had bottomed... something I said I was skeptical to agnostic about. The most recent data supports my skepticism. Just because the powers that be saved the U.S., an hence the world's, banking system from outright collapse does not mean that they have put the bottom into housing just yet. Housing prices, in the final analysis, will be determined as a multiple of average family income - no more, no less. To my mind, that would mean housing has not bottomed - especially if Oil has not topped. Falling housing prices and rising oil prices may or may not be residents of the same coin... but they are certainly problematic for the banking industry... which probably has a bit of contracting left to do.