Good Or Bad News? As US Oil Production Peaks Again, & More

US Oil Production Nears Previous Peak

The EIA’s Monthly Energy Review came out a couple of days ago. The data is in thousand barrels per day and the last data point is July 2015.

US consumption of total liquids, or as the EIA calls it, petroleum products supplied, reached 20,000,000 barrels per day for the first time since February of 2008.

Related: OPEC Divorce And Self-Destruction Thanks To Saudi Oil Strategy?

Something I never noticed before, consumption started to drop in January 2008, seven months before the price, along with world production, started to drop in August 2008. This had to be a price driven decline. Could the current June and July increase in consumption be price driven also?

The Fed Is Dead Wrong 

The Fed won’t raise rates until the world economy looks healthier, but the world economy is actually OK. Even China is OK. (Apple said that the China consumer is pretty healthy). World economic numbers will look much better in 2016, and central banks outside the U.S. will begin raising rates … and that will finally give the Fed the cover it needs to raise.

Are There Investing Opportunities For The Remainder Of 2015? 

The seriousness of last week’s shocking action in the market is shown by the volatility index, which posted its second highest reading since its inception in 1990. This is comparable to the great crash of 2008/9.

An Escalating Migrant Crisis and an Intensifying Search for Solutions 

Many migrants are crossing from Turkey to Greece, Macedonia and Serbia before entering Hungary and then moving on to wealthier countries in northern Europe. (There is an important legal distinction between a migrant who has fled his or her country and a refugee seeking asylum.) The conditions in which they would wait out approval of their applications in Germany and Sweden are better than in places such as Hungary or Greece.

Everything you’ve heard about China’s stock market crash is wrong 

Both moves—the government pulling back from its market bailout and the currency devaluation—stem from the same ominous problem: China’s leaders are scrambling to find the money to keep its economy running. To understand the broader forces that led to this predicament, here’s a chart-based explainer tracing its origins.

The Cross Of The Moment 

Fermi's Paradox, climate change, capitalism, and collapse are some of the subjects discussed in this feature length documentary on the environmental crisis. Interviewees include Bill McKibben, Gary Snyder, Derrick Jensen, Peter D. Ward, Jill Stein, Bill Patzert, Guy McPherson and other top academics, scientists and public intellectuals.

Why So Much Oil Price Volatility? Blame The Speculators

Oil prices crashed last week only to rebound at lightning speed. On August 28, oil prices surged 10 percent, the largest one-day gain in seven years. So, what happens next for oil prices?

On the face of it, the crash and massive rebound makes little sense, with many oil market analysts undoubtedly left shaking their heads.

But there is a logic to what unfolded, just not the logic of the physical market for crude. Oil prices, as if we needed a reminder, are largely driven by speculation. Why else would oil prices plummet by five percent, then spike by 10 percent just a few days later? Not much changed in terms of actual supply and demand of oil in the intervening days.

Sure, Royal Dutch Shell declared force majeure on some oil shipments from Nigeria, as two pipelines had to be shut down. That could interrupt some oil supplies. But other than that, the physical market for crude didn’t see a whole lot of change in just a few days’ time.

A Passing Thought...

Post Crash Alert: Devastated Pension Plans Adding To Global Woes, & More #News

Did Global Stock Market Meltdown Hurt UK Pension Schemes?

The ‘Black Monday' stock market turmoil on 24 August saw the FTSE 100 index plummet 14% below its peak of almost 7,000 points in February.

Investors across the globe began panic selling stocks, particularly in commodities, amid fears of the much anticipated growth slowdown in China.

While about £96bn was wiped off share values in the UK blue chip index, the Dow fell 1,000 points on opening and the Shanghai Composite experienced total losses of 35% since June.

Hymans Robertson put the total pain for UK defined benefit (DB) schemes at a staggering £30bn surge in aggregate deficits in a day, as equities values and bond yields headed south. 

Commentators are divided on whether the event was merely a market correction or an indication of more chaos to come.

But what many agree on is the fact that China is no longer the world's economic growth engine, posing the question of where future investment returns will come from.

How China's economic slowdown could weigh on the rest of the world 

In the year to July, China's customs agency reports that imports from Australia are down by $15bn dollars on the same period last year - a loss which is already equal to 1% of Australia's GDP, and many other countries stand to lose out to similar degrees. China's imports overall are down by 14.6% over 2015. Find out what happens if this decline continues for the rest of the year - or worsens - and how that loss compares to each country's GDP

Deflationary Collapse Ahead?

Eventually, even at near zero interest rates, the amount of debt becomes too high, relative to income. Governments become afraid of adding more debt. Young people find student loans so burdensome that they put off buying homes and cars. The economic “pump” that used to result from rising wages and rising debt slows, slowing the growth of the world economy. With slow economic growth comes low demand for commodities that are used to make homes, cars, factories, and other goods. This slow economic growth is what brings the persistent trend toward low commodity prices experienced in recent years.

The Amazing Harbinger of the Dow's 531-Point Slide 

A strange thing happened fifteen minutes after stock markets opened for regular trading on Friday, August 21, 2015. At least some people on the nationally prominent MarketWatch website were privileged to see in advance what would prove to be the full-day losses for both the Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDU) and the Standard & Poors 500 (SPX) indices. This harbinger or revelation of what was to come occurred six hours and fifteen minutes before the market's close. The uncanny trend projections, or perhaps target prices, were made available while the Dow was down about 180 points -- more than 350 points above its astonishing Friday close.

What If The "Crash" Is as Rigged as Everything Else? 

There is an almost touching faith that markets are rigged when they loft higher, but unrigged when they crash. Who's to say this crash isn't rigged? A few things about this "crash" (11% decline from all time highs now qualifies as a "crash") don't pass the sniff test.

Australia 'sleepwalking into a mess' 

"Unless we recognise that, and recognise that the productivity challenge and the fiscal challenge are intimately linked, and we have to deal with both of them, then we will go on continuing to repeat the mistakes that we've been making and that will get us into a situation that none of us want to be in."

Dr Parkinson earlier told a room of more than 90 corporate, community and academic leaders that productivity reform could not be detached from fiscal reform.

China  Meltdown So Large That Losses Eclipsed BRICS  Peers 

Take the combined size of all stocks traded in Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, multiply by two, and you'll get a sense of how much China's market value has slumped since the meltdown started. Shanghai-listed equities erased $5 trillion since reaching a seven-year high in June, half their value, as margin traders closed out bullish bets and concern deepened that valuations were unjustified by the weak economic outlook. 

The four other countries in the BRICS universe have a combined market capitalisation of $2.8 trillion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. 

Learning Success: 

APPLY Tips From The Best

Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Group – Anyone who owns more than 400 companies and is worth billions of dollars is clearly doing many things right. I admire Richard Branson’s tenacity, and I admire his personal brand

ALERT - 23 Stock Market Crashes Are Now Occurring, & More

23 Nations Around The World Where Stock Market Crashes Are Already Happening

You can stop waiting for a global financial crisis to happen.  The truth is that one is happening right now.  All over the world, stock markets are already crashing.  Most of these stock market crashes are occurring in nations that are known as “emerging markets”.  In recent years, developing countries in Asia, South America and Africa loaded up on lots of cheap loans that were denominated in U.S. dollars.  But now that the U.S. dollar has been surging, those borrowers are finding that it takes much more of their own local currencies to service those loans.  At the same time, prices are crashing for many of the commodities that those countries export.  The exact same kind of double whammy caused the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s and the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s.

As you read this article, almost every single stock market in the world is down significantly from a record high that was set either earlier this year or late in 2014.  But even though stocks have been sliding in the western world, they haven’t completely collapsed just yet.

Morgan Stanley's Fragile Five Swells To Troubled 10 In Selloff

Forget the “Fragile Five.” These days, strategists at Morgan Stanley are worried about what could be called the “Troubled Ten.”

That’s how many nations they say are particularly at risk since China devalued the yuan. While the analysts haven’t used the term themselves, it’s as good a description as any for the currencies -- from the Brazilian real to Peru’s sol and South Korea’s won -- which have trading ties making them susceptible to a slowdown in the world’s second-biggest economy.

“It’s all about vulnerability,” said Hans Redeker, the London-based global head of foreign-exchange strategy at Morgan Stanley. “Major victims of the policy change this time are currencies of countries with high export exposure and export competitiveness with China.”

Ten Years Later, the “Halliburton Loophole” and America’s Dirty Fracking Boom

Bush explicitly exempted fracking operations from key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act. These exemptions from a fundamental environmental protection law provided the oil and gas industry the immunity to develop a highly polluting process on a grand national scale.

Cheap solar in India sounds death knell for coal imports, Australia’s included

Solar pricing is now cheaper than new imported thermal coal-fired power plants.  Thus it is irrational to build another power plant fuelled by imported coal. The death knell for the seaborne traded coal industry has sounded.

What We Don’t Know Will Hurt Us: 

Ignorance In The Information Age 

When discussing what makes a difference in the health of

 Canadians, we tend to think first of the health care system. 

Doctors and hospitals, physiotherapists and pharmacies;

 these things are important. But they are far less important 

than other elements of people’s lives. 

Is the Economy Ready for Higher 

Interest Rates? 

Low interest rates act as a boost to the economy; they spur 

lending and encourage spending capital. Higher interest

 rates do the opposite; they suppress lending, and encourage 

saving — both of which slow an economy.

In other words, if rates were to lift off in a fragile economy,

 one like we have, it could cause a greater collapse than the

 financial crisis because the few people who are spending

 now would stop and sock their wealth away in savings to 

enjoy the higher rates.

Looking Back

Why Southeast Asia's Boom Is A Bubble-Driven Illusion

Since the Global Financial Crisis, Southeast Asia has been one of the world’s few bright spots for economic growth and investment returns. With its relatively young population of 600 million and its growing middle class, Southeast Asia has been the scene of a modern-day gold rush as international companies clamor to get a piece of the action. Unfortunately, my research has found that much of this region’s growth in recent years has been driven by ballooning credit and asset bubbles – a pattern that is also occurring in numerous emerging economies across the globe.

In the past few months, I have published reports about the growing bubbles inSingapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia, and I will use this report to explain the region’s economic bubble as a whole. My five Southeast Asian country reports have generated quite a bit of interest and controversy, and were read nearly 1.3 million times, and were publicly denied by the central banks of Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

Learning Success: 

APPLY Tips From The Best

Larry Page,  Google – 


Larry Page is another example of a businessperson who can persevere any challenge. Larry and his company have faced much criticism and received ample praise over the years for his company’s actions. But in the midst of the storm, he has never let what others think sway him from pursuing the course for his company that he considers the best.

Top Weekly Ideas and Insights

An Inconvenient Truth

"Battle For Oil" 

What Happens When Political Interests Get Desperate?

EXISTENTIAL REALITY 

"Coming To The End Of Oil Age"

 - Looking Beyond The Brink -