Tag Archives: politics

RJS: Focus on Fracking Summary: Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a 21 year low, distillates supplies at a 17 year low; 300,000 bpd global oil surplus in April, despite loss of 1.2 million bpd from Russia & Kazakhstan; natural gas rigs at a 32 month high..   OPEC’s Report on Global Oil for April Thursday of this week saw the release of OPEC’s May Oil Market Report, which includes details on OPEC & global oil data for April, and hence it...

RJS, MarketWatch 666 Summary: Producer Prices Rose 0.5% in April; Record Annual Increase of 16.3% for Final Demand for Goods The seasonally adjusted Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand rose 0.5% in April, as average prices for finished wholesale goods rose by 1.3% while final demand for services was unchanged . . . that increase followed a revised 1.6% increase in March, when average prices for finished wholesale goods rose by 2.4% and...

Coronavirus dashboard for May 13: the virus will gradually become less lethal – because you can only die once, COVID-19 is still a pandemic and will gradually transition to an endemic. A year ago I thought that between nearly universal vaccinations and an increasing percentage of the population already infected, the virus would wane into a background nuisance by now. No more.  I am now thoroughly convinced that an unending series of variants...

I haven’t commented on rumors about Putin’s health.  Lots of people have reasons to spread disinformation, and I have no way of seeing through the smoke.  Still, the rumors are out there.  What should we make of this? Sounds like the Ukrainians are expecting more of this, and plan to try and methodically destroy the new formations. The most interesting interview Ive seen this week is this one by the head of Ukrainian DoD intelligence....

Amazing Republicans are trying to skew the peaceful (so far) protests of pro-choice consisting mostly of women as being violent. Not that they never get angry . . . they can and will. They are not happy with SCOTUS and are making it known peacefully. Cruz and others are trying to make this into something else similar to what Cruz was supporting January 6, 2021. Waiting on V.P. Pence Ted Cruz smugly sitting in the capitol building January 6th...

Andrew writes on healthcare, mostly the PPACA plan and the various metal plans, and the latest gig (ARPA) resulting in lower costs for anyone under 250% FPL and lower costs for anyone higher than 400% FPL. All made possible due to Biden and Democrat’s American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. It will expire EOY 2022 and I doubt Manchin will help with it. Without it and other aid, This all could have been a 2008 Redux. Mostly, what you will catch me...

Steve Schmidt has created his own Substack to tell his story. It is about lying, lying in politics, lying as a politician, and his lying. It is one hell of an interesting read, I only put part of this up. You can see the rest “here” or clicking on part of the title. Steve Schmidt’s Substack, “The Warning” Intro; “Steve Schmidt is a strategic advisor, who has counseled Heads of State, CEOs, leading athletes, major corporations, academic...

It’s hard to know why things shake out in Congress the way they do.  Why hasn’t there been agreement on a climate bill?  Why hasn’t a compromise been reached on a child tax credit?  Why not better preparation for the next pandemic, or even for the next wave of this pandemic?  From the outside it’s hard to say, but I am inclined to think that Schumer and Biden both bear considerable responsibility for these failures. A deeply disturbing article by...

From Reuters: U.S. President Joe Biden said on Monday he is worried that Russian President Vladimir Putin does not have a way out of the Ukraine war, and Biden said he was trying to figure out what to do about that.. . .Biden said Putin is a very calculating man and the problem he worries about now is that the Russian leader “doesn’t have a way out right now, and I’m trying to figure out what we do about that.” As far as I can tell, Biden has...

Putin is looking for an off ramp and has outlined his main terms. In mid-March, it became clear that a full-blown Russian defeat in Ukraine was a real possibility.  That possibility has grown in the past few weeks as the Russians have continued to perform shambolically in every way possible, and NATO has increased its military support for Ukraine.  The scary open question was – and is – whether Russia would escalate in some fashion.  There was...