Dear readers,
After 355 posts, most of them long-form essays, I need a break. So I'll be taking August off, and resuming fresh posts Sept. 1. I may weigh in if there's major news. In the meantime, the archives are full of good stuff and I hope you'll rejoin me in September.
Meanwhile, I encourage Rogue's smart readers to use this post's comments section as an open thread about current events, issues and what's on your mind.
Jon Talton
That’s disappointing: I’ll miss your posts. But I’ll keep an eye on the Front Page links.
I’ll miss them too. They’re always well-written and informative, and I’ve learned a lot about my adopted home from them (AZ resident for 16 years now.)
Enjoy your month off!
Have fun!
I hope you enjoy a well deserved break. I also hope when you return you will consider writing a post regarding AZ private tuition tax credits. The East Valley tribune has a 3 day series on the subject here: https://www.eastvalleytribune.com/page/taxcredits
Vacation Jon?
Really?
Or are you down in Mexico having your teeth artificially sharpened so you will have a better chance of getting asked to sit on one of those death panels that will determine Granny’s future?
Hmmmmm?
Is that it?
Just a few days ago benchmark crude jumped $3.23 in one day’s trading. That’s been described in the business press (accurately) as a “huge spike”. Does anybody think that real demand increased that much, that fast? The spike occurred on news of a decline in oil inventories, so obviously the spike was driven primarily by commodities investors (read: speculators).
Here’s a link worth adding to the Front Page list:
https://www.cjr.org/the_audit/wsj_scoop_cftc_will_blame_trad.php
Here’s a cached version of the Wall Street Journal article referenced above, for those who don’t have subscriber access:
https://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:mhF2yGP3S5YJ:online.wsj.com/article/SB124874574251485689.html
“The problem is that commodity investors exert far more influence on the market than physical traders. On the one hand, investors exert their influence through regular rolling of commodity futures. On the other hand, one needs to consider the leverage made possible by futures market trading. To purchase a WTI contract on the NYMEX usually requires less than 8% of the value of 1000 barrels of the crude oil which it represents. . .
. . .as investors increased their exposure, the relationship changed utterly. Today, on the NYMEX alone, WTI futures worth the equivalent of 600m barrels of crude oil are traded daily, while US production is less than 5m barrels per day. Even compared with global demand for oil, which currently stands at around 83m barrels per day, there is a huge discrepancy. This becomes clearest when we compare the volume of WTI actually produced with market trading volume: WTI oil production has now fallen to just 300,000 barrels per day. So now, each barrel of WTI crude is traded on the futures market nearly 2000 times over (Chart 7).”
From a recently published Dresdner/Commerzbank paper, reported on here:
https://www.businessinsider.com/dresdnercommerzbank-of-course-oil-prices-are-up-because-of-speculators-you-fools-2009-8
The Dresdner paper may at times take an overstated position, but there are a number of important observations. If anyone finds an English version of the complete paper online, please post the link here.
Is it September yet?