For the 11th week in a row, US oil rig counts declined (down 8 this week to 392). This is the first drop below 400 oil rigs since Dec 2009.
Judgiung by the neat perfect correlation between rig counts and lagged oil prices, we would expect further declines before any re-increase occurred.
Perhaps even more stunning, the total US rig count dropped to 489 rigs last week. 1 above the all-time record low 488 seen in April 1999...
Murder Is Washington’s Foreign Policy
Paul Craig Roberts
Washington has a long history of massacring people, for example, the destruction of the Plains Indians by the Union war criminals Sherman and Sherridan and the atomic bombs dropped on Japanese civilian populations, but Washington has progressed from periodic massacres to fulltime massacring. From the Clinton regime forward, massacre of civilians has become a defining characteristic of the United States of America.
Bernie Sanders has slammed low Internet speeds for users in the US by making a comparison between America and Romania. The US democratic presidential candidate tweeted on Wednesday that “High-speed Internet access is no longer a luxury. It’s crucial for rural America to be connected and do business with the rest of the world” Press TV reports: “Today, people living in Bucharest, Romania, have access to much faster Internet than most of the US,” he later wrote, adding, “that’s unacceptable and must change,” without explaining why he chose Romania for comparison.
There is an odd feeling of Deja QEu this morning, when with two hours to go until the February payrolls, global stocks are modestly higher, US equity futures are likewise slightly higher on the back of a weaker dollar (or perhaps stronger Euro following a Market News report according to which the ECB may disappoint, more on that shortly), but it is gold that is breaking out, and after entering a bull market yesterday when it rallied 20% from its December lows...
The U.S. Navy have dispatched a fleet of warships to the South China Sea in a show of its military might amid tensions with China over the disputed islands. The U.S. claim that China are attempting to militarize the region in order to guard the territory that the U.S. say China have no right to claim. Navytimes.com reports: The stand-off has been heating up on both sides. After news in February that the Chinese deployed an advanced surface-to-air missile battery to the Paracel Islands, U.S. Pacific Command head Adm.