Business

In the past several months we have dedicated numerous articles to demonstrate the sheer lunacy of the Vancouver real estate market with isolated cases in which Vancouver houses, whether abandoned or in phenomenal shape, would sell for millions of dollars above asking just because Chinese buyers would pay any price in their rush evade capital controls and launder cash in northeast Canadian real estate. Perhaps the most egregious example took place two weeks ago when we wrote "Valued At $16 It Sold For $68 Million "In 7200 Seconds" - The Inside Story Of Vancouver's Wildest Property Deal."

Among the bigger financial problems covered in depth on Zero Hedge over the past several years, have been China's massive amount of newly created credit adding to an already unsustaimable debt load (estimated as high as 350%), its rapidly growing bad debt pile (what we call China's "neutron bomb" which as we first estimated last October is about 20% of total bank debt), and its sub-prime real estate bubble.

It appears Russia is close to taking the next big step towards de-dollarization and killing the petro-dollar as Vladimir Putin's "dream" of ruble-based pricing of its domestically-produced oil is on the verge of realization. SPIMEX (The St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange) is actively courting international oil traders to join its emerging futures market, which as Bloomberg reports, is designed "to create a system where Russian oil is priced and traded in a fair and straightforward way."

For years, Ali al Naimi was the most important person in the world of oil: the former CEO of Saudi Aramco ascended to the post of Saudi oil minister in 1995, and over the past 21 years had the power to send the price of oil soaring or plunging with one word. To be sure, over the past two years it was mostly plunging because as is well-known, Saudi Arabia's policy ever since the 2014 Thanksgiving OPEC meeting in which Saudi Arabia broke off from the rest of the petroleum cartel to pursue its intention of putting US shale and high cost OPEC production out of business.

Several days ago, hedge fund legend Stan Druckenmiller spoke at the Sohn Conference, delivering what may have been his most bearish fire and brimstone sermon yet, and in fact according to some buysiders who were present, its somber mood and lack of faux optimism was downright apocalyptic.