Business

Submitted by Julianne Geiger via OilPrice.com,

Moody’s Investors Service placed 11 West Texas governments and municipalities under review for a potential downgrade last week.

The review will consider downgrading the credit ratings of 11 local governments, which include Odessa and Midland, Pecos County, and 7 hospital districts. The review would affect US$477 million in outstanding public debt.

Everyone knows a downgrade is bad news, but how bad is bad—really?

Authored by Steve H. Hanke of the Johns Hopkins University. Follow him on Twitter @Steve_Hanke.

The Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV) wins the prize as the world’s worst central bank – at least for the time being.  Venezuela’s annual inflation has been in triple-digit territory for more than three years.  As the accompanying chart shows, the implied annual inflation rate soared as high as 800% last summer.  Since then, inflation has fallen to its current 320% annual rate.  This is still well above the phony 180.9% annual rate reported by the BCV in December.

Earlier this week, when looking at the rapidly fraying dynamics in the all-important Treasury repo market, we explained that as a result of the unprecedented, record shortage of underlying paper, the repo rate for the 10Y has plunged to the lowest on record (and even surpassing it on occasion), the -3.00% "fails" rate, an unstable, broken state characterized by a surge in failures to deliver and receive, when one party fails to deliver a U.S. Treasury to another party by the date previously agreed by the parties.

With ETF shorts falling to 2016 lows, WTI crude futures are surging once again (despite yesterday's news that there will be no "production freeze." Near $39, this is the highest since the first day of trading in 2016.

Sending WTI crude to its highest since 2015...

.

Craig Hemke TFMetals Report: Demand For Physical Gold/Silver Will Break The System

Posted with permission and written by Rory Hall, The Daily Coin (CLICK FOR ORIGINAL)