Business

Submitted by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,

Demand for thermal coal is declining, a trend that appears to be “irreversible.”

That is the conclusion from Goldman Sachs, which published a new report on the global coal and gas trade on February 15, and reported on by SNL. For coal producers, this is the latest in a long line of grim warnings, all of which point to a future of shuttered power plants, mine closures, and bankruptcies.

The exuberance following last night's surprising inventory draw from API has been erased as DOE reports inventory builds across the entire energy complex - crude +2.15mm, distillates +1.4mm, gasoline +3.04mm, and Cushing +36k. WTI Crude has dropped back below $31, erasing API-driven overnight gains.

API reported:

• Crude down 3.3 million
• Gasoline up 750,000
• Distillate down 2 million
• Cushing: up 175,000

But DOE reports:

Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

Larry Summers is a pretentious Keynesian fool, but I refer to him as the Great Thinker’s Vicar on Earth for a reason. To wit, every time the latest experiment in Keynesian intervention fails - as 84 months of ZIRP and massive QE clearly have - he can be counted on to trot out a new angle on why still another interventionist experiment or state sponsored financial fraud is just the ticket.

In the days after the August 24 ETFlash crash, the world's "risk parity" funds had a near-death experience when as a result of the furious disconnect between stocks, Treasurys and most other asset classes, the underlying correlation models failed, leading to dramatic declines for such giant funds as Bridgewater's $70 billion "All Weather" fund.

Submitted by Constantin Gurdgiev via True Economics blog,

Recent media and analysts coverage of the global economy, especially that of the advanced economies has focused on the rising degree of uncertainty surrounding growth prospects for 2016 and 2017. Much of the analysis is shlock, tending to repeat like a metronome the cliches of risk of ’monetary policy errors’ (aka: central banks, read the Fed, raising rates to fast and too high), or ‘emerging markets rot’ (aka: slowing growth in China), or ‘energy sector drag’ (aka: too little new investment into oil).