The last time front-month crude oil traded at these levels ($26.12) was May 2003 as WTI Crude has collapsed over 22% in the last 2 weeks - the biggest drop since Lehman in 2008. Goldman's "teens" are getting closer...
With credit risk already at record highs - and getting higher - we suspect the moment of Chapter 7 truth is getting closer.
Submitted by Arthur Berman via OilPrice.com,
An OPEC production cut is unlikely until U.S. production declines by about another million barrels per day (mmbpd). OPEC won’t cut because it would accomplish nothing beyond a short-term increase in price. Carefully placed comments by OPEC and Russian oil ministers about the possibility of production cuts achieve almost the same price increase as an actual cut.
Bad News About The Oil Over-Supply from IEA and EIA
Via ChicagoStockTrading.com,
In December’s article “The Yellen that Stole Christmas”, the point was to show how buyers in the SP500 were caught above 2040, and needed a Yellen rescue. The market attempted to breakout to start December, however the rug was pulled from underneath as Yellen reiterated a rate cut later in the month. After bluffing the market for 2 years on this rate cut, the call fell on many deaf ears.
It appears by the total lack of coverage that the utter collapse of Europe's banking system is entirely irrelevant to the "fortress-like" balance sheets of US banks... but it is not. Once again today, US financials saw bonds dumped across the senior and subordinated segments...
...and while US financial stocks have fallen hard year-to-date, if credit is right - and it usually is on a cyclical basis - US bank stocks have a long way to go (as believe in book values is battered).
A Nobel prize winning economist, former chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank, and chairman of the President’s council of economic advisers (Joseph Stiglitz) says that the International Monetary Fund and World Bank loan money to third world countries as a way to force them to open up their markets and resources for looting by the West.
Do central banks do something similar?