Business

It has been at least a week without news of a prominent hedge fund liquidating, so when moments ago Reuters reported that once prominent hedge fund Standard Pacific, which a decade ago managed over $5 billion, is the latest casualty of broken markets and has decided to shut down things once again reverted back to normal.

Exclusive: Standard Pacific Capital, the stock-focused hedge fund firm led by Doug Dillard and Raj Venkatesan, is shutting down

— Lawrence Delevingne (@ldelevingne) February 4, 2016

European bonds are collapsing... systemic risk is rising... US Services economy "pillar" plunges... and jobs data is dismal - stocks shrugged...

"It's a supply issue", "No, it's a demand issue" - when it comes to the cause for plunging oil prices, the two camps will surely never agree on just what is causing it.

Luckily, Obama may provide just the tiebreaker.

Moments ago, Politico reported that in his final budget, Obama is set to unveil an ambitious plan for a “21st century clean transportation system.” which will be funded by a $10/barrel tax on oil.

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

It’s news that seems ripped from the pages of The Onion. Or perhaps Atlas Shrugged.

But incredibly enough it’s actually true: earlier this week, Congress proposed a new law authorizing the US Postal Service to provide banking and financial services.

It’s called the “Providing Opportunities for Savings, Transactions, and Lending” Act, abbreviated as… wait for it… the POSTAL Act.

We’ve written quite a bit about US O&G producers’ dependence on capital markets to plug funding gaps.

In short, the entire space is free cash flow negative, which means without access to liquidity, the whole thing falls apart. That, Citi wrote last September, is shale oil’s “dirty little secret.”