United States

Oil prices around USD 30/bbl mean that an increasingly significant volume of future oil projects no longer make sense. Although Deutsche Bank does not expect US crude inventories to reach capacity, rising US inventories and high US crude imports may heighten downside pressures to push prices closer to marginal cash costs of USD 7-17/bbl for US tight oil.

With few plausible scenarios for a strong price recovery in the short term, Deutsche lowers their Q1-2016 price forecasts to USD 33/bbl for WTI and Brent.

Following years of QE-inspired excess returns, investors in 2016 suddenly find themselves embroiled in a broad and brutal bear market. As BofAML's Michael Hartnett notes, the 10-year rolling return loss from commodities (-5.1%) is currently the worst since 1938...

Oil peak-to-trough -80% past four years, EM currencies trading 15% below their 2009 lows, yield on US HY bonds up from 5% to 10% in past 18 months, and equal-weighted US stock index down 25% from recent highs...

The US total rig count dropped 18 to 619 in the last week with a drop of 12 in oil rigs (to 498) as the ongoing lagged drop of crude drives rig counts every lower. Perhaps oddly, given the rig count decline, WTI is tumbling as a 12 rig drop is clearly not enough...

• *U.S. TOTAL RIG COUNT DOWN 18 TO 619 , BAKER HUGHES SAYS
• *U.S. OIL RIG COUNT DOWN 12 TO 498, BAKER HUGHES SAYS

The trend continues...

And it appears the market wanted more rig count declines...

Charts: Bloomberg

Submitted by Carey Wedler via TheAntiMedia.org,

As the nation rightly focuses on Flint’s ongoing water crisis, other cities in the state of Michigan face even higher levels of lead contamination. The alarming pervasiveness of potentially toxic drinking water extends across the United States.

By now, not even CNBC's cheerleading permabulls can deny that the US is in a manufacturing recession: in fact, it is so bad that even the staunchest defenders of Keynesian dogma admit what we said in late 2014, namely that crashing oil is bad for the economy.

And yet, the "services" part of the US economy continues to hum right along, leading to such surprising outcomes as a stronger than expected print in Personal Consumption Expenditures. How can this be?