The US is at war with Iran. The US has always been at war with Iran.
The US is friendly with Iran. The US has always been friendly with Iran.
The US is at friendly with Iraq. The US has always been friendly with Iraq.
The US is at war with Iraq. The US has always been at war with Iraq.
The US is at war with Islamic State. The US has always been at war with Islamic State.
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I'm not talking about the stock market, I am talking about commodities (and their financialization) - "Why Oil's Collapse Could Ultimately Be Worse than the Housing Crisis"And the money dumped into oil-derived securities is just one of several bubbles - the "great" state of the US economy is, IMNSHO, largely illusory, a result of the massive amount of liquidity pumped out by the Fed for years. If anything, the coming crisis will be worse than the last one; (which is exactly what should be expected after massive consequence-free bailouts).Oil and gas companies borrowed heavily when oil prices were soaring above $70 a barrel. But in the past 24 months, they've seen their values and cash flows erode ferociously as oil prices plunge — and that's made it hard for some to pay back that debt.
This could lead to a massive credit crunch like the one we saw in 2008. With our economy just getting back on its feet from the global 2008 financial crisis, timing could not be worse, especially in an election year. It makes you wonder: How could this happen again? Quite easily, as it turns out.
Industry fundamentals are being misunderstood.
A $30 Nymex West Texas Intermediate crude price on a screen is the price paid when that barrel is delivered to Cushing, Okla. However, the producer of that same barrel in the Permian Basin will receive only $27 per barrel. Lesser quality crudes such as West Texas Sour might only fetch $15 a barrel. When prices were above $100 or even $60, those margins mattered less. With oil around $30, it's a much bigger deal.
A similar problem exists with lender's reserve values used for credit judgments. Notwithstanding the persistent decline in oil prices, commercial banks still use escalated price decks. These often mirror or exceed slightly, the forward price curve on the Nymex. Today, a $30 WTI barrel is forecast by the futures market to be sold at $39 per barrel a year from now. Those escalations become very significant, again, because of the margin squeeze.
With global oil demand flat, or even declining somewhat, OPEC price "hawks" producing all they can, OPEC price "doves," Saudi Arabia and its near neighbors producing to regain market share, and inventories at record highs — is a price escalation likely? The banks believe it is.
No matter how you cut that cake, there will be a flood of hard defaults with bank lenders and bondholders over the coming few months.
Significant year-end losses and write-offs are also coming, and very likely more write-offs in the ensuing quarters. Auditors will likely start to qualify their assessment of whether firms are a viable "going concern." Those also constitute an event of hard default with most lenders. These specific events of hard defaults with a senior lender generally will create a cross-default on other debt styled securities.
(I'm a Cthulhu supporter myself, but I'm not sure what to do this year - old squid-face took one look at the Republican candidates and went back to R'lyeh.)
I sort of agree with you about Clinton and the Republicans, in the sense that I see Clinton as an eminently generic status quo politican (obviously we disagree about the merits and stability of the status quo itself) - Clinton is as qualified to be President as most of her predecessors (the glaring exception being Obama himself), while the Republicans are all terrible. And not terrible in the "I disagree with them" sense of the word, but the "they'd be both less capable than Obama and worse for the country" sense.
As a strong lefty, I know I'm supposed to like Bernie (and I do, as a person), and I do agree with a lot of his ideas, but... he's basically just pushing what I think of as the "sane billionaire" position; not fundamental reform, let alone justice and a return to a republic / democracy, but just the simple acknowledgement that the bus that is the United States is headed for a cliff, and we should carefully turn the wheel and/or apply brakes, instead of stepping on the gas, (terrifyingly, that position is very much a minority one).
What all this means for Iran and the US... idk. If a crazed Republican gets in, it's probably war - war that we'll lose even if we "win" it, because the direct and indirect costs will far exceed the practical gains (if any). Such a war will likely be a strong contributor to a US collapse, China dominant (presuming they don't collapse on their own) scenario. Even if someone as comparatively sane as Hillary or even Bernie becomes President... I think the Saudis are still going to collapse, and there's going to be a loud faction in the US against any sort of rapprochement with Iran on any basis, from realpolitik to rational humanism. Whatever happens, the Middle East (including) certainly isn't going to get much calmer or more stable, global warming all on its own would see to that.
"In today’s America, conservatives who actually want to conserve are as rare as liberals who actually want to liberate. The once-significant language of an earlier era has had the meaning sucked right out of it, the better to serve as camouflage for a kleptocratic feeding frenzy in which both establishment parties participate with equal abandon" (Taking a break from the criminal, incompetent liars at the NSA, to bring you the above political observation, from The Archdruid Report.)
I think the US is trying to tie most of the loose ends with Iran and move their attention to the pacific. Middle East has been given too much attention for too long, meanwhile China has been growing powerful and is now emboldened enough to threaten America's interest in that region.
a war with Iran fixes nothing, it just throws US into more debt and the war costs will racket up leaving US economically weak to completely and thoroughly counter China in the coming decade. this was pointed out years ago that the US is changing it's focus from the middle east to the east of Asia. It's not that they're "scared" of Iran or anything, but China is just a bigger threat and a war with Iran would drag the US into several more years of ground invasion/military operations throughout the middle east to effectively destroy Iran's military capabilities. and nothing short of occupation can systematically change Iran's regime and nature.