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The losses incurred by the trafficking campaign surpass $100bln, according to Syria’s oil ministry

https://media.thecradle.co/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/ustroopssyria2.jpg

(Photo credit: USA Today)

The Syrian Oil Ministry released a statement on 9 August accusing US forces occupying Syria of being responsible for the theft of most of the country’s oil.

“The amount of oil production during the first half of 2022 amounted to some 14.5 million barrels, with an average daily production of 80.3 thousand barrels, of which 14.2 thousand are delivered daily to refineries,” the oil ministry’s statement said.

The statement went on to say that “US occupation forces and their mercenaries,” referring to the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), “steal up to 66,000 barrels every single day from the fields occupied in the eastern region,” amounting to around 83 percent of Syria’s daily oil production.

According to the ministry’s data, the Syrian oil sector has incurred losses nearing “about 105 billion dollars since the beginning of the war until the middle of this year” as a result of the US oil theft campaign.

Additionally, the statement added that alongside the financial losses incurred by the oil sector were “losses of life, including 235 martyrs, 46 injured and 112 kidnapped.”

On 10 August, footage filmed by a Russian attack helicopter was released on social media, showing a convoy of trucks operated by the US military, smuggling stolen oil destined for Iraq, out of Raqqah.

Recently, the US army, which currently occupies northeast Syria, has been consistently looting the country’s oil and smuggling it into their bases in Iraq through several illegal border crossings.

Local sources in Syria’s Hasakah governorate reported on 6 August that the US army looted and smuggled dozens of oil tankers out of the country, making it the second stolen oil shipment by the US that week.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why expensive gasoline is here to stay

July 30, 2022

Why expensive gasoline is here to stay

“Future presidents and administrations are going to be absolutely bedeviled by high gasoline prices.”

A gasoline price board is shown at a gas station.

In the short term, expectations for a drop in gasoline demand have yet to emerge. | Jeff Chiu/AP Photo

The political pain that high gasoline prices have inflicted on President Joe Biden offers a potential warning to future presidents: It’s likely to happen to you, too.

The reason: The United States’ capacity for refining oil into gasoline is declining, a trend that appears irreversible — for reasons that include climate change. But the nation’s appetite for fuel is holding firm, no matter all the predictions of a future filled with electric cars.

The result is a domestic gasoline supply on a hair trigger, making the nation more vulnerable to fuel panics that would resemble last year’s hacker-driven shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline, while feeding inflation and angering voters. Since early 2020, the United States’ fuel-producing capacity has fallen by nearly 1 million barrels per day, or about 5 percent.

“We are going to be operating a shrunken, old and in-need-of-repair refining system a lot harder,” said Bob McNally, head of consulting firm Rapidan Energy and former senior director for international energy on the National Security Council in the George W. Bush administration. “Future presidents and administrations are going to be absolutely bedeviled by high gasoline prices.”

Republicans have pummeled the Biden administration for record high gasoline prices, blaming the jump on the president’s focus on climate change and his promises to reduce the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels. But instead of being a modern outlier, the high prices may signal a new norm that future residents of the White House of either party will have to face down.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Running on Empty, Part V

July 23, 2022

Running on Empty, Part V

When the Dollar is Broken, What Does One Do to Not Go Broke? (Guest Post)

Gary Brode of Deep Knowledge Investing was kind enough to share my series Running on Empty with his readers. This afternoon I’ve invited him to offer his thoughts for my readers, focusing on the implications that Running on Empty has for investments in the years ahead. After you’ve finished here, be sure to check out Gary’s own Deep Knowledge Investing for more insight.

Overview

Contemplations on the Tree of Woe wrote Running on Empty, a three-part analysis of the petrodollar system that was so full of woe that it ran a full four parts. That’s 33% more woe than had been promised. Because we thought the series represented the kind of deep-dive analysis that we admire, we asked the Tree if we could print Part I as a guest post. You can find that piece along with links to parts II, III, and IV here.

Part I of the series explained the origins of the petrodollar system, and noted that it’s the first reserve currency not backed by gold or other precious metals. We’ve made similar comments about the disaster started when US banks in conjunction with the government created the Federal Reserve, and then took the US off the gold standard in 1971.

Part II of the series explained how the system enabled the Federal Reserve to print increasing amounts of currency and enabled Congress to run increasing deficits. Because the US could print dollars for free, we did so and sent them overseas in exchange for foreign goods. This hollowed out the manufacturing base of the US and led to a decline in living standards for many Americans at the same time that the people decrying inequality were pursuing policies that led to more of it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In Ukraine, a proxy war on the planet

July 22, 2022

In Ukraine, a proxy war on the planet

As the Ukraine crisis causes global havoc, US officials won’t negotiate with Russia to end the fighting — and are even willing to “countenance” mounting hunger as a result.

(Marine Corps Cpl. Jailine Alicea-Santiago / media.defense.gov)

In 2015, one year after a US-backed coup ushered in a US-friendly, far-right-dominated government in Kiev, University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer issued a stark warning. “The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path,” he said. “And the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked.”

Mearsheimer’s cause for concern was what he identified as a US-led campaign to convert Ukraine into a NATO proxy on Russia’s border. The events since have proved him to be both tragically prescient, and understated.

In using Ukraine to “fight Russia over there”, as Adam Schiff put it in January 2020, the US has not only sacrificed countless Ukrainian lives. Four months into Russia’s invasion, the Biden administration is signaling its willingness to sacrifice the rest of the planet, particularly the most vulnerable areas.

In an article headlined “Ukraine War Pushes Millions of the World’s Poorest Toward Starvation,” the Wall Street Journal summarizes the impact of the Ukraine war on global hunger:

The World Food Program says that increases in the cost of food and fuel since March have pushed an additional 47 million people into acute food insecurity, when a person is no longer able to consume enough calories to sustain her life and livelihood, taking the total to 345 million people world-wide. Of those, some 50 million are living on the edge of famine.

In the energy crisis that has followed Russia’s invasion, the New York Times adds, “the poorest and most vulnerable” have felt “the harshest effects.” In Asia and Africa, the International Energy Agency recently warned that “higher energy prices have meant an additional 90 million people in Asia and Africa do not have access to electricity.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US Consumer Prices Soared In June, Americans’ Real Wages Fall For 15th Straight Month

July 13, 2022

US Consumer Prices Soared In June, Americans’ Real Wages Fall For 15th Straight Month

With The White House having desperately tried to front-run this morning’s inflation print, analysts were expecting a jump higher led by food and energy costs. They were right in direction but it was way worse as the headline CPI soared 9.1% YoY (vs 8.8% exp and 8.6% prior)…

Source: Bloomberg

The 1.3% MoM rise is the hottest since 2005…

Source: Bloomberg

…and the 9.1% YoY is the hottest since 1981.

Source: Bloomberg

Goods inflation is slowing but services costs are soaring at their fastest since 1991…

Source: Bloomberg

Under the hood, energy costs dominated the rise, but the rent index rose 0.8 percent over the month, the largest monthly increase since April 1986.

The motor vehicle maintenance and repair index increased 2.0 percent in June, its largest increase since September 1974.

The index for dental services increased 1.9 percent in June, the largest monthly change ever recorded for that series, which dates to 1995.

Focusing on the roof over your head factor, shelter inflation +5.61%, up from 5.61%, highest since 1992, and rent inflation +5.78%, up from 5.22%, highest since 1986

Real wages fell for the 15th month in a row… (Americans’ purchasing power domestically fell by a record 3.6% YoY in June)

Developing…

Finally, the S&P has ended the day lower on 5 of the last 6 CPI days…

Trade accordingly.

Running on Empty, Part II

June 2, 2022

Running on Empty, Part II

How the Petrodollar Poisoned Foreign Policy with Financial Profiteering

Welcome to Part II of Running on Empty, my three-part analysis of the Petrodollar system. Part I of this series explained what the petrodollar system is, how it came to be, and what its financial effects have been on the United States. In Part II, I’ll explain the petrodollar’s implications for foreign policy. In Part III, I’ll show how those implications paved the way for the Russo-Ukraine War, and why that’s causing the system to break down.

America’s Chief Export is the US Dollar

As explained in the previous installment, the petrodollar system is based on an agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia. Under the terms of the deal, the US guarantees the security of Saudi Arabia and in exchange, Saudi Arabia guarantees that all petroleum is sold by OPEC for US dollars, with the US dollars re-invested into America via petrodollar recycling. The result: Since everyone needs petroleum, everyone needs US dollars. Oil replaces gold as the hard backing for the dollar. 1

Since the petrodollar system was put in place, the US has enjoyed a comparative advantage in manufacturing currency that no other nation enjoys. Under conditions of free trade, a country produces and exports more of a good for which it a comparative advantage, and produces less and imports more of the goods for which it doesn’t. And that’s what has happened: Since the petrodollar system was put in place in 1973, America has produced more and more dollars and produced less and less of everything else. The dollar is today our nation’s #1 export.

How large is the circulation of US dollars? As of April 2022, the American money supply, which economists call M2, stands at $21,728 Billion Dollars. M2 includes three types of money:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Chris Hedges: Waltzing to Armageddon

March 20, 2022

Chris Hedges: Waltzing to Armageddon

The Dr. Strangeloves, like zombies rising from the mass graves they created around the globe, are once again stoking new campaigns of industrial mass slaughter.

Bus burning on a road from Kharkiv to Kiev as Russia invades Ukraine on Feb. 24. (Yan Boechat/VOA)

The Cold War, from 1945 to 1989, was a wild Bacchanalia for arms manufacturers, the Pentagon, the C.I.A., the diplomats who played one country off another on the world’s chess board, and the global corporations able to loot and pillage by equating predatory capitalism with freedom. In the name of national security, the Cold Warriors, many of them self-identified liberals, demonized labor, independent media, human rights organizations, and those who opposed the permanent war economy and the militarization of American society as soft on communism.

That is why they have resurrected it.

The decision to spurn the possibility of peaceful coexistence with Russia at the end of the Cold War is one of the most egregious crimes of the late 20^th century. The danger of provoking Russia was universally understood with the collapse of the Soviet Union, including by political elites as diverse as Henry Kissinger and George F. Kennan, who called the expansion of NATO into Central Europe “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”

This provocation, a violation of a promise not to expand NATO beyond the borders of a unified Germany, has seen Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia inducted into the Western military alliance.

This betrayal was compounded by a decision to station NATO troops, including thousands of U.S. troops, in Eastern Europe, another violation of an agreement made by Washington with Moscow…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Russian Propaganda” Means Disputing US Propaganda

February 16, 2022

“Russian Propaganda” Means Disputing US Propaganda

Listen to a reading of this article:

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The Associated Press has published yet another article based on unevidenced assertions by anonymous government officials about the scary horrifying frightening Russian menace, this time to accuse another media outlet of promoting propaganda. Without a trace of irony.

“U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday accused a conservative financial news website with a significant American readership of amplifying Kremlin propaganda and alleged five media outlets targeting Ukrainians have taken direction from Russian spies,” AP reports. “The officials said Zero Hedge, which has 1.2 million Twitter followers, published articles created by Moscow-controlled media that were then shared by outlets and people unaware of their nexus to Russian intelligence. The officials did not say whether they thought Zero Hedge knew of any links to spy agencies and did not allege direct links between the website and Russia.”

“The officials briefed The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence sources,” AP adds, repeating the refrain we’re all familiar with now which is always used to justify a complete absence of evidence or accountability for incendiary claims about governments the United States doesn’t like.

You have to scroll down to the eleventh paragraph for some examples of the “Kremlin propaganda” that Zero Hedge is accused of “amplifying”. These turn out to be entirely innocuous objections to western imperial narratives that were “written by people affiliated with the Strategic Culture Foundation,” an outlet the Biden administration sanctioned last year “for allegedly taking part in Russia’s interference in the 2020 U.S. election.”

“Recent articles listed as authored by the foundation and published by Zero Hedge include those with the headlines: ‘NATO Sliding Towards War Against Russia In Ukraine,’ ‘Americans Need A Conspiracy Theory They Can All Agree On’ and ‘Theater Of Absurd… Pentagon Demands Russia Explain Troops On Russian Soil,’” writes AP’s Nomaan Merchant.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What Has Been Asserted Without Evidence May Be Dismissed Without Evidence

February 2, 2022

What Has Been Asserted Without Evidence May Be Dismissed Without Evidence

Listen to a reading of this article:

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We’re being bashed in the face with western propaganda about the Ukraine situation with increasing forcefulness. Every day now we’re seeing things like “analysts” claiming Putin definitely wants a large-scale war, very familiar-looking puff pieces about Ukrainian guerrilla freedom fighters based on claims by anonymous intelligence sources, think pieces on why Americans should all care about Ukrainian freedom from Kremlin tyranny, and, of course, a lot of entirely unsubstantiated assertions about what Russia is doing.

Despite the British government’s evidence-free claim that Russia was planning to install a puppet regime in Ukraine being debunked within hours and then shown to be a US intelligence claim dishonestly packaged as a British one days later, mass media outlets still to this day repeat the allegation like it’s a real thing. Despite the entirely unevidenced US government claim that Russia was plotting to stage a false flag attack in eastern Ukraine failing to prove true in subsequent weeks, US Senator Bob Menendez went on CNN over the weekend and declared that this false flag which never actually, physically happened was grounds to sanction Russia effective immediately.

The US political/media class is just saying whatever it wants about what Russia is doing and planning to do with no regard for facts or evidence. Nothing is too cartoonishly hysterical; in fact the more clickbaity and attention-grabbing the better. They feel free to scattergun these outlandish claims willy nilly all over our information ecosystem because five years of Russia hysteria have taught them that they will suffer exactly zero professional consequences when they are proven wrong, and that they will in fact see their stars rise as a reward for advancing the interests of the US empire.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

False Flags Suddenly No Longer A Crazy Conspiracy Theory

January 16, 2022

False Flags Suddenly No Longer A Crazy Conspiracy Theory

Listen to a reading of this article:

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In a drastic pivot from typical denunciations of false flag operations as conspiratorial nonsense that don’t exist outside the demented imagination of Alex Jones, the US political/media class is proclaiming with one voice that Russia is currently orchestrating just such an operation to justify an invasion of Ukraine.

“As part of its plans, Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating a pretext for invasion,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Friday. “We have information that indicates Russia has already pre-positioned a group of operatives to conduct a false flag operation in eastern Ukraine.”

“Without getting into too much detail, we do have information that indicates that Russia is already working actively to create a pretext for a potential invasion, for a move on Ukraine,” Pentagon Spokesperson John Kirby told the press on Friday. “In fact, we have information that they’ve pre-positioned a group of operatives, to conduct what we call a false flag operation, an operation designed to look like an attack on them or their people, or Russian speaking people in Ukraine, as an excuse to go in.”

The US government has substantiated these incendiary claims with the usual amount of evidence, by which I of course mean jack dick nothingballs. The mass media have not been dissuaded from reporting on this issue by the complete absence of any evidence that this Kremlin false flag plot is in fact a real thing that actually happened, their journalistic standards completely satisfied by the fact that their government instructed them to report it. Countless articles and news segments containing the phrase “false flag” have been blaring throughout all the most influential news outlets in the western world without the slightest hint of skepticism.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

China Set To Release Crude From Strategic Reserve In Early February

January 16, 2022

China Set To Release Crude From Strategic Reserve In Early February

China has agreed with the United States to release crude from its SPR around the Lunar New Year holiday on February 1
The volume of the release may depend on actual crude prices

China has agreed with the United States to release crude from its strategic reserves around the Lunar New Year holiday on February 1, as part of the broader U.S.-led effort for strategic releases to bring oil prices down, sources with knowledge of the talks told Reuters on Friday.

“China agreed to release a relatively bigger amount if oil is above $85 a barrel, and a smaller volume if oil stays near the $75 level,” one of the sources told Reuters, without offering additional details about the amount to be released.

China will be celebrating the Lunar New Year with an official holiday between January 31 and February 6, and the crude oil release is set to take place around that time, Reuters’ sources said.

U.S. President Joe Biden said at the end of November that the Department of Energy would release 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in a bid to lower high gasoline prices in a coordinated effort with other major oil-consuming nations. The SPR release from the United States will be carried out in parallel with other major energy-consuming nations, including China, India, Japan, South Korea, and the UK, the White House said at the time.

A day later, China said that the volume of the expected Chinese release of crude from its state reserves would be decided according to the country’s actual needs, and declined to comment if it would be releasing crude in the coordinated effort led by the United States.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

America’s Attila the Hun moment

January 14, 2022

America’s Attila the Hun moment

In the year 435 AD, after several years of endless menacing from the nomadic Hun tribe, the Roman Empire was ready to make a deal.

The Huns were fairly new on the continent; they had originally come from central Eurasia as recently as 370 AD. Yet in the span of a few short decades, they quickly established themselves as the dominant tribe in Eastern Europe, conquering vast territories and threatening the Roman Empire.

The Empire was a pitiful shell of its former self at that point. So Emperor Theodosius II sent one of his generals to meet with the Huns in the city of Margus, now called Pozarevac in modern day Serbia.

The leader of the Huns was a short, flat-nosed warrior in his mid 30s named Attila who famously remained on his horse during the entire meeting with the Roman envoys.

Attila was cunning, and he knew the Romans were weak. So he intentionally made ridiculous demands.

Among them, he told the Romans he would leave them alone if they paid a tribute of 700 pounds of gold per year (worth about $13.3 million in today’s money).

This was a significant sum back then, especially given that the Roman Empire had lost its most productive gold mines in Hispania to the Visigoths and Vandals in the early 400s.

(The region of Andalusia in modern Spain is actually named for the Vandal tribe, derived from the Arabic word al-Andalus.)

In addition to the money, though, Attila also demanded that the Romans could not enter into any alliance with any other tribes if the Huns deemed them to be a threat.

In making this demand, Attila was essentially giving himself control of Rome’s foreign policy and military affairs.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US Consumer Prices Soar At Fastest In 39 Years, Real Wages Tumble For 9th Straight Month

January 12, 2022

US Consumer Prices Soar At Fastest In 39 Years, Real Wages Tumble For 9th Straight Month

Consensus was convinced – with barely any outliers – that this morning’s consumer price index would print with an astonishing 7.0% YoY (and notably 7 of the last 9 releases have come in above consensus) and they nailed it with the 7% print at its highest since June 1982 (when ET was launched in the US)…

Source: Bloomberg

That is the 19th straight monthly rise in headline CPI and Core CPI also surged to its highest since Feb 1991 (printing hotter than expected at +5.5% YoY)…

Source: Bloomberg

Under the hood, commodities, shelter, and new-and-used cars and trucks saw prices jump the most. Energy actually saw a modest 0.4% retracement (that will not be the case in January)…

Source: Bloomberg

The cost of putting a roof over your head is accelerating once again. Shelter inflation rises to 4.13% Y/Y from 3.84%, the highest since Feb 2007…

In fact, while Services inflation rose to +3.7% – its highest since Jan 2007 – Goods inflation soared 10.7% YoY – its highest since May 1975…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, and perhaps most importantly for Main Street, real average hourly earnings fell (down 2.4% YoY) for the 9th straight month…

Source: Bloomberg

So the next time a politician tries to tell you to be grateful that your wages are going up or you can move to a new higher paying job, just remind him that the surge in the cost of living is outpacing wage gains, thanks to The Fed’s money-largesse and Congress’ lockdown policies and helicopter money have crushed the quality of life for millions.

US to Help Ukraine Strengthen Border With Russia, Belarus

December 30, 2021

US to Help Ukraine Strengthen Border With Russia, Belarus

The US will pay about $20 million for video recording systems, drones, and equipment for border guards

Ukraine’s border service said on Tuesday that the US will finance projects to strengthen the country’s borders with Russia and Belarus.

The border service said the US will spend about $20 million to purchase video recording systems, drones, and personal protective equipment for Ukraine’s border guards.

The new project comes as tensions are high between the US and Russia over Ukraine and Western military activity in the region. Moscow views US support for Ukraine as a provocation and is seeking guarantees that Kyiv won’t join NATO.

Since 2014, the US has provided Ukraine with over $2 billion in military aid, including Javelin anti-tank missiles. The 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, which President Biden signed into law Monday, allocates $300 million for more military aid to Ukraine.

The US financing of Ukraine’s border projects also comes after the EU has accused Belarus of weaponizing migrants by luring them in from war-torn countries in the Middle East and trying to push them into Poland and other neighboring countries. Belarus denies the accusation, but the US and some of its allies have hit Minsk with sanctions over the issue.

Russia Advises NATO to (Finally) Honor Its ‘Not One Inch Eastward’ Pledge

December 26, 2021

Unlike in 1990, Russia has many options left to itself if NATO ignores its proposal for peace and continues to advance on the former Soviet space.

As NATO continues its mission creep inexorably towards the Russian border, Moscow issued a security proposal to the Western military bloc, which is in fact nothing less than an ultimatum: halt any further eastward military advances or Russia will be forced to act on behalf of its national interests.

The date February 9, 1990 will be forever remembered among historians as a ‘day of infamy’ as far as NATO-Russia relations are concerned. That was the date when U.S. Secretary of State James Baker famously assured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, during glasnost-era talks on German unification that the Western military bloc would not advance “one inch eastward” towards Russia’s borders.

The level of deception contained in that empty pledge is easily discernible today as NATO membership has exploded since the Cold War times to 30 member states. In 2004, the former Soviet states of Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined NATO at the 2004 Istanbul summit; Albania and Croatia became members in 2009, while North Macedonia joined in 2020.

Already, the Western military bloc abuts Russia’s northwestern border in the Baltic States of Latvia and Estonia. But now with the political tinderbox known as Ukraine actively seeking membership in NATO, Moscow has produced what amounts to an ultimatum, where the carrot is simply the preservation of peace among the world’s nuclear superpowers.

Will the US-led organization bite? On the question of NATO, the draft agreement on security states that “The United States of America shall take measures to prevent further eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and deny accession to the Alliance to the former USSR republics.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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