YIN YANG ZONE: June 2016

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

On the Road to United Eurasia by Pepe Escobar

Review: Compelling narrative about Chiang, Mao, birth of modern China

Brexit: Russia’s comfort level rises, US loses Eurasian plot BY M.K. BHADRAKUMAR

oil crashes on Brexit, Ohio output data, oil imports at a 42 month high, record gasoline output & usage, etal

oil prices crashed along with global financial markets on Friday following the British vote on Thursday to exit the European Union (widely referred to as "Brexit"), which is widely expected to precipitate a period of political instability in Europe...Conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron, who had campaigned for remaining in the EU, submitted his resignation; British Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn also faces a no-confidence vote, as both major parties had campaigned to remain in the EU...in response to the British vote, populist parties on the left and right across Europe are calling for referendums in their own countries, with speculation that France, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland and Hungary might also vote to leave the EU, effectively rebalkanizing the continent....although markets in the US and Britain recovered to end down less than 4%, European markets were hit the hardest, with German and French indexes down 7% and 8% respectively and markets in the southern tier of European countries down as much as 15%...however, since it isn't our purpose here to discuss European markets or politics, we'll refer you to Brexit: What Happens Now? from the BBC for a discussion of what steps the British might take next, and to Brexit: Pulling the Signal Out of the Noise from Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, who entertains possibilities outside of the most obvious, and who also includes exit polling results...Yves includes graphics from "Lord Ashcroft Polls How the United Kingdom voted on Thursday... and why" which are better viewed on the original site, where there are also several more graphics detailing the demographics and the politics of the British vote...for our purposes, we'll start with a look at how oil prices reacted to this political upheaval...

the above graph comes from FXCM, a mostly foreign exchange (forex) online trading website, and it shows the prices that US WTI crude exchanged at through their online exchange, every hour, 24 hours a day, over the last 5 days...since they're providing the trading service, the prices shown aren't to the penny the same as those seen at the NYMEX, but they track them pretty closely (otherwise traders would play one exchange against the other), and they also trade oil after the regular exchanges are closed...in this candlestick style graph, there's a red or green bar for every hour over this period, and each bar shows the price of oil at the start and end of the hour indicated; when the price of oil went down in the given hour, the bar is red, and when the price closed higher at the end of the hour, the bar is green...note that most of these red and green "candlesticks" also have light grey "wicks" on either end, which represent the range of prices outside of the beginning and ending price that oil traded at over that one hour period...thus we can see that oil prices rose as high as $50.50 a barrel on Wednesday morning, and topped $50 a barrel again late Thursday, before the first results from the British voting came in...as the vote results became clear, oil prices then fell more than 6% over the next 6 hours, trading below $47 a barrel for a short period before buying resumed, which pushed the price back up to $48...oil then traded in a range between $47.30 to $48.40 a barrel the rest of Friday, and ended the period shown here at $47.58 a barrel (this graph is from Friday midnight, thus including after hours online trading; oil officially closed the week at $47.64 a barrel on the NY Mercantile Exchange)

it's important to recognize that there was no fundamental change in the supply of or the demand for oil and its products that drove that price change, or a similar drop in the price of the international benchmark Brent oil over the same period...those with cars in Great Britain and Europe will be driving them next week as they were the week before this vote, and European industries consuming petrochemicals will continue to operate...it may even take a year or two before the political ramifications of Thursday's vote are sorted out, much less begin to affect the economies in those countries...with this crash as a backdrop, however, the coming week will likely be telling a tale about the ultimate trajectory of oil prices for the months to come; if oil prices stay at these levels or even drift lower, it will be a pretty strong indication that the $50 a barrel level will be the limiting price for some time to come; however, if oil prices recover from these losses and push back over $50 a barrel again, then they've beaten the panic that caused this week's price crash, and might well move higher the rest of the summer, even as US drilling activity resumes...

Ohio’s Oil and Natural Gas Production, 1st Quarter 2016

on Friday of last week (June 17th), the ODNR released the 1st quarter oil and gas production report for Ohio's horizontal shale wells; the complete spreadsheet with details on oil, natural gas and brine output for each of the 1,302 Ohio wells that reported production in the quarter is here (Excel file)... checking for producing shale wells in nearby counties, we find there are 4 in Portage country, 4 in Trumbull, and 8 in Mahoning, with none in Ashtabula, Lake, Geauga, Cuyahoga, or Summit...more importantly, at a time when we know that production from other shale formations nationally has been going down, Ohio's production of oil & gas is dramatically higher...oil production in the 1st quarter of 2016 amounted to 5,485,854 barrels, 24% more than the 4,432,188 barrels Ohio produced in the first quarter of 2015...meanwhile, Ohio's output of natural gas totaled 329,537,838 mcf (thousand cubic feet) in the first quarter of this year; that was 80% more than was produced during the first quarter of 2015...those increases have occurred even as drilling operations in the state have been cut by 2/3rds ...Ohio averaged 45 rigs operating in the state in January of 2015; that fell to average 31 rigs by March of that year...in 2016, we started the year with just 14 rigs operating, and that fell to 10 by the end of March...that fits the description of Utica output as described by drillers at the annual Developing Unconventionals conference in downtown Pittsburgh this week, where the drillers were saying that one deep Utica shale well has the potential to produce as much natural gas as three wells drilled into the Marcellus layer above it...

if you recall when we looked at the new maps of the Utica shale from the EIA in early May, they indicated that the largest number of Utica wells in Ohio had been drilled in Columbiana, Carroll, and Harrison counties; or around the point where West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio meet, where the Ohio river becomes the southeast border of the state; that drilling was primarily done by Chesapeake when it was being run by Aubrey McClendon, and Chesapeake still leads Ohio with 614 producing wells in the state…however. this report indicates that 9 out the 1st quarter's top ten gas producing wells were located in Belmont county, just to the south of those three counties...indeed, even as Carroll county with 429 wells still has the most producing wells in any county in Ohio, their gas production was at 56,741,243 mcf in the 1st quarter, 43% less than the 99,235,384 mcf of natural gas produced in Belmont county, which has just 175 wells...that's enabled Gulfport Energy, which has focused on Belmont county, to approach the production levels of Chesapeake....and now Monroe county, with just 136 wells, has moved up to the 2nd most productive county in the state, as they produced 63,316,436 mcf of natural gas during the first quarter...Pennsylvania's Consol Energy, which used to be called Consolidated Coal, has sold off it's remaining coal mines in West Virginia and now intends to focus on drilling for gas on their acreage in Monroe County, all of which tells us that the most productive areas of the Utica are turning out to be to the south of those counties where drilling has been concentrated in recent years..

The Latest Oil Stats from the EIA

this week's oil data from the US Energy Information Administration indicated another drop in our production of crude oil, a spike in our oil imports, an increase in refining to near seasonally normal levels, and record levels of both gasoline production and gasoline consumption... however, the crude oil fudge factor included on the weekly U.S. Petroleum Balance Sheet (line 13) was a minus 253,000 barrels per day, which means that 253,000 barrels of oil per day that we appeared to have produced or imported last week did not show up in the final consumption or inventory figures...that follows an adjustment of +335,000 barrels per day during the prior week, a swing of 588,000 barrels per day, which is certainly enough to call into question most of the weekly changes we'll review today...

in the stat which varies the least, and is hence probably the most accurate estimate, the EIA reported that our field production of crude oil fell by 39,000 barrels per day, from an average of 8,716,000 barrels per day during the week ending June 10th to an average of 8,677,000 barrels per day during the week ending June 17th...that was our lowest oil output since the 1st week of September 2014 and 9.7% lower than the 9,604,000 barrels we produced during the week ending June 19th last year, which week was close to the record 9,610,000 barrel per day oil production that we saw during the week ending June 5th of 2015...our oil production has now been down 19 out of the last 21 weeks and is 542,000 barrels per day lower than we were producing at the beginning of this year...

at the same time, our imports of crude oil jumped by 817,000 barrels per day to average 8,439,000 barrels per day during the week ending June 17th, up from the average of 7,622,000 barrels per day we were importing during the week ending June 10th....that topped this year's previous high of 8,384,000 barrels per day that we imported during the week ending March 18th and was the most oil we've imported in any week since the week ending December 7th of 2012....while this week's imports were 24.7% more than the 6,765,000 barrels of oil per day we imported during the week ending June 19th a year ago, oil imports are typically volatile week to week, so the EIA's weekly Petroleum Status Report (62 pp pdf) reports imports as a 4 week moving average...that metric showed that the 4 week average of our imports has now risen to the 7.9 million barrel per day level, which is 13.6% above the same four-week period last year... ..

meanwhile, U.S. refineries’ crude oil usage averaged 16,505,000 barrels of per day barrels during the week ending June 17th, which was 188,000 barrels per day more than the 16,317,000 barrels of crude per day they processed during the week ending June 10th, as the US refinery utilization rate rose to 91.3% during the week, from 90.2% of capacity the prior week...this week's crude usage was just a small fraction lower than the 16,532,000 barrels per day US refineries used during the week ending June 19th last year, when US refineries were operating at 94.0% of capacity...

with more oil being refined, our refinery production of gasoline rose by 582,000 barrels per day, as gasoline output averaged 10,289,000 barrels per day during the week ending June 17th, which was up from the average of 9,707,000 barrels per day of gasoline produced during the week ending June 10th and a new all time weekly high for US gasoline production...that was also 3.6% more than the 9,934,000 barrels of gasoline per day we were producing during the same week last year...however, our refinery output of distillate fuels (diesel fuel and heat oil) slipped at the same time, falling by 28,000 barrels per day to 4,956,000 barrels per day during the week ending June 17th...that was also 14,000 barrels per day below our distillates production of 4,970,000 barrels per day during the week ending June 19th of last year, when distillates inventories were quite a bit tighter than today...

with the record output of gasoline, our gasoline inventories rose by 627,000 barrels to 237,631,000 barrels as of June 17th, the second small increase in the past 3 weeks, at a time of year when our gasoline supplies are usually being used up....that was as the amount of gasoline supplied to US markets rose by 53,000 barrels per day to 9,815,000 barrels per day, 1.7% higher than the 9,655,000 barrel per day consumption during the week ending June 19th last year, and a new record for US gasoline consumption...also adding to gasoline inventories was a 129,000 barrel per day jump in our gasoline imports to 876,000 barrels per day, which were still lower than the 896,000 barrels of gasoline we imported during the same week a year earlier...as a result, this week's gasoline inventories were 8.8% higher than the 218,494,000 barrels of gasoline that we had stored on June 19th last year, and 10.5% higher than the 214,977,000 barrels of gasoline we had stored on June 20th of 2014... thus our gasoline supplies are still categorized by the EIA as "well above the upper limit of the average range" for this time of year..

at the same time, our distillate fuel inventories also rose by a nominal 151,000 barrels to end the week at 152,314,000 barrels, as distillates were added to storage on the east and west coasts and withdrawn elsewhere...since our distillate inventories have been well above normal since the El Nino winter reduced US heat oil consumption, our distillate inventories are still 12.5% higher than the 135,428,000 barrels of distillates we had stored at the same weekend last year, and 26.3% higher than our distillates supplies as of June 20th 2014, and thus they're also characterized as "well above the upper limit of the average range" for this time of year...

finally, even with the disappearance of 253,000 barrels per day in this week's EIA data, that big spike in imports limited our withdrawal of oil from our stocks of crude oil in storage to 917,000 barrels, under a million for the 2nd week in a row, at a time of year when are stored supplies of oil are usually being used up twice as fast....thus our oil inventory level of 531,543,000 barrels on June 17th was 14.6% higher than the 462,993,000 barrels of oil we had stored as of June 19th, 2015, and 36.7% higher than the 388,090,000 barrels of oil we had stored on June 20th of 2014...with our oil inventories continuing that much higher than the seasonal records we set every week in 2015, it goes without saying that our crude oil supplies are also "well above the upper limit of the average range" for this time of year..."

This Week's Rig Count

drilling activity slowed this week for the first time in four weeks as oil drillers pulled back while gas drilling expanded for the 3rd week in a row.....Baker Hughes reported that the total count of active rotary rigs running in the US fell by 3 rigs to 421 rigs as of June 24th, which was also down from the 868 rigs that were working as of the June 26th report last year, and down from the recent high of 1929 rigs that were in use the week before the OPEC meeting on Thanksgiving 2014...the number of rigs drilling for oil fell by 7 rigs to 330, which was also down from the 628 oil directed rigs that were in use a year earlier, and down from the recent high of 1609 oil rigs that were working on October 10, 2014, while the count of drilling rigs targeting natural gas formations rose by 5 rigs to 90, up from the record low of 82 three weeks ago, but down from the 228 natural gas rigs that were in use a year ago, and down from the recent high of 1,606 rigs that were drilling for natural gas on August 29th, 2008...there was also still one rig running this week that was classified as miscellaneous, unchanged from last week but down from the 3 miscellaneous rigs that were operating a year ago....

of the net change in drilling, rigs that had been drilling both offshore and on inland waters were shut down this week...a drilling platform that had been deployed in the Gulf of Mexico offshore of Louisiana was taken out of service this week, which cut the Gulf of Mexico active rig count down to 20 rigs, which was down from 28 a year ago...that also reduced the total offshore count down to 21, as there still is an offshore platform working off the Cook Inlet in Alaska....at the same time, there were two rigs removed that had been drilling through inland lakes in southern Louisiana, which cut the inland waters rig count down to 3, which was down from the 7 rigs that were deployed drilling on inland waters at the end of the same week last year...

the number of working horizontal drilling rigs decreased for the first time in four weeks, as their count fell by 1 to 325 rigs this week, which was also down from the 654 horizontal rigs that were in use on June 26th of last year, and down from the record of 1372 horizontal rigs that were in use on November 21st of 2014...at the same time, a net of two directional rigs were also pulled down, leaving 43 directional rigs still working, which was down from the 98 directional rigs that were drilling at this time last year....meanwhile, the vertical rig count was unchanged at 53 rigs, which was still down from the 107 vertical rigs that were drilling in the US during the same week last year...

for the details on which states and which shale basins saw changes in drilling activity this past week, we will again include a screenshot of that part of the rig count summary from Baker Hughes, which shows those changes...the first table below shows weekly and annual rig count changes by state, and the second table shows weekly and annual rig count changes for the major US oil and gas basins...in both tables, the first column shows the active rig count for each state or basin as of June 24th, the second column shows the change in the number of working rigs from the prior week, the third column shows last weeks rig count, the 4th column shows the change in the number of rigs running from the same week a year ago, and the 5th column shows the number of rigs that were drilling at the end of that week a year ago, which in this case was June 26th of 2015: :

from this we see that Louisiana, where 5 rigs were shut down, was the big winner this week, as not only did they see the offshore and inland waters drilling rigs shut down, but they also saw 2 land based rigs in the southern part of the state idled...Oklahoma saw 4 rigs shut down, and it's clear from the basin count table that 3 of those had been working in the Cana Woodford and another was in the Ardmore Woodford...on the other hand, Texas had a net of 3 rigs added this week, the 4th week in a row they led those states increasing their activity...over the month of June, the Texas rig count has climbed from 176 to 194, thus accounting for the entirety of the national increase in the rig count from the record low of 404 rigs active that we saw during the weeks ending May 20th and May 27th...

more here...

What Brexit Means For the US

Thursday, June 23, 2016

The UK has left the EU building.

Will/should Cameron resign?

IMHO
No refugee crisis in the UK
No exit.

Who will be next to take the EU exit?

Most of the world's millionaires live in Asia

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Hillary 'The Moralist'

Hillary 'The Feminist'

Sunday, June 19, 2016

oil rallies on murder of British MP, gasoline consumption at a record high, rig count up again

after falling from 2016 highs above $51 on Thursday and Friday of last week, US oil prices continued to drift lower each day early this week, dropping to close at $48.88 a barrel on Monday, $48.49 a barrel on Tuesday, and then $48.01 on Wednesday...however, there weren't any changes in oil fundamentals from the prior weeks that drove the change from rising to falling prices, rather, the most common reason given for the downturn was market fears that Britain would leave the European Union, possibly precipitating a global recession...(on June 23rd, British citizens are due to vote on whether to leave the EU or not; up until last week, polls had indicated they would stay; this week, the "leave" voters swung to a 10 point majority)...on Thursday, heightened fears of the repercussions of an EU breakup hit markets worldwide, with a flight to US assets driving the dollar up and oil down, as oil fell another 4% to close at $46.21 a barrel...however, on Thursday afternoon, pro-European British lawmaker Jo Cox was shot and stabbed by a crazed man yelling "Britain first", which had the perverse effect of turning global markets around, as traders believed her murder would lessen the popularity of the separatist movement (a writer at the Wall Street Journal even penned an op-ed defending the stock market's celebration of Ms Cox's death)...with the British campaigning on the EU referendum thus suspended, global markets and oil rallied on Friday as fears of a British exit subsided, and oil regained most of the previous day's losses, to close the week at $47.98 a barrel..

The Latest Oil Stats from the EIA

this week's oil data from the US Energy Information Administration indicated a modest drop in our oil output, a relatively small drop in our oil imports, a corresponding drop in the amount of the oil that we refined, and a relatively small drawdown from our stored oil inventories...however, the crude oil fudge factor included on the weekly U.S. Petroleum Balance Sheet (line 13) was + 335,000 barrels per day, which means that 335,000 more barrels per day showed up in our final consumption and inventory figures than were accounted for by our production or import figures, meaning one or several of this week's metrics were incorrect by that amount, likely due to errors in reporting or gathering that data...

so, given the data that was reported this week, it appears that our field production of crude oil fell by 29,000 barrels per day, from an average of 8,745,000 barrels per day during the week ending June 3rd to an average of 8,716,000 barrels per day during the week ending June 10th...that followed the 10,000 barrel per day increase of last week, which had been only the second increase in 20 weeks, and which now looks more like an outlier than the beginning of a trend....this week's oil output was 9.1% lower than the 9,589,000 barrels per day we were producing during the week ending June 12 last year, and down by 9.3% from our record 9,610,000 barrel per day oil production that we saw during the week ending June 5th of 2015...

at the same time, our imports of crude oil fell by 83,000 barrels per day to average 7,622,000 barrels per day during the week ending June 10th, down from the average of 7,705,000 barrels per day we were importing during the week ending June 3rd....that was 7.9% more than the 7,067,000 barrels of oil per day we imported during the week ending June 12th a year ago, but since oil imports are typically volatile week to week, the EIA's weekly Petroleum Status Report (62 pp pdf) reports imports as a 4 week moving average...that showed that the 4 week average of our imports was still above the 7.6 million barrel per day level, and 9.8% higher than the same four-week period last year...

meanwhile, U.S. refineries used an average of 16,317,000 barrels of oil per day barrels during the week ending June 10th, 100,000 barrels per day less than the 6,417,000 barrels per day they used during the week ending June 3rd...while that was a bit less than the 16,282,000 barrels of per day that refineries processed during the week ending June 12th last year, that year ago week was an outlier in a month that averaged almost 16.5 million barrels of oil per day of oil refinery inputs....the US refinery utilization rate fell to 90.2% of operable capacity last week, down from a 90.8% capacity utilization rate during the week ending June 3rd, which is very low for this time of year; even with the slow week of June 12th a year earlier, the refinery utilization rate was still at 93.1% at that time...

with less oil being refined, the output of gasoline from refineries fell by 415,000 barrels per day, as gasoline output averaged 9,707,000 barrels per day during the week ending June 3rd, the lowest gasoline production since April 22nd and down from the average of 10,122,000 barrels per day of gasoline produced during the week ending June 3rd...still, that was 0.6% more than the 9,651,000 barrels of gasoline per day we were producing during the same week last year, which was the slowest week of June....however, our refinery output of distillate fuels (diesel fuel and heat oil) increased at the same time, rising by 146,000 barrels per day to 4,984,000 barrels per day during the week ending June 10th...however, that was still half a percent below our distillates production of 5,011,000 barrels per day during the week ending June 12th of last year, as 2015 distillates inventories were somewhat tighter, encouraging more production...

with the large decrease in gasoline production, our end of the week gasoline inventories fell by 2,625,000 barrels to 237,004,000 barrels on June 10th, following the increase of 1,010,000 barrels during the week ending June 3rd....the drop in supplies was exacerbated by a 68,000 barrel per day drop in our gasoline imports to 747,000 barrels per day and a record amount of gasoline supplied to US markets, which rose by 196,000 barrels per day to 9,762,000 barrels per day, 6.4% higher than the 9,176,000 barrel per day consumption during the week ending June 12th last year, and matching the previous record set during the week ending August 17, 2007...we've thus come full circle on this proxy for gasoline consumption, despite the better fuel economy of newer cars...our gasoline consumption averaged over 9.6 million barrels per day during the summer of 2007, and fell to average below 9.0 million barrels per day during the summers of 2012 and 2013...however, at the rate we're going so far, it looks like that we'll set a new record for gas guzzling this year...

still, even with that big increase in consumption, our gasoline supplies remained 8.8% higher than the 217,814,000 barrels of gasoline that we had stored on May 29th last year, and 10.6% higher than the 214,267,000 barrels of gasoline we had stored on June 13th of 2014...thus our gasoline supplies are still categorized as "well above the upper limit of the average range" for this time of year..

at the same time as gasoline supplies were falling, however, our distillate fuel supplies were rising for the 2nd week in a row, increasing by 786,000 barrels to end the week at 152,163,000 barrels, as the seasonal agricultural related consumption of diesel fuel has slowed...with distillate inventories already above normal after our warm winter reduced heat oil consumption, our distillate inventories were thus 13.9% higher than the 133,591,000 barrels of distillates we had stored on June 12th last year, and 27.5% higher than our distillates supplies as of June 6th 2014...thus they're also characterized as "well above the upper limit of the average range" for this time of year...

finally, since the drop in crude imports and crude production was matched by a decrease in refining, we only needed to draw 933,000 barrels of oil from our stocks of crude oil in storage, at a time of year when are stored supplies are usually being used up twice as fast....thus our oil inventory level of 531,543,000 barrels on June 10th was 13.6% higher than the 467,927,000 barrels of oil we had stored as of June 12th, 2015, and 37.6% higher than the 386,348,000 barrels of oil we had stored on June 13th of 2014...hence, since our oil inventories continue to build higher than the seasonal records we set every week in 2015, it goes without saying that our crude oil supplies are also "well above the upper limit of the average range" for this time of year..."

This Week's Rig Counts

drilling activity increased for the third week in a row during the week ending June 17th, after the industry had gone the prior 41 weeks without seeing a net increase in total active rigs.....Baker Hughes reported that the total count of active rotary rigs running in the US increased by 10 rigs to 424 rigs as of June 17th, which was still down by more than half from the 857 rigs that were deployed as of the June 19th report last year, and down from the recent high of 1929 rigs that were in use on November 21st of 2014...the count of rigs drilling for oil rose by 9 rigs to 337, which was still down from the 631 oil directed rigs that were in use a year earlier, and down from the recent high of 1609 working oil rigs that was reported on October 10, 2014, while the count of drilling rigs targeting natural gas formations rose by a single rig to 86 this week, which was down from the 223 natural gas rigs that were drilling a year ago, and down from the recent high of 1,606 rigs that were drilling for natural gas that was set on August 29th, 2008...there was also still one rig running this week that was classified as miscellaneous, unchanged from last week but down from the 3 miscellaneous that were operating a year ago....

one of the rigs added this week was drilling from a platform in the Gulf of Mexico, which brought the Gulf rig count back up to 21, which was still down from the 27 rigs working in the Gulf on last June 19th... that also brought the total offshore count up to 22 rigs, as we still have an offshore platform drilling off the Cook Inlet in Alaska, whereas a year ago all offshore drilling was in the Gulf...horizontal drilling increased for the third week in a row, after going since November 2015 without an increase, as the count of working horizontal rigs rose by 3 rigs to 326 rigs, which still was down from the 662 horizontal rigs that were in use on June 18th of last year, and down from the record of 1372 horizontal rigs that were deployed on November 21st of 2014....at the same time, 7 more vertical rigs were also added, bringing the vertical rig count up to 53, which was down from the 101 vertical rigs that were in use at the end of the same week a year earlier...meanwhile, the directional rig count was unchanged at 45 rigs, which was down from the 95 directional rigs that were in use during a year earlier.

for the details on which states and which shale basins saw changes in drilling activity this past week, we will again include a screenshot of that part of the rig count summary from Baker Hughes, which shows those changes...the first table below shows weekly and annual rig count changes by state, and the second table shows weekly and annual rig count changes for the major geological oil and gas basins...in both tables, the first column shows the active rig count for each state or basin as of June 17th, the second column shows the change in the number of working rigs from the prior week, the third column shows last weeks rig count, the 4th column shows the change in the number of rigs running from the same week a year ago, and the 5th column shows the number of rigs that were drilling at the end of that week a year ago, which in this case was June 19th of 2015:

it's pretty obvious from the above that most of the increased drilling activity was in the various basins of Texas, with the Barnett shale in the Dallas-Ft Worth area seeing it's activity rise from 2 rigs to 7, and with the Eagle Ford of south Texas and the Permian basin of west Texas both seeing an increase of 4 rigs...and while the Cana Woodford of Oklahoma saw an increase of three rigs, the state total was unchanged, so rigs elsewhere in the state must have been pulled down....this week also saw changes in activity in a few states not listed above...first, Illinois saw it's rig count double, from 1 rig to 2, which is also up from the single rig they had active a year ago...then both Kentucky and Mississippi saw their rig counts drop from 3 rigs to 1....for Kentucky, that's still new activity, as a year ago, they had no drilling...for Mississippi, that puts them right back to where they were a year ago, although the state had seen drilling activity levels as high as 7 rigs in November and December of last year...

we'll also include a copy of a graph from Steven Kopits of Princeton Energy Advisors which was published Friday at Calculated Risk...this graph shows the recent horizontal oil rig count by basin since November of 2014, the month the oil price crash began after OPEC flooded the global markets, with the weekly number of active oil rigs in each basin color coded in a stacked graph as indicated in the key...;set on top of that is a graph of the price of oil over this same period, showing how the falling price of oil has preceded the drop in drilling activity three months later...we've covered all these changes at they happened, most weeks explaining the rig count changes in detail, but had never seen a graph that laid out that history in one place like this graph does...it's pretty clear from this picture that over this year and a half period, the largest percentage decreases in drilling occurred in the Williston basin (Bakken) of North Dakota and the Eagle Ford of south Texas, while basins like the Cana Woodford of Oklahoma have been relatively unchanged...even the Permian, which has seen the largest total rig count drop, still has a relatively large number of rigs still working...

more related news here...

Saturday, June 18, 2016

The War Risk of Hillary Clinton

Is China warming back to Pyongyang?

Map: All the mass shootings in the US from 1982 to 2016

Making A Killing From The Gun Trade - America's 10 Biggest Gunmakers

Fully Loaded: Inside the Shadowy World of America's 10 Biggest Gunmakers | Mother Jones:

Gaston Glock resides in an opulent Austrian villa. He has two corporate jets worth eight figures and a $3 million helicopter to shuttle him around Europe. In the 1980s, some of Glock's biggest law enforcement contracts were allegedly won with the help of Gold Club strippers near the company's US headquarters in Smyrna, Georgia. "For a lot of guys coming in from out of town, this was the best time they were going to have all year, or maybe their entire life," a former police official told journalist Paul Barrett for his book Glock: The Rise of America's Gun.

Wikileaks will publish ‘enough evidence’ to indict Hillary Clinton, warns Assange

Modern American Gothic

Foreclosure Starts at 11 Year Low, Mean Time in Foreclosure at Record 1088 Days

The Mortgage Monitor for April (pdf) from Black Knight Financial Services (BKFS, formerly LPS) reported that there were 595,235 home mortgages, or 1.17% of all mortgages outstanding, remaining in the foreclosure process at the end of April, which was down from 630,766, or 1.25% of all active loans, that were in foreclosure at the end of March, and down from 1.63% of all mortgages that were in foreclosure in April of last year. These are homeowners who at least had a foreclosure notice served but whose homes had not yet been seized, and the April "foreclosure inventory" now represents the lowest percentage of homes that were in the foreclosure process since the summer of 2007. New foreclosure starts, which have been volatile from month to month, fell to 58,728 in April from 72,762 in March and from 70,400 in April a year ago. This was the lowest number of foreclosure starts in any month since April 2005, before the mortgage crisis began.

In addition to homes in foreclosure, BKFS data also showed that 2,145,589 mortgages, or 4.24% of all mortgage loans, were at least one mortgage payment overdue but not in foreclosure at the end of April, up from the 4.08% of homeowners with a mortgage who were more than 30 days behind in March, but down from the mortgage delinquency rate of 4.72% in April a year earlier. Of those who were delinquent in April, 730,179 home owners, or 1.45% of those with a mortgage, were more than 90 days behind on mortgage payments, but still not in foreclosure at the end of the month, which was down from 732,765 such "seriously delinquent" mortgages in March. Combining the total number of delinquent mortgages with those in foreclosure, we find that a total of 2,740,824 mortgage loans, or 5.41% of homeowners with a mortgage, were either late in paying or in foreclosure at the end of April, and that 1,325,141, or 2.62% of all homeowners, were in serious trouble, ie, either "seriously delinquent" or already in foreclosure at month end...

The graph below, from page 5 of the mortgage monitor pdf, shows the monthly historical counts of both foreclosure starts and of new 90 day delinquencies. The new 90 day delinquencies are tracked by the red line, with an obvious seasonal pattern wherein homeowners tend to fall behind on their mortgage payments as the holiday shopping season ensues, while the seasonal low for such serious defaults typically occurs in March. The number of monthly foreclosure starts are shown below in smoky blue bars, which are further divided into new first time foreclosures, shown as the darker portion of each bar, and repeat foreclosures shown in light blue, which are mortgages where the homeowner had been foreclosed on previously and either caught up on his payments or got a loan modification at that time, only to fall behind on payments another time and subsequently be foreclosed on again. Foreclosure starts usually hit their seasonal low in April, a month after the seasonal low for the 90 day defaults. And while it's fairly clear that total foreclosure starts in April were the lowest since April of 2005, if you look closelu you'll also notice that new foreclosure starts are the lowest on record, dating back to at least 2000...

For the details of the historical mortgage crisis metrics covered by the Mortgage Monitor, we're including below that part of the monthly table showing the monthly count of active home mortgage loans and their delinquency status, which comes from page 16 of the pdf. The columns in the table below show the total active mortgage loan count nationally for each month given, number of mortgages that were delinquent by more than 90 days but not yet in foreclosure, the monthly count of those mortgages that are in the foreclosure process (FC), the total non-current mortgages, including those that just missed one or two payments, and then the number of foreclosure starts for each month over the past 4 months and for each January shown going back to January 2005. In the last two columns, we see the average length of time that those who have been more than 90 days delinquent have remained in their homes without foreclosure, and then the average number of days those in foreclosure have been stuck in that process because of the lengthy foreclosure pipelines. With the slowdown in new foreclosures, the average length of delinquency for those who have been more than 90 days delinquent without foreclosure has now climbed back up to 520 days, but it’s is still short of the April 2015 record of 536 days, while the average time of delinquency for those who’ve been in foreclosure without a resolution has increased again and at 1088 days has again topped the record set last month. That means that the average homeowner who is in foreclosure now has been there roughly three years, which, considering that this year's new foreclosure starts were all less than 120 days old, suggests that many foreclosures started early in the crisis are still not yet completed…

(the above was excerpted from my weekly post on Marketwatch 6666)

Sunday, June 12, 2016

oil prices double from recent lows, cheaper gasoline hits refinery margins, global rigs ex-Americas up 24

oil prices rose to 8 month highs on Wednesday of this past week, nearly double the February lows, but dropped back to near where they started the week after unexpected and unseasonal increases in gasoline and distillate inventories, an incremental increase in our oil production and another increase in the oil rig count...US WTI crude prices, which had closed last Friday down 53 cents to $48.62 a barrel, opened higher and rose to close at $49.10 on Monday after news of three more attacks on Nigerian oil infrastructure over the weekend...oil prices continued rising on Tuesday on Nigerian worries, and closed the day at $50.36 a barrel after the American Petroleum Institute indicated a 3.56 million barrel drop in US oil supplies for the week...prices also rose Wednesday morning but turned chaotic with the afternoon release of the official EIA data, which confirmed the large drop in oil supplies, but also showed increases in oil production, gasoline supplies, and distillate supplies...oil fell from $51.17 a barrel to $50.82 a barrel in the first two minutes after the news release, then spiked to $51.34 a barrel three minutes later, before drifting lower and closing for the day at $51.23...oil then fell $1 a barrel early Thursday on profit taking and a half percent increase in the value of the US dollar (higher dollar value raises prices in foreign currency, lowers it in dollars) and then rose back to settle at $50.56 at the close...oil prices continued falling Friday after Baker Hughes showed the second consecutive increase in oil drilling rigs, and closed the week at $49.07 a barrel down nearly 3% for the day...we'll include a 2 year oil price graph here, since it's been a while since we've shown the long view of what price changes have transpired since OPEC production flooded the markets and drove oil prices down...

the above graph shows the end of the week prices per barrel over the last 2 years for the July contract of the US benchmark oil, West Texas Intermediate (WTI), when it's stored at or contracted to be delivered to the oil depot in Cushing Oklahoma...since this graph only shows prices for July delivery, the record low prices near $26 a barrel of late February for March delivery would not be shown; but we can see that July oil had dipped below $30 a barrel at that time, while March oil was trading near $26...similarly, prices for this July contract have tended to be higher than the currently quoted price over this price history, just as all oil futures prices have been higher than currently quoted prices, setting up the contango trading we saw so much of last year, wherein traders would buy oil at current prices, enter into a contract to sell it at a higher price at some future date, and then pay for the storage costs until that date...the price differential is not so extreme now, but even today the contract for July 2017 oil is priced at $52.15 a barrel, more than 6% higher than the July 2016 price...with contract prices now generally over $50 a barrel, we're now seeing a modest increase in drilling, as well as the first nominal increase in oil production...Continental Resources said this week that they have now begun completing some of the drilled but uncompleted wells (DUCs) in the Bakken formation, now that oil prices are at $50 per barrel; we assume other oil frackers will do the same, sooner or later...

The Latest Oil Stats from the EIA

as we've already mentioned, this week's oil data from the US Energy Information Administration showed a seasonally significant drop in our oil inventories, offset by increases in our gasoline and distillate inventories, as refineries used more crude than they had in any week over the past two months, while our imports of crude were modestly lower....also as mentioned, our field production of crude oil rose by 10,000 barrels per day, from an average of 8,735,000 barrels per day during the week ending May 27th to an average of 8,745,000 barrels per day during the week ending June 3rd...though that was the largest increase in our production since the week ending January 1st, it was only the 2nd increase in the past 20 weeks, so our production is thus still 9.1% lower than the 9,610,000 barrel per day oil production that we saw during the week ending June 5th of last year, which as it turned out was the high for the year...that increase in oil output was not an indication of an increase in fracking, however, as the entirety of the increase came by way of an 18,000 barrel per day increase in Alaskan production...

at the same time, our imports of crude oil fell by 134,000 barrels per day to average 7,705,000 barrels per day during the week ending June 3rd, down from the average of 7,839,000 barrels per day we were importing during the week ending May 27th...while that was 16.3% more than the 6,623,000 barrels of oil per day we imported during the week ending June 5th a year ago, oil imports are typically volatile week to week, so the EIA's weekly Petroleum Status Report (62 pp pdf) reports imports as a 4 week moving average...that metric showed that the 4 week average of our imports was still at the 7.6 million barrel per day level, which was 9.5% above the same four-week period last year...

meanwhile, U.S. refineries’ crude oil inputs averaged 16,417,000 barrels of per day barrels during the week ending June 3rd, which was 211,000 barrels per day more than the 16,206,000 barrels of crude per day they processed during the week ending May 27th, as the US refinery utilization rate rose to 90.9% during the week, from 89.8% of capacity the prior week...that crude usage was still 1.0% lower than the 16,576,000 barrels per day US refineries used during the week ending June 5th last year, when US refineries were operating at 94.6% of capacity...part of the reason for the current refining slowdown may be that gasoline profit margins have shrunk to their lowest since 2010, as gasoline prices have been falling over the past 4 weeks even as oil prices rose...with the global glut of refined products, some gasoline markets have even gone into "backwardation", which means that future contract prices are lower than those currently quoted, meaning losses for every barrel of gasoline stored...

still, with more oil being refined, our refinery production of gasoline rose by 206,000 barrels per day, as gasoline output averaged 10,122,000 barrels per day during the week ending June 3rd, up from the average of 9,916,000 barrels per day of gasoline produced during the week ending May 27th...that was 1.1% more than the 10,007,000 barrels of gasoline per day we were producing during the same week last year, and the most gasoline we've produced in any week since the middle of last August....at the same time, our refinery output of distillate fuels (diesel fuel and heat oil) also increased, rising by 81,000 barrels per day to 4,838,000 barrels per day during the week ending June 3rd...however, that was still 4.8% below our distillates production of 5,083,000 barrels per day during the week ending June 5th of last year, as 2015 distillates inventories were somewhat tighter, promoting more production...

however, in contrast to last week, when increased production of gasoline and distillates did not add to inventories, inventories of both products ended this week higher....our gasoline inventories rose by 1,010,000 barrels to 239,629,000 barrels as of June 3rd, the second large unseasonal increase in the past 3 weeks, leaving our gasoline inventories little changed since mid-April, at a time of year when they're usually being used up....that was despite a 94,000 barrels per day drop to 815,000 barrels per day in our gasoline imports, as the gasoline supplied to US markets fell by 148,000 barrels per day to 9,568,000 barrels per day, which was also down from the 9,600,000 barrel per day consumption during the week ending June 5th last year....as a result, this week's gasoline inventories were 10.2% higher than the 217,354,000 barrels of gasoline that we had stored on June 5th last year, and 12.2% higher than the 213,482,000 barrels of gasoline we had stored on June 6th of 2014...so it's no surprise that our gasoline supplies are still categorized by the EIA as "well above the upper limit of the average range" for this time of year..

at the same time, our distillate fuel inventories also rose by 1,754,000 barrels to end the week at 149,623,000 barrels, as distillates were added to storage on both the east and west coasts...with distillate inventories already above normal after our warm winter reduced heat oil consumption, our distillate inventories were thus 13.4% higher than the 133,477,000 barrels of distillates we had stored at the same time last year, and 27.3% higher than our distillates supplies as of June 6th 2014, and thus they're also characterized as "well above the upper limit of the average range" for this time of year...

finally, with the drop in crude imports and the increase in refining, we needed to draw 3,226,000 barrels of oil from our stocks of crude oil in storage, which fell from 535,702.000 barrels on May 27th to 532,476,000 barrels as of June 3rd... the crude oil fudge factor included on the weekly U.S. Petroleum Balance Sheet (line 13) was a negligible minus 5,000 barrels per day, which means that 5,000 barrels of oil per day that we appeared to have produced or imported last week did not show up in the final figures...thus our oil inventory level on June 3rd was 13.1% higher than the 470,603,000 barrels of oil we had stored as of June 5th, 2015, and 37.6% higher than the 386,927,000 barrels of oil we had stored on June 6th of 2014...hence, since our oil inventories are still off the charts, it goes without saying that they too are "well above the upper limit of the average range" for this time of year..."

This Week's Rig Counts

as we mentioned in opening, drilling for oil and gas increased this week for the 2nd week in a row, after the overall rig count had not previously increased in any week since August 21st of last year.....Baker Hughes reported that the total count of active rotary rigs running in the US increased by 6 rigs to 414 rigs as of June 10th, which was still down from the 859 rigs that were deployed as of the June 12th report last year, and down from the recent high of 1929 rigs that were in use on November 21st of 2014...the count of rigs drilling for oil rose by 3 rigs to 328, which was still down from the 635 oil directed rigs that were in use a year earlier, and down from the recent high of 1609 working oil rigs that was reported on October 10, 2014, while the count of drilling rigs targeting natural gas formations also rose by 3 rigs from last week’s record low to 85 this week, which was down from the 221 natural gas rigs that were drilling a year ago, and down from the recent high of 1,606 rigs that were drilling for natural gas that was set on August 29th, 2008...there was also one rig running this week that was classified as miscellaneous, unchanged from last week but down from the 3 miscellaneous that were operating a year ago....

there were no changes in either offshore or inland lakes rig counts this week; the Gulf of Mexico active rig count remains at 20 rigs, which was down from 29 a year ago, while the total offshore count remains at 21, as there still is an offshore platform drilling off the Cook Inlet in Alaska...the number of working horizontal drilling rigs increased for the second week in a row, after never rising in prior weeks this year, as working horizontal rigs rose by 4 to 323 rigs, which still was down from the 663 horizontal rigs that were in use on June 12th of last year, and down from the record of 1372 horizontal rigs that were deployed on November 21st of 2014...at the same time, a single vertical rig was also added, bringing the vertical rig count up to 46, which was down from the 101 vertical rigs that were in use at the end of the same week a year earlier...there was also a directional rig added this week, increasing the directional rig count to 45 rigs, which was still down from the 95 directional rigs that were drilling in the US during the same week a year earlier..

for the details on which states and which shale basins saw changes in drilling activity this past week, we're again going to include a screenshot of that part of the rig count summary from Baker Hughes, which shows those changes...the first table below shows weekly and annual rig count changes by state, and the second table shows weekly and annual rig count changes for the major geological oil and gas basins...in both tables, the first column shows the active rig count for each state or basin as of June 10th, the second column shows the change in the number of working rigs from the prior week, the third column shows last weeks rig count, the 4th column shows the change in the number of rigs running from the same week a year ago, and the 5th column shows the number of rigs that were drilling at the end of that week a year ago, which in this case was June 12th of 2015:

as you can see, there were more basin variances over this past week than the week before, when only 3 shale fields saw rig count changes...that the largest increases in drilling were seen in Texas and North Dakota is no surprise, nor are the single rig increases in Alaska, Oklahoma, Ohio and Utah....there's obvious gas rig changes in the Haynesville, the Marcellus, and the Utica, where another rig has been added, while the Mississippian lime of the Kansas Oklahoma border, which had been pretty much been abandoned when prices fell, saw its drilling activity rise from 3 rigs to 5...note that to balance the final state rig count shown above at +6, a drilling rig not shown above was removed from Indiana, the one which had just been set up there during the week ending May 13th...a year ago, in fact over most of the past year, Indiana had no drilling activity...

Global Drilling Activity During May

the past week also saw the monthly release of the international rig count for May, which unlike the weekly count, is an average of the number of rigs running in each country for the month, rather than the total of those drilling at month end....Baker Hughes reported that an average of 1405 rigs were drilling for oil and natural gas around the globe in May, which was down from 1,424 rigs drilling globally in April and down from the 2,127 rigs that were deployed globally in May of last year...the ongoing pullback in US drilling accounted for the decrease, as the average US rig count fell from 437 in April to 408 in May, which was also down from 889 in May a year ago...the US drop caused the Northern America count to fall from 478 rigs in April to 450 in May, as the average Canadian deployment was 42 rigs over the month, up by 1 rig over April, but still down from the 80 rigs that were working in Canada in May a year ago...outside of Northern America, the International rig count rose by 9 rigs to 955 in May, which was still down from 1,158 rigs a year ago, as except for Latin America, all other areas of the globe saw an increase in drilling activity...

drilling increased in the Middle East for the 5th time in the past 10 months, as the region's activity was up by 7 rigs to a May average of 391, which was still down from the 398 rigs deployed in the Middle East a year earlier...the region did see a pullback of 3 rigs working offshore, however, lowering the offshore count to 51, which was still up from their offshore rig count of 41 rigs last May....Pakistan accounted for 4 of the net rigs added in the region, as they were up to 27 rigs in May from 23 in April, and up from the 20 rigs that were drilling in Pakistan a year earlier...Kuwait added 3 rigs, which brought their total to 43 active rigs, which was still down from 48 rigs a year earlier...Oman and Bahrain each added a single rig; that brought Oman up to 69 rigs, down from 70 a year earlier; for Bahrain, it was their first active rig since June a year ago, and also up from no rigs last May...at the same time, Egypt saw 2 rigs idled, dropping their active rig count to 28, which was down from the 36 rigs they had deployed a year ago at this time...meanwhile, the Saudis kept 123 rigs working, the same as last month, and down from 124 rigs last May...the Saudis have been averaging a deployment of 125 rigs throughout 2015 and 2016, an increase from their average of 105 rigs in 2014, when oil prices averaged twice as high, so they’ve been adding rigs as prices fell...

meanwhile, the Latin American countries pulled out another 15 rigs, same as in April, and hence the region is now down by 82 rigs since the first of the year...Latin American countries averaged 188 rigs in May, including 30 offshore, down from the total of 327 rigs, which included 69 offshore rigs, that were active in Latin America in May of 2015, so you can see their pullback in drilling is similar in magnitude to that of our own....Venezuela saw the largest drop, as they were down by 9 rigs to 60, which was down from the 69 rigs that were in use in Venezuela a year ago...Brazil idled 4 more rigs, after shutting down 9 in April, and they were thus down to just 15 active rigs, from the 43 rigs deployed in Brazil in April last year...Argentina, which had added rigs in March and April, shut down 2 in May, leaving 71 still working; that was down from the 104 rigs working Argentina in May of last year..in addition, Ecuador, Peru, and Mexico each cut a single rig in May, that left Ecuador with 2 working rigs, which was down from the 15 they were running a year earlier, left Peru with no rigs running, down from 2 a year earlier, and left Mexico with 22 rigs working, which was down from the 60 rigs working there a year ago....meanwhile, Columbia, which had cut their active rig count from 30 all the way down to 2 over the nine months ending April, added 3 rigs in May, which brought them back up to 5 rigs, which was also down from the 24 rigs they had deployed last May...

elsewhere, the Asia-Pacific region had 190 drilling rigs working in May, 11 more than the 179 rigs working the region in April, but still down from the 217 rigs working the region a year earlier...the largest drilling increase there was offshore of China, where 31 drilling platforms were working in May, up from 26 in April and up from 25 in May a year earlier...in addition, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia each added 2 rigs, bringing Malaysia up to 6 rigs, but still down from 12 rigs in May of 2015, bringing Thailand up to 15 rigs, but still down from 19 rigs a year ago, and bringing up to Indonesia 19 rigs, also down from 28 rigs in May of 2015...at the same time, Myanmar cut 2 rigs, leaving just 1 rig working there, same as they had a year ago...rigs working on the African continent, meanwhile, increased by 1 to 91 rigs in May, from 90 in April , which still was down from the 100 rigs working the African continent last year at this time...both the Ivory Coast and Morocco added a rig in May, the Ivory Coast now has 2 rigs drilling, up from 1 rig last May, while Morocco has just the new one, and also had none a year ago...at the same time, a single rig was taken down in the Congo, which now has just 1 rig running, down from 4 a year earlier...

lastly, Baker Hughes reports that the rig count in Europe rose by 5 rigs to 95 in May, which was down from the 118 rigs working in Europe a year ago at this time...trouble is, they include Sakhalin island, off the east coast of Russia, where four rigs were added, as part of Europe....Sakhalin now has 10 rigs working, up from 6 in both April and in May a year ago...elsewhere in Europe, additional rigs were set up in Iceland, Denmark, and offshore of the UK; the new rig was the only rig working Iceland, who also had no activity a year ago, the new rig in Denmark brings their total to 2, same as a year ago, while the UK offshore count rose to 9, which was still down from 16 a year earlier...at the same time, France and the Netherlands both shut down 1 rig; that left France with no drilling activity, same as a year earlier, and left the Dutch with just 2 rigs, down from 5 a year earlier.....note that Iran, Russia, and China rig counts are not included in Baker Hughes international data, although you might have noticed that rigs drilling in China's offshore area are included in the Asian rig totals here...

more here...

Saturday, June 11, 2016

The 1967 Naksa: The making of the new Middle East

.....................It all began in 1967. The 1967 Naksa prepared the foundation for a neoliberal Middle East, and Israel's militarism and colonial Zionism was the ideal tool for such an endeavour.

The defeat of Arab nationalism led to the Arab elite's forceful reintegration in the world economy under the new terms of defeat, and, by implication, engendered further disintegration of the Arab world and decomposition of the state apparatus.

Reliable and authoritative data of key social, economic and political indicators covering the past five decades could easily substantiate the following inference: The 1967 Arab defeat was a significant historical turning point that dictated the subsequent course of the entire Arab world.

It also led to the rise of neoliberal Zionism and the formation of the "New Israel". The seeds of the current troubled Middle Eastern scene were sown in June 1967.

FBI criminal investigation emails: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says - Salon.com:

From 2011 on, the State Department had a secret arrangement with the CIA, giving it a degree of say over whether or not a drone killing would take place.
The U.S. drone program has killed hundreds of civilians in Pakistan and other countries.
Under Sec. Clinton, State Department officials approved almost every single proposed CIA drone assassination.

They only objected to one or two attacks.
The emails that are at the heart of the FBI’s criminal investigation are 2011 and 2012 messages between U.S. diplomats in Pakistan and their State Department superiors in D.C., in which the officials approved drone strikes.

Friday, June 10, 2016

All Hail Hillary Clinton, the Queen of Exceptionalistan by Pepe Escobar

................Every sentient being remotely familiar with Hillary Clinton’s record knows by now that, if elected, she will preside over a Warfare State – which, incidentally, is bound to further bankrupt Washington. Spending on the defense/security/surveillance complex will balloon way beyond the current $850 billion a year. We’re not talking about landing under sniper fire in Bosnia here; this is the exceptionalist meat of the matter.

Hillary Clinton’s record shows that she fully supported Bubba’s military adventures in the Balkans, Dubya’s disastrous wars on Afghanistan and Iraq and Obama’s Afghan surge. But her masterpiece as Secretary of State was of course the destruction of Libya – followed by her enthusiastic support for weaponizing “moderate rebels”, a.k.a hardcore jihadis, in Syria.

R2P (“responsibility to protect”) would have remained no more than a hollow smart power-related concept without the Three Harpies (Hillary, Samantha Power and Susan Rice) lobbying non-stop for its implementation in Libya. Libya was the battling ground supposed to gloriously elevate the Clinton Doctrine to the apex of foreign policy smartness.

R2P – as in humanitarian imperialism deployed towards regime change – should have been duly paraded throughout the 2016 presidential campaign. But alas, even with We Came, We Saw, He Died the descent of Libya into a militia hell scotched all those elaborate plans. It was – and remains – more of a case of I came, I Saw and I Got Tangled Up in Benghazi.

ENOUGH! Anarchists For Donald Trump—Let The Empire Burn by CHRISTOPHER KETCHAM

The historic opportunity of the 2016 election is one which Bernie Sanders likely will not have the courage to embrace: The burning to ashes of the corporatist Clintonite neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party.

The scenario ideally plays out with Sanders contesting the nomination all the way to the convention and then running as a third party candidate, say on the Green Party ticket, siphoning away the base that Clinton needs to win. This will hand the election to Donald Trump, and force the Democratic establishment to realize it’s doomed unless it pivots sharply to the left.

The Clintons will disappear into the toilet where they’ve always deserved to be flushed. We can then look forward to 2020 after four years of Trump and—what? Who knows. He’s truly a wild card.