The US Hamster Wheel

[Seenenough]

I hear that when the security staff rushed poor Donnie to the Bunker on Friday night he was confused because he had never played golf at night before. He did, however, get out of this bunker.

You mean sand trap.

[Boac]

Indications are that Bojo has 'given in' to American demands to accept Chlorinated Chicken and Hormone treated beef.

[Undried Plum]

Why should we eat the shite that Murricanes eat?

Why should we lower ourselves that far?

Why?

[Seenenough]

Why should we eat the shite that Murricanes eat?

Why should we lower ourselves that far?

Why?

I'm going to be eating a nice bit of Montana Certified Hormone Free and Grass fed picanha on the rotisserie tonight Plum.

PS I forgot to add .....after seeing the DOW go up over 1.5% again today.

[Undried Plum]

seeing the DOW go up over 1.5% again today.

Yes, but did you see the 600Bn of puffmoney being introduced into the market which drove the stockmarket prices up?

[Boac]

Why should we eat the shite that Murricanes eat?

Because Donnie tweaked Bojo's strings?

[barkingmad]

Indications are that Bojo has 'given in' to American demands to accept Chlorinated Chicken and Hormone treated beef.

So let’s hold his feet to the fire, shall we?

https://www.nfuonline.com/news/latest-n ... -petition/

My paw print is already on it...

[Boac]

Interesting, BM. I'm sure one of our members - someone called 'Barking Mad' or similar, pointed out to me the pointlessness of signing a petition. Did I imagine it?

[barkingmad]

Interesting, BM. I'm sure one of our members - someone called 'Barking Mad' or similar, pointed out to me the pointlessness of signing a petition. Did I imagine it?

You did not imagine it. I did not sign the Cummings petition as I didn’t agree with the frenzy over a lockdown infringement, broken by many others in the public eye, but blown out of all proportion because it was one person much disliked by the meeja, the Lefties and the Remoaners.
Please will you generate a petition to sanction the Jockistan minister Blackhead, the female health minister who broke it, the former Labour Whip who broke it, the Taff minister who broke it etc etc, then I might see some point in signing.
Have you 1) Signed the NFU petition? 2) Have you written to your MP on the topic of the migrants, having invited me so to do?
I admire your terrier-like tenacity in pursuing some of the issues/comments raised but be cautious about being caught out espousing your causes but criticising others who may not toe your particular line.
Yes, I believe the petition system often fails to draw the blood the signatories would all like to see but I don’t recall stating the entire petition system was pointless.
In between GEs in the UK it’s the only method we have, apart from BLM-style riots, to indicate to our masters our disagreement with their policies & practices.
But doubtless you will comb the pages herein, find my self-incriminating words and correct me. So be it.

[Boac]

Have you 1) Signed the NFU petition? No

2) Have you written to your MP on the topic of the migrants, having invited me so to do? As previously posted. Do you need a chlorinated Chicken nugget pointer (not a terrier)?...........

I admire your terrier-like tenacity in pursuing some of the issues/comments raised but be cautious about being caught out espousing your causes but criticising others who may not toe your particular line.

What! Behave like an O-N poster? Shirley not. To which 'particular line' do you refer?

Please will you generate a petition to sanction the Jockistan minister Blackhead, the female health minister who broke it, the former Labour Whip who broke it, the Taff minister who broke it etc etc,

No

In between GEs in the UK it’s the only method we have, apart from BLM-style riots protests, to indicate to our masters our disagreement with their policies & practices.In between GEs in the UK it’s the only method we have, apart from BLM-style riots, to indicate to our masters our disagreement with their policies & practices.

?? I'm surprised you advocate 'riots'! Never saw you as a rabble rouser.

Not too much 'combing' required.

[Seenenough]

Meanwhile,everyone seems to have missed Trump announcing that he wants to reduce the number of US Troops located in Germany by a quarter which is about 10 000 in number.

As expected Nato and Merkel are not happy about it.

[OFSO]

Does anyone believe Russia will invade, when all they have to do to bring Germany to its knees next winter is turn the gas off ?

[barkingmad]

boac said "Not too much 'combing' required."
Good, now can we get back to important issues, otherwise we'll have to adjourn to the OK Corral and waste time and effort, of which I have limited stocks?

[Seenenough]

Does anyone believe Russia will invade, when all they have to do to bring Germany to its knees next winter is turn the gas off ?

OF,Trump has asked the same question all along.He has also asked Merkel how she expects the US to defend Germany and Europe from the Russians if she is placing Germany and Europe into a positition where Putin can close the valve as he chooses and in so doing bring Germany, in particular, to its knees.

One of Trump's election campaign points was that he wanted to reduce the number of US troops located around the world which he has steadily been doing and I belive will continue to do.It will be one of his main re-election campaigning points.

[barkingmad]

Let's be fair, it was quite far-sighted of Germany to dump it's coal-fired generating capacity to prove how Green they are to the rest of the EU dullards who have not looked beyond their narrow horizons when thinking energy policy.
UK government are now trying to bribe car owners to go all-electric despite the obvious flaws in the great carbon-neutral dream, just like we were all told to buy diesel powered cars as the then 'green' pollution solution!

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/car ... 6-000.html

I'm sooh excited I nearly wet myself at the news!! But will someone please tell me from where will we get 24-hour reliable wiggly amps though the Grid to do this whilst deleting gas boilers and hobs and open fires?

Anyway, the new EU Army will be up and running, sometime, to warn off Putin if he decides to go walkabout so we're safe aren't we?
After the breakup of the old USSR it was the USA who decided to surround the former Soviet areas with a splattering of airbases and military resources so what surprise is it if the 21st Century Russian Empire is feeling threatened?
"Those who cannot..."? Points for completing the oft-quoted phrase will be awarded.

[Undried Plum]

I've had a very interesting chat with a chum who's an oil trader. He buys, transports and sells cargoes of crude in multiples of a million barrels, usually somewhere between 1 and 1.5 million barrels. He keeps two tankers on long-term charter semi-permanently and hies others on the spot market on and ad-hoc basis. One of them is the biggest that can get through the Suez Canal and the other is a 1.5Mbbl giant. He typically has four or five cargoes on the go at any one time, though sometimes he goes for half a dozen or more.

He often changes the destination of a cargo while it is on passage if he can get a better price from another customer. The big one has to go the long way round to China or other east Asian countries and he has it cruise quite slowly down the coasts of Iberia and West Africa so that has plenty of time to divert it if a customer in North America is happy to pay more than the originally intended customer.

Right now he's in clover. He bought a half a dozen cargoes of North Sea crude below $20. It's now worth over $40. A very tidy profit for a couple of months investment. A $120M gross profit in under a hundred days. That's before shipping and insurance costs, but a nice little earner neverthless.

He held one of them off Dunbar and another off Southwold. Unlike the US which has massive storage facilities such as the SPR and the Cushing tanks, the UK has no significant storage for oil at all. The refineries and export terminals have a little bit of buffer capacity, but that's just sufficient to bridge the time gap between consignments. He sometimes uses his tankers as a mobile storage resource while he waits for the price to go up. That's just what he was doing a month or two ago.

He explained the concept of the equilibrium price of oil. For Brent that's $55.80 at the moment. It's a mythical number as the oil market never ever stabilises at an even balance between supply and demand, but it's a useful number to keep in mind as he makes his profits by understanding the demand side and whether fear or greed is the dominant emotion in the market at any one time.

Right now in the US market, fear is in the ascendancy. The very obvious mental instability and conspicuously gross incompetence of the President is beginning to worry a lot of level-headed people in the market. History shows that when a PotUS feels that he's backed into a corner or is in the bottom of a self-dug hole, he starts or re-ignites a war somewhere far far away. This Chump arshole is in just such a position.

The Chinese are the clever ones. They are playing a clever game in both the gold market and in the oil market. In the physical gold market they are buying up every ounce they can get their hands on. When the price of oil was down in the $10-$20 range, they bought up every cargo of crude they could get hold of.

Now that the Chinese have got a firm grip on the Coronavirus epidemic, they are loosening up their domestic market and are getting back to work and getting on with what they do best, which is making and exporting manufactured goods.

For the Russians and the Saudis, their strategy of buggering the frackers of the US has been stunningly brilliant in its success. It has also worked to the advantage of the Chinese.

[Boac]

It must come as shock to many (including Marines) that General Mattis is not in fact 'a retired Marine', according to Sebastian Gorka, who served for about seven months as a deputy assistant to Trump from January 2017 to August 2017, and has written an op-ed saying

'I'm not a Marine, but I know the Marines,' Gorka asserted in the op-ed. 'Jim Mattis is no Marine.'

The Hungarian-American former Trump official turned fish-oil pitchman argued that he's qualified to make that assessment about the retired Marine Corps four-star general due to his two years of teaching U.S. military at Marine Corps University in Quantico."

Any ex US Military on here agree with that? It has been re-twatted by the Chump, by the way. He is C-in-C so he should know.

[Seenenough]

"The Chinese are the clever ones. They are playing a clever game in both the gold market and in the oil market. In the physical gold market they are buying up every ounce they can get their hands on. When the price of oil was down in the $10-$20 range, they bought up every cargo of crude they could get hold of. "

You seem to forget, Plumb, that the US filled their strategic reserves at the same low prices also and we also have no idea at how much gold the US Federal Reserve aquired at the same time.The US gold reseves are not and have never been accurately known.

It is not in the interests of either the Russians or the Saudis for the price of crude to be so low as both economies are almost entirely dependent on oil and gas exports.The US economy is not totally dependent on exporting oil or gas and it is able to supply its own oil and gas needs if it has to.

If things are so bad ,Plumb, why is so much of off shore buying currently taking place on the NYSE?

[k3k3]

Let's be fair, it was quite far-sighted of Germany to dump it's coal-fired generating capacity to prove how Green they are to the rest of the EU dullards who have not looked beyond their narrow horizons when thinking energy policy.

In 2018 Germany's electricity generation was 24% Braunkohle (Lignite) and 14% Coal.

[G-CPTN]

German electricity by source in 2019

Nuclear 13.8%
Brown Coal 19.9%
Hard Coal 9.5%
Natural Gas 10.5%
Wind 24.8%
Solar 9.1%
Biomass 8.7%
Hydro 3.7%

Source:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrici ... in_Germany

In 2019, Germany produced 516 TWh of electricity of which 46% was from renewable energy sources, 29% from coal, and 10% from natural gas.
This is a major change from 2018, when a full 38% was from coal, only 40% was from renewable energy sources, and 8% was from natural gas.

Even though renewables production increased significantly between 1991 and 2017, fossil power production remained at more or less constant levels. In the same period, nuclear power production decreased, much of the increase in renewables had to be spent to fill the gap left behind by closing nuclear power plants.
Germany will phase-out nuclear power by 2022, meaning that future growth in renewables will be needed to fill the gap again.
Germany also plans to phase out coal, but not until 2038.