I heard a rumor that this song is about Biden and OPEC (Biden waited all those lonely nights, waiting for MBS’s call…) and that the amazing revelations in this article are going to blow your socks off. Better read it while you can. It’s an offer you can’t refuse!
October 5, 2022
Notable
- OPEC+ decides on a 2M bpd (barrels per day) reduction in production (Man, I should be a rapper! Trader-P, way better than Easy-E, loves to eat brie…ugh. Okay maybe not.)
- The jobs report is coming out on Friday. What’s the rumor (expectation)?
- Credit Suisse’s CDS’s get super expensive even though the stock keeps going up. What’s the rumor and what the heck is a CDS?
Rumors , rumors, everywhere…
What’s OPEC+? Haven’t I been saying OPEC all this time? OPEC is a bunch of countries that banded together to bully the world through selling oil. OPEC+ is a bunch of countries that join in with them so that all together they can have a stronger monopoly. Sort of like when you go to the homecoming dance with a +1 but in this case it’s a +10 and all your +’s are ugly but they vote to get you elected homecoming king which is all you care about. Besides, you’re not exactly a catch yourself.
Way back in history around a week or so ago, the rumor was that OPEC was going to cut oil production by 500K bpd. Then it was to 1M…1.5M…2M… OPEC killed all the rumors and announced that it would be 2M bpd.
Why did Biden go to Saudi Arabia this past summer, hat in hand, and why is he mad now? The price of oil was up. So was inflation. So was voter sadness. Biden asked Saudi Arabia to increase oil production to bring US voters joy.
MBS (Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman): “Sorry, buddy, we’re at our limit. And this has nothing to do with how you’re trying to wipe out our entire economy and way of life with all your green initiatives. By the way, thanks for not approving any more drilling in your country so that you have to come crawling to us when you need more oil in the world. How’s that working for you?”
Biden: “Hmmm…we’re gonna get slaughtered in the midterm elections so I I better open up the SPR. Oh yeah, and I’m concerned for all the gullible peons, er citizens, being hurt by inflation. Release the spigots!”
Spigots? SPR? No, it’s not Super Poppa Rocks, which is totally what my kids say about me to their friends. It’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is where the USA stores emergency oil. The SPR has been getting drained at a million barrels a day to give us lower gas prices. (How’s that going in your neck of the woods?) That was going to end in October, but the “deadline” has been extended into November. By the way, you know that the elections are in November, right? Funny how that works.
What does all this mean? Well, if we’re adding an extra 1M bpd from our SPR but OPEC starts subtracting 2M bpd, then that equals oh dang we’re screwed. OPEC is basically giving Biden and the Fed the finger. The Fed wants to raise rates to ease inflation? OPEC is going to cut production to increase inflation. Who will win? Tough to say but when mom and dad fight, we lose our jobs or pay $50 for a loaf of bread. That’s dysfunction in the petrodollar family for ya.
tl;dr
oil production down, oil price up, inflation up, Democrats down
The jobs report is coming out on Friday. That’ll tell us how many people are looking for jobs and getting jobs and pretty much everything you want to know about jobs until you puke. The rumor (expectation!) is 318K new jobs were added in August with a steady unemployment rate of 3.5%. Wall Street is hoping it’s worse. In fact, the worse the better (Doesn’t that sound so weird?) because then the Fed will be more likely to stop raising rates. This is the whole “bad is good” thing I’ve been telling you about ad nauseum. Interesting that Wall Street would like to see that Main Street is losing jobs, eh? Tell me again why they’re not BFF’s?
tl;dr
jobs report down, recession, Fed maybe stops raising rates, stock market hooray!
jobs report up, Fed pumps the rate, stock market sadness
I was going to talk about Credit Suisse’s CDS’s, but I’ll leave that for later because I know you’ve already fallen asleep. Here’s this confusing movie we’ve mentioned before that might help you understand CDS’s if you can stop staring at Ryan Gosling’s pretty face. Maybe we’ll have fun with CDS’s tomorrow! One can only dream.
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