Kunstler: Murphy’s Law to the Rescue!

What can go wrong will go wrong. It’s so fundamental to the operation of the universe that Sir Isaac Newton should have installed it between his 2nd and 3rd Laws of Motion — but he had his hands full losing a fortune in Britain’s South Sea Bubble circa 1721, after muttering to a colleague that […]

Saudi Prince says CIA cannot be trusted

A senior Saudi prince cast doubt on the reported CIA finding that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last month, saying the agency could not be counted on to reach a credible conclusion. “The CIA is not necessarily the highest standard of veracity or accuracy in […]

Venezuela Has Hyperinflation. Now What?

Venezuela is the fifty-seventh country to encounter hyperinflation in modern history. The economist Steve Hanke estimated — using the doctrine of purchasing power parity (PPP) — that the country’s monthly inflation exceeded 50 percent for more than thirty days in November 2016. Therefore, it entered the list of Hanke-Krus hyperinflations.The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that Venezuela’s […]

Big Oil Doesn’t Like EV Subsidies, Just Its Own Giant Subsidy

You may not have heard, but electric vehicles are just another one-percenter boondoggle, Jay Gatsby’s cream-colored Rolls Royce reincarnated and partly paid for by you, the toiling masses, via various subsidies. As an argument, it is tailor-made for an era of anger at “elites.” And it’s one with which I’ve become familiar reading recent letters from organizations such as Koch Industries […]

Trump Pushes for Lower Oil Prices

U.S. President Donald Trump has pushed for lower oil prices in a Twitter statement published Wednesday. Oil prices getting lower. Great! Like a big Tax Cut for America and the World. Enjoy! $54, was just $82. Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but let’s go lower! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 21 November 2018 Commenting on […]

Saudi prosecutor claims Crown Prince Mohammed innocent, seeks death for 5 others in Khashoggi killing

Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor on Thursday said that 11 suspects had been indicted over the death of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi and that he requested the death penalty for five of them. The deputy prosecutor also told reporters that Khashoggi died from a lethal injection and that his body was dismembered and taken out of […]

Upset by Trump’s Iran waivers, Saudis push for deep oil output cut

When U.S. President Donald Trump asked Saudi Arabia this summer to raise oil production to compensate for lower crude exports from Iran, Riyadh swiftly told Washington it would do so. But Saudi Arabia did not receive advance warning when Trump made a U-turn by offering generous waivers that are keeping more Iranian crude in the […]

Kunstler: Rock The Vote

It warmed my heart to read in The Wall Street Journal that Hillary Clinton is preparing to re-enter the Washington DC swamp from her deluxe exile in the woods of Chappaqua, New York, and make another run for the White House — though it’s hard to calculate how many porters in sandals and loincloths will […]

We have not learned enough from the horrors of war

At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, the cannon and guns of war went silent. This ended the First World War. It had started four years earlier, when the presumptive heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo by a Serbian member of the […]

Saudi Crown Prince Claims Assassination Attempt Against Him Was Thwarted

BBC Arabic reports based an exclusive Jerusalem Post story that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman told a group of Evangelical leaders who met with him in Riyadh earlier this month there was a recent plot to assassinate him, and that the plan was thwarted by Egyptian intelligence.  The Jerusalem Post first broke the story this week based on accounts […]

Saudi Arabia Is Evaluating A Break Up Of OPEC

In potentially groundbreaking news – which failed to generate a market response as it hit at the same time as the FOMC statement – Saudi Arabia’s top government-funded think tank is said to be studying the possible effects on oil markets of a breakup of OPEC, a research effort which the WSJ called “remarkable” for […]

UAE and Saudi join major Arab military drills in Egypt

The armed forces of the UAE, Saudi Arabia and four other Arab states began a joint training exercise in Egypt this weekend in the first major drills of what may become a regional military alliance to counter Iran. Alongside the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait are taking part in the 16-day […]

The Twilight of the Intelligentsia

I promise, I didn’t time this sequence of posts so that this one would come out the morning after one of the most bitterly fought midterm elections in memory.  Nor, of course, did I have advance notice of the outcome, though it wasn’t a surprise to me that the much-ballyhooed “blue wave” would flop as […]

Iran able to sell as much oil as it needs despite US pressure

Iran has been able to sell as much oil as it needs despite U.S. pressure, Iranian Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri was quoted as saying on Tuesday. The United States on Monday restored sanctions targeting Iran’s oil, banking and transport sectors and threatened more action to stop what Washington called its “outlaw” policies, steps Tehran called […]

Army Major Exposes The US Military’s Empire Of Secrecy

“Democracy dies in darkness.” That’s an old saying that The Washington Post recycled as its motto at the dawn of the Trump era. Truth is, the journalists at the Post don’t know the half of it; nor do they bother to report on the genuine secrecy and increasing lack of transparency in the Department of Defense. […]

Iranian marchers chant “Death to America” on eve of US oil sanctions

Iranians chanting “Death to America” rallied on Sunday to mark both the anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy during the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the imminent reimposition of U.S. sanctions on Iran’s key oil sector. Thousands of students in the government-organised rally in the capital Tehran, broadcast live by state television, burned the […]

Ex-Pentagon Official: US Working To Replace Saudi Prince

Following outrage over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, Prince Mohammad bin Salman might face troubles at home. As analysts told RT, some in Saudi Arabia are keen to see the Crown Prince go. Much of the mounting international outrage over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is attributed to Mohammad bin Salman, the 33-year-old Crown […]

Erdogan blames Saudi state for Khashoggi murder

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the order for journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s killing came from the “highest levels” of the Saudi government but said he does not believe King Salman ordered the hit. In an opinion piece in the Washington Post, Erdogan said that Saudi Arabia still has many questions to answer about the […]

US Is Said to Offer an Iran Sanctions Oil Waiver to 8 Nations

The U.S. has reportedly agreed to let eight nations continue to buy Iranian oil after trade sanctions are reimposed on the nation on Nov. 5. Bloomberg’s Stuart Wallace reports on “Bloomberg Markets: European Open.” (Source: Bloomberg)

Saudi Coup “Imminent” As Crown Prince’s Uncle Arrives To Oust “Toxic” MbS

The youngest brother of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has returned from self-imposed exile to “challenge” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) “or find someone who can,” reports the Middle East Eye. Prince Ahmad bin Abdulaziz Prince Ahmad bin Abdulaziz is reportedly hoping to oust his 33-year-old nephew in the wake of an allegedly state-sanctioned murder of […]

Why I Remain Hopeful When Things Look Grim

Hi. I’m sorry to my regular readers for not writing any articles in the last couple of days; I’ve just been staring transfixed at the fallout from the election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and the words which normally come bubbling up on their own just haven’t been there for me. Bolsonaro is a fascist. […]

Khashoggi killers to be tried in kingdom

Foreign Minister Jubeir slams global outcry over journalist’s killing as ‘hysterical’, saying investigations take time. Saudi Arabia has admitted Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside its consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul. Khashoggi – a Saudi writer, US resident, and Washington Post columnist – entered the building on October 2 to obtain documentation certifying he had divorced his ex-wife […]

Forced Sterilizations In Peru – Paid For By US Taxpayers

In countries under heavy US influence or occupation, the US government has a habit of pushing political programs that would be too unpopular to implement in the United States. In Japan, for example, the US occupation after World War II offered an opportunity for American bureaucrats to push abortion policies they couldn’t win support for […]

We Need a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty – and We Need it Now

How did government respond to the recent scientific conclusion that only “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” can deliver the globally agreed target for stopping climate breakdown? In the UK, fracking for fossil fuels was given the green light, plans were announced for a huge new road in the south-east, incentives for electric vehicles withered, the expansion […]

Trump Admin May Stun Iran Oil Waiver Seekers

The oil market could be in for a surprise when U.S. sanctions on Iranian crude exports are implemented in 10 days, according to Hedgeye Risk Management LLC. Traders who expect the U.S. to hand out waivers allowing certain nations to continue buying oil from the Islamic Republic, “are making a huge miscalculation,” Joe McMonigle, head […]

Why Jamal Khashoggi Was Killed

A new whisper campaign against him is trying to blur the truth: that he criticized certain U.S-Arab alliances, and paid the price… In the early summer of 2005, during the height of the U.S. war in Iraq, I arranged to have lunch with Jerry Jones, a special assistant to then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. I […]

Middle East Braces For Apocalyptic Conflict Between Israel And Hamas As Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman Declares “War Is Inevitable”

It appears that a major war between Israel and Hamas is imminent.  For the past six months, Hamas has been staging violent protests along the Israeli border in an attempt to end the Israeli-Egyptian blockade.  Those protests have escalated in recent weeks as Egyptian efforts to broker a long-term ceasefire have faltered.  During these violent […]

Saudi Arabia Has No Plans to Repeat 1973 Oil Crisis

Saudi Arabia has no intention of using its oil wealth as a political tool in the controversy over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and the kingdom plans to boost crude output again soon. “For decades we used our oil policy as a responsible economic tool and isolated it from politics,” Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih […]

Kunstler: Lost in Translation

Saturdays, when fewer eyeballs see the paper, The New York Times likes to publish its most extreme ventures into social unreality. Last week’s prank was the story at the top of page one that declared: #WontBeErased: Transgender People and Allies Mobilize Against Trump Administration Proposal. (The accompanying photo featured a rainbow flag, of course, denoting […]

How Donald Trump saved Civilization (and lost the planet)

“Call it the Third Middle East Oil Shock.” The controversy swirling around murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has been moving Congress towards sending to the White House an Act* imposing broad sanctions on Saudi Arabia, effectively scrapping billions in pending arms sales. Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence […]

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