Saudi Arabia’s Secret Holdings of U.S. Debt Are Suddenly a Big Deal

Hiding data is “mind-boggling,” says former Treasury official Saudi burns through $100 billion of reserves as strains emerge It’s a secret of the vast U.S. Treasury market, a holdover from an age of oil shortages and mighty petrodollars: Just how much of America’s debt does Saudi Arabia own? But now that question — unanswered since […]

Activists Deliver Plan for Just Transition to EPA Offices

Activists deliver the Our Power Plan to the EPA’s regional office in San Francisco on January 19. (Facebook/CEJA) Yesterday, activists at each of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 10 regional offices issued their own corrective on the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. Days before the end of the federal comment period, the Climate Justice Alliance’s Our […]

The Birth Of The PetroYuan

Give me that!!   It belongs to the Chinese now! h/t @FedPorn As we previously detailed,  two topics we’ve deemed critically important to a thorough understanding of both global finance and the shifting geopolitical landscape are the death of the petrodollar and the idea of yuan hegemony.  In November 2014, in “How The Petrodollar Quietly […]

Its going down magazine

The idea for It’s Going Down started over a year ago and developed out of conversations about the need for a high quality news site that was accessible to the public and was also a tool and resource for those already involved in revolutionary social struggles. Launched in the summer of 2015, we’re happy to […]

BC Govt rejects Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion

Just heard on CBC that BC Govt has formally pulled support from Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion to the west coast (through Vancouver). Northern Gataeway is now dead in the water. No to Keystone XL And now Kinder Morgan expansion looks more than shaky. theglobeandmail.com

Everything you learned about how the world works is probably wrong

It’s time to rethink everything we know about how the world is ordered. Citi is out with a big new report on our current geopolitical order, and maybe what happens next. What the firm argues, effectively, is that the global order most of today’s adults have come to know as “true” probably isn’t so anymore. […]

The End of Saudi Arabia?

A more detestable regime than Saudi Arabia could not be found.  Arguably the most repressive regime on earth.  An absolute monarchy.  A Wahhabist theocratic nightmare that arms ISIS.  Only North Korea may be worse, and North Korea does not put women in burqas or have any areas where female genital mutilation (FGM) is practiced.  It […]

Saudi Arabia vs Iran: Who is to blame for the row?

As tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran continue to escalate, who is to blame for the feud and is there an end in sight? In this episode of UpFront, a close ally to the Iranian president debates a former adviser to the Saudi royal family. Mehdi Hasan also looks at Latin America beyond the stereotypes, […]

Kunstler: Worse Than 1860

The lost story-line amid the food-fights and boasting contests that the “debates” have turned into is the destruction being wreaked on the two major parties themselves. I don’t see how either the Republicans or Democrats get out of this thing alive. The primary season now upon us is the event horizon that sucks these two […]

Think Plummeting Oil Prices a Good Thing? Think Again

It is far from clear whether the recent plunge in international commodity prices in general, and in oil prices in particular, will provide a boost to the U.S. economic recovery. While those price declines would certainly provide the equivalent of a sizable tax cut for U.S. consumers, they will deliver a major blow to the […]

When Oil-Rich Countries Need More Cash

The long slide in oil prices, which reached a 13-year low this week of less than $30 a barrel, means that oil-rich nations are not so rich anymore. And that is potentially a big problem for investors and policy makers in the United States and abroad. Falling oil revenues will increase the need for Saudi […]

Iran Sanctions Are Lifted

Just hours after Tehran and Washington swapped long-held prisoners, the United States and European nations lifted oil and financial sanctions on Iran and released roughly $100 billion of its assets, after international inspectors concluded the country had followed through on its promises to dismantle large sections of its nuclear program. At the end of a […]

Dallas Fed Suspends Energy Mark-To-Market

Earlier this week, before first JPM and then Wells Fargo revealed that not all is well when it comes to bank energy loan exposure, a small Tulsa-based lender, BOK Financial, said that its fourth-quarter earnings would miss analysts’ expectations because its loan-loss provisions would be higher than expected as a result of a single unidentified […]

End of Petroleum-Centric World?

Plummeting oil prices may challenge the established geopolitical status-quo and even result in war and turmoil, experts warn. Will the petroleum-centric world of the past half-century be restored again soon? The current slump in oil prices has affected giant oil corporations and the ancillary businesses; it also threatens to undermine economies of major energy-producing countries resulting in a “profound […]

Saudi Arabia: A Weak Kingdom On Its Knees?

The great Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – the long-time dictator of crude oil prices for the world – is struggling on all fronts. The Saudis are losing their proxy wars in both Syria and Yemen; their OPEC leadership is under threat; they are not winning the crude oil price war; and its long-running alliance with […]

Michael Klare: The Oil Pricequote

As 2015 drew to a close, many in the global energy industry were praying that the price of oil would bounce back from the abyss, restoring the petroleum-centric world of the past half-century.  All evidence, however, points to a continuing depression in oil prices in 2016 — one that may, in fact, stretch into the […]

Can ISIS Actually Gain Power Over Libya’s Oil?

As it turns out, Syria was merely a springboard for a much larger ISIS plan—replenishing terrorist coffers by taking over oil assets in war-torn Libya. The terror group has largely taken control of the Libyan city of Sirte and its hundreds of miles of coastline, and has ransacked two key oil terminals in an attempt […]

Friendly Colonialism

The public’s reaction to Justin Trudeau’s election is reminiscent to Obama’s victory in 2008. But despite the fact that Trudeau voted for the totalitarian, police state-inducing legislation, Bill C-51, and unequivocally supports existing pipeline proposals, and the expansion of the Tar Sands, loads of so-called “progressives” are swooning. Now Trudeau is aiming to co-opt and […]

Father of Koch Brothers Helped Nazis

The father of the billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch helped construct a major oil refinery in Nazi Germany that was personally approved by Adolf Hitler, according to a new history of the Kochs and other wealthy families. The book, “Dark Money,” by Jane Mayer, traces the rise of the modern conservative movement through […]

The US Government Is The Most Complete Criminal Organization In Human History

Unique among the countries on earth, the US government insists that its laws and dictates take precedence over the sovereignty of nations. Washington asserts the power of US courts over foreign nationals and claims extra-territorial jurisdiction of US courts over foreign activities of which Washington or American interest groups disapprove. Perhaps the worst results of […]

Who Wins and Who Loses in a World of Cheap Oil

Stratfor looks at one of the big questions for 2016. Low oil prices will devastate those nations dependent on oil revenue and provide small benefits to those that consume oil. The destabilizing effect of the former will affect everybody, to vary degrees. Ten years ago people worried about running out of oil (see the comments […]

Depletion Of China’s Reserves Creating Concern And A Potential Derivative Nightmare In Oil

With continued uncertainty in global markets, today a legend in the business warned about the depletion of China’s massive reserves and a potential derivative nightmare in the crude oil market. Here is a portion of today’s note from Art Cashin:  How Fast Are China’s Reserves Shifting – China has a huge pool of foreign currency reserves but recent […]

Islamic Radicalism: A Consequence Of Petro-Imperialism

Islamic radicalism, a consequence of Petro-imperialism: In its July 2013 report [1] the European Parliament identified the Wahhabi-Salafi roots of global terrorism, but the report conveniently absolved the Western powers of their culpability and chose to overlook the role played by the Western powers in nurturing Islamic extremism and jihadism during the Cold War against […]

An “Extremist” in the United States

We are the Mainstream, Who Are You? A view of the US Republican debate. Credit: CNN screengrab I am a mild-mannered (a polite term for “boring”) white Christian man, born and raised in North Dakota, a state of the United States known for being mild-mannered. I teach university courses on freedom of expression and the […]

Libya oil storage tanks ablaze after assault by IS

Shelling by so-called Islamic State (IS) on an oil terminal in Libya has started fires that have spread to giant storage tanks, officials say. The fires are reported to be raging in Sidra, on the coast between Sirte and Benghazi. Officials said at least 10 guards had been killed since IS attacked the neighbouring ports […]

US struggles to explain allegiance to Saudi Arabia

WASHINGTON: The Obama administration on Monday confronted the fundamental contradiction in its increasingly tense relationship with Saudi Arabia. It could not bring itself, at least in public, to condemn the execution of a dissident cleric who challenged the royal family, for fear of undermining the fragile Saudi leadership that it desperately needs in fighting the […]

The Rule Of Law No Longer Exists In Western Civilization

My work documenting how the law was lost began about a quarter of a century ago. A close friend and distinguished attorney, Dean Booth, first brought to my attention the erosion of the legal principles on which rests the rule of law in the United States. My columns on the subject got the attention of […]

Saudi Arabia Says It Shot Down Missile Fired From Yemen

Saudi Arabia says it has shot down a missile fired into the kingdom from nearby Yemen, which is engulfed in a civil war. The Saudi military says it intercepted the missile Thursday morning in Jizan province and later attacked and destroyed the platform that launched the missile in Yemen. It made the announcement in a […]

Gas, Oil Production Boomed During Obama Administration

The nation’s biggest fossil-fuel trade group delivered its annual state-of-the-industry report Tuesday. True to form, it included a whack at President Barack Obama’s policies — even though oil and gas have flourished on his watch. Bloomberg’s Jennifer Dloughy reports on “Bloomberg Markets.”

Fork the Economy

I’ve given up on fixing the economy. The economy is not broken. It’s simply unjust. There’s a difference. We have to stop looking at our economy as a broken system, but one that is working absolutely true to its original design. It’s time to be progressive — and this means initiating systemic changes. For example, […]

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