Putin Says The Petrodollar Must Die, “The Dollar Monopoly In Energy Trade Is Damaging Russia’s Economy”

On one hand, despite initial weakness following Europe’s triple-dip red alert, futures declined only to surge higher after some headline or another out of Russia was again spun to suggest imminent Ukraine de-escalation (something which Russia whose only interest is to keep crude prices high, has absolutely zero interest in), perpetuating a rumor which was […]

More War for Oil?

The “no blood for oil” crowd has piped up with surprising speed and noisiness in the short hours since President Obama recommitted U.S. forces to the fight in Iraq. Steve Coll, a writer for the New Yorker, suggests in a piece posted on the magazine’s website that “Kurdish oil greed,” whose partner Mr. Obama now […]

The REAL Reason for New U.S. and French Military Involvement In Iraq

Why We’re Bombing to Protect Erbil Why is Obama now re-committing the U.S. military to Iraq? Why is France strongly backing military action? Obama says it’s to protect minorities.    That’s nothing new.  Obama is the fourth president in a row to bomb Iraq … while claiming it is for humanitarian purposes. But the architects of […]

Oil and Erbil

To the defense of Erbil: this was the main cause that drew President Obama back to combat in Iraq last week, two and a half years after he fulfilled a campaign pledge and pulled the last troops out. After Mazar-i-Sharif, Nasiriyah, Kandahar, Mosul, Benghazi, and a score of other sites of American military intervention—cities whose […]

Kunstler: Global Nausea

Any American influence left in Iraq should focus on rebuilding the credibility of national institutions. – Editorial, The New York Times Gosh, isn’t that what we spent eight years, 4,500 lives, and $1.7 trillion doing? And how did that work out? The Iraq war is just like the US financial system. The people in charge […]

Counting up all the battles in the Middle East

As the old saying goes, you can’t tell the players without a scorecard. So in this week’s Oilgram News column New Frontiers, Tamsin Carlisle does just that, skipping through the Middle East to summarize the hot battles, and the cold ones, impacting oil across the region. —————————- The Middle East and North Africa region has […]

Washington Threatens The World

The consequence of Washington’s reckless and irresponsible political and military interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria has been to unleash evil The consequence of Washington’s reckless and irresponsible political and military interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria has been to unleash evil. The various sects that lived in peace under the rule of Saddam Hussein, […]

De-Dollarization Accelerates – China/Russia Complete Currency Swap Agreement

The last 3 months have seen Russia’s “de-dollarization” plans accelerate. First Gazprom clients shift to Euros and Renminbi, then the UK signs currency swap agreements with China, then NATO ally Turkey cuts ties and mulls de-dollarization, Switzerland jumps in the currency swap agreements, and BRICS create their own non-US-based funding vehicle, and then finally this week, Russia’s oligarchs have shifted cash holdings […]

While U.S. Defends The Kurds With Airstrikes, It’s Choking Off Needed Oil Revenue

A leading Democratic voice on foreign affairs called Friday for the White House to drop U.S. opposition to allowing the Kurdistan Regional Government to sell its own oil. On Thursday night, President Barack Obama declared that the United States would defend the Kurds, who are facing an onslaught from the militant forces of the Islamic […]

Michael Lynch: Will Geopolitical Progress Mean Lower Oil Prices?

After a decade of elevated oil prices due to lost production in Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria, Libya and Iran, the past few months have seen a fairly moderate response to the advances of ISIS in Iraq, the Israeli-Hamas fighting, and the rebellion in eastern Ukraine. Prices rose as much as $10 at the worst point, and […]

U.S. Bombs Iraq

The United States dropped laser-guided bombs on ISIS artillery in Iraq on Friday, the Pentagon said — the beginning of airstrikes threatened a day earlier by President Barack Obama. NBC

The United States’ Biggest Allies Are Funding ISIS

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar & Turkey all back terror group President Barack Obama’s authorization of air strikes on ISIS targets in Iraq serves as an opportunity to remind ourselves which countries are bankrolling the deadly terror group. The answer; Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey and Qatar – three of the United States’ biggest allies in the […]

ISIS Capture Iraq’s Largest Dam

Sunni militants captured the Mosul dam, the largest in Iraq, on Thursday as their advances in the country’s north created an onslaught of refugees and set off fearful rumors in Erbil, the Kurdish regional capital. Residents near the dam and officials in the region confirmed that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, […]

Petrodollar Under Threat As Russia And Iran Sign Historic 500,000 Barrel A Day Oil Deal

Russia Delivers Blow To Petrodollar In Historic $20 Billion Iran Oil Deal Russia signed a historic $20 billion oil deal with Iran to bypass both western sanctions and the dollar based western monetary system yesterday. President Putin Admire Gold Bar (London Gold Delivery Bar) Currency wars are set to escalate as the petro dollar’s decline […]

Nearly 4% of the world’s oil supply is offline due to wars, unrest, sanction

The world’s oil prices have stayed high since 2010 — bouncing around $100 per barrel— for two basic reasons. Oil demand keeps rising, and production is struggling to keep up. But why is production struggling to keep up? One big factor has been geopolitical conflict. Wars, unrest, and sabotage have increasingly plagued oil producers like Iraq, Libya, […]

ISIS Marches On (And The Saudis Are Getting Nervous)

Destroying Iraq’s Cultural Heritage The fundamentalist retro-gang that has conquered Northern Iraq has decided it needs to go Taliban on cultural monuments it disapproves of. One of the most recent outrages was the destruction of the tomb of Yunus, better known in the West as the prophet Jonah (yes, the biblical one who spent some […]

One Hundred Thirty Nine Square Miles of Sand, Part III: Denouement

Deir Yassin was like Black Kettle’s village on the Washita River. Gaza is Wounded Knee. Before the current invasion, Yuval Diskin former director of Israel’s internal security service Shin Bet, told Der Spiegel: “They [Palestinians] will never accept the status quo of the Israeli occupation. When people lose hope for an improvement of their situation, […]

The Rise Of The Petroyuan And The Slow Erosion Of Dollar Hegemony

For seventy years, one of the critical foundations of American power has been the dollar’s standing as the world’s most important currency. For the last forty years, a pillar of dollar primacy has been the greenback’s dominant role in international energy markets. Today, China is leveraging its rise as an economic power, and as the […]

Putin Orders Preparation Of Retaliatory Sanctions, Expands Trade With Iran

As we warned previously, it appears Russia is stepping up its sanctions-retaliation confirming its threat that “US will feel tangible losses.” *PUTIN ORDERS GOVT TO PREPARE RETALIATORY SANCTIONS: RIA *PUTIN ORDERS GOVT TO READY STEPS IN RESPONSE TO SANCTIONS: IFX *PUTIN: RETALIATORY MEASURES SHOULDN’T HURT RUSSIA CONSUMERS:IFX Russian stocks and currency are sliding this morning, […]

Our Dysfunctional National Government Is Incapable of Building a Sustainable Economy

My Columbia University colleagues Bill Eimicke and Alison Miller recently joined me in authoring a new book entitled Sustainability Policy: Hastening the Transition to A Cleaner Economy. If all goes well, Jossey-Bass publishers will release the book in early 2015. Our work focuses on how American government at the federal, state and local levels can […]

CFR: The Bigger Oil Story Behind the Headlines

While we fixate on sexy headlines about Chinese military threats in the South China Sea, for instance, or Washington ‘lifting the ban’ on crude oil exports, we miss the bigger stories—and we miss the reality. China’s relentless resource quest has the greatest impact on trading prices, which may not make for headline news, but is […]

David Stockman: The Collapse of the American Imperium

im·pe·ri·um noun 1. command; supreme power. 2. area of dominion; sphere of control or monopoly; empire. 3. a nation having or exerting supreme power; superpower. David Stockman, former director of the OMB under President Reagan, former US Representative, best-selling author of The Great Deformation, and veteran financier is an insider’s insider. Few people understand the ways in which Washington DC, The Fed, and Wall Street work and intersect better than he does. He’s extremely concerned […]

Why Does The U.S. Government Have An ‘Office Of Population Affairs’?

Did you know that the federal government has an “Office of Population Affairs”?  I didn’t realize this either until someone sent me a link to their website.  The Office of Population Affairs operates under the umbrella of the Department of Health & Human Services, and it might as well be called “The Office of Population Control” […]

Big Oil Companies Pay A 11.7 Percent Tax Rate

Big oil companies pay 23.3 percentage points less in tax than the rate typically imposed on corporations, according to a new report. The report, published by Taxpayers for Common Sense, found the U.S.’s 20 largest oil and gas companies paid 11.7 percent in taxes from 2009 to 2013. That’s significantly less than the statutory corporate […]

Energy politics can be tough on Massachusetts politicians

Practicing politics in Massachusetts must be like steering a ship toward a safe harbor while running away from a hurricane. Certainly Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who is being battered by environmentalists, must feel that way. On July 31, three members of the state Global Warming Solutions Act Implementation Advisory Committee resigned and criticized the administration’s […]

Money Creation – “So Simple The Mind Is Repelled”

As John Kenneth Galbraith famously stated, “The process by which money is created is so simple the mind is repelled.” As Peak Prosperity’s Chris Martenson explains (as part of his excellent Crash Course), essentially, money is lent into existence though fractional reserve banking. The dollars you deposit at the bank? They turn into nearly 10x […]

Palestinian Conflict; The Natural Gas Twist

The International media today is extremely busy in trying to depict the assault on Ghaza as a war that is justified and rightful. With over 500 unarmed civilian casualties incurred in just a few days, and that too, of mostly women and children; this is not a war, it’s not a conflict; its systematic genocide […]

Why China Wants Control Of The South China Sea

A stunning $5.3 trillion in goods cross South China Sea every year, and as we previously explained, 190 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves sit below the ocean floor – enough to replace China’s natural gas imports for over a century – so it is hardly surprising that the world’s largest importer of oil wants […]

Sanctions Target Russian Oil, But Will That Persuade Putin?

Both the United States and Europe announced this week against Russia for its role in the conflict in Ukraine. Among other things, Western companies will no longer be able to sell Russia new technologies to develop its oil fields. The move comes at a time when oil exports have become more important than ever for […]

Islamic State captures Iraqi oil field, defeating Kurds

Islamic State Sunni insurgents have captured the northern Iraqi town of Zumar and a nearby oil field in their first major defeat of Kurdish fighters, witnesses said on Sunday. The al-Qaeda offshoot, which swept through northern Iraq in June almost unopposed by the U.S.-trained army, poses the biggest challenge to the stability of Iraq since […]

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