LifeItself

JPMorgan forecasts oil supply to fall short of demand by 600,000 barrels a day during the third quarter, even with the assumption that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries increases output by 1.2 million barrels a day in coming months. The gap could narrow to 300,000 barrels a day by the fourth quarter, assuming  Saudi Arabia increases production to 9.5 million barrels a day,  Angola  to 1.7 million and  Iraq  to 3 million, though “that may prove a stretch,” the bank said. Output from those three OPEC countries in March was 8.66 million, 1.56 million and 2.69 million barrels a day, respectively, it said. As I pointed out in the April 30 blog , the runaway Global Casino speculates on everything on the Earth and distorts all prices everywhere.  Mr. Casino is totally divorced from Ms. Reality, and his current bets on a lower oil price are as imaginary as his bets to the contrary. Earthlings beware! These speculative bets and brazen market mani...

Click on the image to see the full size version. Sources: World Settlement Bank , World Bank As an earth scientist, I deal with real resources, such as water, oil, natural gas or coal, and I am bewildered by the figure above. It shows that the sum of goods and services produced on the Earth, or the World Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is as large as credit default swaps, and 10 times less than the total face value of all financial derivatives, including the credit default swaps.  Therefore, in the global casino we have created, bets on all things in the world have exceeded the value of what we actually produce 10-fold.  So if only 10 percent of these bets went wrong, an equivalent of world's GDP would be wiped out.  And our clueless politicians are piddling with a couple of billions of dollars here and there.  Or our hapless Treasury is talking about controlling the "core" inflation. A credit default swap (CDS) is a form of insurance that protects a lender ...