Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oil's Collapse Is a Geopolitical Reset in Disguise

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 221 posts

Re: Oil's Collapse Is a Geopolitical Reset in Disguise

#111

Post by coffeemug »

Sebguer wrote: post #107
coffeemug wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: THE FOLLOWING DATA IS WRONG. (I foolishly misread a chart. Leaving this up for continuity, but the numbers are completely off.) --- Less than a third of Harvard students come from a household with income greater than $100,000/year. Almost half the students come from households with income between $30,000 and $75,000/year. One in six students comes from a poor family. Harvard is firmly middle class. The data sim…

And way more than 1/6th of America is part of a 'poor family'. Old money is vastly over-represented in Harvard, and even more vastly over-represented in the backbone of the institution.

EDIT: THE FOLLOWING DATA IS WRONG. (I foolishly misread a chart. Leaving this up for continuity, but the numbers are completely off.)

---

No. Only 25% of households in the US have annual income between $35,000 and $75,000. About one in five families in the US is below the poverty line. So middle class students are over represented at Harvard. Students from poor families are only slightly underrepresented, and considering that household income and academic achievement are correlated, it’s actually a testament to their efforts to have socially conscious admissions. The facts do not support your argument. On this you are simply wrong.

Re: Oil's Collapse Is a Geopolitical Reset in Disguise

#112

Post by voldacar »

voz_ wrote: post #2

Additional detail: The author was one of the architects for major pieces of the Iraq war, including the surge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meghan_O%27Sullivan

>She is Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School and a board member of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Kennedy School.[2] She is a member of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations,[3] where she was previously an adjunct senior fellow, and the North American chair of the Trilateral Commission.[4]

Damn, checks all the boxes

Re: Oil's Collapse Is a Geopolitical Reset in Disguise

#113

Post by coffeemug »

whyenot wrote: post #108
coffeemug wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: THE FOLLOWING DATA IS WRONG. (I foolishly misread a chart. Leaving this up for continuity, but the numbers are completely off.) --- Less than a third of Harvard students come from a household with income greater than $100,000/year. Almost half the students come from households with income between $30,000 and $75,000/year. One in six students comes from a poor family. Harvard is firmly middle class. The data sim…

I'm a little curious where your data comes from, because: "The median family income for Harvard undergraduates is $168,800—more than three times the national median, according to a recent study." https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/1/25/harvard-income-...

Oh shit. You’re right. I googled “Harvard demographics” and got a nice chart from US department of education. I just looked at it again, and it looks like it’s data for _all_ students in the U.S. Sorry to the OP. I was wrong. I’ll edit my posts in a minute.

Re: Oil's Collapse Is a Geopolitical Reset in Disguise

#114

Post by dantheman »

jeffdavis wrote: post #97
Iv wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the most relevant part was this: > She was an assistant to Paul Bremer in the Coalition Provisional Authority. She was Senior Director for Iraq at the United States National Security Council. Around that time, Bremer decided to bar former ba'ath officer from either serving the new military or getting pension. That decision almost single-handedly created the backbone of the terrorist networks that would become I…

"People from that admin should be shunned from any published analysis" Interestingly, it was GWB that also put a lot of effort into pandemic preparedness. See: https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/homeland/pandemi... History is kind of a weird place.

GWB is war monger and torturer.

Sure he may have done some things that are good, but he made many horrible decisions.

Re: Oil's Collapse Is a Geopolitical Reset in Disguise

#115

Post by fyfy18 »

rckoepke wrote: post #25
xiaolingxiao wrote: post #13

I found this part really interesting: "For dozens of oil producers, the plunge in oil prices is devastating. No major oil producer can balance its budget at prices below $40; according to the International Monetary Fund, with the exception of Qatar, every country in the Middle East requires at least $60, with Algeria at $157 and Iran at a whopping $390. The average Brent price of oil over the past month has been a ha…

Iran's oil is not expensive to extract. These aren't marginal break-even prices on each barrel of oil...rather they're how much their current oil production would have to be sold for in order to balance their national budget, which includes defense and healthcare and whatnot. 79% of Iran's exports are unrefined crude oil: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Islamic_Republic_of_... (edited to 2017) Countries typic…

Why can't they just take loans like most Western countries do to balance their budget? The UK has been running at a deficit (£55 billion in the last budget) since 2002.

Based on my back of the napkin math, the UK would need to export it's oil (yes, the UK is a net exporter of oil) at $350/barrel to cover that.

Re: Oil's Collapse Is a Geopolitical Reset in Disguise

#116

Post by twomoretime »

People are really optimistic in the industry. I am active in petroleum circles and many are convinced that this is another temporary downturn and we'll always need oil.

All I see is public sentiment turning against fossil fuels and an inevitable death for 90% of the industry as we move away from petroleum. We only use something like >20% of raw petroleum for plastic and medicine and such. And the price curve is not linear, so the oil necessary to satisfy the first 20% of today's demand is probably priced some absurdly low number, my gut says less than $20.

It feels like our entire geopolitical system is crumbling. A vulnerable state had been brewing for a long time. Coronavirus was the trigger. Perhaps the american hegemony was not sustainable, or recently became such. For those unaware, petroleum really does factor into a lot of worldbuilding that we do in the middle east. Major shifts in oil markets typically mean major shifts in geopolitics.

Interesting times ahead.

Re: Oil's Collapse Is a Geopolitical Reset in Disguise

#118

Post by caf »

rckoepke wrote: post #56
irjustin wrote: post #3

I really appreciate this piece as there's a lot of the world of oil I don't understand. One thing I don't understand is, why is it favorable for OPEC not to cut supply? Is it they want to crush all non OPEC based producers? Or are their buyers forced to buy at a particular price so they don't care if they keep producing?

There are too many producers...OPEC only produces 30% of the global oil supply. The USA has proven that it can ramp up to meet large shortage in global supply very rapidly with fracking. And there are _thousands_ of oil companies in the USA, so it's difficult to collude with all of them. Basically, OPEC needs a situation where they can reduce supply by 10% and get more than 10% increase in price. Otherwise they may i…

Basically, OPEC needs a situation where they can reduce supply by 10% and get more than 10% increase in price. Otherwise they may increase the price, but still lose revenue overall.

That would only be true if you had a zero cost of production (and OK in Saudi Arabia's case, they nearly do). A decrease in volume decreases both your costs and revenue, but an increase in price goes all to revenue.

So if, for example, at the current oil price you had a margin of 25% (eg. $15/barrel cost of production and $20/barrel price), you only need a 2.8% increase in price to balance a 10% drop in volume. Even SA's ~$5 production & transport costs still means an 8.3% increase in price balances a 10% drop in volume.

Re: Oil's Collapse Is a Geopolitical Reset in Disguise

#119

Post by chillacy »

glenvdb wrote: post #109
core-questions wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much. As soon as we all get moving again, the demand is going to ramp back up to previous levels; higher in some cases as industries work harder to fill backlogs. It's not like all the oil-consuming things have disappeared in two months.

I think the ramp will be much longer and gradual than people expect though.

Case in point: all the pour souls who kept buying USO a few weeks ago without understanding the details of oil futures.

Re: Oil's Collapse Is a Geopolitical Reset in Disguise

#120

Post by Ericson2314 »

coffeemug wrote: post #113
whyenot wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little curious where your data comes from, because: "The median family income for Harvard undergraduates is $168,800—more than three times the national median, according to a recent study." https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/1/25/harvard-income-...

Oh shit. You’re right. I googled “Harvard demographics” and got a nice chart from US department of education. I just looked at it again, and it looks like it’s data for _all_ students in the U.S. Sorry to the OP. I was wrong. I’ll edit my posts in a minute.

Also check out the portion of white students who are legacy admits.

There is the non-elite "meritocracy" and elite finishing school, side by side. Which are the suckers propping up the other? You tell me.

Post reply on HN