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Oil's Collapse Is a Geopolitical Reset in Disguise

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

#161

Post by zapttt »

baybal2 wrote: post #144
xxpor wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between the Kennedy School and the law school, it seems like everyone I hear about coming out of Harvard these days is stupid and/or evil in some profound way.

I read O'Sullivan reports and some of her works in my student years. First, I have no idea how she got her scholarly titles when her writing is so incoherent, and devoid of line of though. Some times she outright descends into polsci technobabble, and I loose her. She is not a scholar, but a person who went to school and bullshited her way to the degree with every mean and way, in hope to get a cushy government job.…

it's funny how easily we see BS jobs all around us, but how the American civil religion blinds us in those cases.

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

#162

Post by zrail »

sadfklsjlkjwt wrote: post #79
opo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can choose to do that, or they can choose to save and invest the money. Norway's oil fund is around 1 trillion dollars. >...The Government Pension Fund Global, also known as the Oil Fund, was established in 1990 to invest the surplus revenues of the Norwegian petroleum sector. It has over US$1 trillion in assets, including 1.4% of global stocks and shares, making it the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund. h…

An increasing proportion of Norwegian spending is already covered by the revenues from the Oil Fund. This crisis has seen a near perfect storm of massive increase in welfare spending, massive fall in the value or the Oil Fund's assets and massive decrease in the price of oil (and hence the input for the Oil Fund). It will be very interesting to see what happens with the fund in the next 10-20 years. EDIT: To be clear…

> I strongly suspect that Norway will use the entire fund cushioning the transition away from being an oil producer

My very cursory understanding of the Fund is that cushioning that known inevitable circumstance was the entire point in the first place.

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

#163

Post by teknopaul »

jacobush wrote: post #149
sadfklsjlkjwt wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An increasing proportion of Norwegian spending is already covered by the revenues from the Oil Fund. This crisis has seen a near perfect storm of massive increase in welfare spending, massive fall in the value or the Oil Fund's assets and massive decrease in the price of oil (and hence the input for the Oil Fund). It will be very interesting to see what happens with the fund in the next 10-20 years. EDIT: To be clear…

Not a bad use.

Countries under sanctions, obviously, cannot choose what to spend their money on. If you impose sanctions you are essentially government planning another country. I agree with the article's principal point that this is very likey to go horribly wrong somewhere soon. Prevention is better than cure. Even from a purely selfish viewpoint.

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

#164

Post by pas »

ggm wrote: post #37

The shift from coal catapulted.. it took years. First, technology had to shift to oil as a commodity beyond oil bunkers for battleships. Second, the nation states had to get out from ruinously bad national oil deals which also led to the Pahlavi regime, hatred of the British in Iran, the CIA and other bodies. This was not a catapult. It was a long slow dangerous and corrupt slide.

This sounds very important, but somehow very scarcely known. Could you point to some sources about this?

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

#165

Post by RobertoG »

rckoepke wrote: post #29
xiaolingxiao wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, so does this mean Iran is particularly dependent on oil to finance itself?

Indeed: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Islamic_Republic_of_... (edited to 2017) 79% of their exports is unrefined crude oil. While exports are not always the whole story, in this case it is extremely relevant. If Iran's economy was 99% domestic and 1% trade, (essentially autarkic) then it wouldn't really matter at all what the price of oil is, as Iran makes everything it needs for itself, whether that be aut…

This is a great comment.

I would add that, in order to spin up domestic industry or increase the value of their exports they need expertise and technology. Due to the sanctions that will not be easily available to them. This is really economic warfare.

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

#166

Post by pas »

spicyramen wrote: post #74

Mexico is planning to build a new refinery, while oil is key it is also important to mention which countries have the technology to process this extra oil into products. Mexico depends on US technology to do this for their gas. Once they built the new refinery this no longer going to happen. Something important to consider for our balance sheet and American workers

One refinery won't change the world overnight.

There are already multiple refineries in Mexico: https://argus-public-assets-us.s3.amazonaws.com/2018/07/17/2...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_refineries#Mexico

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

#167

Post by teruakohatu »

ilstormcloud wrote: post #151
hasseio wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 5 Eyes? NATO?

5 eyes are more of client states than partners at this point. That's not to say they have no utility, far from it, I think they are very potent. It's just that 'partner' is not the right word to describe them. I say this mainly because they don't seem to have opinions about foreign policy other than the one set by the USA. A better example of a partner in my opinion would be Germany, or France. As for NATO, The only…

My country, New Zealand, is in the 5 eyes. Other than intelligence, we have very little military interaction with the USA. Apparently they won't even allow us to buy high tech gear because we ban US Navy nuke ships from visiting. We are a long way off from being a client state.

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

#168

Post by sumedh »

bsanr2 wrote: post #44
rckoepke wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But is their ability to produce or sell refined vs unrefined oil effected by the sanctions? Maybe not directly; maybe in how they're able to access funding for infrastructure, for example?

Indian refineries used to import Iranian crude and then sell some of processed oil back to Iran but those refineries have significantly scaled back their imports because of US sanctions.

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

#169

Post by golergka »

FpUser wrote: post #20

given President Putin’s need to demonize the United States I am curious how exactly Putin/Russia are demonizing the US?

Recently, one of the most famous russian movie directors, who's also very close to the government (and also heads a "copyright protection" agency that gets 1% tax on all writeable media - because they could be used, to, you know, pirate movies) said in his own TV show, on state television, that Bill Gates wants to implant chips into people to earn crypto. In general, state media is full of conspiracy theory level of propaganda - with aliens, lizard people and secret world government.

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

#170

Post by boomboomsubban »

divbzero wrote: post #132
dantheman wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GWB is war monger and torturer. Sure he may have done some things that are good, but he made many horrible decisions.

Among the good things, George W. Bush contributed more to the fight against HIV/AIDS than any other president. [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President%27s_Emergency_Plan_f...

I can't find the full funding breakdown, but I'd guess Obama contributed more. Purely as he had 8 years to Bush's 5 though.
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