321–330 of 750 posts
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You have another thing which is that MBS (correctly) felt comfortable ignoring Biden. If he'd slighted Trump in that way it would probably take 2 private jets to undo the damage.
Biden was ready to take on the Saudis and then Russia invaded Ukraine...
OPEC has long been Saudi Arabia reducing output, and everyone else selling everything they can. They haven't had much power since the 1970s, but that they exist means they are a threat that if everyone else actually stuck to the agreement for a change. This is the common problem for cartels: everyone has inventive to cheat on the deals made. By selling a little more than your share you get more money, while because e…
This is the US trying to salvage the petrodollar. They want those t-bills and oil priced in dollars to maintain reserve currency status, but the whole world is divesting anyway. UAE is hoping that by leaving OPEC they can continue to do business and get protection from US. But US isn't gonna risk a larger war just to defend UAE, US has plenty of oil to exploit in Venezuela and at home. So UAE is just kinda screwed, a…
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CAFE standards were always a stupid idea. If we want to reduce fuel usage then increase the tax on fuel instead of punishing manufacturers for selling vehicles that consumers want to buy.
This is, respectfully, corporate propaganda. Consumers buy the vehicles that are available and advertised. It's in the best interest of manufacturers to convince/compel consumers to buy larger, more expensive vehicles with higher margins, and that's exactly what they're doing.
CAFE is a great example of a well-meaning regulation failing because the people who developed and approved it didn’t think through the obvious consequences.
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This is, respectfully, corporate propaganda. Consumers buy the vehicles that are available and advertised. It's in the best interest of manufacturers to convince/compel consumers to buy larger, more expensive vehicles with higher margins, and that's exactly what they're doing.
If gasoline is more expensive, customers will demand more efficient vehicles. We aren't mindless zombies buying whatever we see on TV. I'm old enough to remember when Japanese small cars practically took over the market in the 70s and 80s due to gas price shocks. It can happen again.
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Eh, 50/50. Israel would not respond positively to Egypt throwing the gates wide open.
The Israeli openly proposed for the Gaza Palestinians to move to Egypt (effectively ethnic cleansing Gaza, their obvious goal), not that long after 7.10. Egypt said 'HELL NO', first, because they don't want to deal with Palestinians (both political and economic nightmare), and second because it would have been viewed as ceding to Israelis and helping them cleanse Gaza, which would be highly unpopular among their popu…
Yeah, that's not "wide open". Israel would absolutely be happy with a one-way exit gate.
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CAFE standards were always a stupid idea. If we want to reduce fuel usage then increase the tax on fuel instead of punishing manufacturers for selling vehicles that consumers want to buy.
Increasing prices doesn't effect demand right? $10+ per pack cigarettes in California hasn't had any affect on smoking rates.
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This is, respectfully, corporate propaganda. Consumers buy the vehicles that are available and advertised. It's in the best interest of manufacturers to convince/compel consumers to buy larger, more expensive vehicles with higher margins, and that's exactly what they're doing.
How many CAFE compliant “light trucks” do you see around? CAFE is a great example of a well-meaning regulation failing because the people who developed and approved it didn’t think through the obvious consequences.
OPEC has long been Saudi Arabia reducing output, and everyone else selling everything they can. They haven't had much power since the 1970s, but that they exist means they are a threat that if everyone else actually stuck to the agreement for a change. This is the common problem for cartels: everyone has inventive to cheat on the deals made. By selling a little more than your share you get more money, while because e…
In March 2020 at the start of the pandemic, it looked like the world economy would come to a standstill. Oil futures went into extreme contango, briefly going negative as nobody was taking delivery. So in April 2020 the Trump administration went and browbeat all the OPEC+ members to massively slash production [1][2][3]. Art of the deal. This culminated in a 2 year deal to cut production by initially 9.7Mbpd (million barrels per day) and then reducing over the 2 year period [4]. This was a disaster.
For context, OPEC does this sort of thing by themselves without any kind of prompting when necessary. They meet every 3 months and project demand and then set production targets to maintain a floor and ceiling for oil prices. Individual members can and do cheat, producing more than their allocation and lying about production cuts but all in all the system mostly works.
Trump loses the election. Biden comes in and demand rockets back in 2021 and crude oil prices skyrocket, as do gas prices as a result. The Biden admin quietly went to MBS to ask him to end the deal. He refused. You can overlay this 2 year deal with global inflation and it pretty much matches up exactly.
So Republicans blamed inflation on Biden even though it was a Trump deal. The Democrats didn't abandon US foreign policy and publicly hang out an ally to dry so instead just blamed greedy oil companies for price gouging. And nobody at all mentioned the 2020 OPEC deal. Not in mainstream politics anyway.
That was a 10% cut in global supply and look what it did to inflation. Closing the Strait cuts global supply by 20%. In 1973 with the Arab oil embargo, the major recessionary effects took 6 months to really hit. This is a ticking time bomb that will likely explode leading into the midterms.
Anyway, the point is OPEC+ did that.
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/economy/special-report-trump...
[2]: https://www.reuters.com/article/business/opec-russia-approve...
[3]: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/opec-would-miss-frie...
[4]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil-saudi-cuts-idU...
[4]:
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Best of luck! These proxy wars have existed since the days of Assyria. 3000 years and running. Kind of depressing thought actually.
Lots of things have existed throughout history, yet we have overcome them in the last few hundred years. There is peace in Europe (west of Russia) which had as ancient conflict as Yemen; there is democracy, freedom, women have equal rights in much of the world, starvation and many diseases are mostly overcome, warfare is very rare and not an omnipresent threat, ... Thank goodness our predecessors didn't think this wa…
This part of the planet has been almost intractable since the age of Hammurabi - it is quite fractured without any current overarching unity or framework. There isn't a dominant religion (similar to Europe) or shared values. I could say almost meaningless things like "thought that through reason, hard word, and humanism they could overcome these things" which would make little of the hard truths of the long histories of the varied peoples and fractions of the area.
It would almost seem naive to say things like because we've solved some tough problems in the last century we can solve all problems.
I think you gloss over much and certainly give yourself a mightier than thou feeling with your "Thank goodness our predecessors didn't think this way".
I too hope for peaceful resolution and stability but fall back to the historic record of success especially in a place that is constantly, recently and historically decimated by war among fiefdoms.