I know I have buried my real concern at the end of this but I ask your patience.
I don’t know if many people follow oil pricing but the WTI contract (West Texas Intermediate — proxy for all US crude pricing and much of the world’s) has moved from $37/barrel to $45/barrel in the last 20 days. That is a huge move.
Much of it has been explained by COVID vaccine optimism but the US markets haven’t recovered like that and the OPEC production cuts are supposed to end on December 31. Reason for cautious optimism but not full throated “everything is well”. Especially with unemployment claims up today and expectation of storage builds not draws today.
Then this rumor comes across one of my feeds:
Israel told army to prepare in case US strikes #Iran: Axios #oott
Yes, rumors are rampant but that just seems way to Trumpian plus accomplishes lots of things:
- It let’s Trump play autocrat and really play with all those nifty military toys and pretend he is the “best general ever”
- It let’s all the Rethug chicken hawks throw gasoline on the military fires as they walk out the door
- MBS and the Saudis get run away oil prices and sticks the US with all the costs, abuse from world leaders, and follow on terrorist problems
- Putin gets the US reputation ever further damaged
- Let’s the Dominionists have their potential start to Revelations
So many boxes to check — so much damage to the US. Plus it puts the Biden presidency completely on its back foot for a long time, probably punches another hole in the US budget and makes the Rethuglican “but the deficit” rally against any progressive expenditures — especially large infrastructure jobs spending — even stronger.
The indication that Biden will get the PDB “whenever” encourages me a little — unless the idea is to launch strikes before he starts getting briefings. Then all that happens is he gets to see the mess unfold before his eyes.
I really hope this chain of logic is not correct but this is starting to look, walk, and quack.