The plunge in gas prices over the last six months, from an average of $3.70 per gallon in July to $2.10 per gallon has revealed many truths that you won’t hear being discussed by the MSM or your government keepers. From my perspective, with four cars in the family, this is unequivocally a great development. I estimate it will save me $2,000 per year if prices remain this low.
So why are the financial markets in an uproar over the fall in oil prices? Why are central bankers upset that it will lead to lower costs for consumers? Why is Wall Street and corporate America angry about lower oil prices? Why are government bureaucrats and politicians worried about their tax revenues?
It’s because these people and organizations don’t give a fuck about you. It’s a big club and you’re not in it. What’s good for them is bad for you. They don’t treat oil and gas as a cost of living. They treat it as an investment in which to make billions in profits at your expense. Every person in America is benefiting from the fall in their energy costs. Oil is an input in virtually everything we buy. Your cost of living an every day existence is going down for once. And the oligarchs don’t like it. They pontificate about the dangers of deflation. The danger is to their riches, power and control. Lower prices are a godsend to the average American family that is one paycheck away from financial disaster.
The second revelation is how immense the taxes are on a gallon of gasoline. If you go to this link, you will see the actual wholesale cost of a gallon of gasoline is only $1.27 per gallon. That begs the question, why are we paying $2.10 per gallon?
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/prices.cfm
In PA, I’m still stuck paying $2.30 per gallon, and the reason why is in the chart below. My fine state of Pennsylvania now has the highest level of gas tax in the entire country. They increased it by 10 cents per gallon on January 1, after increasing it by 10 cents per gallon last year. It will increase by another 8 cents in 2017. I get to pay the highest gas taxes in the nation for the privilege of sitting in horrific traffic, blowing out tires after hitting one of the thousands of potholes along my driving route, supporting a bankrupt public transit system and their thousands of union drones, waiting in gridlocked traffic because traffic lights don’t work below 10 degrees, and withstanding six years of construction on the Northeast Extension by union construction workers. Their motto is: We’re slow, but at least we’re expensive.
There are multiple executives from the PA Department of Transportation in state prison for the massive fraud and corruption that permeates Pennsylvania agencies. We pay a 50% union premium for all the road construction projects. On top of the gas taxes, PA has increased tolls by 100% over the last five years. And this was all done under a Republican governor with a Republican legislature. These criminals say the tax money and the tolls pay for the roads, but it’s a crock of shit. It goes into the general fund and is used to pay the gold plated pensions of the government drone workers.
| State | Gasoline tax (includes federal tax of 18.4¢/gal) |
Diesel tax (includes federal tax of 24.4¢/gal) |
|---|---|---|
| Pennsylvania | 68.9 | 88.6 |
| New York | 68.7 | 73.1 |
| Connecticut | 65.8 | 78.9 |
| California | 63.8 | 65.0 |
| Hawaii | 63.4 | 66.8 |
| North Carolina | 56.2 | 62.2 |
| Washington | 55.9 | 61.9 |
| Florida | 54.8 | 58.1 |
| West Virginia | 53.0 | 59.0 |
| Nevada | 51.6 | 53.0 |
| Rhode Island | 51.4 | 57.4 |
| Wisconsin | 51.3 | 57.3 |
| Vermont | 50.4 | 56.4 |
| Oregon | 49.5 | 54.7 |
| Illinois | 49.1 | 63.9 |
| Michigan | 48.7 | 58.4 |
| US (Volume-Weighted) Average | 48.5 | 54.5 |
| Maine | 48.4 | 55.6 |
| Indiana | 48.3 | 68.7 |
| Minnesota | 47.0 | 53.0 |
| Ohio | 46.4 | 52.4 |
| Montana | 46.2 | 52.9 |
| Kentucky | 46.0 | 49.0 |
| Maryland | 45.8 | 52.6 |
| Georgia | 44.9 | 54.5 |
| Massachusetts | 44.9 | 50.9 |
| Nebraska | 44.9 | 50.3 |
| Idaho | 43.4 | 49.4 |
| Utah | 42.9 | 48.9 |
| Kansas | 42.4 | 50.4 |
| Wyoming | 42.4 | 48.4 |
| New Hampshire | 42.2 | 48.2 |
| District of Columbia | 41.9 | 47.9 |
| Delaware | 41.4 | 46.4 |
| North Dakota | 41.4 | 47.4 |
| Virginia | 40.8 | 50.5 |
| Colorado | 40.4 | 44.9 |
| Iowa | 40.4 | 47.9 |
| South Dakota | 40.4 | 48.4 |
| Arkansas | 40.2 | 47.2 |
| Tennessee | 39.8 | 42.8 |
| Alabama | 39.3 | 46.3 |
| Louisiana | 38.4 | 44.4 |
| Texas | 38.4 | 44.4 |
| Arizona | 37.4 | 51.4 |
| New Mexico | 37.3 | 47.3 |
| Mississippi | 37.2 | 42.8 |
| Missouri | 35.7 | 41.7 |
| Oklahoma | 35.4 | 38.4 |
| South Carolina | 35.2 | 41.2 |
| New Jersey | 32.9 | 41.9 |
| Alaska | 29.7 | 36.2 |
You can see the amount of gas taxes you are paying. A full 30% of the price I pay at the pump is taxes. I’m paying $1,400 per year in gas taxes, on top of all the income taxes, sales taxes, liquor taxes, and the myriad of other taxes I’m forced to pay at the point of a gun. And what good does it get me? It funds this welfare/warfare state that keeps me under constant surveillance and wages un-Constitutional wars around the world.
Remember. What is good for the government, central bankers, Wall Street, oil companies, and mega-corporations is not good for you. Know your enemy.
I see a bird, and he’s swimming. He’s very big, and very black, with a long neck. Swim harder, baby. You could save us all
Here in S.C. there is a growing faction that wants to raise gas taxes in order to pay for roads etc. They are getting louder because after all gas is getting cheaper. Of course there isn’t any discourse as to how the funds will be spent etc,it’s just give it to us now and we’ll explain later. The Chamber of Farceness is the loudest monkey at the circus right now.
I paid $1.66 for gas yesterday .
I swear on my darkened soul … on our way back from seeing my parents yesterday we filled up the tank at Luke Oil (Russian owned, I believe) for UNDER $2 bucks a gallon …. $1.96 to be exact.
Yes, I read a couple articles yesterday about the low gas prices … and how BAD n TURRIBLE this is for the economy …. and I hear the same, or worse, when gas prices increase …….. and so, I’m not kidding, I just throw up my hands in frustration and say “FUCKIT!”, cuz I will obviously never ever understand this thing called “economics”.
$1.66 ?????? No shit! Really? Wow. I guess I got fucked at $1.96
Even those lower prices will be hard to pay if you’ve lost your job in the oil and gas industry.
Peak oil is such a dire situation, they just had to crash the price per barrel???? Was this to inflict pain on the Russians or to hold down the gold price, or both? Me thinks TPTB talk out of both sides of their ass.
Enjoy that cheap gas it won’t last.
First Of Many: Standard Chartered Hit By Billions In Losses From Commodity Crash
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/13/2015 08:23 -0500
Now that even the pundit brigade has confessed that crashing crude may not be the “unambiguously good” event all of them had sworn as recently as a month ago it surely would be, and stocks are beginning to comprehend that plunging oil may well be rather “unambiguously bad” because without EPS growth (energy is well over 10% of S&P EPS), without multiple expansion (rumor has it the Fed will hike this year), without a jump in stock buybacks (energy companies account for 30% of the buyback growth in 2015 according to Goldman) and without a boost to GDP (energy capex plans are imploding), the only way is down. But there was one key element missing from the “bad” scenario: impaired banks. At least until now, because as Reuters reports, Asia-focused bank Standard Chartered is the first (of many) bank facing billions in losses resulting from the crude crash.
The bank, which recently has been on a firing spree and even exited its entire equity business, will likely need $4.4 billion of extra provisions to cover losses from commodities loans, potentially forcing it to raise billions of dollars from investors, analysts said on Monday.
From Reuters:
Credit Suisse analysts said the losses could force Standard Chartered to raise $6.9 billion to improve its core capital ratio to 11 percent by the end of the year. “We think the needed provisioning could be large enough to require further capital measures, such as further equity raising, and/or dividend reductions,” analyst Carla Antunes-Silva said in a note.
Standard Chartered’s shares were down 2.3 percent at 923 pence by 1330 GMT, the weakest major European bank.
There were previous hints, completely ignored by the markets of course, that things at this China-heavy bank are going from bad to worse: a jump in Standard Chartered’s bad debts in the third quarter has prompted concern that it could face heavy losses from commodities loans after the fall in the price of oil and commodities.
The loss could be lower…
Credit Suisse’s estimate was based on an “adverse” scenario that would see the bank need $4.4 billion to maintain its capital ratio, based on a potential $2.6 billion of pretax provisioning for commodities loans that sour and a higher risk-weighting on the loans.
Then again, considering that the “adverse” scenario in the ECB stress case didn’t even consider the current deflationary environment, the loss could be far higher. Which means capital raises are on deck, and logically Credit Suisse said the bank could announce a rights issue or cut the dividend at its 2014 results, due on March 4.
“We believe the last two years of de-rating have been driven largely by weaker revenue and that the asset quality deterioration leg is now setting in,” said Credit Suisse, maintaining its “underperform” rating on the stock. Analysts at JPMorgan and Jefferies also cut their target prices on the stock on Monday, saying that credit quality could deteriorate.
Standard Chartered CEO Peter Sands is under pressure after a troubled two years in which profits have fallen, halting a decade of record earnings. Some investors have said that Sands should go or the bank should set out succession plans.
One down: many more to go. Hopefully equity investors are as generous to all those other banks who will be stunned to learn they, too, need billions more in capital.
How could trillions of dollars be laundered from the Wash DC regime to Saudi Arabia? Why, through Citigroup, of course.
By Ann Barnhardt
A clever reader with probably more knowledge of the Middle East than they would care to have put before me a very interesting question. Is the US laundering money to Saudi Arabia through Citigroup in order to “hedge” against, or compensate Saudi Arabia for the drop in oil prices?
Well, it sure as hell looks like it.
I recently tweeted the reportage on the massive derivatives position being accumulated by Citigroup (the parent Holding Company) and Citibank (the bank held by Citigroup HoldCo) – $135 TRILLION. Citi is adding roughly $10 TRILLION PER QUARTER, and the bank is now holding MORE derivatives than the parent HoldCo, which is unprecedented and shocking. Even worse, the bank – the derivatives holdings of which are now “guaranteed” by the FDIC, which is to say the US TAXPAYERS, thanks to the Cromnibus bill – is where the exposure is being added – $9 TRILLION was added to the Citibank portfolio within the third quarter of 2014 alone – the latest available data. Citi is the only big bank that is INCREASING its derivatives position, all the other big banks have modestly reduced their derivatives exposure in the same time period. But Citi is piling it on as hard and fast as it can – NINE TRILLION $ IN ONE QUARTER!!
Do you know who the largest private shareholder of Citigroup is?
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud. Mister Saudi Arabia.
So, I’m going to indulge in a little dot connecting here. I don’t think this is terribly far-fetched.
I hypothesize that the Washington DC regime is providing Saudi Arabia with a “laundered short hedge” on oil prices through Citi. Citi “borrows” money from the Federal Reserve at next to zero percent, plows it into swaps (a form of highly leveraged derivative wherein cashflows, not assets, are the underlying “commodity”) at this stunning clip because all swaps are held “off balance sheet”. Remember that term from MF Global?
The position is such that it makes money when oil prices drop, thus “hedging” Saudi Arabia. If the poop hits the fan, thanks to the Cromnibus, 100% of Citibank’s derivatives portfolio is now under the umbrella of the FDIC, which we all know means the Federal Reserve printing dollars to bail out their friends. The FDIC is only sitting on a few billion in assets. It’s a joke.
So, the Washington DC regime has essentially posted YOU AND SEVERAL GENERATIONS OF YOUR PROGENY as the collateral guaranteeing a short hedge on oil prices that it is providing for Saudi Arabia through its ownership of Citigroup. In other words, MONEY LAUNDERING, EXCEPT ON A MULTI-GENERATIONAL, CIVILIZATIONAL SCALE.
Quack fucking quack. Makes sense, jim
FDIC is smoke and mirrors hokey-pokey. They would be hard pressed to come up with one percent of deposits in personal accounts in the US, probably more like one half percent to be sure.
Hope you won’t miss your savings accounts, retirement accounts etc. Muppets will need a good lube.
“Enjoy that cheap gas it won’t last.” —- Bonz Eye
Meanwhile, some Saudi prince recently caused quite a stir when he said oil will never again reach $100 per barrel.
Snyder has an article today — “Boom Goes The Dynamite: The Crashing Price Of Oil Is Going To Rip The Global Economy To Shreds”
Not sure what to make of it. Just posting it because he offers an explanation of why such low prices are devastating to the economy. Like I said … I don’t shit about how this all works.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/boom-goes-dynamite-crashing-price-oil-going-rip-global-economy-shreds
Never again reach $100 a barrel? Maybe, if we lose the reserve status?
There’s an old saying, the cure for low prices, is low prices.
Once the low price clears the field of those sitting on the debt fence, global demand will once again be greater than global supply. Then what?
Mark Spitznagel said, “the real black swan problem is not about a remote event that is considered unforeseeable; it is about a foreseeable event that is considered remote.”
@card802
Did petrol go down and maintain a lower price 40+ years ago when UK lost reserve status?
A $1.65 at Costco this AM in Minneapolis.
I was born and raised in PA (left in 1972) – every time I go back it looks more and more like a shit hole. That fuckin’ I 80 was really beat to shit (a couple of years ago)..
The way I hear the PA legislature did nothing about the huge pension liability for public employees. So I guess you’re going to take it up the ass in the form of a gas tax hike.
Here in Minnesota they redefined ‘roads’ it’s now ‘transportation’. The money that working people pay via gas tax is being spent on fucking bike paths / walking trails / Light Rail that goes through nigger / Hmong / spic neighborhoods.
Last year all Minnesota counties enacted a $10 wheelage tax. They just put $10 on the license tabs. Theft.
“Did petrol go down and maintain a lower price 40+ years ago when UK lost reserve status?”
I don’t know, did it?
All I was trying to say is if we lose reserve currency, then oil will be priced in something other than the US dollar, so the prince would be telling the truth. Oil will never reach $100 US, but $100 Renminbi or whatever.
Saw an article about Saudi Prince Alwaleed comments on oil prices the other day. Headline was: “Saudi prince: $100-a-barrel oil ‘never’ again” article here: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/bartiromo/2015/01/11/bartiromo-saudi-prince-alwaleed-oil-100-barrel/21484911/
From Ann Barnhardt:
“How could trillions of dollars be laundered from the Wash DC regime to Saudi Arabia? Why, through Citigroup, of course.”
“A clever reader with probably more knowledge of the Middle East than they would care to have put before me a very interesting question. Is the US laundering money to Saudi Arabia through Citigroup in order to “hedge” against, or compensate Saudi Arabia for the drop in oil prices?
Well, it sure as hell looks like it.
I recently tweeted the reportage on the massive derivatives position being accumulated by Citigroup (the parent Holding Company) and Citibank (the bank held by Citigroup HoldCo) – $135 TRILLION. Citi is adding roughly $10 TRILLION PER QUARTER, and the bank is now holding MORE derivatives than the parent HoldCo, which is unprecedented and shocking. Even worse, the bank – the derivatives holdings of which are now “guaranteed” by the FDIC, which is to say the US TAXPAYERS, thanks to the Cromnibus bill – is where the exposure is being added – $9 TRILLION was added to the Citibank portfolio within the third quarter of 2014 alone – the latest available data. Citi is the only big bank that is INCREASING its derivatives position, all the other big banks have modestly reduced their derivatives exposure in the same time period. But Citi is piling it on as hard and fast as it can – NINE TRILLION $ IN ONE QUARTER!!
Do you know who the largest private shareholder of Citigroup is?
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud. Mister Saudi Arabia.
So, I’m going to indulge in a little dot connecting here. I don’t think this is terribly far-fetched.
I hypothesize that the Washington DC regime is providing Saudi Arabia with a “laundered short hedge” on oil prices through Citi. Citi “borrows” money from the Federal Reserve at next to zero percent, plows it into swaps (a form of highly leveraged derivative wherein cashflows, not assets, are the underlying “commodity”) at this stunning clip because all swaps are held “off balance sheet”. Remember that term from MF Global?
The position is such that it makes money when oil prices drop, thus “hedging” Saudi Arabia. If the poop hits the fan, thanks to the Cromnibus, 100% of Citibank’s derivatives portfolio is now under the umbrella of the FDIC, which we all know means the Federal Reserve printing dollars to bail out their friends. The FDIC is only sitting on a few billion in assets. It’s a joke.
So, the Washington DC regime has essentially posted YOU AND SEVERAL GENERATIONS OF YOUR PROGENY as the collateral guaranteeing a short hedge on oil prices that it is providing for Saudi Arabia through its ownership of Citigroup. In other words, MONEY LAUNDERING, EXCEPT ON A MULTI-GENERATIONAL, CIVILIZATIONAL SCALE.”
Seriously, how fucked up is the world when there is screeching everywhere that reduced prices are a BAD thing. That is seriously fucked up and contrary to common sense.
How can it be bad when the world has to pay less for one of its most critical products? Common sense dictates that it cannot be bad – that it has to be good, and that it should spur economic activity, or savings. Billions of people now have more money to either spend or invest. It really is that simple.
Sure, some very isolated industries will suffer. So what else is new – the markets will sort that shit out.
If in some twisted universe falling oil prices is bad for the world, then the entire system is fucked up beyond repair.
Here are some folks that SHOULD benefit from falling oil prices:
truck manufacturers and drivers/transport in general
mom and pops who drive their offspring everywhere
auto makers
energy producers
plastics manufacturers
farmers (for fuck sake – farmers will be overjoyed, don’t you think?)
food consumers everywhere
fishermen (fishing boats burn oil at prodigious rates)
local travel industry
etc etc etc – the list goes on and on and on
But all I hear are tales of woe re how the world will come apart because of low oil prices.
If that is so, then I again repeat – something is truly fucked up.
llpoh, read both the article I linked and the one I pasted above and you begin to see why its bad. Add in the hardships it’s causing other oil producing countries to an already unstable world and it could lead to very bad things. The cartoon admin posted about on Snday would indicate that this is a great opportunity for TPTB to implement a huge carbon tax on fossil fuels.
Whenever the MSM and govt starts telling me something is good, I immediately believe the opposite until proven wrong. I don’t enjoy thinking this way but it serves me well.
IS – I read it. That is financial thievery, of course.
But the fact remains that falling oil prices in and of themselves is a good to society at large. Making a critical product cheaper is a good, no matter how you cut it. Always has been, always will be.
The advancement of economic society has been based on that premise. It used to take hours to make a dozen needles, and now it takes a fraction of a second. Cheaper is always better, so long as cheaper is not a result of simply reducing the wages of the workers.
llpoh said:
“Making a critical product cheaper is a good, no matter how you cut it.”
Not when they keep transferring the “savings” to future generations via increased debt which will only cause the inevitable crash to be worse while they get richer but I get what you’re saying.
IS – Making something cheaper is good for society. It is the financial manipulations which suck.
Transferring debt generationally is a bad thing. That is inarguable, and I am in agreement with you. It is a great evil, and it is being foisted on the young. Perhaps a great reset will save them from what is being done.
The fall in price is related to over-supply. No one seems willing to cut back production – everyone is forging ahead with production, so prices are dropping.
I do not fully understand what is happening re Citibank, but financial manipulations are happening everywhere, and it is going to end badly.
I seriously do not doubt Ann Barnhardt’s take on Citi/Saudi. These blackhearted sons of bitches and dogs will stop at nothing to accomplish their “Agenda”, 21 or otherwise. They way I see it, people so evil to plan and execute 9/11 aren’t Human. And I’m not talking about “Al Queda” or however you spell it.
The net effect really isn’t too different from “Obummercare”; subsidies all around, and let’s fuck up Russia so they’ll launch a nuke. I really think that’s the motivation…if they can get Russia into WWIII then they can bring it on home to true one world govenment. And the fact that WWIII would kill between 70-90% of the world’s population is just icing on the cake to these motherfuckers.
One other thing, aren’t you mad as hell how badly you’ve been ripped off for gas over the past 10 years? In the past decade we’ve gone full circle, from about where prices are now, all the way to $5+ and back. Can you even imagine how many Trillions of Dollars that represents?
If you’re passing through Charlotte on I-77 and have never been there before, just look at SC Exit 90, a mere half mile across the NC state line. $1.75 vs. $2.04-2.14 gasoline, $2.54 diesel for my TDI vs. $2.89-2.99.
There are 6-7 large pumpers there that are continually packed. The Kangaroo next to the hotel where I stay does 350,000+ gals/mo…..in DIESEL. And another 1.5 MM in gasoline. For those of you who’ve never been a petro distributor, the average C-store is 125-150,000/mo of gas& diesel.
Admin, you left AL off the list – it’s right there w/ SC on taxes. The same holds true there with the AL/FL & AL/GA lines.
A lot of the commenters here are missing the real point of this article. Step back, and take a look at the BIG picture. It’s not just about the price of gas. WHO, exactly, is behind EVERYTHING that is going on in the world today? The U.S. Government has been completely hijacked by the Western International Central Bankers, and their “globalist”, corporatist, fascist Multinational Oligarchical allies.
The Long, Abusive History of the Money Power – Part 1
http://sgtreport.com/2014/12/guest-post-the-long-abusive-history-of-money-powerpart-1/
Read the comments.