Four million barrels per day are now offline, likely for months, not weeks.
The Expert Assessment
Politico reports Saudi pipeline hit by drones will be out of service for weeks, further restricting oil flow
A crucial Saudi oil pipeline that was struck in an attack will be mostly out of service for weeks as the damage is repaired, two regional officials said Monday, as Yemen’s Houthi rebels seized more islands along Red Sea shipping routes in a new blow to Saudi Arabia’s oil exports.
Oil prices gained more than 2% amid growing worries about global petroleum supplies and the effect of the new developments on the ability of the world’s biggest exporter to get its crude to market. The Iran war has forced the kingdom to shift its exports away from the Persian Gulf, since Iranian attacks have stifled shipping through the gulf’s sole exit, the Strait of Hormuz.
So the kingdom has relied on the East-West Pipeline, which runs 745 miles across the breadth of the country, to move its crude production from Gulf ports to the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea. From there it can be put on tankers for export. But authorities were forced to shut down the pipeline after an attack Thursday that Saudi Arabia blamed on drones from Iranian-backed militias in Iraq.
Repairing the damage, including at a major pumping facility, could take three to five weeks, the officials, who have been briefed on the matter, told The Associated Press. The pipeline may work partially during the repairs, one of the officials said, but they could not say how much oil might get through.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to brief the media.
Three-to-Five Weeks? Really?
No.
In non-war conditions, say an unexpected fire or rupture, the three-to-five assessment might seem reasonable if not excessively conservative.
In this case, if rebels in Iraq, Yemen, or Iran could hit the pipeline once, then they are able to do so again, and again.
It would not be surprising for the route to be down indefinitely, until some agreement is reached between Iran, Yemen, Oman, and Saudi Arabia.
Any guesses how long might that be?
Houthis March On
Meanwhile, Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels continued to expand their threat to Saudi shipping routes out of the Red Sea by capturing the strategic islands of Greater and Lesser Hanish, government and Houthi officials said Monday.
The islands lie 100 miles north of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The strait is a choke point that connects the Red Sea to the open ocean and Saudi Arabia’s key Asian markets.
The Houthis’ advance also puts them just 20 miles from the U.S. military base in the tiny Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti, on the other side of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
For more than a month, the Houthis have been striking Saudi oil infrastructure and shipping in the Red Sea, stepping up pressure on global oil prices and boosting Iran’s leverage in its war with the United States.
The Houthi advances have seemed to come with little resistance from Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces. The rebels deployed on the Hanish islands after hundreds of government-allied forces withdrew from the archipelago, according to two government officials and a Houthi official. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists.
A rebel spokesman said the Houthis fired dozens of missiles and drones at the King Khalid Air Base in the southern Saudi city of Khamis Mushait, targeting hangars, radar installations and ammunition depots. The statement on Monday by Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree did not specify when the attack took place, but the Houthis often take hours or days to claim responsibility for attacks.
There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia on the Houthi claim of striking the base.
Musical Tribute
Wow. What harmony.
Well, they aren’t talking but I will.
A Three-to-Five week’s repair estimate assumes no further attacks, an assessment I find not just optimistic, but ridiculous, unless there is a deal.
Any guesses when might that deal might be?
No Respite in Sight
The Wall Street Journal reports Oil Executives Say the Great Fuel Crisis Is Here
Trump officials say the oil-market disruption is temporary, but Chevron’s Mike Wirth and others warn global supplies are running low, with no respite in sight.
Commercial fuel stocks around the world have been depleting for more than six months, and strategic crude reserves can’t be tapped much further. Attacks last week shut down a crucial crude pipeline in Saudi Arabia that bypassed the Strait, stranding at least 2.5 million barrels a day from an already tight global oil market, analysts estimate.
“All these mechanisms helped to mitigate the price and supply risk,” Chevron Chief Executive Mike Wirth said Friday at an energy conference in Austin, Texas. “Those have largely now played out, and we don’t have nearly the buffers in the system that we did when it began.”
“I wish I could tell you that I saw some reason why things would ease, but it’s difficult right now to see that happen,” he said.
Don’t Worry “We Had High Prices Anyway”
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said at a Houston G-20 event on Monday that “the prices in the prior administration were this high anyway” and that Americans would have paid those prices permanently because former President Joe Biden was “pursuing a policy of energy subtraction and shutting down refineries.”
“If you want to write about the prices, make sure you include the word ‘temporary’ because this is a temporary disruption,” Burgum told reporters.
Hoot of the Day
We had “high prices anyway”, but now they are “temporary”.
Thanks. That’s my hoot of the day. I’ll make a note.
Note: I wish these jackasses could see how comments like the above come across to the average person struggling with Trump-sponsored inflation.
Advantage Iran
Here’s a comment that does make sense.
“The advantage in most negotiations usually goes to the side that has time on their side, and is willing to be patient,” said Wil VanLoh, founder and CEO of Quantum Capital Group, during the Austin conference. Iran, he said, “is willing to suffer. Their people have already suffered a lot for many decades.”
Let’s check back in with Burgum for the final ridiculous comment.
“We will do anything that helps the price at home,” Burgum said. “But we’re also going to be smart about it, and not just have some idea that if we stop exporting, that somehow magically is going to help the prices.”
Seems to me that if you want to do something to help, then declare the war won and leave.
But hey, keep exporting diesel and tell farmers that “prices were high anyway”. I am sure they will understand.
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Lies every day. Multiples today. Should I make this a regular feature?
Wow! “Silence is Golden”, Only slow song in the record stack, so played ad infinitum at 7th grade end of year party. Thanks for the memory, Mish. BTW, small world, Jonathan Frakes was there.
Oh, about the oil situation, the price of a barrel has no limit at this point.
Did Biden himself actually shut down any refineries? Exactly how many? And when? Did any refineries shut down during Trumps first term in office?
Think of how f’ing stupid Trump sounds when he makes ridiculous claims that “other previous administrations could have solved problem x, y, and z (whatever those problems might have been) while not realizing that he was in charge of one of those “previous” administrations!
Also, pipelines are normally easy to fix, and the Arabs, whatever one might want to say, can act quickly when they decide to do something. That being said, you are correct Mish regarding future sabotage/bombing. To all that thought these pipelines were the savior and going to make the straight “irrelevant”, a stationary pipeline of 1,000 kilometers or so, is a lot easier to disable than moving ships with air support!
Idiots!
And for Trump, THE 25TH!!!
You are right and wrong. Right that clearly Iraq/Houthi groups aligned w/ Iran have precise targeting info and means to deliver to the many other pumping stations. Wrong in that yes, they can probably resume flow (at a reduced level) fairly quickly using temporary pumping stations and flow additives (they’ve done this in the past).
Don’t worry, BYD is building 10 new car carriers, each has a capacity of 9100 vehicles.
China is doing the world a huge favour by exporting +1M vehicles a month, most EVs.
Opportunities like Trump presented China with his suicidal Iran War are why China builds excess capacity.
Exactly. Why even bother fixing it for now? Just spewing bs again. This is like Bessent thinking they can just build a pipeline and the problem is solved. They probably know better but hope that we don’t. Also, looks like Ukraine just broke their make believe ‘promise’ to Trump about blowing up Russian energy targets.
It’s funny how my area was polled to have $4 gas as a breaking point with consumers and they’ve had it pegged at $3.99999. Everythings fine and dandy over that fraction of a cent. What a joke.
I’d like to hear Mcconnels thoughts on this at the mic now that they dragged him back in like the wet bag of s*** that he is.
Ukraine did not break anything, since the US supplies the weapons and targeting data.
This is no longer a skirmish or conflict where we pick and choose targets to minimize civilian inconvenience. It is a full-fledged war and time to fish or cut bait. We are either in this to win like we did in the two world wars, or we have to declare victory and leave enduring the consequences Iran chooses to impose on us because we have little or no influence on them. Doing what we are doing is the same thing Johnson and Nixon did with Viet Nam, and the results will be similar, a prolonged war with no good outcome. What makes this worse is Iran can to a degree control the world via negatively influencing the world economy by restricting fuel supply enough to meaningfully inflict pain on most of the world population.
What the Trump administration assumes is this is essentially an economic war where enough destruction of the enemy’s capability will force surrender is absolutely wrong. Iran has been invaded by radical Muslim ideologs at the highest levels of leadership. Their motivation is religious dictate to destroy/kill anything not subject to their religious doctrine. Remember we are the great Satan, the chants of death to America are not idle talk, they are an objective. Because of this motivation, we might not be able to declare victory and walk away, the other side has to allow us to leave and not follow to our homeland.
Trump may have opened a box much bigger and more complicated than he can even imagine, even bigger and more complicated than the problems every other president has created before him. What a mess.
So, after starting a war of aggression, you now advocate for genocide.
just radical islam. Do you believe they would hesitate to use a nuclear bomb against the west if they had the capablity to do so?
Pakistan (as in “The Islamic Republic Of Pakistan”) has had The Bomb for some 20 years now.
Of course, Iran has been “two weeks away from The Bomb” since the 1980s.
How do you know that they don’t already have a nuclear weapon? And, have, as yet, chosen not to use it?
So far only a “christian county” has used nukes. Pakistan has nukes have they used them?
I don’t understand it Trump is such a high Q person and knows so much more than the generals how on Earth could this have happened. I only hope someone in his inner circle has the balls to come out and tell the truth about how this went down. I am certain he had he ignored all relevant wisdom from the military experts.
Then again this “little” conflict was only to last 4-6 weeks. Right?
And, you know this, about the Iranian leadership how exactly? Your extensive travels to the region? Your scholarly work? In all of these 47 years that they’ve “been at war with us” exactly how many times did they “follow us home to our “homeland”? They might now, after we’ve attacked them in a war of our choice, but, they never did before.
We’ve been hearing about “sleeper cells” for 25 years, but they never seem to wake up.
They would be justified in attacking trump and his family in return for what trump did to them.
“Iran has been invaded by radical Muslim ideologs at the highest levels of leadership. Their motivation is religious dictate to destroy/kill anything not subject to their religious doctrine. Remember we are the great Satan, the chants of death to America are not idle talk, they are an objective.”
Absolute BS. Iran is a theocratic democracy with religious protection for native Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians. There is not a single documented instance of the Iranian military attacking US citizens, military members or government officials except when under attack by US forces, since the 1979 hostage crisis.
The USA overthrew their government, and installed a murderous regime that tortured and slaughtered anyone fighting to regain independence and democracy. Of course they hate us. We keep murdering them and their children. Whey wouldn’t they?
good little sheep you are. I take it you resemble that remark. Must be an irgc plant on this site.
o look, Dave still acting like he is an expert on Iran.
“Seems to me that if you want to do something to help, then declare the war won and leave.”
You know and I know and Burgum knows and Trump knows that he can’t do that.
Netanyahu has The Files, and Lord knows what else.
Saudi oil pipeline facing a 3-to-5-week outage.
They must be measuring time with the exact same tools Trump used to forecast the duration of the Iran war.
The number was carefully chosen so as not to unduly spook oil markets. At the same time, if the Houthis hit pumping stations again (and they have plenty of time to do so), the Saudis can say that they really really tried very hard, but Mean Houthis, see….
This morning, I saw a video of celebrations in Yemen including some of the Ansur Allah fighters. The warriors were lean, tough looking and apparently experienced fighters. The other day I saw the army national guard fighters in my home state. Apparently, our home fighters had just finished working out at Colonel Sanders in preparation for Sunday’s game. I don’t expect American troops will be involved in this fight.
You’re supposed to call them “Our Heroic Warfighters(R)” or something like that.
Sheesh.
Anyway, sarcasm aside the Zaidi tribes of Yemen have a reputation as guerillas going back at least to Ottoman times. They saw off the Turks, the british, the Egyptians and the Saudis, to name a few.
I believe they fought a war with Saudi Arabia and despite being outnumbered held up well. Tough guys, Americans have no idea what tough means. We are high altitude bombers.
BTW-My sources tell me they are being joined by Al Qaeda “holy warriors” from Africa. Another battle-hardened group.
Your sources are full of shit. Ansarallah (aka the “Houthis”) are Zaidi Shia.
Al Qaeda are Sunni and regard the Shia as little better than apostates. Al Qaeda are fighting in Yemen – on the side of the Saudis and their puppet ruler.
Maybe you should calm down. Al Queda often sell their services; their interests aren’t always tribal or ideological. They were employed by the CIA in Syria against the regime (Asaad was Sunni?). I was told, by a reliable person, Al Queda is now fighting in the gulf, I can’t prove it, I’m hardly an expert on tribal war in thjis region..
My point is that these militants are tough and hardened, the US is best to leave this region alone.
Assad was Allawi, not Sunni at all, and in fact considered even lower than Shia in the Sunni fundamentalist view.
Probably not. But the Saudis are hiring muslim Sudanese fighters as mercenaries to fight the Houthis in the name of the Yemeni government. The problem of course is that the Houthis are supported by the vast majority of the Yemeni population and the federal government is held together only by Saudi money.
Saudi Arabia has 20 million barrels of oil in tanks at Yanbu oil terminal. Enough for 5 days of exports. Then, hardly any exports for 4 weeks because only few tankers can make it through Hormuz.
Saudis were exporting roughly 7 million barrels per day of oil and oil products in 2025 and it wasn’t enough to keep the state budget balanced as the country needed oil price at $80 barrels. The oil price was at around $65 at that time. Saudi Arabia was issuing bonds to borrow money in 2025.
So you can imagine what is going to happen during those coming 4 weeks. Riyadh will have to sell assets to keep its welfare state and army afloat. That’s a loss of 30 days by 7 million barrels at $80. That makes $17bn dollars.
What prevents Houtis or Iraqi Shias from hitting the same pipeline in 5 weeks again? Nothing.
LIV golf is already gone so can’t sell that….lol
“US reveals it has weapons in space
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said the deployment was aimed at deterring America’s adversaries”
Boeing X-37 has entered the chat.
Some material for a 1984 “fan fiction” novel I should write…
Oceania might be attempting to starve Eastasia of energy (ultimately refined product). It has targeted choke points (ports, straits), captured nearby supply, and targeted distant supply to at least disable it. This de-energizes Eastasia and gives Oceania more power.
Many people push back and claim Eastasia is immune to the strategy. However, that is true only of the Eastasia primary stan. It is much less true of the many stans in the RoW that help constitute Eastasia supply chain.
When those lesser stans want to feed their people or fight mysterious drone swarms from mysterious militant groups that start assassinating their leaders and more, Oceania will offer some food and “protection” for whatever price Oceania thinks the target will bear.
Think they can’t pull it off? Oceania’s “superpowers” are its corruption and its propaganda. The corruption captures the target rulers, while the propaganda captures the target serfs. With these tools, Oceania adeptly develops and leverages proxies that fight for Oceania’s interests. It is an efficient strategy, because then Oceania itself usually does not have to fight.
Just for an update Mish,
Away from the oil…
I passed day before yesterday again through the land border station of Hatta (between UAE and Oman).
At the Omani side still all kind of cargo trucks pile up beyond the old Al Wajaja custom checkpoint – which means more than 3 ½ km trucks, trucks and trucks.
On the UAE side the Dubai Police is actively managing the traffic to the border station by having converted an old gravel mining patch of approx. 6 ha – that is located 4 km ahead of the border point – into a standby / waiting area for trucks (but not passenger cars) in order to avoid total chaos at the border point.
That much to… the strait is open.
I’m guessing this is something the inflation that was ‘temporary’. I haven’t seen the grocery prices in supermarkets dropping like bricks since the ‘temporary’ inflation came to an end. ‘Temporary’ coming from officials means stop complaining, I don’t want to do anything about it.
Of course it is temporary!
Once the sun burns out it will increase in size and swallow the earth… And nobody will sell oil above a dollar a gallon anymore.
I’m stocking up on Coppertone SPF-70 sunblock.
A word on US refining capacity.
We have plenty of capacity. More than we need for domestic consumption.
While the number of US refineries has continued to shrink over the last 50 years, we have seen expansions of the remaining refineries, leading to an expansion of overall capacity. Replacing the old, small and inefficient refineries with larger, more efficient ones.
Gas and diesel prices are up worldwide because the rest of the world is short of refining capacity because so many Russian, Chinese and Persian Gulf refineries are offline. Though China is coming back now.
Our refineries sell their products into the open market. Most of the time, they don’t know who the buyer is or where they are located. Refineries do not set the price. The marketplace sets the price.
So buyers bid up the price for US refiner output, and then sell it to export markets for big profits.
Trump has said to the world, “come buy our oil and gas. We have more than anyone else.” And they are.
Prices for gasoline and diesel are going to keep seeing upward pressure until the global refining crunch gets solved. It is difficult to see that happening in the remainder of this year, and probably into next year as well.
You have not accounted for E15 gas in 87 and 89 octane at the pump. That puts a good 30-50c/gal markdown on gas at the pump, but it’s a stealth tax via poor mileage, and also harms older pre 2001 engines. Trump will keep exporting all the liquid fuels he can, he cares not one whit what Americans pay for their energy.
Thanks for that summary, really helpful! Isn’t having to invest heavily in expanding, modernizing, and diversifying their refineries a risky proposition for the refiners? Seems hard to figure out how much to invest when they don’t know whether/when the war will end at some point and things would re-normalize.
And then there are the tariffs on Canadian oil, which would seem to complicate things even more!
Must be interesting times for those in the oil and gas industry! Seems like a lot of opportunity for those who can successfully predict what will happen.
Question, have you heard anything about refineries hardening their facilities against drone attacks? Seems to me that would be an easy way to disable them, at least temporarily.
Do even the MAGAs believe Burgum?
As McDonald’s goes, so goes the consumer cash-strapped, gas-paying American service sector economy. McDonald’s may be the canary in the recessionary coal mine; since the Iran special military operation started in late Feb 2026, it has lost 25% of its equity value. The further supply-squeezed oil and diesel markets, will twist the screws ever tighter.
“declare the war won and leave.”
That is one lie I wouldn’t mind Trump telling…
maybe he’ll get to it eventually…
he’s cranking them out like chocolates on an assembly line…
and we are Lucy…
unable to consume it all.
Not so easy: war crimes were committed and the US must pay reparations and officers be hanged in Nurem… the Hague!
It’s hard to call this “3‑D chess” when the pipeline hit is just the predictable result of skipping basic diplomacy. Signing the MOU early on would’ve been the simple move that kept us out of this mess. Now we’re stuck reacting to problems we created.
They are not reacting. They have a plan. It is just too horrible for most people to contemplate without openly rebelling (assassinations, fragging, sabotage, resignations).
The Tremeloes’ harmonies sound damned good! Is the past a foreign country or what?
Everywhere I turn I keep hearing mistakenly saying these things resolve soon. NO. Things and supplies are STILL going down.
After today’s close at an energy conference in Austin: “Trump administration officials have said the current oil market disruption is temporary, but Chevron’s (CVX) Mike Wirth and other industry executives are warning global supplies are running low, with no respite in sight.
Commercial fuel stocks around the world have been depleting for more than six months, and strategic crude reserves cannot be tapped much further, oil executives say, after attacks last week shut down a crucial crude pipeline in Saudi Arabia that bypassed the Strait of Hormuz, stranding an estimated 2.5M bbl/day at least from an already tight global oil market.
“All these mechanisms helped to mitigate the price and supply risk,” Chevron (CVX) CEO Mike Wirth said Friday at an energy conference in Austin, Texas, according to The Wall Street Journal. “Those have largely now played out, and we don’t have nearly the buffers in the system that we did when [the Middle East war] began.”
“It’s harder to envision a scenario where prices soften and quickly,” Wirth said. “I think the risks remain to the upside over the next few months.”
U.S. retail diesel prices have skyrocketed to a record $6.23/gal, and gasoline prices, which had slipped below $4 during the summer, have bounced to $4.32/gal, and WSJ reported that some CEOs and energy advisers are growing alarmed as the Middle East conflict has picked up again, with ships and energy infrastructure being targeted in both directions.
Yes. Weren’t we told that this stupid war would be over in 4-6 weeks? Trump & his minions are dummies. They are trapped. They deserve to lose the midterm elections due to their stupid forays into foreign lands.
That pumping station is (was) huge!
No way that thing gets operational again until end of 2027, IMHO.
4mbpd offline until then….
All I have to say is it’s a HOAX, obviously. Affordability, a HOAX. Inflation, a HOAX. Mail in voting, a HOAX. 2020 election, a HOAX. Ai doom, a HOAX.
A HOAX upon your HOAX, sir!
I see your HOAX and raise you another. Epstein is a HOAX!
Drones and drone warfare have changed everything. Chris Martenson said he couldn’t believe they were selling oil lower on Friday knowing these hits took place. Well the selling lasted a day, bid higher today. What’s crazy is this market continuing to think absolutely nothing matters. As long as deficit money pours into corporate earnings, what, me worry?
Anyone in this administration seeing how Ukraine has kept Russia at bay with drones now reaching deeep inside Russia should have concluded that all these strategic assets in the Middle East were reachable very inexpensively and likely unstoppable in aggregate.
The self-inflicted wound is bad but at least it’s a wakeup call as to how incapable we are. Maybe the war mongers will have to stop bwahahahahah who am i kidding? It’s the most bipartisan thing ever this war business. Super power? We are neither super nor powerful thanks to off the shelf weapons.
There will have to be some agreements with nearly everything reachable in the ME.
Yemen attacked the Saudi oil fields with drones back in 2019, impossible to believe anyone was surprised by this. We have true idiots in charge.
The regime actors act as fools. If we believe it, then we are the fools.
The stupid never stops.
That there is a single bridge or locomotive functioning in Ukraine is a testament to Russian dithering and indecision.
I know of not drone that can deliver itself to the front, assemble and fuel itself, then fly off.
Milton Friedman told us that inflation is always a monetary phenomenon. Examples can be seen in the US deficit and extra spending that J. Biden three times engaged in and that Trump #1 once engaged in. Inflation damages prosperity. And it is Keynesian prescription for governments to seek a constant small amount of inflation, so, supposedly, Central Banks can better manage recessions.
Then there is supply disruption, in this case oil. Past instances have been in 1973 and 1979. Now a big one brought on by Pres. Trump. Before blaming Trump recall that it has been government policy since the Kyoto and Paris accords. Biden did it in the accords, seeking to force down our consumption of oil. European leaders ditto. Trump has done it outside the Paris accords, and might have a more profound effect. This also damages prosperity. With the qualifier that many believe the West is excessively prosperous, and that everyone could be sufficiently happy on a half or a third as much prosperity, needing only some socialism and new economic reorganization to distribute that half-as-much equitably.
My estimate is that “throwing in the towel” will not restore conditions to what they were at the beginning of this year, or at the beginning of 2022 before Russia invaded Ukraine. Production in the future will always be lower and the price, at least for the West, will be higher. Plan on less prosperity and less availability of energy.
“Milton Friedman told us that inflation is always a monetary phenomenon. Examples can be seen in the US deficit and extra spending…”
Did you get this from a bad AI prompt? Deficit spending is a fiscal policy, and entirely separate and different from a monetary phenomenon.
If budget deficits are not supported by artificially low rates, then wouldn’t deficits increase bond supply and interest rates until it attracted — soaked up — enough money from other investments? IOW wouldn’t deficit spending be “inflation-neutral”? If so, then the inflation from deficits arguably stems from the monetary games.
Not to excuse deficit spending. Just wondering your thoughts on this q.
Milton probably covered this issue. Guess I should ask an LLM. But I do too much of that these days…gotta chat sometimes with fellow humans. (“Hubris”, please don’t tell me you’re a bot account.)
Pretty sure hubris can fog a mirror. Maybe after he saws some logs, you’ll see a response.
Deficits *already* increase bond supply and interest rates regardless of the interest rate at the time. Supply and demand. If USG wants to compete for people’s savings against everything else those savings can go into, they have to pay a premium through higher interest rates.
The interest rate is the price for buying the debt. It is at least partly influenced by the risks the investor sees in (1) not getting their money back (borrower defaults) and (2) inflation eating into their actual return. The higher the federal debt goes, the more interest rates should increase due to these factors.
Yes. Hope I did not suggest otherwise.
First, that assertion attributed to Friedman is wrong (at least as how most people quote it – he was referring to the long run). Inflation can be caused by increasing money supply, but it can also be caused by supply-side issues (like quickly increasing diesel fuel prices), or ‘over-spending’ with deficits.
To your question, Congress creates deficits (or theoretically surpluses) with its taxing/spending policies. The Treasury just collects the revenues and pays the bills passed by that (and earlier) Congress members. If Congress enacted new spending laws, the deficit would go higher and the Treasury (not the Federal Reserve) would have to finance it. If – theoretically – private spending decreased by that exact same amount due to higher interest rates (complete ‘crowding out’), then inflation should not increase at all. Total spending in the economy is the same – only the impact of the public vs. private actors has changed.
Agree. If the deficit spending causes the central bank to increase the monetary units to pay for the spending in excess of tax receipts, that inflating of the money supply, like a balloon, is inflation. But the deficit is not because it just represents spending in excess of the money you are taking in that quarter or year. If people actually understood the phenomenon better perhaps they’d hate the Fed more.
Milton was defining a tautology, not the actual economy.
Wow.
I am so glad I bought an EV under the auspices of the forward-looking Inflation Reduction Act
Me too! Back in 2019! And the appreciation in Hybrids, AND most of all next several years of car inflation is darn near a generational personal best buy!
BTW, speaking of that whole timing is UPSIDE DOWN. Cars are off the charts expensive. WAY overpriced, and with accompaning over priced property taxes and insurance.
I’ll be milking m y current car for a long time.
Taco’s war just keeps getting better (worse).
Oh man, I wouldn’t trust the estimates, but imagine it depends on exactly where the drones struck. A lot of speculation these attacks were aided by Iranian (aka Chinese/Russian) intelligence and targeting guidance in which case they could have hit exactly where it hurts the most. In any case, they’ll have to hand out a lot of hazard pay for whoever is willing to do this before there’s a durable peace.
Depending on the news source, I might imagine the oil is projected to be magically fully back online the day after the US midterm elections.
I believe nothing the government says—ZERO ~ G Carlin. When I asked AI it said typically 2 years planning and 2-5 years for construction of a pumping station. Assuming emergency construction, it will be months if not years. And that assumes no further attacks, a fantasy assumption. This pipeline will be inoperable until at least 2029.
The mainstream media seems to assume that when Trump or his administration says something, it is true. Their credibility is also in the toilet as well.
Notice that they only do that regarding Epstein class objectives like forever wars. Anything HHS Kennedy says is totally disrespected and undermined by the Mockingbird media.
Which Lloyd’s Syndicates are on that?