Oil forecast to be 70.00 a barrel in 2009?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Quigley_Sharps, Aug 3, 2008.


  1. Quigley_Sharps

    Quigley_Sharps The Badministrator Administrator Founding Member

  2. Quigley_Sharps

    Quigley_Sharps The Badministrator Administrator Founding Member

    The Fall of the American Empire; $70/Barrel Oil -- How Soon?<!--CGI_COLUMN_TITLE_END-->
    [​IMG]

    <!--CGI_COLUMN_BODY_BEGIN-->(3-10-08) A major meltdown in the markets was narrowly averted on Friday, March 7, when the Federal Reserve announced a doubling of its Term Auction Facility (TAF) money auction from $50 to $100 billion dollars per month (which is effectively 28 day money). In its announcement, the Fed said that the reason it was doing this was because of continuing illiquidity in the nation’s subprime markets, subprime municipal junk and junk bond market. In other words, by this action, the Fed is saying that $50 billion a month is not enough. It is not providing enough short-term liquidity to allow the financial institutions that carry inventories and make markets in these securities to do what they are in business to do -- to maintain liquid markets in these securities. This is very serious indeed
    [​IMG]
    The equity and debt markets initially acted favorably to the Fed’s action, and it did prevent what could have been, and what many floor traders expected to be a major meltdown in domestic equity markets on Friday. This didn’t take place, probably, because of this announcement.
    [​IMG]
    People should understand that the initial reaction by the unwashed, or those who do not understand economics, is that this is a “good thing” -- that the Fed understands that there is a problem, that they are doubling the amount of money being put out on these 28-day auction sales in an effort to liquefy markets. The smart money people, however, look at this as a negative because the Fed was forced to do it. They didn’t do it voluntarily. They did it because they had to do it. It was simply a last minute drastic emergency measure.
    [​IMG]
    The Fed’s action shows clearly that there is a big, big problem, since the Fed not only had to double the size of TAF money auctions, but also had to loosen what are called “pledge standards.” In other words, they are now allowing a much greater variety of securities even than before. It is now “all collateral loans.”
    [​IMG]
    The Fed then is adopting a policy that all collateral will be used for this TAF money and this bespeaks of how dire and desperate the situation has become. It shows just how illiquid the bond markets have become.
    [​IMG]
    Other news was that the February unemployment report, which showed payroll loses of 63,000, was much worse than expected, since it is now the second consecutive month of so-called red numbers, or in other words payroll jobs falling.
    [​IMG]
    What is a little deceptive, and another reason why equity markets didn’t melt down as much as they probably otherwise would have, is that the job losses in this report were much larger than expected. The actual unemployment rate fell from 4.9% to 4.8%, but the reason it did is because the number of employable persons fell.
    [​IMG]
    That is how the statistics are calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and is based on what is called the “total employable pool.” The total employable pool fell by 4 million. That made the unemployment rate look better that it actually is. What we are seeing now is the same thing you saw from 2001 to 2003, where there is an increasing number of people dropping out of what is called the payroll survey. These are job seekers who have effectively given up looking for jobs.
    [​IMG]
    In fact this is confirmed in what is called the weekly wage survey, one of the subcomponents of which is called “continuing claims.” Continuing claims means long-term unemployed, or those who have been unemployed for more than 18 months. That number has risen sharply in the last 3 months -- from 2 million to 2.8 million. This continuing claims number, peaked at 3.8 million in the middle of 2003 at the height of the what I have called the “Bushonian Job Export Program.”
    [​IMG]
    Other news released Friday included the monthly numbers by the NAR (National Association of Realtors) and the NMBA (National Mortgage Brokers Association). Markets did not initially react to this release because they were stunned by the numbers. That is the only way to put it.
    [​IMG]
    Total foreclosure rate in the month of February rose to 5.82%. Total mortgage arrearage rose to 8%. Total property tax arrearages, which include homeowners who are in arrears of their property tax for more than one year, rose to 17%.
    [​IMG]
    Most worrisome of all, however, was the fact that what is called the national homeowners’ average debt to equity ratio fell below 50% for the first time since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
    [​IMG]
    This was also perceived very negatively by the markets. As a matter of fact, I think the markets did not react to it as much as they should have, because traders are in disbelief of how the housing sector in this country have deteriorated. People are simply in a state of disbelief and denial because of it. It was much worse than expected.
    [​IMG]
    The National Association of Realtors has been pressing the U. S. Treasury Department that there is only one ultimate solution here – and of course pro-Bush faction Republicans are diametrically opposed to this – that some sort of U.S. Treasury guarantee and bail out, has to come. It is the only thing that is going to be able to re-liquefy the real estate markets. The capital base of both commercial and investment banks, brokerage firms, insurance firms, and pension firms are now so depleted that they cannot in some confederation mount any type of real rescue effort.
    [​IMG]
    We saw how weakened the capital basis of the nation’s investment banks have become when they tried on Thursday to bail out AMBAC, one of the big bond insurers. AMBAC is on the precipice of losing its triple A rating. It had been suspended, but what a group of banks led by Citibank did was proffer a $1 ½ billion dollar share offering in AMBAC on Thursday. They raised $1 ½ billion dollars by peddling AMBAC, which was already down more than $2.00 on Thursday at a further 9% discount. They have thus effectively diluted shareholder equity at AMBAC to a negative number.
    [​IMG]
    Citibank, which led the consortium, would not even put in $1 ½ billion dollars of its own money, not because they didn’t have it but because they were frightened of an endless or open-ended commitment -- if you try to come in and save them, like Bank of America is trying to do with Countrywide..
    [​IMG]
    BofA bought Countrywide, but they are finding that it is a bottomless pit into which they are having to throw money because the leverage of mortgage derivatives is 30/1 or 40/1 so that if $1billion dollars of mortgage paper collapses, the counter party, or risk exposure might be $30-40 billion dollars. No one actually knows. That is the reason why they are afraid to bail these firms out.
    [​IMG]
    This is the derivative time bomb going off, as has been predicted by many, including Warren Buffett. Last week the nation’s second largest mortgage provider, Fremont General, collapsed. The nation’s largest so-called Tier 1 mortgage provider, which provides mortgages of more than $600,000, Thornburg Mortgage also collapsed. Now they can’t write any more mortgages, so they are effectively out of business.
    [​IMG]
    Mortgages that they have underwritten will continue to exist as service entities but they have collapsed as ongoing businesses. They have depleted their capital.
    [​IMG]
    The collection part of their business is typically farmed out, but since they actually own or are the syndicators of the underlying paper that has been packaged-up and sold out in different so-called tranches, they have to stay in business at least in a collection/ supervisory role. But we have seen two large mortgage firms collapse last week and one of the big ten bond insurers, SCA, also collapsed.
    [​IMG]
    As the National Mortgage Brokers Association pointed out regarding last week’s collapses in the mortgage issuance arena, there has been a contraction in this country. Only half of the mortgage providers in this country that were in business when the Bush-Cheney Regime came into power are still in business today.
    [​IMG]
    We have an even greater story about commodities. As we have been warning our readers on Al Martin Raw and InsiderIntelligence.com, there is this “second speculative bubble” that has been created in commodity prices, and what we saw late week is the speculative bubble in commodities prices is beginning to unwind.
    [​IMG]
    In that case, people have said – well, when can we expect $70 per barrel oil? How soon will we be seeing this -- if the rise in oil prices to $100 a barrel is not justified by near-term fundamentals, especially when you consider the capacity of OPEC and the falling growth in demand?
    [​IMG]
    The answer is this -- what’s called the “supply/demand value” of oil is right now about $70, even though different firms calculate it differently.
    [​IMG]
    The facts are pointing to a lower price for oil – but when? For instance, the International Energy Agency has revised global oil demand downward for 2008 by 600,000 barrels a day, or 6.8%, since last summer. In fact the EIA revised its global oil consumption forecast for 2008 for the third time reducing its estimates of oil consumption. So with the falling demand and the fact that OPEC will be well covered with the rising supply, it should be remembered that during the first half of 2007, oil prices went down to around $56 per barrel.
    [​IMG]
    So what breaks the back of speculative bubbles is not the same as it used to be because what feeds speculative bubbles (namely unlimited monies being put into commodity funds) has changed the way commodity prices react to economic fundamentals, by completely and totally distancing commodity prices from underlying supply/demand fundamentals.
    [​IMG]
    What broke the back of the first speculative bubble in commodities in late 2006 to 2007 was the fact that the commodity funds ran out of money. Also the so-called free money derivative trade based on the Japanese yen ran out of steam. In other words, this was a situation wherein you could create money through trading the spread of the yen against the dollar and other currencies.
    [​IMG]
    This was the leverage created by the so-called “yen carry trade,” wherein you could create in essence free money. That has collapsed. The yen carry trade no longer exists. The big firms that sponsor the commodity funds, like Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman, etc. have themselves become substantially illiquid. They are all in dire financial straits.
    [​IMG]
    I’ve been asked – what’s the likelihood of $70 a barrel oil in 2009? I say. You will see $70 per barrel oil by the end of this year. Why? Because this bubble will have to pop.
    [​IMG]
    We began to see what happened last week when Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, et al, who are the sponsors of the big commodities funds, saw their capital bases become so eroded and their fiscal conditions became so dire, that they had to get more money. So where do they go for money? To their commodity funds. They force the commodity funds that they manage to liquidate long positions in commodities that they have a profit in. Because of that, we saw a sharp back off Thursday and Friday in coffee, cocoa, sugar, orange juice, and cotton.
    [​IMG]
    What people don’t understand about all this, however, is that the prices that commodities trade at are no longer a reflection of their underlying supply/demand fundamentals. They are now a function of how high prices can be pushed by what I call the Bullish Shills.
    [​IMG]
    People must understand that commodity prices now have become completely artificial. They bear no supply/demand reality. And the end result is a speculative bubble in all commodities, the magnitude of which has never been reached before..
    [​IMG]
    This speculative bubble has been driven by commodity funds (this time under the mantra because they need a mantra) of “Inflation. Inflation. Inflation. The Fed is reducing rates which is creating inflation.” Which in fact it is. However it’s short-term.
    [​IMG]
    The Fed’s counter to this is that inflation will begin to fall later in the year as the recession in the United States deepens and as global economic growth falls, and they are right. Inflation will begin to fall in the second half of this year because consumption will begin to fall, which is already falling, and it will continue to fall.
    [​IMG]
    Some people might even construe this as good news. What you haven’t seen break yet is the oil, the gold and the silver, and the reason why you haven’t seen them break yet is because they have the greatest concentration of what is called “deep-pockets spec long money.” Also they are the most inflation-sensitive commodities. Therefore you can still bang the inflationary drum to bring in Joe Six Pack buyers of one and two lots, who are always convinced that gold is going to $2000 tomorrow, and who are convinced that silver and oil, will move higher.
    [​IMG]
    People don’t believe they are undervalued, but they are being sold on the concept of a hedge against this enormous round of new inflation that Fed action is going to create, which is a lie.
    [​IMG]
    So when does oil break? When do these commodities get their backs broken like the backs of soft and tropical commodities last week? We also saw grains start to come down last week. When they get their backs broken is when Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley get sufficiently starved for cash. So the big long interest starts to come out of the oil and the gold. It has nothing to do with the supposed inflation, and nothing to do with supply/demand.
    [​IMG]
    These are the new realities of today’s capital marketplaces.

    http://www.almartinraw.com/public/column349.html
     
  3. BigO01

    BigO01 Monkey+++ Founding Member

    They need to get their backs broken after raping America for the last several years .

    Drive the price of a barrel of crude down to .25 cents and let them feel the pain for a few years and lose their homes and have to go begging at food pantry's like I've seen people doing on the news .

    So much for $200 a barrel , like I've been saying all long it's nothing more than a scam to screw us and they bastards know if they kept it up too long things would turn violent and people starving and living on the streets have nothing to lose so there would be no reason NOT to hunt down oil CEOs and ventilate their heads with a bullet or stretch their necks with a rope !!

    Bush is about to come out of office and they need to start removing the evidence how they pulled this one off before the public has a smoking gun to demand they get prosecuted for manipulating the markets in some manner so the trail of corruption doesn't lead straight back to them .
     
  4. Quigley_Sharps

    Quigley_Sharps The Badministrator Administrator Founding Member

    I thought we were at peak oil and the price was never coming down, now im confused,[booze]
     
  5. ghrit

    ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

    I thought so too. You reckon he meant $170?
     
  6. RouteClearance

    RouteClearance Monkey+++

    The "Fat Lady" has yet to sing, gold and all other commodities has dropped also, yet inflation is still going up and our economic situation is getting no better.

    These price drops are because of reduced demand across the entire planet for crude oil and raw materials. The "Decoupling" of the American Consummer from India/China Mart started last June.

    Hopefully "Peak Oil" has not happened, but intill oil goes back to $20.00 a barrel,I will not change my attitude on prepping for PO.
     
  7. Tango3

    Tango3 Aimless wanderer

    ??wtf???? So the big guys are gonna be selling off their their commodities holdings to regain some cash?? (is That what he said?)????


    confused....Maybe it just smoke...to take some of the speculative pressure off.( oh yeah oil is gonna go all the waaaaayyy down to the basement, get out of oil now BOOOYAH!)
    voodoo.
     
  8. Minuteman

    Minuteman Chaplain Moderator Founding Member

    The evil speculators that the demmies keep blaming for the high price of oil are estimated to add only about a maximum of $30 to the overall trading price.

    So they are moving thier money into other ventures and guess what?
    The price of oil has come down what? Almost $30 in the last few days?

    Hmmm...seems pretty cut and dried to me.
     
  9. Conagher

    Conagher Dark Custom Rider Moderator Emeritus Founding Member

    Yeah the price for sweet crude dropped to $117 a barrel a couple of days ago. I'd be happy to have the $.77 a gallon we had in 1987......[beer]
     
  10. monkeyman

    monkeyman Monkey+++ Moderator Emeritus Founding Member

    Hell Ild be thrilled to see it back around $1.00/gal but dont see that ever happening again no matter how low crude dropped. They now know folks will pay $4+/gal so if they drop it back to $2.50-3.00 everyone is just happy it isnt $5 and if crude was $20 then the floks from the refineries on could just make more profit.
     
  11. Minuteman

    Minuteman Chaplain Moderator Founding Member

    They who? Just curious.
     
  12. RouteClearance

    RouteClearance Monkey+++


    "They", being the entire "Oil Conglomerate", which is any company that makes money from a barrel of crude from the point that it is pumped from the ground, transported to the refineries, to the distributers, and then finally to you gas tank. There is a lot of steps that a barrel of crude goes through before the refined product ends up in our fuel tanks. Alot of middle men are also involved with this process and to place the blame solely on the big oil companies and speculators is very near sighted.

    These recent price decreases are due to reduced demand, nothing more. This year marks the first year since 1945 that the total miles driven has decreased for the first time ever in the US and the Oil conglomerate now realizes that the US consumer can only spend so much for a gallon of gas. Even if the price would go back to $2.50-3.00 a gallon, it would still be a very tight vice for this country. Our economy started unraveling last summer when oil was at $70.00 a barrel. There is a lot of evidence that shows we actually went into a recession early last fall. The credit, subprime crisis only added fuel to the socalled bon fire that we as a nation are witnessing first hand.

    If or when oil receeds back to 2000 levels, then I can see this nation making a solid recovery, but I have a feeling that this may not happen, and belive me when I say I hope I am wrong.
     
  13. Seacowboys

    Seacowboys Senior Member Founding Member

    They'd give the stuff away if we come up with alternative fuels that are cheap and renewable.
     
  14. Seacowboys

    Seacowboys Senior Member Founding Member

    Them![gone]
     
  15. RouteClearance

    RouteClearance Monkey+++

    A "Net Gain" in electrolysis is our only solution, hydrogen is our most plentiful source of energy on this planet that could sustain the world as we know it now, but that magic formula is still well beyond our grasp, with no workable solution in sight.
     
  16. overbore

    overbore Monkey++

    A different perspective here: I think the clash in Georgia is about an oil pipeline that threatens the Russian monopoly. When the stuff hits the fan with Iran [shtf]
    the Straits of Hormuz will be closed and shipping rates will be through the stratosphere because of the Lloyds War insurance premiums on hulls. The landed cost of one barrel then will be closer to $200 per brl than $100. Write this down and when it happens, your read it here--. When the tsunami is approaching the ocean recedes and all looks grand- as it does now-- but then----. This then is my humble opinion of where we are nationally. Our national economic tide has gone out ( to China{ thank you Bill} and the tsunami of rampant inflation is about to come over the horizon to engulf us all. Geo. Washington said "in time of peace prep for war". Overbore
     
  17. Seacowboys

    Seacowboys Senior Member Founding Member

    An interesting aside is that one of the salvage companies that I work with from Amsterdam, has just had one of their tugs and crews ransomed back from pirates off the coast of Somalia after nearly four months of captivity.
     
  18. Quigley_Sharps

    Quigley_Sharps The Badministrator Administrator Founding Member

    LOL they need cash ehh, things are tuff all over I guess, hope they are fine.
     
  19. Minuteman

    Minuteman Chaplain Moderator Founding Member

    Very insightful analysis. Everything is ultimately about oil. It is the life blood of the world. (ie; the Taliban in Afghanistan stop the building of a Shell oil pipeline. We invade and a former Shell oil employee is installed as president and the pipeline construction resumes. )

    You can see in some old posts of mine on here that I have been saying for sometime that Russia is our greatest threat. They are moving to secure the artic oil for themselves and I have and still predict that we will be at war with them in the future. The resource wars are just getting started and will continue to flare up around the globe.

    I will put more than my pride on the line here. I have $1000 that says we will see $140 a barrel oil again before we ever see $70. Any takers?

    I also predict that Russia will at some time in the future launch a sneak attack against the U.S. with the intent to destroy our ability to interfere with thier world ( and oil) conquest ambitions. A 21st century, nuclear, Pearl Harbor.

    Of course when that happens I doubt that there will be anybody around here to read it.

    As for returning to 2000 levels. Fuggeda bout it. Aint happenin.

    As for alternatives. IF we had another 20 or 30 years to develope the technology, then maybe we could replace a portion of the oil we consume. But totaly replace it with something else? Nah, not likely.
    And BTW, a little nit-picking. Hydrogen isn't an energy source. It is an energy conductor and it takes massive amounts of energy to obtain.

    As for the price of oil. There is no "They" that sets the price of oil. The major oil companies control only 6% of the worlds supply. The State owned companies and conglomerates like OPEC control much more. Them and the Wall Street speculators can influence the price, but none of them can set it. Supply and demand and stock market speculation set the price. Wars and rumours of war have a greater impact on the price than any company or state ever could.

    So I agree with you overbore, the tide is out right now and God help us when it comes back in.
     
  20. Quigley_Sharps

    Quigley_Sharps The Badministrator Administrator Founding Member

    I see gold is down over 100.00 an ounce, that wasnt supposed to happen again.....
    [boozingbuddies]
     
survivalmonkey SSL seal        survivalmonkey.com warrant canary
17282WuJHksJ9798f34razfKbPATqTq9E7