Year: 2022

Investors sold petroleum for a fifth consecutive week but the pace of selling slowed as the balance of risks began to shift to the upside and beaten down prices provided a more attractive re-entry point. Hedge funds and other money managers sold the equivalent of 15 million barrels in the six most important petroleum-related futures and options contracts over the seven days ending on December 13. Fund managers sold a total of 236 million barrels over five weeks starting on November 8, according to position records published by ICE Futures…

We know that historically, many economies around the world have collapsed. We also know that there is a physics reason why this happens. Growing economies require a growing supply of energy to keep up with a growing population. At some point, the energy supply and other resource needs cannot grow rapidly enough to keep up with population growth. When this happens, economies tend to collapse. In their book Secular Cycles, researchers Peter Turchin and Sergey Nefedov found that economies tend go through four distinct phases in each cycle, with each stage lasting for…

Bold and unpredictable maneuvers are supposed to be the trademark political style of Russian President Vladimir Putin; last week, however, he surprised observers of various persuasions not with a proactive move but with an unusual act of avoidance. Putin’s annual marathon end-of-the-year press conference has been canceled, as has the traditional “direct line” with carefully trained audiences, and his constitutionally prescribed annual address to the Federal Assembly has been postponed indefinitely (RTVi.com, December 15). Speculation about Putin’s allegedly deteriorating health, always a dime a dozen, are rather subdued as the…