Good post. I think it’s most likely more Americans will care about abortion and the likely convictions of Trump than they will about Ukraine.
Secret peace talks with Vietnam began in 1968 when Cyrus Vance (Asst Sec Def at the time) met with Le Duc Tho in Paris. Secret negotiations directly between Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho started in 1969. Rolling Thunder, a huge escalation, only happened after peace talks started and was actually an attempt to force progress in peace talks. No agreement occured until 1973 and Saigon didnt fall until 1975.
Some in this thread seem to be perfectly okay with the idea of Trump being elected just so Ukr can take back Crimea. Good luck. With all due respect folks are going to be in for a rude awakening if this war doesnt end.
Gas and oil prices are nowhere near an all-time high, and the recent rise in prices is mostly about Saudi Arabia's actions rather than anything dealing with Russian sanctions. Sanctions just limited the west from buying Russian oil which gets bought (at a nice discount) by China/India/Africa, meaning that other oil doesn't get bought by those countries and stabilizes the price. Total demand hasn't changed and total supply hasn't changed from sanctions. All that changed was the routing and the money that Russia can earn.
Europe has been paying up the butt in LNG prices though. I don't think they want a repeat this upcoming winter, even when the previous one wasn't "that bad." That and the Fremont refinery explosion wrecked our local gas prices for a bit. I wish I could blame Cali's winter gouging on that but Cali be Cali...
WTI is trading at 80ish while gas prices are at historic levels for WTI trading at 81 because crack margins are literally at record highs. I posted the chart already. If crack margins were even in their 20s we'd have a national average about 40 cents lower than what they are right now. We have a major global refinery issue with Russian refineries offline due to sanctions. Diesel crack margin is literally the second highest its been in modern history right now. Saudi arabia is trying to buy up the PGA and BIden is stopping them. Their all in for Trump and they will continue this ****ery next year. If the war is raging on then biden cant do a export ban because then it would spike up prices in Europe at a time when they are supplying UKR with air defense missiles. Also next November is election season in Europe. The point being is with the war raging on biden has very limited options on gas prices because if he does a export ban that might force others to stop supplying UKR with weapons. Hes already tried making peace with Venezula and Iran for more oil but both countries are being a pain in the ass. The only reason they survived last year was because last winter wasnt as bad as it was expected too. Europe is already dealing with America stealing their industrial green base. They're not going be too happy
The US isn’t stealing Europe’s industrial base….. European companies are expanding to the US and the EU is also offering their own “IRA type subsidies” pretty soon.
lol they've been talking about it for a year. They won't pass anything. USA is stealing their corporations and it'll accelerate over the next 12 months as the IRS finalizes their rules. Europe is going turn ugly
I know you follow Zeihan and his claims about the industrial base in Europe (primarily Germany) collapsing from the years it will take to make new Russian-free energy supply chains seems pretty sensible. They can't even continue outsourcing manufacturing capacity to China because of ideological and China's internal demographic reasons. Overall, complacency or looking for the US to bail them out (we would but only after a day late and a dollar short) will probably bode bad for them. They really need novel ideas and a different approach to risk taking. A peace deal would ease restrictions but no one will want to put back the status quo even if both sides want to pretend they would to appease fence sitters who aren't really paying attention.
Peter thinks the IRA is the final nail in the coffin for Europe and I agree with him 100%. They just havnt realized it yet. The idea that biden can issue a export ban in the middle of this war is crazy. Europeans will flip on usa and go to China. The war gives saudi all the power in the world and saudi is literally paying trump to host tournaments at his golf course. It's just insane. Also Europe are going green regardless so they won't need Russia in the long term. The issue is they won't have a industrial base by the time they'll go be fully green.
Right.... things move more slowly through the EU. Just because you are unfamiliar with how slow the EU moves, doesn't mean they won't pass anything. And btw.... the EU only announced the framework for their subsidies in 2/23. And you have an awful habit of getting caught in headlines and soundbites as Europe has always been more protectionist than the US.... so right off the bat the Chancellor is being a bit dishonest since it's existing policies are protectionist. Remind me which corporation(s) is moving their headquarters from Europe to the US?
And Peter Zeihan is right on some things and wrong on others.... The first time the US has an industrial policy in decades.... and it's "final nail in the coffin for Europe". Hyperbole doesn't help your argument.
First comes the expansion and then comes the collapse. European companies are flooding America while not investing anything in Europe. I dont think you realize the massive scale its happening right now. The whole "EU moves slowly" is exactly why its going collapse. Green tech needs quick rules and subsidies. i dont want to derail this thread so ill stop talking about Europe but youre underestimating the devastation EU is about to go through. China's economy is collapsing and Volkswagon makes all their money from China. Without Volkswagon Germany will implode and the entire european system will collapse. France will not subsidize Germany in a million years. Hopefully UKR keeps taking back land as that puts them in a better seat for negotiations.
I'm not a fan of hydrogen fuel cells. It's a bit of trickery like corn ethanol in the sense that you most likely have fossil fuel derivatives converted into it's intermediary before converting to hydrogen. You kind of have to because pure hydrogen is a pain to store. But of course this spending spree is now low-key esg once big daddy AI took over the investment hype train.
Crack spreads no longer correlate the way they did pre-war due to all the disruptions in the global market. Gas and oil prices are substantially lower than they were a year ago and at various times over the last 20-ish years. They are nowhere near all time highs. Not sure the PGA has to do with any of this, but the Saudi relevance is they have unilaterally cut oil production beyond the OPEC targets to help raise oil prices. Biden has limited options on gas prices for the same reason that Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc had limited options on gas prices: it's a global market that's largely outside of US policy control. If it weren't, we'd never have high gas prices and it would never be a political issue. Here are projected gas prices: And that's not even accounting for inflation. Inflation-adjusted, gas prices are pretty flat over 20-30 years. They are currently waaaaay lower than 2008, 2012-13, etc. Outside of crazy splikes (like mid-2022), it simply doesn't drive behavior or have the political power you think it does. They were a relevant political issue in Mar-Sep 2022 (when there weren't really any elections going on) and are a backburner topic as of now.
Jesus Christ we aren't flipping on NATO - FFS CHICKEN LITTLE - how many times are you gonna claim the sky is falling? DD
The PGA has everything to do with it because MBS entire goal is to make Saudi the hub of sports. Thats why their buying up all these soccer players left and right. Their goal is to have the best soccer league in the world in a decade. They are trying to do the same with golf by buying up the PGA. The biden folks are stopping the transaction but MBS is all in on for Trump. The saudis will **** over biden in any way possible when it comes to the election. Its obvious as black and white. The point i was making on crack margins is that the reason they dont correlate no more is because of the sanctions we've put on RU gas. If the war were to end and we were to ease those sanctions it would help drop gas prices substantially overnight. Probably 50-60 cents overnight in some cities. This next election will be the most important election of this countrys history. If Trump wins we may never have another open election again in this country, Why in the world should biden gamble with high gas prices with trump on the ticket and the fate of democracy? It makes absolutely no sense and alot of people here are underestimating Trump. IF you can negotiate a reasonable peace deal and offer security guarantees for UKR its effin insane not to pull the trigger. Once this war is over biden will have control over the gas market because then he could issue a export ban without pissing anyone off whos arming UKR. He cant do that right now as they're arming UKR. His hand are tied The sky is falling in Europe.
