“Putin, sadly, has got all of our political class, every single one of us, including the media, exactly where he wants us.” Fiona Hill speaks to Lesley Stahl in her first interview since the impeachment inquiry. Watch tomorrow on 60 Minutes. https://t.co/VioR1BrQ7Z pic.twitter.com/LK7Q2mZjEZ
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) March 7, 2020
Peripherally related:
There’s another reason things turned for the US economy last week… A geopolitical game over oil prices outside US control.
https://t.co/oXJARP3ws7— Shawn Donnan (@sdonnan) March 7, 2020
At 10:16 a.m. on a wet and dreary Friday morning, Russia’s energy minister walked into OPEC’s headquarters in central Vienna knowing his boss was ready to turn the global oil market upside down.
Alexander Novak told his Saudi Arabian counterpart Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman that Russia was unwilling to cut oil production further. The Kremlin had decided that propping up prices as the coronavirus ravaged energy demand would be a gift to the U.S. shale industry. The frackers had added millions of barrels of oil to the global market while Russian companies kept wells idle. Now it was time to squeeze the Americans.
For over three years, President Vladimir Putin had kept Russia inside the OPEC+ coalition, allying with Saudi Arabia and the other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to curb oil production and support prices. On top of helping Russia’s treasury – energy exports are the largest source of state revenue – the alliance brought foreign policy gains, creating a bond with Saudi Arabia’s new leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
But the OPEC+ deal also aided America’s shale industry and Russia was increasingly angry with the Trump administration’s willingness to employ energy as a political and economic tool. It was especially irked by the U.S.’s use of sanctions to prevent the completion of a pipeline linking Siberia’s gas fields with Germany, known as Nord Stream 2. The White House has also targeted the Venezuelan business of Russia’s state-oil producer Rosneft.
“The Kremlin has decided to sacrifice OPEC+ to stop U.S. shale producers and punish the U.S. for messing with Nord Stream 2,” said Alexander Dynkin, president of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow, a state-run think tank. “Of course, to upset Saudi Arabia could be a risky thing, but this is Russia’s strategy at the moment – flexible geometry of interests.”
The OPEC+ deal had never been popular with many in the Russian oil industry, who resented having to hold back investments in new and potentially profitable projects. In particular, Igor Sechin, the powerful boss of Rosneft and a long-time Putin ally, lobbied against the curbs, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing private conversations.
The Kremlin was also disappointed the alliance with Riyadh hadn’t yielded major Saudi investments in Russia.
For several months, Novak and his team had been telling Saudi officials they liked being in the OPEC+ alliance but were reluctant to deepen production cuts, according to people familiar with the relationship. At the last OPEC meeting in December, Russia negotiated a position that allowed it to keep production fairly steady while Saudi Arabia shouldered big reductions.
When the coronavirus started devastating Chinese economic activity in early February – cutting oil demand in Saudi Arabia’s biggest customer by 20% — Prince Abdulaziz tried to convince Novak that they should call an early OPEC+ meeting in response to cutback supply. Novak said no. The Saudi king and Putin spoke by phone – it didn’t help.
As the virus spread and analysts forecast the worst year for oil demand since the global financial crisis, the Saudi camp was hopeful Moscow could be won round at the next scheduled OPEC meeting in early March. The Russians didn’t rule out deepening cuts, but kept making the point that shale producers should be made to share the pain. Putin, who has been the final arbiter of Russia’s OPEC+ policy since the alliance started in 2016, met oil Russian producers and key ministers last Sunday…
Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Ethnicity
trollhattan
Does this even work? I understand oil is fungible worlwide yadda yadda but how much do price fluctuations affect ongoing extraction?
IIUC the Canadian tar sands production can go upside down pretty quickly because extraction is extremely energy intensive, making the oil rather expensive plus they can’t easily throttle it up or down, but what about shale, the Bakken fields, etc.? Do they have similar limitations? And I don’t seeing this impact natural gas, either.
Chetan Murthy
@trollhattan: These fracked shale-oil/gas wells don’t produce for anywhere near as long as old-style wells, right? So all he has to do is scare off enough new drilling, and that changes the landscape in 2-3 years, I’d think.
Major Major Major Major
Lightly related, Dow futures at -850 right now.
SFAW
I, for one, am glad that the “adults are in charge” in the Non-Black House, because they will just — … aah, fuck it, I can’t even joke about those morons any more.
I have no idea how the maladministration will respond, other than it will be in a manner that strokes the fragile ego of the Toddler-in-Chief, and maybe gets some cash into his own coffers.
dmsilev
@Major Major Major Major: I’m sure Trump will, somehow, blame Obama.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major:
I don’t feel so bad about getting out after Trump was elected.
trollhattan
@SFAW:
If only Tillerson were still at State, then we’d have an awhl guy to fix this right up.
marklar
I’m far from an expert on this topic, but this is my take. The energy sector is going to take a hit due to the economic downturn corresponding to COVID-19. Lots of other sectors will be taking hits as well. If the shale gas industry gets hit, it might be a blessing in disguise. We need to find out better ways to extract oil from shale…the current fracking techniques are imperfect, and produce way too much issues with run-off affecting our water supply.
If the industry uses this slowdown/moratorium to come up with cleaner ways to get the oil, that’s all for the better. It’s not like the soil is going anywhere. When overall markets come back, the shale oil industry will as well… this time, cleaner.
I’m wide open to being corrected and learning something about this!
Baud
Too bad windmills cause cancer, or we could install more of them.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: It’s the sound from the windmills, that’s why I keep the tunes cranked when I go by the windmills when I go out to shoot.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Major Major Major Major: so much winning.
trollhattan
@marklar:
Any time oil and natural gas go down more coal plants close. Thinking longer term here, but will take upsides whenever they pop up.
debbie
Finally, a 60 Minutes episode to actually look forward to.
I guess the days of the despots high-fiving each other are over. //
MattF
Note also that Saudi Aramco, a newly traded company, has fallen below its IPO price. Putin is punishing its investors.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
If there’s anybody I’d like to see die from COVID-19, it’s Putin because fuck that guy for still trying to sow chaos even in the midst of a serious deadly pandemic. Viruses don’t care about borders, asswipe, and fucking with the world’s largest economy at the same time will only make mitigation efforts more difficult. We’re probably already going to get a global recession
chris
Benchmark West Texas Intermediate Crude oil is off 20%. That’s the good stuff, most shale oil is much crappier and costs more to extract. Offhand I’d say Putin will succeed if this holds.
In slightly better news for some, RBOB Gasoline is off 15%.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Speaking of energy, does anybody know if gasoline supplies could be disrupted in the coming months? The US gets a lot of it’s oil domestically now as I understand it and we do have strategic reserves. Prices per gallon are low right now because China basically shut down it’s economy. Could gas prices soar?
MattF
@trollhattan: The break-even price for US shale oil is around $50/barrel. Reports say the market price tomorrow will be well below that.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Liberal Wall Street hoaxing the public by crashing their own assets.
Not exactly sure what is going on in the news, but the tanking started at 5PM Eastern. It’s dropped 1,000 points in the last 90 minutes
mapaghimagsik
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Honestly that’s the perfect time to sow chaos.
“Don’t kick him when he’s down!”
“What do you think I knocked him down for?”
Calouste
@SFAW: WA Gov Inslee, when asked about the shitgibbon calling him a snake, called is “background noise”. Donnie dipshit won’t be happy to be basically called irrelevant.
PsiFighter37
Eh – the energy market getting crunched has little to nothing to do with what is going on in the marketplace ATM. As for shale companies – to be honest, they weren’t exactly doing great beforehand. Investing in American energy companies has been something of a losing proposition for many years at this point, since the main issue is that American oil is heavily oversupplied, and we lack the proper infrastructure to actually transport it. This is an issue that is more than a decade old at this point and has not gotten better. I would point out that the Keystone pipeline will do virtually nothing to help with this, and if anything, will oversupply the market further (because it is transporting Canadian oil, not American oil).
West of the Rockies
I am soooo tired of seeing Putin’s bland, fat face and smug look. Are we or the IC or China or anyone doing ANYTHING in retaliation? Are we mucking around with Russia’s economy or cyberspace or something? All they have is oil and mobsters. I want him and his corrupt, violent supporters to face consequences.
PsiFighter37
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: It started at 5 PM because that is when US equity futures start trading overnight in Asia. Nothing more than that.
My view, by the way, which has panned out virtually every time the market has rallied a bit late in the day to end up down less than it had been (like it did on Friday) – just means there is more room for Asian investors to sell at a better price as soon as the market opens in their hours.
The Dangerman
@Major Major Major Major:
Yeah, I was wondering if the one good day last week was a dead cat bounce (hate using that phrase around here, but that’s what it’s called). Sure looks like it.
I’m kinda surprised the market hasn’t taken a complete shit as opposed to a bit of a correction. Stay tuned, I guess.
mrmoshpotato
@?BillinGlendaleCA: This?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@mapaghimagsik:
As I said, viruses don’t care about national borders (not that they care about anything, being non-sapient and non-living); they’ll infect any human they can become in contact with, whether they’re Russian, American, or Atlantean. Putin himself is on the older side, so is at greater risk. The world needs cooperation in the face of this crisis, not nationalistic bullshit.
Putin and leaders like him don’t deserve the power they have because they abuse it. If he’s this fucking stupid/greedy, then he deserves to die from this virus. Better hop in that bunker Pootie Poot and pray nobody inside with you starts to cough
PsiFighter37
That said, I did just check that oil futures are down 20-30%. Wow! That is far more than I thought would be the reaction to this news.
bluehill
@marklar: I think that a lot of shale drillers carry a lot of debt and apparently below $42/barrel it becomes unprofitable to drill. So one concern about U.S. drillers is that they begin to default if prices stay low. I don’t think (but don’t know) if that debt is as large as resi mortgages back in 2008. However, if drillers begin to default, I think there would be some spillover to other high-yield corporate bonds and that would probably begin to suck some liquidity out of the debt markets. Plus, more practically, the impact on jobs and other businesses dependent on drilling.
PsiFighter37
@bluehill: Most energy companies are high-yield companies. The analogous comparison would be 4 years back, when oil prices crashed to similarly low levels. You had some defaults back then, but given that energy companies were (at that time) 20% of all high-yield issuers, the impact was less than one would have expected, largely because oil rebounded back to $40-50/barrel fairly quickly. The unknown here is the impact of the virus, which could suppress the demand side, regardless of how low the Saudis try to drive the price. If prices stay down here for half a year, you will see big job losses in TX and ND just before the election.
Major Major Major Major
MattF
NYT article on Russia-Saudi oil price war.
opiejeanne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Did you see the list of things for the coming zombie apocalypse and examples of said items?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@opiejeanne:
No, I didn’t.
Geminid
I don’t see how the Russians can break the American shale oil industry. Many of the small and medium players are heavily leveraged and will file bankruptcy, but the oil will still be there. I think the break even point for shale oil production is 30-40$ excluding debt service, so some people will still be working. Hopefully the rest banked some of their $100,000+ pay they’ve made the last few years. The drop in severances taxes will put big holes in the Texas and New Mexico state budgets, and the recession we are entering will make them worse. So, this will be disruptive, but it may focus the affected states even more on creating renewable energy jobs. Governor Michelle Lujan-Griffen of New Mexico got a good clean power program passed last year, and it looks like those wind and solar energy jobs will be needed. Texas is already pitting up a lot of wind and solar infrastructure, but they can do more.
SiubhanDuinne
@debbie:
I can’t recall the last time I watched 60 Minutes, but saw this post and the Fiona Hill clip and immediately turned the Tee & Vee to CBS.
bluehill
@PsiFighter37: Yeah good point. It will be interesting to see what Trump does. I don’t know how MBS and Putin are playing this. From what I’ve read, Russia has a lower cost per barrel than the U.S. so MBS’ decision to flood the market could hurt Putin, but hurts the U.S. worse.
opiejeanne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Drat. I posted it in the wee hours on the next COVID-19 page. I think that was Thursday?
opiejeanne
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: It’s Sunday! Why are they trading today?
Mary G
Dow futures down
almostmore than 1,000 now, and here’s something else to worry about:I am almost a hermit already, but now that I’m not supposed to go out, that’s all I want to do
And is a credit card really that much less likely to have virus on it?
Mary G
@opiejeanne: Futures are betting on where the market will open tomorrow.
bluehill
@opiejeanne: Not in Asia.
SiubhanDuinne
@opiejeanne:
They have no truck with that whole “rest-on-the-seventh-day” stuff.
Ascap_scab
The current break even price for Bakken shale (North Dakota) is generally $40 to $45 per barrel (42 US Gallons). Permian Basin (West Texas) break even is $35 to $40. Eagle Ford (South Texas) is $45 to $55.
The thing is, once the wells are drilled, the cost of extraction goes down significantly until the field is used up. Still, you do need to recover a certain profit over the life of the field to pay off all of the capital costs.
So while low crude prices will stop new fields from being developed, it won’t stop US shale production unless Russia is willing to kill their own economy for the next three to five years.
RobertDSC-Mac Mini
The enemy has a vote. This is theirs.
James E Powell
My niece’s instagram post from the grocery store showed an almost barren toilet paper aisle.
What does toilet paper – or bathroom tissue if you prefer – have to do with coronavirus?
Mary G
This tweet won’t be up long:
Picture of Twitler playing the violin with caption “My next piece is called nobody can stop what’s coming.”
bluehill
@Ascap_scab: Good point. So that breakeven price is more relevant when deciding to drill new wells? I wonder what the fixed costs are for existing wells.
debbie
@opiejeanne:
It’s always Monday somewhere. ?
SiubhanDuinne
@James E Powell: It has nothing to do with Coronavirus per se — it has everything to do with the prospect of not being able to leave home for the next several weeks.
Chetan Murthy
@Mary G:
Fixed transcription error. Hooboy, that he doesn’t see the obvious allusion to history …..
opiejeanne
@Mary G: I realized that after it was too late to edit. It’s Monday in Asia so they’re betting now on what our market will do when it’s Monday here.
Mary G
@Chetan Murthy: Thanks, just noticed that myself and fixed, and what maroons they are.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mary G: it both is and isn’t amazing that trump and Scavino seem unaware of the whole “Nero fiddled” thing. One of those things that makes me wonder if Conway– who is a complete moral bankrupt but not stupid– has taken to day-drinking with her office door locked.
And all the quatloos say Jared would have to explain it to Ivanka, who would have to explain it to the Fredos. “Okay, you remember when we in Rome…” “Prada!” “No, the big old buildings…” “they didn’t seem very elegant or classy…” “and Roberto the tour guide talked about the empire..’ “Daddy has an empire!” “Um, okay, well….”
Frankensteinbeck
Russia strikes me as a country in even worse shape to deal with coronavirus than America.
evodevo
@Mary G: Well, in a way…you are the only one to touch it – it goes into the card reader and back out. I don’t know how infective viruses remain after sitting inside a card reader, but the cashier won’t be handling it, nor will a thousand other unknown people, like with paper cash. Paper bills have ALWAYS been a good medium of infection with bacteria, etc. Most bank tellers can come up with some personal stories on that.
chris
@Mary G: Qanon reference I think.. Click on the Scavino tweet and scroll. What a rathole!
Another Scott
@MattF:
Last price I see for WTI is $33.27.
Reuters:
Putin’s nuts if he thinks he can control the oil market without the Saudis. They can undercut everyone if they want to.
Putin needs money to keep the Russian economy running. He’s burning money in Syria. He’s playing with fire here…
Cheers,
Scott.
opiejeanne
@James E Powell: One of the effects of the corona virus is diarrhea, and people are planning to stay at home for 4- 6 weeks, as if they were snowed in. 2 or 3 weeks for me and another 2-3 weeks when my husband catches it from me. It’s just the 2 of us, and we’re old, but imagine that scenario with kids. You can’t go out while someone in the house has it, and you can’t count on the neighbors or friends or family to drop some off because they might be sick too.
How many rolls do you use in a week? (I have no idea, myself), but I think we have enough for a month plus.
There is speculation that as people get sick the supply chain may not function for a couple of weeks. One of my friends just realized that her favorite tp is made in China.
OTOH, here in virus central in King County, the shelves at the supermarket have been restocked by yesterday with toilet paper, paper towels, and even hand sanitizer gel.
opiejeanne
@Debbie: Haha! I thought that it was always 5pm somewhere. Time for a drink!
Martin
So, this is echoing what I was saying yesterday.
Mitigation means accepting that most people will get this. You can’t keep it out of your office or school or neighborhood. It means slowing the spread so that hospitals aren’t overwhelmed. So, limit large gatherings, social distancing, work from home, etc. Slow. Things. Down.
It also means that we can probably expect guidance to change. (I’m not giving a suggestion here – do what the doctors tell you, but don’t be surprised if what they tell you at some point in the next few weeks looks like the following): If you think you have it, go home, follow the recommended course of treatment. You may be able to get a prescription via telemedicine. Don’t go to the doctor. Don’t go to the clinic. Don’t ask to be tested. You probably have it, just follow the course of treatment, don’t go out and get other people sick. If you have the following symptoms, then contact the hospital, tell them you’re coming in, and you’ll then be tested and treated. Serious cases only.
Classes will get cancelled, events cancelled. Elective surgeries cancelled. An exponential growth would mean everyone would have this by the end of June or so. The goal will be to stretch this out through next year if possible. If this is indeed the determination (and I’m seeing a lot of evidence that it is, even if the political leadership isn’t near that) then we need to brace ourselves for maybe a million fatalities in the US. Maybe more depending if government does a bad job managing this <cough>. Their ‘industry-led response’ is probably the three dumbest words to combine and apply to this situation. But maybe if they pray hard enough Jesus will point them down the right path.
Steeplejack
@Major Major Major Major:
Comment: “Maybe your phone is not wide enough.”
Martin
@Frankensteinbeck: Not really. At a minimum the public is pretty resigned to dealing with crises. They’ll just drink more vodka, shoot up more heroin, and carry on.
chris
CNN says that Ted Cruz is quarantining himself after contact with someone who tested positive. It’s TEOTWAWKI!
opiejeanne
@Martin: Thanks for your comments and advice on our planned trip to France.
Iceland Air says we can reschedule our flight without penalty, but only once, and up to 5 days before the flight leaves.
So I’ll wait until April 15 to see if they’re going to give everyone a refund if they want it, and if not then we’ll reschedule for either this fall or next spring ,which is what we’d prefer because we really want to see Giverny and Provence in the spring. We bought our tickets in January. If we had bought them last week they would be about a third of what we paid then, for the same trip.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Frankensteinbeck: Yeah.
opiejeanne
@chris: And I feel fine.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Martin:
Please please please let Putin get this and die from it. Couldn’t happen to a nicer sociopath. It’s been happening in Iran. The so-called Butcher of Tehran died recently
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin:
Subsole
@West of the Rockies: Not much we can do at the moment.
We haven’t the manpower/force built up to punish him militarily, and economic efforts require buy-in from the rest of the world.
Which just watched us piss away fifty years of effort so a bunch of bitter gringo motherfuckers could throw a temper-tantrum over the fact they are not nineteen anymore.
I would LOVE to shove his face in shit and make him cry, but it will be a slog.
Getting the GOP out of power at all levels and keeping them out is step zero.
How are things looking on that front, everyone? What’s the feel in your communities, election-wise?
dmsilev
@chris:
Every cloud has a silver lining.
chris
@dmsilev: It got better! The contact was at CPAC last weekend. He was on the Hill last week and I hope he shook a lot of hands.
Subsole
@Mary G: Credit cards would be easier to wipe down, if it came to that.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I thought the Butcher of Tehran was assassinated in 1984.
Geminid
Sounds like the Saudis want to crush the Russian oil industry as much as Putin wants to crush the American. In the silver lining department, I hope to make a road trip in April to visit kin in Phoenix, by way of Atlanta, Pensacola (wonderful camping at Fort Pickens), and Las Cruces NM. Return by way of Alamosa CO, I-70 and I-64. This oil price war will save me a couple hundred bucks.
mrmoshpotato
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
LMAO! Nominate yourself for the rotating tag.
mrmoshpotato
@chris: Has someone told Ted that throwing yourself into a volcano cures Coronavirus?
J R in WV
@opiejeanne:
In Asia it’s already Monday, and they’re trading US futures against the actual market tomorrow our date/time.
Pretty amazing to watch our economy failing in real time in SE Asia while we’re cruising the weekend.
I started to work out how much of our savings $$ each thousand points of the Dow represents, and decided not to do that….
arthur
Russia flooding the market with cheap crude is bad for the shale oil producers, but it’s good for the rest of us: We pay less at the pump. Overall, it’s good for the non-crude producing parts of the U.S. economy. Think of what Amazon spends on gas. As U.S. production declines, less ground pollution near the wellheads and slightly less air pollution near the refineries.
mad citizen
I watched the 60 minutes Lesley Stahl/Fiona Hill show–not knowing it was going to be on. It really pissed me off. Stahl asked a question and equated Fox News and MSNBC. Hill was really wordy, very hesitant to criticize trumpov, and yet of course she had to via the truth. I guess she feels better with herself for helping this administration, but I would have left once the Alex Jones/Roger Stone conspiracy story that Soros had installed me as a mole. There were death threats. wtf?
arthur
On the other hand, it’s possible that Putin is aware of the long-running connection between the price of gasoline and the popularity of incumbent presidents, and cutting prices is just another aspect of his assistance to the current regime here.
J R in WV
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
But there have apparently been several military leaders called the “Butcher of Tehran” — one of which was shot down in Paris according to his obit in Wikipedia:
The other guy who died recently is called the “butcher” or hangman of Tehran by an Israeli web site I’ve never heard of, Israel Hayom — which appears to be a less authentic title than the Shah’s General who was assassinated in Paris after the Islamic Republic overthrew the monarch. The publication does cite The AP which lends them a little credit.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@J R in WV: Israel Hayom is Sheldon Adelson’s rag.
J R in WV
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
That says something, as well. Thanks! He owns the big newspaper in Las Vegas NV too.
Uncle Cosmo
@James E Powell: I was at a Big Lots store this afternoon. Plenty of TP and PT (paper towels) on the shelves (I picked up some of each since it keeps forever) – but no hand sanitizer.
It seems hand sanitizer is the pandemic analogue to extreme weather’s toilet paper. More succinctly:
J R in WV
@Uncle Cosmo:
I hit up an Aldi’s the other day — they had plenty of both toilet paper AND hand sanitizer. Just not my brand of TP, but in an emergency, anything improved past leaves and sticks is OK by me.
Kroger’s was low on toilet paper in the afternoon, looked like if you hit them up in the early am there would be plenty. The shelf for sheets of sanitizers to wipe things down was empty, but a guy was shelving other goods down the aisle, and when I asked him to check for Clorox wipes he was happy to go look, and came back with several flavors, I got 4 packs.
catclub
Never get attached to the last 20% of the market heights.
sdhays
@arthur: This was exactly my thought. The framing of this as something that would piss of the American government doesn’t make any sense since Dump doesn’t give a shit about anything except himself. If the entire US oil industry collapses, but gas prices are low, he’ll take that as a win and just gaslight about it like he always does.
Raven Onthill
So the price goes down and more and more carbon goes into the atmosphere.
Boize moi!
Raven Onthill
Later thought: are we going to have to fight a war to stop carbon emissions?
Bill Arnold
@Raven Onthill:
No, demand globally will drop, a lot. Economic effects; reduced transportation, factory closures in China/broken lean supply chains, etc. From 19 Feb:
Analysis: Coronavirus has temporarily reduced China’s CO2 emissions by a quarter (19 February 2020, Lauri Myllyvirta)
It’s a win for lowering of GHG emissions, especially if there is a sustained global recession (or worse).
There will be other desireable side effects, e.g. in the US serious discussions about paid time off and universal health care without crippling out of pocket expenses, but lowering of GHG emissions and damaging of some carbon extraction industries (coal, shale oil) will be the big deal. (Fullness of time, a large number of human lives saved (and other species saved from extinction), many times more than killed by the virus.) Don’t known how persistent though; activists will need to seize these opportunities. (Probably would be wise to expect more such pandemics, just saying.)
Bill Arnold
@Raven Onthill:
Global pandemic(s) triggering a deep global recession are a lower mortality approach.
(A (contained) regional thermonuclear war, repeat as needed, is a higher mortality approach. Rapidly expanding nuclear arsenals in Pakistan and India portend regional and global catastrophe (02 Oct 2019)
“Recovery takes more than 10 years. Net primary productivity declines 15 to 30% on land and 5 to 15% in oceans threatening mass starvation and additional worldwide collateral fatalities.”)
Raven Onthill
Duh. Me big dumb bird. Although, if fundamentals do not change, emissions will come back.
And, no, not advocating for nuclear war. But–this can’t go on.
Ken
In this case past performance is a predictor of future behavior.
He’s been taking credit for every day the Dow increased, and blaming someone else for every day it decreased, since he took office.