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Re: Oil Glut, Implications for Railroading? And, then the s#it hit the fan.......
Author: BOB2
Date: 03-14-2020 - 11:17
This recession was on the way, before the "oil shock", and the "oil shock" was already well underway, before the "oorona shock". Falling demand, across the board, was well underway, like those truck demand, rail TEU's shipped, the "trade war shock" related import and export drops, the drop in capital spending over the last two years, the 8% drop in manufacturing employment, the zero growth in overtime, despite supposed "full employment", radically slowing growth in places like China, partially due to the "trade war shock" (well before Corona...) ...were what was already caused weak world oil demand and weak prices.
The Saudi's are fighting a very expensive war they can't afford, and the Russian kleptocracy is entirely propped up the oil and gas sales, so they've been undercutting each other to maintain "cash flow", and many countries don't honor the ban on buying Iranian oil, and you can't really tell it is Iranian, when it come out of the pipelines from Azerbaijan, can you? So they've all been cutting each other's nut's off to maintain cash flow.... And, of course with the US fracking having made the US again the worlds largest "free market" producer once again...And, with new finds like Guyana, and increased production from new recovery investment in places like Viet Nam to Angola, the market has finally collapsed.
The impacts of this recession are now "baked in", and impacts on choo-choo's and other industries, and a whole lot of real folks losing their jobs by the tens of thousands as I write this, will be very serious. I suspect we will see many projects postponed, equipment procurement put off, and way less demand for things like pipe and fracking sand...
With natural gas now closing at $1.88, with a low this week of $1.61, you'll see even more deterioration coal traffic, as the cost/benefit ratio of "writing off" the remaining coal plants, and shutting them down, or converting them to gas, increases.
And, now for the really bad news about these kind of events, there is no "magic bullet" that politicians or central bankers can put in their guns to slay this vampire sucking the life out of the economy today.... There's almost nothing "monetary" policy (lowering already negative to inflation interest rates) can do about these kind of "exogenous" economic "shocks", no matter how hard one rants at the Fed Chair... And, fiscal policy ("gubmint" spending or tax cuts) can't cure diseases, or panic, nor are able to stop economic shocks "after the fact", and will, at best, only partially and poorly "cushion" the fall, after the fall has already happened... How many of you have ever found yourself earning as much on unemployment, as when you were making that extra overtime, working...?
The Saudi's are fighting a very expensive war they can't afford, and the Russian kleptocracy is entirely propped up the oil and gas sales, so they've been undercutting each other to maintain "cash flow", and many countries don't honor the ban on buying Iranian oil, and you can't really tell it is Iranian, when it come out of the pipelines from Azerbaijan, can you? So they've all been cutting each other's nut's off to maintain cash flow.... And, of course with the US fracking having made the US again the worlds largest "free market" producer once again...And, with new finds like Guyana, and increased production from new recovery investment in places like Viet Nam to Angola, the market has finally collapsed.
The impacts of this recession are now "baked in", and impacts on choo-choo's and other industries, and a whole lot of real folks losing their jobs by the tens of thousands as I write this, will be very serious. I suspect we will see many projects postponed, equipment procurement put off, and way less demand for things like pipe and fracking sand...
With natural gas now closing at $1.88, with a low this week of $1.61, you'll see even more deterioration coal traffic, as the cost/benefit ratio of "writing off" the remaining coal plants, and shutting them down, or converting them to gas, increases.
And, now for the really bad news about these kind of events, there is no "magic bullet" that politicians or central bankers can put in their guns to slay this vampire sucking the life out of the economy today.... There's almost nothing "monetary" policy (lowering already negative to inflation interest rates) can do about these kind of "exogenous" economic "shocks", no matter how hard one rants at the Fed Chair... And, fiscal policy ("gubmint" spending or tax cuts) can't cure diseases, or panic, nor are able to stop economic shocks "after the fact", and will, at best, only partially and poorly "cushion" the fall, after the fall has already happened... How many of you have ever found yourself earning as much on unemployment, as when you were making that extra overtime, working...?
