Financial Markets and Economy
Oil Prices Fall After Producers Fail to Reach Deal at Doha (Wall Street Journal)
Oil prices opened sharply lower in early Asian trading hours on Monday after major oil producers ended their meeting in Doha, Qatar, over the weekend without reaching an agreement to cap production.
200M Barrels Of Oil Sit In Idle Tankers Waiting To Unload At Chinese Ports (Oil Price)
There is a new drama on the oil front: those who have it in excess can’t get it to those who want it—at least not quickly enough for everyone to be happy.
A recent Reuters story reveals that tankers carrying around 200 million barrels of crude are waiting to leave or dock at ports around the world, creating “the world’s biggest traffic jam.”
What’s Next for Crude Oil Prices After Today’s Doha Meeting (Wall Street Examiner)
The future of crude oil prices hinges on the most important oil meeting in decades, which is taking place today (Sunday, April 17) in Doha, Qatar.
We’re drowning in cheap oil – yet still taxpayers prop up this toxic industry (The Guardian)
Those of us who predicted, during the first years of this century, an imminent peak in global oil supplies could not have been more wrong. People like the energy consultant Daniel Yergin, with whom I disputed the topic, appear to have been right: growth, he said, would continue for many years, unless governments intervened.
CLSA Sees China's Yuan Plunging 19% by 2017 in Most Bearish Call (Bloomberg)
China’s yuan will tumble 19 percent by the end of next year as a depletion in foreign-exchange reserves forces policy makers to let investors set the value of the currency, said CLSA Ltd.
Australia's Debt Dilemma Raises Downgrade Fears (Bloomberg)
1986 may seem like a long time ago, but for Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison some of the parallels with his current budget balancing act are getting too close for comfort.
Asian shares drop, crude tumbles after Doha deal fails (Reuters)
Tumbling crude oil futures dragged down Asian shares on Monday after producers' weekend talks failed to agree a plan to curb the global supply glut, and Tokyo shares dropped as investors assessed the impact of a devastating earthquake in southwestern Japan.
Some 18 oil exporting nations had gathered in Doha, the capital of Qatar, in an attempt to agree stabilizing output at January levels until October 2016. The pact fell apart after Saudi Arabia demanded that Iran join in.
Recognizing Overpriced Stocks (Paul Price, Guru Focus)
Nobody goes to stores hoping to pay more than everybody else for the same merchandise. That can usually be avoided because MSRPs (manufacturers’ suggested retail prices) are normally clearly marked on retail items’ price tags. Bargain hunters only like to purchase at discounts to list price.
"Bearish For Prices," Expect "High Price Volatility"; Saudi Oil Production May Jump (Zero Hedge)
When it comes to skewering logic, cause and effect, and simple facts, nobody does it quite like Goldman. Which is why when we got the just released post-mortem of the Doha deal from Goldman's energy analysts Courvalin and Jeffrey "short gold" Currie, we fully expected them to spin today's unprecedented OPEC failure into a bullish catalyst. Not even they were so bold.
Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems (The Guardian)
Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you’ll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?
Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power.
Credentialism and Corruption: Neoliberalism as Lived Experience (Naked Capitalism)
Despite the fancy title and the epigraph, this post is going to be more like where a pundit writes a column about taking to the cabdriver on the way into town from the airport; except one cabdriver is an anecdote, and four or five cab drivers starts to look like a pattern. In this case, the cab-drivers would be credentialed, what the Archdruid would call the salaried class, or Thomas Frank the professional class (Boston being their “spiritual homeland”). Marx would, I think, call them the petite bourgeoisie.
Politics
The battle of New York is upon us: What you need to know about this week’s primaries (Salon)
Hillary Clinton is feeling so confident in her chances of winning the New York primary on Tuesday, she took time out of her campaign on Friday to play dominoes like a common unemployed day laborer. This was an obvious pander to working-class voters by Wall Street’s favored candidate. It upset the 3-Card Monte Union Local 100, which immediately endorsed Bernie Sanders. Things are getting ugly in New York, folks!
We All Lie, Scientist Say, But Politician Even More So (Associated Press)
This is the season of lies.
We watch with fascination as candidates for the world's most powerful job trade falsehoods and allegations of dishonesty.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump routinely calls rival Ted Cruz "Lyin' Ted." Cruz retorts: "Falsely accusing someone of lying is itself a lie and something Donald does daily."
Trump Poised for New York Landslide (Info Wars)
The survey from Republican firm Optimus Consulting shows Trump doubling his next closest competitor, John Kasich, 49 percent to 24 percent, with Ted Cruz far behind with 14 percent. But even as the survey has him leading in all 27 congressional districts, Trump’s margins will prove crucial in the hunt for New York’s 95 delegates, from Buffalo to Ithaca to Bethpage.
Technology
Where Artificial Intelligence Is Now and What’s Just Around the Corner (Singularity Hub)
Unexpected convergent consequences…this is what happens when eight different exponential technologies all explode onto the scene at once.
This Desk-Size Turbine Produces Electricity From Carbon Dioxide And Can Power 10,000 Homes (Black Listed News)
General Electric Global Research has just announced the development of a prototype turbine which converts carbon dioxide into electricity. While the size of the turbine does not exceed that of a desk, the inventors say it could actually power a town of 10,000 homes!
This sounds really promising, given that this innovation has the potential to help solve two critical issues of the modern world – CO2 pollution and energy crisis – at the same time.
Health and Life Sciences
The Entire World is Getting a New Polio Vaccine This Month (National Geographic)
In the final push to end polio, global health planners are embarking on an unthinkably ambitious and potentially risky move. Over the course of two weeks starting Sunday, they will switch 155 countries—a good portion of the world—from one polio vaccine to another.
This will require moving millions of doses of a new vaccine into place while sequestering the remaining stocks of the old one.
This Amazing Computer Chip Is Made of Live Brain Cells (Singularity Hub)
A few years ago, researchers from Germany and Japan were able to simulate one percent of human brain activity for a single second. It took the processing power of one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers to make that happen.
Life on the Home Planet
Aid Begins to Flow in after Earthquake kills 246 in Ecuador (Associated Press)
Aid began to flow in Sunday to areas devastated by Ecuador's strongest earthquake in decades and the death toll continued to rise as people left homeless hunkered down for another night outside in the dark.
Officials said the quake killed at least 246 people and injured more than 2,500 along Ecuador's coast. Vice President Jorge Glas said the toll was likely to rise because a large number of people remained unaccounted for, though he declined to say how many.
We Just Crushed The Global Record For Hottest Start Of Any Year (Think Progress)
NASA reports that this was the hottest three-month start (January to March) of any year on record. It beat the previous record — just set in 2015 — by a stunning 0.7°F (0.39°C). Normally, such multi-month records are measured in the hundredths of a degree
Last month was the hottest February on record by far. It followed the hottest January on record by far, which followed the hottest December by far, which followed the hottest November on record by far, which followed the hottest October on record by far. Some may detect a pattern here.
