| Unleash Prosperity Hotline Issue #322 07/08/2021 |
| 1) OPEC and Big Oil’s New Best Friend: Joe Biden We say this only half facetiously. The oil price surged to $75 a barrel this week under Biden’s green energy policies. The price was as low as $35 a barrel under Trump – because Trump believed in American energy dominance – “drill baby drill.” More oil meant lower prices at the pump. This was effectively a massive multi-billion dollar tax cut for lower and middle incomes. Pain at the Pump  With the exploding demand for energy now that the world economy is reopening and the idiotic Biden curtailments on oil drilling here at home, which is often done by the smaller and independent “wildcat” drillers, this administration is enriching the major oil companies with existing wells. This is why the price of gas at the pump is $3.29 a gallon nationally and above $5 a gallon in California. Our friend Harold Hamm, who runs Continental Energy, and is one of the fathers of modern shale gas innovations, predicts the price may surge to more than $100 a barrel –which means well over $4 a gallon at the pump. Even Biden’s own Energy Secretary, Jennifer Granholm has complained that in some ways the Biden policies are making carbon emissions worse, by approving pipelines of dirty energy from Russia to Germany, while killing pipelines from relatively cleaner oil and gas here in the U.S. Our prediction is that global and U.S. carbon emissions are going way up this year and next. And, yes, that is the Saudi oil sheiks you are seeing rolling on the ground laughing at us.  |
| 2) Could it Happen Here? Another cautionary tale from around the world: this time Lebanon. The New York Times headline reads:  Lebanon is now in the midst of what the World Bank calls one of the three worst financial crises in more than a century. While that strikes us a bit histrionic, the situation in Beirut is desperate. The Times notes: “Lebanon’s currency has lost more than 90 percent of its value since fall 2019, and unemployment has skyrocketed as businesses have shut down. Imported goods that were once commonplace have become scarce. Inside Lebanon, the crisis has created a distinct sense that the country is coming undone, as all but the wealthiest spend their days sweating through frequent blackouts, waiting in fuel lines that wrap around city blocks, and running from pharmacy to pharmacy to search for medicines that have disappeared from shelves. The gross domestic product of the small Mediterranean country of about six million people plummeted by about 40 percent, to $33 billion last year, from $55 billion in 2018, the last full year before the crisis began. Half of the population is poor. Lebanon’s crisis was caused by extensive deficit spending by the government that left it deeply in debt, and by unsustainable monetary policies that finally collapsed, leaving the banks largely insolvent and the value of the currency plunging. The government is spending about $500 million per month from the central bank’s dwindling reserves. Last week, the Parliament passed a law to spend $556 million on a ration card program for poor families [to pay for food, medicine and energy] although it remains unclear how it will work and how the state will pay for it.” Sounds to us like Modern Monetary Theory run amok. |
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