One element of this price rise is on the supply side, especially with Saudi Arabia and Russia apparently maintaining a production cut agreement they have. Rumors from OilPrice.com suggest there may be cheating on these agreements to come. But for now these two are holding the line on the supply side.
More important has been the increase on the demand side, which looks set to continue rising for at least the near future. I have posted previously on how global carbon emissions appear to have bottomed around April 7, with them rising since, if still well below pre-pandemic levels. Burning fossil fuels is a major source of these emissions, so it is quite possible that oil demand has been rising since around then, even though it was 10 days after then that oil prices did their brief plunge into negative territory.
According to OilPrice.com it is China that is leading this increase in oil demand. It was the first economy to drop due to the pandemic, with its oil demand declining about 40% during February. However, it looks that China's demand has returned as of May to a level 92% of its peak prior to the pandemic. That is substantial, while leaving more room for further growth.
Another nation with a large economy making an even sharper turnaround is India. In early April at the beginning of its two month lockdown its demand declined by 60%, but now it is estiimated that in June its demand will return fully to its pre-pandemic level.
US demand has also made a turnaround, although it did not decline as much and is recovering more slowly. But its demand is rising and will almost certainly continue to do so, if not at a rate that would happen if there were a V-style economic recovery.
Barkley Rosser
and just when you thought it couldn't get worse...Part of the group was from the Bureau of Prisons - Special Operations and Response Team (SORT) (part of DoJ)...I don't think they are known for community policing!
ReplyDeleteAccording to OilPrice.com it is China that is leading this increase in oil demand. It was the first economy to drop due to the pandemic, with its oil demand declining about 40% during February. However, it looks that China's demand has returned as of May to a level 92% of its peak prior to the pandemic. That is substantial, while leaving more room for further growth....
ReplyDelete[ Nicely summarized. ]
A.,
ReplyDeleteLooks like your first comment is for my other post. In this morning's WaPo it is reported that these unidentified people include US Marshals and also FBI personnel, all under the jurisdiction of the DOJ and Barr. The excuse being given for forces without ID is that they were called up so quickly they did not have time to get them.
An odd bit is that one photo in WaPo showed these people "guarding" the Lincoln Memorial without any IDs, although they were labeled as being DC National Guard. But supposedly NG people have IDs. Anyway, Trump has a special guard that can protect him in the White House if he loses the election but refuses to leave office.
The existence of the suspected 'capability' does not surprise me.
ReplyDeleteThe use of DoJ or ICE employees is likely an operational/economic decision as keeping the 3rd Inf (or Marines at the Marine Barracks) at "standards" and "standby" operational response alert would be quite expensive and detract from protocol duties.
Protection of the president is a responsibility of everyone in the military. We were trained in at least the theory annually.
Suppose a couple of thousand 'protesters', whose first amendment rights regularly expand to mayhem, property damage and personal injury show up and "move on" the White House......
https://cepr.net/washington-post-invents-a-growth-dividend-from-swedens-coronavirus-strategy/
ReplyDeleteJune 4, 2020
Washington Post Invents a Growth Dividend from Sweden’s Coronavirus Strategy
By Dean Baker
Sweden has stood apart from most other wealthy countries in dealing with the pandemic, by not imposing some sort of shutdown, where non-essential businesses are closed and travel is kept to a minimum. Its Nordic neighbors all went this route and then engaged in extensive testing and tracing strategies.
As a result, Sweden has seen a much higher infection and fatality rate than the other Nordic countries. Sweden’s fatality rate to date is 450 per million, that compares to 101 per million for Denmark, 58 per million for Norway, and 44 per million for Finland.
Even worse, while these other countries all seem to have the pandemic well under control, infection rates and deaths remain high in Sweden. Yesterday there were two coronavirus related deaths in Denmark, one in Finland and none in Norway. Sweden had 74 deaths. (Sweden’s population is roughly twice the size of each of the other three Nordic countries.) Sweden’s track record in containing in the spread of the pandemic has clearly been abysmal.
However, the Washington Post holds out * the prospect that Sweden has at least had an economic benefit from going the no shutdown route, telling readers:
“And because Sweden’s economy is tightly bound to the rest of Europe’s, it also has suffered, although not as badly as others.”
While it is true that it does not appear that Sweden’s economy will shrink as much as hard hit countries like Italy and Spain, the International Monetary Fund projects ** that it will actually do worse in 2020 than its Nordic neighbors. The I.M.F. projects that Sweden’s economy will shrink by 6.8 percent in 2020. That compares to projected declines of 6.5 percent in Denmark, 6.3 percent in Norway, and 6.0 percent in Finland. In short, contrary to what the Post piece implies, there is little evidence that Sweden has gotten any economic benefit from its no shutdown strategy.
* https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/sweden-epidemiologist-anders-tegnell/2020/06/03/063b20e4-a5a0-11ea-b619-3f9133bbb482_story.html
** https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2020/01/weodata/weorept.aspx?pr.x=25&pr.y=11&sy=2019&ey=2021&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&c=128%2C142%2C172%2C132%2C134%2C144&s=NGDP_RPCH&grp=0&a=
That Sweden, a country of 10 million has a mere 72 fewer deaths than China with 1.44 billion and that Sweden is tragically going to pass China in deaths in 2 days strikes me as calling into question the social ethic of Sweden. What actually is social democracy in Sweden, anyway?
ReplyDeleteSocial democracy in Sweden is mostly in good shape. They just let themselves be led astray by an incompetent health manager who decided not to have a substantial lockdown policy. Like the Brits, they were for awhile pursuing a strategy of "herd immunity," which everybody has now figured out was a completely idiotic mistake. In any case, both Sweden and UK are paying for their mistakes, which the Brits moved to correct sooner after Boris Johnson got infected.
ReplyDeleteProbably worst in the world right now is Brazil, whose Bolsonaro is proud of out-Trumping Trump. Of course the US is not doing all that well on most of these comparative stats either.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
ReplyDeleteJune 4, 2020
Coronavirus (Deaths per million)
Belgium ( 824)
UK ( 588)
Spain ( 580)
Italy ( 557)
Sweden ( 452)
France ( 445)
Netherlands ( 350)
Ireland ( 337)
US ( 333)
Switzerland ( 222)
Canada ( 202)
Luxembourg ( 176)
Portugal ( 143)
Germany ( 104)
Denmark ( 101)
Austria ( 74)
Finland ( 58)
Norway ( 44)
Greece ( 17)
Japan ( 7)
India ( 5)
China ( 3)
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
ReplyDeleteJune 4, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 1,923,636)
Deaths ( 110,171)
UK
Cases ( 281,661)
Deaths ( 39,904)
Sweden
Cases ( 41,883)
Deaths ( 4,562)
China
Cases ( 83,022)
Deaths ( 4,634)
The percentage of coronavirus cases ending in death in Sweden is a startling 10.9, while in Britain the percentage is an even more tragic 14.2. This indicates a serious problem with the social-political state in both cases.
ReplyDeleteAs for Brazil, the United States supported the prosecution of Lula da Silva and the impeachment and removal of Dilma Rousseff which was a tragedy that has been confounded by the current president.
ReplyDeleteAs of June 3, according to the Guardian, Sweden had the highest seven day average of per capita deaths due ro covid-19 of any nation in the world. Even Anders Tenfgell, the guy responsible for their botched policies, now admits that "too many Swedes have died."
ReplyDeleteBarkley Rosser:
ReplyDeleteAnders Tenfgell, the guy responsible for their botched policies, now admits that "too many Swedes have died."
[ Forgive me, but Sweden's political leaders simply decided that "too many Swedes dying" was worth the cost of catering to dominant business interests. I find this an intolerable decision, making a mockery of Sweden's social-democratic reputation.
Swedish political leaders made a decision that should have been culturally intolerable. ]
https://twitter.com/Tom_Fowdy/status/1268943531810439175
ReplyDeleteTom Fowdy @Tom_Fowdy
The UK government are only doing this now, literally only doing this now! After the deaths of all those frontline workers...
CGTN @CGTNOfficial
Health Secretary Matt Hancock announces new guidance will come into force for National Health Service staff in England on 15 June which will require all staff to wear surgical masks
12:31 PM · Jun 5, 2020
A.,
ReplyDeleteI think they did not realize how many would die. They were full of themselves due to their self-image of high levels of trust and social cooperation, so there was a lot of talk that people would properly socislly distance when asked to, and indeed there is evidence that people there did do a lot more voluntary social distancing than we have seen in many other nations. But it turned out not to be sufficient, and now they just finished seven days of having the highest per capita covid-19 death rate in the world.
I think this was arrogance about their own morality and good social behavior more than some wanting to save their local capitalists more vigorously than other European nations wanted to save their local capitalists.
Barkley Rosser, a fine judicious preliminary explanation. I do appreciate the response, and intend to think more about the Swedish matter.
ReplyDeleteBarkley Rosser:
ReplyDeleteI think this was arrogance about their own morality and good social behavior more than some wanting to save their local capitalists more vigorously than other European nations wanted to save their local capitalists.
[ Sweden has a peculiar economic structure, largely influenced or even dominated by the Wallenberg enterprises. I need to look at this influence of the Wallenberg enterprises on the approach Sweden adopted to the coronavirus. ]
A..,
ReplyDeleteYes it does, but Wallenberg dominance is less than it once was. Policies used to be more socialistic than now, and Wallenbergs and allies did not or could not block it. This is moral arrogance and trusting an official who goofed up.