Economic Outlook

U.S. economic growth hits 3% rate in second quarter

MW-FG274 nerd o 20170221133048 MGWASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The U.S. economic rebound in the second quarter was stronger than initially reported, as a lift to consumer spending and business investment led to the strongest growth in more than two years.

Gross domestic product rose at 3% rate from April to June, up from an initial 2.6% reading, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.

Economists surveyed by MarketWatch expected a smaller upward revision in second-quarter GDP to a 2.8% rate.

The economy picked up from a 1.2% rate in the first quarter. A slow first quarter followed by an improved second quarter also occurred in two of the past three years. Economists say that the most recent data suggest the U.S. is on track to maintain a 3%-plus clip in the third quarter.

The last time the U.S. economy had two quarters above 3% was in 2014.

President Donald Trump is relying on growth above 3% to generate enough revenue for the government to pay for tax cuts and more infrastructure spending.

….also analysis and charts from ZeroHedge:

US Second Quarter GDP Revised Sharply Higher To 3.0%, Best In Two Years

Hurricane Harvey Tosses Global Oil Markets Into Chaos

a1003054b7a3f229fd35e769a65189beThe most powerful Hurricane to hit Texas in more than 50 years has devastated much of the coast, and the historic flooding is now causing havoc in the energy markets.

The rain is not over, and will continue over the next few days, spilling a year’s worth of rain within a week.

ExxonMobil shut down its Baytown refinery, the second largest in the United States with a capacity of 560,500 bpd. Royal Dutch Shell closed its 360,000 bpd Deer Park refinery, according to S&P Global Platts, and Phillips 66 shut down its 247,000 bpd Sweeny refinery. 

All port facilities in Houston and Corpus Christi were also shut down on Monday, not open to vessel traffic. That means that no refined products or crude oil will be either imported or exported for the time being.

The implications of the refinery outages and the port closures could be dramatic, although how long it will last is uncertain. The first obvious effect is a disruption to the production of refined products, which could have substantial effects on the U.S. fuel supply. As of Monday morning, more than 2.3 million barrels of daily refining capacity was knocked offline, according to Reuters, or about 13 percent of the nation’s total. That has already forced gasoline futures upby 7 percent to their highest levels in two years.

The effects will reverberate well outside of Texas. For example, the massive refineries on the Gulf Coast send gasoline through a major artery to the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. The disruption will mean that much of the country could see higher gasoline prices soon. The Gulf Coast also exported 2.7 mb/d of refined products in May, much of which was sent to Latin America and Europe.

Related: Is Wall Street Funding A Shale Failure?.

In fact, as the world’s largest refined product exporter, disruptions in the U.S. will be felt around the world. “Any hiccup in U.S. refined product exports is highly disruptive to the supply chain given the dependency of nations like Mexico and other Latin American countries on the U.S.,” Michael Tran, director of global energy strategy at RBC Capital Markets, told Reuters. Worse, refined product output in Latin America has fallen recently, with Mexico and Venezuela most vulnerable to supply outages in Texas.

“If there are a lot of shutdowns, whatever capacity is running will get consumed in the U.S., it will have to be, so Latin America will have to get its barrels from elsewhere. It creates a domino effect,” Vikas Dwivedi, global oil and gas strategist at Macquarie, told Reuters.

That domino effect will push up refining margins worldwide. “If (U.S.) refineries shut down for more than a week, Asia will need to run at a higher level, because there’s no spare capacity in Europe,” Olivier Jakob, managing director of Petromatrix said in an interview with CNBC.

Texas imported 1.9 mb/d of crude oil in May, while the Gulf Coast also exported 0.75 mb/d. The port outages will wreak havoc on oil differentials – Gulf Coast refiners import heavier crude to process, while coastal ports export lighter oil coming from Texas shale fields to customers overseas. In the short run, the U.S. could see a bit of a glut of lighter forms of oil, while heavy oil producers overseas will be hit by a temporary interruption of purchases from Texas refiners. There are reports that oil tankers are idling offshore in the Gulf, but they will likely have to wait a little while longer before they can dock.

Those disruptions could also inflict pain on upstream shale producers. S&P Global Platts reports that two crucial pipelines servicing the Permian Basin – the BridgeTex and Longhorn pipelines – saw operations suspended, taking 650,000 bpd of takeaway capacity offline. That could weigh on the prices that Permian shale drillers receive for their product. Other pipelines in the state were also temporarily idled.

Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass LNG export facility was spared, with only minor damage reported and no expected interruption to service.

Meanwhile, oil production offshore was also affected. S&P Global Platts says that an estimated 378,633 bpd of oil output was knocked offline as of August 27, or about a fifth of the total production in the Gulf of Mexico, while a quarter of the region’s natural gas output was also sidelined. More than 100 oil platforms in the Gulf were evacuated, although those platforms will probably come back online much quicker than the onshore refineries.

Related: Aggressive U.S. Oil Sanctions Could Bankrupt Venezuela

The damage to upstream shale production onshore is a bit more uncertain, although could be significant. ExxonMobil’s shale unit, XTO Energy, shut in all production that was situated in Hurricane Harvey’s path, although production details were not provided. S&P Global Platts says that thousands of wells could be affected in the Eagle Ford in South Texas, and Platts Analytics’ Bentek Energy says that the Eagle Ford is currently producing 1.34 mb/d, which is down slightly from the 1.41 mb/d the region is expected to average this month, according to EIA data.

Hurricane Harvey was one of the worst in Texas’ history, but even as the winds die down, the damage from rain remains. Another 15 to 25 inches of rain is possible by Friday, so the worst of the flooding is not over.

By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:

 

 

Why Gold’s Surge Beckons Caution

Kim-Jong-Un-sane-rally-should

With a sharp lurch higher, December Gold has broken above the 1301.20 resistance I’d flagged as crucial to the intermediate-to-long-term outlook.  The rally is encouraging, but we should remain cautious for two reasons:

For one, the move was catalyzed by news that Kim Jong Un-sane had fired a missile over Japan. As someone pointed out in the Rick’s Picks chat room on Tuesday, however, traders who have faded market moves caused by seemingly shocking news have only made money.  Indeed, every geopolitical crisis in memory, including the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the Cuban missile showdown turned out to have been a great opportunity to buy stocks at relative bargain prices.  Indeed, DaBoyz used these crises and countless others to shake down shares so that they could by more of them at bargain prices. This was clearly the case here. On Sunday evening, index futures plummeted on news of Kim’s brazen aggression.  But Wall Street, cynical as ever, treated the short-lived panic as a fire sale. The result was that, by the end of Tuesday’s session, traders had reversed a 134-point selloff on the opening to close the Dow up 57 points — a 190-point reversal.

The second reason we should treat gold’s ‘breakout’ cautiously is that it is still well shy of election night’s watershed top at 1353.00. Until such time as that high is exceeded, the 1462.70 rally target given here earlier will in my estimation be more theoretical than probable. For now, caveat emptor. I

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Why Gold’s Surge Beckons Caution

Death of the US Dollar Reserve Currency… Picking Up Speed

The Death of the U.S. Dollar as the world’s reserve currency will have a profoundly negative impact on the lives of most Americans.  Unfortunately, 99% of the population has no clue.  The only reason 1% of U.S. citizens understand what is going on, is because the Mainstream media and financial networks have distorted the truth and the reality of our present situation.

What happened in the markets today was a perfect example.  Zerohedge published an article today titled,  ‘Traders’ Panic-Buy Stocks, Shrug Off Nuclear Armaggedon, Debt Ceiling, & Biblical Flood Fears, and stating the following:

Crazy-Markets-768x353

For a few brief hours overnight – until the bell rang at 0930ET on the NYSE – investors were anxious about North Korea’s most provocative yet missile launch, the terrible flooding disaster in Texas, and lest we forget, the looming debt ceiling debacle. But all of that was instantly forgotten as the machines took control and lifted stocks higher practically all day on a sea of USDJPY-ignited momentum.

Looking at the chart above, we can see that when fear came into the markets during the North Korea missile incident and then the opening of the European markets (shown in the two red boxes), the Dow Jones Index fell as well as the USDJPY, while gold and the U.S. Treasurys increased.

However, after the U.S. markets opened, MAGICALLY everything reversed because the nuclear threat with N. Korea, Biblical flooding in Texas and the upcoming debt ceiling issue no longer mattered.  Those of us in the Alternative Media find this quite hilarious that nothing negatively impacts the financial markets anymore.  Some have laughed while saying, “If a nuclear bomb had taken out New York City, the stock market would probably go up.”  While I doubt that would happen, it is becoming a real joke to watch the financial markets today.

I wrote about the insanity in the markets today and how it has negatively impacted the value of the precious metals in my recent article, The Reason Why Gold & Silver Have Frustrated Investors Since 2011.  In the article I posted the chart below, by a Deutsche Bank analyst Aleksandar Kocic, on why the Markets Broke In 2012:

The description of the indicator above may be a bit difficult to understand so that I will simplify it.  The BLUE LINE represents the “Economic Uncertainty Policy” (EPU index) shown by the frequency of articles in ten leading US newspapers that contain three of the target terms: economy, uncertainty; and one or more of Congress, deficit, Federal Reserve, legislation, regulation or White House in the mainstream media.  The BLACK LINE is the VIX index, the volatility index (S&P 500).  Economic uncertainty printed in articles in the Mainstream Media should correspond with the volatility indicator of the markets (the VIX).

And, this is what precisely took place from 1996 to 2011.  The blue and black lines moved up and down in tandem.  However, after 2011, something changed.  According to Kocic:

Intuitively, when VIX is in tune with EPU, the market is acknowledging the levels of risk through the prices. However, when VIX is low and EPU high, markets are complacent – they are underpricing risk.

After 2011, the two measures of risk decouple with VIX consistently low despite growing uncertainty. The breakdown is structural, and it is visible across all market sectors, not only equities.

What Kocic is saying is that the market has become highly complacent and is severely underpricing risk.

This is exactly what happened today.  Not only do we have a threat of a Nuclear incident with N. Korea, but Houston is dealing with epic flooding from 4-5 feet of rain, while the U.S. Government is about to hit a wall with the debt ceiling issue.  Those three factors would have caused the markets to sell off considerably 5-10 years ago.  Again, according to the chart above, it doesn’t seem to matter how much negative news there is in the economy, the markets have to continue higher or remain elevated, or else the entire house of cards comes down.

The U.S. Dollar As The World’s Reserve Currency Is Under Serious Pressure

According to Clive Maund’s articleDOLLAR update as LOSS OF RESERVE CURRENCY STATUS LOOMS...  if the U.S. Dollar breaches its support level, then it could go into freefall:

While I don’t pay a lot of attention to technical analysis, many traders do.  Clive Maund states in his article that the U.S. Dollar is due for a bounce because it is oversold.  But, once the bounce is over, we could see the Dollar decline considerably as the U.S. Government has to deal with the debt ceiling issue.

When the U.S. Dollar is no longer the reserve currency of the world, Americans will be forced to live on a lot less.  We won’t be able to exchange worthless U.S. Treasury paper for oil, metals, commodities, goods or services anymore.  We will need to trade GOODS for GOODS, not PAPER for GOODS.

We still import 6-7 million barrels per oil per day to run our economy.  We provide ious for a lot of that oil.  Last year, the U.S. trade deficit was $502 billion.  A portion of that trade deficit was for oil.  Without the 6-7 million barrels per day of oil we import, our economy would shrink by one-third for starters.

The only way the U.S. economy can continue moving along is via the U.S. Dollar being the world’s reserve currency.  When the U.S. Dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, it will be difficult to pay for oil with worthless U.S. Treasuries.  Of course, the Fed and U.S. Treasury may speed up the printing press to make up for our ongoing trade deficits, but that would likely erode the value of the Dollar.

The Death of the U.S. Dollar will be the end of America as we know it.  Unfortunately, a tiny percentage of those in the Alternative Media Community realize this, while 99% are completely oblivious.

Check back for new articles and updates at the SRSrocco Report.

Wall Street Cries Wolf

There is no question that the stock market is richly valued and the economic expansion since the 2008 mortgage debt panic has endured far longer than normal cycles. Recent pessimism has arisen with major banks and analysts warning that the sky may start falling soon. Increased negative forecasts can be a positive contrary opinion signal, so let’s look at some of the concerns the major bulge banks are propagating.

Recently, $30 billion in funds flowed out of US equities and the current mid-2017 outflow is at record levels, which is being portrayed as a scary signal of impending doom. Oddly, past extreme spikes in fund outflows were good times to begin buying stocks. In particular, the two most impressive rush for the exits occurred in mid-2004 and early 2016. In hindsight, these were a couple excellent points to buy stocks hand over fist. Apparently, many institutions equate this extreme proxy of equity fund outflow and today’s high priced stock market as a valid correlation when their own evidence would indicate otherwise.

01-fund-outflow-8-17

….continue reading HERE