There's another issue that comes along with this:
Watch for an unusual surge of people losing their homes and lives to house fires due to them using other means of heat... space heaters on 100 year old wiring or wood stoves... in order to fill the heat gap.
I'd suspect that a lot of people bought the promise that this price disruption would be "short term pain" back in March... and didn't fill their tanks expecting that situation to come to fruition... and now they're entering the year with a 1/4 tank and about to get romped...
The U.S. is tapping its emergency diesel reserve for only the second time ever, with diesel still sitting at $6.32 a gallon
The Department of Energy said today it will loan up to 315,000 barrels from the 1 million barrel Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve, per Reuters, which first reported the move
The fuel comes out of sites in Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut, with deliveries due by November 13. The only other time the reserve was drawn was after Hurricane Sandy in 2012
The AAA national diesel average is $6.32 this morning, up 74% from $3.62 a year ago. It set an all-time record of $6.53 on September 22, well above the 2022 peak near $5.82
About a third of New England homes heat with oil, and about half in Maine, right as winter starts
For scale, the IEA says 20 million barrels covers just over 5 days of U.S. diesel use, so 315,000 barrels is roughly 2 hours of national demand. This buys the Northeast some breathing room, but it doesn't fix the refining and supply squeeze behind $6 diesel, and that cost flows straight into trucking, food and shipping prices
ALT Chart of weekly US retail diesel prices since 2019, showing the June 2022 peak of $5.81, a September 2026 record of $6.53 and $6.28 on Oct 19, per EIA
Here's one share of a company... remember who gave it to you and don't go spending it all in one place!
Widge retweeted
There’s a reason the first thing the oligarchs do is buy a newspaper megaphone or some other media outlet…gotta keep the pitchforks and torches crowd marching in the other direction.
Optimism can be found in every first scoop of the dig and can be buried in the bottom of every empty hole.
Widge retweeted
On July 7th, Brad Gerstner told every American family to put their money in the stock market at the top of the AI bubble.
Meanwhile, he was selling...
Widge retweeted
Fuel oil is up 15.3% month-over-month, and gasoline is up 9.1%. At some point, the things we "have to have" will get so expensive that the things we "want to have" may actually start to go down because nobody has enough money left over.
Full report: peakprosperity.pulse.ly/wo6b…
I can only hope that Youtube is using AI to send emails... because that's the worst sales pitch since that mayor tried to lure people into being lab rats by shoving french fries into his face hole...
@BrianBrenberg Noticed you hadn't posted much. Haven't been catching too much TV in recent months and just saw that you were in a new time slot.
Good Luck, Professor!
Wonder how many bets on the Eagles' season might have been triggered by anyone with knowledge of this situation...
Widge retweeted
Pending Sales down -11.3% YoY
Redfin reporting most cancelled sales since Covid at 14.5%
Builder results in 7 days, but sentiment at 2012 levels
As foreclosures (forced sales) ramp and elective sales retreat the nat'l median home sales price will come under add'l pressure
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I'm of the opinion that some type of mass adoption of AI and robots are more likely to explode the debt...and while people want to compare this move to the Tech Boom of the late 90s, take a look at what has happened to debt and labor participation in the ensuing 30 years.
“Musk cited the political establishment’s lack of will as the main reason for the difficulty in reducing the fiscal deficit. He argued, “No one in the White House, Senate, House, or judiciary has the will to cut spending,” and claimed that except for a few like Republican Senator Rand Paul, there are virtually no politicians willing to reduce government spending.
chosun.com/english/industry-…
I wish I could take credit for this reasoning, but it's from @DavidBCollum:
By incentivizing the empty nesters to liquidate their relatively high priced homes...they have to move somewhere. They would end up competing with the 1st time buyers on smaller homes via a wad of cash.
I know there's a push for it, but I frankly don't think that would help because it would just float more homes on the market that are far above the price range that is needed.