Saudi Setting "Us" Up For $200 Oil? -- May 18, 2015

From Seeking Alpha:

• More than $100B of spending on at least 26 major projects by the world’s energy companies has been slowed, postponed or canceled in the wake of plunging oil prices, including Royal Dutch Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Statoi, according to a Financial Times analysis.
• One of the biggest developments to be shelved, Shell’s Arrow liquefied natural gas plant in Australia, accounted for almost a quarter of the planned spending reduction.
• Western Canada is suffering the most from the retrenchment, with nine Canadian oil sands projects pulled back, each ranging from $1B-$10B in planned expenditure, the analysis says.
• According to Morgan Stanley, which looked at capex guidance for 2015 from more than 120 companies, investment is expected to drop by a quarter this year to $389B from $520B.

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ObamaCare to the States: Gotcha!

This story started as a small story posted at a nondescript site either yesterday or early today. I don't recall how I came across. I elected not to post it simply for that reason: it was hardly news and it was posted at a nondescript site.

However, the story is now being picked up by some major outlets, and will grow legs through the 2016 presidential race. One party will use the Iraq implosion to try to take our minds off the implosion of ObamaCare.

Politico is reporting:

Medicaid enrollment under Obamacare is skyrocketing past expectations, giving some GOP governors who oppose the program’s expansion under the health law an “I told you so” moment.

More than 12 million people have signed up for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act since January 2014, and in some states that embraced that piece of the law, enrollment is hundreds of thousands beyond initial projections. Seven states have seen particularly big surges, with their overruns totaling nearly 1.4 million low-income adults.

The federal government is picking up 100 percent of the expansion costs through 2016, and then will gradually cut back to 90 percent. But some conservatives say the costs that will fall on the states are just too big a burden, and they see vindication in the signup numbers, proof that costs will be more than projected as they have warned all along.
Obamacare originally expanded Medicaid — which traditionally served poor children, pregnant women and the disabled — to all childless low-income adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level (about $16,250 for an individual) across the country. But the Supreme Court made expansion optional in 2012. And 21 states, mostly with GOP governors, have resisted.

“The expansion of Obamacare will cost our state taxpayers $5 billion,” Florida Gov. Rick Scott said in an interview with POLITICO last week, referring to the 10-year cost. “Name the health care program — I think the only one is Medicare Part D — that cost less than what they initially anticipated…Historically, if you look at the numbers, with the growth in Medicare costs, Medicaid costs, it’s always multiples.” A bitter critic of Obamacare, Scott at one point surprisingly backed expansion, but withdrew his support earlier this year. His state legislature is deeply split on Medicaid policy.

You simply wonder what Florida's Governor Rick Scott was ever thinking. 

The White House provides us the list of the 22 states that resisted this scam. According to the White House, North Dakota supported the president on this one, along with Minnesota and Iowa, and the entire west coast (Washington, Oregon, and California).

Montana and Texas voted for sovereignty, as did Warren Buffett's state of Nebraska.