Saudi Arabia's Foreign Exchange Reserves Plummet -- Something's Happening And The Mainstream Media Is Not Reporting It -- April 6, 2018

I don't know enough about the "Trump tariffs" to talk about it except in a very, very general way. My hunch is that the mainstream media does not know enough about "Trump tariffs" either. Producers, analysts, others have been so preoccupied with Hillary, Mueller, Russian collusion, that I truly think folks are missing some tectonic changes that are literally occurring under our feet. There are some huge stories, I think, that are not being reported.

Example: look at this chart, posted March 28, 2018, just a week or so ago. As mentioned then, it looked like Saudi Arabia might have turned the corner based on the October, November, December (2017) data, but then in January, 2018, reserves dropped, albeit slightly.
Readers know that I don't particularly care to quote/link Oilprice.com but Irina Slav has a great article today that relates directly the graph above (and one that will be posted momentarily). Ms Slav is not reporting anything readers of the blog don't already know but not many are writing about this issue in the mainstream media. I haven't subscribed to Forbes in a long, long time, but I would expect if any mainstream media would write about this story, it would be Forbes.

So, quick, what do you think Saudi's cash reserves were in February compared to January (2018)? Same, less, more? February was three days shorter than January but the price of oil stayed steady and one would expect Saudi's cash reserves to have stayed about the same month-over-month. Now that you have had time to guess, let's post the February, 2018, data.

Oh, oh.

I'm too tired to blog any more tonight, but this story, Irina Slav's story, and "Trump's tariffs" all deserve more coverage. I'll come back to these stories over the weekend.

But right now, the decline in Saudi's cash reserves in February (2018) might be the biggest story of the month. There is nothing to suggest this is a one-off. Cash reserves depend on a) revenue; and, b) expenses.

We'll close with this screenshot for now: