After Announcement, WTI Jumps $2.15/Bbl -- June 22, 2018

Oil output increasing. It's official. OPEC-non-OPEC (Russia) agree to increase production. No link; story everywhere. But look at this, WTI immediately after announcement -- 

Also, note that the US has asked Japan to stop importing Iranian oil. Yesterday, Iran accused the US of interfering with global oil trade. Well, duh.

That $2.15/bbl jump in the price of WTI is very, very interesting.

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Notes to the Granddaughters

From wiki:

The Renaissance began in Florence, Italy, in the 14th century. Various theories have been proposed to account for its origins and characteristics, focusing on a variety of factors including the social and civic peculiarities of Florence at the time: its political structure; the patronage of its dominant family, the Medici; and the migration of Greek scholars and texts to Italy following the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks. Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, and finally Rome during the Renaissance Papacy.

I was unaware of the close relationship between the Pope and the House of Medici. Pope Eugenius IV moved the pontificate from Rome to Florence in 1434 where the Medici bankers were based. 

An interesting brief history of the Renaissance -- again, which began in Florence -- can be found in Gavin Menzies 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance, c. 2008, particularly chapter 17. See also Zheng He.

The yield from rice fields is some several times that of wheat. I was unaware that the growing of rice was such a big deal in Italy. From the net:

Italy is the largest rice producer in Europe, and the Lombardy and Piedmont regions are Italy's rice bowl. Rice production in Italy started around the middle of the 15th Century. Today, japonica rice varieties are planted under irrigated conditions in large and highly mechanized farms.

From conigliera:

Asian rice was brought to the Middle East sometime around 1000 B.C., and the most likely route of introduction in Europe was through Spain, conquered by the Moors in the 8th century A.D. Although rice was known to the Romans, and mentioned by Pliny in his Natural History, it was only thought to have some medicinal properties and was not grown by them as a food source.

It was not until the 15th century that rice cultivation spread to Northern Italy, where the fertile swampy plains of the Po river valley provide suitable growing conditions.

In a letter written in 1475 the Duke of Milan claimed that from the one sack of rice he sent as a gift to the Duke of Ferrara 12 sacks could be harvested, if properly cultivated.

This impressive yield led to rice being quickly diffused throughout the region, but up until the mid-19th century only that one variety of rice- called Nostrale- was grown. In 1839 a Jesuit priest, Padre Calleri, returning from the Phillipines imported 43 different rice varieties, and it was from this stock that Italians began to experiment with the varieties that could best be adapted for use in Northern Italy’s temperate climate.

From Menzies, p. 204:

In many ways, the Po River resembles a smaller version of the Yangtze. Both rivers carry melting snows from the mountains eastward to the sea. Both suffer from flash floods and are controlled by a network of canals, locks, sluices, and dams. The waters of both are used to form extensive rice field. The exact date when the Po was first utilized for rice is not known (see above). Clearly it predated 1475 but by how much? Menzies suggests it was after 1435 when Taccola's first drawings of pumps appear, and probably after 1438, when his drawings of lock and sluice gates first appear.