The Market, Energy, Trade War, Natural Gas, And Political Page, T+48 -- July 18, 2018

CSX: CSX reports jump in profit. Cost cuts and higher freight rates boost railroad operator's second-quarter earnings. CSX reported a sharp increase in profit, and wow! Was it ever! Net income was almost a billion dollars. Actual net income was $877 million in the second corder, a 72% increase from the $510 million it earned one year earlier. Revenue increased about 6% to $3.1 billioin, boosted by higher volumes. This WSJ article has received no comments so far. La-de-da.

BRK-B: up over 2.5% in pre-market trading. Probably has nothing to do with the CSX story, but remember, Warren owns BNSF lock, stock, and barrel. Pundits suggest BRK-A/B is rising because the company has "lifted previous restrictions on buying back its own stock." Pundits suggest that Berkshire is unable to find anything worth buying. And with hordes of cash, it might as well buy back some of its own common stock. Okay.

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It's not Nordstrom's, it's Nord Stream 2. Posted earlier,

The Europeans are wary of Trump and Putin meeting this week, and yet it's the Germans buying all that natural gas from Putin through a brand new $11-billion pipeline. These are the facts:

Nord Stream 2 is a gas pipeline that would allow Germany to effectively double the amount of gas it imports from Russia. In 2017, Germany used up a record 53 billion cubic meters of Russian gas, comprising about 40 percent of Germany's total gas consumption. Nord Stream 2's delivery system is designed to carry up to 55 billion cubic meters (1.942 trillion cubic feet) of gas per year.

So, to repeat: currently, Russian natural gas accounted fro 40% of Germany's total gas consumption; the Nord Stream 2 would effectively double the amount of gas Germany would import from Russia. Seems fairly significant to me. And yet, CNBC says "Trump is exaggerating Germany's reliance on Russia for energy."  CNBC was disingenuous with its argument (Trump was exactly correct, it turns out) but worse, CNBC defends Russia even as NBC calls out Trump on Russian sanctions. Seems one can't have it both ways. Unless you are CNBC/NBC/MSNBC.

Even cartoonists get it; this is not rocket science: