Idle Rambling -- Sunday Morning -- April 10, 2022

Putin's War: at some point we were going to start seeing signs of the financial debacle for Russia caused by Putin. Each week the war continues will set back Russia one year economically. 

Putin's War: western Europe should be incredibly ashamed of how they have responded to this invasion. It's hard to blame the US. The latter can only provide military and humanitarian aid to the extent the Europeans "allow." To do more would require an administration that could quietly goad -- behind the scenes -- a more vigorous response by the Europeans. The US will provide everything the Europeans request, but the Europeans need to request.

China Covid: obviously no one outside Beijing really knows what is going on. 

Apparently upwards of 200 million Chinese citizens are in lock down. For comparison, the US population is 330 million. The Chinese lock down appears to be centered around Shanghai. 

China has lifted the shutdown in the industrial center near Hong Kong. Considering China is somewhat homogeneous culturally -- one can argue that -- and exists under a dictatorship, I find it inexplicable that Shanghai would be that much different than the rest of China when it comes to a pandemic.

One of two explanations for the lock down:

• they really do have a public health problem (I doubt it)
• this is simply political, nothing else, and not related to public health (have we seen this before in the western world?)

If China truly has a public health problem (which I doubt), it speaks volumes for how the west has handled the same situation. It also suggests, perhaps, the efficacy of the Sinopec vaccine compared to others around the world.

Oil: never has tracking the price of Brent and WTI been more fascinating. 

Folks appear to be evenly divided on where "this" goes next. I think American demand for "all" products -- energy, consumer, housing, food, everything -- is much more elastic than economists think. And, unlike the rest of the world, the US has "spare capacity" everywhere.

Freight market slowdown: off the radar scope until the beginning of the last week. I first noticed it with UNP. Throughout the entire week, UNP kept falling. This next week we will start to see a lot of stories with regard to the freight market slowdown. I think it caught folks by surprise. It certainly caught me by surprise. The business headlines certainly did not raise any red flags. 

Watching a train wreck: the Masters for one most famous player.  

Investing: the rest of the day, most of the blogging will be about investing. Wells coming off the confidential list this next week and initial production for theses wells has also been posted. I still have to complete the top stories of the past week.