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  The US, as a country, should count its blessings that Trump was the president over the last   almost 4 years. As crude and rough as Trump may be, the US has been incredibly lucky. His narcissistic nature, as painful it may be to witness and deal with the consequences of decisions made by him, are exactly that – all about him. Fealty to him is required; Kim Jong-Un fell in love with him and his stable genius. He seems to have an infinite need for praise and admiration. While revolting (yet slightly interesting from a psychological point of view) this is actually a great thing. Trump’s infinite need to be loved and adored, combined with the need to embarrass anyone and anything that was not sufficiently obedient and full of praise, is what has prevented the US from bidding farewell to the American Experiment. Trump needs to be the best, and to have the biggest crowds. It got so bad that even Fox (yes, Fox) called him out on it.  During the 2016 presidential campaign, his need to

As we are getting closer to the US election the question as to why characters like Trump and Biden the candidates of choice are pops up again. A big part of the underlying cause of why politics in the US are moving more to extremes is the unrelenting, ever increasing wealth inequality – or, more accurately – the awareness of huge inequality in society. To take this one step further, it is not so much that We, The People, are equal (because we are not) but that we should have access to an equal opportunity set. And we don’t. After the ’08 financial crises and subsequent bailouts of the financial system, the Occupy Wall Street movement fomented. It was a general protest against the corrosive power of moneyed interests over democracy itself. Eventually it somewhat fizzled out but the notion that when there is a crises Wall Street gets bailed out while Main Street does not was a bit more obvious and has lingered since. Occupy Wall Street also made the 1%/99% part of our everyday langua

  Exxon et al. are on track for a bailout that will make the financial rescue of ‘08 look like handing a lollypop to a child. Oil companies – no matter what you think of them – create an essential product for modern society. Covid has caused a temporary surplus of crude which in turn has brought down prices significantly. US producers have been leaning heavily on horizontal / fracking to extract oil. This method of extracting oil is considerably more expensive than traditional drilling.   The reason why oil companies are going that more expensive route is because there are fewer and fewer vertical drilling locations available that economically make sense -we are running out of the affordable oil that society is built on. The result of companies switching to more expensive production is that – for example – the free cashflow from Exxon has dropped from 30-40bn/year in the mid 2000’s to 5-10bn with more and more quarters showing negative cashflow. XOM is borrowing money to pay dividends.