The Housing Bubble

Slow news day? Chinese cyber attack per Adan’s orders?

Have a cup of this:

http://www.picpaste.com/FtrLz10o.jpg

Region VIII

Did the bush family offer condolences to their close family friends?

(I already read house of bush, house of saud.)

too bad bush allowed the family to leave the US when there was a shoot to kill no fly order after 9/11

This Red fellow traveler should’ve been hanged for treason.

It’s like they are handing out free money to investors, similar to what the Fed did in the aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown with respect to the U.S. stock and housing markets.

Don’t cry. Go get yourself a jiffy lube.

Short XOM and CVX then.

Go fill your SUV’s gas tank and rejoice!

A lot of public union takers who presided over turning our schools into DNC indoctrination mills will be enraged when they realize those corrupt, incompetent Democrat administrations they sustained in power didn’t just run those municipalities into the ground and rip off taxpayers and productive citizens - they also made dodgy deals with Wall Street grifters as the financing ran out (i.e. as the parasites killed the hosts) so now the public labor unions are going to get thrown under the bus. (Wait till you see what Wall Street did with your pensions, losers.) The poetic justice is rich indeed….

“A lot of us are working paycheck to paycheck because our pay has decreased,” she said. “We’re getting paid less because our health insurance went up. I’m paying $200 per paycheck for insurance. Now I have to call about my bills and ask if I can pay them on Friday because I wasn’t paid all my money on time.”

Cry me a river, NAR slugs. I only feel sympathy for the kids who are wholly unprepared to go out and function in society, thanks to their substandard “everyone’s a winner!” education.

Mt. Gox is old news.

If you don’t make your own paper bitcoin wallet and store your bitcoins there, you are at the mercy of your app that stores the bitcoin.

See bitaddress.org.

Turn your Wi-Fi off or unplug your Ethernet cable, make your bitcoin wallet, memorize your private address, Clear your web browsing history, close your web browser, reboot your machine, turn on Wi-Fi or plug in your Ethernet cable.

security is simple as that.

Isn’t Mt. Gox’s proper pronunciation, “Empty Gox”?

An army of loon voters, terrified of whatever they’re told to be. OBAMA! BOOGABOOGA! IRAN! AIEEEEEEE!

They have a very successful distraction. Meanwhile 10 million poured in from Mexico. Mission accomplished.

‘from January 2008 to October 2013, there were more than 460 recorded attacks by Nile crocodiles, most of them fatal. That tally is almost certainly a massive underrepresentation.’

“Why are the Americans more concerned than us?” said Joseph Mabuwa.’

The eternal re-ordering of priorities. Should we note that more US citizens are killed by falling furniture than by terrorists? Because if so, it might cause us to question why so much money and blood (and media attention; a connection?) is spilled on the latter.

When I lived in the Dallas metro in the 80’s, I noticed that automobile fatalities were relegated to a newspaper page far from the cover. But these deaths are enormous when compared to shootings and Ebola outbreaks, etc. Let’s dig a little deeper; most automobile accidents occur in construction zones. Why that means they could be preventable.

And in the 80’s, we didn’t have multiple 24 hour TV news channels, fighting for eyeballs.

“As with many countries in Africa, in Zimbabwe big wild animals such as lions, elephants or hippos are seen either as a potential meal, or a threat to people and property that needs to be controlled or killed.”

I’m sure Minnesotans would feel quite differently about Cecil if he had lived at large in a Minneapolis suburb.

That’s like asking who has the most fingers left in the leper colony. All of those currencies are “backed” by central banks that have embarked on a regime of currency debasement and trying to print their way out of their debts and obligations (or in the case of the Fed, printing trillions in free gambling money for its Wall Street accomplices). I’d rather trade my green pieces of paper (FRNs, as opposed to actual money backed by a store of value) for something of value, before the Fed debases it right into the ground.

Given Uncle Buck’s current relative strength compared to other currencies, I’d say he has a reserved seat.

They are doing it because there is no stigma attached to living at home anymore? That’s the argument of Frey and Settersen?!?

Wow!

There wasn’t a stigma attached to living at home back in the late 1940’s either Mr Frey and Mr Settersen.

Pray tell why did millions of young people form their own households back then? These were their grandparents and ergo had the same genome.

Consider comparing the graph of small business formation to the graph to young people living at home. So how is it just two generations ago home sapiens with the same genomes were starting businesses like crazy? And yet this generation is not? They aren’t capable?

Everyone needs a place to live. Luckily for lots of Milleniaks whose barrista pay checks don’t cover the mortgage, they continue to occupy their childhood home by their parents’ good graces.

Too bad, so sad for real estate sales people who lack Millenials among their customers.

Meanwhile, creepy people and criminals are using drones to perv on sunbathing teenage girls and peer into people’s patios to see if there’s anything worth stealing. And they’re doing it with impunity.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/kentucky-man-arrested-after-shooting-down-1800-drone-with-shotgun/

Oops, almost forgot to gratuitously get WPA’s panties in a twist by throwing in a ZH piece on shooting down drones that violate your property rights.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-31/should-it-be-crime-shoot-down-drone-over-your-property

She tells me that. “You have to get qualifed thru our lender to buy here even if you get a loan thru your bank” ??

Pretty standard for new developments…They do not trust what other lenders may say particularly mortgage brokers so the way they control the transaction and make sure you are capable of buying the house is to require you to go through their lender for pre-qualifying purposes…

Remember…… If you have to borrow for 15 or 30 years, its not affordable nor can you afford it.

“She tells me that. “You have to get qualifed thru our lender to buy here even if you get a loan thru your bank”. Then they tell me we are giving $1500 cash back to people who qualify.”

She wants a commission; period.

Soon to be followed by the corrupt Republican-run cesspool called Kansas. Take off your partisan glasses and understand that overspending and undertaxation are both equally bad and end in the same result.

You must be mistaken. Obama explicitly promised us the most transparent administration in history. And the ‘tards bought it.

Man, Obama must have been up all night to read that many emails.

“Greece may miss it’s biggest payment yet…”

No problem, phuc the lenders!

Carter was epically incompetent, but has often told the truth.

I’m what used to be called an “Eisenhower Republican”.

But i find that I am also a “Socialist”, according to current Republicans.

China Official Factory Gauge Slips as Growth Slowdown Bites
July 31, 2015 — 6:10 PM PDT
Updated on July 31, 2015 — 8:22 PM PDT
An employee cleans residue from a container at an aluminum smelting facility in Zouping, China.
Photographer: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg

An official Chinese factory gauge slipped to a five-month low, signaling that months of easier monetary policy have yet to kick in and putting pressure on the country’s leadership to take further action.

The official Purchasing Managers’ Index was 50 in July, compared with the median estimate of 50.1 in a Bloomberg survey and down from June’s 50.2. The non-manufacturing PMI, a measure of services and construction, was at 53.9, from 53.8 the previous month. Numbers above 50 indicate expansion.

“The internal and external demand for the manufacturing sector is still on the weak side,” Zhao Qinghe, senior statistician at the national statistics bureau, said in a statement released with the PMIs on Saturday. Zhao cited the impact from hot weather, storms and commodity prices as major reasons for the drop.

The data echoes a private PMI that weakened in July, an indication interest-rate cuts and efforts to shore up local government finances have yet to spark a recovery despite recent signs of stabilization. China’s leaders pledged in recent days to make “pre-emptive” policy adjustments in the second half.

“This shows that the pickup we saw in the second quarter is not stable; we have seen no sign of recovery in the manufacturing sector,” said Zhu Haibin, chief China economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Hong Kong. “We may see manufacturing bottom in the third quarter as the government continues and steps up measures to stabilize growth.”
…

Asia Pacific
U.S. Decides to Retaliate Against China’s Hacking
By DAVID E. SANGER
JULY 31, 2015

The Obama administration has determined that it must retaliate against China for the theft of the personal information of more than 20 million Americans from the databases of the Office of Personnel Management, but it is still struggling to decide what it can do without prompting an escalating cyberconflict.

The decision came after the administration concluded that the hacking attack was so vast in scope and ambition that the usual practices for dealing with traditional espionage cases did not apply.

But in a series of classified meetings, officials have struggled to choose among options that range from largely symbolic responses — for example, diplomatic protests or the ouster of known Chinese agents in the United States — to more significant actions that some officials fear could lead to an escalation of the hacking conflict between the two countries.

That does not mean a response will happen anytime soon — or be obvious when it does. The White House could determine that the downsides of any meaningful, yet proportionate, retaliation outweigh the benefits, or will lead to retaliation on American firms or individuals doing work in China. President Obama, clearly seeking leverage, has asked his staff to come up with a more creative set of responses.

“One of the conclusions we’ve reached is that we need to be a bit more public about our responses, and one reason is deterrence,” said one senior administration official involved in the debate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House plans. “We need to disrupt and deter what our adversaries are doing in cyberspace, and that means you need a full range of tools to tailor a response.”
…

Chinese economy
China’s large manufacturers stall as demand weakens at home and abroad
The latest survey of the huge factory sector shows only very sluggish growth, fuelling expectations of more government stimulus
An employee conducts tests at FiberHome Technologies in Wuhan in China.
Photograph: China Daily/REUTERS
Saturday 1 August 2015 00.46 EDT

Growth at China’s big manufacturers unexpectedly stalled in July as demand at home and abroad weakened, an official survey showed on Saturday, reinforcing views that the economy needs more stimulus as it faces fresh risks from a stock market slump.

The official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) stood at 50.0 in July, compared with the previous month’s 50.2. The 50-point mark separates growth from contraction on a monthly basis.

Analysts had predicted another tepid reading of 50.2, pointing to expansion, albeit a sluggish one.

However, both export and domestic orders shrank for the large firms covered by the survey, and in response they continued to cut jobs.
…

Leadership 7/31/2015 @ 11:55PM
Do China’s Stock Markets Portend The Chickens Are Finally Coming Home To Roost?
Harry G. Broadman
Contributor

No economy can have its cake and eat it too. The overarching objective of modern China’s economic reform program, which was launched in 1978 soon after the death of Mao Zedung and perhaps best encapsulated in Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 pronouncement of the concept of a “socialist market economy”, has been always fraught with inherent contradictions.

Indeed, as someone who has professionally focused on China’s economy since 1993, worked extensively in many regions of the country—some far, far off the beaten track—and been on the factory floor in more Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) than have most Chinese (so I’ve been told by friends in Beijing), Deng’s notion always seemed to be a blatant contradiction in terms.

The country’s sheer size—in geographic, population and resource endowment terms—coupled with the tremendous ingenuity, determination and patience of the Chinese leadership and society, have, time and time again over the past 35 years, allowed China to largely paper over these contradictions and achieve a globally envied record of economic growth (even if allowances are made for the inadequacies and inaccuracies of Chinese official statistics).

But the recent perturbations in China’s stock markets—less so the price gyrations themselves than the authorities’ as well as the population’s reactions to them–may well mean a fundamental tear in the country’s microeconomic fabric and a breakdown in Deng’s logic are in the offing.

Heightened sensitivity to the prospects of China’s continued economic fortunes has been reflected in news headlines around the world for the past few years. Attention there has largely focused on the apparent slowdown in China’s annual macroeconomic growth rate, from about 10 percent to roughly 7 percent (at present).

To date, however, that performance is, in and of itself, likely reflecting more of a cyclical rather than a secular (or structural) set of changes. Nowhere in the world is the business cycle dead—no matter what label is championed to describe a country’s economic system. In fact, several such macro slowdowns have occurred in China since the advent of its reform era.

Huge changes in share values on China’s stock exchanges have also previously occurred. But now not only are they coming at the same time the economy is significantly softening after a long run of tremendous growth, but also following an unprecedented, dramatic increase in both the extent and intensity of the Chinese population’s participation in stock buying.

Most importantly, however, they are occurring as the confluence of many long-standing fundamental contradictions of the Chinese reform program are being further exposed, driven, in part, ironically, by Xi Jinping’s campaign to root out corruption and instill greater transparency in domestic economic relations.

All this is not being lost on China’s citizenry, business community, government technocrats and People’s Liberation Army. Notwithstanding the country’s strong nationalistic feelings, going forward the risk of loss of confidence in the leadership’s ability to manage—indeed perhaps even unwind—some of the more pronounced contradictions successfully may not be trivial. There has long been a nagging feeling by some China observers that, all told, these contradictions may well reveal an economy built on a house of cards. An exaggeration to be sure, but not wholly out of the realm of possibility.
…

Whatever happened to AlbqDan? One day he was posting 50 times a day, the next day he was heard no more.

Left town under cover of darkness, would be my guess.

Housing market shows strength as pending sales soar
By KATHY RUFF, May 25, 2015 at 8:00 AM

April’s residential real estate sector mirrored the weather – up and down, depending on your location. But the momentum from the first quarter continues with a 6.7 percent growth in closed sales in the Greater Lehigh Valley compared to April 2014.

That momentum shows signs of continuing as pending sales grew 21.8 percent, from 1,567 in April 2014 to 1,909 last month in the Greater Lehigh Valley.

“We are pretty much knee-deep into a normal market, finally,” said Frank Renaldi Sr., owner/broker of Century 21 Pinnacle, Bethlehem. “I won’t say it’s robust but I certainly would not say it’s slow, either.”

Other real estate professionals agree.

“I’m encouraged by the residential market,” said Kate Steffy, associate broker/general manager of Century 21-Park Road, Wyomissing. “Business has certainly picked up over last year. Days on market are greatly reduced.”

Some are seeing more buyers and sellers.

“We are just jammed right now with buyers and sellers,” said John Keely, real estate agent with Re/MAX Results, Sciota. “I’ve never been this busy this time of year. It’s a good thing.”
…

Southern California home sales soar in June; prices climb 5.7%
Home for sale
A home for sale last year in Huntington Beach.
(Bryan Chan / Los Angeles Times)
By Andrew Khouri contact the reporter

The Southern California housing market, known for its dramatic swings, is settling into a more normal, healthy pattern.

Home sales are up. All-cash and investor purchases are down. And home prices are rising at a more sustainable pace than in the last few years.

Economists said those factors put the regional housing market on a path for growth that won’t wash away in a tsunami of foreclosures and ruined credit scores.

“The healing continues,” said Stuart Gabriel, director of UCLA’s Ziman Center for Real Estate.

On Thursday, fresh evidence of that trend emerged in a report from CoreLogic. Home sales posted a sizable 18.1% pop in June from a year earlier, while the median price rose 5.7% from June 2014 to $442,000, the real estate data firm said.

The sales increase, the largest in nearly three years, put the number of sales just 9.6% below average, CoreLogic said. A year ago, sales were nearly 24% below average.

Notably, it appears more families are entering the market as the economy improves. Although still elevated in comparison to long-term averages, the share of absentee buyers — mostly investors — slid to 21.1%, the lowest percentage since April 2010, CoreLogic said.

“This is the real recovery,” Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of Beacon Economics, said of a market where increasingly buyers actually want to live in the houses they purchase. “The last was the investor recovery.”
…
Comments

for those of us in the know, this is horse hockey pucks. having been in this industry 28 years this is the worst. There are so many homes still underwater by 50% or more. There are properties that now require MI to just do a rate and term refinance. I am talking from 157k to 4 million dollar…
Bernie Dillon
at 10:14 AM July 17, 2015

Real Estate
As homes languish, seller stress soars
By Jay MacDonald • Bankrate.com
Highlights
Home seller stress levels approaching clinical levels, expert says.
Many sellers remain locked in fantasy of higher prices.
Despite fears, less-dire outcomes more likely in most cases.

Want stress? Try selling your home today.

Two years ago, home sellers had it all. Multiple offers drove record-high home prices ever higher. Buyer financing was little more than an afterthought. The world was a seller’s oyster.

But the housing bust changed all that. In what has been termed a buyer’s market without buyers, home sellers find themselves trapped in extended servitude to the place they once called home. Sellers must keep their homes spit-shined, sanitized and stripped of any personal effects that might turn off picky buyers.

Lengthening DOMs — the Realtor shorthand for “days on market” — might more appropriately be spelled “DOOM,” as today’s sellers choose from three equally unpleasant scenarios:
…

Is it really possible that Albuquerue’s home ownership rate fell by 3.3 percent (63.8 - 60.5 = 3.3) over the course of one quarter? I find that implausible.

Real Estate Inc.
Millennial effect? Home ownership rate down across U.S., including ABQ metro
Jul 31, 2015, 6:17am MDT
Stephanie Guzman Reporter Albuquerque Business First

The number of people nationally who owned homes in the second quarter of this year dropped to levels last seen in 1967, according to data released earlier this week by the U.S. Census Bureau.

America’s home ownership rate in the second quarter of this year was at a low of 63.4 percent, down from 63.7 percent the first quarter of this year and lower than the same time last year. It’s also lower than the 50-year average home ownership rate of 65.3 percent.

To compare to boom times, the highest home ownership rate was 69.2 percent in the last quarter of 2004.

Albuquerque metro area’s home ownership rate was also down, from 63.8 percent in the first quarter to 60.5 percent the second quarter. Between 2005 and 2015, Albuquerque’s highest home ownership rate was in the fourth quarter of 2007 at 72.7 percent.

The Midwest has the highest number of people who own homes, with a home ownership rate at 68.4 percent. The West had the lowest at 58.5 percent. All regions except the West, which remained the same, experienced a dip in home ownership rates from the first to second quarter. New Mexico’s home ownership rate is currently 63.5 percent.
…

“A 300 mph CHI to LA train is going to take 8 hours plus. Assuming no stops. And if it doesn’t stop, don’t expect anybody in Flyover to support it.”

And it would be impossible to protect the infrastructure from saboteurs.

Leave it to some dumb bozo to make lame comments to the effect that lower U.S. home ownership rates are “bad”.

It should be quite interesting when this begins to happen a few decades out to massive recently constructed Chinese ghost cities. It seems likely to get serious when Mother Nature reclaims skyscrapers and high-rise apartment buildings.

A fresher article on the apartment boom by Faux News - only, that this article is not faux.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/04/21/low-vacancy-rate-leads-to-increase-in-construction-nationwide-apartment-boom/#

“…market is oversupplied by more than 1.5 million barrels a day…going to be oversupplied well into 2016…”

Sadly, it is beginning to look like AlbqDan’s $80/bbl December 2015 oil price prediction was a massive miss.

Energy Commodities
Oil falls about 21% in July, worst since October 2008
Friday, 31 Jul 2015 | 2:59 PM ET
Reuters

Oil saw its worst monthly drop since the 2008 financial crisis after signs that top producers in the Middle East were continuing to pump at record levels despite a growing global gut.

A higher U.S. oil rig count for a second week in a row added to the market’s downside. Uncertainty ahead of key U.S. oil production and rig count data due later in the day also weighed on prices, despite a weaker dollar, which would normally support commodities.

U.S. crude closed down $1.40, or 2.89 percent, at $47.12 a barrel. The contract fell nearly 21 percent for the month of July, marking its largest monthly decline since October 2008, when oil had an epic collapse at the outbreak of the financial crisis. Brent fell 18 percent on the month.

Meanwhile, Brent was down $1.10 at $52.21 a barrel.

Diverting some attention from crude, heavy hedging activity in gasoline and diesel futures ahead of front-month contract expiration dominated play on the petroleum complex.
…

ft dot com > Companies > Energy >

Oil & Gas
Last updated: July 31, 2015 9:19 pm
Oil price collapse hammers big US energy groups
Christopher Adams and David Sheppard in London, and Robert Wright in New York
A droplet of petroleum drops from a fuel nozzle at Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s 150th gas station on its opening day in Moscow, Russia, on Wednesday, July 8, 2015. The global industry is scurrying to respond as oil below $50 a barrel guts cash flows.
Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg

Shares in some of the world’s biggest energy groups tumbled on Friday as the collapse in oil prices battered the profits of ExxonMobil and Chevron, capping a week in which European rivals announced thousands of job losses and slashed spending by billions of dollars.

As Exxon, the US giant seen as best insulated from the crude price crash, reported its worst quarterly profits since 2009, its main US competitor Chevron suffered a huge $2.2bn loss in exploration and production in the three months to June 30.

For the first time, the biggest and strongest industry operators are feeling the full effect of a plunge in Brent crude since last summer that has led to an estimated 70,000 job losses worldwide and caused some $200bn of spending on major new oil and gas projects to be shelved.

The slide in the oil price, which began around this time last year, accelerated in November when Opec, the producers’ cartel, decided not to cut output in the face of a US supply glut.

After a brief recovery this spring, the oil price decline resumed in July, with Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, posting its biggest monthly fall since December. It now stands at $52.08 a barrel, down from $115 in June last year.

Analysts say the renewed decline was triggered by the surprising resilience of US shale output in the face of lower prices, as well as the nuclear deal with Iran which has raised the prospect of more barrels hitting an oversupplied market.

The US oil benchmark West Texas Intermediate fell by a fifth over July to approach $47 a barrel, its worst monthly decline since Lehman Brothers collapsed.

Saudi Arabia, which effectively leads Opec, is widely believed to be attempting to squeeze out higher-cost production in a battle for market share. Iain Conn, chief executive of Centrica, Britain’s biggest domestic energy supplier, told the Financial Times that he believed prices were likely to stay within a $45 to $70 range.

Rex Tillerson, Exxon’s chief executive, blamed the sharp fall in crude for a 52 per cent year-on-year slide in its second-quarter earnings to $4.2bn and a net loss in its US upstream business, with a robust refining result only partially offsetting the effects of oil’s collapse on revenues.

“Our quarterly results reflect the disparate impacts of the current commodity price environment, but also demonstrate the strength of our sound operations,” Mr Tillerson said.
…

Emerging Markets Daily
News, analysis and actionable ideas about emerging markets.
July 31, 2015, 2:43 P.M. ET
Chevron Points To China In Lower Oil Outlook
By Dimitra DeFotis

Shares of energy giant Chevron (CVX) are down nearly 5% after it reported a plunge in quarterly profit and a lower oil-price outlook.

Negative currency translations also are hurting results; refining is helping the bottom line. Chevron’s quarter included impairments tied to the company’s lower outlook for oil prices, but the company didn’t reveal the price it’s banking on. When asked by Citi Analyst Alastair Syme about the impairment charges, Chevron CFO Patricia Yarrington said, according to the Thomson Reuters transcript of Friday’s earnings conference call:

We are not going to give you our proprietary oil price. I can just say the revised outlook was really based on two factors. One had to do with the rate we were expecting of global GDP growth and in particular around China. So we have seen softening in China and we have taken our view of that down accordingly.

And the second major factor that lowered our overall price outlook had to do with … much stronger production coming out of the U.S. and with the ingenuity and cost efficiencies of the U.S. industry we have seen costs continue to fall and economics of those barrels continue to rise. And so that puts more supply onto the marketplace.

BG joins oil price casualties as profits slide 65 per cent
Tom Bawden
Enviroment Editor
Saturday 01 August 2015

BG Group, the FTSE 100 giant being taken over by rival Royal Dutch Shell, became the latest casualty of tumbling oil prices, reporting a 65 per cent dive in profits in its second quarter despite record levels of production.

Capping a week in which BP and Shell reported dramatic slumps in their financial fortunes, BG revealed a $429m (£273m) second-quarter profit – down from $1.2bn a year earlier. This came despite a doubling of production in both Brazil and Australia, taking group output to its highest-ever level.

Both countries are areas in which Shell is interested, and the takeover will strengthen its position as the largest supplier of liquified natural gas in the world after Qatar.

BG, formerly the exploration arm of British Gas, also revealed that it had cut costs by 34 per cent to $3.1bn in the first half of the year.

“Our costs are lower, our production is higher. This [the fall in profit] is more or less only driven by the lower oil price in the market,” said the chief executive Helge Lund, adding that he was “not disappointed” with the result given the tough operating environment in the oil industry.

The oil price has tumbled over the past year after the US shale boom created a glut in supply. Hopes that the price was beginning to rebound have been dashed in recent weeks following an international agreement to relax restrictions on Iranian oil exports in return for curbing its nuclear programme.

The benchmark Brent crude oil index averaged $62 a barrel in the second quarter, down from $110 a year earlier.

BG’s results come a day after Shell announced a 38 per cent drop in second-quarter profits to $3.25bn and said it was cutting 6,500 jobs this year.

On Tuesday, BP slumped to a $6.3bn second-quarter loss as the company was hit by a further multibillion-dollar charge relating to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010, as well as falling oil prices.

Meanwhile Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, reported a 52 per cent slide in second-quarter profit as, again, tumbling crude prices weighed on its results.

Exxon, based in Irving, Texas, said its profit in the quarter was $4.2bn, compared with $8.8bn a year earlier.

Oil and gas output rose by 3.6 per cent to 4 million barrels oil equivalent per day. While profits at its refining operations more than doubled to $1.5bn, earnings at its oil and gas exploration business dived 74 per cent to $2bn.

Exxon’s US rival Chevron also saw its profits plunge 90 per cent in the second quarter – to $571m from $5.7bn a year ago – after nearly $2bn worth of writedowns.
…

Oil and gas companies
Afren enters administration after oil price slump and boardroom strife
Oil and gas explorer fails to find financial backing to plug £132m funding gap caused by Brent crude’s international price nosedive
Petrol pump
The price of Brent crude, which is used for petrol production, has fallen from $115 a barrel to close to $45.
Photograph: Bernadett Szabo/Reuters
Terry Macalister Energy editor
Friday 31 July 2015 07.52 EDT
Last modified on Friday 31 July 2015 11.03 EDT

Plummeting oil prices and internal boardroom upheaval have forced the London-listed Afren exploration company into administration.

Crisis management consultants from AlixPartners were brought in after Afren failed to find financial backers to meet a growing cash crisis at the firm, which produces oil in Nigeria and the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

“The board believes that all the possible routes have now been explored during the course of this process, which was subject to a strict timetable, driven by Afren plc’s short-term liquidity issues,” said Afren in a statement.

“These discussions have failed to deliver support for a revised refinancing and restructuring proposal that would result in Afren being able to pay its debts as they fall due.”

Afren first revealed in January that it was in desperate need of a $200m (£132m) cash injection as the international price of Brent crude fell from $115 a barrel to close to $45.
…

I’ll concede that AlbqDan was not that far off the mark with touting Rasmussen’s prediction for a Romney win in 2012.

By comparison, his predictions on oil and the Chinese stock market recovery are beginning to seem laughably wrong.

“Is everyone enjoying their affordable gasoline prices as much as I am?”

No you aren’t. California gas prices are still above $4 per gallon.