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Oooooh, I can’t wait til Maxine Waters gets to the bottom of this with Senate hearings.

This is a multi-moving part phenomenon and I can’t claim to see more than a modest portion of it.

It’s oddly very Reaganesque in the sense that it is probably very oppressive to Russia, but that, too, is a different set of factors with the very weak president we have and the heightened aggression of Russia. It will probably drive Russia to export more weapons and cement further their budding alliance with China.

It will probably bolster the increasing strength of the US dollar and continue the story of “very low inflation” which will make bonds more attractive and allow the US to persist in neverending debt as bonds, despite how low a coupon they pay, remain very attractive.

It’s a massive, massive boost for the US consumer, very probably the most in-your-face and most widespread same-kind-of-thing as a tax cut but it is instantaneous.

Probably quite bearish for gold. Very bullish for the stock market.

What else?

“further their budding alliance with China.”

That has me a bit puzzled.. what is in it for China?
Given the rising power of their middle class the genie for the purposes on an ideological table no longer makes sense.
They are seeing that middle class more on a par with the US. That middle class has far more communication options that make going back not an option.

Russia is deluding itself if they think they can lead and or control any movement on the scale of the US or the scale of the China with a middle class growing closer to us than Russia still has very little of a consumer class than it did when they got out of Afghanistan (okay, maybe a bit more but barely).

China and Russia stand very little unless they believe they can foment whipping public opinion against us. They both benefit only making a move against Saudi Arabia than us in a military or economic fashion.

We should give strong support to keep North America moving ahead on production. The Saudi’s will not stand to lose any money by getting in a pricing game going against us. Russia is happy if Europe gets a strong cold spell and increases call for more natural gas.

The ruling class of Russia can not get in any sort of pricing battle with us. Their cash flow benefits the ruling class of Russia only and not the Russian middle class.

Again, on just monetary reasons both Russia and China only make out when our middle class benefits and can not/will not take any not moving ahead.

I saw two videos over the last few days that only support this. One involved the Russian troops in Ukraine. They seemed like they sensed the Russian actions had very little support on the troop level.
The second was the Chinese military helping with a citizens group releasing a Panda back into the wild. There were band playing and every thing. This Panda had been orphaned or something and there were Chinese wildlife people watching the whole release around video monitors... it looked like they where landing on the moon.

If the Chinese coddle the citizenry over an orphaned Panda release... they are more like us than many would think.

The point of both videos show that the governments are playing to a citizenry more like us than they would maybe like, but neither has the backing to take us on in any serious fashion and so won't.

We should just play it out and oil will eventually- inevitably settle out and it will be too late for the Saudis to so anything as there is nothing they can really do.

We will only befit by just moving forward. If anything this is a herald to what a new reality on oil prices will be. Drill baby, drill.