NATURAL LAWS

 
 We like to write about oil, not because we think we know everything because we don't. What we're interested in is, among many other things, human behavior. Now don't laugh. We know it's an endless, knotty chore.

Our interest doesn't include the kind ladled out in academe. They're probably the last ones with a clue. The recent controversy over the Harvard psych professor's claim about poses is a case in point. Most of the stuff these academic shut-ins produce is for each other not general consumption. If it were for general consumption, there'd be no need for these academics to exist because the masses, despite the popular MSM propagated view, are generally adept at smelling bullcrap on their first whiff.

There's much market hand-wringing these days about excess oil supplies. Given the obvious global slowdown (Please don't share that piece of info with the Fed.), where's the demand going to come from? It's the big question of the hour. Well, if one's looks careful it might come from the nation with the globe's third largest oil reserves, America's northern neighbor, Canada, and their newly elected left-wing government in the Alberta province.

After 44 years of conservative rule, the new administration is threatening to "cap carbon emissions from its oil-sands industry, a move that threatens to strand billions of barrels of crude from supplies so vast that only Saudi Arabia and Venezuela control more," according to today's WSJ.

Now nobody knows if this is a done deal or its full ramifications if it is. You might not agree, but to us this is more about human behavior than macro economics. Human behavior always precedes not follows macro economics. Politicians who claim to be human do stupid stuff and the macro effects wend their way into the social and economic fabric.

Now if you're long energy at these cheap prices, this is a move you devoutly welcome, however stupid it might or might not be depending if you're  a card-carrying fanatic of the climate change society. Forget the trend or the Fed. Follow the actions of politicians. Recall also Keystone here. Notwithstanding all their efforts, bureaucrats, regulators and politicians have tried to proscribe regression to the mean, a natural law of its own sorts.

The safe bet here is against politicians and their behavior not natural laws.