We wait with bated breath for President Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia tomorrow. He’ll take a historic flight from Tel Aviv, which is truly a wonderful thing, but what happens next is anyone’s guess.
There is lots of speculation that Biden will try to avoid shaking hands with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which probably won’t be a great way to start off negotiations. Maybe this will be known as the Fist Bump Summit. Or maybe Biden will resort to shaking hands with the air yet again. But then again, what is being negotiated, if anything, and why? Biden has indicated that the objective for this visit is bolstering security and other policy issues, not oil. But we all know that what would really benefit the United States is for Biden to convince the key OPEC nation to pump more crude.
Yet, this premise is, of course, absurd. America has ample untapped energy resources at home that we aren’t even attempting to access at this time; and Biden, perhaps in fear of the environmentalist base of the Democratic Party, seems mostly uninterested in changing that. So, will he ask the brutal (but slowly modernizing) regime that is loathed by his base to pump more? Maybe that will work.
What’s more, it’s unclear if the Saudis are even capable of bringing more oil to the world market, which would trickle down to America and provide at least a small degree of relief at the pump. So, what really is the point of this visit anyway? Perhaps we’ll never know, and many of you will never really care either.
King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (right) and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman attend the 39th Gulf Cooperation Council Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on December 9, 2018. (Bandar Algaloud/Getty Images)
On the bright side, the Biden administration has recently expanded offshore oil exploration after the West Virginia v. EPA decision came down from the Supreme Court a couple weeks ago. Yet, characteristic of the Biden presidency, this milquetoast effort satisfies no one. The greens are unhappy with his insufficient attempts at climate change activism, and conservatives feel he’s not doing nearly enough to renew our efforts for energy independence.
Jobless claims came in at around 244,000 today, which is a slight increase over last week. These numbers were smack in the middle of projections, providing a minor victory for the struggling economic prognostication industry.
The Producer Price Index (PPI) climbed to 11.3 percent from last year, which is near the 11.6 percent record set in March. The PPI is up 1.1 percent since May. Energy costs are almost entirely responsible for the rise. There were a few small bright spots in the data, including a rapid decline in chicken eggs and a steep drop in iron and steel.
Bank of America lowered its 2022 target for the S&P 500 from 4,500 to 3,600. The mega-bank is forecasting a recession this year.
Overall, things are not looking good. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon summed it up on Thursday: “Geopolitical tension, high inflation, waning consumer confidence, the uncertainty about how high rates have to go and the never-before-seen quantitative tightening and their effects on global liquidity, combined with the war in Ukraine and its harmful effect on global energy and food prices are very likely to have negative consequences on the global economy sometime down the road.”
And with the reemergence of Coronavirus slowdowns and lockdowns, many Americans are being forced to embrace the suck.