Total Chaos: Massive Market Moves Spark Selling-Panic Into Close

Perhaps this sums up the day for many FX, bond, equity, and oil traders today…

 

Incredible Volatility today – 100 point roundtrip in the S&P, and 800 points in the Dow – all driven by a halt in Ruble Trading, the European close, and Kuwait pissing on the US market's fireworks…

 

And the volatility was incredible across the entire US equity market – as the S&P ramp ran stops to yesterday's highs then gave it all back...again around the EU close

 

A massive roeundtip in cash markets…

 

The Russian markets dominated headlines…

 

but the US credit markets were more worrisome as it appears the risk has finally started to appear in the investment-grade credit market.

High yield bond yields hit 2-year highs… and spreads to 18 month wides…

 

And Investment Grade credit has become infected…

 

Every asset class underwent a roller-coaster…

Treasury yields fell 10ps, rose 10bps then fell 8bps…

 

Silver and Gold pumped and dumped.. as oil dumped and pumped and dumped…

 

Across the asset classes today – these were the events…

 

 

Finally we wonder… who was this mysterious $3.7 billion trader today…

But don;t forget…

 

Charts: Bloomberg




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Witness Disputes Police Narrative in Death of Miami Graffiti Artist Demz

Last Tuesday I blogged about
Delbert Rodriguez Gutierrez, a graffiti artist better known as
“Demz”, who was hit by a Miami Police car after being
caught tagging at the art festival Art Basel. At the time, Demz was
in critical condition with a brain injury. He died Tuesday night, becoming the latest in a
long list of recent, suspicious fatalities at the hands of U.S.
police.  

Miami Police Officer Michael Cadavid, who was driving the car
that hit Demz, said the 21-year-old had fled from cops and turned
down a side street, where he crouched down and hid between two
cars. When Cadavid turned the corner in his car, Demz jumped out at
him, claimed Officer Cadavid. 

“It’s unfortunate that the young man tried to run from police,”
Miami Police Chief Manuel Orosa said by way of condolences.

But family and friends are skeptical of the police narrative,
reports the Miami New Times. Danny Garcia, a friend
tagging with Demz that night, said there’s no way Demz had time to disappear
around a corner and hide before police hit him: 

As Garcia was finishing up his tag, he says, he glanced over his
shoulder to check on his friend. That’s when he saw the flashing
red and blue lights from an unmarked silver Chevrolet sedan—a
patrol car driven by Det. Michael Cadavid—approaching. Garcia took
off sprinting. As he ran, he glanced back to check on Rodriguez,
only to see a flash of his friend’s white T-shirt as he abruptly
rounded the corner onto 24th Street, followed closely by the
Chevy.

Garcia kept running but then returned to the scene a few minutes
later after hearing ambulance sirens. He questions the police’s
suggestion that they lost sight of Rodriguez or that his friend
would have been able to hide between parked cars or lunge into the
street. There simply wasn’t time, he says.

“It was literally seconds,” he said of the time from when Garcia
began running to when he would have been hit as Cadavid’s car
turned the corner. “There wasn’t no ‘He was running and then he
hid,’ like they said. He tried to cross the street, and whatever
happened, the cop struck him.”

A widely circulated photo posted on Instagram seems to support
Garcia’s claims. In the photo … Rodriguez is splayed on the
ground in front of the Chevy, stopped midturn as it rounded the
corner. Only one parked car is visible near Rodriguez. “Where would
he hide, just on the road?” Garcia asks. “That whole story they
gave is baloney.”

“It looked like he was trying to run across,” Garcia adds. “And
the cop turned the corner really quick and struck him… I’m really
hoping it was an accident, but I don’t know if he purposely ran my
friend over.”

Officer Cadivad’s Internal Affairs file, reviewed by the paper,
shows a history of complaints about his aggressive behavior, road
rage, and use of force. Most of the complaints were ruled
inconclusive. In one, Cadivad was found negligent and guilty of
improper procedure for his role in an “infamous” incident involving
Miami cops getting rough with Halloween revelers.

A video allegedly from the hacker group Anonymous says: “Miami
Police, you have caught our attention. Art is not a crime, and we
will not tolerate fellow artists being in danger for expressing
their first amendment rights by the same people who swore an oath
to uphold and protect that very right.”

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What Tight Lending Conditions: Underwriting Standards Mirror Those Before Subprime Crash, OCC Finds

The myth of harsh lending conditions in the US is probably only matched in its disconnect from reality by the just as entertaining narrative of the “one-time, non-recurring” harsh winter crushing Q1 GDP. A narrative which even needed support from none other than former Fed Chairman Bernanke who allegedly was denied a mortgage refinancing on the $672K loan he still owes for his 3-bedroom, 2100 square foot home (a story which is about as credible as 17 year olds making $72 million by cornering the penny-stock market).

For the truth we go to the Office Of the Comptroller of the Currency, which just reported in its annual survey that for the third year in a row, U.S. banks relaxed loan underwriting standards, “a trend mirroring the lax lending just before the financial crisis.”

Those who blame the collapse in mortgage (and overall loan) volumes on strict supply limits – usually the same who say the crash in oil is entirely supply driven and has nothing to do with the Chinese slowdown, or the European triple dip, or the Japanese quadruple dip recessions – will be stunned to learn that according to the top US regulator, large banks in particular loosened lending standards as they tried to boost loan volumes.

But… that’s goes entirely against the fake and contrived narrative? Can’t they at least keep track of the lies they fabricate to boost confidence?

The answer is, clearly, no. But it gets worse, because not only are banks rushing to underwrite anything once again, the pace of underwriting is back to pre-subprime crash levels:

Banks still make high-quality loans, the regulator said, but credit risk, or the danger that borrowers will be unable to pay, is on the rise.

 

The survey looked at 91 banks and about 94 percent of loans in the federal banking system over the 12-month period that ended June 30.

 

“This year’s survey showed a continued easing in underwriting standards, with trends very similar to those seen from 2004 through 2006,” said Jennifer Kelly, senior deputy comptroller for bank supervision.

The surprise is that it took as long as it did to finally admit that it is not a supply issue, but one of demand, and specifically a completely lack thereof. The paradox is that while the OCC is concerned by the trends, it is none other than the Fed who is urging every single bank to become the Countrywide Financial of the New Abnormal: after all it is either lend the reserves, or use them to boost stocks ever higher into a market which even the BIS says is an unprecedented bubble.

Regulators said banks relaxed underwriting standards for credit cards, large corporate loans and leveraged loans, which go to entities that already have significant debt, because they faced more competition and struggled with low interest rates.

 

OCC examiners also said banks allowed exceptions to their own lending rules for some commercial products.

The punchline: “The combination of looser lending standards and policy exceptions adds extra risk that can crop up during crisis periods, the OCC said. Managers should look into the changing practices and try to reduce credit risk, regulators said.”

Yup, managers will get right on with reducing risk, even if – or especially if – it means writing off their bonus for this and however many years in the future, until the whole house of cards comes tumbling down all over again.




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Key Pro-Police Witness in Ferguson Grand Jury May Have Been Lying

Smoking Gun had
dug up some fascinatingly damning facts about a witness before
the Ferguson grand jury whose alleged eyewitness report matched
Officer Darren Wilson’s pretty thoroughly.

Turns out “Witness 40” may not have even been on the site of the
murder of Michael Brown, and has a record of insinuating herself
into cases she has nothing to do with, and has some decidedly
curious attitudes about race.

Some details:

“Witness 40”’s testimony about seeing Brown batter Wilson and
then rush the cop like a defensive end has repeatedly been pointed
to by Wilson supporters as directly corroborative of the officer’s
version of the August 9 confrontation. The “Witness 40” testimony,
as Fox News sees it, is proof that the 18-year-old Brown’s killing
was justified, and that the Ferguson grand jury got it right.

Smoking Gun insists it has identified this witness as
“a 45-year-old St. Louis resident named Sandra McElroy”—and
that McElroy herself confirmed this after their initial report
appeared. They also insist that available evidence indicates she
“was nowhere near Canfield Drive on the Saturday afternoon Brown
was shot to death.”

The details are all weird and should have raised red flags
even to the police—for example, that she didn’t contact police
until four weeks after the event, after Wilson’s version of it was
already available for her to corroborate if she wished. She had
been making pro-police comments on her Facebook page before then,
and not saying she was an eyewitness to the event.

Best Facebook detail:

On September 13, McElroy went on a pro-Wilson Facebook
page and posted
a graphic that included a photo of Brown lying dead
in the street. A type overlay read, “Michael Brown already received
justice. So please, stop asking for it.” 

And how did Ms. McElroy, who lived 30 miles away from the street
where Michael Brown was shot and killed, happen to be there?

When asked what she was doing in Ferguson–which is about
30 miles north of her home–McElroy explained that she was planning
to “pop in” on a former high school classmate she had not seen in
26 years. Saddled with an incorrect address and no cell phone,
McElroy claimed that she pulled over to smoke a cigarette and seek
directions from a black man standing under a tree. In short order,
the violent confrontation between Brown and Wilson purportedly
played out in front of McElroy…..

McElroy’s grand jury testimony came to an abrupt end at 2:30
that afternoon due to obligations of some grand jurors. But before
the panel broke for the day, McElroy revealed that, “On August 9th
after this happened when I got home, I wrote everything  down
on a piece of paper, would that be easier if I brought that
in?”

“Sure,” answered prosecutor Kathi Alizadeh……

Her reason for allegedly being on the scene changed by her next
appearance before the grand jury, though:

Before testifying about the content of her notebook
scribblings, McElroy admitted that she had not driven to Ferguson
in search of an African-American pal she had last seen in 1988.
Instead, McElroy offered a substitute explanation that was,
remarkably, an even bigger lie.

McElroy, again under oath, explained to grand jurors that she
was something of an amateur urban anthropologist. Every couple of
weeks, McElroy testified, she likes to “go into all the
African-American neighborhoods.” During these weekend
sojourns–apparently conducted when her ex has the kids–McElroy
said she will “go in and have coffee and I will strike up a
conversation with an African-American and I will try to talk to
them because I’m trying to understand more.”

What follows seems like a bad joke:

The opening entry in McElroy’s journal on the day Brown died
declared, “Well Im gonna take my random drive to Florisant. Need to
understand the Black race better so I stop calling Blacks N*****s
[my edit] and Start calling them People.” A commendable goal,
indeed.

The story also details an earlier police case in which Ms.
McElroy tried to insert herself, which resulted in police
announcing that  “We
have found that [her] story is a complete fabrication.”

It almost makes one wonder if Ms. McElroy saw the shooting of
Brown by Wilson at all. But the grand jury knew things that rest of
us didn’t, I suppose.

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Broken VIX Means "Markets Getting Scared", Group One Says

We noted earlier the “noise” in VIX. We are starting to get a picture of what’s happening… and it’s not good. As Bloomberg reports, Group One Trading’s Dominic Salvino warns, inputs to the calculation are going skewy on the VIX in the past couple days because “safety parameters are set to hair triggers” and market makers are going wide more often than not. Yet another market – and The Fed’s direct manipulation tool – is now entirely broken.

 

 

As Bloomberg reports,

Inputs to the calculation are going skewy on the VIX in the past couple days because “safety parameters are set to hair triggers” and market makers are going wide more often than not, Group One Trading’s Dominic Salvino said.

 

CBOE may look at the issue to see if something “more reliable” can be used: Salvino, in phone interview

 

CBOE spokeswoman didn’t immediately have comment

 

Was happening, with smaller effects before; now that weeklies are in the calculation, spikes occurring more often

*  *  *




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Survey Finds Teen Pot Smoking Fell This Year Despite the Message Supposedly Sent by Legalization

A few months ago, I
noted that the National Survey on Drug Use and Health showed no
increase in marijuana use by teenagers after 2012, despite
groundbreaking legalization measures approved by voters in Colorado
and Washington that year. According to the latest
results from the Monitoring the Future Study,
released today, marijuana use by eighth-graders, 10th-graders,
and 12th-graders fell this year, even as state-licensed pot shops
opened in both of those states. It is too early to say whether
diversion from adult buyers will increase cannabis consumption
among teenagers in Colorado and Washington. But contrary to
warnings from prohibitionists, legalization does not seem to be
sending a message that encourages teenagers across the country to
smoke pot.

“There has been more public dialogue about marijuana over the
past year than any 12-month period in history,” says Mason Tvert,
communications director at the Marijuana Policy Project. “States
around the country are making marijuana legal for adults,
establishing medical marijuana programs, and decriminalizing
marijuana possession, and the sky is not falling. The debate is not
resulting in more marijuana use among young people, but it is
resulting in more sensible marijuana laws.”

That point is reinforced when you take a longer view. Since
1996, when California became the first state to allow medical use
of marijuana, cannabis consumption has fallen in all three of these
age groups, even as 22 states and the District of Columbia have
followed California’s example. Those trends are the opposite of
what drug warriors said would happen.

“How can we expect our children to reject drugs when some
authorities are telling them that illegal drugs should no
longer remain illegal, but should be used instead to help the
sick?” Thomas Constantine, then head of the Drug Enforcement
Administration, asked
just before the California vote in 1996. “We cannot afford to send
ambivalent messages about drugs.”

John Walters, George W. Bush’s drug czar, likewise
cited the purported threat to teenagers when he urged voters to
reject medical marijuana initiatives. Gil Kerlikowske, President
Obama’s first drug czar, took up the same theme. “We have been
telling young people, particularly for the past couple years, that
marijuana is medicine,” he complained
in 2010. “So it shouldn’t be a great surprise to us that young
people are now misperceiving the dangers or the risks around
marijuana.”

From Kerlikowske’s perspective, this worrisome misperception was
reflected in the rising percentage of teenagers who rejected
the idea that people who smoke pot run a “great risk” of harming
themselves. Since people who smoke pot do not, in fact, run a great
risk of harming themselves, it is hard to share Kerlikowske’s
alarm. In any event, notes Lloyd Johnston, the researcher who
oversees the Monitoring the Future Study, “the belief that regular
marijuana use harms the user…continues to fall among youth, so
changes in this belief do not seem to explain the change in use
this year.” Neither does “personal
disapproval of use,” which “is also down some in 8th and 12th
grades.”

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New Poll Finds 59% of Americans Support Post 9/11 Torture – Propaganda, Cultural Sickness, Or Both?

Screen Shot 2014-12-16 at 1.15.18 PMEver since the torture report was released last week, U.S. television outlets have endlessly featured American torturers and torture proponents. But there was one group that was almost never heard from: the victims of their torture, not even the ones recognized by the U.S. Government itself as innocent, not even the family members of the ones they tortured to death. Whether by design (most likely) or effect, this inexcusable omission radically distorts coverage.

Whenever America is forced to confront its heinous acts, the central strategy is to disappear the victims, render them invisible. That’s what robs them of their humanity: it’s the process of dehumanization. That, in turns, is what enables American elites first to support atrocities, and then, when forced to reckon with them, tell themselves that – despite some isolated and well-intentioned bad acts – they are still really good, elevated, noble, admirable people. It’s hardly surprising, then, that a Washington Post/ABC News poll released this morning found that a large majority of Americans believe torture is justified even when you call it “torture.” Not having to think about actual human victims makes it easy to justify any sort of crime.

– From Glenn Greenwald’s latest piece: U.S. TV Provides Ample Platform for American Torturers, but None to Their Victims

After reading about a new poll that shows 59% of Americans support post 9/11 torture, I’ve spent the entire morning thinking about what it means. Does this confirm the total degeneration of American culture into a collective of chicken-hawk, unthinking, statist war-mongering automatons? Alternatively, does it merely reflect the effectiveness of corporate-government propaganda? Is it a combination of both? How does the poll spilt by age group?

These are all important questions to which I do not have definitive answers, but I have some thoughts I’d like to share. First, here are some of the observations from the Washington Post:

continue reading

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Outspooking The Lehman Apocalypse: Could A Russian Default Be In The Cards?

Via Mint – Blain’s Extra Porridge,

“Nazhmite Lyubuyu Stavku…“

Extra Comment – this might be getting serious.

 

Russia’s markets have been spanked hard despite last night’s hike. 19% currency crash and 13% down stocks in a session. Ouch! Cumulatively, over the past few weeks stocks, oil and the Ruble are off 50% plus, and bonds off 40%. This morning felt like free-fall. Expect more action from the Russians to stave off economic catastrophe… imminent capital controls are rumoured, but markets are demonstrating a massive loss of confidence.

Lots of old market hands are talking about how its similar to the Russia default and crash of ‘98 all over again.. Actually.. its worse.

Much worse.

The scale and speed of the current collapse is a magnitude greater, and the effects are accelerated and magnified by the utter absence of liquidity, and by the political stakes at play. Lots of comments about how a Russian crisis might play out and what cornered Putin may do – or be forced into. Let’s not speculate, but it seems pretty clear that any Western support to calm the crisis and stabilise markets would come at a very high personal cost to Putin. That would be a good point to get selectively involved.

It’s too early. We’ve seen a few cautious buyers get wallpapered with Russian and Ukraine paper – and done decent amount of business, but generally none of the main distressed players feel it’s yet time to get involved. “Don’t expect a V-Shaped recovery – its different and aint going to happen..” said one manager. Hope is not a strategy when it comes to Russia at present.

The big risk is whether the Russian meltdown can be contained within the borders of the Rodina. All kinds of no-see-ems suggest themselves.

What are potential knock-ons into other markets? Perhaps Russians having to unwind London Property, (we understand Russians have been very big buyers in recent weeks prefiguring potential exchange controls), or further ructions in Europe? We’re already concerned European sovereign debt is poised on a knife-edge between brutal reality and over-inflated hopes for QE. A strong nudge from a conflagurating Russia and bang goes Italy?

Or will it come from safe-haven flight triggering sell-offs across every asset class in a replay of 2008? Could a Russia default that will outspook the Lehman apocalypse be on the cards?

So much for dull Christmas markets…




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Wall Street Harbinger Jefferies Reports Q4 Bloodbath: 73% Plunge In Fixed Income Revenue, 45% Drop In Equities

Following the conversion of all of its failed peers into bailed-out, FDIC-insured bank holding companies (speaking of which, where can one find a Goldman ATM these days?), middle-market focused Jefferies may be best-known as the last true investment bank standing. Or at least was until Leucadia came and gobbled it up a year ago.

But what Jefferies is best known for among Wall Street shareholders is that, by still reporting a Nov. 30 fiscal year end, 1 month ahead of everyone else, it provides an invaluable glimpse into the fortunes of its Wall Street peers with a 4 week advance notice, especially when it comes to its bread and butter: fixed income trading (recall that CEO Rich Handler was a Drexel bond trader when the firm blew up). And report it did earlier today, although most of Wall Street shareholders would rather it didn’t, because the numbers were absolutely abysmal, and indicative of nothing short of a trading bloodbath on Wall Street in the latest three months of trading. In fact, if this is what one should expect out of the larger Wall Street names in a few weeks when the big banks close the quarter, then it may be best to skip earnings season altogether.

The numbers:

  • A 73% drop in Q4 revenue from fixed-income trading, down to $61 million from $227 million
  • A 45% drop in Q4 revenue from equity trading, down to $158 million from $290 million
  • A 24% drop in Q4 revenue from investment banking, down to $316 million from $417 million

Charted:

Overall, Q4 net revenue crashed by a whopping 43% to just $538 million (resulting in a net loss of $92 million) driven by the plunge in revenues from fixed income and equity trading. There is a caveat: it wasn’t just a plunge in flow volumes: Jefferies decided that it was smart to have some prop positions on too. Positions which had yet another spectacular blow out. From Bloomberg:

Jefferies Group reported a 73 percent drop in fourth-quarter revenue from fixed-income trading as the firm sustained losses on distressed debt, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securities.

 

“We experienced a very challenging fourth quarter,” Chief Executive Officer Richard Handler, 53, said in the statement. “Despite these results and our decision in respect of pursuing strategic alternatives for our Bache business, we believe Jefferies’s prospects for 2015 are solid, with our investment-banking backlog currently robust, and an expectation of more normal trading markets.”

Still, it is safe to say that with vol surging in the last quarter, most if not all banks will come well to the low side of FICC expectations: “Fixed income was affected by heightened volatility starting in September and a tepid trading environment that led to mark-to-market writedowns, the firm said. The bank reported $55 million in negative revenue from distressed trading following a slump in those markets, it said.”

Finally, while it is not a secret that Goldman has almost single-handedly taken over the advisory business, mostly on the M&A (and stock buyback advisory) side, the tradeoff is that there is very little residual business left for everyone else, such as smaller firms like Jefferies.

Investment-banking revenue declined 24 percent because of “dampened capital-markets activity due to the unsettled markets, which in turn led to the postponement of deals into future periods,” the firm said in the statement.

The only good news, if any, is that Jefferies said the tabloid drama surrounding its ex-UBS rainmaker Sage Kelly did not hurt its revenues. “The impact from the unusual publicity in late October and November was immaterial” to earnings, the firm said in the statement. Which show that the cost to shut up the disgruntled Mrs. Kelly was far lower than the most optimistic estimates.




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Great Unwind of Oil-and-Gas Junk Bonds to Defund Fracking Boom

Wolf Richter   www.wolfstreet.com   http://ift.tt/Wz5XCn

The price of oil plunged once again off the chart on Monday and early Tuesday. At one point, West Texas Intermediate traded below $54 per barrel, though it soon bounced off. Crude is down nearly 50% since June. And over-indebted energy companies with cash flows that range from increasingly uncertain to completely demolished are suddenly contemplating just how deep the abyss might be.

The below-investment-grade bonds these risky companies issued with enormous hoopla and hype to fund the shale revolution and offshore drilling projects, lovingly dubbed “junk bonds,” had been sold to investors on the premise that oil would sell for ever increasing prices in the future, with the understanding that this might allow the company to make interest payments on time and raise new debt to pay off the old debt when it matures.

Even the still uncertain economics of fracking – the expense of drilling coupled with the horrendous decline rates – or the potential environmental consequences and subsequent backlash were elegantly shrugged off on Wall Street, given the ever increasing price of oil.

And investors loved the slightly higher yields these bonds offered in an era when the Fed and other central banks have conspired to expunge yield from the system with the express purpose of pushing investors ever further out into riskier and riskier bets. Investors, driven to near insanity by these central-bank policies, went for the junk bonds with gusto, and it turned into a feeding frenzy that pushed yields down even further, encouraging companies to issue more and more junk at lower and lower yields.

Now the price of oil has plunged by nearly half. None of the equations work any longer. Sure, oil companies have hedged some of their production at much higher prices, and few are fully exposed, at least not yet, to the wrath of the oil-price collapse. But some of their production is already exposed, and in the future more and more of their production will be exposed.

Then what? The answer hovering in the room for junk bond investors, which includes conservative-sounding bond funds that people have in their retirement portfolios: default. A very unappetizing thought.

So investors are losing their appetite for oil and gas junk bonds. As they dump this suddenly crappy-looking paper and as they unwind this once magnificent bubble, prices drop and yields soar. This chart by S&P Capital IQ’s HighYieldBond.com shows just how rapid the decline has been: in July, energy junk bonds (red line) were still trading above 105 cents on the dollar, outperforming overall junk bonds (blue line) during the peak of the junk-bond bubble. Then the Great Unwind set in:

US-junk-bonds-energy-v-ex-energy

During these times of turmoil in the oil patch and on Wall Street, scores of bond issues become illiquid, and “price discovery” sets in where buyers and sellers are so far apart that no trades take place. And if forced selling sets in, prices collapse entirely. It’s brutal out there.

It’s a big market: energy junk bonds make up over 15% of the $1.3 trillion high-yield market. The rout has started to drag on the overall junk-bond bubble, and junk bonds ex-energy are now also declining.

At the riskiest and erstwhile frothiest end of the overall junk-bond market, it’s getting outright ugly: the effective yield index for bonds rated CCC or lower jumped from the record junk-bond-bubble low of 7.94% in late June to 11.72% on Monday. An increase of nearly 50% in funding cost for companies in that category. Here is a two-year chart with that beautiful spike :

US-Junk-bonds-CCC-2014-12-15

Junk bonds provided $1.3 trillion in funding to risky companies of all stripes, some of which are in terrible shape and likely to default in the near future. But oil drillers saw their revenue model suddenly cut in half, and this scares investors.

They know their favorite junk bonds get in trouble for two reasons:

  • When the oil-price plunge decimates the cash flow from unhedged production, and drillers have trouble making interest payments.
  • When a bond matures that was issued at a yield of, for example, 6% and has to be refinanced at 12%, just when revenues are plummeting while drilling costs remain the same, which might make it impossible to refinance this debt.

Leery investors see this, and they try to bail out of the riskiest end of the market, or they start demanding much higher yields to be enticed back in. In the process, they effectively turn off the cheap-money spigot these companies have become addicted to, and must have access to in order to survive. If this process continues, investors are effectively defunding parts of the fracking industry, precipitating the very events they’re so scared of.

The plunge in the price of oil is good for consumers, and so Wall Street promises a big boost to US GDP. But what have these folks been smoking? Read…   This Is Why the Oil-Price Crash Will Maul the US Economy




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