On Monday (8/08), British Prime Minister Theresa May announced what is being called the “Frackpot” –  to redirect some of the future profits of shale gas production to households, rather than councils.

[Note that in the UK and most countries, unlike the US, the government owns the mineral rights under a landowner’s land.  Note also that – surprise – British environmentalists are denouncing May’s policy as a “bribe.” – JW]

After leaving the European Union, Britain will have to be quicker to adopt new technologies, the better to create wealth in the knowledge economy. For me that’s the biggest opportunity of Brexit.

But to grasp it we must find a way to persuade people to be more ready to embrace innovation and less suspicious. A country that can work out how to do that is going to steal a march on its rivals.

Innovation is the source of virtually all prosperity. It is the reason the average person now lives longer, feeds better, travels farther, is better entertained and sees more children survive than even a monarch did four centuries ago. A glance back through history shows that innovation nearly always does more good than harm.

So why is innovation so fiercely resisted?

Two recent news stories highlight how pernicious the welfare state has become in America today.

Fox News reported (7/18)  that food-stamp groceries can be delivered right to a recipient’s door. In New York, the program is being called Fresh Direct – note the website has a convenient En Español button.

Service with a smile. The Obama administration says it is too much of a hardship for those on welfare to actually travel to the grocery store. What’s next? Cooking the meal for them? If only the DMV would do home deliveries for drivers licenses.

The second story is the hullabaloo over a proposal by Maine Governor Paul LePage to prohibit food stamp recipients from using their food aid to purchase junk foods like sugary soft drinks and candy bars. He says that the state has an obesity problem and he will “implement reform unilaterally or cease Maine’s administration of the food stamp program altogether.”

The Obama administration rejected his request and the left activists act as if a welfare recipient can’t stuff themselves with Mars bars and Mountain Dew at taxpayer expense, it’s a violation of civil liberties.  The media in Maine promptly condemned LePage’s “food stamp recklessness” that shows “little respect for Maine’s poor.”

The welfare/entitlement state of mind has spiraled out of control in America. The cost of welfare is now well over $1 trillion a year.

OPEC's worst fears are coming true. Twenty months after Saudi Arabia took the fateful decision to flood world markets with oil, it has still failed to break the back of the US shale industry.

The Saudi-led Gulf states have certainly succeeded in killing off a string of global mega-projects in deep waters. Investment in upstream exploration from 2014 to 2020 will be $1.8 trillion less than previously assumed, according to consultants IHS. But this is a bitter victory at best.

America's hydraulic frackers are cutting costs so fast that most can now produce at prices far below levels needed to fund the Saudi welfare state and its military machine, or to cover OPEC budget deficits.

Scott Sheffield, the outgoing chief of Pioneer Natural Resources, threw down the gauntlet last Thursday (7/28) -- claiming that his pre-tax production costs in the Permian Basin of West Texas have fallen to $2 a barrel.

"Definitely we can compete with anything that Saudi Arabia has. We have the best rock," he said. Revolutionary improvements in drilling technology and data analytics that have changed the cost calculus faster than almost anybody thought possible. 

Oil rigs in the Permian Basin of Texas are still being built even at $45 oil, defying shale skeptics

Oil prices have tumbled to a three-month low as surging supply once again exposes the chronic global glut and threatens to perpetuate the energy slump for another year.

US crude contracts crashed through key technical barriers to $42.40 yesterday (7/26) before recovering slightly in late trading on profit-taking. They have fallen by 9% over the last four sessions.

Speculators have given it an extra push. Data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the US shows that 52 hedge funds have taken out large short positions, betting that the summer sell-off still has a further leg to run.

Prices are unlikely to re-test the February lows of $26 when asset prices were tumbling across the world and markets were in a full-blown ‘China panic,’ pricing in a global recession that never happened. 

The latest oil tremors reveal little about the underlying health of the global economy, which has so far shrugged off Brexit fears and may be accelerating.