Saudi Arabia and the core OPEC states are taking an immense political gamble by letting crude oil prices crash to $66 a barrel, if their aim is to shake out the weakest shale producers in the US.

"The resilience of US shale may prove greater than the resilience of OPEC," said Alistair Newton, head of political risk at Nomura.

There is no question that the US has entirely changed the global energy landscape and poses an existential threat to OPEC. America has cut its net oil imports by 8.7m bpd since 2006, equal to the combined oil exports of Saudi Arabia and Nigeria.

OPEC has misjudged the threat. As late as last year, it was dismissing US shale as a flash in the pan. Abdalla El-Badri, the group's secretary-general, still insists that half of all US shale output is vulnerable below $85.

This is bravado. US producers have locked in higher prices through derivatives contracts. Noble Energy and Devon Energy have both hedged over three-quarters of their output for 2015.

Further, efficiency is improving and drillers are switching to lower-cost spots, confronting OPEC with a moving target. "The (price) floor is falling and is not nearly as firm as the Saudi view assumes," says Citigroup.

Without fracking of oil and gas deposits, there would have been no economic growth in the U.S. over the past five years. Yet the oil and gas industry has been a favorite whipping boy of the environmental zealots both inside and outside of the administration.

Without those brilliant entrepreneurs and engineers in the private sector who developed the new techniques to unlock massive amounts of oil and gas at reasonable cost, it is unlikely that President Obama would have been re-elected - for it is they who have kept his economy afloat.

Mr. Obama owes his renewed presidency to the very people he gives his back of the hand to.  Is there no end to the irony of this president?

The only TV news I watch is Fox.  CBS has that blonde airhead, ABC/NBC have nonentities, and CNN is the English translation of Al Jazeera.  But lately I can't even watch Fox, for the only news it seems to cover is the ersatz drama about a bimbo with giant mariachis.

No doubt that giant mariachis are among the most wondrous creations in the known universe - but endless discussion of the deceased possessor of two of them is not news.  At least, not any longer.  Shouting, "Enough already!", I either click the off button on the remote, or go in search of a CSI rerun or John Wayne movie.

Pretty soon, of course, viewers will get bored with the Anna Nicole story and move on to some other silliness.  So let's do a thought experiment.  Suppose, just suppose, that Fox doesn't let up, keeps featuring the story, dissecting every detail, comes up with new revelations, month after month after month after month.

Now suppose all other news outlets do the same.  For months, stretching on into the interminable future.  Would you go (a) out of your mind, or (b) no longer pay attention to nor have any interest in the news altogether?

Welcome to the Anna Nicole Presidential Campaign - with no giant mariachis.

Five million Swiss voters will decide on Sunday (11/30) whether to force the Swiss National Bank to repatriate all its gold from vaults in Britain and Canada, boost its holdings of bullion to 20% of foreign reserves and then keep the metal forever.

The "Save Our Swiss Gold" referendum is a valiant attempt by Switzerland's army of gold bugs -- and the populist Swiss People's party (SVP) - to lead the world back to the halcyon days of the international Gold Standard. It is a primordial scream against a quantitative easing and money creation a l'outrance (at all costs) by the leading central banks.

Yet there is a snag. The Swiss National Bank (SNB) is the biggest printer of them all in relative terms, far outstripping the Bank of Japan, let alone the US Federal Reserve or the Bank of England - mere amateurs at this game.  

At one stage it was mopping up half of the entire sovereign bond issuance of the eurozone each month, a scale of action that the European Central Bank's Mario Draghi can only dream of.

You have to smile when you hear Swiss gold enthusiasts complaining that these foreign bonds - bought with electronic fiat francs created out of thin air - are now losing value as the euro slides against the dollar. But then we all suffer from cognitive dissonance.

If you were a political leader who wanted to control the population, but wanted to do it without using brute force, how would you do it?

The answer: control how individuals and businesses spend their money by controlling their bank and other financial accounts. The Obama administration has set up a program to do just that, called "Operation Choke Point."

If the government can prevent you from spending your money on legal products and information services it does not like, it soon has control over much of your life. You might be thinking this could not happen in America, but it is.

Increasingly, businesses and individuals engaged in legal activities are having their banking relationships severed because people within the Obama administration and some politicians do not like the particular activity.

The Justice Dept.'s "Operation Choke Point" should be renamed Operation Choke Freedom, for that does seem to be its very purpose.