The OPEC cartel is to continue flooding the world with crude oil despite a chronic glut and the desperate plight of its own members

Brent prices have tumbled $3 a barrel to below $41, US crude over $4 to below $38, as traders tried to make sense of the fractious OPEC gathering in Vienna last Friday (12/04), which ended with no production target and no guidance on policy. It reeked of paralysis.

Prices are poised to test lows last seen at the depths of the financial crisis in early 2009. The shares of oil companies plummeted in London, and US shale drillers went into freefall on Wall Street.

“Lots of people said OPEC was dead. OPEC itself has just confirmed it,” said Jamie Webster, head of HIS Energy. Instead, there is now a new world order of three and only three oil superpowers. Guess who they are…

“The fact of the matter is that there’s a reason why you have the largest gathering of world leaders probably in world history here in Paris. Everyone else is taking climate change seriously.” Barack Obama.

Like a lot of the president’s statements on climate change this isn’t true. In fact there are lots and lots of people in the world who know it’s a hoax. And among them happen to be the ruling elite of the most significant carbon emitting nation of them all: China.

We know this because of a devastating report, The Truth About China, released today (12/02) by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, written by one of the West’s leading experts on the Chinese environmental economy, Patricia Adams.

She reveals that the China has no intention whatsoever of sacrificing economic growth by reducing its carbon dioxide emissions. So it’s going to be fun to watch the Chicoms strangle the Paris COP-21 conference in its crib and Obama pretends he sees nothing.

Many observers of American politics still do not quite grasp that Obama will end his presidency by seeking to get his opponents’ goat — and that his resentment will lead to some strange things said and done.

Insidiously and inadvertently, Barack Obama is alienating the people and moving the country to the right. But, counterintuitive as it seems, that is fine with Obama: Après moi le déluge.

By sheer force of his personality, Obama has managed to lose the Democrat Senate and House. State legislatures and governorships are now predominantly Republican. Obama’s own favorable ratings rarely top 45 percent.

In his mind, great men, whether Socrates or Jesus, were never appreciated in their time. So it is not surprising that he is not, as he presses full speed ahead.

Obama certainly has doubled down going into his last year, most recently insisting on letting in more refugees from the Middle East, at a time when the children of Middle Eastern immigrants and contemporary migrants are terrorizing Europe.

What remaining unpopular executive acts might anger his opponents the most?

Now that Cruz has overtaken Carson to run neck-and-neck with Trump in the Iowa Quinnipiac University poll, Cruz is looking a lot like a winner. Here are my top 10 reasons to back him.

10. He really knows economics -- not the ideologically driven pablum dished out at universities, but the real battlefield of entrenched monopolies against entrepreneurial upstarts.

As Asheesh Agarwal and John Delacourt report, he did a brilliant job at the Federal Trade Commission. Anyone can propose tax cuts. It takes real know-how to cut through the regulatory kudzu that is strangling America enterprise.

9. He really knows foreign policy. He is a hardline defender of American interests, but is not beholden to the bunglers of the Bush administration, unlike the hapless Marco Rubio – who, as the Establishment's last hope after Jeb Bush's belly-flop, is instantly recognizable as the tough-guy hero's cute younger brother.

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The truth is, Obama has no plan for containing ISIS, much less defeating it. Nor is he planning to get one any time soon. That’s because Obama doesn’t win wars. He lies about them.

Obama and his political allies believe that crime can’t be fought with cops and wars can’t be won with soldiers. The only answer lies in addressing the root causes, which means blaming Islamic terrorism on everything from colonialism to global warming. It doesn’t mean defeating it, but finding new ways to blame it on the West.

The unspoken idea that informs his strategy is that American power is the root cause of the problems in the region. Destroying ISIS would solve nothing. Containing American power is the real answer.

Obama does not have a strategy for defeating ISIS. He has a strategy for defeating America.