'Last Week Tonight' covers McKinsey for National TV Talk Show Host Day

Happy National TV Talk Show Host Day! I'm celebrating today by embedding last night's McKinsey: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO).

John Oliver discusses the oldest and largest management consulting firm: McKinsey & Company.

John Oliver made a superficially dull subject interesting by connecting it to income inequality, the opioid crisis, and Saudi Arabia. Including a cameo by Katie Porter helped. Bravo!

I'm only beginning with holidays, as I'm celebrating National Food Day tomorrow, followed by a full week of Halloween posts. Spooky season!

Higher oil prices because of attack on Saudi facility plus driving update for Pearl on Talk Like A Pirate Day

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!  Appropriately enough, my car Pearl, short for The Black Pearl, Jack Sparrow's ship, passed 48,000 miles on Monday, September 16.  That means it's time for a combined energy and driving update along with a celebration of the fake holiday.  I'll begin with three videos from CNBC about the effects of an attack on an Aramco oil facility that took out 5% of the world's oil supply above the jump followed by the driving update and a song for Talk Like A Pirate Day below the jump.

The first video from Monday is Oil prices soar after attack on Saudi Arabia oil facilities.

Drone strikes attacked an oil processing facility at Abqaiq and the nearby Khurais oil field on Saturday, knocking out 5.7 million barrels of daily crude production — or 50% of the kingdom's oil output. CNBC's Hadley Gamble reports from Riyadh.

I commented about this attack in response to A View from the Brink at Kunstler's blog.

I was reminded of what you said in "The End of Suburbia" about "all it takes is 50 pounds of plastic explosive and a camel to take out a pipeline."  This is very similar, although it was some cheap drones and a facility more sophisticated than a mere pipeline.  Still, the concept applies.

All this takes place as the United States is fixing to tip into recession anyway, something the yield curve, "the chart that predicts recessions" is already telling us.  A good old-fashioned oil price shock would do the trick.

On that note, the next video CNBC uploaded on the story was Expect oil prices to go even higher, says Again Capital's John Kilduff.

Amy Jaffe, Council on Foreign Relations, and John Kilduff, Again Capital, join "The Exchange" to discuss the price of oil soaring following attacks on Saudi oil facilities.

In addition to a yield curve inversion, which has already happened, a large prolonged oil price spike is one of the phenomena I told my readers to watch out for in The tax bill and the U.S. economy in 2018 and beyond almost two years ago: "The second is a rapid rise in oil prices, which has occurred either slightly in advance or concurrently with every recession since 1973."  Whether this price spike is big enough or will last long enough remains to be seen, but if so, that's another recession warning.

I concluded my comment at Kunstler's blog by noting the latest bad news for brick-and-mortar stores: "Meanwhile, the Retail Apocalypse rolls on, as GameStop announced it was losing money and closing stores."  It turned out that Tuesday's video on the story bore directly on the Retail Apocalypse, as CNBC uploaded Amazon is the biggest loser from higher oil prices: Smead Capital's Bill Smead.

Bill Smead of Smead Capital Management, joins 'The Exchange' to discuss the momentum vs. value stocks and who stands to lose the most from higher oil prices.

While I'm sure higher oil prices passed on as higher delivery costs will hurt Amazon's profitability, I don't think it will hurt the company enough to slow down the effect of online retail on their brick-and-mortar competitors, who also have to pay for increased transportation and delivery charges.

Follow over the jump for the driving update and a celebration of Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Vox explains how Saudi Arabia became the largest buyer of U.S. arms and is using them in Yemen

Much to my surprise, I have written nothing about Saudi Arabia's involvement in Yemen.  The closest was Gas prices move up on Yemen fear premium more than three years ago, which didn't mention Saudi Arabia at all.  I have also written nothing about Jamal Khashoggi.  Considering that I'm interested in collapse and have worked as a journalist, those are both oversights on my part.*  Fortunately for me, Vox has just provided me two opportunties to correct them.

First, Vox uploaded how the Saudis ended up with so many American weapons yesterday.

And why they want more.
...
Saudi Arabia and the US have a partnership that's been in the making for over seven decades. It started after World War II and survived the Iranian Revolution, the Cold War, the Gulf War, September 11, and the proliferation of conflicts across the Middle East. This whole time, the US has been selling weapons to Saudi Arabia -- now its number one customer. Saudis bought bombs, tanks, guns, and planes over the years to defend themselves from various threats. The US supplied those weapons because the Saudi’s threats have usually been a threat to the US as well.

Today, there's a shift in the relationship. Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen has created the worst humanitarian disaster in the world - and thrown the Middle East into chaos. The problem is, the Saudis are using US bombs to do it.

This is not new.  Vox uploaded The US may be aiding war crimes in Yemen two years ago.

The U.S. is helping Saudi Arabia bomb Yemen and it's a disaster.

Nothing came of efforts to disentangle the U.S. from Saudi Arabia's involvement in Yemen then.  That changed this week, as Vox reported The Senate just passed a resolution to end US support for the Saudi war in Yemen, writing "It’s a bipartisan rebuke of the Trump administration in the wake of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder."

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Chris Murphy (D-CT) co-sponsored the resolution to stop US involvement in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is fighting the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The nearly four-year conflict has killed an estimated 50,000 people and put nearly 12 million on the brink of famine.

The war in Yemen — and US support for the Saudi-led effort — actually began during the Obama administration. But President Trump has moved the US even closer to Saudi Arabia as part of his administration’s broader Middle East policy, which largely focuses on countering Iran.

The horrific assassination of Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul has put the US-Saudi relationship under a microscope, particularly after the CIA concluded that the country’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), ordered Khashoggi’s murder.

The Senate resolution is a major step toward holding the administration accountable and wresting back some control of war powers from the executive branch. Yet it’s still a long way away from actually ending US support for the Saudis in Yemen, or finding a resolution to the conflict altogether.

The White House in particular has pushed back against the Senate’s measure, and if it were to end up on Trump’s desk, it would almost certainly face a presidential veto. Additionally, the House approved a rule on Wednesday that blocks the chamber from taking up any Yemen resolutions before the end of the year, meaning the Senate resolution won’t advance.

Well, phooey.  With any luck, it will be reintroduced next year, when the House rule expires and the Democrats take over control of the body.  If so, I'll re-examine the issue.

Thanksgiving travel up as gas prices falling but still high

An early Happy (American) Thanksgiving to my readers!*  In Seth Meyers checks in on minority voter suppression, I wrote "it's time to go full Thanksgiving in time for the holiday."  I begin by passing along CBS This Morning reporting yesterday Record number of Americans expected to travel for Thanksgiving.

The Thanksgiving travel rush is underway. AAA predicts more than 54 million Americans will travel at least 50 miles away by Sunday. The holiday weekend is predicted to be the busiest for Thanksgiving travel since 2005. Kris Van Cleave reports.

All of this is despite the highest gas prices since 2014.  Still, oil prices are falling, as CNBC reported in Oil stocks in bear market.

CNBC's Brian Sullivan reports on the crude oil wreck and stocks that are feeling the impact.

The effect of the collapse in oil prices should be lower gas prices, which CNBC reported in GasBuddy: The other shoe has yet to drop with prices at the gas pump.

Dan McTeague of GasBuddy.com discusses the landscape for gas prices as we head into the holiday season, and the lag time between falling oil prices and prices at the pump.

Neither the experts nor I expected oil and gas prices to fall, especially not as steeply as they did.  All of us expected sanctions on Iran to drive prices up or at least support them.  Instead, the Administration has granted so many waivers that the sanctions have had very little effect.  That's a point brought up in Bloomberg's Trump, Saudis Make Fundamental Oil Analysis Impossible, Analyst Sen Says.

Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at Emery Aspects, examines President Donald Trump's influence on oil prices. She speaks with Bloomberg's Jonathan Ferro on "Bloomberg Markets: The Open."

Once again, Trump is creating chaos.  At least this time, it's helping U.S. consumers.  Give thanks for that silver lining in the cloud of Trump.

*I already wished my readers a Happy Canadian Thanksgiving, so I have to make the distinction.