Welcome to today’s scouting report. A lot happened over this weekend, so let’s dive in.
Following the terrorist massacre at the Russian music venue Russia has upped the intensity and targeting of attacks against Ukraine. One of the hits was apparently against the F16 capable airstrip at Stryi but the intensity and duration of the fireballs seen over the next 24 hours suggested to me that perhaps the NatGas storage facility near Stryi might have been hit.
If so, this is big news and a game changer for Europe and not for the better. A lot of NG, as I understand it, still flows through such facilities and into the EU. If hit, not only do those flows stop, but Ukraine will suddenly need to draw from the EU system instead of transiting NG into the EU system.
Next, gold is flooding from West to East, as measured by the flows of kilo bars out of Switzerland and into China. How much longer can the roaring sound be ignored?
The churn (‘gross issuance’) in the US Treasury system is back at Covid “emergency” levels. What’s the emergency now? The erection, er election, we presume, but who actually knows?
We all know that the actions of the current crop of DC vandals will eventually result in the ruination of the dollar…the great puzzlement between now and then will be the extent to which the dollar rises, not because it’s a sound store of value, but because of the unwinding of massive leveraged dollar-based bets that have grown like an algal bloom over the prior few decades.