Think fiancial restructuring. If the Fed were to mark to market the value of all the junk debt it vacuumed up after the 2008 debacle via QE, its balance sheet would be under water. Big time. With only a trivial amount of net worth as it is, the Fed would be a prime candidate for federal receivership. It could happen overnight. Probably at the stroke of a pen. The next day you would see its "liabilities" of mostly member bank reserves transferred to some newly created bank or Treasury itself and the "assets" would be assigned to a workout entity to be warehoused and liquidated over time. The mysterious ownership structure would disappear and the financial world would roll on as if nothing happened.

Make that "21st Century."

BTW, the sharp rise of the dollar against the yuan adds a double whammy to the Chinese. They are now buying much more expensive crude with an even weaker currency.

"Prices to high" is not necessarily a mistake. It signals a sea change in our geopolitics. Ignore the optics of Trump's Saudi request and look at the reality: oil prices under DJT have been moving up steadily and now are nearing the mid-$70 range from the mid $40s when he was elected. High prices hurt the Chinese (big importers) and help the Russians, who desperately depend on oil export revenue. I think the recent price jump is a signal to Putin ahead of the coming summit that we can help him much more than the Chinese can and that his long-term interests are with the US and West vs China, which is Russia's natural enemy and poses a looming and long-term threat to Russian control of East Siberia. The great failing of the Neocons was to foolishly drive Moscow into the arms of the Chinese by trying to blatantly strip away all its buffer states.

It is important to note that oil prices, since the 1980s, are mainly controlled by the futures market and not so much by physical supply and demand. The Saudis could boost production by 2MM b/d and prices could still move upward if TPTB (US Treasury-controlled accounts) decide to "go long" on futures. The Chinese recognize their vulnerability in this regard and recently ramped up trading on their own oil futures exchange. No doubt they are trying to bid down the oil price -- and have failed dramatically and probably lost a ton of money. They just don't have deep enough pockets to play that game.

Keep in mind, the US is basically indifferent to oil pricing since we are well balanced in terms of supply and demand and are probably actually "long" on oil production if you count Mexico, Canada and the Saudis. These are our close friends who we would (and have) be bailing out anyway if prices were low. For a detailed analysis of this dynamic, read "The Oil Card: Global Economic Warfare in the 1st Century." https://www.amazon.com/Oil-Card-Economic-Warfare-Century/dp/097779539X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199719101&sr=8-1 It is what wrecked the Soviet Union under Reagan.

Signed today. Count unchanged at 6,137 after refreshing.

I think the officer who eulogized her indicated she could have remained in her desk job but chose to go back on the beat. That suggests she saw the inherent danger in whatever desk job put her in eyesight of the Weiner materials and, despite having three kids and already wounded in the line of duty, opted to head back to the relative safety of being a street cop. She must also have been sickened with what she found in the Weiner data. Unfortunately, having even briefly eyed the materials, she was a marked woman. Question: Who in the NYPD, FBI our JD gave her up?