Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/17/2012 15:50 -0400
China
Crude
Crude Oil
Distillates
None
Recession
recovery
While the Achilles heel to the endless "economic data" BS coming out of China may be its electric production and demand, both of which show a vastly different picture than what the Beijing politburo's very wide brush strokes paint, the US itself is not immune from indicators that confirm that anything the BEA dishes out should be taken with a grain of salt. One data set that we showed recently that paints a drastically different (read slowing) picture of the US economy which we noted recently is railcar loading of waste and scrap for the simple reason that "The more we demand, the more waste is generated by that production." Of course, the propaganda manipulation machinery only focuses on the "entrance" of production, and completely ignore the "exit." But an even far more important metric of the general health of the US economy may be none other than broad energy demand, in the form of petroleum deliveries and gasoline demand. If this is indeed the relevant metric to observe, then things are about to get far, far worse. As Dow Jones notes: "U.S. petroleum deliveries, a measure of demand, fell by 2.7% in July from a year earlier to the lowest level in any month since September 2008, the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, said Friday." It gets worse: "Demand in the world's biggest oil consumer, at 18.062 million barrels a day, was the weakest for the month of July since 1995, the API said. Year-to-date demand is down 2.3% from the same period in 2011."
Did Americans forget to drive?
Demand for gasoline, the most widely used petroleum product, dropped 3.8% from a year earlier, to 8.624 million barrels a day, the lowest July level since 1997. Gasoline use in the heart of the peak summer driving season was 2.2% lower than in June. January-July gasoline demand averaged 1.1% below a year earlier, at 8.671 million barrels a day, the API said.
Oh well, maybe Americans just decided to take the peak driving period of the summer season off for some reason. Demand for other distillates would still be high... assuming the economy was chugging along. Yes. And no.
Kerosine-based jet fuel use fell 0.8% in July from a year ago, to
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/what-recovery-petroleum-deliveries-lowest-september-2008-weakest-july-demand-1995?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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