Pending Invasion

[xoxoxoBruce]

So Putin is running amok in west Europe/east Asia and there isn't much anybody can do about it.
Obama warning of sanctions sounds like, get-off-my-lawn, shouted from the porch.
But here's the first something I've heard that made me say, Hmm, maybe.

The tool is the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the 700-million-barrel underground cache of crude oil waiting in Texas and Louisiana for a rainy day (see chart below). In an overnight note to clients, Verleger argues that if the US were to ship just 500,000 barrels a day of oil onto the market, it would drive down prices by about $10 a barrel and cost Russia about $40 billion in annual sales. The US could keep doing this for years, he says. “[Russia's] GDP might drop 4%, which would certainly count as a ‘consequence,’” he says. Half would come from lower oil prices and half from gas sales, whose prices Russia indexes to oil.