In other words, the administration—which was already slow-walking energy regulatory approvals—is simply not going to green-light any new LNG project, including any new terminals, any new capacity expansion or upgrades, or any new export licenses, for the foreseeable and indeterminate future.

This decision, intended as a political concession to the radical progressive wing of the Democratic Party, further undermines U.S. energy independence. The action freezes the industry and effectively paralyzes any potential future investment toward the growth, development, and productive enhancement of a critical energy resource.

The knock-on effect of this will be higher future energy costs for American businesses and consumers and a weakening of the U.S. energy industry. The “pause” deters foreign buyers in Asia and Latin America from considering the United States as a reliable supplier for their growing LNG demand, hurting our export economy. More consequentially, the move strengthens the hands of our global energy competitors and potential adversaries, including China, Russia, and Iran. It is a total folly.

The Biden administration has been at war with American energy independence from day one. In pursuit of a quixotic dream of zero emissions and complete migration from fossil fuels to renewables, one of the administration’s first actions (literally on President Biden’s first day in office) was to issue an executive order canceling the Keystone XL pipeline project, which, in addition to creating tens of thousands of American jobs, would have safely and cleanly delivered more than 800,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta, Canada, to U.S. refineries at low cost.

Previously approved oil and gas exploration and development leases in the Arctic were suspended on grounds of “deficiencies” in paperwork and process, and all work ceased. Regulatory agencies were given clear instructions to unleash the Kraken of bureaucratic red tape, ensuring that applicants would suffocate under the constriction of its tenacles—new approvals ground to a halt. Even before last week’s decision, LNG export applications processed by the Department of Energy took nearly a year to receive approval, compared with an average of less than two months under the former Trump administration.

Starting in November 2021, the Biden administration began to drain the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which by January 2023 had lost 265 million barrels of oil and which even to this day sits at less than half capacity. Just a few months ago, in September 2023, the Biden administration reversed Trump-era approvals and permanently canceled seven oil and gas leases in Alaska.

All of this begs the question, why would any company, entrepreneur, or debt-financing provider be willing to risk investing capital in an environment in which billions of dollars of work can be flushed down the toilet with the administrative stroke of a pen? The answer is obviously that no one would, and that is precisely the intended result of the Biden administration’s short-sighted actions. These complex projects take years to complete, not to mention the cost involved. Even with a new, energy-friendly administration, the risk of policy reversal—witnessed firsthand with the Trump–Biden transition—will hang like a dark and foreboding cloud over future investment decisions.

This latest blow against American energy independence comes at a time when U.S. inventories of West Texas Intermediate crude oil in Cushing, Texas, have fallen to their lowest seasonal level in a decade. U.S. refinery capacity remains nearly 1 million barrels below pre-pandemic levels. U.S. oil rig counts are down by 110 from a year ago, and production is at its lowest level since June 2023. The SPR is at its lowest level since 1985. These are all warning signs that are being largely ignored. Energy was one of the biggest drivers of inflation in 2022. While energy prices have fallen in recent months, it is dangerous to grow complacent.

The world watched anxiously last winter as Europe nearly froze after Russian gas supply to the continent was cut off. It was U.S. LNG that came to the rescue. Europeans suddenly woke up to the dangers of reliance on foreign suppliers for their energy needs. The U.S. government seems to find nothing worthwhile to learn from Europe’s experience. But just who will come to America’s rescue if our oil and gas industry falls into disrepair and neglect? China? Iran? Saudi Arabia? Qatar? While they are all investing in and expanding their energy industries and export capabilities, they are not doing it for the sake of America’s economy or its people.

We are devouring our children’s future.

Is the broader banking sector at risk of contagion? This is the issue we need to look at as soon as possible.

SVB’s demise came suddenly (pdf). On Wednesday, the bank announced a loss of $1.8 billion from selling “available for sale” investment securities. Its holding company announced it would raise $2.25 billion to shore up the bank’s capital. Rather than comforting investors and depositors, this surprising announcement spooked them, “causing a run on the bank.” Within a few hours, depositors withdrew some $42 billion in cash, approximately 25 percent of total deposits, leaving the bank with a negative cash balance approaching $1 billion by the end of Thursday. Unable to shore up this shortfall overnight, the initially illiquid and then insolvent bank failed. California’s Commissioner of Financial Protection and Innovation took over the bank and appointed the FDIC as a receiver.

While the FDIC provides deposit insurance up to $250,000, representing less than 10 percent of SVB’s deposits. The vast majority of SVB’s $173 billion in deposits are uninsured. According to the FDIC, “uninsured depositors will receive a receivership certificate for the remaining amount of their uninsured funds.” These certificates will receive dividend payments from future sales of assets, which may not be enough for depositors to be repaid in full.

The issue for SVB was that its assets were heavily weighted to its investment portfolio. Specifically, some 57 percent of SBV’s assets were in marketable securities, primarily U.S. Treasury and mortgage-backed securities. With the rapid rise of interest rates over the past year, the market value of these bonds fell substantially. That fact won’t matter if a bank can hold these bonds until maturity when they will be repaid at par. But if a bank is suddenly forced to sell them to generate liquidity, i.e., to meet depositors’ demands for cash withdrawals, it is forced to sell them at a loss. A vicious circle ensues. Unplanned asset sales generate losses; losses weaken the bank’s financial position, and depositors get nervous and demand their money, requiring more assets to be sold, thereby stimulating further losses. As in the case of SVB, this can happen in days or even hours.

Illiquidity, not insolvency, typically causes banks to fail, which was undoubtedly true for SVB. The question now is, how many other U.S. banks are similarly exposed to this type of liquidity risk? Analysts are working overtime to review the data to see which other banks may be in a similar position to SVB. While SVB had the highest ratio of securities to assets, several other regional banks have more than a third of their holdings in similar categories. Should their depositors get nervous, bank runs could occur elsewhere in the coming days.

The collapse of SVB has sent shockwaves through banking and financial markets. The NASDAQ Bank Index fell nearly five percent on Friday. Crypto has been particularly impacted, as SVB was a preferred bank for the industry. Two of the largest crypto exchanges, Coinbase and Binance, suspended the sale or convertibility of USDC, the stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the U.S. Dollar. As a result, USDC depegged and fell to $0.90 early on Saturday. With USD 41 billion in circulation, this represents an unrealized loss of over $4 billion. Coinbase’s parent Circle confirmed on Saturday that it had $3.3 billion of reserves at SVB that it could not get out of the bank on Thursday. This situation represents a new challenge to the viability of the stablecoin model.

At a minimum, readers should take this opportunity to consider whether their banks are safe and sound and where they may face unknown risks. But that’s not enough. Banking crises are often driven by human nature and psychology as much as asset and liability mismatches. Should investors and depositors gain confidence that the issues at SVB were bank-specific in the coming days, perhaps this storm will pass. However, fear is a highly contagious pathogen. To the extent that a broader panic ensues, we may be looking at a frightening banking and financial markets crisis. Keep a close eye on this one over the coming days.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Nevertheless, it’s a much better list than most that I read. On today’s episode of The JD Rucker Show, I dove into this list for about the last two-and-a-half segments. Here’s the video from Gab.tv which we are trying to grow, plus a backup from Brighteon is below the article.

The year 2022 was one of surprises: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, persistent inflation fueled by energy costs, the collapse of FTX and crypto markets, the revelations of the so-called Twitter Files, and one of the worst equity markets in recent history, to name but a few.

The year 2023 is poised to present some equally challenging circumstances. Here are 12 trends, events, or surprises that may come to shape and define the year ahead.

1) Inflation Returns

I may be the minority report here, but I do not believe we’ve seen the end of—or worst of—inflation in the United States. I argue that following a lag in which price growth appears to moderate, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation returns to the 8–12 percent range, where it persists for the rest of the year. This will be cost-push inflation, not demand-pull (see the second point below), and a lagging result of trebling the money supply in the United States since 2009. Stagflation returns, with the Misery Index (inflation plus unemployment) hitting new highs.

2) The U.S. Economy Enters Recession

This is a less controversial proposition at this stage, as most economists and analysts agree that recession looks highly probable for 2023. The first half of 2023 is likely to be characterized by negative GDP, rising unemployment, and an insecure consumer. The wave of layoffs which began in the tech sector in 2022 spreads to other industries and sectors, and migrates down from large-cap corporations like Meta and Amazon to small- and medium-sized enterprises which are disproportionately affected by the slowdown.

3) European Energy Crisis Worsens

While in the near term Western Europe may be spared the worst possible outcomes due to a mild winter, the underlying factors which led to the energy crisis haven’t been resolved. Germany, the European Union’s largest economy, made a Faustian bargain believing that it could abandon its coal industry and any nuclear aspiration and instead place their trust in the Russians—against all historical experience—and a green utopia. France similarly backed away from its path to energy independence—nuclear power—and are paying the price. While both have recently repented these misjudgments, the path to recovery will take years, not months. In the meantime, supply shortages will continue to plague these economies.

4) Oil, Crypto, and Gold Perform

Energy markets will continue their bull run for the foreseeable future as a result of continued supply disruptions and refinery constraints. Bitcoin and Ethereum emerge from a long, dark crypto winter, but altcoins remain frozen out. The dollar begins a long, if slow and turbulent, slide from 2022 highs, as peak demand from rapidly rising interest rates eases.

5) Continued Rise of Resource Nationalism

The unforgettable geopolitical lesson of the pandemic era has been that just-in-time supply-chain dependence on countries that many or may not have another nation’s interest at heart represents a dangerous strategic folly. It’s well and good that we learned this lesson when we did. Countries around the world are now aggressively working to realign their supply chains and ensure that they have strategic resources in adequate supply to meet unexpected, Black Swan events. Look for increasingly protectionist and nationalistic policies to dominate trade discussions.

6) Traditional Global Alliances Break, New Ones Form

Long-standing partnerships, such as the United States’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, have already begun to unravel. Expect further strengthening of the China and Russia-led alliance involving former U.S. allies, or at least non-aligned nations such as India, Turkey, South Africa, and Brazil. Most vulnerable to geopolitical shifts are countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America. Because of sanctions warfare and incoherent or at least inconsistent foreign policy, the United States ends up in a net deficit position, losing more friends than it gains in this process.

7) U.S. Dollar Dominance Continues to Erode

Hard money returns to favor, with commodity-backed currencies taking the spotlight. Alt payment systems, petrodollars being replaced with petrorubles or petroyuans, as well as central bank-issued digital currencies, will all conspire to slowly erode the U.S. dollar’s share of global financial and trade flows.

8) The West, Weary of Cost of Ukraine War, Sues for Peace

While it may not be realistic to think that Russia can bomb the Ukrainian people into submission, the increasing costs of supporting Ukraine’s war with Russia will challenge political leaders across the West. This fatigue will increase as more citizens start to ask reasonable questions about whether hundreds of billions of dollars or euros might not be better spent to take on some of the domestic economic and social challenges that these nations face at home. Eventually, Western governments and Putin each decide that a half a loaf is better than no loaf at all.

9) Domino Effect of Exposure

The recent uncovering of high-level frauds and corruptions involving U.S. government agencies and personnel continues. Increasing transparency leads to accountability. Eventually, the evidence becomes too overwhelming to ignore; arrests, trials, and convictions ensue. Congressional hearings lead to wave of resignations and first steps toward fundamental institutional reform.

10) China Barks, but Doesn’t Bite, at Taiwan

While we should expect the growling and barking to grow louder, with more frequent air space incursions, naval activity, intimidations, and outright threats, it is highly unlikely that China invades Taiwan in 2023. While China most certainly would prefer to confront Taiwan while the Biden administration remains in power, rather than face an improbable return of Donald Trump to the presidency, Xi Jingping’s government will conclude that they are not ready, militarily, politically, or otherwise, to invade Taiwan. Domestic issues, including a worsening economy and rising social unrest within mainland China, will mean that creating a row with the United States and other trading partners in the West remains untenable for the time being. While Russia might be able to make do without selling gas to Germany, there is no way the Chinese economy can survive if abruptly cuts itself off from the United States and Western Europe.

11) Second-Half Rebound in Economy and Markets

While I am not optimistic about the first half, I take great comfort in the breadth and resilience of the American economy. There is enormous unleashed latent potential in oil and gas, in manufacturing onshoring, in supply-chain realignment, and in new technologies such as AI, quantum computing, blockchain, and cold fusion.

12) More of the Same

What could derail a more V-shaped recovery are the same forces that helped bring the recession about: poor policy decisions that continue to damage our energy industry, keep our borders insecure, and fail to dismantle the out-of-control regulatory bureaucracy that is impeding innovation in energy, manufacturing, financial services, and technology. These are some of the largest sectors in the economy and those which have been most negatively affected by the Biden administration’s imprudent return to Obama-era economic policies.