Explosive job growth in the oil and gas sector propped up the U.S. economy for several years in the wake of the recession, as the fracking revolution put American energy workers back to work.

But 2015 was the year that job gains in the energy sector came to a screeching halt as rock-bottom oil prices triggered layoffs of more than 258,000 workers globally, according to a comprehensive analysis by industry consultant Graves & Co. And the energy business is poised to endure a fresh round of job cuts and bankruptcies in early 2016, analysts say.  The number of active oil and gas rigs in the U.S. fell 61% to 698 as of Dec. 31, compared to a year earlier, according to Baker Hughes Rig Counts....Oil companies in Texas have endured revenue losses of up to 70% over the last year, he says.  Dan Heckman, national investment consultant for U.S. Bank Wealth Management, said he expects to see a fresh round of layoffs, production cuts and bankruptcies in the oil and gas business in early 2016.  The current U.S. unemployment rate for the oil, gas and mining sector is 8.5%, but could top 10% by February, about double the overall jobless rate, Heckman projected.   Oil production leader Saudi Arabia has refused to slash output to bolster prices, and U.S. producers have kept wells flowing to pay off investments ordered in the 2000s when new fracking technology triggered a spike in American energy production.  "Many of these companies are in negative cash flow, and that’s not a sustainable dynamic," Heckman said.  It’s a game of chicken, with energy analysts closely watching to see where production cuts take place in an effort to boost prices.  Projections for a prolonged period of low oil prices provide little hope for a quick rebound. Most analysts believe oil prices will stabilize in 2016, but probably won’t rise much until the second half of the year, barring unexpected geopolitical instability.  It’s a sharp reversal of fortunes for an industry that was celebrated for the economic windfall it provided for oil-rich states such as Texas, North Dakota and Pennsylvania as other areas of the economy remained soft.  The number of jobs at oil and natural gas companies rose 40% from the start of 2007 through the end of 2012, even as total U.S. private-sector employment rose only 1%, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Honda confirmed Thursday that an inflator ruptured in a crash that killed a teenager in July, the ninth fatality linked to air bags made by Japan's Takata.  When an inflator ruptures, it can hurl metal and plastic shrapnel at a car's driver or passengers, causing sometimes fatal injuries.  "American Honda has confirmed that the Takata driver's front air bag inflator ruptured in the crash of a 2001 Honda Accord Coupe on July 22, 2015 near Pittsburgh," the automaker said in a statement. "Injuries related to this air bag inflator rupture likely resulted in the tragic death of the underage driver."  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which inspected the wreck along with Honda officials, has attributed eight deaths in the U.S. to the air bags. All were in Hondas. In addition, another death occurred outside the U.S.  The Takata recalls now involve at least 23 million ammonium-nitrate inflators in 19 million vehicles involving 11 automakers.  "This young person's death is tragic, and it underscores why we are continuing to work so hard to get these defective inflators off the road," said NHTSA spokesman Gordon Trowbridge when the death was announced earlier this month.

I think that the assumption that through better medicines and care, people will live longer, is incorrect. Life expectancy has started to fall in the West and with the problems of obesity and laziness, it will fall by more in the years to come. The proposition that most people will live into their eighties and many beyond one hundred is laughable. The birth rate is lower in the West as many people prefer increased wealth to screaming toddlers. If the government wants to address this, then they need to subsidize the working population to ensure that having children is less of a financial drain, rather than importing large numbers of people from alien cultures...Euthanasia anyone? The population has increased by ten million since I was a kid - can't imagine they're all pensioners. What I really love about Britain is the lack of planning - scaremongering with atom bombs and climate change on one side, but taking a long term look at the country forgotten. Twenty years ago the Aussies, for one, started superannuation - whereby a percentage of your income went into your pension fund, employers had to add to it too. Thus negating the state pension in the long term. Funds are run by yourself or your Union or private - also helps for business investment. Some countries look ahead... well...There is no need to panic. If advanced countries gradually lower their populations, it will ease pressure on infrastructure, the environment, property prices, it should be seen as a boon not a catastrophe. Indeed lowering birth rates may well be a natural response to a feeling of overcrowding among cold-adapted homo sapiens (whites and asians) who evolved in environments with limited resources and harsh environments. Considering that the same effect is occurring in different cultures- Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox and Asian cultures, that may be the primary variable.  The only "problem" is for those in finance who profit from a form of centralised economic management predicated on expanding money supplies and GDP, which do not matter for everyone else, for whom all that matters to get better off is GDP per capita, which can increase- and may increase more rather than less- with a gently falling population.  The issues regarding elderly care are used to frighten us. In truth, this is a rather trivial administrative matter. Humans are more than capable of organising our societies around a shifting demographic. Added to which we have no idea what the future holds, including improved management of ageing due to new medical and bio- technologies.  A deep underlying reason for fomenting panic over this, though, is to justify mass immigration to supposedly "pay the bills of the future", to which our ruling class are ideologically wedded. If the hypothesis in my first paragraph holds, this will only further suppress native birth rates in those areas where it happens. The reaility is that immigrationism cannot anyway solve the problem, since it then just creates, down the road, even more elderly people to pay for, and thus requires more and more immigration. It's not a good policy on any basis.  Aggregate GDP does not matter. GDP per capita matters. Once you understand that, this "crisis" is not a crisis at all.

For the second time this past week, Chinese stock markets shut early after its "circuit breaking" mechanism, that was introduced on January 1, was breached within the first 30 minutes of trading. This triggered a sharp fall in the Shanghai Composite index - 7pc.

The slump in the stock market came as Chinese authorities guided the yuan lower - allowing it to decline by 0.5pc, its most since August, which resulted in a mass sell-off, otherwise known as Black Monday. Stocks should be valued based on the dividend yield not future earnings which never are realised. If debt had been priced correctly this manic stock market could have been easily controlled.  Any market in investments is inherently unstable due to the positive feedback at the heart of the trading. The problem is that unstable systems are very difficult to stabilise and often any atemps to do so can lead to further instability. The heart of the problem is that a price variation is reinforced by herd mentality. If the price goes up, then more people buy rather than fewer as would occur for most non investment items. The reverse is also true. This is worse when there is wider share ownership, as more investors act irrationally rather than based on reasoned consideration of company fundamentals. Possible other devices to consider are shorting, higher stamp duty, minimum length of share ownership, discouraging wider share ownership and price reinforcement. What is really needed is the investment equivalent of a car shock absorber combined with something that cuts or attenuated the positive feed back. My favourite is minimum length of share ownership. If a stock is subject to a speculative price hike then investors are less likely to put more in if they know that they cannot get it out in the short term. In short, short term investments are a contributory factor to price instability.  Having consulted the oracle, I get that ominous hexagram known as the Preponderance of the Great. Too much weight in the middle; all unbalanced, and clearly away from the Tao.

" Police in Germany are investigating an alarming series of sexual assaults on women trying to celebrate the New Year by large groups of single men “of Arab or North African appearance”.

Authorities in the city of Cologne are to hold a crisis meeting on Tuesday after police described a group of some 1,000 men who took over the area around the main station on New Year’s Eve.

Women were robbed, groped, and had their underwear torn from their bodies, while couples had fireworks thrown at them.  Police have received 90 criminal complaints, around a quarter of them for sexual assault, including one case of rape.  Police in Hamburg say there was a series of similar incidents in the city’s Reeperbahn red-light area. Witnesses described groups of five to 15 men of who “hunted” women in the streets."   Merkel, the leader of the EU, has brought this upon her country, and Europe. She had enough warnings...but works to another agenda.  Let her continue to sink into the quagmire.  Bring on our opportunity, to get out of the EU madhouse, as soon as possible.

Relatively rich societies as a whole do not benefit from importing cheap labor from the third world. The rich and powerful in those affluent societies benefit as the immigration drives down the price of the labor they must employ to maintain their positions. Everything from cleaners to gardeners to nannies to whatever is all made cheaper relatively speaking for the established elites. They support the influx for that reason. The only exception being the left which supports it because it hates the West and the Western working classes and would do anything to cause them harm. It is a no-brainer that this is not done for the majority already there.  There are many indices comparing countries for quality of life, opportunity, happiest and so on. They are put out by the UN, OECD, IMF and other organisations both public and private. The nations that always top these lists - Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Finland and a couple of others - all have one thing in common. Relatively low populations. Aside from Germany no country with a large population even makes it into the top ten on most of these indices and Germany only manages it for a few. The correlation between a smaller stable population and wealth and income equality and general quality of life is obvious and the reasons don't need explaining. It just doesn't suit some to have things go down this path so they shut down debate with abuse and slurs.  Horror of horrors, imagine a country with rising wages for everyone as people must be paid significant sums to do even the most menial jobs. It would push wages up right along the chain. Crikey, you might see the position of the rich and other elites eroded with respect to the rest of the population. What a terrible thought. A smaller population supported by automation and doing things smarter with better education for all and spreading the wealth evenly and maybe true democracy where those people are asked if they want to get involved in a foreign war far away. A sickening thought if you are a Cameron, Blair, Miliband, Corbett and the like. They would not have the power they crave and love in such a world. Others would not have the wealth they love.  The West can do nothing to help with over-population in the second and third world. There are just too many people and they are still having too many babies. The answer to their problems must come from within or nature will sort it out for them. I visited the Foundling Museum in Coram's Fields over Christmas. It is a lovely place - but chronicles the horrors caused by the population explosion in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries as people moved into cities and stopped dying like flies of poverty and disease - and the cities began to look like Third World cities do now - overcrowded slums full of factory workers. The population of Britain and Ireland in 1700 was probably around 6.5 million, estimated from parish records etc. The first Census in 1801 recorded 18.5 million - so it tripled in 100 years. In 1901 it was 45 million, despite mass emigration during the 19th century. And poverty was still rife, despite mass emigration.  The growth has slowed down somewhat - but is still headed for 75 million by 2050. This is not a fluctuation back and forth. This is an inexorable, unsustainable, rise which can never ever be catered for even if we continue to access the resources of other countries as well as our own. It was only ever catered for via mass emigration - i.e. overflowing of millions to America and Australasia. (The two World Wars had little or no effect by the way.) That emigration continues to this day as young Britons are forced to choke back their tears and emigrate to Oz or New Zealand - a new series of "Wanted Down Under" starts tomorrow on BBC1. Yet Down Under must be filling up in turn by now, surely?

" The world's stuttering economic recovery will continue to disappoint next year, the head of the IMF has warned. Rising US interest rates, a Chinese slowdown and disappointing world trade will all weigh on growth prospects in 2016, said Christine Lagarde. The IMF estimates the global economy will expand by 3.6pc next year, but Ms Lagarde - writing in German business daily Handelsblatt - said growth would be disappointing and uneven."At last an official acknowledgement that the German austerity forced on Europe for the last seven years has been a terrible mistake caused by the stubborn and stupid insistence of the messianic Merkel and her mad crippled adviser Schaubel. Just as the US and UK successful economic policies of the last few years are being reined in with small interest rises the ECB are printing €trillions of euros far too late and the IMF is in a panic having now changed position by 180o.  When has Germany ever had any policy that does not suit its selfish interests and wrecks Europe every time in the process? No wonder Merkel is out of the headlines for a change. She should hang her head in shame and push Schaubel way out of the picture. Best Germany should leave Europe and take its satellite slaves with it...well... "The IMF has calculated that emerging market companies have "over-borrowed" by $3 trillion in the last decade, reflecting a quadrupling of private sector debt between 2004 and 2014." "Any "failed normalisation" of interest rates and market conditions would wipe 3pc from the world's economic output over the next two years,according to the Fund's financial stability report."  Ah, so we should keep the 'accommodative monetary policy' that allowed this to happen, because we screwed up in the 'accommodative monetary policy' that let it happen. Who's responsible for overlooking all this? Ah, that would be you Christine, would it? Never mind, my advice is start pointing to it now and try and thereby distance yourself from it.... Ah again, I see we have already...