Gas wars: A gallon is just 46 cents here

www.cnbc.com

While gas prices are low nationwide, some stations are slashing the fuel's price to rock-bottom levels to the tune of less than 50 cents a gallon.

The drastic price cuts are part of a gas price war at three Houghton Lake, Mich., stations.

Athit Perawongmetha | Reuters

During the last three days, the prices dropped below a buck per gallon, falling as low as 46 cents at Sunrise Marathon. Meanwhile, the Beacon & Bridge gas station was as low as 47 cents, said employees of each station in interviews with CNBC.

A nearby Citgo says its prices slumped to 95 cents a gallon.

Read MoreThe coming bull market for oil, but not for stocks

There have been long lines at the stations for most of the weekend, according to the three stations, with police officers directing traffic in the area due to the congestion.

Local stations first reported this news.

COMMENTS

Donald Trump Quotes the Bible at Liberty University, Tells Youth ‘Never Give Up’

AP/Rich Schultz

by ALEX SWOYER18 Jan 2016Washington, DC749

GOP frontrunner Donald Trump spoke at Liberty University to thousands of people that filled the audience, where he quoted from the Bible and told the college students to “never give up.”

“You can never ever give up,” Trump told the audience on the college campus in Lynchburg, Virginia. “If you give up, you’re not going to make it.”

“Go into a field that you love,” he added, “If you don’t love it, you’re not going to be successful.”

A man shouted from the crowd and Trump echoed him, “I make you proud to be an American?”

Trump responded, “That’s very nice.”

“It’s very hard for somebody to run for president,” Trump told the crowd, referencing his comments on illegal immigration and the backfire that followed. “You’re really exposing so much.”

“We’re going to protect Christianity,” Trump vowed. “I don’t have to be politically correct, we’re going to protect it.”

Trump then quoted from the Bible, “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

“It’s so representative of what’s taken place,” he added.

During Trump’s speech, he went on to tout the poll numbers that have him leading the GOP field and said he thinks he’s going to “clean the table” in terms of state primary elections, adding, “I think we could really surprise a lot of people.”

Trump said everything that was discussed during the Democratic debate on Sunday night means “tremendously high taxes.”

Trump said he would build a strong military, and he doubled down on building the wall along the southern border and having Mexico pay for it. He also vowed to bring jobs back to the United States from other countries.

Trump said he would like to see a woman president, but not Hillary Clinton, because she’s “a disaster.”

He also took a swipe at the other candidates because unlike them, he is funding his own campaign and doesn’t have any donors or Wall Street to answer to. “They don’t own me,” Trump said of the donors and lobbyists.

He also bashed the mainstream media and how they never show the large crowds on the camera when he is giving speeches at his campaign rallies.

“It’s a movement. It’s packed,” Trump said about his supporters. “The press is very, very dishonest,” adding, “not all of it, but most of it.”

“This political press is brutal,” Trump explained. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” referencing, “the camera trick where they don’t show” the crowds supporting him.

“You’re not getting a real picture of this silent majority,” he explained.

“It’s no longer so silent. It’s become a noisy majority. People want to see greatness for our country,” Trump touted. “These politicians are all talk no action. They don’t get it done.”

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AGAIN Donald Trump is the only Republican mentioned during Dem debate

www.dailymail.co.uk

Bernie Sanders cited his head-to-head polling lead over Trump as evidence he should win nomination, hinting at how much the Democrats fear The Donald Martin O'Malley attacked Trump's call to temporarily ban non-citizen Muslims from entering the country'If Donald Trump wants to start a registry, in our country, of people by faith,' O'Malley boomed, 'he can start with me!' Sanders claimed Trump believes 'climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese'For more on the Democratic debate visitwww.dailymail.co.uk/DemDebate

Republican presidential front-runnerDonald Trump drew less than one-half as much interest from debating democrats Sunday night, compared with their last on-stage contest in December.

But he was still the only GOP contender who drew any fire by name as Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley tussled in Charleston, South Carolina.

Clinton, the presumptive favorite to win the Democratic nomination, left Trump out of her rhetoric. But Sanders and O'Malley launched broadsides as his positions on Islamic terrorism and global warming.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEOS 

GLOBAL WARMING WARRIOR: Vermont's Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders took a climate-change shot at Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday during the Democrats' debate in Charleston, South Carolina

'IT'S A HOAX': Trump had claimed in late December that the climate change movement was a 'hoax' and a 'money-making industry'

SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT: The South Carolina debate brought bitter rivals Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders within spitting distance of each other, and included Martin O'Malley as a feisty third wheel

'The debate is over. Climate change is real. It is already causing major problems,' Sanders said in the second half of Sunday night's contest. 'And if we do not act boldly and decisively, a bad situation will become worse.'

'It is beyond my comprehension,' he added moments later, 'how we can elect as President of the United States somebody like Trump who believes that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese.'

That line brought laughter from a partisan audience gathered downtown at the Gaillard Center.

Trump indeed said during a December 30 rally in Hilton Head, South Carolina that the modern climate change movement is 'a hoax. I mean, it's a money-making industry, okay? It's a hoax, a lot of it.'

He insisted that 'we don't have to destroy our economy' in order to protect the natural environment.

Trump never said during that appearance that China invented the purported hoax, but did point a finger at Beijing for failing to abide by the same rules the United States agreed to follow in a recently inked multinational climate change deal.

'They're buying all of our coal. We can't use coal anymore, essentially. They're buying our coal, and they're using it,' he said.

In 2012 The Donald tweeted – in a moment he later called a 'joke,' that '[t]he concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.'

O'Malley, a former Maryland governor, said Sunday night that he objected to Trump's call for a temporary ban on non-citizen Muslims entering the United States until the federal government can determine 'what is going on' in the wake of a deadly Islamist attack in San Bernardino, California.

DRUNK IN LOVE WITH HILLARY: A Clinton supporter advertised her support from Beyonce during a rally outside Sunday night's debate site

He spoke of a 'political front' in the war against the ISIS terror army. 

'If Donald Trump wants to start a registry, in our country, of people by faith,' O'Malley boomed, 'he can start with me!'

'And I will sign up as one who is totally opposed to his fascist appeals that wants to vilify American Muslims. That can do more damage to our democracy than anything.'

Sanders had already drawn the billionaire's blood, saying earlier that all three Democrats on stage had 'denounced Trump's attempt to divide this country, the anti-Latino rhetoric, the racist rhetoric, the anti-Muslim rhetoric.' 

The focus on Trump to the exclusion of all the other Republicans may indicate that Democrats fear the real estate tycoon more than the establishment candidates who want to unseat him at the top of the GOP pyramid.

ROUNDING UP CATHOLICS? Martin O'Malley (left) said that if Donald Trump (right) wants to segregate Americans by religion – meaning Muslims – 'he can start with me!'

IT'S GO TIME: The lawn of Charleston's Gaillard Center became a forest of yard signs Sunday night

Sanders made a point of emphasizing his poll numbers in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup with The Donald when he made his case that the Democratic Party should nominate him instead of Clinton.

'In terms of polling, we are running ahead of Secretary Clinton in terms of taking on my good friend Donald Trump,' Sanders said.

In the December 19 Democratic debate there were no fewer than nine separate mentions of Trump's name – including a controversial claim from Clinton that her league-leading Republican counterpart 'is becoming ISIS' best recruiter. They are going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.'

That contention was never backed up, although propaganda videos introduced later featured both Trump and Clinton.

O'Malley said that night that the United States 'must never surrender our American values to racists, must never surrender them to the fascist pleas of billionaires with big mouths.' 

THE 2016 FIELD: WHO'S IN AND WHO'S OUT 

A whopping 15 people from America's two major political parties are candidates in the 2016 presidential election.

The field includes two women, an African-American and two Latinos. All but one in that group – Hillary Clinton – are Republicans.

At 12 candidates, the GOP field has already lost two current governors, two former governors and a sitting senator, but is but still deeper than ever.

A much smaller group of three Democrats includes a former secretary of state, a former governor and a current senator.

DEMOCRATS IN THE RACE

Hillary ClintonFormer sec. of state

Age on Election Day: 69

Religion: United Methodist 

Base: Liberals 

Résumé:Former secretary of state. Former U.S. senator from New York. Former U.S. first lady. Former Arkansas first lady. Former law school faculty, University of Arkansas Fayetteville.

Education: B.A. Wellesley College. J.D. Yale Law School.

Family: Married to Bill Clinton (1975), the 42nd President of the United States. Their daughter Chelsea is married to investment banker Marc Mezvinsky, whose mother was a 1990s one-term Pennsylvania congresswoman.

Claim to fame: Clinton was the first US first lady with a postgraduate degree and presaged Obamacare with a failed attempt at health care reform in the 1990s.

Achilles heel: A long series of financial and ethical scandals has dogged Clinton, including recent allegations that her husband and their family foundation benefited financially from decisions she made as secretary of state. Her performance surrounding the 2012 terror attack on a State Department facility in Benghazi, Libya, has been catnip for conservative Republicans. And her presidential campaign has been marked by an unwillingness to engage journalists, instead meeting with hand-picked groups of voters.

Bernie Sanders* Vermont senator

Age on Election Day: 75

Religion: Jewish

Base: Far-left progressives

Résumé:U.S. senator. Former U.S. congressman. Former mayor of Burlington, VT.

Education: B.A. University of Chicago.

Family: Married to Jane O’Meara Sanders (1988), a former president of Burlington College. He has one child from a previous relationship and is stepfather to three from Mrs. Sanders' previous marriage. His brother Larry is a Green Party politician in the UK and formerly served on the Oxfordshire County Council.

Claim to fame: Sanders is an unusually blunt, and unapologetic pol, happily promoting progressivism without hedging. He is also the longest-serving 'independent' member of Congress – neither Democrat nor Republican.

Achilles heel: Sanders describes himself as a 'democratic socialist.' At a time of huge GOP electoral gains, his far-left ideas don't poll well. He favors open borders, single-payer universal health insurance, and greater government control over media ownership.

* Sanders is running as a Democrat but has no party affiliation in the Senate.

Martin O'Malley   Former Maryland governor

Age on Election Day: 53

Religion: Catholic

Base: Centrists 

Résumé:Former Maryland governor. Former city councilor and mayor of Baltimore, MD. Former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

Education: B.A. Catholic University of America. J.D. University of Maryland.

Family: Married to Katie Curran (1990) and they have four children. Curran is a district court judge in Baltimore. Her father is Maryland's attorney general. O'Malley's mother is a receptionists in the Capitol Hill office of Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski.

Claim to fame: O'Malley pushed for laws in Maryland legalizing same-sex marriage and giving illegal immigrants the right to pay reduced tuition rates at public universities. But he's best known for playing guitar and sung in a celtic band cammed 'O’Malley’s March.'

Achilles heel: O’Malley may struggle in the Democratic primary since he endorsed Hillary Clinton eight years ago. If he prevails, he will have to run far enough to her left to be an easy target for the GOP. He showed political weakness when his hand-picked successor lost the 2014 governor's race to a Republican. But most troubling is his link with Baltimore, whose 2016 race riots have made it a nuclear subject for politicians of all stripes.

DEMOCRATIC DROPOUTS

Jim Webb, former Virginia senator

     (withdrew Oct. 20, 2015)

Lincoln Chafee, former Rhode Island governor

     (withdrew Oct. 23, 2015)

COMMENTS

Big banks brace for oil loans to implode

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Firms on Wall Street helped bankroll America's energy boom, financing very expensive drilling projects that ended up flooding the world with oil.

Now that the oil glut has caused prices tocrash below $30 a barrel, turmoil is rippling through the energy industry and souring many of those loans. Dozens of oil companies have gone bankrupt and the ones that haven't are feeling enough financial stress to slash spending and cut tens of thousands of jobs.

Three of America's biggest banks warned last week that oil prices will continue to create headaches on Wall Street -- especially if doomsday scenarios of $20or even $10 oil play out.

For instance, Wells Fargo (WFC) is sitting on more than $17 billion in loans to the oil and gas sector. The bank is setting aside $1.2 billion in reserves to cover losses because of the "continued deterioration within the energy sector."

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) is setting aside an extra $124 million to cover potential losses in its oil and gas loans. It warned that figure could rise to $750 million if oil prices unexpectedly stay at their current $30 level for the next 18 months.

"The biggest area of stress" is the oil and gas space, Marianne Lake, JPMorgan's chief financial officer, told analysts during a call on Thursday. "As the outlook for oil has weakened, we would expect to see some additional reserve build in 2016."

Citigroup (C) built up loan loss reserves in the energy space by $300 million. The bank said the move reflects its view that "oil prices are likely to remain low for a longer period of time."

If oil stays around $30 a barrel, Citi is bracing for about $600 million of energy credit losses in the first half of 2016. Citi said that figure could double to $1.2 billion if oil dropped to $25 a barrel and stayed there.

Related: $10 oil: Crazy or the real floor beneath the oil crash?

More oil companies will die

The oil crash has already caused 42 North American oil companies to file for bankruptcy since the beginning of 2015, according to a list compiled by Houston law firm Haynes and Boone. It's only likely to get worse. Standard & Poor's estimates that 50% of energy junk bonds are "distressed," meaning they are at risk of default.

"There is a lot of distress in the industry. There will be a lot of pain but they'll get through it," said Buddy Clark, a 33-year veteran of the energy finance space and a partner at Haynes and Boone.

The financial pain has gotten so great that now there's murmurs of a bail out for the U.S. oil industry, though it's clear any assistance would run into political opposition.

Related: Is it time to bail out the U.S. oil industry?

Are banks ready?

All of this raises the question: Is Wall Street doing enough to prepare for the oil storm?

"One year from now, are you going to look back and say, 'Whoops, we didn't get ahead of this enough,'" outspoken banking analyst Mike Mayo asked JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon during Thursday's conference call.

Dimon said if it were up to him, he'd reserve against the potential for even greater losses. However, he said those decisions are limited by accounting rules.

Still, Dimon said the energy portfolio makes up just a small portion of JPMorgan's balance sheet and many of the loans are backed by physical assets. That means banks can sell off assets to recover money if a company defaults on its loans.

"We're not worried about the big oil companies. These are mostly the smaller ones that you're talking," Dimon said.

Paul Miller, a banking analyst at FBR, said oil loans don't represent nearly the same threat to banks that mortgages did last decade. He also pointed out that banks have been forced to stockpile capital to help them absorb losses.

"The big banks might have 1% to 6% of exposure. That's not going to kill them. This is not like 2006 or 2007," Miller said.

Despite the turmoil, JPMorgan isn't planning to run away from the oil patch.

"To the extent we can responsibly support clients, we're going to. And if we lose a little bit more money because of it, so be it," Dimon said.

CNNMoney (New York) First published January 18, 2016: 4:13 AM ET

COMMENTS

The North Dakota Crude Oil That's Worth Less Than Nothing

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www.bloomberg.com

Oil is so plentiful and cheap in the U.S. that at least one buyer says it would need to be paid to take a certain type of low-quality crude.

Flint Hills Resources LLC, the refining arm of billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch’s industrial empire, said it would pay-$0.50 a barrel Friday for North Dakota Sour, a high-sulfur grade of crude, according to a list price posted on its website. That’s down from $13.50 a barrel a year ago and $47.60 in January 2014.

While the negative price is due to the lack of pipeline capacity for a particular variety of ultra low quality crude, it underscores how dire things are in the U.S. oil patch. U.S. benchmark oil prices have collapsed more than 70 percent in the past 18 months and fell below $30 a barrel for the first time in 12 years last week. West Texas Intermediate traded at $29.03 as of 11:13 a.m. in New York.

“Telling producers that they have to pay you to take away their oil certainly gives the producers a whole bunch of incentive to shut in their wells,” said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates LLC in Houston.

Flint Hills spokesman Jake Reint didn’t respond to a phone call and e-mail outside of work hours on Sunday to comment on the bulletin. The prices posted by Flint Hills Resources and rivals such as Plains All American Pipeline LP are used as benchmarks, setting reference prices for dozens of different crudes produced in the U.S.

Plains All American quoted two other varieties of American low quality crude at very low prices: South Texas Sour at $13.25 a barrel and Oklahoma Sour at $13.50 a barrel. 

Canadian Bitumen

High-sulfur crude in North Dakota is a small portion of the state’s production, with less than 15,000 barrels a day coming out of the ground, said John Auers, executive vice president at Turner Mason & Co. in Dallas. The output has been dwarfed by low-sulfur crude from the Bakken shale formation in the western part of the state, which has grown to 1.1 million barrels a day in the past 10 years.

Different grades of oil are priced based on their quality and transport costs to refineries. High-sulfur crudes are generally priced lower because they can only be processed at plants that have specific equipment to remove sulfur. Producers and refiners often mix grades to achieve specific blends, and prices for each component can rise or fall to reflect current economics.

Enbridge Inc. stopped allowing high-sulfur crudes on its pipeline out of North Dakota in 2011, forcing North Dakota Sour producers to rely on more expensive transport such as trucks and trains, according to Auers.

Producers outside the U.S. are also feeling pain. The price for Canadian bitumen -- the thick, sticky substance at the center of the heated debate over TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline -- fell to $8.35 last week, down from as much as $80 less than two years ago.

Negative energy prices are rare but not unprecedented. Propane traded at a negative value in Edmonton, a key pipeline hub in oil-rich Alberta, for about three months last year. Oil refineries sometimes pay people to take away low-demand products such as sulfur or petroleum coke to free up space. However, those are both processing byproducts, while oil is a raw material, according to Auers.

“You don’t produce stuff that’s a negative number,” Auers said. “You shut in the well.”

COMMENTS

Ban Donald Trump? You’ll Have To Ban Ex-Muslims, European Leaders, And Me As Well

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by RAHEEM KASSAM18 Jan 20161,390

It was perhaps inevitable, when you note the wilful and lazy underreporting by Britain’s mainstream media of issues pertaining to radical Islam, that when a vocal critic came along, people’s first instincts would be to call him a “racist” and seek to curtail their own rights of free speech in response. Turkeys voting for Christmas. Cutting off your nose to spite your face. Choose whatever idiom you want… if the shoe fits… ahem.

So when Suzanne Kelly – a long-standing anti-Trump campaigner in Scotland – started a parliamentary petition, the media seized on it, failing to report that a) it was NOT in response to his comments about a moratorium on Muslim immigration to the U.S. and b) it was actually started BEFORE he even said anything of the sort.

It was one socialist, who has been “investigating Trump’s activities and the objections of local residents to his golfing development for several years” who inadvertently triggered tonight’s parliamentary committee debate on effectively banning people from saying anything even remotely critical of Islam. It accidentally turned from a socialist crusade against property rights, to a socialist crusade in favour of an Islamic blasphemy law in Britain.

Don’t worry – today’s debate isn’t binding. Nor is it in the House of Commons chamber. But if you were to turn Sky News on this morning, you’d think there was a key government vote on the matter. Of course, it has been seized upon by Muslim Members of Parliament.

But if Mr. Trump has to be banned from Britain, then who else? Well, a significant number of Britons, really, who believe, as Saxony’s Prime Minister Stanislaw Tillichhas said this weekend, that the West has “too little experience with Islam” and that inward migration should be curbed.

And what about Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has said that “Islam has never been a part of Europe” or Slovakia’s premier Robert Fico, who has said that Muslims are “impossible to integrate”? Do we ban these people too?

Do we ban ex-Muslims like Ayaan Hirsi Ali? Do we ban people like Sohail Ahmed, a self-professed former radical who has since left Islam? Or is the British reaction to Donald Trump’s comments – for that is what most thought they were signing the petition about – reserved for white American men?

Whatever the motivation – and whatever your answer to the questions posed above, it is surely obvious at this point that British democracy is in a very sorry state.

And we could talk about why until we’re blue in the face: self-censorship, post-colonial guilt, media indoctrination, the liberal monopoly on public life… the reasons are endless. Why waste the time?

Instead I suggest we become far more robust in our language. Far more robust in asserting our birthrights. And far more robust in rejecting the attempts at manipulation of our nation state.

Yes, a lot of our efforts this year should go to fighting a European referendum so that we may reassert ourselves on the world stage again. But don’t forget, once parliament is sovereign again, it will be a parliament that we have packed with soft-fascists. Those who want to tell us what to eat, drink, smoke, and think. And those who will today be discussing what amount of free speech should get you banned from this country.

It is this, coupled with the long-standing liberal monopoly of the press and our television channels that we have to think about fighting next. Otherwise what is the point in being a sovereign nation?

Whether or not you agree with me about Donald Trump – you surely believe that it is time for radical change in this country. And that starts with refusing to vote for the same old parties, buying the same old newspapers, and watching the same old TV channels. Turn it off.

Follow Raheem Kassam on Twitter hereand on Facebook here for less of the same, and more of what’s really going on

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UK Parliament to Debate Banning Trump from Britain

THE NATION THAT GAVE THE WORLD THE MAGNA CARTA IS DEAD.
Pamela Geller

By BREITBART LONDON18 Jan 20163,531

The British parliament is set to debate today whether to ban U.S. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump from entering the UK.

The debate comes after 570,000 people signed an online petition calling for Mr Trump to be refused entry after he called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States.

Breitbart London reported last week how the effort is being spearheaded by a Muslim Labour MP who has admitted previously campaigning for Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential Election and is one of the MPs who helped the hard-left anti-Israel Jeremy Corby become her party’s leader.

She told the Telegraph last week: “The United Kingdom should not be held to ransom by corrosive billionaire politicians. In our country, money doesn’t buy the right to sew discord and hatred in our communities. Donald Trump’s threats about withholding investment from the UK is another desperate attempt to get in the headlines and anyone seeing his comments should reject his bigotry.”