SPACs, Oil Price Spikes, Tax on Big Oil Companies, and the JOLTS Report

SPACs: You may not remember about 18 to 24 months ago when the big rage was SPACs. These are special purpose acquisition companies, and many were formed back in 2020. We talked about not investing in these blind pools for fear of being hurt and losing money.

Oil Price Spikes: Russia has made a bold call that if the West proceeds with a ban on energy exports, oil prices would skyrocket to $300/barrel if not more. This would be a devastating situation for our economy, but I do not see this as likely. Currently the major oil companies and the government are playing a blame game with one another.

Tax on Big Oil Companies: I was disappointed to see congress members solution to higher oil prices is to tax big oil companies at extremely high rates. The proposal which comes from Elizabeth Warren and Sheldon Whitehouse would require oil companies that produce or import at least 300,000 barrels of oil per day to pay a per-barrel tax equal to 50% of the difference between the current price of a barrel and the average price from the years 2015 to 2019. 

JOLTS: Our favorite Job Openings report (JOLTS) came out today and the openings continue to remain strong with 11.26 million in the month of January. This level is currently 4.75 million more than those that are counted as unemployed.