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A roundup of what The Globe and Mail's market strategist Scott Barlow is reading this morning on the World Wide Web.

A terrific report from Bloomberg underscores the comfort of oil sands producers at the $50 per barrel West Texas Intermediate crude oil benchmark price.

"Even with crude down 52 percent since June, output will grow 3.5 percent this year from the world's fifth-biggest producer. The Canadian dollar is near a six-year low and materials cost less, helping oil sands producers cut costs and keep pumping. Oil would have to stay between $30 and $35 a barrel for at least six months, down from about $50 now, before wells and mines are shut, according to the Canadian Energy Research Institute."

This post is even more important in light of all the misleading "producers are unprofitable at [ randomly selected price] per barrel" statistics. These average numbers do not account for quality of wells, stage of production and other important factors. In the end, each producer has its own cost curve.

"Canadian oil sands output growth defies plunge in prices: Energy" – Bloomberg

Another Bloomberg report details the success of Saudi Arabia's strategy to reduce non-Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' oil supply by refusing to cut production. I'm a bit uncomfortable with this line of argument – if anyone should be responsible for cutting production it's the Americans, who have come from practically nowhere as an oil-producing nation to produce more than twice as much crude as Iraq. I also suspect that the Saudis are more concerned with maintaining market share than affecting U.S. operations, but that's just a quibble.

"'OPEC giving up on trying to control the price is working,' Francisco Blanch, head of commodities research at Bank of America Corp. in New York said by phone. 'It is having the effect that we would expect, which is a decline in investment and ultimately supply, and somewhat higher demand. We think this change is for good.'"

"Saudis' oil price war is paying off" – Bloomberg

"The oil price has been rising again – but will it last?" – The Economist

Former U.K. finance executive turned pundit Frances Coppola posted the transcript from her remarks at a recent forum discussing the failure of macroeconomics as a discipline ahead of the financial crisis. It's not actionable information, but in my opinion it's constructive as a means for economics to move forward.

"Some of the most influential people in macroeconomics have spent their lives developing theories and models that have been shown to be at best inadequate and at worst dangerously wrong. Olivier Blanchard's call for policymakers to set policy in such a way that linear models will still work should be seen for what it is – the desperate cry of an aging economist who discovers that the foundations upon which he has built his career are made of sand."

"The failure of macroeconomics" – Coppola comment

A paper from the Bank for International Settlements argues that as a population ages, inflation pressures increase. This is, of course, an important policy issue as the Canadian population steadily tilts towards the elderly.

"We find a stable and significant correlation between demography and low-frequency inflation. In particular, a larger share of dependents (ie young and old) is correlated with higher inflation, while a larger share of working age cohorts is correlated with lower inflation."

"Can demography affect inflation and monetary policy?" – Bank for International Settlements

Tweet of the Day: "@voxdotcom Here's the favored recreational drug of your grandparents' generation: bit.ly/1LLDTCy http://t.co/QOckauZTZJ "

Diversion: "The eleven most useless and misleading infographics on the internet" – i09

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