While talking heads and TV personalities reassure the investing public that low oil prices are "unambiguously awesome" for everyone, it seems the cracks in this narrative are starting to show. From falling wages, surging job cuts, plunging rig counts, and crashing capex, it's becoming a lot harder to 'pretend' that everything's fine. One wonders, when the companies themselves are slashing workweeks and cutting rig counts, when will 'investors' believe... perhaps now that Lynn Helms, Director of the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources explains to the House Appropriations Committee that at least half of its shale regions are already below breakeven.

From a 12 page presentation...

The following shale regions are below breakevens (at which new drilling would cease)...

Which likely explains the accelerating collapse in rig counts...

And as we noted previously,

...while his monthly gas bill for his Chevy pickup truck has dropped, he admonishes, "That’s not going to replace a paycheck... and I don’t know why this is happening." ... The impact of the energy industry here is so widespread that for some workers in Lorain, oil prices affect almost every facet of their lives, from home values to roads to jobs. “We thought this time the going was going to be good for a while,” said Chase Ritenauer, the town’s 30-year-old mayor. “But now Lorain is going to feel the impact of the global economy.”

What happens to all the happy-clappy "low gas prices will spur massive consumption" confusers (which includes - rather stunningly - The Federal Reserve) don't see the surge in spending they expected?