CHICAGO — A former DuPage County prosecutor accused of making threats against state lawmakers and the Illinois Attorney General over social media has been charged.
30-year-old Samuel Cundari, who was an Assistant State’s Attorney in DuPage County, has been charged with transmitting in interstate commerce a threat to injure another person, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Central District of Illinois.
Prosecutors say authorities were initially contacted by two Illinois State Representatives on March 17, after they were allegedly tagged in a threatening post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
The post allegedly stated “Our patience grows short with you. The day we put your kids’ feet first into a woodchipper so we can enjoy their last few screams is coming.”
Five other people or groups were also allegedly tagged in the post, including the Illinois Attorney General, and as a result, the FBI began an investigation.
Prosecutors say a couple of days prior, on May 15, a tip came into the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center regarding another post on X that appeared to be in response to an advertisement about the Springfield PrideFest, which took place on May 18.
Prosecutors say the post allegedly stated “I sure hope NOBODY leaves a pressure cooker filled with bail bearings, glass, and nails, filled with diesel fuel and fertilizer, with the over pressure safety valve disabled, near a natural gas line line [sic]. That would be VERY sad and VERY unfortunate.”
According to prosecutors, authorities were able to trace back the two social media posts to Cundari.
Cundari was subsequently arrested and charged.
If convicted, Cundari could face up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a possible fine of up to $250,000.
Although the EU cut off its biggest supplier, diesel futures prices in the bloc fell 1.6% on Monday, amounting to a 20% loss over the past two weeks as demand in the region has waned, and efforts by countries to stockpile ahead of the ban have started to pay off.
The price drop will be met withrelief by millions of the continent’s truckers, drivers and businesses that rely on diesel. About 96% of trucks, 91% of vans and 42% of passenger cars in the European Union run on the fuel, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’Association.
“The expectation was that, when the ban came in, diesel supply into Europe would tighten but, actually, that’s currently not materializing,” Mark Williams, a research director at consultancyWood Mackenzie, told CNN.
The diesel ban comes two months after the bloc placed an embargo onseaborne crude oil imports from Russia, as part of a package of sanctions against Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. Russia accounted for 29% of the region’s total diesel imports last year, data from Rystad Energy shows.
Countries have prepared for the latest banby ramping up imports of Moscow’s diesel in recent months. Europe’s imports were up nearly 19% in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared with the same period the previous year, according to energy data provider Vortexa.
“Those stocks should act as a buffer against the immediate loss of Russian diesel imports,” Williams said.
Demand across the bloc is also weak.
Data from OilX, an oil analytics firm that,shows that diesel demand in Europe was down between the start of November and the end of January compared with the same period a year before.
Analysts attribute the slump partly to warmer-than-usual weather in the region, where diesel is also used as a heating fuel, and high prices. Despite recent drops, wholesale prices are still 10% above their level the same time last year.
At the pump, the average cost of a liter of diesel in the EU hit €1.80 ($1.93) on January 30, up from €1.60 ($1.72) the same time last year, data from the European Commission shows.
Neil Crosby, a senior analyst at OilX, told CNN that “persistently weak demand data” in Europe had helped it “substantially boost its gasoil stocks over the last few months.”
Still, it may take a few months for the full impact of the ban to be felt as Europe starts to import morediesel from suppliers further afield, incurring higher shipping costs.
The blocis already importing significantly higher volumes of diesel from the United States, the Middle East and parts of Asia, according to Williams at Wood Mackenzie.
Even so, those imports will not be enough to “offset the loss of Russian barrels into Europe,” once Europe whittles down its stockpile, he said, adding that prices relative to other importing regions could start to rise from the third quarter this year.
The impact of the ban on Russia may also be underwhelming.
Moscow has managed to reroute more of its diesel to other markets since July of last year. Exports to Turkey and North Africa have soared 154% between November and January compared with the same period a year before, according to Rystad Energy.
Jorge León, a senior vice president at the firm, sees this trend continuing, he told CNN, also predicting that Russian exports to South America are likely to stay at “marginal” levels.
However, he added that the United States could redirect some of its current diesel exports to South America to Europe, with Russian diesel then “find[ing] a home” in South America.
OilX’s Crosby noted that there are “many more” potential buyers of Moscow’s diesel compared with its crude exports.
“Most Russian diesel barrels will manage to make it to global markets,” he said. “The notion that Russian diesel will have a very hard time finding new homes is beginning to lose credibility.”
— Julia Horowitz contributed reporting.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported the measurement of diesel that has fallen in Europe. Diesel demand has fallen.
Europeisscrambling to buy diesel fuel from Russia before a ban on imports comes into force in early February, but the frantic stockpiling is unlikely to prevent a new price shock for truckers, drivers and businesses.
In the first two weeks of January, European countries snapped up almost 8 million barrels of Russian diesel, according to energy data provider Vortexa, roughly on par with imports this time last year before Russia invaded Ukraine. Imports in the fourth quarter of 2022 were up nearly 19% on the same period the previous year.
Since Russia’s invasion in February last year, the European Union has made a huge effort to wean itself off Moscow’s oil and natural gas supplies. That has included a ban on all Russian seaborne crude oil imports, which came into force in December.
EU countries drastically reduced their imports of crude from Russia ahead of the ban, but that isn’t happening with diesel because it’s much harder to find alternative sources of the fuel.
Russia is the bloc’s biggest supplier, making up 29% of its total dieselimports last year, data from Rystad Energy shows. The fuel is the continent’s “economic workhorse,” Mark Williams, a research director at Wood Mackenzie, told CNN.
It is used to power the “vast majority” of transportation for goods and commodities around Europe, he said, as well as fueling the bloc’s fleet of diesel cars. About 91% of vans and 96% of all trucks run on diesel, as well as roughly 42% of passenger cars, according to the European Automobile Manufacturer’s Association.
“The main difference we see is that Europe was, for months, reducing Russian crude imports before the December deadline began,” Jay Maroo, a senior analyst at Vortexa, told CNN.
“On diesel we see the opposite, where imports have picked up — almost a final dash before the finish line,” he added.
In the last three months of 2022, the bloc imported an average of 604,000 barrels per day of Russian diesel via seaborne tankers, compared to the 508,000 barrels per day imported during the same period the year before, Vortexa data shows.
The EU ban will tighten the global market for diesel, Williams said, unless Russia can successfully divert its cargoes to Latin America and Africa, regions which typically import from the United States. That would free up US barrels to be sent to Europe, plugging the gap left by Moscow, he said.
But importing diesel from suppliers further afield, including the United States and Saudi Arabia, will push up freight costs, feeding into higher consumer prices, he said.
“We are expecting diesel prices to rise in Europe. We’re expecting a spike sort of February, March time,” Williams said.
According to Wood Mackenzie’s estimates, the price of a barrel of diesel will average $40 for the first three months of this year. That’s up a whopping 470% from the average price for the whole of 2021, before Russia’s invasion sent prices soaring.
The average EU cost of a liter of diesel at the pumphit €1.77 ($1.92) on January 9, up from €1.50 ($1.63) the same time last year, data from the European Commission shows.
France could be hit especially hard. Europe’s second largest economy is also its biggest buyer of diesel, responsible for 22% of all seaborne imports over the past three years, according to Vortexa data.
But Jorge León, a senior vice president at Rystad Energy, told CNN that the impact of the ban won’t be felt immediately in Europe because of the large amount of diesel in its stocks.
The European Union has also “done its work to find alternative suppliers,” he said, including Kuwait, which opened a massive oil refinery in November capable of producing 600,000 barrels per day of diesel. That could help cushion the impact of losing Russian supplies.
But if Europe sees a strong rebound in demand as the economy picks up, consumers can expect price rises, he added.
“Deliveries are going to be a bit more expensive… filling up [a] car is going to be a bit more expensive,” León said.
US drivers have never seen a year quite like 2022.
Wild price swings at the gas pump throughout the year make predicting prices for 2023 even more difficult.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions that it sparked on Russian oil sent the price of crude soaring in February at the beginning of the conflict.And even though relatively little Russian crude oil was ever exported to US refineries, the fact that oil prices are set on global commodity markets meant that US drivers were not spared a spike in gas prices.
Prices were far more volatile throughout 2022 than they were in other recent years, both during and before the pandemic roiled oil markets.
By June, the average US gas price crossed $5 a gallon for the first time ever, hitting a record $5.02 on June 14. But after that came a prolonged slide in gas prices, prompted by a number of factors, including the release of oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, concerns about the possibility of a recession in both the US and global economies, and a surge in Covid cases that caused renewed lockdowns in Asia. By the end of the year, the national average price of a gallon of regular gas had fallen to just over $3, well below the pre-invasion price, back to the average price of late summer of 2021.
But there was not the same level of relief for the price of diesel. Diesel prices fell 20% from their peak in June, only about half the decline for gasoline during the same period. And while gasoline is cheaper than it was a year ago, diesel remains close to the pre-2022 record price set in 2008. Greater demand for North American diesel by Europe in the wake of the war in Ukraine kept diesel prices so high.
While relatively few US drivers use diesel for their private cars, it is still the fuel used by most heavy trucks, so it had an impact on the average American’s wallet. Most trucking companies charge a fuel surcharge to their customers when diesel prices increase. Because virtually all goods purchased by Americans are on a truck at some point before those purchases, that was a factor driving inflation higher.
The wild swings in oil and gasoline prices were a major factor in battered consumer confidence during the year. But those swings were not felt evenly across the nation and throughout the year. Many of the western states faced much higher gas prices because of more limited refining capacity. But there were a number of refinery accidents throughout the year that caused spikes in other regions as well. So, everyone saw wide swings in prices, though not always at the same time.
There is also the wide variation in gas taxes, from 68 cents a gallon in California to only 15 cents a gallon in Alaska. Some states temporarily halted their state gas taxes during the year in the face of high prices.
But the difference in average income in the different states meant that drivers in some of the states with relatively low prices had to work almost as many hours to buy 15 gallons of gas as those drivers in high-priced states.
For example, in Mississippi, where the hourly average wage in November was $24.52, according to the Labor Department, it took 1 hour and 41 minutes of work to earn enough to pay for 15 gallons at $2.75 a gallon at year’s end. In California, where the average price of regular was $4.38 a gallon, or about 60% more than in Mississippi, the average hourly wage of $37.61 meant that they only had to work four more minutes to buy those 15 gallons.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has told CBS News that the spectacular collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which sent shockwaves through the crypto world last week with its bankruptcy filing, should serve as a warning to Americans about investing their money in “extremely risky” financial products traded in a space lacking “appropriate supervision and regulation.”
FTX, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, crumbled in the space of only about one week, and both the company and its former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, are now being investigated in the U.S. and other nations for possible securities violations. While the fallout from FTX’s collapse has largely been limited to the crypto finance markets, Yellen joined a rising chorus of experts and officials around the world suggesting the digital currency industry should face more regulation.
“I think this is a space where investors and consumers should really be very careful,” Yellen told CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes in a wide-ranging interview in Bali, where the Treasury Secretary was attending the G20 summit alongside President Biden. SHe
“We have very strong investor and consumer protection laws for most of our financial markets, but in some ways the crypto space has inadequate regulation.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, left, speaks with CBS News congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes in Bali, Indonesia, November 15, 2022, on the sidelines of the G20 summit.
CBS News
Yellen said the Biden administration had highlighted “regulatory holes that need to be filled for this to be a space where Americans can feel safe doing business,” and blamed the “absence of appropriate supervision and regulation” for the FTX collapse.
Yellen stressed that she was not in a position to offer Americans specific advice on how they should or should not invest their money, but she called cryptocurrencies “extremely risky assets, and even dangerous in some ways,” and urged people to “be extremely careful about their activities in this space.”
FTX’s creditors will be first in line to receive whatever assets a bankruptcy judge deems appropriate to distribute as the company seeks to restructure as part of its Chapter 11 filing. Investors in the Bahamas-based company, which had raised some $2 billion in venture capital, will be second in line. That means FTX account holders, who used the platform to trade bitcoin, solana and other digital currencies, may have to wait years to get their money back – if they ever do.
A “strong, resilient economy” vs inflation
The Treasury chief described the U.S. economy overall as strong and resilient and said she expected inflation to ease over the coming year with plenty of jobs on offer for Americans, but she warned that the global picture remained “uncertain.”
“Many countries are really suffering from high energy and food prices, and we have those strains ourselves, but we have a strong, resilient economy,” Yellen told Cordes, calling the U.S. labor market “exceptionally strong.”
“We continue to create jobs at a very solid pace. Unemployment at almost 50-year lows, and two job openings for every American who’s looking for work,” she said, calling the economic circumstances for country’s households, banks and businesses “by and large solid.”
“I expect inflation to come down over time, and Americans are rightly concerned about that, but I believe they’ll be feeling better about it,” she said.
Diesel “shortages and low inventories”
One thing that could work against the U.S. inflationary rebound this winter is a limited supply of diesel fuel, which is used both to heat buildings and to move virtually everything Americans buy around the country. Diesel powers most freight trains and trucks, and a global shortage of the fuel has seen prices climb more than 40% over the last year, and they’re still rising.
One major U.S. supplier’s warning of a “shortage” on the East Coast earlier this month sparked rumors that the fuel could even run out.
While U.S. inventories of diesel are lower than they have been since 1982, energy market experts told CBS MoneyWatch the tight supplies were no reason to panic, and the U.S. was not going to run out — at least not in the coming weeks, and not unless the global supply chain completely broke down.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen attends the Launching of the Pandemic Fund at the 2nd G20 Joint Health and Finance Ministers Meeting ahead of the G20 leaders summit, in Bali, Indonesia, November 13, 2022.
Dita Alangkara/AP
Yellen shared that optimism, but cautiously. Asked by Cordes if the U.S. had enough diesel to get through the winter, she said: “Hopefully, I believe there will be,” but acknowledged there would be “some shortages and low inventories” on the East Coast.
“Hopefully we won’t see a further increase — prices have gone up and we’re monitoring the situation very closely,” she told Cordes, adding that the Biden administration has “had conversations with the oil companies about it.”
Shift to EVs “reliant on China”?
President Biden has spoken a lot about his ambition to see half of the vehicles on U.S. roads powered by electricity, not fossil fuels, by 2030, but the Pentagon recently called China’s dominance of the electric vehicle (EV) battery market a major challenge to that goal.
Most of the raw materials used to make lithium-ion vehicle batteries are produced by China, and Yellen acknowledged that the U.S. and its auto industry have “been reliant on China” thus far.
The Treasury Secretary said the Inflation Reduction Act approved by Congress over the summer “contains incentives and provisions that are intended to change that and to diversify our supply chains for battery components.”
“They are very strong incentives for investment in these minerals in the United States and other allies, so we have a heavy focus on that,” Yellen said, adding that from next year companies that assemble EVs in North America will be “required to source around 40% of minerals, or mineral processing, in the United States or other countries that we have free trade areas with, so over time I expect the situation to change and we will become less reliant on China.”
CBS MoneyWatch’s Kristopher J. Brooks and Megan Cerullo contributed to this report.
