Wednesday Morning Journal Links And Maybe Other News -- The Train Wreck Is The Central Story In Today's Journal; No Mention Of The Syrian Civil War (Except Tangentially)

A reminder: someone stole my "URL" so a lot of links inside the blog will be broken; it will take time to fix them; some will probably never be fixed.

ALERT ALERT ALERT ALERT

 

Tesla announces a recall: a defect in the mounting bracket of the back seat in their otherwise "perfect" Model S. The company estimates 20% of their 1,226 vehicles might be affected. At least we know how many Tesla Model S's are out there. About as many in the ONEOK natural gas processing plants parking lots in North Dakota. I assume there are a lot of Ford 150's in those parking lots. The workers, no doubt, leave their Porsches in their garages back home.

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Okay, that's over. Now for the rest of the news.

The Wall Street Journal has some incredible stories today.

Again, the most interesting news is the news that is not being reported: what happened to the proxy war in Syria between Mr Putin and Mr O'Bama. Someone blinked. We'll never know.

Section D (Personal Journal) has some incredible stories today.  First of all, Walt Mossberg confirms that Apple's new battery/MacAir does indeed "last all day." The only competitor that comes close is a Sony laptop, and that's only when you attach a second battery to the underside of the Sony laptop. Also, this little bit of trivia in the article:

For my tests, I chose the latest MacBook Air, introduced last week. The Air is the leading slim and light laptop in the U.S. According to research firm NPD, it outsold all Windows Ultrabooks combined in U.S. retail sales for the first four months of this year. I also took a look at an entirely new Windows Ultrabook, the Sony Vaio Pro 13, a handsome, even lighter laptop with a touch screen to accommodate Microsoft's touch-centric Windows 8 operating system.

It's a great article; must-read for Apple fanboys. No one else will care.

Then this story: tweens say it with duct tape.  Last night we were discussing the concept of "tweens" with our two granddaughters. So, the article was timely in that respect. In addition, our older granddaughter had made a "Father's Day Card" for her father earlier in the week with duct tape, using multiple colored tape. And Sharpies. This article is all about youngsters, creativity, Sharpies, and duct tape. Sharpies are not ubiquitous, and come in 31 colors; duct tape comes in 200 different colors, up from 11 in 1997. It's another great article for anyone with children between the ages of 6 and 60.

I did not read the article on working with Microsoft on the iPhone, but it should be of interest to many.

In Section C (Money & Investing), I didn't read this article either about the market continues to move higher. This certainly doesn't look like a market worried about a war in the Mideast: first the market is going higher (which is normally wouldn't in a shooting war); and, oil is not spiking, just moving up nicely. If there was any concern that there would be a disruption in OPEC oil, the price of oil would spike at least $25.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here.

My hunch: the market will fall significantly this afternoon after Ben mentions the word taper and the phrase "later this year" in the same sentence. So, we'll see. Some folks will probably sell high this a.m. and buy back low this afternoon. Others will sell low, and buy back high.

In Section B (Marketplace), the best story of the day. I proposed this "solution" some years ago; I don't know if I posted it on the blog. Wal-Mart needs to use their thousands of stores as mini-distribution centers to compete with Amazon. And that's just what they are now doing. There is also a back-story to this development. Two great articles. Amazon, by the way, is vexed with strikes in Germany. Wal-Mart pulled out of Germany years ago when it couldn't adjust to German ways, like this big of trivia at the linked article:

Wal-Mart famously ran into difficulty in Germany after trying to impose American rules on its German employees. Wal-Mart forbids supervisors from dating employees and asks employees to smile. Germany employees fought this, saying it was an affront to their personal rights.

One sort of understands how an Adolf Hitler could take control of a country with that attitude: smiling is an affront to personal rights. Okay. I doubt Adolph smiled after the age of 12, assuming he ever smiled before then.

On a happier notes, pilots in the future will use iPads in the cockpit, instead of dials and buttons. Passengers are already using them in economy. Everyone will be smiling.

And, as noted above, the front page did not have anything about Mideast strife, or if it did, not worth taking time to read. But this was predictable: health-insurance exchanges are behind schedule. Train wreck.

Around two million people are projected to receive insurance through the small business exchanges and seven million people will be enrolling in the individual insurance exchanges in 2014, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The small-business exchanges in particular have had some early setbacks. The federal government said in April that contrary to initial plans, it wouldn't allow workers in the first year to choose between a range of insurance options offered through employers. For the first year, companies will select one plan to offer to workers.

In some states, only one insurance carrier has expressed interest in the small-business exchange. In Washington state, officials have had to postpone the exchange altogether because they couldn't find a carrier willing to offer small-business plans for all parts of the state.

Seventeen states are running their own small-business exchanges, with the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services carrying out the task on behalf of the remaining 33 states.

One huge train wreck. Senator Baucus is getting out just in time. 

For those wondering how the oil market is gamed, a great article with details on how you, too, can play the game. Assuming, of course, you can take delivery of 80,000 bbls of crude oil next Monday.  The source is Platts, one of the few sites I follow on Twitter.

By the way, I continue to say that a Twitter account is imperative in this day and age.

Illinois continues to flirt with ... well, flirt with something. The Illinois legislature delayed a pension vote due to deadlock.

Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, has called the legislature back into session for Wednesday after members failed last month to pass a plan to fix a $96.8 billion shortfall in the state retirement system after more than two years of debate. The lack of action on the shortfall has caused Illinois's credit rating to fall to the lowest among U.S. states.

The entire state government, legislative and executive, is on one side of the aisle. Cue up Connie Francis. I suppose this is the sudden interest if finding Jimmy Hoffa; maybe he has a plan. He's dead, but that doesn't stop politics in Illinois.

I really was correct: in the world news section, "nothing" on the Syrian Civil War, except as background to other stories.

In the op-ed section, one of my favorite writers, Holman W. Jenkins says the young won't buy O'BamaCare. Young adults spend, on average, about $800/year for health care. Under O'BamaCare they either have to buy health insurance at $6,000/year or pay a $95 fine or 1% of their salary. The truck drivers in the Bakken earning $100,000/year will have a thousand-dollar penalty for free medical care vs trying to figure out how to enroll on-line and then pay $6,000 for the exercise. This is not rocket science. This is not even math. It's simple arithmetic. As one Democratic Senator pointed out last week -- that's right, it was "Markey" in a "Markey vs Gomez" debate in Massachusetts. Train wreck.  

For $5 I could have heard this author speak at a Harvard Book Store event last week, but I chose not to go: Niall Ferguson on "the regulated states of America."