Idle Musings On A Very Newsworthy Day

This has been an incredible morning for news.

Just-released census figures: the fastest growing county in the United States is Williams County, North Dakota, the center of the Bakken. 

Oil is settling "down" -- currently up about $1.10 but it was as much as $2.31/bbl higher. [Talk about volatility: at 10:52 central time, it's up $2.44 over on Bloomberg.]

The US federal government declares football athletes on scholarship are employees of the university. Even if the football athletes don't vote to unionize, there is now precedent to declare those on scholarship to be employees of the university.

Geo-politically, these are just some of the areas in play: Estonia, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Ukraine. Air Canada won't fly into Venezuela. It is my understanding that American Airlines has one quick-turn flight into/out of Venezuela during the night. Venezuela is perhaps the biggest story in the western hemisphere right now. Brazil could become a headline story before the year is out -- energy problems and drought.

Headline story in the WSJ: US insurers concerned over most recent extension in ObamaCare. Insurance works this way: insurers calculate risks on an annual basis and the annual premium to cover that risk. The insurers are "nice" enough to divide that annual premium into monthly payments, divided evenly over twelve months. With the extension, folks who pay for nine months of coverage will get the same coverage for the rest of the year as those who pay for the entire twelve months. If one did not have insurance in January, February, or March, but visited the doctor who prescribed diagnostic tests, one could delay those tests into June, July, August, while waiting to enroll. Just one example. [Later: even CNN.com refers to the 6 million enrollees as a "symbolic victory."]

Jobless claims plummet, unexpectedly. Of course, no one believes these numbers, but they are what they are. The only thing that has really changed in the past few weeks: unemployment benefits for long-term unemployed are coming to an end.  The wind is taken out of the sail of those who want to extend long-term unemployment benefits (this will not be a major campaign issue); and, all things being equal, the unemployment numbers should keep getting better.

The Bakken will do just fine, but there are some headwinds: huge competition from the Permian and the Eagle Ford. Fortunately for North Dakota, many of the operators in the Bakken are confined to the Bakken with little acreage elsewhere.

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

I think this could be one of the best years for investing, ever. It won't beat last year, and it might be more sector-specific, but it looks like it could be an incredibly good year. But then, I'm inappropriately optimistic.