This Is Not An Investment Site; Do Not Make Any Investment Or Financial Decisions Based On What You Read Here Or Think You May Have Read Here -- May 8, 2015

Yellen says market overpriced -- May 6, 2015
Yellen was right; markets are overpriced -- May 7, 2015

Market surges, oil up -- May 8, 2015:

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Global Warming A UN Ruse -- Australian Prime Minister Advisor

AFP is reporting:

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's top business advisor on Friday claimed climate change was a ruse encouraged by the United Nations to create a new authoritarian world order under its control.

Maurice Newman, chairman of the Prime Minister's Business Advisory Council, said the real agenda was "concentrated political authority. Global warming is the hook".

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Kennedys Flying To Rapid City To Go Skiing

Link here. Snowstorm in the Black Hills and another one forecast for this Sunday; recent snowstorm in Colorado.

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At Least It's Hard To Catch

Fox News is reporting:

Ebola has been discovered inside the eyes of a patient months after the virus was gone from his blood.

Some survivors have reported eye issues, but how often they occur is not known. The virus also is thought to be able to persist in semen for several months. Ebola has infected more than 26,000 people since December 2013 in West Africa.

The new report concerns Dr. Ian Crozier, a 43-year-old American physician diagnosed with Ebola in September while working with the World Health Organization in Sierra Leone.

Crozier was treated at Emory University Hospital’s special Ebola unit in Atlanta and was released in October, when the virus was no longer detected in his blood. Two months later, he developed an inflammation and very high blood pressure in one eye, which causes swelling and potentially serious vision problems.

The Ebola news embargo remains in effect. 

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Baltimore 

The Boston Globe is reporting:

What’s more, a disproportionate chunk of the money that the city has goes to its most pressing need: public safety. While cities like Boston and New York capitalized on dramatic declines in crime to fuel urban renaissances over the past three decades, Baltimore continues to suffer from chronically high levels of violence. In 2016, Baltimore will spend about $130 million more than Boston will on policing. This makes sense and it doesn’t — Baltimore had 235 homicides in 2013. Boston had 40 that year. (Baltimore's population is slightly less than that of Boston.)

Sort of goes back to the same questions that need to be asked in Milwaukee.

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Jobs

Unemployment rate drops to 5.4%. Folks are coming out of the woodwork to snatch up those jobs now that the minimum wage has been raised. Reuters is reporting:

U.S. job growth rebounded last month and the unemployment rate dropped to a near seven-year low of 5.4 percent, signs of a pick-up in economic momentum that could keep the Federal Reserve on track to hike interest rates this year. Nonfarm payrolls increased 223,000 as gains in services sector jobs offset weakness in mining, the Labor Department said on Friday.  

The one-tenth of a percentage point decline in the unemployment rate to its lowest level since May 2008 came even as more people piled into the labor market. 

"... as more people piled into the labor market." LOL. Whatever.

This has nothing to do with "people piling into the labor market." The 5.4% unemployment is all about people dropping out of the labor market. A record 93,194,000 Americans are NOT working; a record 56,167,000 women are not in the labor force. That's 93 million Americans are not working. Most of them are in Baltimore. That's 56 million American women not working. Most of them are in the suburbs.

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Typographical Errors

Back to this story: look at all the typographical errors in a story on "education." I assume the story was a press release written by the NEA. If you missed the typographic errors, two hints:

• parental volvement is missing a syllable
• el-sewhere is divided in an interesting spot

The second typo (el-sewhere) has been fixed; the first typo has not.

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Not In The News Today

Greece.
ISIS.
Saudi Arabia.

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In The News Today

Puerto Rico could run out of cash by September; miss debt payments.

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The Bakken 

Active rigs:

	5/8/2015	05/08/2014	05/08/2013	05/08/2012	05/08/2011
Active Rigs	84	191	185	209	177

RBN Energy: ocean-going ships and low-sulfur requirements. Not all that painful. Cruise ships were saved by lower oil prices overall.

About this time last year (May 2014) ship owners and companies using their vessels to transport everything from dry bulk cargo to oil and even people (cruise liners) were pretty concerned about the impact of the new 0.1% sulfur regulations coming into effect in January 2015.

That was because back then the options open to bunker fuel buyers needing to comply with the new ECA rules were all looking expensive to implement and it was expected by many in the market that shipping costs would increase sharply as a result. We’ll first take a look at the options available to meet the ECA regulations, then at how shipping companies chose to respond before January and finally at what has happened since.