A Breakout? Oil Up Almost 3%; Solidly Above $51 -- October 19, 2016

WTI at $51.69. A year from now, we're all going to wish we had our own personal 1,000-bbl storage capacity for gasoline. Gasoline demand appears to have reached its seasonal low. 

No links now, but it's hard to believe that just a few months ago, GDPNow forecast a 3.3% growth rate for 3Q16; that rate is now projected to be under 2%, at 1.9%. And yet the market hangs in there.

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The Apple Page

The Surface Looked A Bit Deflated

It Just Doesn't Get Any Better Than This

From USA Today:

Bill Belichick is sticking to his old-fashioned ways on one technological front.

After the image of the New England Patriots coach slamming a Microsoft Surface tablet on the sideline in a Week 4 game against the Buffalo Bills went viral, Belichick explained Tuesday why he is fed up with the product.

“As you probably noticed, I’m done with the tablets," Belichick said. "They're just too undependable for me. I'm going to stick with pictures, which several of our other coaches do, as well, because there just isn't enough consistency in the performance of the tablets. I just can't take it anymore." 

I've had similar thoughts about the Microsoft Surface tablet. 

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And The Streets Are Made Of Gold Bricks
Except in Ferguson, Baltimore, and Cleveland

From Yahoo!Finance:

Dimon addressed a wide array of topics from the need for the Federal Reserve to raise rates, to the benefits of corporate tax reform.

It’s worth watching the full 45-minute exchange between the two titans of business (the other was Warren Buffett), especially ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

During the panel, Dimon said that Republicans and Democrats shouldn’t degrade on another over the problems being raised by both sides.

He went on to offer an upbeat assessment on America.

“America has the best hand ever dealt of any country on this planet today and ever. And Americans don’t fully appreciate what I’m about to say.”

He continued: “We have peaceful, wonderful neighbors in Canada and Mexico. We have the biggest military barriers ever built called the Atlantic and the Pacific. We have all the food, water, and energy we will ever need. We have the best military on the planet and we will for as long as we have the best economy.

And if you’re a liberal, listen closely to me in that one. OK, because the Chinese would love to have our economy. We have the best universities on the planet. They’re great ones elsewhere, but these are the best. We still educate most of the kids who start businesses around the world. We have the rule of law, which is exceptional. If you don’t believe me we can talk about Brazil, Russia…Venezuela, Argentina, China, India. Believe me, it’s not quite there.

We have a magnificent work ethic. We have innovation from the core of our bones. You can ask anyone in this room…It’s not just the Steve Jobs. We’re the widest, deepest financial markets the world has ever seen. I just made a list of these things. Maybe I missed something. It’s extraordinary. It’s extraordinary. And we have it today.”

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A Note for the Granddaughters

At the Monet: The Early Years exhibit at the Kimball Fine Arts Museum in Ft Worth, Texas, there were several paintings of the famous Holland windmills when Monet returned to the continent after a short period in England (to evade the French draft when the Franco-Prussian war broke out).

He had set his sights on the scenic and touristy Zaandan. It was then that I had the epiphany.

I was coincidentally reading a book on the Frisians. The Frisians settled at the mouth of the Rhine where it enters the North Sea, near the present day border between Holland and Belgium. Only recently are archaeologists learning more about this ancient history. Apparently there was a temple for their goddess who watched over Frisian sailors at Domburg, on the left (?) side of the Rhine. The book mentioned islands in the area that had been fought over by the ocean and the Frisians. In the end, with all those beautiful windmills, mankind won and the little islands eventually came to be Zeeland.

From wiki:

Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sighted New Zealand in 1642 and called it Staten Landt, supposing it was connected to a landmass of the same name at the southern tip of South America.

In 1645, Dutch cartographers renamed the land Nova Zeelandia after the Dutch province of Zeeland. British explorer James Cook subsequently anglicised the name to New Zealand.

The epiphany was not that New Zealand, if discovered by the Dutch, would be named after a Dutch locality. The epiphany is this: with all the possible names for this landmass that the Dutch could have chosen, they named it after the tiny little area near the home of their temple to the goddess who had watched out for their safety.

Another two dots connected.

Oh. My. Goodness. I just noted that date, 1645, while formatting this post.

1645 sounded very familiar.

I went back to Michael Pye's The Edge of the World, c. 2015, page 4, in the introduction: the temple at Domburg was "uncovered" in January, 1647, after "high winds tore up the dunes and made the sea wild. The sand was forced out of the way to show something in the subsoil that should have never been there: stone. There is no stone at all on the coast near Domburg; there is only sand, peat, clay."

That turned out to be Domburg and the temple to Hehalennia.

Apocryphal or not, it will help me tie together a number of "events."

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Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution

Nathaniel Philbrick

c. 2016

DDS: 973.4 PHI

Chapter 8

The Knight of the Burning Mountain

Chapter 7
Chapter 6
Chapter 5
Chapter 4
Chapter 3
Chapter 2
The origin of the submarine.
Chapter 1
First mention: nothing transcribed.

Chapter 8 follows.

The chapter begins on May 8, 1778:

• frigate Porcupine arrived at Philadelphia
• William (ARMY) Howe will be replaced by Sir Henry Clinton
• Brits will be redeployed against French St Lucia, taking 5,000 British troops
• Red Coats will become a skeleton of its former self; will be consolidated in New York
• his predecessor had spent six months trying to conquer

French recognition of the United States: what was once a colonial rebellion was now a world war
Britain now besiege on fronts as far away as India; and as close as the English Channel; the focus of the conflict changed from North America to the sugar-rich islands of the West Indies

• British islands in the Caribbean were considerably more economically important to Brits than North America
• short summary of how much money could be made in the Caribbean (remember, this is where Hamilton came from -- this would be a good time to review Hamilton's upbringing and coming of age in the Caribbean (wiki)

Passage of the Declaration of Independence had forced Americans to make a choice to which side they belonged

• Benedict Arnold, in 1778, still recovering from a leg injury; could not fight
• June, 1778: obvious that the Brits were preparing to leave Philadelphia
• By now, Benedict Arnold had lost both his health and his fortune to the cause; he wanted to get back as much as he could; he was not contemplating treason, simply getting back what was his; he was not alone
• Washington was in similar straits
• June 18, 1778: the Brits were gone (from Philadelphia)
• Arnold was on orders to leave Valley Forge and return to "take" control of Philadelphia (Washington gave the orders)

With the entry of France, Britain was desperate to end the war.

• Clinton was fleeing Philadelphia; may even have to flee NYC; give up America altogether for Nova Scotia
• June 19, 1778: Geo Washington and 13,000 troops march from Valley Forge

Battle of Monmouth, June 28, 1778

• Geo Washington did not know it then, but this would be his last battlefield encounter until the Siege of Yorktown.

Meanwhile, Arnold had his hands full running a chaotic Philadelphia

July 14, 1778: Geo Washington receives word that the French have arrived; overnight the Americans have naval superiority (although it was the French)

• Again, Sandy Hook: July 11 -- French arrive; ready to enter New  York Harbor where Clinton was; Howe still there and set up defensive blockade; stand-off for ten days; but French did poorly; lost two naval battles; limped back to Boston for repairs

Rest of the summer, 1778: Geo Washington spent in White Plains, where he could keep close eye on Clinton in NYC

• even though the French had lost two naval battles; the Brits were bottled up in NYC

Politics with the adoption of the new constitution in 1776; everything topsy-turvy

• Pennsylvania's farmers, artisans and mechanics (many of them Scotch-Irish Presbyterians) were in control but did not have financial wherewith of the wealthy Quakers and Anglican landowners
• those voted out of office called themselves Republicans: they tended to be well-to-do; enjoyed the finer things in life; their opponents, now in power, called themselves Constitutionalists
• Arnold: politically involved; the outrageous provocateur
• Arnold: passionate, excitable, intelligent; troubling behavior as governor of Philadelphia
• chapter ends with this: "Washington's former adjutant general, the Philadelphia lawyer Joseph Reed, pushed him [Benedict Arnold] over the edge