The Market And Energy Page, T+292 -- November 9, 2017 -- China To Invest $83 Billion In West Virginia Shale Gas Development (I Guess, In Case All That Solar Energy Talk Doesn't Pan Out)

Trump's tax cut bill on "life support."

Free fall: CNBC talking like the market is in free fall. The Dow is down about 1%. Nasdaq is down about 1.4%.

Jobs: first time unemployment claims -- surge; up 10,000 to 239,000

• forecast: 232,000
• actual: 239,000
• four-week average: declined 1,250 to 231,250, the lowest point for the average since 227,750 in the March 31, 1973 week

Comments: so, with ...

• Trump's tax bill on "life support";
• the stock market plunging;
• first time unemployment claims surge; so ...
• ... great opportunity for Janet Yellen to raise rates in December (why not?)

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on anything you read here or think you may have read here.

Markets: so, on a day when CNBC says the market is plummeting (about 1% drop), are there any issues hitting new highs? Let's see: 56, including Duke Energy;  DR Horton; SRE. It's possible many of those hitting new highs, hit their new highs early in the morning only to pull back later.

• new lows: 53
• buying opportunity

Worth re-posting: I was alerted to this by a reader -- huge story:

China Energy, the world’s leading power company, announced Thursday it plans to spend more than $83 billion on shale gas and chemical projects in West Virginia, a deal that represents a massive foreign investment in American energy. A memorandum of understanding between the the company and American officials was signed as President Trump meets with his Chinese counterpart. The agreement is part of a broader package of deals signed between the two nations totaling well over $200 billion. The investment is expected to stretch over two decades. The $87 billion will be spent on power generation efforts, chemical manufacturing facilities and liquefied natural gas storage projects.

Deserter: one person who may have a chunk of money to spend on investments (and lawyers): self-admitted US Army deserter Sgt Bowe Bergdahl who walked. He could receive $300,000 in back pay. What a great country.

*****************************

Immigration

From: A New Literary History of America, edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Solors, c. 2009, p. 569

The Johnson-Reed Act, May 26, 1924, was the culmination of a long campaign to designate certain ethnic groups foreign to the United States. It reduced immigrant admissions to 2% of the population of each nationality already present in the United States, as enumerated in the 1890 US Census. Data points:

• this drastically curtailed immigration from countries in southern and eastern Europe, which included high numbers of Catholics and Jews
• the act excluded all aliens who were ineligible for citizenship, which shut out almost all Asians (there were exceptions) because by 1924 US courts had ruled that Chinese, Japanese, and Indian immigrants were not white and therefore could not naturalize
• the act called for the development of a system of immigration quotas proportionate to the allegedly discrete European national origins of the contemporary American population
• nonwhites: including those of African and Asian ancestry born in the US and therefore citizens were not considered part of the American population when the quotas were being drawn up
• the act, partly in deference to agricultural interests, put no numerical limitation on immigration from countries in the Western Hemisphere (like Mexico) and from American colonies, ...
• ...but with the advent of the US Border Patrol, criminalized migrant workers of Mexican descent in the Southwest and broadened antimiscegenation statutes targeted at workers from the Philippines