Monday Evening, The Market, Energy, And Political Page, Part 3, T+18 -- May 28, 2018

Updates

May 29, 2018: Italy: ready to "exit." The US is the only economy with legs.

Original Post

Failed (and failing) states: I touched on this briefly the other day. Something tells me this is a story that is not getting the attention it deserves.

• Turkey: a tyranny establishes itself. London Review of Books, May 24, 2018; a very, very long ten-page article. 
• Italy: ready to "exit." The US is the only economy with legs.
• Venezuela.
• Colombia. 
• Mexico. In July will elect a far left president that is very likely to take Mexico down the "road-to-Venezuela."
• Brazil. Now the truck strike. Country at a standstill after nine days of this nonsense. No end in sight.
• Saudi Arabia. Needs $88 oil; the price of oil now trending down again. 
• Canada. Can't even get a simple pipeline project approved. Everybody sees this as a "financial" problem; it's much more than that.

Russian roulette? Has anyone been following the latest Russian malware scare? [That's a rhetorical question: do not reply with answers.]

The FBI says that "as many as" 500,000 routers in 54 countries "may have" been infected with Russian malware. The FBI is talking about "personal routers" -- routers used in homes and in small businesses. I assume there are 500,000 routers in the state of North Dakota alone. Plus or minus a few thousand. But, c'mon man, 500,000 routers in 54 countries -- how did they come up with this number? I'm not saying this isn't likely to have happened, but it sounds like the FBI is CTA.

So far, although I may have missed it, it appears the Drudge Report has not linked this story. This sounds like the kind of story the Drudge Report would link and so far it has not. I believe the story is at least two days old. My wife told me about it when I got home after being gone for a week. I had to google it. The FBI urges everyone to re-boot their routers. And change their passwords. How does one re-boot a router? One unplugs it for 30 seconds. Electrical storms in Texas do that on a regular basis. I think our router is re-booted at least once a month during tornado season. Changing the password is a bit more difficult. I will take action if my internet provider contacts me and suggests I do that.

Back to the Bakken tomorrow.