Trade War? What Trade War? T+42 -- July 12, 2018

Nasdaq: closes at a record high.

S&P 500: near 2,800

Dow: up over 200 points.

WTI: holds, and closes above $70 -- barely. That's fine.

Theresa May, UK, talking "free trade agreement" with US in concert with Brexit.

Sounds like protests in London are muted.

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Notes to the Granddaughters

The Book Page

Without question, in "our" thirty-years-plus-one-day career in the US Air Force, the best assignment was our first overseas tour, Bitburg Air Base. Facebook has a page devoted to Air Force members who served at Bitburg. It's that special.

I've just finished The Quiet American by Graham Green, the story of a journalist and (probably) a spy for the OSS assigned to Saigon during the First Indochina War, the war in which the French were fighting in Vietnam and before the Americans got heavily involved. Graham Greene mentions the battle at Phat Diem, 1951, and the book was published in 1955, so it obviously takes place sometime between those two years.

1955.

Sixty-three years ago.

For a youngster, 20 years of age back in 1955, he/she (and most likely a "he) would be 83 years old today. Probably not many still living that can say they were in Saigon/Hanoi back in 1955. For those that can, I can only assume the memories would be haunting. A lot of "what-ifs."
 
Great, great book. It is amazing how Graham Greene, writing in the early 1950's was able to foreshadow events that took place ten years later.

If you have not had your "fill" of Vietnam, and have not discovered Graham Greene, this is a great place to start.

A love triangle: the narrator/journalist, Thomas Fowler, an older fellow, a journalist, English, probably in his 50s; Alden Pyle, an idealistic 26-year-old American agent, probably OSS; and, Phuong, a young (maybe 18 years old) Vietnamese woman; their lover. In Los Angeles, through my Japanese mother-in-law, and in the US Air Force, I met many Asian war brides. The stories were very, very similar. The ones who survived with a marriage intact seemed to be the rare ones.