The Market, Energy, And Political Page, Part 2, T+27 -- December 3, 2018

It would be interesting to compare this with similar data points from the EU. Meanwhile, the Brits are mired in Brexit.

ISO New England: unremarkable. Link here.
Car sales: we should start seeing data today, tomorrow. EVs here. The Volt is dead; long live the Volt. Oh, give me a break. 

• GM: no longer releases monthly figures
• Ford, Japan 3 (Toyota, Honda, Nissan) drop on weak car volume. Automotive News.
• Ford: 7.1% drop overall -- its third straight monthly decline
• Ford truck demand slipped 2.3%
• SUV and crossover sales dropped 4.9%
• car deliveries skidded 20%; now down 18% for the year
• Ford could cut 25,000 jobs worldwide (mostly Ford Europe); would far exceed the 14,000 that GM announced -- Morgan Stanley
• Toyota: fell less than one percent
• Honda: its biggest setback of the year
• sharp decline in demand for the Civic "and other cars"
• 30% plunge in Civic sales
  
• Nissan: off 19%; dragged down by a staggering 33% drop in demand for cars
• FCA: 17% increase; it's third consecutive double-digit gain and ninth straight overall
• US car sales: on track to decline for fifth straight year
• Americans abandoning cars; buyers mostly looking at trucks and SUVs
• lacking? what pickups are selling? have to go back to August, 2018, sales to get an idea
• best increases yoy: Toyota Tacoma; Nissan Titan; Nissan Titan XD; Ram
• Ford not among the top four, but was up 6% yoy
• Honda Ridgeline up 7%
• Ford announced that it would bring back the Ford Ranger
• lacking? what SUVs, pick-ups are selling? have to go back to August, 2018, sales to get an idea
• four of Jeep's five nameplates saw a sales surge; Wrangler set an August record
• Audi's premium Q-brand models surged 21% overall
• Hyundai's SUV sales soared 30% yoy
• Toyota RAV4 mentioned
• Nissan Rogue: up almost 7% yoy

Comment: mainstream media focused on car sales; missing the point; should be focused on SUV sales. 

Gasoline price wars: yes, here in north Texas -- easy to find $1.89/gallon; now, seeing $1.83/gallon; 

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The Book Page

I was aware of the relationship between the two to some extent but I had forgotten the details. From Karen Armstrong's The Bible: A Biography.

Martin Luther (1483 - 1546) had been educated in the scholastic philosophy of William of Ockham (c. 1287 - 1347), who had urged Christians to try to merit God's grace by their good works. But Luther fell prey to agonizing depression and none of the traditional pieties could assuage his extreme terror of death. To escape his fears, he plunged into a frenzy of reforming activity and was especially incenced by the papal policy of seling indulgences to swell the coffers of the Church.

Some years ago I read about Luther's outrage with the Pope selling indulgences. It's an incredibly fascinating story, how money was transferred from monarchies to the Vatican.

Luther was rescued from his existential distress by exegesis (pronounced ex-uh-Jesus -- stress on first and third syllables).  The first time he saw a copy of the whole Bible he had been astonished that it contained so many more writings than he had realized. He felt that he was seeing it for the first time.

Luther became Professor Scripture and Philosophy at the University of Wittenberg and during the lectures that he gave on the Psalms and Paul's epistles to the Romans and the Galations (1513 - 1518) he experienced a spiritual breakthrough that enabled him to break free form is Ockhamite prison.

The lectures on the Psalms began conventionally enough .... but he made two significant changes. First, Luther asked the university printer Johannes Gutenberg to produce a custom-made Psalter for him with an ample margin and wide spaces for his own annotations.... Second, he introduced an entirely novel definition of the literal sense. By "literal" he did not mean the original intention of the author; he meant "christological."

"In the whole scripture," he claimed, "there is nothing else but Christ, either in plain words or involved words. Take Christ from the scriptures," he asked on another occasion, "and what else will you find there?"

Thomas Jefferson did something very similar, which is now known as the Jefferson Bible. He literally cut up and pasted his own personal bible.

Historical coincidences fascinate me. The fact that both Luther and Gutenberg were "stationed" in "the Saxon backwater town of Wittenberg." Who would thought. By the way, the Gutenberg wiki entry does not mention the word Wittenberg. I assume Karen Armstrong has impeccable references to back up her claim.

See book review at The Washington Post.

One of the historical coincidences that fascinate me the most: the coming together at one time: Benjamin Franklin (diplomat), Thomas Jefferson (thinker), George Washington (war-time general), and Alexander Hamilton (money).