Notes From All Over -- Part 4, July 15, 2019

ICYMI: the NDIC Director's Cut (May, 2019, production data) was delayed; it is now scheduled to be released tomorrow. The Bakken Expo in Bismarck opens tomorrow, I believe. My hunch is that officials may want to use the most recent production data in their remarks. Look for at least one production record to have been broken in May, 2019. Wow, I love to blog about the Bakken.

The Bakken Expo: after opening remarks by the event organizers, Governor Brent Sanford of North Dakota will speak for 30 minutes. 

Disclaimer: I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken. 

NDIC:I've often said North Dakota / NDIC seems to be the most transparent regulator in the country. Regardless of what you think about California politics and its policies regarding Big Oil, the actual "transparency" of its regulatory commission is incredibly bad -- or the governor is incredibly inept.

The Desert Sun (USA Today network) reported that fracking permits in California have doubled  since the new governor entered office and he was completely unaware of that. With everything on his plate, I wouldn't expect the governor himself to track oil permits but certainly he would have a staffer that would check in on that at least once a month. Good grief. So, either it's extremely difficult to track oil and gas permits in California or the governor is incredibly inept. Whatever. This note has little to do with California and everything to do with appreciating how transparent and the NDIC is and how user-friendly its sites are.

CO2: China greenhouse gas emissions soared 50% from 2005 - 2014, inclusive. But Germany is doing its part to combat that by going coal-free.

Boeing: there was another article out today about Boeing / MAX 737 -- things not looking good and the extent to which Boeing is holding back the Dow. Having said that, all three indices apparently set new records today. Making America great.

They're reading the blog: earlier today, in a minor note, I noted that no one has talked higher consumer prices due to Trump tariffs on Chinese goods. There was lots of talk about that happening but to date there have been few examples. Well, today, over at Yahoo!Finance, they have story pushed by the AAFA CEO that Amerians will see higher prices this fall when they shop for back-to-school clothes. We'll see. If states are worried about possible high cost of clothing this fall due to tariffs, the states could declare tax-free "back-to-school" shopping for a few weekends. Texas does that every autumn: offsets any price increases and gets folks out to the malls. As for seeing increased prices due to tariffs, I doubt it. Trump/Xi agreed to suspend any new tariffs while negotiations continue.

USAA - Schwab: Schwab in talks to buy USAA's wealth management division for $2 billion. We just talked about this the other day. USAA has roughly $100 billion in wealth management assets. If Schwab pulls this off, this is a huge story. Schwab already has more than $3.5 trillion in client assets. To put that in context, Merrill Edge was reported to have a paltry $200 billion under management back in the fall of 2018. Schwab acquiring USAA wealth management division would be in the same ballpark as acquiring Merrill Lynch.