Making America Great Again: America's Gasoline Demand Has Quietly Reached Record Levels -- Rigzone -- March 5, 2020

Gasoline demand: record levels, link here. The lede:

At 9.5 million b/d, U.S. gasoline demand is now as high as it has ever been.

Looking forward, it is simply just assumed that gasoline and the internal combustion engine that it fuels will “go gentle into that good night” to be replaced by electric vehicles. Yet in reality, gasoline is an incumbent technology with entrenched large-scale infrastructure. Let us examine just a few of the reasons why the reports of the death of gasoline have been greatly exaggerated.

Advice: if you have time to visit only one website today, visit realclimatescience, simply the best global warming site on the web.

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Investing

US 10-year treasury drops below 1% -- is this getting anyone's attention?

Market set to drop 600 points on open this morning. 

I told a reader last night that I feel like I'm driving a snow plow at 55 mph through light snow. I have a 30-year horizon for investing. Every day I wake up, I check my brokerage accounts to see if any cash has accrued through dividends; if there is any cash, I immediately add more non-energy shares to the positions I am building. We don't often get opportunities like this.

I'm still not following the market. I do what I can to avoid even broad headlines regarding the market. But I do check cash position and continue to invest.

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

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Corona Virus

March 5, 2020: Italy out of control: 769 new cases. Compare with --

• China: 160; an unbelievably low number;
• South Korea: another 467 new cases; 5 new deaths; population: 50 million; fatality rate, 40 / 6,088 = 0.7%
• Iran: out of control -- another 591 new cases; 15 new deaths; population: 80 million; fatality rate, 107 / 3,513 = 3%
•  Switzerland; first death; 114 total cases; 74-y/o with chronic illness; hospitalized since March 4; source of infection unknown 
• EU: almost all cases can be traced back to ski vacations in northern Italy
• Russia: under control; only four cases; no deaths; 
• India: most perplexing story -- only 30 cases total, including one new case today. 

Test kits: as noted earlier, the crisis exposed the CDC for what it is -- a bonehead, government-regulating bureaucracy. It turns out the #1 problem for public health officials "managing this crisis" is the lack of test kits. It turns out that the CDC controlled the entire product line and would not let states, medical schools, universities, or private companies develop these kits. And heaven forbid if an Israeli company came up with a test kit for sale in the US. This morning it is being reported that yet another state -- Texas -- has developed its own test kit. And yes, it was Trump that got this "problem" fixed. CDD funding is not the issue; parochial polices, rules, and regulations are the problem.

Test kits: we will see a huge number of "new cases" reported in the US. The mainstream media will neglect to tell us why: availability of test kits.

Double counting: something I suggested some time ago -- some cases from the Diamond Princess were indeed double counted; total number of cases dropped from 706 to 696.

Background noise: at some point, the daily statistics will become background noise as Americans learn to live (and die) with coronavirus.

LA County declares county-wide emergency: when one case was reported. And so it goes. If you declare an emergency for an infectious disease, does one need to close the theme parks and rock concerts in LA County? Just asking.

Timeline:

• China identifies crisis in mid-December;
• President Trump bans air travel from China, February 1, 2020
• March 5, 2020: US Congress hopes to have emergency spending bill by the end of this week -- are you kidding -- it's taking this long; and that same congress wants to impose further constraints on the president to take military action when attacked by the US -- wow!

Politics

Brokered convention: odds just went to 5% chance of a brokered convention. 

Voter turnout: 

• Bernie admits he did not get the youth-turnout he had expected
• Trump scored more votes than Bernie/Biden combined in many states

Returns: two days later we still don't have all the votes counted in California. Someone pointed out:

• they can't read the names off tombstones at night;
• they haven't found all the warehouses where boxes of ballots are stored

Unhinged: Senator Schumer; Donna Brazile. Fox generally changes its headline/banner story about every two hours or so. Schumer was forced to apologize -- unprecedented -- for suggesting that two justices of the Supreme Court would come to great harm if they "ruled" incorrectly on an abortion case before them. He made the remarks outside the US Senate where such speech is not protected, and technically he clearly broke the law -- suggesting harm might come to US Supreme Court justices if they ruled incorrectly.

Post-mortens: when the Bernie loss is examined six months from now, two things will jump to the top:

• Pocahontas cost Bernie the nomination (look at Super Tuesday); Pocahontas and Bernie combined easily defeated Biden almost everywhere (except for the Deep South) but Pocahontas took 10 - 15% of the vote in most states which let Biden take first, Bernie, second; and,
• Bernie's implosion began the day he said Cuba/Fidel wasn't all bad (that's the day I blogged that Bernie just lost Florida); 

Pocahontas: will suspend her campaign today; a week late, if you ask Bernie. [Later: official -- Pocahontas drops out of race; for Bernie, it came a week too late; she really blew it; gave the race to Biden.]