The Political (?) Page -- March 25, 2022

First things first: Singapore lifts Covid-19 restrictions.

Now back to common sense.

Common Sense weighed in on "what is a woman?" LOL.

I agree completely. In today's environment, if I were a practicing physician, I would not be able to answer the question as asked by the US Senator. I remember, decades ago, during training, almost my first week in my pediatric internship, I saw a teenage girl brought in by her mother for long forgotten reasons (forgotten by me, not the mother).

Within five minutes a possible diagnosis was made and later confirmed with genetic testing.  The patient had been raised as a girl -- "she" had all the outward appearances of a female but genetic testing confirmed "she" was a "boy" by "the standard definition at that time. Genetic testing revealed an XY genome, but the individual had a dysfunctioning/non-functioning "Y" chromosome. The individual was raised as a female but genetically was a male. "Her" birth certificate identified her as a "female birth." See Swyer syndrome.

If a practicing physician could not have answered that question as asked, under those conditions, there's no way a lawyer could have answered that question. The nominee answered that question well, but not perfectly. But had she answered perfectly she might have doomed any chance of being confirmed.

I have suggested on the blog -- at least once -- that the NCAA and the IOCC better come up with a definition "of a woman" very, very quickly or "woke" politics is going to undo, overnight, twenty years of progress for women under Title IX. 

The bill was passed in 1972 but it took a couple of decades for women to "grow into it." We are now seeing the positive results of that law. But if the NCAA and IOCC don't figure this out quickly, it's going to be all undone.  

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Is This The Craziest Market Or What?

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

The Fed raises rates for the first time in a decade (needs to be fact-checked). From zero to 0.25%.

The Fed sounded relatively dovish with the first rate increase, but now sounds absolutely hawkish.

There's a regional war involving a nuclear power led by a madman that could end up being a world war.

Politically and economically it's already a world war. All we need is for a few stray missiles to land in Poland.

There is no charismatic leader on the world stage right now. By some standards, the strongest nation on earth (militarily and economically, if not politically) has perhaps one of the least best choices for president (and vice president, for that matter). [But nothing is so bad that things can't get worse.]

Crude oil is surging.

We're coming out of a pandemic but now we're hearing rumors BA.2 is lurking. Omicron was "badass #1" (or BA.1). Son of Omicron is simply referred to as "badass #2," the sequel.

One googles: how soon after the first rate do we experience a recession and this is what we get:

A rate hike will come and the bull market will stumble, bond yields will climb and the economy will slip into a recession. 

This we know. [What a bunch of malarkey.]

What we don’t know is how long all of that will take and how long it will last. For the economy specifically, history offers little guide about timing. A recession has come as quickly as 11 months after the first rate hike and as long as 86 months. 

Not.

And, oh by the way, connecting dots separated by 86 months (seven years) seems to be a stretch. 

This time, the Fed tiptoed into the water, raising the rate 25 basis points (yawn). And then announced it could do something almost unprecedented -- raise the rate by 50 basis points two months in a row. 

And what does the market do? The Dow surges and the price of oil falls. LOL.

[Historically, we have at least eleven months and perhaps as long as seven years to wait for the recession.]

To make it even scarier, I read somewhere that Jim Cramer doesn't call it a "50-basis-point" increase in the Fed rate, he calls it a "double rate hike." I guess that's not new; I don't know. But CNBC says a 50-basis-point rate is a "double rate hike." 

Release the kraken.

Let's make it a triple rate hike, or heaven forbid, a quadruple rate hike.

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

And to make it really, really scary, announce the quadruple rate hike on a triple witching date. 

The next triple witching date is June 17, 2022. 

And here we are, the market, on a Friday no less when we have no idea what a weekend will bring is surging again.

FOMO, YOLO, TGIF.

BRK-B:

• up $4.11 in early morning trading.
• three months ago, BRK-B was trading at $300, almost on the dot, as they say;
• today, BRK-B is trading at $356
• let's see, 356 - 300  / 300 * 4 = 75% appreciation annualized; 
• for a value stock that isn't suppose to move?
• or another way, 356 - 300 / 300 = almost 20%
• three more months: 1.18 * 356 =  $420
• three more months: 1.18 *420 = $496
• three more months, one year later: 
• $585
• I don't even want to consider AAPL

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