Without further ado ... drum roll ... nominated on January 3, 2017, no one surpassed Prince Harry.
January 3, 2017: That didn't take long, our first nominee for the 2017 Geico Rock Award. Prince Harry: "Saving endangered animals is God's test for humanity." I guess he missed the Aleppo [Syria/ISIS] story, the 2016 equivalent of the 1940s Holocaust.
Winner of the 2017 Geico Rock Award: Great Britain's Prince Harry.
Motorists from Maine to Florida will soon feel the wrath of Hurricane Harvey without seeing a single raindrop.
Fuel prices at the pump are likely to climb after Colonial Pipeline Co., the largest U.S. gasoline conduit, was forced shut its main diesel line late Wednesday and planned to halt its gasoline line Thursday because about half of Gulf Coast refining capacity was offline.
Valero Energy Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, both major Gulf Coast refiners, told wholesale customers Wednesday they don’t have enough gasoline and diesel to sell retail suppliers.
“It’s one thing to not have refiners,” Dan McTeague, an analyst at GasBuddy.com, a company which tracks retail prices and availability, said by phone. “It’s quite another thing to not have pipelines.”
Hmmmm .... pipelines? I thought we didn't need any more pipelines.
release gasoline from the Northeast Gasoline Reserve
Two comments:
a shortage of oil is not the problem; the refineries are shut down
gasoline? the US gasoline demand is about 10 million bbls/day; NEGR contains one million bbls of fuel at three sites in New York, the Boston area, and Maine
Either I'm missing something or we have another nominee for the 2017 Geico Rock Award
Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, travel, job, or relationship decisions based on anything you read here or think you may have read here. In addition, I often post quickly which may result in factual and typographical errors. If this information is important to you, go to the source.
Truck manufacturing: huge. Cramer says he's never seen it this strong. That corroborates what my son-in-law in Portland, OR, is seeing. He works at a truck manufacturing plant there. Where the demand is coming from: heavy fleet business (housing, construction, shipping [Amazon], oil and gas, etc).
Fossil Group: shares plunge after hours; shares drop 20%. Reported a loss of $345 million after reporting a profit same quarter a year ago. CNBC said loss much worse than expected; Zacks seems to disagree. Only comment: is this a surprise?
Hertz: earnings much worse than expected, a loss of 63 cents vs 20 cents forecast. Meets revenue forecasts of $2.22 billion.
NOG reports. From a press release --
daily production increased 4% sequentially to average 13,794 barrels of oil equivalent per day in the second quarter, for a total of 1,255,280 boe
Northern added 4.3 net wells to production during the second quarter of 2017
the 6.2 net wells that Northern elected to participate in during the first half of 2017 have an estimated internal rate of return of approximately 30% at a $50 /bbl flat pricing assumption
at June 30, 2017, Northern maintained a strong list of wells in process totaling 16.1 net wells that have an estimated internal rate of return of approximately 30% at a $50 /Bbl flat pricing assumption
Northern's GAAP net income for the second quarter of 2017 was $13.8 million. Adjusted net income for the quarter was a loss of $0.2 million. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $30.7 million.
*************************** Nominee For 2017 Geico Rock Award
Mark Egan: over at CNN Money -- "millions can't feel the stock market boom."Mark obviously doesn't understand macroeconomics, the economy, how the market works, etc. In fact very few Americans are not feeling the stock market boom:
economy growing at almost 4% GDP;
unemployment rate at 4.3%; full unemployment;
number of folks on food stamps dropping;
record number of Americans working;
many employed have 401(k)s; pension plans -- all dependent on the market; and,
it goes on and on.
******************************
COP And Alaska's Fiscal Health
The other day I posted a list ranking the states based on "fiscal health." North Dakota was second from the top. I mentioned that Alaska had fallen to #17 in the most recent polling (2017) after being #1 in 2014.
ConocoPhillips (COP +1.2%) is evaluating a proposal from Alaska's Department of Natural Resources that would allow it to expand an existing North Slope oil field into an area near big discoveries if it agrees to development steps that include drilling a well by next June and possibly paying the state ~$7M.
The offer to COP to add acreage its to its Colville River unit follows months of discussions between the company and the state over drilling rights on the Tofkat area
The prospect might attract significant interest if Alaska offered it to bidding companies in a lease sale, but doing so also could restart the clock on development, leading to delays in a state that desperately wants more oil production to help close a $2.5B deficit.
After hours, Disney: missed on revenues, $14.24 billion vs $14.42 billion; beats on earnings, $1.58 vs $1.55;
the bigger news is that Disney will pull its movies from Netflex, and
will initiate a new streaming service that will take on Netflix. The new streaming service sounds a lot like TCM. Call it DCM -- Disney Classic Movies.
ObamaCare: on so many levels, not passing the "skinny" bill was the right thing to do.
everyone needs time to step back and really, really think this through
health care insurers will do just fine -- as long as changes don't whipsaw them back and forth
ObamaCare apparently holds back national GDP 0.1%
it appears healthcare in the US is not imploding; the US Senate -- made up of the smartest politicians in the universe -- don't seem much worried about healthcare; if they're not worried, why should anyone else worry
ObamaCare: is now off the table for any future elections. McCain is the scapegoat, but if it had not been him, it would have been someone else. "Everyone" knows how to count. Someone would have stepped up. McCain took the bullet; six months from now ... but "everyone knows" ...
Everybody Knows, Leonard Cohen
Transgender in the military: a really, really, really bad announcement by the president (I can't separate "decision" from "announcement" on this one)
I blame him less than the generals who gave him advice on this issue
if he made the decision/announcement without input from his generals, then it was a really, really, really, really bad decision/announcement
this issue was not on the top 10 list of any US poll of issues facing Americans; I'm not sure it was even on any top 20 list
not one argument banning transgender Americans from the military holds up
he was very, very clear during his campaign: he loved the LGBT voting bloc
I'm waiting to see Camille Paglia and Peggy Noonan address this issue
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: I need to re-read this book
What happened? I debated at length (about 20 minutes) whether to post "what happened" the other day? Wow, talk about superb timing. Today, Ted Van Dyke, active for more than 40 years in Democratic administrations and campaigns, talks at length about "what happened." He must have read the blog. LOL. If blocked by a paywall, google the democrats biggest problem is cultural wsj ted van dyk. That's what I love about this country. The activists in the 60s, one could argue, were much like the colonists in 1776. It just took a little longer and there was no Treaty of Paris (1783).
Ted was VP Hubert H Humphrey's assistant
Ted was policy and platform director for
George McGovern’s
campaign
Blame game: no links; I read the story the other day; a reader sent it to me. The New York Times says it will be President Trump's fault for what happens next in Venezuela. I cannot make this up. Google it.
Scaramucci: certainly ruined his "good-boy" charm. About as naive as they come.
Daily WH press briefing: streams. How good it works, I don't know. First time I've tried it.
Just give them the money: from USA Today -- $70 million in government "financial institution" to manage a program with $34 million in assets -- and Congress complains about US banks ... where is Pocahontas?
The Trump Administration said Friday it’s
shutting down an Obama-era program aimed at encouraging low- and
moderate-income households to save for retirement because the
scant participation didn’t justify the cost.
About
30,000 Americans have contributed a total $34 million to the program,
called myRA, which launched in late 2014 as an option for households
that didn’t have access to an employer-sponsored retirement plan, such
as a 401k, the Treasury Department said. About 20,000 accounts have a
median balance of $500 and the owners of another 10,000 accounts made no
contributions.
Meanwhile, it has cost $70 million
to manage the program – including server costs and promotion -- and was
expected to cost an additional $10 million annually going forward,
Treasury said.
**********************************
The Literature Page
Trump Derangement Syndrome: continues for The New Yorker, July 31, 2017, issue. But there is some good news: this issue does have a great review of a novel of Clytemnestra and her children. I need to re-read these myths over and over to remember them. Google queen mother a novel of Clytemnestra and her children the new yorker. This issue also devotes twelve pages to the new Muslim mayor of London.
Love In War: also in the current issue of The New Yorker, July 31, 2017, page 73, "Briefly Noted," this:
The Unwomanly Face of War, by Svetlana Alexievich, translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. During the Second World War, a million women served in the Soviet Army. This remarkable collection of testimonies, translated into English for the first time, is the earliest, and the most earnest, of the Nobel laureate's chronicles of Soviet and post-Soviet lives.
Sitting at kitchen tables, Alexievich coaxes out of the women stores that describe a reality vastly different from the officially sanctioned version, with its glorifying tidiness.
She asks them, "Was there love during the war?," and what was it like, when death was so near? They speak guardedly but vividly of fleeting encounters, deep relationships, unexpressed feelings. To the women, love was "the only personal event in wartime. All the rest is common -- even death."
*******************************
Body by Darwin
How Evolution Shapes Our Health and Transforms Medicine
Jeremy Taylor
c. 2015
DDS: 576.8 TAY
This is a really, really weird book: not the subject, not the content, but rather the way the author writes. There's a good reason why there is no index. Unfortunately Amazon does not provide a "look inside" so that would-be readers can see the style of writing.
Five chapters:
Absent Friends: how the hygiene hypothesis explains allergies and autoimmune disorders.
A Fine Romance: how evolutionary theory explains infertility and diseases of pregnancy
The Downside of Upright: the relationship between bipedalism and orthopedic illnesses
DIY Eye: how developmental biology cures blindness and rebuts creationism
Hopeful Monsters: why cancer is almost impossible to cure
A Problem With Plumbing: why the evolution of coronary arteries makes us prone to heart attacks
Three Score Years -- And Then? how evolution is breathing new life into moribund dementia research
I read the first chapter first to get an idea of the writer's thesis and way of writing. I was familiar with most of what he wrote.
I am now reading the chapter on heart disease; it looks promising.
I will read the article on dementia after the coronary artery chapter.
This banner appeared shortly after Senator Schumer made some of the most ridiculous comments ever made in the history of political interviews. I find it amazing that Americans do not thank the oil companies for doing what they do. (The arrow points out that US gasoline is at a 12-year low; six months into the Trump presidency.)
What a doofus
Original Post
Unless you've been under a rock for the past year, you know that US gasoline prices are at record lows.
Apparently, at least one "celebrity" has been under the Geico Rock for at least the past year.
Even as gas prices have fallen to the lowest point in years under President Trump, Senate Minority Leader is claiming the price of petrol has only gone up.
The nationwide price for gas closed the week of July 17th at $2:39/gallon, down from $2.47/gallon when Trump took office.
Over the July 4th holiday weekend, gas prices were at their lowest point since 2005, according to the AAA.
"At $2.23, today’s average national gas price is the cheapest the country has seen all year," AAA reported. "On the week, gas prices fell in 46 states. Only Illinois, Oklahoma and Washington, D.C. saw prices increase, albeit by one cent each, while Hawaii and Maine remained flat. South Carolina continues to carry the cheapest gas in the country at $1.90. Today, consumers can find gas for $2.00 or less at one out of every four gas stations in the country."
Chuck Schumer, appearing on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, claimed Sunday the prices are only rising, thanks to "huge companies buying up other big companies."
"Gas prices are sticky -- you know, when the domestic price goes, uh, when the, uh, price for oil goes up on the markets, it goes right up but it never goes down.," Schumer said. "How the heck did we let Exxon and Mobil merge?"
Schumer also appeared confused over the "sticky prices" economic theory, as gasoline is cited by the Federal Reserve as an example of prices that aren't "sticky."
Can you imagine if Hillary were president with Maxine as vice-president; and, Schumer and Pelosi were in charge of Congress? Wow.
Dismantler-In-Chief: Jeff Sessions is dismantling Obama's legal legacy (whatever that was) according to Bloomberg. One could also say he is getting back to enforcing the nation's laws as written by the US Congress and not promulgated by President Obama's executive orders. Whatever. I went through the article very quickly; nothing there seemed particularly noteworthy. The writer noted that Mr Sessions must have a lot of time on his hands simply because he recused himself from going down that Russian rabbit hole.
Dumping on Arizona, Nevada. I saw this article some time ago, or a different version of the same story, at a different site. Much could be written about it. It could go on the "market and energy" page but this particular slant suggests it should go on the "political page." Whatever. If I had more time, I would write more about it. The implications are endless.
Down and Out at MSNBC: Greta Van Susteren "out" at MSNBC. Wow, that happened fast. It was such a non-story, it was buried at the Drudge Report. When will Wolf Blitzer be fired?
Geico Rock Award Nominee for 2017: former Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, on CNBC says we need more projects like Southern Company's Kemper project. Link to follow if I ever find the video link. I guess he knows his legacy is tied up with the never-ending story.
Governor Cuomo: fighting global warming, fighting fracking, fighting sugary soda, apparently left Governor Cuomo spread too thin -- he forgot all about some very basic needs of his fellow New Yorkers: a modern transit system. CBS Local is reporting that Governor Cuomo has declared a state of emergency for the MTA; that Governor Cuomo calls the transit system’s state Of decline ‘unacceptable’ (with a "capital U"). I assume Elon Musk has a solution; just give Musk 100 days and he will solve this problem also.
ICYMI: Connecticut, Illinois in dire economic straits. Fox News has the update. Top three states with the worse credit ratings: Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut. Some interesting details:
fifteen states have not passed a budget; deadline is June 30 (tomorrow); includes Connecticut, Illinois
Connecticut's deficit: $5 billion
Connecticut:$240 million cash in its 'rainy day fund -- only five states with a smaller cushion
governor of Connecticut: Democrat
Connecticut state government: first time in decades -- not in Democratic hands; state senate tied at 18 - 18; Connecticut is historically a blue state
Aetna, GE have recently left; Xerox, Sikorsky, Vineyard Vines have promised to stay
Connecticut's unemployment recently rose from 4.5% to 4.9%
Oil guru who foresaw the market rout in 2014 says OPEC should have cut deeper in 2016 -- Bloomberg. Well, duh. I think everyone thinks that now. Whether or not it would have worked is another question. In the US alone there was just too much in storage and shale producers were yet to ramp up in light of OPEC announced cuts. From Bloomberg:
“They should have cut another million barrels a day for ninety days
in order to drain the system,” said Gary Ross, global head of oil at
PIRA Energy, a forecasting and analytics unit of S&P Global Platts.
For Ross, the producers missed an opportunity to deepen cuts between
June and August when refinery demand is higher and so accelerate the
decline in inventories. Such a move would have pushed the market into
backwardation, when near-term prices are higher than those for later
months. That structure favors OPEC because it would discourage
their shale-oil rivals from locking in prices for future production.
Ross’s view was echoed by analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd., who
said OPEC needs to cut deeper for longer to restore inventories to
normal levels. “OPEC needs to drain by 34 million barrels a month or 1
million barrels a day for the next 10 months,” the analysts wrote in a
note. “This looks challenging.”
Ross also warned that Chinese crude-demand growth is set to decrease
in the second half of this year. “That poses a real problem for OPEC as
they enter 2018,” he said.
It was brought to my attention that Clifford Kraus, NY Times, needs to be nominated for the 2017 Geico Rock Award for being unaware why gasoline prices are so low this summer. From the linked post above:
The writer actually wrote this:
But whatever lies behind the dividend at the pump, drivers are happy to have it.
"Whatever lies behind" low prices? Wow. Shallow reporting at the NY Times.
Cliff will be added to the list of 2017 nominees. This, by the way, is probably the perfect example of what the "Geico Rock Award" is all about.
Had it been just one quarter or two quarters, or maybe even just one year, I would have let it go. But reading that this company has had ten quarters of falling sales because the CEO admitted he "mis-read" the "technology" makes this CEO a nominee for the Geico Rock Award of 2017.
Millard “Mickey” Drexler,
the fashion genius whose ability to spot trends reshaped how
Americans dress, has a humbling admission. He missed what might be the
biggest trend of all—how quickly technology would change the retail
industry.
“I’ve never seen the speed of change as it is today,”
the 72-year-old chairman and chief executive of J.Crew Group Inc. said
in an interview at his New York office. “If I could go back 10 years, I
might have done some things earlier.”
The retail veteran, who
redefined Gap Inc. in the 1990s and then transformed J.Crew into a
household name, is now scrambling to keep the company he took private in
a leveraged buyout from ending up in bankruptcy.
Whatever.
Even Trump, at age 70, understood the power of Facebook and understands the power of Twitter.
The lead story in The Los Angeles Times is actually quite interesting to read, understanding that of the three (The LA Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times), The LA Times is clearly the most liberal and clearly the most interested in bashing President Trump. The story was linked at the Drudge Report, the website accused of being so conservative. Matt obviously saw the same things I did.
This, for example, jumped out at me:
at JFK+86, the incredibly spectacular Bay of Pigs fiasco;
at T+75, the incredibly spectacular successful destruction of a Syrian airfield and chemical weapons depot
Mainstream media is accusing "the young presidency" of being rash. I guess the mainstream media was thinking about the Bay of Pigs. Or maybe the Gulf of Tonkin (LBJ + 253).
Elsewhere, this was sent to me by another reader who noted this, in The Washington Post: just as the Russians were building up Central America back in the 60's, we now have the Russians again building up in the region. The headline:
The Soviet Union fought the Cold War in Nicaragua. Now Putin's Russia back.
The Russian embassy has been under construction for at least the past two years and to the best of my knowledge I don't remember seeing one word written about it and certainly not one word from President Obama. But on T+78, The Washington Post finally gets to writing about.
By the way, we have another nominee for the 2017 Geico Rock Award:
Juan Gonzalez, who was deputy assistant secretary of state for Western
Hemisphere affairs during the Obama administration, said he had
generally been skeptical about theories that Iran, China
and Russia were posing a security threat with their increased
activities in Latin America. But he has changed his mind over the past
couple of years because of Russia’s activities in Nicaragua and
neighboring El Salvador. (The Salvadoran foreign minister visited Moscow
last month to discuss trade and investment deals.)
By the way, it's only a few months until October 16 - 28.
claims have now been below 300,000, a threshold associated with a
healthy labor market for 109 straight weeks. That is the longest stretch
since 1970 when the labor market was smaller.
the labor market is currently near full employment.
four-week moving average fell 4,500 to 250,000
the number of people still receiving benefits after an initial week of
aid decreased 24,000 to 2.03 million in the week ended March 25
the
four-week moving average of the so-called continuing claims fell 7,750
to 2.02 million, the lowest level since 2000
2017 Geico Rock Award nominee: Lonnie Golden, economics professor at Penn State University.
"There’s no clear association with the implementation of the “employer
mandate” in Obamacare and the time trend in involuntary part-time
workers, said Lonnie Golden, economics professor at Penn State
University and author of that EPI report."
Seeking more flexibility, American workers are working from home and
part-time, but these jobs often come with fewer benefits. In fact, the
number of Americans working involuntarily part-time rose 45% since 2007
to 6.4 million, a December 2016 report
by the Economic Policy Institute found. The EPI, a nonprofit think-tank
in Washington, D.C., said the increase is almost entirely due to the
inability of workers to find full-time jobs, leaving many workers to
take or keep lower-paying jobs with less consistent hours to make ends
meet. And more than half (54%) of the growth in these involuntary
part-time jobs between 2007 and 2015 were in retail, leisure and
hospitality industries.
$70 by the end of the year? Someone thinks so. John Kemp tweeted it.
I am posting this only to help me keep backwardation and contango "straight" in my mind (a nice definition at this post).
Oil prices are not capped around $55 as is widely assumed but rather
are on track to hit $70 per barrel later this year, according to Pierre
Andurand, managing partner at Andurand Capital Management.
We're currently at a crossroads from where
oil prices should significantly rebound, Andurand told CNBC on the
sidelines of an event Thursday evening where he was crowned the winner
of the EMEA Investor's Choice Awards for 2017.
"I think oil prices are likely to recover
to around $70 … I think the market will switch to backwardation –
sustainable backwardation – by late summer and that will bring the next
wave in oil prices," he said, referring to the situation where
nearer-term spot price oil contracts are more expensive than
longer-dated forward contracts.
***************************
2017 Geico Rock Award Nominee
Take you pick, but for this one I will nominate ABC News. The network seems surprised that Jared and Ivanka Trump are (really) wealthy. So are Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Bernie Sanders, among many, many other democrats.
Cognitive dissonance: the cover of The Economist, this week: "On The Up: The World Economy's Surprising Rise." Inside the issue's op-ed: the world's surging economy due to "stimulus, not the populists." The implication is that the economy would have surged regardless of who was elected US president. It's amazing how quickly the US economy, and apparently the global economy, surged -- it began the night the election results started coming in and has continued unabated.
Take It To The Bank
And The Winner Is
Senate confirmations: on track to have all confirmations complete by President Pence's second term; on tap this week -- Secretary of Labor; Supreme Court nominee to start hearings this week.
TV money: mainstream media is making a big deal that Donald Trump made $30 million off "The Apprentice" in 2005. That may be. To put that in perspective, the top three actors in "The Big Bang Theory" are each earning $1 million/episode, 24 episodes/season. Mainstream media seem surprised that so much money can be made off television. Nominees for the 2017 Geico Rock Award? By the way, by the close of season nine (2016), there will have been 211 episodes. I believe "Big Bang Theory" is in its 10th season.
Congress talks to FBI Director Comey on whether Russia tried to influence US election, but no one asks whether he was aware of Donna Brazile's admission:
Former DNC chairwoman and disgraced CNN commentator Donna Brazile
has admitted that she relayed confidential questions to Hillary
Clinton’s presidential campaign in advance of last year’s primary
debate.
Stephanopoulos comes across as looking pretty gullible.
By the way, now Donna Brazile blames this on the "Russians." This is starting to become the biggest joke in town, blaming everything on the "Russians."
[Update, June 29, 2017: it's now widely known -- and she had admitted -- that she, Donna Brazile fed debate questions to Hillary Clinton. The question is which journalist(s) fed the questions to Donna Brazile. There is at least one source (?) who suggests it was John Harwood.]
June 11, 2017: Clifford Kraus, NY Times, did not know why gasoline prices were so low this summer; did not even hazard some opinions on why gasoline prices might be so low.
April 9, 2017: Juan Gonzalez, deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs during the Obama administration who now suggests that Putin may have had nefarious reasons for returning to Central America under the Obama administration. At the time, he admits he was skeptical of any security threats that Putin might pose in the region.
January 3, 2017: That didn't take long, our first nominee for the 2017 Geico Rock Award. Prince Harry: "Saving endangered animals is God's test for humanity." I guess he missed the Aleppo story, the 2016 equivalent of the 1940s Holocaust.
