What I Learned This Week - 5/20/2016
The Economy
That fantastic 1.3% monthly in retail sales was just that: fantastic - as in fantasy. It seems that the number was based on "seasonal adjustments." Stephanie Pomboy reveals that without those adjustments, sales actually declined -0.9%. And the thing about such "adjustments" is that they're somewhere on the spectrum of theoretical-mathematical-projection/hypothetical-model-driven-calculation/guess/outright lie. You can decide where you think this particular number falls on that spectrum.
Investing
Oil's price rise likely has nothing to do with supply-demand. Which means it's not the case that supply has diminished to the point where it's slipped below demand, thereby driving up the price recently. The report in Bloomberg that 83 large tankers of oil were lined up waiting to offload in China belies that falling-supply story. After all, it should be obvious by now that China's economy's got a whole lot of hurt dragging it down. So why do they need all that oil? They don't. It's more reasonable to speculate that they've made some sort of storage deal with the oil companies. This way the news that storage in the U.S. has reached full capacity doesn't wind up on the front page. Such news would likely create panic and a price collapse.
So how does this work? China apparently has excess storage capacity. Since the G-20 met only a couple months ago when oil's price was in the toilet, a deal was struck to squelch the "full up" storage situation in the U.S. by creating some sort of arrangement with China to store all that excess oil. It prevents the further continued collapse of oil's price. And that removes a potential trigger for a bigger market sell-off. Whew! Saved by the bell. At least for now.
Politics
Hillary Clinton swears she's going to reveal what the government knows about Roswell. That's the place in New Mexico where rumor has it aliens landed and all the evidence is secretly stored in some government facility.
What I learned wasn't that Hillary's going to expose government secrets. It's that she seems to have hit some sort of speed bump in her assumed ascendancy to the Presidency. Must be Bernie Sanders has gotten to her. After all, she can't seem to put away this frumpy phony Democrat, who played the "I'm an Independent" game for years and decided that the Democrat constituency was ripe for an old, unimaginative, blatant socialist with a heavy New York Jewish accent who moved to Vermont years ago. (What, that doesn't doesn't sound appealing?) Is she trying to energize or at least wake up some segment of the population that's dying to know "the truth" about aliens and Roswell? (And don't we hope that's not a large segment of the population?) Or is it more that she's just grasping at whatever any of her advisors throw against the wall in a desperate attempt to save a failing campaign.
So what I learned: that Hillary's in trouble, despite Wall Street's overwhelming support. And if that's true, I guess I'm learning that Wall Street's maybe not all-powerful after all - especially in the face of real, everyday people who frankly are fed up with the way a shrinking segment of the population has wrested control of the money and power in this country and used it to enrich themselves, and those whom they deem worthy to be enriched. But that part you likely already knew.
Personal
I learned about this development in the "transgendered" saga HERE. I really wasn't really aware of how far off the course of civilized thinking and behavior this has gotten. I won't comment further, and simply leave you with these two paragraphs, with the hope that you might engage these bizarre words with your reason and common sense. Maybe you'll wake up and understand not only what's going on (this woke me up) but also the likely direction this will take in the future. Perhaps we'll talk more about this in the future, but to do so now will just potentially spoil my weekend. Besides, maybe you think this stuff is somehow OK.
That fantastic 1.3% monthly in retail sales was just that: fantastic - as in fantasy. It seems that the number was based on "seasonal adjustments." Stephanie Pomboy reveals that without those adjustments, sales actually declined -0.9%. And the thing about such "adjustments" is that they're somewhere on the spectrum of theoretical-mathematical-projection/hypothetical-model-driven-calculation/guess/outright lie. You can decide where you think this particular number falls on that spectrum.
Investing
Oil's price rise likely has nothing to do with supply-demand. Which means it's not the case that supply has diminished to the point where it's slipped below demand, thereby driving up the price recently. The report in Bloomberg that 83 large tankers of oil were lined up waiting to offload in China belies that falling-supply story. After all, it should be obvious by now that China's economy's got a whole lot of hurt dragging it down. So why do they need all that oil? They don't. It's more reasonable to speculate that they've made some sort of storage deal with the oil companies. This way the news that storage in the U.S. has reached full capacity doesn't wind up on the front page. Such news would likely create panic and a price collapse.
So how does this work? China apparently has excess storage capacity. Since the G-20 met only a couple months ago when oil's price was in the toilet, a deal was struck to squelch the "full up" storage situation in the U.S. by creating some sort of arrangement with China to store all that excess oil. It prevents the further continued collapse of oil's price. And that removes a potential trigger for a bigger market sell-off. Whew! Saved by the bell. At least for now.
Politics
Hillary Clinton swears she's going to reveal what the government knows about Roswell. That's the place in New Mexico where rumor has it aliens landed and all the evidence is secretly stored in some government facility.
What I learned wasn't that Hillary's going to expose government secrets. It's that she seems to have hit some sort of speed bump in her assumed ascendancy to the Presidency. Must be Bernie Sanders has gotten to her. After all, she can't seem to put away this frumpy phony Democrat, who played the "I'm an Independent" game for years and decided that the Democrat constituency was ripe for an old, unimaginative, blatant socialist with a heavy New York Jewish accent who moved to Vermont years ago. (What, that doesn't doesn't sound appealing?) Is she trying to energize or at least wake up some segment of the population that's dying to know "the truth" about aliens and Roswell? (And don't we hope that's not a large segment of the population?) Or is it more that she's just grasping at whatever any of her advisors throw against the wall in a desperate attempt to save a failing campaign.
So what I learned: that Hillary's in trouble, despite Wall Street's overwhelming support. And if that's true, I guess I'm learning that Wall Street's maybe not all-powerful after all - especially in the face of real, everyday people who frankly are fed up with the way a shrinking segment of the population has wrested control of the money and power in this country and used it to enrich themselves, and those whom they deem worthy to be enriched. But that part you likely already knew.
Personal
I learned about this development in the "transgendered" saga HERE. I really wasn't really aware of how far off the course of civilized thinking and behavior this has gotten. I won't comment further, and simply leave you with these two paragraphs, with the hope that you might engage these bizarre words with your reason and common sense. Maybe you'll wake up and understand not only what's going on (this woke me up) but also the likely direction this will take in the future. Perhaps we'll talk more about this in the future, but to do so now will just potentially spoil my weekend. Besides, maybe you think this stuff is somehow OK.
The NYCHRL [New York City Human Rights Law] requires employers[, landlords, and all businesses and professionals] to use an [employee’s, tenant’s, customer’s, or client’s] preferred name, pronoun and title (e.g., Ms./Mrs.) regardless of the individual’s sex assigned at birth, anatomy, gender, medical history, appearance, or the sex indicated on the individual’s identification.Hope your week was as good as mine was. Enjoy your weekend.
Most individuals and many transgender people use female or male pronouns and titles. Some transgender and gender non-conforming people prefer to use pronouns other than he/him/his or she/her/hers, such as they/them/theirs or ze/hir. [Footnote: Ze and hir are popular gender-free pronouns preferred by some transgender and/or gender non-conforming individuals.] …
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