I normally do not comment at all on current news since rarely is it truly important in the framing of the issues of the day except perhaps through the mists of time. Then there are weeks like the past that reach a threshold to really stand out and beg for comment. Here last week we had a possible market bottom and the abrupt emergence of Sarah Palin as political kingmaker.
I say possible market bottom because it is the first week of September, the down move is now testing a prior low from two months ago when the worst financial news was first breaking. Also this low is 22% of the all time market peak. To go the next 10% all that strongly touted bad news would have to be true. If that bad news is not true and I am seeing solutions going into place to prevent the worst, then stocks are cheap again and the worst is over.
Remember that the real stupidity has been cleaned out over the past two years. All the holders of bad paper have been working overtime to repair the damage. Stabilizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should mostly end the surprises and also stabilize housing prices. We are almost ready to return to prudent business as usual.
There will now be plenty of cash around to buy equities and this is one of the better times of the year for such buying of bargains. This last brief shakeout sets the stage for a decent bullish quarter offsetting the past nine months of ugly financial news and markets.
The price of oil continues to slip as everyone wakes up to the idea that $145 oil suppresses demand and that Americans want out of the oil business now. The oil price decline has also taken the speculative money out the commodities markets in general and they are all in major decline. This was long overdue. Next year everyone will be complaining about surplus everything.
This readjustment in global pricing will have the immediate benefit of improving cash flows as this source of costs is finally abated. This means that business can improve across the board over the next two years.
Then into this mix we have the introduction of Sarah Palin as the vice presidential candidate for the Republican Party. What a week!
I dislike commenting on the US political scene since I am an outsider looking in and can surely only offend everyone. However, I have watched the media give Obama a free pass for the past year and have been disquieted. I am not the only one. He has not been brought to heel on his visible attachment to long discredited policies of the liberal left. And let us be totally fair. The wacko right has policies that are just as far from the pale of acceptability. I simply believe that a country’s leader must be pragmatic and an independent thinker above the simplistic ideas of the ideologues. Obama may well be such a thinker, but he hides it well.
This set him up with a giant bull’s eye on his back for the moment that someone changed the story line. You must also admit that the press was getting tired of the great storyline presented by the Obama candidature. The nomination was wonderfully choreographed as the coronation of the prince culminating in the most heralded oration since the Gettysburg Address. I think he got twelve hours of coverage before the rug got pulled by McCain. Since then for the past several days he has barely gained a mention as the press leapt happily onto the story line of Sarah Palin.
The Campaign or battle is now truly joined and he is up against two wonderful scrappers who are surely not going to let go control of the script for the next sixty days.
More importantly, their success means a probable one term McCain presidency followed by a probable two term Palin presidency. Goodbye Hilary.
Vastly more important to the Republican brand itself is that their supporters identify with this renegade style of candidate. Remember that the original success of the party with Newt and the boys was as renegade outsiders. That they became insiders much too fast was their undoing.
I have no doubt that the first task undertaken by a McCain presidency will now be the reforging of the entire US energy business. My readers know what the solutions must be and see in my postings many of the most viable options. These have been mere words to date. In the hands of visionary leadership they can become total reality in the next four years. Sarah was totally right to drive the building of a working gas pipeline from the Alaska North Slope through the Mackenzie Valley (which may turn out to be the greatest store of hydrocarbons on earth) to the pipelines in place in northern Alberta to the lower forty eight. A huge long lived store of natural gas is a giant boon for the American economy and this pipeline and others have been dickered over for thirty years. It took political will to finish the job.
Readers already know that North America can be energy independent. It takes immediate conversion of the long haul transportation industry over to LNG, preferably from Alaska and rapidly expanding THAI oil production in both the Alberta tar sands and possibly in formerly depleted US oil fields. Cattail ethanol can also be expanded everywhere wetlands exist at a production rate a least an order of magnitude greater than corn. Full out this can all be done in the next four years.
I have seen no evidence that Obama can even imagine change on such a scale. I suspect that McCain/Palin are both able to and believe enough in themselves to go forward.
I think that this week will be remembered as truly historic.
I say possible market bottom because it is the first week of September, the down move is now testing a prior low from two months ago when the worst financial news was first breaking. Also this low is 22% of the all time market peak. To go the next 10% all that strongly touted bad news would have to be true. If that bad news is not true and I am seeing solutions going into place to prevent the worst, then stocks are cheap again and the worst is over.
Remember that the real stupidity has been cleaned out over the past two years. All the holders of bad paper have been working overtime to repair the damage. Stabilizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should mostly end the surprises and also stabilize housing prices. We are almost ready to return to prudent business as usual.
There will now be plenty of cash around to buy equities and this is one of the better times of the year for such buying of bargains. This last brief shakeout sets the stage for a decent bullish quarter offsetting the past nine months of ugly financial news and markets.
The price of oil continues to slip as everyone wakes up to the idea that $145 oil suppresses demand and that Americans want out of the oil business now. The oil price decline has also taken the speculative money out the commodities markets in general and they are all in major decline. This was long overdue. Next year everyone will be complaining about surplus everything.
This readjustment in global pricing will have the immediate benefit of improving cash flows as this source of costs is finally abated. This means that business can improve across the board over the next two years.
Then into this mix we have the introduction of Sarah Palin as the vice presidential candidate for the Republican Party. What a week!
I dislike commenting on the US political scene since I am an outsider looking in and can surely only offend everyone. However, I have watched the media give Obama a free pass for the past year and have been disquieted. I am not the only one. He has not been brought to heel on his visible attachment to long discredited policies of the liberal left. And let us be totally fair. The wacko right has policies that are just as far from the pale of acceptability. I simply believe that a country’s leader must be pragmatic and an independent thinker above the simplistic ideas of the ideologues. Obama may well be such a thinker, but he hides it well.
This set him up with a giant bull’s eye on his back for the moment that someone changed the story line. You must also admit that the press was getting tired of the great storyline presented by the Obama candidature. The nomination was wonderfully choreographed as the coronation of the prince culminating in the most heralded oration since the Gettysburg Address. I think he got twelve hours of coverage before the rug got pulled by McCain. Since then for the past several days he has barely gained a mention as the press leapt happily onto the story line of Sarah Palin.
The Campaign or battle is now truly joined and he is up against two wonderful scrappers who are surely not going to let go control of the script for the next sixty days.
More importantly, their success means a probable one term McCain presidency followed by a probable two term Palin presidency. Goodbye Hilary.
Vastly more important to the Republican brand itself is that their supporters identify with this renegade style of candidate. Remember that the original success of the party with Newt and the boys was as renegade outsiders. That they became insiders much too fast was their undoing.
I have no doubt that the first task undertaken by a McCain presidency will now be the reforging of the entire US energy business. My readers know what the solutions must be and see in my postings many of the most viable options. These have been mere words to date. In the hands of visionary leadership they can become total reality in the next four years. Sarah was totally right to drive the building of a working gas pipeline from the Alaska North Slope through the Mackenzie Valley (which may turn out to be the greatest store of hydrocarbons on earth) to the pipelines in place in northern Alberta to the lower forty eight. A huge long lived store of natural gas is a giant boon for the American economy and this pipeline and others have been dickered over for thirty years. It took political will to finish the job.
Readers already know that North America can be energy independent. It takes immediate conversion of the long haul transportation industry over to LNG, preferably from Alaska and rapidly expanding THAI oil production in both the Alberta tar sands and possibly in formerly depleted US oil fields. Cattail ethanol can also be expanded everywhere wetlands exist at a production rate a least an order of magnitude greater than corn. Full out this can all be done in the next four years.
I have seen no evidence that Obama can even imagine change on such a scale. I suspect that McCain/Palin are both able to and believe enough in themselves to go forward.
I think that this week will be remembered as truly historic.
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