From the “What IF Department: Remember what was going on a year ago this weekend? The world was supposed to end when the Mayan calendar flipped over. Yet, if your eyes are open, you’ll notice that things are still here. (If not, I’d be interested in how you’re reading this…) HOWEVER, whether things will still be “normal” come February, well, that becomes a matter for a bit of speculation.
First off, if the report this morning is oddly timed (late), please don’t be alarmed. We have had more than 6-inches of rain in our rain gauge here in the East Texas Outback in the past 24-hours and a lightning show which has been going on for 12+ hours now. Frankly, it’s one of Ma Nature’s finer displays. The problem is that there is fairly large power outage, so our emergency power systems are what’s keeping us online for the moment. Not that they won’t continue doing their jobs, but the little matter of not having coffee until I fire up the BBQ and make some…well, THAT is the important stuff when I get up before three effing ayem.
Either the US Treasury is lying, or the Congressional Budget office is lying. You see, the Treasury Debt to the Penny makes it look like the Debt Ceiling is being nicely observed. But according to the Congressional Budget Office, spending in August (as quoted in this article over here) was $331 billion and the income to pay for that was a mere $185 billion. You can’t have it both ways. You have exactly three choices here:
The market was set to open a tad higher this morning as last week’s frenzy has had a weekend to wear off or sober up. The first news out this morning will be existing home sales at 10 AM but nothing exciting until later in the week when Durable Goods come out and that ain’t exactly a heart-stopper. The reality is that genuine news takes a little time to work its way through the system: We told Peoplenomics readers this weekend that monthly West Coast Port data for June showed a 3% slowing of imports, which is not the kind of thing to see if there’s a major recovery underway. Moreover the price of oil is apparently not coming down.