Simple, Genuine, Economic MAGIC

I don’t suppose you happened to notice that the Triple A Fuel Gauge Report this morning showed the price of regular has dropped down to $3.649.

Just last week at this time (before half the country filled up, gassed up the jet skis, dirt bikes, airplanes, and yada, yada) the price was $3.672.

Now, isn’t much – 2.3 cents a gallon, so if you own a reasonably busy gas station and do 20,000 gallons a week, that’s only $460 bucks in holiday spending money.  And out of that you need more staff and maybe a mechanic doing some overtime (billed on repairs, but still…)

It’s fun to push out the numbers and see how well the supply and demand picture is managed in this country while places like Europe pay something like four times as much for gas.  In the Netherlands, gas tax (tax alone, mind you) pencils out to $3.50 per gallon or so.

There may be a lot of things wrong with America, and fracking, and all that…but geez, what economic magic at the pumps….still.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

The War with Mexico, Gaza

Boy, you talk about a couple of countries with vastly different mindsets:  Israel, which has a wall, and the US (which effectively doesn’t) are today both reaping the results of their policy decisions.

In the case of Israel, they are on the verge of invading Gaza over rocket fire in recent weeks.  And when a teens are killed, the country launches what?  Air strikes.

Fade the US border scene:

What in Israel might be labeled terrorists, but which here are called “La Raza Militants” are now arriving in Murrieta where the Feds are planning to drop more kids. But this may be in reaction to locals in California trying to drop the dumping busses.

When political types – like Nancy Pelosi – go to the border to proclaim “We’re all Americans” she demonstrated nearly unfathomable political ineptitude. 

Seems to me, the country response profile certainly be interesting to strategic planners in China and Russia:  Missiles from Gaza and Israel readies invasion.  A flood of kids from all over hell and gone and the US….falls into internal debate and dissent. 

Tough question here:  Which country would anyone in the world rather pick on? D’uh.  We’re just asking for trouble from elsewhere.

I’ve been telling you for years that the War With Mexico is about to move from a “low intensity conflict” to something more overt:  Welcome to the “more overt” part.

The folks in Washington are (once again/still) hopelessly out of touch with the balance of America.  Americans, I believe, have no quarrel with legal immigration from anywhere…we’re a country based on the melting pot idea. 

But just like in a kitchen, even a good stew can be ruined, if you turn it up too high and that seems to be the agenda.

Or, as one reader wonders, is something much bigger in play?

George,

A random, make that crazy thought materialized upon my awakening this morning.

The immigration migration happening in the Southwest U.S. Is of almost biblical proportions. For some reason, U.S. Border agents are not only ‘helping’ the migrants make the crossing, but are providing transportation to shelter and medical facilities.

Strangely, the vast majority of the current wave of immigrants crossing the U.S./Mexican border are unaccompanied children. As this article indicates,

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/most-children-illegally-crossing-the-border-alone-will-be-deported-white-house-signals/2014/07/07/0f9ec85e-0603-11e4-bbf1-cc51275e7f8f_story.html>

most of those kids are from Central America – largely Honduras and Nicaragua.

Maybe I’ve read Ure column for so long and watched too many Sci Fi movies lately, but could the otherwise unexplained unfettered welcoming of these kids be tied to a non-political, humanitarian event?

Let me step way outside of the logic box and suggest that perhaps some “future” disaster could be the real impetus behind this unobstructed mass migration – a war, quake, tidal wave, volcano . . . an event which may occur somewhere relatively soon somewhere within the Central American region (or maybe all through it?)

Just a thought – if but a spurious one, completely untethered to any rational data. Mayhaps Ure (Now Chris McCleary’s)  dream center or Nostracodeus data might provide a few more ‘data points’ to this otherwise wild a** notion?

Yes, on a couple of fronts:  Chris’s Project August is due out in about three weeks, so we will see how collected mass dreams to when comes to predicting a specific month.  And Grady’s latest data run over at Nostracodeus shows more (similar to this week) going into next week.

So no, I don’t think there’s any specific “plan” to what’s going on (other than the usual self-serving politicos are working soft-headed Americans). 

More than likely, the reader question arose from the semi-dream state because somehow that 7.2 turned 6.9 earthquake down on the Mexico/Guatemala border may have subliminally been suggestive. With the news-talk station on in background, the reader might not have even been aware of the input, except on waking this morning.

Neat theory, though.  Have you thought of a movie script?

More after this…

Markets:  Life on Credit, Jail, and Silver

We’ll go overs the details and analysis tomorrow morning (before the open) for our Peoplenomics readers, but keep a close eye on the markets around 3:00 PM Eastern time today because that’s when the Consumer Debt report is scheduled for release.

Of course, banksters being who they are, this will be called Consumer Credit because from their sid3e of the table (and it is all about them) they are extending you credit.

We insist and cutting through the bullshit, however, and label this the Consumer Debt report because when you spend money you don’t have yet, it’s called the yoke of debt with a reason.  So much so, by the way, that if you read economic history, you’ll find that one of the reasons people used to get paid on Monday’s was so that they would be sure to sober up and make it in to work for another week.

We’ve gotten a lot more subtle about how the world operates, but it’s still there at the hard/cold level when you look closely.

Markets in the US are down a tad on the futures, but gold and silver and rising from the dead because why?  Could it be the prospects of an economic boom to come from the immigration issue?

Speaking of which, I wonder if CXW (Corrections Corporation of America) would be an interesting play?  Hmmm…

Memorandum from an Idiot to CXW Management: Have you thought about changing stock symbols to something more simple for idiots like me?  I know PRSN would be too simple buy might get confused with PRSNX (T Rowe Price Strategic Income).  I think the symbol JAIL is available and it would sure help me remember the symbol…thank you.

Let’s also keep an eye on AMZN today.  The world’s biggest online retailer this morning send out a new chargeback policy to vendors this morning.

Now, where were we…,Oh yeah…silver is making a big move this morning, up almost one percent.   Soon, my lone silver coin might buy something more than a bottle of Ripple and a couple of cheeseburgers.

Say, you don’t think the border mess will cause the world to lose faith in the US Dollar and that will drive up the domestic price of gold and silver here, do you?  Accidental genius move my emptying out our bond piggy bank a month and a half back?

War in Ukraine

Keep half an eye on this one because it’s not going away anytime soon.  The pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine (formerly effectively western Russia) now want to keep fighting even as the EU is looking at more sanctions.

The part where this will all become interesting as the Dickens will be along about the end of September to mid October when the weather in that part of the world chills and the EU comes to recognize that they have just pissed-off one of their major natural gas suppliers….Russia.

Then we’ll see how serious sanctions work out against, oh, frostbite and darkness, for example.

Reader Note:  Still trying to figure out how to write shorter columns.  Haven’t figured out how to write less and still have time for both The Daily Bomber or the latest Kardashian press …