Archive - Oct 2014 - Story

New York City health officials have released Morgan Dixon, the 30-year-old fiancée of recently diagnosed Ebola patient Dr. Craig Spencer, to her West 147th Street Manhattan apartment where, as WSJ reports, she will remain under mandatory quarantine. This 'good' news comes as New York's Department of Health issues a statement on the deteriorating condition of Dr. Spencer who "is entering the next phase of the illness, which is anticipated gastrointestinal symptoms." This was expected apparently, as NYC's health commissioner Mary Basset noted, "we've seen with this disease that it continues to get worse before it gets better." A large CDC team is actively involved.

Europe is fast turning into a freak comedy show. Very fast. Or maybe we should say it’s always been one, and it’s just that the Larry, Curly and Moe moves are only now coming out in droves. Or maybe, what do I know, we’re just starting to understand how much talent for farce and slapstick the boys from Brussels have always had. Someone finish off that inane union before it starts to do real serious harm. Because it will.

The Queen unleashed her first tweet on Friday from the official account of the British Monarchy, explaining her pleasure at opening a new exhibit at The Science Museum. The news media were exultant and instantly went to Social Media for their reaction... Unfortunately for The BBC, they live broadcast a less-than-BBC-esque remark from one @WolfgangDikface...

"What someone believes is paramount."

We are now less than a year away from the day when Robert Zemeckis and Michael J. Fox inspired an entire generation to expect nothing less from 2015 than flying cars. Sadly, as a result of the past 6 years of human "progress" being redirected to finding creative ways of preserving crony capitalism, the failed way of Keynesian life and masking insolvent banks as lipsticked pigs, the only automotive question we have of 2015 is whether there are any GM cars that haven't been recalled; cars which one hopes will never be airborne. And yet, there is one aspect of 2015 that the Back to the Future trilogy may have gotten correct: that "other" thing which every 80's kid wants to have more than anything: hoverboards.

Ffuture production losses could extend to a wider variety of staples: California represents almost one-fifth of all US States’ milk exports, a third of all vegetable and rice exports, almost half of all fruit exports and over 90% tree nut exports. What is equally striking is how distant the #2 States are in some cases in terms of production volumes. So if the drought continues into the foreseeable future (and this is a real possibility), here’s a really interesting question: who will make up for any shortfall in California’s gigantic contribution to US food production?

The recent slowdown in Chinese property sales, prices and early-cycle new starts has most impacted physical demand for (and sentiment towards) commodities exposed to the earlier stages of China’s construction cycle – steel and iron ore – which have underperformed commodities more exposed to latter stages of the construction cycle, such as copper. However, as the recent slowdown in new starts flows through to late-cycle, copper-intensive construction completions, we expect copper to come under further pressure.

"What everyone wants to believe is that when things reach a tipping point and go from being merely crappy for the masses to dangerous and socially destabilizing, that we’re somehow going to know about that shift ahead of time. Any student of history knows that’s not the way it happens. Revolutions, like bankruptcies, come gradually, and then suddenly."

If you want to hide something in plain view, exaggerate it to the point it becomes extreme and convert it to a conspiracy theory.

We fear many Americans who don't travel internationally might have become somewhat immune to the intrusive, arbitrary nature of today's American government and its institutions. It is still possible to achieve the American Dream of a simple life with opportunity for wealth creation, fun, freedom and good times without an overly intrusive, threatening government ... just not in the United States.

Having been relatively quiet for a while, Russia's leader Vladimir, speaking in Sochi (following meetings with Middle East crown princes who confirmed Russia as a key partner - "isolated"?), has unleashed his most aggressive statements with regard the failing world order: PUTIN SAYS U.S. DOLLAR LOSING TRUST AS RESERVE CURRENCY, WORLD WITHOUT RULES IS POSSIBILITY; ANARCHY GROWING. Adding that the risk of major conflicts involving major countries is growing, as well as the risk of arms control treaties being violated, Putin exclaimed that the US-led unipolar world is like a dictatorship over other countries and that "US leadership brings no good for others," and calls for a new global consensus.

If, as the smart chaps on financial media continuously remind hungry investors, "earnings are the mothers milk of stock market rallies" then WTF is going on in the chart below... (Hint: "perenially too optimistic")

The Social Security Administration has just released wage statistics for 2013, and the numbers are startling. Last year, 50 percent of all American workers made less than $28,031, and 39 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000. We are witnessing the slow-motion destruction of the middle class, and very few of our leaders seem to care.

“Our predictions highlight the rapidly closing window of opportunity for controlling the outbreak and averting a catastrophic toll of new Ebola cases and deaths in the coming months,” said Alison Galvani, professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health and the paper’s senior author. “Although we might still be within the midst of what will ultimately be viewed as the early phase of the current outbreak, the possibility of averting calamitous repercussions from an initially delayed and insufficient response is quickly eroding.” The model developed by Galvani and colleagues projects as many as 170,996 total reported and unreported cases of the disease, representing 12% of the overall population of some 1.38 million people, and 90,122 deaths in Montserrado alone by Dec. 15. Of these, the authors estimate 42,669 cases and 27,175 deaths will have been reported by that time.

With The Royals and The Giants flip-flopping scores like an HFT-trader on FOMC day, we thought a glance at the two teams' local real estate markets might give some context for who comes out the weekend the winner... As RealtyTrac notes, the San Francisco Giants may have one of the most Equity Rich real estate regions, but the Kansas City Royals hit a home run with home prices.