Great Piece By Ron Isana/CNBC About Trump and Paris Treaty

I kinda grew up with Ron Insana, back when he was a news anchor with FNN (Financial News Network)… that eventually become CNBC.  My wife (girlfriend at the time) often remarked that he was our morning alarm clock.

He wrote an editorial today about Trump and pollution and the Paris Treaty that I think is spot on.

It’s short and worth reading, but there’s one point he makes that I often use myself:

Ron said it like this:

I am not a “tree hugger.” I don’t have the necessary scientific background to claim expertise in this area. I don’t know if the changes we are seeing are the result of natural cycles that occur in geologic time, or if they are governed by solar cycles, or are, as many worry, anthropogenic (caused by humans).

To me, it doesn’t really matter. It seems obvious that whatever the reason, we, as humans, should act responsibly when it comes to the care and cleaning of our habitat.

Bravo, Ron.

I like to say it like this:  I don’t care if global warming is real or not… who the hell wants to live in smog-infested cities like LA and Beijing?

What Does It Mean That OPEC Is So Quiet?

It scares me that OPEC is so quiet.

OPEC countries usually love to grab the spotlight during big meetings (and the media loves to shine the spotlight on anyone that looks anywhere close to being an oil minister!).

That’s not happening for the big confab tomorrow, though… where everyone universally believes OPEC will extend their production cuts.  After all, the leading OPEC members said as much in a press conference on Monday.

Quiet is a bad sign… as is the Middle East unanimously agreeing on anything.

Could there be some hugely negative surprise tomorrow?

There have been little chirps here and there about Iran (the #2 player in OPEC) not wanting production cuts to apply to them…

… but nothing disruptive.  Indeed, everything seems civilized… which is a word not many would associate with the players involved.

Unbelievably, I think there’s a really good reason why OPEC may be in agreement:  The production cuts seem to be working.

Crude oil is trading about 15% higher than before the production agreement was announced last Nov.  Maybe more significantly, it dramatically changed the trend line.  Before the announcement oil was spiraling downward, everyone (there’s that “universally” thing again) was sure it would soon be trading in the 30’s.  OPEC’s agreement seemed to single-handedly stop the decline in its tracks…

… and there in lies the major motivation for cooperation:  Oil in the 50’s is a lot better than oil in the 30’s.

Guess we’ll see how it plays out in the next 24 hours or so.

 

OPEC Games?

To say the oil market is sensitive to news coming out of the Middle East is an understatement.

In November I wrote, “If I Were A Bad (Oil) Guy“… essentially wondering if countries in the Middle East might be jerking oil markets around on purpose to earn a little side money.

Guess we’ll find out this week… there’s another very big meeting on Thursday… and while everything seems quite hunky-dory right now… it will be interesting to see if anyone tries to upset the oil cart this week.

Stay tuned.

P.S.  It’s quite possible that something like this already happened… UWT (which tracks crude oil 3x) was trading just under 23 about a month ago… about two weeks ago it his just above 13.50… that’s a pretty sizable drop in such a short period of time.

17 Inning Win Means The Giants Are Going To The World Series In 2017

On Friday, May 12th, the Giants were the worst team in the Major Leagues.

That all changed with their HUGE 17 inning win that night against the Cincinnati Reds.

I was there for all 17 innings.  In fact, in a rarity, I was at the game about an hour early… so that’s about 6.5 hours of baseball for me!

By the end of the game… which ended just before 1am… there were only a couple dozen of us left in the park… you can see my picture of Buster Posey being greeted by his teammates after his game-ending homerun in the bottom of the 17th on the jumbotron… not a single soul in the bleechers.

From worst to first.  You heard it here… first.

Trump’s First 100 Days In One Chart

Trump often ridiculed Obama for playing golf and even went as far as saying that if he became president he was “not going to have time to go play golf.”

This chart from BusinessInsider shows why it’s difficult to take anything Trump says seriously:

Forget about yet another false statement, President Trump spent almost 20% of his first 100 days playing golf?  Really?  Nothing better to do?