Today it looked like the NYSE might recover from Monday's 588 point fall. About lunch time the Dow was up 350 points from opening. Then something happened, and most of the 350 points went away, leaving the Dow about where it was Monday night (in deep doo-doo). Shepherd Smith on Fox said a rumor of Chinese troop movements swept across the trading floor about 3 PM causing a wave of selling. Shep said the rumor was totally unconfirmed, but it did a job on the Dow before close at 4PM.
Wall St Journal said the overall price/earnings ratio was 25 on Thursday before the s*** hit the fan on Friday. As of Tuesday the price earning ratio was down but only to 23 which is still high. Historically, going back to the Civil War, price earning was about 11. Rule of thumb used to be buy stocks with a P/E less than 12, and sell anything with a P/E above 24. It may be that this market disaster happened when all the computer programs decided to sell 'cause the P/E was as high as it could go, why not cash in?
Anyhow, with an average P/E of 23, the market can go down a long long way before it gets to 11.
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Monday, August 24, 2015
Legion d'Honneur for Americans suppressing Train Terrorists.
TV shows the three Americans and one Brit accepting France's highest honor, the Legion d'Honneur from the president of France. The Americans are wearing knit polo shirts and khaki slacks. To my way of thinking, they should have been wearing coat and tie for such a ceremony. We were required to wear coat and tie merely to go to dinner at my old prep school, let alone receive the Legion d'Honneur. Oh well, they are heroes, and they make me proud to be an American.
Splat. Market falls
The Dow Jones took a 500 point drop on Friday. The market opened this morning and it dropped another 900 points in the first 10 minutes of trading.
Scary.
Scary.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Securing the Border
Everybody is in favor. Nobody has spelled out just what they mean. The Donald wants Mexico to pay for it. Nobody has estimated the cost.
Let's ignore the problem of people who just drive up to a border checkpoint, show some paper work and drive on thru. And neglect to go home. That's another problem for another day. I'm talking about preventing people walking or driving across the 1900 mile border that stretches from San Diego to Brownsville.
For me, I'd settle for a regulation chain link fence from sea to shining sea, backed up with a dirt road on our side of the fence, a few hundred yards back, to allow for jeep patrols. And air surveillance, by two place light aircraft, say Cessna 172's. No trendy but pricey drones, helicopters, electronics, camera's, and other welfare for contractors. The fence stops vehicles, or at least the hole in the fence tells you someone crashed thru it. The air reconnaissance spots people on the move and calls for agents to drive out and arrest them.
Costs for fence. We need 1900 miles of chain link fence. That's 10 million feet. I haven't priced fence lately, but I bet you could put it up for $10 a foot. So $100 million for the fence. Guess that the road (dirt, just good enough to get thru with a jeep) might cost the same. Buy twenty light aircraft at $100,000 apiece ($2 million) and you could fly over every part of the fence every hour. Let's assume the current ICE force can handle the arresting and patroling with their current appropriation.
So, we are talking maybe $202 million startup costs. Lets assume the ICE budget can handle manpower and maintenance.
Gee, we haven't every gotten to a $ billion yet. "A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you are talking about real money" said Everett Dirksen a long time ago. So far we only have a fifth of a billion. Long way to go before we are talking real money.
Let's ignore the problem of people who just drive up to a border checkpoint, show some paper work and drive on thru. And neglect to go home. That's another problem for another day. I'm talking about preventing people walking or driving across the 1900 mile border that stretches from San Diego to Brownsville.
For me, I'd settle for a regulation chain link fence from sea to shining sea, backed up with a dirt road on our side of the fence, a few hundred yards back, to allow for jeep patrols. And air surveillance, by two place light aircraft, say Cessna 172's. No trendy but pricey drones, helicopters, electronics, camera's, and other welfare for contractors. The fence stops vehicles, or at least the hole in the fence tells you someone crashed thru it. The air reconnaissance spots people on the move and calls for agents to drive out and arrest them.
Costs for fence. We need 1900 miles of chain link fence. That's 10 million feet. I haven't priced fence lately, but I bet you could put it up for $10 a foot. So $100 million for the fence. Guess that the road (dirt, just good enough to get thru with a jeep) might cost the same. Buy twenty light aircraft at $100,000 apiece ($2 million) and you could fly over every part of the fence every hour. Let's assume the current ICE force can handle the arresting and patroling with their current appropriation.
So, we are talking maybe $202 million startup costs. Lets assume the ICE budget can handle manpower and maintenance.
Gee, we haven't every gotten to a $ billion yet. "A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you are talking about real money" said Everett Dirksen a long time ago. So far we only have a fifth of a billion. Long way to go before we are talking real money.
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Warming Weirdness
Long discussion on my Facebook page about global warming and what causes it. Two theories were advanced. First theory is the Sun causes it. Second theory was "Chemtrails" . Neither theory is worth a hoot.
First let's talk about the Sun. It's a huge fusion reactor, and it's perfectly conceivable that the reaction sometimes runs fast and sometimes runs slow. From the ground it's hard to measure solar output, because your instruments are looking up thru clouds and air and stuff which comes and goes. About forty years ago the first satellite equipped to measure solar output ("the solar constant") was launched. That first satellite wore out years ago, but others were launched. Out on the Internet you can find plots of solar output from all the satellites going right back to the very first one. The Sun is putting 1350 watts per square meter onto the top of the atmosphere. And, that number hasn't changed over forty years. The instruments are quite sensitive, you can actually eyeball the plots and see the 11 year sunspot cycle. Solar output varies by maybe 10 watts (out of 1350) from sunspot minumum to sunspot maximum. But, try as you might, you cannot see any long term slope to the curves, they run flat across the graph, with only a little 11 year ripple from the sunspots.
Granted, if we keep watching for a much longer time, 400 or 4000 years, instead of the mere 40 years, we might be able to see a rise or fall in solar output. But using the best measurements we have this year, we can say the solar output is very steady. Unless we can measure a change in solar output (which we cannot) I cannot believe the sun as anything to do with global warming.
And then we come to "chemtrails" Those long white streaks that trail behind jet airliners. Flyers call them condensation trails or contrails for short. You have all seen them. Apparently some people think the streaks are mysterious chemicals deliberately sprayed into the air for nefarious purposes. Actually, they are just water vapor formed when kerosine is burned in the engines. Burn kerosine in air, and you get water vapor and carbon dioxide. When the air temperature is right, the water vapor condenses and you can see it.
Some years ago, Bob Guida, an airline pilot of my acquaintance was campaigning for public office up here. Someone asked him about "chemtrails" at a meeting. The questioner said the chemtrails were deliberately produced. "Not on my airline." was Bob's answer.
I spent six years in the Air Force, working on the flight line, and I can assure you that no Air Force aircraft ever had any equipment for production of "chemtrails" anywhere on board. The "chemtrail" idea is a joke, on a par with flying saucers.
So, the solar theory and the "chemtrail" theory are wrong. If global warming is still happening (global temperature has been steady for the last 19 years) something else is causing it.
First let's talk about the Sun. It's a huge fusion reactor, and it's perfectly conceivable that the reaction sometimes runs fast and sometimes runs slow. From the ground it's hard to measure solar output, because your instruments are looking up thru clouds and air and stuff which comes and goes. About forty years ago the first satellite equipped to measure solar output ("the solar constant") was launched. That first satellite wore out years ago, but others were launched. Out on the Internet you can find plots of solar output from all the satellites going right back to the very first one. The Sun is putting 1350 watts per square meter onto the top of the atmosphere. And, that number hasn't changed over forty years. The instruments are quite sensitive, you can actually eyeball the plots and see the 11 year sunspot cycle. Solar output varies by maybe 10 watts (out of 1350) from sunspot minumum to sunspot maximum. But, try as you might, you cannot see any long term slope to the curves, they run flat across the graph, with only a little 11 year ripple from the sunspots.
Granted, if we keep watching for a much longer time, 400 or 4000 years, instead of the mere 40 years, we might be able to see a rise or fall in solar output. But using the best measurements we have this year, we can say the solar output is very steady. Unless we can measure a change in solar output (which we cannot) I cannot believe the sun as anything to do with global warming.
And then we come to "chemtrails" Those long white streaks that trail behind jet airliners. Flyers call them condensation trails or contrails for short. You have all seen them. Apparently some people think the streaks are mysterious chemicals deliberately sprayed into the air for nefarious purposes. Actually, they are just water vapor formed when kerosine is burned in the engines. Burn kerosine in air, and you get water vapor and carbon dioxide. When the air temperature is right, the water vapor condenses and you can see it.
Some years ago, Bob Guida, an airline pilot of my acquaintance was campaigning for public office up here. Someone asked him about "chemtrails" at a meeting. The questioner said the chemtrails were deliberately produced. "Not on my airline." was Bob's answer.
I spent six years in the Air Force, working on the flight line, and I can assure you that no Air Force aircraft ever had any equipment for production of "chemtrails" anywhere on board. The "chemtrail" idea is a joke, on a par with flying saucers.
So, the solar theory and the "chemtrail" theory are wrong. If global warming is still happening (global temperature has been steady for the last 19 years) something else is causing it.
Friday, August 21, 2015
Carly Fiorina impresses
She gave a town hall event in Littleton last night. The place was full, standing room only, 150-200 people. Carly is a really good speaker, and the audience was behind all her words. A lotta of NH professional politicians showed up. I would call it a successful event for Carly.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Electronic is insecure
We had the Target Stores hack a couple of years ago. We had the Bradley Manning hack of the Army and State Dept also a couple of years ago. We had the Edmund Snowdow hack of CIA. We had the Office of Personnel Management hack last month. We have the IRS hack this week. We have the Ashley Madison hack this week. The lesson to me is that electronic data bases are insecure. Either a hacker coming in over the net, or a disloyal employee, and everything fits into a thumbdrive and and gets posted on the net.
Thanks Obama for ordering my medical records made electronic. I'm sure they will be hacked in a year or two. If they haven't already been.
As for email, that's so insecure that classified matter should never be emailed. For that matter, high government officials (like Hillary) should never use email. Every intelligence agency in the world wants to know what the Americans are thinking about, planning, doing. Take a clue from Osama bin Laden who gave up on phones and high tech and ran his operations by couriered messages, which is what kept him alive for so many years.
Thanks Obama for ordering my medical records made electronic. I'm sure they will be hacked in a year or two. If they haven't already been.
As for email, that's so insecure that classified matter should never be emailed. For that matter, high government officials (like Hillary) should never use email. Every intelligence agency in the world wants to know what the Americans are thinking about, planning, doing. Take a clue from Osama bin Laden who gave up on phones and high tech and ran his operations by couriered messages, which is what kept him alive for so many years.
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