Corona craze

This thing has gone viral in more than one way. It isn't just the disease itself, it is also the way people respond to it. It is a bit nutty.

Now I'm doing it. Sorry to add to the noise, but since this has gotten my attention, I seem to have gotten the craze myself. Anyway, let's at least try to remain as rational as possible.

Yesterday, I started taking my temperature. I want to know exactly when I start showing any symptoms, if any. Today, I am going to start noting everything I touch. One careless move is all that it would take.

Crazy huh? Or is it just a heightened sense of awareness?

Thermometer

Something I heard recently gave me an idea. Public places were requiring people to have their temperatures taken before they were allowed into a place. The idea is that you don't want to be a vector of the disease. Why not take your own temperature before you go out?

Please don't misunderstand. If a place requires your temperature, then cooperate. I'm just saying that if you are sick, don't go out. But it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to crawl into a fetal position because you are scared of this thing.

The benefit is that you can be assured that it wasn't you who spread it around. If you get a temperature, then you can call outside and ask for assistance. Whatever you are told, then do that. I wouldn't just show up at a doctor's office without calling first. Don't panic and run around like a chicken its head cut off. Maybe it isn't the coronavirus.

I've got a thermometer. I took it yesterday, and it was normal. I'll keep taking it every time I need to go out. Otherwise, I'll just be normal. Maybe that will be a useful suggestion for anybody who is worrying about this.

The most worrisome thing about this is that people are getting panicky. I'm more worried about that than in getting sick with this myself.

Obligatory, 3.12.20

We had an Oval Office Address last night. Trump isn't any Reagan, so this may not work for him. As with everything else, we will see.

If there was anything that I would like to see, it would be the use of the Strategic Oil Reserve in order to combat the economic war on our oil patch. This country has achieved some oil independence in recent years. I'd hate to see that go away because of an oil price war.

One thing that could be done would be to buy up some oil. This would tighten the supplies up a bit, and firm up prices. It shouldn't cost too much. Saudi Arabia is at near capacity already. In prior times, they could have imposed huge costs for such a tactic, but no more. If we go back to dependence upon OPEC, they could do it again with impunity. Buy some oil for the SPR while the price is low. It makes sense.

Most everything that they are doing is window dressing. It is all for show. The fact of the matter is that this thing will follow its own course until it is done. We may be able to slow it down, but there's really no stopping it.

If you really want to minimize deaths, you could quarantine otherwise healthy adults.

That might sound insane, but if you quarantine otherwise healthy senior citizens, the death rate would go down. It would also be a lot less costly. Seniors could self quarantine. That is what "social distancing" is anyway. Most people will be okay even if they get it. Seniors are vulnerable. Protect them instead.

This other stuff is just for show.

Obligatory, 3.11.20

The Biden campaign wasn't dead after all, but he looks pretty ill.

It looks like the Dems will nominate a near-cadaver for POTUS. To me, it is all the same. They are all bad. Maybe if he is nearly dead, he cannot do as much harm. But he still lies his butt off when he is lucid enough to get a few words out.

The lefties are fully committed to lying. It really doesn't matter if it is Bernie or Biden, they'll both lie in order to win.

I know what the Dems will say. They'll say that Trump lies. It doesn't make any difference what Trump does if they are going to lie every time they open their pie holes.

If they would tell the truth, then we could look at Trump. Otherwise, the best they can do is to make an equivalence. By the way, if they claim to be more competent, then all they can accomplish is to claim to be better liars.

In other news, the market has gone south again. I have to wonder what the market is seeing right now. It appears that the Saudi-Russian move in the oil markets is what may be moving the market recently. If there is any exposure in the oil markets that may make a price plunge problematic, then maybe that is what we are seeing with this sell-off. What I'm getting at is that this may have ripple effects.

In the end, if domestic oil production is not too expensive, then they can weather this storm. If not, there could be a massive restructuring of the oil market. That is what we could be seeing now.

Why Trump wins, and why he will continue winning

The idea here is that the Democrats are incompetent and that Trump is not. Of course, the Democrats are saying otherwise. If they would stop and analyze the situation honestly, then they would conclude otherwise, and begin to shore up their problems.

But they won't. They are heavily invested in their incompetence. How? Their class warfare is one factor. Class warfare does not recognize competence. It actually punishes it. The result of this is a growing lack of basic competence, especially within their own ranks. All failures are externalized. It cannot be all everyone else's fault. Especially if it continues. But the failure WILL continue because of the basic unwillingness of these people to recognize their own FAILURES.

A prime example of this is the Spygate scandal. The Democrats keep pushing the erroneous notion that Russia put Trump in the White House. It should be obvious by now that this is not so. But they stubbornly cling to that erroneous notion, and consequently, it makes them INCOMPETENT to deal with the problems that it creates for them.

Another example is this coronavirus scare. They keep pushing ideas that won't help, like OPEN BORDERS. The fact that Trump's limited Chinese travel to this country is credited with the relatively low infection rate in this country. If the Democrats had their way, the infection rate would be a lot higher. The Democrats are pushing what should be obviously a failed strategy in order to hurt Trump. But it will harm them instead.

Yet another example is their haste in trying to exploit the market selloff. When pump prices begin to fall a bunch due to the oil price war, the economy will receive a boost. This will actually help recovery to any of the ill effects of the selloff.

It all happened the same way in the late nineties. Although there was a recession in 2001, it wasn't caused by the oil glut of the late nineties. Actually, the low prices then were considered to be HELPFUL in delaying a recession. The actual cause for the recession in 2001 was the extremely tight monetary policy in the preceding year.

The yield curve was inverted in 2000. It was about that time that the dot-com boom went bust. The FED popped that bubble, and the terrorist attack of 9-11 sealed the deal, and the economy went into recession.

Unless there are some other events and wrong turns, Trump will continue to win. The Democrats won't be able to exploit these events, because they will be focused on the wrong things. This is due to their own incompetence. Trump will win because he is more competent than they are, and it will be obvious to enough people for him to be re-elected.

$20 barrel oil soon?

There's talk about that happening this year. There are two factors in that outcome: 1) The coronavirus and 2) an OPEC price war.

How does that price translate into prices at the pump? If $10 oil is $1.00 per gal at the pump, then the price should be fairly close to a buck. Not a buck but close to a buck. Imagine that.

Back in 2008, when oil peaked at $150, the prices around here were about $4.00. The most I ever paid for a gallon of gas was about $4.15 if memory serves.

The oil boom might go bust.

If we are lucky, that will be all that happens. What might be a bit of worry is if there is a popping-of-a-bubble type phenomenon. This could have ripple effects throughout the economy.

Incidentally, I note that Saudi Arabia is going to pump over 10 million barrels per day. Is there really any need for such output in the midst of a glut?



Update:

Wow. Well, I didn't expect a big selloff today. It was already ongoing by the time I posted this. I posted it at about 9:30 central time. The market opens at 8:30 central.

I don't follow the markets much anymore. The thing that alerted me to this selloff was the Bongino Show. He called it a "somber" day. Maybe he bought the dips earlier. There is a problem with buying dips. You have to time them at bottoms, or you may ride that sucker to the bottom with big losses before the thing bottoms out.

If I knew how to buy at bottoms, I would be wealthy right now.

Html

I've experimented a bit with Html recently. Perhaps there are those of you out there who have noticed.  This is a post to test some Html that I have adapted for my own use. If the experiment succeeds, future posts will look a lot like this one.  The experiment is intended to solve a long-term problem that I have had with the Blogger interface. I cannot create posts offline and paste them into the Blogger editor. The interface scrambles the text and requires extensive editing to make it readable.  The Blogger interface does allow for Html, which is how this post will be constructed.  Html as a subject never did interest me, so this required a bit of study before I came to this point. The Html code will encapsulate the text so that it will be properly formatted with any text that I enter. At least, that is what I hope happens. If it works, there will be little if any editing necessary once I get my post written up in a plain old text editor. I can just paste it in the pre-written Html and bingo, a properly formatted post. So here goes.