Rivers can be dangerous

Where should You live?

A third way to go

At least in Washington state. The legislature approved this on May 21

Good Customer Service?

I made an error in paying my last Chase bill. I was short one penny. Rather than go through the hassle of writing a check for that amount, I called Chase on the assumption they would credit my account for the penny. After all, I had just come from CVS where I was very easily able to convince the clerk to take $35.25 in payment for an item costing $35.27. I guess Chase is in tough shape, as I wound up paying them the penny by allowing them to withdraw it from my bank account.

How often will I use my Chase card in the future?

A Waste of Time

Twenty or so years ago I subscribed to Vanity Fair. True, it had a fair amount of fashion articles, but it also had a couple of substantive articles in each issue. However, things changed and I ceased my subscription. About a month ago I got an e-mail from them offering a deal for five issues; I took it. I got my first copy yesterday and the magazine has become a fashion magazine exclusively. Just about every article has a photograph(s) of the subject(s) of the article. Each photograph includes a description of what the subjects are wearing. It still has more pages of advertisements than articles, but the articles have no substance other than fashion. My next four issues will go right to my waste basket.

Changing Cow's Food

C

Doing Good

Calculating Health Risks of Air Pollution

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to change the way it calculates the future health risks of air pollution. It will use what they are calling the Affordable Clean Energy rule. But the methods used in this rule have never been peer-reviewed and are not scientifically sound. It relies on unfounded medical assumptions and discards more than a decade of peer-reviewed E.P.A. methods for understanding the health hazards linked to the fine particulate matter produced by burning fossil fuels.

The rule would slightly improve the efficiency of coal plants and allow older coal plants to remain in operation longer and result in an increase of particulate matter.

Are derivatives still a problem?

You may remember that they were a big factor in the Great Recession. One of the major reasons why was that trading in them was under the table so that the banks did not have sufficient resources to absorb potential losses. Well, as the following chart shows, trading in them is still not exactly crystal clear.

Truly big banks

Did you know that Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo have 50% of the assets of the 5,406 FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings institutions in America? That's what the House Financial Services Committee concluded in their latest report, “As of December 31, 2018, there were 5,406 FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings institutions that held a combined $17.9 trillion in assets…”.  The Committee then notes that there are eight mega banks in the U.S. “that hold a combined $11.1 trillion in assets, comprising roughly 50 percent of domestic banking assets.”

It concludes that these six banks “have engaged in—and continue to engage in—a crime spree that spans the violation of almost every law and rule imaginable. Taking the breadth and depth of their illegal conduct as a whole, the six biggest banks in the country look like criminal enterprises with RAP sheets that would make most career criminals green with envy. That was the case not just before the 2008 crash, but also during and after the crash and their lifesaving bailouts…In fact, the number of cases against the banks has actually increased relative to the pre-crash era.”

A major problem with Chinese pigs

Millions of them have died and are still dying from African swine fever. The nation’s stock of live pigs has fallen by a fifth from a year ago. They expect that China, the world’s largest producer and consumer of pork, will produce 150 million to 200 million fewer pigs this year because of deaths from the infection. Last year 700 million pigs were slaughtered in China.

African swine fever, for which no treatment or vaccine exists, has spread to every Chinese province and region, and has also jumped the border into Cambodia, Mongolia and Vietnam.

What's with JPMorgan Chase?

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the regulator of national banks, says that, as of December 31, 2018 the bank held $2,212,311,000,000 ($2.2 trillion) in equity derivatives.This is 65.5 percent of bank trading in the derivatives market. You remember derivatives from the Great Recession?

According to the OCC, JPMorgan Chase lost $644 million on its equity positions in the fourth quarter of 2018.

Not only is JPMorgan Chase Bank NA engaging in risky stock derivative trades, but according to the OCC just 31 percent of these trades are centrally cleared. The other 69 percent are what are called over-the-counter or OTC derivative trades, meaning they are “bilateral,” or secret contracts between JPMorgan Chase and a counterparty with little daylight available to Federal regulators. That also would suggest that they are highly illiquid.

Do you believe this?

This appeared in June 2016 re Trump:

"An exclusive USA TODAY analysis of legal filings across the United States finds that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and his businesses have been involved in at least 3,500 legal actions in federal and state courts during the past three decades. They range from skirmishes with casino patrons to million-dollar real estate suits to personal defamation lawsuits."

That's about 100 a year or 2 a week. I have not heard or seen any comments by Trump quarters.

We're having fewer kids

The CDC reports that the number of births last year dropped to its lowest in about three decades. Birth rates declined for nearly all age groups of women younger than 35 but rose for women in their late 30s and early 40s. Overall, the provisional number of births in 2018 for the United States was about 3.79 million, down 2% from the total in 2017. The finding marks the fourth year that the number of births has declined, after an increase in 2014.

The fertility rate has also declined. Last year it was 1,728 births per 1,000 women, a decrease of 2% from 2017 and a record low for the nation. The total fertility rate in 2018 was below what is considered the level needed for a population to replace itself.

Should we worry?

From Wolf Street

How much did you pay for your last prescription?

Growing food in the Arctic

Dealing with plastic waste

The Basel Convention is a treaty that regulates movement of hazardous materials from one country to another. Governments of 187 countries have signed this treaty, but we are not one of the 187. Now they have added plastic to the materials to be better managed. So, contaminated and most mixes of plastic wastes will require prior consent from receiving countries before they are traded. We will have difficulties in trying to trade plastic waste to virtually any country in the world.

An estimated 100 million tons of plastic is now found in the world's oceans, up to 90% of which comes from land-based sources, studies have found.

Living with snipers

Not pleasant news early in the morning

From today's NY Times:
After Big Loss for Market, Fears of a Lasting Effect 
Wall Street had its worst day in four months as the U.S.-China trade war showed no sign of ending. 

With new measures from both sides, it will be hard for businesses and consumers to avoid the fallout.

White House Reviews Military Plans Against Iran, in Echoes of Iraq War 
The plans envision sending up to 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack U.S. forces or accelerate nuclear weapons work, officials said. 

They were updated at the insistence of hard-liners led by John R. Bolton, President Trump’s national security adviser.

Taking care of baby

Finally some action on prescription drug prices

Americans pay far more for prescription drugs than the people of any other industrialized nation. The attorneys general of 40+ states have filed a lawsuit accusing 20 major drug manufacturers—including Pfizer, Teva, Novartis, and Mylan—as well as more than a dozen senior executives, of conspiring to inflate prices.

A 20th century star

Looking at the lower end of the economy

Federal Minimum Wage 1978 to Last Update in 2009

Total Consumer Credit Owned and Securitized, Outstanding (Source: Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System)

One view of the Border Patrol

What's going to happen with Italy and India?

Crossing the Atlantic

Jean-Jacques Savin did it in a different way - he lived in a large, barrel-shaped capsule made of plywood; it measures about 10 feet long and 6 feet 8 inches wide. He depended on winds and currents to go from place to place. It took him 127 days to make the 3,125-nautical-mile trip from the Canary Islands to the Dutch Caribbean island of St. Eustatius.  He did have a satellite connection with Europe, which connected to a GPS device and software that relayed weather forecasts, wind speed and direction. Through the satellite, he was able to get emails, text messages and make calls.

Structured Investment, Anyone?

JPMorgan Chase is offering one. You can buy a six-month note that promises to pay investors annualized interest of 16 percent under certain circumstances. The circumstances depend on the performance of G.E.’s stock. As long as G.E.’s stock stays within a certain range each month for six months — basically not falling more than 30 percent from roughly where it has been — then JPMorgan Chase will pay you at least 1.333 percent per month interest on your investment, or 8 percent for six months, or an annualized rate of 16 percent.

This is not the only structured investment you can buy. The market is around $60 billion a year in the United States, and growing; in Europe is closer to $180 billion, or three times larger; in Asia, it’s closer to $350 billion. Goldman Sachs has created a company called Structured Investment Marketplace and Online Network (or SIMON). SIMON supposedly provides increasing transparency and information for these investments.

Doesn't this sound like the CDOs of The Great Recession?

Compulsory voting

Why do salmon cross the road?

They are crossing the Skokomish River in Washington. The river flooded and they're going upstream.

Courtesy of a Duncaster resident

It's a different economic world

Some Tax Info

From Tim Taylor

Friendship

The record of a great business man

He's doing something smart at last.

Health and Human Services has announced that drug makers will soon have to include their sticker prices in TV ads if the drugs cost more than $35 for a month’s supply.

The Dancer

We're not doing too well

What if?

We are really in trouble

Or so says the UN's Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in its 1,500-page report, compiled by hundreds of international experts and based on thousands of scientific studies. Here are their main points for we citizens: 

Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’ 
Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’

Current global response insufficient; ‘Transformative changes’ needed to restore and protect nature;
Opposition from vested interests can be overcome for public good 

Most comprehensive assessment of its kind;
1,000,000 species threatened with extinction

We need to restore the IRS so that it can audit everybody who...

... should be.

Since 2010, the IRS has lost thousands of employees because the budget has been cut by almost $3 billion. What this has meant is a decline in auditing companies and rich people. Now about half of the companies we used to audit we no longer do so. And the same is true for individuals making $10 million or more a year.

However, the number of poor people audited has not diminished. More than one-third of all audit targets are recipients of the earned income tax credit; the major audit question is to prove these low-income taxpayers are eligible for government programs.

Criminal tax enforcement has also faltered. More than 150 million income tax returns were filed in 2017, but the IRS brought fewer than 800 cases in which someone was charged with making legal income but criminally evading taxes.

What do you recycle?

Another view as to how bad it is

From the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

Drugs in the water far from the ocean

Researchers in England have found cocaine in all samples of shrimp tested in a rural area of eastern England. A researcher said, “Cocaine was found in all samples tested, and other illicit drugs such as ketamine, pesticides and pharmaceuticals were also widespread in the shrimp that were collected.” Contamination of the water supply by drug waste is an increasing problem, with residue from insecticides and recreational drugs finding their way into the system.

A mystery is solved

What does this portend?