The Nation's Financial Condition

[Nigel]

I had beers and pimento cheese dip with a buddy on my lanai yesterday and neither of us was within six feet of each other because dudes have never done that, and interestingly I’ve never felt compelled to virtue signal to anyone that we were ‘socially distanced’. Just a few buddies kicking back with some beers.

Do you guys ever just chill or is everything a cause?

In the 70's we would go to my grandmother's house in Syracuse and hang out on her lanai. My parents and aunts/uncles would joke it was the only lanai in the city. Seems Grandma was obsessed with all-things-Hawaii after she took a trip there so the lanai term stuck . We'd sit out there with her artificial Christmas tree, drinking egg nog and listen to John Denver albums on her record player. It was mostly enclosed in glass so it offered a great setting to watch nature in her back yard or the snow drifting. Grandma would tell us about Grandpa in the war or about the history of anything important in Syracuse while she sipped on her glass of rye. Of course there were always the timeless stories of how Dad got into trouble as a youth. Still bust on him about some of them today! Learned a lot on that lanai. Good memories.

Nigel, where on earth in Syracuse was your Grandma's lanai?

Over near Nottingham HS, Euclid Meadowbrook area.

[Nigel]

I had beers and pimento cheese dip with a buddy on my lanai yesterday and neither of us was within six feet of each other because dudes have never done that, and interestingly I’ve never felt compelled to virtue signal to anyone that we were ‘socially distanced’. Just a few buddies kicking back with some beers.

Do you guys ever just chill or is everything a cause?

In the 70's we would go to my grandmother's house in Syracuse and hang out on her lanai. My parents and aunts/uncles would joke it was the only lanai in the city. Seems Grandma was obsessed with all-things-Hawaii after she took a trip there so the lanai term stuck . We'd sit out there with her artificial Christmas tree, drinking egg nog and listen to John Denver albums on her record player. It was mostly enclosed in glass so it offered a great setting to watch nature in her back yard or the snow drifting. Grandma would tell us about Grandpa in the war or about the history of anything important in Syracuse while she sipped on her glass of rye. Of course there were always the timeless stories of how Dad got into trouble as a youth. Still bust on him about some of them today! Learned a lot on that lanai. Good memories.

I had an Aunt in Pittsburgh who build a Polynesian themed tiki bar in her basement. She called it her lanai. I never knew what the term really meant until I was in high school. She painted a mural on one wall of beach at sunset and always put on a Don Ho album, or two. As kids we always got mocktails with tiny paper umbrellas.

I never knew the term either. To me it was just a room added on the back of the house. It's still a running joke for all us cousins when we get together. She had these big round wicker swivel chairs out there along with folding tray stands and us kids got 'stuck' out there away from the adult table at the big holiday meals. We too had those paper umbrellas in our ginger ale and always with a cherry. She also had a few Don Ho albums and of course Elvis Presley was the king!

[tech37]

I had beers and pimento cheese dip with a buddy on my lanai yesterday and neither of us was within six feet of each other because dudes have never done that, and interestingly I’ve never felt compelled to virtue signal to anyone that we were ‘socially distanced’. Just a few buddies kicking back with some beers.

Do you guys ever just chill or is everything a cause?

In the 70's we would go to my grandmother's house in Syracuse and hang out on her lanai. My parents and aunts/uncles would joke it was the only lanai in the city. Seems Grandma was obsessed with all-things-Hawaii after she took a trip there so the lanai term stuck . We'd sit out there with her artificial Christmas tree, drinking egg nog and listen to John Denver albums on her record player. It was mostly enclosed in glass so it offered a great setting to watch nature in her back yard or the snow drifting. Grandma would tell us about Grandpa in the war or about the history of anything important in Syracuse while she sipped on her glass of rye. Of course there were always the timeless stories of how Dad got into trouble as a youth. Still bust on him about some of them today! Learned a lot on that lanai. Good memories.

Nigel, where on earth in Syracuse was your Grandma's lanai?

Over near Nottingham HS, Euclid Meadowbrook area.

Good story...thanks for sharing. She sounds like an interesting character.

[wgdsr]

i mean, i get the mask thing, wear it inside and where required, advise it for my kid.
but we've had the cdc, the who, the surgeon general, our top pandemic guy, and god knows who else all come out at various times to say don't wear them, wear them. or maybe not.
these are supposedly the most qualified scientific people in the world.
isn't there a spot to say What the heck is going on instead of these folks are bad? we expect them to what, believe today's tape on masks? when the world's top experts don't know what's the rule? this whole shebang has been a sh*@ show. top to bottom.

They didn’t want a run on mask but nobody cares. They had their reason.... it is not because they are stupid. I bought some any way because they wear them in Asia and they have more experience. People are people....If it has worked for them, it should work for us.

Congratulations.

Had 'socially distanced' dinner on the patio with our intern, recent grad of Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering, 5 years at Hopkins, grew up in Hong Kong.

Guess what Hong Kong's experience has been?
Now look at a map of where HK and Wuhan are...what would have been predicted?
Extremely dense community.

As we discussed this, she made an interesting statement. When the virus was first beginning to be recognized by the docs in Wuhan in January, and yet the government was saying not to worry, the people of HK, who near universally don't trust the gov't, immediately all put on their masks (which they had experience doing having been through SARS.) They already wore masks quite a bit, for instance if you ever go to a doctor, everyone wears a mask in the waiting room, etc. It's just the social norm. They had a run on masks, but most had sufficient supplies in their home, and cloth masks as well.

Protestors had already been masked, more to keep the government from identifying them. Expect more protests through the summer, as the government is looking to shutdown various holiday celebrations, despite near zero community spread.

I had beers and pimento cheese dip with a buddy on my lanai yesterday and neither of us was within six feet of each other because dudes have never done that, and interestingly I’ve never felt compelled to virtue signal to anyone that we were ‘socially distanced’. Just a few buddies kicking back with some beers.

Do you guys ever just chill or is everything a cause?

tough to NOT bogart that joint, my friend.....you can't pass it over to me if you are 6 feet apart. I ALWAYS make sure everyone has their own stuff, to stop germs from being spread.

Did you like this movie?

Has Gary old man ever performed better in any role than this? If one doesn’t like True Romance I just don’t know what to say. All. Time. Classic!

(Not to mention young stoner Brad Pitt and Michael Rappaport as roommates or Dennis Hopper telling that horrible joke before he gets sent to another plane by Christopher Walken amongst a million great parts to it-and to think I watched it originally because as a kid I fell in love with Heathers and thought Christian Slater was a criminally underrated star waiting to explode until he picked one trash script after another for a solid 15yrs...)

incredible movie.
saw it again a year or 2 ago, maybe 5th time.

[a fan]

+100. One of my favorite movies. Ridiculous performance after ridiculously good performance. My favorite Oldman performance together with The Professional and Basquiat.

Walken blew the doors off of the joint....watching him and Hopper was right up there with the DeNiro-Pacino scene in Heat. Two actors at the top of their game.

[Kismet]

+100. One of my favorite movies. Ridiculous performance after ridiculously good performance. My favorite Oldman performance together with The Professional and Basquiat.

Walken blew the doors off of the joint....watching him and Hopper was right up there with the DeNiro-Pacino scene in Heat. Two actors at the top of their game.

The best thing that can be said of Walken as a actor is that he was totally believable as Sicilian mob boss Don Vincenzo Coccotti. The famous "Sicilian" scene he does with Hopper where they talk about Sicilian ancestry, the Moors, arabs and eggplant (moulinyan)/cantaloupes is priceless (and a rare use of the N-word by white people in film)

[CU88]

So where does the o d administration and congress go from here?

"The United States on Friday set a single-day record for new cases for the third day in a row, with 44,702 reported. Thirteen states set their own records for the average number of new cases reported over the past seven days."

"Vice President Pence, in the first public briefing of the coronavirus task force in nearly two months, offered no new strategies to combat the rapidly spreading virus."

State are going to shut down "again"

[Farfromgeneva]

“Hey Jerry, we told you to keep them presses running and making it rain through Nov 4th! Don’t make us sic Billy Barr on you!”

[Typical Lax Dad]

+100. One of my favorite movies. Ridiculous performance after ridiculously good performance. My favorite Oldman performance together with The Professional and Basquiat.

Walken blew the doors off of the joint....watching him and Hopper was right up there with the DeNiro-Pacino scene in Heat. Two actors at the top of their game.

The best thing that can be said of Walken as a actor is that he was totally believable as Sicilian mob boss Don Vincenzo Coccotti. The famous "Sicilian" scene he does with Hopper where they talk about Sicilian ancestry, the Moors, arabs and eggplant (moulinyan)/cantaloupes is priceless (and a rare use of the N-word by white people in film)

[Farfromgeneva]

Chesapeake Energy, who is either #1 or #2 non integrated natural gas producer has filed BK over the weekend. Ch 11 and they claim their assets exceed liabilities in FI mining but looking at Chevron and BPs massive writedowns in the past 9mo (Dec and last month respectively) I suspect this may not even the case. Either way job losses will be part of any restructuring.

[CU88]

Politics & Policy
GAO Can’t Solve the $2.7 Trillion Mystery of Covid-19 Aid
A lack of transparency and accountability means few know where federal money is landing, what impact it’s having and how the effort to battle the virus is going.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... id-mystery

Last week, the Government Accountability Office issued the first comprehensive analysis of how trillions of dollars of taxpayer money is being spent to protect Americans, the economy and public services from the ravages of Covid-19. Its broad conclusions aren’t reassuring.

The report paints a picture of a federal government that is managing a gargantuan effort, at best, haphazardly. The government is either unable or reluctant to provide enough data and financial information to put clothing on what this $2.7 trillion effort truly looks like — and whether the funds are being deployed in a broadly successful way.

r turd show

[CU88]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/29/nearly- ... to-go.html

Nearly Half the U.S. Population Lack Employment

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 47.2 percent of Americans are not working. In May, the percentage of people working as a proportion of the working-age population dropped to 52.8 percent. Comparatively, in January, 61.2 percent of the U.S. population was employed, and in 2000, the record high, 64.7 percent of the population was employed. This data provides a more extensive picture of the economic downturn and the path to recovery. The employment-population ratio takes into account adults not in the labor force and those discouraged by the prospects of finding a job. Torsten Slok, Deutsche Bank’s chief economist, discussed the path to recovery, stating, “To get the employment-to-population ratio back to where it was at its peak in 2000 we need to create 30 million jobs” (CNBC).

Investors will look to this week’s June jobs report for an update on the pace of the labor market recovery.

[Farfromgeneva]

It’s coming in then energy complex. 7.5% of us employment so even if you philosophically hate fossil fuels you can’t ignore this. Shell writes down $22Bn of goodwill on its books. Their market capitalization you ask? $120Bn. So 1/5 of their value they just acknowledged does not exist or you will see a forward multiple expansion by 25% and hope to be happy with a nasty looking PE multiple in 2yrs (goodwill is value over tangible book value, or cost, for assets owned by a company and justified as something intangible that can be monetized through higher future cash flows to offset the need to amortize,or write down, this excess over book).

Or these equities could come down to adjust...

[Farfromgeneva]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/29/nearly- ... to-go.html

Nearly Half the U.S. Population Lack Employment

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 47.2 percent of Americans are not working. In May, the percentage of people working as a proportion of the working-age population dropped to 52.8 percent. Comparatively, in January, 61.2 percent of the U.S. population was employed, and in 2000, the record high, 64.7 percent of the population was employed. This data provides a more extensive picture of the economic downturn and the path to recovery. The employment-population ratio takes into account adults not in the labor force and those discouraged by the prospects of finding a job. Torsten Slok, Deutsche Bank’s chief economist, discussed the path to recovery, stating, “To get the employment-to-population ratio back to where it was at its peak in 2000 we need to create 30 million jobs” (CNBC).

Investors will look to this week’s June jobs report for an update on the pace of the labor market recovery.

I see a lot of metrics on the micro and macro level that seem to backdoor to 18-25%. Prior shell writedown, you could extrapolate that if the baseline is 62-63% and were at 47% that’s low 20s. Could toss out many more examples. GDP going from 2.5 or so to 1.5-2.

Maybe it’s all coincidence but seems like trough damage is on this order.

[6ftstick]

+100. One of my favorite movies. Ridiculous performance after ridiculously good performance. My favorite Oldman performance together with The Professional and Basquiat.

Walken blew the doors off of the joint....watching him and Hopper was right up there with the DeNiro-Pacino scene in Heat. Two actors at the top of their game.

Bring me EVERYONE

[6ftstick]

So where does the o d administration and congress go from here?

"The United States on Friday set a single-day record for new cases for the third day in a row, with 44,702 reported. Thirteen states set their own records for the average number of new cases reported over the past seven days."

"Vice President Pence, in the first public briefing of the coronavirus task force in nearly two months, offered no new strategies to combat the rapidly spreading virus."

State are going to shut down "again"

You do understand that more testing means more cases.

You continue to ignore the CDC reporting there's 10-20x's more cases than are reported.

That means the virus is less than 10% of the numbers the press is using to scare us back into our homes.

[Farfromgeneva]

Well the death toll is many, many multiples of 9/11 and yet we have TSA, Homeland Security and a Patriot Act, not to mention the Iraq War which cost what?

If it’s a cost benefit analysis then this would be a fair comparison. Especially after Clinton didn’t grab Bin Laden from Syria in the late 90s when offered like we switched from buying N95 masks that were intended to be ordered but dropped in lieu of spending that money on biological warfare defense gear that directly profited a friend of the administration.

[Typical Lax Dad]

+100. One of my favorite movies. Ridiculous performance after ridiculously good performance. My favorite Oldman performance together with The Professional and Basquiat.

Walken blew the doors off of the joint....watching him and Hopper was right up there with the DeNiro-Pacino scene in Heat. Two actors at the top of their game.

Bring me EVERYONE

My favorite Gary Oldman performances were in:
The Professional
State of Grace
True Romance
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Immortal Beloved

All great films.

[Farfromgeneva]

Strangely my wife likes The Fifth Element which he has a bizarre but large role in as well. Weird accent he has in that, not a favorite of mine but we left it on since I sometimes elect to compromise with her if it’s not too painful...

[a fan]

+100. One of my favorite movies. Ridiculous performance after ridiculously good performance. My favorite Oldman performance together with The Professional and Basquiat.

Walken blew the doors off of the joint....watching him and Hopper was right up there with the DeNiro-Pacino scene in Heat. Two actors at the top of their game.

Bring me EVERYONE

Yes!!!! Outstanding!