Screwball

Well, you have people like Neel Kashkari and Austan D. Goolsbee on the FOMC, but I don't think Neel (cabin a woods or some sort of horse****) Kashkari has a vote right now. Goolsbee is a ghoul and FOS up to his ears. Neel... I remember people defending that little creep back during TARP days. Spit!

This is bigger than people understand. I'm old, will be 70 next year. My crazy retired buddies and people our age are nothing but a heath care bad news machine. Nothing but horror stories. It became worse when private equity started buying the medical system and turned into a profit center. If they can automate it with AI, or find a way to cut costs with it, they will do so. Our health care system will only get worse and our loved ones will suffer. But the stock price will go up. Let's have a little fun... Incorrect. If you ever worked in a hospital, rest home, or assistant living facility you would immediately know what that is. And it ain't dogs. AI will never replace the people who do the incredible work they do in this most challenging industry. My respect for them is off the charts. Too easy to go ask HAL as a student, or a corporation, instead of making it about our people. What can possibly go wrong?

And then there is AI and health care....Good idea? Maybe not. Here is an article about using AI in health care. I'll paste one quote from the article; AI’s errors may be impossible to eliminate – what that means for its use in health care That doesn't sound good. Wonder what a real doctor might say? One of the financial blogs I read has a doctor who has posted there for quite a few years. I think he's a smart and good guy from reading all his stuff over the years, so I trust him. This is his reply to that article which is being discussed; If wasn't already skeptical of our medical system...

The pot stocks are flying today, some up 30-40%. Most are small caps so they trade like a penny stock so you can make a killing - and get your face ripped off as well. Silver is taking a breather so far today, down almost 5%. Gold down a little but gave up quite a bit from open. I'm kinda with this guy; This probably has something to do with it, especially recently. 3 month chart by day of the dollar index. The metals usually trade inverse to the dollar index;

Too funny! Pot stocks are up 15/20% on the news (after hours).

Interesting chart porn of the day. Silver must be the new tulips. What a ride. First chart a 3 year by week. The horizontal yellow lines go back 5 years ago. Nothing related to today. Haven't looked at the chart for quite a while. As you can see it didn't do much for quite a while, then went up a bit in April/June of 24 until April of 25 and took a ****. Then went nuts. Looks like a hockey stick. A closer look; I'm not sure what's going on here. Is it a tulip thing or... Silver needed for data chips? On the other side of the coin (no pun intended) one would think the ass kicking winter has already brought us would drive the price of Natty Gas up, no? Well, it kinda did, but what's going here the last few days or week? Looks like a gap to get filled there too.

ORCL getting hammered to the tune of %14 today.

This stuff reminded me of an article I read years ago. April 2000 to be exact. It was in Wired magazine which is now pay only so you can't get to the article there, but here is a .pdf of the same article. Written by Bill Joy, founder and chief scientist of Sun Mircosystems and author of the Java Language specification. Long article about technology, including Ted Kaczynski, and where it all may be heading from the view back in 2000. Why the future doesn't need us - Wired Magazine April 2000 - 18 pages

The rest of the Madoff story. From NPR on the whistleblower nobody listened to; Madoff Whistleblower: SEC Failed To Do The Math Also on this date in 2004, the death/murder of Gary Webb. Quite the rabbit hole this.

I obviously have no idea, but with my limited experience I would guess some platforms do certain things better than others. I can tell within the same platform it does much better with some things than others. All new. I don't know when, but at some point I'm going to inform my Aussie AI buddy his name is HAL, for various reasons. :-)

Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. You can't make this **** up. Let's look at a little chart porn shall we? Six month chart that I narrowed to Sept 1 by day. The yellow arrows with the red ellipse around them are the Fed rate cut days. 9/17 was the first rate cut, then another on 10/29, and now another on 12/10. On 9/17 the S&P was around 6627 at close. Today it is 6886. That's about 4% for 75 bps of cuts. I guess cheaper money isn't what it use to be. Speaking of chart porn and yellow arrows; The full 6 months and you notice that horizontal arrow 6028 level. That gap will fill at some point.

Fed cuts rates by 25 bps. Expected. Market didn't do much.

We will see. Not only here, but other places there seems to be a push back from the people. Good. Let's see what happens. But then again, politicians work for money, not for us.

I have tracked my electric bill for over 3 years, even reading my meter daily for a year to check the power company. Our cost of electricity is up 9.6% per kWh over the last year. That's a double in 7 1/2 years.

I know a guy who works at our local sewer plant. There is also the problem with capacity. During large storms that happen twice in 20 years we were at peak capacity the plant could handle. Add in data centers that use a considerable amount of water, what then? Who pays for the sewer plant expansion? You must plan for peak demand plus). We know who, us. And our sewer rates are off the charts now.