and the bumps in the road appear
Jun. 21st, 2018 12:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drhoovesThe markets are beginning to gyrate again, with the S&P falling back to 2750 today, but the naysayers who are out in full force tends to have me believe the "Big One", that is crash mind you, is not quite here yet. Tech is holding up nicely, and while the DOW is looking anemic, we've made it to the Solstice without the usual "sell in May and go away" tendencies of the past, so methinks the market is okay for now. It should continue to churn around a bit though, and the volatility should keep things interesting. Many financial pundits are warning that the Fed's continued rate cuts and dollar's strength will bring a bloodbath to equity prices, and phony trade wars aren't helping either. It remains to be seen if the Fed will deviate from its long trend of telegraphing its moves well ahead of time, and actually morph into "the Fed has got your back!", ala Jim Cramer.
The NSA is moving data into a top-secret "cloud" while cloud security is still up in the air due to design flaws in modern chips running the hypervisors. Call it tech insanity if you will, as single points of failure abound in many companies infrastructure today, and to have Uncle Sam be on the same teetering bandwagon is hardly reassuring. While investors are getting defensive, and buying stocks that better weather a storm and moving cash into treasuries, the question now becomes what happens when online banking and ATMs go belly up, for even a short period of time? I can't shake the feeling that a "bank holiday" of some sort may be in our future here in the States, and we'll be "Cyprus-ed" into having some serious wealth trimmed from our holdings afterwards.
In other news, the employment landscape continues to change, with mobile workers in corporate camps replace traditional housing in places like Silicon Valley. Seattle should soon follow, and based on the homeless populations and mild climates, the West Coast should maintain its home of young tech companies for the foreseeable future. The political landscape is consumed with the stories about illegal migrants being separated from their children, but it doesn't seem to get mentioned that often it's because a parent is tossed in jail, and that these policies have been around for well over a decade. Trump responded this week with a couple of executive orders to "fix" things, but time will tell how effective the repairs will be. The Supreme Court has ruled online shoppers should pay taxes on purchases, and along with their recent ruling on sports betting just confirms my view that the .GOV's thirst for "revenue", err taxes, is getting worse.
The environmental news is a bit scary, as drinking water studies across the country indicate that many are contaminated with man-made substances, and some of the these are quite hazardous to your health - and at lower does than current EPA regulations. Seafood consumption is tied to more frequent sex, but that trend goes away as seafood becomes more scarce. The NYC subway system is crumbling, and you don't have to look very hard to find numerous examples ANYWHERE that the infrastructure maintenance in this country is well behind schedule. Just part of the Decline. Most disturbing is the news from Russia where the FIFA World Cup fans are drinking up all the beer. Egads! A world without beer is sad, indeed.
The NSA is moving data into a top-secret "cloud" while cloud security is still up in the air due to design flaws in modern chips running the hypervisors. Call it tech insanity if you will, as single points of failure abound in many companies infrastructure today, and to have Uncle Sam be on the same teetering bandwagon is hardly reassuring. While investors are getting defensive, and buying stocks that better weather a storm and moving cash into treasuries, the question now becomes what happens when online banking and ATMs go belly up, for even a short period of time? I can't shake the feeling that a "bank holiday" of some sort may be in our future here in the States, and we'll be "Cyprus-ed" into having some serious wealth trimmed from our holdings afterwards.
In other news, the employment landscape continues to change, with mobile workers in corporate camps replace traditional housing in places like Silicon Valley. Seattle should soon follow, and based on the homeless populations and mild climates, the West Coast should maintain its home of young tech companies for the foreseeable future. The political landscape is consumed with the stories about illegal migrants being separated from their children, but it doesn't seem to get mentioned that often it's because a parent is tossed in jail, and that these policies have been around for well over a decade. Trump responded this week with a couple of executive orders to "fix" things, but time will tell how effective the repairs will be. The Supreme Court has ruled online shoppers should pay taxes on purchases, and along with their recent ruling on sports betting just confirms my view that the .GOV's thirst for "revenue", err taxes, is getting worse.
The environmental news is a bit scary, as drinking water studies across the country indicate that many are contaminated with man-made substances, and some of the these are quite hazardous to your health - and at lower does than current EPA regulations. Seafood consumption is tied to more frequent sex, but that trend goes away as seafood becomes more scarce. The NYC subway system is crumbling, and you don't have to look very hard to find numerous examples ANYWHERE that the infrastructure maintenance in this country is well behind schedule. Just part of the Decline. Most disturbing is the news from Russia where the FIFA World Cup fans are drinking up all the beer. Egads! A world without beer is sad, indeed.
