U.S. confirms second Texas screwworm case, Canada restricts livestock imports
Saturday, June 6, 2026
That's unfair to Harris, she came in fourth in California
Again, what doomed Democrats was betraying their sitting president in the ninth inning.
Warren Buffett's right hand man Charlie Munger was fundamentally anti-social
... "You don’t need other people. The point of getting rich is so you don’t have to need other people, so you don’t have to get along with others.” ...
Quoted here.
Friday, June 5, 2026
Everything sold off today
Stocks were down across the board, with the NASD 100 notably down 4.77%. The equal weight S&P 500 is down 0.52% month to date.
The Tech sector was down the most on the day, 5.78%.
The Consumer Staples sector was up the most on the day, 1.64%, which looks defensive against a possible coming recession. The Utilities sector was up half that.
The U.S. 10Y yield rose to 4.55%, and the 20Y and 30Y yields rose above 5.00. YTD return for VUSUX is now down 0.85%.
Oil retreated 3%.
Metals were down across the board, silver down over 8%.
Crypto was down across the board, too, with Bitcoin falling below $60k.
But DXY climbed! +0.658 to 100.071.
The theory is investors are upset that today's "strong" jobs numbers (the 70k hospitality hires is probably World Cup related, a one off, so forget that) indicate easy money from the Fed is now absolutely out of the question, and maybe even a rate increase is coming because the economy is running too hot, which is silly with 1Q GDP at 1.6% annualized. CNBC called that "solid" lol.
Jokers say everyone's just raising cash to buy overpriced SpaceX in its IPO next week.
Investors are taking profits ahead of SpaceX IPO, says Capital Wealth’s Kevin Simpson
SpaceX is worth less than half of its $1.75 trillion IPO target, Morningstar says
The increase in Saudi oil exports through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait in April 2026 came to about 3.3 million barrels per day according to Kpler
Iran’s threats against this Red Sea choke point are a big vulnerability for the oil market
... Oil and product exports through the Bab el-Mandeb nearly doubled to 7.2 million barrels per day in April compared with 3.9 million bpd in February before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, according to data provided by Kpler.
The interactive chart by Kpler in the story is a shipwreck.
The data is in millions of barrels per day passing through, as explained in the story. Unfortunately you don't see "million" anywhere in the chart.
What you see is 5.2B, 7.7B, 2.9B, etc., which could easily be misinterpreted as either "barrels" or "billion".
The proper designation should be MMb/d or perhaps MMB/D in the chart, but maybe just leave that out entirely next time because it's already too busy and just put "million" in the subtitle before "barrels" and leave it 5.2, 7.7, 2.9, etc. in the chart.
Middle East tanker transits May 28-Jun 3, 2026: Strait of Hormuz 1.1/day, Bab-el-Mandeb Strait 14.9/day
SoH E: 0.4/day
BAM SE: 7.3/day
Just 48.82% had a full-time job in May 2026
Trump I averaged 49.23% full-time, even with 2020 thrown in there.
For 2017, 2018, 2019 the average was 49.87%.
2019 averaged 50.38% full-time, Trump's best year.
Trump's best month was July 2019 at 50.98%, which Biden did not beat.
Trump is making America 2017 again, not great.
Full-time peaks in the summers, so we'll see what happens, but the set-up doesn't look promising.
The Dow Jones consensus estimate for May jobs was +80k, leisure and hospitality alone led all sectors with +70k lol, well above the 14k/month average over the past year, government added 52k, education and health services 40k
Productive jobs rose by 7k in manufacturing, by 17k in construction, and by 4k in mining and logging, mixed in there with the others.
U.S. payrolls rose by 172,000 in May, much more than expected; unemployment at 4.3%
Thursday, June 4, 2026
Democrats should have punted on allowing warrantless spying a long time ago, but it's amusing that Trump putting Pulte in the game might make them finally do it
I mean, Pulte's own family punted on him, why shouldn't Democrats?
Nope, you dope
Ruining young brains was not better.
And while we're at it, letting young girls cut off their tits wasn't better, either.
"We got this, we got this" USDA says about Plan B after Plan A began too late, with too little urgency, and will be short of the needed 500 million sterile screwworm flies until 2028 at the earliest
We are so screwed, so to speak.
Hamburgers will never be cheap as long as Donald Trump is president.
Flesh-eating screwworm is confirmed in the U.S., officials say
... "The United States has defeated this pest before, and we will do it again," the USDA said.
... Dudley Hoskins, undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs at the USDA ... “USDA invested heavily in the tools needed to eliminate NWS ever since cases started increasing in Central America and Mexico,” Hoskins said. “The United States has defeated this pest before, and we will do it again.” ...
Confirmed screwworm case in Texas sends two biotech stocks higher
... regional director of the Federal Crop Agency ... “We just had a conditional use drug approved; U.S. producers can handle it.”
August 15, 2025:
... Washington has halted cattle imports from Mexico and invested millions in setting up a new sterile fly production plant in Metapa, Mexico. But it will take roughly a year to come online.
... The U.S. eliminated screwworms in the 20th century by flying planes over hotspots to drop red-striped boxes packed with sterile flies, sometimes called “cupcakes” by ranchers. The USDA constructed a fly production plant in Mission, Texas, in 1962, that pumped out 96 trillion flies until it was decommissioned in 1981. Now the USDA is planning to resurrect the plant to disperse sterile flies, while Texas officials have scattered 100 screwworm traps along the border.
USDA inspectors known as Tick Riders who patrol the border on horseback to guard against another pest, the cattle fever tick, have also been tasked with conducting screwworm preventive treatment for all cattle and horses they find in the border area.
At the heart of the problem is an unworkable math equation. The USDA estimated 500 million flies need to be released weekly to push the fly back to the Darien Gap. At its maximum, the Panama plant produces just 100 million.
“It’s an overwhelming situation at this point,” Dr. Lansford said. “Screwworm is obviously doing well in Mexico, and they’re up against the same challenges we are.” ...
October 21, 2025:
... Moscamed, as the factory is called, will begin manufacturing 100 million sterile flies by July 2026. ...
Until now, the sterile flies that are spread throughout the country to combat the screwworm plague (100 million each week) are brought from a plant managed by the Panama-United States Commission for the Eradication and Prevention of the Cattle Screwworm (Copeg), in Panama, where they have been working at maximum capacity to control the pest since January 2025. ...
With the other leg of the project, the construction of a manufacturing plant for these flies in Texas, international efforts project a production of up to 500 million flies per week, which will be released throughout the region. If international cooperation continues, myiasis could be eradicated in less time than the first time. Some representatives of Senasica have even talked about achieving this goal in five years. ...
USDA didn't break ground on the Texas facility until two months ago.
April 17, 2026:
USDA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Break Ground on New Texas Sterile Fly Production Facility
... Initial operational capability targeted for November 2027, reaching production of 100 million sterile flies per week.
Construction continues immediately beyond initial operations to scale full production capacity to 300 million sterile flies per week. ...
This new state-of-the-art facility will complement USDA’s ongoing production of 100 million sterile flies per week at the Panama-based COPEG facility. USDA has also invested $21 million to support modernization of Mexico’s Metapa, MX facility, expected to be operational in summer 2026. ...
CNBC says long-term unemployment is surging but it is not, at least not yet
Long-term unemployment is surging in the U.S. There are hidden costs for workers and the economy
Long term unemployment is . . . falling.
The four-week moving average of initial claims has been falling for a year.
The four-week moving average of continued claims has been falling for ten months, not very fast at first, but falling decisively nevertheless.
The actual number unemployed 27 weeks or longer is down since December 2025. Yes, it is slightly higher than in January.
The percentage of population unemployed 27 weeks or longer is not surging either. At 0.666% in April, the percentage has been holding fairly steady near this level also for ten months.
In this latter metric, a surge would look more like a steady climb toward 1.00% of population unemployed 27 weeks or longer, which is common after recessions begin. The climb to the current level has been very choppy, reflecting the chaos of positive and negative developments under Trump II.
And incidentally, a contraction in this metric falling below 0.5% would indicate good times are here indeed, so this right now is not that either, as Trumpty Dumpty keeps saying.
Of course all of this could be about to change for the worse because of oil.
Oil makes our world go round.
Trump always prefers a diplomatic solution after oil prices spike 62% after he doesn't
Oil prices fall 3% on report Trump reluctant to restart Iran war
... The White House declined to comment on the report when asked by CNBC. A White House official said while Trump “always prefers a diplomatic solution, he has been clear about the consequences if Iran refuses to make a deal.” ...
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