G2 Weather Intelligence

Hurricane Ida: Cat-in-a-Box or Flash-in-the-Pan?

 

Better late than never for traders of CME hurricane futures -- it now appears likely that Hurricane Ida will pass through the region in the western Gulf known to traders as the "Cat-in-a-Box."

Here's how this works:

Traders or firms with an economic stake in that area (e.g. oil rig evacuations in the face of a hurricane threat, etc) purchase a hurricane hedge that pays out a set amount of money if a hurricane passes within the predefined area.

According to the AER hCast application, there is now an 83% probability Ida will move into the Cat-in-a-Box region tomorrow morning, triggering payouts to traders who have hedged their risks in the western Gulf.

Money from hurricanes.  Who'd of thunk?

USA Today Weather Page: "Just another example of the homo-meteorological agenda"

Steven Colbert on the "leanings" of the USA Today meteorological team: 

"Sadly enough, even the weather page is in a state of moral decay. What’s wrong with Red, White, and Blue USA Today?

This rainbow weather map is just another example of the homo-meteorological agenda.

I don’t care what their forecast is. I will not turn partly gay with a chance of a reach around."

Wake up, America!

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Home, Hearth, Heart and Heartland - This Land Is Your Land
www.colbertnation.com
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Al Gore Raw: "We're all going to die, aren't we?"

See below:  Al Gore flogging his new book on The Daily Show.  Love him or hate him, he is truly the Pied Piper of the global warming movement.  Always interesting to watch ...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Al Gore Extended Interview Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

The Big Drill

Interesting overview of research into past climates from my friends at Climate Central.  

NEEM Ice Drilling Project from Climate Central on Vimeo.

CNBC: The Weather Influence on Holiday Shopping

Had a flurry of media activity over the past 2 weeks re: our estimate of the influence of weather on this year's holiday shopping season.

Following is a synopsis:

CNBC Five Reasons US Retailers May Have Jollier Holiday This Year

CNBC Why These Retailers May Beat Sales Estimates Tomorrow

USA Today Retail sales hint at 'less bad' holidays Chilly weather may have spurred September shoppers

Fox Business News Appearance: Managing Climate Change

Global Cooling Heats up the Climate Debate

Following is a good and relatively thoughtful (and unemotional) video from the WSJ describing the apparent slow down/downtrend in global warming over the past several years.

More to follow.

Paul

On 9/11

Ordinarily I wouldn't use the same author twice in a row, but it seems fitting to replay David Kotok's thoughts from last year on the anniversary of 9/11.

Still fitting. 

Great read, one of David's best ...

Reflections on 9/11

September 12, 2008

There are two images that have not muted with time.  

 

They are exactly 84 months old. 

 

After seven years, these closed eyes still see the jumpers as vividly as I did that morning.  I counted five in the few minutes between the time I first turned around to look at the smoldering North Tower and the time the second explosion rocked the South Tower. 

The couple holding hands and flinging themselves out of an uppermost floor right below the “Windows” restaurant are framed on my inner eyelids. 

 

They seemed so young to me.  He had no jacket and tie.  She had long hair which was illuminated by the bright sun.  It was hard to see much more detail from that distance.   Even now, as I write this, they still seem so young.  Yes, too young, they were much too young.

 

I often speculate about what was in their minds. 

 

They were knowingly jumping from 100 stories to certain death.  What was it like for them with heat and smoke and carnage to bring them to that action?  This was before the second explosion and before the buildings fell.  This was an act determined by them and only by them before we learned details of scheming Al Qaida monsters and their consummate evil.

 

Were they young lovers?  

 

Were they a couple? 

 

They jumped holding hands.  They fell clasped to each other for as long as they could.  They must have been plummeting a hundred miles an hour as their rate of fall accelerated.  Had they been at breakfast together on that clear, blue sky, bright sun, welcoming beautiful autumn day?  Did they hold hands while walking to work that morning?  The instant before Mohammed Atta struck, that “September morning” was as appealing, tranquil and inviting as one could imagine.  Was it that way for them?

 

The second explosion is the other image. 

 

I was then standing on the knoll across West St. and near the entrance to the building where the escalator takes you up to a lobby and on to elevators that rise to the Wall St. Journal offices. 

 

Ancient army training instinctively had me measure the size of the fireball.  It was 20 stories tall and about the same width.  I counted the stories out of instinct.  I also counted the “flash-to-bang” time and determined that I was between 4000 and 5000 feet from it.   I could feel the heat briefly as the shock waves rolled out from the blast.  It made the loudest sound I had heard since the ‘60s when I crawled on my belly next to an artillery simulation pit at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.

 

My mind surfaced the 23rd Psalm that morning as I stood on that knoll. 

 

Looking across West Street and down Liberty Street and beyond Broadway toward Wall St. one had a vista of two smoking buildings, panicked and running people, chaotic and sporadic emergency vehicle movements, injury and death. 

Through all of this, the bright sun and cloudless sky allowed a sharply defined shadow to angle onto the buildings in the financial district.  There are places here where the sun never reaches the pavement, I thought.  The nickname “canyons of Wall St.” entered my consciousness.   I cannot recall who coined that phrase. 

 

From the metaphor of canyon and shadows the psalmist’s words leapt at me.   You are looking at the valley of the shadow of death, David.  

At that moment we felt calm and not panic.  We pursued action not frozenness.   We moved decisively. 

 

We escaped and are here to tell about it and to contemplate.

 

Why me?  

 

Why those jumpers? 

 

Ancient texts yearly ask that we reflect and personally examine that question.  Millennium old teachings say that an annual accounting is done in a spiritual realm.   Who shall live and who shall die?  These things get sealed yearly according to those traditions.  

 

But good deeds of charity and kindness can annul the judgment.  That is also the message imparted by those ancient teachings.   

 

Maybe that is why I recite the 23rd psalm?  Why I keep it on my personal bulletin board in my kitchen?  

 

Maybe that is why its final sentence is phrased so profoundly with the text that we know? 

David R. Kotok, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer

Cumberland Advisors
614 Landis Avenue Vineland NJ 08360-8007
1-800-257-7013 http://www.cumber.com

On Bankers and Beavers

The latest missive from my friend David Kotok. 

This time from the back country of Maine. 

Read it. 

You'll be glad you did.

Bankers and Beavers

Labor Day, September 7, 2009

Drive north on US Route 1 about 2 miles from Princeton, Maine and turn right on Telephone Road.  Five miles of gravel takes you to the edge of Tomah Stream, a serene, magical place on the edge of the Passamaquoddy Indian reservation.

We turned onto Telephone Road.  The BlackBerry still had one bar, and there was the report from the London meeting of the G-20 finance ministers.  Banks had to raise more capital they said.  Some form of compensation limit was being considered.  All this would be implemented after the financial crisis eased.  Then the world’s finance mavens would put in place just what was needed to prevent the last crisis.  They didn’t say it this way – I am doing so.

In 1907 the banking panic and crisis led to the formation of the US central bank.  The Federal Reserve became a legal entity in 1913.  It was supposed to prevent another crisis.  In the 1930s the Fed received new powers designed to address the Great Depression and to prevent another crisis in the future.  In the last two years the Fed has used those powers to address the present crisis.  The application of those powers has more than doubled the size of the Fed’s balance sheet.  Did the G-20 tell us how a future crisis will be prevented, when our Fed and other central banks have expanded their balance sheets and have also taken interest rates nearly to zero?   No.  All they told us is that banks need to raise more capital and that bank executives are overpaid.

To be fair, they did mention the need to exit the stimulus at some point in the future.  And they did suggest that some coordination is needed.  But did they say how and when and who would take the lead?  Did they remind the world that it took a coordinated and massive, globally integrated liquidity response to break the back of the present crisis last November and December?   And did they remind us that if they do not execute a nearly perfectly coordinated exit, the risk of a currency crisis looms in the future?

No.  We do not yet have the fully transparent definition of roles for the international effort the world desperately needs. The G-20’s own roles are not clearly defined.

Back to Telephone Road.  “Last week the road was wide open” said Ray.  Now we had to slow because of a large puddle.  “Beavers have dammed up the culvert” he explained.  “I’m going to have to take out the live traps and move them to the pond.”  Ray is a ranger on the reservation and is also a friend and my fishing guide of many years.  He uses live traps to relocate beavers without harming them.

The beaver family has learned that it is easier to block up a culvert and create a pond than it is to dam up a stream.  Once the pond is there they quickly build a beaver house for the winter. We talked about beaver families.

The male and female mate and usually have 2 or 3 offspring per season.  They keep last year’s offspring with them as well.  So a beaver family is between 6 and 8.  After two years the parents kick the older offspring out and the cycle repeats itself.  The male is responsible for maintaining the dam.  The female guards the children in the beaver house.

“What happens if you trap the male?” I asked.

Ray explained how the female will come looking for the male at the dam.  If she doesn’t find him, she will take the dam apart in an effort to save him if he has been trapped or caught somewhere while trying to build the dam.  The dam will be broken open by the female and the water level will fall so she can search for him. “That’s how I know I have trapped the dominant male,” said Ray.

We drove the rest of the way to the stream.  Tomah’s wonderfully pristine dark waters yielded many hungry smallmouth bass.  Sunshine bathed the day.  Blue sky and red tinges on the swamp maples completed the kaleidoscope.

Too bad the G-20 isn’t meeting here, I thought.  They could learn a lot about role definition from mama beaver. She knows what to do in a crisis when papa beaver hasn’t returned; he knows his role in maintaining the dam.  Beavers do not know about culverts and roads that cover them.  Beavers didn’t put them there.   Humans did.  Maybe they were built by former central bankers and finance ministers.

Happy Labor Day from Tomah Stream.

Photo courtesy of Victor Fazzio

Curahee! A Walking, Talking Miracle

Don't miss this video.

From the CBS Sunday Morning show -- incredible story of the recovery of a wounded soldier from the 101st Airborne Division

Sent to me by my friend Mike Davenport.  His commentary:

"Must be old age catching up to me....but I am not embarrassed to tell you that this one brought a few tears.   So why am I sharing this with you?  Curahee!!  :)

For some of the addressees of this email, you'll remember the crusty old 4-star general in the video as that sadistic, hard-charging SOB Division G-3 that made us wear our battle button buttoned.  :)   Dave Petraeus, if you don't know him, is the smartest man you've ever met....and he can out-soldier everyone in the military except for SOWT.  HUAH!!  
 
Have a great looonnggg weekend!
 
V/R

Mike"

Curahee indeed ...