This is definitely amusing, watching the North Korean leadership try and play tit for tat, essentially against themselves. This is the kind of bravado that can only be fostered living in a hole in the ground. What do they think is going to happen?

The old lines of warfare have been killed out, largely thanks to the financial industry. Unprecedented levels of cooperation and mutual interests have been aligned over the last sixty years. Those aren’t going to just erase themselves.

The roots of NAFTA have sprouted a magnificent tree that is even now holding the countries together. Does North Korea think China has its back in a war against the South? South Korea and the US are far more important to China than North Korea is. I would venture that North Korea is actually a liability for China.

If markets seem unusually calm at North Korean warmongering, it’s probably because North Korea will get their clocks cleaned if they pick this fight. Any effective war against the US by the part of China would send that country screaming into a depression. They’ve come too far to see it all get ruined by old world communists.

But hey, let’s call North Korea’s bluff and find out.

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Chavez is now officially dead for real – as opposed to the fake news reports that have been making the airwaves once every few months – ironically it seems he died in Cuba’s “stellar” medical program, of a respiratory infection.

No, Cuba, you’re supposed to “clean” your instruments. “Clean”…

Well, hah! What do you expect for free?

I’d like to say this marks a turning point in Venezuelan history; a triumphant moment where a once-great culture can pull itself out of the gutter and rebuild after almost twenty years of garish incompetence.

I’d like to say that, but I’m just too smart for that sort of thing…

You see, there is nothing special about Hugo Chavez. Nothing. He was the dominant monkey to emerge from a primordial game of survival. His rise was circumstantial, charged by a sharp smile and a knack for knowing how to tell everyone, one on one, exactly what they wanted to hear. And now that he is dead, my only real satisfaction is knowing that he died young (one second early for every life he helped ruin I’d like to think).

His legacy is a power vacuum. You see, like most jackasses, Chavez believed himself irreplaceable. That is folly. Our betters come behind us, catapulted by our efforts today. Chavez belittled his people and convinced them they needed him, concentrating all power, publicity and wealth to himself – a megalomaniac of the highest order.

And now that ‘irreplaceable’ man is very dead.

The office that he left behind is unparalleled in power and has zero accountability attached to it. No culpability whatsoever – I mean, the man promised infrastructure spending back in the nineties and yet Venezuela has had rolling blackouts twice a day for a decade.

What kind of person is attracted to such a title?

And so, the next con artist is out there somewhere…preparing roaring and empty speeches…brushing up on what they think the near illiterate people want to hear…planning for all the wonderful things they’ll gift themselves from the public treasury, that grand reward for that good work they haven’t done…

Prepare yourselves. Soon to follow will be the dramatic calls from the indefensible sympathizers here in the US. Dull burdens of society like Sean Penn will soon be out and about, shining gold on Chavez great ‘legacy’ of “wanting to help people”. “Wanting to help people” is all they have – mostly because they’re too dumb to actually help people. They can’t let that go; what would be left for them?

But what should upset you is the murmur that will be coming from more sensible folks. The kind of folks who ought to know better…

They will ask the question, “is now the time to invest in Venezuela?” in much the same way they asked, “is now the time to invest in Russia?” in the early 90’s, even though it wasn’t clear that Russia was even a place (much less not-the-USSR). Chastise these men and women without delay – such baseless speculation can only bring suffering to themselves and those around them.

Even his death brings nothing for Venezuela. Because he left behind a mighty opportunity for the worst of mankind, and a population too weak, pitiful and sad to do anything about it. That is Chavez’ true legacy – that of a sycophant and a self-aggrandizer.

But there was nothing uniquely important about Chavez himself, and the banal can easily fill his shoes, if fortune and chance should allow it.

The monkey-knife-fight succession plan is about to commence…

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Finally!

Citing runaway deficits and long-term debts Detroit could never repay on its own, Gov. Rick Snyder today pulled the trigger and announced he will appoint an emergency financial manager for the state’s largest city.

Read here:

It is about time somebody stepped up and smacked down this city and the incompetent fools who “run” it. You would think 30 years of rampant corruption and blatant unethical conduct would be grounds enough – a ‘mandate from heaven’ – for anyone in any leadership position in the State at large to annex this God-forsaken place without debate; but no, we had to spend the last three years in what is essentially bankruptcy, pretending like any of us cared what JoAnn Watson ‘thinks’ (believe me I use that term real loosely).

Sorry folks, but there is no “absolute right” to self governance. Particularly if you make bad decisions, squandering resources and destroying credit in the name of the public – your credibility is attached to those things. The rest of us should not have to suffer while you roll around in the mud, dragging us down into a state of rancor with you.

Detroit is simply not suited for pure democracy…because Her people are too stupid. A democracy cannot adequately function when half the population can barely read. I appreciate that many people in Detroit are very poor and need help; however, “help” is not placing those people in delicate positions of power where lots of other citizens depend on them.

I care about Detroit’s poor. I do not care about Detroit’s poor’s ideas for fixing their own condition.

I welcome the authoritarian wielding absurd levels of zero oversight, no contest declarations. This city is already on its knees; time to cut out the cancer and begin the real rebirth – through fire.

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HIGHER

The Obama gun control announcement was a complete non-issue for gun manufacturers. The Executive Orders, the only part of this that I ever feared, was stuffed full of common sense, passive actions that no one was objecting to in the first place.

And Obama acknowledged (which is always half the battle with him) that any attempt to restrict magazine capacity or ban “assault weapons” (read “any gun that looks scary”) must start in the Legislature.

Reid and Boehner are just FIGHTING with each other over who gets to start that process…

Oh, wait no they’re both punting.

Meanwhile, Obama’s actions, surrounding himself with children like a 20th century totalitarian on crack, before announcing this set of soft measures, have fired up the gun owners and political operatives who haven’t quite worked out yet that this isn’t a big deal.

The gun buying craze, which is pre-empting future government action that probably isn’t coming, will run voraciously until it exhausts itself. And ironically, a push to try and reign in weapons will have inadvertently put a lot more of them into circulation.

On a pullback, I will consider adding back RGR to my portfolio. By this time next year, it will be making new highs.

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The California Public Employee’s Retirement System has finally waded into the gun debate (after much speculation they might do so). Effectively, public employees (or more specifically, California elected officials trying to feign being responsible) have now pushed their retirement funds to divest of all firearms stocks – putting downward pressure on RGR, SWHC, and the like.

That’s funny, as last I checked, CalPERS’ was perilously underfunded, with estimates running between final targets as low as 40%. Present funding puts them at a little over 70% funded. In any scenario, I would point out that if CalPERS was in the private market right now, the Pension Protection Act of 2006 would currently obligate the government, under terms of business hardship, to come in and seize the whole operation.

I guess I didn’t realize that CalPERS was in any position to throw away profitable investments.

It should be well known to my full time readers that Cain Hammond Thaler is no friend of the clinically insane residents of California. The 9th floor is very much against their particular variety of arrogance-wrapped-in-financial-illiteracy-in-need-of-a-match.

And when that accelerant finally finds its spark, I will sit back sipping on an Tom Collins and watch with glee as the leadership of California, so long insistent that they are a model for the rest of the country, is forced to come begging with hat in hand, for a bailout.

And when that happens, I think California public employees might realize they had far more serious matters to be debating right now, than whether or not selling legal weapons largely to responsible owners was a moral imperative.

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As the market is off a whopping fraction of a percent, commentators are literally soiling themselves on live television, trying to time the next selloff.

Oil reversed yesterday – to a flurry of publications informing us that the move higher is over with.

Bond analysts are flipping out about Europe.

Romney made some comment most everyone I hang out with agrees with – half of all American’s are lazy tits with zero self-worth – and now a few ancient and withered CNN “journalists” are creaming their pants insisting Obama now somehow has this election in the bag.

And China is thinking of crushing Japan because of some island that might have oil rights.

Folks, this is obviously a drama day. I’m checking my brain out.

Do you understand insignificant this selloff is?

Do you get how high all commodities ramped over the last three weeks as the QE announcement was obviously leaked?

Do you see that European bond yields are still lower than they’ve been all year?

Do you understand that CNN journalists all dorm together in a crawl space and haven’t made a correct prediction in the last 15 years? That the polls coming out have fluctuated consistently by 3% or more, leaving Obama and Romney (the guy supposedly nobody likes) in a virtual tie?

Do you get that Japan has nukes too?

Seriously, this is ridiculous. I’m closing the 9th floor for business early today. My things are packed. I’m closing the door behind me – the lights are flipped off as my hand slides quickly out before the latch locks tight.

Today is just too stupid to get involved with. I’ll see you tomorrow.

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