A New Year . . .

Christmas is done and we have begun a new year.  We have clean up, put up and shut down all the Christmas doings and are moving forward with expectation to the new year.  We had a good time but realize we are getting older and less viable, we do not bend as easy, stand as quick or can keep up with young children as well as in the past.  Neither one of us has improved hearing and that really shows up with youngsters flashing around us.  But we cope, they are after all our grand children.

A woke this AM, got my breakfast, made coffee and read the news paper.  Then on to the computer and to learn we are in a stock market down turn.  China has the beginnings of a severe correction and it could get worse.  And the Arabs and the Persians are at it.  The Iranian's fresh from their thumbing of noses at the US, trashed a Saudi Arabian Embassy (shades of Jimmie Carter again).  But this time they face each other across the Persian Gulf and both are oil giants.  There is no love lost between the two Muslim nations as the best of times and times are not so good at the moment.  World wide economic recovery is not in great shape.

So the price of oil has ticked up a bit but not by much.  Right now it is a lot of shouting and banning of Ambassador's.  Iran has yet to produce the oil that they say they can and many experts think they will not come up to speed for at least another six months.  The thinking is that Iran's oil infrastructure is old, worn out and leaky.  I am sure there will be those that will charge in to make a dollar or two off the situation that will help Iran.  But maybe not.  The oil patch is suffering from the demise of OPEC and there will be those who careless about geopolitics and only care about money that will pitch in and try to fix up Iran oil production.  Maybe they speak Russian or Chinese or Korean as in North Korean.  It will be the Russians that have any real knowledge of what and how to do it, but you never know who it will be - Venezuelans even.

We have to see how the China thing plays out.  If they have another bad day it may shake up all the markets even more.  That could be bad.  Things are not great here in the states but they are better off here than almost anywhere else in the world.

Not an auspices beginning to the New Year.  Looks and sounds like a bad omen.