Economy and MarketsFriday Jobs is Big, Iraq oil is Bigger

The Friday unemployment following all the up beat economic data might not be so big now. People will just think it's a matter of time. Even manufacturing is way up, but that might change because the dollar is on one of the all time tears in currency trading, up from 1.19 in March to 1.08 (ECU) today; the high was .86. This is because the European economies are in the toilet and everybody is looking for Uncle Sucker to bail them out. Don't forget this currency surge means that everybody who bought Euro Stocks is getting royally screwed and as they see the currency run up they are frantically selling their currency to buy dollars so they can jump into U.S. stocks.

Energy Iraq oil is now flowing with no fanfare and no announcement, probably because nobody wants to brag before the next pipeline blow up. This oil flows from the northern fields around Mosul to Turkey. The totally ruined and ancient infrastructure around Basra that our brilliant CIA failed to notice will keep Iraq production down for another three months. Gasoline prices "eased" to $2.09 all over LA this AM; second highest price over a sustained period of time ever. One station was selling at $2.07. Don't look for a big break anytime soon unless OPEC loosens up. However, the Labor Day horrid weather patterns cut down driving greatly which drove futures prices down twelve cents per gallon; look for that showing up at the pump very soon. This means supplies are now OK. However the good old Russians are cooking a deal with the Saudis to control oil prices and drill for natural gas; they are the numbers one and two producers. They couldn't cook this deal up if it weren't for our environmentalists killing natural gas drilling here. The upside here is that there is a lot of non-OPEC oil about to come on line (two to six months) and prices could get better; also the vaunted world economic recovery doesn't include Europe so that demand is gone from the market.