A reader who describes himself as a “pretty left-wing guy, a Bernie-voting vegan” who is also a rabbi has hit the wall with his liberal co-religionists. He sends in this statement by Rabbi Rick Jacobs, head of the Reform Jewish community in the US, saying that one of the lessons of the Holocaust is that cross-crapping must be permitted. Excerpt:

Cynics, skeptics, and fiction-peddlers are frowned upon by the Obama administration (and the mainstream media) when it comes to our glorious leader's economic miracle. So we thought a simple litmus test might be useful to judge just how 'doomed' the nation really is...

"When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing;

 

when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors;

 

The full article with additional charts can be accessed here

Something’s got to give in the oil market

There has been a surprising mood change at JPM over the past 4 months: after initially changing the company's long-held view on equities, which for the first time since 2007 it is no longer holds at overweight, JPM's head equity strategist Mislav Matejka has been quite vocal on urging clients to take advantage of the current rally and sell into it. To be sure, this was surprising because whether JPM is talking its book or not, the bank stands to generate more client fees if the prevailing sentiment is one of bullish optimism rather than the opposite.

Submitted by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

The average price of gas in the United States is now at $2.22, up 8 cents over last week, hitting a 6-month high. This, in stark contrast to February’s ultra-low gas prices of $1.68 per gallon - a level that had not been since the end of 2008.

Then, the price drop lasted only five months from December 2008 to May 2009 when it rose to $2.24 per gallon.