RANDON THOUGHTS

Well, I am an idiot. Notre Dame stank it up almost as bad as Butler the night before and as a result Hoosiers 2 will not be coming shortly to a theater near you. The Mid-West is in mourning. Congrats Huskies and Aggies.

Portugal raise arounf 1 billion Euros today in 6 and 12 month bills carrying yields of 5.1 and 5.9 per cent respectively. Way too high to be in any way sustainable. The coverage ratio was well over 2x but nobody is really sure who the buyers might be. They sure weren't the Portugese banks. Methinks the actors in this play must be the ECB and sovereigns of various shapes and sizes. How does Brazil and China sound? More importantly, does anyone see a pattern emerging? Nobody appears to be standing in line to buy U.S. Treasury obligations...just like Portugal and Greece and the maturity of what is being issued appears to be getting shorter and shorter...just like Portugal and Greece. Odd, don't you think?

If you listen to the Dems on the Hill and the NY Times, Rep. Ryan is the Anti-Christ. Knew it would be bad but the reaction now they got their talking points all lined up is downright over the top. One wag went so far as to accuse him of attempting to solve the problem by insuring that seniors would die early from lack of medical care. Ryan was on the Obama fiscal commission but declined to endorse the majority report and yet he incorporated a good deal of the broad recommendations of that report with changes, of course. I guess I will never be a politician but for the life of me I cannot understand why he did not give more credit to that report and the commissions two chairs which The Leader completely ignored. I also think there is too much talk on his side about reducing taxes to spur growth and too little talk of the commission's and my idea that even with a reduction in marginal rates the flattening of the code and the removal of deductions and loopholes will undoubtably produce more revenue which is the key of course, not taxe rates. Taxes must be paid to produce revenue. When GE has 1000 tax attorneys looking for ways NOT to pay taxes, coupled with high priced lobbiests, the result will be what we have read about in the papers...every time. By the way, one thing that is missing in Rep. Ryan's proposal is some method by which if we get anything good it had better be carved in stone otherwise the first chance a single party gets to change things, it will. Are you waiting like I am to see what little Paulie has to say tomorrow? It should be great.

Finally, with all of this going on, the Euro is up around 1.43 and Oil at $109. Going to visit the grandkids this weekend and are not looking forward to gassing up. Guess I shouldn't worry, however, as Ben and Bill the Dud tell me prices aren't going up. I feel better just thinking about those guys being in control.