I yesterday posted an article on gambling .  Today I'll look at whales, the betting kind and the largest animal ever in the history of Planet Earth. I'll start with some interesting  Homo sapiens  operating in casinos,  famous human whales . An unusual one is Zhenli Ye Gon. He was born in Shanghai in 1963, and moved to Mexico in the 1990s, becoming a citizen in 2002. He owned Unimed Pharm ChemMexico and other companies, and in the early to mid 2000 decade, legally imported thousands of metric tons of psueudoephedrine and ephedrine from Asia to Mexico. These are used in cold medications such as Sudafed, but is valuable to manufacturers of methamphetamine. Between 2004 and 2007, he was an ultimate whale, and lost over $125 million at the Venetian in Las Vegas in his attempt at money laundering. Las Vegas Sands, operator of the Venetian-Palazzo hotel complex, returned $47.4 million to the Feds in 2013 to avoid criminal prosecution. Linked  to Sinaloa Cartel. In 200...

Today, gambling....the casino kind and more.  But first, a few more things about petroleum, my feature yesterday:  Iran warns oil could hit $200 as it fires on merchant ships . WTI Crude Oil dropped from $110/barrel ( price just before the market re-opened on Monday ) to $82/barrel yesterday, but increased to $87/barrel today. The stabilization occurred because Donald Trump said this would be a short war, plus the International Agency recommended the release of 400 million barrels from global strategic reserves.  Note that the world roughly produces 106 million barrels of oil/day, and the USA is #1 with 13.6 million barrels/day.  Amazingly enough, North America is the largest oil-producing region, with over 31 million barrels/day. The world strategic petroleum reserve holds over 2 billion barrels, of which 20% will be released.  The USA has 415 million barrels in Gulf Coast salt caverns, which are designed to hold 714 million barrels.   President Trump...

Much of today brings back memories.  Let me start with the possible  return of COVID-19 , which served as the theme of my Thursday postings for years.  According to the CDC, there has a been a spike in COVID-19 cases of 18% this past week, and 24% hike in hospital admissions. From  Worldometer,  173 Americans died of COVID this past week and 277 in the previous week.  Of course, last year 550/week died from the flu, and this rate tends to jump in the winter, so flu deaths today are considerably higher than from COVID.  And few take the seasonal flu seriously. This alarms professionals like  Ashish Jha . More people tend to die 21 to 28 days after cases begin to increase. 60% of Americans did not get boosted. And look at how politics can make a difference. About that New Orleans terrorist attack by 42-year old  Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar , he was inspired by ISIS, but probably acted alone.  Donald Trump was wrong again, blaming Jabbar as an...