Update...

A few crisis events here and there, in our home and around the world, and little has been posted here recently.  Last night, Woody Allen's "Cafe Society" was watched, which was an entertaining break. Jesse Eisenberg actually plays the Woody Allen role to a tee --- intonations, gestures, and body language that lead to the conclusion that the writer and director no longer needs to be on screen.  He has created his image.

Yesterday's terrorist events in Berlin and Ankara are beyond concerning.  Little events start big events unexpectedly.  The assassination of the Russian ambassador at a photography exhibit in a museum, an exhibit that was meant to highlight a connection between Russia and Turkey, was brazen madness on film for the world to see.  This does not rise to an Archduke Franz Ferdinand moment, but reminds us that something could.  The Berlin festival murders are more alarming, as the German right wing is already calling what happened to those festive shoppers "Merkel's dead".  Those types of pop up Christmas shops and food venues at Union Square and Columbus Circle were favorites here in Manhattan for many years.  Today they were no doubt fortified.

Meanwhile, back at the U.S. financial ranch, the news networks cannot get enough of the possibility of a Dow 20,000.  It's a news event and not a financial event.  It could easily happen this week absent any consequential news, and that will be followed at some point by the hedge fund shorts moving in later to wipe out the enthusiastic retail investors and the prospectus constrained mutual fund managers and drive the market back down.  So it goes.