'Roadmap to Resilience' urges restoring coastal Alabama seafood brand, stabilizing coastal insurance market

Published: Wednesday, December 15, 2010, 8:06 PM ??? Updated: Wednesday, December 15, 2010, 8:06 PM

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Members of the Alabama Coastal Recovery Commission on Wednesday presented state leaders with a report that detailed the impact of the BP oil spill on south Alabama and offered a series of recommendations on how to protect the coast from future catastrophes.

The 198-page “Roadmap to Resilience” report was the product of three months of work by the 80-plus member commission, created by Gov. Bob Riley on Sept. 27. The report included nearly 300 proposals designed to strengthen the region’s social, environmental and economic vitality.

Commission chairman Ricky Mathews handed bound copies of the report to Riley and Gov.-elect Robert Bentley before a packed room at the Old House Chamber in the state Capitol.

Mathews, the publisher of the Press-Register, was tapped by Riley to lead the commission after heading a similar effort in south Mississippi following Hurricane Katrina.

Mathews emphasized the importance of Mobile and Baldwin counties to the rest of the state, noting that the two counties together account for more than 20 percent of Alabama’s general fund revenue.

“Coastal Alabama is the economic engine that drives our entire state,” Mathews said. “It’s critical to all of us that we build a better coastal Alabama.”

The report’s overarching recommendations included fixing the claims process for people and businesses affected by the spill, restoring the Gulf brand for seafood and tourism and ensuring that BP penalty funds are directed to areas where the most spill damage occurred.

Its specific proposals included an array of ideas, ranging from renourishing beaches and oyster beds to establishing a concert series to building a new beachfront convention center near Gulf State Park.

The report offered a comprehensive examination of the coastal insurance crisis. Participants said one of their top priorities was the creation of a trust fund to provide incentives and financing for homeowners to fortify their houses against storms.

“The coastal economy cannot thrive unless we stabilize the cost of insurance and even lower insurance premiums,” said Walter Bell, a former Alabama Insurance commissioner tapped to lead the commission’s insurance committee. “We believe we came up with some good solutions on how to sustain the coast by improving the availability and affordability of insurance.”

Riley announced he was taking immediate action to implement at least one of the commission’s recommendations, issuing an executive order Wednesday to create the Alabama Fisheries Marketing Board.

With an “I Love Gulf Seafood” sticker fixed to his lapel, Riley said the board will be charged with developing a plan to promote Alabama seafood and educating consumers about its quality.

Riley said the seafood promotion board was just the first of many good ideas to come out of the commission. He said the report will serve as a valuable resource for state leaders as they decide how best to spend the billions of dollars Alabama could receive from federal fines levied against BP.

“It may be years before we know the long-term impact, but the recovery process can’t wait,” Riley said. “This gives us a clear plan so that we can come back better than we were before the spill.”

Bentley, who takes office Jan. 17, commended the commission for its work and said he was eager to review the report.

“I look forward to studying these plans and helping you implement them,” he said. “If we can put these plans in place, we can improve the lives of the people who were affected by this tragedy.”

Commission members said the delivery of the report should be viewed as the first step toward a stronger, more resilient coastal Alabama.

“While no one would have ever wished for the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, this opportunity to bring various individuals and communities together was one of the good things that came about as a result of something so bad,” said U.S. Rep. Jo Bonner, R-Mobile. ?

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Market Meets New Wall of Worry Or More Likely Just Brief Profit-Taking On Way To Higher Highs

Stocks pulled back after a big advance and that can be good for bull markets

Most of the bricks in the previous wall of worry have been removed.?Economic reports have continued to improve over recent weeks; in manufacturing, the service sector, retail sales, durable goods orders, and even in the employment picture, where 151,000 new jobs were created in October, more than double the 70,000 that economists expected.

The uncertainty over the Federal Reserve’s QE2 decision has been resolved with the Fed adding to the stimulating atmosphere, providing another round of quantitative easing in spite of the already improving economy.

The major U.S. market indexes, including the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq rallied back to, and then above the potential resistance at their April peaks, before pulling back some this week.

Investors have become even more bullish and optimistic. This week’s poll of its members by the American Association of Individual Investors showed 57.6% bullish, the highest level in almost four years.

The good news apparently also reached Main Street. On Friday morning it was reported that the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index improved to 69.3 in early November (its highest level in five months) from 67.7 in October.

So what has been wrong with global markets this week?

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The U.S. market closed down roughly 2.5% for the week. Emerging markets, which many analysts projected would benefit the most from inflows of additional liquidity provided by the Fed’s decision, were down the most. Brazil, India, South Korea, closed down two to three percent for the week, while China closed down a big 5.5%. Meanwhile, Japan, a large developed country, which was not supposed to fare as well as emerging country markets, closed up 1.0% for the week.

A bet against emerging markets via the ProShares UltraShort Emerging Markets ETF, symbol EEV (designed to move up when emerging markets move down, and leveraged two to one) closed up almost 9.0% for the week.

Was it just that markets had become short-term overbought and ran into a brief bout of profit-taking, particularly since this was the week before the month’s options expirations week, and the week before tends to be negative?

If so, markets are likely to be back up next week since the decline this week took care of the short-term overbought condition, and next week is the week of the expirations, which tend to be positive.

Or was the decline the beginning of something more serious?

The market does seem to have a new wall of worry just a week after concerns about the economic recovery, and whether the Fed would or would not provide additional quantitative easing, faded away.

The bricks in the new wall of worry include:

• Concerns that the Fed’s additional stimulus may cause new problems rather than help the economy by encouraging home purchases or providing new jobs.
• Worries that commodity prices had spiked up into bubbles which may burst, a worry that struck Friday with the big $40 an ounce (3%) plunge in the price of gold, and equally large declines in the price of oil and other important commodities.
• Apprehensions about the activities of the Chinese government, including talk that it might hike interest rates to dramatically slow its globally important economy and ward off threatening excessive inflation in China.
• Anxiety about a potential currency or trade war if the decline in the U.S. dollar continues.

Via technical analysis there is also the U.S. market’s intermediate-term overbought condition above 20-week moving averages, and the high level of investor bullishness (which is at levels of complacency often seen at market tops).

The uncertainties have even extended to U.S. Treasury bonds, which investors have piled into as a perceived safe haven over the last two years. The safe haven over the last two months has actually been a bet against U.S. Treasury bonds. For instance, the ‘inverse’ ProShares Short 20-year bond etf, symbol TBF, designed to move up when bonds move down, has gained 11% since early September, while bonds have declined 11%.

There’s no doubt about it. We are still in a very fluid economic and investing period, not a time for investors to become so complacent as the investor sentiment readings seem to indicate, that they fall asleep at the switch.

(In the interest of full disclosure, we have positions in the U.S. market, the Japanese market, gold, and the ‘inverse’ bond ETF TBF, in our portfolio, at least at the moment).

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Market Meets New Wall of Worry Or More Likely Just Brief Profit-Taking On Way To Higher Highs

Stocks pulled back after a big advance and that can be good for bull markets

Most of the bricks in the previous wall of worry have been removed.?Economic reports have continued to improve over recent weeks; in manufacturing, the service sector, retail sales, durable goods orders, and even in the employment picture, where 151,000 new jobs were created in October, more than double the 70,000 that economists expected.

The uncertainty over the Federal Reserve’s QE2 decision has been resolved with the Fed adding to the stimulating atmosphere, providing another round of quantitative easing in spite of the already improving economy.

The major U.S. market indexes, including the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq rallied back to, and then above the potential resistance at their April peaks, before pulling back some this week.

Investors have become even more bullish and optimistic. This week’s poll of its members by the American Association of Individual Investors showed 57.6% bullish, the highest level in almost four years.

The good news apparently also reached Main Street. On Friday morning it was reported that the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index improved to 69.3 in early November (its highest level in five months) from 67.7 in October.

So what has been wrong with global markets this week?

Special Offer: Jim Oberweis bought Baidu at $7.90, earning readers huge profits.? Click here for more recommended stocks in the?Oberweis Report.

The U.S. market closed down roughly 2.5% for the week. Emerging markets, which many analysts projected would benefit the most from inflows of additional liquidity provided by the Fed’s decision, were down the most. Brazil, India, South Korea, closed down two to three percent for the week, while China closed down a big 5.5%. Meanwhile, Japan, a large developed country, which was not supposed to fare as well as emerging country markets, closed up 1.0% for the week.

A bet against emerging markets via the ProShares UltraShort Emerging Markets ETF, symbol EEV (designed to move up when emerging markets move down, and leveraged two to one) closed up almost 9.0% for the week.

Was it just that markets had become short-term overbought and ran into a brief bout of profit-taking, particularly since this was the week before the month’s options expirations week, and the week before tends to be negative?

If so, markets are likely to be back up next week since the decline this week took care of the short-term overbought condition, and next week is the week of the expirations, which tend to be positive.

Or was the decline the beginning of something more serious?

The market does seem to have a new wall of worry just a week after concerns about the economic recovery, and whether the Fed would or would not provide additional quantitative easing, faded away.

The bricks in the new wall of worry include:

• Concerns that the Fed’s additional stimulus may cause new problems rather than help the economy by encouraging home purchases or providing new jobs.
• Worries that commodity prices had spiked up into bubbles which may burst, a worry that struck Friday with the big $40 an ounce (3%) plunge in the price of gold, and equally large declines in the price of oil and other important commodities.
• Apprehensions about the activities of the Chinese government, including talk that it might hike interest rates to dramatically slow its globally important economy and ward off threatening excessive inflation in China.
• Anxiety about a potential currency or trade war if the decline in the U.S. dollar continues.

Via technical analysis there is also the U.S. market’s intermediate-term overbought condition above 20-week moving averages, and the high level of investor bullishness (which is at levels of complacency often seen at market tops).

The uncertainties have even extended to U.S. Treasury bonds, which investors have piled into as a perceived safe haven over the last two years. The safe haven over the last two months has actually been a bet against U.S. Treasury bonds. For instance, the ‘inverse’ ProShares Short 20-year bond etf, symbol TBF, designed to move up when bonds move down, has gained 11% since early September, while bonds have declined 11%.

There’s no doubt about it. We are still in a very fluid economic and investing period, not a time for investors to become so complacent as the investor sentiment readings seem to indicate, that they fall asleep at the switch.

(In the interest of full disclosure, we have positions in the U.S. market, the Japanese market, gold, and the ‘inverse’ bond ETF TBF, in our portfolio, at least at the moment).

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