Welcome, everybody, to this week's monthly webinar with me, Michael Huston, and my colleague in Toronto, Colin Cizinski. Quite a bit to get through today. Obviously, commodities are one case in point, and it's certainly something that we will be looking at, both for myself and Colin. The commodity currencies as well, and potential for further easing measures may be from the Bank of Canada, the RBA, and potentially the RBNZ. We're also going to be looking at U.S. earnings and whether or not there's going to be any seasonal variations. We're going to look at potentially the strength of the dollar as well and try and determine whether or not that could well have an effect going forward on S&P 500 tech earnings in general. For now, let's go and just basically work our way through the various disclaimers, which we have to basically put up to keep our good compliance department all happy and sweet and fine and dandy and what have you, and then we can basically then crack on. I know you've got quite a bit that you want to say about Commodities, Colin, but before we do, for those of you who don't know, I know Daniel or Danny, you basically come into it on the colour of my tie earlier this week when you viewed my gold video, so we're going to start with gold because we've heard an awful lot of speculation I think is probably the best word that I can use with respect to the reasons why we got the sudden sell-off in gold over the weekend from nervousness about a U.S. rate hike. I mean, come on, give me a break. That's not exactly new. So I don't think that was behind the move lower in gold prices, but I certainly think, given what we know with respect to the strength of the dollar, the fact that gold is moving lower really shouldn't be a surprise if you look at this chart. It's been trending lower for quite some time, so we can see straight away the 2014 lows, 1,130. If you're going to be longer gold, where are you going to put your stop? You're going to put it underneath there. So any break underneath there is going to trigger a reaction and that's what we got. Now what the catalyst was, I think there's probably any number of catalysts, one of which has been speculated that the Chinese admission that their gold reserves were potentially lower than what markets had initially suspected they were, could have been behind that. I'm a little bit skeptical about that and I think if you believe everything that Chinese authorities tell you, then I think you're being somewhat naive, the Chinese will tell you what they want you to know, not necessarily what is actually true and I think if you're looking to buy gold and build up your gold reserves, what better way to do that than manipulate the gold price lower? That's my theory anyway, conspiracy theory and all of that. There was another round of thinking on that, that it could also be that people had just outright stolen it. There's all kinds of, that perhaps a member is real and if that's true then perhaps it may be indicative of how much has been scrolled away by various officials, that was another line of thinking I'd seen earlier in the week. So there's certainly lots of speculation but certainly I think the bottom line on that one is that we do, as Michael said, we do have to take any official numbers with the green assault. So, yeah, absolutely, so I mean basically what we're looking at now, the key level for me on the gold price is, let's start with this chart here. Now I'm not being rude in the bottom left-hand corner, Brown's bottom. Why is that Brown's bottom? Because that's where our esteemed Chancellor Gordon Brown sold quite a bit of the UK's bullion reserves in 2001-2002, right at the bottom of the market and if we can then do some nice little Fibonacci retracement levels off that, really brings us in and around about give or take, 1088 give or take, give or take the odd dollar or two. But around 1088 is 50% retracement of the entire up move from $250 an ounce to the highs at 1921. So in that context, this move lower needs to push below the 1085 level and you can look at a more in-depth analysis of that in my weekly video that I've posted on YouTube, which one of you has so kindly commented on the color of my tie. Well, I thought it was topical, gold tie is talking about gold, why not? So, 1088, that's our next level, but also we've got the 2010 lows at 1044. So, I'm going to give you a little bit of an example of that. We've got the 2010 lows at 1044. So, while people are basically saying that we could well see further losses, I certainly don't rule it out, but what we need to do is we need to stay below this breakout level at 1130. 1135 is really the level that I'm looking at for us to stay below, for us to push down through 1085 towards 1044. Now, this move lowering gold, it's not just unique to gold. We've seen declines pretty much across the board. I'm going to finish with this gold chart, Colin, unless there's anything else you want to add. I just wanted to comment on a couple of things here with gold, Michael, before we move on. So, we've seen this as, Michael knows that I think the catalyst between the Chinese and also the technical break of those lows were what caused the big $50 drop we had in gold on Monday, but there's still a lot of storms swirling around the gold. In particular, we've seen capital in general starting to come back out of some of the defensive havens, not just gold, but also the yen and also the fact that inflation pressures are coming off, which we're going to see in a moment. But one thing I wanted to highlight on the stochastics is we are getting a little bit of a positive divergence and we are starting to get some oversold readings on stochastics and RSI. So it is possible we might get a pause here. We're also starting to get a little bit closer to a more seasonally favorable period for gold in terms of short-term trading. Indian wedding season comes up in the fall and historically August and September have been okay months for gold. The wall is a little more mixed with the wall exactly. So we are getting to a point where we could be getting close to a seasonal washout in gold with the potential for a pause or a bounce, but I'm still thinking that there's a possibility we could still see a bit more downside perhaps to that 1040 or even. We're so close to striking distance of the 1,000-round number. I'm sitting here questioning myself if we're going to probe that before we get the seasonal bounce or after or sometime later on. I'm still a little up in the air on that one. There's still another factor to price in there, Colin. You have to recall that the previous high in gold was what? 1040, 1050, which also corresponds to the 2010 lows. First of all, the technical analysis is support and resistance can reverse their roles, one of the key roles. The previous high in gold was just above $1,000 an ounce in 1980. We could retest that again. So even if we break below 1080, we could get a washout to around about 1040, 1050 and then a rebound. So everyone's so negative on gold and certainly I think there's an awful lot of reasons to be negative on gold, but do I think we get a Fed rate hike in September? No, I don't. I think it's too soon. I think despite those weekly jobless claims numbers that we saw earlier today, which came in at the lowest levels since 1973, there are still significant concerns about the US economy, particularly in the manufacturing sector, which appears to be in recession after those revisions, those downward revisions to industrial production data earlier this week, as well as the poor retail sales numbers that we've been seeing out of the US over the course of the past few months as well. So even though the jobs market looks pretty healthy, low participation rate notwithstanding, inflation appears to be fairly benign and likely to remain so and that's basically feeding into what we're going to talk about next. Not only are gold prices coming off, but a whole commodity space is coming off as well. Oil prices, gas prices, sugar prices, copper prices, grain prices. So all of that means that in terms of raw materials, food and everything else, there is no real price inflation at the moment. Milk prices as well are under pressure. So that's going to keep pricing pressures, I think, fairly muted over the course of the next few months. So let's move on to crude. I'll give you a similar sort of story. I know you wanted to talk about the dollar index. We'll talk about the new column. We'll talk about that in the context of the stronger dollar later, but certainly in the context of Brent and WTI, the direction of travel here seems pretty clear. Lower highs, lower lows. The next target for me is this $54 a barrel level lows here. We've had a bit of a rebound. The direction of travel still remains lower and the likelihood is, given the Iran deal, whether or not you believe it's viable, the fact of the matter is the fundamentals and the price action do seem to suggest that further declines in oil prices seem pretty much nailed on. And certainly I think the currency price actions also speak to that as well, particularly dollar CAD. Can I speak a little bit to oil before we move on to that? Sure. Is that on top of Iran coming back into the market, the supply worry isn't going away anytime soon either. The Saudis have been running around for the last several months clucking about how they've won, but in fact, I think the talk of the U.S. has been lately that now that they've cut back on their exploration, now they're looking to cut back their costs and get the production going. And one thing that's been making the rounds in the last few weeks was the idea of going back and refracking some of these old shale wells to see if they can get more oil out of them at a really low cost. So I think we're going to hit a point where the U.S. producers, their initial response was to cut exploration. Their next response is going to be to cut costs and get their production back up, because they've certainly been, people have been, they don't want to be seen as the big losers in all of this, and they're going to find a way to eventually to respond to the challenge from the Saudis. So this could drag on for a while. We've got WTI has gone back under 50 bucks. I see no reason why, and it's starting to take out, you'll see on the chart, Michael's put up the 62% retracement. If that doesn't start to hold soon, then you're looking at a full round trip and you could retest those march lows, and it wouldn't surprise me in the coming months to see that happen. So basically what we need to see here is a move back above really $50 a barrel to suggest that there's a potential base in place. But certainly in the context of that particular chart, Colin's right, I think we could be building up for a bit of a round trip back to the lows that we saw in March, and certainly if you then figure it all the way out and you look at where crude prices, US crude prices were in June last year and where they are now, you look at the annualized inflation effect with respect to that, and then you wonder why US CPI is as benign as it is, and yet despite this, there doesn't appear to have been any sort of consumer-led rebound in terms of consumption spending or anything like that with respect to the US economy, which does make me wonder as to how confident US consumers are. On that, could you bring up the gasoline, praise Michael, because there's a point I wanted to make to that, and it actually ties back into earnings as well. Okay, I don't think I've actually caught it, let me find it. Okay, so while Michael's getting the chart, something that I noticed this morning in the earnings was the best earnings out of the states this morning was out of Dow Chemical, and they did totally blew away street estimates, and last quarter all the refiners totally blew away street estimates, and one of the reasons I think why you're not seeing, now you are seeing a kick in a little bit here, but look at this chart in gasoline, while crude oil bottomed out in March through the winter gasoline prices actually had recovered first, and something that's happened and we're seeing in earnings is that refining margins have exploded, positively exploded, and the refiners are making a boatload of money, so anybody who's got raw material costs in crude oil, they're doing just great because the raw material costs are going down a lot faster than the refined product costs, so the point of this being is that the fall in the crude oil price isn't showing up at the pump price, and the refiners are making an absolute fortune, and the chemical companies are making an absolute fortune. Money hand over fist these days, and that's possibly one of the reasons why we're not seeing it translate into consumer spending is because the money hasn't found its way back into people's pockets, so what we'll be watching here with gasoline in the next couple of months is we're running right through, halfway through the middle of summer driving season, so what happens when that comes off as we head into the fall, and at some point do we see these refining margins get shrunk or are they going to stay blown wide open like they are these days? We'll see what happens there, but with crude oil coming down, you would think gasoline could be quite vulnerable here. Maybe we could overlay the WTI on top of that, Michael. Is that possible? Of course it's possible. Yes, I know it's possible. I meant if you don't mind. Let me just try and track that on. You'll see what I mean. Let's get rid of that and change that. There. So if you look back in the fall, November, December, they were basically tracking each other, and then since then that spread, which the spread there between oil and gasoline has blown wide open. In gasoline's favor. Yes. So either that's going to close or what? We'll be watching to see that over the next little while, particularly with crude coming down again. Well, I mean, if it's anything like here in the UK, the politicians are going to go to the petrol companies and say, why aren't you passing these price cuts onto the consumers? Because it's fair. Basically we've had, while prices were dropping off here, gasoline prices were still going up. So I think it does take the question why US companies aren't passing that on. But obviously that's gasoline, that's WTI. We've had similar sorts of declines also in copper prices. We can see that here. Made new multi-year lows on copper right there. The direction of travel is fairly clear, but not just that. Let's look at sugar as well. That's looking pretty soft. Also, if we look at corn, silk food staples, if you just blow that out, we've had a little bit of a spike there. But look at where we are in context of 2014. Again, we're quite a bit lower. So all across the commodity space, we've seen commodities come under pressure. And that has consequences for currencies like, a Canadian dollar. And this is where I'm sure you'll want to jump in. Absolutely. So the Canadian dollar totally broke out earlier this month, clearing the 128 level. It's driven pretty much straight up to 130 where it's started to level off in the last day or so. And as we can see, that's back getting close to the 2008 highs as well. There was a measured objective up to about 132, but so far the resistance kicking in in and around 130. And certainly, though, we can see that and we're starting to see a bit there. But it's bumping up against it. There's no really a sign of a top. We are getting overbought on, as we can see on the stochastics, it's also showing same on the RSI. But we're not seeing any indications yet of a top forming. We haven't seen that roll back down. We haven't seen a negative divergence. So at this point, it looks like we're just pausing a bit around 130. But overall, there's still quite a bit of weakness. The Bank of Canada cut interest rates last week. There's a lot of talk that they may have to cut a gain. And at a time when interest, and people talking about the divergence here, of the expectation that the Fed's going to raise interest rates sometime this year versus that the Bank of Canada may have to cut a gain they've already cut twice, has that as what's totally driven that, that the Looney Munch, the Looney Lower and Dollar Cat higher over the last few months. Now, if Michael's right in the U.S. doesn't raise interest rates, then that side of the equation changes and then perhaps this might be getting close to a top. That's the thing you see. And I think in terms of trading this particular market, if you're looking to go long Dollar Cat, I wouldn't be looking to go long here. Simply because we are so close. If you look at the number of times we tested this one, 30, 65, 70 level in 2008 and 2009, on four separate months we tested it and failed to get above it. So it's important. And if you're looking to place a low-risk trade, then your stop really needs to be at 131 for a move back down towards these previous 2015 peaks, which we saw in February and March at around about 128, 128, 10, 128, 20. So certainly I think it's going to be very interesting to see how the CAD reacts around 130, 70, 130, 80. Yes, and on top of that, I also just may add something else on the U.S. Dollar here. Regardless of whether the U.S. raises interest rates to this fall or not, it's priced in now. And if you think that the U.S. has put up their lowest jobless claims in 40 years and U.S. Dollar didn't go up anymore, that says to me that the September lift off one to two hikes has already been priced into the market. And therefore what would it take to push the U.S. Dollar higher? The U.S. Dollar may now have actually reached its high point against a number of these other currencies unless they actually deliver and start to accelerate interest rate increases even faster than what the streets are already expecting. So I think that's been baked in and that's starting to get baked into currencies because when you see a market that's going up that fails to respond to good news, usually means it's already been priced in. And on that basis then, the balance of probabilities, the surprise is now actually starting to swing back the other way where if they did actually, even if they did start raising interest rates, the U.S. Dollar may not go up anymore because it's already been baked in. Yes, indeed. And if you look at the Dollar Index, which is what we're looking at at the moment, look how far it's gone up in the past 12 months. We're talking 20% or so or more and that is going to have an effect, not only on inflation but also on earnings for U.S. companies. Absolutely, and we're seeing that this week. Why don't we go with that, Michael?  Okay, so we started to see this show up and in particularly where we're really seeing it is in the technology sector and that's been something that's been building over the last couple of quarters, but in particular it explains why the action we saw earlier this week where we had both Apple and Microsoft beat the Street on headline earnings and yet their stocks post sold off. So maybe you want to pick up there because I know you had some great comments on Apple in particular. Well, Apple in particular was particularly interesting I think because of the fact that even though we sort of met expectations on earnings, what was actually quite interesting from once you dig around into the internals was the level of sales in China, for example, which was 21% lower over the course of the last quarter. Now that for me I think is quite important because I think China is going to be in one of Apple's biggest markets and I think despite the fact that we saw fairly good revenues out of China, those were down 21%, suggests to me that the sell-off that we saw in the Chinese equity market is starting to hit the Chinese middle class. Now obviously Apple products aren't cheap. They're not what you would call products for people lower down the income scale. So in that context I think there is a little bit of concern that Apple's exposure to China as a new market could see an earnings impact going forward and I think yes we have seen a bit of a rebound in the context of yesterday's declines but overall with Apple we're in a trading range above the 200-day moving average. There's a bit of a reversal there and I think we'll continue to trade within that range and if you look at Apple's earnings forward earnings it's around about 15. So I'm not overly concerned about Apple. It still generates $40 to $50 billion a quarter in terms of revenues but some of the other company earnings that we've been seeing from companies say for example like Netflix. Let's look at Netflix and let's compare Netflix to say for example Apple. I'm just going to go back to Apple again and look at Apple's performance this year. That's really done an awful lot. Yeah, I would suggest it's one of those companies. It's a company that is very, very popular. It's iconic. It has some very, very good brands and then we've got a company like... I'm not sure it looks a lot like the Dow and the S&P too. Well, it's not really surprising when you actually consider how big the company is. Exactly. Then let's look at Netflix. That's since the beginning of the year. That stock price has trebled. It's gone from $40 to nearly $120. You compare a company like Netflix which obviously is a very, very growth sensitive stock. It relies on subscriptions and what have you. It trades on forward earnings compared to Apple which is $15. Netflix trades on forward earnings of $475. Wow, that's huge. That's crazy. That's bubble days. That is a bubble valuation. That is a bubble valuation. You can inflate a bubble for quite some time before it goes pop. Would I buy Netflix? Not in a million years. Not even if it was half the price that it is now. Not on that valuation.  Exactly. The thing is there's a very great big gap between $100 and $108. Gaps generally tend to get filled. We'll see how that pans out. Let's take us back to a chart that I also showed earlier this week. That was as the S&P, as you say, pretty similar to Apple's stock price. Now let's go and look at the Dow. Again, not much difference there. Now let's look at the small cap. Now let's look at the Nasdaq. Let's look at the correlation here since the beginning of the year. For me, this is a bit of a warning sign for US stocks. This is something that I've talked about on Bloomberg earlier this week. We've got record highs between April and May for all of the major indexes. Suddenly here, the Nasdaq in red spikes higher. What's interesting is the small cap continues to track lower. The S&P trade sideways, but the Dow also starts to track lower. Now if you've got markets that are closely correlated or going in the same direction, I generally don't have a problem with thinking from the markets going up. When one particular market basically goes higher but the others don't track it, particularly the US small cap 2000, that makes me a little bit concerned that there's a huge amount of divergence going on and there's an awful lot of uncertainty with respect to where US stocks are going to go next. When you see valuations of 400 times earnings, you really have to question whether or not there is much more upside in US stocks. It's more risky. Particularly when you're looking at something like the Nasdaq taking off like that when the broader markets aren't because it's usually a, that in the past has been a sign of, because the Nasdaq's only 100 stocks and it's 100 tech stocks, tech and a few other things. But a lot of momentum plays in there that you've got to wonder sometimes if speculation's gotten a little bit out of hand when you start seeing stuff like that. Absolutely. That's the earnings story and we saw yesterday's sell-off come off the back of some disappointment from Microsoft, disappointment from Intel, disappointment from IBM, disappointment from Yahoo and a little bit of a negative reaction to Apple. I think it was interesting that Tim Cook said that they were operating in a difficult for an exchange environment, which is code I think for, we're worried about the strength of the dollar. Well, I mean, except 20% over years is going to impact your business of the multinationals, no question. And it's up 8% on the year since the beginning of the year. So that brings us next to the Australian dollar because there's an awful lot of speculation now that after the RBNZ cut rates overnight that the RBA could be next. Now, the RBA has recently cut rates to record loads of 2%. What does that mean for the Aussie dollar? Does that mean that there's more rate cuts on the cards? I think the answer to that is probably yes. Let's look at where the Australian dollars come from since 2007 or 2008. Basically, we're still well above the levels we saw at the beginning of 2008 when we were around about 60 cents. We've broken below the 200-month moving average. We've also broken below the lows that we saw at the beginning of this year, March this year, around about 75. So the direction of travel is potentially for a much lower Australian dollar. There is also something else to be concerned about with respect to the Aussie dollar and it's Australia's over-reliance on commodities, particularly gold, copper, iron ore. Rio Tinto and BHP are basically key exporters to China. And Australia is the key market for Australia. Coal prices are also low. And when you actually look at the economic numbers for Australia, 55% of Australia's exports are basically commodity-based, commodity-driven. Think of what's happened to commodity prices over the last 12 months. In fact, think of what's happened to commodity prices over the last five years. You've only got to look at the Bloomberg Commodities Index or the Reuters CRB Index to know that foreign currency earnings for Australian companies have taken a huge hit over the course of that time, which means that essentially Australia's trade balance is probably going to continue to deteriorate, which means that that 20 years of uninterrupted GDP growth that we've seen out of Australia 25 years now could be at risk. The Australian economy is still growing at 2%, but you have to be aware that further interest rate cuts in Australia will fuel a housing bubble that's already out of control around Melbourne and Sydney. So it's going to be very interesting times for Australia unless they can rebalance their economy away from commodities because the demand that we've seen out of China in the first 15 years of this century is not going to be anywhere near as ferocious as it was, and that is going to have consequences for the Australian economy, which means we're probably going to see a lower Australian dollar, particularly if the RBI cuts rates and people continue to speculate that the Fed will raise. I'm still skeptical that the Fed will raise, but we may get a hike in December, but I don't think we'll get one in September. Colin, anything to add? Yeah, no, I'm basically of the mind with you that I still think the Fed's going to sneak one interest rate in a raise this year, most likely in December just like they did with tapering. They kind of just got it in before the end of the year. I mean, a lot of the Fed members are still talking about wanting to do it this year, even Dr. Yellen who mentioned it in her testimony recently. And for them, I think it's just a matter of that they need to start doing something. They can't stay at zero forever, and the other thing they've talked about is that they're planning on doing it pretty slow. So it's not like in the past where Greenspan, I think he raised interest rates a quarter point at 14 consecutive meetings. It's not going to be like that this time. They'll probably do an increase and then wait a couple of meetings and then do another one, and that sort of thing. They seem to be really big this time on keeping the pace of increases slow, kind of a recognition that they need to start going up, but that they don't want to go up very fast or very aggressively. So I think that they're mindful that they need to get off of zero, but at the same time that they don't want to crush their economy either. That's what it strikes me. It feels like they want to do it and they really want to do it. But they box themselves into a corner because when you look at what's happening to commodity prices, you look at what's happening everywhere else. Everyone else is cutting rates. The truth is the Fed's waited too long again. They really should have, as soon as tapering finished last fall, they should have just done it, really. At the same time, I always find it an interesting one. We talk about 0.25 interest rates, but who's actually paying that? Here we've got 0.5% interest rates, but all the mortgage rate is more like three. The line of credit rate is more like five. We won't even get into what some of the credit cards start charging, right? Yeah, absolutely. It's the same over here. Personal loan over here is 8%. Base rates are at 0.5%. Even if they raise a quarter of a point, is that going to have an impact on consumers? I doubt it. I doubt it, but it probably will have an impact in terms of benchmarks, in terms of how mortgage rates are priced, because they're priced off libel or they're priced off base, so it can affect trackers. But you are right. Basically, you look at rates in the U.S. and you look at rates in the U.K., and the exchange rate itself acts as a form of monetary tightening. Absolutely. That's another point, right? Absolutely. It's true that the big gains that the U.S. dollars made over the last year are certainly the equivalent of several rate hikes. I mean, I've been saying to the opposite of Canada that the way the loonies come down in the last two months is a huge easing. And then in here too, we're talking about rebalancing the economy where the oil price crashed. That took Alberta down with it, and so you've got this Canadian growth has been knocked back to zero, and now you've got to rebalance, but the problem is the rebalancing and the export side and the tourism and the people don't go on the U.S. shopping trips anymore and the movie industry comes back and stuff like that is that all takes longer to kick in, right? So you get the short-term negative, long-term positive, and the U.S. is probably seeing the reverse of that where you get some short-term positive effects and now you're seeing the longer-term negatives on the earnings of people like Apple and the other multinationals is starting to work its way in. Right, we've managed to get through this half an hour and we haven't even mentioned Greece once. I mean... Which is absolutely incredible. So let's move on to the Euro. All right. Because the Euro does appear to be finding a little bit of a base. Yes, it does. I think it's pretty good the last year too. Around 108. It's had two attempts at it since it peaked at 1.14 and a half in May, and it's basically failed on both occasions. So that also begs the question is how much further upside is there in the dollar? Now, if I look at this chart here, which is a daily chart for Euro-dollar, that suggests to me that potentially we could actually track higher through 110. We had a little look at it at 110 earlier today. Through 110 and retest the highs that we saw early this month around about 112. I think if at any point we break below 108, then obviously we can definitely, we can probably move lower. But at the moment, the Euro-dollar trade is what I would call a classic pain trade because everyone wants and thinks it will go lower. And I'm not overly convinced that it will. So you generally will find that every time the market tries to push it lower, you'll get a nice little short squeeze. All the shorts will get taken out. And while it may eventually go lower, it'll probably go higher first. But the big, big level is around about 115. This is a very bullish daily reversal candle here on the Tuesday. I think as long as we can hold above around about 109-2030, then we could well push higher back towards 111-112. So that suggests to me the dollar could weaken. And I'm seeing a similar story played out. Before you leave that, Michael, could I say one thing to that? Yeah, you can. That's a very, very strong base. If you look at this, you've got a double bottom in March and April. Now you've essentially got a double bottom at a higher level here between May and July. That's a really, really strong accumulation pattern there with two support retests kicking into the higher level. On top of that, you're oversold on the stochastic. So it looks like there you're already oversold, I'm sorry, overextended to the downside. I mean, it's certainly looking pretty good here. And this is when the Grexit fears were growing. The euro was bottoming out. It tells me that the euro already had priced it in back in the spring. And that this is starting to shape up as a really nice turnaround here. And you're right also that the sentiment is still very negative on this. And finally, the short euro trade has been very crowded. So there's a potential for buying to come back in as people have to cover that. Let's just do that there. So basically I'm keeping an eye on this trend line here from the June highs. So keep it on this level, ladies and gents, because this could be crucial in the context of where we go next. Looking a little bit overbought at the moment on the four-hour chart, which is what this one is. But overall I'll be looking for a test of this line here and then see how we react around there. I think it's a similar sort of story on the pound against the dollar. Pound has been marginally a little bit stronger. But again, we're finding, it's settling down into a little bit of a sideways range. This is a four-hour chart here. 156.75 is the big, big level on the top side. It was last week's highs. It's also been this week's highs. But again, we've got good support around about 155.20. But below that, we've also got a much longer-term trend line from the lows in May. And we also have the 200-day moving average. That being said, there's probably more potential for a little bit of a drift lower than higher. Now that probably means that Euro-sterling could actually squeeze higher, and Euro-sterling does have a tendency to do precisely that. Just when you think that Euro-sterling is going to go down quite aggressively, suddenly it ratchets higher, takes out all the shorts and then goes lower. So at the moment, I think, and while we're below 156.75 on cable, you've got to be a little bit worried about another test lower before we break out. But overall, I still think cable can go higher, just on the basis of the fact that when the Fed does get around to hiking, I don't think the Bank of England will be too far behind. Agreed. And I think we saw that in the speculation this week, the first round, the MPC minutes come out, and people are starting to think about inflation, and boom-up goes sterling, and then of course we had the retail sales come out this morning, and they missed, and then bang-back down goes sterling. But it seems one of those where people are looking for a reason to speculate on rate hikes. It's kind of like what we've seen, the flip side of the earnings, where the earnings are coming out, and people are looking for reasons to sell. It looks to me as though people are looking for reasons to go long on this, and looking for reasons to think that liftoff could be coming to the UK as well. Yeah, I don't think it'll be happening overnight. Basically I think the August meeting will be interesting in the context of what Martin Weill and Ian McCafferty do, because this time last year they defended, and we're calling for rate hikes from the Bank of England, around about this time last year, they changed their votes at the beginning of this year to go along with the consensus. But given some of their recent comments, there is a good chance that we could go for another 7-2 split in terms of unchanged and a 25 basis point rate hike. What that doesn't mean, however, is that we're in danger of putting rates up in the short to medium term, because we were 7-2 for about the last three or four months of last year, and rates never went up.  If we get descent, we may get a little bit of a spike higher in the pound against the dollar, but with numbers with respect to 7-2, that's not going to move the dial in the context of timing. Which I believe the last talk was still the middle of 2016. Yeah, or the beginning. Certainly the beginning at the earliest. Yeah, I wonder if they'd have to go for the beginning with the risk of a Brexit referendum later. When would that be later in the year? 2017. It's not going to happen before then. I'll be surprised if it does. Which brings me to Euro sterling, which is the daily chart, and again here we're getting the oscillator starting to turn upwards. We've got two very strong upward candles in the past three days, which does seem to suggest the market is a little bit short. But overall... It looks to me like just another trading bounce within a broader downtrend so far. Because you're still on the channel of lower highs and lower lows, and you've gotten oversold and you're bouncing here. But I think you'd have to, at a minimum, clear that previous high, which I can't read very well. 7-2, 20. Yeah, you'd have to take that out before we could think that it's anything more than just another dead cat bounce. Yeah, as I say, we've made marginal new lows around about 69-30, which coincides with the lows that we saw at the end of 2007. Going all the way back here. So this November 2007 I think was... Where are we? Let's just do this. Yeah, November 2007 low was 69-20. So that was a fairly key support level there before we basically went higher. That's held so far. So as I say, we could go all the way back to 72 on this particular short squeeze without undermining the bearish scenario too much. Now let's look at the dolly end, because this chart here, that looks like a bearish engulfing day. And also, 124.50.60, in this series of peaks here, that seems to suggest there is natural interest to sell. Given what Coroda said, Bank of Japan Governor Coroda said earlier this week, has he called a short-term top in dolly end? It's going to take something quite significant to push it through 124.50. So while we're below 124.50, there is potential for us to drift back down again towards the top of the Ichimoku Cloud, which is around about 123.20, 123.30. Anything you want to add there, Colin? No, I mean, it just looks like, again, we've gotten overbought and rolling over, and so I wouldn't be surprised at all to see it come back off within this channel here, but that 124.00 in change is definitely looking like a pretty strong resistance level, or up to 125.00, because even if we go back towards that one day up peak above 125.00 there, we look at the prior high there, was about 125.00. So 124.60, 125.00, it looks like it's emerging as a pretty significant resistance zone, even just taking out that one day wonder there as a one-time thing.  And the fact that you said it earlier, when a weekly jobless claims number as good as the one that we just got doesn't precipitate a significant rally in Dolly Inn, then you have to ask yourself what will. Absolutely. So caution is the watchword with respect to the long dollar strategy, I think, at these sorts of levels. Right, ladies and gentlemen, we're pushing the boundaries of time here. We've been going 45 minutes. We're going to wrap this up, but before we do, is there anything that any of you would like either Colin or myself to look at right now? Please use the chat facility to basically address your questions. Otherwise, we'll wind this up. We'll post it online, and it will be available on YouTube. Right, we can ask the S&P 500. Let's have a quick look at that. We're range bound in that, I think. That's a very strong bearish candle there. Especially fairly similar to the Apple chart, isn't it? Good resistance. To be quite honest, I think we're range bound on the S&P. The oscillators starting to turn over a little bit. We could probably go back to 2130. But overall, I think the direction of travel here, Colin, for me, is for us to drift back down again. Yeah, I think we're sideways to lower within the sideways channel. Could you bring that out to a one-year trade, please, Michael? Or at least back to the beginning of the year. There you go. There, that's perfect. So we're in the sideways trading range for the S&P. And it's similar to ranges we've seen before around the time that the Fed was starting to move towards tightening. You get a case where the liquidity kind of drives up that was pushing the market higher. But at the same time, so that caps your upside.  So we saw this in 94.95. We saw it in 0.405. And we're getting it again here in 15, where we're into a sideways pattern for U.S. markets that can drag on for nine months to a year. So if you measure nine months off February or if you say, well, maybe this started, kind of started back in November, you measure a year off November, puts you into October and November, we're still kind of in the middle innings of this. And I think that with the historical seasonality of the fact that August and September are usually not very good months for stock markets through to about mid-October, that I think we're probably going to see this in the future and it's sideways for quite a while. We've bumped up against the top, so it wouldn't surprise me at all to retest the low end of that channel in the coming weeks. I think a lot will depend also on next week's FOMC meeting. Absolutely. We've got Fed meeting next week. Not expecting any change, but I think what we will be looking for is any sort of signposting as to what the Fed may want to be doing when it reconvenes in September. So look at the statement language for any clues as to what policy makers are thinking with respect to the U.S. economy and the strength of the dollar more importantly. And I think the markets come in pretty solidly behind pricing in a September increase. So if you see them move towards that, the U.S. dollar maybe might go up a little bit, but not a lot, but I think the surprise might be to the markets would be if they start to back away from September. That's where you could see some movement or action in the dollar. So next Wednesday, keep an eye on that, ladies and gents. It could actually be a significant dollar mover. Right. On that note, Colin and I would like to thank you for your time today. And until next Monday's webinar with my colleague Jasper, the next non-farm payrolls webinar with myself and Colin. Both Colin and myself would like to thank you for your time today and we'll talk to you very, very soon.


As a general rule, arbitrary functions don't have elementary antiderivatives, so what happens when we have to find a definite integral for such a function? Remember that a problem exists whether or not you can solve it, so we have to find something to do, and in this case we must rely on some numerical integration technique. So remember that the definite integral can be defined as the limit of the Riemann sum as the width of the widest interval goes to zero. Now previously we found Riemann sums by using right endpoints, left endpoints, lower rectangles, and upper rectangles. And all of these were rectangles and we just had to decide where we wanted to take the height, and so we'll take a radical step and choose the midpoint. So let's find the approximate value of this integral and we'll use the midpoint and n equals two intervals. So let's go ahead and graph this. If we have n equals two equal width intervals, the intervals will run from x equals zero to x equals two, and from x equals two to x equals four. So in the first interval, the midpoint will be at x equals one, and so we'll find the coordinates of the point on the graph at x equals one. In the second interval, the midpoint will be at x equals three, and again we'll find the coordinates of the point on the graph at x equals three. Now the midpoints give us the tops of two rectangles, and so we'll find the areas of the two rectangles, and if we add these areas up that will give us an approximation to the definite integral. Now we can derive a formula for the area given by the midpoint approximation. We won't actually do that. We'll leave that as an exercise for the viewer. But now let's do something completely different. We can take a radical step and not use rectangles. Instead, we can use trapezoids. So for this, it's helpful to remember that the area of a trapezoid with bases b1 and b2 at height h will be given by the formula, and you can think about this as the height times the average of the two bases. So again, let's use n equals two rectangles to approximate the same integral, and so our trapezoid will actually join the corners of our region. So the first trapezoid will have one corner at 0, 1, and the other at 2, root 17. So its area will be the second trapezoid will have corner at 2, root 17, and the other at 4, root 257. And so its area will be, and so the trapezoidal approximation will be the sum of these areas. Now we could derive a formula for the trapezoidal approximation. We shouldn't, but we will. So suppose we partition our interval at points x0, x1, x2, and so on, where the partitions have equal width delta x. So we need to know the heights of each of these points, so we find their coordinates. Now the first trapezoid will have bases fx0 and fx1, so the area will be, but since we've assumed the intervals have equal width, x1 minus x0 is just delta x, and so the area of the first trapezoid will be. Similarly the second trapezoid will have area, and again since we've assumed that the intervals have equal width, the area of the second trapezoid will be. And similarly we can find the area of the third trapezoid, and so on, all the way up to the last trapezoid. Now since every one of these areas has a one-half delta x in common, we can factor it out and get the sum of the components. And the thing that's worth recognizing here is that except for the first and last function values, every other function value appears twice. And so this sum can be written as, and this gives us a nice formula for the trapezoid approximation. And so we can approximate this definite integral using the trapezoidal approximation with n equals 4 equal width partitions. So with n equals 4 partitions, the interval between 0 and 4 will have the partition points, x equals 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4. We find our function values, and we can read the trapezoidal approximation as one-half the sum of all the function values, doubling those that are inside the interval. In other words, not the first, not the last, but all the others. And so we find our trapezoidal approximation.


Penguin presents Henry VIII, The Quest for Fame by John Guy, read by John Banks. Introduction Few monarchs have divided opinion more than Henry VIII. Inevitably so, because besides doing more than any other English king to reshape the country's institutions and identity in roughly the form they survive today, he was also a willful destroyer. Those who opposed his attacks on the church and hefty demands of taxation, he was a vindictive tyrant who associated might with right and value with lustre. He was, said John Hale, a priest of Isleworth in Middlesex, to be called a great tyrant rather than a king. Allowed his day in court by Henry before being sent to the gallows on a charge of high treason, Hale was determined to put his views on the record. The realm of England was first a realm, he insisted, was there never in it so great a robber and pillager of the Commonwealth read of, nor heard of, as is our king. Others have strenuously disagreed. For perhaps a majority of his subjects, Henry was everything a king should be. Capable of the best as well as the worst, he exuded magnificence, both personally and through his spectacular palaces and art collections. His children revered and adored him. Faced with disobedience from her own privy councillors, his daughter Mary, who was the country's first queen regnant, sometimes found it an uphill struggle to establish her authority, even with her closest supporters, declared that they would never have dared to do such a thing in her father's lifetime, and she only wished he might come to life again for a month. Not surprisingly, criticisms of Henry's policies were linked to attacks on his private life. Comparing him to the infamous classical tyrant King Dionysius of Syracuse, Sir Thomas Elliot wrote, He was a man of quick and subtle wit, but therewith he was wonderful sensual, unstable and wandering in sundry affections, delighting some time in voluptuous pleasures, another time in gathering of great treasure and riches, oftentimes resolved into a beastly rage and vengeable cruelty. About the public wheel of his country always remiss, in his own desires, studious and diligent. But while Henry had six wives and several mistresses, he was, by the standards of his royal contemporaries, sexually restrained, and although two of his wives were executed and too divorced, it can be argued that dynastic security made such casualties necessary. Whereas those on the wrong side of Henry saw him as a tyrant, ruled by his sexual passions, others, especially nobles and property owners, keen to profit from the spoils of the annihilation of the Abbeys, saw him as providing the essential stability that kept the country free of the civil wars that had plagued the 15th century, or the wars of religion that would bring anarchy to France and the Netherlands later in the century. Rather than attempt to vindicate the views of either side of the debate in this short reassessment, I will seek to look behind the mask into Henry's mind and explain how he himself understood events. How far did those of his childhood and adolescence make their indelible mark? What led him to shape his policies and choose his wives and ministers? Was he a ruler with genuine principles, deeply held convictions, or simply an unscrupulous pragmatist? Was he devout and therefore sincere in demanding the massive changes and destruction reeked upon the church and the monasteries? What impelled him to attempt to become a commanding presence on the European stage with all its immense costs, human and material? In particular, did his cruel streak come only latterly with age, disappointment and ill health, or was it always there? Keeping such questions to the fore will, I hope, open the door to unfamiliar as well as more familiar insights and enable readers to feel they can reach out and touch this charismatic and yet so difficult and complex king. Author's Note Dates are given in the old-style Julian calendar, but the year is assumed to have begun on the 1st of January and not on Lady Day, the feast of the Annunciation, i.e. the 25th of March, which was by custom the first day of the calendar year in France, Spain and Italy until 1582, in Scotland until 1600, and in England, Wales and Ireland until 1752. Spelling and orthography of primary sources in quotations are given in... Sample complete. Ready to continue?


Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name is Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Roger Distruty and as you know every month we strive to bring a new guest to talk about some of the important roles of county government and today you're gonna see a new face. We have a new HR director, Human Resources Director for Sheboygan County, Miss Jean Gallimore. Welcome. Good morning, thank you. Jean started in April so it's about three months and we're very pleased to have her aboard.  Absolutely. From a human resource perspective I've been in the business for just over 20 years and really started within the banking industry so a little more financial background and and so forth within that within that industry. Probably the most common denominator that I've seen throughout my human resources career is is really guest service or customer service so as I think back at my 17 years within banking although human resources was a common thread guest service certainly really kind of drove you know the focus of that. Within that time I traveled to several banking locations and certainly provided leadership and direction in terms of the human resources role recruitment hiring performance appraisal processes and that of nature. Following my stint certainly in banking which provided an excellent foundation within human resources I joined hospitality so went from a very serious human resources role to a much more interactive I will say a little more fun water park type environment water park type environment so with that being said again guest service very important so supported about 12 department heads was the human resources director during my tenure there just over seven years and again supported really the human resources function in terms of balancing the employee needs and the organizational needs and how legally all of that you know makes sense so that really sums up and then about a year and a half or so ago I joined the county just as a limited term employee to help create some policy and proceed your handbook processes so that was about a six month opportunity to join and understand county government a little bit better in terms of you know really putting the human resources tool in effect within government so had a little bit of experience there and really give you a leg up in the interview process not only did you bring excellent private sector experience but you had a feel for the how the county operates and some of the key players and staff and did a nice job with our with their employee policy and procedures set the stage for our viewers a little bit how many employees the Sheboygan County have and and then what is the budget of the HR department how many staff do you have okay you but currently we have approximately 830 employees about 19 departments that comprise that number and that number comes really fluctuates just a bit in terms of some summertime where it might go up a little bit and we need some summer seasonal type help but typically about 830 in terms of the budget we have a human resources budget of approximately 468 thousand dollars okay and you have how many staff currently for four staff right so four staff helping 830 so employees and a breadth of roles and responsibilities what are the key responsibilities of a human resources department right and that's ever changing every day however I like to explain it Adam from the standpoint of really our mission is to create an inclusive environment for our employees with excellent guest service and customer service to help balance the needs certainly human resources has to understand the business if you will so those 19 department heads that I referred to earlier it's very key that we understand an overview if you will of what those departments do so we can help be that strategic business partner at the table help making decisions internally if you will for those key department head managers supervisors and then those employees I like to describe human resources as kind of the life cycle of the employee we do our best to from the onset recruit talented staff for Sheboygan County once we have them recruited we certainly onboard them and the entire hiring process balancing the legal ramifications certainly within those processes and once we get them on board it's our responsibility to help ensure that proper training really the policies the procedures the manuals all of those important rules if you will that apply to Sheboygan County our communicated appropriately and a timely basis we ensure that safety is is key to our employees and that they're trained you know as they're onboarded on those types of things as you move through that life cycle of that employee they're now on boarded they're trained they're enjoying their time at Sheboygan County and we ensure them that anything from their payroll check in conjunction with the finance department and payroll human resources helps make sure that because we want to pay employees correctly that's important to them that we participate in that process the employee benefits is a huge section of which human resources plays a role making sure that our employees employee benefits are working for them as well as balancing the county professional training and development is critical and that's something that I'd really like to focus on in the coming year making sure that we are you know professionally training you know our management staff to move forward and prepare them for the future for Sheboygan County and I know you also have some the more challenging roles with you know it's fun to hire new people and help people improve and gain the skills they need to be successful but from time to time you need to step in and help department heads or managers deal with discipline or or sometimes letting people go and that is obviously not a fun part of being a manager or an HR department but an important role nonetheless right it's probably more the serious side certainly however I view that as as really coaching opportunities we want everyone to succeed at Sheboygan County so when the time comes when there is that opportunity for improvement if you will we certainly do our best engage our employees and want to make it right so we have it an excellent I believe due process policy if you will in our hand book that walks us through those tough times and speaking of the handbook I mean you really got engaged with county government at a incredible time in the history of Wisconsin with Act 10 as I think most of our viewers are probably aware of or heard of created a lot of buzz at the state level really changed how we interact and negotiate with our employees to a fair extent set the stage for us a little bit what what is Act 10 and what were some of the significant changes that you came in and needed to address as both the employee handbook as well as just now your day-to-day operations right very good Act 10 the Act 10 changes really the most significant piece that employers or Sheboygan County government had to really take a look at hard was the changes relative to really eliminating the action the changes really eliminated most of the collected bargaining you know opportunity for the majority of our employees so it was very much of a concern as we those changes came aboard for the county and the county took that very seriously however as we talk about the employee handbook and what that change meant I believe that we took a very sensitive and respectful approach to those changes for those groups of employees and had to do a very good job to balance what are those employees that are not in those collective bargaining units prior to Act 10 changes and how do we bring these groups together and I think the neat part of that was being part of that policy development process last year which really allowed me to gain the knowledge and really truly again the respect to that basic human kindness for each employee and understanding how they fit individually into those changes and we were able to I believe put together an employee handbook that was is positive promotes employee engagement open and honest communication just as we had before but we had to redefine that a little bit to ensure to those employees that were perhaps losing those collective bargaining rights that we are an employer choice we care and we will engage and respect and have an open door policy for those their opinions and speaking of open door I know that personally chairman distruty and I wanted to make sure that as this policy as these new policies were prepared as this HR manual was developed that we allowed for a lot of input from our staff what was that process because from time to time you'll hear about a local unit of government creating a new HR manual and they may be criticized because the employees didn't have any opportunity for input but I know we did just the opposite here right again being part of that process from almost the onset it was so enlightening to me because I have never been part of such an engaging process from the employees standpoint at first I was like wow this is this is interesting but really what a learning experience I believe for all of us as we stepped through that we had a number of policies and from the beginning split those policies into three sections what we did from their atom is we identified key players a diverse group of of employees who could sit in those three different groups to really peel the onion if you will in each of those policies what's working what's not how can we add better value in light of the potential changes coming with act 10 how can we get really an employee handbook that is inclusive so we really did a nice job at getting at the table having great open discussions putting together drafts of those policies and from there the drafts were put together they were put on our intranet the shaboin county intranet site for all employees to view so if they were not part of that meeting in that committee if you will for the that set of policies they could add value they could comment on the intranet they could email human resources and then in conjunction with that as we continued to take their concerns and advice we then continued to fine tune those policies in those drafts and the really neat part again and I was a little hesitant but it worked very well was that we went to then employee open forum meetings and we said all right everyone invited come on in and we reviewed policy by policy line item by line item and continued to to the very end seek out additional you know concerns adding value whatever the employees wanted to to voice we were open to so that as an end result I believe created a very fine handbook that spoke to the issue of truly engaging our employees I think you and the others involved handled it very well our employees have been complimentary of the opportunities for input it certainly was a balance however I mean it wasn't just what the employees wanted clearly it was organizationally how do we position ourselves for success this year and going forward and fiscally there were some changes made that for some employees were difficult to swallow but but overall I think it was a balance and one that is serving us well will continue to make refinements as we move forward I'm going to transition to Roger because of course German just Rudy knows that another key initiative for the county was our in health clinic so Roger I'll turn it over to you yes thank you Adam and good to have you with us Jean and looking forward to you working many years with the county when did the county establish the in health clinic and why would you explain some of that absolutely the in health clinic was established in 2008 and really as as we look back and put some history together about the why's of that Roger it really comes down to again what's best for the employee as we talk about the human resources role and understanding you know why a number of our employees are working is because certainly we need to take a look at their their health benefits and what what can we provide so as we looked at both balancing what's best for the employee what's best for the county what's best for the taxpayer we realized that our costs were quite high and how do we take a look and control those costs in a more efficient manner so we were able to to develop this this really in-house clinic if you will through Ontario health and basically what that does for the employees and for the employer and taxpayers is really a common thread and that is to say lower because we're such a large organization lower health care costs in general we were able to provide primary health care to our employees at a much more effective and efficient cost for the employee so very low out of pocket costs for the employee which in turn then for the taxpayer as we focus the clinic on wellness and coaching and controlling any disease management issues really minimizes hopefully minimizes more longer term care issues and concerns which relate to dollars so hopefully we're minimizing future health care you know costs and risks with the clinic and as you know the city of Sheboygan and the Sheboygan school district have joined us and we're glad to see that that helps pay the operating costs and reduce the cost for the taxpayers of all those entities would you explain how that's been working absolutely we're excited to have both the city of Sheboygan and the Sheboygan area school district join our clinic it does a number of things for us certainly it encourages and fosters great employee relations with you know certainly employees across the board with those three entities however it also from a community standpoint is certainly the right thing to do you know as as we work with our partners we were able to again maximize additional savings as they came on board because we were able to share as you mentioned really equipment costs our overhead costs in general were now shared by three entities instead of just Sheboygan county as a whole carrying that that weight if you will so not only from a a right thing to do in the community perspective as well as really the taxpayers on a whole and allowing those two groups in and there are those employees to start certainly enjoying the benefits of lower cost you know health benefits and so forth now the federal health care reform is a big challenge also how is Sheboygan county reacting to that and what are we doing to prepare right federal health care form and the health care reform act affordable care act certainly has employers and in particular Sheboygan county taking look at how we provide affordable health care to the majority of our employees so we're responding to that certainly understanding a number of changes still yet to come this year that we don't have specifics on we are working with our benefit consultant certainly and understanding where our plan is today what are the costs associated with what today is trying to understand certainly and will have a better understanding and handle on that in the next couple of months in terms of cost going into 2014 and beyond however we continue now to take a look at our plan design for 2014 what the costs are associated with that but also balancing the cost to the county with the needs of the employees and retirees at this point in time so really in the middle of balancing what's the right thing to do and what's you know for the employee and the taxpayer at the same time and I just always a concern how much are the employees paying toward their insurance and how much is the county paying would you explain that to our viewers right overall we have a couple of different plans because we still do have two collective bargaining units active we have about 237 employees out of our 830 that still remain within the collective bargaining unions if you will so that in answer to your question we've got a couple of different percentages that employees do pay toward health care on the average though Roger we are we have our the majority of our employees paying between 15 and 17 and a half percent of that health care cost with the county picking up the balance and we're fortunate to have a very good safety record in the county from all the different departments but how are are we trying to strive to improve and and things better if possible very good safety is is a number one priority and I was encouraged as I came on board to see really that we do have very good safety controls in place and very minimal claims if you will on both the employee and the guest you know from those perspectives however there's always opportunity to improve and enhance those processes what we've done since my arrival is we've kind of picked up that safety initiative we now have put together a safety committee who meets once a month it is comprised of a member of all 19 of our main departments and really a diverse group of employees managers supervisor and department heads on that committee we take safety very seriously here at Sheboygan county from a few perspectives one from the employee's perspective we certainly want to offer a work environment that is safe for our employees to come to so whether that has to do certainly with the chemicals they might handle and on the job tools if you will lock out take out on equipments and so forth we're focusing on those types of efforts we're also focusing certainly on those how do I say natural disaster type safety so tornado warnings fire drills things of that nature we need to have Sheboygan county prepared in the event we have the unexpected happen so we're focusing on those policies those procedures those manuals are being put into place as we speak and furthermore will continue to develop really from a broader perspective contingency action plans in the event we do have a more major disaster will Sheboygan county be ready yes we will so really in a nutshell the the committee continues to meet we have a target date of September 1st to have those policies as I mentioned among others put together in our department heads hands we will have our management group trained in September and then we'll roll out the first ever all employee annual safety training required for all of our employees so we can educate and be ready in the event of any safety concerns very good thank you gene nice overview and I really appreciate it jeans leadership on this as well as Steve Steinert our emergency management director the two of them have been co-chairing this effort the last few months and it's very important to success of our organization and it's not only you know as you said those natural disasters I think most people think a tornado drill or fire drill or you know working with chemicals or what have you but we live in a day and age where unfortunately we have to be more concerned with a bomb threat or someone calling in making that prank call or threat that there's a bomb or someone in the building with a gun we we we've had situations and people certainly have seen us on the news where you might receive a letter or a package in the mail that may have anthrax or at least we could we it could possibly have something in it these are just different threats that we read about in the paper see on the news that it seems to always happen in that other community or that bigger city but it could happen here and obviously we want our staff prepared you know how do you respond to that if you pick up the phone that day and you're being threatened or your building is being threatened how do you respond when you when you get that piece of mail that looks dangerous and again it's something that I wish we didn't have to spend time and resources on but it's very important that we do so so I really appreciate your work and the committee's work you mentioned earlier professional development and I think it goes without saying in our organization that we're always striving to improve I mean continuous improvement is part of our philosophy but it doesn't just happen you know we need to we need to work at that we need to give employees the skill sets they need to improve so Jean you've really brought in some you know fresh ideas and some juice behind we've got to enhance our professional development opportunities what do you have in mind professional development happens to be my passion so I kind of light up when you talk about that Adam I believe again when we look at the future of whether that's human resources or Sheboygan County as a whole we need to be ready we need to be ready for the future whether that means education tools that we might provide we have our employees who are out hopefully you know learning and on the job and preparing themselves for the future we need to help that effort along the lines of what I said earlier in terms of human resource management and how we need to set a stage legally for Sheboygan County to be successful we need to train our managers and our leaders about what to do what not to do what is okay and what are those parameters so I'm excited to be able to offer as we move forward more interviewing hiring employer relations management leadership guidance we have great leaders as our department heads but we need to look forward and develop we are looking forward to perhaps putting in place a succession planning process within Sheboygan County what does that mean we want to make sure that we know who the next are we grooming someone internally to be the next HR director and the next planning director and so forth do we have people internally with those skill sets if not perhaps we should look at how we can get those skill sets so again long term really looking out for the taxpayers Sheboygan County's bottom line to promote from within to encourage to educate our staff in-house if you will at a very minimal cost we want the best and the brightest we want to be able to to attract good employees and when they're here we want to be able to retain them and obviously that equates to providing the best service we can to to the community you've focused more on professional development we're going to provide those opportunities but of course compensation is important in order to attract and retain good employees as well and to the county board's credit and to the HR department's credit we have had some checks and balances over the years to you know make sure we're competitive with other counties but this year we're going through a comprehensive compensation study what's in play there very good we are working with with a consultant as we take a look at the importance of where are our salary ranges number one are we competitively priced number one with our surrounding counties in the job market but also taking a look at both public and private sector what does that mean we have to be competitive as you talk about recruitment attraction and retention of those employees and so what we're doing the process that we're hoping to really have an end result and and and get to is taking a look at job descriptions making sure that our job descriptions are up-to-date accurate and and completely define the roles and responsibilities of positions marrying that then Adam with our study that we're doing through our consultant we're actually taking a look at comparables so we're going out and we're saying all right other counties what are you paying for like jobs private sector what are you paying for like jobs at the end result where we will present a salary and a pay structure that really is in in the year if you will very up-to-date and we'll speak to the competitiveness of our ranges as we look at that process and our goal is by the end of the year to have those ranges in place the job descriptions in place and then we were able to really tie that to performance and hopefully we're looking at what we call a paper performance plan which is really rewarding recognizing those employees who are top performers who are really doing an excellent job for Sheboygan County and we will tie then those pay ranges those job descriptions and that performance appraisal process together hopefully by by this time next year because we know overall our you know our grades are probably in pretty good shape and obviously 830 employees that's a lot of position descriptions most of them are probably fine but over time adjustments do need to be made but we also know we have some areas of of concerning compression in the sheriff's department or you know where an employee is supervising someone that may be making as much or more because of overtime would have you so those tweaks are ongoing and it's a credit again to the county board for encouraging this consultant to come in and give us that snapshot so we can improve the competitive nature of our county we don't want to be average we want to be the best and we're striving to get there last question if someone has an interest in working for Sheboygan County how do they get more information what can they do to learn what positions are open very good we have a number of ways primarily really the number one means of communication is our website Sheboygan County website sheboygancounty.com and basically you can go on and you will see in the day what is available you'll see a job description you'll have an idea of really the scope and dimension of what's expected what's required and so forth so I encourage anyone to go on our website and take a look at that if you don't have access to a computer you can certainly give our human resources department a phone call we'd be happy to walk through that with them as well as our local job service if you're down and using that resource it's an excellent resource and again provides great information on the employment opportunities Sheboygan County has to offer outstanding well not bad for a 30 minute presentation you've got a wonderful overview of HR roles responsibilities and as you can see incredible breadth of responsibility for Jean and her staff thank you for joining us today wonderful overview if you have more questions or as Jean said are not able to get on the website and have some interest in learning more about what may open or available in the county at our HR department or the job center please don't hesitate to contact us thank you for being here and thank you for your good work the past few months as Roger said I'm hoping that we've got a we're going to have you around for a long time Jean well thank you it's good to be here thank you Roger and thank you for joining us next month again we're going to have another important department head come in and talk about roles and responsibilities and switching gears a little bit we haven't had our corner here for quite some time and corner David Lafine who's been our corner in the county for years years and years and provides of course a very important service is going to be here to talk about his roles and responsibilities and I generally don't see the corner very often it's always the budget process when I see Dave and sometimes that feels just about right for me but he's always interesting so please join us next month and until then have a good summer thanks for joining us


A massive wildfire is raging across an Oregon forest in the United States, advancing eight kilometers. An army of firefighters is battling the inferno, which is fed by dry timbers and has burned tens of thousands of hectares of forest. But there's hope, as a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Forestry, has announced that more than 2,100 firefighters, a dozen helicopters and airplane tankers had 22% of the place under control. And Oregon is not the only U.S. state filling the heat. More evacuations have been issued in Northern California as the community is threatened by another wildfire which has been burning for two weeks. The fire exploded several days ago amid strong winds according to local media. It had burned more than 23,000 acres by Monday morning. About 70 major active wildfires were listed five days ago in the United States. Together, they have burned more than one million acres in 12 states. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


In June 2016, we had the referendum and that expressed the will of the people, but the will of the people isn't something fixed or unchangeable. If the circumstances change, the will can change, the views can change. We knew that we voted to leave the European Union, but we didn't yet know the new relationship. We've got the right to rethink. It's not that we have to rethink, but we've got the right to rethink if we want to. So when we see this new relationship, and I think the new relationship will be one in which Britain is either trying to keep very close to Europe, in which case we'll have to obey Europe's rules, but we'll have lost our seat at the table of decision making, or alternatively, it'll be very far from Europe, in which case the damage to Britain economically will be quite significant. I think when people see this new relationship, they're going to ask themselves, again, the question, well, is this really worth it? I think we also have to deal with the underlying reasons why people voted for Brexit. Now, those reasons were often to do with issues like immigration, concerns about immigration, concerns about communities left behind, economic and cultural alienation. I think you have to deal with those reasons. Now, some of that can be dealt with by Europe also coming forward and saying, look, the circumstances that gave rise to Brexit in Britain are also circumstances that obtain a lot of Europe as well. If there's an intelligent response from the UK, there could also be an intelligent response from Europe that says, OK, let's try and meet you halfway around things like freedom of movement, not interfere with the basic principle, but make sure it operates in a fairer way, and deal with some of the underlying issues that gave rise to Brexit. If Europe was to take that attitude, then I think that would facilitate a change in mind in Britain. Is this worth pulling Britain out of the biggest political union in the world, the largest commercial market in the world to which we're tied physically by the channel tunnel, commercially by the single market, historically by all the ties that bind Europe together, and in geopolitical terms where the world in the 21st century will have America in the West, you'll have China in the East, and Europe in order to represent its interests and its values has got to stay strong and Britain should be part of that block. If you're a medium-sized population country, like Germany, like France, like the UK, then you've got to band together collectively because otherwise your bargaining power in the world is going to be too weak with these major large population players. Over two-thirds of the young people were voting to stay in Europe, two-thirds of the over 65 is voting to leave, and I think for younger people particularly, you know they see their future as being part of the world in which membership of the European Union is not contrary to our British national interests but part of it. In many ways Europe's become a kind of lightning rod for a whole lot of anxieties and concerns that people have that really aren't concerns that are about Europe but are about people's worry, which is very real, that they've lost control over their own lives, lost it culturally through forces of immigration, lost it economically through forces of globalization, and my point is that the political leaders have got to respond to those anxieties and not end up in a situation where a kind of populism that rides the anger but doesn't provide the answers takes control, and this is the risk in Britain, but frankly you can see this all over the Western world, and Brexit is merely part of that movement in the West that's a big reaction against this process of globalization, and we've got to take account of it and deal with the underlying reasons for it because otherwise if we end up obstructing globalization, or for example Britain pulls itself out of Europe as a result of these worries, you know we'll just do ourselves long-term damage.


You had an interesting game with the white pieces against dragnar today It was a very interesting opening and this was an opening that happened between Laura and Bella as well yesterday Bishop f4. What was can you give us some insights on your preparation? afternoon analyze Just a position. I I remember Bishop e7. I think It's okay black. Yeah, but that's all that you saw that Bishop e7 is okay. Yeah, I think a piece of e7 Okay Yes, and what about you? You were probably expecting the e5 as was played in Laurence game yesterday.  So I just Improvised Bishop f4 basically and where do you think you went wrong? Okay, I think Bishop h5 was a big blunder, but Already h4 in the opening was inaccurate for sure After Bishop h5 does does he have any chances of saving this game you yes, I think you can't can these seven I think a white is dangerous Inside I think a black is attack attack very strong Right and any other what do you think? Where do you think you could have improved instead of Bishop h5 in this position? But with h4 already see things seem to go wrong, right? Yeah, I mean the position was already unpleasant for white. I think but Okay, instead of Bishop h5 I can try g4 rook h3 which may give white some chances to defend Right, and how how do you feel about the way things have been going today was a tough day But otherwise how have the games been for you so far? Okay, I mean I had a big success yesterday. I beat Ivanshuk with black But actually I also played this game quite poorly. So I'm not really satisfied with my play Right, and you have you were somebody who comes back to Gibraltar.  I wish next game next tournament Play good good move good tournament. Yeah, I wish you wish both of you all the best for the remaining rounds. Thank you Okay, thank you


When interacting with tap backs in the messages app on both Mac and iPhone and of course iPad to see who has reacted to a message via tap back. You know, if you, especially if you're in a group, right? And you see, you know, the little thumbs up or the thumbs down or the heart sign or whatever, but you don't, it doesn't show you which person. It just shows you that there are reactions. You tap or click if on the Mac, the tap backs stacked in the corner of the message. You don't need to click and hold. You don't need to long press. You don't need to double tap the message itself. Just tap once on or click once on the actual little reaction in the upper left corner of the message and it will expand the tap backs themselves and show you what, uh, which person responded in which way, which is awesome. I've, I've been driving myself crazy to do this for a long time. So I really appreciate this tip.


Today, Wednesday, March 3rd, 2021, the Ezra Long Laboratory would like to report that the backlog which was experienced during the months of January and February of 2021 has been completely cleared up and we have reverted now to our 24-hour turnaround time for COVID-19 PCR testing. The Ezra Long Laboratory has finalized the processes to increase the testing capacity over the last few months. During this period of February 25th through 28th, 2021, we were able to do 2,408 patient samples during just a three-day period. To put this into context, in the month of August last year, we were able to do 2,500 patient samples. One month's work in one week and this was what the lab was faced with during those two months. What we were able to do, we had to look at every single facet of our processes and try to see ways we can improve, be more efficient and handle the increased workload. By this, we were able to bring in a biomedical engineer for repair and certification of a second biosafety cabinet thus developing redundancy. So if anything happens to it, we have a second to work with which occurred on February 1st, 2021. We also procured an automated extraction robot which can do extractions of 188 patient samples in an 80-minute period. Putting it into context, manual extraction, which was what we were doing, would have a human being able to do 16 samples within an hour to two-hour period. So this greatly increases our ability to test patient samples during the day. We had to get clerical staff in, increasing the clerical staff from three to six persons and doing a 24-hour period workflow rather than the 16-hour workflow that was happening prior. We had to get work stations for those persons to work. Computers, lab information systems, inputted on them so we can be able to process and input the patient data and turn these results out from a sample into a result as soon as possible. The laboratory is able to process between 762 to 1,125 samples daily with a 24-hour turnaround. We continue to try to see how we can develop strategies that can minimize the risk of this backlog recurring and are still in discussion to improve our throughput even further to probably 2,500 in a day. The Ministry of Health and Wellness would like to thank the general public, each and everyone for their patience during the laboratory results delay over the last few months. We acknowledge the impacts that this has had in the public service, the private sector and in every single household. We continue to support the national effort in the management of the COVID-19. The Ministry of Health reminds the public that they must remain in isolation after testing and while symptomatic. Also, every single citizen is encouraged to continue adhering to the infection prevention and control measures to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 to friends and family. This includes the use of face masks, maintaining physical distance from others and frequent hand washing.