UrbanSurvival

Well lookie here: Twin Quakes popping all over the place lately.  There were the two around December 26th that affected 95,000 people.  Then we had the twin 7+ quakes  Sunday morning off Indonesia that touched off some small tsunamis in Japan.  Early, it seems, but not wrong on that linguistic set; still pondering all the ‘financial earthquake’ and ‘financial market aftershocks of Madoff which made this all a very confusing stew…  Well, at least that’s done…unless we have the BIG follow-on quake today or tomorrow.  That’d be a bummer…

 

And the largest of all bummers would be for these latest twins to be leading into something popping off at Yellowstone and there a,re some who are quite worried about what could be happening (or about to happen) there…noting as one author does, that the caldera is a little late for a major eruption.  About 40,000 years late…and yeah, that would sure fill in the dislocation/isolation/aid from foreign countries linguistic set, and maybe ruin enough food production down wind to bring along those food shortage and rationing descriptors.  But let’s not go there…probably just petulant magma flowing. 

 

I hope.

 

Obama’s (New & Improved) Free Lunch Deal

Let me see if I have this right:  The US is running a budget deficit right now thanks to (count ‘em as we go) the War in Iraq, the War in Afghanistan, miscellaneous wars and low intensity conflicts, bailouts for banksters, foreign aid, and pork for the gang that doesn’t think straight inside the Beltway.  So much so they are pimping around a hike in the gas tax.

 

Fine.  That’s America, warts and all.

 

Now, along comes the new kid and he puts together a speech which according to one headline will include 600,000 new government employees!  OMG, has anyone but me started to wonder “What are they going to be doing?” Jiminy Christmas - What’ll they all do?  Spies to spy on the spies?  Auditors to audit the auditor’s auditors? On my tax tab? 

 

Here’s the Magic:  At the same time, there’s talk that the prez-elect is looking at a $310-billion dollar tax cut.

 

I hope you understand that massive increases in the self-employment tax is not considered an income tax inside the Beltway.  Nope; the screwing of small business is how Big Business keeps small guys small. 

 

Only the rich get to have Boards of Directors and take the hefty part of their pay as stock options which are usually held offshore, which get taxed at a big fat zero when exercised in some tax haven and then the money wired back into the US tax-free.  These are the same folks that bitch about the ‘commoners’ who put in 70-hours a week, not counting soccer practice, but you knew all that, right?  Like I said, warts and all.

 

I’ll start watching the wires for the ‘walks on water’ reports…

 

Bye-Bye Bill Department

Seems that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is pulling his nomination to be Commerce Secretary since a grand jury is looking at a little commerce related to how some of his key donors picked of lucrative state contracts.

 

Let me see here.  This would make Richardson the first “Soon to be ex Commerce (even before confirmation hearings) appointee”?  I’m sure they’ll come up with some other ex-Clintonista for the gig…no worries.

 

The New York Coronation

What Monday would be complete without my usual rant about how America has its elected aristocracy which is why it’s only a matter of time before Caroline Kennedy becomes Hillary’s replacement.  The NY Times coverage is good.  But, I reckon it’s as good as a done deal since what once passed as leadership in America  has evolved in the MSM to brand royalty, star power, and money-raising. Which (besides a state income tax) explains in part why I don’t live in New York, huh?  Wonder how many trees have been killed covering this?

 

War Toll

The score is now Palestinians 531, Israel 1 with almost 2,500 Palestinians an d 55 Israelis injured, if I’ve got the score coming out of Gaza right.

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I don’t know about you, but I am personally embarrassed that the US blocked a cease-fire call at the UN. Why the U.S. couldn’t act like a genuine world thought (and moral) leader and draft and present its own cease-fire proposal instead of waiting for an Arab-drafted plan (unacceptable!) is just beyond me.  (Unless I follow the money, of course.  Then everything in Washington makes sense.)

 

At least the head of the UN has enough sense to keep pressing for international action to stop the killing.

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Now that Israel has cut Gaza in half, the end high profile warring is likely within a day or three says my best source on these matters. 

 

“Who’s your source?” 

 

You really want to know?  OK: It’s the price of gold.  Down almost $23  when I looked this morning and that means peace is out there in the wings somewhere and someone’s got the nod.  Again, follow the dough and you’ll seldom be wrong.  I’m gonna turn you into an economist yet.

 

Speaking of wars: 40 dead in a Shiite mosque bombing in Baghdad.

 

Markets/The Week Ahead

Auto sales and construction spending today (after the market gets its first cup of coffee) then tomorrow we get factory orders.  Along about Thursday  the Fed comes out with the Consumer Debt report - which they persist in calling consumer credit despite my protestations. Then on Friday the unemployment rate comes out.  I look for this one to be a big pop upward.  A sort of ‘evening of the books’ before the next crowd comes into office. 7% wouldn’t surprise me, and maybe 7.1%.  In fact, we’re in the position now where paradoxically, a high unemployment rate is good because it will stampede the Beltway Buffoons into spending even more of our money that they don’t have.

 

Is this a great country, or what?

 

If you’ve got good bandwidth (and the boss is still hung over) drop by www.thepowerhour.com this morning at 9 AM Central as I’ll be talking with Joyce & Dave (no relation to Sam & Dave) about the “How to Live on $10,000 a year or less” ebook…  If you’re not able to drop by, at least remember “You can only spend it once” and your budget has two columns: Income and outgo…so if you want to get ahead, cut the outgo faster than the income goes down…

 

Toxic Thought Syndrome?

BBC reporting that detox products to drive them poisons out of your body may not do much more than drive money out of your wallet…

 

Taxing Thought

Oh, here’s a goodie of an email:

“George, Looking at my 1040EZ there is indeed a line called Recovery rebate Credit, but it is described as follows:’ “You may be able to take this credit only if: You did not get an economic stimulus payment, or Your economic stimulus payment was less than $600($1200 if married filing jointly)”

There are a few more qualifiers, but the bottom line is that it is phrased as an elective rebate (if you didn’t take it last year) and is added to your line 7 “Federal Income tax withheld” figure, which in effect decreases the current tax due.

Still, I will need to see if they jacked up the entire tax table by $600, because if they did then i would appear that you are still correct.”

Oh gee, imagine that!  Let us know what you find…but remember, they make up for it by screwing the self-employed people over pretty good in the Self-employment Tax section, too.

 

Oh, oh. I can almost here the inbox overflowing with comments now… I just keep coming back to my question which distills down to “If the ‘rebate’ ain’t income, why are they asking about it on and income tax form, huh?”  I mean, if I don’t report it as income do I get it again?  LOL, don’t worry.  I’m totally honest on my taxes.  It is, after all is said and done, only paper calling itself money and you can’t eat, drink, hear, drive, smoke or screw it (directly anyways…).

 

What a crappy thing to wake up thinking about…Monday’s are bad enough as they are without adding this to it, eh?

 

Pop Culture

“Lawsuit: Cobb firm illegally distributing Mexican Pepsi in U.S.“  “Coca Cola hits back over Fanta high pesticide level claims” (UK story about British pop tested in Spain…).

 

Coke Times Square billboard goes ‘green’ and in Flint Michigan, Coke just goes away.

 

All Purpose Box Department

We keep moving closer and closer to the ultimate ‘all purpose” box in the living room.  Latest move is LG Electronics adding a direct internet surfing option to a like of its HDTV’s. 

 

Of course you can get the same thing with a high end PC, with HDMI card and such, but this comes at the problem without the OS  being in view, it seems. 

 

Don’t know if there will be a keyboard, but if there is, seems like email and www.docs.google.com could turn TV watching into work… hmmm…

—

Send snip and save items to george@ure.net

—

 

Around The Ranch:  Fish Tales

Congrats go out to my commodity broker JB Slear at www.fortwealth.com who, on his 48th birthday yesterday, broke a 5-year losing streak at the dumb end of a fishing pole and caught himself a couple of trout near his home in Arizona.  Offsetting the joy? Weather at the time was a mix of rain and snow.

 

But this reminds me to pass on one of Pappy’s old fire house sayings:  “You can’t generally catch fish in comfort.” 

 

I won’t bore you with a lot of old fire house sayings but the one about fishing seemed right on point.  I’ll save the others for another time   (”Any worthwhile home remodeling or car repair project involves bleeding…” and so on…)

 

Peoplenomics.com 

The Crash Handbook Part 2:  What Nobody Wants To Talk About

Denial is powerful stuff, so our next task is to blast through some common misconceptions about how closely we are rhyming with events of the (First) Depression and other economic watershed events.  I refer to the study of cycles - the periodic waxing and waning of human events that may be driven by, or causative of change.  It’s the topic “Nobody wants to talk about” in mainstream academics.  Using cycle studies, we might speculate about the date a coming World War. Or,  we may be able to see some repetition in patterns of malinvestment by ‘common folks’ in stocks and bonds over innovation cycles.  It all adds up to a viable alternative to “pure market dynamics” as those focused hypnotically on quantitative analysis would otherwise have policymakers believe. Invention and innovation, not the application of formulaic obscura, is what creates your future. Be warned that the trance of formulas and symbols is not about your prosperity….

 

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What is better than a Christmas  New Years  Valentine Card?

Why, sending an email to everyone in your ‘contact’ file and tell them about  www.urbansurvival.com of course!

 

“Live on $10,000″ Updated

What?  You haven’t ordered the ebook “How to Live on $10,000 a year — or less”?  Suit yourself.  We’re all going to live it shortly, anyway.  I just thought you might like a heads up by reading about how to do it before you get pink-slipped.  But, suit yourself OR visit www.liveontenthousand.com or, click one of the following button:

 

 

 

Yep - still possible.  I also took a bit of additional material that was pertinent from recent issues of Peoplenomics and included them.  The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the aforementioned dollar amount, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you make a little more than that and do some active savings…  Click here for the page with more details on it.

—-

 Last week’s report is here.    For back issues of this site, click here.  (Goes back to 1997!)

 

Although I am loathe to do Saturday updates, specially since I am working on vastly more important things like this weekend’s Peoplenomics update (The REAL Problem of 2012 which is a chapter in my new ebook “The Crash Handbook”), there are a number of reader complaints/observations worth sharing, although most are distractions.

 

1. “Your .PDF of the Coast to Coast show is completely blanks - can you fix it?” 

 

No.  That was created using current software.  The folks who have not been able to open the .PDF, as far as I’ve been able to figure, have older versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader installed.  A free update from www.adobe.com should get you current and reading.

 

2. “You didn’t mention the failure of you Dec. 10-12 earthquake in your ‘predictions report’. 

 

Correct:  I did, however,  cover that on the air with Ian Punnett as our “Worst Prediction of 2008″ and made two points (from my notes):

• “We expected a December 10-15 ‘twin quake’ and that was simply a bad read on our part”

• And… “What we got was a lot of’ financial earthquake’ and ‘after shocks’ language around the breaking Bernie Madoff story that happened at the same time as the isolation/shutdown of the Pacific Northwest - just a case of getting pieces right but not the whole”

 

3. Here’s a dandy email: “You still are trying to take some kind of false credit for predicting some kind of incident on 07 October 2008. Your .PDF which lists 2008’s “accomplishments” puts the Icelandic bank failures at 06/07 October 2008. NEWSFLASH — they were precipitously failing a WEEK PRIOR the failures did NOT begin on 06/07 October 2008. Another NEWSFLASH — They still are. Again, you had the trend but you faltered by listing a specific date and time.”

 

WTF is this?  First, look at the wording of the prediction from Jan 2 2008:  See slide # 3, October 2008 prediction, fourth bullet point: “May be a global replay of what the 1932 bond crash in the Great Depression was.”

 

Second, we refined this to a roughly Bell curve distribution around Oct. 7th.  That’s a distribution centered on a date.  Now, look at Wikipedia’s entries for September 2008 and there is no reference to “global financial crisis.”  Now look at the October entry below it.  There are three references including the October 7th loan of $4-billion to Iceland by Russia to bail them out as they experienced a national financial failure.

 

I have informed the individual that it is not my role in Universe to engage in further debate on this, and despite that I have received yet another insulting email criticizing the accuracy of the prediction made 10-months in advance.  As evidence ‘you weren’t right’ the reader quoted news item about a smaller  $600-million loan from the week before Oct 7th was attached.

 

Lemme see here: Jan 2 a year ago we point to Oct ‘08 and the large-scale crisis.  Mid summer we refine it to October 7 as the peak of a distribution.  And non-subscriber (without access to all the data) claims a minor article appears the week before and that somehow invalidates 10-years of work in a new area of science?  OK, sure…whatever

 

No we don’t get everything and, as demonstrated in the Madoff case, this is only a fledgling science prone to errors.  Fine so far…  But then I get this:

“My version agrees with the facts; YOURS does NOT. It always amazes me that when one is caught as a liar that he considers the claims as “trivialities” and takes umbrage at being caught!

Too bad you lack the honesty and good moral character to admit when you are in error. A mistake has grown into a lie! You should be ashamed of yourself! Trouble is, your lack of good moral character probably immunizes you, like Bill Clinton, from personal shame.”

Lemme see: No contribution to development of the technology, argumentative wrong-headed self-righteous criticism, personal insults…  Yep: Congratulations!  Junk mail filtering applied.

—

This brings up a very important point about personal energy:

 

Although this site is largely focused on the uncertain/cloudy future, it is nevertheless positive in that it’s all about coping and preparedness for whatever may come.

 

I don’t mind questions and trying to help when someone disagrees but I draw the line at self-righteous personal attacks.

 

4.  Here’s an example of a thoughtful email:

“Hi george, Love your site except the last couple of days. I really don’t like your tone towards Israel. The only reason they are bombing Hamas is they are shooting misses into Israel. I was a volunteer at an Israeli army base for 3 months in 05. Everyday before work they would give us a quick news and weather update. ANd everyday several rockets fell in Israel In 05 after Israel left Gaza and even removed Israeli’s and left business Gazans were lobbing missiles. How many years would it take you to respond if it was somewhere in Texas? How many thousands of rockets would it take for you to respond. The Israelis want peace. They have given up acres of land, which when you live in a tiny country, means just a little more security, to prove it. Arabs that live in Israel have a better life and more heath benefits and rights than arabs anywhere else, OH except those that are on the top of the heap. The IDF calls on the phone and warns civilians where they are going to strike, but that is not why suicide bombers carry cell phones. We live in a time when evil is called good and good evil.5 times a day I could hear the Muslim prayers from the base I worked at in Israel. How many Jewish prayers do you think you can hear a day in Saudi Arabia? Which side are you on George? “

The answer is complicated, so bear with me.  Simply:  I am terribly disappointed in both sides and consider myself on neither. That deserves some discussion as I am not an Egyptian (which administered Gaza prior to the 1967 war).  I am not Israeli (which has administered it since the 1967 Six-Days War). And I am not Palestinian.

 

In terms of the timeline here, we are now, as the AP puts it, in “Week Two of Israeli blitz on Gaza with no end in sight.“

 

When it comes to geopolitics, I a consider myself akin to the American Whig Party…

“…the Whigs supported the supremacy of Congress over the Executive Branch and favored a program of modernization and economic protectionism. This name was chosen to echo the American Whigs of 1776, who fought for independence, and because “Whig” was then a widely recognized label of choice for people who saw themselves as opposing autocratic rule.”

Got plenty of that autocratic rule stuff going around, in case you’ve lost count of the Executive Orders and Signing Statements.  And Executive-run agencies which claim powers to violate our Constitution more or less on a whim.

—

As I see it, we live in an age where complexification rules and any simplicism of complex events into “You’re either with us, or against us” as the Decider put it, denies the fundamental complexity of the world.

 

At a macro-level, the Middle East Wars (which are part and parcel of what I refer to as the “Manufacturer’s Resource Wars“) are a combination of resource grabs (oil and drugs) and employment programs.  Yup, in a sense Jihad may be veiwed an employment program, but in a sense, so is Iraq.  Even the Crusades and be looked at as an economic initiative.

—

I don’t like war - anywhere.  You know what’s the most war-promoting country in the world?  The Netherlands.  How’d I figured?

 

If you look at top weapons exporters here and population over here, you can see that between 2000 and 2007, the Netherlands increased arms exports by 5.23 times.  $82/per capita of weapons exports

 

Now, to their credit, Israel’s exports are down 26%; they are # 5 on a per capita basis at $37.47.  The US exports from 2000 to 2007 are about even and we do $24.97 per year of arms exports per capita.

 

Anyway, my point is I don’t choose to be on any side of war. It’s a business and one I don’t choose to support.  Don’t misconstrue: I will defend America.

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Globally, arms sales are up 61% among top exporters since 2002.  This is global economic progress?  I just get bummed out about it…I’ll try to be a little more Hoo rah! about it.

 

Peoplenomics.com 

 

 

The little ebook I wrote called “How to Live on $10,000 a year…or less!” has been incredibly successful.  No, it hasn’t been stocked by Amazon, nor has it been picked up by a major publishing house.  But it’s been successful by the number of lives it has changed & improved; things publishers and retailers may give lip service to, but when comes right down to brass tacks in publishing, everyone’s got to make a buck, and that’s cool.  I’m undeterred from my personal mission, however, which is to open people’s heads a bit, give them new ways of looking at old problems, and above all remind people that the only wealth that survives death is the bank vault of riches between your ears.  If that vault is empty, then Life hasn’t been properly lived.  So over the course of the coming month or two, we’ll step back far enough from the theoretical  trading and investment side of Peoplenomics to address the nitty-gritty of “Whatcha gonna do when?”   Because that “When” is getting really damned close now.

 

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What is better than a Christmas  New Years Card?

Why, sending an email to everyone in your ‘contact’ file and tell them about  www.urbansurvival.com of course!

 

“Live on $10,000″ Updated

What?  You haven’t ordered the ebook “How to Live on $10,000 a year — or less”?  Suit yourself.  We’re all going to live it shortly, anyway.  I just thought you might like a heads up by reading about how to do it before you get pink-slipped.  But, suit yourself OR visit www.liveontenthousand.com or, click one of the following button:

 

 

 

Yep - still possible.  I also took a bit of additional material that was pertinent from recent issues of Peoplenomics and included them.  The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the aforementioned dollar amount, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you make a little more than that and do some active savings…  Click here for the page with more details on it.

—-

 Last week’s report is here.    For back issues of this site, click here.  (Goes back to 1997!)

 

 

 

---

January 2, 2009

Click here to download the Coast To Coast AM radio show notes in which Cliff’s 2009 predictive linguistics outlook is summarized along with a few of my personal ‘things to be watching for’.  Ian Punnett did a really good job of it, too…lots of guests with lots of predictions.  Quite interesting.

 

Quick!  Hide Your Wallet

Yeah, I know - six months ago gasoline prices were north of $5 some places - and since the election was coming, along with the economic collapse, gas prices have been cratering.  Down to around $1.66 a gallon nationally, last time I checked.

 

But if you think this is an opportunity to ‘make back’ some of the screwing at the pumps earlier this year, think again: “Panel wants fuel taxes hiked to fund highways.“

 

This is exactly the kind of Depression Inducing Half-think crap (can’t think of a more polite word, sorry) we’ve come to expect from Washington. 

 

First, to raise the tax on diesel will take even more truckers off the road and will drive up prices of goods. 

 

Second, it will push the cost of commuting to work back up.  Third, why can’t government cut back on wasteful spending in its own ranks? They behave like it’s OK for working people to have their hours cur, but what about government?  Where’s government’s 10% cuts and 4-day weeks?  Those of us writing the checks want to know!

 

And fourth (this is my pet peeve) we see a tax hike so the slimeballs in office can do what?  Sell off more publicly funded highway projects to private greed-driven corporations which in turn will put in toll booths?  Notice how no one is arguing that roads should only be operated by not-for-profit organizations?  Nope - goes to outfits with ties to the elite, ‘natch.  Even royalty/bloodline freaks of southern Europe I hear….

 

The predictive linguistics are very clear:  2009 is a year of transformation and a ‘fuzzy/global’ soft revolution.  But given enough stupidity on the part of policy makers, that ’soft/fuzzy’ could turn really hard and really ugly.  Here’s my new bumper sticker:  “Watch the botch.”

 

The Global Depression Digs in

“Singapore economy shrinks at 12.5% in 4th quarter”.  West coast port trade is adown about that much.  Anyone connecting the dots besides us?

—

One reader apparently is…sending in this email:

“The story below has me wondering what will China do with all it’s unemployed people. Seems like wars are often used in situations like this. What do you think?

“Rising desperation as China’s exports drop“

That’s one of the points I made to Ian Punnett on CoastToCoast last night.  We were talking about the Russian (Igor Panarin’s) prediction that the US would likely break apart or experience some kind of revolutionary change due to the economic implosion this year..

My point to Ian was that Panarin’s thinking that other countries will have enough ‘energy’ to spend exerting ‘influence’ over other countries - like the US West - ignores the notion that globalism fundamentally means there is no safe place for capital to hide during economic chaos

A Chinese-dominated West?  A European dominated Atlantic Northeast?  Where are those regional trade powers going to be getting energy and goods to keep their own houses in order?  No, I think this soft revolutionary change coming will be much more global and all-encompassing.

Just as globalism on ‘the way up’ made all countries ‘winners’, the collapse of the consumer economy (and its Services Sector bubble), will likely beggar the planet.

What I characterized as the Third-Worldization of America will really be a global affair, so when you read about things like Russia and Ukraine fighting over natural gas now, it’s just foreplay to the main events to come soon enough. 

I look for resource warring and sparring to spread such that over 2009 your personal experience of the Year of Transformation will vary by where you live.  The Midwest may have grains, but no veggies.  California may have veggies but no power.  The Pacific Northwest may have power but no grains or veggies - that kind of circularity applied globally.  And the shortage of clues in Washington will intensify the mess, of course.

Oh well, stuff happens, right?

Denial Department

“Experts keeping mum of 2009 market outlook” says this morning’s NY Post.  Well sure:  Like I was raised, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all…”

 

What’s Enough Bloodshed?

OK, Israel has killed more than 400 in Gaza.  Are they like trying to hit some kind of number, or is there a metric of “How many dead equals a ‘win’”?  Number of wounded is over 2,000, too.  So folks get to sit back and guess as to when enough will be enough.  But, obviously, we’re not close yet.  Maybe it’s 1,000 dead?  I dunno…

 

At what point does the world label as terrorists those who bomb places of worship?  It’s a question worth asking because as the AP reports “Israel targets Gaza mosques used by Hamas.”  Which brings up the discussion about whether it’s cricket under the Geneva convention to target places of worship and civilian populations…The IDF claims missiles were stored there.

 

Might be ending soon, though:  gold’s down.

 

MSM is reporting “Gaza’s rocks put Israel’s nuclear plant in battle zone.” No, Dimona hasn’t moved, it’s still 42.1 miles from Gaza and earlier the same media outlet reported the Iranian-made Fajr-3 rockets had a range of “more than 30 miles” … not more than 40.  Whips up emotions, though doesn’t it?  Mention of ‘nuclear plant’ and ‘missiles’?  Where’s my KI pills…

–

Israeli PM Ehud “Olmert vows ‘iron fist’ against Hamas.”  So is it Truce or Consequences time?

 

Deadly Fire

61-dead in a Thai nightclub fire…police looking into it.  Given the recent political turmoil in the country, I find myself wondering about this one..

 

Murder Rates Drop

An ABC report has it that “Some big cities see homicide rates drop in 2008.”  While it seems like good news, I wouldn’t count on it staying low for long.  As the layoffs come along this year and the rising unemployment rates, I expect lawlessness, and particularly street robberies to spike.  It’ll be interesting to see how that portion of the stats will play out…

 

The Future’s a Gamble…

There’s a thoughtful piece in the Wall Street Journal this week headlined “Will Gambling continue to Grow?  All bets are off…“

 

Best I can figure, gambling is on the skids - and it may never recover. Not only does the “Slump mean identity crisis for Las Vegas“, as the Washington post reports, but a story earlier this week that Housing Prices fell at their fastest pace in October (the most recent figures) included this remark: “Prices in Las Vegas and Phoenix, where developers built subdivisions stretching into the desert, fell by nearly a third in October from 2008. “

 

As the predictive linguistics work out of HalfPastHuman notes, America is about to undergo a major transformation.  I expect a large part of that will be to return to some thrifty Yankee ways.  Gambling, and it’s mis-named ‘investment’ analogs have likely run their course.

 

There’s simply not money to waste in most households, along with too much employment uncertainty.

 

Folks that haven’t saved for ‘rainy days’ are feeling the first drops. So are the gambling Mecca’s.

As a newcomer to a remote Air Force site up in the 49th state back in my youth, I was treated to a fine blend of humor and hospitality arriving at Murphy Dome AC&W site, some 30-miles outside of Fairbanks.  The site’s not there any longer, but you can still see pictures of it here. I ran the ‘microwave shack’ for a defense contractor, and it’s located just below and to the left of the high power acquisition radar dome in the upper left of the picture.

 

My first day on site I wandered into the officer’s club (at age 19 I was a GS-14 equivalent) and announced myself as “George the microwave tech rept.”  Properly introduced to Colonels King & Hillis as “George-wave”, I got around to learning how to put a checkmark next to my name on the honor-system bar tab.  Scotch was 2-bits a shot - and you just put a checkmark down each time you poured one, and that was that.  The count seldom came up short.

 

After a couple of checkmarks, I forget which Major it was came over and asked if  “Are you a real Alaskan yet?”

 

Puzzled, I had to confess that I had no idea what he was talking about.

 

“Have you had an ice worm cocktail yet?”

 

Well, no, since I’d been in Alaska for all of about 3-weeks at that point, and all that was spent in the basement of the StratCom building at Fort Rich during Operation Snowtime that year, and after that barely managing to learn what an Alaskan calls a Black-Label Sandwich is (a shot of Johnny Walker Black and a bottle of Carling Black Label beer chaser), I admitted this was a new one on me.

 

The Major disappeared into the mess for a few minutes and returned with a glass of brown somethingorother which had what looked like a pale bluish-purple purple worm down at the bottom of it.

 

After a couple of minutes of having the anatomy and behavior of ‘ice worms” explained to me, along with a detailed description of how they could ‘eat a mans guts out if not properly killed’ I was offered the glass with the ‘ice worm in it’ and all eyes focused on me around the room while I decided on the risks of drinking the somethingorother  with the worm in it.

 

Having been raised proper-like, Pappy had allowed me to sample Mezcal which comes with a worm in it, and so I figured this worm couldn’t be much worse than that.  I hoisted the ‘ice worm’ and then spent another half hour hearing stories of folks who couldn’t be forced even at gunpoint to down the concoction.  Turns out some drink and then ‘lose the worm’ within minutes, too.

—

This weekend being the end of the Holiday season, and since Elaine may not read my column today (she was up part of the night because I was on CoastToCoast last night) I may have to bless her with an East Texas variation on the ice worm story.  Having folks over and wanna have some fun?  You’re welcome to play along…

 

I’m thinking, given our farm critters, that a ‘goat worm cocktail‘ might be kind of interesting.

 

Not saying you should engage in this kind of playful mixology, but if you happen to have a bottle of gravy browning, and maybe some grape juice for good measure, an Xacto knife any old piece of leftover spaghetti noodle can be turned into a fine imitation of a worm. 

 

Feeling really creative? Wide spaghetti (of the sort used for Stroganoff) can be crafted into other buggy shapes, too.  Cottage cheese curds dipped and briefly dried can be turns into other (how do I say this at breakfast?) challenging garnishes.

 

Might want to wear eye protection.  There’s always a chance the goat worms or ice worms will be returned - via airmail.

 

Y2K Redux

Microsoft says a software glitch that occurred on some (30 gb) versions of its Zune product should be self curing as the date rolls past January 1st.

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Send snip and save items to george@ure.net

— end snip and save section —

 

Peoplenomics.com 

 

The little ebook I wrote called “How to Live on $10,000 a year…or less!” has been incredibly successful.  No, it hasn’t been stocked by Amazon, nor has it been picked up by a major publishing house.  But it’s been successful by the number of lives it has changed & improved; things publishers and retailers may give lip service to, but when comes right down to brass tacks in publishing, everyone’s got to make a buck, and that’s cool.  I’m undeterred from my personal mission, however, which is to open people’s heads a bit, give them new ways of looking at old problems, and above all remind people that the only wealth that survives death is the bank vault of riches between your ears.  If that vault is empty, then Life hasn’t been properly lived.  So over the course of the coming month or two, we’ll step back far enough from the theoretical  trading and investment side of Peoplenomics to address the nitty-gritty of “Whatcha gonna do when?”   Because that “When” is getting really damned close now.

 

       More For Subscribers        Subscription Information

 

 

 

What is better than a Christmas  New Years Card?

Why, sending an email to everyone in your ‘contact’ file and tell them about  www.urbansurvival.com of course!

 

“Live on $10,000″ Updated

What?  You haven’t ordered the ebook “How to Live on $10,000 a year — or less”?  Suit yourself.  We’re all going to live it shortly, anyway.  I just thought you might like a heads up by reading about how to do it before you get pink-slipped.  But, suit yourself OR visit www.liveontenthousand.com or, click one of the following button:

 

 

 

Yep - still possible.  I also took a bit of additional material that was pertinent from recent issues of Peoplenomics and included them.  The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the aforementioned dollar amount, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you make a little more than that and do some active savings…  Click here for the page with more details on it.

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 Last week’s report is here.    For back issues of this site, click here.  (Goes back to 1997!)

 

What’s about to be revealed, at the close of trading today, is the real nature of what a multi-billion dollar industry insists is “investing” in paper assets.  It’s generally not, of course, really investing at all.  The more precise word is gambling.

 

One definition of investing does like this:

“An asset is usually purchased, or equivalently a deposit is made in a bank, in hopes of getting a future return or interest from it. “

The definition of gambling is quite similar is many regards:

“…referring to wagering money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods.”

The difference is so slight that it demands honest discussion.  Gambling is differentiated by two things:  hopes of perhaps a higher return than an investment, and over a shorter period of time.

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I looked at a couple of the indices last night after the close and got to wondering if it’s really honest anymore to call allocating money into paper assets - like the Dow Industrials (directly through shares, or through a third-party for the weaker willed - those things called mutual funds) - ‘investing’. 

 

When December 31 rolled around last year, the closing Dow was around 13,265.    The Dow is down this year 34.65% going into today’s session. 

 

You may have noticed that I often call the paper assets trading “today’s action“.  Perhaps you’re not awake enough to understand the subtlety of my word choice: ‘action’ but it’s a common phrase in Las Vegas and other gambling Mecca’s:

“This is a general gambling term which refers to the total amount of money bet in a specific period of time. Ten bets of 15 dollars each is $150 of action.”

If percentage of return and shortness of time define ‘gambling’ how does an honest and introspective individual look at the NYSE this year:  Was it ‘gambling” or “investing”?  I’d argue for the former.

 

If a nearly 35% drop in average share price on the Dow isn’t gambling, consider these numbers: 

 

The S&P 500 closed last year about 1468 compared with yesterday’s 890.64.  A decline of 39.3%.

 

The NASDAQ Composite closed last year at 2652.  It closed yesterday at roughly 1551.  That’s a 41.5% decline.

 

You might want to ask yourself “What’s the threshold?  When does investing become gambling?”

 

My view is that ship has sailed and that anyone who doesn’t understand that paper is a gamble needs to have their head examined.

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The actual returns are much worse than these, of course, because we also have to look at how the House has rigged the game.  Monetary Inflation is alive and well.  A friend mentioned to me that “Social Security benefits are going up about 4.8% for 2009 payments…isn’t that great?”

 

No, not really, because it means (loosely) that the purchasing power of the nation’s money has fallen somewhere between 4% and 5% overs the past year.  While the last month has been OK at the store, on average, prices for 2008 were up as reflected in the Consumer Price Index.

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I frequently look back at the stock market’s real all-time-high - which came in the Spring of 2000.

 

On April 10, 2000, the Dow closed at 11,287.

 

Flipping over to the Minneapolis Fed Inflation calculator, top right side at this link, and putting in 2000’s Dow figure, we see that for the Dow to have stayed even on a purchasing power parity basis it would have to soar to 14,131.60.  OK, add in something (4.3-4.8% for 2008 inflation if you want)…but let’s not get depressing in our quest for knowledge here…

 

Now, to be sure, the Dow closed at 14,087 on October 1st of 2007,  so on an inflation-adjusted chart, the Dow has almost completed what technical analysts could point to as a ‘classic double top formation‘.  Care to guess what happens next?

 

Of course, that doesn’t bode well for people who insist on throwing their money into paper assets because while the first week or 10-days of the New Year might seem like just a test of the recent lows, by the middle to end of February, we ought to have taken them out (decisively) before we get  the arrival of inflation from there through the late days of spring, if my read of things is right.  (No, not investment advice, just how I may place a couple of commodity bets…)

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Gold, meantime, which closed out last year around $833.75 seems destined today to fulfill its traditional role as a ‘holder of value’ and seems destined to end the year up[ a modest 4.3% which is guess what?  About the most recent 12-months worth of inflation.  Gee, look surprised.  Gold up for the year…while paper crumbled.  Who told you?

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The problem of building personal net worth is ever so complicated against this kind of background.  For an ‘average’ investor, who would have made market-tracking returns - not only was there the roughly 40% decline in the market but there were those fund management fees on top of things. 

 

Which is why I told you I was parking some dough in Savings Bonds back this summer, because I just knew down in the gut that when the government changed the limit on how much an individual can buy in savings bonds, dropping it from a maximum of $30,000 a year to just $5,000 a year per taxpayer, that the reason government was doing that was probably because it would be a ‘best bet’ - and can’t have too many people playing ’safe’ and winning now, can we? 

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Honestly, I don’t trust government when it comes to money for the simple fact that government turned over control of the money supply to the bankers cabal at the (not really) Federal Reserve in the wee hours before Christmas in 1913.

 

The banksters have watered down the money’s purchasing power so far that if you had saved $100 in 1913, in order to buy the same goods and services at the beginning of 2008, you would have shelled out $2,177.78.

 

Worse:  Since the price of gold (a placeholder for purchasing power over thousands of years), we could add another roughly 4% to that figure to account for 2008’s inflation of the money-supply. That won’t show in the Fed numbers until new calculations are put up, usually around February or so.

 

$2,264.89….or, to look at it another way, your money has only 4.435% of its purchasing power compared with when the bankers started their slow-motion coup d’état.  That a buck is worth less than a nickel isn’t supposed to register.

 

So don’t feel bad if your 401(k) got its ass kicked this year.  You’re playing in a rigged casino and paper is gambling.  It’s just they use really fancy markers.

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Now, to be sure, there may be some fat paper profits ahead in 2009.  I’m planning on bagging a bunch of dough in trading because I think I’ve got a reasonable outlook put together here.  But I’m only looking at trades that can return 4-10 times my risked capital and if you infer that limits me to options, you’re darned right.

 

One reason I can even contemplate such a thing is that the volatility index, the VIX, has come down a fair bit over the holidays.  I reckon when it gets down into the 30-35 range, then it might be time to plunk down a few bucks.    Even more appealing are commodity options and if I can pick a sweet spot where there’s low option premiums, a last-gasp run up in the US dollar, and dire predictions about the economy such that oil takes out $30 on the downside, then a bounce that could follow oughta just pour out profits.  Can you imagine the leverage of commodity options, bought super low, when the market turns as the coming make-work programs spur demand, the US dollar declines overseas, and the current glut at Cushing dries up a bit?  Makes me positively giddy.

 

But not yet.  Timing is everything - and this is pure gambling.

 

If there’s one lesson I’ve learned in 2008 it’s that I need to do a better job of using stops.  I can see a number of trades where I could have (and should have) locked in profits, but I let things ride far too long.  Not the first guy to do that, eh?  As much as I hate ‘mechanical trading’ it helps to remove testosterone from the equation.  Perhaps saltpeter in the milk before trading?

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As usual, we had a pretty good 2008, but let me remind you why.

• Seeing that there were ‘hard times ahead’ for the country & economy since 2002, we bought real estate which appreciated - not the other way around.  That continues to pay off.

• We have shunned any purchases that we can’t pay cash for.  If the money’s not in checking, we don’t spend it.  There’s no credit card debt here.  Rates over 30%?  Many people would stop using their cards they just took a few moments to realize that their are paying twice as much for something if they put it on plastic and pay those horrible interest charges.

• We have continued to upgrade our property.  More fencing, better land management, home improvements (like a new central a/c system) and so forth.  Wherever possible, we do the work ourselves.  Just as an example, Elaine’s rework of the kitchen counters cost us less than $100.  The bid to have ‘professionals’ come in and do the work?  North of $1,500.  And that’s typical.

• We made a major (nearly $20k) investment in solar energy, again, steered by the concepts of self-sufficiency and independence and reducing future cash flow demands.

 

The ideal would be to reduce monthly cash obligations to nearly zero.  If you grow some of your own food, n o trips to the store.  If you grow your own power (and you have a grid-tied inverter) power bills shrink.  If you improve your own home, you get some relaxation and skills build not to mention increased value.

 

And I think that’s what most people forget when they see all those fancy ads for investment houses on television.  Those outfits are trying to lure you with the same ‘grabbers’ as the casino industry, but without the floor show and great buffets.

 

What they are not telling you is that investing (of the non-gambling sort) is all about one thing - and one thing only:  building your personal net worth.