The hardest daily decisions in most newsrooms is deciding which story to ‘lead’ with. In television, that would usually be the story with their the catchiest images to would hold people over through breaks while in print it’s a combination of exclusivity, insight, quality of writing, and the bent of the publication (news, glitz, business, sports, etc.).
Since the focus here in on long wave economics – and how they come creeping through to form a control layer over much of human behavior – you’d think the decision to lead with something like the Sunday Financial Times article by ace economist/realist Nouriel Roubini where he explains the “Mother of all carry trades faces an inevitable bust” would be a simple call to make; that’s definitely ‘above the fold, page one material.
But, around here, decision-making is never so cut and dried. Life has become incredibly complicated since mid 2001 when I started writing about a ‘predictive linguistics project run by Cliff High at www.halfpasthuman.com – although at the time, there was not HPH and Cliff was much more reclusive. Here lately, the linguistics have – since last spring – been pointing to an October 25/26 turn date which would lead to a period of extremely high building tensions from that ‘turn date’ until two or three weeks later, by which time we should all be able to look back over our shoulders and say “Damn! That’s what a turn date’s all about…”
The hints are sketchy – but that’s the nature of the technology. The event is supposed to be something on the order of 85% economic and 15% other and it arises from the GlobalPop portion of the modelspace, which means whatever it is, it should be more or less planet-wide and not just some series of events that puts the fear of God into some fraudsters and greedsters down on Wall Street (or in Washington, where they also seem drawn in sizeable numbers).
today, my bet – subject to change at whim – is that the ’swine’ flu story will be “IT” in retrospect. Not only did president Obama issue the national state of emergency right on schedule, but there has been steadily building concern around the topic such the by the end of the week, the shutting down of most of Europe comes into view as a ‘nonzero’ possibility and with that would come the fulfillment of economic impacts.
Moreover, the whole ’swine flu’ story is developing almost along two tracks in the public mind: One track follows the ‘offishul’ (sic) version which is that the ’swine’ flu just arose ad hoc in a swine population in Mexico and spread to the USA and elsewhere. The second track notes that the evidence is thin on the swine part and that the dispersal and now coming of the killer version/bleeding lungs part of ’swine flu’ to eastern Europe seems mighty awful suspiciously like a low-grade bio-war between East and West. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves – this story will be incubating for another week or possibly longer.
The BIG story this morning, economic in nature, is that “Swine Flu Grips Ukraine“. It’s in the Wall Street Journal, after all, so it must have something to do with economics, right?
And indeed it does: Ukraine is something of a bread basket area to Russia populated by smart, hard-working people. Since independence in late summer 1991, Ukraine has been evolving into the 29th largest economy in the world on a mix of agriculture, aerospace, and manufacturing while being a critical chunk of real estate to the Russians since goods like natural gas from Russia to Europe through its borders.
As of this weekend, 53 people have died of swine flu, some by what’s described as bleeding lungs which hark back to the 1918 Spanish Flu and cytokine storming where the body’s defensive mechanisms got crazy and attack the host body itself.
Responding to the situation, the government is closing down schools, some businesses, banning large gatherings, and is trying to buy another 700,000 doses of Tamiflu from Roche. A stock to watch?
The thing we probably should watch over the next few days is how the neighboring countries fare. Already Hungary’s health minister says the “Ukraine flu epidemic to create emergency in Hungary” as it may also do in Romanian, Moldova, Slovakia, Poland, Belarus, Russia, and anyone pulling into port from he Black Sea or the Sea of Azov.
Now we go into deep background mode on this with an email I received from a particularly well informed reader who expects this will be one for the history books that should be watched closely:
“This story may be the most important of our lifetimes. I’m a retired Ph.D. biochemist FYI. I conjecture that much of the coming troubles the web bot project speaks of may well arise from this new flu variant. I note that the first cases appeared a few days ago, just the length of the incubation period from October 25th.
OK, a Mossad microbiologist warned two months ago that a new deadly flu bug was going to be released into Ukraine in two months. He got the place right, the bug right, and the time right.
The sequence of all 8 pieces of RNA in the virus that caused the “Spanish flu” pandemic of 1918-1919 is public knowledge. A long dead Inuit woman buried in the permafrost was dug up and the virus taken from her body a couple of years ago and the RNA pieces were sequenced. Quite simple to synthesize these 8 pieces with widely available commercial machines and reagents. Then transfect mammalian cells with the RNA genes to obtain the intact, fully functional, virus. Another quite well known technology. Then grow all you want in fertilized chicken eggs or a mammalian immortal cell line. More quite well known technologies.
What scares the sh*t out of me is that the bleeding in the lungs is exactly what killed a lot of folks in the 1918-19 pandemic. See the great book “The Great Influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in history
.” People would literally fall dead walking across the street. The bleeding out of the lungs was most likely the result of a “cytokine storm” that so increased the vascular permeability in the air sacks that blood filled the lungs. The reason why the mortality in the 1918-1919 pandemic was concentrated in the 18-25 yo cohort was that they had the most active immune systems.
Now I’ve NO conjecture as to who may have let this loose or why. But I do know that the technology is widespread to replicate the 1918-1919 virus that killed 2-4 million Americans and about 50 million world wide. And folks only traveled by ship in 1918. And there is NO vaccine for this flu type.
Hopefully we will know in a couple of weeks the sequences of the 8 RNA pieces in the Ukraine virus. I’ll bet the farm that it is a replicant of the “Spanish Flu.” If so, the odds are totally infinitesimal that this was NOT a deliberate bioweapon release.
I note that long haul truckers will simply go home and park their rigs if this flu reaches the USA. And exactly what reason do we have to suppose that it will be confined to Ukraine? The average city has 3 days of food. Connect the dots… please……………
A credit is due here. the word “replicant” is from the great sci-fi movie “Blade Runner.”
All of this is puts us on the scale of impact somewhere in the middle between inconvenient to bad on one end of the scale to horrific and Biblical at the far end. But the linguistics seem to be pointing to the most terrible of all yet to come with temporal hints around the time of the Whistler Olympics (late February to mid March) for another round of dispersal.
The nonzero probabilities keep adding up and at some point, even the most skeptical human has to reach the point of non-coincidence and conclude what’s for now only a possibility: Namely that the factions of the PowersThatBe are at war with one-another and we – humans down here at the worker bee level – are the unwilling cannon fodder for the coming year or longer.
CIT Bankrapture
Sorry, I can’t take credit for the term “bankrapture” – it was sent in by a reader. (I did come up with Bankoween Saturday though and nice to see that propagate4d out onto the net…).
Bankrapture is what happens with a story that has been building for weeks – if not months – finally moves from speculation to court filing. With the CIT filing this weekend, we’ve now seen the 5th largest filing in US bankruptcy history.
CNN|Money/Fortune has compiled a handy list of the 10 Largest US Bankruptcies which you might want to jot down and keep pinned on the wall somewhere.
Think of it as Stockiflu to be administered when you hear another claim that “the economy has bottomed” or “things are beginning to improve”. Clinical signs there of deliriums investums.
Gutting the Gutsy
Meantime, Congressman Ron Paul (one who still deserves to be addressed The Honorable) says “Be pared for the worst” because ‘The large scale government intervention in the economy is going to end badly.”
Oh, and Paul’s effort to audit the Fed has been effectively gutted. All at once now: Look surprised.
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Hope you weren’t just munching into breakfast at that headline…sorry.
The Weak Ahead
After losing about 260-points last week, the Dow is in dangerous territory in here with some fearing the worst (more declines) this week. But maybe not. The BIG NUMBERS which come out in a flurry on Friday include Average workweek, Hourly earnings, Nonfarm payrolls, Unemployment rate, Wholesale inventories and the mother of all: the Fed Consumer Debt report.
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Although I got the general idea right that the stock market would be taking it on the chin in here, my gold put options are turning into a dumb idea (I cleared some Friday) since the dollar is heading back down early this morning and gold seems to be going up.
From a trading standpoint, I guess a 125-150 rally (50% to 61.8%) from the Friday nosebleed ought to be expected before confidence runs out again. Short violent rallies are a characteristic of long-term declines, but as usual my only investment advice is “Live fast, die young, (but as late as possible) and leave a good looking corpse.“
The “Ure Indicator” (Dow moves about 10X gold) suggests an early 70-90 points up, but I don’t stick my hand in that garbage disposal. Don’t know who’s at the switch anymore. But see here: stock futures up before the open. How about that? Who needs circuit breakers who you control the switch?
Call THAT an Election?
Let’s see…charges of rigged elections, the opposing candidate resigns rather than put up with the charade and the headlines richly declare: “Karzai declared elected president.” in Afghanistan. Why, I can see the strings from here.
Delay of the Day
“Iran seeks experts opinion on UN fuel plan” as Iran drags this out…and out…..and…..
Most important move on this particular chessboard: “US and Israel reiterate to Moscow: Military option is on the table.” And about the same time as the Ukraine super flu breaks out? Only a coincidence…nothing to see here…move along…
Leftover Spooks Department
Dandy InformationWeek article on NSA plans to build $1.5 billion Cybersecurity Data Center. Don’t look now but you’re in it! Of course you won’t really have arrived as a high impact human until you have your own subdirectory in it. None of this showing up in SQL tables on the fly, nossir…
(You guys just want me to upload my computer via FTP every so often, or do you already do that with online backup services? Just curious… No, make that just paranoid.)
Suspicious Death Follow-up
A second – private – autopsy may be performed on that British nuclear expert who plunged from the 17th floor of the UN CTBTO building in Vienna recently. Worked on a lower floor, I hear, and at 3:10 AM in controlled access building…