Thanks to George Noory, who was kind enough to have my on Coast to Coast AM for a few minutes last night. As I told him, Cliff at www.halfpasthuman.com and I hope Cliff’s linguistic projections of a major earthquake are wrong, but since the technology has accurately given good lead times on other events, it wouldn’t be surprising to see ‘breaking news’ about a major earthquake on the news channels & news crawlers in the next day or three.
By the way, the full moon of tomorrow is the biggest and brightest of the year – good piece on the ‘super moon’ on the NASA web site here.
Meantime, we understand there’s some discussion out of Singapore about putting a similar predictive linguistics project together. Oh, not similar in funding – instead of a garage/part-time project by a couple of nutjobs, theirs is government monied and of a larger scale. We understand it will be called DiANE – a digital analysis network environment – and may give Singaporean government types a heads up on big ‘emotional shocks’ in the future. We’re waiting for a copy of the working paper (in Chinese).
Unfortunately, the lifespan of a project like this could be limited by the new ‘political correctness’ software that may change words being displayed off discussion groups and such to reduce the sometimes inflammatory (and yeah, maybe even the odd terrorism discussion) on the ‘net. Seems you can’t get it both ways in the digital world…
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Several readers have asked ‘could the linguistics be pointing toward a New Madrid’ event? I suppose…and yeah, I caught that out of the ordinary 2.0 in Southeast Missouri... Two dead in a 5.0 quake in China today (latitude was 32.26.126 North, BTW) but likely not big enough to count. I’m holding out that to get the kind of visibility implied, it would need to be near the May China quake in size & coverage.
Trade Collapsing
As the globe seems to be doing its dead-level best to sink into a Second Depression, we notice that the Balance of Trade report out this morning is pretty grim:
The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, through the Department of Commerce, announced today that total October exports of $151.7 billion and imports of $208.9 billion resulted in a goods and services deficit of $57.2 billion, up from $56.6 billion in September, revised.
October exports were $3.4 billion less than September exports of $155.1 billion. October imports were $2.7 billion less than September imports of $211.6 billion. In October, the goods deficit decreased $0.3 billion from September to $69.8 billion, and the services surplus decreased $0.4 billion to $12.6 billion. Exports of goods decreased $3.0 billion to $104.8 billion, and imports of goods decreased $2.7 billion to $174.6 billion.
Exports of services decreased $0.3 billion to $46.9 billion, and imports of services were virtually unchanged at $34.3 billion.
In October 2008, the goods and services deficit increased $0.9 billion from October 2007. Exports were up $7.6 billion, or 5.3 percent, and imports were up $8.5 billion, or 4.2 percent. Goods The September to October change in exports of goods reflected decreases in industrial supplies and materials ($1.4 billion); foods, feeds, and beverages ($0.8 billion); automotive vehicles, parts, and engines ($0.2 billion); consumer goods ($0.2 billion); capital goods ($0.1 billion); and other goods ($0.1 billion). The September to October change in imports of goods reflected decreases in capital goods ($1.4 billion); automotive vehicles, parts, and engines ($0.9 billion); other goods ($0.2 billion); and industrial supplies and materials ($0.1 billion). Increases occurred in consumer goods ($0.5 billion) and foods, feeds, and beverages ($0.1 billion).
Next week, we’ll be getting a clearer bead on how the Second Depression will unfold when the West Coast Ports start reporting their November container traffic. But in the meantime, it’s obvious that what’s ahead is…
Trouble for Truckers
Although gasoline prices are coming down – we’ll get to that in a sec – the decline in trade is definitely having an impact on the transportation sector. the Wall Street Journal headlines that “Freight Haulers Slam on the Brakes Expecting the Weakest Year in Three Decades, Truck, Rail and Ocean Shipping Firms Are Cutting Back.“
Agassed & Aghast
Lots of reports this morning about how gasoline prices are falling around the country. And, on one of the news channels, I noticed that folks in Indiana are paying less for gas than we are here at the ranch, despite our property being literally right across a back county road from a 600-acres oil drilling area (with several active producing wells, including a slant-drilled operation that came in about 18-months ago. I have a hard time figuring why people there should get a better price than those of us who are literally sitting on top of resource, but that’s not the point.
John Crudele’s column in the NY Post today suggests that with gasoline prices around $1.50 nationally, “The Government Could Use a Gas Tax Hike.“
Seldom do I disagree with Crudele’s assessment, but personally, I think he’s wrong on this one.
(I wonder if the story was an editor’s idea?)
You see, government has been playing an increase taxes game over the years which seems to deny MSM (MainStreamMedia) reporting. I remember when I was a kid that government was able to get along on a 5% sales tax (in Washington State) and there was even a 12% state limit on credit card interest.
But, what has happened, over time is that states like Washington and NY and almost all others, have slowly turned up their percentages to match spending instead of containing government growth by the natural increase in revenue that would come from inflation.
If you head over to The Tax Foundation’s web site, you will see that Tax Freedom Day (the number of days you have to work each year just to pay taxes) has been running to mid-April of late. If you look at the whole history of Tax Freedom Day, you’ll see that before the (not-really) ‘Federal” reserve came along and started messing with the government’s role in money creation, that ‘tax freedom’ happened in January. Throughout the ‘Roaring Twenties’ the latest it got to be was February 22 – and that was to pay for debt from WW I and to deal with a serious recession in 1921. So not like half the tax burden isn’t possible.
So no, I don’t think the government needs a ‘tax hike’ just because the price of gas is coming down. Otherwise, those crafty folks who forget who the bosses are (non-government workers, at least till our trip into corporate-socialism is complete) will use falling prices in other arenas as an excuse to raise their rates as well.
I wonder if – by extension- a case could be made that we need a higher sales tax, since some food prices have turned and may be coming down? Nope. Tighten belt, go to four-day work-weeks in government, and lay off at least 1% of government employees.
THEN – and only then – if the government still needs money to operate, we can have the meaningful discussion about how to maintain sound money which the Fed – aided and abetted by the Secretary of Printing at Treasury – reign them in first and then I’ll consider it. Till then, I’m gassed and aghast that someone would even suggest a bigger slice of the working man’s pie to the OCD spenders who know no limits; yet can’t help more with mortgages and may not help Detroit.
Auto Nation
I’ve made the case as it relates to the Treasury Secretary’s November 11th flip-flop on mortgage aid, that ever since the selection of president-elect Obama over the republicorps offering in November, that the republicorps ‘bailout’ (or spin-word ‘rescue’) have been more about making sure the right-wing pals on Wall Street get their rewards in order to keep fundraising alive. Paulson, you’ll recall, about that date suddenly went from pushing mortgage aid in a direct sounding way to almost running away from it in order to heap more dough on the banksters.
Well now, we see more evidence that the republicorp are doing everything they can (get away with) in order to screw over the democorps. The evidence? The house has voted on Wednesday to give a measly $14-billion bailout to the Big Three automakers in Detroit.
BUT – and here’s the politics & power-tripping over humans part – the bill faces very rough sledding in the Senate, which is its next stop.
What’s clear, if you follow economics long enough, is that handling of the economy is one of the key political footballs, and that the republicorps are doing everything they can to blame the financial woes facing America on a few excesses in the mortgage-CMO arena. What gets lost is that there’s a global derivative meltdown underway, and it’s trying to hide behind the relatively small subprime and Alt A mess. A check for a hundred billion would probably have solved all the subprime problems, sources tell me. But this multi-trillion dollar debacle that will continue ‘taking down’ the economy into the new year?
That’s mostly to be laid at the feet of the republicorp (and to a lesser extent the Clintonistas) who collectively took the contributions and failed to regulate a wildly speculative bubble, hoping they’d all be ‘in the clear’ by the time things broke. And, for the most part, they’ve gotten away with it.
He Said – She Said Department
While there’s a report from the UN saying that man-caused global warming is ‘beyond a doubt’, we have to note that a group of 650 scientists in Eastern Europe take the opposite view, or are way more cautious about global warming’s impacts.
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One of the points made is that sea levels fail to rise. But, hold on to your hat, the predictive linguistics say that s publicly noticed sea level change/global coastal event lies ahead – in the headlines anyway – in 2009.
Worse Than ‘Inflation Disease’
This could be turning into ‘Denial December’. No, not just the republicorps stonewalling on auto aid, or more substantial mortgage help. No, I mean the latest reports from Zimbabwe where their president Robert “Mugabe: No cholera in Zimbabwe” is making the headlines. More than 15,000 infected so far and 800 dead, and South Africa is worried about spread into its country.
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Yes, this is from the same Robert Mugabe who, as CNN reported recently) has presided over a 231-million percent inflation – something that may be the envy of some folks inside the Beltway who are trying to get money into circulation fast enough – and throttle just the right amount of inflation to prevent the US from auguring in to a deflationary spiral, while at the same time avoiding ‘going Zimbabwe’ on the other.
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A bit of snow this week in Houston – not common at all. Here at the ranch (about midway between Dallas and Houston in the East Texas Piney Woods – all we got was some sleet. No cross country workout for me this weekend. Oh well, don’t own skis anyway…
WOT
Belgium has detained 14 al Qaida suspects ahead of an EU summit meeting. Thinking is that they may have been up to no good – maybe something like a suicide attack on their agenda.
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Meantime, Debka.com reports that those “Somali pirates set up “agencies” on three continents” to help with intelligence, fund raising and other needs of the pirates.