UrbanSurvival

Dream A Little Dream…

If you have an especially vivid dream that seems to have something to do with the future, please write it down so others can look it over for possible future/predictive values. Simple go to http://www.nationaldreamcenter.com/ and click over to the DreamBase – commercial-free and open registration…

Cookie Video

The folks at Maxa Research have put together a short video (sound track by guess who?) that shows the Maxa Cookie Manager. You can see it here.

I don’t usually get all whipped up about software, but this is one of those dandy tools that just simply works great. First thing I put on my new computer when I got it was Avira Anti-virus and Maxa Cookie Manager (MCM). Either follow the on-screen download instructions of simply click:

Once you try it out, to upgrade to the fully functioning version, just click the upgrade button (!) on the upper right hand side for the $35 unlock to get it to remove even those nasty and highly intrusive ‘non-browser specific’ cookies. Bonus: You computer may run faster.

“Live on $10,000″ A Year

Having a hard time making ends meet? (Like who isn’t, right?) A good starting point to better match up income with outgo is our $10 e-book “How to Live on #10,000 a Year…or less!”

It’s an automatic download. It’s written in an information dense style: The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the cheap, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you have a little hustle left. A bonus section called “How to Build Anything” should instill confidence if you’ve never taken on a home improvement/home creation project before, too….. Click here for the index and details.

Pass It On

A different take on things – that’s what you’ll find here most mornings. If you know of anyone who might also like our content, simply click here and send a link to them. Or, if you hated what you read, send the link to all your ‘worst enemies’. Like they say in Burbank, “Ain’t no such thing as bad press…”

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Then there’s Japan’s Nikkei 225 which traded as high as 9,069-ish overnight, but which closed just under one of those big round numbers (9,000) to close at 8,995.14.

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10,000 and Other Psychological Barriers

Posted on August 24, 2010 by George Ure

I find myself asking an odd question as we’re a couple of hours yet from the opening of the markets as this morning’s column spills out of the fingers: What if Global Markets are entraining for a crash?

The reason for bringing up the question is that we could see multiple markets this week hit – and pass through to the downside – several psychologically important numbers.

Take Hong Kong’s Hang Seng: It only dropped 230-odd points overnight, but it’s getting close to a big round number: 20,000. It would only take another 658.72 points – a couple of days of trading, say by Friday – for that market to drop below a key big round number.

Taiwan’s TSEC index is at 7,940-ish this morning, but during the trading session Tuesday it popped up as high as 8,013.12 – another one of those big round numbers.

Same kind of thing may be seen, by squinting at things just so, in Europe this morning where the German DAX Monday fell through the 6,000 level, and UK’s FTSE is edging its way down toward the 5,000 level, although it’s not quite there…yet. Give it time.

I mention this because the US Dow is only 175 points (before the open) away from a big round number, too – the 10,000 level which has been called (by more astute observers than me) an ‘important psychological barrier’, and the S&P is looking to me like it could go down and test – and possibly penetrate – the 1,000 level. If that happens, the NASDAQ, too, could punch through the 2,000 level.

So if this anything other than monkeymind looking at the predictive linguistic ‘hot date range’ and wondering if we might see some kind of global entrainment shape up only to be kicked seriously to the downside worldwide with some kind of adverse news? Maybe…maybe not.

The key thing to watch here is that the markets have been in a crash window since around the end of July with the Grand Cross that the astromoney folks were going on about, and just because it hasn’t happened yet is hardly any reason to go lining up behind the bullish case. Their window runs to September something.

The Home Sales report will be out at mid morning and serious disappointment there might be all it will take for the Dow to mount a real challenge to the 10,000 level…today.

One thing to keep an eye on – another one of those ‘big round numbers’ is the battle around $1,200 for gold. If gold decisively takes out the $1,200 level to the downside, then it might hint that deflation fears are back in a meaningful way as a market driver, and should that happen, things like the US dollar could gain appreciably which, in turn, would tend to drive down the price of US stocks since they’re currently priced almost as much as a proxy for inflation as for underlying value.

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Had an interesting conversation yesterday with my friend Howard Hill (who, BTW is calling a top in the 10-year and higher bonds, although he admits probably early) about a phenomena that may soon come to call on various investment outfits called “Hobson’s Choice“.

The problem for some of the big investment firms is that yields are getting so dicey in some instruments that a few firms could soon find themselves in a position where the two choices are either a) cut deals now that will result in guaranteed losses in the future – unless greater fools can be found, or b), not do any deals at all, which as Howard points out is not really a choice at all, because that’d be telling their customers to ‘get lost’ and going out of business, which is clearly not a viable choice, at least if they want customer money to play with.

But that’s the kind of picture that’s starting to emerge not in stocks and unlevered bonds, but in the more sophisticated instruments like bundles of this, or that (thinking derivatives). Howard’s got a much more elegant explanation of how this could all work out in his article “S Curves” which you can (and I think should) read here, because when Howard’s good, he’s just frigging brilliant. Telling us regular folks how the magic works behind the curtain is a noble endeavor if there ever was one.

And that gets me to a very interesting tactical question for the Fed and Treasury to be thinking about in here: “What happens if a lot of the ‘little’ boutique operations that do small numbers of derivatives and minor REIT’s and such all start to run into Howard’s Hobson’s choice problem at about the same time and toss in the towel?“

Just old goat farmer’s gut talking here, but couldn’t we find the market has avoided short-term death via bailouts of last year only to live long enough (1 year cost how many trillion?) to ‘die a death by a thousand cuts‘ as boutiques start to implode which then sets off a [chain reaction] that doesn’t lend itself to the ‘too big to fail’ excuse to bail, but which nevertheless starts the avalanche of cascading collapse?

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Maybe the Norfolk Southern railroad is onto something with 100-year bonds....or is that just pushing the promise to deliver onto folks two or three generations out? Now, if they’d tie it to gold or oil or something like so many calories of food out there, I could see it really being worth something.

Otherwise, are you kidding? The minimum implied annual deflation rate alone would have to be 2.3-2.5% just to take up for the average money-watering-down that the Fed’s already demonstrated since 1913 (a year that lives in infamy for spawning both the income tax and IRS).

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My guess: If it does, then look for the US to be chomping at the bit to either pick a new war to go fight, or we’ll get some kind of attack on the homeland. To have an honest outcome in the larger game would reveal “Why, yes, the Emperor really has no clothes on” down on Wall Street. And when the illusion of savings (or whatever you call those derivatives bundles tossed mindlessly in pension funds and endowments and IRA’s and such) gets blown up, I figure the whole country will just slide to Third World status in only a couple of months as the financial system (and in turn everything else) ‘coagulates’ – to use Clif’s right word to describe things.

If my columns get a little dark and brooding over the coming fall, don’t worry about my portfolio; I’ll be worried about the much bigger problem of how to get some of that Monopoly Money turned into something useful like food and solar panels and more seeds for the garden before even that is made illegal in an effort to beggar The People and prop up the American Aristocracy. A 60-70% gain for the year which is my plan, isn’t much of an accomplishment if it won’t buy a six-pack, know what I mean?

Think Ahead A Bit: Inflation is NOT prices going UP…it’s the purchasing power of money GOING DOWN. The hyper education system teaches it back-asswards. Inflation follow deflation like day follows night.

All of which means what? America may soon be facing a scaled-up version of Hobson’s Choice – bigger than even the boutique derivative shop questions floating around the periphery of Wall Street. Do we take the third world lifestyle choice and do a cold restart, or just implode and claw back from the late 1800′s?

Ugly Questions. No simple answers.

Say What?

The Smoking Gun has a grand read – not to be missed – “Justice Department Seeks Ebonics Experts: DEA wants “Black English” linguists to decipher bugged calls“. Wo tah, homie?

Elsewhere, Life Continues

“Barack Obama Elementary School opens in Maryland“. Wonder if they teach pollution control or how a checkbook works?

Going For Our Food

Extra large…no, make that jumbo sized…assault on personal freedom is shaping up behind the egg recall which is blowing up into a half-billion egg whoopdee.

All of which will be used to try and stampede folks into ‘food safety measure’ (S.510 et al) which will restrict home grown food even for personal consumption.

Click here to read the bill to see how a food safety bill gets introduced (119 pages) and turned into a Homeland Security power grab bill (266 pages) which then goes to the full Senate where I’m betting the egg recall will be used to reinflate the stretch for more powers and thus control of agriculture.

New word around here for use on the would-be food controllers: The Cropstapo.

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Gee…let me think: How did humans get along about a million years without all this government intervention…..??

The yokes on us.

Carter Does Salt?

Let me see… is it the movie which opens with Angelina Jolie in a North Korean prison? The movie was Salt…still showing.

Nope…this one opens with Jimmy Carter going to North Korea on a rescue mission.

Life is still imitating art, I ‘spose. Salt – the movie- has made $172-million and still climbing. No telling what Carter’s cost us.

Move Over Windy City

Rose Park Utah is getting a taste of those strange/new wind patterns that have been in the predictive linguistics…just a foretaste to be sure, but 60-70 mile an hour winds are a real nuisance.

Wonder if there’s a kite shop up there? Come to think of it, wonder how many kite shops there are in Washington? Plenty o’ wind there…

Steamrollers Alert

So, now that a federal judge Monday blocked further stem cell research, which the Obama administration has been pushing, the next move will be a federal appeal to a higher court where the feds will no doubt get their way.

Iraq Charade

A growing number of readers are sending notes noticing something wrong with the highly touted US withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq.

“Why, some are even asking ‘If the war’s really over then why aren’t our boys (and girls) headed home?”

Oh, you missed the part where we’re just taking them off the board till the Iran mess has worked up to a full-on battle, and then we’ll put ‘em back in the fight. Say, didn’t ya’ll learn how to play chess as a kid?

Quakes To Come?

Reader’s been watching the latest from the magnetometers us at HAARP and wondering if there might be some fallout from the solar winds hitting.

“Justice Delayed….”

Up to 230 cases investigated by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation will be reviewed for tainted evidence. Some of the people in jail – who could be innocent — goes back to the early 1990′s and the probe comes after a man finally got out after being wrongly imprisoned for 17-years.

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Oh, the rest of the saying is “Justice delayed is justice denied.“ And applies everywhere….came from British prime minister William Gladstone.

Along the same lines: “The more laws, the less justice” – Marcus Tillis Cicero.

Or my own all purpose quote suitable for anything: “They’re doing WHAT?”

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Coping: The Rambling Search for Justice

Posted on August 24, 2010 by George Ure

Ready for a little more “Truth Out” stuff? Yesterday I told you the tale of the blogger in Philadelphia who the city was trying to weasel $300-bucks out of…which seems absurd. But check it out: We have a reader who knows the real story about what’s going on the City of Brotherly Love:

I worked as a lawyer for several years in Philadelphia. There are two reasons for the perverse blog tax in Philadelphia. First, the city has a horrible fascist law that gives a cut of business “privilege” tax receipts to anyone who narcs out anyone making a dime in Philly. Second, the city is absolutely crawling with lawyers. Most quit because they can’t make a living, and most of the rest do just about anything they can to make almost a living. Put the two together and you’re f*&%$d. Some of the lawyers hunt the businesses for a cut of the tax. The the bureaucrats can’t use discretion because they must pay the narcs.

Lot’s of America’s heritage has gone by the wayside, to our collective culture loss, but every once in a while something like this little bit about Philadelphia lawyers comes up which just demands a bit more comment.

However, since we live in a litigious society I’ll bite my tongue (now bleeding profusely) and simply refer you to a song from the last Depression – written by folk singing legend Woodie Guthrie (father of Arlo, who in turn did Alice’s Restaurant). The 1937 tune was “Reno Blues” but it’s also called The Philadelphia Lawyer Song…lyrics here if you care.

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In keeping with our musicology class today, a footnote on Alice’s Restaurant in passing:

“In an interview for All Things Considered, Guthrie said the song points out that any American citizen who was convicted of a crime, no matter how minor (in his case, it was littering), could avoid being conscripted to fight in the Vietnam War.[“

I wonder if that really worked in places like, oh, North Carolina.

Spaced

Say, here’s a reason to pour gazillions more into various space programs that you and I will never get to fly in: A BBC report that “Beer microbes live 553 days outside the ISS”.

Before you pick up the pitchfork to confront the PTB about their beer hall plans in space, this is microbes from the Cliffs of Beer...not a nice Pilsner kind. Save the pitchfork for later, you’ll need it.

Bugs – Terra Infirma

Almost forgot to mention that the most extreme weather in history is slapping Indonesia around. I mention this in passing because we’ve got some trees here at the ranch dropping leaves early, and we’re wondering is this doesn’t have something to do with the ‘disappearing bug reports’ which are piling up from all over the place:

“Vazeny Jiri:

I want to let you know that I have noticed a relatively bug free summer here in Prague this year. Usually we see ladybugs and some other red winged or bodied insects in quantity as was the case in 2008 and 2009.

This winter and summer have been a bit extreme here. Usually the climate here is like that of Piedmont Virginia and North Carolina, but this winter was colder for a long period of time. This summer has been hot with temperatures reaching 35 C but not as hot as in Russia. Instead we ended up under a stalled low pressure area. That weather broke with a massive series of storms that included hail and tornadoes in this part of Europe. I had hail up to 25 mm in diameter a week ago Sunday.

I became aware that record heat occurred in Pakistan this June with an all-time Asian record and Jeddah set the Saudi record of 52 C / 125 F. Records fell all around the Gulf region then, including Baghdad.

The key to the weather issues appears to be the stagnation of patterns.”

Off in SoCal:

“You know, you’re right about the bugs. I’ve taken a couple of drives out in the desert to Palm Desert for a couple of weekend getaways. Back in the 90′s, my Lexus’ windshield would get absolutely covered with bugs to the point where we’d have to pull into a gas station just to deal with it. Likewise, anyone who’s driven between Texas and Oklahoma, as I’ve done and you just did knows that the summer air is full of insects that get splattered on the front surfaces of your vehicle, especially those “love bug” black flying things that always seem to be conjoined in mating. Didn’t see a single June bug in southern California this year, the first year that I’ve ever seen that (or not seen it, as the case may be). Speaking of June bugs, I was test riding a new Honda 750 on the road that parallels the Guadalupe River in the Texas Hill Country in summer of 1976, using a borrowed helmet with no plastic windscreen, when I decried a small black spot in the air coming my way as I was going about 60 mph. The damn thing grew in dimension until I could see it was a June bug right before it hit me like a rock, right in the center of my forehead. Hurt like hell. The bike and I swayed but did not go down. I developed a whole new respect for wind visors on helmets after that and wondered what it would be like if it had been a bumblebee. Speaking of bees, they seem to be in good supply in my garden, but the honey bees are found dead all over the place in what seems to be an unusually high volume. As your other correspondents noted, spiders, ants and flies appear not to have undergone any perceptible reduction.”

And up the coast and inland a ways:

“In reference to your comment from todays epistle regarding the lack of bugs on the windshield, I’d like to offer my observations. I live in Lethbridge, Alberta in the western edge of the Canadian prairie. I recently (end of July) took a trip to the Salt Lake City/Provo Utah area to attend a funeral. This is a trip I have made many times over the years and on many occasions have had to make stops (both going down and coming back) to clear the bugs off as the wipers couldn’t keep up. Not this trip, however. Shortly after crossing the border back into Alberta around 9 PM is when I started noticing bugs, typical of what can happen when driving in the evening around dusk. I didn’t think too much of it until I saw your reference. I have had lots of bugs on the car this summer here in Alberta, so maybe it’s just a US problem that hasn’t made it’s way north yet. Some food for thought.”

Not sure what to make of all the reports…could just be a ‘cycle’ peak of prey and a cycle low of victims, but troubling, that’s for sure. Sorry I didn’t have time to list all the reports of bug shortages, but a group “thank you” for sending them all in…

Staying the Course

Good article “How Hyperinflation Will Happen” that’s worth a read, since it goes along with my thinking to a fair degree.

At some point, the paper debt monster will either have to collapse (deflation) or, there will have to be so much money printed globally that it will look like “Pandemic Weimar” or maybe Zimbabwe Global 2.0.

this weekend, our Peoplenomics.com subscriber site takes on the annual update of our ebook “How to Live on $10,000 a year…or less…” and in it this year is a short road map showing how to get from nothing – and I mean just the shirt on your back to something.

Biggest thing involved in it is figuring out what you can do without now while there is still time to find some greater fools out there. Anyone with a storage unit that they pay monthly for, unless they have something really valuable, like a boat and they can’t keep that at an apartment complex, or something like that, is a dunderhead for paying money to store junk.

I keep telling anyone who will listen that if you’re not using something, or don’t have fairly short-order plans to use it – to pencil out what the storage costs are and in many cases, when you figure out what five years of storage costs are (with interest) you’ll often find that you could junk the old stuff now, buy new later on when you actually plan to use it, and still have enough left over for a soda pop.

Strange how people work, though….anyway, that’s coming up in Peoplenomics this weekend, since there are a lot more of us with nothing and trying to figure out how to climb the social pyramid, than there are uber rich trying to figure out how to get down without getting jabbed by the pitch forks. Hope it’s as much fun to read as it is to right.

Send your comments to george@ure.net

Reader Action Department:

Now at Peoplenomics.com

Move Over, Marx

noodling, we can do better than Marx and redress some of the man vs. machine economic inequities. This week: Some radical economic ideas…

More for Subscribers To Subscribe, CLICK HERE

Dream A Little Dream…

Cookie Video

The folks at Maxa Research have put together a short video (sound track by guess who?) that shows the Maxa Cookie Manager. You can see it here.

“Live on $10,000″ A Year

Having a hard time making ends meet? (Like who isn’t, right?) A good starting point to better match up income with outgo is our $10 e-book “How to Live on #10,000 a Year…or less!”

Pass It On

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Fade the Rally / Rose-Colored Monday

Posted on August 23, 2010 by George Ure

No, I’m not giving you financial advice to flee from the stock market on any rally in today’s action. You spend your money your way, I’ll spend my money Ure way. BUT, seems that a lot of small investors have wised up, especially if you caught the NY Times article this weekend about how “In Striking Shift, Small Investors Flee Stock Market“. Hallelujah. Someone’s got sense.

Being a small investor sometimes is a real blessing. If most of us get a few bucks ahead, we can look at the problems coming down the pike and move our bets accordingly without upsetting the whole apple cart. I’m a big fan in today’s world of getting into gardening, paying down debt, spending a lot less on hobbies, and storing foods and such.

But consider the choices available if you were managing a big pension fund, or if you were faced with the task of placing money in the billions…how would you do it? It’s one thing for us little guys to pick up the phone and order a gold coin, or a 100-ounce bar of silver, or order a couple of pails of long-term storage prepared food from Emergency Essentials, but that doesn’t work for BIG outfits. Ever figure how manyh pails of wheat or rice a billion dollars worth would be? Nope, small investors have the guerilla advantage here.

Let’s face it: The reason most of us get up and go to work on Monday is to keep a roof over the head, food in the belly, and buy a few treats (and maybe a buzz now and then) along the way.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen a systemic deterioration of the reasons to get up and go to work. Some cynic you know might look at the big picture like this:

Housing: On the ‘roof over heads’ front, the payback from the Housing Bubble has been a collapse in housing prices, which may, or may not, be complete yet. Elaine & I are going down to the bank this morning to lock in a rate reduction of 1% lower than existing on the small note we keep on one of our parcels, but elsewhere, you can find similar suggestions like this one: “Refinancing mortgage now may be timely idea.“ All of which means that while housing starts languish, there’s been a pretty good re-fi party going on.

Most meaningful insight of the weekend may be David Streitfeld’s piece in the NY Times where an expert says the housing recover could take 20-years to make back the $6-trillion lost in the housing bubble collapse. Refi’s are up, starts are down, so it’s not just us.

Food: Having eggs for breakfast, without a label check may not be a good idea, since the new food safety laws (which may end your ability to grow food in your own garden) are getting a big kick forward by the PTB against the curious timing of the egg recall.

A number of websites are hip to the cracked timing of this, since salmonella is an almost constant issue with raw or undercooked eggs, but the media’s playing along with the hype, but then again, recall that most media are corporate-owned so they’re all in bed with one another and this sure feels like an agenda item. (Repeat after me “interlocking directorships”.)

A good summary of how the “whip & ‘em up and stampede ‘em into bad laws” campaign is working may be found here. Just don’t look too surprised as you read about it, OK?

Headlines like “Farms fell short on safety” will be used to build more and bigger government. Notice this little detail: I didn’t say ‘better’…

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The thick-headedness of the folks in Washington amaze me. It’s like no one can read the polls…either that or the fix is already in and there’s going to be a hiring festival of former legislators into corpgov positions on the backside of November’s elections. (Take that reference as you will…) Which we’ll remind you of when we get there.

Treats: Our collection of various ‘treat’s is also under attack. The headline that “Beer linked to Psoriasis in women” give new meaning to “Itching to get a cold beer…”

Up in more practical Evansville, Indiana they’re looking at selling beer to bring down their Zoo’s budget deficit...which sounds like a good idea to me.

I admit, by the way, speaking of zoos and such, that I still get confused when I go to the ape house — not sure which side of the doors the wild animals are on.

Also in our Monday collection of sobering thought: Up in the Pacific Northwest, there’s a move afoot to get the state out of the booze business. A lot of Prohibition era laws are still on the books many places, like bans on selling booze on Sunday and such. You know you’re in trouble when people want their glass of painkillers more often…

While you and I may have trouble getting motivated on a late summer Monday like this, especially since it seems that government is continuing to grow unabated despite the housing crunch, jobs collapse and all the other things that go with Depression Two, we notice that Los Angeles is unveiling a $578 million dollar school next month - yes, you read that right – about 6/10th’s of a billion for a school.

And we wonder why states like California are in financial trouble? Wonder if this memorial to big dreams will include a remedial math program?

No sir, it doesn’t seem like getting up and going off to the worker-bee treadmill will be any more worthwhile than any other week, unless you have the three meals a day habit and haven’t eaten since Sunday, of course.

The market knows of your calorie-based indenture, and knowing this, is peeking up a bit at the open. Think the hype du jour may be mergers & acquisitions activity.

I reckon it won’t last, since long term problems of the world didn’t magically go “Poof!” this weekend. The sole purpose of sharp rallies in bear markets is to give cynics like me good entry points and take money from hype-believing optimists blinded to the data.

There’s a simply physics reason for this, of course: You can’t see red ink through rose-colored glasses, or did you miss that in physics?

The Blame Game Dept.

Say, here’s some real genuine progress for you: Now that he’s been in office a fair while, president Obama seems to be shifting the blame for the jobs mess to Congress and taking the heat off George W. Good focus…

All of which is ridiculous. of course: There would be no job problem in America if we just demanded that workers making the goods we buy get paid an equivalent wage to prevailing US rates, or our Customs folks would collect the difference at the ports of entry.

Purchasing Power Parity for workers is such a simple concept, yet its the BIG economic secret because what has fueled the whole globalist agenda is the notion that cheap labor anywhere in the world can be exploited unnoticed and the wage rate differentials pocketed by corporations whose boards of directors don’t mind 10,000-mile supply chains, as long as there’s enough dough left over for their options to go green.

Stupid how obvious this is when you think about it, and taxing foreign goods to make them the same price as domestically fabricated goods would set off an amazing firestorm of domestic growth. But for now, ain’t gonna happen – there’s just too much money making you bid your job against a 19-year old in South Asia with a 3rd grade education running a leftover machine 20-hours a day. Owners pocket the delta.

Don’t it make you proud of all the folks in Washington who don’t get it? Crack pipe, please….

March To War

I sort of expected war to break out this weekend in the Middle East, and perhaps the fact that it hasn’t is one of the reasons the market futures are up a bit this morning.

Nevertheless, the preps continue on both sides. On the Iranian side two developments: Iran’s got a new long-range missile packing drone aircraft to contend with and they’ve started building missile-packing speedboats.

On the other side of the upcoming festivities, Israel has named a new army chief.

But Israel-Iran is not the only conflict on the horizon. I’ve been watching the developments along the southern flank of Russia with some apprehension as a 2011 war involving Russia and Armenia is on the horizon and like according to a Russian expert... (map) Russia wants to own/seriously control the southern Caucasus region (next map).

No danger of peace breaking out any time soon, and if anything, the opposite continues to build. Not that peace was really on the agenda in the first place, after all, there’s no money in that is there? Which gets me to looking at…..

The Oversold Withdrawal

OK, deal on the Iraq withdrawal seems to be that although most combat troops are coming out of Iraq (which could be a mess when the Iran hostilities start) there are still some combat units being ‘reformed’ as Advise and Assist brigades.

Why, this is like one of those Clitonesque finely sliced definition problems, isn’t it: Depends what you mean by combat, huh?

Oil’s Declining Status

With all the mess in the Gulf, we notice that with the price of oil being pretty much static that it’s starting to ripple into Middle East politics a bit. Take for example the report that Bahrain’s sovereign debt is being downgraded by Moody’s as a data point.

Attacking Free Speech

You see where a blogger up in Philadelphia is being told to buy a $300 business license? Let me see: Free speech is no longer free…again?

Rusty Midwest Department

The headlines out of St. Louis that the famous “Gateway Arch showing rust and decay” brings new meaning to the phrase America’s Rust Belt.

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Coping: The National Asset Stripping Festival

Posted on August 23, 2010 by George Ure

We’re starting in to what may very well turn out to be an extremely dangerous – not to mention expensive – period of America politics, as the effects of the Second Depression continue to mount on politicians at almost every level of government.

If you gety a few minutes, there’s a very good overview piece in the Wall Street Journal’s online service about how “…Cities sell parking, airports, zoo…” and it goes into the pressure mounting on state and local governments to ‘asset strip’ in order to meet short-term issues.

Under more normal conditions, I’d be ranting and raving about here on how stupid, if not downright illegal it is, for government to sell off anything it makes: The reason being the public should be getting the revenue streams in perpetuity from things like parking meters, especially when LA’s got parking meters that will take debit and credit cards, and we’ve already seen the first round of asset stripping in the form of selling off roads to private interests.

Not unexpected (sadly) are headlines like ” Chicago, Illinois Ripped Off by parking Meter Lease” and other alleged infractions of the public good. But seems to me there’s an even more basic problem here: Doesn’t sale of assets amount to a direct public subsidy for private industry?

Many of the toll roads being ‘leased’ to private companies were built with public money and funded with publicly backed bond sales yet unabashedly, the politicos who don’t want to be held accountable for maintain state & local services turn right around and for short term gain rip off the public’s long-term investment.

Clearly, this is another reason why the “November 2: Take the Trash Out” stickers are popping up around the country. People understand that the country is in the Second Depression now because government spending has reached unsustainable levels. But, rather than asset strip, the other side of ther coin is to ‘government strip; that’s my term for matching the head-count in government to the income streams available.

I haven’t been watching this very long, but the appearance is that government goes around mouth-mouthing it’s financial condition while at the same time increasing its damn head count and doing this at the very time it’s asset stripping in violation of the public trust.

Care to make a little bet on something? In cities, counties and states where ‘asset stripping’ has already been done, the promise was that it would provide for a reduction in the number of government workers required.

Show me the case where headcount has been reduced in a meaningful war, otherwise I’ll leave it marked in bold as another one of our reasons to vote all incumbents out in November.

On the Road Again

Where’s the Bugs?

Elaine & I had a delightful trip up to Shawnee, Oklahoma this weekend for a nice get together with Robin Landry and his wife…most of the evening Saturday was devoted to what else? Figuring out where the market’s going, but I have a much better sense now of how Robin gets his count and we never disagreed on the longer-term direction anyway (down, if you’re not awake yet).

The scenery along the way was gorgeous – instead of taking the Interstate up through Dallas and Oklahoma City, we took the Indian Nation Turnpike when runs from Hugo, Oklahoma up to about I-40 or so.

And therein lies the tale: In all of about 800-miles of summertime driving, we had only four or five bug hits on the windshield. Don’t know what your thoughts are but this is a screaming environmental warning light to me. Why, as a kid (under age k40) I did a tremendous amount of driving (cars & motorcycles) and most summers beofre plastic face shields on motorcycles, it was often like getting shot in the face with a BB gun to ride 60 MPH on a bike in the summer…stung like hell.

This weekend: Got all the way up to Shawnee with only one small bug on the window and about 3-4 on the way back Sunday, but part of the reason was thatg I took smaller roads and a more direct route. But still – an unbelievable lack of bugs…

Not like I’m the only one to notice as we were talkingt about last week:

“George, I live up in New Hampshire and always during July and August when working in the yard you have to have bug spray on and or wear a hat with netting around it to get anything done. Horse flies, mosquitoes you name it awful! However the last few weeks have been virtually bug free! no spray no netting nothing. I even notice no moths or bugs flying outside at night next to the house lights??

Gone, all of a sudden. A friend of mine commented that no bugs have hit her windshield or car like usual. Driving this time of year at night would usually fill your windshield!

I hate bugs, but this does not feel right!”

Another writes…

“By the by, on a couple of different issues, bugs… I’m in the San Fernando Valley, and while it seems the honey bees have been dropping in population the past few years, this year they’ve been all but non-existent, and I’ve got both a lemon, and an orange tree in the yard, along with blackberry bushes. I’ve seen no butterflies this year, and june bugs were very few and far between. About the only bugs that don’t seem to be in short supply seem to be spiders, flies, and ants, at least where I live.”

And yet another…

“Hi George, Funny you should mention the lack of bugs in your Friday column. I had just noticed this here in D.C. yesterday. No bugs! No bugs flying around the lights at all like they used to when I was a kid. I think I first noticed something unusual last Tuesday evening when my girlfriend and I went out to Wolftrap for a concert. The outdoor stage was brilliantly illuminated and I noticed a bug flying in and out of the lights. One bug. Something ain’t right here George. We had some bugs in the garden this spring- the usual flea beetles and squash vine borers- and at the time I mused to myself that it had been some years since I had seen any tomato caterpillars. Didn’t think much of it though until this week. Flea beetles are gone, squash vine borers are gone- no tomato caterpillars. Not much insect activity at all. I conjectured that perhaps they had changed the streetlights to a type that wouldn’t attract so many insects. Then I saw your column and realized that my perception about this was real. Do us all a favor and see what you can find out about this.”

I’ve got a number of competing theories going at the moment, and these are in no particular order:

Could be the genetically modified (whatevers) in the wild are killing off bugs for some reason…

Could be the bird and insect scavengers are at a ‘cycle high’ and they’ve just done a great job of keeping down the bug population this year…

Could be chemtrails and/or global pollution levels are so high that hapless bugs cannot make it…

Could be oddly behaving weather/weather-modification impacts…

Could just be a fluke of observations skewing data which has no underlying drift…

If you do happen to know anyone who’s a bug-person, oir is in college doing research in the field (sorry for the bad pun here), any input, kespecially if we can get year-on-year comparisons would be dandy. Remember: We’ve been watching honey bee collapse with some trepidation, but the decline of the wholesale assortment of all kinds of bugs (and the resulting death up the food chain) is a very, very bad thing.

Oh, and fits into one of Robin Landry’s observations about what turns a recession into a depression: Famine. Are the bugs telling us something?

Peoplenomics Access Issue Fixed

Interesting problem with Peoplenomics access on Saturday morning early. I’d typed in the wrong [page address] and only had it posted for a few minutes before fixing it…yet that was all it too for that page to be cached around the net so… most people were able to get in, but a few had access issues

If you ever can’t get a Peoplenomics report, there is usually a simple naming convention in place which you might think about for your own files if you have…looks like this, using the Sunday Peoplenomics as an example:

nl20100822.htm

Where…

[nl] The first two characters are the report type as in newsletter

[20100822] Date in sort-friendly format

[ extension if any] a following c (as in nl20100822c.htm) refers to the weekly ChartPack

As a general way of keeping things organized I use a couple of leading characters and the sort-friendly date…just helps me find thing. Now if I could only get rid of the 18,116 items in my inbox…

Smoke Gets In Your Thinking

Good news, and bad, on the tobacco front. The good news is that the BBC reported last week that “Tobacco use in movie [is] ‘falling’.

But depends where you watch the movies. In China, for example, smoking has become a regular part of the PG13 movies and the People’s Daily reports that an “Anti-Tobacco group raises alarm over smoking in Chinese TV, flim“.

The tragedy in North Carolina where on Friday, a 9-year old boy was killed in a tobacco harvester accident only serves to underscore the dangers of smoking to all of us.

Blown Away

With the report that a 14-year old Dutch girl is off sailing around the world, we have to wonder how young people should be before taking on the world’s oceans? While her plans are to do the cruiser’s rounding (using th4e Panama Canal instead of the Southern Ocean, it’s still a mighty big ocean out there, but we have to admire her spunk, eluding authorities in Portugal and heading out on her own.

Send your comments to george@ure.net

Reader Action Department:

Now at Peoplenomics.com

Move Over, Marx

noodling, we can do better than Marx and redress some of the man vs. machine economic inequities. This week: Some radical economic ideas…

More for Subscribers To Subscribe, CLICK HERE

Dream A Little Dream…

Cookie Video

The folks at Maxa Research have put together a short video (sound track by guess who?) that shows the Maxa Cookie Manager. You can see it here.

“Live on $10,000″ A Year

Having a hard time making ends meet? (Like who isn’t, right?) A good starting point to better match up income with outgo is our $10 e-book “How to Live on #10,000 a Year…or less!”

Pass It On

—-

Posted in Snip and Save Department | Leave a comment

Soothsaying and Moneymaking

Posted on August 20, 2010 by George Ure

Lookout below! (Remember: The Crash Window is open, yeah?) Every so often I’ll get a note from a reader wondering “George for such a good economics and markets site, how come you waste so much time on woo-woo, web bots, and crap like that?“ I would think the answer is obvious, but at the risk of sounding redundant (again, LOL) let me spell it out for you…

Investors and speculators share one common trait: They each build a mental construct of the future which – if it comes to pass as they think – will make them some money. However, the reverse is also true: If their construct fails to appear within the right timeframe, they either don’t make money, or worse, lose money. It goes without saying that a speculator is someone who is expecting a quick change of events and the timeframes used by the investor class are a little longer, but in the end, both eye the future, build their vision of it and pray for profits – which is to say – their vision of the future.

Oh, sure, there are other reasons to study the future, like not being in harms way when it arrives with mal-intent. Or, the avoid the end of life for a while by not being under a mushroom clouds; that goes without saying.

So it’s in this spirit that we look at a wide range of future predicting technologies which have the potential to do as well as my friend Clif’s radial linguistic shift approach, or the more seasoned technical analysis approaches (including Elliott Wave theory), astrology, and to an extent, fundamental analysis. Oh sure, I’m aware of the ‘new kids on the block’ who are getting into the space, too; among these, www.recordedfuture.com has gotten some funding from Google, while Lyric Semiconductor which is especially interesting with their statistical probability / best-fit chip path.

Being something of an agnostic, each has pluses and minuses, strengths and weaknesses if you SWOT them out, but to date, only the radical linguistics seem to be able to pull out the ‘turn dates’ for ‘game-changers’ with some degree of repeatability, and even here, I think the biggest claim Clif’s made is that the web bot project is only better than chance by a factor of two, although in certain areas, it’s way beyond that.

Unlike television with its Nielsen ratings, or the web with its web log analyzer programs, figuring how these emergent technologies, as a group, will impact not only investment, but also ‘life as we knew it’ is something of a crap shoot. First, all rely on the Internet, so anything in the future that could take down the net is problematic, and the, since the whole point of investing is making a buck, any failure of the market’s settlement mechanisms (little goodies like a functional international banking system being alive with fund transfers working) are use-case assumptions which no one likes to think about because if more people did, the investment and intellectual property developing population of America (and other centers of financial monomaniacal behaviors) would be far more geographically dispersed on land and sea, and be far more focused about issues of systemic reliability and catastrophic failure recovery modes. But you probably figured most of this out on your own.

Out here in the East Texas Outback. it’s with this framework in mind that we gather here each morning to set “the morning line”, to put it in gambling terms, which the future always is when one takes a clear-eyed look at the beast.

To do this, I use Clif’s work (a lot) because it foretells the outliers so well (quakes in advance, that kinda thing, or the Nov. 8-11 period) and on a rule-out basis, we can use other sources, such as the NY Times piece this morning under the headline “US Assures Israel that Iran Threat is Not Imminent” which gets me to the starting point of this morning’s discussion, at last.

A skeptical reader notes:

“…Of course, if I were the Prime Minister of Israel, I’d have to be asking myself why should I believe the President when he assures me that Iran is still more than a year away from a nuke when this is the same President who was just proven to have lied to his own people about the persistence of the spilled oil in the Gulf. If I were the PM, I’d have my strike planners keep on working….”

In broadest general terms, Clif’s work has a ‘cloud’ over things from the middle of next week on into early next weekend. Take that with the Times’ Middle East piece today and it seems forecast set up (when I read it, but click here and buy your own copy for $10-bucks) more of a financial kind of event than attack on Iran.

Which is not to say that I’m reading his work correctly, it’s just that the way the market is acting, wee could very well be setting up for another “Flash Crash”. All that remains to be defined would be a ‘triggering event’.

Much of what happens in the synthesis of multiple inputs around here should get even better for Peoplenomics.com subscribers next year, since I’m cobbling up an interesting synthesizer’ which will attempt to take Clif’s timing marks and use them in conjunction with planned news events.

As you may be aware, 80-90% of what passes for ‘news’ on a daily basis is predictable because most news events are timed./ Next week, for example, the ‘news budget’ for the week includes home sales Tuesday, Durable Goods on Wednesday, and so forth.

So if you take the market wave counts from a fellow like Robin Landry, then add in the news budget, maybe option cycles from Robin Handler’s Option Signal Service, some input from the astro-econ crowd, and top it all off with a sharp dart, the guessing could be pretty good. In fact, if you asked me right now what I think will happen next week, I’d have to guess at a hugely disappointing weekly employment number again, but more likely any Flash Crash would be caused by intermarket arbitrage accentuated out of control by front-running/HF systems.

Got an interesting theory on this front: The advent of HF trading seems to have had the effect of over-emphasizing a move in a security or index. The analog in electronics would be to make a filter that expresses more gain as it becomes more and more sharp, as the bandwidth is reduced, which is algorithmically what’s happening.

My theory is that the Flash Crash phenomena will repeat at some point because when too many filters in a radio get ‘too tight’ the whole circuit can fall into oscillation…another way of saying runaway feedback. Which means, in practical terms, that when enough humans are taken out of the decision-loop the HF trading platforms could entrain such that the whole collapse of the global finance system could be accomplished completely “hands off”.

Damn, what a long winded exposition. How about we distill it down to a PowerPoint slide?

1. Market in today’s trading has a line in the sand of 10,303 (last week’s close) and if that happens, then a Flash Crash is in the cards next week.

2. Clif has a cloudy in the date mid-week next.

3. The Iran War may not start until the Nov 8-11 period, in which case, the global economy, death of money concept rotates into highest probability.

There, easier to digest? Makes more sense than muttering P3 entrains minute 3 entrains minuet 3 at sub-minuet 3 on the wave count, doesn’t it?

I just thought I’d give you the long version talking around that slide, since that’s the kind of thing on the agenda this weekend when I go up to Oklahoma to talk with Robin Landry in more depth about his count.

—

Market direction may change about a half-hour into this morning’s trading when the Leading Economic Indicators come out. Just remember the initials for this could be viewed as an anagram. Gee, wonder what that might be?

As the Week Wraps Up

A reader summarizes it this way: “Did we just avoid WW 3?”

“Hi George! Wow, what a day. Three BIG stories. Firstly we have the story that the Obama Administration has “Assured Israel That Iran Threat is Not Imminent”

Thats pretty close to the US saying it will not support a military campaign of aggression against Iran.

The second story is about Obama himself. You would think that if someone just spent a week deciding whether to listen to The Masters, or save Humanity, that they would deserve a bit of time off. So,where is Obama? Thats right. Marthas Vineyard. For 11 days with the Fam. Sounds like someone is beat. How is the media covering the story, though? ‘Obama family to begin their 6th holiday of the year.’ Looks like Obama is about to be thrown under the bus.

The third and final story shows that maybe the message has already been received by Israel and they are backing down. Titled, “Israelis and Palestinians to Resume Talks, Officials Say,” the article says negotiations will return for the first time in 20 months!

Mr. Ure… Did we just avoid WW3? Or is the propaganda too perfect?

Ask me around Thanksgiving.

Bundled Troubled

Another potential cause of another flash crash could be the story develop0ing about the Mortgage Electronic Registration System which keeps record of which properties go in which bundle of mortgage-backed securities.

A good background article here goes into speculation that 62-million mortgages could be ‘off the hook’ (or maybe not) but the key thing to keep in mind is this: If we see a major change in expectations about delivery in derivatives, could that ripple through to other derivatives, too, such that the whole hundreds of trillions worth of paper-based debt all goes up in smoke?

Oh, sure, that gets us deeper into the Depression. What changes is the rate of work-out. I won’t even try to summarize all the moving pieces in the derivatives world right now, but it all comes down to one thing: Sudden change is possible and anything that quickly changes future expectations is a bad thing when markets are on the technical edge of the abyss.

My long-tail MBS bundling friend has, in the past, expressed high confidence in MERS but I expect the people in Dresden during WW II thought they had a good fire department, too.

The Credibility Gulf

Hmmm…whom to believe? The White House happy-talk or the academics quoted in the Washington Post this morning who says the oil mess isn’t going away quickly as some of the folks in Washington are trying to sell….

Temperature Tantrums

Oh-oh. Since I wrote up the article earlier this week on global warming/catastrophic climate change in the wings, seems a new debate has broken out about flawed satellite temperature data…

Data for Readers

A couple…no, make that several… readers challenged my assertion in the column earlier this week that president Obama is NOT a Muslim. Just so you know the basis and can look for yourself, please click here.

Reminds me of the old newsroom joke: ‘Let’s try not to let the facts get in the way of a good story.” I’ll leave it to you how to interpret that in this instance…

I routinely dump any and ALL email that trying to hornswaggle me into right or left wing fundraising. They get enough from the special interests as it is, no reason for me to add to their tills. IRS will get their next check from me in 26.72 days, but who’s counting, right?

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Coping: “The Time Has Come The Walrus Said”

Posted on August 20, 2010 by George Ure

A quick visit to the WuJo this morning, where hard science dukes it out with the woo-woo folks, with usually a draw resulting, but along the way monkeymind is massively entertained, so be it…

“Dear George,

I’ve been enjoying your news, even more than usual this week. [Miss a counseling session? -G)

I am particularly interested in all the odd little dreams your readers are writing about. The frog dream is very like some odd ones my daughter and a friend have also been having. They are full of warnings that sound like punchline–hard not to laugh at a frog who says the country is “easily inundated” –very Lewis Carroll.

Being of the Jungian persuasion, I find it hard to think of reptilian conspiracies and tend to think more about maybe kissing the little fellow, especially since he had a crown on his head. I’d love to know what frog princes mean in that dreamer’s mind. The little greenie is archetypal–well, not major archetypal–but one of the minor ones: small helpful animals that talk, like the mice in “Cinderella” or the golden carp or the donkey or the crow of folk tales, for example. Small animals like this, especially if they offer some kind of warning, usually mean that the dreamer is being offered a choice, and if willing to take a chance on some better ethical quality in himself, will reap a reward.

Web bots strike me as little things with their roots in these minor archetypes. And taking a chance on Peoplenomics advice, with an ethical dimensional (as opposed to a numerical dimensional) aspect to one’s actions certainly seems like something to consider.

In the folk tales, the actions of the ethical self, upon accepting the offered chance, always bring about a “transformation,” and reward, or in alchemical terms, a transmutation. Interesting, I think that frogs are also one of those creatures that seem to be markers for climate change, potentially catastrophic microbes and/or pollutants, by virtue of their tendency to present mutations very quickly. I’m also enjoying the “interterrestrial” idea. I’ve always loved conspiracy theories. Once I heard a British commentator say that there’s nothing wrong with conspiracy theories, as long as one gives equal consideration to what he called “cock-up” theories. I think I’ve got it, George: these awful interterrestrials who abduct people, mutilate cattle and collude with world governments are really out there, really involved in evil conspiracies, but they’re real screw-ups. The bad boys usually are.

Thank you for the welcome whiffs of sanity.

Oh…er…sure. Still getting time-shift notes, too…like this one…

“Hi George,

Another time/dimension shift story…

At the pistol firing range yesterday, when packing up to leave, I loaded a clip with JHP .45 rounds into my Sig 220, jacked a round into the chamber, and went to safety drop the hammer with the decocker. I was facing downrange, the gun muzzle down and downrange, and pointing toward the wall-floor intersection, 180 degrees from anyone in the range. At that moment I had a “fuzzydizzy” (fuzidy?) moment, seeing the decocker was mixed with seeing the hammer and not fully comprehending either, gun turned slightly to see it’s left side. There was a loud bang , I felt the recoil, saw the muzzle flash. (My bad, obviously my finger got into the trigger guard while handling. Oy! I’m a pistol instructor of mature age. ) Four witnesses standing behind me also saw the whole event. No Injuries. I, and they, saw me standing about 4-5 feet further downrange than the bullet hole, low in a side door. From where I was standing at bang time, the hole was behind and below me, but directed in the same forward/down direction, and it was my bullet hole. The vector of the bullet through the door indicated (notice the forensics) an origin back by the witnesses, about 12 feet behind where I was standing and from whence I came several seconds before. Yes, there was a lot of collective head scratching. And, lessons learned.”

Not the place to be when time goes shifty-like.

One more on point:

George I couldn’t help but notice a significant synchronicity of this story (about the girlfriend’ and keys earlier this week) that I observed. Keys seem to be the more popular item that go missing for a time and then they are found later in time. So why are keys an item to go missing? Back to the story from one of your readers for a moment, “…On it I saw my girlfriend’s keys and it reminded me of how frustrating it was not having them…” I bring this up because i’ve noticed in others stories of finding missing keys that they were done looking for them or had mentally moved on to some other thoughts and for some reason the missing keys show up when you least expected… or did a difference in thought or emotional state UNLOCK the door (dimension gate) for the keys to reappear? As they say changing reality comes from holding a thought lightly like a breeze, its the subtlety that holds the most magnificent power of all. We must all be statically powered stargates and not even realize it, a power which TPTB are terrified of us finding this out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dude…you so didn’t know that? Why do you think religions were invented – to teach us that such states are universally attainable and there free for the taking? And that’s why the PTB always include a co-opted religious element that gets bent around, too and…oh, you know all this stuff, don’tcha?

Driving a Right?

Earlier this week I was bemoaning how driving out to be a right, not a privilege…and in reply to a note, our one-time Houston editor, of late in the wilds of Indonesia, offered this perspective having challenged state licensing himself in the not too recent past here in Texas…

“George,

First of all, there is a form of shock in which an individual is overwhelmed by the immense size of the problem at hand, and so chooses to “re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic” as a means of coping. This sounds very much akin to that problem.

As for the discussion about rights and privileges, there have been numerous SCOTUS decisions over the centuries that hold that transportation by any means is a right on the public roads. In fact, I have successfully fought nearly 100 tickets for no license, no registration, no insurance, and so on. The problem that so many people get tangled up in is the difference between words and terms.

The law defines certain words in common usage with special meanings, making them terms. We all think of driving as using your car, but under the law, driving is operating a commercial vehicle for hire, which is not a right. So you go to court and try to argue that you have a right to drive and lose. Now, if you use your private machine to go about your personal business, well, that’s a horse of a different color.

Many common words are terms under the law. Vehicle, transport, operate, drive, and so on, all have special definitions in court. If ignorance of the law is no defense, then knowledge of it certainly is. You can fight, and I will attest that you can win, but be prepared. You will spend a lot of time in court and in jail. How much are you willing to invest in protecting your rights? You can pay the fealty and be a slave and take the easy road, or you can insist on your rights and, in the current environment, lose a lot of time and effort. A personal decision, if there ever was one.

One thing I truly enjoy about living in Indonesia is the ability to pay “uang rokok,” or cigarette money. In most instances, a little grease on the palm makes the enforcers go away quietly and leave you in peace. I’m all for it, actually. Some people say that it’s corruption, but I say show me a System that isn’t. I just prefer my corruption out in the open where I can enjoy the benefits as well as the next guy. As the saying goes, ya pays yer money and you takes yer choice. I choose to stay out of jail anymore. I paid my price for liberty and got chased half way around the world for it. People never think about if everyone just stopped participating, the whole charade falls apart. Most folks just pay to get along with the least hassle, and that plays right into the hands of the enforcers.

So, you gotta ask yourself, did I fire five shots, or was it six?”

An additional thought:

In Thailand, they train elephants at a young age by tying a back leg to a stake. The elephant learns that it has limited range of motion when tied down. After a while, the owner doesn’t need the stake. They just tie a rope around the back leg and the elephant won’t move more than a couple of feet until the rope is removed.

Sampai jumpa, B”

All of which gets me – as long as we’re on the topic of laws and rights and such involving travel, we are seeing a fine ‘controlled explosion’ of lawyering within the EU as France has now sent about 90 Romas (folks from Romania) back home with $450 dollars and advice to stay out of France.

What makes this so totally Keystone Cops-like is that the EU says people have a ‘right’ to move around within the EU. Good so far? But then, France turns around and says “only if you have an economic value and are not becoming a burden on the state”…so off go the deportation planes and here comes the lawyering.

What really seems to be going on as a globalist phenom here is that governments are trying to figure out how many layers of government are needed to run the world. Everyone at each layer is firmly convinced their layer is most important and supersedes all.

It’s a fine comedy to watch. The cities in Europe have their little fiefdoms, then there are the districts, and then the countries, and then the overarching (over-reaching) EU itself.

Seen for what it is, the EU is just the first bastard-child prototyping of One World Government – an attempt to politically control different people with different languages, cultures and so on, into a controlled population. What comes are goes (along with Amero currency rumors) is that other regions are looking at this, too, hence the periodic talk of a North American Union, which although not in the headlines here lately, I’m sure is cooking along just like the globalist TransTexas highway and so forth.

When you mow down the last tree to write about this stuff, it all falls perfectly back to its original starting point: Why would a free man or woman subject themselves to the control of others provided their actions were not directly or in a harmful way indirectly impinging on the freedoms of other?

Simply put, whether it relates to driving, wandering around the face of the earth, or in my case, trying to figure out how to license a handmade motorized bike for my personal not-for-hire use, how much respect (and thus fealty) should be paid at any level?

While I wait patiently for the excesses of government to collapse under their own weight and come back to the Constitutional basics, it’s a comfort to be short the market which seems to be acting lately like it senses the stress developing from the internal contradictions which too many lawyers and too many control freaks tend to generate when they forget who the boss is.

Our NZ Skateboard Report

More follow-up…from our US IT whiz who is in NS:

“George,

I got to your daily missive around lunch time. I download it in the morning before I go to the client and read it on my laptop during my lunch hour as the client does not allow any external internet access outside of the .govt.nz domains. Which I may add means that I have not been able to read up on the particular incident. Not that it would stop me from having an opinion

First some background…

A couple of youtube videos of kids doing 80kph on a skateboard have been all the buzz here on the news. It was quite fun to watch these little daredevils (idiots as the local police called them) scoot around trucks in no-passing lanes shooting down hill on a highway.

However here in the NZ nanny state where health care is free and rationed the government goes through some serious effort to reduce the need for health care. Take the stairwell challenge! Hire house painters (falling off ladders is the number one cause of serious home injuries.) Quit smoking! Wear seat belts. All advertisements provided at taxpayer expense. One should not be amazed that they would ticket some kid for scooting down the street as it is a whole mess cheaper to issue a ticket than to patch them up when they wrap themselves around a lamp pole or a truck.

Think of it this way, the NZ government has issued a health derivative to their citizens that assumes all financial risks associated with a major health event. They are just protecting their investment by reducing the likelihood of the trigger event.

Welcome to your future!”

Crap! I suppose this means I won’t be able to make my own powered skateboard, either? Damn…..

Landslide Video

Ever see one happening? Amazing video out of Italy that a reader says might help put those reports in other parts of the world in context…

‘Bout Them Bugs

Remember the other day I told you about the folks working corn who noticed a lack of bugs? Got another report of it:

I’m in southern Oregon – and noticed a mid-west subscriber make note there a fewer bugs – it’s true. We’ve noticed it too. Definitely fewer bugs this season. First a friend from the Northern California (Crescent City) coast asked me if I had noticed it – about two weeks ago, and it’s true – there are fewer bugs. Weird.

Another offers this:

Same up here in the wonderful State of Maine! (Mainiacs – gotta love ‘em – G) And I say wonderful, taxes aside, because we are truly having the spring/summer of our lives. Beautiful weather, warm nights, and very little rain. We have noticed:

• A gazillion fewer mosquitoes (yes it’s the state bird up here and yes gazillion!)

• Few if any Japanese beetles, the bane of my grapes, basil, asparagus, etc. these past 10-15 years

• Ticks, especially deer ticks, seem to be non-existent, so much for the $80 I spent on a 6 month supply of FrontLine!

• And lastly but surely not the least….bats!

Our usual two little nightly visitors, who scour our fields every night seem to be MIA! Many factors can influence this ecosystem…and one of the biggest seems to be water. Without if, the lifecycle of bugs and all who depend and detest them are affected. It’s gotta be some sort of conspiracy! HAARP, Aliens, GW Bush…somebody, help me out here!

In keeping with our public service mission statement (if you believe that, I have this bridge….) here’s the answer from a reader in the upper Midwest:

“Tell him/her that they all ended up in the Ohio/Tennessee Valleys. We started with real good rain, then dropped off for almost a month and a half, with a new record streak of above 90 days, and most of the time a heat index of 105 or more. Too hot to tend to the garden right, even after dark, and the prodigious beans and potatoes from the earlier rains, and we had every conceivable chomper here looking for a good meal. lol”

You know, in some places if you catch grasshoppers and drag ‘em through some melted dark chocolate….If you don’t have time for a trip to Ohio or upper Tennessee, click here to order chocolate covered crickets online…

Time to go do real work now…see youi tomorrow if you get www.peoplenomics.com, or Monday if you don’t…Sunday’s Peoplenomics report will be posted early – Saturday morning, too since we’ll be traveling this weekend…so plan on extra coffee and time to read “Move Over Marx…”

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Getting The Future Wrong

Call this the Labor Department Big Lie Report, if you must. Or, ‘Higher Education’s Big Lie’ as an alternative: I have raised this issue previously, albeit in short form, as a simple question: If a young person makes an educated guess as to where the future growth in the economy will be -based on widely touted government figures – and then secures an education and training for a field that collapses, is it morally ‘right’ for the student to be held accountable for what the government got wrong? That question is critically important to millions of US citizens who took the time and money to head for school and train for areas which looked promising as recently as 2002-2003. This weekend a romp through the ugly numbers you really have to dig to find. When you do, the results stink.

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Dream A Little Dream…

Cookie Video

The folks at Maxa Research have put together a short video (sound track by guess who?) that shows the Maxa Cookie Manager. You can see it here.

“Live on $10,000″ A Year

Having a hard time making ends meet? (Like who isn’t, right?) A good starting point to better match up income with outgo is our $10 e-book “How to Live on #10,000 a Year…or less!”

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