UrbanSurvival

I reckon with all the all the rain we had here at the ranch yesterday, folks in this part of East Texas would feel some kind of solidarity with the people in Asia who’ve been plagued with rains, floods, and related land slides over the past few weeks.  But, the rain here was fairly localized.  Still, 2 inches of rain in an hour and 15 minutes is a fair bit, although the storm which dumped on us didn’t make it as far as the ‘official’ recording station up at Tyler, Texas before blowing itself out.

Normally, raining at the ranch would not be a thing to take notice of.  With 4-million still homeless in Pakistan, or trains running off their tracks in China because of the recent flooding there which has caused a flurry of landslides and land movement, what most people fail to realize is that rain/weather change can add a lot to the cost of things we take for granted as being perpetually available.  Not necessarily.

Take, for example, the cost of apparel.  Lots of it is grown and sewn in Pakistan and the floods have done enough damage to the cotton crop to the extent that prices are expected to go up.

Not that trains were being derailed China only:  There was a train derailed and plenty of damage up in the area in and around Putnam County Tennessee overnight.  Not likely to get as much press coverage as the flood warnings this morning in the nation’s capitol; people there are a little more dense.  And there are more of ‘em per square mile than in Tennessee, too, come to think of it.

Even if you didn’t read Clif’s latest take on long-term data sets in the new “Shape of Things To Come Report” ($10-bucks, here and worth every dime) the outlook for the next couple of years is for more and more weather & Ma Nature crap to intrude which implies that along the way, hillsides will slide, cotton won’t grow, and oh, by-the-by, the impacts on food will be immense and hunger becoming a global reality as the weather evolves from a four-seasons affair to a two-state marvel of too hot and too cold, too dry, and too wet.

This is all showing up now, if you’re willing to look at it.  The Union of Concerned Scientists issued a press release which you squirrel away in your ‘I told you so” file:

“Drought in Russia; Floods in Pakistan and China; High Temps in the U.S. Consistent with Climate Change Projections

A number of extreme weather events have been happening around the world this summer, including record flooding in Pakistan that has killed more than 1,000 people and displaced millions of others; the worst drought in Russia in decades, which has triggered wildfires and doubled the daily death rate in Moscow to about 700; and torrential rains in China, which have caused massive flooding and triggered landslides that have killed more than 3,000 people.

Meanwhile, here at home, residents in more than 15 states have been sweltering from heat waves that flared in June. Several East Coast cities experienced record-breaking heat last month, which was the hottest one on record in Rhode Island and Delaware.

The devastating heat, fires and floods we are seeing around the world this summer are consistent with trends that scientists say are caused by global warming, including temperature increases, increases in heavy precipitation in some parts of the world, and droughts in others.

The Earth’s average temperature has been rising due to a build up of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. According to NASA, 2010 is on track to be the hottest year ever recorded. And the last decade—from 2000 through 2009—was the hottest recorded decade since worldwide record-keeping began more than 100 years ago.”

After Copenhagen, there’s been a fair number of people arguing that climate change was phony; the evidence says it’s not.  And there’s a contingent that says New Ice Age is coming – which it well could be – basing their thoughts on the worst snow in a decade in Brazil this winter (down there seasons run opposite ours).

Regardless of how the weather worries play out – flipping too hot, or too cold – is not the point.  The point is that humans do pretty well as long as they have calories but when they don’t, things can turn bad in a hurry. 

There’s just the tiniest bit of a creaking noise around the foundations of the global(ist) economic system if you listen and look carefully.  It comes in headlines like “Putin Bond Demand Sinks as Russia Drought Lifts Prices” and

Time Magazine’s “The Curious Capitalist” blog by Michael Schuman which wonders “If another food crisis coming?” 

Seems to.

If the linguistics are right, we’re only a week out from the next noticeable sea-state changes weaseling their way into headlines…with the bigger worries still out there for Nov. 8-11/12/13th.  Granted, food may not lead the way – yet – but it seems likely to come in the ‘worry rotation’ with some force in 2011. 

Nothing to worry bout then?  Only if you like to eat.  Like this reader who’s noticing more change in the farm lands:

“We were out peeling corn to process last night and noticed there aren’t as many bugs around. Has anyone else commented on this??? We do see a few but no where near what there have been in the past. We have a farm with 115 acres of land so are more in tuned to this than others. “

Change is in the air and GMO leftovers are in the ground.  Shouldn’t be too hard to connect all these darts.  Hmmm…Wonder if there are any weight-loss companies I could do a long-term short on?

Weekly Job Number

As usual, a Thursday morning highlight for the adrenaline-soaked day-trading crowd which got caught out with futures higher, but then turning lower with the jobs report data:

In the week ending Aug. 14, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 500,000, an increase of 12,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 488,000. The 4-week moving average was 482,500, an increase of 8,000 from the previous week’s revised average of 474,500.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.5 percent for the week ending Aug. 7, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 3.5 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Aug. 7 was 4,478,000, a decrease of 13,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 4,491,000. The 4-week moving average was 4,526,750, a decrease of 1,500 from the preceding week’s revised average of 4,528,250.

The fiscal year-to-date average of seasonally adjusted weekly insured unemployment, which corresponds to the appropriated AWIU trigger, was 5.010 million.

About here, I haul out my favorite Robin Landry-ism: “In a Bear Market, surprises are usually but not always, to the downside…”

Adding to the mess?  The Governator is planning to furlough 150,000 CaliWorkers.  The political needle to be threaded here:  How to get the workers to take time off without pay but bring ‘em back just enough to keep them from all hitting the streets at once.

Notes on Financial MAD’ness

An email from my deflationist pal (Dr.) Jas Jain seems to fity nicely here, sincere there are all these trial balloons lately about debt forgiveness…

“Remember nuclear warheads race and proliferation? What kept things between the US and the USSR from going too far? MAD (mutually assured destruction). Would Capitalist Crooks destroy their own capital in order to wipe the debt obligations of American dopes, including the taxpayers? I don’t think so. Dopes who have bet on the US inflating away its debt are not doing too well, while those of us who have bet the other way are sitting pretty. I have been a gold bull for the past 13 years primarily because it is insurance against fiat currencies and gold is now behaving more and more like a currency. Gold could easily go to $5,000/ounce in a deflationary depression in the US!

Inflating away would be an economic suicidal move on the part of the US. It ain’t in the cards. Prolonged pain for American dopes is in the cards, i.e., backed into the cake. During this period of pain for the dopes Crooks and their agents like Bushes, Clintons, Gores and Obamas would do very well. Financial derivatives markets of 2010 are not the same as those of 1971 when the US was taken off the gold standard. The move was not unexpected by the markets. Amazingly, it is lot harder to inflate, as FDR was able to do on whims, in the absence of the gold standard! Bernanke wishes a 3-4% inflation rate but he can’t get there!!!!!!!!! Of course, he can’t utter a word to that effect because that would trigger a massive problem. The guy doesn’t have much room to maneuver. He has been turned into a paper tiger, i.e., he is impotent just as I had predicted. “

So, we sit back with our part gold, part Treasury position and a few selected shorts remembering what?

It’s Only as Game

Speaking of web bot timing models (remember this next week, OK) and such, here’s a sync-wink from Universe, maybe, in this reader note:

“Reading your blog is the ‘morning paper’ for me. I love that your wide variety of experience and open mind finds so many ways in finding linkages between what most people would consider disparate, unrelated parts.

In the fall of the empire, I am part of the circus. Video game sales, in fact. (don’t tell anyone that I’m not much of a gamer! ) Anyway, the next installment of the popular Call of Duty series is subtitled ‘Black Ops’ and releases on 11-9-10. I find the timing and title interesting to say the least and thought you might too.

Yeah, damn curious timing, LOL.  Move along now, nothing to see here…and whatever you do, don’t go on to read this…

Homeland Security – Gestapo Worries

Emotionally, this is hot, hot, hot.  But, go read what former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura is saying about the U.S. Department of Homeland Security over at the Prison Planet site.  Seems Ventura was trying to shoot some video for a “Conspiracy Theory” episode at the Kennedy Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery and was barred from doing so…details here.

No doubt, there are two ways to look at this, depending on your ideology:  Protect the sanctity of the JFK Memorial on the one hand, or recall the quote

attributed to Huey Long (although it’s disputed whether Long said it that way) that “If Fascism came to America it would be on a program of Americanism.”

Or, maybe Ventura is onto something:  “The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.” -so said J. Edgar Hoover, former head of the FBI  now part of  what Super Agency?

Data Breaches

Don’t know if you’re interested, but your IT Department have find the Verizon/US Secret Service 2010 Data Breach (and theft) report worth reading. A kind of State of the Hacks…

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You know you’re living squarely in three splitting realities when the word virus makes you wonder whether you need to update software, see a doctor about your rowdy raw dog running wild‘s latest unprotected exploits, or visit the CDC website to check on pandemics….

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Oh, and speaking of rowdy raw dogs on the net, “Cameron Diaz tops list of riskiest celeb searches” according to McAfee’s latest research…Something about virus…

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Oh,  check this from over in the egg department – a recall of 380-million egs in four states.

Watching Obama Bashing

New poll out in the Washington Post this morning shows 20% of the US thinks president Obama is a Muslim.  He’s not, but just goes to show you how a message repeated often enough morphs into ‘reality’ for people.

Attention Fiction Writers!

Be looking for the latest federal budget deficit update today out of Washington.

Here’s a dandy trend chart which outlines the problem in case you don’t feel like wading through the whole report to develop a Big Picture sense of things:

Ignore the ‘extended baseline’ model since that is based on lousy-t0-delusional assumptions.  The CBO alternative Fiscal Scenario is more meaningful by far:  See where it points to bad —> getting to worse? 

In more honest times, we’d be admitting the arrive of Depression 2.  Nowadays, it’s just a great recession.

If you have Excel open, build your own chart with the Fed’s latest Charge-Off and Delinquency rates… freshest data here.

We begin this morning by recalling the days of the Mickey Mouse Club on television when, as youth, we remember Disney Creative had come up with themes for different days of the week like “Anything Can Happen Day” which set a tone for a whole hour’s worth of kid’s programming.  And, since it would be a nice rhyme of vague familiarity, we’ll unabashedly borrow the concept and present today’s context for comprehending world events declaring this: “Let’s Pretend Day”.

For our first example, we consider the stories about how on Tuesday  banking execs claimed that they need more federal guarantees pretending that the banksters haven’t already been to the taxpayer trough before, or, since they have, that we’ve forgotten about the people in Washington being hornswaggled and lobbied into ignoring the Voice of the People.  We could pretend that money is less dangerous than crack, or even heroin, but money’s addictive powers trump all powders, liquids and smokes.  But let’s pretend.

Another key feature of Tuesday trading was the federal report out revealing bankruptcies are up near five-year highs.  That should have scared the hell out of the market – which should have cratered, except that the market was off doing something else; playing its game of what?  “Let’s pretend.”

Then we have to consider the impact of the Federal Reserve (really neither) report which claimed that production was up to a preliminary reading of 93.4% in July and that Capacity Utilization was at 74.8% compared with the previous month’s (revised) 74.1%.  Heralded as Great News.

The delirium inducing statistical crap was all it took – along with the conciliatory hype about backing bankster mortgages with more money from [you & me] the taxpayers to blow the market up nearly 200 points – briefly.  All of which would never have happened if everyone looked at the markets and the stats like I do – over several years and thoughtful – because if they did, they’d notice the production numbers were vis-à-vis 2007 data which was the100% high water mark, which means three years later we’re still six point four percent under those levels, and on the capacity side, we were 10 percent higher at 85.1% during the 1994-1995 period.  Just between us, that isn’t exactly the picture of robust health or much of an economic recovery going on.  But, put your hands together and let me hear you brothers and sisters!  “Let’s pretend!”  Again?  “Let’s pretend!”

I usually save my most acerbic comments about the health of the nation’s banking system for Peoplenomics.com subscribers on the weekends, but as long as we’re ‘going to the couch’ to confess our delusions, let’s not forget that FDIC has stepped in to bail out, reorganize, or shotgun marry off 110 banks this year (so far), and on a branch basis FDIC has reorg’ed 934 so far this year, way ahead of last years ‘to-date’ figure of  817 branches at 77 banks.  Up 14.3% on a branch basis, or 42.86% on an institutional basis, but you know what?  Despite the investigation of the Old Southern Bank’s failure which cost the government  (i.e.: us) something like $95-mil, “Let’s Pretend!”

The predictive linguistics out of www.halfpasthuman.com‘s “Shape of Things To Come” report have this big cloud over the global markets starting around August 24-25th, and further clouds, possibly of the mushroom variety, over the Nov. 8-12 period with months of mourning to follow.  With reports that Russians will be helping fuel the Bushehr nuclear reactor early next week, and the headlines in Israel’s Jerusalem Post this morning (“‘Bushehr unrelated to enrichment‘” claims from the Iranian side, I’m compelled to point you at the Google Maps satellite view of Bushehr so you can print off the ‘Before” picture.  Might want a high res. screen scrape just in case it kinda, sorta disappears into a puddle of glass.

Then there’s the report that one of the Saudi papers is endorsing the military option in Iran.

Is war at hand as a reason to rally?  Not in George Land but  “Let’s pretend!”

As luck would have it, the theme of this morning’s remarks could be applied to all kinds of stories in the news:  Whether it’s something big like the wildfires in Russia  and extreme weather and diaspora going on in Pakistan where aid trucks are being mobbed while we sop up coffee, and on to the Tinsel Town buzz that Dr. Laura is hanging up her radio show.  But none of that really means anything does it?  Again, “Let’s Pretend!”

National politics has finally broken the social contract, irrevocably.  Elaine mentioned to me just yesterday “Sure seems like these foreign TV news outfits have it right:  Obama hasn’t made any major changes from the Bush administration polices on matters of war or the economy…he’s just taken up the reins and gone down the same path.  Where’s the change?” 

I dutifully explained there has been change: the lobbyist checks are being written out to the other party now, although I skipped pointing her to the Washington Examiner piece on how “Obama’s war on lobbyists was just a lot of hot air.“  Similarly I didn’t mention the polls which show a majority of Americans disapprove of Obama, but in a larger sense, the whole Washington mess.

The markets today, having only some minor numbers to consider, may open mixed and then rally this afternoon, and maybe even into tomorrow before turning down  for the week’s end.  If you were really worried about maintaining your life’s savings, you would have fled to Treasuries or gold long ago, so it’s a moot point but high drama nevertheless.  America is hooked on over-hyped drama…

With several financial channels are reporting more or less the same thing, we can rest assured that the paper-hangers will find some reason to try and stampede more of the gullible folks over to the ‘great fools’ side of equity ownership.  The touts and pimps will say the future’s bright, that the decline to war won’t matter, and that somehow the century-long systematic watering down of America’s currency through deliberate inflation isn’t a bad thing.  This on-average 2.3% compounded since 1913 isn’t really taught, however.

Around here, we know better.  But since it’s Wednesday, and I’ve got a number of chores to get done, and you might need to really do something around work today, here’s how I think we need to approach this particular Wednesday:

Let’s pretend.

Quakes and No Quakes

Being on edge following the Mariana Islands region quakes, the phone range yesterday afternoon with a buddy up in the Seattle area calling.  “We just had two, short sharp earthquakes I think…” he told me excitedly.

Nope.  A couple of F-15′s going after what turned out to be a seaplane coming back from a weekend at Lake Chelan.   President Obama was in the Seattle area and the plane violated presidential airspace.   And the lesson about checking NOTAM’s (FAA Notices to Airmen) before every flight is what?

Boom Ahead in India

And why might that be?  Oh, 61-trucks with 300 tons of explosives have gone missing in central India, Chinese news agencies are reporting.  Muslim extremists setting up a ‘biggie”?  Don’t be surprised.

A Dear Colleagues Letter

On the Centers for Disease Control website:

Dear colleagues: The ongoing oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has the potential to raise food safety concerns about possible health effects from contaminated seafood harvested from the Gulf. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with other federal and state agencies are monitoring the seafood supply for signs of oil contamination. For the seafood to pose a health risk, the food would have to be heavily contaminated with oil, and would therefore have a strong odor and taste of oil. Presently, testing of seafood from the gulf is being conducted by the Gulf States, FDA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

CDC recognizes the importance of anticipating, monitoring, and responding to public health hazards that may affect human health. CDC is monitoring for potential illnesses across the United States that may be associated with exposure to contaminated seafood. Persons who consume seafood contaminated by oil may experience the following symptoms: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. We understand that these symptoms are general, and that consumption of contaminated seafood might not necessarily be the cause.

Seems to me this calls for a letter back:

Dear CDC:

We’re not idiots.  Where’s the low-level exposure  impact study data over time since that doesn’t seem to be available?  An MSDS sheet is not sufficient for 1.8-2.0 million gallons of dispersant in intimate proximity to the food chain is it?  I mean really?  Or, are ya’ll still hiding behind the ‘trade secrets’ rule which seems by your actions to trump public health?

Before we get into the morning dose of ‘numbers served up fresh’ which will drive the market somewhere (in not crazy), let’s look at some of the early West Coast Port Data coming in.

Port of Long Beach shows total containers inbound was up  32.5% in the month of July compared to July of last year.  While that could be construed as a positive for the economy, the fact that loaded outbound was only up 16.4% for the month suggests that the Balance of Trade picture may not be getting much better – and indeed, could be getting worse as we hit the bean this morning.

Same whiff coming out of the Port of Los Angeles numbers:  Inbound in July was up 21.02% compared with a year ago, while the outbound was only up 5.86%.  Again, bad news in the spread may be implied for the Balance of Trade, and what that means could be pressure to print up money and that in turn may be fueling the increase we’ve seen since the first of the month in the price of gold.

Inbound up at the Port of Oakland was up 16.8% for the month and overall activity was up only 16.3% in July compared with the more robust 21% increase seen in June.

Oakland, by the way, is a neat port to watch because their past years performance is shown on the same page making it easy for the not-yet-coffee-soaked writer (played by care to guess who?) doesn’t have to do a lot of deep thinking to figure out that Oakland’s biggest year ever in terms of container cargo was 2006, which corresponds to the peak in the housing bubble and such.    Call me lazy, but I notice these things.

But of more significance is that based on the YTD total for July, extrapolating things out for the balance of the year, Oakland oughta come in about 2,228,861 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU’s) for the year.

If you’ve been sucked in to the right/left politico’s ridiculousness, and you’re a democorp, you might be tempted based on the Oakland data to conclude things will there be up 8.9% overall since last year.  And you’d be telling the truth.

On the other hand, it could be said with an equally straight face that no, the is still down 6.8% compared with Oakland’s operations in  in 2006, which would be fine grist for a republicorp-led round of Obama-bashing.

The wizened market participant, or anyone with a 401(k), would have to look at the data and conclude, as we’ve just demonstrated here, that the condition of the country depends almost entirely on where you want to start counting from.

If you start counting from 2007 or 2008 things are arguably still bad, but, if you count from 2009, especially if you’re thinking back on March of last year when the markets were totally in the crapper, you can argue this has been an amazing rally. Somewhere off in the background, try to ignore the cynical guys like me who point out that although 10,302 on the Dow Monday looks really good compared with March of 2009′s 6,627 or so,

A check of historical data (weekly Dow, 1999) shows the Dow traded through this range the week of April 12.  Worse, just to keep even with the insidious inflation underway in America, you’d need the Dow to be at 13,585 just to maintain purchasing power equivalency with 1999.  But, I digress; you probably don’t want to think about it, having swallowed the “It’s a whopping 554.% gain since March 2009, fer cryin’ out loud!”

Only if you were out…and except for the predictive linguistics around here in 2008, I doubt most brokers/money managers called their clients and put them short or on the sidelines on the way down. 

So we come back to the first – but biggest – point of the day:  The unit volumes  (or inflation-corrected price – is the only honest way to make any kind of economic assertion and have it mean anything.  The month-to-month perturbations in the market essential add up to mental masturbation with the objective of parting you from your dough.

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As I’ve mentioned a couple of times now, the market put in a Hindenburg Omen (read yesterday’s report if you missed it) and we’re quickly coming up to what I’d suggest may be considered The Kurzweil Paradox of Economics.

“What the hell’s that, Ure?”

Well, goes like this:  We can agree to begin with that one of the most overworked concepts in modern economic/BizSpeak is Ray Kurzweil’s notion that The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology is going to show up, right?

“Get to the point; we exactly ain’t paying by the word here…”

OK: Well, there’s this ugly problem (worse than my great-great-great grandfather’s PR issues, since he was the inspiration for the novel Frankenstein) could have ever imagined:  We’re about to run out of jobs for humans at just about the same moment that we need to be creating jobs like crazy to put all these newly unemployed people back to work so they can pay taxes.

The problem is amplified in this dandy Howard Hill piece “We Robot”  which mentions the human-replacement problems in the auto industry (for one) and brings up the ugly question (once again, if you fire off some neurons) “Who really got bailed out”?  The workers, or the machine owners?

The reason this is so critically important to start thinking about is that ever since the Industrial Revolution got underway, there’s been this notion that humans ought to be taxed, but not only should machines be taxed at lower rates, companies are allowed under tax laws to write down a machines’ value over time to zero (in as little as one year under IRS Section 179, LOL).

But human capital is not treated the same way.  In fact, if humans were treated like most machines, they’d be written off in 10-year or less.  I suppose the wholesale firings that accompany depressions, like the one we’re arguably now in, may be the functional equivalent.

But it brings me to the larger question of “Shouldn’t we be ,taking the machine output, which would be a form of production tax on machine owners so that workers who are displaced may be provided for?”

Howard & I started a conversation yesterday about how far the tax rate (on humans) could be pushed as we make the difficult transition to what could be a democratic socialist middle ground between outright communism and runway world-wreck irresponsible free traders who are only in it for the thing that matters most to them:  Money in their  pockets so that their culture of Elitism may flourish.  After all, no point being uber-rich if everyone is…they actually need the downtrodden and oppressed so they can claim superiority and some God-given “divine right to rule” crap when the truth of the matter is their on a hopeless ego trip featuring an inability to share and share alike and so forth.  But again, I digress.

Our main stage feature is the Producer Price Index and how you want interpret this, or the housing numbers to follow depends almost entirely where you want to stand as your statistical vantage point.  Things are either getting better, or we’re still stuck in Depression Two. 

May I have the envelope, Please?

“The Producer Price Index for Finished Goods rose 0.2 percent in July, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This advance followed a 0.5-percent decline in June and a 0.3-percent decrease in May. At the earlier stages of processing, prices received by manufacturers of intermediate goods moved down 0.4 percent in July and the crude goods index rose 2.7 percent. On an unadjusted basis, prices for finished goods advanced 4.2 percent for the 12 months ended July 2010, their ninth consecutive 12-month increase.”

Well, crap.  I always skip on to the crude goods level to see if inflation or deflation is in the pipeline:

“Crude energy: The index for crude energy materials advanced 4.5 percent in July. From April to July, prices for crude energy materials moved up 0.8 percent subsequent to a 10.9-percent drop for the 3 months ending in April. The monthly increase in July was almost entirely the result of an 11.7-percent jump in the index for natural gas. Prices for coal also contributed to the crude energy goods increase, rising 1.2 percent. (See table 2.)

Crude foods: The index for crude foodstuffs and feedstuffs rose 3.3 percent in July. For the 3- month period ending in July, crude food prices moved down 2.8 percent. This decline followed a 3.5-percent increase from January to April. About a third of the July monthly advance can be attributed to prices for corn, which jumped 14.6 percent. An increase in the index for slaughter cattle also contributed to the rise in crude food prices.

Crude core: The index for crude nonfood materials less energy decreased 1.4 percent in July. From April to July, crude core prices fell 7.6 percent following a 9.7-percent advance in the previous 3-month period. Leading the July monthly decline was a 6.7-percent drop in the index for iron and steel scrap. A decrease in the index for wastepaper also contributed to lower crude core prices.

Oh-oh…inflation.  You saw a week or so back where Wal-Mart had raised its prices about 6-percent in one month in one study (Virginia)?  Flip side: WMT profit is up and heading higher says their forecast.  All those wider aisles, thinner inventory levels and such are paying off.  (Does your team cheer three times a day?)

No rah-rah in the Housing report this morning, though:

BUILDING PERMITS

Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in July were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 565,000. This is 3.1 percent (±2.0%) below the revised June rate of 583,000 and is 3.7 percent (±2.2%) below the July 2009 estimate of 587,000.

Single-family authorizations in July were at a rate of 416,000; this is 1.2 percent (±1.2%)* below the revised June figure of 421,000.

Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 129,000 in July.

HOUSING STARTS

Privately-owned housing starts in July were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 546,000. This is 1.7 percent (±9.7%)* above the 9.7%) revised June estimate of 537,000, but is 7.0 percent (±7.5%)* below the July 2009 rate of 587,000.

Single-family housing starts in July were at a rate of 432,000; this is 4.2 percent (±8.7%)* below the revised June figure of 451,000.

The July rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 95,000.

HOUSING COMPLETIONS

Privately-owned housing completions in July were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 587,000. This is 32.8 percent (±6.8%) below the revised June estimate of 874,000 and is 25.4 percent (±7.3%) below the July 2009 rate of 787,000.

Single-family housing completions in July were at a rate of 490,000; this is 27.5 percent (±7.6%) below the revised June rate of 676,000. The July rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 91,000.

So here’s my question:  If housing starts are so crappy, why are building material prices so damn high for projects around the ranch, huh?

If this is a recovery, the statistical bumps along the way seem wildly oversized.

Bolton’s Timeline for War

There are reports that once upon a time UN rep John Bolton says Israel has until August 21st to attack Bushehr, down the road from the Persian carpet makers in Iran.

I didn’t like his worldview before and even less now.  The SF Chronicle’s site reporting that “Iran Threatens Israel’s Existence if it Attacks” is certainly cause for pause.

But even more reason:  The Russians have crews helping out with the fuel loading, we presume.  Bigger question (which blows up into global war around November 8-12?) is therefore, how’s Russia going to respond when their reactor workers are offed in the attacks?  Do they just sit idly by?  Not hardly.  So maybe the dominionists will get their bigger war after all.

Remember the Diaspora Meme?

Earlier this year, it wasn’t clear to me how Clif’s linguistic predictions about huge diaspora (millions upon millions) moving about Asia would ever come to pass this year.  But now that millions upon millions are homeless, moving around, and being stricken now with diseases like cholera, I can see it, and imagine you can, too.

Coming to Get Our Food

A reader with a sharp eye sends this about the UK Daily Mail article under the headline “EU to ban selling eggs by the dozen: Shopkeepers’ fury as they are told all food must be weighed and sold by the kilo“, noting:

 ”I was under the impression that the UK was NOT part of the EU. If they are not part of the EU, why are they allowing this?  Here Senate bill 510/ HR 2749 is not too far behind.”

It’s really all quite simple and been coming for a long time…the toil all day for a measure of wheat and a measure of oil has been written of for what, 2000 years?

First We Taken Menhaden

(With apologies to Leonard Cohen for the poor pun of his “First we take Manhattan”):  South Jersey shore towns are starting to clean up what are thousands upon thousands of tiny fish that have washed up due to an oxygen deprived dead zone.

While the conspiracy boards are all a-twitter (sorry) with theories about how this might some way be linked to the BP spill, a quick Google search shows high temps are killing fish in Illinois, Topeka, Kansas, and South Carolina recently.

Hide The Sausage Department

I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but the LA Times is running a series on the quality of education in the SoCal area.

At the same time, the Times reported this weekend that “Union leader calls on L.A. teacher to boycott Times”.

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The teacher union official’s comments about judging quality by a test is interesting hereabouts because of our focus in the in-depth Peoplenomics report this past weekend about how despite ‘selling’ of higher education, it hasn’t changed the fact that there are now more humans vying for each job out there and the major change in the demographics of the US workforce since 2000 is that more and more people are entering the workforce with a $20,000-$40,000 (or higher) debt loads on their backs.

Not only does the report outline the dismal performance of job forecasting 9which has fallen short of projections) but with a little easy one plus one equals thinking, you can see that one of the major reasons for the Housing Crisis (ongoing) is that so few young people can get well-paying jobs and their student loan debts are killing the country slowly.

Especially when the elites have no real answer to the Johnson administration sleight of hand (sleight of free lunch is more like it) that put Social Security into the general fund to pay for ‘entitlements’ and there went that money.  So, instead of a Great Society today we have instead a depression unfolding with people who ought to be retiring now working to 72 and beyond and kids swamped with inescapable (even through bankruptcy) debt, but you probably figured that part out.

Thanks Washington.  NOT :  Vote ‘em all out in November.

Looking for a Worthy Goal

I know I’ve ragged on this point a lot lately, bemoaning how America lacks a higher goal… but go read the comments of sci-fi genius Ray Bradbury.  He’s calling for a revolution of the peaceful and gets us somewhere kind.…

Mondays are usually exciting, but there’s something particularly interesting about this Monday.  For one thing, the price of gold started off with a nice $7 pop to the upside when I looked.  “Excellent!” went the Monty Burns voice in the back of my mind.  Note to self: Consider renaming Zeus the Cat “Smithers”.

Holding a boatload of short positions, the AP headline “Stock market apt to stay difficult for some time” set off another character voice, this one going “Yabba-dabda-doo!“  There was also a brief “Ah-OOOO-gah” of a submarine’s diving klaxon in there, too…

A quick glance at the picture in Europe this morning showed a kind of mixed bag, with the UK and Frenchies being down, while the Deutschers were up a tad, and the barest little tad at that.

Starting off the week will be the NY Fed’s Empire Manufacturing report, which has something to do with work in the northeast, although the double entendre with the US off manufacturing empire in the Middle East wouldn’t be a bad play on concepts….

“The Empire State Manufacturing Survey indicates that conditions improved modestly in August for New York manufacturers. The general business conditions index rose 2 points from its July level, to 7.1. The new orders and shipments indexes both dipped below zero for the first time in more than a year, indicating that orders and shipments declined on balance; the unfilled orders index was also negative. The indexes for both prices paid and prices received inched down, while employment indexes were positive and higher than last month. The six-month outlook weakened; though future indexes were generally still positive, many fell in August, with the notable exceptions of the future employment and capital expenditures indexes, which climbed after falling last month.

In a series of supplementary questions, manufacturers were asked about their capital spending plans. Looking ahead to the next six to twelve months, 37 percent of respondents indicated that they expected to increase capital spending relative to its level in the past six to twelve months, while just 13 percent planned reductions. Of those predicting increased capital spending, 27 percent noted that “a considerable fraction” of the increase reflected investment that had been postponed because of the recession; 41 percent of respondents had given this same response in a similar survey back in January.

Another 46 percent of those surveyed this month attributed “some” of the spending increase to the recession. The most commonly cited factors behind increased investment were high expected growth in sales and a need to replace capital goods other than IT (information technology) equipment. The most widely cited factors behind steady or decreased capital investment in the current survey were low expected sales growth, low capacity utilization, and limited need to replace non-IT capital goods. “

Next: The Treasury Long-Term TIC flows will be out in a moment or two, but that’s one of those numbers you can save for a time when you’re having trouble getting to sleep.  They oughta work just fine and they’re NOT habit forming.

Tomorrow, we’ll into a full-blown numeric frenzy with more numbers than you can shake a pop-up calculator at:  Housing Starts and Building Permits will roll in, along with the Producer Price Index in the pre-open, then at 9:15 the Fed will roll Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization out, which I reckon will be flat (or within statistical noise, just to confound the FOMC further – like that’s possible).

And speaking of the confounded FOMC: China seems to be getting more bullish on Europe and less so on the US according to a Bloomberg piece worth reading, especially if you play FOREX, which I stay away from like the plague, since you can get killed with either.

The quants get a day of rest since with the exception of an oil inventory number Wednesday, it’ll be quiet,.  Bleeding economic indicators Thursday morning and basically nothing on Friday.  If you’re looking for a three-day weekend ahead of the  Labor Day herd, this might be a good one to burn a day of comp time on.  No comp time?  Oh, that got outsourced, too,  I forgot…

Robin Handler’s Options Signal Service summed up the arrival of “The Hindenburg Omen” last week this way:

As a reminder, the 5 criteria of the Omen are as follows:

1. That the daily number of NYSE new 52 Week Highs and the daily number of new 52 Week Lows must both be greater than 2.2 percent of total NYSE issues traded that day.
2. That the smaller of these numbers is greater than or equal to 69 (68.772 is 2.2% of 3126). This is not a rule but more like a checksum. This condition is a function of the 2.2% of the total issues.
3. That the NYSE 10 Week moving average is rising.
4. That the McClellan Oscillator is negative on that same day.
5. That new 52 Week Highs cannot be more than twice the new 52 Week Lows (however it is fine for new 52 Week Lows to be more than double new 52 Week Highs). This condition is absolutely mandatory.

Since this has been a kind of buzz ’round the net’, it’s now being pictured elsewhere as heralding the “Financial Doom” of American and other statements along those lines.  I’d remind you that collapse is not a single event, it’s a process – and we just happen to be in it.

Slow as this morning is likely to be, I think I’ll have another split shot Americano tall and try to figure out where all the cartoon voices in my head came from.  I can figure out the sub klaxon without help.

The War Pool

If I were a betting man, I’d bet the August 25th through 28th period will be a meltdown of some of Europe’s banking (again) rather than an attack on Iran by the West.  Still, could be interesting in light of the military maneuvers which are gearing up off North Korea this week.

If you’d like to follow North Korea’s side of things, you can click over to PCWorld and get their twitting details here; maybe they learned a thing or three from the US using Twitter during the Iran internal protests a while back, ya think?

Also,. there have been some internal political maneuverings going on which are leading to some speculation about Who’s Who in line of succession in NK, as differentiated from the Who’s Hu of China.

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But while GTNW (global thermo-nuclear war) is not likely over North Korea.  Iran, on the other hand – second week of November, or so – is a different deal, entirely.  There’s a lot of detail about how all that seems to be headed for a blow-up second week of November when it’ll be lame ducks galore in Washington per the new “Shape of Things To Come” report from www.halfpasthuman.com which was released Sunday morning.  $10-bucks and worth it; just don’t eat first.  Not happy stuff.

But even without the benefit of the plays spelled out there, we see Iran continuing to paint what are effectively larger and larger bull’s eyes on its territory.  The Jerusalem Post, for example in today’s online edition headlines “Iran to build third plant”.  Geniuses.

So if you’re in the office “Next Big War” pool, I’d talk up the idea of a Korea Peninsula showdown, but only as a tool to get the pot a little bigger, and I’d stick with the November 8-12 period for the real deal in the M.E.

As a kind of fine-tuning mechanism I’d be keeping an eye on copper futures on whatever commodity price sites you look in on, like INO.com here.

Food Hikes Are Coming

Sometimes those Shape of Things to Come reports from Clif just absolutely nail a coming trend in an amazing way.  Example: I’ve been telling you for the better part of a year to what?  “Put in a damn four-seasons garden!!”

More than a few people called me “Fear-mongering alarmist!“  when the truth of the matter  is that even a junior time monk learns to live a year into the future.  So, when the stories started appearing lately about all the crop failures in Europe and out of the Wisconsin Ag Connection, the headline was ” August Crop Forecast:  Corn & Soybeans could See New Records” we’d already ordered our greenhouse and will get it set up in coming weeks.

If you don’t have it handy, you might want to bookmark Senate bill 510 which is the “FDA Food Safety Modernization Act” which by some reads would make it illegal for individuals to grow their own food, save seeds, or share it with others.  Wonder how much dough the chemical farming/GMO crooks poured into this one?  Oh well, levers at the read to vote out the co-sponsors in what, twelve weeks, or so?

Related Article:  “Raids Increasing on Farms and Food Supply Clubs.”

Is this the part where I say “Quick!  Look surprised!”?

Quake Spotting

Notice how active the USGS Quake List has been the past couple of weeks? 

Got an email from some outfit this morning referring to the “7.2 Marianas Earthquake” over the past week.  Biggest I could find on the USGS site was the 6.9 quake in the Marianas subduction region, but personally, I find the USGS rated 7.1 in Ecuador last week potentially more meaningful:  Chile quakes, then Ecuador…are they moving north?

Other sites may have slightly different magnitudes reported and, as the emailed evidences, slightly higher quake ratings, but we will stick with the USGS numbers.  The surest way to get data wrong is to use multiple sources which may lead to inaccurate impressions.

Related Development:  A new (previously undiscovered) fault down int he Haiti area….

Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite Department

Hmmm…maybe bed bugs are drawn to fresh apples…Big Apples…yeah…dats dah ticket…that’d explain why 1 in 10 New Yorksters have had bedbug problems, right?

Not MY Zeus

No connection between my editor (Zeus the Cat – ZtC) but just to be sure, I have taken his computer administrator rights away since a reader sent in the headline:

“Zeus Trojan steals $1 million from U.K. bank accounts…“

Seems like that new Sly move (The Expendables) is doing very well at the box offices around the country.  May have to go see it one of these days.  Salt was pretty good as was Sorcerer’s Apprentice before that.  Trying to keep up on movie-going may be one of the last affordable hobbies. 

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I’ve put my quest for an airplane on hold for a while.  Too hot to fly without air conditioning, and the planes that come with a/c are a LOT more expensive to fly.  Oh, sure, once you get up to altitude (if you’re going somewhere, that is) the temps come down…at the rate of about 3-4 degrees per thousand feet of altitude, BTW.  Still, when it’s 99 on the ground and you’re staying in the pattern, the effect is more like broiling under one of those halogen light cooking rigs.

The only sensible way to fly in Texas, new Mexico, Aridzona, and the rest of the south in the summer is plan a cross-country trip of several hundred miles, leaving at first light and getting up to cruise altitude as quickly as possible.  Then, when comes time to land, make as quick a descent as possible to avoid heat stroke….

Coming to some of these realizations, I’ve decided to go on a couple of fcar trips.  They may be slower, but should be fun, nevertheless.  And the a/c in Elaine’s car is great.  Our first weekend ‘mini’ will be up to Oklahoma to see Robin Landry & his wife.  Robin and I will no doubt be spending most of the time going over minute differences in how we count the market moves here lately.

Then, a week or two later (right after school starts) we’re throwing darts at places to visit.  One, on my list is Mount Rushmore, which somehow doesn’t have my likeness chiseled in the rock yet.  But we’re open to suggestions.

The criteria should be fairly simple:  Where’s a good place to go for splendid eye treats?  And within a reasonable drive from the midst of East Texas, too.  Don’t recall seeing a central US poll of best places to visit.  Done caves, mountains and much of the West.  600 mile limit, please, although I am aware that Rushmore’s a bit further, 1220.1 miles according to the Gatesian navigation software.

Been thinking about making a loop of it:  Memphis and Nashville for blues and some country on the eastern side of the loop, a pizza an d steak festival in Chicago, then come down the Western side through the Flaming Gorge park to Grand Junction, then on to Silverton-Durango if I can get train tickets.

We’ve got people to see in New Mexico, not to mention the Hill Country northeast of San Antonio, so not like once we get out on the road we couldn’t just do a big amble of things.  Living in cheap, but hopefully not bed bug-infested hotels, would be in keeping with one of Pappy’s greatest observations about the prices people pay for hotel rooms when traveling:  “Once you close your eyes and go to sleep, they are all pretty much the same regardless of price…” 

That’s when I started figuring that the difference between a $750 a night hotel and a $250 a night hotel was $500 amortized over about 4-hours of being awake and in the room.  Coffee’s pretty much the same in either case, and yes, you might get a $10-breakfast thrown in with the $750 room, but I can buy breakfast for 2-months on the difference.

Idle planning, at least for now, but once the weather cools off a bit, I’m starting to get that ‘get up and look around’ feeling.  Haven’t done much of it for a number of years and there’s something therapeutic about looking at the country from more than one perspective.

Maybe we just need to buy a company somewhere that’s cool in the summer and then spend half our time at one end of the country, and half at the other.  That’d make the most sense and makes one, or the other, all a business trip.

Hmmm…

Curious Smell…

Had a reader call form Miami about 6:10 this morning with a curious observation:

“Have you had any other reports from the Miami area of people smelling oil or something unusual in the air this morning?  I have a good filtration system in my apartment and the filter has some activated charcoal in it, but when I went outside there was a definite scent of something – just a whiff that you got used to pretty quick – and I’m wondering since wee had a good rain yesterday if you have had any other reports?”

Nope, first one, so far.  But the reader asked if other people in the South Florida area are noticing anything today, especially if they go from an air conditioned/filtered building into the outside air, or if it was just his imagination playing tricks.  But, if that was the case, how come someone he was with also smelled it and mentioned it?

So, wonders a foreign press outfit, Did president Obama go for a swim in the Gulf, or not?

Curious Billing

Say: One reason this morning’s column is a little ,shorter than usual is that a certain software/fire wall outfit sent me a billing for $64.95 for a recurring license.  Which would be fine, but I didn’t recall having a subscription to renew automatically and let them pull funds out of PayPal without my specific OK.  I am one of those tight-fisted people that doesn’t believe in recurring subscriptions and even encourage Peoplenomics subscribers to canel theirs so that my system can invite them to renew – not renew and then issue a refund if someone doesn’t like it.

Anyway, I’m curious how many other people are finding an issue with ‘billing agreements’ that were not authorized as a subscription.  A logical follow-on question is whether such companies may be running into hard financial timers such that risking such a customer relations boondoggle would make sense, but I suppose we’ll never actually know on that one.

Send your comments to george@ure.net

Reader Action Department:

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…

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:

http://www.urbansurvival.com/setupMCMstdGU.exe

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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Last week’s report is always here

I suppose you’re wondering where triskaidekaphobia (variously spelt)  came from, if you don’t already know.  That’s ‘The Fear of the number 13” which is curious because it’s a number that’s always popped up in a strange way in my lift; 13-years on 1300 AM in my news days, just for example.  Oh, and my first newscast was at 13:00 (1 PM) for some of that time when I was working afternoon drive.

From Wikipedia we note:

On Friday 13 October 1307, the Knights Templar were ordered to be arrested by Philip IV of France. The theory has been suggested, in the book Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry by John J. Robinson, that the Templars went underground among masons in England and later developed into Freemasons. Because most of the founding fathers of the United States of America were Freemasons, it is possible the memory of the terror of that day is preserved in the Friday the 13th.

Numbers are curiously human creations; neither the goats, nor cats, nor any wildlife around the ranch here see particularly concerned about the numerical

implications of the failure of derivative notional values to remain notional; an event which will destroy the world’s financial systems are illiquid intangible financial assets undergo price collapse.

Interestingly, none of the farm animals here seemed particularly concerned with the Consumer Price Index report out this morning, either.  But, since humans love numbers and financial numerology, here’s the deal:

“The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.3 percent in July on a seasonally adjusted basis, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. (Before seasonal adjustment, the all items index was unchanged for the month.) Over the last 12 months, the index increased 1.2 percent before seasonal adjustment.

The energy index posted its first increase since January and accounted for over two thirds of the seasonally adjusted all items increase. Both the gasoline and household energy indexes turned up in July after a series of declines. The food index, in contrast, declined in July, largely due to the fourth consecutive decline in the fruits and vegetables index.

The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.1 percent in July after increasing 0.2 percent in June. The indexes for shelter, apparel, used cars and trucks, and tobacco all continued to increase in July. In contrast, the indexes for medical care and recreation turned down in July and the indexes for airline fares and household furnishings and operations continued to decline. The 12-month change in the index for all items less food and energy remained at 0.9 percent for the fourth month in a row.

A few highlight numbers (unadjusted 12 months here):  Food overall up 9/10ths of one percent, energy up 8%, fuel oil up 15/1% whiole3 used cars and trucks were up a whopping 17.0 percent…which really makes sense:  What better way to hide incipient deflation than do the cash for clunkers to raise this part of the CPI higher than anything else?  I should have bought me a few acres worth of clunkers when I could have.  Might have been one of the great all time investments.

Of course when prices are up only 1.2% before adjustments, and the M1 figure is up 4½% and Trader Bart’s M3 Reconstructed is still declining at an annual rate of 7% or so, the real pig in a poke is whether M3 double bottoms – and then if that happens, whether there will be any life left on earth following…

Then There’s Retail

If you thought the Consumer Price numbers were fun, consider the latest retail sales figures, also out this morning…

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for July, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $362.7 billion, an increase of 0.4 percent (±0.5%)* from the previous month, and 5.5 percent (±0.5%) above July 2009. Total sales for the May through July 2010 period were up 5.9 percent (±0.3%) from the same period a year ago. The May to June 2010 percent change was revised from -0.5 percent (±0.5%)* to – 0.3 percent (±0.2%).

Retail trade sales were up 0.4 percent (±0.5%)* from June 2010, and 5.9 percent (±0.7%) above last year. Nonstore retailers sales were up 12.6 percent (±2.5%) from July 2009 and gasoline stations sales were up 12.2 percent (±1.8%) from last year.

The advance estimates are based on a subsample of the Census Bureau’s full retail and food services sample. A stratified random sampling method is used to select approximately 5,000 retail and food services firms whose sales are then weighted and benchmarked to represent the complete universe of over three million retail and food services firms. Responding firms account for approximately 65% of the MARTS dollar volume estimate. For an explanation of the measures of sampling variability included in this report, please see the Reliability of Estimates section on the last page of this publication.

Why, this is so much fun I can hardly stand it.  Wait, here’s a picture:

Looks good, UNTIL you remember the auto industry took last year off and cash for clunkers program kicked in.  Oh, and let’s not forget this is DOLLARS not UNITS.  So, if you have 4½ percent monetary inflation (M1) or if you want to use Bat’s M3 down 7%, then the implied decline in units could be anywhere from units down 2% (plus or minus noise) to down 5% (plus or minus noise) which is what I would expect.

Is George full-o-crap?  Well, look at the Rail Time Indicators report from the Association of American Railroads for July:

“The Association of American Railroads (AAR) today (Monday, actually, – G)  reported that monthly rail carloads for July 2010 were up 4.1 percent compared with the same period last year, but still down 14.6 percent compared with July 2008. According to AAR’s August Rail Time Indicators Report, intermodal traffic in July was up 17.3 percent compared with the same month in 2009, but also down 5.1 percent compared with July 2008. “

Smart guys at the AAR – one of the few reports to look at two years, not this lamebrain 1-year crap most follow.  Right on…

Oh, and a check of the Bloomberg chart shows from year ago levels, the Baltic Dry Index is still lower, although gaining a bit in the past few weeks…

Down at the open?  On the Friday the 13th?  Why, imagine that.  Who would have thought…except of course for Georgie Porgy, pudding and puts, made some bucks while being nuts…  (reads better than it speaks, LOL)

Market Reaction

While we wait for the market to open, and I consider my roughly 10% gain for the week for today’s decline, (profits from being in short-side winners) one of those Tyler Durden notes over at ZeroHedge is worth a read.  Scroll down a bit here and realize the so-called Hindenburg Omen has just gone off.

Quick…look surprised!

Bye-Bye Jobs

In case you missed it, and you may have, the Wall St. Cheat Sheet has a list of “23 Occupations that will never recover from the Great Recession“.  Your’s on it?

A reader who signed himself President, University of Retired Person (a moniker or nom de web worth filching) offered this parallel view:

“Just passing this along in case you are not aware of it. I’m sure your readers would be interested. While the rest of the US is in a depression, at least one government agency (Commerce) is offering buyouts of as much as $25,000 for people to leave their good government jobs. Usually when the government squanders tax dollars this way, its because they don’t want to implement reduction in force (RIF) procedures where they can’t protect their favorite employees. You know, the ones who will follow orders and not understand what they are doing, or worse.”

My, how history rhymes at times…

Cups of Java

Oracle is going after Google for infringing on its Java patentplex.  How close the Android – mostly phones – operating system gets seems to be headed for long (read: expensive) litigation.

Funding the Aristocracy

Did you read the juicy details about FHA loans for the ultra rich in the story “Manhattan Luxury Condos Try FHA Backing in Sales “Game Changer”. 

Has someone in the Federal Housing Administration lost sight of reality?  What ever happened in the marketplace to excesses being allowed to fail?

Big Quake Worry?

Like you don’t have enough to worry about, right?  How to scrape up the dough for the Q3 tax filings due on September 15th.  Kids to soccer, and on and on….

But try to save some room on your worry list to look at the quake swarming in the Azores Islands region of the Eastern Atlantic.  Not just one or two, but SEVEN quakes all around 36 North, -32.9 to -33 degrees.

That these quakes are about 200-miles south of the Azores is not the point, nor is the activity in the Mid Atlantic Ridge.

Nope:  The thing to worry about is what this might do to the Island of Santa Cruz de la Palma…where the Cumbre Vieja is a disaster waiting to happen.

Ever read the Wikipedia entry on what happens when Cumbre Vieja slips?

“British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC2 Channel) transmitted “Mega-tsunami; Wave of Destruction”[5], which suggested that a future failure of the western flank of the Cumbre Vieja would cause a “mega-tsunami.”

Day et al. (1999)[6] and Ward and Day (2001)[7] hypothesize that during a future unascertained eruption, the western half of the Cumbre Vieja – approximately 500 km3 (5 x 1011 m3) with an estimated mass 1.5 x 1015 kg, will catastrophically fail in a massive gravitational landslide and enter the Atlantic Ocean generating a so called “mega-tsunami.” The debris will continue to travel – as a debris flow, along the ocean floor. Computer modeling indicates that the resulting initial wave may attain a local amplitude (height) in excess of 600 metres (1,969 ft) and an initial peak to peak height that approximates to 2 kilometres (1 mi), and travel at about 1,000 kilometres per hour (621 mph) (approximately the speed of a jet aircraft), inundating the African coast in about 1 hour, the southern coast of England in about 3.5 hours, and the eastern seaboard of North America in about 6 hours, by which time the initial wave would have subsided into a succession of smaller ones each about 30 metres (98 ft) to 60 metres (197 ft) high. These may surge to several hundred metres in height and be several kilometres apart but retaining their original speed. The models of Day et al.[6], and Ward and Day[7], suggest that it could inundate up to 25 kilometres (16 mi) inland. This would greatly damage or destroy cities along the entire North American eastern seaboard. The physical damage would take tens if not hundreds years to repair and restore. The economies of the countries affected would likewise take several years to return to the pre-inundation levels.”

 Say, you don’t think that would compare with your pother worriers would it?  I seem to recall the runway height at Boca Raton, Florida is only 13-feet above sea level, Miami International is only 8-feet or so if I’m reading the sectional right.

No point worrying, especially if you live in Florida.

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Speaking of which – several Florida folks wrote in and offered that the spate of palm trees (and other vegetation) turning brown is due to a recent cold snap…not from Gulf disaster operations.  OK…whatever.