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Beware The Second Half of April If I could pick any one day to be National Wear Bulletproof Vest Day, it would likely be somewhere here in mid-to-late April. Several readers have sent in notes that point in particular to the period around April 19 as one when some or recent history's most repugnant events have occurred.
For example, on this date in 1993 it was the Branch Dividian Waco siege that killed 76 people - the government's way of serving a search warrant when proceeded by a 51-day standoff.
In 1995 it was the Oklahoma City bombing - and there continues to be controversy about that event - was it somehow tied to terrorism or back to a rogue faction of government?
Other Big/release events seem like they are somehow drawn to the mid April to 2/3r'd of the way through the month.
True, such collections might be written about any other collection of dates, but this one is making the rounds on the new right now. I'd be eyes wide open about everything this weekend if I were going out and about. That'd make me a little more dodge-headed at least through Monday. Extra care with power tools in the shop, too I suppose, but more likely extra care about guns/shooting and such.
George's Rally Last week the mood of investors was sour - along the lines of "We're all freakin' doomed!" but after Friday's romp by the markets, perhaps even that one-man-medical-recycling station known as the Mogambo Guru will be forced to admit that a mindless blow-off top is shaping up for the markets. If not now, then as we go into summer. Almost 524 points to the up side last week.
The Friday rally was fueled by Google and Citigroup leading the way. A financial and a tech stock? Wait, aren't they supposed to be laggards here?
And speaking of trends: Dow Theory says the transport index is a good proxy for what's to come. If so, then the market has another 20% to run given how the Transportation Index has been showing of late. Could that imply just north of 15,400? Which would be a new all-time high? Yeah, could be - manic blow off tops are any ting but predictable. Which is why I don't offer financial advice - I just write about it as an amazed/befuddled/ astonished observer with no ax to grind... --- Then we have to consider that one of the reasons for Citi's rally was the report that they will be trimming 9,000 jobs. I wonder how much the stock would have popped if they had trimmed twice that?
I ask that only half-joking. If Citi could find a buyer for its $64 billion a year in revenue streams at any kind of a premium they could lay off everyone. The stock currently sports a book value of $22.74 a share on a MRQ basis (most recent quarter). Do I belie a price to book bias? --- Electronic Arts has extended its offer for Take-Two. Say, you don't think this will turn into a subplot on the next iteration of Grand Theft Auto, do you? (I'm one of those people who thought one of the best features of GTA was the radio station played in the car - you oughta listen to it closely...) --- In my personal trading tactics for the coming week, in the commodities markets, I may roll out of silver, wheat, and coffee options that I'm holding for July. Reason? If you plot out the time premium in an option, it decays ever-faster once you get inside the 50-day mark, and so in order to maintain my positions (based on my belief that inflation is coming I want to have a lot of time on my side.
I still believe that wheat will continue to increase, that silver will be buoyed by the crazy printing of paper assets, and coffee will benefit from the declining dollar. It's just that these forces might work out slower than I expect, so rolling forward into longer term expirations makes sense in here. I almost did it on Wednesday with the idea of re-entering in a week or two... --- The big inflation news is that oil futures hit $117 a barrel - and don't forget, that $117 is based on an oil barrel which is 42 gallons - not the 55-gallons used in the US for industrial chemicals and finished distillate product. Coincidence?: Iraqi forces have a big operation going against Basra Iraq this weekend.
And talk about holding up a sign that says "Bomb Here!" to the West- the president of Iran says that crude oil is too cheap at $115 a barrel. Pappy had a great saying "Your mouth will generally get you into more trouble than it will get you out of..." Apparently, Iran's president's pappy skipped that particular "Father's lessons to sons..."
As Cliff and I discussed with Jeff Rense Friday night on the Rense radio program, it's looking more and more like the Iran War (that goes badly/wrong and leaves a mess for generations) will not come later than we first thought - perhaps not until August-September. That, in turn (when it goes badly) would argue for an October 7th something impacting markets which would lead to the massive declines to follow. Oil embargo, dollar collapse, something like that yet undefined.
I think Jeff was a little surprised at Cliff's explanation that the BIG/HUGE 'release period' which begins this fall will last until as late as July of 2010 Which would make it a very long, very ugly period of history indeed. On the other hand, we have the spring and early summer to all get our houses in order so we can help people who are not as 'future-directed' get ready for such events. --- The two summary points we offered as the close of the show near repeating: Grow something - even if it's just a few potted plants even a few tomato plants in 5-gallon containers on the deck work event for coop (apartment) dwellers and can provide good 'trading stock'. And, keep asking yourself "How will I make ends meet for everyday needs if the whole current Western paradigm of 'paper assets' falls apart as the 'glue' represented by the socioeconomic contract collapses?
Too Big To Fail! Of course, now that the Fed is consolidating its hold on the money system of the USA, once controlled by Congress, but not in any meaningful way lately, we notice that the Bank of England and the British government are also planning to rig their financial markets by 'shoring up the debt market."
"George, it's for everyone's own good!" I can hear it now. Well, if was, wouldn't we have had a paper currency that had been successful at such a regimen in the past? Recall the USA is on its fourth currency now. If we weren't, the Continental would still be in circ, right?
No, there's nothing specifically wrong with rigging the markets, it just adds a new layer of chance to getting a fair shake on any investment - or given our reliance on Middle East money to bail out troubled banks and such, perhaps we should be looking for a fair sheik...so to speak.
Not to go 'broken record' on you but gasoline prices are going higher for two reasons: suppliers want more value - and the dollar has continued its decline, the late week bounce being hardly a blip in the larger trend.
Strikes: 1, 2, .... Speaking of Jeff (who's a great Mario Lanza fan, by the way) he's got a very interesting story on his site which wonders: "AA strike to lead to a crippling National Strike?"
It's interesting because there's already been a significant increase in labor action/ strike talk directed toward late spring '08.
GM is looking at a Chevy Malibu plant strike as a possibility, and of course you know West Coast Longshoremen are planning an anti-war stoppage on May 1st.
Pope Control Security police guarding the pontiff have bagged a pesky beaver in the East River. I thought beaver hunting was an evening activity, but not in NYC...
Hitting the Bottles Canada has banned polycarbonate infant bottles because of a chemical ingredient. Chemical BPA is suspect. And you thought hitting the bottle referred to something else?
Around The Ranch: Our Own Tornado We're not sure if it was a tornado, but a good chunk of Friday was spent taking a visual inventory of the damage to the lower part of our property by the wild winds through the area early Friday morning.
A couple of dozen trees came down - which means a ton of work for me and the chain saw to get things back cleaned up again. Just to give you a sense of the damage, here's a 4 foot diameter tree down on the west property line and a 70' high pine uprooted by the winds...the root ball here is about 12-feet across:
Here's a 15" diameter limb that was ripped off and deposited some distance from the 'donor' tree:
People in the Dallas/Fort Worth area are also cleaning up this weekend. The trees mainly aren't causing any problems, per se, but they make the property look a mess. I may put an ad on Craig's List for free firewood if anyone wants to come by and cut it - I'll help haul it out with the tractor. Tons of wood...and if an oak tree is worth $100 and a long pine $200, we probably lost about $4,000 worth of trees in this.
So that was the freight-train sounding noise in the middle of the night that took out the power...
Market Tactics: Phase Shifted BehaviorI've been pondering the investment performance of a colleague the last week or two, and I've come up with an interesting - and perhaps useful - new way to look at investment decisions. Part of it comes from reading "Secrets of the Unified Field: The Philadelphia Experiment, the Nazi Bell, and the Discarded Theory." Not to worry, the report this week won't be getting into the woo-woo area of borderland science. But, the book does get me to thinking again about something most people give very little (if any) head space to; the concept of the phase relationship between their individual behaviors and overall group/societal level behaviors, and in particular that social oddity called "The Market". In short, a new way to look at your trading track record and one that I haven't seen discussed in any of the literature. I'll show you how learning to think of your trading in electrical engineering terms used in AC distribution systems may be a very good thing, indeed.
\(The discussion of a potential fifth wave failure is in the ChartPack)
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One follow up note: In the discussion of AC power systems (it really relates to trading styles, honest!) a power company electrical engineer says most companies charge based on a power factor of 1.0. Most exceptions are on the industrial side.
Tell Your Friends About This Site! If you know anyone who is interested in preserving the Constitution, fighting usury from banksters, and shaking off consumer hypnosis, tell them about this site. Click here to send 'em an invite...
Mr. Cheap's Tricks There are lots of ways to save money on food, shelter, transportation, and such. It just takes a little reading and one source of good ideas is our handy ebook "How to Live on $10,000 a year or less. Still just $10. ---- Last week's report is here. If for back issues of this site, click here. (Goes back to 1997!) ---- I promised Elaine that I would unload some of my equipment, so if you're looking for ham gear, especially the older tube-type (EMP resistant) type, send me a note and I will send out the list of what I'm selling off when I get it together. Click here to Put Me On Ham Gear List
Friday April 18, 2009 Them Winds - Texas Style The headline doesn't look like much, if viewed from a thousand miles off, but when the Dallas Morning News headlines "Storms bring hail, outages, to Dallas-Fort Worth" they weren't just-a-kidding.
This morning's report is being brought to you courtesy of the diesel genset here at the ranch because a large tree fell on the feeder lines to our road in the 50-60 mile an house winds here - and the hail up in Big D was bigger than 'silver dollar sized' according to the live coverage we watched on WFAA last night. --- A couple of learning lessons for me in all this. The first is that I need to shorten the maintenance check time on the diesel genset start battery - it managed to be too flat to kick over the generator. Discovering that I could not get enough 'snap' in my manual pulls to start the ice cold genset, that meant moving the car into position along with the jumper cables. So, a big underline for that one on the to-do list.
Second discovery: The coffeemaker doesn't run without power, and I have been too lazy to lug Mr. Coffee over here - so the morning's writing may be less alert than usual - no doubt due to the shortage of liquid brain accelerant. --- The weather continues to be colder than normal in the nation's mid section and one square state reader offers a local farmer benchmark: For each day past April 21st that spring crops don't go into the ground, yields will be dropping about one percent. --- I have to say I envy the people up in Fon du Lac Wisconsin. "Tornado season fast approaching" headlines the FdL Reporter this morning. Yeah - welcome to the season. The US tornado tally continues to run well in advance of the past several years. --- Typhoon approaching China has 56 fishermen missing. All part of the linguistic meme "Them Winds" which we're slogging through this spring. Them winds indeed.
Terra Shakes Several readers have sent in notes overnight about the earthquake in the Bellmont Ill9inoiss area overnight. It came in at 5.4 on the Richter scale, and was felt as far off as Chicago, according to CBS in the windy city.. Typical of our reports from the field:
Oh, here's another one of those delightful "ironies to ponder" delivered by the Universe: This is the anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. If you're thinking "Gee, what are the odds?" The correct answer is 100% today on Rock Three.
A curious linguistic reference: Folks in Chicago call the quake area "downstate" I wonder if people in Chicago know up from down?
Media In Decline I've been mentioning to you for some time that the mainstream media companies which operate newspapers and mainstream television are running into fierce headwinds from competition based on the internet and niche news operations that meet specialized needs - take all those RSS feeds, just as a for-instance.
We can not study the report that the "New York Times Company Posts a Loss " of $335,000 for the quarter. The large issue is now what happened to last quarter, but where will things go from here? --- On the other side of the shift, please notes that http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080417/earns_google.html?.v=10and the analysts are all over the place trying to say "See, I told youi..."
Truth Leak Now the Government Accountability Office says the US lacks a plan to operate in Pakistani tribal areas. Not that that's a revelation - just confirmation that we can't fight all wars, all places, without more people and money. Elsewhere, the Washington Post reports that "Combat Street may cost the US up to $6-billion over time. More people, more money, like I said...
Martial Who? Seem posse comitatus is back thanks to q quietly passed bit of legislation that got virtually no headline coverage. Don't wake up the MSM - no confirmation from other sources yet but it's a step in the right direction... --- I was talking to a friend in Chicago yesterday...and he put forth what is lately a familiar complaint: "I look at the presidential contest and I say to myself where's the choice? Why can't we take our country back? Money, power, the usual stuff...but every once in a while the good guys win a round or two in support of the Constitution.
Rigged Voting in Russia First it was Florida and Ohio...and now there are charges that the elections recently in Russia were rigged. So when what's her name gets elected, don't say I didn't warn you..
Smaller Government This email out of Oregon is interesting:
Any chance we can get ALL POLITICIANS to learn this trick? I can't think of any reason why the electorate shouldn't know all the details about which side their bread is buttered on, so to speak...but then I'm just a salt-of-the-earth plebe search for hope in the last days of Rome...
Markets A quick preview shows that the markets are set for a higher open this morning - at least at the moment - in spite of Citi dropping $5.1 billion of loss to the bottom line due to write-downs. An AP story says "Executives see credit and housing as big threats" and with stories like "Dallas, Fort Worth home foreclosures up 39%, I suppose that's not particularly surprising.
Food Riots We continue to get tracking emails on the Google News search for food riot.
And this morning it was up to 2,479...
--- snip and save section ---
Coping: Multitasking Waste This morning's snip and save will be gloriously short. The headline is that "Multitasking Worse on IQ than Pot" and comes originally from an IEEE Potentials paper.
You are welcome to read the paper, but the zinger in is it that the "...American worker wastes 2.1 hours per day due to multitasking."
Elaine often asks me "Why can't you multitask better?" So who says it's better? Certainly not the I triple E paper...I'll just keep my serial-laser approach to things, thanks. --- Elaine can't walk from one end of the house to the other without being distracted by 20 items of this or that along the way. I, on the other hand, can take a totally focused single task from one end of the house to the other, even if even if doing so requires walking over a couch that's on fire or across a carpet littered with broken glass to get there...
Is It Your Money? Months back I told you how banks were limiting the amount of cash people could get out of their accounts - and while it varies by bank, it's not that much - generally in the $2,000 to $2,500 range say my sources in the banking industry.
And worse, if you even ask how much you can get that triggers something called an SAR - suspicious activity report, which goes up the bankstering food chain until it lands in a federal office somewhere where it's reviewed. Everyone is suspect in the New Amerika.
It's a weird hybrid of legal concepts: Everyone nowadays is potentially guilty until the politikal apparatchik says they're good, safe, party members..
"What are you going to do with that much cash, Citizen?" "Any damn thing I want..." "Say, you've got an attitude there -- Do you have any identification on you?" and the list goes on....
OK, that's the set-up - now to this email:
Well, let me first say that I don't play options any more because it's a crooked game. Not that the individual players are bad guys, or the brokerage firms - they're OK. What's crooked is the government's intervention in the markets which means that even if you make a good bet, government intervention can rob you blind.
Say you had shorted Bear Stearns. The company was headed for the great financial dumpster. In comes the shotgun marriage and poof - a brilliant short is saved from going to zero.
The Fed and a bunch of their power-grabbing buddies say "Oh, look how we saved an outfit that's too big to fail!" But, until the Fed publishes their listed of the anointed who will be bailed out, I won't play stock options because the game is rigged and pappy didn't raise no fool.
OK, if I had money I was willing to waste? I might consider just a few at the money calls for index options for the July cycle. But, I wouldn't do that with anything but money that would otherwise be invested in something useful.
But that's a matter of context, too. Like my old live aboard sailor's bumper sticker says: "I spent all my money on sailboats, booze and women: The rest, I wasted."
--- Send snip and save notes to george@ure.net - anything that helps youi understand life, get along better, save money, or ease the pain discomfort of hemer....oh, well, you got the idea. --- end snip and save section ---
Thursday April 17, 2008 Screaming Oil, Crying Dollars Although there was a jam-up of the dollar early this morning, the bigger question floating around today is "Where will oil stop in its upward climb?" Which will be closely followed by "Is there some point of no return for the dollar beyond which jam-ups will fail?
To the headlines: " Oil futures jump to record over $115 on supply concerns" says an AP report. I know, I know, you're thinking: "George all this Peak Oil stuff is made up - the world is swimming in oil and it's just the Big Oil companies trying to shove it to us consumers...." Except, that's not quite right.
Even if you don't follow the work of oil industry financier Matthew ("Twilight in the Desert") Simmons, you should look at his PowerPoint's which are very clear about what's going on in the Oil Patch. The latest paper on his site, posted March 7th, asks (on page 2), what are "The Key Investment Questions for 2008 (and Beyond?):
I won't try to answer these (you can read the .pdf of the .ppt if you're interested), but somewhere between the "Sky is falling!" of the Alarmists and the "It's all made up" of the Conspiracists the truth ought to be found. --- I've got a feeling that economic depressions happen when society gets so attached to an 'old way of doing business' that a "new reality" is ignored and a kind of active denial sets in about where the collective dots seem to be leading.
From this standpoint, it doesn't matter if one of the drivers of the 1930's depression was the displacement of horses by internal combustion engines in agriculture, which meant land used for horse-raising had to be turned to crops in order to make payments, resulting in excess production which led to the commodity price declines - initially OK - but which spiraled into The (first) Great Depression, OR whether the modern analog could be a continuation of pre Peak Oil consumption rates at (and after) the nominal Peak has been passed - again, likely resulting in a Depression.
Can someone call me when the last tree in the Amazon is cut down? --- Depressions, of course, come in two flavors. You have the excess supply Depressions (1929 and others) where there was simply too much production and prices fell, OR the inflationary depression (1923 Weimar example) where the purchasing power of the currency was so hollowed out that it took millions of marks to buy a loaf of bread. --- My colleague Jas Jain and I have been going back and forth over how the coming Second Depression (or, Jas calls it the "Greater Depression") will be revealed because understanding the dynamics of it may not only define your personal well-being in future years, but it may also define the kind of world your children, and generations of grand children live in thereafter. This is, in an historical sense, "The Biggie" question to get right.
So over coming weeks, if this web site occasionally sounds like a policy workshop for the Banksters, it's not the intention. My goal is simply to present as much information and as many ideas as possible on the question of inflationary fires or deflationary fires, because if you get this one right, you ought to be able to be sittin' pretty for a long time to come.
Just as an example: If a person believed that a highly deflationary workout was ahead, the renting a home would be the smartest thing to do because a home could be purchased in the future for fewer (nominal) dollars. On the other hand, if a hyper-inflationary blow-off is in the cards, then one strategy would be to buy up foreclosures for pennies on the dollar and hang on as the printed presses work their magic.
This morning, Jas counters my view that the world is likely headed for an inflationary blow-off before we get to the real deflation (note that we do agree on massive repudiation of debt at some point and resultant deflation).
--- While I'm ever ready to to stop my battery of the deflationist view, I continue to hold that in a resource constrained world, those countries with resources are likely to see their currencies appreciate while resource constrained economies (like the US) should see weakening currencies.
The point is made as we read this morning how the "Euro strikes new high near $1.60 dollars". Again, this will not be a permanent inflationary workout, but in the short term the commodity cycle continues to feel anything but deflationary.
Just in case I don't have time to write up a more formal response to my friend, consider the Fed's "Beige book indicates further weakness amid consumer slowdown and inflation." And about the debt? "America's Total Debt Report" places the figure now at over $53-trillion and still growing. That puts it omewhere between 4 and 5-times Gross Domestic Product.
Bots, HFCS's, and Sugar Explosions Not to sound overly conspiratorial, but just when we're reading headlines about how the "Georgia sugar refinery blast victims showing improvement" here in the US, overseas we read how there has been another sugar mill explosion. This time it's a "Pakistan sugar mill blast claims seven lives".
Coincidence? You mean like rash of undersea cable breaks in the Middle East recently? These are the kind of stories that I see now and then and wonder "Might this be the active hand of intervention by the PTB?" --- I keep forgetting to mention that our predictive linguistics group has another 'web bot hit' in the making with the latest in the high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) debate. As you'll recall reading here the week ending February 23rd of this year:
As expected, the headlines began around the first of April with notes like "HFCS is not 'natural' says FDA." and the anti-HFCS meme continues to build with a call today in a Canadian paper to "Make healthy snacks for lunches" The role of HFCS was explored this week as part of the documentary work "King Corn" which was on PBS. And opinion columns are developing, too, with headlines like "Amsterdam: the politics of high-fructose corn syrup." --- I'd have to count this as a predictive linguistics hit, although unlike something as dramatic as a tsunami, or earthquake, single big events, this one is a big ratcheting up of the awareness/discussion around a particular topic. Right on schedule, too.
Now, back to the mourning news....
Sense of Place "Suicide bomber kills 42 at funeral."
The Runs: Another Debate If you missed it (and care) here's a selection of accounts...
Dangerous Needles Supreme Court says death by lethal injection OK.
Ah... Gassed GW wants voluntary limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Like people are going to voluntarily give up the phat life? Is there something in the water in Washington?
INS' Pilgrimage The Feds were busy detaining hundreds of workers at Pilgrim's Pride poultry plants Wednesday in five states. Papers, please... and speaking of that...
Say Swabbie.... "Feds to collect DNA from every person they arrest." Once again, I'd remind you spitting in the face of authority is a bad idea...
Me? I'm thinking about patenting my personal DNA. Why? Because that way, if someone takes it without paying a HUGE ROYALTY, I would have recourse! Sure, what the hell.... If the big Pharma corps can patent life, I figure I better patent my own DNA, right?
Want it in your database? Sorry - that trade secret of being a George ought to fetch $100,000 a year....
Watered Down Plans "Study backing more water exports to Southern California is nullified" in part because it didn't consider endangered salmon and steelhead runs says the LA Times. Hmmm...sounds fishy...
--- snip and save section ---
Coping: Hacking & The Joy of Soldering Want some cool things to build? How about this one: a small wireless motion sensor set up. The offering reader sent this note saying. this is..
I have to say that one of the marvels of living in the present day is the huge number of opportunities to "hack" different technologies.
For electronics in general, the site www.hacnnmod.com is a good one.
If you want to one-up the software companies, there's www.2600.com
And, for just getting things done way more efficiently than you have ever done in the past, be sure to read everything over at www.lifehack.org. --- One notch down the excitement scale (with a lot more practical stuff) is O'Reilly's "Make Magazine" Got some VCR parts and a big hard drive? Make your own TIVO substitute kind of thing. Also check out www.hackzine.com.
Then there's the true electronics purist who's into ham radio (I confess...) With no Morse Code required anymore, the big barrier to entry has been removed and why people feel compelled to pay $50 a month for a cell phone for the kids when they could learn something and use a real radio is beyond me. www.arrl.org for information.
Got a scanner you want to modify to cover....er...additional frequencies? Check out www.mods.dk.
Why even Google hacks are popular.
So, the next time you come across a piece of technology that doesn't fit your particular need, simply bend it, shape it, any way you want it. Google [whatever it is] +hack and you might be pleased with the results.
All Worth It? Ever so often along comes a headline which makes me think Hey! People are getting it!
The UK Independent this morning: "The city-dwellers who are becoming front garden farmers". There's hope...
--- End snip and save ideas to george@ure.net
--- end snip and save section
Around the Ranch: A reader Note I too have noticed that for the past couple of days the Kitco supplied chart with US dollar and PM prices has been missing from the top of this page. I haven't changed any of the code on this end, so it may be some changes there. I am looking into it, but all this is to warn that if you show up one of these mornings and the site looks a little different, don't be afraid. Change is inevitable.
Wednesday April 16, 2008 Flee Falling Dollar "Wait a minute, Ure. You meant free falling dollar, right?"
Well, no, the headline says "Oil hits new record as investors flee the falling dollar." When I looked, gold was up over $16 for the day (chart server overload may prevent the display at the top of this page...)
And guess where they are putting their money? Why, into commodities of course. Just as I told you would happen... --- So, how are the other commodities doing today? A few headlines...
I suppose you might be wondering why I saved this morning's new Consumer Price Index report as the second item in today's report. Well, the answer is simple: Around here, I'm much more focused on events yet-to-come, instead of staring into the review mirror of economics to be sure of where we've been. Where we were is a "who cares now?" thing to me.
I stubbornly hold to the idea that I can maybe - just possibly - hedge a bit against the future. But hedge against the past? Forgitaboutit. I mean I'm good - but not that good.
Now, About Consumer Inflation The report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is out...here's today's rendition of Prices According to BLS:
If you feel like prices you're paying are not accurately reflected in the BLS numbers, remember they make hedonic adjustments. And those are?
Say you've been eating top sirloin steak. the price of steak goes up too high. So hedonically you might decided to substitute ground sirloin which, after all, tastes like sirloin, has roughly the same fat content, and it's protein just like the steak. Just a lot less embarrassing on the report than admitting steaks have gone up 30% in the past year. --- The 12-month unadjusted rate at 4.0% in the March CPI report compares with a six-month's ago figure of 2.8% in September and a March 2007 increase of 2.8%. Deflation? Where?
Even home prices aren't collapsing the CPI. Housing prices year-on-year are up 3% unadjusted which I assume means that rents are going up while home prices are going down...
The Continuing Inflation/Deflation Debate My deflationist pal Jas Jain seems to continue in denial about my contention that prices will go up first before we crash this fall in a final blow off top:
The Time Monks at www.halfpasthuman.com find the Jain-Ure rantalog (New word: half rant, half dialog, send me 10¢ each time you use it, please) to be modestly amusing. "Short term we will spike in crazy to unbelievable inflation linguistically over summer and you'll be right, but by the end of the year Jas will be looking like a genius..." they figure. October collapses are like that, I suppose. Ask me in November.
So PPI going up at an annual rate of 14-odd percent, this morning's CPI report, the flee falling dollar report, rebounding precious metals, record oil prices, and food riots...where's the deflation in that?
Ultimately, George The Monetarist says (and Ben Bernanke's boyz are proving this daily) if you print enough paper prices will go up and whether you happen to be a central European nation beggared by WW I, as was the case with the Weimar inflation, or whether you're living in a soon-to-be-foreclosed-on house in the world's biggest debtor nation in history, the mechanics are the same: printers will rule.
Long-term Jas will be right, though, and when the currency itself fails, say in November after Crash II, we will have a new currency and a Kondratieff long wave trough war (WW III or WW IV, depending on how you count the Cold War, Gulf I, Gulf 2, or whatever happens with Iran shortly.)
Prime: Father of Subprime "Here comes the next mortgage crisis" headlines Slate.
Those Poor Bankers Gee, when I read the headline "Private banks feel sting as crisis hurts the rich..." I find myself wondering why I just can't seem to summon up a lot of compassion for the four home, private plane, dollar uber alles mindset. I must be...er....human.
Fuelish Humans Department The word is leaking out of the German press: "Pressure Grows on EU to Abandon Biofuels." Seems the denials by the Bushco folks about the link with soaring food prices are not only falling flat in the US but overseas as well.
Hungry for News "France takes aim at cult of Thinness" says the Washington Post today. Another stellar example of Universe's wry sense of irony: World running out of food, France legislates against extreme diets. Go figure. --- "Chaos spreads as food prices skyrocket" says another story in Spiegel in the past week.
Readers Writes: On Executions A different perspective this morning on the Iran execution story from yesterday - from a reader in Mexico City who looks at the US as...well...his note speaks volumes:
I'd argue that the U.S. is not sissified, but the country has simply been hijacked by the Marketing Monster. Stop with the judgmental pills - let's talk about money!
Maybe it's because I am a marketer at heart, but when I look at porn, homosexuality, and debauched womanhood, or any other newly evolved segmentation of society what do I see? Niche Marketing! Each to my way of thinking is a developing niche market which at some level is exploited for what? Money - and we here in the USA are the world leaders in niche marketing, ergo amoral exploitation of everything for the buck!
No, that's not what the Framers of the Constitution had in mind, but everyone in the US is playing a game with banker-rented money and is corporate chattel at some level anyway. So what have we done? Gone crazy with marketing. Mass consumption and mass markets first, and then the big social niche markets - and now there are even conferences about how the future holds promise of a brand new segmentation scheme called "mass customization". Google it - lots of work in this area now...the race is on between that as the next big thing and we just burn out because of resource/money issues first. --- I'd offer to my Mexico City correspondent that it's because of our ability to constantly generate new niche markets that the flow of workers from Mexico - his countrymen - is to the north, not the other way around. South and Central America seem more about social segmentation than economic segmentation to me...
So when our currency eventually fails (it will be either the fourth of fifth time in the nation's history, so don't be afraid of the change) it won't be due to the amoral nature of money. It will simply mean (mechanistically) that we have reached market saturation across many fronts simultaneously to where further concentration of wealth is not possible. The only issue is whether we will have overshot the planets ability to support the waste implicit in massively parallel niche marketing gone mad.
What follows is the simple matter to consolidate (the historical role of Depressions) and then resegment for another upward leg that our children and grandchildren can enjoy. But that's only if we can get through the coming decade of transition without becoming glowing or starved.
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Coping: Forever Stamps I don't know how I missed this one...oh, I know why: Not stamps are needed on email - yet. But check it out: "forever" stamps are out:
Sounds like a good idea to buy them, depending on how long your planning horizon is. Me? I'll just dish out whatever the freight is - but in the back of my mind I wonder "Gee, would this fit with a trashing of the dollar via inflation to the point where the Amero would come along, but the Post Office would be way ahead of the curve???" Yeah, a little conspiratorial sounding, but still worth a ponder...
Air Conditioning Adventures As I mentioned earlier this week, Elaine and I are having a new heat pump system put in - new everything including ductwork. So, along about 4-hours into the project, the workers cutting in the registers were working in the kitchen with a Sawz-all with a big blade and nicked two waterlines. That led to an afternoon of fun and adventure trying to cobble the odds and ends in the plumbing parts cache into something worthwhile.
But, turns out the effort was doomed from the start because we didn't have really fresh PVC/CPVC glue. So, if you really want to have a totally prepared for anything house, go to the plumbing store or local hardware emporium and make sure you've got at least two of almost everything in the store, and then two or three cans of fresh cement.
Turns out that once the cement starts looking like (pardon this) snot rather than nice clear but colored fluid, its holding power goes to pot. Which explains why after the third attempt to get the pipes back in order, the glue let go (under pressure) as the crew was heading out the driveway about 6:15... --- Besides being properly admonished on the glue front, the bright spot was that our wireless intercoms worked great this morning.
I had patched up the glue joint that failed last night, but it still had a drop-every-couple-of-minutes going, so I turned the water off overnight and we ran it this morning only long enough to fill up containers for flushing, making coffee (the real reason for my being willing to go out and mess with such things at oh-dark-thirty) and to get several glasses of drinking water to have on hand.
About 3-4 months back we had picked up a pair of Chamberlain "Reporter 4-channel wireless intercoms" (which can be networked). It really takes the hassle out of things. No pounding on the floor when I'm under the house fixing this or that (is it broken again?) and if someone needs to turn the water on at the meter - a block up the driveway, there's no ungodly yelling. Just a polite 'beep' followed by a pleasant voice.
So yes, they are not free - just under $80 bucks. And yes, you have to read the directions and press the little button so the machine learn each other's digital address, but once that's done, they are really useful. --- We can, of course, do the same thing with the 2-meterr ham radio gear, or you can pick up a couple of FRS radios on eBay for not much either. But if you want a good investment in quieting of things down - whether you're backing a trailer up, or working on a roof, down in the basement, or 500 feet away on a fence, the wireless communications option is really worthwhile.
And, should you need to summon help, it's there when you need it.
Careful With Taxes! The common version of the American Revolution is that it had something to do with the British and Taxes levied on the Colonies.
We notice this morning, thanks to a sharp-eyed reader - that surprise of surprises, the British idea of taxation is just a little more draconian than our own home spun version.
Specifically, a British "Appeal court rules taxman can keep £864,000 overpayment by ex-Matalan chief." Ouch! Wonder if the guy would help move some of these tea crates around...and say, does TurboTax have a version for the UK?
Finger Food OK, we look at word frequencies once in a while for terms like 'shortage' and 'food riot' (33,109 and 2,485 this morning) but a reader says we oughta take it one step further...
Well, I knew people were hungry for a glimpse into the future, that that hungry? OK, once in a while then... ---
send snip and save notes to george@ure.net
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Tuesday April 15, 2008 Warranted Skepticism: Rising Food Prices Before we get into this morning's producer price index report, a pause to consider food prices is in order. "Food costs rising fastest in 17-years" headlines an AP report. Seems that skepticism of a low reported inflation rate is warranted, eh?
More on point, the returns for the search "food riot" on the Google search engine are up to 3,532 this morning - a statistic one sharp-thinking reader points out is indicative of how there's growing global tension about food going mainstream.
The 'restrictions on travel' linguistic have shown up over the past couple of weeks with the grounding of most MD-80's, so temporally, it's reasonable to expect the encounters with scarcity to be popping up along in here, too. --- We are living in a brave new world of price discontinuities. I'm reading how in Hawaii the price of gasoline is running $3.697 last Thursday. Now, check this out: In LA County the average last week was $3.736. So, here's today's UrbanSurvival smart shopper tip: If you live in LA, fill up in Honolulu. OK, so its a little inconvenient and out of the way (not to mention soggy) but you get the idea - the world has gone one step nuttier. --- Reader Note: Cliff and I have been invited back to the Jeff Rense show on Friday night - see his site www.rense.com - for details. --- I told you at least six months ago that a high rate of inflation was coming due in part to ag costs going up 30% (and more) on the input side. Here at the ranch, we've just been advised that our goat and chicken feed will be going up with the next shipment, and although we're not being told how much yet, I'm braces for something between 15% and 30%. --- While the March Retail Sales figures out Monday might seem like good news (I mean how can increased retail sales be bad right?) it seems indeed they can be when the biggest contributor to the increase in sales was the higher price of gasoline. --- All of which brings me back to questioning the mental acuity of so-called economists who maintain that the right approach to managing the economy is to bail out failing banks with (in effect) taxpayer money, and manage the "core rate" of inflation -- excluding food and energy costs. --- I'm going to spill a cup of hot coffee in your lap here to get your attention as I repeat my contention that: "The Soviet Union didn't crumble. Seems some part of it moved lock-stock-and barrel to Washington where we are now implementing the new State-run 'planned economy' complete with interventions to make sure that there's never too much pain, and that banks which are too big to fail are effectively bought at the behest of the PTB so that those who should lose money because of poor/greed-driven investment decisions never have to face their day of financial reckoning.
Instead, we regular taxpayers are treated to more Fed BOHICA (Bend over, here it comes again) and the soundness of our money is massively diluted by the printing presses, run by folks making 6% a year for managing the nation's money, since CONgress abdicated in 1913 its Constitutional mandate to ensure sound money. --- Bitter? me? Not hardly. Just very disappointed. I'm still hanging onto a pile of commodity options, confident that the inflation tale will become evident by summer. So with that in mind, I have some genuinely mixed feelings about this morning...
Producer Price Report You're staring at something called the manufacturing pipeline. Over there on the left, crude goods are put into the pipe. this would be things like iron ore, crude oil, and so forth.
Along about the middle of the pipe we have intermediate goods which are things steel pipe, intermediate distillates, anything which have about halfway through the manufacturing process.
Then, out the right side of the pipe, you've got finished goods. Ready to be shipped off to the store down the street and available for you to purchase. The bright shiny new box/carton/whatevers.
About here, probably know as much about the producer price pipeline as most economists. Crude goods go in one end, finished goods come out the other. If there's a HUGE increase in the input costs (on the left there) then at some point down the road, presumably there will be some cost pass-through to finished goods because the people along the intermediate stops of this manufacturing pipeline aren't operating a charity.
In fact, these people operating the pipeline are driven to set their prices such that they can make a profit - and if they can't do that here in the good 'ol USA, they will move part of the pipeline offshore...which is why we have a Rust Belt.
Eventually, even the prices offshore go up, due in part to the collapsing purchasing power of the US dollar, which looks like inflation when you're in the US, but which plays out when you're someplace like India or China, like you are being paid with ever-less-valuable paper money.
Now that you're a homespun economist, you're more than qualified to read today's PPI report which goes thusly:
More gory details/charts here in the Gospel According to BLS.
Quick: What's that annualized? Oh, somewhere around 14% Yikes!!! But, did I tell you expect an inflationary explosion, or what?
Don't forget to drop by tomorrow morning, as the next round of the Consumer Price Index is due for release, an event which is sure to bring tears to your eyes - for either its absurdly understated inflation, or for the humor of how disconnected the number-slayers are from the reality down at Wal-Mart.
Why can't Wal-Mart start publishing a monthly real inflation report so we can at least get a second opinion? It would be a marvelous public service!!! (There I go, on my broken record routine...)
Bankers Non Grata A email from an aware reader:
Well, er, hate to reiterate the linguistics on this, but Cliff's work has been pretty clear for months now - connecting the terms like "lamp post" and "bankers" and 'PTB' in the same context is not something reported on lightly. So yes, expect more of this through the year and into next as the economy degenerates.
Las Vegas Imploding As goes Las Vegas, so goes the rest of the economy?
The truly compulsive gamblers haven't needed Vegas for almost 5-years now: Just day trade and you can lose money at home just as easy and no TSA checkpoints to deal with! --- California and Florida still duking it out to see who has the most foreclosures. No winner possible, though...everyone's a loser in this.
How Are They Hanging Department Iran is in second place as the world's most prolific executioner and likely #1 on a population basis: China, at number one has a vastly bigger population base. Nevertheless, the leadership of Iran says the number of executions is "not high". Unless you happen to be one of them, of course. (Maybe our headline writer should be among them?)
Boom Times in Iraq
The Perpetual Diana Story In today's events, "Al Fayed 'disappointed' at Diana Inquest Verdict". This is going on longer than the Lindberg kidnapping coverage...longer than WW I and WW II combined now that I think about it...
Urge To Merge Delta and Northwest with the surviving entity to be Delta. But wait! I think they should have named it Northta! Because then they could buy the Seattle-based airline and become (hold on to your toast here...) Northta-Alaska!!! --- I would have suggested Delwest, but that's too much like the retirement community folks out in Aridzona.
Taxing Thoughts The White House is threatening to veto a tax simplification bill. I'm please to report that the UrbanSurvival Tax Estimator still works:
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Coping: Another Million Dollar Idea Yesterday's report that corporations and corpgov are out and about on the internet masquerading as everyday humans in order to influence how you think about this topic or that (like war, disease, consumer habits and the like) it occurred to me, during a conversation with chief time monk Cliff, that there may be a real opportunity for a wonderful business in the midst of this. A do-gooder business with recurring revenue. How could it get better?
Here's the concept: We consumers of informational things on the 'net would sure like to know if the person who is writing that post about the death penalty, or the war, or the whatever, was really a paid PR shill - or if they were just a common schmuck like the rest of us.
Something like a cookie that would be issued by a third-party server attesting that so-and-so hasn't made any paid postings that are reported on the net. A sort of writer ranker.
"Look, you're a writer/sales consultant/management type by trade, so while it's a laudable idea, you just don't have time for it - Igor and I sure don't - so why not put it out to your readers as a copy-left idea and see if anyone runs with it?" asked Cliff.
Yeah - that's make sense. Which is why I'm mentioning it.
Here are two more conceptual cornerstones of this million dollar idea which could make it workable.
The first has to do with technology. The idea of using cookies and a third-party verification server has been kicking around for a long time.
In fact, a few years back I seem to recall the my favorite think tanks, the MITRE Corp., was doing some work with IRS and although it's not easily accessible without more coffee to power further searching, I wan t to recall a fair amount of discussion about use of so-called "tax cookies" as one way to clean up the Wild West accounting of sales revenue on the internet. http://www.mitre.org/news/digest/archives/1999/tax_admin_mod.html.
So, if someone were to set up this service, which would basically attest that it's an unpaid/unspun hero who's doing the posting, then the backend technology should be readily doable.
The second point is that there are some dandy names that such a certification service could use. Perhaps a simple one like "www.certifiedhuman.org" would work, but that's down into the creative weeds - again, too early for that.
That should ne enough to give the aspiring webpreneur enough of an idea that a business model could be hewn out of bytes and from there, hey, it's only code, right? --- One other further reflection on the issue of paid shills on the web: Remind me to ask Dr. Pete Mickiewicz about whether there are any roadblocks in place to keep some enterprising major corporation from hijacking a virtual world like Second Life. If real money can go into SL, and real money brought out of SL, can corporate hijackers be far off?
Putting shills in internet discussion rooms/forums/fora is only be a logical first step in hijacking the everything of value on the internet. Oh, you mean that's what web 2.0 is all about? Silly me... --- Web 2.0 looks like a good idea:
A little simplistic, based on what we've been uncovering with memeering and then corporate persuasion teams this week, it seems the corporate version of Web 2.0 is a lot less altruistic and bottom line oriented than genuine Constitution-loving Free Speech advocates would like.
So write this down: There is a million dollars to be made in helping ensure that ideas purporting to come from rank and file humans are just that -- and not carefully spun claptrap from the shill houses. --- Putting on my strategic thinking hat, I'd argue that because the Web is the new land of consensus development, and that humans ought to band together and bar through law any corporate masquerading in attempts to influence otherwise human-to-human free discussion of issues.
I'd go so far as to lump this into the same category as laws on the books that prevent electioneering within so many feet of a polling places/voting sites by politicians and their ilk.
That's because the Internet, at its best, is where the voting on our collective future as humans takes place. As such, shouldn't we have anti-electioneering rules to keep shills out of forums?
I, for one, would be pleased as punch to pay five bucks a year to be a www.certifiedhuman.org labeled non-corporate web contributor.
There's a business in here someplace, if we can just keep the shill's masters from hijacking the whole net with restrictions on access... --- Send Snip & Save comments to george@ure.net. Just about everything is welcome, right down to secrets about fixing the kitchen sink. Anything that might help people either get along easier in life (which is tough enough as it is) to ways to save or make money... --- end snip and save section ---
Around The Ranch: Questions & Answers A couple of lessons from Universe in the past day. First was the revelation about how the mouse was eating. Mouse? What mouse? Remember a month back when we finally caught the heat-seeking mouse in one of those sticky-traps? We had been through the house and hidden every conceivable bit of food, sealed up door - in short we'd done everything we could to make sure there was never any incentive to the mouse to hang its tail in our house.
Except one.
Turns out the mouse had been squirreling away cat food - which for some reason (call it a mental blind-side) both Elaine and I didn't really think much about. Well, the mouse did and when we found a couple of pieces of cat kibble under a piece of heavy seldom-moved furniture Monday, it all became clear.
"Maybe that's why cats eat mice?" offered Elaine. More important to me: a big lesson in blinders. --- Along the same lines, in yesterday's report a reader asks if the name of the chicken that gets out of the chicken moat is "Beak Five", why did I offer the name "Drumstick Five" as an alternative? "Wouldn't it be drumstick 10?" asks this sincere reader?
No, I share. It'd be drumstick five for me... ---
Market Tactics: Phase Shifted BehaviorI've been pondering the investment performance of a colleague the last week or two, and I've come up with an interesting - and perhaps useful - new way to look at investment decisions. Part of it comes from reading "Secrets of the Unified Field: The Philadelphia Experiment, the Nazi Bell, and the Discarded Theory." Not to worry, the report this week won't be getting into the woo-woo area of borderland science. But, the book does get me to thinking again about something most people give very little (if any) head space to; the concept of the phase relationship between their individual behaviors and overall group/societal level behaviors, and in particular that social oddity called "The Market". In short, a new way to look at your trading track record and one that I haven't seen discussed in any of the literature. I'll show you how learning to think of your trading in electrical engineering terms used in AC distribution systems may be a very good thing, indeed.
\(The discussion of a potential fifth wave failure is in the ChartPack)
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One follow up note: In the discussion of AC power systems (it really relates to trading styles, honest!) a power company electrical engineer says most companies charge based on a power factor of 1.0. Most exceptions are on the industrial side.
Tell Your Friends About This Site! If you know anyone who is interested in preserving the Constitution, fighting usury from banksters, and shaking off consumer hypnosis, tell them about this site. Click here to send 'em an invite...
Mr. Cheap's Tricks There are lots of ways to save money on food, shelter, transportation, and such. It just takes a little reading and one source of good ideas is our handy ebook "How to Live on $10,000 a year or less. Still just $10. ---- Last week's report is here. If for back issues of this site, click here. (Goes back to 1997!) ---- I promised Elaine that I would unload some of my equipment, so if you're looking for ham gear, especially the older tube-type (EMP resistant) type, send me a note and I will send out the list of what I'm selling off when I get it together. Click here to Put Me On Ham Gear List
Monday April 14, 2008 Collapse Contagion OK, while we still have a shot at a nominal new high by the Dow by my estimates between now and the middle of summer, I'd be edging toward the exits in a nice orderly way ahead of the cries to come that there's a "Fire in the theater!!!" This is not investment advice, just my own feelings toward that combustible wealth substitute paper assets.
Just one more reason to be sashaying that-a-way is found in the headline "U.S. Housing collapse spreads overseas".
Meantime, there's a report that "US banks Citigroup and Merrill Lynch reveal fresh $15 bn loss", but hell, anymore, that's not even budget dust as the size of the crisis spirals toward the $1-trillion dollar mark.
Privately, I'm betting that once the derivatives bubble begins to let go later in the year the mess will soar into the many trillions of dollars as all the "don't worry about it, they're just notional values in derivatives" become real enough that flocks of lawyers will gather to try and enforce specific performance.
In fact, if I had to pick on career that I wish I had trained for, it would be a corporate financial instruments lawyer - because there should be work till the cows come home for the foreseeable future as all this unwinds.
Meantime, as the housing mess continues to unravel, and with the increasing number of homes that are vacant, the problem of copper thieving grows. As the Minneapolis Star-Trib headlines, stolen copper is "The new underground currency." --- With all that on the table, plus
the
pronouncements over the weekend from the G-7 leaders that
"Everything is fine - don't panic - we'll prop up the Dollar"
(which means we should all be scared out of our wits) the patient
investor will await the arrive of "Numbers from Fairytale Land".
Tomorrow we get the Producer Price Index, always good for a chuckle
and that'll be followed Wednesday with the roll-on-the-floor doubled
up material: The Consumer Price Index. Just saying "core
rate" anymore leaves me laughing so hard tears come to my
eyes. We have a reader who works for one of the major financial news outfits as an editor, and I am just amazed that financial reporters can get through a workday straight-faced. I honestly don't think I could. It would be like trying to be a straight faced reporter in the midst of a Mel Brooks movie! But back on track...
The bottom line of the G-7 announcements seems to me to be telling anyone who will listen: Not only is Bear Stearns too big to fail, but so is the US ,so the international banksters will hype propping it up, too. Which, if I read things right in the short term, could be adverse to the price of gold and silver.
But wait: The dollar is crashing back down to 0.63 Euro - so is the G-7 hype real or what? Are banksters going to be our friends now? ROFL...see what I mean? Comic absurdity!
This is one of those stories where choosing the right word is difficult: I don't know whether to write "We'll watch this story unfold" or "We'll watch this story unwind..."
Gold's back up and stock futures down as we put bytes to phosphors.
Recession Blame A reader sends this:
With all due respect to the Congressman, sounds a bit dis-info-ish to me. Figure it out for yourself: The cost of the Wars so far has probably been around $1-trillion dollars. That's economic stimulus to all the defense contractors and military payrolls. Not to mention the private contractors like Blackwater and so forth. Then there are the half million (or more) who are employed in the "Permanent War for Permanent Peace" industries: war-fighting, anti-terrorism, and Homeland Security/TSA/ et al.
The traditional way to fight recessions and Depression has been what? government spending. And the War industries are a massive form of what? --- You did see the Business Week story on the "Consumer Spending Mirage" last week?
Hungry for News Well, our correspondent who has been taking the occurrence of the term "food riot" over at Google's news search engine has an update:
Are you awake enough to spot a trend here? The frequency of the world "shortage" is 31,738 when I checked - about 3-times the number of hits two years ago, but that's no doubt from additional sites being indexed as well as growth of the meme.
Oh, speaking of memes:
Well, well - our linguistics pals spied it and called it "memeering" but I see the polite corporate term seems to be digital influence! Here's an eyeful ,from a purported "insider":
Speaking of bot hits, yes, the grounding of all the airplanes does count toward the "restrictions on travel" meme in this timeframe.
About that Revolution Meme While you're welcome to be skeptical of our linguistic pals framing a 'revolution/rebellion' meme that goes counter to the corporate/government direction of things (corpgov), I noticed a site today which says oodles about the framing of the humans vs. corpgov situation: www.waronyou.com. Just the very name of the site implies that a) there's a war on and b) you are on one side of it already. Which, to my not-yet-coffee addled brain says "Hmmm...there must be something on the other side of said war, huh?"
Faulted My Saturday headline "Rude A Quakenings" where I wonder about the quake swarming down at the south end of the California fault systems and now the action off Oregon elicited this reader note:
My advice to folks in California sounds like a broken record: Got food, water, a full tank of gas, and an exit plan?
Pope Tripping This will be a big week for the Pope - arriving in the US tomorrow with stops in Washington and New York (including a UN speech). Lots of security being put on for this.
Is That You Jimmy? Former President Jimmy Carter is getting the snubberoo in Israel. He's off to Syria next...
A New Kind of Serial Leave it to the people of New York to have this kind of crime pop up: Serial groping in the subways... News by the handfuls around here, yessir.
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Coping: Indy Market Theory We can't be serious all the time - in fact, I've made a life out of just having fun and plenty of adventures. So, when it comes to theories about economics, I'll listen to just aboiut anything, including this one...
Quick! Send this one to the Mogambo Guru - I hear he's working on a movie script called Nightmare on Wall Street... (Wonder if his family forgot to pick up his meds?)
Silvery Basics Every once in a while I make the mistake of thinking everyone has made (and lost :-( ) as much money as me in the stock and commodity markets...so I often gloss over some of the basics. So, when reader asks a question like this:
I'd pass it along to my commodities guy (JB) and let him deal with it:
So, if you have a spare $90,000 laying around and you want to buy 342.85 pounds of silver, that's how you'd do it.
OR, you'd throw one hell of a party, give money to your loved ones, pay off the mortgage, have some stored food, meds, water, and so forth, by a cheap farm someplace, and have enough left over to take delivery on a mini. Such is my personal very long term outlook for paper assets versus tangible assets like herds, flocks, machinery and stored diesel.
Real Life Exchange Rates: This email says it all:
You know what? That has actually crossed my mind. I've also been thinking about pricing it at 3-ounces of silver...
Ant Zapping ROFL...I am amazed as the answers continue to pop up to our fire ant problem. Here's one from a Rube Goldberg kind of reader with a soldering iron...
And he's not the only guy who is talking about microwaving ants!
OK, serious up here....another reader offers this:
Speaking of touching things off: I was burning some trash Sunday morning and the fire died down leaving a smoky mess. So I threw about a half a cup of diesel on it. Well, the smoke just turned white - big billowy plume of it - vaporized diesel. So, I crept up with a light and Whoosh!!! Mr. Ure now sports a considerably shorter eyebrow on the right side and fireball trimmed hair. Told you I was a kid at heart... And speaking of kids at heart...
The huge number of responses has me thinking that there's a NY Times best seller in here somewhere: The Crazy Man's Guide to Killing Fire Ants. The lone rational reader of this site wonders...
Hmmm...he may be onto something... --- Send snip and save comments to george@ure.net
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Around the Ranch: Chillin' I suppose you have read about the lateness of the season this year. "Cold Temperature freezxe gardening season" goes one headline this morning.
As I came out to the office this morning, the digital telltales were reading 35.1 here in East Texas - an my neighbor across the road was kind enough to call Sunday and ask "You got any tomato plants out? We've got a chance of frost tonight...".
This is a little unusual for us. Last year, we had snow on April 7th, and this year, it's cold enough to snow on April 14th. It's like season creep.
The historical normal last date for frost in this area is March 17th - so spring is about a month behind schedule.
Now I get to bow: Elaine and I have a new heat pump system being put into the house this week: 5-tons of high SEER cooling for the days when it get gets hot and muggy down in our part of the South. I reckon with my knack for picking investments, I have just single-handedly solved the Global Warming calamity. --- Our transition to the idyllic country life continues to become more evident with each passing day. With somewhere around 17 animals in the herd and flock and counting cats, I notice that Elaine is now referring to one of the chickens as "Beak Five".
It's a little more humane than my "Drumstick Five" name I suppose...
News from Elliott
Wave International
An explanation of this chart
Once upon a time, a long while ago, I observed during my quest for 'truth' in economics, that the powers That Be, the talking heads on the teeve, and the other information sources that actively engage in the programming of humans not to think, had conveniently swept several trillions of dollars that disappeared in the Internet Bubble's bursting (since spring 2000) under the rug. Surely, it wasn't unnoticed by the thousands of people who called brokers and said "Where is my money?" "Gone, but hang in there as you're a long term investor!" was about all they heard back.
But, the truth of the matter is that this chart shows what your account would look like if you have taken a few thousand dollars and invested equal amounts in the Dow, the S&P 500, and the NASDAQ Composite in the waning days of 1999. It's not a very pretty picture, and it sort of gives away the other side of the story. You know, the one that no one has an interest in telling, because it's a truth which shows the amazing coincidence of the timing of 9/11, the disappearance of naked shorting evidence and all, along with the impact of The Wars which have managed to keep the economy out of an earlier depression than the one expected by me by late 2008.
No, it's not a perfect replay of 1929, but history doesn't repeat exactly, it only rhymes. So think of this as the rhymes and the crimes chart:
Write when you get rich,
George Ure, The People's Economist
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