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A Hacker Gets His Due You know what a pain it is to get a computer virus? Here's one of those "about time" stories that should be repeated with every virus found on the 'net: A teenager gets prison time for unleashing a virus: Story. I'm all in favor of "creative computing" as much as the next guy (and not to mention the web scanning technology our colleagues at www.halfpasthuman.com have invented) but computing crosses the line when it either endangers the property of others (like hard drives) or threatens national security. May all virus writers be sent to jail with nothing more powerful than a VIC-20 or Commodore 64 and no access to modems or RJ-45 jacks...
Voting Threatened We're on standby waiting to see if the much threatened attacks by insurgents just before Iraq elections comes true: Story. We think a lot of this is just idle threats - at least we certainly hope so.
New Tsunami Stations An international conference is looking at multiple locations for a tsunami warning system in the wake of the Indonesia quakes: http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/050129/w012926.html
Quake Watch We have a couple of concerns about the earthquake data from Friday. We saw a strange quake in Arizona, a couple in Central California (precursors?) another 6.2 off Ecuador, and a bunch more in that Nicobar Islands region where a new tectonic plate may be "under construction" by Ma Nature...
As the Economy Blows Up... Which we expect it will, for reasons that the web bot tell us will become apparent in retrospect once we get past February 1st, I received this interesting note from my colleague who worked with me developing the Mazurok-Ure Correlation which says no credit bubble can last more than 83.5 years or so. (You can find links to our work in our www.urbansurvival.com/library.htm area.) But here's his point: Watch very carefully and suspiciously any plan that promotes the idea of investing Social Security funds in the stock market. His note:
Gosh, once again a "sucker bet" uncloaked. Sure someone is going to be the average, but that's a big spin of the wheel. Same thing was pulled over on Canadians in the 1970's. But hey, anything to bail out the stock pimps in return for the fat campaign contributions.....
Inside Report: Today (Saturday) I will polish off the second half of the special report "How to Live on $10,000 a year" - which will be turned into an e-book after subscribers have it for a while. To subscribe to our Inside Report series, click here. o read last week's report, click http://www.urbansurvival.com/lastweek.htm For a more complete library of past columns, click http://urbansurvival.com/library.htm Click here to tell a friend about this site.
News Sources are available, too, in case you want to search more. And we offer our News Scanner service, over here. I also added the time to the Dateline on the masthead so you can see how current the update is.
Friday Calculated Madness OK, just as I wandered toward the shower, it struck me. How much would the Dow have to rise every week in order to just keep even with inflation in 2005? Answer:
Open Jan 1 2005: 10,783.75 4% growth of money supply (X 1.04) Target for Dec. 31 2005: 11,215,10
Weekly gain required to break even: 8.29 points
This week (4) we should be (4 X 8.29 ) + our starting number: 10,816.91.
Gee we're only 409 Dow points from tracking! I wonder if this is why I have been so skeptical of a "rally?" Yah think?
Market Sucking Should I mention that last week the Dow closed at 10,393 or so and it's quickly approaching that now? Remember our well-placed of skepticism of the so-called "Rally!" Rally!!!. Hahhahaha! (to lift a sample and loop it from the Mogambo Guru's laugh track machine.) Read the earthquake stories. Would you invest in a shaken but not yet stirred world like this? Hahhahaha! OK, I have to go to the office now and pretend...just like you that everything is just fine. As HAL might put it "I don't know what problem you mean, Dave?"
Radio Wars: Reader Report A reader reports this incident in Baltimore:
What our reader hasn't done is mention how the switch included putting the old format online: http://music.channel.aol.com/internet_radio/whfs So the media maquilladores of radio can force us to buy satellite radio for the car? Is that the deal? I'd sure like to thank Michael Powell and the FCC for their blatant corporatist sellout of spectrum to group owners who have automated so many formerly community-oriented radio stations...screw the public need, interest and concern....way to go, boyz!
Ecuador Watch: 6.1 quake, folks... 2005/01/28 15:46 M 6.1 OFF COAST OF ECUADOR Z= 10km 1.18S 81.11W
Iraq: Election Nonsense OK, I don't want to sound like I am ragging here, but there are a few stories about the pending elections in Iraq this weekend that scream for fair comment. One of them is this report that headlines out something like "Bush will leave Iraq if asked". The idea is that if the new government in Iraq asks us to leave, we will. But, what's not being reported is that it's a foregone conclusion that only a Bush-friendly government will be elected. Good grief! Then there's the outrageous story from last week on how former Iraqis now living (and voting) in the U.S. will be allowed to vote in Iraq's election. http://www.onnnews.com/Global/story.asp?S=2869827&nav=LQlCViFI And then there's the border clamp down that seems to work in Iraq LINK but which we can't be bothered with along our Mexico border. (More on that in a moment) But the Arab press is reporting this "voters of convenience" story: LINK. My expectation (and perhaps based on the future looking web bots) Yes, there will be election, and yes the turnout will be low, and yes the Administration will point to this as success. But, if it doesn't play well with the global audience, I look for markets and all to tank starting Tuesday or Wednesday or next week. But come Monday, look at the "overseas vote" of Iraq and see how it will influence the overall outcome in the voting.
The Big Sell: Fear We've bemoaned the fact that anti-terrorism is focus on the wrong suspects - good hardworking Americans - not the leaky borders or the free-for-all passport situation that existed pre-9/11. So we might as well express our concerns with the FBI taking up more active role in intelligence gathering operations STORY. Yes, we'd label this as stepped up domestic spying. On the other hand, we do agree with John Ashcroft's concern that a stolen nuke is the biggest problem facing the country from a security standpoint.
Acquisitions: Gillette Proctor and Gamble is picking up Gillette: Details. $57-billion. Not bad...
Quakes: Still Counting In case you missed my appearance on the Steve Quayle show yesterday, we spent an hour or so talking about my "earthquakes are sure acting up" concern. USGS reports 19 quakes of 5.0 or greater in the area of the Nicobar Islands in the last 30 hours: Earthquake List. Our major concern is that the Macquarie Island 8.6 in December and the big 9.2 which set off the tsunami mean all the earth's plates are back in motion. This will bring economic displacement once the goods in the supply chain have been consumed.
One reader who has also looked at the data (it all starts with numbers, right?) reports in:
Maybe...ask me in a month if the rate of increase continues...
Radio: Another One Bites the Dust And another one bites, and another one bites. Stations along the southern U.S. have been switching to Spanish-speaking faster than anyone would have expected. From our Hoiuston Bureau comes this:
I love the Mexican and Latinos that have moved to the U.S. legally. I detest the illegal situation and question the integrity of a government that refuses to deal with the problem for economic reasons. A bi-lingual America? No thanks. A common language should be a legal requirement of living in the melting pot - in my opinion. Verstehen sie, jah? We are not speaking Italian, French, German or Gaelic, so what the deal with Spanish-speaking not having to join in the language of the country? I mean other than "correctness"?
Back to border issues: Mexico is not happy with a US travel warning about dangerous activities (like kidnappings) by Mexican gangs along the border - and then Mexico which has been literally pushing people north gets upset. Link.
Moscow Disney Disneyland in Moscow will be three times larger than Anaheim? http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/01/28/tsereteli.shtml Garsh, Mickey.
Pharma Rip: Time to Call DC A reader sends this:
Global Warming This thoughtful note from a reader deserves to be read:
Thanks for the well articulated thoughts! While I agree that global warming is probably only a "5% caused by humans " problem, the larger context is that the 5% (or whatever it is) can really be managed. Plus, the same changes that will reduce humankind's contribution to global warming would also end the corporatist exploit of labor rate differentials between countries and would tend to improve quality of life long term overall. You may be interested to note that we're picking up continuing buzz from Alaska that the efforts to fix the Alaska Pipeline which is headed toward destruction through melt of the permafrost, will require as big an effort to fix as the original construction. But it's the place of reasonable people make such decisions as reducing global warming - such issues should not be decided because one interest group, such as oil companies, happen to have more paper (in the form of federal reserve notes - FRN's) to throw at the problem than unorganized humans....a 25' rise in sea level and we're all dead because refineries will be out of business worldwide.
Letter of the Week From Michael Nystrom:
Oh boy...I can hardly wait to see the new site, Michael!!! Remember, Bullish might be dead wrong after next Tuesday (Feb 1 hot date) but we'll check it out!
George II, You Shouldn't Do That... My son apparently lacks the subtlety of his old man. He's taken his creative writing skills to finding new ways to hawk merchandise on eBay. An example? (This is an adult story...so caution is given) http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5746981744 Aw, come on, kid - don't use sex stories to sell your cell phone, I told him...leave that for the big national advertising agencies who at least do it with some class. "Yeah, like sex appeal toothpaste, or do you mean all those various stiffening pills pimped by the pharms, dad?" Kids....darn kids....
Thursday Another Cut at the Data A concerned reader wrote to me this morning and asked what I thought of the earthquake data which USGS puts up on its site at http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eqlists/eqstats.html. The perceptive reader asked "What do you think of this data?" The data made things look something like "normal" over a long period. But was it?
My answer is that while the data seems to be relatively stable in total earthquakes, there's something that I took a few moments to "back out" of the data. Specifically, the data includes "no magnitude" events. I figure if a quake is a real quake, the experts would have assigned a magnitude to the event. So when you take the otherwise innocent-looking data, and then back out "no magnitude events" I still come up with quakes that were down around 12,000 a year in 1990 and are now running at more than twice that number today.
I'm not trying to be an alarmist, but as a continuing increase in the number of earthquake just could have an economic impact, it perhaps would make sense to devote just a bit of head space to the question "Gee, Mr. Science...is something changing?" I expect peoples of Indonesia already know the answer to this one...
Big Oil's Big Lie We read in the British press today an interesting account of how the big oil interests, which would be among the hardest hit by clean air regulations, are gearing up a major campaign to convince you that global warming is not real. LINK. On the other side of it - the scientists who have really studied the situation are convinced that not only is global warming real, but it's happening much faster than anyone had previously thought - except for a few nut jobs out there like us : STORY We look at the present situation as crazy. It's like people standing outside a house that's on fire with people inside of it - and arguing first whether the fire is real and then secondly about whether it's going to be big enough to really hurt the people crying for help.
Lest you think the analogy is too harsh, you might consider all of the changes in weather going on presently - the hurricane force winds in Scandinavian, no icing of rivers in Moscow that are traditionally frozen, and the incredible rains of California which are coming down almost four times faster than former annual rates. Go write this down: If we address global warming and it turns out to be either not real, or overstated, the only thing it does is cost money. If we don't address global warming and it's as real as some data suggests, we will be killing millions by our delays. Paper or dead people - there's a familiar choice, huh? Could it be, as we proposed several weeks ago to our Inside Report subscribers, that because the U.S. might really benefit from global climate change, such as a major increase in precipitation patterns across the South and Southwest, that we're ignoring the big climate stories of the day like this one about Boston's new record snowfall?
Sudan's Sneak Bombing Raids Remember, where there's oil, guns won't be far away theory? Check out the latest in the Darfur region of Sudan - Sudanese planes are bombing again, breaking a fragile cease fire in the zone: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4211595.stm Let's see if you can guess what the government said: How about "we deny it..."
Markets: Three in a Row? No in our view. Although there is a bit of preopening froth driven by the reports that SBC might make a run at AT&T, the real picture today is mixed by some reports. And no, we don't expect the market to close up, but then we're always amazed by the quality of denial on the part of investors. Despite the heavy hype, a look at the 3-month view of the S&P doesn't exactly turn us wildly bullish. Not when China is publicly saying what they've been privately acting recently, namely that the U.S. dollar is not healthy: STORY If someone proposes to you that "Good times are just ahead..." remind them that we heard that for the first four years of the last Great Depression, and there's no reason why this one should play out any differently. While there have been reports that Greenspan will retire this year or next, we expect that he won't get out in time and will be around to be held accountable for the coming debacle we expect when insurmountable debt meets inflexible demand. What gives? The currency of course!
Copyrights Policed Let's say you have a restaurant. You run down to the local record store and buy a few CD's and put them on as background noise in your restaurant to help the mood of the joint. Legal? Nope. Because as the recording copyright groups claim, you are putting the artists work out for public performance without compensation: http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/050124/245738_1.html This is one of those stories that has been lurking for year. If you put copyright music on your telephone's on-hold system, you could be in trouble, too. Best course of action: Write your own music and perform in MIDI with a suite like www.magix.com's Music Studio 2005 or use a library of generic music with an unlimited public license included.
Shrouded in Mystery Remember in the 1980's when the Shroud of Turin was claimed not to be old enough to be the real deal? New research out today says it may really be older than first thought: Story. Time will tell. But I would expect a lot of news-oriented Christian ministers to be rewriting this week's sermon to include the dangers of man rushing to judgment about articles of faith... If you write sermons or are a detail fanatic like I am, the abstract of the paper is at this link. The whole paper at this link.
Corporate Computing We have only had one user respond to our request for comments on whether Microsoft OneNote is worth installing on laptops with real (and in my case external) keyboards. That lone review was very favorable. If you use OneNote, drop us a line by clicking here and let us know if it's worth putting in.
Meantime, Microsoft is apparently only going to offer upgrades and patches to users of genuine Microsoft product: DETAILS. Looks like they will package a big discount on OneNote into the deal, but we're tempted to buy it earlier.
Quakes - Follow-Up We are surprised that our earthquake frequency stories have not been picked up by more people - but one report out of India starts like this:
Click here for the rest of the story. I'm scheduled to be on the Steve Quayle radio show this afternoon to talk about the increasing quakes.
Wednesday Dangerous Deficits It seems that the much touted rally in the stock market is expected to continue despite a horrible economic fact that started to emerge late yesterday: The Federal Budget Deficit will be as much as 60% greater than forecast over the next 10-years. LA Times Story. We find this very curious, in that once upon a time, deficit spending was a bad thing yet in today's seriously upside down economy, borrowing has been made "good". You have only to look at the Fed-backed linguistic shift to see it: The Fed pushes the notion of consumer credit, when in reality what's being discussed is consumer indebtedness. Cash, once king in the 1930's, is much maligned by explaining to our young people of today that cash is that dirty paper stuff at the other end of a debit card. Worse? The political parties, including the once fiscally aware Republicans, have abandoned any pretense of balanced budgets in favor of making us - and all of our property, all corporatist chattel.
Another Reader Saved I had a note from a very confused reader this morning who asked:
"Ah ha!" said the people's economist, putting on his pointed hat, which he believes to be the mark of a wizard, but which bears a close resemblance to a dunce hat: "It goes like this: The Bloomberg story is based on the University of Michigan's work: LINK. Meantime, the story out today, and being run up the flagpole by the equities pimps, is based on work of The Conference Board: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-01/26/content_2508349.htm You may be interested to recall that I wrote to the University of Michigan asking them a couple of questions about their consumer confidence numbers. Specifically, I've read that the government "subscribes" to the forecast, but I wanted to know what percentage of the UoM forecast is underwritten by the foxes watching the henhouse, and whether they get an advance peak at the numbers to help them keep the economy on the rails. "And how much does the Fed pay, or do they get an advance before the media?" I wonder. I've never heard back from them, so I have to reluctantly conclude that you shouldn't send your kids to UoM. It appears they will either not learn how to read, or they will have no manners at the end of the experience... Our questions stand unanswered. (I sent the email last year to 3-4 people in the University's PR office.) Speaking of Fiscal Matters... You remember all the "family
values" discussion leading into the election? What if someone said
some of that press coverage was bought and paid for by Bush
supporters? How would you feel about that?
Go feel.
Boston Non-Story You saw the story recently about how governments and politicians are now selling fear - not dreams of hard work and a better future, right? Well, it's in that context that we report this morning that the FBI has now labeled the story about a supposed dirty bomb threat against Boston as not credible: LINK. I'm pleased the threat wasn't real, as any rational person would be.
31 Dead in Iraq 31 marines reported dead today in a helicopter crash: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4209269.stm Less than a week to elections, meantime. We're braced for more bad news out of Iraq between now and then. For example, attacks on political offices around Baghdad are making headlines in Arab media: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/07AA6F1F-C6ED-44F3-B7D4-AFBB371EF849.htm You might want to read the background article in Pravda about Western State Building in the Muslim world: http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/91/366/14874_.html
Market "Rally"? The market is expected to open up a bit today, but yesterday's much-heralded "rally" left us distinctly unimpressed. The reason? When we look at a 5-day chart of the S&P 500 ( click here ) what we see is continued weakness and a tepid bounce. I'll grant that a few of the blue chips had decent earnings reports, but what of the deficit? What of the longer term outlook for energy? And where's the new "must have" consumer items that will drive sustained growth? Not on our radar yet.
Market Non-Advice A reader asked me yesterday whether, with February 1 being a day when the web bots say "equilibrium will be lost" if maybe now might be the time to load up on puts on some of the broader averages. Hell no! Let me explain why - as I did an an email to this reader:
Start to focus on Guinea Our extremely well connected sources in the oil patch have alerted us that it's time for you to be brought into the picture on Equatorial Guinea. Yeah, we know it sounds like something out of the blue, but there's oil in Guinea and that means the U.S. will likely stake out it's "turf". Getting zero coverage in most U.S. media is the fact that the son of one-time British leader Margaret Thatcher has admitted recently that he was a participant in a recent failed coup attempt: Story. Let that sink in: Brits trying to spawn a revolution in Guinea. Reason? Oil development rights. Some other backgrounders to start reading up on: The U.S. is sending naval units into the area. African media are skeptical whenever the U.S. shows up. (Not without reason, we note.) If you use newsreader software you might want to put in Equatorial Guinea for a while and see what comes along.
Guidance from our Houston Bureau:
Say, you don't mean with "Our Lady of Oil Tanker" as Secretary of Oil, do you? Oil & Gas Drilling Caused the Tsunami? That's the gist of a story here.
Enterprise S/W Growth I've been watching the enterprise software sector for a while - and not eh PeopleSoft/Oracle specter. Rather, SAP is one that I find really interesting because enterprise software is an area where a lot of businesses can significantly lower costs. Result? Growth in enterprise software firms. Story. If you're not into enterprise software, think of it as a software "conveyor belt" that let's you put all customer interaction - from marketing at the front end of a business - all the way to shipping or service delivery. It's the complete elimination of double-entry of data and always current information across an enterprise, hence the real name: ERP or enterprise resource planning systems.
A Nod to the Mogambo We're pleased to see one of our favorite economic reads - the Mogambo Guru is posting again. See http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=82359 for some econ insight. He's welcome to a column here...
Tuesday Remember our Ecuador Story? If not, click here. Within three hours of our posting our story, voicing concerns about the continuing string of earthquakes of Ecuador, along comes this latest notice from the USGS, that the "5.4" of yesterday was actually a "6.1":
NY Times Pick Up Glacial Melt We note that the venerable NY Times today which has a great story on the potential damage globally from Antarctic glacial melt: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/25/science/earth/25ice.html Yup, potential for mega disaster is there alright.
Some Rally - Or Is It? I had one of my periodic refreshing conversations this morning with Robin Landry, who operates a very independent-minded investment company in Shawnee, Oklahoma. I had called him to find out the answer to our continuous question around here, "How far is down?" Robin's comments were, as always, enlightening.
It boiled down to this: If the market declines from its highs of the day, and the numbers we've seen in the first couple of hours are the peak for the day, especially if the market were to close up only 25-35 points on the Dow, then it could well portend disaster. "What a lot of folks might not realize is that today's rally has only gained back the last couple of days of losses," he correctly points out. "The real test will come in the 10,514-10,517 area. If we can get past that, then there's some hope for the upside, but I would remain skeptical till north of 10,627." OK, but what about the down side? "Well, if we were to fall below 9.964, the next major support level is 9,708 or thereabouts."
Landry also made the point that a lot of traders have already given back all the gains made in the last two months of 2004. "We were mostly out, or short since the first of the year" he lets on. And about his portfolios presently? "About 60% short, 40% long, with the longs in things like natural resources and oil related stocks."
With the web bots pointing to a "loss of equilibrium" come February 1st or within a few days, we have to sit back and ask ourselves about the potential quality and duration of the present rally. "Sell Signals work great in bear markets, but buy signals don't. Right now, buy signals aren't working. So you have to factor that in."
I don't sit watching the markets every 10-minutes like I did when I was day trading, but one thing is certain: I'll be watching that 10,514-10,517 region closely, and along with the close today, because it should give us some indication as to whether the web bots will be right about the February through June period which sounds decidedly negative. Landry will be watching his proprietary indicators, too. Asking as always, what's the next move from here?
Soft Peddling Fermi II Is it my imagination, or has the shut down of the Fermi II plant been only lightly covered by major media? http://www.detnews.com/2005/metro/0501/25/B01-69792.htm If we were closer to Chernobyl or Three Mile Island on the timeline of history, this would be the lead story on all U.S. media, but as luck would have it for the plant operators, timelines are really on their side. What we'd waiting for definitive word on is the cause. Why? Because we're interest in all types of accidents related to earth movement these days...speaking of which, here's another reader who "gets it":
Perry was blamed on a coolant pump, but what caused that to fail? Another reader asks, "Have you read "We Almost Lost Detroit?" Book Link. Nope, this is a definite "soft peddle."
As a bit of follow-up to my note on earthquakes posted on Monday, we have notices an interesting development of Ecuador's coast - a series of earthquakes of increasing magnitude/frequency. Looking at USGS data over the past week or so we see:
To our untrained eyes, it looks like something a bit odd is going on - and we wouldn't be surprised to learn if there is some sub-sea mountain building going on. I just mention this, because it's almost like the series of low level quakes that have been happening off and on northwest of the Oregon-California border and about 150 miles out - which we expect was also mountain building a while back. Maybe it's nothing, but then again, the number of quakes seems out of the ordiary, so we're watching for Ecuador action on the earthquake list at http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/.
One reader suggested in response to our story of yesterday that one reason for the increase in reported quakes might be more and better earthquake sensor technology. I'm sorry to report that this is not a credible reason, as the number and quality of sensors has been more or less on straight-line growth since 1979 with the Cold War fascination with underground nuclear tests being the object de jure. We won't make any rash forecasts, but we do believe the data speaks for itself, and we have provided all the links so that you may draw your own conclusions. We choose to report the trend because it may lead to something with economic impacts.
Indonesia reports this morning that its death toll from the day-after-Christmas tsunami has been increased again - this time to 220,000: Story. All the more reason to be aware...
Markets to Rise Although it's been the religion of market makers to tout rising markets, maybe today, the markets will really rally. Story Yesterday's decline was heaviest in the techs, which if you believe the variant of Dow Theory (transports lead industrials) that says techs lead the way these days, then the bounce could be short-lived. Moreover, like a broken watch, the stock hucksters are bound to be right one of these days, just like they were right now and then in late 1930, too. The trend was down, but even in the worst of bears (wait till after Feb. 1, caution the web bots) you can still get a few days of rally.
Revolutions and Oil If you were President Chavez of Venezuela, breakfast might bring some additional heartburn today. The reason? Reports are that oil is near 8-week highs today: Story. Although, the Capitalist Tools at Forbes report a little pre-0opening softness in oil today. Details. Now why would oil prices make a Presidente' of Chavez' caliber worry? The answer is that as the price of oil rises, it will refocus the attention of the U.S. on the potential South American war between Venezuela and Colombia. http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/01-23d-05.asp Also, with Venezuela pumping about 20-percent of the U.S. Gulf Coast refinery crude, this could present the opportunity for the U.S. to take it's crusades for democracy to South America. Our zealous promotion of democracy seems closely correlated with natural resources.
High Dollar Generosity Impressive to see Bill Gates give $750-million for vaccinations for children: Link. We can only pray that the money will come with strings to prevent use of vaccines that contain potentially damaging mercury-based preservatives which are a known health risk... Background information on risks.
On the Software Front: Bill & Co. have agreed to ship Europe a version of XP without the Media Player built in: http://www.vnunet.com/news/1160753 Speaking of XP, I have been thinking about adding OneNote(tm) to my desktop. Question for users of OneNote on a real lapptop (not notebook) : "Is it worth it?" email me.
Meantime, back at the Quagmire Let me see: The military plans secret teams to do what the CIA used to do before things started blowing up for the "over the river" crowd at Langley: Story. Then we read that George Bush wants another $80-billion to fund his wars: LINK. No reason to try and block the spending plans, because if I read the administration right, they will go ahead and spend it anyway - so we might as well try to get the paper trail right from the get-go.
Canada Rates Held The Bank of Canada met today to consider interest rates and decided to keep them where they are presently - at 2.5%: Detail. This might give the U.S. Fed room to increase only a quarter at their next meeting. Our privately owned and operated but posing as a government agency Federal Reserve will meet next week to set rates.
Quayle Thursday Steven Quayle has invited me to chat about earthquakes on Thursday - so around 5-5 PM Pacific over on his radio program. Speaking of Steve Q, check out the continuing deaths of microbiologists. We're up to 40 of the world's leading microbiologists being killed: http://www.columbiatribune.com/2005/Jan/20050123News004.asp This is becoming more and more worrisome with each death... It's doubly alarming when you consider that bird flu is just hanging out there on the news event horizon just like it's waiting to pop: Details
16:00 LA Time Nuclear Plant Troubled We have a report that the Fermi 2 plant in Michigan has a reactor problem today. Story developing: http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/4125644/detail.html No leak, but with cold winter weather, this is not the best time to be losing generating capacity.
Pondering Quakes and Warnings Just in - EQ # 4 in our "track over 5.0" - and this is for the day. Our threshold is about 4 at 6.3 or greater in a day... 2005/01/24 04:16 M 6.3 NICOBAR ISLANDS, INDIA REGION Z= 30km 7.37N 92.45E Although the contents of the latest web bot run are proprietary and available from www.halfpasthuman.com, it's fair to say that Sunday was one of the "hot days" that6 has been jumping out of the data sets. The 30th and February 1st are also key in the reports, with February's date having something to do with "losing equilibrium". While we don't know for sure what that means, it seems to imply that the markets are going to have an ugly set of facts to deal with shortly and perhaps the sell-off of the last couple of weeks is only foreplay.
Of more immediate concern as we put bytes to screens on Sunday afternoon (LA time) is the occurrence of another pair of major earthquakes. As we outlined in a rate Saturday report HERE the number of quakes over magnitude 5 is increasing at an alarming rate. On Sunday, for example, we had one in the Eastern Med:
2005/01/23 22:36 M 6.1 EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN SEA Z= 32km 35.95N 29.71E
While another hit in the area of Indonesia
2005/01/23 20:10 M 6.1 SULAWESI, INDONESIA Z= 10km 1.25S 119.79E Then we had this,... 2005/01/23 03:32 M 5.5 MID-INDIAN RIDGE Z= 10km 13.69S 66.12E
Our "gut feeling" is that the quakes should start slowing down shortly if this is just "ringing" following the 9+ that spawned the tsunami after Christmas, but it doesn't yet appear that this is the case, prompting one reader to write:
The problem with observing the wild increase in quakes is that it unfortunately fits with another web bot phrase that has been echoing in the back of our minds. "Numbness" People will have a hard time realizing or coming to terms with the major change of events at hand, seems to be the advice from the web scanning technology of a couple of weeks back. Not good. Here's a really interesting - and we hope hypothetical question: If you had a ranch in Texas that was completely set up with food, generator, fuel, medicines and arms, how many 6.0 earthquakes would need to pop off on a daily basis before you'd consider leaving the big money and lure of the "fast life" in LA before deciding the risk of a major quake was quickly becoming too large? We haven't been able to put a formula together that makes sense yet, but with occasional ear ringing continuing, and with two 6 magnitude quakes on Sunday alone, we have to wonder if we're not succumbing to a bit of that "numbness" ourselves.
Meantime, internet talk show host Steven Quayle noticed this about UFO's and strange signals in the same area where the tsunami hit: http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/01-24-05.asp Check his site now and then at www.stevequayle.com...
Catastrophe a Decade Away? We don't think it's that far, but... The British paper, the Independent, seems to think that a global climate catastrophe is 10-year in our future. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=603975 But we think that like the Reality of Peak Oil, this will be one of those watershed events that will only be clearly visible in the rearview mirror. People in the Northeast might be wondering if there's something odd about the weather now - not ten years off. Check the dramatic glacier melt pictures over at http://www.rense.com/general62/gla.htm and you'll see why sea level is inching up.
Snow Job We look for the snowstorm presently plaguing the East to have at least some unexpected economic outcomes. Story What the outcomes might be is anyone's guess, but could it interrupt hearings in DC?
Feeling Depressed A British psychologist has calculated that today is the most depressing day of the entire year - statistically: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6847012/ Weather, debt, time since Christmas and personal mojo all figuring into it.
Iraq Violence Upswing Big headlines in the Arab press about how things are getting worse as the election in Iraq is nearly here: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/665CB298-01F1-4687-943A-7342CAA9F01C.htm No telling how bad the next 7 days will be. Our prayers are with the troops. We're still not pleased with Bush's War - things based on lies and half truths seldom come to a happy ending. Repeat after me: There were no WMD's - all they had was oil. Can we at least get straight with ourselves on this? The insurgents are making their play, with their leadership making threats again on those who vote: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4201117.stm
N.K. Crazies The North Koreans have cut their food rations to about half of worldwide recommended minimums: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4200861.stm No telling how many more will die of starvation because of the crazies at the helm there. The recipe to save the country is sooooo simple: don't make atomic weapons and trade that ace for food and economic development. Is there something so difficult about the concept? Anyone with a room temperature IQ would make that choice without second thought.
Be that as it may, the way the Russia paper Pravda figures it, the world is now a more dangerous place than ever with the threat of nuclear conflict continuing to escalate because so many countries want their own nukes. Analysis.
South America Simmering Santa Cruz de la Sierra is seeking independence from Bolivia: LINK The region of eastern Bolivia accounts for half of Bolivia's outputs and wants power commensurate with their economics.
Johnny Carson Dead Late night television was invented by Johnny Carson. Damn shame to see him go. Story. Good night, Johnny, and thanks...
High Cost of History An interesting story in Wired at http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66106,00.html about how the documentary Eye on the Prize, a 14-part series on the civil right struggle in America can't be sold or rebroadcast. The reason? It's illegal because of copyright clearance issues. We have to wonder how much more history can be excised or rewritten by simply taking control of copyrights involved in controversial subjects. What about an exclusion for legitimate news and documentary use? But wait! Where would we classify Michael Moore, then?
Weekend Quakes Increasing at Alarming Rate As we covered a couple of weeks back, at http://urbansurvival.com/nl01022005a.htm we ran an informal study of the correlation between people reporting ringing of their ears and the major earthquake(s) that hit Indonesia. Here we go again. Yesterday, I received a number of reports, such as this one reporting a ringing on Wednesday night:
Shortly thereafter we got: A 5.4 in Japan (Honshu) and a 5.5 in Ecuador a 5.6 in the Philippines, and a very anomalous 5.1 in Argentina. There is so much action with 5+ earthquakes lately, that we can only conclude that some very very odd is still going on with the planet. If you're not troubled yet, let me build you a simple chart by using USGS data and news summaries, OK? To make sure we don't capture the "number drift" in the figures, let's just count 5.0 and above quakes on the USGS news releases: In 1997 there were only 3 notable quakes. http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/1997/ 1998 saw 10 notable quakes. http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/1998/ In 1999 there were 13 notable quakes: http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/1999/ In 2000 there were 6 notable earthquakes. http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/2000/ In 2001 the number increased to 7. http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/2001/ By 2002 we jumped to 12 notable quakes. http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/2002/ Hol on, because in 2003 it was 39 notable quakes. http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/2003/ 2004 calmed to just 39! http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/2004/ 2005 Year to Date: We have had 6 notable quakes through the 19th of January. http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eqlists/sig_2005.html At this rate, our annual "run rate" will top 115 for 2005!
Distortion in the Data? Sure! One of the things about our source data is that it appears that in the earlier years, says prior to 2002, the USGS was reporting quakes as notable when they were 6- 7 or larger. For the purposes of this graph, we have only included the 5.0's and larger as they were mentioned. Still, as the old saying goes, when government says "Don't worry" as they did following the recent spate of quakes, we should do what? We think "Worry!" What the hell is driving the present run rate? But moments ago here comes another "qualifier" of 5.0+...: 2005/01/22 11:27 M 5.5 KERMADEC ISLANDS REGION Z= 4km 31.64S 177.98W
This information is provided by the USGS
National Earthquake Information Center.
(Address problems to: sedas@ghtmail.cr.usgs.gov)
These parameters are preliminary and subject to revision.
A magnitude 5.5 earthquake IN THE
KERMADEC ISLANDS REGION has occurred at:
31.64S 177.98W Depth 4km Sat Jan 22 11:27:40 2005 UTC
Time: Universal Time (UTC) Sat Jan 22 11:27:40 2005
Time Near Epicenter Sat Jan 22 23:27:40 2005
Eastern Standard Time (EST) Sat Jan 22 06:27:40 2005
Central Standard Time (CST) Sat Jan 22 05:27:40 2005
Mountain Standard Time (MST) Sat Jan 22 04:27:40 2005
Pacific Standard Time (PST) Sat Jan 22 03:27:40 2005
Alaska Standard Time (AST) Sat Jan 22 02:27:40 2005
Hawaii Standard Time (HST) Sat Jan 22 01:27:40 2005
Location with respect to nearby cities:
90 km (55 miles) ESE of L'Esperance Rock,
Kermadec Islands (pop N/A)
265 km (165 miles) S of Raoul Island, Kermadec Islands
885 km (550 miles) NE of Auckland, New Zealand
1245 km (780 miles) NNE of WELLINGTON, New Zealand
For maps, additional information, and subsequent updates,
please consult: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/
Flinn-Engdahl Region Number = 177
Inside Report This weekend, subscribers got the first 20 pages of the booklet I'm writing "How to Live on $10,000 a year..." For subscription information, click here. News from Elliott Wave International
Write when you get rich,
George Ure, People's Economist
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Updated: Saturday, Jan. 29, 2005 09:15 PST
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