|
A One Man Business & Financial Newspaper |
Saturday February 24, 2007 07:55 CDT | ||
The free public side of Peoplenomics.com Local Navigation: ● Home
"How to Live on $10,000 a year
Related Sites Web Bot Project Favorite Colleagues
Our Favorite Tool::
Poster Printers |
| Last Week
| Peoplenomics | Library
| Independence Journal
|
|
Site Disclaimer
|
Publisher Note |
Elliott Wave |
Link to our mirror site |
Feeds updated daily Winds and Risks I mentioned the risk of extreme winds in parts of New Mexico, Oklahoma, and West Texas in yesterday's update - and although we saw some small fires encouraged by the winds, Elaine and I were awakened at 4:05 AM this morning with our weather radio alert going off to announce that the high wind advisory for our part of East Texas had been downgraded to a warning for today..
Nevertheless, there were some wind and fire dangers about on Friday as fire hit the Wichita KS area, and in North Carolina.
Here in the Piney Woods, we pay attention to the weather radio going off - putting up with the weekly tests at 6 PM Wednesdays, because weather's really important. Even the 25 miles an hour winds with higher gusts are enough to keep us watchful and our of some of the higher stands of timber where big hunks of dead fall can be fatal.
Global War Notes I'm not sure at what point 'war' becomes 'global war'. How many countries do we need to have active duty forces fighting/occupying/advising in before 'global' becomes accurately descriptive? It's an interesting issue and more than just academic because so many of the days headlines - and just about any day - can be slotted into the various fronts of 'global war'. For instance:
So, fundamentally, nothing has changed in the last 24-hours, but the weekend is not over.
Markets and Money The Dow dropped 120 points this week, but whether this is the start of a big slide evidence from the HalfPastHuman time predictive data sweeps, won't be evident till a few weeks from now. Subscribers to the data run can expect a report about mid week, as part one of the ALTA 1207 series will be posted.
Even though the markets cooled a bit this week, we're still wondering if "the top" is in. I'm watching a lot of indicators that show where housing is headed, not the least of which was Lowes earnings down 11.5% in Q$, but management there is expecting things to pick up in the middle of the year.
The zoom-in on housing would have to include observing that mortgage rates have hit 6-week lows, but I wonder if that will be anywhere near enough to slow the pending pop in foreclosures, already described as epidemic in Ohio, as people who bought homes at low 'teaser rates' and especially the subprime borrowers, get the smack-down of re-set adjustable rate loans.
As we read that "Subprime woes seen worsening if oil hits borrowers" in the Canadian Financial Post, and "Subprime lending worries investors" in the US, we wonder how many folks will recall the near tout of former Fed boss Alan Greenspan, who was promoting the living daylights out of "affordable housing." Hopefully, Ben Bernanke will have a little more substance to his economic plans.
But the latest update from Bart over at Now and Futures seems to show yet another uptick in the creation of M-3(b) digidollars - which we all know is why the Fed decided a year ago to stop reporting the broad M-3 measures. Like the classic Jack Nicholson line, I know what they were thinking: "You can't handle the truth!" I guess there are few good men at the Fed, huh?
lots of people ask me "Should I be renting or buying now?" It's a personal call. On the one hand, rent money is spent and gone. While there are lots of good articles in the field, and while in the short term renting may be painful, it may not be as painful as getting into a home now, only to see its valuation plummet as foreclosures increase as the year wears on. For first time homeowners, I'd be patient, but that's just my guess.
Bee Story The collapse of bee colonies has something to do with Russia? Well, here's an email to ponder from a bee-keeping reader:
Bee safe, Ure self. Peoplenomics: Verne, Wells, and 2012 As we come up to the Ides of March plateau and subsequent release period which our friends with the time/event predictive software project at www.halfpasthuman.com have been warning of for a while, I thought it might be instructive to do a little thinking about the future and some paradigms forced on us by society that have a major impact on our investment returns whether we like to acknowledge them, or not. If you're stuck in the "just the facts" mode, click here for this week's ChartPack where I layout my methodology for purchasing power parity investment comparisons in general and for key indices in particular, but don't be too frightened by this brief discussion of the future - think of it as Jules Verne and HG or Orson Wells did: As exciting fiction. Or, is it?
Sly Living Can you live on $10,000 a year? Sure - It's all in our $10 ebook "How to Live on $10,000 a year (or less!) at the Peoplenomics bookstore.
Telefriend Pass the word about this site to your friends by clicking here (Outlook/Express users).
Friday February 23, 2007 Texas' Hurricane Force Winds? One of the nice things about farmers is that they (and now in a small way 'we') tend to stick together and keep an eye out for one another - so it was with great interest that I received an email from a farmer/friend up near Spokane in the wee hours. The gist of the email was "Have you seen this NOAA Advisory and is it true?"
I know it's early, but listen up. There's a high wind advisory today for eastern parts of the Southwest, which when coupled with high fire danger, means there might be news stories by tonight about wind damage, power outages, and who knows what else. Here's the advisory with a few highlights::
All of which is interesting to me, because while we're some 700 miles east of the high wind area, we'll still likely see winds over 20 gusting 30-35 tomorrow - which is enough to discourage me from trying to burn some of my slash piles left over from last year's logging we did.
Food Chain Collapse: Bees & Crop Circles I know this is going to sound strange/fluky/woo-woo'ish and more, but here an interesting notion: Back in June of 2004 there was a crop circle formation sighted which resembled a huge bee when viewed from the air. Now, while no one knows for sure what is causing it, a phenomena called "colony collapse syndrome" is wiping our bees by the millions - and that could have a horrific impact on crops. Presaged by a crop circle? Your guess is as good as mine. --- I don't want to sound alarmist about frankenfoods and frankencrops, but in the process of putting some of these new weed-killer ready products out in the market, did the big chemical companies do studies to see if genetically modified pollen getting into the bee's food chain might have some unintended consequences? We'll bee for more buzz on this one. Is a big faminizing techno "Ooops!" in the making?
Middle East Go-round It's a stew of distasteful headlines - like most mornings. The UN says Iran is speeding up it's nuclear weapons program reports the Seattle Times. The NY Daily News says Britain's "Prince Arming will head to war"...and Prince Harry will bring his own minor troop surge of SAS with him to protect him, which leaves us wondering what the third-in-line will be aiming at? I mean besides headlines... --- The "green death" story out of Iraq (Green Zone) is almost certainly a web bot predictive linguistics hit as officials on our side reportedly expect more chlorine bombs and attacks on helicopters in the near future. --- Off the Middle East, but on the first part of that part of the linguistic libretto, a once skeptical reader admits:
The Smith media circus concluded yesterday with the decision to bury the body in the Bahamas, and yes, it was a huge media events - which is why it is our "prominent" death. No, the death of Dennis Johnson, while sad, was likely not the reference to "green death." MY bet's on the chlorine stories - it fits and with lots of media coverage, to boot - another qualifier.
Next on the Libretto The financial markets are next up for a little action, if we read the linguistic libretto from www.halfpasthuman.com right. While we're waiting for the first part of the new data run (ALTA 1207 targeting December 2007 to March 2008 events) to be posted - in a week or so, it seems if I read it right that a stew of oil, gold/silver, and financial things begin to boil over here and end badly. "Oil," headlines Bloomberg, "is little changed after rising on Fuel Supply, Iran threat" Nothing would surprise me less than something big happening this weekend (like more Iran tweaking or an actual (or contrived event) in the Straits of Hormuz and come Monday morning, everyone heading for the exits and something like a 1987-like Monday drop. Although 55-days from a major market top is more in fitting with past events. --- Which is not to say that it will happen like that. It's only to mention that there are some huge imbalances floating around in the marketplace right now, especially as it pertains to exchange rates. For example, the Yen is heading for its worst week since 2005 versus the Euro on rate outlook, goes one headline.
I know it may seem counter-intuitive to read in the Financial Times that the "Nikkei hits seven-year high on rate hopes" but there's a simple explanation and it all has to do with Purchasing Power Parity. You see, I have this strange view of international markets that envisions international markets like a series of interlocked teeter-totters. Consider the following illustration:
Now, suppose you have invested a while back in the Nikkei and had ridden it up for a gain. The problem is that when you go to convert your gain back into locally useful currency (like US dollars if you're in America) the purchasing power of the Yen may have dropped sufficiently to water down or even negate your gain. --- If you're eyeing the blue teeter-totter, and seeing how the Nikkei going up is about the same as purchasing power going down, you can now flip over to Bart's chart at www.nowand futures.com and notice that the M3B (reconstructed M3 based on broad currency creation measures) is going up in the US by roughly 11.5% annualized.
Given that production of goods is relatively stable (as long as the consumer eats the same as last year, and wastes as much money as last year on junk) we could hypothesize that unless your stock picks are going up 11.5% per year, your purchasing power gain (like the Japanese investor) could be zero or even negative. In other words, if the market goes up 11.5% and inflation whacks purchasing power by 11.5%, you have exposed yourself to a ton of risk for no return.
So who's making the money? Ah. The whole global game right now is the efforts of the G-7 to synchronize the movements of exchange rates to maintain (world) financial order. As long as they can do this, even though there is international inflation/declining purchasing power, the hedge fund and derivatives game can continue and disaster be averted. But, if some serious change in expectations occurs, then the whole international collection of economic teeter-totters lock up and we have something called global financial meltdown. If that's too simple, one of my friends describes it as a Massively Correlated Hyper-Volatility Event. That feels better, doesn't it?
Now, your broker is not likely to warn you of the risk of such a global lock-up, but if you were to read about current moves in the area of globalization of financial regulations, you'd be reminded that in 1974, the failure of Herstaat ( Bank (sometimes called Herstatt or Bankhaus Herstaat) in Germany, nearly took down the whole global economy. A good paper in the field is "The Globalisation of Regulation by Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite of the University of London and the Australian National University, respectively, with a Herstatt reference on pg 12.
Could it happen again? Oh sure, but depending on who you listen to, the odds are either higher or lower than in 1974. So the libretto says pay attention over the next couple of weeks, and you can bet I will. I may look back and regret not buying a basket full of index puts now, while the markets are so high, but I don't play that game anymore. I'm all about keeping what I have in the way of purchasing power - and gold - now eyeing $700 - seems as good a way as any to keep purchasing power. --- Every couple of days a reader asks "What do you think of gold stocks? Wouldn't they be as good as holding gold coins?" My answer is incredibly boring and repetitive: If the every bank in the world suffered Herstaat Effect today (e.g. lockup of the banking system) and the markets closed globally, where would you be able to pass of your paper/shares? (Most people don't event have the actual certificates, these generally being held by the DTC...so what do you really have in hand? A stock statement? You think any sane person in a post financial apocalypse world would be interested in your account statement? Have you gone mad?.
If it's in a computer, or more specifically, if it's not the metal in hand, it's a paper asset. And paper burns. Or, as was the case in WTC-7 / SEC offices (not hit by an airplane), records just go missing or get destroyed.
Notes to the Mogambo I sent what I thought would be a helpful note to the Mogambo Guru this week (www.independencejournal.com/mugu/) having spied a marvelous drug put on site (thanks to a reader in Europe) who thought it was a marvelous spoof of the overly medicated pharmacy business:
So OK, maybe it is a placebo, but does this sound like gratitude to you?
The angriest man in economics lives up to his name, but fortunately for me, the time monks have taught me the secret of invisibility which is readily achieved while chanting the electrical engineer's secret meditation word: "Ohms." He won't even see me.
Thursday February 22, 2007 Another bot hit? Green Death One of the things we've learned from watching the web bot project for six years is that when the web bots predict something, they often refer to clusters/memes as much as specific events. For example, when I put one of the predictions on television in August about an expected attack on Israel's "water supply/wellspring" of something like that in December, the actual fulfillment came as there was an attack on Israel's heritage (cultural wellspring) in December when the Iranians hosted their conference questioning the holocaust...and within a week to 10-days there were stories about contaminated water from some of the settlements. A both archetype and literal fulfillment.
As you know, we've been talking about "prominent death" which was fulfilled by the passing of Anna Nicole Smith (and the resultant median frenzy) and that was to be followed by "green death". This second point has apparently hit literal fulfillment with the attack on a chlorine gas (green) tanker truck in Bagdad in/near the Green Zone. But that doesn't mean we're necessarily "out of the green" but it's certainly a "green death" story of some consequence - 12 dead and 200 injured from the attacks so far. The odds are what? --- Meantime, as we watch for "terra intrudes" this spring summer, meaning we are looking for earthquakes and earth changes of a major magnitude, a curious email arrived advising this:
Given the linguistics, nothing would surprise us much.
Sneaking more Presidential Powers Given the kind of changes which we expect from March to September, when large scale emotional release events start popping off, prior to event bigger problems in December, we're somehow not surprised to read about how the administration is grabbing more martial law powers. The story about this latest executive power grab in the International Herald Tribune is a must-read - at least if you have fond memories of our Constitution, as I do.
Let's see: Posse Comitatus is gone, now the feds can usurp our local law enforcement types on a whim. And, we're not sure what's considered terrorism under Patriot II nowadays. Fat lotta good democorps have done so far, or locking up the handful of crooked lawmakers caught so far, huh?
Investment Grade Diesel We use a fair amount of diesel for land clearing, fence building and the like - so this week we will be topping off our small supplies. I'll also be laying in the supplies which we'll need to complete the office renovation - and maybe a few farm projects, too, like the new chicken coop, running water to the garden (sick of hoses) and so forth.
What's driving this, you're wondering?
One of my deflationist friends sent me a headline proclaiming "Home-purchase loans at four-month low". While that may seem like it's very deflationary, a little deeper read into the news release from the Mortgage Banker's Association presents this fact by deflationist pal skipped over:
Somewhere, I should have a sign up in my office that says "don't look for data to support a conclusion, look at data to derive a conclusion.
I can almost hear him gnashing his teeth when I trot out the inflation supporting facts: Gold was up more than $20 yesterday...and silver is now well over $14 - which is better than a double since we waded in back in July 2005 around the $7 mark.
Now, what is making it look like runaway stagflation or inflation is the bigger bugaboo to be feared? A email from a thoughtful reader in North Dakota spells our more of why inflation - or stagflation - not deflation is the problem to be feared in here:
Which brings us full circle around to energy and my fears about a strike on Iran. Despite the deflationary scare, we notice that the price of oil has been stubbornly holding around $60 a barrel, and along with gold's strength have us wondering if we should buy just enough fuel for short-term use and bank on the deflationists being right, or whether we should bet on our own common sense view of things and bet that fuel prices will be up dramatically by next fall after all the "release events" that start in about 2-weeks.
You know where I'll be this week: loading up on Sta-Bil, the diesel and gasoline preservative folks, and then a trip to the local fuel distributor to fill up some barrels.
Gloat? Me? Well, sure, what the hell. As the People's Economist, I try to spot the long-term macro trends that anyone with 31¢ worth of brain cells can use to do a little better than the rest of the human herd. One of my 2002 calculations went like this: Are we likely to see more of less humans wanting more or less food in coming years? The answer was easy, so instead of taking another big-bucks corporate job in a big city.
Sure enough, it has been a right on call as we read that "Farmland [is] the new hot property". Farmland in Idaho is up 35%, for example.
A farmer/reader in Virginia sees it, too:
He then recounts some of the other prices going up in his area and making an interesting observation:
The tax folks being what they are, we expect ramping up our ag income will be key, which is why we're going into more active farming than "tree farming." Trees are nice, easy to raise and all, but hard to eat.
Tuesday, February 21, 2007 Some Additional Ponders I was sitting at breakfast this morning wondering "Gee, why no 'green death' yet?" And then I flipped over to CNN. Right there was live coverage of the Anna Nicole Smith "where will the body be buried" hearing in Florida. Ah, just so. Too early for the 'green' death yet. --- The CPI numbers came out today:
While the core rate was 3-10th's of one percent for the month, December was raised to 0.4% which pencils to 5% a year, so the deflationist cries are still way early. Late summer, maybe. House prices are not an economy. There are other things, like wars to keep workers busy...
The "Shortage Meme" Returns
The focus of UrbanSurvival (and our
mirror site
www.independencejournal.com) is not to tell you about the
latest fire/murder/airplane crash kind of news. You can get
that anywhere. What we do instead is try to provide a
consistent "big picture" look ahead to enable you to make personal
and investment decisions based on some pertinent facts and
observations. That said, a long-time reader of this site would
do well to recall several things in sequence as we creep up on our
mid March "release period" forecast by the web bot folks. The first thing to recall is that in March 2006 I began tracking the news results from the Google news search site for the term "shortage". This was done on the basis of a long range prediction of "encounters with scarcity" along with "restrictions on travel" and some other long term value sets in model space.
The second thing to remember is that we have tentatively learned (although this forecasting the future via language shifts on the internet is far from a precise science) is that the larger the global/emotional impact of an event, the more lead time we get on it. For very short term predictions (like the accident involving a couple of athletes at the Olympics) high emotive values but low carry values seem to foretell events in a 3-days to 3-weeks timeframe, while events with lower emotive values, but longer carry values are further along the march of time.
From this, and based on lots of "hits", we've also figured that the bigger an event is (in terms of impact) the more lead time we'll see in the language. For Katrina ("1.3 million march north", "city slides into the mud") the lead time was a couple of months. It wasn't much of a Mardi Gras yesterday in the Big Easy.
For the Indonesia/Banda Aceh earthquake, the forecast lead time was four months ("300,000 dead", "land driven back to a previous age") although that was included in a description set (August 2004) which also included imagery of a courthouse abandoned which seemed to presage the September 2004 Redwood City quake during the Peterson trial.
With that on the table, let's consider some of the very long term predictions, one of which is "dollar death" and the other which is "encounter with scarcity/restrictions on travel."
On this latter, one could already argue that "restriction on travel" are already in place. One linguistic interpretation would be that you can't carry many items onto an airplane that you used to be able to, and there's the infamous "no-fly" list, and so forth. But it seems to still be ahead, and that means it could be a much larger meaning for restrictions on travel.
Turning then to the shortage/scarcity meme, there's this ugly chart I mentioned that for the first time since I started tracking, passed the 20-thousand hits level today:
How to take the data is the problem. On the one hand, we are reading about how there is a propane shortage up in Maine. Doctors are in short supply in Alaska. Growth of industry in India has led to a shortage of good managers. And Esso stations in Ontario may run out of fuel this week due to not one, but two, refinery fires.
Obviously, there are other ways to interpret the Google returns. One way is to write it all off as simply a change of spidering and/or indexing and caching at Google. Or (and this is where my personal; thinking goes at the moment) we could be seeing the initial tightening up of supplies as the global economic system runs up again the edges of the Petri dish, and from here pressure has been building toward some kind of crescendo yet to occur in our future.
We'll know soon enough, as the web bot project has Part 1 of ALTA 1207 due out this weekend (subscription information). The baseline modelspace summary was sent out to subscribers last weekend.
As clear as I try to be when explaining the technology (and the massive public impacts we expect), I still get notes from readers like this one which says in part:
As the People's Economist I tap on the whiteboard: Tension builds for another week or so, that's up. Then we get a week or so of plateau, level, then around the 15th, we get a series of release events (down) between there are mid September (19th) punctuated by a series of "Oh my God, did you see what just happened?" events on TV. From September, the pressure goes back on, so emotional pressure builds up, and while we have minor release events there, we build to event more emotional potential "pressure" if you will (going up) until we get to somewhere between big and HUGE release events in (and following) December, perhaps in anticipation of bird flu arriving in January, or nuclear conflict, but that's my guess. --- The "death of the dollar" has been kicking around modelspace for a very long time - which to my way of reckoning, means it will be a massive event. I think I've mentioned that the collapse of paper assets has popped up in the language, and certainly that part of the libretto would make sense. If the dollar goes, the government's going to be in the you-know-what'er. I've sort of penciled in November of this year for the event - there was a temporal marker to "November" that several runs back, and it seems like a fair guess...and it would certain fit, if you believe that governments engage in wars and conflict as a means of population control. A "limited" nuclear conflict come year end would be a major 'way out" for the banksters and the pols. But, the dollar may not last even that long.
As evidence, although not sounding nearly as Machiavellian, the Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin has a modestly titled report "Global systemic rick - April 2007: Inflexion point of the phase of impact / US economy enters recession" that you have to read and internalize. Released a few days back, it forecasts such things are 10-million Americans kicked out of foreclosed home and the like - and in the main sounds like it's another way of saying massive unemployment during this summer's recession/second leg down on the Second Depression which this site has been forecasting since 1997. You saw Nissan is offering buyouts to vehicle and assembly workers in Tennessee? --- The economics of what's ahead are particularly important to me because I can see a "wave" forming that will break over the country this summer. If you think about the cross section of a surfer-sized wave, you have a rising area in front of the wave - this is where indicators like our shortage chart - and reports the price of gasoline may be headed back to the $3.00 range start cropping up. The European outlook is also part of this "build". The actual arrival of a crash is a release event.
The wave begins to "break" when this summer we see the unemployment spike from the round of new layoffs which is now underway. the peaking or passing of economic stimulus from the Iraq War - something the British will feel first as they are starting to ratchet down their Iraq War involvement now. Dick Cheney says he wants the US to leave Iraq with "honor" but I suspect he also means with oil. Which is in part, why Cheney got a cold reception in Japan overnight. --- I received word yesterday that the History Channel will run its segment where I talk a bit about the web bots in a segment of Decoding the Past: Doomsday 2012 on March 1st (a week from tomorrow) at 9 PM Eastern. Check local listings. --- Most of the rest of the day's stories making "headlines" aren't worth worrying about, as most don't fit or modify the real "big picture" in a meaningful way.
That said, if you want something more to read - and certainly more to think about, consider why Russia is spending a trillion dollars updating its strategic missile fleet. Or, go read the latest official [public] military assessments of China and then look at where a lot of goods in the local Wal-Mart are made:
Let me figure this up: The People's Liberation Army has been requiring civil defense facilities at all news buildings since 1997 or so, Russia is rearming, and we've spun our wheels and burned resources in the Middle East. Throw in a collapsing dollar to "kick it up a notch" and maybe an oil embargo. What's a political power structure that's underwater in polls going to do? Maybe I better call the www.ki4u.com folks this week. December is not that far off. And neither are the Ides of March.
Worth Watching You should take some time and watch the comments of Ron Paul on the not-really Federal Reserve. Great video. Worth every second of the 5-minutes it'll take you. "Wages never keep up with profits on Wall Street and the banks, thus sowing the seeds of class discontent." Yup.
Tuesday February 20, 2007 Scent of Disaster Dogs, wolves, coyotes, and jackals I'm told can smell fear - something I can't yet tell is true - just a saying that's usually accompanied by the admonition not to show fear. Still, there are three or four stories developing - any one of which could lead to the very bad period our friends with the event predictive software say at due to arrive from mid March and last until September 19th, or so.
A few readers have asked for clarification of the terms "building period" and "release period." I won't be able to explain it as well as the time monks, but the central idea is that in an emotional building period such as the one we are in now, there's a growing sense of "pressure" about. Not that events stop happening, but the underlying character of news events is one of something "building".
Examples of the "build" are evident when we read stories that make the headlines. The most blatant, of course, is the report that the US is planning to send a third carrier group toward the Middle East. While the BBC reports "US 'Iran attack plans" revealed" we have to note with due respect for our nation's military that contingency planning goes on all the time.
The recent sense of frustration expressed by average folks with the near complete lack of change from the newly elected democratic majority is another. And the administration's retort "that won't stop us" on troop surge, or anything else are clear examples as well...and that move we reported on in Mexico yesterday with lots of federal troops being deployed to places like Tijuana and the border with south Texas, as also clear "builds."
On the financial side, one can observe that the Dow has been climbing, another kind of "build" and the pressure on gold has been "building" although the price action has been muted, there's an underlying upward pressure there, too. Because there's reason to expect terra (or earth related) to intrude into secular events this summer, we also keep an eye on the number and frequency of earthquakes. Not that we can infer anything from them, but there seem to have been lots of 5+ quakes over the past several weeks. Ditto the Princeton Noosphere Project.
The string of bombings in Iraq has continued, building in number over the past 6-months, or so it seems anyway. And even something like Iran's development of nuclear energy is a "pressures building" situation now that Russia has stopped work on the controversial projects while Iran insists that it is not dragging its feet on payments. --- The flip side of the global mindset are the "release events". What would qualify? If the US or Israel resorted to first use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran, or if the current naval build-up results in a defacto replay of the Gulf of Tonkin situation, that would be a "release event."
The huge Indonesia earthquake was a release event...and as the space shuttle disaster recalls, the "release events" are the ones where someone comes into your office, or calls you on the phone and says "Oh my God, did you hear what happened?" That's the hallmark of a release.
Some release events are going on in slow motion, while others we seen happen as blinding flashes. A slow motion death - and one that might qualify for a bot hit on "green death" is the report that "Climate changes killing marine life". --- While the disclosures about climate change are in a sense part of a decades long "release" process that's now gathering steam, the technology also quite properly told us to be on the lookout for a "secrets revealed" meme or theme in events since about when Cindy Sheehan showed up at Crawford. Not that it was a particularly significant event, but it was a convenient temporal marker, just as the Anna Nicole Smith death was quite likely the "prominent" death we were expecting (and a good temporal marker) which means the "green death should be along shortly, if killing off the oceans isn't a "green" (in the environmental sense) isn't a big enough death.
Returning to "secrets revealed" you did see that new JFK film from Dallas has turned up? Again, this goes to the meme "secrets revealed."
The broad brush of what's ahead is this: We're about to the release period and in three weeks, or so, you'll be able to look back and say "Ah! So that's what a release period is..."
Then we have a slide downward through mid September, then a rapid pressure building period into December when we get an even bigger release event, although what's coming this spring/summer should be many times the size of Katrina/Rita combined - so we expect.
It's a good time to rethink personal preparedness. Although we don't expect the Bird Flu to arrive in a meaningful way in the US until next January-February, there's reason to lay in stocks of consumables now.
For example, if we have an Iran conflict pop out. Let's game this out by looking at a lunar calendar. I'd bet on the big hostilities starting the night of the 14th of March because that would give the US maximal advantage in the night vision arena. Older speculation was that the new moon (20-21) would be optimal, but another 4 days of advantage is available by going before the dark of the moon.
What's likely to change if that occurs? Oil prices instantly go through the roof. Meaning over $100 a barrel because Iran is 11.6% (plus or minus) of world reserves. That will be reflected over coming months in soaring food and prices for all imported consumer goods - and thus our advice: If you need something in 6-months, consider buying it now. I'll be topping off my supplies of diesel for our farm equipment this week, and getting the generator online is a major priority now, too.
Today, oil prices are under $59 a barrel - a seeming good sign. But, events have an ebb and flow to them and the "tweaking of Iran" continues. Regardless of the potential for a lower price later in the year if nothing happens and deflation sets in - in some serious manner due to the declines in the housing market - soaring prices seem at least an equal bet, so we'll just top off our propane the first week of March and be willing to pay too much.
My philosophy, restated time and time again is simple: I'd rather structure my life in such a way as to minimize the potential for catastrophic loss of freedom than to structure life for maximal gain. While the maximal gain theory is fine - if you're lucky enough to guess the future right - the downside is much uglier if you get it wrong.
All of which makes life so interesting to watch. If you're in the paper assets are all that matter mindset, good luck. I'll just sit here far from big city targets and sniff the future as best I can...and today there's just a hint...the slightest and most subtle of hints...that disaster is just ahead.
Sirius Questions The satellite radio merger talk between Sirius and XM raises antitrust questions. Got a shortwave radio, by the way? A hand cranked one for disasters?
Jet Blues JetBlue is supposed to be back on schedule after what one headline calls a service meltdown.
Wal-Mart Expands Opening lots of new locations. --- Might make a heck of an interesting short term put option play if the global price of oil spiked, huh? Glad I'm not playing options anymore. And no, that's not advice...
Man's Best Friend Dog credited for saving climbers... You'd want something larger than a lap dog, though.
Debt Check Here's a cool link to credit card debt, interest rates, and average balances by state...worth saving.
Mail Bag From a reader in Israel:
And our best source in Mexico tells us that he, too, smells something fishy about the Pemex security beefed up because of al Qaeda reports:
Monday February 19, 2007 While we read with interest that the Mexico government is sending 3,000 troops to the border area running roughly from Laredo to the Caribbean shores, we're also mindful that the move comes uncomfortably close to our "Ides of March" release period that our colleagues at HalfPastHuman have been highlighting in their future event predictive work. I also recall that events often come out of left field.
Most Americans aren't aware of this but according to one site, Tijuana is also under something like martial law, as the mayor of the city is trying to take over the governorship of Baja, California state.
A third area where corporate-friendly presidente Calderon is sending troops is to guard Pemex oil facilities. This in the wake of the latest terror threat from al Qaeda.
The US Border Patrol is planning to add lots of agents, 500 for the Tucson sector between now and 2008 in fact, but we wonder how the bigger picture will play out.
Then there's the issue of whether US National Guard should be armed or merely relegated to "observer" roles. Although he's a state senator in Tennessee, Knoxville republican Time Burchett figures if Guardsmen from Tennessee on border duty aren't armed, they should come back home.
There are other things going on which have caught my eye. For example, while illegals flood into New Mexico, governor Bill Richardson is urging diplomacy in the Middle East. Now, ain't that rich? I'm surprised that there's no recall movement in New Mexico, but then again, maybe the sleep of voters is sounded than I reckoned. --- A cool-eyed appraisal of the situation might be that there's now a "low intensity conflict" going on along the Mexican border. About 10% of Mexico's population has already fled to the USA, and we would not be surprised to see an official warning of danger to Americans traveling in certain parts of Mexico in coming weeks. As the Vancouver Sun notes, "Canadians unfazed by Mexico violence" but then again, they're a long ways from the border.
Low intensity conflicts have a way of escalating and with the web bot linguistics turning up words like "revolution" and with the Bush trip to Mexico shortly - not to mention the elitists (the Powers That be) pressing their North American Union ideology, we can't help but wonder if Mexico won't figure prominently into events this spring and summer.
I'm also wondering if the Mexico border violence will be used as an excuse to merge militaries to present a "unified force" or "unified command" - and thereby achieve the corporatist goal of a single North American country. A Constitution blockbuster like that wouldn't surprise me from the upcoming Bush trip to Mexico. It would all too conveniently fit the pattern of create a problem and have the solution already in the back pocket. Mexico and Canada could then become unwitting partners to the bankrupting of the American Dollar by the runaway printers. The corporatists get control, the banksters get a new currency, and our beloved Constitution shrivels further.
More to the point: With Mexican troops moving up on the border areas of South Texas, and Southern California, we notice that most US military forces are (conveniently?) out of the country and our southern flank exposed.
India Blasts No surprise in who's suspect - Islamic extremists - but a train bombing in India has killed dozens. Although there have been periodic efforts to settle differences between India and Pakistan, events like this put the brakes on reasonable discussion and extremist groups count on that. --- Extremists seem to be partial to bombs for some reason. Another string of bombings in Iraq has taken 10+ lives, too.
America's Ruling Elite Some top democorps are trial ballooning the concept of Bill Clinton getting Hillary's seat in the Senate if she wins the presidency. Don't we have better for both positions? Between the Bushes and Clintons we might as well have an aristocracy or corptocracy instead of a Constitutional Republic. Speaking of which....
Presidents' Day I'm going to take it easy today, as lots of Americans do, and maybe hoist a branch water to George Washington this afternoon. The markets are closed, although overseas markets are open and the price of gold has ticked up a bit. Lots of sales to throw money at, and depending on city, free parking. For the most part, I expect the average citizen will spend zero time contemplating the rich history of the Republic. There really was a time when the Vice President was the fellow who lost from the other side (Picture Al Gore as Vice President), and there was a time when executive orders and signing statements didn't exist. Is it later than we think?
News from Elliott Wave International
Write when you get rich,
George Ure, The People's Economist
| ||
|
|
Free Financial News updated daily except Sundays. UrbanSurvival.com is mirrored at www.independencejournal.com
Our premium service, which contains more in depth reports is available on a $30/year subscription basis. Details at www.peoplenomics.com/subscribe.htm.
The "web bot project" indicates a reference to the time predictive technology embodied in "Asymmetric Language Trend Analysis Intelligence Reports" pioneered and operated by Tenax Software Engineering for www.halfpasthuman.com. Extracts, when used, are with exclusive permission and any references on other web sites must contain a link to both this site and HalfPastHuman's main page: www.halfpasthuman.com.
Site Contact: george@ure.net --- © 2007 Copyright Notice: The author(s) of this site requires that any links or use of material from this site include the author's name and a link to this site. All links included in our source material must also be included in citations. Address questions to: george@ure.net. Copyright infringers will be pursued, and please note that Fair Use requires identification of the author name and we require a link - which when you think about it is really minimal recognition of our works. |
![[Most Recent USD from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/indexes/idx24_usd_en_2.gif)
