|
"Standup Economics" |
Saturday June 2, 2007 07:40 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
North American Earthquakes — Last 72 Hours Our Favorite Tool::
Vendors & Such
Posters:
Parts: Trading Bullion Web Hosting Radiation Monitoring
|
| Last Week
| Peoplenomics | Library
| Independence Journal
|
|
Site Disclaimer
|
Publisher Note |
Elliott Wave |
Link to our mirror site | Technorati Profile HOT OFF THE PRESS! CLICK TO ORDER YOURS FOR $5!
Another Record - Sort Of Once again the stock market hit another "all time high" this week. Or is it? If you plug if all-time-high from early 2000 of 11,723 into the Federal Reserve's inflation calculator online, you can quickly see that on a purchasing power basis, the Dow needs to continue advancing to 13,989.99 to break even. I won't bore you this morning with the "why" and "wherefore's" of why we are not in a full-fledged Second Depression yet, except that papering-over, the bait & switch war(s), and the housing bubble have all played key parts. And, if you were fully invested in tech stocks in 2000, you're probably still under water.
Look, there's a bright side here: If the market had continued climbing from 2000 instead of the micro-crash of 2001-2003, you'd probably have a much bigger carbon footprint. So, see? Losing money is good.
"Thar He Blows!" The hurricane trackers have their work cut out for them - as this season is supposed to be more active than usual. Evidence enough of that as Tropical Storm Barry heads into Florida waters today. As interesting as first landfall will be watching to see if Barry goes on a 'walk about' once ashore. At least Georgia might get some drought relief out of this...see a silver lining...
Critics Advised We can't help but notice that Russian police have rounded up documents and computers that a Russian journalist was using to write two books critical of Vladimir Putin. Ostensibly, police want the materials for a criminal investigation. Right. We're not expecting that kind of thing in the USA until the 2008-2009 timeframe...although the rate of Constitution hacking is critical already.
Who Cares Department
If so, then you maybe care that this week marked the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album...I'm more a Hendrix fan...
Foreign Policy Geniuses Here's a shocker: The State Department has issued a travel warning telling folks in so many words "Don't go to Iran". Duh. Like the antics of Hair Trigger Dick weren't enough of a clue? Hey! Maybe people really are that dumb...
Real Progress You might have thought China was a Super Power - but now comes real proof of their world-power status: Washington and Beijing are going to set up a "hotline" like the Washington-Moscow hotline. Amazing - Washington catching up to Wal-Mart!
Have Gun Will Travel If you're a mercenary looking to pad that Swiss account - no shortage of opportunity: But while the world's hotspots are ripe with employment opportunities for a man with a gun, it's not all peaches, cream, and gunpowder. In the UK an anti-mercenary law is coming, but not if outgoing war minister Tony Blair gets his way. As the UK's Herald explains: "The draft legislation is aimed at curbing an estimated 20,000 South Africans hiring themselves out as soldiers of fortune in various Third World conflicts, or volunteering for foreign armies." ---- Off to work on Peoplenomics which delves into the Best Jobs to Have When Things Crash...
You may notice that the masthead for this page now describes it as "standup economics" - because I am determined to present a more optimistic view of things. Just because we're being reduced (slowly) to third world status, no point losing our sense of humor about things. It is, after all, only money. Yikes!
Peoplenomics: Where's Bernoulli? I'm particularly fond of what I call the 'substitution method of learning" as a way to rock-climb your way into a clearer picture of how the world operates. I've done this in the past, comparing the study of economics to electricity, where we found that the power of a stock to increasing in value over time, was much like the electricity formula for Watts where P=IE (power equals voltage times amperage). It's closely related to on-balance volume. With the market at "all-time highs" (nominally, but not on a purchasing power parity basis, just yet) I think we can investigate laminar airflow over wings and seek what might be useful as "stall warning indicators" - something of interest (sic) to the millions who insist on betting there's a bigger fool out there somewhere. Likely, there's not. More for Subscribers Subscription Information
Making Ends Meet Our e-book - "How to Live on $10,000 a year or less" is available at our Peoplenomics Bookstore for just $10. Lot's of useful info about living well for less...
Pass the Word to Your FriendsAnd anyone you know, in case you have no friends -- Click here to send the an email telling them about this site
Friday June 2, 2007 Job Numbers I forgot to put up the jobs report this morning - so to fix that:
The real story is - as usual - in the CES Birth-Death Model numbers - which contributed 203,000 jobs this month. In other words, without the "statistically created" jobs, we would have been in the hole -46,000 jobs for the month. And, A-12/U-6 underemployed held steady at 7.9% of the workforce.
My Neighbor Knows Elaine and I are most fortunate, in that we quite literally couldn't ask for better neighbors than the couple across the street. Besides being full of common sense about all things farmerly - and willing to share their learning - they're also politically savvy. Which brings me to the point that my neighbor said something out at the mailbox last week. He mentioned that the Republican Party had called him up asking him for a campaign contribution and he quite vociferously declined. He's not happy with the administration's felony forgiveness plans (packaged for the sheep as "immigration reform"). I suspect there are other areas, too, where the Republicans have broken their promises to their constituency.
Fast forward to this morning's headlines and what do we find? "RNC faces donor falloff, fires solicitors". The point is that my neighbor is not the only fellow who is upset with the once Grand Old Party - which I now call - and I think more accurately - the 'republicorps'. I don't think my neighbor is ready to go that far, but clearly, he's disappointed enough with what's going on in Washington lately that he's stopped sending checks.
While communities in America are trying to deal with lawlessness brought in by illegal immigrants, many of whom bring in drugs to 'pay' for their crossing, and while shootings and assaults are rising in border areas, we notice that Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal Online this morning that "President Bush has torn the conservative coalition asunder." I figured that out when my neighbor declined to make a donation as a personal statement is disgust. --- But, it's not like immigration (and the Gestapo-like powers giving Homeland Security the right to say who can work for whom contained in the immigration bill ) is the only issue facing the republicorps. Folks are awakening - and they're not happy.
Slowly, the Bush administration is in the midst of doing a "U-turn" on global warming, reports the Financial Times. Like global warming or not, the weather is a little nuttier than usual this year, with Europe shivering this week as Russia is enjoying a heat wave. With that bit of foreplay, experts see an increase in hurricanes this year and maybe into the future. New Orleans is planning for hurricanes, but they're not ready for a Katrina-sized storm. Few National Guard around - most are busy in the Iraq/Afghanistan resource wars. --- All of which leaves the administration with its hands full and not dealing with strategic threats - like Vladimir Putin's warning today about a new global arms race developing. Anyone home? Condi Rice saying "Russian attitudes locked in the past" isn't exactly the pinnacle of statesmanship. --- All of which is only the tip of the iceberg, of course.
What's really going on in the District of Corruption is that as many as 10,000 members of government the public sector are worried about what will happen in the DC Madam case. Not too surprisingly, the Supreme Court turned down a request for a stay in the matter. you see, the defendant's assets have been seized so she can't afford to get an attorney of her choice. No, the high court doesn't want her to have the dough to buy good counsel, it seems. This is all headed under the rug as fast as the power structure can manage it. Too dirty, too many involved, too much to expose. Corpmedia seem to be going along with efforts to bury this one - perhaps because there are some corpmedia names on the Madam's lists? If the shoe fits... --- To be sure, there are some signs of hope. The House has approved new lobbying reform legislation last month, but that doesn't get it past the Senate. And if it makes it that far, there's the Decider's decision. Speaking of which...
Author John Lindorff [co-author: "The Case for Impeachment"] notes that the Bush administration hasn't issued a signing statement so far this year and says it's probably because Bush is getting pretty much what he wants: It's like I have seen the whole world flipped upside down: Al Gore is against any attempt to impeach the fellow on Pennsylvania Avenue and my neighbor isn't sending the republicorps a check. That's a 180 if I've ever seen one. ---- With the world gone completely wacky, I can only surmise that in the wake of the collapsed Internet Bubble (2000) and the now collapsing Housing Bubble (2007) that perhaps our next bubble will be in the carbon credit game. I read just today that "European carbon (credit) prices spike to 13-month high" Wucking funderful.
I stand in awe of the "invisible hand" at work but have to wonder - after all politics is corrupted and the earth ravaged to the point of lifelessness like the moon - if visitors from another galaxy wouldn't be watching all this and laughing their asses off.
"Here comes the good part - this is where the ant farm is eaten by the ants," they'd be saying about now.
The employment collapse, dollar collapse, terra intrudes, and the events of September draw nearer. Get sugar while you can, fellow ants.
Falling Incomes From the Bureau of Economic Analysis:
Personal savings rates? People withdrew 1.3% last month to break even.
Thursday May 31, 2007 Time to What? A note from our time predictive linguistics friends over at www.halfpasthuman.com are perhaps instructive for public review: The essence of it was: "Dig a hole, buy a boat". OK, there were a few more harsh words - time monks are a bit more direct when then send notes, but this being an "all ages" web site, you've got the idea?
Even if you don't subscribe to the amazing "Here's what's going to happen in the near-term future" reports they generate, it's letting too much of the cat out of the bag to say that there is still a lot ahead for the US about "gouging of the land" and that means wind/storms kind of stuff. With the formation of tropical storm Barbara, which has a track sort of towards Mexico, the idea of building a tornado/hurricane shelter doesn't sound like a bad idea...just a lot of work to schedule and do right.
In Nawlins' Ray Nagin says in his mayoral State of the City address that the Big Easy is recovering but still needs help. Like FEMA is help? One more storm this season and who knows if NO can be saved...
They're also pretty sure that in the medium-term future (not next week, but not ten years out either) we will be getting some kind of "global coastal event" which is a nice way of saying 'drowning of a lot of land (not to mention people) as sea level catches up with global warming. Curiously, at least to me, folks don't seem to be taking the USGS calculations of a number of years ago very seriously yet - namely that the world's oceans will rise 243 feet as all the glaciers melt and landlocked ice slides into the ocean - but somehow the global warming crowd while possibly right about the general picture, hasn't followed things to their logical conclusion. And that is?
Well, no one is certain about how events will play out, but off in academic circles, we're reading between the lines that "Hmmmm....Have to refigure that and maybe this..." in order to square with recent observations and learning about things like ice dynamics and then apply it to glaciers....None of which would be terribly alarming except that's just the melt side - it doesn't take into account the possibility of a huge chunk of ice somewhere just saying "Time's up...I'm sliding into the ocean now...get your swim trunks on..."
One of my leading economic indicators about how fast all of this is arriving is spelled out by graphing the word "shortage" out of the Google news search engine - a childishly simple technique compared to the advanced linguistics that are use to predict events. Still, we note this morning that the occurrence of the term "shortage" today has jumped up to a new all-time-high of over 24,000 returns. Not to be bothersome, but when we started tracking the disappearance of large boxes of ammunition a year ago, the figure was running about 11,000. --- You may remember the web bot project's talk about the Mississippi-Red River area predicted to have flooding a long while back. Seems that forecast is coming true enough with more severe weather to come. On the way to town yesterday, we had nearly an inch put in the rain gauge and it's not over yet. The good news is grass is growing like crazy around here. The bad news is haying in the rain is less than idea. Some of the ranchers are thinking three cuttings this year - which would be good for beef prices at the store.
Some areas are getting fewer tornados this year. --- I'm not one to jump on bandwagons, but the success rate of the predictive linguistics project is very high, so I've at least started my digging in a slow start way - off to the dentist this week while the price of gold is reasonable. One crown down...and a root canal. I may not be a world class swimmer, but I intend to keep eating as long as possible. Speaking of which...
Recall Expands We're reading more today about that melamine tainted gluten from China - as a Toledo firm starts a recall. Menu Foods, meantime, reported a loss for the quarter because of the pet food recall. they lost about $17.5 million.
G8 Next week's summit of the G8 looks more and more to turn into a shouting match between the US and Russia over just about anything you care to name - US missile "defense" plans for Europe and a host of other issues.
Better Late Than Never Department The Justice Department is looking to see if the Bushcorp violated civil service rules in their firing of prosecutors who didn't toe the party line. Better late than what?
Layoffs Coming While we wait around for the predicted "employment crash" along about late summer, we note that Motorola is laying off 4,000. Pfizer is apparently planning some layoffs in Michigan (2,419 jobs). And the swinging of the axe continues at IBM where 1,500 more have been cut. Maybe IBM won't lay off the rumored total of 150,000 this year. When companies do lots of small announcements, the totals sort of disappear into the background noise. Unless you're one of the cut, that is...
Waiting for China's Crash A couple of people called yesterday and said "OhmyGoddidyouseeChinaovernight?" (A few were genuinely that excited...) Yeah, yeah, but did you notice this morning it bounced back a bit? I'm not worried about the global collapse showing up until my teeth are done, my in-ground wind shelter is built, and I have a boat just in case.
Power Computing The reports between today and the Peoplenomics subscriber report due out Sunday may seem a little different because I'm doing serious computer work and getting ready to move back into my newly refurbished office. (Picture maybe next week). What will take the time between now and then will be the 10-coats of spar varathane on the counters. The cabinet fronts got their coatings of Envirotex-Lite yesterday and came out nice enough...
Wednesday May 30, 2007 The Flipped Arms Race Catch get much by them smart Russian fellows. They apparently have sensed something I've noticed - namely how the USA is now pretty much in the same position as the former Soviet Union was in about the middle of the 1980's. At that time, the Soviets, as best I can recall:
Fortunately, we don't have that kind of situation today in the USA. No sir. Instead we have:
So given the outcome last time one of these situations played out - namely the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, it's not an unreasonable thing for a patriotic America to ask "Is anyone paying attention at the helm?"
Clearly, Vladimir Putin is paying attention because just like the Reagan administration was able to topple the Russians with military spending, Putin's claims that he will out-engineer the US missile shield sounds so much like a harmony with the end of the Soviet empire that it frightens me.
When I read about how the "US Wants Defense Cooperation as Russia Tests Weapon" I think to myself "Vladimir Putin would probably kick my butt in chess." We're taking on the same semi-conciliatory tone that the Soviets had near the end.
A "Second Front" Next week, the G8 is scheduled to talk about the future of Kosovo. The Russians would like to see the situation and future of Kosovo determined by local two-party talks - not see some New York/UN imposed rule for the country. At issue is which group of capitalists (Russia's or the West's) will get the small plum here.
Venezuela Media Battle A showdown seems to be coming over freedom of media in Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez has his sights apparently set on CNN. The problem, as I read it, is that CNN does a fine job of reporting the news. The problem is the US continues to tweak at Venezuela because the behind-the-curtain corporate string-pullers would love a cozy oil deal (like the 35-year concessions in Iraq). So, when the string pullers get some wag/talking head/pol to say anything anti-Chavez, and it gets covered - it is news after all - Chavez seems to attacking the messengers, not the message. An easy tactical mistake to make.
This boils down to a fine example of the "two layer newscake" that I explained in Tuesday's column: You have drivers (string-pullers and oil barroons) and then you have second-level events. The CNN eyed by Chavez story is clearly second-level while the driver events are one level up.
But now think about this salient quote from Chris Carlson of www.Venezuelanalysis.com who wrote early this month: This all gets back to natural resources (Kosovo has some) and propagating "saturation consumer economics in new markets" - a condition which I have characterized as the "Amazing ability of corporations to deliver cell phone bills but not education and health care to developing countries."
New Bank Boss Looks like Robert Zoellick will get the nod today to head up the World Bank - a position vacant since the departure of Paul (start a war and leave) Wolfowitz, who was forced out over a "sweetheart deal" for a female friend while he was running the World Bank.
Zoellick seems like less of a neoCON, but sometimes folks don't reveal their true stripes until they achieve some power - so we will watch this with interest. It's somewhat encouraging - Bush could have done a lot worse - and has managed to do so in the past.
Shortages - New Record Our track of the term "shortage" in the Google news search engine hit a new high this morning, 23,666 - more than double year-ago levels. And a reader in Oztralia says to watch for shortages of rare metals which could put a bite on info-tech development says InformationWeek.
Foodocratic Loophole Here's an eye opener:
Timeline to Meltdown? One of our readers offers that if DHS gets into the job approval business - as they plan in the snunk-in language of the immigration reform/felony forgiveness bill, it will set a crash timer:
Related to the coming meltdown which I expect this fall, a zillion readers have send in this:
Hardly surprising - wars ain't cheap, you know. Actually, it would be enough to drive a person to drink, but thanks to the ethanol bioom, that's becoming more expensive:
Then there's this thoughtful email:
The Snake and the Farmer After I revealed yesterday that Mr. Mossberg and I had gotten rid of the chicken snake/rat snake who stolen my breakfast this weekend by eating some eggs, I received this curious email questioning whether I really belong out here in the Texas outback:
I just had to post this because it's just the finest example of Texas politics I've ever read. "How so? you're wondering.
Well, in Texas politics as in Texas farming, someone down here is always sticking up for the snakes!
Tuesday May 29, 2007 I've been watching with some interest of late the development of something the predictive linguistics department (www.halfpasthuman.com) has been talking about for some months - namely the development of a "duality" to the times we live in. Whether it's because of an extra-strong shot of coffee this morning, of just the notion is finally sinking in, I can now see how the split if going on somewhat clearly. Let me line up some headlines and show you what I mean. Try to think of the news events of the day as "layer of a cake" and here are what we have:
Two Layer NewsCake ______________________________________________ China stock bubble, Russia rearming, Peak Oil, Peak Food, Environmental Collapse, Corporate control immigration reform/government job control, climate change, US dollar collapse, US debt crisis, M3, etc. ______________________________________________ Idol TV, blonde DUI's, presidential wannabe's, movie rankings, gas prices, TV stars, lifestyle stories, texting, "reality TV", child dominated mindset, stock market "records", news anchor stories, Imus firing ______________________________________________
One the "top layer" of our "newscake, we have the "driver" stories - the stories that are driving harsh reality. But, on the second layer, we find the stuff of everyday conversation - the stories that are "driven" by the high level events. Who is going to win American Idol, the next blonde in trouble, and so forth.
I expect there's some portion of the population which reads or consumes only bottom layer stories, and fewer still who focus on top layer stuff.
What we try to focus on, at least for the most part, are the top-level stories that are driving the fundamental changes coming down the road at the expense of secondary/superficial stories of the bottom layer.
So as you head back to work this morning, here are the high level stories to keep in mind to help focus on the top later of events:
And, to round things out, the dollar is now being held afloat by a combination of the printing press and Middle East oil money amidst predictions the Canadian dollar won't (be allowed to) reach parity with the US dollar, even through Canada has a lot of natural resources which are bound to go up faster than stripped out land in the US.
And as for the people who follow the mainstream/distraction/bread & circuses mainstream pabulum? et them eat (news) cake.
Farmerly Things Our chickens did something a bit out of the ordinary on Sunday night - they were on their outside roost and had to be lifted into their chicken house/coup. I didn't think anything about it at the time, but Monday morning when I left them out and checked for eggs, I saw why they were reluctant - a large snake (chicken snake) had made its way into the coup and had eat the eggs.
After flinging the offending reptile out of the coup onto the ground, Mr. Mossberg and I quickly introduced the snake to Dr. Ure's instant head removal technique - which was followed by another round to the now headless midsection which revealed several quite scrambled eggs.
I'm generally a peaceful sort - not liking to resort to violence, but there are some critters that you just can't cut any slack. Snakes, mosquitoes, rodents, and spiders. Life's tough.
Monday May 28, 2007
The BIG Picture
Being as it's a holiday and I'm gong to be a little later than my usual 7:55 AM publishing time, I will start with the last thing first.
UrbanSurvival is a sort of "connect the dots" page with regard to the big picture. Every day (except Sundays) I pull out of the headlines various pieces of economic and lifestyle doo dahs that are like pieces of the Big Puzzle (LIFE), throw them on your screen and give ideas on how to win the game of Life. Oddly, the way to "win" is simply to play to not lose. So toward that, this site is all about self sufficiency, personal competence, being a human, and supporting the Constitution from all enemies (foreign and domestic). You're following this?
Now, as to the first Big Question, that's a little more complicated.
My main thesis goes something like this - in bullet form:
About then, sensing a design pattern, I started researching the Great Depression and have been doing so on a part-time basis ever since. Led to an MBA and all kinds of serious study. Here's where I have gotten - again as bullet points:
So there you go - the Big Picture. Now the hypnotic stuff: So with that as a rant, go have a nice Memorial Day. If you can turn off the hype long enough, you might even want to think about what we're supposed to be remembering. Drop by tomorrow morning for our usual skeptical look at how corporations run the world, not humans.
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)
