Crooked Casino Chronicles

Noticing that the present rally has not yet gone past my 'line in the sand' which marks where I could become a believer in the current 'rally', a reader asks:

'I am tempted to play some puts on the coming down turn, but two things are chasing me from the table at this point, and neither is "stomach" for a gamble.

1) If the FED inflates away the debt, a la Weimar, the stock prices (but not values) may continue upwards, killing the puts, OR

2) Jim Sinclair has suggested that derivative meltdown may take a number of brokerages out, leaving trading accounts as just bankruptcy fodder. Even "winners" will not be able to "collect", and will be no better off than a winner in a busted illegal craps game.

This makes me consider that trying to play either "extreme" may be illusory - perhaps that is what Cliff is also alluding to.

What are your thoughts on this? Am I missing some other scenarios?'

No, that's pretty much sums things up.  The economic indicators that a reasonable person would look at might include:

• Consumer debt, last reported almost a month ago, shows the annual rate of increase for September up a measly 1.8% annualized.  The three previous months, the annualized rate was 5.3%, 6.4%, and 7.5%.

• While the Consumer Confidence number has been tanking, there has also been a fair increase in Cyber Monday and Black Friday sales reported.  This seeming contradiction has also been noted by writer Janice Podsada at www.currant.com under the headline "Sales, Confidence Data Don't Seem to Add Up". I could whisper some possible solutions to the apparent contradiction, like "Oh, that's because inflation is way higher than reported and that bumps up the sales figures" but that would probably land me on some kind of economic terror list despite my constitutional Republican beliefs, which I guess puts me as a Libertarian now that the republicorp has trashed Constitutional Rights, help by the marketing straw man party, the democorps. All fighting to maintain the illusion that the people, not corpgov is really in...Oh yeah, maybe better that we skip to the next item...

• The fall in consumer confidence is not limited to US shores, either.  There are headlines about how confidence is tanking in the UK, lowest levels since 2003, and surprisingly, in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. 

• Although this rally seems to be like manna from heaven, a check of my e-trade charts shows that a) the rally is just now touching the 50-day moving average, so I won't get excited till we're through that one, b) the relative strength indicator (RSI-14) is just at neutral, and c) both fast and slow stochastics are both overbought.  So no, I am not in favor of going long in here, nope.

• If you look at a 5-day chart (we'll use Yahoo, but remember this chart will expire Monday and won't make sense in retrospect), there are some serious gap-up's that need to be filled.  But while the chart picture screams "Gaps to fill!" when you look at the numeric data, over here, you're left with another conundrum:  The chart looks like Monday closed at around 12,750, and it looks like Tuesday opened at 12,800 or so, yet the numeric data says no, the Monday close was 12,743 and change (which is OK) but then the data says the Tuesday open was 12,744.78, which it sure doesn't look like on the chart.

Rather than devoting any more time to the study of such phenomena, I find myself quoting WOPR (the computer in the movie War Games) which offered some great advice on a military simulation called Global Thermonuclear War, which seems also to apply to playing the markets in here:

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

And, just to make the worst of Saturday morning puns, if you believe some of the economic numbers out, you're believing some WOPR's.

The best I can think of is to offer some 'pappyisms'*  (*Things Pappy used to say, or nearly so:)

• "A soft landing is when your neighbor's portfolio loses 10% or more."

• "A hard landing is when your portfolio loses 10% or more."

• "A recession is when your neighbor is laid off."

• "A depression is when you're laid off."

See how common sense works? If you can afford to play 'catch falling knives" have at it.  We continue to be in cash on the sidelines except for a commodity  call option for March wheat.  Inflation of food prices seems a slam dunk, but even that is a flyer.

(With the new limits on wire transfers, not that we'd be able to get our money out of the bank in a hurry, mind you...)

The Runs

Campaign office take over? Pseudo-trama, I think it what I'd call it.

Retraction Sought

Here's an interesting one:  A group called Citizen's United is demanding a partial retraction by CNN of some of it's coverage.

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CNN already finds itself being punished in headlines like "CNN Hit for planted questions" in the Wednesday republicorp debate.

Hijacking Porn Sites

Computer won't stop incessant pop-ups without buying a code to a porn site?  You been hijacked, maybe...

UrbanSurvival Radio

Say, if I were to land a daily radio show (9AM to 10 AM) on the Republic Broadcasting Network, would you listen?  It would be largely audience call-in with an occasional guest, and focused about things covered in the morning reports here.  Might even talk Cliff of www.halfpasthuman.com into dropping by with occasional updates on what's in the predictive linguistics...podcasts for later, too... talks continue...

Click to Vote:              Yes I'd Listen                     No interest

PowerPoint Wednesday Vote

You may recall earlier ;this week I asked if people liked the 'PowerPoint Wednesday style".  169 votes preferred the normal "finances after dark" kind of writing, while 134 liked the PowerPoint approach.

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If I was going to be a one-man media empire builder, there's a great business model here for a daily news PowerPoint, but who's got time for another project?  Besides, more important for now, I think, to keep diversified: part in farming, part in consulting, part in wed media...  The goal being to minimize chance of total loss, not necessarily a get rich quick web-only life...

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Coping:  The Case for More Skills

I don't mean to sound like a bore, but here's a letter from a reader which argues for learning real skills while you can afford to learn them:

"Dear George:

 

Here's some unbelievable news on the real employment picture in America.  And these are far from high-paying jobs.

 

Cleveland - 3,000 people apply for 300 jobs at new Wal-Mart store.  http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/business-4/119606989156620.xml&coll=2&thispage=1

 

(Not the first time this has happened, see this from 2006- g) Chicago - 15,000 people apply for 400 jobs at new Wal-Mart store. http://www.walmartfacts.com/articles/4474.aspx

 

That giant sucking sound you're hearing isn't our jobs going to Mexico (as per Ross Perot) it's the American Dream being flushed down the toilet."

Obviously, we're not going to let that happen, but have you put any thought into what kind of small business you could open to help feed/clothe/shelter/teach people if the youi know what hits the fan?

And, here's more good advice:

"George,

I'm an old Eagle Scout and that means that I truly subscribe to the ideal of "Be Prepared". I have been reading your snip section and can't argue with much I have read. I would like to slip in one reminder to folks looking to gird themselves against shortage/hard times: Keep it simple. Yeah, I hear your reference to Captain Obvious, but hear me out.

Buy several good flint and steel kits. They can be found in any reputable camping store. The spark produced is actually hotter than the Sun and will almost always give you ample enough heat to start a fire with somewhat marginal tender. Remember, when the poo hits the fan, it won't take long before firewood becomes the next "oil". You don't have to burn wood only, there are many, many alternatives. Just be careful not to burn anything synthetic as the smoke may be very toxic.

Once you have fire, you can cook. If your plan does not include bugging out with backpacks strapped tight, you may want to look into cast iron cookware. This stuff is still the best and most healthy way to cook food. I recommend buying your cookware from the best, Lodge brand. These folks have been in business for a long time and make a true quality product that is affordable and will honestly last several lifetimes. These things are heirloom items in the truest sense of that phrase. Care is easy and the instructions are simple enough for Tenderfoots to understand. I have prepared a complete meal for 10 people with little fuss. The "camp" Dutch ovens have feet and can be stacked. The lid has a lip to hold embers and if you work out the timing, you can have pot-roast on the bottom, veggies in the middle, bread or a cobbler on top. Heck, I even made a lattice crust cherry pie in one. This type of cooking is almost fire and forget.

I do strongly advise that everyone get their hands on practical outdoor living books. Sure, survival books always have a great appeal, but often, they are more fluff than substance. Go buy a copy of The Boy Scout Field Book, a copy of Dutch Oven Cooking and a book on your local Flora and Fauna (one that tells you what is edible and what is not). Make sure that any book you pick up has decent illustrations for the step-by-step discussions.

Lastly, I would like to remind everyone that growing your own food sounds like a great idea and in "normal" times really is great. The thing is, if some sort of major disaster hits, growing conditions may not be suitable (radiation, dense cloud cover, volcanic ash, major climate shift, et al.). This means trouble. If you are still able to produce your own food, you will most likely be forced to defend it against raiders (both human and animal) and that becomes a seriously dangerous situation. Could you terminate a threat to your food? Would you shoot someone over a handful of produce? Hard thing to think about, but one that must be given attention. Your other option would be to forage. Knowing what to eat, where to find it and when it is in season is golden knowledge. There are several books on this subject and most of them are region specific. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy or two for the area you plan to make your stand.

We all hope against hope that things will never get bad enough for these skills to be pressed into service, but like I said in the beginning, "Be Prepared".

Keep your powder dry!"

We keep a few hand saws around the ranch, and I've ordered some steel & flint kits for E and me for Christmas.

And here's the link for people who were asking what the address was of that neat kettle designed for cooking in rain/foul weather with the hole up the middle so as to use heat most effectively?

It's the Kelly Kettle:

 http://www.garrettwade.com/jump.jsp?itemID=106256&itemType=PRODUCT

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Around the Ranch: Ham Radio Corner

Friday November 30, 2007

EPVS

A highly placed friend in the upper echelons of finance has come up with an acronym that describes where the investing public is now - and may be stuck through the 2009:

EPVS =- 'economically persistent vegetative state'

Conceptually, it ain't bad.  Almost as good at capturing the essence of things as MCHVE - which I know you'll recall is a 'massively correlated hyper-volatility event', or market crash for short. 

What I continue to observe is the rising number of foreclosures as a result of what to me verges on criminal collusion or conspiracy in the mortgage business involving loan brokers, appraisers and banks peddling loans to under-qualified borrowers on the one hand, and bankers bailing out their banker and Wall St. buddies on the back end as the inevitable train wreck occurs.

Not that all the bankers are going to get off scot-free:  A Joe Bel Bruno A.P. story says the "Ax Falls on Execs as Credit Crisis Grows: Morgan Stanley and E-Trade Financial Executives Are Latest Casualties As Credit Crisis Grows"   To be sure, there are some high profile names being forced to talk the plank, but if I were the head strategist for the 300-familes and 10,000 people at the top of America's economic food chain, I'd have to figure it's all 'acceptable losses'. For as I told you earlier this week, foreclosures actually turned 53,000+ out of their homes last month alone, so the few layoffs to come at Citi and elsewhere are just collateral damage to insulate the corporate elites.  Laid off?  So sorry....can't be helped, at least without causing real pain to the elite and you know that's not in the cards.

On the other hand,  for the members of the elite who skate on this particular culling, a Big Pay Day is almost here, with Ben Bernanke hinting to a group in Charlotte, NC last night that a further rate hike may be in the cards following the quarter point drop at the last Fed meeting:

"How has the economic picture changed in the month since that meeting? As is often the case, the incoming economic data have been mixed. In the market for residential real estate, indicators of construction and home sales have continued to be weak. In contrast, the labor market remained solid in October, with some 130,000 new jobs added to private-sector payrolls and the unemployment rate remaining at 4.7 percent. Claims for unemployment insurance have drifted up a bit in recent weeks, although, on average, they have remained at a level consistent with moderate expansion in employment. We will, of course, have the labor market report for November next week, and in the coming days we will continue to draw on anecdotal reports, surveys, and other sources of information about employment and wages. Continued good performance by the labor market is important for maintaining the economic expansion, as growth in earnings helps to underpin household spending.

With respect to household spending, the data received over the past month have been on the soft side. The Committee will have considerable additional information on consumer purchases and sentiment to digest before its next meeting. I expect household income and spending to continue to grow, but the combination of higher gas prices, the weak housing market, tighter credit conditions, and declines in stock prices seem likely to create some headwinds for the consumer in the months ahead.

Core inflation--that is, inflation excluding the relatively more volatile prices of food and energy--has remained moderate. However, the price of crude oil has continued its rise over the past month, a rise that will be reflected in gasoline and heating oil prices and, of course, in the overall inflation rate in the near term. Moreover, increases in food prices and in the prices of some imported goods have the potential to put additional pressures on inflation and inflation expectations. The effectiveness of monetary policy depends critically on maintaining the public’s confidence that inflation will be well controlled. We are accordingly monitoring inflation developments closely.

The incoming data on economic activity and prices will help to shape the Committee’s outlook for the economy; however, the outlook has also been importantly affected over the past month by renewed turbulence in financial markets, which has partially reversed the improvement that occurred in September and October. Investors have focused on continued credit losses and write-downs across a number of financial institutions, prompted in many cases by credit-rating agencies’ downgrades of securities backed by residential mortgages. The fresh wave of investor concern has contributed in recent weeks to a decline in equity values, a widening of risk spreads for many credit products (not only those related to housing), and increased short-term funding pressures. These developments have resulted in a further tightening in financial conditions, which has the potential to impose additional restraint on activity in housing markets and in other credit-sensitive sectors. Needless to say, the Federal Reserve is following the evolution of financial conditions carefully, with particular attention to the question of how strains in financial markets might affect the broader economy.

In sum, as I have indicated, we will be receiving a good deal of relevant information in the coming days. In making its policy decision, the Committee will have to judge whether the outlook for the economy or the balance of risks has shifted materially. In doing so, we will take full account of the implications for the outlook of both the incoming economic data and the ongoing developments in the financial markets.

Economic forecasting is always difficult, but the current stresses in financial markets make the uncertainty surrounding the outlook even greater than usual. We at the Federal Reserve will have to remain exceptionally alert and flexible as we continue to assess how best to promote sustainable economic growth and price stability in the United States."

 Somewhere, in a research office at the Fed, I'm sure they are looking at the same "Replay of 1929 or 1987 chart" that I am.  I'd expect there to be a huge Hype Day today, with talking heads all primed to explain how Bernanke and the Fed are set to lower rates again, based on the comments out of Charlotte last night.  And they are probably right.

However, what the bankster cabal is not talking about is the true cost for all this economic pain relief.  Let's think this through:  In trying to avoid the pain that comes from periodic malinvestment (like building more homes than people can really afford to buy and bailing out those who have made bad investment decisions through lower rates, the Fed is simply laying the groundwork for another bubble somewhere else. 

Oh, and by-the-by, it trashes the dollar, which means we are likely to see more 'big deals' announced with foreign companies taking those quickly depreciating US dollars and turning them back on us (in aikido-like fashion) to use our own debt instruments to buy our best companies!

The specific mechanism to accomplish this, I mean besides the usual presidential 'briefers' and the back channel 'sources' that feed the MainStreamMedia, is the Plunge Projection Team.  Set up under Executive Order 12631, the PPT  has almost certainly had a deft hand in the market rally engineered this week to prevent bank runs and economic collapse in America.  And, I'm not saying that's a bad thing.  It's just that it's far from the 'free markets' that globalists are so happy to promote.

Moreover, as John Crudele at the NY Post reported this week, there's no transparency into what the PPT does.  In fact, in response to a Freedom of Information Act, the Post received 177 pages of what amounts to horse poo, including 52 pages of completed blacked out/redacted notes.

Despite it's well documented reality (and a presidential order qualifies around here as 'documentation'), if you ask most folks who have a retirement fund "Does government intervene in financial markets to keep favored bankers and hedge funds from suffering losses due to stupid investments?" the majority would answer "Of course not!"

All of which supports my source's contention that EPVS is a pretty good acronym from American investment savvy.

So while we might rally early today, will we see a 'pile on' at the close (melt-up) or will strong hands be selling into strength.  The answer in about 7 1/2-hours.

Global Coastal Event

I've mentioned to you on many occasions that the linguistics team at www.halfpasthuman.com has been patiently awaiting the arrival of the 'global coastal event' which has shown up in predictive linguistics for more than a year.  Empirically, the more lead time we get on a meme, the larger the impact. 

This morning, there are three data points to ponder that are potentially meme linked.  The first of which is what would otherwise pass un-noticed in the MainStreamMedia:  A "Salt time reaches mouth of the Yangtze River" in China.  I'm scratching my head wondering "How does something as predictable as a tide show up two months late, unless there's something else at play?

Lacking an explanation, like someone moved the moon, I am forced to conclude that something else is going on...or, better, there are two things conspiring here.  The first is that undersea volcanic eruptions might result in rising sea levels, says a new study out this week. 

The second is that the rate of ice melt in places like the Antarctic (and Greenland) continue to accelerate as the result of global warming (whatever the cause, and I lean toward a solar activity explanation, but that's another discussion).

What I haven't seen yet is a meaningful study of the 'knee in the curve" which could project rates of glacial melt given internal temperatures of glaciers.  Picture it like this:  If a glacier were uniformly 30 degrees throughout, and the surface temperature were above 32, then the rate of melt would be 'x'.  But, if the internal temperature of the glacier had internal stratification, like the core was -10, and 1000 feet down it was 31.9, then that would result in a predicted melt of 'y'.

I'm not seeing that kind of analysis in the LameStreamMedia yet, and I'm not sure whether that's because no one is doing that work, or because the results might be a little frightening (e.g. huge glaciers only a tenth of a degree from massively melting) or I just live in a really small information bubble.  So, if your surfings around the 'net, if you run across a wide-ranging study that shows internal ice temperatures with thermal conductivity rates for various densities, please let me know.  I'll just send that along to the time monks, being heavy-duty math boys at heart and ask them to model it.  Not that we'll be right, but seems to me that ice-melt modeling could be about the most important area of science around.

Oh, yeah, and with all that new water fro glacial melt dribbling into the oceans, and tides showing up more or less when they shouldn't, there's the little matter of all this shifting weight of water on the surface of the earth, which is perhaps how we got to the big earthquake yesterday in the Caribbean.

Not to worry advise the time monks, the big alignments which could move even more ground than the Caribbean shaker are still 8-days ahead.  So, more large quakes in early December are almost a given.

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Oh, and not to worry you too much, but if you need something more to worry about, consider that there's some discussion in geophysics circles that the earth may have a plasma core.  I only mention this for two reasons:  First, a plasma core would provide for the 'flip side of Einstein'.  Where Einstein said energy equals mass times the constant speed of light squared, the plasma core model would literally 'condense matter back out of energy arriving at earth and could be stated as 'energy divided by the constant speed of light squared equals mass.'

So, you can see the operation of a plasma core would be fairly evenly fueled by the sun, with an expectation that if periodicity of earthquakes over time could be linked to sunspot cycles, then you'd have some interesting empirical evidence for the plasma model.  (With me so far?)

Now here's the point:  What was the 'energy in space' that caused Comet Holmes to go so bright (although it's now fading away), and what caused comet Tuttle to brighten?  If there's a big change in 'energies from space, and if the plasma core model were true, then as the pass the galactic ecliptic in a few years (2012) we might be in for some all-time earth changes.  But not to worry, we have 1,849 days left before that, figure the tm's.

Personal Incomes

Last claims from government statistics:

"Personal income increased $21.2 billion, or 0.2 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $14.0 billion, or 0.1 percent, in October, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $23.8 billion, or 0.2 percent. In September, personal income increased $50.4 billion, or 0.4 percent, DPI increased $43.2 billion, or 0.4 percent, and PCE increased $33.0 billion, or 0.3 percent, based on revised estimates."

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Personal outlays -- PCE, personal interest payments, and personal current transfer payments increased $27.4 billion in October, compared with an increase of $36.0 billion in September. PCE increased $23.8 billion, compared with an increase of $33.0 billion.

Personal saving -- DPI less personal outlays -- was $54.5 billion in October, compared with $67.9 billion in September. Personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income was 0.5 percent in October, compared with 0.7 percent in September. Saving from current income may be near zero or negative when outlays are financed by borrowing (including borrowing financed through credit cards or home equity loans), by selling investments or other assets, or by using savings from previous periods. "

It's been several months now since the statistical methodology was changed to revise out the previously reported declines in personal savings.  There, feel better?

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Coping:  Hay Box

Well, here's another approach to the extended slow cooking concept from Thailand:

"Following on from haybox/thermos thread, in South Africa a charity used to promote and distribute a modern version of the haybox, called the wonderbox - which was aimed at rural African women. This can be used for cooking (rice, beans, soups, stews) and even baking. Get a cardboard box big enough to hold your cooking pot with space to spare. It's easier if the top part of the box slides over and fits tightly over the lower half. Make 2 insulating cushions using insulation material such as polystyrene. You can buy a bag of the small beads or else just grate up some used packaging. Material for cushions should be relatively heat resistant - obviously not nylon, but cotton is OK. An old pillowcase is good. Line bottom of box with 1 cushion. Now put food in pot and bring to the boil. (Can even use a solar cooker for this). Once water reaches boiling, take off the heat and nestle pot snugly in lower cushion, moulding polystyrene beads/cushion around the pot. Then place the second cushion on top and again mould snugly. Seal up the box and food will keep cooking for many hours. "

End of the world fiction:

"One of the best, was Earth Abides by George Stewart. Written in 1949 and amazingly prophetic.

This was the only fictional work from a hard core history professor. He "buried" numerous minor details that connect to greater meanings. A very thought provoking book.

Two others: On a Darkling Plain, and The Last American."

And more reading:

"In answer to your Q of yesterday, I vote for your old style of report, rather than the PowerPoint.

RE: your comments on the end-of-the-world fiction; I’ve read a couple books lately that I would highly recommend; The Road by Cormac McCarthy and The Pesthouse by Jim Crace. I haven’t read the books you recommend, so I’m going to check for them at the library.

Some thoughts in relation to economic or societal collapse -- From much I’ve been hearing, online and elsewhere, I think most people have a romanticized notion of what daily life would become if the shit truly hit the fan on a massive scale. Many seem excited at the prospect, like they think they’ll have front row seats at a movie and won’t be affected because they own gold and a gun or they’ve stocked up on beans and toilet paper. Others seem convinced that a collapse of our current lifestyle will return us to some imagined, simpler time; the enchanted suburbs of ‘Bewitched’ or the small town charm of ‘Mayberry.’

Here’s what I see … when the jobs peter out and the credit cards get refused and the car has been repossessed and the house has been foreclosed, folks will be disorientated, exposed, and powerless. Most will be able to put a good face on it short term, encourage each other, try to be decent people. But hope can only last so long and when it becomes apparent that things won’t go back to normal any time soon, who knows what might come next. It will be completely new territory for most of us who have grown up in a world that has provided so reliably for so long.

What I don’t see happening … no Little House on the Prairie, no good old days, no warm nostalgia, no sitting around the campfire singing Kumbaya; just millions of sniffling, coughing, angry frightened urban strangers looking for something familiar to orient themselves to. Most will not feel cleansed of their silly consumerism, they won’t become wise philosophers, and they’ll blame anyone except themselves. They’ll be suckers for the promises of persuasive charlatans (political or otherwise), they’ll fight amongst each other, divide into blue states and red states, and be as incredulous and dependent as they were before, only without the material possessions.

However, I think instead of one big crisis event we’ll see the economy continue to disintegrate over a period of months or even years. It’ll be propped up behind the scenes for as long as possible, until there’s no longer anyone to bail it out. Families will try to hang on but will drift inexorably downward, so that when the bottom comes, a lot of us will already be there.

Corporations are responsible for millions of our jobs, and they seem to be self-destructing. They’re reporting dismal earnings, and it’s not because consumers haven’t been doing their part. In fact, I’m not sure consumers have the capacity to do much more. I think we have allowed insiders to raid the system, and it’s just about stripped bare. The insatiable greed we see in banks, corporations, on Wall Street and in our governments is like a parasite that’s killing it’s host.

Obviously I see America’s glass as half empty, or maybe barely ¼ full! I hope I’m wrong.

Anyway, thanks for the time you spend sharing your insights and thoughts. I read your site every day. "

Wood Gas

Turning to energy, yes you can make a wood-burning car:

With the gas price moving north, you better start adjusting your car. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4n_OaCIQ-s

If you want to build one of these, you should probably read the book "Producer Gas for Motor Vehicles" first published in 1942 and reprinted by Lindsay's Technical Books.  But, if you click that link, there are so many cool books, youi will want to be sitting on your wallet or, like me, you'll find $100+ worth of books you just must read every time you visit. LOL  Some additional wood gas sources here.

Scalar Physics

Here's an interesting question from a reader, worth saving because periodically wild claims are made about the subject area:

"In your opinion Mr. Electronics, Scalar wave technology, real or imaginary?"

I think the jury is still out on this one.  Here's why:  On the one hand, you've got the establishment scientific community saying 'No, it doesn't work".  But, every once in a while something comes along that suggests that there may be more to this than meets the eye.

For example, in radio antenna theory, up until quite recently, everything was Hertzian - the emphasis was on the electric side of things.  That's where the length of a radio antenna is defined by frequency.  E.G. a half wavelength antenna is 468/ frequency in Mhz.  But, more recently, there has been some study and a whole new class of 'crossed-field antennas has emerged which suggest that at least on the transmitting antenna side of electronics, there may be something to the scalar claims that 'h'  (magnetic) waves orthogonal to the 'e' (electric) waves can be put to useful work.  That said, however, the radiated energy still seems to conform to inverse square field strength  predictions, so scalar claims are not proven.

I think this is one of those 'keep your eyes on it once in a while' things to see if there's a breakthrough.  If inverse square field strength falls, then the whole world shifts...but until then, I'm an open-minded skeptic. H fields might construct a 'virtual e field antenna' but the scalar claims are just that until inverse square field strength falls.

Mojito MoJo

And because it's Friday, there's this email:

Hello, thanks for the November 17 link in UrbanSurvival to my Cuban bread recipe ("Coping: Grain, Pasta, Leftovers and Cuban Bread."). Was looking through my stats and noticed over 500 visitors came from your site, took a little searching before I could find out where they had come from.

When I first saw the site, I was convinced it was going to be a link to the mojito recipe:

http://www.tasteofcuba.com/mojito.html 

*If he thinks UrbanSurvival readers like bread, hah!  Wait till he finds out how thirsty we get on Fridays for Mojitos...

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Thursday November 29, 2007

Rally Over? Now What?

In case you missed my chat with Steve Quayle last night (How could you?), here's the long and short of things:  I remain skeptical of the past couple of days of rally because a) the fundamental problems in the economy have not changed, b) while a Fed rate cut might seem like a good thing, it's outcome will be to further trash the dollar in world markets and c) the 1929/1987 tracking chart shows the timing of yesterday's big rally was almost too perfect.  (Click here for the chart which is down the page a ways.)

Against this backdrop, I spent the first eight minutes of coffee slurping watching a YouTube video sent to me by my commodities broker JB, which is a spoof by a couple of actors on how the American banking crisis got to where it is.  The problem is that it's anything but funny - somewhere on the continuum of 'dry Brit sense of humor' and 'gallows humor'.  But, for the first 8 minutes of consciousness it was OK.

Futures are flat to down a tad.

Foreclosure Data

Thursday ia garbage day here at the ranch, which brings up the New Home Sales figures due out a little later today.  Last month's report is here - and if you click the link after 10 AM Eastern you should see the new figures.  Last month (Sep) starters were down 23.3% from 2007 levels, but the survey admits to a +/- 8% error rate.

Still, knowing that, and remembering from yesterday at another 45-thousand jobs are on the block at Citi, it's enough for economic detective in training Ure to look in Google's news search tool for "foreclosures" to see what hints there are.

• The WSJ reports this morning that October foreclosure filings rise.  Just up 94% from year ago levels (e.g. just about doubled)...94%???!!!! 

Being a 'long view' econ guy, I look at the increase numbers and ask "How bad would the stats be if they were compared with more 'normal' times, say 2005 or even 2004?  Seems to me things were softening in the fall of 2006, too, so the depth of the foreclosure problem could be masked by looking only at one-year change data.

• Another distortion of the foreclosure picture comes when you read the www.money.cnn.com coverage of the topic here:  What they reveal is that the number of families actually forced out of homes rose year-on-year from 20,768 a year ago to 53,609. 

Key point:  Maybe filings were up 94%, but the number of families thrown out of home was up 158%.

While I'm wheeling out the garbage this morning, missing will be the political "We're gonna help you" hyperbole from the politicos.  I reckon that 53,609 homeowners, using an average family size of 2.4, means 128,661 (and a half kid in there somewhere) are homeless this month. 

Meantime, the bankers want bail outs.  Yeah, right.

The Runs

Hillary's hot water warmed up a bit more today with the disclosure that CNN was tricked into posting a question by a Hillary plant in the republicorp debate.  Anderson Cooper's disclsoure is on YouTube this morning...

---

Then, as I mentioned in last night's update, there's this whole thing about once-mayor Rudy charging the city for travel to see a female friend...  and the press ain't buying Rudy's dismissal of the report.

Remember, I said a while back that the linguistics were pointing to some presidential wannabe fallout coming - so here's one republicorp and one democorp in hot water - and one more republicorp set of past deeds is due to surface in the next month...

Fred Thompson, meantime, has launched the first 'negative' ad of the silly season.

(Red) Tides Rising

As we look at what may be a slow motion global coastal event in the making, we note that strangely high tides in Indo0nesia have receded but sea barriers have been damaged.

And 'red' rides are popping up a fair amount:  In Florida, California, and even Chile.  Is there an increase due to global warming, or, is it just better science being able to detect more events? 

Jet Fighters

City of Santa Monica is setting up for a showdown with the FAA over business jets.  The city wants to ban fast execu-jets, while the FAA figure's the city is overstepping it's authority.  Guess the UrbanSurvival Gulfstream will have to find some other tie-down in  the Smog Angeles area...

Jet Fighters, II

All 450 F-15's (A-D models) are grounded by DoD globally for crack checks.  (That's as in structural - not plumbers...)

Pipeline Fire

A good hunk of US oil from Canada is shut down due to an explosion and fire.  We'll have to see what this does to oil trading over the next week so...

Media Concentration

The headline in USA Today that "FCC chief favors waivers for Tribune" brings to mind just how much the FCC has been a republicorp tool to concentrate media power (and in turn viewpoints) into the hands of the few, the elite.  Oh, not to worry though, corpmedia will insist that's fair, accurate, and balanced.  Reality? Looks suspiciously like press release rip & read talking heads to me...and peddling a risk-averse corp-centric viewpoint, never daring to offend advertisers...

Guess that's why I'm not on the Commission, huh?

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Coping:  Making Book

We were chatting yesterday about some of those book repositories around the net - and a thoughtful reader has some hints on managing the home library...

"....And speaking of books [Guttenberg, et all] are you aware there is a GREAT site where you can catalogue your own library very quickly and without a lot of typing?

The site is www.LibraryThing.com 

If you open an acct [user name and password only] you can then plug in the ISBN -- found on the back of cover or inside copyright page -- into the search box and come up with the EXACT edition, type, year and publisher of every book you own. Important if there have been multiple editions of a title, because each unique version has its own individual ISBN. [International Standardized Book Number]

You can list 200 books for free or unlimited amt for $10, which is worth it when you have a library over 200 books!

The finished list can then be formatted in whatever style and with whatever amount of info you want. Mine is Author, Title, ISBN, Publication Data [edition, paper or hardbound, publisher and year]. You can even add a pix of the front cover to your list printout.

An accurate inventory is an absolute must for anyone with a valuable library, especially for insurance coverage! Easy to use -- especially if you use the ISBN instead of doing an author or title search.

I'm printing out a hard copy then making a PDF version to burn onto a CD for safekeeping."

Coming from a family where all of us kids had our first real jobs shelving books for the Seattle Public Library a few zillion years ago, my heavily booked sisters had interesting reactions.  My younger sister said "Darn - it would have been great to know this BEFORE I did mine in Excel...." while my elder sister (the one with a Masters in Library Science) said "Actually I know of tiny public libraries that are using it."
 

Mind Stretching

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Wednesday November 28, 2008

Steve Quayle Show Interview Notes

Big Rally?  So What?

The orchestration of the financial markets was a marvel to behold.  A fed official hits that another rate drop is coming (quick, act surprised!) and when coupled with news that durable orders declined in the latest reporting month, what did the Dow do?

Rally!  (Of course!)  But, does 331 points to the up side mean we are out of the woods?  Well, as Pappy used to say, "Not no but hell no!"

First, let's talk timing of this "rally"

If you're just coming out from under anesthesia, let me just recap a couple of data points here:

• A run on a state managed investment fund is being watched closely in Florida.

• Last month's consumer debt number was up at an annual rate of 1.8%.

• As I reported Tuesday, Q3 housing price declines are on track for a 19-20% annual rate of decline.

• And oh yeah, there's a 5% annualized drop in durable goods I mentioned, made worse because the rate of decline for consumer durables has walked off a cliff: Down 40% or so annualized if last month's performance is maintained.

So a Fed official, Vice Chair Donald Kohn gets up in front of a Council on Froeign Relations meeting in New York and says:

"Central banks seek to promote financial stability while avoiding the creation of moral hazard. People should bear the consequences of their decisions about lending, borrowing, and managing their portfolios, both when those decisions turn out to be wise and when they turn out to be ill advised. At the same time, however, in my view, when the decisions do go poorly, innocent bystanders should not have to bear the cost. "

Now, let me hark back to a 2001 Fed speech by Governor Edward Gramlich which explains (at least to me) how the Fed dressed up no-doc loans and made them somehow OK:

"There is a valid debate as to whether continuing to increase overall homeownership rates much further is feasible or even desirable. But surely pockets of the housing market exist in which such efforts can still pay off. For example, affordable-housing proponents are looking to tap into the burgeoning immigrant markets by tailoring counseling and outreach programs that bridge language and cultural gaps. Because they are locally run, these programs respond to clients' educational needs with regard to household budgeting, credit management, and the mortgage process. The basics of these training curricula, which have helped thousands of first-time homebuyers understand and prepare for purchasing a house, can be applied to foreign-born consumers also seeking the benefits of owning a home."

Remember these famous words from former Fed boss Alan Greenspan?

"Just as important is the effect of home ownership on a household's ability to accumulate assets. For most households, home ownership represents a significant financial milestone and is an important vehicle for ongoing savings. The Federal Reserve's 1998 triennial Survey of Consumer Finances indicates that home ownership represented 44 percent of gross assets for families earning $50,000 or less annually. Further, investment in residential property has been generally more stable than other types of investment, and it is perceived to be largely permanent."

Fired from a mortgage company, laid off in Detroit, living in your RV in the Pacific Northwest, or just plain squatting in Phoenix?  You'll be pleased to know that 'offishully' mass layoffs are 'under control' - if'n y'all follow my drift... (Please don't show this to any of the 45-thousand Citi workers whose jobs are on the line....)

Citi Bank

Speaking of Citi:  They have lost $148.44 billion in last 12 months.   You can check my math on this, but looks to me like 18.5 days of operations is all they got for 4.5% of themselves.  So, what's going to happen in the next 20-days to change the picture?

Layoffs  of 45,000 coming - and I'd say in days not weeks.

Changes in Home Selling

New Signs popping up around the country:

• New Price

• Buyer Bonus

• Make Offer

The Runs

New developments include allegations about Hillary and Rudy Giuliani.

PowerPoint Wednesday

There is so much swirling around in my head this morning, that I thought I would try to organize this morning's report like a PowerPoint presentation, unformatted, though, as it's too early to do backgrounds, graphics, etc. in the 2-hours that I allot to this page every morning.  Like so much else in management, you either get flash or cash...and I lean toward cash.  Here's what today would look like if it were reduced to PowerPoint slides:

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Slide #1

Why Abu Dhabi Bought into Citi

• Gobs and oodles of US cash & instruments outside country from our CMO/CDO peddling

• Buying Citi spends depreciating cash

• Look for other offshore interests to 'send US$ home via acquisitions

• May prop up large cap indices briefly

• Portends domestic inflation, pressures Fed not to raise

• More deal may drive two-tier currency option, move to digidollars

----

Slide #2

Listen to Radio Tonight & Tomorrow

• George Ure on Steve Quayle's show tonight

• Pat Buchanan on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory later tonight

• Steve Quayle on Coast to Coast as a guest tomorrow night re: "Weather Wars" his newest book...

---

Slide #3

Precious Metals Dropping

• Gold has touched under $800 today

• Think it's end of month deliveries

• Same pressure on oil - end of month settlements

• OPEC to raise output likely hype, I reckon

• Some of drop may be related to ME talks @ Annapolis

---

Slide #4

Watch "Revolution/Rebellion" Meme

• Leading edge now arriving per linguistics

• Seeing it in France - 3rd night of rioting

• Injuries to police / LEO's now over 120

• Rioting in France is by immigrant population

• Bookmark Google News search on immigration for trends

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Slide #5

"The Runs"

• Streisand backs Clinton  (So?)

• AP daily summary of "the runs"  here

• Ron Paul got one sentence, buried at end of report despite huge 'net base

• Fox story on Republicans in race doesn't mention Paul

---

Slide #6

Putin Clones US Corpgov

• Valid Putin has 'important announcement" today

• CBS: Putin's party can't lose

• Russia riot teams have been arresting opposition

• US reaction - words only

Corpgov/Globalist agenda:

• Keep Putin in

• Limit US choices to 'buyable'/pliable non 'boat rockers'

• Push Russia and US into corp mold

• Dismantle Constitutions globally, institute corporate rule

---

Slide #7

Durable Goods

Released by the Census Bureau this morning:

• New orders for Durable goods in October decreased $0.9 billion or 0.4 percent to $214.5 billion

• Shipments in October, up following two consecutive monthly decreases, increased $1.2 billion or 0.6 percent to $213.4 billion

• Unfilled orders for manufactured durable goods in October, up twenty-nine of the last thirty months, increased $7.6 billion or 1.0 percent to $779.3 billion.

• Biggie: Non-defense capital goods down 3.1% for the month while defense capital goods were up 16.1%

• Obvious conclusion: Administration needs their wars to continue to prevent recession from sliding to Depression - which is why big corp money going to Prez wannbe hawks

• Related?  A Bush eCONomic advisor steps down.

---

Slide #8

Market Outlook

• My notes only - not recommendations/advice:

• Yesterday's rally nice but no cigars

• I still expect no higher than 13,050 closing this rally

• Personally expect big drops to return late this week, next week

• Today, expect turn down by close

• George is seldom right

---

Slide #9

High Stakes Advise

High stakes poker player/reader offers perspective:

• Bookie = broker

• Tout = "research" reports

• Big casino = Wall St.

• Little casino = high stakes poker tournaments

• Reader reports odds lately are found in little casino, not Wall St. Casino

---

Slide #9

Watch China!

• Sent first warship to Japan in 70 years

• Chinese navy exercising off Vietnam

• China keeping US navy ships out of Hong Kong

• Chinese navy may be reply to Dalai Lama medal/Bush meeting

• Larger message to US/Russia:  "Pacific is our pond, too!"

---

Slide #10

Global Coast Event Starting

• Massive flooding in Indonesia from 18-year high tides

• Blamed in part on rising sea levels/ global warming

• Study: Volcanic eruptions could push up sea level

• Rising sea levels could impact East Bay -- Calif.

• Debate continues on speed of glacier melt

• Himalayan glacier melts worrisome now

• Stories aggregate to leading edge of meme "Global Coast Event"

---

Slide #11

Seen LIMA?

• LIMA = LandSat Image Mosaic of Antarctica

• May be very slow loading

• Not as fast as Google Earth

• Couldn't they just pass the imagery on to Google?

---

Slide #12

Random Hits

• New Bob Dylan movie goes on the "gotta see list"

• Feds have backed off effort to get Amazon customer records

• Power tool of the day: Dell quad core laptop

• Cyber Monday online sales jump 21%

---

Slide #13

Get Smart

• Check out the new Universal Digital Library

• Slow loading (Hey!  Yo! Load balancers!  SQL optimizers! Whatzzup? )

• Gutenberg Project waaaay faster, Vortex-friendly

• Between 'em - lifetime of good books online

---

Whew, that's about all I can squeeze into a PowerPoint at this hour.  Let me know if you like this style, or the more verbose approach.  Click to vote:

• Yes:  I like the PowerPoint approach

• No, get off Ure lazy butt and go back to writing

Curiously (as this morning is an experiment): It takes as long to do the PowerPoint version as the verbose version.  So it's 'time-neutral'.

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Coping:  Vegetarian Myths Busted

From a PhD level reader in a bio field:

Myth: vegetarianism requires special effort and planning to get all the essential amino acids.

Fact: this myth was started when plant proteins were compared with animal-based proteins. Different plant products (beans/rice for example) have quite different ratios of the amino acids lysine, methionine, cysteine, etc. It was assumed that the animal ratios were necessary for animals (such as us). Wrong. ALL living (or formerly living) cells assemble proteins for use as signaling molecules, pumps, enzymes, structural proteins, and so on. Even bacteria use the same amino acids that we do. When we eat ANY formerly living collection of cells, the proteins begin breaking down in our mouth & continue throughout the gut. Free amino acids & some small, 2-3 amino acid peptides are absorbed into our blood & circulate to every one of our living cells. At each cell in our body there are transport mechanisms that move the amino acids into the cell for our own protein synthesis. Assuming a normal starting diet, we have a huge pool of amino acids available in each cell. Depending on the activity of the specific cell, it takes days to months to completely deplete the pool of amino acids. This is partly because we are constantly recycling our own amino acids. As proteins in us become non-functional, proteolytic enzymes break down the proteins into reusable amino acids (to the tune of 50-300 g/day). It is a myth that plant proteins are “inferior” to animal-based proteins.

Myth: store tons of protein for emergency times:

Fact: have plenty of carbohydrates & fats or you will starve to death even with plenty of protein. Infants-preschoolers need 14-16 g/day or protein; school aged children through non-pregnant adults need around 50 g/day of protein & pregnant women/nursing mothers need 60-65 g/day of protein. That’s not much at all as 50 g of protein is only 200 calories (4 Calories/g)! While 200 calories of protein will give us more than enough amino acids, we would starve for lack of calories (or develop full-blown keto-acidosis and slip into a coma and then die). People often do not give enough thought to the need for CALORIES when planning for emergency situations. Proteins are the worst of the three fuels. We do not burn proteins for calories unless we are fasting or starving (even slowly starving). The waste products of burning protein for fuel are toxic (ammonia is generated in metabolizing proteins for fuel & is converted to urea) to our kidneys and can acidify our blood to the point of causing damage to nerve cells. Carbohydrates & fats are the efficiently burning fuel types that do not produce toxic byproducts (Co2 & water). All carbs are broken down to glucose (or a variant 5 or 6 carbon sugar) and are then used for fuel purposes (4 Cal/g). Fats (self-storage or dietary) are used as free fatty acids (9 Cal/g). If we are starving we will actually make glucose from our poor muscle (& other) proteins. Good news for vegetarians! Beans, nuts & grains have all the needed amino acids, carbs & fats that one needs. Store PLENTY of calories, not just proteins. Physical work, cold weather, etc. increase the need for calories. The needed range is typically 1,800 to over 3,000 calories/ day (very hard physical workers & athletes at upper end). 2,000 calories/day & 50 g/day of protein is a good target. At 1,500 calories/day a person will be pretty hungry, but can function pretty well for a LONG time.

Hence, Igor (time monk #2)  is right: store abundant of pie-making material as that will supply plenty of fats & sugars to burn for fuel. And, if it is a pecan pie (my favorite) one gets the necessary amino acids from both the crust and the pecans. Have some occasional beans, rice & vegetables and this allows pie to make up the core of ones survival foods. OK, a bit of liberty with those last 3 sentences, but everything else is right.

The above are assuming reasonable health & no diabetes. Disease state can change what is needed.

BTW, thanks for the snip & save section! My daughter wants a pair of goats for Yule & the link you provided to Countryside & Small Stock Journal will be useful. Also, they linked to Dairy Goat Journal; Santa will have to get her a subscription to that for sure!

NP  (no problem if you're not into texting, which I'm not either, but too lazy to type out 'no problem'.  I would only add that snip and save contributions are always welcome (trying to get a little backlog built up)  (click here to submit) and I was thinking about getting a subscription to dairy goat journal, but my goats can't read....

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Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Special Update

Market Madness

The headline on Consumer Confidence is pretty simple: "Consumer Confidence Tumbles in November" to a two year low.

Market?  Dow's up 100+.  Confidence hasn't been this low since KatRita in 2005.

Q3 home prices are down (on average) 4.5% which is close enough to a 20% annualized rate to scare the bejeezus out of any rational economist.  But, not to worry, let's keep that Dow  rallying and full steam ahead.  "Prosperity is just around the corner", isn't that what they said in late '29?  You seen the existing home sales report?

Just 'cuz oil prices are coming down, realizing that fewer will be able to buy energy products, is not supposed to cross your mind.  Just roll that 401-K money into stocks.

Which sounds a lot like "let's keep everyone in the market while the strong hands get out of Dodge."  Slap me, pinch me, is this a waking dream/nightmare?  Maybe I should just follow Citi's lead and get some Middle East group to buy 4.5% of me of me for $7.5 billion.

Tickers & Time Tinkers

Things are at a serious enough point where the time monks at www.halfpasthuman.com have given me the green light to roll out a little more of the predictive linguistics so you can brace for what's ahead for the population of the USA in the next couple of months.  If you repost any of this, a link to both this page and www.halfpasthuman.com is required.  So fasten your seat belt, here's a kind of sneak peek under the covers as to where we are, where we're going, and 'what comes next.'

Let's start with the report Monday that vice president Cheney has been been undergoing heart treatments for an irregular rhythm.

This is something we've been expecting since it popped up in the predictive linguistics almost 6-months ago.  From ALTA 0108 (Part Zero, May 2007), we seemed to get a sense that the health issues would begin around the time of some new disclosures about what it's like inside the Bush White House.  Best we can figure, the coming 'tell all' book by Scott McClellan which was unveiled a couple of days back is just about a perfect temporal marker.  Here's how it looked when reported as a linguistic probability mid May of this year:

"As the modelspace is progressed into December and the [results linger/limp_along] from the [power outage], the TPTB entity is showing that the [exposure (of the) hungry mouth/teeth] will [precipitate] a [wave/residual flow] of [bad luck/happenstance].  The data sets are under the influence of the [conflict] meta data layer, and are supported with [beasts] and [blood], as well as [crippled/lame] and [damaged tendons pulling].  This sub set has the supporting aspect/attributes with close links to the Press entity which point toward a [visibility] of the [warfare/strike] with TPTB causing an image of [rapacious/lust], and [hunger (for) all (things?/resources)] to emergence within the global mediastream.  This is *not* good for TPTB entity and there will be a swift [reaction] and an [attempted purge] of some [offending voices/faces].

 

"There are several detail layers within the aspect/attributes which help to describe the situation immediately following the [exposure] of the [conflict].  These are pointing to a [bed-ridden/sick/ill] [government] with specific references to vice Dick Cheney.  There are other sets going to [loss (of ability) to reunite], with special emphasis on the [fractured/split] being [permanent], and [without (possibility) of repair].  This area shows that the [broken alliances] will [leave stranded] (many) in [desolated plains/places]."

Plain as mud?  At the archetype level, t the visibility of warfare/strife within the TPTB entity is well met by the McClellan book, and along about now, we have the vice president's health issues, and with the opening of the Middle East peace conference in Annapolis today, linguistically at least, one way to read the view from May of this year would be not to expect any reuniting as the fracture in that part of the world will be permanent and is past repair.

Time and Markets

Before returning to some of the linguistics for the markets in the coming weeks, let me first drag out a chart for you to ponder.  I know the market futures are pointing to an up day in the market as we head into the opening, but the market popped to the up side yesterday too, and that didn't keep us from seeing nearly 240 points whacked off the Dow.

I've been closely watching how this market seems to be running parallel to the declines which followed the market peaks in 1929 and 1987, and as you'll see, the markets right now (today) are at an important 'fork in the road' because if we don't stop this decline in its tracks, the Fed and other PTB forces may not be able to prevent a wholesale rout over the next couple of weeks are events in the past (we think of these as 'self-seeding time cycles' but there's nothing in the literature, so just use the words to conjure up what that means) and events rhyme/echo to cause a  next bigger down move.

Now, to return to the linguistics, from the ALTA 0508 report, there was a sense that although there would be a break in the 'panic' language that accrued around the end of August/early days of September, for a 72-day respite, the problems of the market would continue to build under the surface:

"As the modelspace is moved through the 'turn around' point of September 19th and beyond, the [blood letting] meme begins to accrue almost instantly. It gains strength through the Fall, and goes into its maximum emotional summation levels just as Fall transitions into Winter. Thereafter it fades rapidly as though 'once the beast is drained, nothing more to be said'. There are a number of temporal markers which appear in conjunction with the [blood letting] meme, and these include a [wave/tidal_wave] of [job loss] within [banks]. This area is also curiously involved with [visible] examples of people who [abandon] their [positions] as the [banks fail], and those who [stubbornly maintain attendance] even though their [former employer] (the bank) has failed. This [visibility] of the [bank employees wandering aimlessly] and [locked doors] represents the second level of the [employment crash] and the beginning of the [visibility] for some of the [new populations/self_organizing- collectives] to begin to appear in global mediastream.

 

The [progression of loss of money/currency] which is supported by bespoke [confidence] such that a better interpretation of the whole of the aspect/attribute set might be a [progression of the loss of confidence in currency/paper_debt]. As part of the other temporal markers for this period include [officials] who [make rash promises], and [other officials] who [act as though blind, rashly running (into) obstacles and crying out]. These last are apparently within the [currencies industry] which is another name for the Federal Reserve Bank/Central Bank...which we note is *not* a bank, and therefore is very likely the 'beast' being let of its blood over the course of this Fall. There are repeated references to much [stink] in the way of [talk/verbiage (from/of) officials] which is shown as [doing/accomplishing no things/results], and indeed actually [causing/initiating inter national arguments]. In the end, at the deepest level of support for this area, the [officials] are described as being [exhausted/deflated] and [weeping] and [broken] and [energy depleted]. At this level the cross links go more heavily to the Bushista entity where they are terminating in the main in areas which are controlled by, or participate in [revolution] as a meta data layer, *and* as the actively rising {ed note: near the end of Fall}, dominant aspect/attribute set within Bushista. Apparently lots of people will be very very very p*ssed off about losing all their 'power' and 'money' and will assign blame to the Bush White House."

Again, as you read the linguistics, it's important to read the words trying to sense the 'feel' or 'texture' of what the words paint.  With this continuous 'turning' of the markets, we have to confess to being less than surprised when it was reported yesterday at Citibank may be cutting as many as an additional 45,000 people from its payroll, a headline number that's sort of buried by LameStreamMedia in the USA, but which has not escaped the notice of the Chinese media group at Xinhua...
 

As the September 15th 0508 Part Three continues, we also get a vision of what late winter and heading into spring will 'feel' like - revolutionary change in the wake of economic failure in general and the foreclosure crisis in particular:

"This area is also described within the Markets entity as the [point/time] in which [decisions] are [taken/made] which will begin to manifest as the [new populace] entity that we have been observing forming up in modelspace. Apparently the [fuzzy revolution] will begin to emerge into [visibility] this Fall as [squatting] in [blanks/empty houses] will take on a whole new meaning, and which in turn will begin to build [new collectives/communities] within the populace. This is mostly affecting of the Populace/USofA, but some of the themes will emerge from patterns in other parts of the planet. There are images of [people/crowds (who/which) squat/seize/appropriate] [golf courses], and [canals/other water-ways/sites] where they will [construct places of food production]. In several of the more visible [squatting incidents] there will be actual [battles] with [officialdom] which are shown as [proceeding/lasting] for several months."

When reading these linguistics, it's important to realize that 1) the language always seems to err on the side of the extreme and 2) it is often not an event, per se, that is referenced, but rather the emotional reactions of the planet/population as expressed in MainStreamMedia. 

An example of this was the case a while back where linguistically we saw references to a 9.5 earthquake associated with Hawaii, which has very high emotional values, but it turned out to be a rumor reported in Hawaiian media that was passed along the beach and that rumor was what was picked up because of its emotional intensity.

So, just because the language goes to falling markets, collapse of paper assets, or even a bed-ridden vice president and failed Middle East talks, and problems for the upcoming shuttle mission, none of this means these events will happen, it's just that down at the archetype level of mass consciousness measured by scanning millions of web discussion groups, this is what the language shifts imply.

The time monks continue to work on tuning of the technology.  The actual beginning of the release period came a couple of days ahead of schedule (McClellan's book references on the 20th) and so with each 'hit' linguistically, a few words/phrases can be tweaked this way or that to improve the temporal accuracy of forecasts.

If you're looking for something really, really big as a 'forecast', you might want to watch the upcoming Atlantis space shuttle mission.  Here, we've got loads of linguistics that seem to foretell an Apollo 13-like "Oh my God, will they make it?" kind of event, but sadly, nothing specifically actionable in the way of preventative measures.  Even if we had, who would believe such a garage based effort?  We won't post that whole section publicly, until the events that seem to be foreshadowed to occur over the Atlantic occur (or don't), although this gives you some sense of it:

"This last has the descriptor set of [unknown object] as a place holder or 'variable' in the programming sense of the word. The data sets are indicating, and we are predicting from them, that an 'unknown at this time' object will be [dislodged] and it will be the proximate cause of a [disastrous unfolding/process]."

Hopefully, that's just an artifact of the processing, which with more than 200 operations on millions of half page snips is to be expected.  But, in a sense, the lack of minute details about the future may be a blessing.  If we could say "stay off that street corner tomorrow at 2:53 PM because a bus will go out of control" the accuracy be such that mere possession of it would make some of us outright expendable, as people hungry for power will usually stop at nothing.  On the other hand, seeing only the broad brush of events before they happen is useful in terms of 'bracing' for whatever comes next.  The disclosures to come about some of the presidential wannabe's is another area to be watching. January-ish.

To return to our economic focus, the problems of the dollar (from ALTA 0708 Part 0, 10/21/2007) continue to center on the troubled Buck:

"The longer term value sets remaining from ALTA series 0508 continued to accrue supporting sets under the [millions of small particles]. It now appears that while there are certainly [housing] related inferences within the data set, the *more* likely interpretation is now for either [dollars] or [credit cards]. There are several large sub sets supporting both aspects within the [millions of small particles] new accretions. These data sets of [credit cards] and [dollars] are perhaps *both* legitimately represented. The interpretation of both would forecast a [fall default] wave on credit cards, and this would come in conjunction with a huge [repatriation] wave of [dollars] back to the [usofa]. How this [repatriation] might occur is less clearly described. There are hints that a [complete/total] [abandonment] of [us treasury] and other paper debt instruments would in effect be [repatriation] of [dollars], and would certainly be in the [millions] levels. Further there are also pointers toward a [forced purchase] which involves [metals/commodities] and another which involves [property] of an unknown type. In both cases these are seen as [repatriating] [millions] of [dollars] back into the system.

 

There are recent accretions from the immediacy values of 0708 which also are going to the idea of [millions of dollars] [returning home]. This is cross linked internally with 2/two aspect sets of interest. The first these is terminating in [housing] and seems to be pointing to yet another wave of [foreclosures] and other [abandonment] issues which will begin to surface in late October/early November. Then in conjunction with aspect/attributes from 0508, longer term values sets, the other cross link is pointing toward a [mutiny/insurrection] which is directly held within the Markets entity. This area has very extensive cross links over to the Bushista entity, but is still holding its mass entirely within the Markets entity linguistic structure. The [mutiny/insurrection] values have a very high [visibility] sums, and therefore are expected to be covered by the global mediastream. Further, the [mutiny/insurrection] is apparently to surface as we move into the release period after November 22. In this case we note that the Markets entity is forecasting that the [mutiny] will [topple/fall] the [markets] in December of this year. An additional and possible interpretation for the [mutiny] area also includes [retreat]. The support for this area includes [under/pressured by] and [disparate/separated forces]. There are also [iraq] values directly held as well as extensive cross links over to the [failure] sub set within Bushista. In either interpretation, the impact will hasten the [degradation/death] of the [usofa dollar], and have very serious [dampening] impact on the [markets] for [paper] originating in the [usofa].

 

Not that there won't be plenty of [drama], [heartache], and vast amounts of [increasing tensions] in the [markets] prior to December's 'release language episode'."

So on that note, I can only tell you that while we have hope that a major 'crash' kind of event won't happen in December, down in that preconscious place where people don't spend much time (it is very scary!) there are shifts in the archetypes that seem to be sending us warnings that would fit with precipitous economic decline. Is it just a Big Fear or Real Deal?  We're about to find out...

Having posted this larger context of future events, it's a little repetitious for me to go through a bunch of links about what's going on today - or more accurately, what happened yesterday that's coming out the news pipes today. 

Most of the broad brush of things is fairly clear, and except for filling in a specific event detail (like the precise Consumer Confidence number at 10 AM Eastern today, or existing home sales about the same time) we can just go ahead and skip ahead to our "Coping" section so we can get to the actionable work: collecting ideas for how to be ready for what may...

Some headlines this morning go to the idea that now that the market has done a 10% correction everything is set for a rally.  Here's a "Duh!" for you:  Although a 200 point rally would be widely reported and hyped, if it comes on the heels of a 237 point drop the previous day, it's only a dead-cat bounce on steroids, but then again, I guess you have probably already figured that...

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Coping: Great ideas

Lots of emails coming in, so here are some snips to save.  Let's start with how to pass the time...

"For your upcoming coping page, something most folks won't think of, is having on hand a few decks of cards, cribbage and backgammon boards, dominoes, and non-electronic board games (you know, old-fashioned Parcheesi, Monopoly, Scrabble, etc). The stress relief and competition of playing games (or sports) can make hard times seem a little easier. Also birth control - can't think of anything more inconvenient than becoming parents in the middle of an apocalypse."

And no, playing cards for profit at someone else's expense is not a proper use of cards. Depression, or not.

Next, let's talk about fireless cooking.

"George,

I have done two published articles on “Fireless Cooking” (cooking with retained heat ), modern-day haybox cooking, bearing similarity to today’s posting about cooking rice in a pot that has had the fire turned off except that an insulated container is used to hold in the heat the pot has received. I have done fireless cooking many hundreds of times over  30 years in a variety of vessels and it works great. It is a way to potentially save a considerable amount of fuel in a crisis because most foods cook with no additional heat input beyond the point where boiling is achieved.  I

 

 www.solarcooking.org covers “fireless cooking” and every conceivable aspect of solar cooking, too, for those who might want to build their own solar cooker from scratch for a couple dollars. This is a huge website.

 

www.thermos.com carries Nissan vacuum products and they make the “Cook and Carry System” Fireless Cooker which I’ve personally used for 15 years. It is tremendously efficient and compact; has a 5 quart capacity. They had 4 sizes at one time but now just sell the one at $125. Their  vacuum technology is head-and-shoulders the best in my testing. Their wide-mouthed thermos bottles make the best fireless cookers of this sort esp. where a portable unit is desired. Just pour in the boiling hot ingredients, seal it up and give it 2 to 2-1/2 hours for most foods (beans take longer and may benefit from a reheat.)

 

Another thing Aprovecho (www.aprovecho.org) has done work on is the “Rocket Stove”, a small cook stove that uses ridiculously small amounts of wood to cook a family’s food. See 40 pp. tech paper off their home page that also has a section on “Fireless Cooking”.

 

A lot of the best technology in the above areas is directed to Third World countries but it would behoove us to pay attention while the internet is readily available.

 The commercially-produced  “Zipp Stove” ( a wood-burning camping stove in two sizes from www.zzstove.com ) accomplishes a similar feat for a few bucks but the smaller unit requires a battery to power its draft fan. But I would still recommend knowing how to make and use a Rocket Stove if I lived where fuel might be an issue, which may be everywhere with the eco-nazis on the loose.

Another reader has thoughts about this, too:

The item about cooking rice in a pot (heat off) reminded me of "Thermos cooking". In short, you put whatever you're cooking in a pot, add water, and bring to a boil. Then pour it all into a vacuum insulated bottle. In a few hours your meal is ready. I tried it several years ago and it works great. For more info see: http://www.homestead.com/peaceandcarrots/Thermoscookinglinks.html

Home Stocking:

"Have your readers look at Sprouts... I've been buying the following in bulk.

http://www.wheatgrasskits.com/sprouting/5_part_salad_mix.htm  5 part salad mix Crunchy lentil fest and many others for variety

Then Spirulina, Grits, multi-grain cereal, Rice and seeds.

I have Chickens and Rabbits and then guns for protection..

Its funny how just about everyone at my work say that I can't stock pile enough for all of them and I just kindly remind them that I stock for my family and a select few and then bullets for the rest... They think I'm joking..."

And a question:

"I looked at the site about the 100 things that go missing first from a Sarajavo survivor.... Excellent reference list but #14 and #15 are missing.

Wonder what they were? They were near the top of the listings too."

Hmmm...haven't had time to look yet....  more tomorrow...

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Monday November 27, 2008

Weak Dollar Madness

There's an interesting 'cascading threshold' ahead, and I don't have any idea how to get the data, but here's the question prompted by the headline "Airbus to Sell 160 Jets to China." "To what extent are American manufacturers already spreading currency risk?"  The answer to this question will determine whether the weaker US dollar will really result in any substantive increase in US exports as we go through 'dollar death'.

It's been a very long time since I was involved in the purchase of jet (737-300's back in 1984-85) but at that time the world was stable enough that the hegemony of the US dollar was assumed.  Fuel prices and interest rates were the real deal points; cost per ASM (air seat mile) and RPK's (revenue per kilo) for freight. You bought a jet and the payment was in dollars, simple as that.  You looked at fuel economy, gross aircraft weight, cycle costs, and more.  But currency?  (Cough...) Hardly!  You bought in USD.

But I've got this lingering question out there for outfits like Boeing: How do you sell (or equitably spread) currency risk in today's forex markets?  I don't know any of the folks in BCAC anymore, but I expect there's some kind of a market basket approach, as that would make a lot of sense from the buyer's standpoint.

But now here's my point:  If the decline of the US Dollar is to be a good thing for US exports, I would assume that countries like China would be lining up to buy US goods because with a weakening dollar they would be comparatively cheaper than goods coming from the EU and so on.  So why did Airbus land this latest deal?

At least with the latest aircraft sales, I'm forced to conclude that the conventional economic wisdom, which proclaims that a weaker dollar will be good for exports, is just so much crap.  That's because the folks at the helm of multi-national decision-making have a major incentive to use a market basket approach to pricing in order to ensure they have enough 'money' (in whatever currencies) to pay the bills and make some kind of profit.

Hence, the dream of 'free market' numbskulls, who think a weaker dollar will really result a huge increase in global demand for US made goods priced in falling dollars.  Maybe a tad, but that's it,

Why not try this: call the investor relations departments at a few big multi-nationals and ask something like this: "Say, in your large international sales, do you price goods with a market basket of currencies, or do you price in strictly US dollars?"

To the degree that they price in other-than-dollars, what that reveals is how little impact the falling dollar will have on the money at the top. I'd bet dollars-to-doughnuts that you'll find the upper echelon of sales are denominated in a manner that ameliorates/minimizes the possible impacts of major currency movements. 

What does that mean?  Kiss your present lifestyle goodbye.  A crashing dollar won't result in the classically dreamed economic stimulus that should accrue to the least-labor-cost countries as trumpeted by the superficial financial press because the real international players are almost certainly already playing in a currency neutral/currency-hedged world.

What it distills down to is that on the consumer side, we'll pay more for imported goods due to the falling dollar (so we'll be told), while the real hitters at the top, being hedged, will have plenty of wiggle-room to cash in some bonuses.  The weak-dollar is played as 'good for exports'.  If anyone tells you that, they are victims of first order thinking.  You pay more as a consumer, and maybe make a tiny bit more on exports like grains, but major corporations are probably well  hedged.  Which is why Airbus beat Boeing, I suspect. And why the falling dollar should scare the hell out of you.

Oh, and the Wall Street Journal reports the "Dollar is expected to stay week against Euro, Yen.

It's not like I'm the lone Grinch out there.

$99+

Oil is pushing $99 a barrel now, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it pass the $100 mark this week as soon as the pre-opening push of the dollar is exhausted.

General Concern

There are 100,000 soldiers (pardon this) left over Turkey's border with Iraq and that's got US military types worried that they will march into our...I mean Iraq's...territory.  Third US general in a week has gone there for talks.

Plane Hype

Curious how "Gold seller" Gordon Brown is now says that UK prosperity 'depends' on an expansion of Heathrow airport.  Hasn't this guy heard about a) global warming, b) Peak oil, or c) falling dollars? He wants to expand an airport?  Where's my coffee...

No Inflation, eh?

So the 10% hike in Christmas tree prices CNBC is talking about is an aberration? Hey, I got it!  Maybe there's a federal impartiality rule that says Christmas tree prices (and maybe gifts) don't count in cost of living studies!  Yeah, that's it, I'm sure....

Release Period: Books

The time monks at www.halfpasthuman.com are busy today retooling their lexicon, twraking it ever so slightly this way and that, because it's now looking like the 'release period' emotionally, got oiff to an early start on the 20th, not the 22nd, with the 'release' of notes on one-time White House press spokesman Scott McClellan's new book "What Happened".  Although it's not shipping until April, reading Amazon's notes this one promises to be a major new part of the 'secrets revealed' meme I keep referencing:

"In this refreshingly clear-eyed book, written with no agenda other than to record his experiences and insights for the benefit of history, McClellan provides unique perspective on what happened and why it happened the way it did, including the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, Washington's bitter partisanship, and two hotly contested presidential campaigns."

Stories about the web on this book go to the idea that "For decades, the Bush family has operated above the law, using powerful connections to brush aside evidence that would put lesser Americans in the slammer." 

McClellan's book is not the only one about, although it may figure in to the New Broom Coalition pressing to reopen the Valerie Plame investigation.. 

While I don't wholly agree with Patrick Buchanan, he's got a new book coming out, to be released on January 8th, called "Day of Reckoning" and Amazon's description of it sounds almost like something you'd read here:

"In Day of Reckoning, Pat Buchanan reveals the true existential crisis of the nation and shows how President Bush's post-9/11 conversion to an ideology of 'democratism' led us to the precipice of strategic disaster abroad and savage division at home. Ideology, writes Buchanan, is a Golden Calf, a false god, a secular religion that seeks vainly, like Marxism, to create a paradise on earth. While free enterprise is good, the worship of a 'free trade' that is destroying the dollar, de-industrializing America, and ending our economic independence, is cult madness."

Yup - the cult madness part seems to fit well.

Kindling

Amazon's Kindle book-reader is getting some harsh reviews. Why Amazon didn't pick up on the www.halfpasthuman.com Vortex Reader technology just boggles the mind.  It offers triple to quintuple reading speed and advances the brain's input side of things, and instead out comes an old-style reader that doesn't use super-fast word flickering technology.  Change is tough, huh?

Release Period: Riots Return

21 policemen have been injured in Paris as immigrant youth have gone on the rampage again.  Say, think there's an immigration gone nuts lesson in here anywhere we should be paying attention to?

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But wait!  A new study says immigrants are a "central component" in NY economic growth.

Release Period: Russian Beat Downs

Planning a demonstration against the effective continuation of Vladimir Putin's government in Russia?  You might want to read about the St. Petersburg beat-downs by the political goon squads, er, police,  this weekend.

Flea Flees Wildfires

And if there's not enough of what the time monks call 'self-seeding time cycles' coming back with secrets revealed, rioting returns, and perpetual Putin, we also have the return of the wildfires in southern California.  Among those losing their homes this weekend, was Red Hot Chili's bassist Flea.

Retailing Optimism

Despite my admonition to take all the reports of post Turkey Day sales with several grains of sale (or a whole salt lick), the stories are about today that holiday sales were up, but individual shoppers were spending less.  This is less ebullient that first reports, and if we connect the dots it doesn't sound like much an an increase at all.  Remember, if there's 5% inflation, then a 5% increase in sales means no growth.  So, I'll just sit here and drink coffee till the Consumer Debt report comes out from the Fed in a couple of weeks.

So just how were sales achieved this year?  A reader email explains:

"Well, my oldest son works at Hollister in the mall here in Northeast Louisiana.....I asked him this morning what time he got off work and he said, "well, we couldn't close until we tried to meet last year's Black Friday sales." I then asked him if they did meet the quota... he said he wasn't sure, maybe...barely! He also said they had to take down these ******, put them on, go out in the mall and try and make sales!!! I was shocked! Doesn't sound too promising.....huh? I figure if a place like Hollister can't make last year's sales amount, then who will????"

Meantime, the happy-talk is likely to pimp stock averages at the open.

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Coping: What Has Value?

An email from a reader yields some interesting links about what kinds of things could start to disappear if the dollar decline turns into a full out rout later in the year.,...some good things to think about in here:

George, Thought you might like to look at this. This is a list of the 100 things that disappeared first in Sarajevo during the war. http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4508 

It's mirrored for the most part here: http://www.thepowerhour.com/news/items_disappearfirst.htm 

This might be a very useful Christmas shopping list for folks. Just trying to chip in here.

http://www.friends-partners.org/bosnia/surcook.html  Has very basic recipes from Sarajevo.

Sites main page: http://www.friends-partners.org/bosnia/surintro.html 

The recipes looked rather relevant to coming events...

And another cooking tip:

"I have a quick energy saving tip. When cooking grains (or beans) soaking them first reduces the cooking time and saves fuel. Actually, if you put rice in boiling water, put a lid on it, turn off the burner and let it sit, then the rice will absorb most of the water. So then you turn the burner on for another few minutes to finish the cooking til all the water is gone. That way the burner is not on the whole time. It takes a little longer maybe but you can start the rice, leave the house and come back later to finish it. I am using short grain brown rice here. Barley and whole oats would be similar and millet and quinoa cook fast anyway. If you have a wood stove with a flat surface a whole meal can be cooked there anytime - I did that for years."

Send along coping tips to george@ure.net - the more the better....When I get some time, I'll make up a "Coping" page so newcomers to this site won't have to wander back through a zillion pages of reading while their power is being shut off or the home reposssessed.

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Around the Ranch

I am back on 'egg timer' schedule today.  Getting things done in minimal time.  Except client work.

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I spent a good part of the weekend doing end oif year cash flow projections and tax estimating so I have some idea what's coming down the road.  Amazon is shipping 2007 tax year software already, so you can get ahead of the curve.

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Elaine, who for the longest time said "No cats in the house!" acquiesced this weekend.  The cats still have to stay out at night, but they come in to warm up a bit in the daytime and so far at least, have stayed off the furniture. Rain and 42 is no fun, even with a fur coat on.  The cats have nice well-insulated homes for evenings in the shop/office building...

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I've been making SST Sandwich clones with leftovers.  Take some cut up turkey and sauté with about an equal portion of mushrooms in a little olive oil.  Dash of garlic.  Splash of cooking wine and flame.  Mix in a simple white sauce.  When it gets really hot, serve over toast points.  Sprinkle liberally with Parmesan cheese, broil to melt the cheese, top with some strips of bacon... oh yum... Not exactly like the original at 13 Coins, which you can get even though it's not on their menu, but close enough to ward off famine.

43 and rain is about like Seattle weather, so an SST sandwich fits nicely and gobbles up leftover turkey. Good any time of day - even breakfast which is what I may do this morning.