---

Published Monday through Friday about 8 AM Central Time Except Holidays

 

Can't Sleep Sunday Thoughts

From today, we've got 37 days, if the predictive linguistics are right, to the next point in this timeline when life will go through a major shift - just as the major tipping point in early September of 2001 has had a lasting (and arguably negative) impact on the lives of most of the planet.  So, up early this morning working on checklists and how to deal with life thereafter for Peoplenomics.com subscribers.

 

Along the way though, some serious events that are worth of note as they fit in so closely with the concept of 'urban survival.'

 

One of these is the report out of the UK today that Lehman Brothers is in urgent talks to try and drum up a capital injection.

 

In case you missed it, after the close on Friday, Integrity Bank failed down Alpharetta Georgia way.  This is a fair-sized bank - about a billion in assets.  This is expected to eat through another $250-million to $350-million of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s dough, which in turn came from where?  You guessed it: nice upstanding report-every-dime taxpayers like you and me.  It's getting so anyone with an ounce of economic wit, ought to be afraid as hell of Fridays after the close.

---

I've explained for subscribers, but it bears repeating: The danger in all these bank failures is not just the potential for depositors to lose their shirts and savings.  If that were the case, the Feds would likely be upset, but not nearly as worried about 'systemic integrity'.

 

The real problem that crops up is the whole notion of cascading bank failures.'  The way this scenario paints out is very simple.  Picture all the banks in the world as being players sitting in a gigantic circle, each bank having a pile of receivables from their bank on the right and owing a bunch of payables to the bank of their left.

 

These inter-bank obligation instruments, have tow kinds of values.  One in a 'notional value' and the other is an 'actual value'.  They are derivatives and other piles of paper debt that have previously been taken at face value.  But, all that is now changing.

 

The problem THE WHOLE WORLD has is that if the orderly transfer of dough from the players to the right - to the player in the middle - to the player on the left (in a manner of speaking) seizes up, there will be NO MORE FINANCIAL WORLD as we know it today.  Pure and simple.

 

All it takes is just one bank to renounce its 'turn' and suddenly the whole global economic system can lock up.  In other words, there is no way for the floating craps game that is  the global derivatives and debt market to act in an adaptive manner because the underlying instruments are so horribly complex.  You might have a pile of this kind of pseudo-bond (let's say a collection of mortgages) that was paying 'x' interest, and you decide to swap ownership of thatr for something that will pay you a spread and that in turn is based on some other piece of paper or variable rate on some exchange somewhere.

 

You should be getting the picture that everything is stitched together in a manner that makes it impossible to move positions about.  You can just 'move' the whole world financial system around to accommodate the needs of a few players because underlying the global financial systems is a global pile of 'lawyer-drafted contracts' which would make your head spin.  There is no way all that 'paper asset' and 'paper debt' legal work to be rewritten every couple of weeks (and becoming more regular lately, and becoming the norm this fall) fast enough to keep global economic collapse at bay.

---

The world came close to a financial meltdown in 1974.  You need to devote a few minutes to read a couple of short Wikipedia entries here:  One is about the failure of Herstatt Bank in Germany in 1974 which brought the world to the abyss.  The second is about 'settlement risk' which is the source of the lockup problem.

 

To summarize, how would you feel if I said to you "Oh, I'm guessing 45-75 days until we hit one of these 'settlement risk' problems?  That'd be where Bank A fails to pay Bank B, so B, owing money to Bank C doesn't have the dough to pay up, and so the whole failure propagates. Not just to the mahogany foxholes at the next bank - I mean globally, such that banks won't have money to load up ATM's and things like that. Sucks to be a banker lately.

 

I first learned about this notion back in the mid 1970's when the late Dr. Paul Erdman explained the problem over a two martin8i lunch at the old Trader Vic's in Seattle.  The Herstatt Effect, as the German failure because known in banking circles, was one of the underlying research points in his book "The Crash '79".  However, any of his other financial novels, "The Billion Dollar Sure Thing", and "The Silver Bears" are all equally entertaining, but more important, they will help you soak up some serious financial understanding that you won't find today even in many grad schools.

 

The Herstatt Effect is the ugly duckling, or should I say Taleb's Black Swan, that underlies things like the Lehman gone fishing for capital story. If you are just sitting around this weekend doing nothing, I'd suggest that if you've got even a half ounce of awareness going you'd find some way to change things around in your life so when whatever's coming gets here, you'll be ready for it...

 

Gustav Evacuations

The presently (as I write at 6:05 AM Central) Cat 4 Hurricane Gustav is headed for the Gulf Coast. 

 

There will be some local ham radio club meetings today as ham radio ops get ready to provide a backup communications systems for relocation workers in much of East Texas where no doubt some of the evacuees will land. 

 

The way it will work here is that any arriving evacuees in the Palestine/Anderson County area will be directed to the local Civic Center where they will be assigned to a dozen or so local churches.  Everyone will have to register and be assigned, which while it may sound like a pain (and might be) it will give accurate reporting for disaster response workers and a central clearinghouse of information.

 

We're expecting about a thousand people to show up here and maybe 6,000 (or more) up in Tyler Texas.

 

The National Weather Service has a "Gustav" page here, which I'd suggest that you link to for news and official information.

 

At its closest point of approach the track will put the storm k40 miles northeast of the ranch, so I'll be working today to get my backup power system charged up and get the generator reader, including a new battery and what have you.

 

How Mad Is Russia?

If you remember the Friday "Hot Back Story" on Georgia, the story may be getting legs as there's a report - and a disturbing one indeed - that "Russian 'Sleeper' Agents Begin 'Day X' Attacks in U.S."

 

Some history of the 'Day X' plans can be found here. 

 

We should get a prequel of what's coming on October 7th or thereabout - sure as hell hope it's not the 'Day X' kind of thing.  A simple global meltdown of the economy would be bad enough, but as I've written before, a war to hide financial crimes/excesses may have been behind 9/11 so no telling what this is going to be.  40% military, 50% economic and 20% Terra entity in modelspace - and we expect first look at the current predictive linguistics run just past mid-week.

 

 

 

Been Rudely Awakened?

No, we don't offer counseling discounts, but if you enjoy the content here on UrbanSurvival (or from the mirror site www.independencejournal.com)  please bookmark it for yourself and share it with others by clicking below:

 

Peoplenomics.com 

How Hillary Could Win plus George's School of Crooked Finance

While at first blush, you might think we're covering one topic in this week's report, there are actually two:  The first being a sequence of events that might lead to Hillary getting the nod (or at least the Presidency) and separately, how crooked finance may be blowing up in slow motion while most of the world stands by in disbelief.  Grab a fresh cup, this is going to be fun.  Except for the part about the  latest "after the close Friday"/ "bank Failure of the Week" but more on that after we see how Ms Clinton could get herself back into the White House....

.

          More For Subscribers         Subscription Information

 

Not a Subscriber yet?  It's just $40/Year:  (Allow 48-hours for processing)

 

Review of this week's report:

"Greetings from France George where I am summering and returning Oct 2nd (hopefully in time). Sundays #363 was not one of your best...it was by far your very best. Scary but c`est la vie. My suggestion to you would be at a latter date (next month) to share all or part of it with your regular readers. Its that good and important. Best regards....(name withheld) "

Nice report card, eh?  No, I am not related to this person...  Gosh, what do you think I am, a stock analyst or something?

     (Other Payment. Options)

"Live on $10,000" Updated

What?  You haven't ordered the ebook "How to Live on $10,000 a year -- olr less"?  Suit yourself.  We're all going to live it shortly, anyway.  I just thought you might like a heads up by reading about how to do it before you get pink-slipped.  But, suit yourself OR visit www.liveontenthousand.com.  Yep - still possible.  I also took a bit of additional material that was pertinent from recent issues of Peoplenomics and included them.  The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the aforementioned dollar amount, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you make a little more than that and do some active savings...  Click here for the page with more details on it.

----

Last week's report is here.    For back issues of this site, click here.  (Goes back to 1997!)

 

---

August 29, 2008

Georgia - One Hot "Back Story'

the threat of War over the events in Georgia continues to build.  Russia according to the Voice of America site (which is very pro Western business model) is headlining "Russia: G7 Condemnation over Georgia Shows 'Bias'".  Gee, yah think?

 

Meantime, one of our 'well-placed sources' sent along this report today which we don't have independent confirmation of yet, so take this with a grain of salt:

Hello George,

I know that you will add a wimpy disclaimer, if you publish this, and I understand that you are no longer living in the country, in which you and I were born. However, this information should get wider circulation than it will ever get in the main stream media.

Russian forces are still holding 12 of 22 Georgian servicemen taken prisoner in Poti last week, including two Yemini Jews, disguised as Arabs. On one of these, Russian military intelligence interrogators found a packet of reports, wrapped in plastic and taped to the man's back. This packet consisted of 'the highest level security matters.'

This concerned the ongoing plan to base Israeli fighter-bombers at Marneuli military airbase, 20 kilometers south of Tbilisi and that these aircraft were intended for a special air raid on the Iranian capital city of Tehran. It was originally felt that six aircraft were to be utilized, three attacking the city itself and three to attack targeted Iranian oil facilities.

The captured Israeli's papers, all written in Hebrew, when translated by the Russian GRU turned out to be somewhat different in nature. While one flight was indeed intended to attack various Iranian oil facilities, the second flight was planned to drop chemical warfare bombs on Tehran. These bombs, which were designed to blow open at a set altitude, were filled with weapons-grade anthrax and this anthrax, kept in a specially sealed box at the U.S. diplomatic offices in Tiblisi, came from Fr. Detrick in Maryland and their shipment had the approval of the President himself. Another twist to the bizarre plot was that the aircraft, made in the United States, were to have their Israeli marking masked with American markings and that these markings were to be applied in a water-based paint that could easily be hosed off when this flight returned to Georgia.

When the Russians learned of this, they immediately notified their Embassy in Tehran and subjected their Yemeni Israeli to what they called 'intensive interrogation,' not unlike the CIA's Bush-mandated torture. In this case, the 'subject expired' but not before revealing more of the joint Israeli-US activity.

In an abstract sense, the Russian counter attack on Georgia indirectly saved the lives of many thousands of Iranians.

The Americans, apparently, were totally unaware of the Israeli false flag portion of the operation. Had the BW attack been successful, the question arises as to whether the American military command would ever discuss any aspect of it. If any of the falsely-marked Israeli aircraft had been seen and wrongly identified as American, there would be heated denials and the matter would quickly be shoved under the carpet by the American media.

By the way, though I disagree with your use of wimpy disclaimers, I understand your perceived necessity of disassociating yourself from the promotion of revolution, for which one could possibly be charged with treason. Peaceful resistance, however, is still legal in Amerika and I advocate disorganized resistance, a method taught to me by the same people who have trained your brother-in-law.

Now that's a dynamite accusation, so I wrote back to see if I could get some detailed sourcing from my source:

"I "float", daily, around the United Nations in Geneva. Whenever there is a media story, there is always a back story, which is kept from the media but circulated within the halls. I can not state that this info comes from the ******* but the **** in Geneva, has the best intelligence network in the world. You also need to understand that state players gossip and engage in "shoptalk" constantly. We are all there to gather or dispense info.

The scuttlebutt is that Russia will be releasing the translations of the original Hebrew docs, as well as the American shipping docs, shortly.

This is why Olmert rushed to Moscow for damage control."

Remember, this is the scuttlebutt going on at the UN in Geneva.

 

However, what's clear is that Israel continues to harden its position on Iran with headlines today that "Israel had decided: Iran will not have nukes". 

 

And all of this compounds as we lurch forward to the October 7th date identified in the predictive linguistics work at www.halfpasthuman.com as when we'll slide into events that will dwarf 9/11 in terms of emotive values though at least mid January 2009.

 

And say, with all this intrigue going on, you don't suppose that FAA IFR flight plan computing error this week was a little back-channel messaging from the Russians to the US, do you?  The "FAA points finger at switch for server crash" is the latest... wonder what the IP address of the switch was? 

 

Might want to have an eye on computer systems just in case they become a 'message channel'.  OK, so not as robust or reliable  as the order wire channel in MIL-STD-188-141A FS-1045-1051, but what if we start seeing ATM Drop out?  Oh and that reminds me to mention:

 

Bad Mellons

"Bank of NY Mellon data breach affects 12.5 mln" has caught our eye this morning.

 

Personal Income Dropping

New figures out today from the bureau of Economic Analysis:

"Personal income decreased $89.9 billion, or 0.7 percent, in July, in contrast to an increase of $7.4 billion, or 0.1 percent, in June and an increase of $218.0 billion, or 1.8 percent, in May. Disposable personal income (DPI) decreased $114.7 billion, or 1.1 percent, in July, compared with a decrease of $208.0 billion, or 1.9 percent, in June and an increase of $595.9 billion, or 5.7 percent in May. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $24.1 billion, or 0.2 percent, in July, compared with an increase of $65.5 billion, or 0.6 percent, in June. The pattern of changes in income reflects the pattern of payments associated with the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 (see page 2).

Real DPI decreased 1.7 percent in July, compared with a decrease of 2.6 percent in June. Real PCE decreased 0.4 percent, compared with a decrease of 0.1 percent."

Now here's the part where we need to be really precise - the