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Published Monday through Friday about 8 AM Central Time Except Holidays

 

Urgent Update

Russia's Move preempts Iran Strike

You may recall the story that I reported on August 29th (scroll down to "Georgia - One Hot Back Story) which claimed, among other things, that Israel was planning to base forces out of a Georgia airfield from which to strike Iran.

 

Well, we see that today, the story is getting MSM 'legs' as the well-connected Debka web site is reporting that "Russian units raid Georgian airfields for use in Israeli strike against Iran – report "  So, although my credibility may have seemed stretched a week ago, the story - at least part of it - is starting now to 'go public' and 'mainstream'  just a week after my post here.

 

Blurring Lines

Before the employment report came out (which we'll get to in a minute) the futures were pointing toward a downward open following the market action Thursday which shaved more than 340-points off the Dow Industrials.  That was followed, in almost predictable fashion, by the sinking of markets in Asia, and then Europe, as a follow-on.

 

One of my colleagues insisted (to the point of making a ceremonial 5¢ bet of the matter) insisted that the decline was simply a great entry point for some of his longs.  His thinking was that yes, the US in making some progress in Iraq, the problems of the subprime market fallout may be overblown, and, and besides, no one is going to torpedo the US economy because as goes the US, so goes the world.  In other words, the typical Ameri-centric view of things.

 

For my part, taking the other side of the argument (and wagering the princely nickel) I argued that the reason oil is coming down is that fewer people will be able to afford heat, the predictive linguistics hold not only one more major bank failure, but a financial 'lockdown' condition as the year goes on, and that many companies are 'blurring the lines' a bit when they talk about their sales.

 

Take for example the question posed yesterday in this column, relative to Wal-Mart's earnings.  The underlying 'happy talk' in the MainStreamMedia (MSM) was that WM same-store sales were up prompting headlines like "Discount stores score big in August."    Being up to my ears in work, I didn't have time to follow-up with Wal-Mart's investor relations department, but reader DM did (and our thanks for his diligence here) and it got him this admission out of WM's investor relations folks:

"Thank you for your call earlier today. I inquired about the same store sales as reported in our August sales release. According to the Director of Investor Relations, the US sales numbers are the actual numbers as reported each month, and are not adjusted for inflation. I hope this helps. Thanks again for your inquiry."

Helps?  You bet!. What this means, when you read further stories like "Wal-Mart sales Climb on Back-to-School Discounts" that you can take the 2.8%/3% same-store sales and back out inflation.

 

Of course, once we open the "What's Inflation Really Running?" can of worms, things get ugly in a hurry!  We could argue for a low of 2.4%, basis the Fed M-1 levels for the past 12-months contained in the most recent H.6 money stocks report.  Or, we could argue for 8.8% inflation, based on the more current 3-month M-1 inflation rate (same report).  Or, we could bounce over to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and hit the latest CPI numbers, which would argue for an inflation rate of 5.6% higher than it was a year ago.

 

In all but one of the figures (YoY M-1 from H.6) the Wal-Mart sales figures really reflected a decrease in sales, if you were to look at things from a units perspective, not just the gross dollars involved.  Or, because so many companies have been downsizing their packaging, you would have maybe seen just as many boxes of 'whatever', but under it all, the dollars per pound of goods was flat to down. 

 

My point is that lines are blurring.  Corporate America is reporting sales that are in many cases, and I don't single out Wal-Mart because it's the current way of doing things generally, reporting sales that are "up" but only so long as you put inflation out of your mind.

 

But then again, it's that way with the Dow Jones Industrials, too.

 

I don't want to remind my colleague that on an inflation-adjusted basis, if you put in the Spring 2000 Dow Jones of 11,723 into the Federal Reserve's online inflation calculator, you'll see that in order to have just maintained purchasing power, the Dow would have to be at 14,677.58.

 

And, worse, since the thrashing in the markets on Thursday, on a purchasing-power (inflation) adjusted basis, the buy and holding of the Dow (excluding dividends, but also excluding commissions, yada yada yada) is down 23.773% since 2000.  Of course, if you were a real financial genius, you would have been reading this site back in the fall of 1999 when I posted the paper "Death by Dot Coms: When Barriers to Entry Fail". 

 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it you'd have sold the Dow and parked your money in an inflation-adjusted Treasury position, you'd be about 20% better off than now, but that's all capital gains under the bridge now, isn't it.

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So there's my colleague, hatching out what I expect will be a nickel.  And there's me, on the phone to my friend Robin Landry, the best market predictors I know, and I asked him about his take on things after the close Thursday because I had posted a rare special technical note for Peoplenomics readers, (link for subscribers) showing how we had just taken out what looked to my like critical support:

"If this is the third, (under Elliott Wave counts), it is actually the third of the third - and in that action Thursday, we had a one down, two up, and a three down, which does not appear to be complete yet.  And, it's initial target is around 10,800.  And then we will have a little 4, and then a five, and once we do get that 10,800, if we the panic, because that was the recently low back in July, the targets will be somewhere in the neighborhood of (for the Dow) somewhere in the 10,695 area.. 

 

If we break that, then I expect we'll go straight down to the 9,700 area I mentioned in my comments a while back.

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The interesting thing about what is happening now is that when we had broken the 200 week moving average, going into the July 15th low, we rallied back up to the 200 week average, recently, and it now turned down again. 

 

Going on down from here, if this leg of the decline is from 13, 136 and you subtract 10,816, that equals 2,320 points.  Then if you take the recent high of 11,865 minus 2,320 points, that gives you the 9,545 - which I think is where we're headed right now.

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We're in an oversold area and of course, I have told you that crashes happen when the market is oversold.  So, does this have the chance to be the Big One?  Absolutely!  We are now in the timeframe for the major crashes to Occur - which are usually September into October.

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I have mentioned to you that the highs are usually seen in August.  And so it's following the 'normal' yearly pattern and I suspect that whether it goes beyond the 9,545 to 9,700 levels, in fact we could see 9,,223, one of those little fours will hold for a rally.  At what degree?  I can't tell you because it will be shaped by the decline ahead.

 

But, would it surprise me to see a thousand point down day?  No.

 

When you see the action that you saw the action on Tuesday - with a strong rally, that was a failed C wave of Wave 2.  (Subscribers: see the earlier technical note this week on the rally set-up-G)

 

When a wave fails it does so because the momentum in the opposite direction is so great, that it can't reach its normal target.  That's like a failed fifth wave on the upside.  So all of the things are coming together.

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What is particularly bearish is that the 50-week moving average is now going down toward the 200-week moving average.  When the 50-week crosses the 200-week moving average, things can really accelerate to the downside.  you'll see all kinds of government actions trying to stop it.

 

They might - for a while - temporarily, but it doesn't change the ultimate outcome.

 

The other thing that I think is very telling is that since January of 2008, the Dow Jones 50-day moving average crossed through the 200-day moving average and the high in May rallied back up to the 200-day moving average.  And then it accelerated down into the low of July the 15th.

 

This recent rally that's just ended Tuesday on the highs with the reversal, all it could barely do was test the high of the 7th of August or so, and then it accelerated down and broke back through.

 

Now you have the 50-day below the 200-day moving average and the 50-week is approaching the 200-week moving average. 

 

Many times when they are in this mode, you get your crash, you get a rally, and then you get a test.  The crash being the third, rally being the fourth wave, and the test being the 5th.

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This time if that happens we want to see bullish divergences.  If we do not see bullish divergences, then it means that we're more than likely on our way to the 7,400 area without  a subsequent 6-montyh to year rally in-between.

 

(Note, this would fit like a glove with the predictive linguistics which point toward a financial 'lockdown' in November and lots of bad woo woo through Feb-mar of '09 - G)

 

In other words, it appears the way things are going that we are lining up for a quicker downside resolution than what I had been anticipating because I thought we would have a decline down to 9,700 area, then a 3-6 month rally, and it could surprise us and set a brand new high. 

 

But, we will learn more in this timeframe between now and the end of the year with the wave structure and the breadth of the decline.  That'll give us a clue as to when the subsequent rally goes up, or whether we are in what Mr. Prechter describes as a Grand Super Cycle Decline that will last most of our lifetimes.

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The main thing to get from these comments of mine is that if you're in the market, you need to get out as soon as possible. It's better to be aggressive at getting out, and have to go back in, than to sit on the sidelines and watch everything collapse in front of you. 

 

You know the saying "He who takes his chips and walks away, lives to play another day"?   I was reminded in my readings Thursday that the best thing an investor can do is turn off CNBC.  They are a perfect mirror of what is actually happening.  They'll advice do this and this....a few days ago bullish, Thursday bearish - you can't play that kind of emotional roller-coaster and come out alive.

 

While I have it on, 90 percent of the time I keep it muted and I use it as a sentiment gauge - by who they have on and what charts they put up.  It's getting so I can read lips...and you must have a plan and stick to the plan.

So, with such sage words, you might be asking, what are Landry's clients doing - if anything at this stage in the market.  His answer:

"We are in short-term treasury ETF's and short the double Dow ETF with 5-10% of our funds."

If we take out that 9,300 kind of area, the next fourth degree down level is what?

"7400."

And then if we step back even further from the chart, what's the next fourth down of a larger degree?

"The next one of larger degree is at 3,059"

And is there one after that?

"777."

(Gulp!) The one after that?

"That'd be the 1933 low - you can look it up."

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All of which sets the tone for the real socioeconomic speculation of the morning, which goes something like this:

 

When the US entered the Great Depression of the 1930's, there was not a lot of linkage between the financial economy and the general economy of the Nation.  In other words, paper finance, commodities, the military, and the development of technology were not so intertwined as they are today.  The ,falling commodity prices, due to automation of farms, came first.

 

I would argue that there has been a grand blurring of lines, in order to keep the general economy alive, to such an extent that recovery from a potential crash will be much more difficult than ever before, and thus, the amount of suffering may possibly be greater.

 

My source in Geneva has put up an interesting page here which contains, among other things, two documents which you might want to take a read through this weekend.  One is a strategic view by  the UK Ministry of Defence "Development, Concepts and Doctrine Center".  The key thing in this report (that I pointed out to subscribers last weekend) is that in the event of a major downturn in the economy, the risks of terrorism and the like might possibly go up dramatically because unemployed people will do many things for money or food.  The other papers on the page may be of interest as well.  That Treasury paper, for instance.

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As the economic lines have blurred, we have seen a return to weekend banking many years back, the move of bankers into investment, again, a blurring of the lines that was a precursor to the Great Depression.  And now, we're seeing how finance has become a key tool in State Policy toward terrorist organizations. 

 

We're blurring lines this time around in other areas, too.  We didn't have a carry-trade in the 1930's experience and certainly the global inter-market linkages didn't exist.

 

So we come, over the next year or so to a fascinating point in history which will give us one of two possible outcomes.

 

The optimistic case is that because of inter-market linkages, the expansion of federal financial strategy toward foreign policy goals and anti-terrorism efforts, and all the like, will add systemic resilient to the point where the Global Economic System will be able to muddle-through a massive periodic correction of past excesses in the credit markets.

 

The pessimistic outcome is that the excesses in the financial instruments markets have now been spread around so much - touching almost every part of the USA systemically, that a Crash now will not only trash the banksters on Wall Street, but it will trash the Military, Agriculture, Industry, and Services.  Each has become so intertwined with the financial system that the systemic decline threatening could essentially take down the whole country, not just the financial core.

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We shouldn't have too long to wait.  A year at tops.  But if you wake up one morning and read headlines about how the U.S. Dollar, currently in a counter-trend rally against other global currencies, has suddenly reversed course and is in decline again -- to the point where ships full of goods for the American market are turned around on the high seas to take their goods back home - then that will finally answer the question of whether expansion of the pool of players with 'skin in the game' really does as systemic stability, or whether it simply crashes the whole country.

 

Meantime, Russia is committed to a strong ruble policy, spending $4 billion to support it.

 

Me?  Too close to call, I figure.  As a student of history, I can see that without 9/11, the WOT and the subsequent Wars and Housing Bubble, the Crash to wipe out malinvestment should have happened in 2001/2002 when the Internet Bubble burst.

 

The intervening policy decisions (and you can carry that anywhere you will) have kept the game going, but with necessary expansion of participants.  To the point where now, we read how fixed income gurus like Bill Gross are saying that the U.S. will have to buy assets to prevent a financial tsunami.

 

[Linguistic note: The Bloomberg story above is the first use I have seen in the MSM of our word "de-levering" which was introduced as a concept in the Tuesday August 12th report "Who are the "PowersThatBe" - which in turn was coined by my book writing insider source, who is shopping his book on the financial meltdown...]

 

Does all this blurring the lines change the outcome?  I've got a nickel bet that long-term it doesn't and it just postpones the inevitable outcome.  But, it sure gives financial writers something to write about.

 

Employment Figures

Based on "blurred lines" theory, and the expectation that even intervention in statistical reporting could be justified, if its goal was to save the Nation, I would expect a surprise in this morning's unemployment report.  Especially because of the market's reaction to the private report out on Thursday showing the economy had lost 33,000 jobs in August.  But, no, the market isn't going to like today's report at all...

"The unemployment rate rose from 5.7 to 6.1 percent in August, and non- farm payroll employment continued to trend down (-84,000), the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. In August, employment fell in manufacturing and employment services, while mining and health care continued to add jobs. Average hourly earnings rose by 7 cents, or 0.4 percent, over the month.

Unemployment (Household Survey Data)

The number of unemployed persons rose by 592,000 to 9.4 million in August, and the unemployment rate increased by 0.4 percentage point to 6.1 percent. Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 2.2 million and the unemployment rate has risen by 1.4 percentage points, with most of the increase occurring over the past 4 months. (See table A-1.)

In August, the unemployment rates for adult men (5.6 percent), adult women (5.3 percent), whites (5.4 percent), blacks (10.6 percent), and Hispanics (8.0 percent) rose, while the jobless rate for teenagers was little changed at 18.9 percent. The unemployment rate for Asians was 4.4 percent in August, not seasonally adjusted. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

Among the unemployed, the number of persons who lost their last job rose by 417,000 to 4.8 million in August, with increases occurring among those on tem- porary layoff and those who do not expect to be recalled to work. Over the last 4 months, the number of unemployed job losers has increased by 810,000. (See table A-8.)

In August, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) rose by 163,000 to 1.8 million, an increase of 589,000 over the past 12 months. The newly unemployed--those who were jobless fewer than 5 weeks-- increased by 400,000 over the month."

Table U-6, alternative measures of underemployment was down a 1/10th to 10.7%.

 

And if you have a few grains of salt handy, the CES birth-death model shows the biggest gains in newly estimated as created jobs were hospitality/leisure and professional services. - and best knee slapper of all - 16,000 new jobs in construction.

 

Quick - what's the Mark Twain quote about statistics?  Let's see how this is 'spun positive'.

 

Warships with Aid

Sounds paradoxical, but there you have it. Offloading in Georgia.

 

Spying Charged

According to a new book, the US has been spying on the top leadership of Iraq.  Frankly, I'd be ,surprised if we weren't.  With Echelon and Carnivore looking at US citizens, why would those folks get any less scrutiny?  I m just saying...

 

Oily Outlook

Been watching the declines coming from the Mexican oil giant Cantarell field?  Maybe you should be...  This field may dry up for export by 2013....

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Gee, let me think:  Does this have anything to do "Congress is about to pour lighter fluid on Iran" headlines?  Hmmm...

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And, that story about the 65MPG Ford that we can't have in this market, the story has now made it into Business Week.  And yes, I'd buy one.  We talked about this a month or two back...

 

NJ On Alert

3-5 inches of rain due from Hannah over the weekend.  so far, 136 dead in Haiti from the storm.

 

Do Not Pass Go

"Detroit's Mayor will leave office and go to Jail"

 

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Coping:  The People Programming?

Reader wants to pass on this:

"I dvr'ed it so if you didn't see it "slipped in" to your tv broadcast, let me know and I will send it to you. I studied NLP and I was so shocked when I went to the bookstore only to find the only NLP books were in the advertising section. It really killed me. What do I know.... I thought that NLP was used to help people chase down their demons and make those demons stand in the corner. What a let down. If this doesn't make sense, thank your lucky stars. "

Say, you don't think that she's referring to that 8-mnonth old subliminal story about John McCain that's on YouTube do you?  If you're thinking "Is this how the PowersThatBe" pull our strings, you're like way late to the party, dude.

 

Nope:

"Also was anyone else freaked out about the Cannon product placement in yesterday's speech.... please do not say that I am the only one who saw that...I know that I am a hypno-therapist.... but not everyone could be mesmerized..... please .... say it ain't so... you saw it, right george????"

Nope, the less teevee I watch, the higher my energy level and the more I get done, sorry.  But there was more on the 'programming of people' front:

"Is it just me, or is it especially fitting that he is speaking in front of a perfect facsimile of the old Windows blue screen of death?"

Not to worry, Citizen - it's just a simple truth leak - easily fixed.

 

Forbidden Archeology Department

Humans wearing sandals and walking around 300-500 million years ago?  Oh yeah...

 

Peoplenomics - Rule of 9

If you try to log onto Peoplenomics.com more than 9 times without success your IP is snagged and you get blacklisted.  So, ifs you can't log in the first time, send me an email.

 

Reminder:  The username is your email address (all lower case) and the password is also your email address, all lower case.

 

Rediscovering Rural

You may recall that I was anguishing two years ago about paying $29,500 for 16 acres to expand our ranch to about 29 acres?  Well, there's a 12-acre piece down the road from me up for $57,000...write if youi want details.

 

Meantime, Texas property  taxes are playing catch-up:

"saw as how someone's property tax went up only 20%

in menard tx our tax went up darn near 50% for next yr.

no, written protest did no good.

have half a notion to not pay for a couple years, then pay the penalty with cheaper dollars. let the bas***ds suffer for awhile."

Not just property taxes - our power bill this month was up nearly 50% compared with a year ago.,  Higher supplier prices are blamed, but I'm now tracking to spend $10,000 a year on panels to expand our home power system as long as tax credits hold out.

 

Credit Card Entries

Still time to send in your reports of what kind of interest rate your credit card company is charged.  Current leader is Advanta with just under 36%....

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Send comments, entry, and large US FRN's you don't need to: george@ure.net

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Around the Ranch:  Too Many Projects

Well, that's it for another fun-filled, action-packed week of UrbanSurvival - adventures in mayhem.  This weekend, we'll be running around like ants trying to get the place squared away for the arrival of Elaine's brother Panama Bates from (of all places) Panama next week.  My (tiny) list of projects includes (big ones only):

• Install the dust collector system in the shop

• Finish the well

• Add to the goat barn/covered storage for hay & feed

• Finish putting siding on the north deck extension

• Build cabinetry in corner of kitchen

• Put motor kit on one of the mountain bikes

• Mow yard (*three acres of grass takes a while, trimming even more)

• Brush hog trails around perimeter

• Cut up 3' tree down over west fence

• Till up garden for fall planting

• Catch up on office paperwork

• Install new floor in kitchen

• Write kick-butt Peoplenomics report

• Functional test a new client web site

• Clean office, catch up on filing

• Update accounting software entries

• Mail out various things, pay bills, yada yada

• Rediscover vacuum cleaner & Windex in my office

• Empty burn barrel and burn some trash

• Rebuilding generator

• Install solar panels, charge controllers, battery rack and wire grid-tie.

• Install false ceiling in living room for the 'African/Tropical village motif

 

If I get even a few of these knocked off this weekend, it will be a good thing.  At the very least, a long project list like this (and this is the short version, highlights only) you now may have some insight as to why I don't watch much TV.  Surprising how much you can get done if it's turned off.

 

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October 7th Watch:  You Know You're In Trouble When...

While most of the MainStreamMedia hypnotized public was feeding on the pabulum pushed out by the PowersThatBe-owned 'state media' there were numerous indications going on Sunday afternoon that news events were being pushed as much by the actual events surrounding Gustav, as the need for the PTB to keep things from falling part for two more weeks.  Fortunately, having access to the predictive linguistics reports out of HalfPastHuman.com, I already expect relative order until September 15th because shortly thereafter, and centered around October 7th, we're due to start The Big Slide to Transformation which will happen between now and March of next year.  Still, there was almost a sense of either panic, (Or, was it disbelief?) as my broker called to say "There's a special Sunday trading session in energy due to the hurricane..."  I know, you're thinking to yourself, "hmmm...that's odd..."  Yup, sure was...yet here's the story bigger than life.  And close on the heels of the change in margin requirements installed Friday (oh, what a coincidence, eh?)  With the Dollar on life support (and a hit of meth lately) it shouldn't come as a surprise.. My broker had never heard of a special Sunday session before, but then again, he's only been in the game 20-some years.  But not to worry, seems we're not the only ones worried about the end of the month and then October 7th-ish events to follow.

 

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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?

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"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.

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

 

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Thursday September 4, 2208

Subscriber Note:

Another Technical Picture update has been posted on the www.peoplenomics.com site.  Click here for the report or click here for subscription information.

 

Madness on Bordering/It's Only Money

Amidst the mainstream media hype about the Sarah Palin speech at the GOP convention, what's being lost in the shuffle is that VP Dick Cheney and GWB are busily giving away our tax money for reasons I'm not sure of... I mean beyond the obvious 'continuous expansion model of  global corporate cannibalism'.

 

I must be the only person around outraged that we're giving Georgia a billion dollars, as Cheney and his entourage do a round of photo ops and mit-wobbling (hand shaking then) in what is being packaged as a line in the sand for freedom kind of thing.

 

China today is calling for ,international efforts to resolve the loggerhead, and recall that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization of Asia nations has lined up behind Russia.

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Meantime, the Bush administration hasn't been making much progress pushing the indirect Middle East peace talks between Israel and Syria. 

 

All of which seems to be conspiring to make the biggest foreign policy achievement of the Bush administration the massive expansion of wars in the sand box.

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With the ouster of Pakistan's president Musharraf, the US is being called out for invading Pakistan this week, too.  Certainly, the US being in 'hot pursuit' of terrorists who jump the Pakistan border from Afghanistan makes sense if you're fighting a war, but Pakistan is pretty indignant about it and wants to have a word with us about how borders work.  Borders?  What are those?

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It'd be tempting, after reading how "Stick-wielding riot police beat protesting Pakistani lawyers" to wonder if we can't send some US lawyers.  But, good taste would keep me from asking that publicly.

 

Or: How come we think we can fix Russia's borders when we can't fix our border with Mexico?

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Another country where the US and Russia are on a path to possible conflict is Ukraine.  Again, the country is strategically positioned, and as a once-Soviet buffer, it's an attractive 'new market' for the West.

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I've come to a very simple conclusion about how the global battle for 'hearts and minds' is likely to play out in future years, based on simple Marketing 101.  Which socioeconomic system is likely to grow?  The one that charges 35%+ on credit cards (See today's 'Coping' section) and which defines progress by the number of features on a cell phone, or the one that eschews charging  interest and gives food to its adherents?

 

The world is presently engaged in a battle that's at its core about value systems and definitions of progress.  The West has certainly got a good marketing mechanism (television/MSM) but it's not the only mechanism.  Humans still deal with humans one-on -one.

 

Quick!  What's the #1 major goal that the US population thinks about and works toward every day?  Answer: We don't have one.  At least not that I'm clear on.  Oh we might go back to the moon, or off to Mars - maybe.  But, is that all there is to the circus?  Do we think that as a country paying 35% on credit cards and going through mass foreclosures and bailing out fat-cat bankers is justified by a new OS or development of double-quad processors?  I'm just saying....

 

It seems to me that a true patriot's role in today's troubled times is to differentiate between defending the Constitution and the collective States of these United States on the one hand, versus imposing corporate economic exploitation on the whole damn planet, which is what the pretenders inside the Beltway obviously have on their agenda. 

 

But, around here, progress is not measured by processor speed.  It's measured by the quality of humans we produce.  We've become so fixated on the 'thingness' of life that we've programmed a whole criminal class.  Do you think maybe ...just maybe... that there's a connection between 'thingness' and crime?  Look up incarceration rates on Wikipedia:

"The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world at 737 persons imprisoned per 100,000[15]. A report released Feb. 28, 2008 indicates that in the United States more than 1 in 100 adults is now confined in an American jail or prison.[8] The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population.[9]"

I'll make this as simple as I can:  Dick Cheney is giving away your money to Georgia because we need a new market because if the corporate system doesn't grow, it dies. As long as the West is a money-driven growth machine, we need to keep 'building new markets'.  But at some point, environmental limits are reached, and yes, there probably are limits to growth.

 

In fact, if you want a good read, check out the Matthew Simmons paper from 2000 (!) "Revisiting the Limits to Growth: Could the Club of Rome have been correct after all?"  While Simmons' paper is mainly energy focused (his specialty as an energy financier) the concept (like good XML) is extensible.  More 'thingness' means more prisoners, and so forth.

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Tomorrow morning we'll get the newest unemployment report.  I expect it will be flat to maybe up a tenth.  But, just between us, we know that one reason for the 'low unemployment rate is the multiple wars the West is waging.  Drop those and I expect unemployment would be a full 2 percentage points higher and maybe 4.  And remember, 'discouraged job seekers' (those who have run out of benefits) don't count.     Already, word is that the private sector cut 33,000 jobs in August.  Futures are down a bit, oil up.

 

Good news about interest rates is that the ECB and the BoE have left rates unchanged.

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As a Country and a world, we have a very ugly problem of 'thingness' to overcome.  Every time Dick Cheney shows up in a hot spot to hand out cash, I ask myself  "What are we buying here?"

 

"Cheney slams Russia over war against Georgia".  "Georgia closes its embassy in Georgia".

 

Behind the scenes: the marketing engines wind up.  "Georgia asks IOC to reconsider choice of Sochi as 2014 Olympics venue".  Or, try this one:  "Cheney promotes pipelines in Baku."  "Conflict with Russia cost Georgia $2.8 billion."  Say, is that BP Baku-Supsa pipeline turned on yet?

 

'Them Winds'

Not sure what to make of the latest update from the time monks who may get the baseline (Part Zero) of their predictive linguistics going out toward July 2009 posted this afternoon (subscription info). 

 

An advisory from them a couple of days back went to the idea of grief and impact on lands/terrain of the USA through September 12th - could be an artifact of data collecting, or could be the two inbound storms, Hannah and Ike are expected to start making landfall this weekend - so we'll know soon enough.  Words like 'grief' make us a little leery of potential consequences, though. 

 

Palin Trashed Markets?

Here's one for you to ponder: "Sarah Palin Pick Blamed for Clobbering Stock Market".  File under 'blame game'.

 

Falling Cars

Today's coverage of the drop in auto sales in August should be must-read material, if for no other reason than it gives voice to speculation that soft sales of cars could last another year. 

Honda passed Chrysler another headlines tells us. 

 

All of which keeps pointing toward our October 7th date.  Remember August 1929 auto sales cratered, too.

 

Another Earnings Question

When I see headlines like "Wal-Mart August same-store sales beat expectations" but then read how sales were up 3% for store open at least one year were up 2.8%, I want to grab the phone and call their investor relations department.  If I did, I'd ask "Is that 2.8% increase in same store sales with or without inflation adjustment?"  Obviously, if the figures are after an inflation adjustment, then OK, fine. 

 

BUT, when I look at the latest Fed report (H.6 Money Stock Measures) I see that

 

Percent change at seasonally adjusted annual rates     M1                   M2

3 Months from Apr. 2008 TO July 2008                            8.8                     2.4
6 Months from Jan. 2008 TO July 2008                             5.0                     6.6
12 Months from July 2007 TO July 2008                           2.4                     6.3
 

So, up 2.8% might mean as little as up 0.4% after inflation (measured by money stocks, M1, seasonally adjusted) OR a decline of some percentage if M2 matters...we could argue this all day long, but you got the idea.... always ask if reports in sales gains are real (inflation-adjusted) or hyperbole (unadjusted).  I won't get to calling them any time soon, but if you know, please send us a note.

 

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Coping: A Little Basic Research

You may recall earlier this week I posted a link to a very interesting report that went to the idea that some aspects of radioactivity are linked to the distance between the earth and sun.  Unlikely many everyday-sort-of-blog, around UrbanSurvival, we have access to a lot of resources, not the least of which is a nuclear reactor.  Well, maybe not quite, but we know the people to ask when we want to sniff around a bit more into basic science that involves things nuke-ish. 

 

So I sent the item off to our nuclear engineer/reader who wrote back...

"I did want to add my two cents on the very fascinating paper your mentioned on UrbanSurvival this morning.

1. Wow! One of the major tenets when I was being taught nuclear engineering was the fundamental assumption that nuclear decay rates are independent of external influence. This correlation could, assuming the data are good, blow open the doors for a lot of work in the basic physics of what holds matter together (by that I mean, might not isotopes that we currently regard as “stable” become “radioactive” if they were to venture close to a “source” such as a star larger than our sun?

2. My first thoughts went to the so-called nuclear waste “problem”. If the effect noted in the paper is real and not an artifact of bad data processing and if a device could be constructed to mimic or enhance this process, then you could accelerate the decay of isotopes you don’t want, such as the unusable portions of used nuclear fuel. That would really help close the debate – you could use the 95% of material that is still good after a fuel rod has been “burned up” and disintegrate the 5% that is currently useless to you.

3. How would this relate to the proposed “expanding earth” model? I am not sure. One of the assumed drivers for plate tectonics is heat generated from, among other things, the decay of radioactive material in the earth’s crust. Could a hyper-active period on the sun accelerate such a process and dump a bigger heat load into the crust? What would that mean to they “expanding earth” model? No clue since I am still not sure where all this new matter would come from to meet the needs of a growing planet. The maps are intriguing and correlate great to an expanding earth. I still need a causative theory to drive it that matches up with the physics we observer around us.

4. Has anyone done experiments as to whether radioactivity is just a “retransmission” of solar energy? Not to my knowledge, but there are a lot of physicists out there doing lot’s of interesting experiments, so I wouldn’t want to flatly state “no.” What a fascinating idea. All isotopes have what is called a “cross-section” for particle interactions. Here at the reactor, we care mostly about the neutron cross-section of isotopes. The larger the cross-section, the bigger the target for the incoming particle. This cross-section IS energy dependent – that means that the energy of the incoming particle will help determine the cross section. It’s like going out to a firing range and using three different rifles which fire bullets at different speeds. Rifle 1 at say 4000 feet/sec, Rifle 2 at 10,000 fps and Rifle 3 at 100,000 fps. The target for bullet 1 will be different size than for bullet 2 or 3. Cross-section is an interesting niche of physics. Maybe certain isotopes have a higher cross-section for neutrino interactions than previously thought? Some other unknown energies? I have no definitive answers here, but it opens the field to a lot of speculation.

5. As for ZPE (zero-point energy - G) and scalar fields and the like, I’m not sure this is a game-changer for those theories. It all comes back to how do you build a large enough, or efficient enough, collector to make use of the available energies to provide more than microwatts? Would this discovery aid in the construction of such a device? Maybe, but I’m not sure the effect this paper describes would add any appreciable efficiencies, but I guess it could pave the way for future devices?

I’ll stop here. Fascinating stuff. If we as a species have the time, infrastructure and capital to work on such problems after 2012, then this could be the bleeding edge of huge changes in physics.

This story is, for me, a really big one because it's one of those areas of research which might actually hold a major discovery.  It wouldn't be the first time that something big has been overlooked because people weren't looking for a discovery there.  It could be one of those 'trip over it' things.  So, along with a note that any data/correlations might being either obedient to the inverse-square law, or scalar relationship, I urged the reader to let us know what he finds in his data...

"Hmmmm. I'll saunter up to the control room later and chat it up with our resident physicist. What I may try to locate is historical data on the height of the control rods. If we have an historical record in electronic format, I may see if I can cook up a research project to see if there is a correlation. "

I'm not sure that reactor rod insertion depth would be a fine enough tool to spot something as fine as the possible effect we're talking about, but it might be.  What would be especially interesting would be a discovery of a scalar field because if scalar field could be discovered of this magnitude, then yes, it would really become a game-changer for physics.

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If you want to do some interesting reading, go Goog on 'core expansion model' of the solar system.  The central idea goes something (vastly over-simplified) to the idea that the sun puts out oodles and gobs of energy and through some not-understood mechanism, planets absorb energy and turn it into matter.  You know, just like the atomic bomb is made possible by the rapid release of all that energy under e=mc², the equation might also be rewritten as  e/c² = m, which is to say that if you pour enough energy into something you could see a gain of mass under the right conditions.  Oh, and as long as we're thinking about it, with a big enough energy, shouldn't we be able to bump lead over into being gold?  OK, no more coffee for George...

 

Citrus Futures

Our Canadian Bureau sent along a note this week that we might be interested in buying citrus futures.  "And why's that?" you're wondering?  Check the headline "Citrus Crops in U.S Under Siege From Unknown Bacterium".  Ah, nothing like investing in disaster, huh?

 

UrbanSurvival's Credit Card Contest

Here's a note from a reader who's had a 'rude awakening' about how credit card companies (e.g. blood-suckers) operate:

"Recently I used my credit cards to pay for some uncovered medical care for myself and my daughter. All card payments have been paid on time and we have not gone over limit. My credit score has been in the mid 700s. Advanta just doubled the interest rate on my card to 35.39%. "

OK, not to the contest part:  Who has the highest credit card interest rate these days? 

 

Go grab your latest statement and check the rate and then click here (or send a note to george@ure.net) and we'll see who's going how high... 

 

Not sure what we can do in the way of a prize - I mean other than draw people's attention to who had what kind of rates.  No wonder the money-changers were kicked out of the temple in Biblical times, huh?

 

Counter On It

A number of readers who are contemplating redoing their kitchens have written in to ask what Elaine did in building the faux granite countertops in the kitchen.  I promise that one of these days I will get a picture of it and instructions.  The basic process was roll on a base of a good primer, then a color coat of a water-based solid color, then apply two colors with a dry sponge 'dab on' and then cover up everything with three or four coasts of a water-based polyurethane.

 

Looks pretty good - I have to admit.  Given that this whole thing cost less than real granite, versus paying a dollar per running foot for granite (which would be a genuine 24 kt budget buster) we're quite pleased with the results. 

 

The only caveat is that you can't leave water on the countertop or the water-based polyurethane will get 'milky'  but that's a minor nit.  We don't cut food on our counters, using cutting boards instead.  So unless I come u p with some overwhelming need to slice and dice direct on a countertops which would scratch up granite anyway, this saved us a bundle.

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Around the Ranch: Wild Hogs

Got talking to the neighbor up the hill this week and Sunday morning we're scheduled to rooting around his place where he's got what seems to be a family of wild hogs.  If they're on his property, they're on mine, too, but so far I haven't seen any evidence of them.

 

I didn't realize what a mess hogs could make of property - and after talking to a few folks, I've started to wonder what to do about them (if anything).  I reckon as long as they aren't wrecking my land, and not ripping up my fencing, my 'live and let live' rule applies.  Seems wild hogs have a quite a reputation, though, for being destructive.

 

I know some of the locals trap them and have them made into things like sausage and ribs, but as these are the real-deal wild animals, no telling what they have picked up in the way of diseases, worms, parasites, and so forth.  Don't know if I'd eat the meat, or not, unless it was cooked for a week or three.

 

Anyway, I'll bring along the camera and both short and long arms.  I hear about the only thing meaner than a wild hog is a cornered politician.  And we all know how unpredictable they are.  And, more dangerous, too...

 

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Wednesday September 3, 2008

Sick Day

I'm taking today off.    Stomach flu. Or, leftovers from the dentist drilling out 5 pounds of eroded mercury-amalgam filling...

 

If We Are What We Eat...

The headline "Clones' offspring may be in food supply: FDA"  should probabl7y be the biggest story on earth today.  But, of course, it won't.  Just too damn much money to be made by all those companies that are combining jellyfish with plants and whatever else is found out back to come up with new (and patentable) forms of life.

 

Presactly As Forecast

In yesterday's column, one of the 'things to be watching for' was a call for OPEC production cuts.  Not that the leadership of the country reads this site but here's the perfect 'right-on-cue' headline "Iran calls for production cuts as oil price plummets."

 

Shoot, Dude

"Pakistan's Prime Minister Unhurt after shooting".  Seems shows were fired, missed, and wonder if it was for real or just a message...

 

Those Layoffs

Summer job cuts are running at the highest level since 2002. But then you're not surprised by this, are you?

 

Global Warming

A report of the "Major ice-shelf loss for Canada" bears watching.  I will have to go back to re-reading 48º North and Latitude 38 to see if any fellow intrepid sailors go for the Northwest Passage to Europe.

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Every time I see a headline even remotely connected with sailing, I'm reminded of my favorite bumper sticker from my liveaboard days:

"I spent all my money on wine, women and sailboats.  The rest I wasted."

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Coping:  Who Never Forgets?

The headlines about a particularly smart elephant with a 'flair for math; is a little much.  Hay for quadratics - that's what I'm talking..

 

Browser Wars

"Chrome" - the new browser from Google is out - and getting so-so reviews by the look of things.  Why people need an 'incognito mode is truly beyond me.  But, I'm one of those people that lives as though everything I do was going to be put on the front page of the paper....

 

Mini Cows

Oh yeah, just what we need: a specially bred mini-cow.  Takes up less room, leats less, and if your tastes run toward 4-ounce fillets, this could be the deal.

 

Commodity Bummer:

This is a pretty good email:

"Commodities are getting hit yet again and that's due to deflationary pressures. I know you're tired of hearing it, and many don't believe it, but I am right. Oil took out strong support at 110.00 today and that opens the flood gates for more selling. The Baltic Dry Index fell another +/- 200 points down to 6640 and that is a new low for the entire move down.

Demand is falling for commodities so nations who export raw materials will suffer. Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia are all major exporters and their respective housing boom was due to exporters of raw materials borrowing against "future income" in order to build bigger and more expensive houses/condos. That future income went up in smoke and now they can't sell the new units. Big problems! I would expect to see something similar in Asia.

All of this puts pressure on the US dollar as people scramble to pay debt with income that is reduced or dried up altogether. The September US Dollar index is up .35 and very close to 79.00 and resistance at 79.34.

The September Dow is down 55 points and stocks look lower. of course there will be rescue attempt but I think yesterday's downside reversal did a lot of damage. Good support in the Dow is at 11,260 and sooner or later price will move below it and the current trading range will be broken."

Glad I didn't buy those calls in the Dow yesterday... whew!

 

Taxing Times

Another good email:

Our county has decided to make up for revenue shortfalls from property taxes by reassessing property values upward 20%. On my subdivision street, we just had a foreclosure sell for 50% of the supposed house value. It has been converted to a rental property and the grass is two-feet high, no yard maintenance is being done. That should help the values increase, don't you think? Also on my street alone another house is sitting on the market with not a single visit from a potential buyer, while across the street from that house, a house that had been on the market was taken off the market because it didn't sell.

Yessir...gov't always wants its cut - and then some.

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Tuesday September 2, 2008

Word for the Day

Ah, this is one of those mornings when the Universe wakes me up (aided no doubt by 2.5 cups of organically grown medium roast Arabica) and says "Hey, George!  Here's the Word For The Day!" 

 

The "Word" started to arrive last night when a note from inbound Panama Bates said he'd be going to the dentist while visiting over the 'high risk' window around October 7th.

 

Then it showed up in an email this morning which I received from the Fractal Economist, Gary Lammert:

"George, gold is undergoing precise Lammert quantum fractal decay - more trillion losses in US dollars may be anticipated for the 4.5 billion ounces above ground. For the short term, equity valuations will surprise those with shorts and puts."

Which in itself was interesting, especially if you subscribe to our premi0um services at www.peoplenomics.com and have read the urgent Technical Note "Playing the Currents" posted on Monday afternoon (subscriber link).

 

In fact, so powerful is the item in the technical note that I actually moved a couple of dollars into my options trading account despite telling myself that no, never, never, never again would I play exchange traded options.  Haven't played a thing yet, but like someone hooked on gambling, it's a mighty primal urge - right up there with stock piling and revulsion at the sight of most politicians.

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The next place the 'word for the day' showed up was in the prehensile part of my brain (I know it shouldn't have been there) when I looked at the morning track of what used-to-be Hurricane Gustav, but which is now down to a mere 35-mile per hour loose collections of breezes approaching the Texas state line from Loosiana.  It's going to get pretty wet up in Shreveport today.

 

I called the Chief Time Monk, Cliff at www.halfpasthuman.com last night to ask him if the tropical remnants sitting over the ArkLaTex junction might fulfill some linguistics about Red River flooding and the Mississippi, but he thought those had been met pretty well by previous flooding on the more northern Red River and the 500-year event in some parts of the upper Midwest earlier this year.  The conversation ended on a "Can I get back to eating, now?" note.  Ooops.

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A glance at my Outlook calendar confirms what I was suspecting - the Word was behind today's lone entry.  A trip to the Royal Dentist this morning - for yet another Crown.

 

So the word (or 'root') concept for today, near as I can tell is 'decay'.

 

And sure as hell you can see that on a couple of the commodities this morning.  When I checked very early (like 'while-you-were-sleeping' if you had any sense, early) the price of gold was down more than $25 and silver was down 41¢.  It's not like I had to be completely awake to see it, however. 

 

With headlines like "Gold falls for third day as Oil retreats, dollar strengthens" I have to be a darn fool not to catch on, but then again, I guess you can figure that's how I could have missed it.

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But the BIG story about decay over the long term may NOT be about how the market will zoom up today, nor is it about the losses in gold or silver, because the world (according to the predictive linguistics work) is supposed to continue in a 'it's all good again' mood until about the 22nd of September.  And no, probably NOT about the falling tensions in the Georgia region.  Nor is it about Iran or any of a dozen plus hot-spots in the world.

 

Nossir, the BIG story  might be buried in an obscured academic paper published just a week ago which is making its rounds on the zero-point energy discussion groups and headline services.

 

The paper is titled: "Evidence for Correlations between Nuclear Decay Rates and Earth-Sun Distance".   As you stumble through this with your coffee this morning, just remember that to these serious scientists, the PTB is not the 'PowersThatBe' which kicks around HPH modelspace; it's the "Physikalisch-Technische Bundesandstalt (PTB) in Germany".

 

Now the part that caught my eye was this:

"However, recent work by Barrow and Shaw [12, 13] provides an example of a type of theory in which the Sun could affect both the alpha- and beta-decay rates of terrestrial nuclei. In their theory, the Sun produces a scalar field ø which would modulate the terrestrial value of the electromagnetic fine structure constant EM."

News like this sets the mind spinning:  Why, if there's a relationship in nuclear decay rates based on distance from the sun, might not the 11-year solar cycle also have a major impact on radioactive behaviors on earth?

 

What does this mean to the quest for zero-point energy? and might this somehow work into theories related to the core expansion model of planet Earth?

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The mind reels - and I make a note to ask a nuclear reactor engineer/reader if anyone has done any experiments as to whether radioactivity is somehow just a 'retransmission' of solar energy obeying the inverse-square law, if you will.  In other words, has anyone gone looking to see if there's not some subtle effect of distance on power 'radiated'?

 

How subtle would the effect be?  Hmmm... Maximum difference over 24-hours would be the diameter of the earth (we'll use 7,926.41 miles 'cuz it's easy to find) and divide the Earth-Sun distance into that (93-million) and we come up with an expected daily change rate of (hold the coffee fer a sec) 8.52273118279569...e-5.  Now, we move the decimal point 3 places to the left (5 to get from engineering notation to regular, and two to the right to get to percent and...hold on, it would be .00852...% which would likely be in the error range of most measuring equipment.  8-one-thousandth's of one percent would be pretty fine equipment...Hmmm...remind me to ask my friend what the precision of the power output instrumentation is on his reactor....  Who knows?  Maybe basic science has already asked the obvious...I just haven't heard of it.  More'n likely...I may just be late to the party.

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To my simple-minded way of looking at things, I expect somewhere out there right now is some eccentric zero-point enthusiast who will look at this paper and have a huge "Aha!" moment, which might be along the lines of "Of Course!  This proves that one of Oliver Heaviside's completions of Maxwell has been suppressed...and we really can get something for nothing by tapping into the energy/wave of the Dirac Sea!".  Don't you wish?

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Of course, as I've said before, once zero-point energy is finally harnessed (if ever) I'm sure it will be accompanied by a huge army of lawyers to make sure some corporate board gets to cut its own fat slice.  Just as humans put taxes on products that come out of the ground, there's no reason to believe that something like zero-point energy wouldn't be similarly taxed to death by the PowersThatBe...can't have too much democracy, after all.

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And that spins us, a full lunar cycle forward from today, to events of October 7th, or there abouts, which seem in the predictive linguistics to be coming down the road whether we like them or not.  35-days off, but with something around September 27th as a 'hint' of what's to come.

 

Subscriptions are open for the next data run ($280 for the first data run, and $70 each thereafter), but don't subscribe if you're just worried about the next Big Quake or the timing of the next economic/military cataclysm - we give that stuff out free, complements of the time monks, who (unlike government) think not everything should be taxed to death.

 

I expect Part Zero of their work will be posted for their subscribers sometime this week, and from there, maybe next week we will get into the high immediacy values, which are the things which will appear 'real damn soon' on this timeline we're all riding.

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Returning to the headlines of the day, Dick Cheney was off to Georgia over the weekend, to "stiffen the spine of Georgia, Ukraine"  Russia has been critical of EU threats being bandied about.

 

Notwithstanding, the price of oil is continuing to fall today, down under $106 a barrel by latest reports.  And this gets us to wondering how the boys in the sandbox will react.  If I were advising OPEC, in the next few days I'd put out a price warning that would say something like "OPEC sees oil as being worth more than $100 a barrel and we will cut production in order to keep prices above that mark."  So be on the lookout for that headline.

 

That new tower in Dubai's gonna cost a bundle, right?  Cheap oil is a bad thing when you have payments to make, eh?

 

While the Bush administration may be trying to put a Happy Face on the events recently in Georgia the facts are speaking differently.  A very good analysis piece asserting "Iran Trump Cad:  Russian Can Take Control of Persian Gulf" is evidence to those with open brains that the latest neocon gambit has failed miserably.  Long and short of the story is that the neocons (emphasis on the con part) have driven Iran to inviting the Russians to put gear on the strategically important island of Qeshm in the Gulf.  Smart move, eh?

 

Not only is Russia pissed to the point where they're pushing back into the Gulf, but we see how the neocons are not adjusting well at all to a world where power is shared among great nations.

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If you're a long-time computer geek, you'll have to lay aside any notion that SCO stands for Santa Cruz Operation (the first real Unix company) and change up your thinking to SCO really meaning Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

 

As this SCO meets in Tajikistan, there's word that Russia's line in the sand over Georgia w8ill be backed by China and other SCO participants.  As one headline puts it "Driving Russia into enemy's arms."  Yup, these neocons are sure the bright ones, aren't they.

 

I think of it as "Perpetual War for Perpetual Political Contributions."  Woefully cynical that I be, this looks like just more words adding up to the Universe's word for the day: "Decay".

 

What's Up Docs

My 'well placed source' in Geneva has sent along a link to a three-weeks old draft of the talks going on between the US and Iraq over withdrawal...

"...it is a fairly decent translation from Arabic of the most recent version of the proposed status of forces agreement, between US and Iraq. It is about three weeks out of date but, if anything, the Iraqi position has hardened.... LINK to .DOC

If, with another swig of Arabica juice, you figure that all this South Ossetia monkey motion is just designed to whip up another war to keep things going if we get tired or Iraq (or more likely, they get tired us us) then I'd have to give you a gold star and orders to report to the conference room for an award ceremony.

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Word out this weekend is that Iraq may lose some zeroes on its currency:  I've penciled this out and the inflation rate in Iraq has been...um...137 times or 13,700 percent if the brain is working yet.  Not as good as Mugabe's deal in Zimbabwe, though.

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And speaking of which, Zimbabwe is not only full of financial geniuses, but they are also showing bureaucrats a thing or two by imposing new checks on aid agencies.  You betcha, way to go...

 

A New and Improved Gestapo

Yup, those preemptive raids by police in Minneapolis are sure the way to maintain order - can't have anyone expressing an unwashed opinion at the GOP convention, now can we?  Meantime, a protest outside the convention turned into a "Mini-riot" headlines the NY Post.  We have to wonder if there would have been fewer problems with fewer police?  Confrontation leads to certain outcomes, it seems to me...

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"No, those aren't jackboots, Citizen, they're sure-footed justice..."  My butt.

 

Blow Blown Up

A good story in the Washington Post this morning about the "High Chance of Blowhards" covering a Cat 2 at landfall storm that was covered like a Cat 5- Cat 6 end of the world event.

 

In Training

China is planning the world's fastest train from Beijing to Shanghai - 236 miles an hour.  Maybe we should send TSA trainers to them so they can keep the throughput low, huh?

 

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Coping: Floundering Films

The reports out of the Venice Film Festival are not very encouraging.  Looks like 2008 will be a poor year for movies.

 

Maybe it has something to do with a writer's strike.

 

Could it instead be that we're running out of things to make films about?  How many remakes of WW II, science fiction, or boy-girl, girl-girl, boy-boy relationships do we need as a species?  Yeah, it was fun watching the new benchmark for chase scenes when Bullit with Steve McQueen came out but that was 1979.  Speed was OK, but when I look at most films now, they are all too formulistic - and frankly boring.

 

The aliens are not going to be friendly, the asteroid probably will hit,  and divorce is as much a fact of modern life as bad breath in the morning and gravity.

 

We seem to be getting to a point where we don't need the drama of film anymore. Life is accelerating and we're all playing in the street.  Film?  Why bother...

 

Apparently I'm not the only one thinking that way.  I am planning to watch the latest Batman flick sometime next year.  If the power's on and the neocons haven't gotten us into a shooting war with Russia.

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Monday September 2, 2008

Special Update Posted

Subscribers to our premium service, Peoplenomics, can now access a special Technical Note on trading this coming week posted on Monday afternoon.

 

         More For Subscribers         Subscription Information

 

36 Days - Tension Rising

From today, we have 36-days until we get to the October 7th area, a date which has been 'hot' over nearly a year of HalfPastHuman.com predictive linguistics work.  While the twin storms portion of some of their work is apparently about to be fulfilled, with the arrival of Gustav and Hannah, there's a chance of another twinning down the road, which would be curious, as cleaning up the impacts of a couple of hurricanes might account for the '20% Terra entity" portion of their work. 

 

We expect that the 'part zero' of their work for the time range out of July of 2009 will be available in the next three days, and perhaps in a week to 10-days we will get some better sense of what the October 7th range will bring along with it.

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There's a whole smorgasbord of possibilities; economic, military with Russia, military with Iran, and perhaps a disease outbreak.

 

We can go through these one by one, I suppose, because this is a special edition of our newsletter - the plans to sleep in for the weekend got scrapped because of pressing events.

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First, you know that another bank failed on Friday, making Georgia's Integrity Bank the 10th failed bank for the year.

 

Meantime, Lehman is shopping a $3.3 billion pound deal (About $6-billion USD) to keep themselves solvent.

 

The real headline in the linguistics is the prospect of a financial 'lock-up' which could come along about November or so, the results of the events presently building.  Remember the linguistic work says the October 7th 'pile-on' of things will be about 40% economic in nature which is enough for us to be considering plans to cope with a financial meltdown/lock-up outcome.

 

As an indicator of how sensitive the financial system is seen to exogenous shocks, we have to note that there was a special energy trading session held Sunday on the NYMEX.  Ostensibly, it was because of Gustav, but my commodity broker can't recall a special session for any other hurricane in his 20-years of playing in the commodity market.  Perhaps the real reason is that we can't afford have any out-of-the-blue events shaking up the markets any more than they already are?

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A number of readers have asked whether the story carried last week about documents and soldiers detains in the Russia versus the West showdown in Georgia was picked up from the Sorcha Faal website.  The answer is no.

 

By now you should figure that what gets written about here often front-runs actual events for those tied to a single place on the timeline, so we I start pointing out missed-by-MSM back stories, there's usually a reason.  The reason for that report was to emphasize that things with Russia are going very, very poorly right now.

 

This morning's headline that "Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said further Western support for Georgia's present leadership would be a mistake of historic magnitude " should, in my view, be taken with utmost seriousness.  Russia is saying as precisely as it can that a US/Western paradigm will not be allowed global domination.  Period.

 

A very astute reader notes this:

See today's news article below and note the missile behind Medvedev, indentified as the Topol, is mounted on a road mobile transporter-erector-launcher (TEL), which means it can travel most anywhere in Russia that has half-reliable roads.

According to its Wikipedia listing, the TOPOL (M) has been NATO codenamed the SS-27 STALIN and:

"...The missile is designed to be immune to any planned US ABM defense. It is capable of making evasive maneuvers to avoid a kill by terminal phase interceptors, and carries targeting countermeasures and decoys. It is shielded against radiation, EMP, nuclear blasts in distances less than 500 meters, and is designed to survive a hit from any laser technology. ...

...A submarine-launched version is being developed under the code name Bulava, or the NATO reporting name SS-NX-30. ...

...As of January 2008, Russia operates 48 silo based and six mobile Topol-M missile systems, 69 are planned for purchase by 2015. [2] In late February 2008 the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces announced that 8 new Topol-M missiles would enter service in 2008, bringing the number of deployed Topol-M missiles to 62 by the end of 2008.[citation needed]"

Wikipedia also claims that while the TOPOL can carry one unitary Nuclear 550 kT warhead, the the Russians have tested and claim to have deployed a MIRV capability with six warheads possible.

To quote Leeloo from the 5th Element - BIG BADDA BOOM! "

Word that "Russia to Ban Import of Some U.S. Poultry" has also prompted the observation that when foodstuffs are restricted, it can be a sign that things are very hot:

"The last thing that crossed over the interior Polish border between German control and Russian control during WWII before the outgoing east bound German shells began to fall on forward Russian military units (at the start of Hitler's invasion of Russia) was a train load of Russian grain westbound destined for the German military.

Starting to cut off things like major poultry imports is not a small step, gentlemen.

Five months of emotions like post 9-11?  Hmmnn...how about an RU-USA military conflict? Or something similar? That would do it, I'm afraid."

And it would account for the 40% military aspect of the predictive linguistics, a bit too neatly.

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Then there's the matter of the flu.  We noticed today that the Wellcome Trust is putting $720,000 pound (~$1.5 million) into monitoring research.  So yes, a disease could pop out of the woodwork this fall with serious results. 

 

The US government's www.pandemicflu.gov website has a 'news' section that's being updated periodically and bears checking.  That's significant to a news watcher - when updates become more frequent it can foreshadow future events.

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The linguistics have also been pretty clear about a pending "Israeli mistake" in the near term future, and that Friday headline, in case you missed it, that "Israel won't allow a nuclear Iran" could set up an even harder line. 

 

The headlines most recently have gone to the idea that "Iran, Russia seek Bushehr (Iranian nuclear plant - g) Completion".

 

And, although "Iran denies buying Russian missiles" I wouldn't bet on it. Word that "Iran backs Russia over Georgia" seems to me to likely have more than just completing Bushehr as the quid pro quo.

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Pour it all into a martini glass and shake gently.  Very, very gently.  There's still a muddle-through path, but it looks less likely with each update.  Especially when the Russians are digging in on their opposition to Western interference in their 'back yard'.

 

The Week Ahead

Not much going on today, except that foreign markets are open.  Tomorrow we get things like auto and truck sales.  Factory orders come along about Wednesday and probably the biggest economic story of the week will be the unemployment rate that's due out Friday.

 

The predictive boyz figure that the economic cracks won't start appearing until about the 22nd of the month, so more of sideways action seems to be the outlook for markets generally.

 

Reader Note:

Because it's a holiday, I slept in a few minutes so today's report is a little shorter than most.  Many projects ahead today...so drop by tomorrow morning, same time, same internet.