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Published Monday through Friday about 8 AM Central Time Except Holidays Depending on my mood...
Updated:
Saturday
January 24, 2009
07:55 CDT
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Who Do We Save? There's a most excellent blog in Iceland worth reading now and then as that country is among the first to experience the modern-day analog to the financial implosion that swept Argentina a few years back. This morning's post, which harks back to the Jeffersonian quote "When government fears the people there is Liberty as it headlines "Fear the People yet?"
Iceland is a perfect example of 'country-jacking' by that amorphous stew we call "corpgov" or the "PowersThatBe". A key quote from the "Fear the People yet?" post today puts this week's rioting there in stark relief:
What to do with Iceland is a thorny global problem: Obviously, something has fun off the rails of globalist control, but there's no convenient scapegoat like "terrorism" to hang it on, save the flimsiest of excuses that narco dollars might have flowed through their banks, but we know that's a sham because drug money flows through virtually all banks - it's just a matter of what stage along the laundering process you want to measure things.
Because folks in the UK had accounts there, we saw references to 'terrorism', but some mostly good natured Icelanders ain't an easy sell, even to dumbed down Western corpmedia which we call the MSM.
Yet there sits Iceland, more of less ready for the taking, and in a worst-case outcome, Iceland could become a leader of a Different World Order - one that doesn't succumb to the will of the international elites.
Obviously, if Iceland had more than good humans and a bit of geothermal, we'd have invaded with purple finger dye at the ready - forcing elections and leveling whatever seemed offensive. But, since they don't have oil in sufficient quantities, who'd give a damn about invading and securing their freedom?
Can you picture the marketing problems Iceland is causing the globalist PTB's? It's one thing to point to a country with only a handful of Christians and a crap-load of oil and make the case for invasion to right-wing America. That's a pretty straightforward exercise, helped along by 'terrorism'.
But, how does the PTB argue use of international forces against a country which the CIA World Fact Book reminds us is 82% Lutheran and 70% of its economy is based on their fishing industry? Crusades against Lutheran fish & chips types? I don't think so.
Oh sure, at some point, Iceland will be cast as some kind of rogue nation. Like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, can't have too many threats popping up questioning the Western Consumerist paradigm. Bad juju there, especially if visions of villagers with torches, pitchforks, and ropes, means anything.
The article in the Australian that begins "ICELAND has no army, no navy and no air force -- but it does have riot police." reminds me of one of those Axiom's of Ure, #413 I think it is: "When there's more authority power devoted to controlling people in a country than keeping people out, odds are good it's a dictatorship of some form and you don't want to be there..." --- Not that Iceland is alone, of course. In the Middle East, we read earlier this month how "Indians flee Dubai as dreams crash..."
It's likely all part of the New Diaspora, where people are starting to get up and move around the planet for economic & survival reasons, more so that economic advancement and upward mobility reasons. A subtle shift, but it's already evident as reports are starting to circulate that Mexican workers in the USS are starting to return to their home country - which certainly holds the potential to ratchet up tensions there by late summer as social demands would be pressuring up.
I suggested to a friend in Mexico he consider stability of his country, but he made the most excellent point that it's where his whole family is - so what's he to do? We're all in that boat, it seems.
Perhaps it's the prospect of something contentious along the US southern tier that is behind the "Mysterious Prison Buses in the Desert" in the Tucson area. Or, as the article asks "Prison buses are driving around empty in the Tucson area. Are Wackenhut and the DHS preparing for civil unrest? " Maybe they are, but which side of the border? --- This developing global context/Diaspora/economic chaos has important implications for America.
As the Second Depression grinds up what's left of the economy, headlines like "Welfare cuts expected to be deep" are only the leading edge of what I expect will become a tumultuous roar from the masses over these next couple of years. Which brings into focus what solutions are being proposed now to deal with the developing/deepening crisis as the year goes on.
Perhaps the most curious video on YouTube is Obama economic advisor Robert Reich is seen responding to the evolving economic crisis in America by saying in part: How about just hiring the best workers and skip setting up any kind of 'reverse discrimination program' - which is what seems to be implied"
A sort of soft discrimination is what I think I'm hearing off in the background of his comments, but as a life-long advocate of equality anything other than equal opportunity are worrisome at their core.
My best read is that equality means everybody starts from the same starting blocks: It doesn't mean some of the fastest runners are hobbled so those behind can catch overtake them. Where's excellence and incentive in that? --- Ah, we're not going to solve that one this morning. Besides, Obama's 'test' is due any time now.
About the best I can offer is looking forward to the coming 'test' of the new president - and while I've been waiting for a 'ship grounding' to set things off, a reader in the UK sent this:
Linguistically, it's a close fit, since a ship being 'aground' is very close (at the archetype level) to being 'grounded'. In fact, the collection of anchors, rode, chafing gear and such that holds a ship at anchor is called "ground tackle". No, I don't expect you to be a rode scholar on Saturday morning, but a prerequisite for being a linguistics jock to know such things. --- So, there we have it - a sort of Saturday morning "That's how the global golf ball landed for the week." We tee off again Monday morning. Hand me my 2-iron?
Oh, should I mention gold was up almost $42 on Friday as the Obama folks are trying to pull another $825-billion off the printing presses, which will continue to water down your paper assets? No, that'd be rude. Mention almost $89 bucks for the week? Who me, say "Told you it would happen!"...naw...
But what's come into focus as I watch events of Iceland, the eastern European hot spots, Greece, and so on is this: When the question comes up about needing to 'save' some next country from imploding under the weight of financial delusions and the inability to understand that interest can't compound forever, (or simply because they have some cheap resource we can't do without) the answer to the "Who do we Save?" question is becoming starkly clear:
We'll be doing very well to just save ourselves.
Trans-What-ency? "Clinton Foundation's secret donor" identity is not being revealed. Quick! Look surprised.
Coping: Errant Emails Every so often I get classic emails from people who mistakenly send me an email instead of someone else. From Friday's emails:
Of course, having no clue what reports he was talking about I sent back this:
Usually, this gives folks a good laugh. But, in the event I don't get a laugh in reply, I plan to escalate with something like this:
See you Monday morning...good thing I'm not doing Saturday morning reports...
How Humans Lost Control There's something that's been bugging me ever since my friend The Bond Dude reminded me of it. What he said was that over a long enough period of history, if you have two different rates of return, the higher yield will always swamp the lower yield. Each one dollar of face value on a 10% bond over 20-years compounds out to $6.725 while a 9% rate comes in at just $5.604 per dollar of face value. As you can see, that measly one-tenth of one percent may not sound like much at the time the bonds are issued, but run out over 20-years, it's a huge 20% difference in yield. OK, nothing profound to think about yet, right? Ah, but let's now apply that little compounding trick the question of how humans have lost control of governance to corporations. A little exploration of tax rate differentials suggests we will all, sooner than later, be working for the 'company store'. Sorry, no harm intended, especially if you work in one of those 'in process of being nationalized' banks, it's just that's how the numbers come out. You're just going first.
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"Live on $10,000" Updated What? You haven't ordered the ebook "How to Live on $10,000 a year -- or 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 or, click one of the following button:
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!)
Friday January 23, 2009 Black Friday Lite? I don't like the way the market 'feels' this morning. Has a kind of slimy feel - futures down.... Gold is up - over $875 an ounce at times in the preopen, and as one headline notes "Gold hits record highs in euro, sterling terms" for reasons that have been obvious around here for months: The global paper printing festival is now in full-swing and it's only a matter of time until the price of consumer goods goes skyward in what I judge will be a new economic phenomena: hyper-stagflation.
The market futures look disappointing real, at least as I start on the first cup of coffee. Looks like we may take out the 7900 level at some point in the day's trading and whether the S&P 500 can hold over 800 is also problematic. All of which would get us very close to Robin Landry's first target around 7,859.
As outlined a couple of weeks back, the predictive linguistics are flashing all over the place for a test for Obama coming around January 26th (and it will last quite a while). Because at the 'front end' of it there's the temporal marker of ship grounding, or whatever the equivalent down at the archetype level would be, I keep scanning the headlines looking for the 'feeder/marker' event. About all that's popping so fars today is a heating oil barge running aground in Boston and a couple of cargo ships running aground in Greece due to high seas.
There is one other shipping item that has caught our eye - and maybe this will blow up into something: "Egypt keeping Iran aid ship from Gaza." In the next escalation (which may pop over the weekend) we'll be watching as Iran is planning to send a couple of airplanes with 'medical help' for Gaza as soon as they get Egypt's permission. With that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution calls a 'fragile peace' it's possible that Obama's 'test' (next week) will be a Gaza spin-off and not the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
All of that would make sense, since one of our axioms around here is that when we start trying to forecast too much details (rather than just laying out the linguistic shifts) "If George can imagine it, it won't happen that way..." kicks in.
All that aside, the broader picture of events (we'll wait for the 'test' of Obama for a week, or so) the news out of Europe is likely to weigh on this morning's trading. "European markets fall as UK plunges into recession says one headline, but this has been obvious as hell for months - ever since October if you've been following events.
Moreover, it looks like what's happening is that UK players are starting to wake up to Jim Rogers comments earlier this week that the UK is 'finished'. With 16-trading days before we get to the mid February emotional turn (which may, or may not, correlate to an interim market bottom), the biggest question to be answered is which side of 6,000 we'll be on by then after the world situation starts blowing up and the financial vice tightens down a bit more on State's nuts.
Speaking of which, California voters may be facing special fund/tax-raising elections in April, says the Napa Valley Register's Michael Haley. This should just be a dandy thing to watch: People want 'lunch' (in political terms) but most times the word 'free' precedes it. Now that lunches have been promised all to hell-and-gone, the peoplenomic issue is whether they'll pay for it.
You did see where California has joined Connecticut and Florida is snooping around to see if Wall St outfits overcharged states for muni bond work? --- In the end, there's mounting evidence, although accompanied by mounting denial, that the whole world is now into an economic depression which seems destined (say the linguistics and common sense) to dwarf pretty much everything in history, including the tulips of 1634, the South Sea bubble of 1720, the panics of the late 1800's, the market breaks in 1920 and 1987, and the Great Depression itself.
A click over to the long-term chart of the UK's FTSE reveals that it's gone from a December 1999 high around 6,930 to just under 4,000 this morning. And yeah, that's before cranking inflation into the mix.
You can see the same "double top" is you pull up a long-term chart of the Dow. If you zoom in a bit, it may appear that the Dow's all-time high was October of 2007, but if you run weekly numbers, the weekly 14,066 was just shy of the government's inflation corrections from the 2000 high, such that the 14,066 wasn't an all-time-high (ATH) on a purchasing power basis. Call me old-fashioned, but I have a Zimbabwe $100-billion note on my wall that constantly reminds me to see through the zeros and look at what it'll buy you.
On a weekly basis, if we penetrate the September 30, 2002 close of 7,528.39, it'll be "Look out below" - which is why my question about 'which side of 6,000' is on the table and why I'm wondering this morning if this could turn into "Black Friday Lite".
Even the talk that Pfizer may be in talks to buy Wyeth for $60-billion (deal this weekend rumored) may not have the usual rallying power such M&A deals have exhibited in the past. Money's cheap for deal-making and all, but sales are falling, so the problem is no one (but those of us who study Kondratieff and other long waves) have any idea "How far is down?"
My view continues to be that we'll see a decline in markets till mid-February to early March, then a barn-burner of a rally for metals and energy before the 'summer of hell' globally as soft revolution spreads drives the markets toward an eventual level of Dow under 1,000 amidst a collapsing lifestyle for most.
The signs are everywhere, if you know the words to look for. If you search 'rioting' today you'll find it in Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Bulgaria...just to name a few.
Still, since I don't want to be cast late summer into the US analog to the South Korea financial blogger bust for being too much of a bummer, I remind you that while some of the news at the moment is bad, there are still fundamental shifts underway.
The Bloomberg story that "Microsoft cuts hit home in a city that loves $1,599 carbon bikes" reminds me to call "Bike Shop Mike" in Redmond and ask him to start tracking his sales mix for us. Oughta be interesting to see the brand mix change along the Sammamish River Trail this year. Wonder how business is at Ivar's in Bothell these days - one of my favorite breaks on the trail in past years...just a couple of blocks away....hmmm...where were we?
Oh yeah! Black Friday Lite. No worries, the PPT is in the wings. Ink at the ready... Bet Ben Bernanke looks forward to weekends...
Change of Clubs Representative Kirsten Gillibrand, who is in her second term as a congresswoman, will be taking over the Hillary Clinton spot, now that Hill's gone on to SecState. While Governor Paterson made a good call, I can't help but wonder if maybe Caroline Kennedy won't pop up again in the headlines - maybe as some kind of official in the Obama administration. Time will tell, although note that the predictive linguistics don't get into individual's futures. Reason is that such things are emotionally 'hot' to the point where it's not worth the effort sorting things out.
Feelings Hurt I'm not sure what to make of being overlooked by Time Magazine's annual "Best 25 Financial Blogs". Might be because I rely somewhat on a yet-to-go-mainstream technology (predictive linguistics) for some of my outlook, although not one of Time's picks (that I'm aware of) was telling you in January of 2008 that the market would be melting down 10-months later.
Nor, come to think of it, were any on CoastToCoastAM in September reminding you to 'beware October 7th, right?.
Or perhaps it's because I don't buy into the whole "paper assets" bubble and have been advocating metals and production-oriented small farming for years. Nevertheless, I suppose a tip of the hat is due to those who 'made it this year'. Maybe it's better to be a bit obscure. Who'd believe the rickety time machine stuff, anyway?
Pressed Off I'm not the only one with my feelings hurt by media-types, however. Seems the new president's trip to the White House press room, which was supposed to be a "Howdy" and handshake kind of deal, soured a bit when a reporter started pressing on how it is that there's a ban on lobbyists, yet a key appointee did just that...
--- snip and save section --- Coping: Small Business and Taxes As I am planning to spend a little time this weekend working on taxes, I couldn't help but notice the office remodel done by now ex-Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain...which sported a $1.22 million dollar price tag according to the CNBC report.
I promptly called my tax attorney Thursday and asked him "You sure I can't write off my Porsche 930 as a business expense?"
"No."
"As a farm truck, maybe?"
"No"
"You saw Thain's remodel list? It included things like:
"I feel guilty as hell that buying two laser cartridges on sale at Amazon, and not using both in tax year 2008 might push me over into accrual instead of cash accounting! Yet look at this stuff! I need to spend more money...Maybe I should set up a corporation for myself, buy some adjacent property and build my own office building so I can do this kind of remodeling, too..."
"I'll put some thought into it..."
"Well, I'm putting it on my site tomorrow morning so other small business types can print off a copy so if someone ever questions 'reasonableness' of an expense, they can print out the CNBC story..."
"Whatever...."
Buying American? My note about 'buying American' garnered this reply from a reader:
I'm lost - insufficient caffeine. What question was that?
Successful Crimes I had a private email exchange with a reader, who wanted to know something about some story, or other, and sent me a note ending thus:
Politely as I could, I advised him that...
And that's a fine thought to hold in your all-day meditation tomorrow...you do meditate on Saturday's all day, right? The core lesson of business school seems to be this: If you can come up with a big enough crime and one that no one has thought of before, you can probably pull it off and get untold riches. Why bother inventing products when the breakthrough criminals seem to get the notoriety? Ever since I covered the DB Cooper story as a newsman, I've been pondering this: The first guy to commit a crime often gets away with it. And, in the case of trillion-dollar and up crimes, the larger the crime, the less chance of being caught..... Oooooooommmmmmmmmm........ --- Send snip and save items to george@ure.net --- end snip and save section ---
Thursday January 22, 2009 Focus on Future Events Not often, but every once in a while, a MainStreamMedia outfit gets something smack-dab right. A case in point this morning is the UK's TimesOnline group which headlines something I've been telling you for months to be watching for. Hand a gold star for pattern recognition Roger Boyes' article headlined:
Now, since it's in MSM, the 'rickety time machine' looks a little more scientific. However, fortunately, we're still crazy as ever, so please keep that in mind which I remind you that we're possibly within a week of 'Obama's Test' and I am scanning the headlines like mad looking for ship groundings because that will be either a key temporal marker or part of the flash point's arrival.
To be sure, there are some interesting items down on the waterfront beat. "Fears of mass scavenging as timber washes ashore in Kent" (England, not Washington). In Indonesia, eight fishing vessels have been impounded, but it's tough sledding for authorities as the Chinese are sticking to a convenient language barrier.
In Tasmania, something you don't hear about every day: A boat running aground in a dust storm in the Hobart area. Who'da thought? Probably had more to do with the 60-mile an hour (+) winds, but still, an oddity mostly unnoticed.
With the buzz of the inauguration behind him, president Obama gets down to a more or less normal full day in office. While things like closure of Guantanamo may be on his todo list, the presidential morning briefing will no doubt have something of a normal mix of events, good and bad to be weighed in matters of State.
Yup, just another day in the world. Or is it?
Off in the background, Iran has sentenced four people to jail terms, two of them being US doctors, for allegedly trying to foment unrest and plotting the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.
If you wanted a poster-child for a country that could use a war, Iran might be it. A BusinessWeek analysis by Ian Bremmer notes that Iran's hardliners are facing increasing opposition, and with 25% unemployment and elections due in June of this year, things bear watching closely:
As anyone who watched the 'rally 'round the President' in the wake of 9/11, nations congeal, putting aside individual interests - at least for a while - when there's an externalized 'enemy'. I'm concerned that lesson may not be lost on Iran.
As I mapped out the possible scenario for Peoplenomics readers a couple of weeks ago, the business of who owns the Strait of Hormuz could be mighty contentious, especially is there was something like a tanker grounding on Jaziere-ye Forur, or any of the other Iranian-owned islands which could serve as an 'excuse' to close the Strait. From that report (Peoplenomics #384, January 11, 2009):
It doesn't help the situation that "Iraq accuses Iranian exiles of plotting attack" and even though North Korea and Iran say they are open to US talks on the one hand, Iran's president Ahmadinejad is being skeptical about just how much change the Obama administration will be able to bring to America on the other.
Thus, with a quick stir of the global headline stew this morning, we watch things simmer, knowing that sooner than later, the linguistics seem to hint at a test of the new president to come along. Meantime, I'll keep obsessively looking for that ship grounding that seems linked to the front end of the crisis.
Oil Up Something that's along a somewhat parallel track is that oil seems to be heading back up as company news improves a bit. Passed through $45 overnight. Portent of things to come? Hmmm...
Housing Still Troubled Nothing nice about the Housing Starts report out from the Census folks this morning:
Raise? What Raise? Pay freeze spread during brutal recession says a headline which drills down into who's loosing what a bit.
Kennedy Out This sort of says it all as well as I can: "Despite Conflicting Reports, Princess Of Camelot Informs Gov. Paterson She Is Withdrawing From Consideration"
Reswearing "Obama sworn in again, with right words" says the Washington Post..., an oops for sure.
No Bible used? Hmmm...conspiracy groups will likely pick up and run with this angle...
Gun Policy Now sure how to read the new administration gun control thoughts. Here's an 'agenda' note from the White House site:
"Gun show loophole"? Does this mean an federal form for private sales is coming? Oh oh...
Blogger Troubled A South Korean blogger has been charged by authorities in South Korea for spreading what the government sdays was false info about government currency rules.
This is exactly why I put sourcing links in darned near everything - want to make it clear that I am not making things up...you're welcome to click and check me - and I do get checked now and then.
We're in Deep What? "Did you know a solar flare can make your toilet stop working?" says a NASA report...I gotta see how they arrived as this one...
--- snip and save section ---
Coping: As Goes What? The futures are pointing down modestly, which means the next day of bloodletting on Wall Street is that much closer. Not that riches one day and poverty the next isn't the normal course of events, but the longer term trend seems definitely down as I see it; The all-time-high over 14,000 seems like ages ago, and the penetration under 8,000 by the Dow on Inauguration Day signals a 43% drop from the high.
The practical question "Where next?" and "Should I cash in my 401(k) while it still has value?" are not mine to answer, although they flood my email daily. I'm a journalist with an MBA, not a certified financial planner, so if you want advice, go hire someone locked into the old paradigm. If you want to kick around ideas, that's more my bailiwick.
Now, having said that and reminding you that I'm mostly in things which may have value in the future (solar panels, collectable car, stored food, etc...), if you're still addicted to the 'paper chase' and don't see the meaning of Zimbabwe getting set to print trillion dollar notes, you may wish to consider some old sayings of Wall Street in your ponderings.
"As goes GM, so goes the market" is one of them. While it may be a little antiquated, a glance at a chart of GM suggests that from its high in 2000, down to yesterday's close of $3.53 a share, GM has dropped 96% of its value.
OK, want to feel even worse? You really should take that $87 from 2000 and correct it for inflation. Using the Minneapolis Fed's inflation calculator, that had the spending power of $108.93 late year, and if we consider inflation running 5%, that would put GM's all-time-high at an equivalent of may $114 in 2009 dollars. So, it's really lost 97% of its pricing.
So what might that portend for the Dow? If we retain 3% of the Dow's all-time-high around 14,100, that would pencil out to a Dow of 423. Not that we're going there tomorrow - we could have a decent rally this spring before the summer of hell shows up globally. If you don't mind an excursion down to possibly under 5,000 before a rally to near 10,000, then you've got (fill in your favorite body parts) of steel.
"Damn it, George, that only one stock out of thousands."
Wanna talk Chrysler or Ford? No, I wouldn't do that to you...hand me the salt, would you?
Instead I'll bring up General Electric which went from an all-time-high of $57.81 in July of 2000 down to a close yesterday of $13.03. That means GE has retained only 22.6% of its value from its all-time-high; I won't bore you with the inflation calcs, except to mention in passing that it's really only got closer to 20% of its value, but there have been dividends, so that counts for something.
If we were to see an equivalent drop in the Dow, it would pbe 3,178.
GE will be reporting earnings tomorrow. ---- At the recent Dow high in 2007, the Transport Index was running upwards of 5,098. Yesterday it closed at 3,061.98. Applying the same logic, Dow Theory would suggest that Dow should be up around 8,468, so the news and numbers aren't all bad. But remember that indices get changed around with ugly ducklings get a little too ugly to keep in the index. You don't see Pan Am listed as an airline component, do you? --- Details, details: All of which won't get you any closer to the point of supreme enlightenment on the matter of whether to cash in that 401(k) and pay off what you can and be ready for come-what-may.
But, it should serve as a reminder that most financial advisors think inside the box, in that most would not advise you to buy a collectable car, buy a hunk of farm land, or invest in a good vacation, or take off on some unbelievable life-altering adventure.
Most are compensated for their sale of something to you. So, if you want an advisor, try to find one that you can buy hours of their time from - and tell them up front that you won't buy anything from them - you want their opinions only on how to proceed. --- That kind of advisor is usually hard to find although in fairness, some loaded mutual funds perform better than some unloaded funds - some of the time.
What's rare is finding an advisor who understands that the real investments - the kind you can take with you to whatever follows this life - are the ones between your ears. It's the memories of great times, solid family, good friends, a well-aged Anjeo, the right cigar at the right moment, the sunrise while at anchor, or that time you made yourself sick doing aerobatics, climbing a waterfall in Jamaica...all those things are durable in ways paper can't match. Standing on the bow of a cruise ship coming up the channel into Key West.
To be sure money's nice, but commitment to the adventure of Life may be much more important. That's one of the reasons I lived on a sailboat for so long; sailors tend to be a little more committed to the adventure of it all and a bit less worried about paper.
I knew a fellow named Tom, for example, who I used to bump into at the Sloop Tavern in Seattle once in a while, who lived on a 32-fsooter a few docks down from my boat. Interesting guy. He'd work at part time jobs for anywhere from three to six months and then he'd disappear for three or four months, only to reappear on one of my fish-chips-and-beer runs to the Sloop.
I asked him one time "Where you been? Haven't seen you around the docks...?"
"I just got back from Zanzibar..." And he just sort of let it drop there.
"What the hell were you doing in Zanzibar?" I asked.
"I'd never been there before...so I went. Spent three months walking all over the place - nice people, too. Interesting food, great climate..." and that led into a half-hour/two-beer travelogue of his wanderings about Zanzibar.
They key thing was that here was a guy who was committed to adventure in his life - which for him was walking, biking, and taking public transportation all over the world so he could soak up the sights, the flavors, the music, the languages... just all of it --- every bit he could find.
Few people seem to have that deeply rooted a sense of adventure, wanderlust, but the little bit of it I've done has set very well with me. Makes me appreciate folks like my brother-in-law who used to lay on the bottom of Lake Gatun in the Panama Canal as ships transited overhead, interrupting his diving adventures picking of pottery tossed of ships and what-have-you that's found on the Canal bottom.
I'm writing Peoplenomics this week about the possibilities of living on a boat - something many folks dream about, but the nitty-gritty of how it's done - that's another matter. --- Not that I hold anything against cruise ships (I like NCL), but driving your own boat down the coast is a little different than playing slots in the casino while steaming to a tourist-oriented port of call. In a sense, cruise ships are at the exact opposite end of the experience scale compared to my friend Tom, who occasional even worked as a seaman to get passage to exotic ports. One's a packed meal, the other's ala carte.
I've been blessed to meet a larger number of people who have
'taken on Life' directly and on their own terms, and these
people never fail to impress me. The fellow in his 70's we
met in California who rode his bike around the world.
Years before that, I interviewed Ted Simon, the author of Jupiters Travels: Four Years Around the World on a Triumph ---- I haven't met a financial advisor yet who starts with the 'inside riches' and sort of works their way out to superficial stuff...but to my way of thinking it's how the job should be done. Those that encourage 40-years of 'buy & hold" thinking are too shallow for my tastes, which is why I decided to 'roll my own'. I haven't stepped in front of a bus, but if I had, there'd be plenty of fine memories at most points along the way.
My life isn't completely 'live hard, die broke' but I assure you that standing in the observatory at Machu Pichu watching the sunrise is a much fonder memory than brake lights on the freeway heading for work. And and the view toward Machu Pichu's north tower is far more majestic any a flat screen ever built. --- Send snip and save items to george@ure.net --- end snip and save section ---
Around the Ranch: Zeus Returns - Briefly Yes, my wandering black cat came back yesterday about 9 AM - just long enough to wander through the house, get some food and then go back out to his hidey-hole in the woods. I wasn't going to let him out, but the yeowling was miserable... A friend reminded me that he'll likely get over it because food is love and love is food among animals. Point taken.
Wednesday January 21, 2009 Things of Real Value I seldom talk about the things that show up in the mail at the ranch as they may mean a lot to me, but would probably be a little interest. Examples? The $350+ bottle of tequila from a reader in Mexico, an insignia patch from a veteran of the NYFD who apparently enjoys my writings, and organic coffee from Ethiopia and Central America. Even occasional printer's proofs of upcoming books; "A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil" is due out this spring and I'll start reading it when I've finished Bernanke's essays on the Depression.
Tuesday's mail delivered a genuine $100-billion Zimbabwe special agro-cheque, which although it formally expired on the last day of December, was accompanied by a roll of real silver coins. It was accompanied by a hand written note from a "GATA Goes to Washington" note pad; just the thing to get me comparing the value of things with the value of paper.
Not that yesterday's turn downward in the market wouldn't have gotten me on the scent of things anyway. A call to my friend Robin Landry, who runs his stock brokerage from Shawnee, Oklahoma, confirmed my worst fears as he explained to the effect that:
Not that I needed Landry's targets: Any student of on-balance volume (OBV) knows that when a large decline gets really lop-sided, momentum carries things down. Yesterday's advance/decline line on the NYSE was 440 issues up and 3,332 down. Or about 11% up and 86% down. Made worse by the fact that yesterday was a very light volume session.
But the really, really bad news from a personal trading perspective was that the volatility index had made a remarkable upward jump which effectively prices late-comers to the short play out of the market. In other words, options premiums are so damn high that the usual analysis where you pay so much for time premium and so much for volatility premium gets thrown out. An explanation of how call options work is here, and a 'put' option is just the reverse of it. A call option bets an optionable asset (stock, commodity or whatever) will go up in price while a put option is a bet on the downside.
You may wish to refer back to what I wrote on January 8th:
And I suppose I don't need to remind you that Landry went on a "Crash Watch" last Wednesday, in case you slept through it. So, things line up nicely.
In my personal account, however, my dream of making a 'killing in oil' all hinges, paradoxically, on something pending in predictive linguistics modelspace not working out as I worry it may.
That all has to do with whether Iran blows up in the short term. If it does, then I'll be hard-pressed to buy oil call options cheaply. On the other hand, yesterday's 6% rise in oil prices and the recent strength of gold could be 'front-running events' prior to a Middle East 'happening'.
As for the very short term, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Dow pushed back over the 8,000 level once or twice more, while equally unsurprising would be an attempt to run the S&P back up toward what used to be support in the 850 region. But then, I'd be out of Dodge - if I still played the stock market. Since I've been 'out' for a long time, this is just practice and keeping in the flow of things so when I get ready to make a commodity trade, my thinking won't be too rusty.
It's also damn amusing.
More data comes in this morning at 10:35 when crude oil inventories are reported. And no, I'm not the only one who sees a big pop up in oil prices. "Oil price surge predicted" showed up in the Canadian Globe and Mail earlier this week, but if you're like most semi-hypnotized folks, you were probably being subjected to Obama overload to the point where you missed it.
So, while the markets point to a slightly higher open (and that 8,000 retest) headlines this morning that "GM Official says cash could run out by March 31" and we see the continuation of global currency collapses as "UK Pound falls as King signals new steps to revive economy".
Who ever thought we'd cheer a small recovery in the Russian ruble?
Ever the optimist, I expect we'll see a half-day bounce, or maybe more, following the worst Inauguration day drop in stock market history. Feeling better already? Then by all means, don't read Andrew Tanzer's piece at Kiplinger's - he sounds as long-term bearish as me about things in "Why I'm so bearish."
The 'real value of things' is a little difficult to infer from watching the money honeys on the financial channels, but the reason is obvious when you think about it: The financial channels are sponsored by what? Stock and commodity brokerages, along with be pharmaceutical outfits, best I can tell.
Now put on your thinking cap and ask "How would straight shooting coverage - which might go so far as to even question the value of paper assets - help their revenue? See how obvious things are?
That Nouriel Roubini figures America's banking system is 'effectively insolvent' since losses from the credit mess may top $3.6-trillion dollars, is getting scant attention. But, as dollars get revalued later this year - late spring, actually, you'll maybe want to recall that it won't be happening without warning.
Not to make you worry too much, but since Tim Geithner's hearings as Treasury Secretary are ongoing today, who's the Treasury Secretary to run the plunge protection team if things turn ugly today or tomorrow? Just something to think about.
So is Forbes' call "Mr. President, Suspend mark-to-market". Yeah, like that'll fix everything - go back to fictional accounting? Pinch me...no...better...pour me a shot of el Don.
Maybe we can get fooled one more time... make it a double.
Obama Censored Seems parts of the Barak Obama speech - where in talked about communism - were censored in China. --- That Australia is rolling out its paradigm-defending software censorship seems not to be bothering free speech types because it's wrapped up in a child porn prevention wrapper. Who was it said when fascism comes to America it will be wrapped up in a flag? Well, same sort of thing in Oz. Which, I'd wryly observe, has enough sheep production to pull the wool over a good many eyes.
The Showdown with Iran The Associated Press story headlined "Iran says Hamas has right to weapons" is just one more step toward what I fear may be a showdown in the Persian Gulf within a week, or so. --- Also, in that part of the world, Israel has complete it's Gaza pullout. And Israel's economy is slumping because of weakness in tech.
Ship Grounding Watch Since the rickety time machine boyz are looking for some kind of a ship-grounding to be a temporal marker for the next round of global flare-up, I've started to scan those. A bulk carrier that ran aground in Maryland has been refloated, and a freighter has run aground in France, but nothing particularly threatening - yet.
64 fishermen rescued by Pakistan...
Global Revolution Meme A total of six dead in street protests in South Korea. In eastern Europe, Latvian farmers are back protesting. Reporters Without Borders is protesting the arrest of a reporter covering indigenous people's protests of new mining laws in Ecuador. --- Not the big stuff coming for the summer, but you might see the foundations being laid for future events if you look closely.
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Coping: Still Buying American A very good email this morning brings up the 'buy American' problem:
I'm all in favor of buying American, but you know what? It's damn hard to do anymore. We recently went throw a serious round of check-slinging to buy a new fridge, stove, hood for the stove, and a big-screen TV. Could find anything Made in America for any of those items that was within our price range. I figured if we went with Sub-Zero and Wolf, I wouldn't have enough money left to buy food to put on or in either...but American made and next time....
Same thing with cars. The little bit we drive, I was hard-pressed to come up with a convincing reason to buy a new American sports car for $34,000 to get a 0-60 in 5.3 second turbo when a 22 year old Porsche 930 (at $18,500) is not going anywhere but up in value - it's collectable - and it's as quick off the line and perhaps better in the corners. The new American ride could drop to about one third its value in 6-years I discovered, after watching the price of used Crossfires on eBay ands comparing them with new at the dealership in town.
Even food, you can't be sure where it's coming from. Turns out Elaine has taken to reading event meat labels because that's coming in large measure from Canada and Argentina, despite the fact that we have some of the best cattle operations in the world within a hundred miles of our ranch. Such is the impact of globalism.
Buying American is always our first choice - we will even pay a bit more for it. But, like you, we've got a budget to live within.
The discussion brings up a very good problem for the Obama administration: As unemployment goes toward 10% this year, how many jobs could be 'onshored' if we enact trade laws that level the playing field between countries?
The only reason we can't buy American Made is mostly because workers in other parts of the world are working cheaper and corporations are pocketing the spread which continues to be substantial even after the cost of transportation and distribution.
Which is why I may be eating an Argentinean steak, with a Mexican salad and Canadian wheat based bread, stored in an Asian-made fridge, moved in a German car, and accompanied by a Caribbean rum.
But, you're right on point: If Americans would buy more Made in America, there'd be more jobs here, for sure. But where's the corporate profit in that?
Language/Arts A reader sent me an email suggesting that I spelled "Graphics Goddess" wrong in the right-hand menu - "Goddess" it should only have one 'D' in it, I was politely informed.
I promptly explained that while a goddess may be spelled with a single 'D' by some, here in George-land, one of the qualifications that makes for a true goddess is double 'D's. See how linguistics works?
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Around the Ranch: Zeus Escapes! Speaking of snipping things... My black cat, Zeus, came back from the vet ($132 later) on Tuesday with his Zero Population Growth membership card punched and some ointments to put in his eye, scratched in a cat fight. Although confined to the shop, he managed to escape. A couple of forays into the woods found him extremely uncooperative. But, I'm figuring that cat food will win in time.
Maybe when the country gets out of the woods, so will Zeus...
Tuesday January 20, 2009 A Plane Sync-Wink? I haven't said much about the recent U.S. Airways crash into the Hudson River first because it wasn't an 'economic event' and secondly, I was patiently pondering the event, wondering what to make of it. If I don't have an observation worth sharing, I try to shut up.
But this morning, while I was getting an extra couple of winks, it occurred to me in my half asleep/half awake mode that there was perhaps an interesting message encoded down at the omni-humanity/archetype level: "It's possible to have a successful crash" is what I got to pondering.
The reason I view this as a 'sync-wink' from Universe - a time monk term for noticing and getting meaning from synchronistic events that are often a 'wink' from the Universe - is there is so much 'we're gonna crash' fear out there, that it could be interpreted as a reminder that crashes can be successful. --- Just another example in passing: I took my black cat Zeus into the vet yesterday morning. He'd gotten in some kind of fight with who-knows-what out in the woods and needed to have his eye looked at. And, as long as he's now getting to be old enough to start spraying and wandering around extensively, I thought it would be a good time to also get his 'zero population growth' card punched, if you follow my drift.
Since Monday was a holiday, I only met one car on the two lane road into town taking him on his emergency medical visit: We pulled off to let an ambulance with lights and sirens going pass unobstructed the other way.
A synchronistic event and a very small wink; the kind of thing that passes by people almost every day without acknowledging that there's a little more to life and it becomes evident once you start to looking at how the dance is danced.
So I decided this morning to mention it to you because...
Once the rush of the Obama inauguration is done, the country will have massive issues to confront, not the least of which is that banks are going to need more bailing - at least that's their plea - "another week, another bailout", began a Monday summary in the NY Times. George Soros is calling in from the sidelines that the US stimulus so far is not enough and that TARP bailout money has been misused. Who would have thought?
As while my friend Robin Landry has a 'crash watch' warning in place expecting somewhere between 6,350 and 4,600 on the Dow shortly, There's the matter of the looming budget crisis in California - other states too, come to think of it - and the only solution coming into view is hiking state taxes on whatever they can get past the special interest groups in Sacramento and other state capitols.
What's more (like we need it?), the unemployment picture is set to become considerably worse almost anywhere you look. Whether it's Houston where job losses will force 43,800 out of work this year, Seattle where 32,000 will be out, or Atlanta which figures to see 51,000 cut, it all pals compared to Gotham where 181,000 are expected to lose jobs. No doubt a good chunk of those will be losses in the financial sector which had been enjoying a huge hiring bubble these past few years and that swelled NYC service employment as it puffed up.
Unemployment is busily going global as well, with China facing the worst unemployment in decades and I'm not presactly happy that a career politician is our new Secretary of State.
Speaking of world conflicts for the new administration: The UN Secretary General is visiting Gaza today, where Israel says it will have all of its troops out by the time Obama takes his oath today. --- In case you haven't figured where this is all going, it's to emphasize that the problems facing the Presidency are severe and arguably the groundwork is in place for a Second Depression, although it won't be vogue to call it that till perhaps May or June when the population, which will be hit by falling incomes, layoffs and maybe even soaring oil & gas prices, cut welfare, etcetera, could start displaying an ugly social mood.
That's why the US Airways crash is such an interesting thinking point: It's possible that in the right hands that a 'safe' crash landing can occur.
So is it all a curious metaphor for the economy? A sudden descent, a crash, but we all survive? A sync-wink down at the archetype level?
Ask me about mid September; things oughta be clearer by then.
Bond Bubble There's a headline in the FT Adviser section of the Financial Times today with the headline "Ignis voices fears over corporate bond default rates."
It's almost an echo of a conversation some weeks back I had with my friend "The Bond Dude." He had been running out hypothetical returns on mortgage bonds and was telling me how for them not to turn in a good to great return things would have to be worse than they were in the Great Depression. He's been quite enamored with being able to lock in 15-20% yields for 10-years and longer. Rightfully so. Fine things by historical standards, but at this stage in the economic long wave, what's history got to do with anything?
While it's true that right now oil and other commodities have been in a major downswing, I continue feeling uneasy that hyperinflation could come along and not only screw over the bond markets, but also add to real economic woes of average Americans. I keep coming back to the horrific stew where house values start going up again thanks to inflation, but so too commodities rise and consumer prices spurt ahead at double-digit rates.
All of which, when coupled with headlines like "Bank of England gets license to print cash" gets me to thinking "What if the Inflationists and the deflationists are both wrong?"
In other words: Where's it written that we can't have a stagflationary collapse? That's the unmentionable that I'd be putting my money on, if for no other reason that it's not getting much ink. Kills the bondholders, the commodity shorters, and restores house prices.
Odds of it working out that way? About the same as a safe airplane landing on water. But here lately, a safe crash seems to be possible. The tightrope being 'going Zimbabwe' (or Weimar) and 'going Great Depression' will be about like walking on broken glass.
Unless, of course, we can get an external threat whipped up in the next week or two to pull the country together and rally folks 'round the Obama 78% approval rating and change the economic paradigm. Sort of like stampeding sheep. Which gets me to...
Obama's Test: This Weekend or Next Week? Not to run too far ahead of events - they'll catch up once we get our ship grounding shortly, I figure in the Persian Gulf if my read of futures events is correct - but don't miss the building tensions over Iran that have been escalating since a group of what's being called "US-backed plotters" have been arrested, including one AIDS doctor. Being called a 'gang of saboteurs, this continues to flame the slowly growing tensions.
The key part of the reports today - which I take as a leading indicator of something BIG to come - may be found in this snip:
If indeed we get what I expect will be a ship grounding and talk of closing the Strait of Hormuz by, say, this coming weekend to mid next week, I'll remind Peoplenomics.com subscribers to go back to issue #384 (January 11th report) to read a prequel and how things might play out.
Israel is also upping pressures on Iran, because as the Jerusalem Post reports this morning, Tehran is renewing efforts to supply Hamas with weapons.
Iran, says a Chinese report "slams Egypt's negligence in Gaza case" The Saudis offering a billion dollars to repair Gaza no doubt might seem to depressurize the situation, but with more than 1,300 dead and over 5,000 wounded, I wouldn't put a lot of faith in peace breaking out any time soon.
Being numbers oriented, I can see where if early reports that a total of 13 Israelis had been killed by Hamas rockets in the past seven years, then the 'payback' ratio is 100 to one. Might note that for future conflicts down the road.
No Fiat Currency No cash, just strategic assets is what Fiat is putting up for a 25% stake in ailing Chrysler.
Wonder if Fiat might come to mean "Fund it again, Tony?" --- Meantime, of interest to motorheads is that Honda is shutting down production in the UK for a total of four months, not just two as previously announced, because cars are piling up at Southampton Docks. There, and most other ports.
Border Agents Pardoned One of the last minute pardons by George Bush? Those two Border Patrol agents who were thrown in jail for shooting and wounding a fleeing drug smuggler in 2005 and then covering up the incident.
Conrad Black didn't get pardoned - but who knows what will come out as being done quietly and might not surface for a while? Has until 11:59 AM today.
---snip and save section --- Coping: Big Brother's Radios If you want to get a good handle on the potential for personal surveillance and tracking without your knowledge click over here and read the story about how "New RFID technology allows you to be tracked WITHOUT your knowledge."
So, besides taking the battery out of your cell phone, when you don't want a record of where you area, might want to consider wrapping up your credits cards and such in foil, too.
I keep going back and forth on this one: Part of the time I think it's a hellacious intrusion and on the other hand, there's a lot of good that might be done with thinks like a medical condition chip. Still, I keep coming back to the core issue of "Who do you trust?"
Hip-Hopin' the Bailout Yo! Check it out: "I want my Bailout Money!" on YouTube now...
From the mouths of rappers, eh?
Papering Over If you haven't read "The Fate of Paper Money" might want to put it on your reading list.
You knew the British Pound has lost 98.8% of its purchasing power since 1694, right?
Blog Wars A report in Haaretz.com is worth study: "Israel recruits 'army of bloggers' to combat anti-Zionist Web sites." Something to be aware of if you read blog posts. --- While blogs often come up with interesting content, the feedback I've seen is rarely worth reading. I can formulate my own, thanks.
My guess is that reading blog posts will eventually 'flame out' just like the CB radio craze did. Either that, or they will be 'militarized' or become 'lobbied' to the point of effective state licensure, such that non-state players will be silenced and dissent effectively crushed. China's gone down that road and so has once relatively free Australia.
We're only one terrorist event linked to internet use away from losing the 'free net'. Enjoy it while it is. --- Send snip and save items to george@ure.net. I try to read everything, but don't get discouraged if I don't send you a personal thank you. I could set up an 'auto responder, but that doesn't seem genuine... ---end snip and save section ---
Monday January 19, 2009 Monday Thoughts on 'Leadership' Our once Houston Bureau chief, who's now spending a lot of time in the bush of Indonesia chasing gold and energy, sends this:
You see a lot of ink devoted to the parallels between the incoming Obama administration and ones before it, especially the Franklin Roosevelt term in office -- like this sample out of the Dearborn Press and Guide.
Yet I'm persuaded, after reading FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression
I'd be a damn fool to hope for anything but that, too; although I may be one anyway. Yet a cooler read of history (without the histrionics and the popular wave going through contemporary society) suggests that Obama, like Roosevelt, will get some things right and some things wrong.
Politics is a lot like baseball: We judge the quality of our leaders on the kind of batting average they turn in at the end of the season.
Over the next year, or so, I've resolved to 'go easy' on the Obama administration and give them a chance to review past policy and get new ones of their own implemented, and then see if there's really much "change" compared with the outgoing administration.
My benchmarks are simple: More financial relief for America's hard-pressed middle class, high tax rates for the top 0.1%, and aggressive pursuit of the top wealth holders who, in many cases, avoid income taxes entirely, and ending of at least one American occupation of another country and withdrawal of forces.
Pretty simple, easy-to-measure expectations but these ought to be enough to give us a hint whether we've got another corpgov caretaker, or whether we've instead scored a Hall of Famer. Time will tell whether this depression will have the same kind of mixed results as the first one.
Incoming economic advisor Larry Summers says the incoming administration will not let employment top 10%, but it may already be heading that way.
Just over on the other side of the pond, the Eurozone is talking about unemployment going over 10% and just this morning we're reading about another bank bailout in the UK, but what's another $147-billion among friends?
Still, the financial problems are of such magnitude here in the colonies that the "Obama team weight government bank to ease crisis" - a so-called 'aggregator bank. A kind of 'send me your tired, your poor, the banksters yearning to be free. The socialization of losses and the privatization of profits, that's the modern analog to the New Deal, it seems. Ooops, there I go again, prejudging, which I must remember to avoid.
.The sage up in Omaha is plenty worried, too. Warren "Buffett says US in 'economic Pearl Harbor'. It's a curious choice of analogies, since I've argued that the case that one reason we're in multiple wars (ostensibly against terrorism) right now is that long wave economic trough wars are generally depression-enders. Berkshire Hathaway shares, which were about $147,000 a share last September 19th (see chart here) fell as low as $77,500 by November 20th.
To me, the indicators read that we're nowhere close to a bottom yet and if this Second Depression/Greater Depression is anything like the first, the dawning of the new economic reality will take a good while to sink in. A few are using the word, however. The former chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland, sir George (which has a nice ring to it) for one, is warning of a possible Second Depression in the UK; he calls it a serious risk.
As I've told a few close friends this weekend, expecting the US economy (or the UK's) to have a successful landing are a lot lower than the U.S. Airways crash-landing of last week. Speaking of which, you saw that the wreckage of Flight 1549 has now become a tourist attraction? Is this a great country, or what?
Besides the grim outlook for the economy facing the incoming team, there's the matter of those wars. On that front, Hillary Clinton has already offended Afghanistan's foreign minister by calling his country a 'narco state'.
Truce in Gaza At last, the fighting has quieted in Gaza...at least for a while. Israel has pulled back its troops but the place looks a mess if you check out the pictures. Meantime, tough talk coming out of an Arab summit and talk of reconstruction money.
Quiet Victory, Or Not? I couldn't help but notice that the Sun is reporting today on a new twist to the WOT: "Deadliest weapon so far...the plague". The story then goes on to say, in part, that "At least 40 al-Qaeda fanatics died horribly after being struck down with the disease..."
But something about the story a bit further down into it caught my eye: “It spreads quickly and kills within hours. This will be really worrying al-Qaeda.”
Hmmm...that sounds a little too 'hot' in epidemiological terms, unless it's some kind of lab-bred hybrid between one of the hemorrhagic fevers and plague, but even then 'hours'?
A quick check of my standard medical reference on such matters,
Benenson's classic
Control of Communicable Diseases In Man
And then here's the part which got me to wondering about the Sun article:
So if it's plague it isn't the one that swept Europe in the Middle Ages; something new or something else. Worth a ponder. Say, is that a tickle in the back of my throat? I did see the county chairman of one of the brands of the corpgov party this weekend...OMG..... --- Speaking of things communicable: A couple of new cases of bird flu have been reported in China. A shot of el Don seems in order. Kill them damn bugs.
Slim's Pickings
At the other end of the gray scale, the cross town NY Post headlines "Brother, can you Spare a Times?" Love that kind of writing...dandy contexting. --- Nationally, the attack of alternative media is really starting to bite on newspaper financial statements resulting in "Editors and publishers in a revolving door."
Markets... ... are in many cases closed in the US for the observation of Martin Luther King Day. In Europe, where they're hearing about the UK bank bailout and rising unemployment, markets are generally down as we upload.
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Coping: Connecting A Few Dots A good while back you may remember the story of the Bush family buying land in Paraguay. Now, we're reading that Nancy "Pelosi open to prosecution of Bush administration officials."
Yup, a good conspiracy theorist would whip out their handy-dandy copy of the Bill Clinton letter of transmittal which in 1999 went to the Senate setting up the US extradition laws with Paraguay with this glaring little sidebar on page 6:
So, with political offenses off the table for extradition....oh we needn't go there, right? Makes me want to vacation this summer in Paraguay, LOL when we get to the period when exercising free speech becomes a crime...
Reader Notes Here's a good one:
Which is why I often refer guess what country as the Checkbook Republic...
Here's a reader who, like me, is working on taxes and guess what?
So if the 'rebate' wasn't taxable, is it a crime NOT to report it in your tax filing (it's not taxable income, right?), but if you do report it, your tax bill goes up. Who writes the the logic of this stuff, Yogi Berra?
Of course, I am reporting it. To do otherwise would violate one of Pappy's firehouse sayings: "Never get in a pissing match with a skunk." Report everything, it is after all, only paper, I figure.
And one more email:
Yes. Yes. And probably.
The reason that other planets don't go through pole shifts when crossing the galactic ecliptic is that only planets with water and a combination of water weather that provides for dynamic rebalancing every 13,000 years or so get flipped the 30 degrees (or whatever for a particular crossing) which is where Flood and other legends come from. Atlantis, etc, etc.
At least that's one theory making its rounds on the 'net in various incarnations. Problem is do you prepare for the possibility? Oh, why not....but run and hide? Unlike some families which can buy land in Paraguay (or didn't the Clinton's buy some highland property in Central America?) do we just sit and wait it out.
Personal choice, of course, but the notion that something may happen could explain an underlying 'unifying concept' behind a lot of things.
Or, it could just be another control mechanism/memeering effort. Who knows? Ask me in 2013 if 45% of the world's population drowns. Meantime, I'm going to go feed the goats... --- Send snip and save items to george@ure.net --- end snip and save section ---
Before the chart, a little background: Once upon a time, a long while ago, I observed during my quest for 'truth' in economics, that the PowersThatBe, the talking heads on the teeve, and the other information sources that actively engage in the programming of humans not to think, had conveniently swept several trillions of dollars that disappeared in the Internet Bubble's bursting (since spring 2000) under the rug. Surely, it wasn't unnoticed by the thousands of people who called brokers and said "Where is my money?" "Gone, but hang in there as you're a long term investor!" was about all they heard back.
So one of our charts for Peoplenomics subscribers oughta be widely circulated - it shows that if you line up the peak of the Dow in January 2000 with the peak in early September of 1929, we're on a very very close replay track. Much closer than even the chart shows if you were to back out inflation, and put in the effects of 1929 deflation, but that'd be real work, and I'm sort of lazy if the truth be told.
No, it's not a perfect replay of 1929, but history doesn't repeat exactly, it only rhymes. So think of this as the rhymes and the crimes chart:
"George, that's only a coincidence!" your monkey-mind will protest.
Why sure it is...you bet. A 9½ year long coincidence...yessir....just a coincidence, I'm sure...
Write when you get rich,
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and again, the same directly engaging of Life shined through.
James Michener, Louis L 'Amour, Ernest K. Gann...and the list
goes on.
that we're in
curious times right now - a sort of window during which usual
voter/citizen skepticism is suspended in the anticipatory
hope that the dynamics which got us to this particular
juncture in history can be reversed without pain, loss, and
social upheaval.
, records this about the 'black death' 
