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July 11, 2009 06:40 AM CDT
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Constant Dollar Saturday - Driving the Economy As things economic go, this hasn't been much of a week - a sort of 'week treading water' since the market is trying to figure out if the 'green shoots' are going to come up, or whether we will see the 'green' all withered up as the heat of summer builds.
Take the Dow Jones Industrials, for example (please!). Last week the Dow closed at 8,280.74 and as folks headed for The Hamptons this weekend it was down to 8,146.52, a drop of almost 135-points, but in the bigger scheme of things that's only a 1.6% move for the week, and nowhere near the 'two standard deviations' range where things even begin to get interesting.
It's on trading weeks like this that I'm thankful I invested in my stylish hammock and some umbrellas for the new deck, but the truth is I haven't been able to use them much since we've got a heat advisory out for this part of East Texas that will run through Sunday. Laying in a hammock is no fund when the comfort-temperature is north of 100º.
Not so hot this week was the Consumer Debt report from the Fed. It showed that people are still reluctant to pile on debt - and with good reason, since unemployment is high and may head higher. What's overlooked in the Fed data is that there's no mention of constant dollars in the Fed's numbers. So (here goes too much coffee George with his whiteboard markers) if you have inflation going along at let's say a nominal 4%...and you have the Consumer Debt (mislabeled credit) as declining 1.5%, then the real drop in effective spending is something much worse than most folks think about.
The Fed numbers for Q3 '08 show, for example that back then, consumer debt was 2582.8 billion and the most recent month (May) it was 2,519.6 billion. But to take inflation into account (our 4%) we can multiply the most recent number by .96 (meaning only 96% of last year's purchasing power remains) such that on a constant dollar basis, Consumer Debt is somewhere around 2,418.8. Now, let's do this: Take that and divide 2,582.8 into it (last year's Q3 level) and you'll see consumer debt is running 93.65% of last year. Subtract that from 100% and it means Consumer Debt is down about 6.349 percent - on a constant dollar basis. --- Of course this also applies to other things - like the recently refigured Dow Jones Industrials. If one looks to this historical data, you see that last year's Dow closed the second Friday of July (July 11th last year) at 11,100.54 and so if we discount this week's Dow by 4% to account for annual inflation of 4% that means our 8,146.52 close this week had purchasing power equivalent to what 7,820.66 would have purchased last year, so dividing that by 11,100.54 means the Dow has retained only 70.45% of its value....having dropped 29.55% on a purchasing power basis over the past year.
I realize that this could be easily labeled a "pessimistic perspective" but here in George Land, there's no pessimism or optimism: There's just 'getting aheader" or "getting behinder."
To those who would label such a view as 'Negative" and "Doomster" or "Gloomster" I'd just offer that great Jack Nicholson line delivered in the movie "A Few Good Men" "You can't handle the truth." --- Reports following the G-8 meetings this week show us pretty clearly how the Obama administration is about to get backed into something I call 'stimulus lag.' Just like certain cars have noticeable 'turbo lag' when you get your foot into them when coming out of a corner while the turbo spools up, the same kind of thing can happen to the economy. Now that we're reading headlines where "Obama rejects 2nd stimulus: Give recovery time to work" the economic equivalent ought to be the 'turbo lag' equivalent of something like this...
Which means, to anyone who has read
Going Faster! Mastering the Art of Race Driving
It's always easier to apply a little extra fuel early in the turn, keep the turbo spooled up, even if you get a little high of the line you can always dial it back a bit, rather than overpower and stay on 'the line'. Unless you go way 'inside' so that when the power comes on, you'd be able to harness all that energy.
Unfortunately, however, that would require sounder money and a national focus on something that coupled with an achievable national purpose would cause people to all 'sign on' to a vision...thus 'getting traction' for America again.
Sorry, but 'rolling up your sleeve' for not one, but two flu shots which will apparently contain autism-risking mercury-based preservatives is not going to do it, but those headlines will be along later on in the year, so stay patient. ---- .Although I believe that the economy will experience this 'turbo' (stimulus) lag that risks spinning out the whole country by this time next year (necessitating another LIHOP/MIHOP, perhaps in spring '10) I seriously hope to be wrong. Consequently the Peoplenomics report this weekend will be dealing with design of a personal risk-allocation model using readily available data that we'll update in the ChartPack every so often as the year moves along.
There's always a chance that runaway deflation could occur, but doesn't seem likely...still the intellectually honest thing is to measure, measure, and then measure again, before cutting and fleeing any asset class.
Payback This time it's for real as Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland says the taxpayers oughta get all that dough we've piled into AIG back before execs get bonus money.
Story Catching On More headlines about the adventures of Goldman Sachs adventures in court this week such as "Can Goldman Sach’s Stolen Code Be Used to Manipulate the Markets?"
Great Story Idea Speaking of which: If I were a financial fiction writer, I'd be looking at a novel where the plot line involved the Plunge Protection Team, a/k/a the government's "Working Group on Financial Markets" needing a big player whom they could trust (or so they'd think) in order to keep the markets from cratering in the event of Black Swan things like terrorist attacks or investor panic that would make a Second Depression instantly recognizable. So, they approached a Big Wall Street firm, help them install a financial version of WOPR, but that gave huge leverage to those at the top of the firm who because knew what the deal was, were recruited as a succession of insiders to hold key government positions (at the secretary level, for instance) in order to keep the market manipulation efforts of the government under-wraps.
All fictional of course. But it would make a fine plot in fiction and there are surely a few factual matters to support the plot. Especially if a screenwriter could get hold of the underlying code from the WAREZ crowd and show it had front-running capability. --- For further plot ideas in this proposed fictional account - turn to the headline "DKos Diary Reverberates Throughout Wall St." or the headline "Proprietary Program used to Manipulate Markets Stolen from Goldman Sachs".
It all sounds oh - next to impossible - except that about 2/3'rd's of the way through the plot line, guess what happens?
"NYSE Cuts Order-Execution Time to 5 Milliseconds from 105 " is issued as a press release...which in my proposed novel results not from technical improvements in the "Super Display Book system (SDBK) for processing orders" being implemented, but from a front-running system coming offline before being outted.
And then, because there's risk to the market as things unwind here and the government-backed market-saving system comes offline, the "NYSE Extends Temporary Suspension of Price Standard Through July 31 " and (in this proposed novel) without a press release announces the end of daily program trading reports in a memo to members. Kinda like M3 disappeared fromt he Fed, don'tcha think? Oh what fun fiction is!
Think I'll send a copy to author Michael Panzner (When Giants Fall: An Economic Roadmap for the End of the American Era
Gassed If you thought the situation in Gaza has calmed anyone down, think again. Fox News has video of one of their reporters being gassed near a fence. Started as a peaceful demonstration. And about those relief ships that have been turned back? MSM seems to have gone deaf dumb and blind on that issue.
Around the Ranch: Interior Designing Got about 2/3'rd of the knotty pine-look ceiling up in what will be the 'San Francisco' room done this week. heading for Lowes this morning for more lumber and then a ham radio breakfast. From there, it's spreadsheet festival time working on how to build a personal econometric model to drive fund allocation for this weekend's report.
Have a great weekend...see you Monday morning.... --- Send comments to george@ure.net --- The UrbanSurvival Mall: Toward a Personal Constitution Two great warnings about 'rights' in America have stuck with me over the years. The first was that "Rights are usually taken away from those least able to defend them first..." Something I expect First People on this continent would have no reservations about endorsing. The second thing to strike me is the 'extensibility' of the phrase "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." It extends to thoughts like "When only special interests have access, only special interests have laws." I'm worried that with the recent blatant ignoring of the Will of the People expressed on bailouts and such to congress, that our beloved Constitution is in great peril. I hear the social contract tearing. Is it time to flag Old Glory upside down - as we're certainly in 'distress'. Enough so that I've started working on my own "Personal Constitution" as a portable back-up should the one that keeps the States 'united" fail in the midst of economic turmoil in the next year or two. Should that arrive, whether by terrorism, economic collapse, or an electric grid-killing solar flare, the relevance of the Constitution may disappear as the central government can only exists so long as it can exact tribute from We the People. I love the Constitution, but since it's being hacked up by fits and starts, it may be time to think the once unthinkable....write our own. More For Subscribers Subscription Information Reviews:
MyGroPonics My commodity broker JB Slear has nailed a great solution for people who living in apartments and condos who want to become at least partially self-reliant when it comes to raising food: An ultra-high efficiency micro-hydroponics system using readily available local parts. 25-pages and plenty of pictures to turn you into a farmer no matter where you live (Great if you have back problems, too...)...or if you just want to fill up the back yard with MyGroPonics trees and feed the neighborhood... $10 bucks here...
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Attn: Mac Drivers: MCM does support the Safari Browser, but that does not mean it is compatible with Mac OS. Maxa-Tools only support the Windows world.
Help US Go Viral UrbanSurvival has a dandy growth rate, but sadly, it's nothing like swine (hybrid) flu's growth rate. However, if you'd like to sicken the PowersThatBe, just click here for a tool that may help. (It'll pop up an email window if you use Outlook (or a few other email programs) then simply send a link to everyone on your distro list...
"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 July 10, 2009 Good News - and Bad - On Trade If you thought a Second Depression would be all bad, think again. The US Balance of trade deficit is getting smaller thanks to globalism imploding (for now). It's all in the Census Bureau's International Trade in Goods and Services report for May '09 out today:
These numbers shouldn't be too surprising, however, since we've been mentioning every so often how the West Coast container ports are doing - and come next week, or so, we should start seeing the TEU (ton equivalent unit) reports from the West Coast docks and that should let us know if the collapse in global trade is bottoming.
No, of course, it's not over yet, but we'll just wait for the data to confirm... Meanwhile, stock futures are down.
Say, you don't suppose that the 'end of the line' for globalism would be bad for markets, now, do you?
Government Motors Deal WTF? I don't remember anything in the Constitution about the government owning the means of production (say, that was Karl Marx, wasn't it?). But times have changed and I'm a reprobate, I suppose for mentioning it because today "GM is said to complete bankruptcy asset sale to a new company" and guess what? YOU and I own it!
Of course, that doesn't mean squat since we won't get 'shareholder discounts'. But the good news is that Bob Lutz - who walks on water in my book - is being retained to have creative oversight over the remaining GM product line. Chevy, Cadillac, Buick and GM and the surviving brands.
I'm still trying to find something American-made I want to buy...but I keep going back to the web site one of the local once-Chrysler dealership sales fellows put up to keep in touch with what is really going on with this stuff...
You are SO Generous So lemme see here: We put $180-billion into AIG and now the headline is that "AIG Seeks Clearance for More Bonuses" to the tune of $2.4 million. Hey, after promising $588 for every man, woman, and child in America (if my calculator is working right) to these folks, this bonus is less than a penny a person in the whole freakin country. Why, it's only $60,000 per bonus recipient. Bone us is right...
Disappearing People Meme While we've had some preliminary hits on the idea of mysterious disappearances (the AF-447 crash, for example) there's a story in process of going mainstream that is most curious because it fits the kind of linguistic sets that have been in the data: "Cleaning woman vanishes at NYC skyscraper" which has not only been picked up at MSNBC, but now more than 200-other reports on the net. How's that for a meme appearing?
I spoke with Cliff at www.halfpasthuman.com about it - and turns out that the 'yacht' with the famous/royal/celebrity types aboard being found missing in Mary Celeste fashion is still ahead in our future - only part of the linguistics were fulfilled by the AF-447 crash, so we may still have that to look forward to. One reason? Data seems to infer that the vessel would be headed a different direction...but more when it happens. --- One note about the upcoming "shape of things to come" so the record is straight: There won't be any 'censorship' of the data release in the next "Shape of things to come" report. It will all be in there. The idea I was skirting was about not putting it all out there for your kids/young people. Some of it's pretty dire/bummer/"What's the point of living then" kind of stuff. If you want to bum out the kids, guess that's your call and my bad for suggesting it. --- One other meme thing to say: Yes, we're aware of the 'new land' coming up in Alaska/
O's "Bummer" "Quello sguardo "indiscreto" di Obama" headlines an Italian web site. --- Stories of a young woman catching the presidential eye like "Tail to the Chief" in the NY Post seem to be popping up all over the 'net this morning. But isn't the G-8 meeting about international booty?
Fluey! Oh I can see the chorus to 'roll up the sleeves' forming up now. It's in stories that report "London is days away from an epidemic with the West Midlands not far behind." and "Obama urges vigilance, not panic." Did you see in "Swine flu shots at school: Bracing for fall return" that school flu shots are planned for October? Got your exemption paperwork started yet if you don't want your kids being 'shot'?
Might want to click here later today to see how much the flu death rate has changed, but in last week's report it was 170 dead from 33,902 cases. That's about 1/2 of one percent. We've been buying our Vitamin D-3 since you can read for yourself a doctor's column on why you may wish to "Avoid flu shots, take Vitamin D instead."
--- snip and save section --- Coping: With Shark Saws and Such There are many things I've been called, by friend and foe alike, but one of the most accurate is that I'm a tool junkie. Since most all of construction (including welding, masonry, tile work, plumbing, electrical, and so forth) consists only of four basic operations, making things 'out here' in the physical word is not especially difficult - or even time consuming - provided, of course, that you have the right tool for the job.
Since this is Friday, and since most people devote some part of the weekend to general home maintenance, here's a little extract from the ebook "How to Live on $10,000 a Year...or les..." that's in the bonus sectioni "How to Build Anything" that starts on page 54:
This might seem obvious to a thinking person, but I can't begin to tell you how many times people look at me aghast when I tell them about this project, or that, some of which people would never think of doing themselves. Not that I've got all my tools organized this way, but mentally, at least, things are simple and straightforward. Measure, cut, join, paint.
So before I get to the point of my comments on Shark Saws, it may help you to know that every tool ever built likely falls into one of these categories. Something like a tape measure falls into the planning and measuring department. A miter box and fine finishing saw goes into cutting, while the finishing nails, nail set and 12-ounce hammer fit under 'joining' (in this case cabinet trim for instance) to the underlying cabinet or wall. And covering thing? Take your choice of paint, powder coating, anodizing, varnishing, of specialized outdoor meta-products like Sikkens' Cetol. No, you don't powder coat or anodize cabinet trim unless it's metal, of course.
So now we fast-forward to the discussion about Shark saws. Cliff's been working on his sailboat building and we happened to get to discussing saws and he mentioned his Japanese back saws sometimes called "Shark Saws." He claimed that for much of his fine joinery, the back saws invented by the Japanese were vastly superior to the more Western conventional carpentry saws.
The main difference is that the Asian/Asian-inspired saws are different in two regards: First, they do the cutting on the backstroke (pulling toward you) instead of while pushing away, and secondly, since the saw can be thinner, which in turn makes the kerf (the material removed) is much smaller which implies my favorite reason for buying any tool: Less effort.
Along the way, I found that Shark Saw also makes a 10" narrow kerf table saw blade (don't worry, spins the same way as any other) but what is cool about it is that the kerf is narrower than a conventional table saw blade. Besides turning less wood into sawdust, the cutting to a fine line when doing cabinetry kinds of work becomes more precise. I need all the help in this departmen5t I can.
So I have purchased a couple and sure enough, they work somewhat better than their push-saw cousins and they seem to be faster in addition to being more accurate. It cost a bit more, but the Japanese-style wrapped handle (traditional) seemed a lot more 'authentic' than the less expensive plastic-handled versions. So I now have: This was getting a bit spendy, so I bought the plastic-handled versions of the dowel/dovetail saw and a back-up crosscut saw.
Amazon's also got a five-saw promotional pack here for the Shark
table saw blade: Shark Pro-series (5 Pack) 10 inch 40 Teeth Carbide 5/8" arbor hole Thin Kerf ATB Circular Saw Blade "PROMO"
I don't know that this will make my carpentry any better, but like I said, I can use all the help I can get. Besides, even though I've got a decent-sized solar power setup that will run everything in the shop for a day, or so, working with traditional hand tools like the Japanese style saws and the set of chisels/gouges is just plain old fun.
But don't tell Elaine. I've got her kind of halfway believing that what I do in the shop is work. She's a good sport about it, and if she really knows better, she's been courteous enough not to let on.
CCW Permit Question Reader writes this About getting a CCW (concealed carry weapon) or CCL (concealed carry license):
I don't personally hold a CCW. Not that I couldn't pass the test on the range, or know the laws, but like you, I have concerns about putting my name in some registry or other that would identify me as a handgun owner. While I'm already in a registry for owning an AK-47, that's not an unreasonable thing to have in the cougar, wild hog, and deer-infested East Texas outback.
For example, if a CCW holder is pulled over for a routine traffic stop, say speeding for example, my understanding is that you're supposed to say "I am a concealed permit holder and I am (or am not) carrying at this time." The idea being that this exchange of information means to the officer that "Ah, this fellow is armed, but since he has a CCW he is probably not a felon on the lamb..." Makes sense.
At least it makes sense as long as there is civil order and life as we know/knew it goes on as it has in a nice orderly way.
However, fast-forward into the future where things are socially so out-of-control that there won't be traffic stops and police will be deployed to protect banks and food outlets. That's when open carry starts to make sense. A CCW in my mind hides a possible deterrent. Of course, it may also make you a target, too, so time and circumstances will vary all over the place.
My simple answer is reread Orlov and try to picture how a Soviet-style breakdown would 'feel' and work out here in the USA. --- One thing to keep an eye is the "Blair Holt's Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009" which would (if I read it right) require every gun to be registered and no, I'm dead-set against that. My copy of the Consti0tution may be outdated but is still has a 'right to bear arms' provision in it.
By the way, speaking of things, sometime go read the www.govtrack.us 'group letter' that was sent to congress on HR 45 because it contains some very interesting points about whether gun control really works - or not. A portion of the GovTrack group letter project reads:
You can read more at the GovTrack page here, and while I can't vouch for the historical accuracy of the 'group letter', I have heard from plenty of readers in Australia that crime is still an ongoing issue. And even with some of the toughest handgun laws on the books, folks in Honolulu are considering outlawing even pocket knives because the meth-head problem is so bad.
In terms of my personal life: I plan to keep a low profile, support law, order, and the Constitution, but should that ever fail - or its underlying tenets including the right to keep and bear arms be subverted - then I'd like as much anonymity as possible while fellow patriots figure out how to restore Constitutional America. You know, the one which doesn't have signing statements and lobbyists buying votes, or elected representatives buying automakers, insurance companies, and private banks because they caused those very problems by failing to maintain a level playing field for American workers while the globalists were busy offshoring our jobs and flooding Our Nation with cheap foreign goods to fatten the purse of those at the top under the treasonous cloak of 'free trade.' We now all know that 'free trade' is a buzzword for worker exploitation to phatten the fat.
Yeah, that America is worth defending. The one where Congress doesn't abdicate its fiduciary responsibility and outsource monetary policy to the foxes who were supposed to be guarding our nest eggs....
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Of all of the features the 'web bug' function is the most interesting because that's how some sites track people by putting a nearly invisible 1-byte call of an image source file (img_src) on some IP sniffing server... tricky stuff this cookie and tracking field...
Thursday July 9, 2009 Trading Range Bound Had a nice chat with Robin Landry on Wednesday after the close. As I suspected, he's watching the market in its trading range between an upside breakout and a battle for 7,800 on the Dow. He'd sent me a chart on the 30th along with an explanation of his current view:
So that brings us to the past couple of days of trading which continue that slow downward move, although the market promises a bounce (at least at the open) today.
Will it last? Retailers are reporting a generally weak June and yesterday's decline in the Consumer Debt number from the Fed suggests that consumers are still hanging on to what little dough they have. --- The real story of the day may be the latest developments in the Goldman Sachs computer code case. The story out today in the mainstream, like the Bloomberg article "Goldman Sachs Loses Grip on Its Doomsday Machine" only touches the tip of the iceberg.
If you're a programmer type (or technically savvy) read the Daily Kos report titled ""Incredibly Shrinking Liquidity" as Goldman Flushed Quant Trading " I don't think the term front-running is in the Kos report.
InformationWeek is reporting that "Goldman's Alleged Code Thief Makes Bail" so we will watch his health with more than passing interest.
And we've asked our time monk friends to keep a few spiders out for the code - some 32 MB worth. I hear that has popped up for sale and is stashed on 18-servers mostly in Russia. I
f you're not aware of the group loosely organized as WAREZ you haven't been hanging with the right script kiddies. Rumor has it that not only are there sales brochures for the code making the rounds (helps to read Russian/Cyrillic a bit here) but that tout it as a 4GL program, although no mention of front-running (which would imply some datastream hooks into the front end. I've also heard up the rumor channels that some would-be buyers have been stiffed with things like video and.MP3 files strung together to make up 32 MB and renamed with different file extensions. Seems when you're buying 'hot code' its pretty easy to get screwed if you don't get some serious samples of source and know what you're looking at.
Still, should a good copy of the code surface and make it into the hands of a Goldman competitor (or a super-sized individual investor who's been soured) we may see a lot more legal fireworks around this. Just depends on whether the code ever shows up and then, what is does - or does not - really do.
Oh...would make a helluva plot for a novel, wouldn't it?
Unemployment Down a Tad In this morning's report:
Flat's better than an increase - Rally! Hold Them Rates Bank of Inkland has held at 1/2% - no point rocking the boat with he G-8 meeting, huh?
Arrest California! A reader raises this very interesting (and difficult) problem for the Obama administration now that California is going down the IOU road, since these could be interpreted as emitting bills of credit:
You mean because the state has emitted bills of credit? Well...er..... Meantime, "Budget Crisis "Embarrassing," But Businesses Aren't Fleeing California, Economist Says."
Meantime reports of "The great California exodus is mostly a myth" headlines an article. yeah, but with no water, for how long?
Stimuless #2 As talk about a second stimulus bill grows, investment legend Warren Buffett compares the first to half a Viagra mixed with candy. Wonder if Candy's offended? Oh....the high-fructose corn sugar kinda candy...now I get it...
Speaking of Candy A man died by falling into a chocolate melting vat in New Jersey Wednesday.
Second Place in Autos China has now passed the US market in auto sales. Bet theirs are cheaper is one reason, huh? This having a well-equipped car costing 25% of what a house costs is crazy!
Not Exactly Over 42 dead in the latest bombings in Iraq. Not to mention 25 dead from an explosion in Afghanistan.
--- snip and save section ---
Coping: Once Upon A Time in GD2 Since 1995, or so, this site has been harping on a common theme: "Look out - we're heading into a second great depression!" has been the thrust of it. Then, in 2000, and less than 6-months after I published "Death by Dot Coms: When Barriers to Entry Fall" that explained in detailed how when there are no barriers to entry, no one makes any money, along came the beginning of the internet collapse in early 2000 which was busily picking up steam until the conveniently times 'terrorism' of 9/11 which overnight created of three news industries: The new and improved "War Industry" which has been rolling through places like Iraq and Afsmackistan, the 'security industry' which has secured & snarled airports and gives Gestapo-like powers to government - which for all the powers still wasn't able to even put a dent in the border traffic with Mexico, and speaking of which I guess fence building has been a good side-business, too. Not as neat as the Works Progress Administration or the Civilian Conservation Corp, but it saved the Western corpgov paradigm and sold a bunch of homes, so what the hey.
However, after a short attempt to rekindle good times with a housing bubble orchestrated by the easy money policies of former fed deity Alan Greenspan, (and look where that landed us!) we now find ourselves in the present situation where the Obama administration is trying to pick up an even bigger mess than the Clinton administration left the Bush administration, which in turn was trying to pick up the mess after the....well, you get the picture". And the wheels go round, round, round.
Still, it's a significant turning point to students of the public consciousness that the Urban Dictionary today as unveiled the abbreviation for all this which I've been writing about as simply GD2. I don't think they'd mind my sharing the definition here (since it's very much on point):
In Michael Crichton's novel "Timeline" a group of historians time travel back to the Middle Ages to 'save a friend of their who already traveled back in time before them." A fine novel, but it was based on the notion that time-travel was somehow possible through manipulation of something called 'the quantum foam'.
It's a little early to get down to manipulating the quantum foam at a level that makes time travel possible, although superluminal [faster than light] computing seems just around the corner. But for those who go broad in their acquisition of knowledge, the parallels between the 'quantum foam' and the Buddhist's "Ultimate materiality: "Particles" (kalapas)" seems perhaps just past the Twilight Zone line between coincidence and the larger tapestry of reality... Could it be that humans working on the 'path of enlightenment' really can manipulate matter at the gross level and actually become co-creators of reality along with Universe?
Why, if that were rally the case, you'd think that everyone on the planet would be excited about it and the Human Potential Movement would have advanced to manuals covering topics like "How to Create Unlimited Personal Abundance" and such. But alas, it doesn't work out quite that way, since man of those who grasp (to some extent) that manipulation of things is possible miss the distinction between being 'magicians' - those who would genuinely co-Create along with Universe - and those who would resort to trickery/sorcery since being of lesser skill, their only route to getting their particular grand dreams achieved is by the subjugation and exploitation of others.
All of which makes the Urban Dictionary entry so interesting, since thanks to the internet, millions of people globally are starting to wake up and become aware that even though the 'digital curtain' may be coming down in some places (and threatens to here if enough 'cyber-attacks' come along - in the name of 'security, of course') it also can bring a mass raising of consciousness.
It's here that headlines like "Pope Weighs in on Financial Crisis" can be examined. Yes, while it make sound good on the surface, I seem to recall the looping of South America's first peoples a few hundred years back, and find myself wondering "How does that behavior figure into this current position?" Or, "What about those Crusades?" Ah, the mysteries that a little thought brings about. --- Going even more deeply, my study of religion seems to come back to language and concept changes that few scholars really get down to: The First Council's decisions to retool dogma on everything from calendars, to reincarnation, to whether salvation/spiritual elevation was personally achievable or could only be achieved by proxy.
Says Wikipedia of (Christian) Gnostic Gospels: "Furthermore, the gnostic path does not require the intermediation of a church for salvation. Some scholars, such as Edward Conze and Elaine Pagels, have suggested that Gnosticism blends teachings like those attributed to Jesus Christ with teachings found in Eastern traditions."
Could it be that there really is a "collective unconscious mind" that Carl Jung referred to, yet his colleague Freud didn't believe in? And may that space be at the core of many religious 'systems'?
I often wonder if I could just find a way to put the greatest religious teachers of all-time - and all religions into a room whether they'd all come together as a team and really be the best there is deep down inside all of us...lighting a unified path toward a greater future.
Or - as headlines make me fear - would they end up fighting and bickering amongst one another - beating each other senseless until only one survived and had struck down the others? Where's the love in that? And isn't love what this is supposed to be all about?
Heady and difficult questions, these, but there is definitely a global transformation in progress. The lead-in has been years in the making and has been presaged by popular song titled like (Buying a) "Stairway to Heaven" and "Does Anyone Really Know What Time It is?"
Looking at the predictive linguistics work, and then scanning the news readers that run in background here (when I'm up for it) the question comes up whether the whole world isn't trying to arrange itself so that followers of this belief system - or that - aren't forming up for a global version of my simpler 'Lock the 10- great religious leaders of all time in a room and see if universal peace or universal war breaks out.'
I don't give voice to this kind of thinking very often though, since it invariably floods my inbox with insults and and dire warnings for daring to ask reasonable questions in what are increasingly unreasonable times. Seems people are more interested in differences than similarities. Market segmentation at the personal level.
But there's more going on here than meets the eye and it's 'time' we all got down to it. Starting with questions like who were those Archons in the Nag Hammadi texts, and what's their relationship with Demiurge?
Whatever that relationship is, it seems that among all religions, there's something of a common thread that works out to a metaphysical roadmap where the Buddhist 'bardo' seems analagous in some aspects to the Christian 'heaven'.
Deep and ponderous musings, to be sure. But economics arises not in a vacuum, but as a result of how people interact with one another. Seems to me that the more we can understand one another across even cultural, economic, religious, racial, and ancestral lines, the less war-like both our economics and physical world would be.
And then maybe we could get on with saving all of it. To do otherwise leaves us all locked in that room waiting for the fighting to break out. We shouldn't have long to wait.
Time Note A reader in the Czech Republic takes me to task for yesterday's article on 12:34:56 7/9/09:
The the earlier discussion of sorcerers: We can afford the other paradigm now, we've gone too far in debt to this one.
The Mogambo Writes Wow!
How much caffeine can you handle, Mogambo, Fount of all Economic Truth? Seriously, I'll have my dealer call your dealer...
Wednesday June 8, 2009 Special update Consumer Credit Still Weakening Although it's a somewhat 'noisy' number, consumer credit continued to decline in the latest5 report out from the 'Fed' today with total credit receding at a 1.5% rate, resolving credit dropping at a 3.7% annualized rate and nonrevolving dropping 0.3%.
While my degree happens to be in business (not statistics) I have to look at the numbers and wonder how anyone could infer that this is an improvement. The Q1 '09 overall decline was running down 3.5% annualized, the most recent three quarters were down 7.3% (march), 7.8% (April), and now 1.5% (May) just out. My guess is that the overall decrease for Q2 ought to be somewhere between -5 and -6% annualized, but we will have to wait a while to see how it 'offishully' pencils out. The emphasis being on 'fish'.
Somehow, this continues to leave me with a state of cognitive dissonance: The 'dollar stores' closing due to a lack of product from China, the reports of 'green shoots' being a little more than offset by the weak auto sales, docked and anchored ship reports, falling Baltic Dry Index, cratering long shoring reports and oh, did I mention that the American Trucking Association tonnage index showed a sign of life - up 3.2% in May?
I'm not the only recovery skeptic out there. The IMF report is weighing on stock as we head into the final half hour of trading. At least that's what some media are reporting. Easier to report than "Green shoots may be mirages and here are some ammonia salts to sniff - with TV ad budgets sucking wind, the MSM is doing everything it can to prevent going 'Corilolis Effect" itself - the closest thing to flush they'll be for quiet a spell.
At least the plane is crashing...well....slower....
The Digital Curtain: Tax Evasion Showdown Looming between UBS and the US government over people and entities that live in the US and have secret/numbered accounts in Gnome-land. then wire transfer in tax-free money and claim they don't have jobs here and skate on taxes.
The fun part is that the Swiss say they will stop UBS from handing over data, but of course, readers around here remember the Scotia Bank line of suits that went after drug dealers in the early 1980's and the US courts held (if memory serves) something to the effect that 'If a foreign bank has a branch on US soil, then the ALL branches of that bank ANYWHERE can be compelled to comply, or get kicked out of the US.
All of which brings down Mr. Ure's long-awaited "Digital Curtain". It's going to be like the Iron Curtain back when we still had commies to kick around, but the 'new and improved' version of the curtain technology is that the US will kick out banks that don't fess up, go after some high profile folks that didn't report their overseas TD-F's this year and then the foreign banks will pull out of the US and go with online banking. And then the US will impose server access restrictions to foreign banks from within the US and we will all go the route of China and Australia where this kind of technology is incubating right now.
There, feeling better?
Boring Trading Range haven't talked to Robin Landry for a while about his take on the markets, but as I've said before, Landry's been eyeing the line in the sand at 7,800 and a new high (8,800 and up) in order to call the trading range 'over'. But not likely to happen today. A solid penetration of 7,800 for a few days would set up the retest of 6,626 or on the upside, we get one last load-the-boat on the short side chance. --- Meantime the CFTC is planning to hold ostensibly public hearings around the country to get input on rules which would effectively limit speculation in energy, but it's a move that feels to me more like a ploy to get the little guys (like me) out of commodities speculation. Hey, I get to hedge by 10 barrels of farm diesel, don't I?
Manipulated Markets? Department Did you catch the quote this week in the story that the "Goldman Trading-Code investment put at risk by theft" story where it said...pay attention here to the highlighted part here...
Manipulate markets in unfair ways? WFT? So what assurance is there that Goldman alone can be trusted with such? Just wondering out loud here but do I catch an odor of something? When US Attorneys start talking about unfair manipulation of markets, Mr. Ure listens up. --- The mind reels. What would happen if someone threw this into an Open Source folder? Picture the global trading meltdown that would ensue...oh, not for a month or two? It will take that long to load and test before turning on the production copy? We'll be watching...from the sidelines, of course.
By the way, the Gold Antitrust Action Committee (GATA) also reads this with some concern having sent the following letter to the CFTC (from the GATA website):
We'll be waiting to hear if Chris (or Bill Murphy) hear anything back of substance besides the Washington two-step.
Google's OS Speaking of Code Wars: Here's something to keep an eye one: Google is looking to bring out a new operating system that would be browser-based and might give Microsoft (not to mention Mac and Linux) a run for their money. Lots of open-source in it and based on the Chrome browser - and should be available in mid next year.
If there's still power and an internet, of course. Depends how those dueling trading programs do - that story could be the WOPR.
Hack-Attackas US government and South Korean web sites were attacked over the 4Th of July, which points to North Korea say sources. Sure it wasn't just script-kiddies?
Is anyone Awake? Guess what happens about half past noon today? It will be 12:34:56 07/08/09 notes a reader who obviously missed a pill.
Velocity and Debt Now that the world hasn't ended (yet, not that things don't get dire over the next couple of years, don't get me wrong) we can proceed with our focus on economics; namely how to make an honest buck - or maybe hang on to the few we have - before it becomes time to do a 100% bailout on the paper money system late this year...something we'll get to one of these days.
The predictive linguistics are pretty clear - the one's that come from www.halfpasthuman.com - and a new set will be issued probably in a week to 10-days. So much so, in fact, that Cliff's worried about whether the discussion of its content shouldn't be accompanied by a parental warning along the lines of "Don't let your kids listen..." Not hype, either. Things are gonna get that bad that there's a discussion yet to come amongst time monks as to whether all the cards are laid on the table, or whether certain blanks are left such that young people today will have something worth hanging around for.
Consider - if it's not too early in the day - whether you'd want to live in a world where the oceans are polluted, starvation is more or less chronic, exploitation for crass political purposes is done by a ruling class centered only on its own survival and position at the top, and while you're at it, steal the fresh water, have dozens of earthquakes and terra changes going while grabbing your plutonium filter. Nice place, huh?
Fortunately, we have two things going for us. First is that it won't be happening overnight and second is that the markets will be open again today, arguably waiting for the release of the 'fed's' Consumer Debt report which some wise market watcher, like my friend Jas Jain, have pointed to as the essence of where the economy is going next. Since we live in a dren driven (infested?) economy where your savings is actively under attack through whatever schemes 'the street' can come up with, the best measure of how well the "consumer debt's OK" fraud is working is by summing up the amount of revolving (credit card) and non-revolving debt (like mortgages) and see how we're doing.
Not well, is my sense of it. Although I expect to heard headlines this afternoon that 'the implosion of consumer credit (really debt) has slowed, it would take a refi and easy money festival like none ever before in history to pull this economy back from the disaster that looms this fall. Simple: The odds are infinitesimally small. Our focus will remain on seat belts, Dramamine, barf bags, denial, decaf, and Prozac as a result. --- No doubt the falling global velocity of money will be one of the topics at the G-8 which president Obama will be attending in Italy today. You know things are bad when you read headlines that the "Pope prays for G-8 Summit." Why his holiness wasn't paying for an end to credit card extortionists to be gone back at the 'disaster could be prevented' stage escapes me. But I know he's onboard with that "New World Economic Order" crowd, at least if I read the NY Times piece right. --- When I talk about velocity of money dropping (like a free falling piano) what I'm really talking about is the dramatic drop in global(ist) trade. You know that has to scare the pants off some of the PowersThatBe - why, without trade control, people living within their means, saving a bit, and thinking independent-like, what's a good team of financial despots to do?
Just as a couple of data points, let me share this: Behind the scenes "The Baltic Dry Index .BADI which measures changes in the cost of shipping key commodities fell 4.7 percent overnight."
Put on your unofficial "Mogambo Ranger Hat" and repeat softly (so as your boss won't hear you and have you carted off...) "We're all freakin' doomed." Well, we are...welcome to our mat.
Bad Policy World from the VOA that the "UN halts food aid in southern Philippines after bombings" has me wondering. When I watch the wildlife around the ranch, seems they get more cantankerous - not less - when their bellies are empty. Guess that's why the State Department doesn't call for advice. Stuff's just too damn simple, most times. Just find the item or service that's being used as leverage and delever it. Pretty simple, really.
Joe, Meet Barak Well, one morning I'm telling you that veep Joe says Israel is free to steer its own course on Iran and then this morning, BO says "No green light to Iran attack." Do you guys ever - you know - talk?
Are You Kidding? Department: Blame African Leaders Let me see if I have this right: Western corporations come into Africa, exploit the resources and people, sell guns and ammo wholesale to whoever's armies, turn a blind eye at criminal governments and then flood the region with consumerist imagery and oh, look here's where AIDS breaks out. And then President O says "African leaders must take responsibility for failures..." Oh? --- Then everyone gets to look amazed down on Wall Street when "Nigeria: The economy loses N2.2 billion daily to attack on Chevron's offshore production." --- Maybe I live in La-la-land, but I don't see people fighting or rioting much when everyone gets a square deal.
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Coping: The Ex-Tex Ex-Pat I get very interesting emails from time to time from our once Houston Bureau chief, who found life enjoyable there as long as most everything wasn't being offshored. But, sensing the winds of change as he did, he had to take a cut at a new land: Indonesia. Periodically, he files reports on what life is like there...and his latest report is especially worth sharing:
Will do...and we'll hope to keep the home fires contained to the hearth, but the summer is only a few weeks along.
Passings: Good-Byes The fact that "MSN gets record traffic during Jackson memorial" isn't as bothersome as it was 50% more than watched the inauguration. --- There was another memorial yesterday - to the late father of North Korea's Jong-Il...who, BTW hasn't returned my email yet. I still want to know what the fascination is with building nuclear weapons. No use I can see for them unless he's planning to nuke something, in which case I'm sure readers would appreciate his 'top 10' target list so we can be conveniently dis-invested or out of town that week. --- Also passing: One-time SECDEF turned banker Robert McNamara who eventually said of his Vietnam War "We were wrong." I lost number of friends who I expect will look him up in the afterlife.
The Disappearances Meme Curious email about the 'disappearances meme' that we've been tracking for a couple of months:
Cliff decided (as chief time monk and it's his project) that we wouldn't try to 'keep score' on just how good or bad our batting average was/is. That would lead to endless debates. One person would score a 'hit' this way, while another would score it that. Nope, not interested. The work is there for what it is - the shape of things to come as reflected down at the archetype level.
If it was down to the precise "Don't trade XYZ shares until they hit a bottom at 10:29 AM on the 25th of July (this is an example, that's Sunday and the market is closed, get it?) we would be putting ourselves at huge risk because that would represent just too damn much of a threat to the PowersThatBe.
So we've been quietly publishing the highlights of what's coming for almost 10-years now (as of next June, anyway) and I think we're both getting a good laugh out of stories like the one just published in New Scientist that claim "Email patterns can predict impending doom."
Why, we're in the company of geniuses. If they think emails can foretell an implosion like Enron, perhaps an extension of the concept to the whole web fora and some past hits like the Northeast Power Outage, the China Quake, Banda Aceh, and the list goes on would qualify us as non-nutters.
We do take some of the model outputs seriously - which is one reason Elaine and I returned to our ranch in East Texas from the LA area in early October of 2005. The model had been going on about a major loss of life in a quake at around 34º North and we were living in Burbank which is where?
As I left the LA area more than a few 'friends' thought I was nuts. Even when I emailed them the location of the Kashmir/Pakistan quake three weeks late at 34°29′35″N 73°37′44″E and the eventual toll of 74,500 dead, most I'm sure thought "Coincidence." Haven't heard from most since. Their loss, I figure.
So yeah, we're into the 'disappearances' part of the linguistics now...and it should rag on if I'm reading it right for a couple of more months with so many large (>6) earthquakes are to be too much work to note, although I have to ask Cliff to look a little more at the 7+; one's due before year end. In fairness, though, he asked me "to what end? People aren't going to alter their behavior..." Sadly, that's true.
Meantime, save your solar flare worries for 2013 if we're still around.
Tuesday July 7, 2009 World NOT Ending Today A surprising number of people sent me emails over the past week telling me things like "Did you know that the latest crop circle is forecasting a major solar flare to damage earth on July 7th?"
Well, not to throw too much cold water on the idea, but the little bit of sunspot activity which was reported was only capable of causing B and C class solar flares. From a practical standpoint, the amount of energy from such flares is miniscule and the impact of these on earthy are about negligible. Now, you get to talking M class and X class flares, you begin to get my attention.
But, the sites which have been nattering about crop circles forecast big doings today, are at least in my estimate, not being realistic. If we get a flare that wipes out the national (or even a local) power grid, I will be willing to eat my words, but for now, get out from under the bed and get to work.
If you want to worry about something which will end life on earth, worry about the long-term increase in seismic activity or the coming second round of the derivatives meltdown. Worry about the release tomorrow of Consumer Debt numbers. But B &C class flares? Pah-leeze. Energy levels of x times 10-6 watts per square meter from a B flare means you'd need hundreds of miles of wire to light a cheap 3-watt LED. If you're holding a 500-mile hunk of #22 wire...maybe you could like a small LED, but I'd have to do the calcs.
Fact is the HVAC distribution system gets switching spikes on it that dwarf that kinda power level. Your surge suppresser is going to get more workout from a lightning storm 5-10-miles off than this B & C class stuff. Out from under the bed....really. Buy a bonehead physics refresher.
Is the word "gullible' In the dictionary?
With Friends Like This "Obama: US, Russia not destined to be adversaries." He's right. More like clones so far, just based on the spending, central government power grabbing, and money printing.
Climate Justice Reuters has a new report out that says, among other things, that "world's richest emit about half the earth's carbon." So, how many po folks does that corporate jet equal? --- Not that it matters after the lobbyists start throwing their weight and money around, mind you. Nice thought, though. File with Easter Bunny.
Summer of Hell Our riot du jour "Swine flue worries spark Cambridge Jail Riot." --- Curfew in effect in China where 140 died in rioting this weekend. These are the worst in 40-years. Are things calmed down? Nope. --- Riot squads at the ready at Staples Center in downtown LA for the Jacko memorial. --- But here's the kind of linguistic fill I've been waiting for - terms like 'digging trenches, building barricades" as rioting continues outside of Athens Greece. This is the kind of spark-meme that could light up more of Europe...at least seems to be that in the model outputs I've read. --- And we're seeing reference to uses of riot police as headlines have been coming in this week about how "Migrants are going to Britain, come hell or high water."
A little popcorn while we watch the news slick spread out from these kinds of beginnings.
A Claire Wolfe piece "11 Ways to prepare for Civil Unrest" over at LewRockwell.com is worth reading, although I think we've covered much of it over the past 6-months.
See? Sick 150 down with norovirus on a Germany-based cruise ship in Scotland.
Meantime, Back in the Cookie Jar Washington Post publisher Katherine Weymouth is reportedly launching an internal review of the planned invite at $25-grand a pop to have lobbyists come to her place and have off-the-record dinner/ access to WaPo editors and even some Obama administration officials.
Since it's the WaPo general counsel that's doing the investigating, what do you suppose they will find, hmmmm? I'm ready to be NOT surprised.
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Coping: SEO and Digital Time Sinks A friend (and one-time client) sent me a nice note the other day and advised me that the latest 'hot thing' in SEO (search engine optimization) was effective use of Twitter in order to boost web traffic.
I didn't point out to him, but I will to you, that the 'latest' and 'greatest' in SEO is always being rediscovered. SEO is something of a high art (a black art, if you're not in the white hat SEO camp), but SEO started off innocent enough when the web was young (once upon a time) and people who had web sites were jockeying for position. That's because on the web, the higher your search engine ranking, the more traffic (readers) your site will have, and therefore if it's a business site, the more money you will make.
So SEO started off innocently enough.
All this gets me to the note from my friend advising me that I ought to consider using Twitter as part of my SEO strategy for UrbanSurvival, IndependenceJournal, and Peoplenomics.
I likely won't.
I've run into a personal 'wall' - if I can call it that - when it comes to SEO. A lot of the SEO guidelines make sense. Should there, after all, be a high level of correspondence between what a site writes about, how it's titled, what its keywords and other meta data is, and the embedded tags? You'd think so.
And sure, there's an RSS (real simple syndication) feed for UrbanSurvival that goes out to Feedburner and from there, who knows? But that's a matter of good customer service.
When I went over to the Twitter site, I discovered that it all seems to be based on the notion that everyone wants to know what everyone else is "doing right now."
Me? I don't care what you're doing right now. Nor, do I expect that you much care about what I'm doing right now, beyond the obvious: I'm not spellchecking or proofreading this page deeply enough.
But seriously there's a whole genre of software out there which seems to have little purpose other than to defuse the Will of the People - it's the modern high tech version of bread and circuses. And it's called what?
Social Networking.
To be sure, I have a LinkedIn account - but I don't make a big deal about it, because most of the people I 'accept' links to/from are people who I either know & like, or they are experts in their fields. Not being a snob, but I look at LinkedIn as a kind of toolbox where if I come up with a real 'stumper' there may be someone I know and maybe haven't kept in touch with closely, but who I hold in high regard.
For example, if I need some advice about a patent, I might have a colleague who owns a law firm which does patent law and who teaches patent/patent theory at a university. See how that makes sense? C-level types and experts.
On the other hand, with the except of only a couple of people, my FaceBook account has gone pretty much untouched. True, there is a group of East Texas folks - which is interesting, because the population out here in the outback is fairly sparse. And there are some friends from my young (under 40) who I'd like to keep in touch with a bit closer. But hundreds of people wandering by to scribble some on 'my wall'? Sorry...life's much too busy for that. Reading 'scribbles' is down there with watching mislabeled 'reality TV'.
My operating theory here (and I can be dead wrong and a nutjob) holds a couple of notions at its core:
That said, if you're confined to bed and can only manage a few words at a time while you wait for the Grim Reaper, maybe short message systems (SMS) make sense. Wikipedia has a great selection of them here.
Long term? I figure the number of 'social networking' sites that go belly up or just close because there are people like me who are social Luddites will increase. In fact, Wikipedia already offers a "List of defunct social networking websites."
"Ah! George, didn't you notice that there are far more active social networks than there are defunct ones?" you're thinking to yourself.
Well, duh, of course I got that. But it will all, over time, head for the scrap heap where all those BBS's went in the late 1990's. --- Humans have a compulsion to communicate and in some of the literature it's linked to obsessive-compulsive disorders.
To support this observation, simple goog "communication obsession disorder" and you'll come up with papers (from the government www.pubmed.gov site) with titles like "Social and communication difficulties and obsessive-compulsive disorder." by Cullen B, Samuels J, Grados M, Landa R, Bienvenu OJ, Liang KY, Riddle M, Hoehn-Saric R, Nestadt G.
There you have it! The link between OCD and communications fadistry whether it's excessive CB radio use, hours and hours on long distance, compulsive BBS/fora postings, or more recently tweets, chirps, and all the rest of social networking.
George the Luddite figures if your energy is being trained and drained by tweets, you'll make fine fodder for manipulation as tweeters in Iran were orchestrated recently. Which gets me around to my tentative conclusion: Social networking is social engineering. I prefer independence and mobbing doesn't sit well with me. Reminds me too much of a stampede and we all know how those end.
Assume that everyone you tweet and everyone you like will end up in a Homeland Security 'social mapping'- system such that when push comes to shove, instigators will be easily enough found.
We're seeing that in Iran and despite the stories wondering "Is Twitter the news outlet for the 21st century? I expect the answer will be no. Was CB radio or the BBS forums?
Think you could fit a google of "computer addiction" into your schedule? --- An analogy: Computers are tools - and powerful ones at that because they are 'mind amplifiers." But I've always tried to keep my computer in the same league with my electronics test gear and the table saw out in the show.
If I put a saw blade in my table saw, it usually has something to do with work product that I'm trying to build. A frame for a particular piece of Chinese art or calligraphy in the dining room, or a mounting for an original oil painting win the 'Trader Vic's" room. Tool + time equals measurable output.
Social networking, to put it politely, is like getting the wood and the table saw, and then turning everything you can grab into sawdust, Endlessly amusing and it may even have a purpose if you're planning to take all the sawdust and pulp it down into cellulose and make custom paper out of it. But most people don't think to do that.
Maybe I need another shot of coffee this morning so I can get all atwitter.
Defensive Upgrades Microsoft has confirmed an attack against XP that hasn't been upgraded to Explorer 8. Teach you to turn off automatic upgrades, huh?
Ready for the Maxa-Tools Upgrade Still looking like Maxa-Tools (see following section) will be ready for their latest upgrade which will handle not only one-pixel snooping, but also something called 'data spills'.
"I know that a one-pixel tracker" is where a web page points to an off-site 'img_source" tag and snags your IP address," you're thinking, "But, what's a 'data spill' and why is no one but UrbanSurvival and Maxa-Tools talking about it?
Go read here for a short backgrounder. Takes some ingenious code, maybe?
Upgrade free for current license holders of MCM (Maxa Cookie Manager).
Deutsche Snoop Guess which big German bank spied on one of its own after a reported sales leak back in Q3 '01? --- Compliance departments worry me. Just like police have 'criminalized' us all into 'suspect' status by just pointing a radar gun at us, there are many a good/open/useful story I wish I could tell you about what really goes on down on Wall St., but the compliance departments have people who could rat out the crooks all hamstrung tighter than underwear that's six sizes too small.
No argument about advance non-public disclosure, insider trading and all that, but what about talking about all the crookedness and greed that's already under the bridge? I say compliance should be told to FO once a bit of information is in the public domain. Be nice to get all that 'company review' and only 'official company spokesperson' language out, too. That some compliance departments won't even let people above a certain level (income bracket) post under their own names to financial forums is absurd.
Unless, of course, they're still hiding stuff, right? --- To be sure, there are people who do occasionally stand up for what they think is right in the world of finance, and a story that "Digital Doman to pay $2M in termination suit" is worth reading, although the company seems likely to appeal. --- I mention this because I know people with a whole bunch more tel tell about how the derivatives bubble began to (and seems about to resume) collapse. yet they can't talk to me - or even email me. A small-time financial sheet, I've got no powerful legal department to back up an inquiry and having staff to file FOI requests with the SEC (long missing in action) is only a pipe dream.
Seems like we ought to have something that would be the equivalent of a 'whistleblowers' law in finance. Tell the truth and you're fireproof. Instead, I still hear folks talking about investing 'for the long term'. Where's the drug-testing, not to mention truth in advertising? --- Back in the old days, some PR friends at AT&T told me the best policy they had ever come up with was "When in doubt tell the truth - the whole truth." Invariably, when the fact were on the table, most of what AT&T did made perfect sense from both a business and consumer side. That was before the break-up, of course.
Try selling that 'let everyone talk and tell the truth' to the legal and HR directors in hifi who seem to think that after two serious screwings (the internet crash and housing collapse - maybe rapes is the more accurate term) the public doesn't smell a rat - or whole colony of them - trying to make money at the expense of everyone with an IRA or 401? Gag those who would blog, those would would leak anything but greed-driven dogma. It's really quite sickening. --- Deutsche was looking for a leak - that passes my reasonableness test. But most of high finance hamstrings those of good moral character & high ethical standards with rules that prevent blogging and sending emails to more than one person (like no personal distro lists for dissenting opinion) kind of thing? Well that's obviously (to me at least) NOT in the public interest. And frankly, it pisses me off.
Around the Ranch: Tool Time A couple of new tools to endorse. Down at Lowes a week, or so, back I picked up a Stanley miter saw bench, so that I could move my saw over to the deck for cutting lumber for the San Francisco room remodel and then the master bath remodel. Only $89 bucks and works great. Well worth it since the chop saw without the stand ate up 12-feet of counter space in the shop previously. has 'wings' long enough for a 2 by 4 by 8-footer.
Another tool I've been using (to cut plasterboard for rerouting
some wiring: The Rockwell RK5102K Sonicrafter Deluxe 72-pc Kit
Monday July 6, 2009 Inflation Whipsaw First thing out of the box this morning is the problem of whether we're going into stagflation, deflation, or hyperinflation. My best guess remains that hyperinflation will come along, but before we get there, my friend Robin Landry has been expecting a drop in gold down to the u7nder $700 range - briefly - before things go bonkers to the upside. And, he might be right.
You noticed last week - or maybe you didn't - that while gold was showing a bit of strength, silver was lagging. This morning (chart above) it looks like silver might come down to the $12 range this week. We're only a few cents from it as I write this.
Not only that, but it looks like the oil futures are coming down, as well. Under $65, but the fall in oil futures can be interpreted any number of ways. One school of thought offers that oil was too high and was already threatening to choke off the little bit of recovery that might have been possible. The other school of thought is that oil wasn't driving, but was just reacting to future expectations and it's now doing little more than indicating that the decline in the global(ist) economy is about to resume.
This is one of those "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" kinds of questions that given tenured professors in economics something to write papers about, since the real issues in economics (like nested cycles theories) are absolutely peer-review verboten. --- What keeps leading me back to the 'here comes inflation' conclusion are stories with headlines like "California's nightmare will kill Obamanomics" and the piece by the UK Telegraph's banking editor that figures "US lurching towards 'debt explosion' with long-term interest rates on course to double."
Don't miss the Ambrose Evans-Pritchard piece from Saturday about how "The unemployment timebomb is quietly ticking." Oh yeah, we noticed.
Here, Hold This Bag Department I have good news and bad for you. The good news is that "China won't press for new global currency at G8" summit ahead this week. The bad news is that probably means they still have more dollar-denominated paper to offload.
Rest of the Weak Is this terrible pun Monday? Well....The biggie for folks like me who are waiting for the inflation to show up will be the Fed's Consumer Debt Report mislabeled repeatedly as Consumer Credit. Like no one gets it. Then we get the balance of trade report which will no doubt show a lesser outflow. That's become not only can't we afford to buy much anymore, but the ROW (rest of world) is getting skeptical of dollars. (See Hold this bag story previous if you're not tracking yet.)
Bankruptcy Incentive Study Hats off to Mike Baker of the Associated Press for his story headlined "Bankruptcies low in states that don't seize wages: States that prohibit debt collectors from seizing wages have lower bankruptcy rates than peers..." --- This is all part and parcel of what I wrote about this weekend in the report titled "Frustrated America - Monetizing Misery". This is your 'monetizing misery" part.
I said it before, but it's worth remembering: When misery is monetized, the whole country is on the brink. Or, is that just too damn obvious?
Funny Or Documentary? This week's from Rebecca Price of www.toon-republic.com:
Vet Checks Coming $250 payments to eligible military veterans are hitting the mail now. Don't spend it all in one place.
Summer of Hell Department "China says 140 killed in riots in West" reports an AP story. --- "Honduras coup leaders block ousted president's return." It's pronounced "two-goosey gal-pah" by the way, if you haven't hung out in Central America much. And the airport there is almost as much fun as the one-way marvel up at Cusco in Peru.
War Promotion? The headline in Rupert Murdoch's Times that the "Saudis give nod to Israeli raid on Iran" when taken with the AP story that veep Joe "Biden: Israel; free to set own course on Iran" has me wondering if this doesn't reinforce the possible attack in late October, which would make a dandy distraction of market closings and bank holidays in late September into mid October.
Yep, nothing like a good war/ terrorist attack to swing the public's attention from the cratering economy...just like the magic 'swing' and rally 'round the flag as the economy was on the brink in 2001 - but which was subsequently saved by the instantly spawned "security" and "anti-terrorism" industries. Just coincidence, of course, rest assured. Isn't it time for another pill? ---
Even though it has been dismissed as a work of fiction, and a
clever anti-war book during the Vietnam era, if you haven't read
and considered some of the issues Leonard Lewin raised in his
1967 Report From Iron Mountain Before you read it, you should be aware that...
My take? Real (Galbraith) or Hoax (the author), the discussion of why people put on the yoke of government is just dandy. And, (ready in the bad pun department?) the yoke's on us.
Moscow Dealings President O is off to Moscow (and a Ritz Carlton on our bill no less, but there's no HoJo or Motel Six there, perhaps) to arm twist and arms deal a bit with the Russians. Maybe he'll get a government discount - don't know how the Ritz folks would handle a GTR (government transportation request), if you've never traveled on one). --- I've been watching a bunch of videos on the Obama trip today, trying to catch a glimpse of Vladimir Putin standing behind the curtain pulling (nominal) president Medvedev's strings in puppet-like fashion...
Palin Bailin, Redux The video is up on YouTube of her resignation this weekend. It starts off reasonable enough, but after a few minutes, it begins to ramble...leaving me scratching my head. --- Don't know if this is the first of the PTB disappearances or if she'll be back with a presidential exploratory committee?
Thing is: If she were to run for president, could anyone vote for someone who quits at mid-term? Hmmm...some things to ponder.
One school of thought supposed that there might be federal indictments or some earth-shaking scandal about to pop, but "Palin isn't facing investigation says FBI".
If she were going to run for president, wouldn't she have dropped more hints? If there's no indictment, then what's the deal? We're left to wonder, at least for now. But if she goes ultra-low profile - to the point where no one can find her and the family by mid fall, we'll just have to underline this as another one of the 'odd disappearances' that's been floating around predictive linguistic modelspace. --- Speaking of the 'season of disappearances' it may be the other way around since here's a headline that "Millions face hunger as seasons disappear..." It's what a seasoned reader would expect.
Speaking of Spices... The story that one time Spice Girl "Victoria and David Beckham in their underwear for Armani" makes a fine counterpoint to the Zazzle T-shirt emblazoned with "Make awkward sexual advances. Not war."
Hey! The NY Post has "Swimsuit Issues" in its biz section today...
--- Snip and Save Section ---
Coping: Signs of the Times A reader offers:
(rim shot) OK, let me put on my 'insensitive male" hat. "No, what's foreplay?"
Around the Ranch: Drought? What Drought? The local hay growers and rancherly types who have been going to church to pray for rain finally got some on Sunday afternoon. In fact, we've put about 2½-inches into the rain gauge here since about 4 PM Sunday. Looks like more on the radar at least for the first half of the day. I do have to wonder how 2+-inches is a '30 percent chance of rain' that is referred to in the forecast. But, I suppose we can't ask for better from a gazillion dollars of super-computing horsepower, not to mention that we've got thousands of monitor-sensors before this stuff shows up over East Texas.
May even see some drought relief down San Antonio way, but we'll just have to wait and see. Been drier than a dust bunny down in the Hill Country and along the southwest part of the Permian. Which makes me expect the conversation 'round Arkey Blue's will be weather related this week.
Mean-nasty thunderstorms coming in this morning, so posting early - see ya'll tomorrow morning.....
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,
George Ure, The People's Economist |
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(by Carl Lopez and which lays out a fair chunk of
) and see if
he wants to use the plot line in a novel...pieces all seem to be
there...
Just under $40 for that one.
.
About $180. Get extra cutting blades. Don't
know how the knock-offs work, but this is really fun. Just
the trick for remodeling.
(on the accessibility and desirability of peace), especially the
thorny question of "Why do people accept the rule of
others?" 
