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Published Monday - Friday about 8 AM Central Time Except Holidays....many major typos are fixed by 8:30 daily
Saturday August
8, 2009 07:55 AM CDT
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The Grim Banker...Diverting Sheep If I were an optimist, I'd have to report that only three banks were closed & reorganized by the FDIC this week:
On the other hand, someone who is pretty well read on the events of the Great Depression could look at the data coming out of what's now pretty clearly the Second Depression and observe that:
As I tell you almost every weekend, the comparisons between now and then are difficult at best for a number of reasons, which include (back to sniffing the whiteboard marker here):
Armed, as we are with the 'rickety time machine' output, which among other things tells us to 'beware August 22', there's the little matter of all the pieces of the linguistics that are falling into place & headlines now.
My report a week ago Friday about the coming quake Monday of this week with a possible second quake, matched up linguistically close enough to what was in modelspace that we're reasonably confident of 'game on' for August 22nd. We've got a couple of possible ways this could work out, ranging from the fairly benign to the truly malevolent, but I'll save the details of that discussion for Peoplenomics.com subscribers in Sunday's report. --- No question about our "Summer of Hell" linguistics popping out of the headlines, though. But, at the same time, we have the predictable 'bounce' (or Elliott Wave 2) rebound from the March 2009 down around Dow 6,626, and when we get to...oh, call it 9,450 on a weekly closing basis next week, that will be a near-perfect 50% retracement from the decline which sucked more than half average folks 401(k) dreams.
I hope the fine double entendre is obvious when you read about the 'bull' market? Sure, the headline that "Dow Industrials, Transports Top Highs in Bullish Sign" may be nominally true. But, what all such reporting overlooks (and conveniently so for the stock-pandering outfits that buy TV ad space from the MainStreamMedia) is that on a purchasing power parity basis, the Dow really hit its all-time high in the Spring of 2000.
I've run through the math often enough that it bores the hell out of me, but if you're new to thinking in straight lines, you can pencil it out for yourself as follows:
If you come up with a different answer than "The Dow peaked" on a purchasing power basis (e.g. how many cases of Bud will it buy?) back in 2000, you've done the problem wrong and I'm not running a math class.
But I will offer you a hint: Beware the folks that don't use the continuing erosion of the purchasing power of money in all their calculations. The biggest hornswaggle in history is that mantra from the 1940's and 1950's that "inflation is when the general level of prices rises". Sorry: That kind of pap is pressed by the bankster class that doesn't want anyone to remember that inflation is more cheap paper dollars that have been printed up chasing the same amount of goods and services.
In economics, I tend toward monetarism - interest and its manipulation is at the root of most of our economic problems. And we're pushing those problems off on future generations. Put another way, in the study of economics there are two basic schools: Monetarists and liars.
You know how when you walk into a Casino how "the house always wins"? Well, much the same is true in finance. While I've been sitting here in the East Texas outback telling whoever wanders by that when you buy a house on time (like 30 years) you end up paying for it three times over.
Guess what? The common real estate mantra "Don't worry, you're paying it back with cheaper dollars" is more than offset by the amount of interest you're paying. Plain and simple-like.
From the bankster perspective, they're just playing the spread. If they charge you 6% on a 30-year loan (if you can actually get one to close these days, but that's another problem and rant) you can bet they envision a world where real inflation & money printing will be only 4% and they will pocket the difference (2% of the loan) as their profit.
What we've just gone through - and why the financial services sector has been in the crapper here lately - is that instead of servicing the loan for 20 or 30-years to make their 2%, the bankster class bundled up piles of loans and claimed (which we know is not true) that "A portfolio of real estate loans will act pretty much like a bond over time. Yeah, sure, right.
So while the banksters were making their 2%, the new bond-holders, widows, orphans, college endowments, and oh yeah...your 401(k) and mutual funds...didn't put a pencil to it and figure out that subprime and Alt-A's were going to behave more like a bond backed by Zimbabwe and that once the bad product started to implode, it would take down the good loans (conventional/prime) over time. Which is why Fannie this week is asking for another $10.7 billion.
Important Disclosure: My per capita comparison of the 1930's Depression and our Second Depression here, is really wildly optimistic since I only counted the $200-billioni for the banksters. Believe me, on a constant dollar basis the intervention levels are now running two to three times more than the 1930's event, since in long wave economics, the Second Depression is one order of magnitude larger than the first one. Ergo, the jump-start program has to be more than the combined spending on the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration, and let's throw in half the cost of World War Two as well, because any student of long wave econ knows that Kondratiev trough wars usually end in what? World Wars.....which was $306-billion roughly back then and on a constant dollar basis would be about 3.624-trillion in today's dollars.
So zipping forward, knowing that massive government spending is one way out of an economic disaster on the playing field, we can see how the Obama administration is trying to spend:
But notice if you will how the corpgov fascists are working this like a beer hall putsch. They have rolled out the big cannons of disruption to further the corporate takedown of government which was already well-underway through the checkbook democracy efforts of special interest groups. Yeah, it sure is a new American century, isn't it?
The reports that "Health Care Town Halls Turn Violent in Tampa and St. Louis" and "Physicians speak out on health care bill: Many say costly plan won't fix problems..." are whipping up a national frenzy, which ought to have the herd of sheep that is our unfortunately media-hypnotized, looking just the wrong way when an 'out of left field event' comes along.
As subscribers will get details on this weekend - and with thanks to a researcher up in Idaho - one can almost see the need for a large 'shock & awe' event to stampede the herd into a mindless stampede which might include, oh, another Patriot Act, chipping? Who knows what's been in the desk drawers of the shadow government which continues its wanton over-stepping of authority by imposing its royal will far beyond the limited powers given to the federal government by State constitutions.
Not that the "White House Move to Collect 'Fishy' Info May Be Illegal, Critics Say." But at the macro level, consider how useful a Bush-era LIHOP/MIHOP would be useful somewhere along in here. It would spin the herd into handing over power and bolster those sagging ratings, extends governments already quickly growing powers to intercede in most any part of your life, and it would justify even more government spending toward what I figure will ultimately be the $10-trillion level. Why the US deficit is only up to $1.3-trillion, and that won't be nearly enough which is why depressions last a while and anyone who doesn't have 3-4 months of operating cash hidden by the time of bank holidays in September/October is a damn fool for not seeing it coming.
One thing policymakers haven't thought through is that when a population starts being really squeeze, they stop forming families. Besides driving a stake through the Housing Industry's already bleeding heart, the report that "Amid recession US births dropped 2 percent in 2008" means that our younger generation is losing sight of the dream and they too are dialing expectations back.
That sets us up for a demographic collapse - like the one Russia got into a while back - which means a future revenue collapse and oh, it's goes on in dominoes fashion off to the horizon.
The bottom line is simple: The 'constant-growth' model is, as Nikolas Kondratiev told Stalin shortly before being shipped off to a gulag, a wonderful thing when it's going up. But, it needs to be reset periodically and that's what we're on the precipice of now. It's just most people don't take the time to read history books or figure out anything much longer than the 11-year California real estate cycle in terms of a personal context.
Ah, but enough of this rambling. Much to do at the ranch this weekend. Ham radio breakfast this morning, picking up new windows for the house and getting them installed, and the 'pisser of the week' is that my barely two-year old Husqvarna which is powered by a 23-HP Briggs and Stratton has blow its starter gear after just 67.6 hours of use. Damn plastic gears, anyway. Why a small engine company wouldn't design a metal part for something as often used as a starter gear just escapes me. Or, does it? How do we spell planned obsolescence?
Some mornings it's like the Universe has literally dumped a flatcar worth of material that screams for the application of a little common sense. About that $550-million for 8 new government jets for the big-wigs, just to name another.
Instead, we won't get worked up and we won't buy into the manias about. Instead I'll have a bit more coffee and a shower then 'hit it & git it'.
See you Monday morning. (Or Sunday afternoon for subscribers to www.peoplenomics.com )
--- Send comments to george@ure.net The UrbanSurvival Mall: Peoplenomics This Week: 5-Years Out and 10 Days in October Now that last week's report on how banks are, in effect, swapping write-downs and garnering tax credits as their reward for crashing the housing market has been confirmed, we can put enough pieces of the Great Puzzle of Life on the table, using diverse source materials, that a kind of 'rough out' (as some tradesmen would describe it) of the future can be tabled. When I tell you that this 'rough out' draws on diverse backgrounds, everything from Federal Reserve notes on the economy, news clips from major media including the BBC and even old UFO-studies books, don't be alarmed. Nor should my looking to the recent "The Shape of Things to Come", the follow-on to the ALTA series from www.halfpasthuman.com, which only a few people have figured is connected to the much earlier book "The Shape of Things to Come by H.G. Wells." Grab your tinfoil hat. We're off this week on a major dot-connecting mission, which should things collapse as expected this fall, might be a dim star to steer by on what for most will be very dark times indeed. More For Subscribers Subscription Information 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...
Maxa-Cookie Manager The newest version of Maxa-Tools Cookie Manager (MCM) is available. Existing users of MAXA Cookie Manager Pro use the update button in the about window, all others can download the Standard version here: Once you try it out, click the upgrade button (!) on the upper right hand side for the $35 unlock to get it to remove even those pesky 'non-browser specific' cookies. Bonus: You computer may run faster. I took over 1,000 cookies off my son's machine that he swore was clean. It ran much faster.
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 August 7, 2009 Sleight of Hand? Unemployment 9.4% Let's start with the Labor Department statistical release which is being turned into stand-ups (not comedy, but maybe in a what) by the talking heads even now:
OK, so how do you lose more than a quarter million jobs and not see unemployment go up?
Welcome to jiggering numbers 101.
Then to sort of round things off, all these adjustments will keep the unemployed burger flipping PhD number (more technically the "Total unemployed plus all marginally attached workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers) at 16.8%. (Table A-12, U-6)
Yeah, yeah, I know: How did 422,000 people just go 'poof!' from the labor force in July, you're asking. Well, best I can deduce from these here numbers? They all went on vacation.
Why, of course they did. People less skeptical than me are already headlining that "Job losses slow to 247,000; jobless rate dips" and the price of gold has dropped and things have brightened ahead of this morning's open of the markets.
That this will turn into a "W" shaped recession (kinda poetic, don'tcha think), just seems unimaginable to the unwashed, who in my estimate oughta be sucking dough out of 401(k) plans and into Treasuries as fast as possible ahead of this fall, but heck, I don't offer financial advice. Once we get our close over 9,400 on the Dow, that rustling noise you hear will be Ure moving to treasuries and short positions.
Still Auguring In That "Fannie Mae seeks $10.7 B in US aid after 2Q loss" hasn't escaped our attention. I've been hearing from sources in the banking industry that one reason the 'new home sales' figures are so buffed up, but accompanied by a perplexing lack of economic activity, is that when a deal is desked (sales term meaning submitted to the bank) it is counted for as many months as it sits unclosed. Ergo, if a bank is slow on closing (120-days and up in some cases) the deals are counted each and every month. Not sure about this, but that's what I hear.
And we are just waiting for FDIC to run out of money from all the bank closures and reorganizing.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Summer of Hell Department We've been telling you for what? 9-months or so? That since 2009 is the 'year of transition' in the predictive linguistic work out of www.halfpasthuman.com, that one of the main features along the timeline would be a 'summer of hell" which is starting to pick up steam right now.
Evidence is found in headlines reporting incidents like this one: "Health Care Town Hall Turns Violent in Tampa." The raw video of the confrontation is here. (expect streaming breaks due to high user numbers).
And no, this is not limited to Tampa. A similar report is coming out of the St. Louis Post Dispatch which had one of their reports arrested. Five others were arrested there.
What's more concerning is that the "White House to Democrats: Punch back twice as hard'" doesn't sound like we will get too much conciliatory breathing space any time soon. --- Since we've had plenty of time to see this coming (in predictive linguistics modelspace) we are now in what appears to be a building period that will culminate by early November in talk of activating (if not actually) activating continuity of government plans.
What one sees - given a sense of detachment and noninvolvement - is that the republicorp right is flexing its muscles almost in beer hall putsch fashion, promoting disruption, since that seems likely to track toward the kind of fascist security apparatchik outcome that could be used to reinforce the power position of the PowersThatBe. This is the group, as we've come to learn, who are at the top of the food chain currently, but which in modelspace seem destined to wildly misjudge the situation.
It will be hard for people not to buy into the 'shock and awe' of events now building, but since we've had plenty of heads up time, we've laid in a good supply of popcorn.
Reasonable discussion's a good thing, like the "Rowdy crowd grills congressmen over health care reform" in Arkansas, but in the reports like "Tempers flare in South Florida over healthcare" I wonder "cui bono"? (Who benefits?)
The answer seems in all probability those 300 (or so) families that write checks to both sides of the political aisle and keep the masses appeased with the drama and intrigue of right/left politics when it's really a have/have-not game. That the head of a major pharmaceutical company had his home attacked in Switzerland recently wasn't widely reported; Elaine just happened to catch it in one of her pharmaceutical industry newsletters she's still getting from doing some head hunting in that arena.
You did catch the Drudge Report headline this morning "VIDEO: UNION THUGS UNLEASHED"? Plays right into the globalists hands...
Commanding the Heights
I've recommended several times in the past that you read The Commanding Heights : The Battle for the World Economy
Why mention this? Well, because "Facebook confirms DoS attack same day as Twitter" is out in PC World. The lead-in to this is that a "Hacker attacks silence Twitter, slow Facebook".
But in view of how effectively Western tweets were used to whip up things in Iran in opposition to their ongoing government, I think I see the outline of some testing here to try and de-tweet and defacebook the potential for use of such potential flash mob tools for things like congressional meeting disruption and mass demonstrations against the bankster class and so on.
Bet me?
--- snip and save section ---
Coping: With the Free Market Cult Before a share a most interesting email with you, I think it's worth mentioning that America still has the potential to return to her ideals and 'restore the dream', but we are going through a long overdue period which might perhaps be view by future economic historians as 'the great rebalancing' times. In other words, we have to come to terms with those so-called 'free market' types who believe that free markets are the answer to all things economic that ail you.
Just as a for-instance: One reasons that America has an unemployment problem is that jobs have been 'offshored' at a horrific rate. Without assigning of value judgments to it, this is something that's at once predictable, but which will (and has) caused huge economic displacement.
Under the guise of 'freedom' there's a class of capitalists which has sent IT jobs (just to name a particular group hard-hit) and sent those jobs to places like India. Seems whenever I have a software issue (not often) I inevitably end up talking to someone with an odd accent who goes through a scripted approach trying to solve my problem which is no more than what was in the product documentation the product was shipped with, or is contained in the online knowledgebase. Such things grate on my nerves.
Along the same line, the local pest control outfit came out for its periodic battle with the colony of brown recluses (recli?) that periodically migrate to the area of the house. "We're going to have to use (some unpronounceable) chemical today because with can't get good supplies of pyrethrin lately out of Kenya..."
If there was any doubt in my mind that the work of producing hazardous chemicals has been sent to the second or third world, it was erased by the local pest control guy telling "Nope, can't get that here lately..."
While we could manufacture such chemicals in the USA, that would be a lot more expensive than shipping such things to Kenya, or if you're old enough to remember, Bhopal, India, where a 1984 chemical disaster killed an estimated 18,000 people.
Life, and the density of lawyers/per/capita, was lower in India at the time, so one could observe that offshoring was a good thing from the financial perspective. But is 'economic freedom' and the chant of the Laissez-faire choir would have us believe that what I describe as the 'long-chain capitalism molecule' is the only and best one available. ---- While at one extreme, wild-eyed profiteers will outsource to lowest production cost countries, the other side of the argument is that excessive government is equally bad. But, what's been going on here lately in America is that the 'hands off/free market' people are trying to shirk ownership of outsourcing and the lack of industry in America, as evidenced by a trip to Wal-Mart, or damn near any other large broad-spectrum retailers: Seems like darned near everything is made anywhere but here.
Not that we don't need outfits like EPA and what have you, but we're now at the point in the America where we could easily topple from a horrific financial imbalance which neither the government expansionists, nor the Laissez-faire choir are talking about, namely the woeful decline of an American manufacturing Middle Class.
When you get into the guts of today's unemployment report, you'll see that in Table A, we have (using round numbers here) about 131,000,000 people in the non-farm labor force, but of these, abou8t 12,000,000 are actually making goods these days. The rest of it has been outsourced.
To put a number to it, the number of people 'making things' is less than 1 in 10. --- By contrast, we have what's pushing up toward 23-million people who are employed in government. That means - extrapolating things forward a few years - we ought to arrive at the ugly state of affairs where one person in five works for government while less than one in ten makes things.
Thinking of it this way: Put manufacturing people on one side of a teeter-totter (1 in 11 people) and put government people on the other end (1 in 5) and ask me which way the teeter-totter is going to swing? Answer: Toward even more government. That's just how teeter-totters work, isn't it?
What most economists won't fess up to is that the huge bundle of humanity that's in the 'services' sector, about 63-million people in retail, professional services, education, and hospitality, roughly half of the employment picture, don't really care who they pedal their wares to; a government worker's money spends just as good as a factory worker's when you get right down to it. The services sector in the middle of the teeter-totter doesn't have much skin in the game one way or the other.
The problem, however, is that as government begets more government, we end up with a uniquely Americanized kind of fascism which I somewhat rigorously define as the merger of manufacturing capitalists (Let's go to China!) and government (Let's create artificial employment!) which is why expanding the war in Afghanistan is so important. Yeah, I'm sure there are some Muslim extremists there, but it's not like we don't feed into that through our actions and deeds. Most don't even know about Bhopal, for example. It's possible, however that Islam is up almost 3% since 1950 in India because incidents like Bhopal are pretty good 'sales tools'.
What's more, I expect that Islam's growth will continue because the Western corpgov model still depends on growth at its core. Without growth, Western economies have to go through periodic massive contractions (like the Second Depression that's dawning here) in order to destroy capacity, repudiate debts, and sort of reset the clock. The Islamists, meantime, a selling a different concept - a society which is not ;based on the 'constant-growth' model to the same extent, since under Sharia economics, everyone does buy-sell deals and those can continue whether the economy is going up or down. --- Our hope is to bring runaway capitalism to heel, something that got out of control when interest rate caps were repealed on credit card companies in the late 1960's ;which in turn set the 'new framework' for America, namely the growing conditions that led to financial products being more profitable than manufacturing and core industry.
I don't suppose you run into many people who look at economics as a huge marketing exercise, but count me squarely in that camp. The lifeblood of any economic system is money flows and money will flow to the highest rates of return, molding society along the way. Since credit card outfits can charge 30% (and more) even after so-called reform, that doesn't even begin to reverse the trend. Consequently, as the housing bubble continues to implode (and we will likely get a fair number of forced bank reorganizations after the close again today after the market closes when the FDIC prints its weekly victim list) we're just giving more fresh ammunition to the people who would like to see America fail.
That we need to oppose.
This may seem obvious, but if the Western Christian-Judeo model (1.5-2 billion people) is to survive the competition from the emergent Islamic model (0.5-1.3 billion people and growing faster) it's obvious (at least to me) that we've got to 'get in the game' by recognizing that they've got a family-centric, values based, no interest charging model, which is a pretty easy sell to people who see images of Western consumptions via Western paradigm controlled mass media at virtually every turn. --- Didn't mean to get off on a Peoplenomics-like rant here, but there were two emails I got yesterday which I wanted to address. One guy wrote in and wondered why I didn't just give away my consulting services and Peoplenomics - and why doesn't Cliff give his work away free? Well, duh...since we are living in a high cost world (where monetizing everything is the national sport, I'm a realist enough to where I don't feel like being the first to be beggared, thanks. Do I look like an idiot? I still gotta eat and support a couple of terabytes of bandwidth and processing; more so for Cliff's work where tB's are everything.
The second email was from my friend the 'well informed investor' who reminded me that some 700 Post Offices are going to be closed nationally as the Postal Service cuts expenses:
No, the Western financial model is not yet in an intractable position, but it's quickly getting there. What I'm afraid of is that so few people see the larger context of socioeconomic developments today, that a collision major religious/values paradigms seems inevitable over the longer scale of history while the world is march ever-faster toward that showdown because of a myopic focus on short term economic performance. All of which would be terribly interesting to watch from the perspective of an off-planet life form. It's be like seeing a couple of competing ant colonies trying to get along in the same ant farm. There might be skirmishes now and then till the ant farm is full. But, the real excitement is about to begin now that the ant farm is essentially full and the ants are going to have to fight over the little bit of food and resource that's left. Policies like projecting a national presence over 143 countries and fighting perimeter wars with the other ant colonies unfortunately amounts to synthetic sugars. At some point, ants which communicate via pheromones go to war at a colony-versus-colony level, just as the West which communicates at a testosterone level, goes to war with all that dare oppose us. Whether they'll own up to it, or not, the 'free market cult' aligning with the shadow government amounts to a very dangerous class of warrior ants. Something to think about when you roll up your sleeve for a shot in the next couple of months, isn't it?
Can Government Control Your Car? Several people wrote in yesterday saying, in some many words, "George, you're fulla-sh*t. Government can't control your car by satellite, and neither can anyone else..." Oh? Pinch your nose and read a little bit of reality...
Now, need some tinfoil?
Friday August 7, 2009 Circular References If you're not fully awake yet, and have noticed that the price of gold had jumped $7.40 (at press time) and silver was pressing in on $15.00 again, then you may not understand what the Bank of England did this morning as they have decided to hold interest rates, but print up more 'money' so they can turn around and buy more bonds.
What's going on in the world right now is that countries which have huge debt problems (and collapsing housing markets) are trying to print up just enough money to cause enough inflation to offset incipient deflation which (unnoticed by most) has already landed us in the Second Depression.
One of the ugly possibilities of the August 22 turn date is that since it falls on a Saturday (when markets are closed) the door seems open for a terrorist event. The timing would be almost too convenient, and a letter that arrived anonymously from a reader yesterday got me to thinking through a chilling scenario which I'll lay out (for Peoplenomics.com subscribers this weekend) by connecting some dots about the FEMA 'training exercise' and what I worry about could be in the works.
Oh, related is this gem: Oil falls to near $71 as inventories rise. Understanding finance any more is little more than understanding of how interlocking circular references work. A kind of Keplerian view of the financial solar system. Mechanistic, perhaps, but seems to work.
Do As We Say... Word that congress has ordered up three more executive jets to ferry the representatives of the people around somehow got to be the second thing to 'stick in my craw' this morning. Let me see if I have this right The middle class is likely to go through a BOHICA on income taxes and the folks in Washington are now too good to fly commercial like the rest of us? And you thought it was bad when they just flew First Class? LOL, those were the days, weren't they?
In It For The Money The headline this morning that "Murdock vows to charge for all online content" as reported in the Financial Times has gotten me to wondering: So if they really do this, will they continue to run RSS feeds? And, if they do that, isn't it setting the stage to end RSS by turning it into just another advertising channel full of commercials...??? My pondering continues, but seems like a valid question, doesn't it? I want to see how they handle the micropayments, too.
Think of it this way: People will pay for real news (health, heart, weather and pocketbook) but depending on the rates, who needs it? Over 70% of what's pawned off as 'news' (last time I checked) was essentially clever rewrite of www.prnewswire.com, www.businesswire.com, a handful of government economic sites, White House hand-outs and background 'briefer' whispers, business info you can get free if you have a trading account and oh, let's not forget www.weather.gov.
Possible upside? Murdoch's approach may actually cause the de-emphasis of what I call useless news - you know, that bling-thing and who's being Idol'ed, ratings mania and box-office takes and such. The cool part is that it could become a circular social process over some period of time (5-10 years) where making people pay for show-biz hype causes falling revenues, that in turn might result in less bling-things, which in turn could spiral us away from the me-me-me'ness of HWoood.
Ask yourself - just for example: How much would you pay to know that "Aerosmith's Steven Tyler falls from state in South Dakota"?
Not sure what Murdoch's marketing people have in mind, but think about it: Would you pay 1¢ to lean about Tyler's misfortune? On the other hand, some news, like plans of congress to increase taxes, that might be valuable in some way. But how much? And at the extreme, how much would you pay to learn that nuclear war is breaking tomorrow? $1? $1,000?
And who's going to set the price? Weather news is already free. So are financial details of major companies for anyone who knows where to look. UFO reports? Stick around - this would make a great marketing paper if you're in business school...
Oh - might want to mention "News Corp. reports loss on web writedowns, Ad Drop" in there somewhere, too. Maybe by trying to turn up the price of the net, he can save his print operations? No telling...but an interesting strategic question, for sure.
Cuts Both Ways I got a lot of flack for reporting on the Israeli invasion of Gaza. On the other hand, we do keep things fair and balanced by reporting that "Hamas rocket attacks 'war crimes' according to Human Rights Watch. (No, that doesn't infringe on a word mark at the Trademark office...those are words in the English language, lol)
Call Scully and Mulder... Folks down in Florida have reported more than five alien encounters in the woods down that-a-way over the past four months. My theory? They're checking foreclosures to buy up... --- But seriously: Suppose you were an alien and you showed up on Earth and were checking out the planet to possible membership in the intergalactic cultural exchange program, how would you rate the third rock?
There are some 'truths' that I expect a more advanced civilization might have already figured out.
Ah, but that's not the world we live on. So we go on, fighting, stealing and making a fine game of it. Like kids in a nursery, isn't it? And we wonder what happens in the longer term of history?
But wait...let's go warp space-time with the Large Hadron and go bomb the moon, shall we?
Did I mention "Psychological barriers hobble climate action"? Oh, you mean like big houses and flying to global warming meetings in a private jet? Monetizing carbon problems by trading paper and setting up a new paper and zero game around it? That kinda thing?
Sometimes I waken at night sweating and fearful that all the biblical 'judgment day' stuff is what happens with space-brothers (dimension brothers) show up to see what we've been up to and decide "Nope...this ant farm ain't doing so good. Let's level it, change up the DNA of a few ants and rerun the experiment again..." Oh boy....
A Plague ...has shown up in China. Suspected to have come from a dog, three are dead and 10,000 are under strict quarantine. Have I, or have I not warned you about pets?
Summer's Hot Can't help but notice that things in the weather department are going a bit wonkers today. There's a story that down under, "Tasmanian waters receive warm boost" but that's a little foreign to folks in Aridzona who are facing record temps. Temps down that way are expected to be in the 109+ area today after hitting records over the past couple of days in nearby parts of the state. Also a heat advisory in East Texas today for triple digits in some area. With any luck we'll only hit 99...
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Coping: Why There Be Pitchforks I had a couple of emails on Wednesday that were very grim in their implications. One, just for example, sent along a fine commentary by a writer who posed the correct issue of "545 versus 300,000,000" and connected a fair number of dots that explains why the federal government is so anxious to table some kind of success in damn near anything so that they'll be able to get back to the old way of doing things; the 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours' that prevails now that the bloodless checkbook coup d' tat of the special interests has been pulled off in Washington with the complicity of those in the 'shadow government' who pretend (by day) to be looking after the public's needs, interests, and concerns, but as soon as many leave office, they turn into (by night) what we lovingly refer to as the minions of the PowersThatBe. They're called 'captive regulators' by kindlier folks than me.
While it's true that some members of congress have felt a bit of heat lately, the hope among hopes is that enough people will be swindled into giving up their paid-for cars and saddled with new car payments in the Cash-for-Clunkers (C4C) hoax that not only will old cars be taken off the road, the coffers of the banksters refilled on interest, but another new tool for command and control will be in place; the ability to turn off automobiles with the flip on a star (if'n you follow my drift) assuming you've read about those 'experiments' that have been carried out in a few places over the past couple of years, including rural Colorado by one report a while back.
People are not conditioned to thinking for themselves, and yet on my checklist of features on any new automobile we might buy there is a very important one: No satellite connection.
While it's true that satellite for entertainment purposes is a nice thing to have, or an XM subscription if you want a moving map display in your Lear Jet is nice, I've heard enough 'buzz' about satellites being able to 'turn off' cars (down to idle only) such that I have made a conscious decision not to buy such a beast.
By the same token, we now watch only 'free to air'; channels using an FTA satellite system because the satellite providers kept wanting me to hook up a phone cord to my satellite receiver. While it's true that's how they transmit the information on PPV movies back to their billing office, I have nothing in writing that either bans them from tracking my other viewing habits, hours, and so on, and besides, there's no way for me to audit their information. No, I don't take that 'they have cameras inside them' seriously. Video takes more bandwidth.
That said, however, no satellite connection to the car, a whole bunch of disc ceramic capacitors on critical wiring in the car (to bypass stray or intentional RF energy) and a couple of ZapStop high speed diodes in the alternator/battery line to ground and I figure like that battery bunny on TeeVee...I'll maybe be ...still going....
"Lord o' Goshen, George, however does this relate to economics or pitchforks?" you're aptly wondering about now.
Ah... I bet you were going to wonder how it is that us taxpayers can pay for a whole space program and then have monthly satellite bills off transponders where we paid for the program development, probably the rocket launching and so forth? Well, no, my complaint is with things a bit more earthly: For example the headline that "About half of U.S. mortgages seen underwater by 2011."
Not following me yet? Try this headline on for size: "Regions to make $43.7M TARP payment." Which means that (if the coffee is working) the federal government is getting 5% on its preferred stock investment ala TARP while regular investors who can't throw $3.5 billion around have been getting 5% if I am penciling this out correctly. But says over here that (if I have the coffee working) that regular investors are looking at a forward yield of 0.90% - nine-tenth's of one percent.
Not to pick on Regions - a good operation - but seems to me it's symptomatic of how government operates lately. No, it's not an Obama administration deal, either. It was started by Hank Paulson and that Alan deity knight fellow before him...Easy Al the Bubble Pal.
You & I may have the concept that 'government is of the people, by the people and for the people' but here lately, I'm getting a lot of email from folks wondering how come government (and those we elect) have been ignoring the will of the people so much. Seems to be a building trend ever since the Johnson administration came up with it's laundry list of 'entitlements' which, though it may have seemed like a good idea at the time, we ought to remember has to be paid for, and guess who gets stuck with that? --- We're in a very curious time now when the right wingers are whipping up anger at congressional town hall meetings (although not without reason) and the only course left congress is to try and paper things over just long enough to hand it back to the republicorps.
But when you get right (as in directionally) down to it, the problems of America are not right versus left, democons versus republicorps at all.
It's that we the people let government get out of control and let special interests start buying their way (voters be damned) in Washington.
It's a hard thing to wrap your head around, but it brings me to this morning's point: If you look at who pays for government and who gets a return on that investment, it's mostly we pay and some 'they' reaps the benefit. Which explains why satellite rates for home TV are so high, why government can turn off cars, get 5% of its money, and fix things so that insiders and Gold in Sacks kind of outfits make out like bandits, while half of all U.S. mortgages will be underwater by 2011.
Not too much to be done about it, but it at least lays out the playing field so as I do the play-by-play on what's ahead, you'll know why one team is grumbling down in the locker room about sharpening up pitchforks.
Imitation and Theft We keep seeing outfits pop up that are giving away free (modified) copies of the predictive linguistics reports out of www.halfpasthuman.com. All kinds of modifications it seems being promoted by the minions of the PTB who don't want the originals of the work out there.
Just a reminder: If the so-called report you got was free, it's probably been modified in some way - a slimy (not to mention illegal) thing at best and an attempt to memeer (induce various thought viruses) to influence your otherwise clear thinking on things. So if you're planning to rip us off, sorry, but if you can't afford the lousy $10 bucks, I suppose you deserve whatever modified/cocked up crap you get. Does play nicely into the PTB's efforts though. But, if you want to be part of the PTB's minion class, go for it. We're keeping track of who the sold-out folks are and there are at least half a dozen marked up/changed versions out and about now... --- Got a real kick out of one such PTB-rip-off site that portrays me as CFO of the web bot project. Just so you know: Cliff owns the project outright and I have no financial interest in it at all and don't make a dime off it. That said, we are friends and exchange info and I contribute to the project because it has high value. But ROFLMAO...of we must be pissing the PTB off but good. (Another telltale: the disinfo sites usually don't have any contact info and are run by folks ostensibly outside the USA because (no surprise here) we have lawyers, too...the term stupid dickheads comes to mind, but it's a little early for that kind of talk...)
Still, I expect most of the freeloaders and shallow thinkers won't realize how they're being played.
Some Kids ARE Thinking Two signs that kids may actually have one or two more brain cells than we give them credit for: One is the headline in the Guardian that "It's SO over: cool cyberkids abandon social networking sites". Duh. Tweets is near twits in my dictionary of life.
Other thing is that at least one parent I know has explained recent (to a son) that "If you want to go visit your girlfriend and need money for the trip, you better get on the phone and rustle up some work." Seems so obvious once you grow up to the point of realizing that mom & dad ain't gonna provide everything and if you have big wants, hard work is the first step to getting them.
Strange as this may seem if you're under 18, parents are not full-o-crap.
Unless, of course, you happen to be an alien wandering around the woods of Florida. Perspective has a lot to do with it.
Wednesday August 5, 2009 Tuning My Outlook A number of people have asked me about the expected August 22 date that has come out in the predictive linguistics work. "Is the market going to crash that day?" is a typical question. The short answer is No!
In fact, what comes along August 22 should be almost invisible except to the aware observer. It will likely be something related to the derivatives problems reappearing, or it may be something similarly quite subtle, but it in retrospect later in the year it should mark the start of the snowball that turns into the avalanche later on as summer transitions to fall.
You saw, I trust that "Cathay Pacific to Park 6 Passenger Planes After 27% Sales Slump" and how "Adidas Q2 net profit falls 93 percent"? Even venerable flight to safety beneficiary "P&G fourth quarter profit declines as Consumers Curb spending."
Although the unemployment figures are coming out day after tomorrow, the real unemployment situation is worse than most realize simply because of how the numbers work out. The National Bank of Dad is making a $300 contribution toward rent today to daughter Denise who hasn't been able to find a job while in the nursing program at a local college in Seattle. She's typical of what I have to assume are tens of thousands of 20-something to 30-somethings who are unemployed, yet can't find work, but are not counted as unemployed because they have run out of benefits. Yep, she's at the one year mark and the Seattle area unemployment suck - as it does over most of the country.
That's why the most important number coming out this week will be the Consumer Debt figures from the Fed on Friday afternoon. If we see a level or declining consumer debt number, then I will be very confident of put option shopping. Not that winnings on the short side will pay off, but I look at this as a gigantic-sized lotto ticket.
Since the whole economic system is based on getting as many people into debt as possible, you can see how the Cash-4-Clunkers program is so important? It is creating debt without which, we might as well crash right now, this week, and get it over with.
Still, hope springs eternal in the greed of men which goes a fair ways toward explaining the Wall Street Journal headlining how "Lloyds Steadies the Ship" with their optimistic take on Lloyds outlook. Not that optimism is a bad thing, in fact I've been accused of being overly optimistic a number of times. But, we do want to be able to pass a breathalyzer and pee test at all times, so now and then Reality intrudes.
Best guess at what's ahead? No warranties and this is NOT financial advice, But...
Now, all of this is just a wild guess, but it would mostly fit linguistics and so it's my outlook for now.
Job Crash Continues Ouch. The latest Reuters/ADP employment poll projecting 371,000 jobs lost in July sure doesn't feel like green 'shoots'. Some other spelling comes to mind. Market was expecting 350,000 but here at the National Bank of Dad the 'help with rent' call was the early tipoff.
New Economic Recovery Plans? Oh, here we go: "Senators, Advisers urge Obama to more than double Afghan forces." By which they mean US forces committed to the defense of pipeline routes and control of opium poppy lands...
Cynical Me? I'd be appointing a new czar of 'next war' so we get another resource waster lined up.
Not Exactly Democracy Here's one from our "Actions speak louder than words" file: "Iraq to impost controls on internet." Freedom? Purple fingers? Sure, controls on the internet on sites that incite violence and push porn seem OK on the surface.
I keep thinking freedom is a lot like pregnancy. You either got it, or you don't. Must be a personality fault of mine; sorry to have brought it up. --- Speaking of the electronic frontier, word that the U.S. "Marines Ban Twitter, MySpace, Facebook" actually makes sense. No, not that as a taxpayer I mind building networks at taxpayer expense to move twits (tweets? Ha! I'm talking the people who get sucked down the time-wasting useless comms hole) about. It's that I expect that 1) it'd be too easy in an actual combat situation to give away vital info (loose lips sink what?) and 2) we just mobilized much of Iran tweeting them, eh?
Danger: If communications is not part of an action plan, it's a time sink. Life's to short & valuable - every second of it - to dribble out my wifi link. Maybe yours isn't?
Emotional Release? I look for the market to go higher for at least another week now that we've had one of those curiously timed mass murder events, this one in the Pittsburgh area. Odd that yesterday's column mentioned a hypothetical new client in Pittsburgh, huh? I could have said any other city...so when things like this happen, I just go "Hmmmm...future leak? I wonder...why did I pick that one?"
About Those Quakes Reader wonders:
Like I said yesterday, it's hard telling. What struck me as really strange was yesterday afternoon at 1:37 PM, I got the email from the USGS list server that the smaller of the two 6+ Mexico quakes was "REVISED".
This underscores the problem with linguistics: While we can catch BIG things, when there are a whole bunch of similar items (as in the three/four/ quakes), and then the USGS does an email update right in the watch period, it all cooks into an 'earthquake stew' which is hardly worth sorting out.
Two thoughts on this, though: One is that we were watching the History Channel yesterday which had all kinds of earthquake stuff on it and I remarked how strange it is that a guy with a computer and a vision of how consciousness works can out-predict, at least from a timing model standpoint, the millions upon millions the government pours into such research. Second point: Even if we could get the location down more accurately, how many people would really prepare?
Oh, one other item: Reader wanted me to mention that staying out of stairwells in an earthquake is a damn fine idea. doorways and under desks is fine, triangle of life is still debated, but it makes sense to me. But remember, I got kicked out of engineering school for brining a calculator when slipsticks were required. Now that I have looked into the future a bit, I appreciate them more and have a couple around. You never know in a post apocalyptic world when someone might come up to you and ask "What was the exponent of the money flow decline that just destroyed earth?" Let me check the Ln scale...
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Coping: with Contradictory Indicators When Pappy was in charge of running a fire station in the West Seattle outback, or it might have been Station 28 before that when he was down in Rainier Valley (garlic gulch it was because a high percentage of Seattle's fine Italian residents lived there), he was often referred to as the 'encyclopedia' by other firemen of the time. A typical firehouse discussions would begin over this, or that triviality, and pretty soon someone would yell "Hey Cap! What the [insert damn obscure question here]?"
Not too many years later, in my broadcast journalist day, I worked with a fellow by the name of Don Clark and besides spinning Top 40 discs at the old KOL AM/FM (before it became KMPS in September of 1975) Don had a feature on his show called "The Answer Man". A typical incoming phone call would go something like this:
And that was the sum of it. Short, but funny quips, but all factually correct in their absurdity. --- It's in this tradition of knowing but remembering the joy of absurdity, that we go to emails like this one:
It's good that you're looking at viruses. But remember this (it's the whole key here (or its that keyhole...whatever). Viruses don't generally go walk-about on their own. They use a carrier.
In the case of people sneezing, the live virus is contained in mucosal fluids which are expelled at largish diameters as an aerosolized fluid. The more fluids are running, and the stronger the cough/sneeze or what have you, the finer the droplets. But mostly they are contained in that aerosolized droplet form which is why N-100 works better than N-95.
P.S. if the musocal fluid becomes hard from evaporation and people start to sneezing that, I recommend one of those clear plastic shields that police hide behind in riots. Preferably Lexan or some high impact/non-shattering variety. Next?
Excellent question! Remember the old mantra "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst"? Well, that's what the plane is about. In order to have a high motivation I like to have 'sparklies' out there in the future from which I can draw energy. In other words, if you have a dream, major goal, or aspiration that you really, really, really, want, then drawing energy out of Universe to create that goal is simple as pie.
On the other hand, if I were to just look at the gloomy stuff, I'd probably be in a small institutional box or cowering in a dark room somewhere, and what kind of Like would that be?
As a result I find myself working on various fun projects that I really enjoy (home remodeling, ham radio, doing a little community service like building a web site for the local volunteer fire department which should come on line in the next week or three, maybe even doing a year or two of fire volunteering, keeping an antique sports car up, and getting my pilot's license current again and maybe doing some of that with Elaine...).
Every one of this projects has the potential to be a useful tool of the future no matter how badly things turn out in the future. Think I'm kidding? Consider these concepts:
My experience is that people get paralyzed when they don't have one or two big projects in view ahead of the one they are currently working on. If Elaine finds herself getting bogged down in the house, or if my office starts to looking cluttered, you know how we fix that? We invite a guest (or guests) here. Nothing is a better project kick-starter than having people over. They need to see change, right?
Another aspect of it having something to look forward to. A large number of people I meet don't have much going on in their life. People who get a lot done usually have a lot on their agenda., thus the old saying "If you want to get something done, give it to a busy man (or woman)..." That way, even if you're not into the Zen of the Moment on a project, you can always look up at the next project - one you are really, really, really looking forward to, and draw inspiration from.
There is a warning, however: Sometimes you'll get too many projects doing which is why my well-drilling project is stalled. Just too darned much going on to finish it at the moment and so my motivation is to plan to use the drill rig for a 'super ground' for the ham station here. In other words, in order to get more enjoyment out of ham radio (strongest signal on the band) I need to get my tower up and a 'super ground' built. That means I need to get the well drilling rig freed up to help drill the hole for the ham radio tower foundation pour so it's ready when the tower base steel from Tashjian Towers shows up and as long as I need concrete for the ham radio project, that would be a fine time to pour the pad for the new carport (or will it be garage?) that Elaine wants before we get a new car. See how this stuff cascades?
Dream, build, dream ,some more, build some more. That's how life works when you get a little 'fire in the belly'. Saddest thing I can think of is people with no dreams because without them there are no meaningful goals and without those, then there's no big rewards and huge satisfaction of a good 90-year fight to wrestle all the fruits out of this life you can.
Think up the ugliest situation you can ever place yourself in, and then put some incredibly fun/cool one on the far side of it. You'll find the present ugly situation will get more bearable, the misery will go quickly and you'll soon be at the pleasant part of Life again. At least it works that way for me. Being open to any future that comes along gives youi a lot more choices and as Cliff is fond of noting: "Chance favors the prepared mind."
One other thing: If you are dazed and confused in Missouri, don't leave. You'll probably find yourself dazed and confused in the next place you move, too. I know it seems to follow me around like that...
Hanger Talk A few folks who do have planes have been through my current decision-making process: Get a slower (cheaper) plane, or hold out for a 'complex' airplane. that's something that has landing gear and an adjustable propeller.
Sidebar: Here's a good demonstration of my "Recipe Approach to Life" reasoning: Statistically, you probably haven't asked "Why have an adjustable propeller?" The answer is simple: For a given number of horsepower, a propeller can either take a thinner 'bite' which has more power behind it, or it can take a thicker 'bite' which will move more air faster. It's the same concept as changing out props on a boat, too. One prop on a ski boat might be good for 'out of the hole' pulling a skier, while a bigger bite prop will get you higher speed, but have less pulling power from 0-20 until the skier is pulled up. See how this recipe stuff works? Everything in the world distills down to simple 'recipes/concepts' like this. Once you have the recipes, anything is easy.
Since a fixed pitch prop is always a compromise (whether in boats or planes) the variable pitch prop is great because it gives you both the good 'out of the hole/takeoff climb rate' yet it can be dialed back to take a bigger 'bite' and give you the maximum airspeed in level flight. Nothing being free, however, it's another control, one more thing to break, one more item on the run-up checklist before takeoff, and something else to maintain. Still, lots of readers like complex everything...
Light Sport Aircraft (LSA's) are pretty interesting. There are restrictions on them (e.g. can't carry as much and I did mention about Elaine shopping, didn't I?
Another Mooney driver sends this:
Complex airplanes (retractable gear, constant speed (adjustable props) are a lot harder on the wallet at maintenance (annual) and several readers went on to explain how at best a Cessna 183 (constant speed prop but fixed gear) might be a better choice, or better yet, a fixed prop and fixed gear. I was informed that the Cessna 175 (not the 172) is the prized on to go hunting for, but rarely it seems do they come up on the market. On the other side of the coin, there's this reader note which has to be given equal weight in my ruminations on this:
T&hanks for reminding me of the old "f, f, or f's" saying. Hear it was originated among the wild catters down in the oil patch, which from my office here is a half mile walk south to the first well head. As for the timing of any possible plane purchase, I suppose I should have mentioned that. You might have heard the story about the fellow who bought a top-of-the-line car (something for its day in the Bentley/Rolls class) for a single gold coin? There is also the tale told of a hotel that changed hands in San Francisco during the Depression for a single gold coin. A little more reliable? Cliff's got a relative who bought a whole mountain in California complete with a house and about 3,450 acres if I recall the story right, during the Depression with gold that he had acquired by walking from California to Idaho, doing mining there, and then walking back to California with it. Turns out that a gold coin's actual purchasing power in a Depression can be a real wonder to behold. Getting the pilot's license current again? Makes sense. If the longer term outlook for what's ahead is anywhere near right, a gold coin, or at most two, might be turned into one hell of an airplane. I intend being ready. Tuesday August 4, 2009 Quake #2 Today? You may recall that in the fourth hour of George Noory's Coast to Coast AM show when Cliff & I were on, Cliff mentioned the possibility of an earthquake of some magnitude on August 3 and 4. It's that little word and that has me on the lookout today for a second quake of similar magnitude to the Baja shaker that rolled a 6.9 that was felt as far away as Phoenix on Monday. I also repeated the prediction last Friday, if you scroll down and read last Friday's report.
All of which is not to say for certain that we will have another 6.5, or larger, quake today, but the same part of the language meta set that contained the Monday quake also contained a lot of what we call 'duality' language. So I've got an eye out for it.
About the Monday quake, a reader sent this:
Yes, it is, and the shallower quakes tend to do more damage and be wilder rides, as your son experienced. On depth averages, this is one of those areas where it really depends on what your meta set looks like. The simple answer is that you could take all quakes, add all their depths and divide by the number of quakes involved. That would give you one depth. On the other hand, if you sort them our by size, you'd likely find that (bad joke here...) size matters. No, I don't know why some many come in at 10 KM deep. Maybe that's a default value applied when the data is not clear...just don't know that one.
Shouldn't be any problem getting married on the 22nd. In the linguistics that when the next phase of the derivatives problem becomes visible. Doesn't mean that we get a market break on that day - so don't be loading up on shorts just because of a language shift. I think of it more like the 'turn date' where what has been a building mood of optimism reverses and sets up the dates in the fall. Oh, sure, I might be buying a few long-term put options around there, but that would be based on my expectation that the current rally from the March low could run out of steam in there.
The best overall sense of things (which is where the marriage of long wave economics, Elliott Wave and predictive linguistics can be used to sort of 'box in the future' might suggest a scenario something like this:
Think of it this way: Say you take $1,000 and make an incredibly good option decision on the short side and you lay on the trade in late August of this year. Next April/May, your option has 'hit' and you collect $5,000. But suppose now, also in that period of time, that the price of a gallon of gasoline has gone from $2.50 to $9.00. Ask yourself: "Am I really ahead?"
The answer appears to be yes...by a little bit. Until, that is, you figure out the capital gains taxes, which we you figure it all out, might take that paper trading and make it meaningless.
Which is why I am looking at owning physical things instead of trying to 'own paper'.
The bottom line: While we might get our second big quake today, it could be an artifact of processing or just circumstance of the meta set being drawn around data that coincidentally contained a lot of 'duality' language to it. Still, not a bad call, huh? Hats off to Cliff.
The large number of accompany6ing quakes Monday (7, in fact that were > 5.0) is why we're not even bothering to report big quake dates. Just too much work. If you're on the Pacific Ring of Fire you oughta have 2-4 weeks worth of food and water anyway.
Personal Income Drops New figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (say, do they have a czar yet?) offers a darkening look at incomes as if you hadn't already noticed:
The part I find myself gagging on is the personal savings rate information:
OK, you explain to me how housing foreclosures go on like crazy, unemployment goes through the roof, and Gross Domestic Product falls and we still book a savings rate. This just doesn't hang together for me. Maybe because so many people are in arrears on their homes they are able to 'save' money? Or, better, maybe disposable income was only a dollar and people were able to buy a pack of gum and there was one stick left that hadn't been chewed yet and is somehow figured as savings...I just can't tell you. But NO ONE I know was able to save 4.6% this past reporting month or 6.2% of their disposable personal income (DPI) in May. No one!
This may all be statistical sleight of hand anyway, since today's figures involve a complex recalculation of pretty much everything...
Why that's NOW isn't it. You wanna tell me what small is for the earlier period?
Stock futures dropped following release of this. But will that keep the Dow down? Not if we all take enough pills, it won't...
This is Depressing To read that 27-million Americans are on anti-depressants and that more and more people are accepting the 'diagnosis' of depression is one thing.
But now here's the thing: With 10 percent of the population (by this study) on pills, hasn't anyone besides me started to wonder why we don't make marijuana use legal and tax it? I can't imagine its long-term impacts being any worse than these fluoride compounds. And compared to tobacco? You're kidding, right? Government sanctioned instruments of death, near as I can figure.
They SHOULD BE Afraid Oh, summer of hell pops along nicely now, hitting it's pace with people in Austin demonstrating against Obamacare.
Arlen Specter's pushing things on healthcare through fast ain't sitting well with constituents. Notice the security people at the front in this video??
Same kind of video out of New York against Tim Bishop.
You say you want a......what ? Did we tell you this was in the linguistics?
Local Government Cuts They're just for California anymore. A County in Alabama is slicing off 2/3'rds of its workforce. And yes, people like me are going to be protesting any increase in property valuations this year. You'd have to be a damn fool not to. --- Meantime, federal tax revenue are in the crapper, too - biggest drop since the middle of the first depression.
Go ahead, tell me we're not in the Second Depression as I've been writing since the tech wreck days...
This is Il, II Former president Bill Clinton has arrived in North Korea to try and arrange the freedom of a two journalists accused of 'grave crimes'. --- Wife of Bill (what's her name) is in Kenya, the first of a seven nation African tour. This is a trip the 'birthers' are watching closely...since Kenya is suspected of being where our current president was born; a concept being widely promoted on the right (and middle).
Me? Oh, I'll just be looking to see how much of an increase in Kenyan foreign aid there is over the next year, or so. Not that it would connect a dot or two, but my, don't they have leverage at the moment?
Articles like "Debunking the unbearably stupid" are entertaining for some, but I've got work to do.
Look! Up In the Sky Department, I Controversy continues about laptops and flying. Most recently, there has been some building adverse reaction to the TSA being able to impound laptops crossing borders. Stories with headlines like "Airport Feds can now take your laptop" have caused our resident cartoonista, Rebecca Price of www.toon-republic.com, to take things to their logical limit...
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Coping: Look, Up in the Sky Department, II I'm not a great fan of flying, but it does keep[ one sharp so just for the heck of it the other day I logged onto the FAA's web site and discovered that yes, my pilot's license was still on file and I went ahead and updated my information and got a new copy of it sent out.
Now I'm wondering if we should buy a replacement for the Daewoo, or save our money and maybe buy one of those good (but older) planes on the market that gets good gas mileage. Don't know if you realize it, but some planes will get nearly 20-miles per gallon (or thereabouts) and will move in straight lines at anywhere from 100-250 miles an hour. Something like an older Mooney 20-series, M-20-C Ranger, for example. Fast and cheaper than an Escalade.
Not that an instrument flight rated 20-series Mooney with low hours will cost much under $40-thousand, or so, but then again a new upscale SUV is that much and won't get the same gas mileage. On the other hand, a little more approachable, a little Cessna 172 will get around 13-15 MPG, cost under $30-grand and will still cruise at 135 MPH, getting you wherever you're headed in less than half the time of driving. --- On Sunday morning I went out to the local airport and met the two most important people any pilot knows: The fellow who can administer the biennial flight review and the local flight surgeon who needs to sign off on the medical.
Obviously, before even seriously thinking about the owning of an airplane, the medical needs to be done and renting a little single engine jobby like a C-150 is only $70 an hour (as in only if you say it fast). Nice folks, both, so the next stop was talking to Elaine about how she'd feel about getting her license. No point having a plane unless we'd actually use it.
She's game for it - and after a couple of tough & go's in Flight Simulator she's thinking about an 'introduction to flying' lesson, just to see what it's like. While she's been flying with other people in the past, it's usually been one of those 30-seconds on the controls (but not the rudder) kinda things. An 'introduction to flying' is usually way more serious and generally includes a few 'Dutch rolls' which get you a 'feel' for the airplane.
So the steps will be:
We both remember seeing all those cars stuck in the Kat-Rita evacuation, so a plane would be 'one more way out' and would get us anywhere from 350 miles in a C-150 to n780 miles in an old Mooney. --- Unlike driving a car, an airplane operations in 3-dimensions, which means there's a fair bit of 'head work' to it. Having cheated death for 60-years, I am well aware of 'use it or lose it" applies to thinking skills...
There's no substitute for 'face time' with clients, though, which would mean the odd trip here, or there, would be a legit travel expense. Me? A schemer? --- Say I were to land a client someplace like Pittsburgh, just for example. My travel time to fly from the ranch to a meeting would work out like this: On a commercial jet, depending on connections, it would be a one hour drive to Tyler airport. An hour flight to Dallas or Houston, an hour waiting for the connecting flight and then a three hour plane ride to Pittsburgh. Total time: 6 hours.
In my own plane, if I had something like an old Mooney, it would be a half hour to drive to the airport, preflight, and taxi. Then about 7-hours allowing for a pee stop and fuel along the way. Plus the adventure of it all. --- Then we get to the economics of it. If I were to land a client in Pittsburgh, and Elaine wanted to go along, our costs would be $275 for fuel plus something for the maintenance reserves, maybe $600 total.
Where our own plane would make a lot of sense is in the short lead time department. A relatively spur of the moment flight (go tomorrow, come back Thursday) would cost either $1,098 each and Elaine couldn't 'go for free' on Continental or $1,317 each on American (before taxes and TSA checkpoints).
So, yeah, if you need flexibility, that's sure one way to get it. --- Buying a new airplane may not make much sense, but if you do a lot of transcontinental flying, even some kinds of planes make sense. Their real 'sweet spot' is for spontaneous meetings within a thousand miles, or so, however. --- For the sake of comparison on fuel efficiency/carbon footprint, an old Mooney 20-series (and many other planes) can get 15+ MPG flown just so. A 737 will blow through about 850-gallons per hour (depending on flight length and climb out profile plus other variable like baggage, outside ground air temp, etc...).
You have to be careful on mileage calculations, since its only an apples to apples if you compare costs per seat mile. Our commercial jet will burn something like 2,550 gallons on a three hour flight which might move 136 seats those thousand miles, so they burn something like 2.55 gallons per mile, divided by 136 seats, call it 3.4-cents a seat mile. Jet fuel's presently running about $1.85 a gallon.
An old airplane might not have the conversion to auto gas, so 100 octane av gas might cost on average $4.00 a gallon and the airplane would only move four seats. So on a thousand mile flight it might use 55 gallons on fuel $208 worth of fuel (one way) so call it 21-cents a mile overall and since it's a four place plane, the fuel pencils out to between 5 and 6 cents a seat mile. Av gas prices vary wildly. Rusk Texas has it for $2.97 for 100 LL today while one outfit at TYR airport wants $5.05. Gotta love the net, huh?
Yeah, maybe a dumb idea, but flying is fun and since I'm a consultant, I can pick weather windows and besides, might just give us a bit more grist for the column along the way.
Downside? Oh, how about Elaine shopping in new cities? Maybe that's another risk I need to try and dollarize...
Monday August 3, 2009 Special Update Major Baja Quake You're welcome to be as skeptical of our rickety time machine as you want, but if you would so kind as to click back to last week's Friday report here and scroll on down to where I told you... An d once you recall what I told you last Friday based on the predictive linguistics work of www.halfpasthuman.com, you will want to click over to the Reuters story about the 6.9 earthquake that just happened off Baja California.
Two important items: One: We should get another quake, possibly similar in size tomorrow (odds on that are relatively high) and since this is one of the temporal markers the time monks have been pointing to as 'notice this marker because if it hits, then it's 'game on' for the derivatives visibility showing up on or about August 22.
Don't say no one mentioned it to you in advance. We may not have more than two dimes to rub together, but we do own something of increasingly higher value: The future.
The Weak Ahead You want to buy WHAT? Equities? Are you crazy?
Not to start off Monday morning on a sour note here (I'm in pretty good spirits, really) but I need to inject a little harsh reality into your thinking if you're not fleeing paper assets as fast as you can. There comes a time when every long wave economic cycle gets into its death throes and while there are headlines that we're maybe nearing "The end of the Great Recession" you'll note that even such reports include a note that "Stopping falling means we're still at Bottom".
While most on Wall Street are hoping that another major Bull Market is organizing, what they seem to want to bury is that if you had put equal amounts of money into the Dow, the S&P 500, and the NASDAQ Composite at the beginning of 2000, as is shown in my Aggregate Index chart (here), you'd have lost almost one-half of your grub stake, and that's before cranking in the correction for the declining purchasing power of the dollar. When that's done, sorry to report, you've lost more than half. [I exclude commissions if you exclude dividends.] The Street would just as soon you get memory fogging of events prior to 9/11 and forget that huge losses many portfolios suffered in the Tech Wreck. How soon we forget, eh? --- Since last November I've been telling you there will probably be a double-dip recession. While it may seem like the country is turning a corner here, don't be surprised to see the 'green shoots' wither before we get through September for any number of reasons.
Not that I'm a lone tinfoil hat on this stuff: a "Double-Dip Recession Still in the Picture" says Nouriel Roubini, one of the few folks, who like us, saw the mess before it started to wipe out recovering 401(k) plans after October of 2007.
Roubini is not the lone expert sounding a note of caution, either: David Rosenberg, Chief Economist and Strategist with wealth management firm Gluskin/Sheff in Toronto, issued a newsletter last week ("Break Lite with Dave" - see their web site for more) made an incredibly astute observation which seems beyond the understanding of most investors:
In the expanded note (not his 'lite' column) Rosenberg presents a chart which looks at the S&P's recent action compared with the first Great Depression:
(Thanks to Gluskin/Sheff's COO Brian Ginsler for permission to share this...)
As the Kitco pricing at the top of this page suggests, we're seeing strength in gold and silver this morning, driven by weakening of the US dollar vis-à-vis other currencies, and (again due in part to the falling buck) the price of oil is back over $70 a barrel.
Lining all of this up, I'm seeing what I'd summarize as a classic case of overshoot, as the market tries to digest what are sometimes confusing signals. The way to get over 'overshoot' is what? Overshoot on the downside to come...
For example, the fact that the Cash for Clunkers program ran through its money so fast prompted former Fed Bubblemeister "Greenspan: [to declare] Clunkers Cash an Effect of Economic Rebound, Not Cause."
Yep. The guy who didn't get the Tech Wreck right, then pumped up the Housing bubble and almost singlehandedly created the house-flipping environment, is crediting a 'rebound' with the the program's success, when many dealers are telling me looks to them like a deliberate move on the part of the PowersThatBe to take what had been serviceable autos that were paid for and sucker-punch people into taking on debt they can't really afford.
This isn't a view that I pulled out of the hat to have something to write about. It's based on emails like this one from people in the auto industry who see it this way:
Oh, and let's not forget many of those new cars can be turned off remotely by satellite.
Of course, it won't just be the end of the Cash for Clunkers program that will sneak up on most unaware folks by the end of Fall. There's a lot going on in economic circles that's not getting close attention, too. Take as one example, the decision of the FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board) which has decided to roll out a kind of "Mark-t0-market II" in the near future.
This comes as the Wall Street Journal headlined last week how the Financial Crisis Advisory Group (they overlooked putting me on it) "Panel Assails Meddling into FASB Rules Making." And while a Forbes article says none too subtly "Suspend Mark-To-Market -- Now", an AP story out last week that the Crisis Advisory group denied that accounting rules caused the financial crisis.
With all these cards on the table, I wouldn't be surprised to see a peak in the market perhaps as soon as this week or next. All it would take is the right combination of spin to hit the 38.2% retracement figure between 9,400 and 9,500 on the Dow and then the technical expectations for the bounce from the March 6,626 weekly low would be met.
There may be some moments of skepticism along the way: Since housing foreclosures are going gangbusters, any increase in the Construction Spending report later this morning seems a bit incredible. The NY Post has the latest "AP Analysis: Foreclosures stabilize in Key States" but remember stabilize is not improve just yet. However, the Auto Sales figures which should reflect Cash for Clunkers may add momentarily even more nitrous to the already giddy tone of The Street.
Friday's numbers will be the biggies: Tuesday's Personal Income and Wednesday's factory orders pale in comparison to the Friday Unemployment Rate and the Fed's Consumer Debt report due out Friday afternoon.
Although only five banks were reorganized Friday (after the close) by the FDIC, they combined accounted for 40 offices changing hands. That 91 'banks' have been reorg'ed, officials might well indicate means this is still only a 'recession'. However, if you've been counting (as I have) it's now 3,048 offices. Meantime, I've yet to find the definitive study comparing the closure rates now with the 1930's event. Any analysis that excludes online transactions and ATM's is pretty much pointless whitewashing, in my view.
As reported previously, the per capita cost of the First Depression worked out to about $460 per capita in actual bank losses (constant dollar basis) and the costs here in the Second Depression are on the order of $649 per capita and that was just looking at the $200-billion in bank bailouts. Auto industry bailouts and AIG bailouts add to that.
Still, the futures are up sharply before this morning's open, so 'game on' for the 9,400 level more'n likely. Some of this is attributed to bank earnings, although when you think about it, reporting some earnings on what has essentially been 'free money' from the Fed should be a no-brainer. Wall Street continues to practice wrong-way economics, steering by the rearview mirror rather than what's obviously in our path immediately ahead.
Oh, did I mention that a lot of company earnings may be the result of laying off mi9llions and outsourcing jobs to India? No? Don't mind skeptical me.
The main difference in the two Depressions (then & now) is that in the first instance, the impact was both immediate and personal. In the Second Depression, we have staved off recognition of the peril at hand by funding FDIC's bailout work. But, depending on how many more banks fail and have to be shot-gun married off, or directly funded is a big unknown. Meanwhile, the Baltimore Business Journal headlines that "As bank failures rise, the survivors are left to pick up a hefty tab."
You'll maybe never guess who that's going to be?
BOHICA - Tax Hike Coming A check of the UrbanDictionary web site reveals that BOHICA is the abbreviation for 'bend over, here it comes again..."
This morning the AP reports "2 Obama officials: No guarantee taxes won't go up" for the middle class."
Like the old right-wing email said "Change: It's all you'll be left with..." seems to evoke fewer smiles here lately. headlines like "Obama officials eye more jobless aid, weigh taxes" are appearing.
A couple of folks have reported seeing the new tee shirts out too: "A recession is when your neighbor is laid off. A Depression is when you're laid off. A Recovery is when Obama loses his job."
That said (and humor is intended), we can't overlook the fact the the Bush administration's really to blame for setting this all up. runaway corporate globalism has always resulted in a correction that involves excessive downside action. At least it's been that way since the South Seas Company collapse circa 1720 and the collapse of the tulip market before that in 1638, or so.
Popularized by British Journalist Charles Mackay in his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and Madness of Crowds, Mackay's advice is still sound today:
Around here, the idea is not to be in the herd in the first place, since it's the source of all kinds of aggravation and more often than not, ends at a slaughterhouse. The Memoirs (1852) of the book (e-text here) is also a fine read with more lessons on herd behavior.
BOHICA Redux The UK Independent reports a "Warning: Oil supplies are running out fast" which then goes on to say that the world is facing a catastrophic shortfall. Again, this is not something to blame the current administration for. Gotta take a look at his predecessor who was an oil man, if'n you'll recall.
A visit to my friend Matt Savinar's fine site "Life After the Oil Crash" goes back on the sites to scan list.
Also worth reading (and fast, too,
since it's a PDF of a PPT) is Matthew Simmons's presentation "How
did our Energy Hole Get So Deep?" which was done for a
Chevron conference recently. If you haven't read his book
Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy
New HIV Strain The headline that a "New HIV strain leapt to humans from gorillas: study" Say, you don't think that 800-pound gorilla in those teevee ads was...oh...you know...
Scarred Woman? An important temporal marker for those who follow the predictive linguistics work out of www.halfpasthuman.com. We've been waiting for a 'scarred woman' to appear in the headlines in a major way and look here: "Sudan trouser woman 'ready for 40,000 lashes" which oughta qualify.
--- snip and save section ---
Coping: With Loudmouths One reason we live out in the sticks of East Texas is the lack of noise. Not that it's silent, mind you. Why, just this morning on the way over to the office I was given a nasty hissing by the juvenile raccoon who has been sparring with the cats over their early feeding. I may set up a live-trap for him one of these days and take him for a ride. But mainly, it's quiet, except for the hoot owls, crickets and the odd goat reminding us what time they think dinner should be served.
With this in mind, I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to yell 116.8 decibels worth of anything. Yet, that was the case this weekend at the world screaming championships in Thailand. ---- People don't seem to have much common sense, or courtesy, when it comes to noise. I won't ruin your Monday recounting my usual gripe with people revealing every most personal intimate detail with fellow Wal-Mart shoppers waiting in a check-out line.
But consider your ambient noise levels. Ever been in a room with someone who is watching TV and doesn't turn it down when you address them? That makes me nuts.
Not so nuts as when I check into a hotel someplace on a client trip and the person at the counter puts me on ignore only to answer a telephone call. I usually just pick up and go elsewhere if I can. Once I had a fellow yell "Where are you going? Sir? Sir?"
"Away! I was standing right in front of you and you chose to ignore me. So I'm going somewhere that a person doesn't just hold up one finger indicating 'Wait a minute..." and then go deal with someone who called...I was there first, right?"
Few get it. But out here on the ranch when Elaine comes over to my office, she enters knowing that I will stop when I get to the completion of a thought (should I ever get one ;-) and when she calls on the intercom it invariably beings with either "Are you busy?" or "Are you on the phone?"
On the other side, when I go into the house, if she's watching a movie, or the TV's on, it's turned way down since neither one of us like to speak loudly and in direct competition with the teevee. We try to let 'actions speak louder than words' because this ain't Thailand. ---
If you ever get serious about managing people and need everyone
to be 'equally weighted' in the business decision-making
process, one of the biggest dangers is that a 'loud person' will
often drown out or over-power a softer-spoken team member.
For this reason, I'm really partial to something called the
"Delphi Technique" so if you ever run across THE DELPHI METHOD-TECHNIQUES AND APPLICATIONS
Of course, that assumes you aren't running a company in Thailand.
College Sued A "College grad can't find job, wants $$$ back" from the school where she graduated. Part of me is sympathetic, having run a couple of colleges and been an admissions director. Yet my experience was on the private vocational college side, not in the four year degree world.
When asked, I always summarize things this way:
That someone can graduate from college not knowing this is a little, well, surprising.
Curious Quote A reader is asking...
Send me the part where this is spelled out, please, if you have the specific reference. It would sure fit with the National Guard's recent recruiting to get internment camp security folks signed up. Still I never comment without a read in context first. Hate looking dumber than I already am....
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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about these days is amazing, isn't it?
since it may give you a better sense of how the divide & conquer
game is played by the factions who are at battle. In it,
the important role of communications comes into play.
you need to put it on your "stupidity prevention" reading list.
in your local bookstore, you might enjoy reading it.
Explains how to use the technique and it explains how to avoid
having meetings hijacked by loudmouths.
