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September 5, 2009 07:55 AM CDT
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The Not-So-Grim Bankers Yeah, sure, the FDIC closed down (reorganized in shotgun marriage form) five more banks this week, but it could have been worse since the largest one was only 15-branches. Because of the holiday weekend, the openings will be on Tuesday instead of the usual 'back to normal on Monday' which accompanies such actions. The latest batch includes:
If you're keeping track of how many branches have been involved since IndyMac went down last year, the count is 3,654.
Here in my office in whatever spare time I can muster, I keep looking for the definitive work that clarifies whether the 3,000 banks closed down in the opening 2½ years of the previous Depression were counted on an institutional basis or on a branch basis; so far no success finding that little detail.
Economists, however, continue to fall into two camps: The realists (with folks like yours truly), who have already figured that the cost of bank bailing on a constant-dollar, per capita basis has exceeded the impacts of the previous Depression.
However, the Apologist School of Economics argues (somewhat validly I'll admit) that my $200-billion cost is being slowly paid back, so the comparison is unfair, and what's more, they point out that the banks which are failing aren't really failing, they're just, oh, you know, remarrying - that kind of thinking.
This latter school of economists also argue that we should all relax while government "spends us rich.". Count me as skeptical, but I missed the whole house-flipping bonanza, too, and here I am - stuck without a mortgage. Aw, gee, shucks.
Meantime, the teen age and recent graduate employment levels suck with the teen rate being over 25% now. Got a pet theory on this: How many homeowners like me are deathly afraid to hire kids to do chores like mow the lawn because of the fear that the kid will get hurt and sue the living daylights out of the homeowner? Ambulance chasers abound, especially when times are tight.
The Weak in Markets That another 236,000 Americans lost their jobs in the latest reporting month didn't seem to bother stock market, which if measured by the Dow lost only 102.93 this week.
What so many of my friends spent Friday trying to figure out is where does it go from here?
If you look at a one month chart of the Dow Transports, which under Dow Theory means something, you can see the rally case being traced out. The transports are back, but for how long is anyone's guess.
Me? I bought a couple of options that I call 'lottery tickets' - far out of the money put options on the S&P for the November expiration. And my out of the money I mean under 700 on the S&P before these would make a dime.
Although they have only a slim chance of paying off, if the market begins its third Elliott wave down in earnest, we could blow through 9,100 and 8,099 support on the Dow so fast it'd make your head spin. So I bought some financial equivalent of lotto tickets just in case. Only play money, not grocery money on this.
Investing is not like poker where there's some modicum of skill involved. When a person's fool enough to be long this kind of market, they need to recognize that they're not up against other (irrational) humans so much as they're up against the flash trading/ high frequency trading microprocessors. "Are you [still] feeling lucky, Punk?" Told Peoplenomics readers last week that this'd be the week to exit. My call YTD is up over 20% - not too many 'advisors' are doing that good, which is why I avoid making specific investment advice.
Call Indiana Jones! A massive ancient wall has been uncovered in Jerusalem says a CNN report. Which means wall building has been going on in that part of the world for a very, very long time, eh?
Tourist Traps The US is eyeing charging visitors from EU land a $10 visitor tax. EU seems likely to respond.
Around the Ranch A very short report this morning - but there will be a report Monday - also short, however. Off to work on Peoplenomics where this weekend I explain how to set up your own Free to Air satellite TV and of course, the more in depth economic coverage.
See you Sunday if you're a subscriber, Monday if you're not, or sometime next week if you've got a serious substance abuse problem. Way the market's been since '07, I understand all three possibilities....
--- Send comments to george@ure.net The UrbanSurvival Mall: Peoplenomics This Week: Short Term Values, Capital Preservation First up is a short look at 'immediacy values" from the predictive linguistic work which could impact personal and business expectations between now and when the next "Shape of Things To Come report is issued around September 15th. The good news is that while some things look better, other prospects have grow more ominous. Then we'll consider some of the recent developments in the market and whether it's time to get back to bearish since I became bullish in late March (Issue #395: "Me Bullish? Where to Play the 401(k) Game). More For Subscribers Subscription Information MyGroPonics My commodity broker JB Slear and I have written a simple book to get you started on high density hydroponics. It's an example of how someone with a little creativity, access to a few 'dollar stores' and willing to try out some new farming techniques can grow an amazing amount of produce sin a very small space - like even an apartment balcony (if it gets some sunlight). Sound interesting? It's just $10 bucks here...
Maxa-Cookie Manager No, when you tell your browser to 'empty your cookies' of web sites you've visited, it probably won't get them all. Why? Because there is a whole class of 'browser-independent' cookies that will gobble up space on your hard drive, but more important is they will sneak out information about you without you being aware of it. Ever week I get emails like this one:
Test drive it free by downloading it. To upgrade to full functionality will be $35 bucks. Is your privacy worth it?
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 nasty and highly intrusive
'non-browser specific' cookies. Bonus: You computer
may run faster. I've taken
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....so far. Given Jens and the other engineers time...
Feeling Thorny? Want to be a thorn in the side of the Old World Order? Simply click here and send a link to this site to everyone on your distro list...Nothing more dangerous than sharp, clear-thinking upstarts who ask a lot of questions, eh? Unless you believe WTC-7 fell over on its own, of course....
"Live on $10,000" Updated I've told you in the past to order my ebook "How to Live on $10,000 a year or less..." with the rationale that "We're all going to live it shortly, anyway." Don't know as you have looked lately, but the unemployment rate is up more than 3% since I wrote the first edition of that book and underpasses have never been more homely. Worth ordering? Just visit www.liveontenthousand.com or, click this little whizzie...
It's an automatic download. It's written in an information dense style: The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the cheap, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you have a little hustle left... Click here for the index and details. ---- Last week's report is here. For back issues of this site, click here. (Goes back to 1997!)
Friday September 4, 2009 Unemployment Hits 9.7% We start with the 'official' announcement of the unemployment rate before I do the monthly rip-up of these Pollyanna numbers:
Now here's the grim of this Grimm statistical fairytale.
1. See Table A. The civilian labor force reportedly shrank 422,000 in the most recent month.
2. See Table A. Number of people not in the workforce increased by 637-thousand. If you're confused when payrolls fell by only 216,000 for the month, don't feel like the Lone Ranger.
3. See Table U-6. The number of people who are unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, PhD's flipping burgers and so forth was 16.8% this month, up from 16.3% last month.
4. See CES Birth/Death Model Adjustments: This is the 'statistically made up because we think so" department. Hmmm, lemme see here: 15,000 new jobs in construction...sure, whatever... 26,000 in professional services, and 24,000 leisure and hospitality. Uh huh. In all, 673,000 new jobs have been 'estimated into existence' since January and if you back out January, it's more than a million jobs that have been 'estimated into existence' so far this year.
No fair reaching for a swig of Jack Daniels - too early for that. It's only a 26-year high for unemployment.
The "G20 to pledge stimulus until economic recovery certain" sure doesn't sound very comforting, does it? Let's all go borrow ourselves into prosperity, shall we? Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe is the leading early adopter...
All the bummers aside, the market seems poised to drift up a bit at the open, but I wouldn't bank on an up close today. Too much risk exposure over a three day weekend and besides, who knows how many 'dead banks walking' will be unveiled by the FDIC this afternoon? Speaking of which...
CITI Rumors The NY Post's headline this morning "NO PITY FOR CITI: US watchdog blasts bank's lack of bailout Exit Plan" is certainly worth a read. Especially if you've been hearing the rumors going about the street lately. --- Don't forget to click here http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html for the complete failed bank list and come on by tomorrow morning when I roll out the latest totals and maybe a chart (depends how much coffee I have in the morning).
National Distractions Department The headlines are popping up all over the place: "School speech backlash builds" and "Obama speech to students draws conservative ire" is more and more looking like a right-wing scam to keep America from asking harder questions like "Why not audit the Fed" and "What the hell are we doing in Afghanistan...doesn't anyone understand mission creep?" --- What I'm much more focused on, however, is the odd harmonic off 9/11/2001 that is shaping up for early next week. A couple of astrologer types tell me that an eight year Venus cycle will complete and that seems to mean something to occultists.
When I add up the completion of an 8-year cycle, predictive linguistics that hint at small explosions and terrorism possible September 7-9, and a presidential education photo op, I can't help but remember the pictures of how GW was reading to kids at an education photo op at the time of 9/11. Something just doesn't feel right about this.
I have absolutely no idea why that would be meaningful to anyone occultists or otherwise, but the harmonic is there and next week brings 9/9/09 - which is close enough to 666 upside down to get me to wondering.
Flag This "China's national flag to go up in White House on September 20th" reports China Daily.
Looser Cuba Relations Out from the Treasury Department on Thursday: "The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) today issued a final rule amending the Cuban Assets Control Regulations, 31 C.F.R. Part 515 (CACR), to implement the President's initiative of April 13, 2009, to reach out to the Cuban people in support of their desire to freely determine their country's future, promote greater contact between separated family members in the United States and Cuba, and increase the flow of remittances and information to the Cuban people. "
The link has the details of what's allowed/changed. I know some people in Miami who have relatives in Cuba that they would like to visit that will be quite happy with this...
Il Winds North Korea's announcement that it's in what's headlined as the 'last stages of uranium enrichment' has me convinced we don't have to worry about peace breaking out globally any time soon. --- However a genuinely skeptical person would probably ask an important question here: "Why the hell would they say anything about it?"
I mean check this out: If I were going to build an atomic bomb for possible future use, would I go blabbing out it? That's almost like getting spray paint out and pointing a big targeting circle and a sign "Bomb Here".
Something about this doesn't make sense. Take Israel:
They've built about 300 nuclear weapons at their Dimona facility.
Do they ever talk about how many they have? No. Best
guesses? 250-300. So I ask myself "Why all the hype around North Korea? What is the purpose of their fear-mongering? Or, is North Korea really run by the PowersThatBe as a 'fear tool' on demand? The headlines sure seem to support such a notion.
Ranglers I see the Washington Post is calling for Charles (Ooops forgot to report that) Rangel to step aside as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. --- Anyone want to sign my petition for an amendment which would make it illegal for anyone to come back from Washington with more net worth than they had when they went to Washington (except for an inflation adjustment per BLS figures, of course)?
To the Flu Camps! A number of people have suggested that I've been a little too dismal about the prospects for people who won't roll up their sleeves for the under tested 'swine/novel' flu vaccine (refuseniks) who seem destined to be shoved into government run flu camps. But, in case you have missed it, here's the sample of Iowa's plans to round up people per guidance from CDC. A snip from Iowa's plan:
Another snip:
About the best you can hope for is that your 'home setting' will be good enough to allow for self quarantine, but let me ask you a serious question: If government didn't have some 'camp plans' why would there be orders like this on official government web sites?
Deserves a little thought and a whole lot of planning, as I see it.
Oh...you can of course appeal such an order, but only once quarantined:
Attachment B, I noticed, was blank. --- Coping: Internet Addiction Up east of Seattle in Fall City, Washington, the first internet addiction center has opened its doors. A residential treatment program, this is aimed at curing people who become so addicted to computing that the rest of their life goes to hell in a hand basket.
In covering the story, the Associated Press lists 11-signs of internet addiction which you can read by clicking here.
reSTART has a very nice website and one of the items on there is a report of an NPR story headlined "Doctor: Internet Addiction should be termed a Disease." --- The internet has been a danger ever since the old BBS systems started up and people began to dribble their lives down 300-baud landline hookups. While the net has its place (news, comment, and commerce) the arrival of reSTART gets me to wondering how long before government will start requiring mandatory warning labels on web sites, like they do now for cigarettes and booze? --- Speaking of the 'net, a friend of mine asked me the other day "What was the ____pump joke your son had on his MySpace page the other day all about? I hadn't seen it - since I don't read my kid's writings on the web, but I did ask my son about it.
"What was that all about?" "Just a joke between me and a couple of my friends..."
I then proceeded to lecture G II on the dangers of social networking sites. The key point I made went something like this:
Judging by his subdued reaction, he hadn't thought about it - and I doubt most people have. But think back on all the things you've put on those kind of pages - even if in jet like this (male body part pump joke, for example) and ask yourself "If I were an HR manager in a hiring position, would this kind of post be a tipoff as to the real personality of this job applicant?" --- Going further, You even need to be somewhat circumspect in how you deal with requests from people who want to connect via LinkedIn and other such professional networking tools.
As I explained to my son, "If you are a health care professional, wouldn't you want your connections/contacts to me mostly docs, PA's, nurses, and fellow EMT's and the focus to be on delivery of medical services?"
I don't accept every LinkedIn request I get simply because most of my connections are either C-level types (e.g. CEO, COO, CFO, CTO, CMO, yada yada) because thats what I do when I'm not commenting on life and high crimes in finance. Not that I don't want to chat with other people, it's just I have to manage my time judiciously and expect you'd do the same.
The boy hadn't really thought about that...but when I explained how the internet can be used as a job candidate screener, he really 'got it' - but for everyone who does, there are hundreds who don't.
This all boils down to a simple rule of Life: You become like the people you hang around with. If you hang around with C-level people, you'll probably act a lot like a C-level type. If you hang around with docs, your path in life will tend that way. But, if - hypothetically - you had pictures from that wild drunken party on your FaceBook or MySpace pages they might be good for a laugh among friends.
But C-level types, HR-types, and people like me look at such pages as pretty good indicators of whether yours a serious minded human or something else. If you don't land that $100K gig, have you looked at your web presence like an outsider would?
Friday's Texas Humor Department This one was passed on by a Lone Star State reader:
Around the Ranch: Busy Fall Arrives Things are getting just plain busy around the ranch here lately. The remodel of the house continues on its elephantine pace with the wall mural about 7/8th's done, the new ceiling treatments in, and even the new carpet ready for install next week in a couple of rooms. That will leave some minor finishing carpentry for me to handle. But, in the midst of all this, Elaine has decided to hang up her flying aspirations until we get a little less on the plate. There's still a bathroom remodel to go, a new garage/carport to get built, at least 3,500 feet of goat fencing, not to mention the on-going maintenance issues of keeping the goat from going walk-about.
Panama is only visiting till about of the end of the month, but we've got company for Thanksgiving, company for Christmas, and tons of work to do between now and then to get ready ---- The old saying "If you know a man with no problems, buy him a goat" is still true. Our prize buck Dick Chinney (after his longish beard and occasionally war-like posturing and being full of it) has been bellering at the neighbor's prize buck across the road (Red Cedar) who's been chasing after a female in heat...and Dick Chinney's been getting just enough of the occasional whim of whatever passes in goatland for feminine mystique that he's gotten out a few times and has to be lured back into captivity. --- Speaking of which, the trailer for "The Men who Stare at Goats" - new George Clooney film is out on YouTube and looks like fun. November 6th. --- Although I've got a fair bit of work to do, I'm not exactly overworked, so I'll at least get current again in flying (finish my biennial flight review and do a couple of cross-countries) and such. Maybe go up to Oklahoma and have lunch with Robin Landry - you know, that kind of thing. --- Fall through spring is when most of the work gets done around these parts. Summer with many 100+ degree days is not conducive to pounding fence posts and such, but in the fall with just the right attitude adjustment, such chores can be imagined to be part of an exercise program, such as the kind city-folk paid $100 a month to get at a gym.
I've never understood the fascination with gym memberships and exercise like that. There are so many things to do around here (or any household) that a person could sweat for weeks on end and still not have everything done. Yet in spite of that, just yesterday I noticed both Elaine and her visiting brother Panama were working out with the free weights.
I bit my tongue, not wanting to suggest that we have plenty of exercise machines available besides the free weights. Maybe I'm just too practical.
Figure what I'd do is try printing up a couple of fancy membership cards for "George's Rural Gym" and give them each a copy. Charge 'em $50 a month each and list all the free weigh exercise machines we have around here. You know: Fence pounder, hammers for expanding the goat shed, shovels for digging the hole for the ham radio tower base, and the lifting that goes with picking up deadfall from the trees and burning it. Then there's the ShovelMaster machine that needs to be used on the fall garden patch....
Doubt they'd see the humor in it, though. Maybe if I charged $150 a month and offered free towels and put body wash dispensers in the showers. Better yet: Set up a portable mirror along the fence line so they could check form while putting in posts. Maybe a mirror at the garden, too...Yeah, that oughta do it.
Then all I'd need to do is spot fence posts....yeah, I like this a lot! "George's Gym Farm"
Thursday September 3, 2009 Gold in a China Shop The bullish performance of gold seems like it's signaling something: Probably a conscious move of the Chinese to offload some of their gathering pile of US dollars in an attempt to turn it into something a little more fungible than ink on paper. Perhaps they've learnt a bit from watching those hundred trillion dollar notes in Zimbabwe, you think?
It's important to keep an eye on the global currency wars because as I've explained many times, in the First Depression, the battles between countries were fought with tariffs as goods came off the boat. This time around, the wars are being fought upstream at the currency/exchange rate level. so the headlines that matter including "Yen rallies, hits 7-week high vs. dollar, euro" which results in headlines like " Gold Increases 2.3% As Greenback Drops."
Elsewhere, we see that oil is coming back up after visiting under $69 and China's markets are busy with a dead cat bounce.
With China giving itself an 'out' on derivatives positions (saying in effect that state owned companies can Welch on them) seems pretty clear to me that China's made a tactical decision to turn paper into goods as fast as they can, so dollar down and gold up, at least to the $1,030-1,040 level seems a safe bet although it's not investment advice. This is a crooked casino, after all.
You see where China is buying $50-billion in IMF notes? Exiting the buck. --- Cycle Studies - long a kind of bastard child of academic economics, but where fortunates are made now and then by independent thinkers have some interesting tidbits for the period ahead. In particular, one reader suggests a study of the 9/.2 update on the Cycle LT site as being interesting. Especially since it rhymes up with the linguistic outlook for the period.
Employment Preview Weekly unemployment data just out this morning:
All of which is more than you really care about, but I have a keen interest in this since the National Bank of Dad (care to guess who that is?) is till getting calls from the kids. Denis is interviewing for jobs like mad because she's out of benefits. G II is in his EMT recert program and Allison is working in the grocery industry (a fine move since people gotta eat). So the current Family Unemployment Rates is about 50%, you figures may vary.
National unemployment picture due out tomorrow. Bet you can hardly wait...hope you're not in the count. --- Market looks to tick up a bit at the open. May not hold. August retail sucked.
NS Sherlock Department "Study: unemployed feel traumatized by recessions." Geniuses! By-God frigging Geniuses.
Powerful Memes Department Memes are thought viruses and we're seeing some really odd things in the background that are percolating down at the archetype level. One of particular attention this morning - because it comes amidst the US debate on whether to accept swine flu vaccinations is the story out of China that "Needle stabbings lead to protests."
Just strikes me as some very strange memeering around needles and injections - seems way out of the range of 'coincidence", know what I mean? Wonder who's fanning anti-needle sentiments (globally) and why?
Quake Filling Expectations That quake down in Indonesia is bout 70-percent filling the expected linguistic values, per Cliff. Now that the death toll is up to 46, about the only thing missing is the archetype-level imagery of houses falling into their foundations, but with media coverage using words like 'houses pancaked' in the hardest hit areas, seems like that's just a matter of time until the pictures make it to the western mass-hysteria media. --- Due next the short-term high immediacy values from the lexical compote is a serving of terrorism (or bespoke fears of terrorism fears) in the Monday-Wednesday range of next week with references to explosions; we shall see. No damn fun knowing the future in advance, even if it's the sketchiest of outlines. But, such is our station in life.
Obamavision Goes to School Remember how we used to look forward to having slide shows, films, and more recently videos in school because it was so much more entertaining than the teacher and the chalkboard? Wonder if that applies here:
Wait! Who said that? Who just said "Sure makes the case for home schooling doesn't it?"
Obamavision comes to the dinner table September 9th.
Early Exits The Brit's National Health System may be judging and ending lives of terminally ill patients early according to a health scandal breaking in the royal's back yard. Say you've been dying to visit England? (Blame the coffee for my surly attitude!)
Iran's Woman Minister Let me see if I've got this right: BBC reports that the new Iranian cabinet includes a woman who is wanted by Argentina for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in that country. And Iran makes here what? Health minister? Not defense? --- Debka Files headlines that Hezbollah is deploying bio and chemical weapons near the Israeli border. Remember the linguistics about 'ill winds' when all this ends badly this fall?
The Bongo Beat Not that the win by Omar Bongo as president of Gabon is really that important to the Amurkin Sheeple, but on morning's like this, anything for a fun headline. Oh, if only this has been in The Congo or his running mate was named Conga, I could have had ever so much more fun with it. But I'm beat this morning.
Way To Go - Molex! Molex is shutting down a production facility in France and moving production back to the USA. Cool! Well, cool, that is, unless you're the French. Molex makes a fine line of auto electric connectors, so I figure let the French go back to soldering things.
Like My Inbox I see Caribbean storm Erika is "disorganized." Time machine points to the September 13-16 range for a Katrina-like biggy on the East Coast I gotta ask my sources in West Palm if there are still blue tarps about from previous year's damage. Figure we'll see a FEMA go 'round in this.
--- snip and save section ---
Coping: With Religious/Philosophical Ponderings Every so often, I use the term 'Universe' to refer to the great organizing whatever-It-Is that keeps the world operating as it does, hangs the planets in place, and defines that Whatever that Taoism refers to as That which cannot be touched that is bigger than everything because It is Everything. That prompted a reader to write:
I suppose. But, better brains than mine have spent a lot of time on this subject and as Zen or Taoism studies seem to indicate, small minds trying to 'know the Unknowable" can be a huge time sink. So for now, I'm quite content referring to the Great Nondenominational IT as a sort of master karma-weigher, rather than a zealous/jealous white bearded dude who damns those who don't believe this way or that mostly because of their birthright and circumstance. I mean, who arranged that, you know what I'm saying?
Best take on the mechanics of how Universe seems to work I've
found so far was in Alan Watt's The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
In the beginning there was nothing but God - who is by definition everything. Now, after some millennia, that gets to be really boring so God came up with this dandy way of keeping Himself (Itself?) entertained. He simply created a Universe, and then divided Himself up into billions of little pieces and now has what Watts calls the 'great game of hide & seek' at the center of which is the game of black & white; good & bad and the whole paradox of yin and yang.
That's the stuff which encompasses all religions and (thankfully) doesn't require this group be damned, or that group annihilated. By hiding little part of Himself/Itself in each of us, the game goes on forever until at last, we all discover that we're all part of the same Being and we sort of pull it all together again and we get to marvel in the wholeness of The Great Game.
While not perfect, Watt's explanation of the mechanics and difficulties of Being the Supreme does a nice job of assembling the available pieces as a single design pattern that fits all the observable data. It provides a framework (for me anyway) that explains how evil is necessary because without it there would be no good since such concepts (like black and white) are based on a scheme of opposition or opposed parts.
The framework allows me (and I'm not pressing my belief territory on you here) to honor and respect all organized religions as well as the unorganized sorts; they're all part of the Great Hide & Seek which is busily passing Eternity by playing hide & seek.
So whenever something really bad happens in my life, I take it with as grain of salt and a "Aha! I am getting more opposite of good & happy right now so that I can appreciate the good and happy stuff when it comes around again..."
If one accepts that there's a Universal Something that really is within everything then creations such as satan (the Great Liar, sa-tan) are really only elements of this game of hide & seek providing genuine evil which serves a purpose of putting genuine good into stark relief/ high contrast and to keep the cosmic level video game incredibly interesting for a long period of time. --- I think it's been said that more wars have been fought (and more people killed) over religion than any other cause throughout human history. I can't begin to imagine how boring watching Ant Colony Earth would be if all the ants did was sit down over a piece of pie and 'let down the walls' that separate our hearts from one another.
Fortunately, we are in precisely no danger of peace and good will breaking out. However the mere fact that we can pull a few bits and pieces of the future out of linguistic shifts on the internet must surely doom the whole of the net to limitations and licensure at some point. Can't have too much sharing too quickly; a millennium is a lot of time to fill.
Polarity is what keeps the game going although in the longest of views, entropy takes us all back to the central organizing Principal. But not just yet. Polarized humans are vastly entertaining. --- Now if you'll please open your hymnals to Crash Test Dummies' "God Shuffled His Feet" on page 2:
Speaking of Religious Matters You saw where the UK's Daily Mail headlines: Give us this day our daily... Catholic church issues prayer for faithful to say before sex.
Thinking back as a more-or-less normal 60 YO male, I can't remember all my sex-related prayers but there have been many. In a kind of chronological order they have included "Hope it's not going to be a baby...." to "Hope it's a girl" to "Hope it's a boy" to "Hope I can stay awake" to "I don't see that in Outlook today..." Middle Age is when the arrival of a Harbor Freight catalog is more important than Playboy - except the After Dark section which is a good writing tutorial.
My before sex prayers have also included "Do I have ice?" and "I hope this is the right mood music..."
Apparently they have something else in mind, though. --- Wonders if the pre-sex prayer should be said before doing tax filings - I mean it's just a different kind of...oh, never mind.
Wednesday September 2, 2009 Fundamental Problems At the Open Before we get into the earthquake in Indonesia - which has filled some of the expectation set I told you Monday to expect this week - there's a a tremendous amount going on that could have a massive impact on your future plans if the markets go as badly this fall as they could.
Let's start with the fundamental problem: Back in the days when most of us Boomers were growing up, there wasn't too much in the way of factory/shop floor automation. So a headline like "Productivity, factory orders seen on the rise" would naturally be met with celebrations down on Wall Street.
If you think of the rise in the US standard of living, it likely has described a huge "S" curve overs the past 40-years. We started from a baseline where only Amana had the Radar Range was being built and the original was a 6-foot tallk, 750 pound behemoth.
By 1975, however, microwave ovens had topped gas ranges. And here recently, you can buy Asian-made microwaves for under $100, depending on which 'feature sets' you hold out for.
The problem of microwave oven manufacturing is that the processes by which the 'waves' are kicked out are requiring fewer and fewer humans to accomplish.
The Federal Reserve (which ain't really federal - it's just a bankers club basically that looks after money in the interest of its member banks and owners) makes a big deal about American 'productivity' numbers. At some level, however, the People's Economist will quiet remind you that at its extremes anymore, you can have 100% productivity and no change in human employment provided you have a product which can be manufactured with 100% via an automated production line.
Not that it's been consumer electronics, either. This has been going on in the auto industry, in warehousing and distribution where pick & place has been the rage in semi-automated distribution centers, such that the amount of labor provided by humans has been going down while the machines which are the real backbone of much of modern production, have been ascendant.
At the macro level, once humans could be swept out of much of the manufacturing process, they tended to congregate in overhead kinds of positions in companies: C-level guys who direct the machines, engineers who come up with the 'new product implementations' and the bevies of bean-counters who think they know more about how to run a company than the sales and marketing types.
It's become so extreme that I tell clients (now and then) that a good management team should really be 'product independent'. Oh yeah some special 'lingo' for a vertical market can't be avoided, but the basics - five unique selling features, the companywide implementation of strong positioning, commitment to customer service (highly automated) are pretty transportable from one industry to another. If you have an ISO-9000+ team making X, you can build an ISO-9000 making Y pretty easy.
Lots of good money being made by Microsoft Gold partners and Oracle types who tweak companywide ERP systems, optimized for this vertical or that, but the basics are pretty much universal.
Not to waste you first half cup of coffee on management philosophy this morning, but it eventually gets around to the point that as automation goes up then amount of human labor keeps going down and as it does, things like an increase in productivity and factory orders will not - in my estimate - have much impact on the nation's real unemployment rate which even some Fed officials admit is nearer 16% when you count discouraged workers than the Happy talk headline number of 9.4%. --- The factory order number reflects little more than current sell-through not some marvelous expansion of product sales. For the most part, the economy has/is flatlined and though it's not popular to point this out, at some juncture we will get the 'straw that breaks the camels back". Counting processor clock ticks has little to do with genuine productivity in the workplace except insofar as it may speed up a few engineering calcs, so the growing hordes of machines (more often than not being sited in Mexico and other tax dodge havens) aren't taxed and depreciated here where the unemployment is.
Why? Least cost labor, of course! Which is what's behind the moves offshore and I don't see that reversing anytime soon until the oil prices make long-haul (think of it as remote production) less attractive.
That is not likely to happen any time soon because the Obama administration and the Bushies before them, have been in the go along to get along mode, neither shaping the country into a new business model, nor articulating clear direction. Instead, the business lobbies scream for favors (which they get at the border with Texas and the southern tier states endorsing new highways for Mexican based trucking to imperially run on US roads, while the other loud lobby is the entitlement groups who want more and more dough yet don't actually make things that can be taxed.
You see the larger view problem, I trust? --- So it's against this kind of uneven playing field that the US market has a terrible crossroads at the opening this morning according to my friend Robin Landry who's got a decent track record of getting things right for his clients who have patience.
We talked after the close on Tuesday and as he sees it:
Which leaves me expecting something like a little bounce in the market on the numbers due out today. Since the formula is something like "no bounce = financial collapse" today, I figure the flash traders have been given the word. Just you and I don't get to see it, that's all. What? You think this is an even playing field? ROFLMAO. ---- But seriously: I'm still rather glum about the longer-term outlook, however, since the predictive linguistics report due around the 15th doesn't paint a pretty picture for people who still have their 401(k)'s in stocks as the fall comes along in under three weeks now. May be a horrific fall and those who don't get really conservative in their accounts now may find they have worked for a lifetime only to be 'had' by the boys on Wall Street and their friends in the money business. --- I was talking with a friend last night and we were kicking around what would really fix the economy. My answer? A cap on interest rates. If the Fed rate is under 1%, a mortgage should not be more than 4-5% above the cost of money. Nor should consumer debt be marked higher than 8-10% above the cost of money.
My reasoning? Try this one for size: When consumer debt is ridiculously high ( over 33% on some credit cards - still and despite pabulum flavored 'reforms') there is so much profit that the financial products people can sell products two or three times and there's enough interest to pay for a couple of layers of salesmen, accountants and lawyers to make the deals. If we had thinner margins via interest spread caps, we would shrink the financial products business since there's be enough money for one layer of profit - maybe two, but not the kind of pyramiding that got us down this crooked path.
But, you probably already figured that out for yourself, right?
Leftover problem: What would we do with all those unemployed financial products salesmen and their ilk? Who would make the big campaign contributions, commission the mega mansions and what have you? It's a terrible public policy question, isn't it. I mean if you're one of American self-proclaimed ruling class who puts themselves up for auction. Ooops, I mean election. Really...election. Repeat after me...election not auction. And the checks in the mail, yada, yada
Hope That Quake Was "It" We had an overnight earthquake down in Indonesia that has killed at least six people so far and done a fair amount of damage. Not only that, but it set off a tsunami warning for the Indian Ocean and it's making a bit of a headline splash. Whether the headlines are enough to fill the language descriptor set.
Our firsthand report from Bernard - ex-Houston Bureau Chief is as follows:
--- I don't remember whether I put out the PowerPoint on how the predictive linguistics project works, but I did a talk about it a while back up in Tyler for a group that came from as far away as New Mexico and you can read my notes (as a .PDF file) here. Several weeks old, but you can get the idea of how it works.
Yeah - it's difficult to wrap your head about the use of the internet to peer into the future based on changes in language, but as this week's earthquake seems to have come in on schedule, and if the next immediacy values to be filled are a series of terrorist explosions (Sept. 7-11 timeframe - deliberately no more detail provided) then the odds of a sudden/unexpected Katrina type storm around the 13-15th of the month may be higher. Or, we could be completely wrong. This is all bleeding edge computing. --- Yeah,. I saw that there was a reported 4.5 in Nevada last night, but I got this odd email from USGS with the subject line: "2009-09-02 08:13:11 DELETED: (M 4.5) NEVADA 40.7 -116.4" So officially, seems like no EQ took place. (OK, so what was it? Not explained...) --- Yeah - I still wouldn't be surprised by a super quake this week in China yet to come - after all, there was that mass UFO sighting in Shandong province and often UFO's show up before quakes, or maybe they are some kind of natural phenomena surrounding quakes (quake lights?)...just no real research into that area that I've seen.
Nor am I the only one eyeing China. A hip 'gets it' reader has been doing research and shares this:
Shandong Province is about 900 miles east - and that's where the UFO sightings were that I mentioned earlier this week. Next best bet on the Chinese UFO's then? Going to look at Three Gorges Dam before...before....we'll get back to this in the future.
Loan Sharking Cities? Got your calculator warmed up and idling? Here's the morning's second econ lesson having done an econ and a computer science lecture, LOL.
Headline: "Budget Crisis: City takes out $275M Loan" which refers to the deal Philadelphia has cut with JP Morgan. While the initial rate the city is paying is 3% interest, it pops up to 8% December 1st if the city doesn't repay the loan.
What Inquiring Minds want to know is this: What did the city put up as security and what's JP Morgan's plan if the city doesn't pay? A bank-owned city? Just gotta ask these things.
Fall of America Not that the predictive linguistics are the only source of pessimism when it comes to America's future as a Constitutional republic. A Russian professor says "Collapse of America could begin within two months." Worse: The Obama administration is not getting ahead of the problem says the Russian dude.
Obamavision Returns After going through a period when it seemed like the president was on television daily (getting more TV time than Oprah and Jerry Springer combined, LOL), I thought we were past watching 'president TV' but seems not. Looks like next week sometime we'll be treated to a major speech on Obama's healthcare reform plans.
What Planet's She From Department? Word that SecState Hillary is upset with private contractor guards at the US embassy in Afghanistan for their purported parties with booze and hookers seems a little out of touch with reality to me. No mention of it being while on duty and when off duty, what does she expect? Boys'll be boyz in the sand box - what's so surprising? --- Transactional Analysis possibility: Displaced emotions. Just sayin'...
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Coping: Whence Comes Super Flu? Despite all the warnings and the public fear-mongering on the 'pandemic flu' the msot significant flu story I've found so far suggests that the flu may have morphed more into a government scare tactic and profit bonanza for Big Pharma than a real people-killer.
The story that isn't getting play? "H1N1 Pandemic Virus Does Not Mutate Into 'Superbug' in UMd. Lab Study" --- OK, so we take that story, two aspirin, and read tomorrow's column...
The headline about the government using flu-mongering as a power grab continues with the headline "Cops jump on swine-flu power: Shots heard 'round the world." over at WorldNetDaily.
Sounds plenty scary but then I got an email from a reader in Massachusetts who has done his homework:
Depends how much you trust government, I suppose. My decision is made - so is Elaine's - and we're not going to be shot - at least this way.
Software Update - Opera Users Note! Got a nice email from Jens over at Maxa-Tools worth passing on:
Maxa Cookie Manager has scrubbed 37,642 cookies off my main machine so far. Hazards of being a power user, huh?
Tuesday September 1, 2009 Bunker Business Although it may seem an unusual place to begin a daily economic column, there are a couple of things that have come into focus for me as it relates to pending military events this fall.
The first deals with how the timing may work out on the expected Israeli attack on Iran, which I had earlier pegged around October 25th based on my read of the predictive linguistic work from www.halfpasthuman.com. As we have gotten close to the event, it looks now like there will be some kind of a prequel event around October 25th, but then we should go through a week or two of massively building tensions before the actual attack, maybe even as late as late November to early December. The next "Shape of Things To Come" is set for release September 15th and you can do your own read of things.
First week of November oughta to feature busy headlines, though, with economic messes and then the lead-in tension --- perhaps we'll see things like big name political figures flying around trying to personally intercede -that kind of thing. --- With this in mind, we can now see the headlines shaping up to support these projected events. For example, the well-connected Israeli news operation DebkaFile is reporting that the "US Trebles MOP "bunker buster" bombs order, wants more and faster.
We can also see that Iran is not sounding quite so belligerent as the BBC headlines that "Iran 'has new nuclear proposal." Trying to stop the clock,. are they?
This comes after the past few days where the officialdom in Iran has been debating the makeup of the new Iranian cabinet which has been on ME news channels. Are they worried that the West isn't kidding? Could be.
Same kind of 'lightening up' going on with North Korea, too as the NY Times announces that "N. Korea Reopens Border with South."
Bomb orders increased and in the background Iran and N.K. act a little more conciliatory. Makes sense, I suppose.
Markets Down As long as the market stays over Dow 9,100, there's still a chance that we could get one more pop upward before the fall of fall, but it isn't looking too bright this morning as the US futures are down before the open. Housing and manufacturing data is due out about 10 AM if you want to chase numbers. Rotsa ruck. --- European markets down already today since the EU is at the highest unemployment levels in a decade.
Charring L.A. The Station fire in L.A. county is over 100,000 acres now with no sign of containment yet.
Sun Quiet:
Cold Winter Ahead
SpaceWeather.com is reporting just a single sunspot today (#1025) after 51-spotless days.
Gets me to wondering if there's any predictive value to the kind of winter clothes people are buying? You know...a bipedal woolly worm kind of thing.
Million dollar promotion: Weather Channel follows its own forecasters shopping! No? Not a million dollar idea, huh?
OK, Shoot 'em In the Back? Suppose for a minute that someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night and you reach into your night stand and whip out your handy Ruger P-85. As you take the safety off, you yell "Who goes?" and there's a sound from the living room. Going out into the other room, and taking your trigger finger out of indexed and your racing heart reminds you this is scary and you're in a 'him or me' situation. Although the attacker's back is to you, he begins to turn and you catch the glint of steel in his hand. Knife or gun? You're not sure....but he looks like he is turning....
Do you shot? --- The answer to this question may have changed a bit in Florida where a "court OKs force against retreating attackers."
Comical M&A Department Nothing funny about $4-billion: Disney is buying Marvel Entertainment. I won't say anything snipe or they might send Spidey over to rough me up, LOL. Where'd I put my Kryptonite? --- Skype is going private after being part of eBay. Guesses run in the $2-billion range. --- Sony is selling off a TV manufacturing plant in Mexico to a Taiwan outfit.
Say, this reminds me - forget which of the foreign channels was reporting it, but word is that the last television picture tube has been produced! Boy, talk about change: Nothing but LCD displays being made any more. Really amazing when I think about it. That old Trinitron might have collector value someday...
Headline of the Day I like the N Y Post's headline style. Writing about the ex-Société Générale trader who supposedly went rogue, the Post headlines "FRENCH TOAST: Kerviel Trail is Set".
Anniversaries "Ceremonies in Poland mark start of WWII" today while in Russia it's the fifth anniversary of the Beslan school massacre that killed 331 people. --- This week is also the 40th anniversary of the Carpenter's recording debut.
Gee, how time flies when you're working for a living, huh?
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Coping: With George's Chart Reader asked an eminently reasonable question which I should answer - since she's probably not the only one to wonder about this:
The chart she refers to is the one at the bottom of this page, here. (scroll down a tad)
Point #1: Yes, both lines start at the 1/20/2000 Dow level from January of 2000. The reason that the 1929 Dow looks the same is that the 1929 Dow has been multiplied by 31.15419986 to 'normalize' the data. So each of the historical values for the 1929-1940 period is multiplied by this figure so that we can see how the two traces compare.
This is a really dandy way to 'norm'; data so you can do an apples-to-apples comparison of performance. Not only that, but since the purchasing power of the dollar has been watered down so much since 1929, it actually makes sense to diddle with the numbers to so extent.
My personal preference is to divide the 1929 Dow (376.29 on 9/3/29) into the 2000 Dow (11,722.98 in 2000) to get the 'correction' which is then uniformly applied.
I keep thinking everyone can hear what I'm thinking, so I don't very often remind people of this.
The important thing is that the general shape of the curves is similar. If you want to really see how close they are, you could align the data for both inflation adjustments and then 'norm' it. Problem is, if you do this, the curves get way closer together since there was rapid deflation in the 1930's event, which increased the purchasing power of those dollars that were available.
On the other hand, in the present replay of 1929, the dollar values have (more or less) constantly eroded.
I've haven't done the inflation correction/constant dollar 'norming' version of this chart, simply because no one has asked, but I've put it on my 'to-do' list for this weekend's Peoplenomics report. Yeah, it'll be interesting, but more'n likely quite damning since the track will be even closer.
I resisted the urge to put a 'tail' on the data, but in some of my charts I will repeat the last value several times so that the vertical height my be more easily ascertained relative to the Y axis scaling. --- The "Art of the Chart" is an area of data presentation is one worthy of a little bit of study. For example, one can either make or break apparent performance by choosing the scaling of charts. Logarithmic scale charts can turn curves into what see like straight lines, for example, and while that may be to some people's tastes, it certainly isn't to mine - which is why I tend toward linear charting.
Same thing with trend lines: I like to put lots of them in place since they can be useful in trying to get a sense of what underlying dynamic the numbers may be obeying. A linear trend my look most pleasing, or an X period moving average, or an exponential curve, or a polynomial.
I apologize for not making this a little more clear in the past and promise to add a little note (1929 data normed to 1/10/2000 Dow levels.
Not sure you'll want to see how close they come when they're all adjusted to constant dollars. Then it gets really ugly and you might not like the picture. Remember the Jack Nicholson line from "A Few Good Men", non?
The more things change, the more they stay the same, LOL.
The Well-Regulated Life Thinking about holding a garage sale? Well, just make sure you're not reselling recalled toys, or Uncle could take up after you. Or, as the Kansas City Star headlines it: "Seller, beware: Feds cracking down on secondhand sales of some products." --- That the US has a huge demographic bubble of Boomers (including me) just amazes me; With all the lead paint and dangerous toys around from when us oldsters were kids, it's amazing that any of us survived at all! Although maybe the lead paint levels back then have something to do with our political choices nowadays... Yeah, that's it: Maybe we really are that dumb.
Around the Ranch: Cop Calling With the return of Panama Bates from another round of Central American adventures (including the being swept out to sea only to be 'spit up' on the shore by a rogue wave while returning froim a hike in the mountains north of Panama City some 80-miles, or so) we had a nice dinner out up in Tyler last night. There, Panama was able to have his first steak in a year.
Turns out, after some discussion, that when you eat out in some of the not-so civilized places in Central America that there are certain health risks that we very much take for granted here in the US. "If you eat out very much, it's only a matter of time until you get intestinal parasites," he explained. "People have different ideas about health. For example, it's common not to wash lettuce or other vegetables. " Oh-oh. Forgot about that part of travel.
Last time I was traipsing around way off the beat path, it was 1984 in Peru...time blurs the details while the highlights of such adventures remain fairly crisp. --- Nevertheless, on the way back to the ranch from Tyler, we were pulled over by a local police car in Coffee City for doing 70 in a 55. Honest mistake on my part, since I was pretty sure that the speed limit was 65 there...hmmm.
But even though there was no ticket ("I'm going to let you off with a warning. Ya'll keep it down..."), since the officer was going the other direction and turned around to come after me instead of the gray Silverado that had been between us and the cop car on the Lake Palestine bridge on Highway 155, I was reminded that as much fun as my red car is to drive, it's a cop caller.
Why would a police officer go after a nondescript pick-up when there was a much shinier guards red, whale tail, driving lights on target which looked like it was going fast?
After thinking a bit on the topic I've tentatively concluded that I may put an ad on eBay offering the red car as partial trade on an airplane. It might be fun to have both the red car and a small plane (both get around the same mileage) but not much sense having a 150+ MPH capable car when it's never going to be legally driven at more than half that. On the other hand, even a used Geo Metro would get us to the airport and from there, t'ain't no speed limits upstairs except 200 knots in certain kinds of airspace.
Only thing that worries me is that this kind of thinking may be an indication of getting old. Can't have that. Maybe I'm just trying to decide whether I'd like to be listening for an outer marker or a radar detector...just no telling.
Cooler Cars Speaking of automobiling - Russian TV has a special 26-minute piece about the "Motor Rally to the North Pole. Seems in April for the first time "two Russian-made YEMELYA experimental vehicles traveled over 1,100 kilometers across the drift ice of the Arctic and reached the North Pole." That'd be off-roading even by E. Texas standards. --- Can't get the Russia Today channel? Ooops. Limited inputs, limited outputs. What can I say?
What Slingers? OK, this is absolute proof that you can find anything on the internet. Happened to touch base with a ham radio friend this morning and he mentioned that one of his next projects was to build a 'shepherd's sling". "A what Jeff?" I asked.
Turns out there is a whole web site about the ancient art of 'slinging' that dates to long before the David and Goliath showdown.
OK...another goodie to add to my repertoire of skills I suppose. But, as crazy as lawmakers are (and they are experts at slinging you-know-what) I think I'll hold off on this one. I figure it'll only be a matter of time, though, till we're all gonna be required to register rocks.
Monday August 31, 2009 Special Update Dow Theory Train Wreck Go look at this chart: here - which compares the Transports to the Dow and then read the article which suggests China's going to tell counterparties in derivatives to take a hike if the trade doesn't suit 'em.
But the best line of the day is from a Dr. Marc (Dr. Doom) Faber interview I missed last week:
How many ways can you spell t-o-a-s-t?
Only What's Actionable If I had a crystal ball, I'd be tempted to cover the damn thing up because the next several weeks are looking downright crappy. So much is drifting around in the predictive linguistics that Cliff at www.halfpasthuman.com is planning to put out a "Shape of Things To Come" report around the 15th. But, beyond that, after swearing off 'short term immediacy values' there are three that I outlined for Peoplenomics subscribers on Sunday that you may as well put them on your refrigerator door so you can play along at home.
The three high immediacy values indicate the increased chance of a major earthquake this week (Sep 2-5, more likely 3-4) which will be large enough (>6.8 to 8.0+) that a couple of weeks after the quake we'll still be watching imagery of buildings falling into their foundations. Might want to bookmark the USGS global seismograph page here. Oh, and the global quake list here. Along about Thursday or Friday is when the data seems to peak.
Quake could be Turkey/Pakistan/Asia/China because of the time delay in the pictures, or around latitude 34 north but that data's very broad, so anything south of the SF area latitude-wise seems possible. And may not be North lat. See the problem?
Then about a week later (shading toward September 7-11 there's an increased risk of 'terrorism' events (explosions, no further detail or clarity yet) and then around September 13-15 a 'sudden/surprising' hurricane coming ashore in the Southeast USA. ---- Actionable? Maybe not. Let me explain: The problem with all of this is that these are statistical probabilities based on shifts in language and may or may not actually happen. Secondly, they are not specifically actionable except insofar as people in SoCal and around New Madrid may wish to have earthquake kits topped off with fresh water. That comes up on my list this week, even though we're nowhere near a quake-zone. At least yet.
Same thing with terrorism risks elevating around September 7-11th: Not enough clarity to be actionable and may not even be in the US, since only the terra entity has been processed so far, so it could be a few days before we find out if that shows in the PopUSA data when that portion of the model is run.
Then there's the 'sudden/surprising' hurricane around Sept 13-15 in the SE USA. Again, about all you can do is buy a couple of blue tarps and have the generator ready; this one threatens to cause some degree of Diaspora and we should be treated to visuals of FEMA's response in KatRita kind of fashion by say the 20th or so. ---- Beyond these three immediacy value pops it looks like the "Shape of Things to Come" report will be out around September 15th, and by then many of these short term values/aberrations in the data will be passed and they're not really the point of the work, anyway.
My advise to anyone is to focus on those things which are personally actionable and blow off most of the rest of the news. Toward that end, next week's Peoplenomics report is a kind of step-by-step report (workbook? Don't know how wordy I will get...) which explains how to set up your own cross between a radio or TV assignment editor-level information platform at home and personal recording studio. Hope it won't go ebook length, but that sometimes happens when it's a subject that I really enjoy. Not that the budget for such a creation (About $1,000) could be better spent on other things, but it's at least a primer on how to get access to non-corporate media and get some sense of how the rest of the world is operating.
You are what you think - and getting control of your own electronic sheep leash is at least a first step on the road to independent thought. --- Having laid all that out, the markets really fade into insignificance, since fall market declines are nothing new and we're almost at fall now. In the linguistic work, fall in America may be described any number of ways: The classic version would be through September 20/21 which it 'officially' arrives, but in contemporary language it's from Memorial Day to Labor Day which means next weekend we'll be edging out of it.
Where things have come more clearly into focus is what happens to the longer term values from September 15th out through next year and there are been some degradation in the outlook there, especially as it relates to basics like food and governmental organization and response to (nominally) free humans; just be patient and the report will be along. Meantime...
Fires Over Glendale The "Summer of Hell" has been a bit lighter (so far) than some of my personal expectations, although we've had plenty of 'revolutionary' imagery & revolutionspeak to contend with; everything from demonstrators practicing open-carry of fire arms at political demonstrations, to the hot language around the town hall meetings attempted by congresspersons and now the major fires out in California which are threatening the big communication towers up on Mount Wilson.
Don't know if you have ever had the chance to take the 'windy roads' up northeast from Glendale, but it's a pretty area, or at least it used to be. A Google map of the area is here. The reason the Mount Wilson fire is important is that there are something like 22 television stations and 25 radio outlets with facilities up on that hill, although there aren't that many towers. A lot of them are shared facilities with big backup generators and cooperative tower leasing. Two firefighters dead so far.
New Broom Sweeps Japan The first time in what, 30-odd years, Japan has a new party in power. Gone are the (not really) Liberal Democratic Party and in come the Democrats. All of which would be a total yawner except for the fact that the Dems want to impose a ban on temporary workers on the factory floors of the country which has the business lobbyists are twisted up in their knickers. --- Monday's action on the Tokyo Stock Exchange was muted with the N225 down 4/10th's of one percent. Japan's economy has about been flatlined since 1996.
Like the US problems catching up to us now, Japan has problems that no one has simple answers for because all possible solutions will cause socioeconomic pain. The problem can be summarized as"
All of which leads to all kinds of teeth-gnashing and snarling among the politicos who rather than getting candid in in-your-face about the tough choices spend most of their time maneuvering for maximum personal gain/profit/wallet padding. --- China was down almost 7 percent last night - way I figure it is that some of China's hot money will be called home to cover, so I'd expect the US market to be down today. Just a feeling. Shanghai chart and numbers here. A couple of big losers in Chinese steels and transports when you drill down into it. Bummer for China's economy.
Sick City The headline that H1N1 has infected about 10% of New York in its rounds this spring leaves me wondering "If this stuff is so damn dangerous, where are all the dead NY'ers?" --- Such reasonable questions aside (and yes, I understand it can mutate) I'm still aghast and appalled that flu hysteria is on the verge of turning the Republik of Massachusetts into a "Constitution-free Zone" by contemplating roundups and $1,000 a day fines for those who won't roll up their sleeves. I won't go for the obvious jackboot and needles since the net's full of that. --- President of Columbia has the swine flu.
Like It Wasn't Obvious Department Faced with North Sea declines, mounting debt load on the Pound, newspapers in the UK are getting around to my view that the "Lockerbie bomber was set free for oil." Not being judgmental on this, mind you; depends how attached you are to driving and reliable power in the UK, does it not? --- That said, Al Jazeera is reporting this morning that the Lockerbie bomb is in the hospital.
Pirate Blockades The British government is considering new rules which would allow UK ISP's to cut off internet file-sharing users. As you'd expect, there are some folks who are really ticked at the proposal because it will likely add to internet costs. But, the government's business secretary Peter Mandelson insists it's a workable solution... --- News watching tip: If a media outlet refers to the UK biz-sec as 'Lord Mandelson' you can get an important insight into the old (top down/royalty model) paradigm being supported down at the unquestioned/subliminal level.
"Lord" is royal labeling scheme and we don't do that around here as my personal clarity on the subtleties of paradigm reinforcing mechanisms improves. Sorry for being so dense.
Slow Learner's Department I noticed that Russian television today is marking their pull out from Afghanistan 15-years ago. Meantime, "U.S. fears clock ticking on Afghanistan." Can someone explain to me why we're there besides the economic stimulus for the war machinery outfits, the poppy fields and pipeline routes? --- Russian TV is also reporting about the growing number of political prisoners in Georgia - evidence they say that democracy is dying there. Still looks like a Moscow vs. the West flashpoint to me.
One more from our scan of Russian headlines? Sure, how's this one: "Cutting-edge laser surgery - with no cuts" is coming along.
Immunity Card? I've been wondering if former veep Dick Cheney might have gotten a 'get out of jail" card from his former boss George Bush before leaving office. At least that's one question which crosses my mind upon reading how "Cheney may snub detainee probe." --- Linguistic note: If you or I did that it would be contempt. That Cheney might do it being called just a 'snub' is curious, isn't it?
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Coping: High Tech Monday All kinds of things to ponder in the high tech headlines today. One of them is all the buzz about the new version of Apple's operating system (Snow Leopard) that started shipping on Friday. Accompanied by stories like "Snow Leopard reveals new spots", and beset with a few bugs when it comes to HP printers, Snow Leopard seems to be heading Apple in the direction of a multicore future.
None too soon, it would seem: AMD has come out with a new six-core chip called an Opteron which features ultra-low power consumption.
All of which has gotten me to postpone buying anything new for my main computer for a while. When I start to pencil out the cost of any upgrade versus the actual performance, I can get more done by throwing another 1 TB external drive onto the USB port than going through the grief and agony of a complete software platform roll. Besides, my typing speed is relatively fixed, anyway. don't see anything in Windows 7 or Snow Leopard that says it can improve my typing accuracy. Damn.
Twits or Tweets Ah...here's another one of those data points which supports my 1,000 channels of digital wastelands theory. "Fox lives up re-runs with Twitter commentaries."
With all the places to see in the world, all the things to learn, all the cool and really personal stuff people can think of in their highest creative moments, is this what humans come to? OMG we are sooooo screwed as a species.
Say Cheese You saw where India has lost contact with a satellite which it had orbiting the moon? My theory is the aliens with their bases on the backside of the moon shot it down or somehow zapped it. It couldn't possibly has been a power supply level component failure, now, could it? Naw...let's blame the aliens for this one, too.
Chinese UFO Siting Still, there have been enough crop circles this year - and now a huge UFO sighting in China to at least keep the possibilities of something other than humans being about open. For example, I trust you're aware of the Chinese UFO sighting case where literally thousands of people in a 300 kilometer range reported a mass sighting in Shandong province?
Of course, to my simple mind, having UFO's sighted in this wide an area being written off as 'paper lanterns' being released in a park just seems a little...oh, you know...improbable. --- Here's the real deal: Far as I know, China hasn't been as aggressive about shooting down UFO's as the West has been, so why wouldn't any other-worlders go there? Besides, they own the US, right? No wonder the Western press will marginalize such reports, LOL --- Outlandish stuff? Of course! But, what the heck, it's Monday and this is a 4½ day work week anyway. (Nobody's gonna do squat on Friday afternoon ahead of a three-dayer, right?) So go ahead, pour another cup and go read the "Global UFO Event to Occur in 2010?" story and ask yourself this: "Why is that story there, why is there this UFO stuff in the linguistics out in 2011, and why does the US Navy have a Space Command and what are they doing?"
As long as youi know the grays are essentially hydraulic and all you need to do is severe one of their internal hoses to disable them (which is why a good tinfoiler will never go anywhere without a knife) it doesn't really matter does it?
Why, drop by tomorrow and we'll get into the latest Michael Jackson sightings. My theory is he and Elvis have been working on comebacks.
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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In it (and I'll do a terrible job paraphrasing here, so please
forgive me) Watts proposes an idea that goes something
like this:
