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Published Monday - Friday about 8 AM Central Time Except Holidays....many major typos are fixed by 8:30 daily
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October 3, 2009 13:10 PM CDT New
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This site is supported by subscription to Peoplenomics. For additional content, please subscribe. Content mirrored at my other site: www.independencejournal.com,
Urgent Web Bot Update Ref: 10/25 The following in from Clif at www.halfpasthuman.com on Saturday - changes somewhat our expectation for the way things will be working out both in markets and in the defense world over the next month:
The usual caveats here - doesn't mean, for example that war between Iran and Israel won't happen, it just means if it does (which is may anyway) it will be so far down the food chain as to pale in terms of personal impact. If you didn't have anything else to do this weekend, you might be pondering: "How could I survive - and for how long - if there were market suspensions, hold-ups of executions of electronic transactions and all the other things other countries have gone through when faced with calamitous financial events? Refer to any Argentinean or Icelander who's been there... Sure means out earlier piece this morning may be closer to the mark than comfortable.... Waiting for Black Monday Maybe it will be this coming Monday - or maybe one after that - but the forces which have been building as this 'bounce from the first leg down' in the market continue to evolve, I can tell you the absolute last place I'd have money today would be in stocks. I spent part of Friday working on the subscriber report (www.peoplenomics.com) for this weekend and the Dow still appears to be higher - by a factor of more than two - than competing investments. Lots of myths and 'old sayings' from that period which will be reviewed in Sunday's report. But most stem from common sense - you can't live high on borrowed money forever - yet with a continuing balance of payments deficit, a moronic mantra like 'strong dollar' and an increasing lag in manufacturing, the American dream stands on the precipice of becoming the American nightmare. Such is the stuff of economic tipping points.
Speaking of which, time for your Saturday morning count of banks to go down: Only 10 branches, so just 3,726 branches have been reorg'ed since IndyMac in May of last year. That's not so bad, is it?
The good news - if there's any to be read if one takes off the rose-colored glasses about this economy - is few and far between. September payrolls dropped 263,000 jobs and given that the cash for clunkers is over, auto sales tumbled and on and on goes bummer headline after bummer headline.
If you want to read some fine 'whistling past the graveyard, click over to the Wall Street Journal which reports the "IMF Chief: Double-Dip not 'Key Scenario". Yeah, right, you betcha, sport.
Not saying that this next week will bring a further market collapse - the hype may keep things intact a while longer. But at some point, global recognition of our 4.6¢ dollars (that's how much has been hollowed out in purchasing power since 1913) will start to dawn on people who we've been depending on to keep us living high on borrowed money.
Next week's Treasury auctions will be closely watched, since China is not expected to be stepping up. The g-7 finance leaders are meeting this weekend in Istanbul (Turkeys anyone?) and may not be able to issue a joint statement. Could it be that's because the US if babbling about 'strong dollars' and other participants know how to read a balance sheet?
Stopped Out "InStop abruptly closes all 152 retail stories and lays off all workers" reports a Cleveland.com headline.
Wasn't it just last week I was telling you to expect a swarm of small business closings about October 1st as companies which had been counting on (bought into) the 'recovery is just ahead pant load would be having to file BK or reorg? Tell me about this ' recovery' again, wouldja...
Dig Out - Calif. Quake Swarming While up to 4,000 people may still be buried in the rubble down in Indonesia, we've had a sizeable earthquake swarming event in Central California. So...
Watch California Pacific Plate definitely active again...34 quakes just today alone and it's not even 7 AM as I write this. I'd expect later on this weekend we ought to be reading headlines like "Officials issue earthquake watch..." kind of thing.
Weekend Get Aways The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency is in Iran this weekend. No, not for the shopping. We'll be keeping a fairly close eye on the fancy footwork around Iran's nuclear program as we get closer to the real start of global crisis weeks on October 25th plus or minus a couple of days. Figure less than three weeks till Pepto Time. --- Israel is keeping in practice using Gaza.
Blow Out, 1 A 'state of calamity' is what officials in the Philippines have called the most recent hurricane (Parma's) arrival.
Blow Out, 2 The Windy City got a thumbs down from the International Olympic Committee. Going to Rio in 2016 instead of president Obama's adopted town.
Bow Out With Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America to throw in the towel before the end of the year, the Charlotte Business Journal is asking a very interesting question: Does Uncle Sam have any say on who his successor is? I mean, since the Obama administration has Czars for this, that and too many things else (very Roosevelt-like in this regard), is there a Bank President Hiring Czar? And if not, why not?
Picking Up After Bernie "4 Madoff Relative Sued by Liquidator" as the ripples of that rip off continue.
Here Comes Healthcare The "Senate finance panel nearly done with its healthcare bill" which means this is coming down the track with - or without - wide open debate. The Oministration's plan is to shove it through using the finance track so it's just a spending deal and by the time it gets through, no one - especially members of the public - will have had time to consider what's included in it, and in turn give feedback to their so-called representatives. --- But, as we learned from the too big to fail banksters, keeping the public out of the loop is fine since everyone in Washington turns a deaf ear to the public anyway when there's significant money for corpgov issues on the table. --- Just as a general flavor of things back in DC there's the matter senator John Ensign's reported conduct. And then there's representative Charlie Rangel who's under investigation. And the recent dissecting of how the Ted Stevens case was handled. I've been working on a list of folks in Washington I wouldn't trust with a lunch tab, let alone the fate of a Great Nation.
Bee As in Bayer New British film which is on our 'things to watch if we ever get time list": Vanishing of the Bees lays much of colony collapse disorder on Bayer's neonicotinoids now banned in France but still used in the US and UK. High crop yields or bees - helluva choice, huh?
A Nobel Bra Do I understand correctly that an Ig Nobel prize was just given for a designer bra that could be used as a gas mask in case of an attack by loonies? Don't know if the designers have thought this through but the prospect of millions of women taking their underwear off seems like it incents instead of prevents terrorism. --- I can hear the bad pick-up lines already: "Mind if I borrow your mask?" --- If you've made it this far you might want to show up Monday morning about 8 AM Central for our next titillating look under the...er...headlines.....
--- Send your comments to george@ure.net The UrbanSurvival Mall: Peoplenomics This Week: Competing Uses of Cash A number of readers have asked me (at various times over the past six months) “I have X dollars in my in my Y account…what should I do with them? This week we’ll start trying to get some ideas about where the economy is going by considering the views of those very bright people who work for the government (JASON Defense Advisory Group) which we tripped over in our circuitous adventure to the fringes of woo-woo areas last week. From there we will hit a number of other government agencies and see what their vision of the future looks like. (Hint: Screwier than yours or mine, which is not very comforting…). Ultimately we’ll draw some conclusions about the Zero Delusion, that once uniquely Zimbabwean monetary disease that spreading faster than swine flu on a formerly healthy Navy ship. We begin by developing.... 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 October 2, 2009 How Far Is Down? Black Monday coming next week? OK, so the market dropped 203 points on Thursday and markets around the world got a little edgy, too. Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, yada, yada, yada were down 2% or more but by the time trading got going in Europe the Great Spin Machines had started to crank up so losses were generally a bit more than 1½% - a little less than what Asia lost.
One reason for optimism is the the buzz about factory orders is on the positive side. And then there's the 800-pound gorilla today - this morning's jobless report, which we'll get to in a moment, but let's just note in passing the futures are down...
Two items are at the front of the line: my own digital cocktail napkin sketch of the range of where I expect the markets to go using a different kind of chart I've been tinkering with lately - the 'expectation range' chart....
Those funny green lines are my 'expectation range' and no, this is NOT TRADING ADVICE - but the green lines ought to give you an idea of where I would be placing bets if I were stepping up to the window in Las Vegas and putting down some long green on the range of future possibilities.
Big picture: Down to test the 6627 March low, then a healthy bounce, then we take out that low and head for a new low of Dow 4,400 (best case) to Dow 2,700 (medium to bad case).
As you can see, my outlook doesn't have a happy ending unless you own a lot of put options like...well, you don't think I do this totally for fun, do you? But then again, it does synch up with the latest note from Robin Landry ( rlandry@allegiance.tv ) in a note to his colleagues in the investment community:
No, the employment report isn't going to help...
Emp-Sit-Rep: 9.8% (Yeah, right...) This is a biggy - you might want a brownie or a double cognac to go with this one:
Why the labor force shrank 551,000 last month?
Looking at the CES Birth Death Model we find 'statistically estimate job creation for the month was only 34-thousand, of which 20-thousand new jobs were in trade, transportation and utilities, which is pressing credibility a bit - but we'll get to the slow times on the railroads story in a minute. Let's press on here for a sec.
And the total number of un and underemployed was down 0.4% to just 16.1% - although remember this doesn't reflect people who have been wiped from the jobless rolls through statistical sleight of hand. Out of benefits? You may not count now...
While the statistics themselves are a 'biggy' the underlying (with the emphasis on the latter syllable) question is "How believable is this?
In what I call me "Personal Unemployment number" the rate is actually improving. Daughter Allison is a grocery checker now (while paying back college loans from when she learned - against Dad's advice - how to be a fine chef but care to guess what has happened in high-end cheffing/cooking lately? Just this morning, Daughter Denise called to announce that she's got a job starting on the 16th working for the Washington State Employment Security Department - not too sure how happy I am with that, but beats calling the National Bank of Dad, right? --- So where did that half-million that disappeared from the workforce go??
Not Just Port Traffic - Rail's Are Down, Too I mentioned a couple of weeks back how container port traffic is down - and how that was a pretty good indicator that green shoots is largely hot air. So here's your confirming indicator - the latest from the American Association of Railroads:
Not to worry - good times are just ahead, eh?
Bank Disaster Rolls On The report that "Banks with 20% Unpaid Loans at 18-Year High Amid Recovery Doubts" is...how would you say this? Not very surprising maybe?
Speaking of Banking... "Online glitch angers millions of TD Bank customers". Ooops.
Say It Again, Tim "Strong dollar "Very Important": Geithner." So are Easter Eggs and Unicorns. Look: the US dollar is down to 4.6¢ of purchasing power compared with where it was in 1913 when the Fed coup seized the money creation power that the Founders had wisely placed with Congress and Geithner wants it to do what now, reversing a nearly 100-year trend? Might as well be asking the tide not to come in.
Net Freedom The US will be giving up some of its power over the Internet, although it's not clear in the report what impact this will have on the monitoring and surveillance operations.
US Break Up I see the story from some months back where a Russian professor (KGB background too, if I recall right) is still predicting the US will break up into 6-regions which will be beholding to Europe, Asia, Mexico and so forth, depending on where you happen to live. While he says it will happen in 2010, I'll just keep paying my quarterly taxes, since I don't think such a simplistic view will ever come to pass. Likely to be much messier than that...
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Coping: Ponce De Leon & the DNA Trail There's a fine story out today about how mice life expectancies can be seriously extended by tweaking their DNA just so to mimic restricted caloric intake. Of course, people with 33-cents worth of will power could extend their own lives by simply eating a lot less, losing weight and doing a little exercise, but where's the profit to be made in that? Nope, gotta be something that can be packaged and sold - that's just how Western Medicine works these days: pill 'em & thrill 'em for the most part. --- The problem with life-extension technologies is that is causes huge problems for the economy. For one thing, people over 65 still eat, drive cars in many cases, and use utilities. So, the question is, how many people can an economy support that are not working at goods producing - or services producing - jobs?
I won't bore you with a rehash of the Club of Rome Report on population "Limits to Growth" which came out back in 1972, but it seems to have become a touchstone of the illuminati types who seem determined to either make piles of money on living humans, or reduce the number of humans to just the bare number necessary to allow them to have someone to boss around and extract tribute from. Most place that number down around 500-million globally which means the number of excess eaters is up around 6.5 billion or so.
Not that this kind of quiet agenda should influence your decision on whether you get a flu shot to which things like mercury-based preservatives are being added, but... --- An article in the NY Times this morning under the headline "Swine Flu Spreading Widely, Worry Over Pregnant Women" is worth reading,. especially when you hook it up with the report that 28 pregnant women have died of swine flu...the scariness of it seems oddly coincidental to reports flu vaccine is now shipping.
No word on how a flu shot will impact the unborn, although a story that "Pre-Birth Exposure to 1918 Flu Raised Heart Risks, Study Finds" certainly raises a lot of questions, doesn't it? --- In the end the relationship between flu, caloric intake of mice, and the number of dead people by a given age is one of those statistically interesting, but personally pointless areas of study. Restricting calorie intake makes sense (it's cheaper) and people who restrict calorie intake live longer. But if you do that, then economics catches up with you and makes you broke, or near enough to it!
The comforting conclusion is that if you're overweight a fair bit, then you shouldn't need to work as hard (and maybe as long) since you won't be around as long so you won't need as big a retirement package.
Hmmm...I suppose that's why Ponce De Leon was looking for both gold and the Fountain of Youth.
The more I think about this, the more I'm forced to the realization that economics is not the 'dismal science' - actuarial studies is the really grim one.
Say What? "Did Apes descend from US" is the headline in The Star this morning. Doesn't seem hardly possible. For one thing, they don't speak, hold elections, run around killing one another in wars like we do. How could they possibly have evolved from us?
27+ MPG Airplane A new light sport aircraft is coming from Sirius: 100 HP Rotax power plant, high winger. The $131K airplane has a collision avoidance system and recovery parachute and - the part I'm impressed with: At 116 knots cruise and 5 gallons per hour it pencils out to 27.46 MPG and no dodging the stater's radars on the ground. This is cool. So is the 1,200 fpm rate of climb and the 58 db cabin noise level.
Astronomers Feedback A number of astronomers responded to yesterday's question with a "This guy has got to be kidding..." Nice to hear - and thank you. I can sleep better now, safe and sound in the comforting knowledge that our end will be at our own hands, not some random rock floating by. Gee, how comforting. --- Which reminds me - you saw where an 11-year old led cops on a 100 MPH chase?
October 1, 2009 Who to Believe Here we are, on the opening day of what is often one of the worst months in the stock market - and yet the future direction of things isn't quite clear to many people. The reason is simple: The headlines are contradictory and confusing - even to the experts.
It seems like only a couple of days ago that the IMF was warning that things were bad yet this morning there's a story about that the IMF now thinks the world economy is recovering faster than expected. Confused? Yes, this is the same IMF that was just calling for overhaul of the world's financial system, so what gives?
To be sure, the S&P/Cash-Schiller Housing report was up a tad in the past few days, but it's still down 30% from its peak values of a couple of years ago, and then there's the little matter of Ukraine's state energy company announcing today that it will be defaulting on bonds.
Banks are still having their troubles - yet while the Street has been busting Citigroup's chops (in terms of stock price) lately, the company has just inked a sale of its Nikko Cordial Japanese stock brokerage unit to Sumitomo-Mitsui for $8.7 billion which should not only keep a few wolves away from the door, but kill some that were even thinking Citi was going to go down.
But it wouldn't take a Citi-sized outfit to run the financial Wells dry - the FDIC is just about out of cash - so much so that they're asking banks to come up with three-years of premiums - which Bloomberg says may come to $10-billion and that's for a handful of Big Banks.
On the back of a napkin, if you sketch out the flow of funds, it looks suspiciously circular: The FDIC gets money from big banks, pours it into little banks, some of which are married off to bigger banks, which in turn borrow money for next to nothing from the Fed which in turn...you got the picture?
I get raked over the coals which I mention that what's going on in American finance looks suspiciously like a game of three-card Monte, "Which walnut shell is the pea under?" - but when circular relationships are set up and it looks like three-card Monte, why not just call it that so everyone gets on the same page?
The fact of the matter is that the Federal Reserve, in concert with government agencies have a vested interest in preventing systemic meltdown - something that should be painfully obvious: If there's a meltdown, government would have less (or no) money to spend and that would mean smaller government, right?
In the wake of the 1987 mini-collapse (which in retrospect was a worrisome hiccup) the government set up something called the President's Working Group on Markets - which some financial writers (like me) refer to as the Plunge Protection Team.
It hasn't gotten too much attention lately - although I expect it will in coming months when the stuff hits the fan - but what the Plunge folks seem to be worried about here lately is how to prevent not only an American meltdown, but how to keep the whole interlinked Global economic system from imploding.
Evidence? Sure - yesterday's comments by Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo before the House Banking Committee's subcommittee on Security and International Trade & Finance where he gives a little insight into what the Plunge Protection Team's up to: They're trying to sort out what to do since the central bankers don't sit directly on the G-20, which in turn is maneuvering ,to obsolete the UN and take over global governance before a bunch of those unruly Third Worlders start exercising clout.
So, you can see why this is all starting to feel a lot like a super-sized game of chess where we have the poor countries (those stuck in the UN who are not represented in the G-20) being slowly worked around to a position of reduced power while the G-20 comes to an internal divvying up of the globe - which is the process underway now, if I've got it right. Look for the G-20 to appoint its own global president, in effect. Which is my the Plunge Protection
Team is busily holding its collegial meetings - gaming out how
the US interests will fare - which in an unrigged casino would
not be very well, since the G-20 Boyz have been playing with
House Money (leverage and printing up whatever they need) -
which is how the industrialized nations can go into a
country and using nothing more than paper, abscond with the
national and natural resources of defenseless countries that
don't get the picture that they're being drawn and quartered at
the pleasure of the industrialized countries. John Perkins
lays some of it out in
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man Kind of like Colonialism 3.0. Except that unlike the Spanish invading South America and stealing their gold and jewels, instead G-20 gangsters go in with something far more dangerous (paper and zeroes) and steal natural resources from indigenous peoples, got it? We get oil, and we'll build an...er...ice skating arena...and other such baubles. Not that this is all bad per se, since I like consuming those resources, too and if that means a little overtime for the PPT, well, then so be it. Except for the one little problem: It's a crooked game and it's bound to have karmic repercussions. Sort of like those flash trading platforms that were front-running the market. Were those illegal? Well, maybe if they had been front-running individual transactions, maybe. But front-running the whole market? Oh, that's different. Right. The new Global Anticipation Europe Bulletin has a dandy article along the same lines "Strategic advices and recommendations: 1/ Which indicators to trust in this crisis? " Actually, the answer is simple: The only two indicators that matter to most folks are 1) "Do you have a job?" And, 2), "Do you have any money in the bank to keep the wolves from the door?" Beyond that at some level you might want to ask yourself "Who you gonna believe?" Ah...here comes a contestant now...from behind curtain number three would you please welcome.... Personal Income (and Other Myths) Yeah, sure, your job is uncertain (and more layoffs are coming, so the concern is justified) and oh yeah, the market rally is getting long in the tooth and there's a growing number of reasons to be concerned that the first world is about to enslave the third world through yet more paperwork (maybe Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe is right...) but what about the continuing upward drift of personal incomes?
This morning's report:
How "personal savings was 3% in August" is a miracle in creative accounting, best I can figure. Unemployment is up more than expected for the week and the futures were drifting down when I checked.
Drop by tomorrow morning for the unemployment numbers. We always find that good for a few smiles, since the fictionally created CES Birth/Death numbers (which hypothecate jobs created in the construction industry, just for example) is at least as entertaining to the financially aware as those song and dance contests on teevee, unless you're really into eating cake at the commercial bread and circuses offered as distractions.
A reader, watching the employment picture closely, sends this:
Ah! That used to be the case. But (repeat after me) "It's different this time!" Reread above discussion of three-card Monte again until this sinks in. Bread and Circuses Department And what better point to bring up the latest distraction from the healthcare worker revolt against flu shots, the loaded markets, and sliding American quality of life, than here to talk about the 2016 Olympics!
Quick: run and hide! 6 Anti-Olympic protesters charged with Mob Action in Chicago. Last time I checked, 6 people was a little on the small side of 'mob' but then again, not everyone is old enough to remember the '68 Democratic Convention in Chicago.
If people set fire, arrest them for arson, but mob action has always seemed a little loosey-goosey to me - comes close to colliding with freedom of speech (which doesn't include setting fires) and freedom to peaceably assemble (which doesn't include trashing property).
Might mention that to the city mothers in Philadelphia too - speaking of which anyone ever find out what happened to those protesters that were singled out there and hauled off in unmarked vehicles? --- Now that "Chicago youth's killing 'heinous': White House" is out, I suppose the economic forces in favor of Olympics in the Windy City will ramp up, but regular folks seem about evenly split by one poll.
China Turns 60
Big parades and Mao jackets the order of the day in China.
I suppose they have reason to celebrate, since they have
effectively beaten the US into submission by simply selling us
so much stuff that we're now more hooked on Chinese
manufacturing than a junkie hooked on smack. America's
leadership, by offshoring industry has effectively sold us down
the river into the waiting arms of globalists who are exploiting
cheap labor where? Hint: A large country that is
celebrating it's 60th's anniversary of the revolution. Not much money to be exploited from a sustainable culture, though, is there? No mega yachts, corporate jets, casinos, fast living and bling bling....
Nuke Talks Want a simple way to sum up the West-Iran nuclear talks getting underway in Geneva? One word: stalling.
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Coping: Some Quake Follow-Up Yesterday's report on the apparent increase in the number of historic quakes got several emails - one of which was from a reader that suggested my data was bad, since I took it from the USGS site page which listed historic earthquakes - not all quakes.
This reader then went on to argue that the number of 7.0 quakes has been roughly similar. On the other hand, as I explained in a study I did earlier this year for Peoplenomics subscribers, whether there's an increase in quakes depends on where you draw your data cutoffs. For example, if you draw it at 7.0 quakes, the data may look flat; a cut of the data at 6.5 may show an increase, another cut at 6.0 may show the increase yet by the time you get down to 4.8 the quake variances may disappear into the data.
A reader/researcher in Peru sent this:
I don't make this stuff up - I'm a data-driven human.... --- The predictive linguistics - which have been saying of quakes from this summer on are basically too many to bother counting - point to more ahead (building again in 2010) like this year. And the death toll is still climbing from the 7.6 in Indonesia yesterday. We're waiting to hear from our correspondent there. --- Then there's the little matter of cosmic rays being at their highest in half a century according to NASA. Hmmmm we might ponder whether there's a connection here, the gamma ray bursts also seem coincidentally related.
If there's anything to the 'plasma core model' of the world it might be the place where a lot of incoming energy is turned into matter' and that would expand the earth which would in turn cause what? Earthquakes maybe?
Calling All Astronomers OK, related to Earthquakes (perhaps?) is this email from a reader - see the object description in space and see if you can see anything out there...
Hmmm...while this sounds like another Niburu / Planet X kind of report, nevertheless, if you are an astronomer and have any current imagery of that part of the sky and want to share it with us, please feel free to send it along. Not sure an amateur astronomer would be able to pick off things like rotation from .11 light years out on a .43E object, but I'll leave that to experts to discuss.
While I won't get worked up over it yet (think back to the 99942 Apophis scare in late 2004!) it's nevertheless worth keeping an eye out for it.
(This information curiously showed up in a forum on 8/18/2009 and was resent to my inbox this week - the posting on the forum is here.
Readers Writes: Who's Special? How many people are really conscious and spiritually awake? Is 15% the right number, or is it less?
Gauging Gauges Here's a good one:
Cool on the gauge part...but Warning Warning Warning on capacitive battery chargers! The way they work is simple: Instead of using a transformer to convert 110V down to 12 volts for charging, these devices are based on connecting a capacitor directly to one side of the A.C. line. This is DANGEROUS AS HELL. MY ADVICE IS DON'T DO IT. Capacitors leak, capacitors break down, and the amount of current that it takes to stop a human heart is on the order of just five milliamps. Clarification: Arizona's Carry Laws An interesting clarification from yesterday's column - I've added some highlighting of what seems important to me:
Ah...with more details from the NRA what's going on in AZ makes a lot more sense now...especially the part about "as long as they are not consuming alcohol. 'Preciate the clarification. Wednesday September 30, 2009 A Serious Quake Question Normally, this site is focused on that obscure backwater of socioeconomics called "Long Wave Economics". The whole premise is simple as phi: Are there long term drivers which determine the course of the economy? You know - things like the extension of lifespans in the past 100-years or so, the "new game" of constantly depreciating the purchasing power of money through inflation which has logical limits, and even 'out there' forces like sunspot cycles, which seem to coincide with a roughly 11-year cycle in things like certain market segments and California real estate.
But every once in a while along comes a story which screams "Pay attention weak humans! Ma Nature's got one here you ought to be thinking about!" And that's what the 8.0 earthquake down in the vicinity of American Samoa on Tuesday (our time) brings up.
We start with the basics, which unless you really have no perception of life beyond Facebook and MySpace, can be found at sites like the Wall Street Journal's which headline "Tsunami Wipes Out Villages in South Pacific". While other coverage like the UK Telegraph piece "Samoa earthquake: a history of tsunamis" provide good historical contexting, there's another story if you look at one of the USGS pages that lists "historic worldwide earthquakes". What I've done is taken the data just from 1900 and I've added it up in terms of 'quakes per year' which is the left axis of the chart. Don't freak out, but...
See anything odd about the increase in quakes since the turn of the century into the 2000's? Seems to me that it's been going up. Oh, then we had a 7.6 this morning in the Southern Sumatra area.
True, the number of 'historic quakes'; this year seems to be down, but a few more sips of coffee with the spreadsheet suggests that with this latest quake the average great quake in 2009 was over 7.3, while doing the same calculation for 2008 reveals that the average 'historic quake' was a 6.64. Of course, some of this is subjective, to be sure: The 2008 data that calls a February 2008 4.8 quake in England a historic level event is, well, you know - stretching things.
Still, dropping that one out, the 2008 average was still 6.69 and this year's 'average' big quake is up from there. Also, if you go around the net, there are sites you can find where people write about so-called 'disappearing quakes. Officially, what happens is that once in a while a single quake might be double-counted, or a quake may have been reported by 'mistake'. In earthquake watching circles, its something of a sport to look for variances between the USGS list and the Swiss 'Red Puma' site which lists yesterday's quake as a 7.9. That'd be somewhere north of 600-megatons worth of energy if you were trying to build a bomb that big. An 8.0 would be a gigaton bomb-sized event.
Remember that earthquake magnitudes are logarithmic functions, so a 6.0 quake is only 1/10th the force of a 7.0 quake. But on an energy basis, Wikipedia offers:
Shake amplitude is times ten, energy release is times 1,000 - quiz tomorrow morning. That's why even if we have had fewer 'historic' quakes this year compared with 2008, the amount of energy that's beings released is still damn near the same level.
Granted, this quick pass through the data is just that - a quick pass with only the first half cup of coffee in me, so no warranties on the quality of the work, but there's enough of an increase in the apparent data that if you know someone like that retired seismologist who reads this site once in a while that a thorough run through the data with an eye toward cyclicity and trending on the data would certainly be welcomed as a contributed paper.
If you're a Peoplenomics subscriber, we touched on this trend in Issue #386 (January 25, 2009) which is indexed as "Running away to Sea: Everything you want to know about living on a boat - and why a building earthquake trend should give you pause..." --- Curiously, it was only two days ago that one of my daughters (Allison) called from Seattle to tell me that her and her squeeze had finished moving into their new apartment and would I consider "sending us some MRE's for Christmas" since she had been getting strange feelings about earthquake dangers in the Northwest. Nothing in the data from HPH until next year, but never can be sure about such things, so yeah, Dad's got MRE's on the Christmas list. --- I look at this long term data and have to ask a really important question: Is there something going on we're not being told about?
An Also Ran Quake From the USGS list server this morning:
Bombs Away - Sooner or Later Not here yet, but the report out of the well connected web site www.debka.com that the "US giant bunker-buster bomb project rushed since Iran's Qom site discovered" (that's their second uranium enrichment project) means we're right on track for events to kick over into high gear around October 25th. Remember, doesn't mean the bombs will fall on that day; think of it more like that's when the theatre doors open and people start going in for the big big show... --- Read an analysis the other day that essentially said, ifs the US wasn't at least partially supportive of this, the Israelis would never be able to go it alone in such an attack. The rest destruction of Iran's lone AWAC's plane is...er...you don't think coincidental, do you?
Driven to Distraction Saying the n umber of traffic deaths caused by driver distraction is probably about 6,000 a year, the US Department of Transportation is holding a "Distracted Driving Summit." The agenda is posted here in case you're in Washington with nothing to do today.
No Shot Sherlock Now that the label on some of the flu vaccine is out and cautions officially that it may cause little problems like anaphylactic shock, and such, it's not too surprising that "NY Healthcare Workers Revolve over H1N1 Vaccine." --- The classic Clint Eastwood quote runs through my head every time I read a flu shot story: "Are you feeling lucky today, punk?" --- There's something about medicine which just seems like a deliberate attempt to obfuscate, confuse, and deflect common sense regular folks. Take for example how they set up needle gauges, OK? Logically - if anyone would listen to the Ure Version of Common Sense, a bigger needle would have a bigger number, right? But NOOOO. Instead, a 7 gauge need is way bigger than a 23 gauge needle.
The way I have it figured, there's probably some big part of learning medicine which is learning which things are backwardized and which things aren't...
Of course, that gauge problem is also true in electricity/electronics where small wire (#24) is itsy bitsy stuff compared with #2 or #0000 wiring used in ,shipboard DC power systems - but I wonder why humans do that? Take an old idea and promote it like that? Say, did you put something in this coffee? Hand me one of them brownies...
They'd Rather Not Dan Rather's $70-mil lawsuit over the way he was treated after leaving prime time anchor duties at CBS has been tossed out. Is the real reason because it was really over a 2004 report on then prez George Bush's military record and because the Courts are really paradigm defenders anymore? Hmmm...we'll just set that aside on the pile of evidence mounting in that direction. --- Fine axiom from my brother-in-law Panama Bates comes to mind for such situations: "Tell the truth and leave shortly thereafter..."
Social Progress? Guns are being allowed in Arizona bars starting today. Now, don't get me wrong on this: I'm a gun owner and out here in the East Texas outback, a gun is a tool just like a set of 3/8th's in sockets...it's wild country and all. But here, taking a weapon into a dispensary of adult beverages is against the law. I haven't met anyone who has better judgment after a couple of drinks than before, but maybe I don't hang with the right people.
Still, seems to me that use of a gun - hell just touching a gun - is something that should only happen when a person is sober as a judge (except maybe the ones that threw out the aforementioned lawsuit, but I digress).
Markets Gold bouncing nicely after the recent end-of-month beat-down. Dow looks to open to the firm side although off a bit after the ADP jobs numbers.
Then there's the morning's newest on Gross Domestic Product - falling:
Then there's the talk that the Fed will have to 'raise rates quickly' once the time comes to raise rates. Because, way I figure it, that will be when gold is going through $2,000 an ounce and gasoline will be up around $8 a gallon...and the dollar sinking into the....
Sports Commentary OK, I admit it: I'm no fan of sports unless it's something I get to participate in (golf, fishing, target shooting, bow and arrow, and man's favorite indoor pastime...) sooo, when I saw the headline in the NY Times that " Dementia Rick Seen in Players in N.F.L. Study" I had to ask the obvious:
What about in fans? --- But don't get me wrong, I enjoy football because it's where any darn fool can go to see how time dilation works. Heck, I've seen the final 2-minutes turn into 18 or 19 minutes on an almost regular basis... and they laughed at H.G.Wells...
Condolences Gee, Gordo (Give away the gold) Brown slumps to 3rd as election timetable published for the UK. Couldn't have happened to a nicer, war-mongering...oh this is a family site....
Really? The UK's Times Online headlines: "Gore Vidal: 'We'll have a dictatorship soon in the US'. --- Wonder if he means 'soon' as in already happened with the corpgov coup?
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Coping: Pondering Food & Water Options The big quake on Tuesday reminded me to mention again that there are (for now) plenty of interesting investments out there that a person could make in the 'food growing' department. To be sure, some of them are very inexpensive dollar-wise but are fairly demanding time-wise. Or, you can find solutions that are more (paper) dollar-intensive but which get you to a satisfactory outcome. The reason tuesday's quake gets us on track with this is that during most of humankind's history, the main point of work has been to provide a couple of square meals a day and something to keep the rain off; pursuit of MP3 players, 22" chrome rims and 35-series tires were, how do you say? Pointless, maybe? --- I've decided to get extremely methodical about my food-growing strategies and my first investment will be in what? Gutters for the office building and the house. Why? Well, with 30 inches of rain per year, the metal roof on the shop should produce (based on 35-inches of rain) about 8-million cubic inches of water, and since there are 231 cubic inches of water per gallon, which means my first 34,909 gallons of water for gardening ought to be a simple matter. We're looking at putting a metal roof on the house, too, since rainwater off a 20-year old fiberglass/shingle roof is not very appetizing. That roof upgrade and some plastic water barrels ought to get us a shade under 42,000 gallons for domestic use.
If I can actually get it all figured out (which means constructed in such a way that management won't notice the project ;-)) we ought to be able to gin up 100+ gallons per day for domestic use plus another hundred a day for the garden - and that's before going to the well & pumps. Strange thing living on a boat on salt water, you get really possessive of fresh water. Thanks to the kinds going through 200 gallons in a long weekend on the boat, I suppose back in the days before the watermaker went in. --- So that takes care of the water. Now comes the gardening part.
I've bracketed this into roughly four levels: The Wal-Mart seeds at the checkout stand if you can still find them. Occasionally you can get winter garden seeds like broccoli at reasonable prices. A couple of jugs of MiracleGro and you're set for under $10 if you can cobble up some plastic frames to keep the frost off. And if you have time. Oh, that stuff: time.
Next step up would be to order some good heritage seeds online (along with a can or two of seeds from Everlasting Seeds (see ad, right column). This will get you seriously into gardening.
And if you go down that track, the next logical step would be to get the MyGroPonics book (below) and start working on high density homebrewed hydroponic gardening.
One step up from there would be the HarborFreight.com (or similar) greenhouses which you can pick up this time of year for about $800 (before you get shipping into it).
However, a small greenhouse is not likely to produce much food using conventional methods if you actually had to eat what comes out of it, so in that case get ready to start studying your brains out trying to find the right trays, frames, nutrients, grow lights, shelving and the list goes on...
OR.....
Turns out a UrbanSurvival reader (Wayne Fuday, 541.488.0931 ) has come up with a complete turnkey growing system which includes everything you need to do high intensity gardening without having to spend the time on research to figure out what to get. He calls it the "Grow4It" system and it includes:
To be sure, the system is not cheap - about a Happy Meal under $5-grand. But, the trade off is that it is (except for soil & seeds - you get to select what you want to grow) it's a no-brainer in terms of getting something online and producing and in most of the country that means three seasons if not four worth of food.
I've been down two tracks so far in my gardening adventures. The first year we had our 'outside' garden it did just great - And then came the fire ants and time demands and one thing led to another and once I got behind the curve in the spring and the weeds got ahead of me, well, that's when I figured it would be the propane burner and a couple of garden hoses and I'll just burn the weeds out and go for the winter garden - and devote an hour or more a day to weeding for the foreseeable future.
On the other hand, people who are doing greenhouse/controlled environment growing (even my commodity broker JB with his MyGroPonics system, got more out of his garden this year than I got) seem to be eating more home-grown food.
Those 'upside down tomato thingies' that we bought did a fine job of hold the tomatoes right at head-level for the deer. Good news - seeing as there is always a balance in Nature if you look for it: My abandoned garden patch has been a fine nursery this year for a couple of young fawns - I imagine the fencing kept a fair number of coyotes out. But I don't eat deer, so no calories there.
Every time I look at Cliff's Grow Dome picture's I keep coming back to the problem of how to mix gardening in to the schedule of events around here. Between yard upkeep, never-ending remodeling, demands of the goats, yada, yada, well, you can see where I'm not the only guy who thinks Fuday may be onto something with his turnkey Grow4It System. It's a simple answer and while $5-grand is a good-sized chunk of dough, he's guessing the payback period (with modest attention) is between 2 - 2½ years, depending on inflation (or for that matter availability) of food at the grocery store.
Here's the order link - comes with complete instructions. Time was I'd look cynically and utter something along the lines of "$5-grand for a food growing system?" Nowadays with not much to show for a lot of effort except a quickly being overgrown fence, some fat deer, and a couple of rototillers that get used a couple of days a year, I'm not sure its an expensive solution at all. ---- Oh - one other gardening idea which you might want to file away -especially since there may be this government money-fest for home appliances next month: Was reading in my favorite farm publication --"Farm Show Magazine" -- about a guy who took a bunch of used refrigerators and turned them into raised bed gardens! Simply pulled the doors & hinges off of them. had the refrigerant sucked out and laid 'em into the garden. Figure a couple of holes down low for drainage, some gravel for drainage and load them up with topsoil. Hell, throw a used glass door on and you'd have a dandy cold frame with (my favorite part here:) next to no work.
Except, of course for the collecting the used fridges, taking the doors off, getting them evacuated, moving them, getting a load of gravel delivered, and a couple of loads of topsoil in, punch in holes and then how to lay them out to get the tractor in between and then mu8lch or mow between them and more edging and then there's fencing and...and....how much was that Grow4It system, again?
Confidentially: The Answer Man Is Back A reader has another one of those 'pondering fluage' moments to share:
I'm sorry, you are not cleared to hear the answer to this.
Next confidential inquiry of the morning, please?
No chance, don't be absurd. Wait. Do you smell cooking oil? Hmmm, well you're not cleared for the answer to that one, either. next?
Ah, the Answer Man knows this one - it's easy! As many as it takes to get a major budget increase and stampede the people with the checkbook!
Contributed Dreams Maybe
it's since I have my copy of Jung's
The Red Book
With that as lead-in, here's an interesting email from a fellow who's been dreaming of...Ben!
Interesting dream with several interpretations to it. First, I looked up Ben Bernanke in a 'dream dictionary' and found no listing. However, to dream about the stock market can represe4nt the 'ups and downs in your life' and you might want to look at the interpretations for 'money' while you're at it (Is your self-confidence going to take a hit in February?).
All kidding aside, this sounds like the kind of dream that your subconscious comes up with when most everything else in your life is going OK and you can mentally take 'time out for dinner'. Why you'd select a table next to Ben Bernanke in a dream means you may have a new 'director' rolling the film on your dreamscape...perhaps now that director Roman Polanski has been arrested you've subconsciously given permission for your dream director to experiment by ad-libbing new kinds of scenes in your dreams? Encourage it! But get more creative. How was the food? What did you have? Do you have a friend who was talking to you recently about weight or money problems?
But seriously - or mostly so - this is the kind of dream when your subconscious may be pointing the way to make a little dough. Wait till the market gets up to the Dow 10,300-10,400 level and then start legging into long expiration put options in the March-June timeframe. Just a thought.
And stop focusing so much on the market. Dream about other people - the Dalai Lama or Ms. March for example...might as well have great dreams till the fan and the stuff meet up.
Your subconscious is sure optimistic. The stuff coming in February is a damn sight more significant than mere money matters, assume you've read the latest "Shape of Things to Come" and know that.
Dismissed. Until tomorrow, that is...
Tuesday September 29, 2009 Monster Quake Biggie: 7.9 today down in the area of American Samoa.
A Little Overdone, Maybe OK, hang on a minute. Yes the market rallied a bit on word that the S&P/Case-Schiller housing report was up a bit...but how much is a bit? I got out the spreadsheet version and its...its....(don't say "Monte Python!" or I will have to slap you): 1.15%. Housing still sucks, being down 30.6% from its high water mark. Last month it was down 31.4% so it you want to hold a big office party to celebrate the return of real estate, have at it. I'll just sit over here in the corner with my cup of tea and watch, thank you.
Oh, and things got worse in Detroit & Phoenix again. But go ahead...party. Probably just means banks are trading between themselves at slightly higher numbers.
The Movie Question Answered From earlier this morning the answer to the movie question is:
Death by centrifuge in this one was one of the novel special effects - maybe the State Department should ship this movie to Iran?
Stand-Up Tuesday After a couple of emails wondering if I had lost my marbles (yes!) when I suggested on Monday that the top was in last week, people are demanding answers. "George the market was positively buoyant Monday!" was a typical rejoinder. Well yes, well no: The market bounced up smartly for a while Monday so the strong hand could finish selling the last of their paper to the 'weak hands' who shoveled it into mindless 401(k) accounts - no question about that. But, this morning the futures are down. Not only that, but if flip over to Yahoo's handy historical prices page you''' find the Dow's recent high (intraday) was 9,937.72 on the 23rd of September and yesterday's high was 76-points and change shy of that, so until we best 9,937.72 I'm going to be incredibly skeptical of bullish claims.
Oh, not that the market can't go higher: There are all kinds of experts who think there's a chance of 10,300- to 10,400 on the Dow is still in the works; that'd be a nice 50% retracement off the fall 2007 to March of this year's low. I'm no market guru, preferring to take my money out of obvious trends and skip all this 'catch falling knives' nonsense that goes with trying to pick bottoms and tops. Entirely a waste of time.
More productive? Writing comedy - hence this morning's feeble efforts at stand-up in a fall-down market.
Fading the Buck The first joke involves the US dollar. I've got one tacked up on my wall next to a Zimbabwe $100-trillion dollar note that a reader contributed. Every time I look at it, I'm reminded that the main difference between the Z-buck and the US-buck is theirs is blue and has a significant number of zeros on it. It's actually a nice looking bit of printing...
Now, how anyone could throw money into a US dollar denominated assets (like stocks or dollars) when we have a) Headlines like the "World Bank Head Sees Dollar's Roll Diminishing" and b) When the Treasury and Fed are borrowing back and forth in Three Card Monte fashion to keep the game going for just a little while longer boggles my (small overloaded) mind. --- If the joke ended there, it might be worth a smile and a repeat of the old "Some of the people, some of the time" line. But it doesn't. The latest is that FDIC is planning to ask banks to pay their FDIC insurance premiums early so they can pay off the losers that they're reorganizing and marrying off. Since I pay my car insurance off as a single payment once a year, I figured "Not a bad idea..." but then I got to the fine print: FDIC wants three years in advance.
Hold on - got my $269 drum set handy to punctuate just this kind of story - (rim shot). --- Noticing that no one is laughing (no smiles, either) at this latest bit of financial humor the words "This is a tough room" well up in the back of my head. Better start writing some A material quick. --- The world is now operating upside down and backwards if you hadn't noticed. A momentarily strengthening of the dollar means it only takes $66.50 to buy a barrel of oil (which is 42 gallons, not 55, eh?). At the same time, that drives down gold and also (this is really odd) drives down the stock market, since the stock market is priced by the market like an apartment house in an inflationary environment - except instead of apartments, what people are buying is future share of market, but it prices the same.
Fortunately, folks like us don't need to worry about such things. We just need to hold to the antiquated notion that government is looking out for us (which hasn't been true since congress set up its own retirement program separate from Social Security which is going to run a deficit for the next couple of years, so we will be printing up more IOU's to stuff in there, but let me sum it all up for you with another trip to the drum set, shall we?).
(rim shot) [I really ought to record on of that so you can click it and hear it...loses a little something when written...]
Pass Us A Number Not that kind of number you drug-crazed loon! (rim shot) Consumer Confidence is due out this morning at 9 and so's the S&P/Case-Shiller Housing report. Of course these pale in comparison to the gargantuoid comedic whoppers Personal Income (Thursday) and Consumer Prices (Friday) so we will just have to work with what we get. Of all of them, I trust the S&P/Case report most since they don't adjust hedonically...they just report the numbers.
Don't Believe... ..."The V-shaped recovery hype" -going to be much slower-going than it's been advertised according to one economist. Gee, imagine that...
Spy Vs. Spy Vs. Spy Not to borrow the concept from Mad Magazine's famous Spy Vs. Spy cartoons, but we are just being overwhelmed with spy outfits differing on their assessment of whether Iran is trying to build an atomic bomb. I don't suppose I need to point out the hypocrisy the rest of the world sees when the only country ever to use an atomic bomb on a civilian population gets uppity on the morals and ethics of things that make glass in megaton batches? Tesla's death ray would have been maybe a bit more ethical but probably just as unworkable...
Nice Doggie... An air of consternation as to the reality of the latest batch of psy ops on the socioeconomic front seems implied in the latest 'Dog Poet transmitting.... No worries, his bark's worse than his bite, while our banks are worse than his bark...and my writing today is worse than all that. Can't be great all the time, though. (Who said "Just once?" )
Buck 'n Flu Major truth leak on this flu campaign has developed up north as a "Report suggest people who get vaccinated are more likely to catch H1N1". Writer Patrick White's piece beings "A “perplexing” Canadian study...". --- Hard to come up with a punchline to a story like this, huh? Oh here's one... --- "No mandatory vaccinations?" (rim shot) Ha! There's a joke for you. 500,000 healthcare workers in NY state are having to get shot or get fired.
Big Pharma's gotta love the marketing department that put the flu scare on the public...fine job of mass-hysteria marketing. The outbreak in Mexico? A fine move... And the death rate for his flu, compared with any other is....oh, you don't want to go there do you? This has gone more viral and anything yet on YouTube...
Check the science at the door and forget you heard about that 'perplexing Canadian study' and don't even mention Guillain-Barré Syndrome which one of the government's own web sites admits "Occasionally surgery or vaccinations will trigger the syndrome. " Allergic to adjuvants and mercury-based preservatives? Toughsky you-know-what-ski...you're fired. --- Got
recourse? Of course NOT. The drug makers have
arranged to make themselves sue-proof on this. It's fast
becoming the definitive study in how to stampede the citizenry
and open the public purse globally at the same time... It also sets up a whole new level of corporate anti-human malevolence. Why this gives us a migration path to replace the 'government sanctioned war spending programs' with corporate 'health defense programs'...Is this a wonderful turn of events, or what? We'll see the turn approaching as new even more frightening diseases are 'accidentally' unleashed but ooops! We just happen to have this vaccine at the ready here and it will only cost.... Take the long view and watch the trend evolve...
Read the science and make up your own mind. Carefully. Might want to invest a few hedging bucks as a hedge in pharma outfits that lose disease samples in the mail and bring back Spanish Flu DNA from dead folks dug up in the frozen north. You know, something for the grand kids?
Hitler Missing Don't suppose you'd care to find out that the remains of Adolph Hitler, who supposedly shot himself in the Berlin bunker in the closing hours of WW II was really a woman in her 40's and that the ID was based mainly on dental records and we know from 40-years of TV shows how easily dental records can be swapped around, right? --- Will school textbooks be rewritten to frame the bunker scene as 'Hitler disappeared' or "Hitler was thought to have died' in the face of modern forensic pathology? Better he should be dead than to be hidden away to South America or some Antarctic base, though it's been fertile ground for novels and now a bit of evidence for the conspiracy types. ---- Say, this wouldn't have something to do with ex US leaders buying property down in the Altiplano, you think?
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Coping: Back to the WuJo: Brain Creases OK, so much for this morning's normally light-hearted look at the days events. Time to get back in touch with the serious stuff going on in George's WuJo.
If you're new around these parts, this is where we follow the trail of oddities that happen around me. For example, I mentioned in a report last week about this really, really strange dream in which I was dozing between 4 AM and 5 AM and I had this odd dream where there was test - except it wasn't text at all, it was more hieroglyphics - streams from upper right to lower left and there was one symbol in particular which really stuck in my head, depicted like so:
Besides the curious rolling text in the background - which was moving down to the left like one of those "The Matrix" screen savers, but titled and monochromatic, this dream was also notable in that it wasn't my usual 'fill immersion screen' - normally, I dream is a kind of iMax format. This one was framed and about the same aspect ratio as a piece of paper. Very un-George.
A check with Cliff at HPH and sure enough, there are a lot of reports popping up around the net about people that are having odd flashes of graphic symbology - seemingly spontaneously - in either deep meditation states (e.g. Cliff) or too lazy for that dream states (like mine).
Other people are reporting scattered incidents - like this one:
Our best guess is that this is the 'human equivalent' of crop circles. They may have a point to their creators - or they could just be a kind of inter-dimensional direct mail piece - I really don't know. Maybe it's designed to give people new neuron connections so that later on when this goes mainstream (next summer-ish it's due to spread in the linguistics) it will all become clear. Once 100,000 people report the same phenomena, well, remember where you read about it first. Is it a government psy-op (since project Blue Beam was outed, maybe this is its replacement being tested. Or, is it something from elsewhere/elsewhen that's bleeding through the dimension barrier as we get closers to (gulp) 2012? And not just 'symbol dreams' - also an uptick in things like orb sightings, too, like this one in California a couple of weeks back. ---- Is this the mental equivalent of crop circles? Hmmm... the evidence is quite good that many crop circles are not explainable as hoaxes - which means one theory a student of the woo-woo could posit is that the source of the cross circles (corn creasing) may be giving up trying to communication with 'corn consciousness' and maybe have moved on to see if they can establish some kind of conscious connectivity with the humans that run around planting the corn and grains, burning lights, starting wars and fighting with one another over food, borders and who 'owns' that Lexus over there. Why do these people trade zeros on paper, again?
Cliff speculates - and I have to admit it's not far-fetched - that it may all be related, but it's too early to tell for sure - and he hides from my favorite question "Why?" "That goes to intent..." And in fairness, whatever the intent of crop circles of the non-human kind is seems a bit obscure for now...
Maybe
it's just my brains reaction to the name of Dan Brown's new
novel
The Lost Symbol --- Now comes an interesting concept: What if - and I might as well mention it now, but don't expect to see it cropping out of the mainstream for 5-8 more months, but it's out there: People on something approaching a mass basis seem likely to start 'seeing' this kind of stuff going on in their dreams.
in Cliff's brush with it, it was whole pages of symbols - and since he's got lots of experience with flashed pages from his research which led to the Vortex Reader patent - he said it went on for some number of minutes, interrupting a nice meditation and he was physically tired after all of it.
Question: Is this an 'information planting" - is it something like a mental 'crop circle'; - or is this a class of 'not-from-here' four gen warfare? Sorry, no answers on that till the end of 2010 or maybe even as late as early 2011, but by maybe the end of next spring this ought to pop into the mainstream and hopefully someone will be able to figure out what it is other than the psychotic monkey mind beating on the (ascii) typewriter in semi-sleep.
Picture Spinner Software Speaking of crop circles, our high-powered programming friends are about to launch a really high-powered version of the crop circle 'spinning' software; maybe later this week.
The reason that I'm anxious awaiting the release of the software is that it will let a person 'spin' graphics in multiple dimensions at up to 12,000 frames per second - faster than your monitor can keep up with (especially since the refresh times on a decent LCD is still down around 200 frames per second (5 ms. is 5/1000th's of a second, OK?).
Chatting with project leader Chris Monday it occurred to me that ignoring crop circles for a moment, I would sure like to 'spin' some plain old pictures of scenes that I fine especially pleasing.
Take for example a pleasing picture or a sailboat at anchor on a sunny morning with Mount Rainer rising in the background taken from the shore at Blake Island State Park in the Seattle area, to pick one image, while another might be a picture of Franklin Falls up on the way to Snoqualmie Pass taken on a foggy morning. Spin the two images and see if there is something compositionally similar between them - some 'resonance' visually when spun, since its possible that the way people store data in their heads is not static and might actually involve some ongoing movement...but that' s a bit deep for breakfast time, isn't it?
We'll just wait for the software release and give you the link when ready - but there may be applications that go beyond spinning crop circles about. Might be a whole new branch of psychology/brain analytics based on commonality of spun/rotated imagery.
Or, maybe it would just be a high tech version of phrenology. Just don't know without trying it...
Also from the WuJo I keep getting emails from people who are noticing that the '15 percenters' are really starting to differentiate as a group - which is useful since the PTB seem like they are about ready to pop with the active memeering to get them to come over to the blue bloods and royals side, where they will naturally be second class superiors but should be interesting to see how they work it.
Here's a typical email from one of the 'gets it' people:
Curious, huh? A kind of internet-based self organizing
collective forming around this and a number of like minded web
site. Here's another wujo related email:
If you have details on the name of this movie please send 'em along. Wonder if it's just in some film vault somewhere... Peoplenomics Note Subscribers to Peoplenomics will be interested to know as a follow-on to the week before this one's article about NAS Patuxent that there's a dandy article about "New directed energy center to impact future weapons for naval and joint forces" which is opening up right near guess what?
I'll just have to speed up my particle accelerator construction plans, I guess. --- Related email:
Speaking of Zeus the Cat...
Around the Ranch: Shaman Jammin' I noticed that since I got my drum set up and have taken to periodically bashing on it during the day (or in the morning if the news flow is slow) Zeus the Cat is not spending nearly as much time in my office. Where in the past, the word's "Here Zeus" would bring him running and purring a greeting, since the crash-ride cymbal has been bent in, the words "Here Zeus" have approximately the same impact as a neutron bomb...
Not sure why that would be - perhaps his taste in rudiments is a little more finely honed than my my weak comprehension of quarter-notes, which I continually adjust for inflation and deflation randomly.. --- Nevertheless, I am amazed at how many otherwise smart people I know do not have drums around the office.
Short Management tale: At one company where I was head of sales, the company president maintained a coyote head (dead, sun bleached, found in the desert) a couple of native rattles and drums and a 'shaman stick' in his office. Every once in a while when something wasn't feeling 'right' in the office, he would go around the office doing made-up dances, chants of who-knows-what, banging on the drum, shaking the rattle, gesturing with the stick...and it worked! Engineers who were previously having energy blocks found new inspiration, marketing projects that were boring me to tears became a little more interesting and the company prospered.
Don't get me wrong, this was no 'dark ritual' stuff (no blood sacrifices, etc.) just having some fun, letting off energy and rebalancing to get back into harmony with Universe. Chanting gibberish in a meeting? That's what I'm talking about...
I told this to a friend of mine who is a successful Long Island broker (also a famous author) and he didn't seem to familiar with it. Yet having been from around 'high tech' I can tell you that when people spend more time having fun, the quality and the quantity of their work explodes. Why does Google have great employee morale? Is it the er...restaurants, pet groomers, massages, or naps? Does it matter? The company cognizance of the fun factor at some level helps to offset hours and hours of code and meetings. Like Traveling Software's 1996 climb of Mount Rainer just to do the web live from up there... fun stuff, you know?
I explained to my Long Island friend that if he was in an office setting where people were not banging on drums, paying attention to the feng shui of the building, ad libbing product development demon exorcisms, or just having as great time and throwing love and positive energy about, he was working for a dark ages outfit.
Honestly, I think he was skeptical. I could almost hear him thinking "George, we can't have traders doing that kind of stuff." Well, argue for limitations and they will be yours, I think is how Richard Bach put it in one of his books.
Maybe that's why I can't put up with extraordinarily serious accountant-driven management styles. Can't tell you how it happens, but most ( thankfully not all) accounting degrees come with an operation that removes what R&B fans call the 'soul' of a manager. Some companies 'rock', others are more like 'easy listening' and then there's some that just 'give you the blues', know what I'm saying? (Might have made more sense on a Monday, fer sure...)
I bet if more companies would put drum sets around the office that we'd have a happier and more productive workforce.
Know why China out produces us? Fireworks and dragon dancing. Oh sure, prison labor, too, if you insist then.
Quotes of the Day "If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called Research." Einstein had that one right.
Ure's Corollary: "If anyone knew more about economics than me, why are there so many poor people?"
"Your
theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true."
Niels Bohr. I Knew This Would Happen! www.urbandictionary.com has an 'Urban word of the day' email you can sign up for. Today's is catchy: "Tattoo Remorse" which they define as:
Do I mention this because my kids (20's and low 30's) got tattoos? You mean when dad said "You know, there will come a time some day when dad's going to remind you - when you want to borrow money - that you had so much money you could spend it on tattoos....when you could have bought a gold coin or a fair bit of silver for the same money. You can only spend it once..."
Would I do that? Why hell yes....
Monday September 28, 2009 Now That The Top's In? Didn't seem like the Dow dropped 155-point last week did it? There was so much meandering about that it lost any sense of meaning. Yet the number to watch this week will be that 1035-1040 area on the S&P because ifs that's taken out in a serious way, then all those born-again Bulls who have been moving their upward targets upward may have been hornswaggled (which is what you do to bulls) into looking less prescient and more foolish than usual.
Futures are up a tad right now, but for the week ahead? Hard bet to place.
The markets have a way of moving in ways that make the large number of people wrong, it seems, and thus moves the large amount of dough from the hands of the weak into the arms of the strong who in turn laugh all the way to the bank.
Markets in Shanghai and Hong Kong were down about 2% in overnight trading, while Japan was down 2½% as measured by the Nikkei 225.
Global market linkage being what it is, the European markets were down a bit (under 1% though in most cases, apparently hoping that some news would come along this morning and give investors reason to part with sensible cash to buy more electronic chits, which when you think about it is an even dicier proposition than buying paper with zeroes on it because they all depend on the power being on. That's a good bet most time - but this isn't most times, is it? --- To be sure oil is down in the $65-$66 range waiting for this week's number-junkie fix of economic data, but we try not to get too excited about such numbers because they are indicative of water long under the bridge. The real numbers to watch are unemployment, inflation in the production pipeline and reports (even if just well-founded rumors) that more layoffs are in the works. --- We're also in a fine window to 'test the MainStreamMedia (MSM)'s ability to report factual news. A couple of weeks back, we had tea-party, small government demonstrations in Washington with (pick your own favorite number here) anywhere from 50,000 to 2-million people marching in the streets, and little coverage by the MSM.
Yet this weekend, a little demonstration about 5,000 showing up at UC Berkeley to protest tuition increases, teacher furloughs, and staff layoffs is getting plenty of coverage, at least out west. Not to minimize the beefs at Berkeley, but compare the coverage that 5,000 are getting compared to the bigger (by an order or magnitude) event in Washington and how the neutered/out-of-touch press underplayed it as part of the grand social engineering powers invested by the PTB in their press-control mechanisms. Yeah, makes the internet a dangerous thing, doesn't it?
At an overarching level, we see how events which favor the corporate track get played up while challenging events get played down. --- Not nearly so dangerous as turning control of the nation's money over to a private group of bankers and calling them 'federal' but that's another story which we can save for a later date in these times of revolutionary change. --- When you read headlines in the Wall Street Journal online edition that "China likely to keep stimulus measures for 19 Mos - JP Morgan", you have to wonder how it is that the PRC and their PLA business buddies can move with more foresight than the bulwark of democracy.
Unless, of course, we are no longer the...er...well, you know. The checkbook coup d' etat however has for sure slowed things down and while we wait for the unemployment extension to be voted on, my frustration with the 'bankers to the front of the line' approach in Washington becomes all the more disgusting.
Notice how TARP got shoveled through will all kinds of Hanky panky in a New York (bankster) second while things like last week's House approval of 13-more weeks of benefits takes its own sweet time, deliberations and dump trucks full of 'deliberating'?
Don't know about you, but this rolling out the procedural red carpet treatment for the usury crooks, many of whom should be in jail for their hijinks while people are still facing mass foreclosures, well it is a little much for the patient patriots who support the Constitution but notice that there's nothing in the Constitution about corporations and other non-human legal entities have any rights, let alone superior rights to flesh and blood humans.
A letter in the NY Times p/Ed section this weekend summed the growing disgust with corporation this way:
This is the kind of thing your average working family will spend exactly zero time considering because corpgov media has gone to great lengths to promote the left vs. right political facade as being how the political decision-making process works in America.
While that might have been true back in the glory days of the American Whig Party whose sensible approach favored a strong Congress, modernization and economic protectionism - goals still of high value today, don'tcha think? - only level-headed Libertarians seem to grasp the concept while the democons and republicrats keep soaking up all the dough that goes with being checkbook pawns of the corporate coup d 'etat.
My periodic mention that we could fix America in no time with a ban on all interstate political spending except for the office of the Presidency isn't going to get anywhere; with that kind of limits on the phat cats we wouldn't see the Boyz in Connecticut buying defeat of budget saving propositions in California so they can profit in bond defaults and the list just goes on and on.
(Put your Wheaties down for a second:) Maybe what we need is for sensible people in America to hold a "National Puke In." We'll meet up and swallow bottles of Epicac syrup and when the inevitable result follows, we'll name each wretch after a particularly greedy member of Congress who went to Washington poor and who has now become mysterious rich (in the millions in many cases) and at guess whose expense? Oh...here comes one for special interest group _____. --- Or, maybe we none too subtle news laws on the books regarding finance. Remember that in the days of the Wild West, horse thieving was a crime and someone could be strung up in a nearby oak tree if caught stealing another mans horse or livestock. Yep, oak trees and a vigilant public were much less expensive that the corporate criminal justice system which has now processed something like 15% of the adult population of America at some level.
Why not bring back a little old-fashioned American justice and make economic crimes over a certain dollar figure ($50,000 would be a good number, I'm thinking) capital offenses. Anyone guilty of deliberate theft at that level (or above) would get treated the same as a murderer. And we could extend the policy to those who abuse consumers at any level, whether multilevel marketing that cedes too much revenue to the top, dumping known defective products, or generating computer viruses that cause that much economic disruption. Theft of credit card account information, too.
Of course, it will never happen. there are just too many lawyers around to ever allow such a thing, too many judges to accept plea bargains, and yet somewhere in the back of my head, I wonder who does more damage to society: The unemployed fellow who sells a couple of baggies of home grown weed to rich drive-by businessmen, or those businessmen who swindle Americans out of most of their 401(k) accounts?
"Time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground" goes a Toby Keith song lyric ("We'll raise up our glasses against evil forces sayin' whiskey for my men, beer for my horses"..).
Maybe I've been in East Texas a little too long. But it just seems to me that the answer to financial crimes ought to be to be the same brand of swift justice (and terminal consequences) as horse thieving. It's no different whether in old days a man's horse was his livelihood, or when his 401(k) was his livelihood in advanced years, as I see it. If the retreads and hacks in State Legislatures and Congress aren't willing to stand up to the banksters and the corporate coup, they sure as hell are not worth voting for a second time, and weren't the first time either.
Something to think about the next time you see a multi-billion dollar swindler living the phat life on the grounds that he's too important to treat like a 'common' criminal. When it comes to criminals, I'm all over equality. It's either Riker's Island for 'em all, or condos for 'em all. That's where equality matters. --- Next weekend's Peoplenomics report is about taking back American Democracy. It's working title: "How to Vote With Your Wallet Every Day." --- Wonder if David Copperfield has thought about a career in politics? I figure he'd be a hit in Washington for sure. And at least with Copperfield, we'd occasionally get something back at the end of a trick. It's no small point: with the now crowd appearing daily at the three ringer inside the Beltway, no one seems to get back what they started with...
March To War Since we're now inside the 30-days period that leads to the 'hot date' around October 25th, we can start keeping tabs on the set piece moves in the headlines that seem likely to whip up the public sentiments between now and then.
Of course we're not locked in to the October 25th period signaling the equivalent of a Cuban Missile Crisis between Israel and Iran, it's just that so many pieces would fit that way. Of course, there's another concept that would fit - the complete meltdown of global financial markets.
And we could get some complete wild card show up. How about India announcing that it has an H-bomb or however close 200-kilotns of yield is to that? I love it when someone says 200 kt. is a 'proper strategic deterrent'. Makes attacking gun the gun collector hobby look a little ridiculous, doesn't it?
Words and Headlines Every once in a while we get to award a 'split decision' in terms of linguistics hits. While we had been looking for diaspora (dispersal of people) from the US Southeast from the September 15th on period, it looks like this has been more of a global phenomemess. Not only has there been record flooding in Turkey, the messy rains of Georgia, but now they're bandying about words like "Epic" to describe the flooding in the Philippines.
The Weak Ahead Tomorrow morning we get the S&P/Cash Schiller Housing Index - always a fine read. No, not to see that the numbers keep dropping, but at least they have solid methodology and the numbers are credible. Something that...oh, never mind.
Consumer confidence comes out about the same time. Personal income on Thursday, Unemployment rate Friday. Bet on 10%?
Why the unemployment rate for what the NY Post calls "The Dead End Kids" is now an astounding 52.2% Look for that 'un to be buried, huh?.
Hedge Fun Death? Death at a Caesars Escalator is being investigated.
She's Back Angela Merkel back in for round two as German Chancellor. Pressing ahead with tax cuts. Das ist gut. Out of vogue for now in in America, though.
New Conspiracy Theorist "Bill Clinton: Vast right-wing conspiracy are 'virulent' as ever" says a headline. Ah...that's what we like to see: More promotion of the myth of right vs. left instead of the real Up versus Down of it all. It's just a check away...
Running Out Social Security is being strained by early retirements, say reports. Nice euphemism, that: "early retirements." Wonder if that's the buzz-word for firing people when they get to be 65 because they make more than young people who will do the same job for less dough...
--- snip and save section ---
Coping: With the Other 85% If you haven't read the latest (genuine) www.halfpasthuman.com report, not one of the modified ones floating around torrent sites, you may not be hip to the great mental gulf that is starting to really build among people. to sum it up in short form, there seems to be about 15% of the population that is quickly evolving an kind of higher consciousness. Maybe it has something to do with connecting with other people on the web who are like-minded, or maybe it's something else.
Whatever the cause, however, emails with notes like this one are becoming common:
Yup...looks of readers are starting to get that feeling. When you can read a "Shape of Things to Come" report, then pop by here and see how the dots are lining up to get from here to there, it does take a certain amount of the stress out of day to day living. Maybe it's the detachment that develops when you have a decent sense of what's coming.
I mean, take this October 25th period. We hit some kind of a big emotional turn that day, so lots of readers are going to read whatever the mood-shifting headline is (around that period plus or minus a couple of days) and go "Oh, so that's what it's going to be, eh?" And then they will promptly get on with the next thing on their task list for the day and that will be that. Puts the event into the background.
On the other hand, the people who aren't getting it - who buy in to the old right/left paradigm and the 'news can't be known in advance" belief sets - will see whatever the headlines are around then and will become hypnotized (foxnotized?) and will waste huge amounts of energy glued to the teevee, calling their friends to say "MG did you just see on teevee where..." and they will get all caught up in the shock and awe of the moment. For them it will be a huge foreground event.
So if you're looking ahead, wondering when the shock and awe machine will be turned on after that, you might also pencil in sometime after December 21 to not later than around March 21 for North Korea to go nutzo and either seriously threaten or actually do the deed of lobbing a couple of nukes into the South. We had been looking for that about four weeks after the October 25th event's unraveling, which best I can figure would put us into the early part of January.
M y present bet is for the October 25th event to be the start of the countdown to bombing of Iran with something like an Israeli ultimatum by the 25th plus or minus a few and then the airplane diplomacy. Figure it's about 2/3rd's that possibility and one third market collapse. All subject to change. But, in any event, we have some sense of the bounds of that set, so it will just be a matter of seeing which one pops into reality out of the quantum foam level.
We'll still go shopping the next day, the lawn will still get mowed, the goats fed and watered and no, we won't be taking part with the other 85% in the "OMG did you see where..." discussions. Fat waste of time and 15%er's have other things to do.
Bankruptcy Surge in Two Weeks? Shane Richardson and Jarod Huggins on the local "Urban Survivalist" radio show this weekend do a good job of summing up what seems like a high probability of a bankruptcy filing bubble to come in about two weeks. The driver, as I told you to expect last week, will be those thousands of small businesses who haven't filed their 2008 income taxes and are about to run out their second extensions for filing. Having gambled - and lost - on the idea that green shoots in 2009 would pay 2008 taxes, lots of businesses have lost. More on the YouTube video fo this weekends show. Starts about 3:30 into the 7:57 clip.
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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or while you're at it, Steven Hiatt's (as editor)
,
but you probably know all this stuff, right?
Every
couple of weeks I get pictures from him lately showing off his
pickings...which embarrasses me no end, since our summer
garden this year (to put it nicely) 'got away from us'.
coming, but here lately, the content of dreams is becoming a
rather interesting part of life to watch. For one thing, I
find myself asking "When people die, what if they just make a
'transition' into the dream worlds and stay there until
they puzzle their way through that existence. Hmmmm.
Well, I'm certainly in no hurry to find out, since the 'present'
world is a fine place. But, something to consider,
nevertheless.
...but what is that strange looking symbol that looked like a
hybridization between the number '7' and a boomerang? How
does that fit into things? Do I have so little going on in my
head that I can now leisurely make up symbols to fit book
titles? Can I do something a little more productive maybe
- like, oh LOTTO NUMBERS? Nope.
