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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 10, 2009 07:55 AM 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,
News to Party On? A check of the FDIC web site (at least, as a press time Saturday morning) showed no new bank failures posted this week. This discovery has kicked my schizophrenia into high gear: Part of me wants to celebrate that 'Nothing has been reorganized this week!" But, the other side of my personality is asking to questions: "Is FDIC out of money?" and "Calm before the storm?"
Or, am I simply getting up too early? Maybe I will check back later on this weekend.
Bubblicious I see the Dow Jones Industrials gained, oh, 377.27 points this week. at least someone must be laughing all the way to the bank. Although the truth is my commodity account is up 44.6% for the week, so no, I'm not crying about things. Should this keep up, Elaine will get a Lexus after all. Daewoo's dying anyway, I suppose.
If you want to celebrate a 3.9% gain for the week, have at it. I still think stocks are overvalued and will decline (hmmm...might Oct., 25 be a crash date?). I'll just keep making a few small commodity bets on things people can't do without...like food, for example.
Tracking stocks? Index funds? Paper that tracks other paper? Yeah....you bet'cha. Have fun.
Poles Ink EU Yep, the Treaty of Lisbon needs only the signature of the Czechs now in order to pave the way for the EU to have a long-term president. I look for that to be a blairing error, if'n you know what I mean.
Sweat Lodge Mystery A Sedona Arizona-area sweat lodge is being investigated after two people died and 19 others were hospitalized for unknown causes.
Google Trouble Google's "Voice" service may be in trouble with the FCC over whether calls to rural areas are getting through. Hello? Hello?
Vitamins Versus Cancer Headline worth noting "Vitamin D good for breast cancer patients" hints a report that found low vitamin D levels now recommending high doses of D for patients. --- I wonder how much longer vitamins will stay out of the hands of Big Pharma?
Chronic Fatigue - Virus? Turns out that 98% of the roughly one million Americans with Chronic Fatigue syndrome have a virus by the name of (it's a longy...) xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus, or XMRV. Just reading the name of the critter made me tired. Opens up new treatment & diagnosis possibilities.
Hummer's Future GM says it has signed a deal with a Chinese outfit to make Hummers, but the Chinese gov't says the deals not in their inbox yet. Rebrand as the Ho Hum in the works? Naw...
The Fighting Over Peace (Prize) Here we are in the second weekend of bow hunting season here in East Texas, and I have to say I still feel safer in the woods with (sometimes) wild-eyed Texas deer stalkers than I would ever feel being back among the MainStreamMedia. To be sure, the headline in the UK's Times Online that "Barack Obama's peace prize starts a fight" pretty well sums it up. Fighting over a Peace Prize - if that doesn't take the cake!
To be sure, UrbanSurvival readers are somewhat split on this one. One (apparently in the 'birther' camp) wrote in to argue that president Obama is not the first Kenyan to receive the prize, pointing to Wangari Maathai's 2004 win of the Peace Prize, which turned into something of a controversy since he was reported to have made claims that AIDS was 'deliberately created by Western scientists to decimate the African population." Politically incorrect - We don't need to go there.
The facts of the Prize are a lot more clear and the court of public opinion is already in session as another wrote "Isn't Obama getting the peace prize like an Olympic athlete getting his medal before performing his sport--just because the judges were hopeful? Or a school kid getting his grade of "A" before doing his essay for his English class--just because the teacher was hopeful?"
The other side was well represented by emails like this one:
Naturally, I couldn't let this alone...so I wrote back explaining that I've heard from people who run in diplomatic circles that there are some number of people who wouldn't touch the Nobel Peace Prize with a 10-foot pole since it was awarded to Henry Kissinger back when, who many claim was guilty of war crimes for the conduct of the war(s) of Southeast Asia.
I didn't have long to wait for a response:
Good point - I have to ponder that one.
There are many times, when as a journalist, I report things as they happen, along with my reporters gut/visceral reaction to the events of the moment only to find later in moments of cool reflection reflection that the emotionally 'hot' reaction seems almost intended as a polarizing ploy; certainly more so than a substantive news event, because while it may look nice on a bio some day, the Nobel Prize has not appreciably slowed the world's headlong rush to mass insanity.
Still, today's headlines that "Iran's ambassador to UN demands Security Council take steps against comments made by Ephraim Sneh, who said Israel would attack Iran if sanctions weren't in place by Christmas" mean the Man of Peace has a little work to do. Hope he gets up as early as I do. --- Besides the issue of the Afghan troop levels, there's also the "New US missile plan raises 'questions': Russia". Seems my charitable mention of the missile shield move by Mr. Obama (which wasn't even in sight at the time of the nomination, but I really should stop HAARPing on that, huh?) earlier this year was perhaps premature.
I don't suppose that another fight breaking out at Chicago's Fenger high school on the day officials were discussing school violence gives any indication of the social mood evolving in America, does it? --- The predictive linguistics out of www.halfpasthuman.com have been pointing toward a growing 'revolution meme' in the period we're now in, so I will try to keep my emotional reactions more toned down (regardless of the absurdity of the headlines) and remember to cast them in the 'memeering' context. That's where are those who spin the public's emotions this way, or that, is used for less than honorable motives.
And I'll try to keep more of a weather eye toward the words that matter in the mass media-defined culture. Whether it's a word like 'revolution' which pops up in the Wall Street Journal's headline about "China's New Cultural Revolution" or the unfortunate passing of Norman Borlaug, father the the "Green Revolution" last month, the word 'revolution' is floating around a lot more it seems.
That Google's Trend Lab charts show that there has been a general decline in search volumes for the word "violence" while there's been a slow growth in news references volume leads me to conclude that "People don't have to go looking for violence as much...it's coming to find us."
Surf's Up New site to visit now and then "PhotoShop Disasters". Taking Ralph Lauren to task for an impossibly skinny model pic.
Gives me an idea though: I'll throw out the digital scale and just take pictures of myself and then modify how I look with PhotoShop Elements...yeah, that's the ticket...screw this calorie counting stuff.
Coping: Now Read This I see here in PCWorld that Barnes & Noble may build an electronic text reader along the lines of Amazon's Kindle product line. Hope you are aware that you can get the daily UrbanSurvival.com reports here in .MOBI format for Kindles and what-have-you's? Kindle is switching to AT&T from Sprint, BTW. --- Something that I have got on my task list for today is redefining my personal information platform a bit: We've got a nice, small library of maybe 500 books, or so. This is down from my lifetime high library in the mid 1970's of somewhere north of 3,000 books, but up from my liveaboard sailing days of under 100 books.
I think my younger sister has all of her home library in a spreadsheet or database.
My inclination is to take what's about half a terabyte of ebooks, put them and the library spreadsheet (author and several keywords for each book) and put them on their own USB drive. Then, put in Google desktop or some other tool so when I need to find some information, I can be more focused in my search.
Don't know how ADHD you are, but I have a helluva time staying on task when I go from computer to library to computer looking for something. I noticed this last night when I started looking for a book on drum lessons and got waylaid by a book on green sand casting of small metal and rubber parts...which in turn led to reading up on Devcon's flexible urethane rubber and how soft I could push the durometer reading with Flex-Add* - which is Flexane's softening agent.
(*The answer is a durometer reading of about 30 which is not much thicker than chewing gum or a rubber band - if you start with Flexane 80, not Flexane 94, got it?)
If you don't know what a Shore durometer is - let alone have one or more in your tool box - you must live in a blissfully quiet state where meditation is still possible. I'm convinced that some people have to acquire a huge database of facts to simply over-power monkey mind with data until it gives up, thus allowing the mind to (at last, maybe some day) enter into a meaningful meditative state.
On the
other hand, if you do want one (a kind of ultimate intimidation
tool when buying tires, for example) you can get a Longacre Durometer & Tread Depth w/ Case
I know, I know, what would I do with it? Well, making bread, for example. If you really wanted to know when dough was at just this (or that) consistency (a term I hold in disdain), wouldn't it be useful to have a digital durometer reading to correlate dough kneadiness to various palate qualities? Why, throw in a digital scale for weighing ingredients, a couple of digital moisture meters, digital thermometers and I might be able to make bread yet...
Say, weren't we looking for a book on drumming? Oh-oh. Here's a 1968 copy of Trader Vic's Pacific Island Cookbook... I wonder what the durometer reading of pineapple is? And after soaking it in rum? Hmmm...
This is why nothing gets done around here! See you Monday... --- On the very serious side, Peoplenomics Sunday looks ahead to "The Day Money Stopped Working".
--- Send your comments to george@ure.net The UrbanSurvival Mall: Peoplenomics This Week: A Bad MoM, Real About Real Estate, and Depression Era Myths Three parts to this week's report: Part 3 will deal with the very worrisome report from HPH modelspace which was posted on the UrbanSurvival site on Saturday. Part 2 reviews some of the macro "myths" were that came out of the first Depression and how the systematic dismembering of those hard-learnt lessons set the stage for the great pain yet to come here in the second Depression; which brings us to Part 1 - a much larger/further housing price collapse, and massive (and rising) unemployment. It's unfortunately simple when you look at implied housing prices resulting from even modest declines in aggregate loan-to-value (LTV) rates... 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 whizzy...
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 9, 2009 Special Update The Facts Just Flu Away This is definitely, for sure, going into my journal as "The Day the World Went Surreal." Not only do we have the non-sequitor of president Obama getting the Nobel Prize for Peace (for doing what, exactly?) but now we have another surreal cap in the you-know-what as the AP is reporting that (I just love this one...) "US, other nations stop counting pandemic flu cases." Granted, officialdom stopped counting cases in July - but the AP story quotes one expert who says the case count was a "Vast underestimation."
OK, sure, my masters is in business administration, not epidemiology or public health, but doesn't it seem kinda strange that now that we have so many people globally saying "Hey! This flu is no worse than any other in terms of death rates so far..." that now of all times, the decision is made to stop tracking meaningful statistics?
If the numerator is small and the denominator is getting too big to stampede people into cost plus flu shots, this stopping counting of actual cases smells of...well...you know...that stuff that hits fans. Hand me my tinfoil hat, this is getting nuts.
If you only count dead people, should be easy to make it look like a 100% death rate, eh?
He Got the WHAT Prize? Word that "In a surprise, Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize" has me - and a fair number of readers going "WTF?" Yep: The word's out all over the place. Typical reader reaction this morning is running like this:
Oh yeah! After spilling half a cup of coffee on myself when I read the headline, I got to thinking "Well, maybe the Nobel folks see something I don't...after all "I'm just a doof in the East Texas outback who consults businesses on stay-alive strategies while the world is trying to come crashing down into the Second Depression."
The Nobel Prizes - and especially the 'peace' prize - have always confounded me anyway since they are all based on profits left over from the guy (Alfred Nobel) who invented dynamite and gelignite. So pardon the political incorrectness of this, but as I see it, naming something a 'peace prize' and funding it with dynamite profits is - how do you say this? - a kind of blood money deal by my standards...
So forget that part - that's always been the case, no change there. No, instead I needed to look further to build a list of what Obama has actually done since he got into office.
In fact, the Nobel Committee itself seems to be shy on specifics. The best one that I could come up with was Obama's decision not to put the missile shield project into Poland and Czechoslovakia. To be sure, that may have improved relations with Russia a bit, but then again, that part of the shield was to protect Europe more than the US and we're about flat broke anyway (or we will be after the next big bail failure) so the US is no longer in the position of being the world's biggest, free-spending defense benefactor .
When I read how Obama has created "a new climate in international politics" I ask myself "Is that what they call it when he goes along with the G-20 plans to unseat the Dollar as the world reserve currency?" Or "Has North Korea decided to stop building bomb parts and exporting missiles when I wasn't looking, or is Washington's deaf, dumb, and blind on the Arctic Sea caper reaping some kind of payoff?"
Not to get hung up on this one non sequitor of the day...we have plenty of others to deal with, but this one, well it's two sizes bigger than being a dandy. It's like a Bush Whopper II. Where's my flight suit?
Even more hilarious - absurd - paradoxical - stupid: This nonsensical award decision comes on the very day that the USA becomes the first country to bomb the moon. Peace my.... ---- Now you know why so many Americans have to use pharmaceuticals for breakfast. What we're fed and the reality of what's going on are increasingly disconnected. Yet to question the ruling paradigm brings insults and derision. "You're a nutjob!" "Doomster!"
A friend who hangs in diplo circles in Switzerland noted "What a man...in office two weeks before nominations closed and he's changed the world."
Where's my crack pipe? Think I need to join you.
Man of Peace: More Troops? "General wants 40,000 more US troops for Afghan" says a Reuters report. Show us that peace stuff, would'ja? I'm getting confused: More troops or Peace Prize - please pick one. There's not enough Prozac or crack for this kind of news to continue. 'Specially since the feds are still gonna do simple weed busts....keep them jails full, boys! --- The rebels win anyway? "US forces leave isolated Afghan base after attack." That hunk of real estate cost three American lives and now we leave? What's the number of the Army Manual FM-something on infantry tactics? I must be losing my mind or my memory is completed hosed.
This Really Helps "Russia strongly condemns Kabul blast." That ought to get them Putin & puppet in line for the next Nobel, you think?
Cache Talks I see the October 7th article "Allow me to Introduce: The Biggest Sucker Rally Since the Great Depression" has been 'disappeared'. But, as we're so fond of pointing out - this is when a Google cache page is useful.
Especially when the market may be a tad weak today, LOL.
Saudi Money Go Round So, if the world cuts its dependence on their oil, the Saudis want to know if they can get foreign aid. Lemme see if I have this right: This is that part of the world with ultra posh yachts, hotels, and silver luxury cars (not to mention that ice arena in the desert) and they now are wondering about what? More money? Hand me the vice grips, I need to start pinching myself. --- We have an old saying in America about saving something for a rainy day. If the worldwide Depression becomes a "W" (justly poetic, ain't it?) instead of a "U" shaped affair, such that we're in global famine in a year and there's no money for the lords of oil, you think Americans will be anxious to participate in that kind of bailout? Don't see the world funding families under overpasses and in the Bushtowns, now Obamatowns, around America...
Unbalanced of Trade Speaking of international trade - or is that International leg irons?...the new Balance of Trade report is out this morning. Just the topping for your Cheerios:
I know, they shouldn't start two paragraphs with "In August, the goods..." back to back...so instead look at their high end artwork and let it be: There - picture's worth a thousand words, and all of them related somehow to "In August, the goods..."
Monopoly Money Speaking of 'the goods' -- By my estimate, we still have a minimum of 1.5 years and another 10% down to go in home prices and a maximum of 3 years and 70% further to drop, but you will be pleased to see that "Mortgage Rates in US fall to 4.87%, Freddie Says." --- If you've already lost the house, are living in your minivan, and reading today's report at the public library, I'm sorry I couldn't have reported this to you when it might have helped - a year ago, for example.
Whither Weather Big band of rain and a huge cold front moving through East Texas this morning. Nothing compared to the Philippines where the rain drags on and more than 100 are dead. This touched off landslides. And in Japan, the digging out is underway as a new storm forms. --- May snow in Chicago this weekend which (if it happens) would be the earliest ever on record. But then again, haven't I been telling you "Since the Gulf Stream is slowing, look for colder winters up north?" Wait till the Thames River freezes over this winter...
Flu-Flew Yessir, airport security is nothing to sneeze at as "Airports to Screen Passengers for H1N1 Symptoms." --- Of course, this won't stop the release (or is it mutation?) of swine flu at the Winter Olympics which shows up in the predictive linguistics from www.halfpasthuman.com. But don't cancel that trip to Whistler on account of that...
Quakes to Come Think the recent round of quakes in the South Pacific will settle things down and has released what's been building pressure around the Pacific Plate? No, sorry to say: "Bigger earthquake looms for West Sumatra" say scientists. Damn.
Demographic Note "Report: Global Muslim population hits 1.57 billion." I don't seem to remember a report when it was at 1.56 million. Hmmm... Christianity is somewhere between 2.1 and 2.2 billion. --- Not mentioned is the religion of excess consumption which I'm pretty sure trumps all of 'em.
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Coping:
Get Ezekiel On The Line!
What's got me thinking down this particular dark alley is that video out of Russia earlier this week with that strange cloud formation over Moscow.
You may not be deep enough into woo-woo to see anything particularly strange about this, but down here at the WuJo (where woo-woo steps onto the mat with science and harsh logic) we've got a copy of the 1991 article by Tom Brown Junior from 1991 titled "The Protection Vision of 'Grandfather'.
You have to read down to the Second Vision reported in this; the part that reads:
You may wish to read the rest of the visions here - worth your while, I think.
Since I'm nominally part of the nutjob crew that looks into the future using the predictive linguistic techniques of www.halfpasthuman.com, I'm pretty well tuned in to what's objectively real and what's BS when it comes to predicting future events. For Tom Brown Jr's piece to get holes in sky concurrent with rocks and soil shaking (this week in spades if that's not too much of a double entendre for you at this hour) looks like it's a blip over the noise floor.
Moreover, the Russian 'smoke ring' is not a lone event. A reader sent me this:
Another reader claims to have seen a circular cloud somewhere in the Carolinas (if my memory is still intact) but darned if I can find where I filed that email - not sure if it had a picture - so check back tomorrow.
All of which gets us to an interesting question of what the hell is going on with earthquakes, this particular area of space we are transiting, and what does that imply for three major areas of concern: 1) the fate of omnihumanity as we move toward 2012 and the crossing of the galactic ecliptic, 2) what are the implications for the fledgling science of prediction which does hit often enough that there's something 'over chance' happening that's not defined, and on a completely personal/greed level, how will all this impact my May 2010 wheat commodity options?
More reader thoughts on point:
Here's a link to Frank Condon's posts at the Syzygyjob.com site. Well worth checking out and bookmarking. --- Is there a correlation between 'holes in the sky" and quakes? Too early to tell, that's for sure.
But just in case, get me Ezekiel's phone number - need to call him up and see if he has a camera phone and can send in circular cloud pictures. --- Let me see, here: Moscow is 55.75 North by 37.6 East and the quake epicenters can be found from USGS here, so with a little high powered math, if this hole in the sky stuff is real, we should be able to work the problem backwards (as with a bullet hole through a window and into an interior wall, right?) and figure out who is shooting at us.
Oh, sure, this may sound a bit far fetched and like it would be a waste of a huge black budget for dealing with 'alien wars' but certainly no more so than smashing something into the moon pretending to look for water. India already established that, I mean WTF?
(Rickety) Time Machine Notes OK, so here we are waiting to see what tips its hands over the next several days that should lead to a huge emotional 'building period' starting around October 25th. May not be a single event - could be a dispersed me, but we shall see.
Against this background, I find myself pondering the "Ure Postulate" that says (simplified) The more visibility of an event we get in advance (in the predictive linguistics work that Clif does) the bigger the event is likely to be. Hence, when we get descriptor sets in the data of 'death of the dollar' a couple of years in advance, you know it's gonna be a 'biggie'. Just as a comparison, the lead time on 9/11 was about 120 days.
So now a reader sends us this pondering:
(* If you haven't read "Threshold fields of the purely growing parametric instabilities in bounded homogeneous magnetoactive plasmas" you are going to be hopelessly lost trying to engineer how to use OLED/PLED projection systems onto thin film plasma streams in order to project clocking imagery onto your black budget flying device which also warps time a bit, but that's another day's column.) Well, of course there are others out there trying to project future events based on language and yeah, we're wondering about that cyclical repetition of big events. It's kind of like that 'print through' effect at the archetype level. (**When audio is recorded on an old 36-track studio machine, you can sometimes catch 'print through' of the next layer of tape, something you can hear on some Led Zeppelin tracks, on whichever album Stairway to Heaven was on, just as a for instance.) So yeah, this print through stuff with how archetypes work is a vexing problem. But we're in no particular hurry to be right about the several years worth of 'death of the dollar' meme that has been floating around only partially fulfilled because it means all kinds of grief and suffering is all too close at hand. Much better to be wrong when forecasting calamities, but at some point we usually end up being right, print through issues or not. Using subtle shifts in language use to infer the future a year or two out is far from an exact science. Think of it as trying to do delicate brain survey with a Caterpillar D-9 and you'd be in the ball park. Now, get back to work! Don't you have a flu shot to get, or something? Thursday October 8, 2009 Update Look! Up in the Sky! Department Say, usually when I put an update on it has something to do with an earth-shaking event (bad pun, see next story) or some scum bag being busted for securities fraud - you know, the usual day-to-day news crap. But check out the pictures from the Moscow sunset last night of an anything-but-ordinary cloud over Moscow...Link here. Caught it on RT's Galaxy satellite feed this morning and forgot to mention it.
OK - why mention it? Well, to the truly paranoid (and they are out to get you - so it's OK) it sure looks like a (gulp) bullet hole in the sky!. Given that NASA is blowing up that 'kinetic device' on the moon tomorrow you don't suppose...naw...forget it...well...er.....
Shakes & Quakes Discussing earthquakes may seem like an odd place for a website ostensibly focused on economics to start out, especially when the US dollar is dropping and the price of gold was up nearly $10 bucks, but I've been telling you about gold being the place to be long enough that if you haven't 'gotten it' by now (figuratively and literally) you may get one more chance after the collapse of the markets gets under way, but in the long term inflation seems the only way out of the nation's policy pickle, so cowboy up and deal.
The string of earthquakes is notable because (like it or not) Ma Nature can trump Wall Street an7y old time he/she wants. Checking the USGS earthquake server this morning we notice there have been seven earthquakes in the 6.0 or great magnitude in the past two days, the largest of which was a 7.8. The NY Times headlines "Pacific Quakes Stir Panic But Tsunamis Tiny".
Not that the increase in quakes comes as any surprise, since they are supposed to be so frequent as to not even be worth mentioning based on predictive linguistics work. But what's got me head scratching is the question "What's causing it?" I've got three competing theories going. One is that there is some yet-to-be-disclosed change going on related to the plasma core model of earth and the recent increase in cosmic radiation. More energy coming in means more matter being created in the earth's core (like a balloon being blow up) so we get earthquakes.
Another is that the normal precession/rotation forces are gathering such that the Pacific Plate will simply crack. Depending on where exactly that decides to happen, we either get a human die-off of people as either tsunamis was up around the whole Pacific Plate or we get glaciers washed off into the ocean from down in the Antarctic. Good movie content, but hasn't it already been done?
Or, it may all relate to something as simple as the massive low pressure up north of the earthquake area which accompanied typhoon Melor which is smashing Japan about this morning.
Not that anyone has a one best answer, could be any combination of ingredients recommended by four out of five PhD's. Still, worth watching. (And you thought all the shakes were in the Middle East? Damn I miss writing for radio sometimes.)
New Casino Unveiled Feel like a little gambling? Tried of those Gamblers Anonymous meetings where you're tired of confessing your day-trading addiction? Well, look no further than Russia which is unveiling its equivalent of the NASDAQ shortly with a little less emphasis on silicon and a bit more on nano-tech. "Are yah feeling lucky, punk?"
Russian For The Oil Lukoil of Russia is making a run at developing an Iraqi oilfield reports BusinessWeek. Now, now, no saying "Hey! That's ours..." Who do you think you are, a NWO'er?
Jokes & Hoax I don't suppose you've gotten around to reading through the Wednesday release of the Consumer Debt report of the Fed have you? A fine read it is. We're informed that revolving debt is decreasing at a 13.1% annualized rate. Just how much of that debt reduction is being facilitated by people just spending less, and how much is because people are simply saying "Screw this!" and walking out on their debt to the banksters is not revealed. You'll want to poll your friends for some insight in that department.
Then there's the much smaller than expected decline in the nonrevolving debt collapse which was only dropping at a 1.6% annualized rate. I say 'only' because best I can figure, the $7-billion of auto sales in August from the Cash for Clunkers fiasco is what saved the statistical day. Without that, the nonrevolving debt would have been down much more - probably an annualized rate between 6.5 and 7%.
My deflationist friend Jas Jain made an interesting remark - as he's been studying a lot of American history of late. He's got an evolving view that the economy does OK when there's a balance between the priestly class, the warrior class, and the banker class. Last military president we had was what, Eisenhower? Which may explain why the nuclear family has been busted up and one person working can't hardly make ends meet anymore. Banker class wouldn't have it any other way...or, it's in their interest....
Unemployment Newest weeklies here:
Rally Rally! Rally! Everyone buy stocks. Or, at least the futures are higher. Healthcare: The Bitter Financial Pill
We Ain't Them Department With the demonstrations against the further expansion of the war in Afghanistan (which is a done deal for the economy, after all) interesting to see how the Taliban are trying to communicate that they are not part of al Qaida. --- Meantime, a report says American troop morale is falling. Understandable given the mission creep and lack of decisive engagement plans. Maybe if Washington could articulate what 'winning" means besides being stuck on the ground into the foreseeable future and driving the drug trade into Russia and....
On the other hand, a return from war front would exacerbate unemployment levels...oh it's a fine kettle of fish, isn't it?
Messy Stats Department Oh sure, the headlines that same store sales show some growth may sound encouraging. But hold it! What's the growth when you back out inflation/purchasing power dilution? I know, I know...don't ask, don't tell. --- When you look at retail sales figures please, for heavens sake look at unit volume as well as raw revenue. A store can have increased revenue and falling unit sales depending on inflation's impacts. Like you need to be reminded of this
Clif on Radio A little scheduling Ooops on the Jeff Rense show last night. Clif was supposed to be on talking about the predictive linguistics update we posted here last week. But, also booked was Gerald Celente - who was on last night and last I heard, Clif's appearance was pushed back to tonight.
I keep telling Rense to outsource his scheduling to India, but he seems to think we need to keep jobs here in the US...don't know about this guy. He'll never get to be a filthy rich outsourcing/ labor rate differential exploiting kapitalist at this rate...
Try his listen live page tonight.
Novel Lit Herta Mueller won the prize in literature this year for reporting what things were like on the other side of the Iron Curtain back in the 1980's. No, I haven't read any of her stuff yet - you?
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Coping: Enter: The Writer Unlike "Enter the Dragon" - a Bruce Lee martial arts flick which unlike most columns around here has both a good character and a good plot - some days are destined for B ratings.
Such was the case Wednesday when my financial genius friend Howard called to mention (among other things) that the Washington Post was having a contest to find "America's Next Pundit". "I may enter," he revealed.
Howard's a considerably better writer than me, although his opus on the mortgage meltdown from an insiders perspective hasn't seen print yet because the mortgage collapse (Phase One, residential) has become something of 'old news' and publishers are hooked on 'the next hot thing' (Phase Two, commercial). But, that's still in the wings for a couple of more weeks.
The Post's contest is limited to 400 words, a toughie for me because I'm an electronic journalist and we use recycled electrons, not physical goods like paper & ink which cost money.
Brevity? Around here? Yeah right...
"Start making your case" advises the Post.
OK
then: "The Federal Reserve sucks and has hollowed out
the dollar to where it only buys 4.6¢
of goods compared to what it would buy before the bankster coup
outlined in The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve
I suppose at this point I could try to reinforce my position with more current data like yesterday's Consumer Debt report which the bankster's call Consumer Credit since they are creditors and you are the cannon fodder. But a trip to the grocery store, a serious inflation-adjusted review of what's left in your 401(k), or trying to actually pay down a credit card balance that has interest rates that would embarrass even a loan shark, is all the proof most people would need.
There. That ought to put me in a Bruce Lee-like position. The Hero takes on the unruly mob of group-think editors and with a simple word-flip and lays them all out. This is fiction, of course.
This part's not: I expect the Post's 'next pundit' will spew the same consensus as previous contributors. Skeptics of the distracting game of right vs. left (instead of haves vs. have-nots) need not apply. Question the ruling paradigm? How dare! And the paradigm is: People go to Washington broke and come back millionaires. The common folk aren't welcome.
More will cost you another tree. --- The Post also wants 100 words about the entrant. That's easy: George Ure is an East Texas nutjob who has been writing about the decline of America's economy since 1995 on his www.urbansurvival.com web site. Besides consulting and goat ranching, drum smashing, machining, remodeling, ham radio, and studio production, spends endless hours trying to decode Edward Leedskalnin's and James Clerk Maxwell's works. He's semi-educated, highly skeptical and alleges that 13-years running a big city radio news department qualifies him as writer. Ure consistently forgets that he's not writing for radio and frequently misspells and claims credit for inventing the 'improvised punctuation device' which is demolishing good grammar on the internet.
[enter].
---
Here's my first brush with Washington. I figure here's 99 of something and when it gets to Washington its suddenly 102 of something. Right there an in-your-face 3% inflation rate - and that's just dealing with words!
Same thing with my 'submission'. In Word is was 399 while in Washington post Editorese it counted as 411 words. Perhaps it's not the editors who count differently, maybe it's their programmers - shouldn't make wild assertions like this without proof that editors can't count - but I've always had suspicions in that direction anyway.
Now Let's Get Bombed This morning's column may be a tad shorter than usual since I actually had to run spell check on part of this morning's report, so now we can unlax a bit and scan the important stuff in the inbox. Like this one - about how a reader is worried that we're going to start something tomorrow when we 'bomb the moon'...
No worries...yet. Here's my read of the predictive linguistics reports. First, whatever it is that's coming October 25th (plus or minus several days) is likely to be mainly economic in flavor. 85/15% kind of thing. So, even if the US/Israel go bomb Iran in that date, it's likely to be an also-ran news event.
Something that would fit? A massive decline in the US dollar, or a thousand-point drop in the stock market in one day. Who knows? Maybe enough people will sober up or skip the Prozac on Friday the 23rd that they will realize paper and ink means nothing (Washington post aside, LOL). A crack in the market would certainly fit Friday or Monday would fit, but then so would a Top Five bank failure/reorganization and emergency spending package for the first of the next round to "Too Big To Failers" which is another reasonable guess.
Or that too quick denied story about the US buck being sent packing when we go begging for oil...that kind of thing.
At least it seems things will be primarily economic in nature. The best defense for such things I can think of would be a bit of extra cash, so you can buy a little something at the store, although that may not last long because of the magnitude of the electronic nightmare. I'd also make sure the cable bill is paid up so you can see all the stress/panic due over the following couple of weeks on television.
But bomb the moon? Not hardly a concern. The real 'alien wars' stuff isn't till late 2010 and it may be only a bad attempt to launch Project Blue Beam or some other 'spin the masses' trickery. Another 9/11 or a further economic meltdown will be off the table - and we're at about our carrying capacity for war(s) already. What'cha gonna do?
And the Perfect Home Page Is? A couple of readers have suggested I look at www.startpage.com - which they point out is more private than some of the other pages. I presently use my own home-brewed home page but startpage looks interesting.
So, got any strong feelings as to
what makes a good home page? Always been curious about
that, never seen much research on it, though... Wednesday October 7, 2009 How High Does Gold Go? A few readers have written in to ask "When are you going to sell your gold?" I have a coin that I bought back in 2001 when gold was under $270 an ounce and I've just never had the gumption to part with it; always held to the idea that it was one of the few things that the government of Zimbabwe (or the US) could not just tack a bunch of zeroes on an call it a 'gain' and then tax me on it.
The simple answer, of course, is to look at a chart of how gold fared in 1980 when it hit a peak of over $850 an ounce briefly in January. Now, running over to the Minneapolis Fed inflation calculator (on their home page here) and plug 850 and 1980 in, we arrive at the price level $2,199.27, although because gold traded instantaneously over $850, some pundits bandy about the $2,300 level. Maybe, but not everyone (or anyone) I know is a perfect top picker, so I find myself thinking "$2,200 is close enough for government work...")
Now let me explain when I will be buying real estate again by wheeling out a cocktail napkin where I will show you what has been going on with the price of gold for the past couple of years both on absolute terms and in terms of relative value - this latter being the defining metric for all investments yet it's one few bother to think about.
We will start with a simple chart of where housing prices have been - and where they seem to be headed, shown in the left axis of the chart, and the price of gold very approximately, shown in the right (vert) axis of the chart:
What this chart illustrates is that in (July 2007) a house that was worth $300,000 when the house flipping mania and outburst of zero-doc loans was at its peak required a little more than 450-ounces of gold to purchase. Now run forward to today where that same house may have dropped to $175,000 on a cash basis and then let's project these trends out to the end of next year when at their extremes one can see the situation arise where 50-ounces of gold might buy a house.
But is this extreme? Heck no! On an historical basis an ounce of gold would buy either a decent house (probably something in the $150K range in terms of today's pricing) or it would buy 5-acres of land and some livestock to run on it.
While I can't speak to the price of land up in your area, the going rate for wild/undeveloped land adjacent to ours is about $2,500 on a cash basis presently. So what would this imply for the ultimate price of gold? Well, I can make the case that gold should be priced at $12,500 in today's dollars and something well over that when we get a little ways further down the pike in government spending beyond our incomes.
One more thing to ponder is "What happens to the price of silver in all this?" Well, to my way of thinking, silver is the real leverage play (not that gold is bad, mind you, LOL). When I told you I was buying a little silver in July 2005 around the $7/an ounce level with the thought that I might sell it when it would pay off my (then) new tractor I have to confess I've never sold it and the tractor is about paid off. We were in no hurry to pay it off because it was a zero percent loan - which made really good sense to me at the time (and still does...).
You can find a lot of discussion of the gold to silver ratio on the net and a here's a good article on topic from 2008. Looking at the very long term trend (a chart on point is about halfway down this page) we can see that until about 1979, the ratio of gold/silver was between 10 and 15 to one.
However since then (and it may have been delayed follow-up to Nixon closing the gold window which I think was around 1974) the average has been about 70 to one with a spike in 1980 of 100 to one.
Fast forward to this morning and in the pre-market, gold has almost touched $1,050 while silver's high has only been $17.54 which is a ratio of a bit over 59.
If we were to speculate (which is what we have to call this because calling it 'investing' is just as misleading as calling flash trading' investing), I would expect minimally to see just on an inflation adjusted basis a blow-off top of gold to $2,200, a doubling of oil prices, housing drop another 30-50% from present levels and a silver ratio of somewhere between 60 which would imply $36 silver t0 100 which would still imply $22 silver.
Then I'd sit back and take a look around and see what's happening. Sometimes long-range 'single decisions' should be rethought - about every 10-years or so, which means I will be due to rethink my 'single decision made in 2001' in a couple of years from now.
Could the gold/silver ratio return to historical levels of say 15 to one? You bet. And what would than make silver? Oh, $146 an ounce and change. It'd be nice, but I'm not trying to get rich - just trying to hold on to my purchasing power while the (so-called) Fed is printing up dollars. I figure by that time, the amount of purchasing power left in the US dollar which is presently about 4.6¢ compared to the whole dollars in 1913 when the banker coup got rolling, ought to be down to under 4¢ on the dollar, which would imply an inflation rate of 13% or higher.
While that seems outlandish, over at Trader Bart's M-3 Reconstructed chart, you can see that while 'money' (hard to call it that, sorry) creation has backed off a tad in recent months, the annual rate of growth of 'money' in its highly fictionalized paper form is still running about 16½ percent annualized, so the idea that consumer price inflation will catch up to money supply bloating isn't so much a 'maybe' as a 'when'.
And that sets up what my friend Jas Jain looks to as the defining figure which is due out this afternoon from the Fed - that'd be the Consumer Debt figure, which the central banksters call the "consumer Credit" figure because they are creditors and they would just as soon you don't think of all this as a debt game because if you did that you'd be brought back to the reality that debt is a yoke of oppression that keeps a man (or woman) from being truly free. The more debt, the more kontrol - but you knew all that.
If gold drops to $700-$800, I figure the ratio to real estate won't move much, but housing prices will be collapsing more (next year, early) which is why a good stock strategy has always been playing to countercyclical high beta stocks - same kind of thing, except the high beta units happen to be denominated as 'houses' and 'gold'.
Radio Appearances Cliff (www.halfpasthuman.com) and I will both be on the Jeff Rense show on internet radio tonight. See www.rense.com for details on how to hook in to the audio stream. Cliff will no doubt be reviewing the economic update (and more) since he ran the model of the model late last week and I will be on in the second half of the show to talk about (what else?) the Consumer Debt figures.
Maybe a few words about the
Treasury Budget, but Clive Cussler fiction is more to my taste,
thanks. (His newest are Spartan Gold (Fargo Adventures)
Treasury Bids Go Limp One of our banker friends (he's a good guy in a community bank - not one of the gougers) sent along the results of yesterday's 70-day Treasury Auction. Not good:
Translation: OK, so you're not a fixed income guru: Bottom line is the government was trying to raise $50-billion from the bond sale and didn't make even half that. Can you say "No interest"? Well, not no interest. Just not enough at a rate of ¼%.
When you read things like the Australians raising rates, you know what that means, right? The money boys are looking for fatter returns which drives a stake through the heart of those...um...green shoots. --- Besides having banks prepaying insurance premiums, an amazing three-years worth, do I detect an increase in FDIC enforcement actions? Revenue, revenue, revenue, eh?
Oh Look - Inflation! Oil is back over $71 a barrel on economic recovery hopes. Most people haven't taken the time to pencil out where inflation would be if oil prices hadn't collapsed from the $150 range down to the present ultra-cheap levels. I'd do that for you, but you'd end up doing a lot of drugs to cope and we don't want any responsibility for your chemical solutions to life's absurdities.
Hyping War, Tracing Precedents Of course, all this means that the government has to find new and creative ways to print money and then pump it into the economy. What better way than expanded war-making? Ooops! Right on cue here: "US troop build-up in Afghanistan may be gaining favor". Stories like "Obama to discuss Afghanistan with Advisors" are simply formalities of a Bush-era surge to come. Care to bet on it?
Unfortunately, despite the promises of 'change' the Obama administration has fallen back on the old Bush-era 'permanent war for permanent peace' thinking which has justified the continued evolution of the Post Orwellian Security State. Word that "Police chiefs endorse anti-terror community watch" is, oh, youi know...just part of how it all fits. Besides, there aren't too many economic levers left to pull that allow for tweaking of the economy. Fine tuning can be done with military levels and spending.
The really coarse adjustments need to be done with big (e.g. terrorist) events, etc. (If you thought for just a second that 'etc.' included things like instant flu threats' you get a gold star! If you are looking for the 'mutated flu' to be set loose at the winter Olympics in Vancouver, you get a whole row of gold stars for the day... or a single blue one if you simply read the predictive linguistics report and remember the details of that part on page 30 or 40-something)
"Swine flu's bigger impact on blacks and hispanics is not being addressed" notes the NY Daily News today. You noticed, too? I don't suppose I need to speculate as to "Why" do I? Got'cher copy of "Limits to Growth" handy? --- If the UN keeps talking about replacing the US dollar as the global reserve currency, I'm sure that a flurry of Osama bin Laden tapes and communiqués will follow.
No one in 'officialdumb' is likely to call the UN out on their currency views for two reasons. First is that the G-20 already says that's what's planned and 2) because the UN is doing a fine job hyping 'cyber-threats' which helps to lay the foundation for licensure of the internet. Just like the Communications Act of 1934 was the 'free speech land grab' of the 1930's depression, licensure of the internet will be the 'land grab' of this depression. Give it time - a couple of years max, although Spring 2010 seems likely based on the movement of the sheep who seem to be on the verge of wakening. Can't have that...
Have I revealed too much? Doggone it...let's get back into minutia for a minute, shall we?
Grain Options I am halfway expecting some wheat options (March 2010 calls) to start gaining back some of their lost value. Why? "Rice output to slump in Philippines on Storm Damage." People have this habit of eating...my kind of demand curve - nice & steady.
Dig This The Jerusalem Post this morning headlines that 'Israel digging under Temple Mount'. Now, you talk about a piece of real estate that has held its value, how would the Dome of the Rock compare with that Empire State Building-sized object debated for Midtown NY?
(Illegal) Immigration Reform The Obama administration is considering "US to overhaul immigration system" but just what that means isn't clear yet. "Detainees will be ranked by risk factors, and new detention centers will be built." So, that contingency study that KB&R was working on ($500-million for the study, wasn't it? My memory is bad at this hour, but it wasn't free...that much I recall) may be used for something after all?
I may seem pretty stupid on this stuff, but you know, if we'd just FINISH THE DAMN FENCE and BEEF UP BORDER PATROL we could SOLVE THE PROBLEM AT ITS SOURCE, but that wouldn't be one of those aforementioned fine adjustments to the economics levers, then, would it?
Nope. Instead we need to design and build multiple Club Feds.
Czar Wars
New Windy City Big winds in Cleveland. Hmmm...don't see any political gatherings there...
Quick, get Boone Pickens on the line and ask him "Why Texas, why not the shores of the Great Lakes, huh?" Ask him about eminent domain and right of ways, too, would yah?
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Coping: National Night Out Last night was "National Night Out" here in Texas. Elaine & I went up to the Elmwood Volunteer Fire Department's headquarters to check out what was going on. The sheriff came by (briefly - he had other stops to make) as well as one of the local constables. More cookies and snacks that I'd seen in a good long while.
Besides chatting about the various goings-on in the Department, there was the usual conversation about life in the outback; most of the fall flowers are getting ready to call it quits for the year and the inevitable discussion of the weather. When the 'night out' started, the temps were in the upper 70's with very high humidity, and over the course of an hour, the temp must have dropped 10-12 degrees so it was quite pleasant.
All of this has a point (you were wondering, I suppose?): If you live in the Houston, Dallas, or Austin areas, be sure and put the next Elmwood VFD event on your calendar: Saturday November 14th about lunchtime ( 11AM till about 2 PM). The Department holds a fund raising raffle and this year's prize is a big screen TV - tickets are $3 each or two for $5.
Late Daily Reports Just as a point of information, several people have told me they don't like getting UrbanSurvival daily updates the next day. Seems that some ISP's are caching UrbanSurvival updates for 24-hours (or longer). I assume you, Monday through Friday (and most Saturday's seems like) I update the page before 8 AM - so if you are not getting today's report TODAY then either call your ISP and complain or dump your browser cache and hit refresh.
The most common source of the problem seems to be AOL users. My suggestion? Use a current version of FireFox (or MISE) and get onto the net without using software from other folks. No telling what they delay - and you don't want to miss things, right?
For your ToDo list: If you don't get today's report TODAY call up your ISP and scream at them and let me know what they give you for an excuse... (There is none, but ISP's say the damnedest things when you tell them "No port blocking! No caching of content! - I pay for online access not for storage of old news!"
Beyond Indexing: This one goes in the weird co-inky-dink file:
Hmmm...that's nothing. Why I added up all the numbers in my social security number like they do in numerology and you know what? It gave me my IQ (2)! Tuesday October 6, 2009 Reviewing Storm Tactics Remember a couple of weeks - heck, might have been a month or longer - back, I was telling you about how a lot of the oil operators in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) fields were capping off their wells and brining their workers back and putting them on furlough because oil prices were just too low? Well, it looks like that's going to be changing in a major way over the next six months or less, but that may not bring all the shut-in production in the GOM back on line.
Comparing oil and gas outputs from the GOM is always a contentious affair since when you get into the late summer months variables like hurricanes and tropic depressions can cause shut-ins of product. On the other hand, just taking a quick pass through the year-on-year oil and gas reports from the government's Mineral Management Service database (which you can download and play with here) it looks to my under-educated eyes like oil production in the GOM was down 12.55% in July 2009 compared with year earlier levels. Even more significant is the drop in natural gas production, down 25¼% YoY looking at July numbers.
The story line consists of several dots, so let's follow them as best we can and see where they lead us - because this could be one of the most important financial periods of your life.
First, the macro view: For several years now the predictive linguistics have been warning of 'dollar death' and how that would bring with it a massive impact on US lifestyles. in 2007, the reports actually went so far as to talk about dollar death in November. As it turns out, which November may have been wrong, because this is a fledgling science - this looking into the future stuff - and since there are no textbooks, we have had to infer rules about how language shift happens.
One of the rules which has evidenced itself though - and it is THE rule to be aware of this fall - goes to the idea that the further ahead we can see something, the BIGGER its emotional impact will be.
Does the 'dollar death' therefore occur this year? Well...maybe.
Our first 'dot' to trip over this morning is the report that the "Gulf States in Secret Talks to Drop Dollar" surfaced. The original story was published in the UK Independent under the headline "The demise of the dollar: In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading."
Now, as you might expect, that set up a screaming crapstorm in the overnight markets, and that in turn has spurred denial after denial about the dollar dumping scheme. For example, the "Saudi Bank Governor denies talks to replace Dollar" and "Gulf region to stay with dollar for oil: UAE central bank source."
(Ain't forensic journalism fun?)
Although we haven't heard too much from the Obama administration yet (it's early in the storyline here) we can already infer some things from the fact that president Obama is not meeting with the Dalai Lama - a move which is bound to please the Chinese at a time when the Chinese could play a key role in deciding how much the US dollar should figure in future oil pricing. On the other hand, congress is meeting with him (Dalai Lama) - so the US is trying to play both sides in this. On the one hand trying to maintain the charade of a balanced pro-freedom stance on Tibet, while at the same time sucking up to the Chinese who are the up and coming 900-pound gorilla in oil consumption as their country's standard of living comes up; a euphemism for eats more energy.
Despite the denials out of the Middle East this morning that something's afoot, the gold and silver markets had a healthy bounce since any devaluation of the US dollar (a kind of foregone conclusion long term, especially since the G-20 meeting last week in How's your Sound Cannon City? put the writing on the wall for all to see.
Another consequence of the weakening of the US dollar's relative prestige in world finance would be an increase (dollar denominated) in domestic commodity prices. You can see the mechanics of this already coming to play as Australia has triggered the first round of interest rate hikes (to 3.25%) because governments now have to pay a little more to keep people buying stodgy bonds when go-go commodities could really pop in dollar terms.
Don't be surprised to see the Australian lead in interest rates followed - and perhaps that means the next Fed meeting might be forced to start increasing rates which in my view will come at a time when rates need to be kept low because if they are not, then banks that borrow on-the-cheap from the Fed will raise their rates to commercial borrowers and that would about nail (as in coffin) the second leg down in the Second Depression getting underway.
Already today, the Wall Street Journal Online is headlining that "Crude Rises Further on Weak Dollar, Equities."
Paradoxically, however, this may actually be good news for equities, since in an inflationary environment, we're likely to see a whip-saw effect on equities. In the early going (like now) the thinking may be that if a company has a market cap of X based on a book value of Y and sales of Z then it really ought to be valued like an apartment house, which despite flat rents can appreciate during inflationary periods just based on higher replacement costs for the asset.
EXCEPT, of course, when vacancy rates in the apartment - the analog of which would be falling consumer sales for a company - begin to drop dramatically. Then you can get sudden and dramatic changes in both apartment house values (replacement costs go toward infinite while revenues from rents/operations fall toward zero making the equity position untenable). Which is the dynamic of how real estate, stock, and other bubbles burst.
All of which leaves us where this morning? In a state of flux. While there may be some initial movement up in equities, tomorrow's consumer debt report from the Fed should be important to watch because just as regularly collected rents are the basis of buying commercial real estate (and we know those are in trouble anyway among mall operators who may get 50% or more from sales override provisions in their leases, so too the analogy on the consumer side is how much debt is being run up by consumers.
When the consumer debt begins to collapse, it simply means that commercial outfits - like retailers - will have less to share with mall operators and that seems likely to march a few large mall operators to the wall in coming months. At the same time, that will lead to additional layoffs among people who have so far been able to skate around developing unemployment, but somewhere north of the 10% official level (moving closer to 20% real unemployment rate based on John Williams' Shadow Government Stats site ), we ought to see another flurry of large-scale layoffs.
And that could be exacerbated by an increase in oil prices which are already starting to firm; not to mention the confirmations being given by gold and silver prices - also firming. Oh and interest rates firming and....(insert circular references till you tire of it here).
All of the 'iffy stuff" notwithstanding, until we see a major move confirmed, the global economic top seems likely to continue spinning for a while but the storm clouds are out there on the horizon. Just to give you a feel of it (and because it's a sailing movie) you might want to check out "White Squall, a 1996 movie about things that come from the horizon than can take lives.
Granted, an economic White Squall coming in this month might take take your life (see the case of the "Former Japanese finance minister Kakagawa found dead"), or more likely it may take your 401(k) down by a significant factor, depending on how you decide to play the developing financial storm. My solution has been a 'sea anchor' of part Treasuries held in my own account (no third parties, thanks) and a couple of bit of gold and silver. Run away inflation and the metals may be the winning ticket, and in runaway deflation, the bonds would be the hedge. I have heard reports of people who had August COMEX deliveries for silver who still don't have their bars yet, BTW.
It's
not a cheap book at about $70, but a read of Surviving the Storm: Coastal and Offshore Tactics
A key reversal in the market today could be another one of those clouds coming in advance of the financial world's version of a white squall.
Taste of Depression The taste of fear is not even in the air yet - that's some ways off - but already Depression Two has claimed four long running Conde Nast magazines including one of our favorites: Gourmet.
Trick or Tweets Reader sums up gold-old-fashioned American Double-speak with this:
Get the feeling we're we being twicked or tweaked?
War On the Rock! Nasa figures conditions will be right to bomb the moon on Friday of this week. All of which seems terribly 'me-too'ish" since India has already figured out that there's water on the moon. With all the high powered surveillance technology we have to monitor civilians, why aren't we aiming some antennas and steeling the data from some of there other countries? Seem like a high payback approach to me... ---- I don't suppose anyone has asked if there are alien bases on the backside of the moon, how they would take it?
Slow Nobels Three Americans got Nobel Physics prizes - but some of the technology has been in the market place for years. Maybe 'newest' is not one of the criteria, I can't say. Deserved, but kinda late to my way of thinking. How long have CCD's been out? Answer: 1969. And the fiber optic prize was based on a 1966 breakthrough.
Better late than never, I suppose.
QuakeTrails Quake-hit Indonesia city sprayed to stop disease is an interesting headline to people who look for chemtrails over North America and elsewhere. Spraying disinfectant? 'Scuse me, but what chemical is being used? Oh, mosquito spraying on top of that.
Disease is also a looming threat in the Philippines which is digging out from typhoon Parma.
Sharking Developments A"748-pound shark caught off Fort Lauderdale Coast." Helluva fish story. Maybe not as fishy as some government employment statistics, but worth a mention.
Where to Live Based on UN Data from 2007 the best places to live in the world (quality of life/standard of living) included:
Iceland was #3 but this is 2007 data before their banking mess...
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Coping: Eyes to the Skies Good article at Wired Science about a new kind of telescope that is trying to zoom in on dark matter in the Universe. Sounds like scads of fun, except that the kind of energy that we've been focusing on around here has been more along the lines of "How much energy is left in paper/fiat money at this late stage in its life?" and "This should be one hell of a cold winter." --- The nubbins of the problem with this coming winter is that we already know that this summer's 'global coastal events' had a very odd thing happen with higher than normal tides along the US East Coast. This is thought to have happened because the Gulf Stream has been slowing down - which means, if I extrapolate only a little bit, that the thermohaline conveyor is slowing and that will likely mean a huge drop in farm and ag productivity in Europe next spring as I would expect less warm water going north could bring on an all-time-ugly winter up there. Up there being France, the UK, and Germany.
Throw into the mix headlines like "El Nino puts spin on winter weather" and you could come up with a major shortfall of food stocks in 2010.
Just something to think about. A few more big earthquakes, some sizeable vol;canic eruptions to throw more particles into the upper atmosphere and the slowing of the weather moderating Gulf Stream and you have a recipe for disaster.
Which gets us to the morning's statistical question: Which will get us all first: volcanism, extreme weather, or extreme government/currency diseases? Why this isn't made into a weekly TV show just amazes me, especially when I notice the crap that people seem to want to watch. Truly disheartening.
How People Index Yesterday I mentioned that I just learned after 9½ years that my wife 'indexes' life events to what she was wearing on this day, or that. Turns out, people have sent in a fair number of other indexing schemes, so if you thought you had an 'odd way' of storing knowledge, read on to how other readers are doing it...
More as indexing reports come in...
Can't Pay Property Taxes? Does this smell like a set-up to get people separated from their rights to private property?
Pardon me while I put on my suspicious hat...
Reader's Writes Here's a good one:
Also included was a good link to Denis Jones' site and an article on "The Virtues of a Disorganized Resistance"... --- Busy day ahead - a couple of subscribers to Peoplenomics have misplaced passwords, so that's first up after breakfast...and then a whole load of projects...ya'll come back tomorrow yah hear?
Oh - this is National Night Out night - drop by the local fire house and say howdy - if you happen to be around either the local ham radio club here in Palestine Texas (www.pacarc.org) or the local VFD: www.elmwoodvfd.org.
Monday October 5, 2009 This Oughta Be Interesting I trust you saw the advisory note which was posted Saturday from the predictive linguistics team that the coming events (around) the October 25th 'hot date' are now shading about 85% - 15% in favor of the event being primarily economic in nature? If not, it's in last week's report here.
When I say "This oughta be interesting' what I'm trying to encapsulate is a whole range of concerns that range from the very general like 1) the future viability of paper and digital money, 2) can the problems of TD Bank experienced last week happen to other banks, too? To the more specific and short-range concerns like "When Robin Landry's Elliott Wave count and Robert Prechter's count agree should we be really, really worried?" And 4) If the predictive linguistics are going to be right about an economic news story of huge proportions coming around the 25th, or so, what will be 'prequel' story be that should start to making headlines either late this week or early next?
That's of course before the worries about the meaning of an early rally in the market and a mid-session reversal in the face of pressures to the downsize and what all that would mean.
Just to take one section of this weekend's Peoplenomics report and abbreviate the hell out of it, the main problem in the economy is that real estate troubles are far from over for two reasons.
To illustrate the first, let me hand you $30,000 and ask what kind of a house you could buy in most markets today versus what you could buy in most markets 3-years ago?
If we look at 3-years back, a 95% Loan To Value (LTV) package would means $30k down could buy a $600,000 house. Today, with LTV's falling faster than a free-falling safe, banks are looking for something closer to traditional 80% Loan To Value (LTV) ratios.
Problem: A down payment of $30K on an 80% LTV package means the home that can be afforded with $30k down is only $150,000. A drop of 15% in LTV's gives a retail price drop of 75%.
And you thought the housing prices were down dropping so far? And that's before little problems like the unethical mortgage fraudsters who may have "Ooops!!" sold a loan into multiple collateralized mortgage obligation pools - which Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi sums up as a rude "Waking up to discover the mortgage market was a giant criminal enterprise." --- Not like the residential side is the only sketchy operation in town: My tax consigliore called Sunday to congratulate me on coming around to his view that the 'other shoe' was still out there on the residential side. "But did you know, on the commercial side, that most mall leases are tied to store incomes, and with retail sales down, that means a lot of the big mall operators are going to be marched to the wall this fall when they will run out of cash flow as sales decline and override revenue fails to materialize? Some get more than 50% of their cash from 'sales override' clauses..."
"Got any other good news to share?"
"Well I was at a party Saturday and a lot of the middle manager types who have avoided getting fired so far are getting worried that they will be laid off in the next month or so because the recovery has been much weaker than anyone was expecting..."
"Great...anything else?"
"Well you have penciled out the amount of debt sloshing around the global system which according to my model we don't have enough money to service right now, haven't you?"
"Don't you have a trial to prepare for, or something..."
So went Sunday afternoon.... --- The week's financial headlines are pretty tame - in fact, verging on lame: Some ISM numbers this morning, crude inventories on Wednesday along with Consumer Debt from the Fed and the latest chapter in the longest running work of fiction ever - the Treasury Budget. By comparison, the trade balance out Friday will be a "Who cares?" event.
Most of the international picture was mixed overnight, however Bombay's BSE Sensex was down over 1.5% and South Korea's KOSPI was down more than 2%. All of Europe was up slightly when I looked early on (updates here) but nothing to write home about.
Still, with this being a 'make-or-break' week for the US averages which are down around the 50-day moving averages, this should be interesting, not to mention the possible foretaste of events possible later this month by the time we get around to next weekend. --- Wild guess about what's out there? Sure:
Heard from a reader the FDIC is (supposedly - this is unconfirmed but sounds credible) offering super-big bucks to some key people who have a particular kind of expertise in a particular kind of banking problem. Not low-end worker bees - $300/hour kind of expertise. The conditions of employment included just showing up at an airport where there would be a ticket waiting (no advance notice on which city) and that they would not be able to mention a word to anyone they knew about which bank was involved.
Just a reader report - but every once in a while our news tip hotline pays off with good info and this doesn't sound like a stretch, so perhaps the possible events around October 25th might be something like a failure/bailout of a too big to fail bank with national ramifications. Almost makes a person want to double check that they don't have too many eggs in one basket, doesn't it?
And you saw where the head of FDIC is hinting "too big to fail" may be policy toast. Setting up expectations that we'll actually maybe not all get 100% insurance on what's in banks???
Market is set to open higher, but a reversal today or tomorrow and taking out last week's lows would be bad, very, very bad. Finger's crossed?
Dr. Martin Weiss piece "Three government reports point to fiscal doomsday" makes me sound like the optimist. Who'da thought?
Carbonized? Guess What's Crashing Department Say, Have I drawn your attention to how the CCX Index is doing? Oh, should I say not doing so well lately? That's the Chicago Climate Exchange where 'carbon credits' are exchanged. A reader who has taken more cynical pills than me sent in the tip:
Yamal hockey stick implosion? If it's not too early, you might want to conduct your own research and readings. But my bottom line is that farmers & ranchers aren't likely to be lining up to sell off development rights to their land for a couple of cents an acre per year for ten years. But I told you that how long ago...that farmers ain't that dumb that they'd let traders in Chicago make more money in carbon credits than those of us who sit on the land out here...
Of course the meltdown in carbon credits may only be temporary since there is one hell of a science battle going on over whether hockey sticks are real, or not. The discussion on point over the RealClimate web site is a good starting point. But be warned! This can turn into a major time sink, since there are points to be scored on either side.
If you wade through all the data it may reduce to a simple multivariate problem where the variables are public interest and concern, cost of investment money, revenue to farmers and commissions to traders and market makers...that's simple, right?
Depression-Era Rhyme One of the durable images of the pre-Depression years in America was the dumping of milk by farmers because they weren't getting enough money to make ends meet. Fast forward to today and in Europe, hundreds of tractor-driving farmers arrived in Brussels to pressure the EU into coming up with ways to support low milk prices.
Good News - Or Bad The headline in the Rachel Beck/AP story that "Great time for US consumers: America is on sale" either means we're on the cusp of recovery, or we're still spending our way down the credit card road to hell. Not sure which...ask me in a couple of months.
Tim Speaks The Treasury Secretary speaks to the Joint World Bank-IMF Development Committee Meeting. I've highlighted it so you can speed read if necessary...
All of which leaves me head-scratching: If more money is going in than before the crisis, how come things are getting worse? Have staff get me a report on that, will yah? I read "Africa Development Fund as "Get Africa's Resources online..."
We Got How Screwed? Seems like a year since Lehman went down, but just now we're starting to read how the deal finally works out in stories like "Deal Proposed to Lehman Brothers Europe Creditors." Which is slower: Glacial melt or deal clean up?
The Nukem Report All kinds of glowing headlines here: "UN to Inspect Iran Nuke Site October 25th" -Oh oh there's that date again. Meantime, the head of the IAEA is upset that Israel won't allow inspections of its installations for 30-years yet is holding Iran to inspections And then we have the report that the United Arab "Emirates Leader signs law to Develop Nuclear Power". Inspection calls and bombing contingency plans for them, too? I'll just keep the batteries handy for my radiation survey meter, thanks.
--- snip and save section ---
Coping: With Different Indexing Schemas So there we were last night, Elaine and me, having a discussion of whether to rip the bathtub out of the master bath and have me build a nice (larger) walk-in shower and somehow the topic of bathtub refinishers came up.
"Remember, we talked to someone at a street fair in Palestine after the car show this summer, I have their card around someplace..." Now, you need to know that 'the car show' that she was referring to was the March 21st "People's Choice" car show back in March.
How the heck does she remember that kind of stuff? I wondered idly. So I asked "How do you remember that kind of stuff?"
"Oh, by what I wear..." she explained.
"What???!!!!"
"Yes, I was wearing my white and black pants that day...and that helps to remind me where I think I might have put the card..."
At this point I was floored. The car show was back 6½ months ago and she could remember which pair of pants she was wearing? So I inquired further. "You really remember that?"
"Women always remember what they were wearing," she explained. "Don't men?"
I couldn't help laughing... "Well, no, actually, I don't think so. I can't speak for all men, but to me the clothing I was wearing, oh yesterday, for example, just doesn't register since it's not important. Heck, I can't remember what I had for dinner last week, either, since it's not important and I don't fill my head with that kind of detail. I save it for things that matter: You know, closing market averages, critical support levels, projects that need to happen around the house, which consulting projects need what done on them today, phone numbers...you know that kind of thing..."
"Hmmm...well, here's the card... knew I had it somewhere and once I remembered what I was wearing, I knew where I'd put it." --- All of which reminded me of something I hadn't thought about in a long time. A colleague of mine back in the early 2000's would always park her car in our office build in a spot numbered either 54, 77, or something like that. When I inquired why she parked off at the far end of the parking garage when it was virtually deserted, she explained that by the time we got done with the day's project, the garage would be full (this was early early morning) and she could always remember parking sport 54 because of a TV show from her youth ("Car 54, Where are you?") and spot #77 reminded her of another show - 77 Sunset Strip.
I remember thinking at the time...what an odd way of indexing! Now, come to find out after 9½ years of marriage I have just discovered that my wife indexes events based on clothing. TV shows? Clothing?
For sure, this is something that I had never considered before, but it now goes into my portable collection of "Tools to size people up" that I carry around with me: Find out what their indexing strategies are and you will get a huge clue into what's important to them.
At least with computers I get to declare what fields SQL will index - which make computers oh so much easier to understand than...oh, you know. So how come modern psychology books don't start off with some of this obvious stuff "Humans organize information using different indexing strategies..."?
Got an odd way of keeping things indexed in your head? Send it along - might be something useful in there...
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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for around $48 bucks at Amazon. The digital version is the
which goes for about $400, which I've been pondering.
.
and
(this last won't ship until mid November).
by Steve Dashew (a staple when we lived on our boat) may be a
bit over your head if you don't know a halyard from a sheet, but
it will at least get you seriously thinking about how to size up
your adversary, develop options, and how to properly batten
down. What works for sailboats, in a sense also works to
keep personal net worth afloat in what seems like marginal
conditions to come. It's the practice in contingency
thinking that matters.
