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October 31, 2009 14:49 PM CDT New
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This site is supported by subscriptions: For additional content, please subscribe to Peoplenomics. . Content mirrored at: www.independencejournal.com, Kindle (.MOBI) version here
Special Update Ukraine Flu Panic Not sure from reading the reports, but media in Ukraine are going ballistic over California A/N1N1 flu and H1N1 ()swine) flu. Schools are being shut down for three weeks and other restrictions on large public gatherings will take place. Been building over the past 48 hours.
Pre-election politics? Maybe not - apparently quite a few dead there - and there's talk about closing down borders between regions within the country - which would be akin to stopping interstate travel here in the States. --- So now back to the questions: Is the building tension period going to be based on the emergency flu declaration which happened coincident to our 'turn' date? Or, will markets just panic next week - or all of the above? Time's running out - I'll keep an eye on this every so often - so check back.
Bankoween! Nine Banks, 153 Branches And you thought Halloween was scary? Most Saturday mornings I wake up and the first thing I do, besides swilling coffee, is to sit down at the FDIC website and throw the latest bank reorganization dated into what has become a somewhat large spreadsheet. The reason I do this is so that I can tell at a glance how many banks have closed by state, how many banks have closed since IndyMac closed last year, or any other query I wish to throw at the data.
This week, the FDIC press releases were organized somewhat differently: instead of giving the number of branches for each of the nine banks involved in this week's reorganizations, only the group total was given for the nine banks. 153 branches is a pretty sizable number of branches closed this weekend and to reopen under other names/ownerships on Monday.
If you're into heavy math, 1307 branches have been reorganized this year alone, which compares with 3914 since IndyMac went down in May of last year. By my spreadsheet, this makes 115 banks reorganized since January 1, 2009. Our latest additions are:
The news isn't all bad of course, since it means that FDIC still has enough money to pay staff and arrange shotgun weddings. It also means that at least one branch of government seems to be doing a relatively efficient job of carrying out its mandated tasks. Sorry, that's about the most optimistic point of view I can come up with leastwise until some more coffee sinks in.
Today's rather large announcement of banks being reorganized raises a very interesting question: with tonight being Halloween: What would be the scariest possible costume one could wear to a party? My costume idea list includes going as:
Fortunately, we live way off in the outback of East Texas and about the only thing that comes visiting us even on Halloween eve is a small herd of deer seeking refugee status from local bow hunters. (Next weekend, we'll be passing out the Kevlar vests and ear muffs as the rifle season opens). Besides, I haven't been invited to a Halloween party in years. Come to think of it, I don't get invited much of anywhere. Wonder if my dour attitude about the economy has something to do with it?
One thing this FDIC report does is it takes "...or Treat" off the table.
Black Monday Fears You know what's really interesting? Since the Dow Jones industrial average closed down on Friday 249.85 points, or or nearly 2.5%, the number of people who have been questioning the web bot project seems to have fallen dramatically. Gee, wonder why?
Not only that, but a couple of astute readers noticed that the predictive linguistic project turn date of October 25/October 26, exactly corresponded to the turnaround in the volatility index -- the VIX.
Fortunately, I don't dispense trading advice, because if I did it would surely embarrass many of them Wall Street mavens who pulled bigger paychecks than me with duller darts. I refer you, of course, to the column 2-weeks ago in which I outlined a scenario where the linguistic turn date would morph into a major market downturn and correspond with a major uptick in the US dollar.
Well guess what?
To my way of thinking, there is a nonzero chance that either next Monday Tuesday Wednesday or... we could get into a major crash situation. The reason for this is we're at the point of recognition where someone besides an old goat rancher- like you know who - will figure out that the market advance from the March lows this year cannot continue ad infinitum. When that blinding flash of reality streaks across the skies, a lot of folks will figure out the market is overbought and a retest of the March lows will suddenly appear in the cards.
In all this week the Dow Jones industrials lost almost 260 points. The backup numbers are here. A typical reader e-mail from this morning:
Robyn Landry has the same kinds of concerns I do... you don't think I'm smart enough to figure all this stuff out by myself do you? I always say ride on the shoulders of giants if you can.
Robin's stopping points are Dow 9,450 (or so), then 8,500, 8,150 and then 6,617. We could bounce of of any, all, or none. Just depends what the stampede looks like when it starts. You don't want to be popping bubble gum on Wall Street this next week, or so, however, because that's all it might take to set things rolling.
The BIGGIE: The reason I pointed out the recent "Ure Ratio" which had postulated that the Dow moves about 10-times whatever the price of gold moves - may have broken down on Friday. If the ratio was to hold, gold should have dropped nearly $25 - which it didn't.
Being no fool, I cleared one of my gold puts on Friday when the breakdown occurred while other positions will wait to see how next week shapes up (or shapes down).
The linguistics had pointed to a decoupling of gold/silver in this area and this could be it...
Cognitive Dissonance Department To recap: Down down 260-for the week and 153-bank branches reorganized. And midst this? "Obama Cites Good Signs on Economy."
If I were a doctor on the presidential team, I'd sure be asking if the president's eyes have been bothering him lately. Here: Let me help: How many fingers am I holding up?
"Good times are just ahead"? Oh...er...sure....maybe government can expand faster than commercial real estate vacancy rates are going up after all...
Say What? The headline on the BBC reads "Abdullah 'may quit Afghan poll' but the story then clarifies that: "The BBC's Ian Pannell, in Kabul, says this does not mean he is officially withdrawing, although Mr Abdullah is expected to decide on his next step this weekend. " --- This one left me scratching my head for the better part of a half hour and I have the pile of dandruff to prove it. We have how many NATO and US forces there in the land which the Russians (Soviet era) gave up on in 1988 after trying to charm that snake pit for about 10-years? And this costs what?
Assuming the West has a similar learning curve to the Russians (or we may be a bit slower thanks to New Math), about the time we get to 2011 or 2012, the West ought to decide that it's not worth fighting over, or at least its unaffordable since the cost of health care reform is back over a trillion again. And that's before we consider a 40 to 75 percent devaluation of the US dollar... --- See why I can't run for office? Although I thought about running against Jeb Hensarling for congress: Just too damn obvious for voters to deal with. Especially the kind of Idol thinkers than make up most of the flock. Just sayin'.
Truth Leak of the Day "Biden: Job Stats "Not 100 Percent Accurate" reports Real Clear Politics. OMG - What? Tell me it ain't so!
Wonder how far back they'd have to go to get all the BS-factoring out? When did they start statistically estimating new jobs with the CES Birth/Death Model, anyway? Not that it matters: You either have a job - or don't. The number is just something for monkey-mind to grapple with instead of realizing your true potential as a human, but that launches us off into the weeds of philosophy and there's too much work to get done on the weekends to mess with that kind of musing.
I should save it for another time - something you can haul out during one of those interminably long meetings that go on during the workweek.
Who's the SOB who invented conference rooms anyway?
Guess Who's Coming? Word from MSNBC that president Obama has named 110 visitors to the White House is not exactly huge news. What would be? Oh, I dunno, inviting Elaine and me for lunch to talk over my recently extended golf offer, I guess.
Calculator Abuse Speaking of networks and investigative reporting: ABC pencils out the cost of each stimulus job at $160,000 -using a little different than the numbers I plugged in earlier this week which got the price per job to $230K, but still kind of steep. White House calls it all calculator abuse. Figures... (horrible pun, but this is the weekend material).
Sticks & Stones Dept. Then we get around to the report "Jeb Bush: Obama trying to 'attack capitalism". Well, no. Obama's trying to pick up the mess after your brother, who as I seem to recall built the Housing Bubble..
Progress in Europe Want some encouraging news? "Merkel and Sarkozy unite to end Blair's European dream." Gee...so sorry. Couldn't have happened to a nicer former chancellor of the Exchequer who sold gold when it was $275...talk about foresight, and financial genius huh? <<<---Correction here: Now that the coffee has done it's work, I seem to recall Blair's the war-monger, Brown's the gold seller. Same masters, different department. I sit corrected.
Nixonian Practices California AG "Jerry Brown's office taped reports' calls" says a Chronicle online story. Will Brown prosecute himself? --- If there's something strange going into the water inside the Beltway, there must be mass dumping of the same stuff into the water supplies that feed Sacramento.
--- snip and save section ---
Coping: Dragon Breath Speaking I finally got around to installing Dragon Breath 10 on Friday and so far it has been a lot of fun trying to train it to behave. If you have run into some unusually phrases this morning, it's because Dragon is still having difficulty figuring out what I'm saying - something no small number of readers have mentioned, too.
The coolest part of it so far is not composing general text; it's in handling emails. A couple of commands ("move down" gets me down to the next email and then "reply" brings up the composing screen) is pretty cool.
Still, even though Dragon is better at typing without errors, somethings a phrase will run off the road... Point being that if something I write doesn't make sense, try saying it aloud and then maybe what I intended will come through. For example, el Don references keep coming out L. Don and things like that.
Apparently, the more I use it, the more it will learn about my speech patterns - and presumably the better job it will do of putting it on the screen. Either that, or it's really a program designed to teach infinite patience...which is its main feature so far.
Around the Ranch: The Zeus Report A couple of readers have inquired how Zeus my black cat has been doing lately. To tell you the truth, or something near enough to it, he's been fine, except we sometimes end up at loggerheads over the use of the drum set which occupies the middle of my office. Z complains it's not fair that I get to use all the computers, and periodically turn around and smash on the drums while he's trying to take a nap. He's quite vocal about this:
It's not like I wake him up, because he doesn't sleep very much during the day; I've got him answering reader emails while I do real work.
No, the problem is a little deeper than that... Zeus has the idea that I don't know a 16th note from a 2 x 4 on the drums. Worse, he says my percussion skills should be applied to a hammer, and nothing as sophisticated as the (cheap) drum set.
Darn uppity cat. He apparently doesn't appreciate that I let him snooze on my Guggenheim area rug and he gets two squares a day. --- Look: I'm generally not one to engage in an escalation of conflict, but I pointed out to Zeus recently that the number of birds and mice he's brought to the office as offerings has declined from one every couple of months to near zero here lately. In turn, he blames me because I'm keeping the yard well manicured. He insists that ruins it for hunting. Blah, blah, blah...typical workplace conflict.
Too bad! I am the fat biped in charge here.
Things will improve next week when I post a revised organization chart of ranch operations. The Org chart clearly shows that the mice, squirrels, birds and vermin on the ranch (except local politicians who have their own department in town) have copperheads as their immediate supervisors with a dashed matrix line over to the coral snakes. Zeus is supposed to run that whole part of the operation while I, in turn, supervise Zeus and slack off as much as possible. Dogbert school of management.
Going up the chart, I report to Elaine, who in turn doesn't seem to report to much of anyone.
Zeus seems to be okay with that, but he'll occasionally jump outside the organization lines and go directly up chart complaining about the quality of food service and other workplace conditions directly to she who sits over me in the organization chart.
And so it goes -- the ranch has the same problems I ran into in the corporate world. Just as many snakes, just as many vermin, and younger cats challenging and getting outside the org lines. The same kind of politics, too. About the only thing missing are those stupid posters put up by the HR department about teamwork. Maybe if I put some of those up Zeus would toe the line a little better. Having a hard time finding them in Catonese, though.
Have a great weekend, and see you Monday morning, Black Monday or otherwise. Off to continue bashing on the left front wheel bearing of the Daewoo, and then polish off this week's Peoplenomics report: "The Single Person's Marketing Plan". If you're wondering how that topic relates to economics, you haven't thought through what the most expensive decision in Life is, have you?
--- Send your comments, electricians, and dwarves to george@ure.net The UrbanSurvival Mall: Peoplenomics This Week "Economic Island Theory" While we wait patiently to see which big commercial real estate outfit will be the first to hit banko, what the public reaction to the Obama declaration of national medical state of emergency and so forth will be, we're at a fine point to consider one of my pet economic theories. I call it "Economic Island Theory" and it works with countries, states, cities, neighborhoods, and people right here on your block. If you want to understand who has power, Economic Island Theory is the ticket...no fancy formulas needed. Job, home, and Life counseling - all in one byte-sized theory. "Live on $10,000" Updated With another round of layoffs due to start later this month...a round which will start to axe many of the middle managers who have managed to avoid the HR grenades...might I suggest a preemptive tactical move? Voluntarily dropping your lifestyle back a bit, since we're all being marched down that road by either circumstances or some out-of-control-PTB types who write checks to Washington lobby and to anti-reformers in California! A good starting point, at least if you've still got $10-bucks is my e-book "How to Live on #10,000 a Year...or less!"
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.
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...
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....
---- Last week's report is here. For back issues of this site, click here. (Goes back to 1997!)
Friday October 30, 2009 Special Update Bot Hit: Not Another "I told You So" Can't tell you how many people people have sent me links to the the NYSE advisories today which have details first at 9:54am ET in the trading day:
And then at 11:50 AM:
The emails that have accompanied these reports ask "Is this is somehow tied to the market lock-ups that the linguistics mentioned in this period?" "Is this in addition to the banking access issues of last weekend?"
I'm biting my tongue so as not to dress down the skeptics...ya'll draw your own conclusions...the forecast stands on its own. Just a reminder though: we're nowhere near Nov. 5 - which is when this all gets really interesting... these one-day wonder rallies are pretty cool, though...
The Art of Delayed Decisions Over the course of my first six decades of stumbling around and bumping into ideas, I came across a very important one in about 1986. Goes like this: In management, there's a fine art to harmonizing with coming events and the future direction of life that's often most easily achieved by consciously not making a decision.
How many times have you heard (or read in a management journal) about someone who gathered all the facts and then promptly made an early decision only to discover in no time, that events had changed such that what was once a well-framed decision turned out to be one of (XYZ Company's) greatest blunders?
Yes, it's a fine line between the abdication of responsibility and delayed decision-making BUT the older I get, the less hurry I'm in to make decisions since the closer we get to the future, the more we know about it and the event drivers that construct it. Not sure if this makes sense, but if you have enough coffee going, or one of those brownies left over from yesterday's reports, give it time and it might sink in. ---
Fast forward on an extremely clear-headed Friday to the email inbox and readers who are writing in -- 75% agreeing that there was a noticeable dynamic 'mood shift' over the past week and 25% who insist the web bot project is the closest thing this side of Sedona to silicon woo-woo.
Not to abdicate an implied duty to proclaim whether the predictive linguistic project was 'correct' in its forecast, I'm sure that will become clear over the next couple of weeks. However, despite a few expected emails ("George, you're a dishonest idiot! Admit it, the webbots were wrong!" and another saying "How many gullible people are there?"), this is one of those linguistic shifts which is analogous to the sinking of the Titanic; certain events have indeed occurred but since the band is still playing on, and as long as we're still reshuffling the deck chairs, this is still an unsinkable ship, right?
Well, no.
The leading candidate for this period has always been that the Israeli strike on Iran would be coming in this period. While it's not here yet, I'd remind long-term readers that in predictive language work it's impossible to distinguish between an actual physical event and one that is simply bespoke in mass media such that the emotion 'print-through' from the future into the present would be described in the same way.
Yet right on schedule over the past week, the IAEA first announced a break-through deal with Iran to outsource certain aspects of their nuclear program and now we read that Iran ( which must have read my management notes on delaying decision-making) is slowly moving around to rejecting the key conditions. Tensions are building like crazy.
Naturally, the Big News in Israel this morning is slugged (an old newsroom term meaning 'headlined or spiked' ) with captions like "Report: Iran rejects nuclear deal" so Israel is quickly moving up to 'get 'er done' -ready to launch status. I haven't gone through a morning news cycle on the FTA satellites yet, but the world that "Tehran has rejected the proposal of the IAEA" is obviously getting traction.
There are profound implications of all this: If I were betting right now, I'd still expect this to be candidate #1 for filling in linguistic expectations over the next several weeks to November 5 - at which time we'd get a see-saw or shark's-tooth form of headlines for a while (strike on, then strike off, back to strike on, yada, yada, yada) with the requisite 'personal diplomacy' where we ought to be treated to lots of presidential-level airplanes taking off and landing hither and yon, trying to stop what is feeling more and more like a showdown.
This has some huge trading implications, too: For one thing, any major ratcheting up toward Israel bombing the half-dozen known & suspected Iranian operations would cause a bifurcation in the global investment community: Some money would flee back into US dollars on a 'safety play' while some other wheel barrows full would flee away from the US Buck for exactly the opposite reason.
So my first point is: In three weeks will we all look back at the events this week as the starting point for a crisis which seems destined to bring China and Russia into the picture; a modern analog to the Cuban missile Crisis? The starting point from which tensions build may still very well work out to be the IAEA's hopeful "We have a deal!" pronouncements of about a week back.
This story is amazingly complex - but the financial moving parts are clearly peeking from behind headlines. Take for example "Saudis to drop WTI as price benchmark for U.S. crude". Related to death of the dollar meme and the Iran situation? Without a doubt, you betcha.
Just as near-certain is the role of Iran's new oil bourse which was dedicated this past week; remember this is the kind of behavior that got Saddam Hussein eventually hung. But look at all the jobs he created for us in the process!
So, no, I'm not prepared to write off the linguistics outlook for the period as a 'miss" just yet.
True, there has not been one singular event like a nuclear terrorist attack, but that was always an outlier. But, what was not is the present period of building tensions for another week (or slightly longer) and then a saw tooth set of brink-like headlines. --- There's a second story that is also a candidate - the announcement of National Emergency of "swine" flu.
Remember that we had enough insight into this period that a couple of weeks ago I told you to start making lists of numeric addresses of all your favorite web sites (including UrbanSurvival and Peoplenomics.com) so that if anything happened to the internet's name server system, you'd at least be able to hit a few key news web site and maybe get access to online financial services.
And then what happened? Out came the headlines "US government report recommends blocking popular websites during pandemic flu outbreak."
For sure, some people are going to call that a 'dumb luck' call on my part, but it's all part of a language turn. Seeing it coming I told you a week ago today:
Then there was the October 15th report (more than 2 weeks ago) where I asked readers to bookmark our IP numerically with the idea that:
And here we are with those headlines foreshadowing restrictions on the 'net. ---
Ultimately. time is the great arbiter of how much we get right & how much is wrong. Way back on August 15th I wrote up a presentation on how the technology worked for the 'web bot discussion group' which had a Saturday lunch up in Tyler, Texas. At that time (slide #64) I said in part:
No, I didn't say the obvious: A little from choice #1 and a little from choice #2, but that's where we seem to be.
So pardon me if - like Iran - I play the waiting game while events sort themselves out over the next week or two. But if they can do it, so can I. Say, you don't hear some jets spooling up, do you? Listen closely. Real closely.
Personal Income Report This may not seem even remotely connected with reality if you've lost a home or are forced by layoff conditions to adapt to living under an overpass, but here's the latest report on Personal Incomes out today:
Here's why out need to get a job in government - revealed by today's report:
Here all this time, I thought I was the humorist. Check out this part:
Maybe they 'roast-a-bowl" earlier in Washington on Fridays, or something...I just can't think of another explanation.
Meantime, the advance Q3 GDP figures out Thursday resulted in a manic melt-up in the stock market which provided this key insight: People have incredibly short memories. Q3 was when cash for clunkers and home buyer incentives were flowing strong. It's the period which I've filed under "Giving away debt to home and car buyers..."
So to summarize: Eventually everyone ends up working for government of some stripe, until finally we formalize the tax slaves as a class, which we are already, but the marketing hasn't kicked in yet.
ECI Supporting this seditious view is the Employment Cost Index which was up today as well:
I don't need to remind you that America has 154 million workers but only 18.465 million are actually goods producers. That means for everyone one person who actually makes something we've got 8.3 people who are providing services, education, and government to them which seems like a screwy ratio, unless, of course, the agenda is to ship all manufacturing and goods producing to the cheapest possible country and then report "corporate profits" on the labor rate differentials and bid population against population...but that's been the game since telecommunications got cheap enough to make it all work.
Shall we change topics? My blood pressure's rising.
Headline Thinking CNN sent out an email advisory this morning that the "White House says 650,000 jobs were created or saved by $150 billion stimulus funds."
OMG here we go again: Am I the only human with a calculator able to think any more? That's $230,769.23 per job created or saved.
What is in the water supply in Washington? Tell you what: I'm going to save 23-million jobs in the US for today and I'm going to do it for $$5.6-million dollars. Be looking for my bill.
Shake & Quake A strong earthquake in Pakistan Thursday is worth nothing. But then again, even bigger was the quake in Japan this morning. That one was a largish 6.9 quake according to USGS.
--- snip and save section --- Coping: With Personal Instrumentation A curious way of looking at the world, but a valid framing concept is this one: Modern science has - over the past several hundred years - been adding 'personal instrumentation' to our lives yet I think it's an open question as to whether it has really 'improved' anything. --- Key Concept: In management school, there's a key differentiation made between 'data' and 'useful information." Data is a collection of "facts" while it's the analysis of the data, understanding its implicates and forming some action that's at the core of management science. --- I recently felt compelled to expand my weather data gathering abilities. So I ordered a fine system which will tell me wind speed, humidity, rainfall, and will keep nice computerized records of all these things. Which sounded like a good thing until the unit actually arrived.
By then, I'd had enough time to think this through: What in heaven's name do I need to instrument the weather for? If I step outside and get cold, I need a coat. If I step outside and get wet, then I need an umbrella. Better: I need to step back into the house and try to remember what I was going outside for in the first place. Was that something which could be delayed (a kind of theme that's emerging this morning)?
Thermometers have their application around the garden, I suppose. But, since our garden is not in for the winter (long story about time available and virtues of fallow) does it really matter to me if we get down to 31.7º degrees instead of 32.8º. No, probably not.
Then there's the personal medical thermometer: Although again, the question is where to draw the line between personal data and actionable information? I reasoned that if I'm somehow compelled to reach for a thermometer, I'm probably sick and the thermometer's role becomes one of justifying what I already knew.
You're seeing the problem, right?
The same thing is true for time. Once-upon-a...there was no digital taskmaster. People got up, worked till they were tired, called it quits and that was that. Today I sit in an office with a receiver tuned to WWV, outlook alarms for way too many details of life, and not counting the clocks that peek out from computer screens there are three digital taskmasters nailed to the walls - 2 out of 3 of which are of the WWV synchronizing type.
Not to go completely Ned Ludd on you here, but at some point in my life I think I've instrumented almost everything that can be measured. Everything from blood pressure throughout the day to how many M/L of air I exhale (450 M/L), to how much weight is lost due to the matutinal movement. (I didn't want to say "crap" as you may be in the midst of breakfast...)
All of which at some point seemed terribly important yet as I sit here thinking about it being able to aside numeric values to a wide range of life's activities is feeling more and more like a con game. The more I work on the art of 'non-attachment' and it's first cousin 'unhurried decision-making', the more I sense that there's a vicious circular reference in life: Critical thinking as taught in schools involves having lots of facts to pick and choose from. More and better facts to further and further decimal places.
It's like most humans have been conditioned to seek that "one last fact" that will crystallize everything and have it gloriously transform to world into something that makes sense.
I'm slowly coming to terms with a horrible truth that's hidden in plain sight: speedometers don't make cars go faster, wind instruments don't make a sailboat go faster, and taking your temperature doesn't make you sick or well.
I've concluded that what we need is just one 'personal instrument'. It would be roughly equivalent to the instrument of overwhelming importance when flying: The stall warning indicator. It tells you when the airplane is about to change from gravity defying joy to free-falling disaster.
I don't know what the human equivalent of a stall warning indicator is, but if you come across one, I've got a bunch of other instrumentation I'd like to get rid of that's tying up valuable processor clicks in my prehensile brain which in turn is getting in the way of touching the stream. Thanks.
Honesty In Marketing Department So, what do you buy your wife a Lexus? Drive the big Beemer. Work 90-hours a week (other than you have a habit of eating and don't like underpasses)?
I thought GMC was close to spelling it right when they came out with the Envoy model...but as I've discovered this morning, Hewlett Packard has gone them one better with a computer line called simply "Envy".
Surely, this is worthy of some kind of "Honesty in Marketing Award" isn't it? Isn't that why people send uncounted hours washing and waxing cars...so they can inspire others to envy them? Isn't that why we have a multi-billion dollar cosmetics industry? Why we are all acculturated to "More is better, Most is Best"?
HP didn't "Invent" Envy. But at least they're being honest about brining it to market.
1148 Department Several people have sent in links this week to the WolframAlpha site after they plugged in my xxxx days to go number to see what I was referring to. A hint here.
Several others asked if we were aware that the 'tension build' in the linguistic work seems to get to the saw toothy wave form right around what Calleman describes as the "beginning of the Sixth Night of the Galactic Underworld"? Well, duh.
The usual disclaimer that the linguistics can't distinguish between real or simply 'buzz' on a topic, shopping for a sailboat is back on my list of things to do.
All I Want For Christmas, I That time of the year is almost here: When Greed & Excess consumption gets stylish. Soo.....on the off chance that it won't matter anyway, check the video of what looks like the world's fastest amphibious vehicle here. If you need our shipping address, let me know...
Peoplenomics This Weekend "The Single Person's Marketing Plan" Single? A little management science is just what may be needed. Segment that market and roll....
Thursday October 29, 2009 Some Anniversary Not to sound to 'geeky' this morning, but do you know what was going on 29,220 days ago? If you haven't had a lot of coffee yet, another hint might be 80-years ago...but that makes it just too obvious: Wall Street was going through it's infamous Black Tuesday in 1929.
Market crashes then - along with now - are not one day affairs: Black Tuesday followed Black Monday, which in turn was preceded by Black Friday and Black Thursday, which gets us back to October 24 of 1929. A reread of the Wikipedia history of those days seems in order:
In the wake of those days - and the decade that followed - America stumbled through a series of policies that were supposed to help the recovery ("Good times are just ahead") but arguably what really ended the Great Depression was the US entry into World War II.
Two of the greatest pieces of scholarship which are acknowledged by most who've studied events in detail are that 1) The U.S. knew at some level that Pearl Harbor was to be attacked and 2) Adolph Hitler's body was not the one found in that Berlin bunker - based on recent DNA work - unless he'd been turned into a woman first.
It's the inconvenient facts that lead many conspiracy students to suspect that there really is some kind of uber klassen (The PowersThatBe) which really call the shots - that drive the direction of great nations - and it's the soil in which alternate levels of reality flourish. As one example: An alternative ending to WW II is that the Allies made a secret deal with German and that Hitler and some key Nazis were allowed to escape and continue work on the Nazi Bell - a kind of flying saucer precursor that bent space-time.
All of which is very interesting but leads inevitably to a massive time-sink and since most of us have less than 20,000 days of life left (if not 1,149 days - do the math), so we properly remain focused on making enough money to have a passable life and toward this end we study the financial picture hoping to get enough insight to stay one step ahead of the herd. --- Have we avoided the Second Depression, now that the stock market is back over the March 6,627 lows set earlier this year? I doubt it. But it's a contentious point since most people don't properly consider the time value of money - in much the way a frog being brought to a boil doesn't consider slow changes in water temperature while he could do something about it.
My own study of events - now spanning 15+ years - is that we began the Second Depression in the Spring of 2000 when the Internet Bubble collapsed. I've asked you to do this before, but it has been a while. Look up the weekly closing Dow for the week ending January 10, 2000 (data available here) 11,722.98.
Then go to the Minneapolis Fed home page and plug that number into their handy inflation calculator along with 2000 for a start and 2009 for an end and tell me where the Dow would need to be just to stay even with inflation: 14,514.17 is the answer you should be coming up with.
That should prove to you that at its lows in March of this year, the Dow has lost 54.34% of its purchasing power between 2000 and today. If you want me to run through how at yesterday's close the Dow was down 32.73% from 2000 levels, I'd be tempted to decline just so as not to keep running your nose in it, but you see the point.
Along in here, those most strongly in denial about the Second Depression get all huffy and start firing off emails (which I round-file) screaming "What about dividends? What about stock splits, you moron?"
In response I used to send back long academic emails suggesting their criticism is unwarranted for any number of reasons: The replacement of real losers in the average periodically is an artificial inflation of the Dow since if you let me put only profitable companies in and bury those that have gone banko under the carpet, I can make the number do anything I want it to. Secondly, there's the matter of management fees and commissions that go a long ways toward offsetting 'profits' claimed by SD deniers.
Then there's the 'beaut' of a discussion about the integrity of the 'offishul' government inflation numbers which are based on hedonics; substitute the cost of ground sirloin when sirloin steaks got too pricey, kind of thing.
Then there's the mitigation work which has been done in the Second Depression. Horrific as it was the attack on the Twin Dowers on 9/11 created an overnight industry in America - OK, two industries: World Cop and The Security Industry. Why throw in a housing bubble from St. Al's Fed and you've got the impact of the Civilian Conservation Corp, the Works Progress Administration, and a host of other Roosevelt-era solutions all over again. ---
All this is foreplay, of course, and merely sets the stage for some of the major news stories of the day. Some of which get widespread coverage and some of which get buried.
The MSM will likely focus on this morning's GDP report, so we might as well get that out of the way:
What does it add up to? Just another Thursday morning. Or, at least so far.
Using the "Ure Indicator" gold was down $12 yesterday, and so the market being down 119 was no surprise. Likewise this morning, gold is up over $7 top $8, so the Dow seems destined to bounce up 60-90 early on. A non-event, except that gold coming down from $1060 to the $1026 range means we ought to bounce up to $1043 (50% retracement) and then maybe - just maybe down to 992...not trading advise, just thinking out loud.
Consumer confidence is down again....and no, no sign of Christmas, except that may have been the blip in shipping numbers recently. Both presents have been shipped now.
Unemployment Numbers The weekly:
Tad higher than expected (520-525K).
Still Weaseling As long as today is shaping up as a replay of stories from earlier this week, how about the latest on Iran playing the West for time on the nuclear inspections discussions?
Pimpin Blair Oh, I see the PowersThatBe are still pushing for Tony Blair to become president of the EU. --- I've never been a fan of governments appointing governments - it's just not as comforting as direct popular election to my way of thinking. Which is why I don't live in Europe, I suppose. there's many things the U.S. has to work on, like ending the role of checkbook dispensing special interests in Washington, but Europe?
People in Europe seem a little dazed and confused: They fight two world wars to embrace separate national identities and now they're on the verge of embracing....what? Makes no sense to my simple-minded worldview.
Oil Leak Big news in Australia is about the oil leak that has plagued a Timor Sea drilling operation for nearly 10-weeks. Kinda hard to fix when it's 2.6 kilometers down in the ocean. No one has any clue as to how much oil has leaked so far.
Weedys A hearing was held in Sacramento this week on legislation which would allow recreational use of marijuana in California. There was nothing especially notable about the hearings: The moneymen were saying it would bring hundreds of millions in revenue in, while law enforcement had the same-old arguments. But, then again, if alcohol use were up for debate, I expect the lines would be draw, except the alcohol interests have more money for lobbying. --- Since we're in the Second Depression anyway I figure a modest improvement in the social mood could be had by changing the PTB attitude from "Let them eat cake!" to "Let them eat brownies!" Who'd need bread and circuses then? --- But speaking of California - the Circus, not the State - you saw where in a note back to lawmakers explaining why he didn't sign a particular piece of legislation, the letters reading down the left margin spelled out ...well go read down the left margin of the rejection email and see what you think. It's here. Oh my! Just a coincidence says an aide. You mean a 1 in 200 billion coincidence says a CBS-13 piece by Steve Large. He dug up a Sacramento State stats prof....
Aw, let them eat brownies... We'd then be better equipped to deal with what's now what I call Firesign Government. --- If "Don't crush that dwarf...hand me the pliers" doesn't make any sense to you, either you didn't see "Nick Danger in the case of the Missing Yolk" or you've never heard "Waiting for the Electrician or Someone like him..." In either event have another brownie and it will all make sense. Us Boomers had our moments.
"George how can you make jokes about drugs?"
"Uh...the same way I make serious about finance and government?"
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Coping: With Critics A reader sent me a rather critical note yesterday, taking me to task for wanting to build a large walk-in shower for our master bath. The note went to the idea of "What about the environmentally sensitive, resource-conscious deep thinker image?"
Let me explain by explaining that we live in what's euphemistically called in the South a 'modular". People up North would call it a mobile home while the hoi polloi would call it a 'trailer". Since it was made out of chewing gum and 2-by-3's in 1989, I figure we're already consuming less resource that most Americans. Why, think of the environmental impact of having roof joists every four feet...why deck it over with thin plywood and it's argued that it's functionally as strong as heavier construction. But that's why 'modular roofs' tend to sag.
There has been - oddly enough - a strategic reason for remodeling the house rather than building a new one. Two reasons: Resource conservation and a pay-as-we-go accounting approach since I'm a great fan of living below one's income and leveraging up living space by doing your own work.
The key point here is that one of the current bathrooms has a 'mobile home sized' shower/bath which is too small to effectively bath in unless you're one of those Firesign dwarves. And it's only 23 5/8th's inches wide - assuming the shower curtain doesn't intrude - which it does.
The second design program is that both bathrooms presently have tubs - which means stepping up and over. All of which wouldn't be so bad except that East Texas water is incredibly soft...when our kids visit they invariably come out of their first encounter with hand-washing wonder "Do you ever get all the soap off your skin here?" This slippery water makes a fiberglass tub treacherous and neither Elaine or I are fans of shower mats which are just one more thing to clean.
I'm willing to live pretty reasonably, but I've always in some dark recess of my brain measured my lifestyle by the quality of things around me: When I bought a brand new house (1974) up in the Pacific Northwest, it had a roughly 3-foot by 5-foot shower with sliding glass doors and tile walls. Nice.
Even our sailboat had a bigger shower, although on the boat, the midships head/shower/vanity took longer to clean up than the shower process.
So when I talk about a 'large walk-in shower' I'm looking at something roughly equivalent to my 1974 lifestyle. have I thought about something larger? Oh, sure, you bet. My dreams have gone as large as 4-foot by 6-foot, beyond which I reckon silliness sets in.
Another thing to think about is this: If you have one shower nozzle, the size of the enclosure doesn't have anything to do with ongoing operating costs. You can use the same amount of water in a 'large walk-in shower' as you can in the 23 5/8th's inch wide one. Less maybe, since the water wouldn't be so prone to making a run for it, down the tub sides and one to the floor which gets us to another engineering point that I'm sure is becoming boring by this point.
I'm not terribly worried about water use, in any event. We've had 41-inches of rainfall, plus or minus a bottle of water this year. Our little place in the outback measures around 1,254,528 square feet, so with 41 inches of rain, that's 25.56 gallons per square foot which means we get (this is amazing) 32,063,780 gallons of rainwater landing on the property each year. Sooner, or later, I figure government will find a way to tax that windfall....
Meantime, it makes me think about adding a second shower head. But thanks for asking.
Rewriting AID/HIV Something you might want to catch: House of Numbers - a new film which rethinks the pharmaceutical industry's definitions of HIV/AIDS. Trailer here... Goes on my must watch list.
Hearing The End of the World Decided to build up a extremely low frequency radio so I could listen to the local 'natural music' or magnetosphere music. Read "Auroral Chorus III", too. www.northcountryradio.com for their ELF radio kit.
Damn, I wish Heathkit was still around...
Wednesday October 28, 2009 Keeping Up Appearances Missiles to China to Save US Economy? To be sure the evidence here is circumstantial, but the facts are quickly falling into place:
President Obama has issued the power and authority of his office to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, an (American of Chinese descent) and two term Washington State governor - who is now in China.
Specifically, the delegation of powers reads:
And what exactly does this Section 1512 authorize?
Wait till the MSM wakes up on this. So is the reason for the dollar turnaround that the Chinese are getting a little quid pro quo not to bankrupt the USDA ...just yet? A fine question which someone beside an old goat rancher like me in the East Texas outback oughta be asking!
New Home Sales Census and HUD are out with the latest on the housing sales nationally:
Street had been looking for 2.6% and got -3.6% so a really good argument for recovery, huh?
That said,. the fine print is:
The highlighted part feels like a gap big enough to get a T600 (Kenworth) through.
Oh, and mortgage applications are falling....
So Much for Glitter? The price of gold was showing down $8 per ounce early on, which using the "Ure Ratio" seems to suggest that the Dow could drop 70-100 points at the open. Already - a couple of hours before today's open, headlines were about that "Stock set to slide at opening" were making the rounds.
Although it has been a little slower than I was expecting, we are nevertheless seeing the decline shape up that I outlined a couple of weeks back. In that scenario I suggested that the decline of the dollar was being way overplayed and when too many people start getting on board with an idea ("Quick...buy gold right now...") it usually means - at least to me - that it's time to 'go the other way' and vote against the herd. I then suggested (to much scorn and derision, I'd add from the Gold $10,000 crowd) that I'd buy some put options at $1,000 and wait for what could be a declined to (you're not going to like this) as low as $700.
Do I think gold will go that low? No. But, is this a tradable decline? We'll let account balances at the end of November judge that. It wouldn't be the first time I've gotten the directions right and the investment vehicle wrong, but we shall see.
How much of the recent run-up in gold was so Russia could get top dollar when it was panning to offload $1.7 billion worth of gold? No telling, but since word of their planned sale leaked, gold has been headed down...might be related.
A bit of good news before the open has reduced pressures on gold and stock futures though. And that is....
Improving Durables A new durable goods report out from Census this morning:
V as in "Vacant" The Wall St. Journal online story "Landlords Sweeten Pot for Renters" oughta to give you a sense of how bad things are getting in commercial real estate. If you don't have time to read the whole article, the chart about halfway down the article on the left says it all...vacancies are climbing like crazy. --- All of which has me thinking "Hmmm...what about getting some commercial office space, get the 6-months (or longer) of free rent, have the T.I. package (tenant improvements, yeh?) include a bathroom with a huge walk-in shower,....and seeing what that would cost. Depending on how desperate the landlord is, that's a strategy to be considered, isn't it? I mean if we really get to hyper-inflation (late spring 2010) then WTH? --- Or, you could simply move families into hotels that may be headed for trouble. The WSJ story "Hilton debt load weights on Blackstone seems related. --- New home sales - due out in a half hour, are expected to rise 2.6%. Methodology question: Is this 'deals desked' or actual closing, huh? Won't spoil the question with an answer for you... but you see the gap.
Free Marketing Slogan Word that Coca-Cola Enterprises had better than some thought earrings has spurred the creative juices. Out pops a new positioning statement for them: "Things go better with earnings,..." Like it? Has a nice ring to it, I thought.
Model C Ford is leaning toward Geely of China for sale of their Volvo unit. Want another positioning statement? Sure: how about "The Great Car of China"? You know, playing off the Great Wall? Picks up on Volvo's fine safety/reliability ratings.... Not this one either?
It's Only Tax Money Talk is that GMAC may go back to the trough for another injection of dough.
Bombings Middle East bombs are going off like mad lately, it seems. The latest report is that a car bomb in NW Pakistan has killed at least 80 and mounded several times that. --- A lot closer to home, "2 charged by U.S. with plotting attacks" on a Danish newspaper.
Terms Talk & Deal Points Iran meantime is talking about how it still has a right to nuclear development on the one hand, while seeking to rewrite proposed deal terms with the West.
Meantime, the Obama administration seems to be hinting (as if having a general address the topic isn't enough of a hint) that it has a response ready if the talks don't move along smartly.
Latest rumored strike data is Halloween...but I've got a whole pile of 'strike dates' posted on the wall and no fresh glass anywhere...
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Coping: With Windows 7 "George that new Windows 7 product is full of NSA backdoors..." "George, when are you going to make the switch over to Open Source?" "George [this]..." and "George [that]..."
Although lots of people have opinions (and everyone has a what?) about Windows 7, like the stock market, I figure 'most folks' are often wrong, so I backed up my system entirely and at 11:53 AM Tuesday started my conversion of my main computer to Windows 7.
At a cost of $119 (Amazon) and almost four hours is the upgrade worth it? So far - - yes.
7 seems to run a bit faster, has some nifty new features which seem useful (preview of open documents and click-to-bring-forward windows, to name two) and so forth.
In a previous incarnation I worked for a software company (a Microsoft Gold Partner in the higher education space) and one of the concepts I championed was the whole notion of 'evergreen software'. No, that doesn't mean it was written somewhere on Bainbridge Island or by the sasquatches of C# programming near Ohanapecosh. It means something which strikes a nice balance between ongoing revenue for the company on the one hand while offering the best & latest feature sets via ongoing upgrades and support.
Windows 7 hits the mark (*so far).
Don't get me wrong: I like the idea of open source. However, I am extremely reluctant to get into Linux since my whole personal business model is based on high reliability computing. What that means to me is what?
Computing is not an end, in and of itself, for most people. Computers are tools - and ought to be categorized like saws or air tools out in the shop. Out in the shop if I need to scribe or mark something my choices are metal working scribes (or first spray layout fluid on and then scribe) or a carpenters pencil. In the home office it's Corel Draw or AutoCad's SketchBook Pro 2010, depending on project.
Computer's being 'mind amplifiers', the more transparent they are - and the better job of 'mind amplifying they do, so much the better. So, do I think it's worth $120 to upgrade? Hell yes.
My Vista experience was, how do I say this? A little less than perfect. But for the last 6-months, or so, even Vista has been very well-behaved...although it took a little doing to get there. 7 seems more like it's on the XP path in terms of reliability. While I'm sure there are some programs that it won't run with, I don't have any on my machine.
Maybe this means that Microsoft has figured out the two obvious points: 1) People don't mind paying good money for good value. 2) The best way to battle Open Source is to embrace 'evergreen computing' and product superiority.
Cookie Wars Speaking of which, I've been using the new upgraded version of Maxa Cookie Manager which has removed (as of this morning) 49,236 cookies and 122 web bugs (sneaked in code that report back to whoever) from my computer.
The latest upgrade includes scanning for (and removing if desired) new cookies every x-minutes. The ones on the white-list are retained while the ones no there go "Poof!" without me having to think about them.
The core concept is that cookies in general - especially the browser-independent web bugs based on Flash - have the potential for abuse at the same level as conventional viruses, so I think of it as one more moat around my computer.
You can download the free demo here: www.urbansurvival.com/setupMCMstdGU.exe Upgrading to full functionality will set you back about $35.
Hi Hondutel Not to name names here, but I've got a pretty serious computing set-up here with up to seven screens on at once and multiple terabytes, yah? When my system started acting up last week I called the local genius team and found out that my high-level pipe to the internet was under attack. The trace route went as far as Hondutel in Honduras (but likely beyond that). Fortunately, whoever was trying to get between me and the backbone doesn't have an appreciation for the gear here and now there's what a call an "F/U" script running on equipment ahead of our routers that gives 2-log-on chances and then blocks the IP block for a day.
Not that this kind of thing will keep determined hackers out, but a good ISP is worth its weight in gold; F/U scripting at three places between our router and fiber is a good start and should slow down whoever thinks an SSH attack's gonna work. At this rate, I will need to worry in 27,521 years.
Playing the MSM A new movie called "Starsuckers" is in the works and it takes aim at 'celebrity journalism'.
Apparently this goes to common themes around here: The pointlessness of the 'cult of personality' (why anyone would spend a minute of their time worrying about celebrity BS boggles the mind...). Nice to see someone else 'gets it'.
Not For Breakfast, But... A reader sends this:
LOL, I really hope readers understand that I don't really pour shots of el Don for breakfast. Never before 5 PM.
Say, what time is it in Istanbul right now?
Around The Ranch: Weathering Elaine returned from a trip to the local feed store last night and announced "I just heard on the radio it's going to be awfully windy and stormy on Thursday. We better make sure everything it battened down..."
We got ready for the rain and what have you, but this morning's forecast looks like an 80% chance of rain and 15 MPH winds. In Seattle, this would be mid-summer weather. And the low of 47 coming Friday night? Mid-June for Puget Sounders.
If you haven't lived in a lot of different places, the weather difference seems to be that in East Texas, winter lasts about a month. In the Northwest, summer lasts about a month.
Got me to thinking, though, about one of my big goals in life that I haven't made much progress in achieving: I keep trying to spot a place where owning and driving a convertible would make sense for more than a month or two of the year. Darned if I've been able to find it yet. If you've figured that one out, please let us know where it is.
I hear 6,000 feet in the tropics is good, but looking at places like the slopes of Volcan Barú in Panama there's a distinct lack of roads and shopping.
The question of the morning is this: If you could live anywhere in the world, where would that be? And, if you're not there, why not? A number of readers in Ecuador say it's close to perfect - ditto the reports from parts of Chile's hinterlands (yet still close enough to have access to the net....
Peoplenomics Subscriber Note We're up on the new enterprise class server now - the short outage this morning was due to setting of permissions in the new directory structure.. should be back to skookum now.
Tuesday October 27, 2009 Just
In: Case
To carry my cynical calculisms further, since the January readings of this year, these August numbers are still down 2% versus January's numbers YTD. I'd compare them with fall 2007 numbers, except then I'd be talking you in off the ledge....although if it's a slow news day.....
More gentle, is to say that there actually are some markets where home prices have held or have gone up a bit since January: San Diego (climate's still good), San Francisco, Denver, Cleveland, Dallas - and no surprise here - Washington where demand is based on what kind of spending? Hint: You pay for it.
The spreadsheets are accessible from this page. Seasonally adjusted numbers are on the right...
The "Ure Ratio" says the market should now head south...as gold is down $4....which means Dow down 40 - bets?
The "Ure Ratio" At its NY high yesterday, around 10 AM, gold was pressing up on $1060 per ounce. From there it dropped to about $1,038. That's a 'swing' of $22.
The Dow meanwhile, had a Monday intraday high of 10,072.32 and closed down 104.22 at 9,867.96. That's a swing of 204.36 points.
The Ure ratio is presently: (204.36/22) or 9.29 when rounded. In other works, if you're trying to guess where the Dow ought to close, and you are looking at gold, or visa versa, you can maybe 'ballpark' it by saying Gold times ten. So when I looked early on and saw gold was up about $1.30, I figured that would translate to a 13-point upside open.
No, it's not a perfect indicator - just one of those things that goes through the back of my mind when I read emails like this one:
Yeah a little pop at the open of the US markets would not come as a surprise, since even dead cats bounce... not a hard & fast rule, but seems to be useful for now.
If gold is up $2.00 then the Dow up 20 - which wouldn't be much of an open - the market's waiting for news to drive things this way or that. Here in about 45 minutes or so, we should have the new Case-Schiller/S&P housing index. That ought to push things a bit one way or t'other.
Say What? "Recession over but not job losses." Hopefully, this will make more sense than it does to me.
Oil Bourse Inauguration on October 26th of the new Iranian Oil Bourse. Oh-oh....
Bank Questions Readers keep asking:
Just installing software so its easier to control the sheeple, I reckon. Patience and all things in time. Except this is pressing now:
Punish Responsible Behavior Department There's a report that some big banks may charge responsible people who use credit cards for - having the privilege of credit, I guess...and since we're one of those families with no credit card debt, I can tell you I will quit banking anywhere that does such to us. So far, they haven't.
Linguistic Watch OK, why is the global coastal event still in modelspace? "Climate report wants coastal residents" says a report out of Australia. Oh, and warns to alert to such things that as sea levels come up, look for government to grab powers to confiscate and redistribute land. --- Meantime, the Discovery Channel page "South Pacific Quake Swarm - Armageddon" may be a tad early. Me a doomster? You mean because we have 1,151 days and that's assuming we make it past 11/11/2011 which is only 745 days out. But who's counting, right?
Vegetarian Call Nicholas Stern says eating meat might reduce global warming. While others use the term Lord Stern when referring to him, but I don't much buy into such titles nor am I 100% convinced giving up meat is the answer. True, giving up meat is likely better for you, however. --- I don't suppose I need to explain for the umpteenth how the British use of terms like 'lords' and "Sir" plays right into the hand of the ruling class, do I? I mean unless you want to start calling me Sir George of Practical. Might be a nice counterpoint to Sir Alan of Bubbles, come to think of it...
Remember My IP Address Warning? Over the past couple of weeks I've been encouraging you to bookmark both the SSL layer for this site https://urbansurvival.com as well as my static IP address.
Last week that sounded really nuts, but now we see where the Government Accountability Office says the SEC and Homeland Security need web backup plans...
Gee - 'magine that
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Coping: With Presidential Golf The Politico story that president O has played as much golf in 9-months as Dubya did in 2 year 10 months has me back to contemplating getting out the irons to play a little golf now that cooler weather has arrived.
Stories like "CSU's Claussen fires 4-under 68 in opening round of Las Vegas tourney" discourage me though. If I were ever to fire another 4-under, it would likely be on an executive length course (e.g. short & quick) like it was the first time.
Unfortunately, when I finished with my 68 I was reminded there were still 9 more holes to play on the back 9. --- There's something appealing about a short executive course, although I read recently that Boca Raton Executive Country Club was closed. Time & money. When we were living in Boca, 2002-2003, off season rates were something like $10/person including cart if you ordered a book of 20-games, I think it was.
The rates at the local club (www.pinedunes.com) are a little higher: Saturday and Sunday are $79, but a Monday-Thursday $39 senior rate looks promising. Not sure how old you have to be to qualify for the Sr. rate but if it's 55 or 60, then I'd be able to swing it.
Your security clearance doesn't authorize you to know whether I ask for that rate for Elaine. --- Periodically I like to extend invitations to past and present presidents. You may recall that when he was out working cutting brush at the Crawford White House I invited George Bush to come by Uretopia Ranch to cut some brush for us, too. So far, Dubya hasn't shown up, but I still keep the Husqvarna Rancher 455 chainsaw more or less ready in case he changes his mind. I*'d even run into town and get some diet pop if I knew he was coming by.
In the same spirit I'd invite Mr. Obama to visit East Texas for a round of golf. Heck, I'd even pay for his round, too, as long as it's the Monday-Thursday $49 rate. Might even be able to scare up a local democratic party representative, depending on schedules.
Might give him a chance to see one of the few things that mounts up even faster than the federal debt: The number of swings it takes me to get out of the sand traps on the 11th hole.
If you picture going to Honeyman State Park in the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area and installing a putting green? Something like that. 11 and I don't get along. But then neither do 12, 13, 14.... --- Taking my cue from the people in Washington, I have recently developed a improved golf scoring method called 'Off Budget Golfing."
The way it works is pretty straightforward. Most golfers use the equivalent of 'cash basis accounting'. These simple golfers start on hole 1 and play through to hole 18. Add up strokes, lowest stroke count wins. Simple, but obviously outdated since it's not the way IRS, the federal government, or real slippery corporations do things.
Accrual Golfing: First, I have an intricate set of rules that allows me to define my "fiscal game". Usually, that means the scoring on the first three or four holes is associated with a past game. When someone asks me "What did you shoot last week" I tell them "Oh, 115..." I leave out the part about the four shots left to play the coming week.
If that past game happened to be a pretty good one, I use a technique I call 'score averaging. Done properly, I can usually get a 5-10 stroke credit carryforward, since the results of the previous game are subject to accelerated depreciation. So automatically, on the 5th hole, I'm usually 4 or 5 under par.
Then I have set up the golf equivalent of Section 179 which allows me to deduct all the strokes on my three worst holes in any fiscal game. That often gets me up to the tee box on the 8th hole still 4 or 5 under par. As you can see, this makes me a formidable golfer.
Next, I disallow certain travel expenses, such as off-fairway excursions. Can't count since it was not even close to business travel, got it? Usually save 10-strokes or so using that one.
Then, if the ball is struck and disappears, it is assumed to have gone into a special high security hole that no one knows about outside the Senate Golf Committee' staff, so I count only as many strokes as it took to launch the ball into oblivion.
Water traps are treated off budget, too. If I splash a ball, it's as good as done - and that's my stroke count for the hole. It just went 'off budget", right?
Even with all my new found sleazy golf accounting tricks, I sometimes find that I'm carding 90 or more by the 17th hole. In which case, I elect to report my score as an offshore currency equivalent. If, for example, I move my score to my Cayman Islands golf account, I multiply the US score by 80% to convert it to local scoring. You have to be careful with this, however, since any score in Cayman Islands golf m put back in am American scoring account has to be multiplied by 1.25, although if you know the right folks in Grand Turk.... --- If this sounds like an absolutely crazy way to score golf - you're absolutely right - it is!
Yet if this is crazy for golf scoring, or we applied such absurdities to other iconic American sports like Baseball of Football, why is it less crazy when we invest absurd abstractions for the 'scoring' of federal, state, local and corporate accounting?
Didn't the US government itself just announce last year that Lehman and AIG were mulligan's? And isn't the Fed trying to become course marshals with a hidden rule book that no one ever sees?
And what about GE? Are we going to spot them one club length inside bounds and play on like nothing's going on? Citi? What - 5-yard penalty, replay the down?
Think about it. What would the world be like with the FASB scoring sports? I'm not waiting. I'm going to start creative account in golf immediately.
Hey! Maybe then I could score one of those green Master's Jackets? The first one to implement the latest & greatest special accounting rules wins...am I right?
I wonder if hosting president Obama for golf would be tax deductible for a regular human? I expect it would be for a nonhuman corporate entity....
Monday October 26, 2009 "Events" From a watchful reader:
Ah! Were the Bard writing today it would be another chapter of Churning of the Screwed. Off Tech Ticker: Economist Carmen Reinhart has the fine line of the morning "Mountains of debt end badly." For Peoplenomics Subscribers Remember the Peoplenomics (#425, 10/18/2009) report "Channeling the News" - our mini crash course on being a TV assignment editor? Here are some of the things I said to be watching for Sunday night if you were the hypothetical assignment editor in a San Antonio TV station:
While XXXX was not a super quake (used in the example) (at least not yet) - it's the flu follow-up, then the part about weather remnants of the Hurricane once known as Rick is playing out on schedule although not nearly as intense. 41 in Kerrville this morning, though. And on local media? San Antonio's WOAI (good station, BTW) has the predicted rehash of the Cowboys and the look-ahead piece to the Monday Night game.
Oh, and in our example in the Peoplenomics piece I referred to a hypothetical "Air Two".....but you see how news operations can block out stories a week or two in advance with a good assignment desk? That was my point....this is how today 'blocked out' 10-days ago before Rick fizzled..
Tensions Build- But Which Cause? Since the world has slipped over the weekend from 'release language' to 'building tension language" we have a number of items which are candidates to be precursors to what happens next over the next several weeks - and there may be more to come as the day wears on; predictive linguistics is not like wearing a Timex. Predictive linguistics is based on aggregate changes is language use which is a pretty loosey-goosey way to tell time when compared to far more precise tools like sundials or even pointing at that big thing in the sky. --- THE biggest buzz on the 'net this morning seems to be about the presidential declaration of a state of emergency which some folks point to as the precursor to 'martial law' and the seizing of Constitutional rights. While that is always a concern, a number of readers offer two unique perspectives - law and microbiological reasons - why the net buzz may be quite overdone. Although decrypting the weekend's Drudge Report's O/9/11/N1N1 headline has turned into something of a sport.
So that's the legal side of the house. Now, for the microbiology side, we turn to our consulting microbiologist PhD:
In the linguistics we have the 'super' version of the flu expected out in the February-March timeframe, and although there's a question how much impact this vaccine will be against the further iteration (which is it comes from the avian vector might be an H3N1 strain, or something like that) the only way to know is keep on top of events and follow the numbers.
No, if you're worried about swine flu mixing with avian flu, you need to be quite specific since the headlines about swine flu hitting Turkey is about the country, not about the kind that go on dinner tables next month. But, the H1N1 virus has been confirmed in a turkey flock in Canada last week, so I won't go to Thanksgiving in Canada this year... (What do you mean they already had Thanksgiving and I missed it?)
Our #1 MD reader has been thinking this through:
Then our #2 of our MD/reader offers these further thoughts:
If you're worried about jackboots marching through town, not yet. See where Rhode Island is tracking flu with pharmacy records, BTW. And looking at the bright side: they may be contractors with no liability or recourse... Best government money can buy, eh?
I hear banks are tying their internal dB's into some kind of Fed lash-up...only a rumor but in money center banks that has been the rumor going around this weekend. -----
So that's one big shift that happened this weekend. Want another? OK, how about the bankruptcy filing of Capmark Financial?
The company reportedly has $21 billion in debt and it's owned by (among others) Goldman and KKR.
The reason to keep an eye on Capmark is they are 1) in commercial real estate and 2) because this could be a precursor event which might lead to other commercial real estate outfits lining up at the BK filing window over the next few weeks and that would be fund by whom? (Damn, we're a generous country...)
Should we also keep an eye on an NYC deal that could be headed for the rocks?
Which leads to what in the markets? I mean the hypothetical question might be phrased something like this: "How many commercial real estate bankruptcies does it take before the markets notice - and panic?"
Nomura 's latest "Global Strategy Weekly begins with the headline "Internally Inconsistent." Mind if we borrow that?
Well, with Capmark filing the ballsy Monday move would be to play the bounce on REIT's but I keep saying Pappy didn't raise no fool, although that's open to debate. ---
Since we're talking about major shifts here, how about this one which would line up with my "Strong Dollar Reversal Strategy" that I invoked about a week and a half back and described to Peoplenomics readers? "Dollar hegemony for another century" by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is a must read.
My personal portfolio position going into this week was a precious metals straddle: Some $25 silver calls and some $1,000 gold puts. No, this is not a recommendation - I am a wild-eyed trader and may just be exhibiting flu-like symptoms....deleriums tradems I call it. And the flu oughta be spelled 'flew' as that's where the trade is so far.... --- Synchronized car bombings in Iraq have left more than 500 wounded and nearly 150 dead. Let's see, the oil deals were ratified on the 17th, so a week later we see this....
14-dead in Afghanistan this weekend - accidents mostly.
But then there's the "Violent clashes erupt at Jerusalem's holiest site." File this under "Turn the other APC..."
--- OK, usual stuff flowing by - so far - except that POTUS declaration with its odd weekend timing - have to watch how it all builds over the next couple of weeks.
Hey! Maybe that meteor that crashed into Latvia this morning with a 27-foot hole was made of Kryptonite, you think?
Green Shoots; Hardly A key index of foreign trade is sounding alarm bells: The China Containerized Freight Index. Re-what-ery?
Showdown in Chicago The American Bankers Association is meeting today in Chicago. Expect there to be some demonstrations against things like globalization, foreclosures, usurious interest rates, job-jackings and such.
Of note: Senator Dick Durin's speech to the protesters. (2nd vid) Sen. Durbin seems to have sensed the winds change...
NPV Watching Net present value shopping? "Geithner widens bills-to-bonds gap with new sales." Essentially, just like you'd try to lock in the best possible long-term interest rate if you were buying a home, so too the US government is trying to lock in low rates by issuing more debt. --- The head of a thrift operation told one of our readers last week "Money will be so expensive in the next few months that you will have to be solid as rock and rich to borrow any."
Wonder if the Treasury borrowing might force rates up and drive out other borrowers? Dollar is still falling this morning and that could turn bullish for the metals.
Bigger Than Bernie? The death of an associate of convicted fraudster Bernard Madoff is not the biggest item on our radar in the Ponzi-watching area. Question is: How many similar operations are there still running?
This Weak The key number to focus on tomorrow will be the Case-Schiller/S&P Housing report. This is the survey of 20-markets that paints a much different view of things than the cheerleaders in Washington fess up to.
US consumer confidence comes out this week. The German equivalent out today was down as Germans worry about the same kinds of issues we do: getting axed, cost of living, prospects for a brighter...a brighter....a....hmmm....
--- snip and save section ---
Coping: With the "New Electrics" Seems Cold Fusion is back:
Uh, wouldn't the rearrival of cold fusion be a world-changer? The whole 60-Minutes piece is worth watching.
Flipping
Out
Time Distortions Fair bit of work being done in whether the brain speeds up in moments of ultra-high stress, or something else is going on. Article in New Scientist on how humans have a 'framing' system for perceptions that in many ways is like a motion picture camera. --- Cool science fiction plot: What if there really is a whole 'reality next door' and we're just prevented from seeing it because our 'reality shutter' is closed when that 'other world' is present? Fine grist for a movie/short story/ government research contract there, LOL.
Around The Ranch: Storming This morning's report is a little shorter than normal since we've got a long band of thunderstorms moving through this part of East Texas. Zeus the Cat has been running in and out, afraid for his life...not sure why the sky is shaking like it is with all the flashes. Me, the cowardly biped, I keep playing back in my mind "Weren't you going to pick up a wireless keyboard and wireless mouse rig so this kind?"
Zeus - being an all black short-hair cat - is going through "trauma month". He's got thunder storms today, Halloween this week, and then the opening of hunting season on the 7th of November. Out here in the outback, it's like SWAT teams on steroids.
Been trying to get shooting muffs on the cat, but with no bloody success - literally. He seems dead set against anything that would infringe upon his ability when the fridge opens.
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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