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December 5, 2009 7:55 AM CST New
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Weekend Reminders:
Updated from Friday Morning 1. Before doing anything with the Marshall Protocol, please read the report here on it. Always talk to a Doc first. 2. Gold is cratering - down $30 when I looked - while the market has gone up meaning the Ure Ratio which seemed to be working for a while can no longer be trusted, so back to the drawing board on that idea... 3. My commodity guy called excited with some news about gold and silver coin announcements due from the Mint today, but you know, seems like I'll just keep my lonely little coin safely tucked under the Glock... 4. Forget about snow in Houston today - up to 40.1º here at the ranch and now seems like only a glimmer in a forecast model at best...
Tomorrow's report - per usual - for www.peoplenomics.com subscribers only - as is the usual Sunday in depth piece. TTYM (talk to you Monday)
"Good" Unemployment News The latest unemployment numbers came out from the Labor Department this morning and remarkably (verging on unbelievably which we'll get to in a moment) things seem to be improving with the rate down to 10% from 10.2% last month:
Stand Back! I'm going to pop a 'cynical pill'! (Yum...coffee please?)
The report claims that 98,000 fewer people were in the labor force last month. Kinda hard to swallow that, but OK, let's run with it. Moreover, 227,000 jobs were 'created'. Of these, 30,000 were created by the CES Birth Death model which has 'estimated' 1.179-million jobs into existence since February.
Then there's the matter of table 12, Line U6: The un and under-employed which is 17.2% down a tad from the 17.5% last month.
This is all very bad for gold and the markets, gold dropped under the $1,200 level and the Dow dropping a hundred (or more) to close the week down would ne anything but surprising.
All Hail: Power to the Ben! Of course this is bound to bolster the chances of Ben Bernanke being back for another term as Fed Boss, since he's still trying to get more powers. The report today could be argued either way, I suppose.
Obama's Ecstasy Pills You seen these? Ecstasy pills in the likeness of the Commander in Chief. Gotta be an infringement suit in there somewhere...
Travel Spending There's a report out that the world's front-running candidate for 'first carbon billionaire - Al Gore - has canceled plans to give climate lectures in Copengloben. My guess? I figure he's going through his PowerPoints trying to figure out what still works. More to my liking would be an international group look to see which other institutions have played similar data screening games...but of course youi know me;' ever the optimist and all. --- 'Course it's not like this is the first time climate-changers have been caught out: "Toronto blogger embarrasses climate experts" was on the CBC news web site back in (you'll love this) 2007.
And no, no one has completely explained away the 'urban heat island' effect which any darn fool (played by me) can figure. But, then again, I'm not selling my carbon credits so carbon hoax3ers can profiteer, thanks, nor am I pedaling airline seats to Copengloben, or....the list goes on, but we have other things to do. Got me a present yet?...just fer instance.
Not Snowing Yet...But... Maybe later on this morning as Houston may get its earliest ever snowfall shortly. Global whating? Here, use my data... No snow here at our ranch in E. Texas - yet.
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Coping: Earthquakes & Predictive Futures With the next predictive linguistics report due out this weekend, I've been spending a lot of noodle-time on something that really vexes me: Namely, how does the future announce its presence in advance of things? Or does it, as some have claimed? There are several schools of though on this, but the short list seems to go something like this:
If you want a fine weekend project (due Monday before 6 AM - my writing time) please go study how the Gregorc Style Delimiter works: a psychology and higher education assessment tool that analyzes a personality based on thinking styles random, sequential, abstract, and concrete. Then, once you see how Gregorc is constructed, develop a time-perception model equivalent based on the above differentiations so when people have discussions about time and the arrival of future events, then can see the built-in bias of the person they're speaking with. I believe so much in style delimiter approach that Elaine & I took the delimiters and found our thinking styles largely overlapped, so at least we think similarly (both being pretty well balanced, btw).
What seems to occur as a practical matter is that when one person looks at the future as a computation/extrapolation supporter, there's almost never agreement with a religionist/superliminalist /external referencer because they haven't set aside their framing mismatch. What usually seems to erupt is a debate matching numeracy against heresy. Yet both sides will deny it. --- What I'm getting to is that unless you can be really open-minded about how things are framed, and unless you can share framing references and then toss out ideas on the table without getting emotionally sucked in to defending a particular personal bias/framing set, the future becomes less accessible, because of built-in biases.
I mention all this so that when the next predictive linguistics report comes out, you consider the language from all perspectives which seems to me to be the way to extract maximum value. --- Earthquake Data This all has a practical application in how we shape our future expectations of earthquakes, since it's time to roll out the latest monthly earthquake summary from contributor Tony Ring. That charts, please?
I'm not a trained seismologist, but it seems the count of quakes is down, magnitudes are up and the kind of situation where that might fit would be something like late-stage tectonic plate lock. Have any kind of external event to set the plates to moving (as in 2012, maybe?) and we might possibly have an interesting set of outcomes to survive. Highly speculative, but a decline in average depth intuitively suggests to me that down lower, things may be locking up...
When he's not being interrupted at client websites by me hounding him for EQ data, Tony Ring who compiled the data for us really has a life and blogs at http://www.dogstarmist.com/.
iPod Police, Revisited Yes, it's been a while since I've ridden public transit - since there isn't any that runs from out here in the middle of nowhere to my office which is 75-feet away (and you thought you were lazy...).
Nevertheless, the crackdown on Staten Island iPod users seems to have merit figures this reader:
I just somehow thought it was going a bit far, but then again, I'm the kind of out-of-Gotham yokel who shows up and takes the whole Apple in with some relish, figuring that it's something out of a dream...to be sampled a bit then then flee for more reasonable parts.
Flip Side of Vitamin D While there's a ton of discussion on the net here lately about the usefulness of vitamin D to reduce the chance of coming down with swine flu, there is a real flip side to vitamin D which was sent in by a reader upon hearing that Elaine gets tinges of Raynaud's Syndrome (hands going white when exposed to cold):
The list of diseases that Marshall Protocol seems to help is impressive and broad:
What's more, the discussion of TH1 Spectrum Disorders is first-rate, so next time you run into a health problem with one of these diseases, seems like a sensible question for your doctor might be "So, what about the Marshall Protocol as a long-term approach?" I've got enough issues on the list that I may actually send it to my Dr. friends and ask their thoughts on it.
If I get a reply that they're OK with sharing, I'll pass it along...
--- Send your comments to george@ure.net The UrbanSurvival Mall: Peoplenomics This Week Fingerprints of the PTB Don't know if you have noticed the same disturbing trend I have, but when one sits back on a cool morning with no work to think about and reflect over a hot cuppa joe, I get a growing sense that less and less of what's being 'piped' into human melodramatic consciousness can be trusted. It starts as a feeling, but when I started start to add up all the Big Lies of the past few years, the number became impressive; 9/11, the supposed naturally occurring flu, the 'need to war', and more recently, climategate. This week, we review a few of these Big Lies and ask an almost impossible question: "Why?" The answers are few, but we can at least begin framing a large and potentially life-altering answer set. More For Subscribers To Subscribe, CLICK HERE Maxa-Cookie Manager Been a while since I've updated you on how many cookies and web bugs have been removed from my main computer by the Maxa Cookie Manager from Maxa Tools: 1,602 web bugs and 54,131 cookies so far. It's amazing.
Take it for a free test drive by downloading it. To upgrade to full functionality will set you back $35 bucks, but Christmas is coming... 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.
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...
"Live on $10,000" A Year 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...
Pass It On The business model of this website is base 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!)
Thursday December 3, 2009 Productivity Screams Ahead Holy smokes - an 8.1 annualized increase in productivity is claimed in Labor Department figures out this morning:
Why this is better than ring-around-the-nose for the crackhead monied class...I'm sorry, make that Wall Street crowd. Stock futures are pointing to a buoyant open, also assisted by the report that Comcast is buying a controlling stake in GE's NBC/Universal unit. --- Before you get carried away with productivity, try to remember that if everyone is fired then productivity shoots skyward until there's no one working and productivity reaches 100%.
Banking 101: Comparative Currency Class One of the rumors which is going around the 'net lately is that the US will have a 'banking holiday' that's variously pegged at 'over the New Year's long weekend', the 'middle of January' and by some accounts 'mid-February'. A chat with my consigliore - who indeed expects such events, suggests that there's nowhere near enough unanimity of opinion in Washington to make such a move - which rumors insist will be accompanied by a new currency or perhaps a two-tiered US currency - to make it politically acceptable. His outlook is for maybe a year from now depending on how the second wave down (late next summer) goes.
But, in the meantime, the NY Times has a dandy article on how currency changes can be plugged in by repressive regimes like North Korea which has essentially stripped its citizens of their savings.
Did I mention folks in North Korea don't have a right to keep and bear arms? Maybe that would be out of place if P.C. [politically correct] meant anything around here...but fortunately, it doesn't.
Meantime, I wonder if Treasury or the Fed have a crack news analytics group that goes through reports like this and studies how it works out? You know - a prototyping department..."If NK tried it, what would it be like here?" kind of thing. --- Banking 201: Independent community bankers think the passage of systemic-risk legislation is a good thing, saying the legislation will "create a more equitable financial system and hold too-big-to-fail firms accountable for the risks they pose to America’s taxpayers and the viability of our economic system." Yeah, I like local bankers, generally, in case you can't tell. --- Banking 501: Bank of America is planning to repay its TARP money, and while it's nice that taxpayers are getting out of their ownership position, this will have three or four notable impacts which you can throw a dart at to figure which one(s) are core decision-drivers:
Open book test in September of next year. Be taking notes as we go along paying particular attention to the Synchronized Global Inflation Theory that the MSM doesn't seem to have a clue about...
Beyond The Surge If you think 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan is something (since any right-thinking jihadists would have moved to Pakistan long ago) consider that The TalkingPointMemo's Muckraker section is reporting that there are also 104,000 'contractors' in country now...which they get along to asking "Who is paying them and who's in charge of them?" Mighty fine questions, except for the one about the pay; you know who that is, right? Change, indeed, yessir...sit on your wallet.
Changeling's Inaction Speaking of which: After all the hoopla about how democorps were going to be bringing 'change' to Washington, I see here the headline that "Congress appears poised to back Obama War Plan."
This goes, once again, to underscore my contention that the electoral process in America - thanks to special interest group powers of the checkbook - has been co-opted so as to offer only a choice between War Party A and War Party B. You saw where former SecDef Donald Rumsfeld says troop increase requests were not denied by the Bushitas? Where's my nitrous? ---- It has probably escaped congress' collective wisdom that the war there has been going since October 7, 2001...which is par: Can't expect to have a cohesive plan, benchmarks for success, exit strategy, self-supportive government, and other reasonable expectations on ...lemme count...9.16 years (3,344 days) into this...not when it keeps American families fractured, taxpayers hobbled, consumer consumption limited, the unemployment rate down from where it otherwise would be, and contributions from defense outfits pouring in along with country-specific support group dough. Gosh - and did I mention 'security employment' booming? Who'd want to question a deal that good- why it's be un-American. --- We apparently didn't send a representative and a couple of senators each to Washington. We sent jellyfish or some other runaway species of political invertebrates. Like the bankster bailout wasn't a clue...or the auto bailouts, or....but I digress. Teach your kids the word 'gumption'. It used to be a shared core value of Americans.
New Electrics Watch Remember that we're supposed to be seeing a lot of buzz starting up in about this timeframe about the 'new electrics' from the linguistics report? How about: Lockheed linking up with ultracapacitor firm EEStor (2008) and getting into the clean energy business? About time to be watching this one, maybe? Not a recommendation - I'm just watching closer, that's all...also saying at least someone has an Afghanistan exit strategy....
Changing Sea Levels Department No, they haven't gone the way of Lemuria or Atlantis yet, but folks in Venice are getting a lot wetter than usual due to a low-pressure system and what I suppose are semi-diurnal tides. Or, is there something more to this? You see where it showed up in Northern Tasmania, too...hmmm...
iPod Police Next? Report in the Village Voice this morning that new Staten Island Ferry rules prohibit 'ear bud leakage'.
Coming tomorrow: The Monthly earthquake summary with charts...
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Coping: Thinking the Unthinkable Ha! You thought I was the Grinchly person this time of year. Nothing doing. Check out this reader who has been looking at the problem of overpopulation and has been obviously trying to engineer the kind of solutions that, well, have a certain inhumanness to them:
Got to lay down the books once in a while, don'tcha think? Season to be jolly, yada, yada, yada? A little more diazepam maybe?
Down in the WuJo: Orb Sightings Been several people who have noted (since the next predictive linguistics report is coming out this weekend) that there was a very good 'hit' (fill expectation set) with a large increase in UFO sightings as a 'wave' in South America.
But it doesn't stop there. Seems that 'orb' sightings are up , too as this reader offers:
After looking at the video on this one, I'm not as convinced that this is a 'real deal' orb. This one seems to act in a straight line (or nearly so - kinda hard to tell from the video. As such, it could be any number of low-flying satellites. The kind of UFO/orb videos that get my attention are the ones where the orbs are close to the ground - which gives a scale reference and do maneuvers which are significantly off a straight line path. The classic being the orbs cutting crop circles video from a couple of years back.
A couple of readers near the southern Oregon coast have sent in descriptions in the past, although at this time of year I'd imagine its getting a little chilly to be hanging out at 4 AM outside looking for odd lights. The only 'odd lights' I'd be looking for would be the one which indicates the "E.B is on 'mother'" (Non-George translation: The electric blanket is turned all the way up and there's a little light on it...)
But speaking of which, we've all read Currents of Death
News Wars
Funny thing about it is that I think there's still some opportunity for a news organization if they would just aggressively reframe the current/old paradigm into something that makes sense.
It's like when the business channels - which we can lump together - and a steamy lump at that - if you know what I mean - all report how the 'cost of living is going up' when the truth of the matter is there's a whole other way of looking at it which I natter on about endlessly; namely that money is being watered down.
I have yet to see such a direct exposure of the soft-underbelly of assumptions that keep the Ovis Aries of the audience in line. Just as 'no one dares call it conspiracy', none dare question the fabric of the emperor's clothes. A news organization that holds 'reframing' at it's core would probably do pretty well. But, of course, I'm only an ex-major market news director, so WTF do I know...
Around the Ranch: Pistachios and Yoga Don't
look now, but since the
Wii
I'm sure that my momentary fitness rush will wear off soon enough, but now that I'm past 60, anything that gets me out of a chair, balancing for snowboarding, yoga, or whatever, seems to be a good thing. I don't know what the key demographics of Nintendo buyers are, but seems to me that the senior (Jeez, am I one of them? OMG) market for the product is likely as big - or bigger - than the kids market.
One other pleasant surprise: Wii is also an internet tool; has a built-in browser which makes big-screen surfing comfortable. Not sure I want to get too deeply into it, but I've already got my 'news links' page set up as a favorite, along with www.finance.yahoo.com.
Don't know what ever happened to Ron Judy - but if you know anyone at Nintendo, you might mention that there's a wild-eyed marketing crazy man in the East Texas outback who swears that Wii could easily become the defining video tool (like it's not?) by just taking the onboard Opera-based browser and incorporating the processing horsepower (enabled plug-in) so that the box would run www.hulu.com so we could watch missed House episodes...just thinking...
Maybe this is already possible, but I didn't see a simple way to do it; but the product is so close to TV-on-demand as it is - and with fitness, web surfing, and an optional wireless keyboard, it's turned into a fine decision...well, we're just tickled with it. Beginnings of the true all-purpose box. --- Since my shoulders are a bit sore from the boxing workout, my flash-of-health regimen will continue at least through today's tooth cleaning down at the dentist's place in town. I didn't used to be such a fan, but you know, a little more nitrous and it's not all bad.... --- With snow in the forecast for tomorrow morning, it's finally the civilized time of year in the outback; when one can simply put beer or wine outside to keep it cool and the danger of setting the Texas Piney Woods on fire. Can't do food, though, since the raccoons and cats tend to fight over it. Time to refill the BBQ gas jugs and pick up some pressurized cans of whip cream, LOL...let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...
(Sure as heck, I plan ahead like this and nothing will stick. Oh well....)
Home Handymen's Corner Gotta love this one on the make-it-yourself powered bikes:
Haven't had time to put mine together, but if we get a couple of warm days - or I will assign my soon-to-be-visiting son to that task...will give him first-hand experience with workshop practices. May pick up a bike specially for this project since my mtn. bike is aluminum framed and oblong tube where the motor is mounted which poses some issues since I'm too lazy to cast a new mount.
Search Bike motors on eBay.
Wednesday December 2, 2009 Glockman Sachs, Globalists, and Gold As luck would have it, this daily look at the market through nontraditional, long-wave economics oriented eyes, does not have a particular bet. In other words, I haven't put down any boundaries around the writing style to make in conformant with the venerable A.P. Stylebook, although I keep one at the ready lest someone question my journalistic integrity. In fact, as a writing style to be emulated I find "Playboy After Hours" as good as any, since a little levity goes a long ways toward lightening the load, whether you're meeting some 'friends of fermentation' across the street from the NYSE after work for a post mortem, or looking through stacks of long-tail bond analysis trying to squeeze an extra dime's worth of interest out at the 30-year mark.
Since humor is no stranger here, I'm pleased to report that this morning we have what you'd call a "target rich environment". If you know what MOUT is (and all .mil types know that's 'Mobile Operations on Urban Terrain'), I keep a local Eat Texas variant alive best I can. It's called SHOUT; Somewhat Humorous Observations in Unbelievable Times. --- With this in mind, we can scope out our first objective: Goldman Sachs, reported Alice Schroeder (Bloomberg) is "Arming Goldman with Pistols Against Public". Invariably, this set headline writers to work in a double entendre frenzy: "Top firms said to be loading up on firearms in case of uprising" and "Gun Toting Goldman Execs Prepare for the Revolution."
My personal favorite would be something like "Goldman Execs to Hit Bonus Target" or "Goldman: Bonus Bull's-eye...." or something like that. --- But the truth of the matter is (and you're not going to like this) that the flurry of language connected with this story, especially how it is linking terms like Goldman to "guns" and "revolution" and "uprising" and "against the public" yada, yada, yada is [wait for it] pretty much exactly what predictive linguistics held for this period.
As I've told you time and time again, the rickety time machine up at www.halfpasthuman.com is incapable of distinguishing between a "real" event or a flaring up of linguistically 'hot' headlines such as those that are filling much of the descriptor sets that go with conflict with/between bankers and the general public.
The next HPH report should be out Sunday ( www.halfpasthuman.com, $10 bucks) but Cliff's taking a very low-key approach to its release. We're both pretty much sick of the project since while movies popularizing how cool having a real time machine would be are totally off-base, our experience over the past 9-years is that even when the project yields 'well above statistical chance' outputs, the detractors/denials/skeptics keep throwing rocks and so forth, resulting in something akin to rising bile in the throat. Everything from damnation to death threats to vicious ad hominem attacks has come from it so far - along with charges from some that we're profiteers and worse.
How we can be profiteers at $10 bucks a report and with wholesale rip-off artists modifying and posting the reports on the net in violation of copyright laws is never explained; just that we're somehow bad guys for not sharing the output of thousands upon thousands of hours of work for free. I know there's a business model in free somewhere, but the critics never explain this which pisses me off no end. Cliff's attitude is a little closer to "Screw 'em. I'll do this report but after that..." The work, and it's remarkable 'hits' either stands on its own, or not, and we're just interested in the work, not the debate. This ain't global warming data that can be neatly corralled and purged.
I still get several several emails a week urging "George admit it! You guy's October 25th call was dead wrong!"
Was it? We did get the presidential swine flu declaration spot/smack-dab on, and the Ukraine flu panic, after all. And by some news accounts, we are only in the second of what should (if linguistics are right) be a total of nine global waves of 'ill winds' associated with this linguistic set which the Ukraine and related European (mostly Eastern) countries have gone bonkers discussing. not to be defensive hear, but most of the critics don't read the overseas press widely and tend to be US-centric in their views.
From a broader perspective, the language stew that was visible 6-months back wasn't exactly crystal clear, but I'm sure one of these days the project critics will send along the definitive books on predictive language shifts so that we may better find the errors in our ways. I jest of course; there are no books on what we're doing because guess what? This is what life on the bleeding edge of computing is about. Not one of the critics we've heard from offered a clearer perspective on what the language of this period would be back in mid August. Easy to criticize when there's no comparable work to offer up in comparison.
Several people have asked "How come Cliff" (and to a lesser extent George) hasn't been on the radio much lately? To which I answer with a simple question in kind: "Ever hear the term 'pearls before swine'?" Certainly makes clear at a deep personal level how tempting is it for the PTB to treat the whole planet as little more than grazing Ovis Aries. Ever read "Operation Mind Control"?
Sorry if I've lost a bit of my humor. I'll get it back just as soon as I offer card-carrying Glockman execs a chance to step onto the pistol range here at the ranch to work on that fist-sized grouping at 10-meters. Two caveats though: Around the ranch BOA doesn't mean Bank of America: It means Bring (your) Own Ammunition. And, if all you know about 'indexing' is summarized in letters like ^DJIA or ^DJT, or ^IXIC, don't bother. --- OK, let's shelve Glockman and move on to Globalists, who are having a dandy week, having essentially taken over Europe, much to he chagrin of a few English patriots such as Daniel Hannan who noted Tuesday "At midnight last night, the United Kingdom ceased to be a sovereign state." Spelt Kingdum, I'd say.
Turns out that after all the jeering, laughter, and derision heaped upon people who've been writing of the corporate/globalist take-over of the world, that the alarmists were right. But this isn't the first time the alarmists have been right, as you well know. The John Birch Society was warning of the socialist take-over of America back when I was a kid and sonavabitch if they weren't substantially right in their warnings. Of course the same JBS which was right about creeping socialism is now writing about the globalist power grabs to come in places like Copenhagen (see: "UNEP Power Grab Planned for Copenhagen"), but pay that no mind, Ovis. Frogs being slowly parboiled don't complain, and I don't expect you to, either. --- Serious though the first couple of headlines were this morning, the third brings a smile to my face...in fact, I'll just go laughing all the way to the bank as my gold coin came to being worth within a whisker of $1,218 this morning. (See updated price at top of page)
My wife Elaine asked me just yesterday "Don't you think we should sell that thing?"
"No," I explained patiently. "That gold has a long ways to run before it even comes close to being sellable."
I then took her through the "When is fully valued likely to happen?" exercise.
It begins with looking at the price of gold in the early days of 1980. January 21, 1980, Kitco's gold price data shows a spike to $850 an ounce.
Now we need to correct for 'official inflation' by putting $850 and 1980 into the Minneapolis Fed inflation calculator. That says that to be priced to the beginning of 2009 - in other words correct just for offishul monetary inflation /watering down of money's buying power, gold would have to be where to equal the 1980 spike? $2,199.27.
But like the late-great Billy said: "But Wait! There's More!" That doesn't take into account inflation for this year. I think 4.5% is a realistic number (or should be by January when the last of the exceptionally low data rolls out). That means minimally to equal the 1980 price spike, Gold ought to be $2,298.23 before I even begin to get remotely interested in selling.
That, unfortunately, is not where our tale ends. Nossir; we need to go to John Williams' most excellent site Shadow Government Statistics and put in the inflation calculation which is based on a different - and dare I suggest less politically agendized? - methodology.
The answer he comes up with (through October of this year only) is a gold price of $2,368.39.
And even that is not really where gold is going, since if people today were to hold as much on a per capita basis just based on population change, the price could be arguably higher. You see in 1980, global population was, and this is UN numbers here, 4.43 billion and in 2000 that was up to 6.07 billion. So not counting the last 10 years of growth, population was up 37%.
Kah-ching! Kah-ching! Williams' calculator's $2,368.39 times population growth would put gold in the $3,244.69 area.
Oh sure, there's been some mining (and some mining of tungsten, too, LOL) so not even counting the last 10-years for global production and such, I still keep coming back to the $3,000 level and that's before we get the explosive high cost of money in 2010.
"THE WHAT???"
Oh, sure, you were paying attention, weren't you, to the reports that the Fed was going to suck money out of the system in Q1 2010? And what does that in turn do to rates? OMFG...
Of course, you may be one of those people who discounts conspiracy theories on the origins of AIDs, too. But in case you haven't had your head outside the MSM patrolled borders of US thought, perhaps reading an article in an Africa media outlet "Don't discount conspiracy theories on origin of Aids" might be an eye opener.
If an outfit like Baxter can be found out for 'accidentally' shipping live flu virus about earlier this year (see: "Baxter: Product contained live bird flu virus", Toronto Sun, Feb 27, 2009) then who's to say this couldn't have happened with other biowar materials much earlier on in a covert plan to depopulate the planet down toward the 500-million Club of Rome agenda? --- By the way - if this is any comfort - the update to 'Limits to Growth", the CoR report on population from 1972, updated in 2004 predicted at that time (2004) that there was only a global gold reserve for 9-more years. See the Wikipedia entry on the methodology called "Exponential reserve index" for more...Petroleum runs out in 20 years (basis 2004) so we only have something like 14-years to run on that clock, which is why governments are getting so globalistic and cap & trade-ish, restrictions on travel, reduced caloric, disarmed populations, yada, yada, in their behaviors. You knew all this, of course. --- So the question is not whether global population has to be reduced; the real issue is whether you will be one of the survivors of the cull which will no doubt be coming along either because of 2012, climate shift, alien wars, or global pandemic disease. Care for a little something each from behind curtains 1 though 4 to keep things interesting?
Going Down? US stock futures have started to dip after the ADP jobs report figured 169,000 jobs were lost int he US last month. One of three things could happen here: The overnight pop in gold could evaporate, the stocks could rally later in the session, or the relationship between stocks and gold could break down. I'm figuring the latter.
Climategate, Redux Since we're talking about the conspiratorial side of life this morning, I suppose we should notice how the climate stamped is going, eh Ovis?
In our last exciting episode, the "Climate scientist at center of e-mail controversy to step down" and republicorp Senator James "Inhofe asks Boxer to investigate possible 'Scientific Conspiracy' in 'Climategate'"
Yep...and I expect a full open accounting of this all on my desk not later than March 31, 2025.
Urge To Surge Change? You weren't seriously expecting change from president O who just committed another 30,000 American forces to Smackghanistan, do you.
Only change: War Party A to War Party B...but this is a Checkbook Republic form of government where people in Washington don't get there by raising money solely within their home districts, for crying out loud. --- More proof? Sure, take New Jersey, please: "Corzine's total tally for his 3 campaigns: $131M"
Best government money can buy.
Life in the Web Yahoo has it's top searches of 2009 warming up.
Sailing On Those 5 British sailors who supposedly strayed into Iranian waters have been released. Wonder if both sides got a quick refresher course on how to put keep out zones into their GPS nav systems?
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Coping: With Comfort Food Out here at the ranch, we're eyeing something a little unusual for this part of East Texas: A chance of snow in the forecast for Friday and maybe a few flurries into early Saturday.
I'm not sure why I like cool weather so much. Perhaps it's something genetic being of Scottish and Danish extraction, but whatever the reason, it's one of the few areas where Elaine and I differ. She's got a mild case of something called Raynaud's phenomena, such that when we were doing winter sailing back when we lived on the boat, she'd every now and then get white fingers and white toes. Hence, she'd prefer to spend as much cold weather time in the Bahamas or warmer climes. Snow? Bring it on, as far as I'm concerned!
In reflecting on this difference in metabolisms, I've come to suspect that one reason I'm so thrilled about cold weather is that I can justify (however lamely) the extra inch or three of body fat I carry about; a genetic hangover from pre-microwave oven days. The family genetics are impressive in this area and the Danish background includes something akin to Teflon vein liners, since Danes don't seem to particularly prone to heart problems, at least to the same extent on an equal-calorie basis compared to other haplotypes.
Some guys have self control. My friend Robin Landry, for example, has double-stuffing with his Turkey this year; he likes to have leftover dressing and something else between T-Day and Christmas. Just chatting about it the other day with him got me to thinking over winter comfort food. Extra stuffing here - double, triple, or more, only lasts a week -> tops.
A few of my favorites for this time of year:
Burgundy Beef Stew: About 5-pounds of stew meat, the usual assortment of veggies (carrots, celery, potatoes, mushrooms, many onions, a few garlics) and spice (basil, thyme, bay leaves) all aided by a whole 1-liter bottle of any old not-too-sweet red wine and then simmered for about 4-hours, or until tender. Done right, a harsh look is all it takes to make the beef fall apart. To die for, especially when served with fresh handmade French bread and a second bottle of wine...or third, depending on how ambitious the cooking effort was.
Variation: Burgundy Beef Spaghetti Sauce. Instead of a liter of red wine, such a large (1 quart, or so) can of Hunt's Traditional Tomato spaghetti sauce, spritz with garlic oil, change bread to something Italian-looking. Best part of this recipe? It frees up another bottle of wine for the cook.
Rum-Soaked Chicken Breasts: Here, you take however many chicken breasts you need (1-2 per person) and soak 8-hours or longer in the fridge with at least 1-shot of rum for each one, I usually go with 2. Then you take them out of the fridge, warm them slowly to room temp, covered, somewhat safe thanks to all the alcohol sloshing about. Now you put them on the hottest damn fire you can find - BBQ works best. Toss on additional shots of rum while they are cooking, preheating the rum so that it flares up and your spouse yells "Stop that! You'll set the house afire!"
Once they are cooked (toothpick test for clear fluid) but not overcooked, you plate them on a bed of fresh fettuccini noodles over which you have poured a simple Alfredo sauce. I don't know who this Alfredo guy was, but he got whipping cream, garlic, an egg yolk, and gobs of melted parmesan cheese figured out.
After the fire department has left, put another handful of parmesan cheese on the top of each chicken breast and toast the whole (fireproof plate) under a medium broiler to melt the cheese into the chicken and the outlying districts of the noodles.
I could go on and on about my favorite winter-time cooking. Summer, with its endless parade of shrimp salads and sweat seems blissfully distant about here. My friends who have had encounters with Bill W have their own variants that are alcohol free - and the booze-free wines are getting better all the time, along with the alcohol-free beers, which can be used as a third variant of the basic stew concept. Rum flavoring can make a passable hot-buttered non-rum in a pinch, too.
Even the simplest fare takes on a flare at this time of year. A can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup can be amazingly enhanced with a good stiff shake of nutmeg to bring out the 'shroom taste, and the accompanying fried cheese sandwich migrated from the Velveeta of youth to the provolone (and beyond) cheeses of adulthood, also makes grand cold weather fare.
Elaine's not as excited about eating as me, but then she's at - or just a pound or two under - where she was in high school. Fortunately, I've avoided that, but mostly by choice. I come from a cold-weather family that sat around the dinner table; hot food was an art form to be cherished along with the many side dishes of heated debate on this or that.
I think I'll have some leftover spaghetti stew for breakfast, and I'd advise you to do the same. You never know when you'll be run over by a bus, or 'taken out' by some bank-shot of Universe - so the way I figure it, no point going out hungry. Although the Teflon-lined veins help.
One of these days, I expect the food industry will get around to optimizing meals for people based on their genomes. Until then, you can either study thinks like "A second generation human haplotype map of over 3.1 million SNPs" or have your own gene history done.
An easier and cheaper way? Find the oldest/longest-living, member of your family on both sides and ask them what they eat (or ate, as the case may be, but asking gets harder). Munching along those lines would make a lot of sense. At least it does for me, since my grandmother cooked for a minor noble's family in Odense. Pastries, pork, coffee and cookies. Yep, love cold weather.
Is it lunchtime yet?
Bad Dream Just caught this in the overnight email:
Just a bad dream. pappy used to say that a person would get bad dreams if they ate pork without apple sauce. Eat an apple and let us know if it occurs again...
Tuesday December 1, 2009 Climate of Confusion I suppose the biggest story from an historical perspective is that the Copenhagen/UN/Climate summit is going ahead as planned. "Leaked emails won't harm UN climate body, says chairman" rather optimistically, one would suppose. The story in the UK's Guardian this morning causes me no small amount of concern and I've spent a fair bit of time on subject; something I'm loathe to do.
The problem is that yes, our lifestyles are likely unsustainable BUT the problem is that the climate change hack of 10-days back was only ONE hack of ONE institution. I don't know where these ol' boys went to school, but where I did that's a 100% failure rate for the integrity of those who had the opportunity - and apparently took it - to shred the data to arrive at agendized answers. --- This is not the only area data-skewing is starting to be in vogue. Recently, some sources around the net which had been posting Price/Earnings (P/E) ratios of stocks and indices have started to cut back and in some cases for an index, just plain stopped reporting the forward P/E ratios.
I've often pointed out to subscribers (to Peoplenomics) that in many so-called 'excellent companies' the majority of profits accruing to the company do not come from an honest accounting on operating activities but rather come from stock market operations.
Suppose you have a lemonade stand, a favorite school days example of modern business theory. Let's say that after a long day in the hot sun (or one fiscal year, whichever) you have $1.00 left over after selling $10.00 worth of lemonade. Assume, too, that you have 10-shares of stock floating around the neighborhood, each prices at $2/share. That means the 'market cap' of your lemonade stand is $20, and on 1 dollar of earnings (after-tax), that you'd have a P/E of 20 which is what 20 divided by one works out most days.
The price-to-sales ratio is also important: Take the market cap and divide by sales. In this case, $20/$10 means a P/S ratio of 2.
Another ratio to look at is Sales/Earnings which would be ($10/$1) which for the lemonade stand is 10.
Armed with this simple way of looking at companies and lemonade stands, we can now start to look at the quality of good stocks. Take GE, just for example, which you can find a key statistics profile for at Yahoo's finance site: Forward price earnings (look-ahead forecast of their lemonade sales) is 17.6; that'd be 56.8¢ for each $10 worth of lemonade. The current P/E is shown as 14.83, which would pencil to George's lemonade stand making 67.4¢ for the past year of standing in the sun.
Where I part company with stock analysts in general is when I look up the average 3-month volume and discover that GE trades around 100-million shares a day, or at $16 a share here recently (or thereabouts) that's $1.6 billion a day in stock changing hands. And with a market cap of $170.6 billion, this means every 106-days, or so, the market cap (shares outstanding times recent price) changes hands.
This is not to single out GE - which is a very well run company - just to point out that in the case of our lemonade stand example that which had a market cap of $20, that means that over the course of a year, something around $60 in lemonade stand stock would change hands. Which inconveniently gets around to the issue of whether companies are in business to make goods and services or whether they are really in business to be stock operations.
Clearly GE makes quality goods, so forget them and pick some of the 'hotter & wilder' stocks that people have sunk major portions of their life's savings into: All this builds to my two simple observations of this morning.
First here's a million dollar idea: Make all stocks report on a lemonade stand basis. I do it when I'm looking at individual stocks but it takes a bit of work (you can build a spreadsheet and get the same outputs...just would be nice if all financial parameters, not just sales and earnings were reported in a more friendly context, although that might empty out business classes, since a little woo-woo is what drives price and demand here.
Since the stock market is open about 250 days a year, we might generalize that a good company like GE (trading about $1.6 billion a day or so of shares) can be considered a $400-billion per year 'handle', which when divided by annual revenue (call it $162-billon trailing 12 month/ttm) gives a George Ratio of 2.47. This is something you can tinker with for other stocks, but I find it often gives me a little different insight that trying to wrap my head around some complex calculus of P/E's, P/S's and what-have-you's of mainstream/marketing stock analysis.
IBM's 'George ratio' is about 2.22 using a 250-day year while Bank of America has an annual 'handle' of about 721-billion in stock sales divided by TTM revenues of 63.25 billion for a George ratio' of 11.41. Waaaay too rich for me.
Cool thing is that Yahoo has both the 3-month average and a 10-day average which is a fine thing if you like playing momentum - you get two data points.
Fun, huh? Different/nontraditional way to look at things.... point being that you can make up your own 'truth detector' if you want, no one says you can't. You know as much about the lemonade business as the next guy. Where you might be a little hamstrung is not considering annual handle, which the George ratio takes into account. Why? Well, it is a casino, after all! Handle is everything. ---- The second thing to raise I guess is the question whether the climate scientists who scrubbed their climate data weren't already going down a trail blazed by sales departments of major stock brokerage firms and even governmental (off budget) accounting outfits?
Climate Notes With the White House packing for the Copentrippen, interesting to see "Gibbs: Despite research dispute, 'climate change is happening'.
Sunspots showing a goose egg but on the other hand some folks in Wisconsin figure the warmer fall has something to do with El Nino. Yah think?
Government Can Help - Right! Word that the FTC is holding a couple of meetings this week to figure out what the government (FTC et al) to help frailing, ailing, MSM should scare the hell out of anyone who remembers 'right to a free press' as a concept.
I'd put it in the same category as matchmaking between hemophiliacs and vampires; oughta be a classic of groupthink. Hard as you may find this to believe, any citizen can be a reporter, journalist, publisher if'n they put their mind to it. ANYTHING that impinges the level playing field is what? (jackboots?) And by anything I mean even little gimme's like favored tax treatment or any other 'protectionist pap' they care to come up with. I run a semi-respectable one-man newspaper here and I can rewrite government hand-outs as well as the next guy.
Some Surge Word that the UK is sending 500 soldiers to the 'surge' in Afghanistan (which I can only assume to be part of president O's 'change' we were promised) doesn't sound right when compared with 30,000 expected to be the additional US move. Hand me a pencil - something ain't right:
The population of the UK being (rounded off) 61-million and using 2.5 persons per household, that means one household in (you're gonna love this) 48,800 will be personally impacted.
On the other hand, with 308 million people, and using the same households divisor, 123.2-million households sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan means the household impact will be 4,107 households will be impacted directly here. --- On the other hand, I suppose the British do have other worries, such as what Iran will do with the five yachtsmen who were detained after supposedly crossing an Iranian boundary while sailing from Bahrain to Dubai.
Lifestyles of the Rich in CONgress Don't let the headline "Nancy Pelosi spends $2,993 on flowers" put you off - lots more meat to chew on in the Politico coverage of congressional spending on this & thats. You & I? We just foot the bills.
Hell, I'm gonna start voting for myself as a write-in for everything.
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Coping: Keeping Hope Alive Don't know if you have read the "Tenth Amendment Center" web site posting on how to "Resist DC: A Step-by Step pan for Freedom". In case you've forgotten it, the 10th Amendment says:
Unfortunately, the enforcement of such laws is left to the politically appointed (and federalist leaning) Supreme Court. Which is something akin to appointing foxes to count the chickens, but the Center's step-by-step plan seems doable, at least on the surface. Something to consider, anyway.
Thinks like setting of national speed limits - things like that just bother me. Don't know of a state in the Union (or former Confederacy for that matter) that gave speed limit setting powers to Washington. I've always held that if things like speed limits were designed to save energy, then vehicle fuel economy should have been the limit so that a high fuel efficiency car could go whatever speed it wanted, while a guzzler would be held to it's most efficient speed as its top end.
Similarly, on matters like drug laws, the central government merely assumed authority for regulation and (Harrison Act) taxation of drugs. But the fundamental question which damn few bother to ask is this: Where is the delegation of State power to the central government, since that's supposed to be reserved to the states and the people unless specifically delegated?
I may have missed something in the constitutions of the various states I've lived in, Washington, California, Florida, and Texas, but I don't recall speed limits or federal drug enforcement being ceded by either the state constitution or an appropriate amendment thereto.
Come to think of it, I'd have to look up and see where states actually ceded a national tax-collecting power to the central government. Not sure as I recall seeing that one, either.
Curiously, when people look at Constitutional Law, they often seem to worry about the top-down perspective. Can the central government do this, or that. Instead, a different way to look at it would be to ask "Where's this ceding of powers" that - just to throw out an example here - makes owning a machine gun a ceded power?
Not to say that central control of things like Air Traffic and such isn't cool and neat; it's just a matter of is it technically traceable in law as a permitted federal activity, or should air traffic control - to name another area - be formed as a non-profit agency run by the participating states? --- Part of me - the patriotic 'letter-of-the-law part - wants to object to the centrist control. But the hardcore business student says "No, much of this works...why fight it?" About here, a barroom brawl of thoughts storms along and I find more deception in how people's framing of governmental authority than I can shake a stick at.
"You can't fight City Hall" is one that comes to mind. It's BS: I've seen it done and very successfully. During the Civil rights days of the 50's & 60's and the anti-war days of the 70's.
Anyway, something to ponder. I'm not going to be agitating too much: The 2010 edition TurboTax comes in today and the saying "He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day" goes off in the back of my mind. Some dragons have tails I just don't care to step on, since I have other things to do in my life than fight fiery serpents, constitutional or otherwise. Governments all change over time. One of the few enduring values I can think of is a glass of wine at sunset with one's main squeeze, and stepping on dragon's tails messes that up, fo sho'.
On Watch "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura" makes its debut tomorrow. TruTV at 10 PM. Actually heard about Jesse's tour a while back - should be quite good what he's dug up out of the public limelight, the Variety review aside. --- Too damn serious this morning - I will try to lighten up a bit in tomorrow's report...
Monday November 30, 2009 Monday Morning, Dubai Blues Almost sounds like a country (or blues) tune doesn't it? But no, the first heading this morning has to be about how Dubai is seeking to postpone trading for a while on $5-billion plus worth of bonds, and on my first check of gold prices for the week, the price would seem to infer a 50-100 point downward opening of the Dow - just a dart thrown early. This after last week's see-saw - manic rally and equally manic reversal Friday netted the market a 9-point loss for the week. Woo hoo! Party on the profits....or not.
The world markets are acting like Jell-O on the news: Hong Kong (no relation to Donkey) saw Sands China drop 13 percent but unrelated to Dubai where markets were down 7% early in the day's slogging.
As I explained in more detail to Peoplenomics subscribers in this weekend's reports, the outlook for the medium term (less than one year) could easily be a breakdown through February and then a rapid ascent into July-august and that'd be the time to load the boat with shorts - which I'd be willing to gamble on if the first part of the scenario works out. Gold in all this would pull back, perhaps to the $800 or below range, but since buying it back later would be a questionmark, likely the best bet would be to hang on and simply add to positions. Note this is not financial advice; just my own leanings and subject to more frequent change than the winds. --- Statistically, we are at another one of those busy periods, although today has only the Chicago purchasing number. As the week gets a move on, there's construction spending and both auto sales will be reported tomorrow. Maybe a truck was sold, too.
Wednesday we get down to serious with the Challenger Job Cut forecast coming, the ADP employment numbers, Fed Beige Book (forget Dewey's decimals - file under fiction, LOL) and, weekly unemployment and Productivity - another once-upon-a-time work of science fiction.
The biggy comes Friday when the unemployment rate comes out - a reasonable bet is that it will be shown holding around the 10% area on the official tally - which rolls off people who have run out of benefits, since they must not be serious about looking for jobs. Toss those folks in - as many stories in the MSM are starting to point out - and you get a real unemployment rate reminiscent of the Roosevelt Depression years.
For traders making micro-bets, this is should prove an exciting week. For us longer term traders (verging on investors) the real question is whether the ascending support presently around 10,000 on the Dow will be broken by Monday Morning Dubai Blues - and if it is, how far is down - besides the March lows at 6,627? I ought to get a guitar to pluck - I may not be Dylan, just right now and then. Aided by a rickety time machine, which is getting ready to dispense another report in a few weeks - I'll let you know when. --- If you have noticed that both Cliff and I are being really low key about the predictive linguistics project there's a reason for that...so much of what's ahead over the next three years (1117 days) is grim beyond words - we ought to get to a point in either 2010 or 2011 that it won't matter and systemic collapse takes over - making the holding of any assets other than basics (grub, gold, gun, garden) - could become pointless. The good news is that the rickety time machine is easily confused between bespoke words about the future which may (or may not) be related to action at a particular point. The filtration process there becomes unimaginably difficult, not to mention just plain outright depressing for Cliff.
Bigger Problems If my notes on the market seem to be suffering detachment, it's because of a few inconvenient truths about the global socioeconomic backdrop. Our own slapstick government hasn't been able to figure out that the recently hacked Climate Research Center emails and papers infer a huge engagement in thought control and junk science in order to stampede (with the cooperation of the PTB) regular folks into believing that global warming is our greatest problem.
Once-upon-a-time, maybe. But not with the Space Weather folks showing another goose egg for sunspots which really ought to have been increasing to the daily 5-10 range by this point in Solar Cycle 24, but which I've taken the liberty of renaming the Obama Minimum.
The good news - and bad of macro climate change: "Last Ice Age took just SIX months to arrive" reports the Daily Mail. Although there's slight comfort that the "Polar ice cap during last Ice Age may not have been as extensive as previously thought..." says an ANI report from India.
You know how my steel-trap mind works: I'll be watching ice cream sales. --- Latest Climategate revelations (like we need more?): "Climate change data dumped". If at first you don't succeed, throw out the real data. Why, you'd think these old boys had been hanging around a marketing department, or something.
Fluing the People OK, so you don't scan the professional journal "Virology" - but if you did, the abstract out last week titled "From where did the 2009 'swine-origin' influenza A virus (H1N1) emerge?" contains this nugget - as good science may have isolated the fingerprints of the PowersThatBe:
"Laboratory errors" where there's an umpteen billion windfall from shoot-em-up-happy vaccine promoters? Gee...let me think.... Ure's Public Health Axiom #106: You can flu some of the people some of the time, but you can't flu all of the people all of the time. Why hadn't anyone else figured this? I oughta get a Nobel Prize for this... I hear it's gotten easier.
Emotional Release Ever notice how when markets are on the verge of breaking down some emotional blow-off happens in the press? Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, and this weekend, the killing of four police officers in the Lakewood area, south of Tacoma, Washington. Local TV in the Seattle area is reporting the suspected shooter has been wounded - and may be dead after holing up in a Leschi district Seattle home east of the CD. --- Still little insight - although some fine PR shuffle around the Escalade escapes of Tiger Woods this weekend.
Patriot Acting With key provisions of the Patriot Act set to expire, there's a whole obfuscation festival underway held by officials wanting to keep expanded powers while at the same time appearing to defend the remnants of the great Constitution - neat trick, and like I said, you can flu some of the people some of the time...
Let's Get Smashed Department The Large Hadron collider has set a new world record for energy levels with potentials beyond one trillion electron volts being reached. Beats the old record held by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (outside Chicago) Tevatron.
And the point is? Oh, sure, there's a chance the elusive Higgs Boson can be found - if Nature doesn't mind the so-called "God particle" from being unmasked. Barring that, or even with it, I haven't seen much improvement in human behavior since the first atom smashing in the 1940's...but maybe I missed something...yeah, that's it... I missed something - that's got to be it. --- Most of what passes for history seems to be encapsulated in the change from food to trinkets, trinkets to gold, gold to paper, paper to bytes.
Just as 'money doesn't care where it came from', the Large Hadron seems destined to prove 'electrons don't care either'. Damn...that's gotta be worth a few trillion to figure out, doesn't it? I oughta get a Nobel Prize for this... I hear it's gotten easier.
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Coping: Exercise and Garbage A reader email get's us started on this morning's physical fitness rant, since we're through the turkey and now all that remains is a Christmas leg of pork with all the Danish family trimmings and perhaps some of that most hazardous material of all: Citronfromage.
"How can you event think about food after this weekend?" you're screaming. "Back on point!" Oh, yeah...er....
Hmmm...let me go through my handy guide to trite writing: "Waist makes haste!" - no, that won't work.
In all seriousness (or nearly so) it has me wondering whether some of the big trash companies like Waste Management might not get a little silver lining from poorer times.
Just thinking through my own 'trash' weekend: Thought the garbage would be picked up on Saturday, since that was what happened last time around. But no, as the old Zen master said, "Change is inevitable". The trash was picked up on Friday when my can wasn't wheeled out to the road (a half block-long driving is a great thing and a curse...in this case, the latter).
Even had it come on Saturday, I was so tired, I would have missed Dion's drive-by - Dion being the miracle worker who makes garbage contents disappear.
This eventually (and circuitously, I think you'll agree) gets me to wondering how many people know their garbage men/persons and trash haulers by name? If you don't, they're actually regular humans who work at a different sort of trade. ---
As long as we're on topic with
exercise, I might as well confess to getting Elaine's Christmas
present early: a Nintendo Wii game console
Naturally, with a house still in remodel mode, a shop full of projects, a car that could stand a good hand wash, 10-acres of goat field to mow and burn deadfall on, a spring garden to prep, yada, yada, yada, I wouldn't think I'd need more exercise. More appropriate would be something like a pry bar to get me out from behind the keyboard.
But the balance board - that's an interesting add-on since that seems to allow for all kinds of activities (with the remote motion sensors and another numbchuck and so on...I figure the golf game I got to go with it all - so I could tune up my game in the event the Mogambo Guru or president Obama ever take me up on my gene4rous offer for a round of golf at the local course (M-Th rates only, I'm not made of dough) would be a cost-saver.
Then I noticed what I'd bought:
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10
Mr. Doodles is Back The mysterious contributor Mr. Doodles is back:
Oodles of noodles on doodles, I'd say. The WuJo files: Missing Time Here's one that ought to get you into the Cyber Monday as an X-Files episode mood:
Let me offer three possibilities for you: Aliens are abducting you periodically (check for implants, watch for odd nose bleeds and so forth). Second: The Multiverse may just happen to re-synch more often at places you frequent (in which case, don't come visit, sorry). Or third - and my leading candidate: Aliens like Turkey - not strawberry ice cream as reported. Did you count drumsticks and dinner rolls?
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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(2003) is about the best there is.
Of course, what I'd like to see is a more robust model; e.g.
a cross platform model that would calculate on an
integrative basis, known price actions from multiple markets
with various time-bases, to avoid the problem of manipulated
markets & interventions here lately, but I doubt the good
professor has time to build the comprehensive cross-market
model to look at bond, real estate, precious metals, stocks,
and consumption & production globally to intuit future
change, since
.
As you can see, the borderline between computation and
prescience can get mighty damn fine to the point of
blurring. Let's set these aside on a vetical axis and
now build a horizontal axis:
is a fine jumping off point to appreciate this view.
I suppose and you'll notice there aren't many electric blankets
around anymore...
and the
showed up, we've been taking excursions into the fitness zone.
Last night, we were up boxing, balancing and yoga'ing (if that's
a word) will about 10 PM - in fact, we got so wrapped up in the
games that we ended up munching on pistachios while we took
turns on the balance board...skipped dinner...
for Wii. Has me wondering if it will come with a new
warning label: "Wait a half hour after use before driving
an SUV"?
