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Reader Note: This being the weekend, fresh content is served up for subscribers to our $40/year premium service - www.peoplenomics.com -- which is what pays for the server space & bandwidth charges around here. If you can spend $40, you're welcome to come along, otherwise come on back Moneday when Mr. Cynical has finished his weekend...
Putting My Money Where My Foot Is In my mouth, maybe? We oughta know soon enough. I added 50% Thursday to our "big enough to buy a car" short side position on yesterday's bounce in the market from when things were down about 80 Dow points when it bounced up from there. Earlier than Robin Landry's call (this was to colleagues in the money management field, not general investment advice) for a decline from the 10,650 level sometime in August.
The decision may not be bad: The Asian markets were mostly down overnight, and Japan in particular was down 1.64% while the Hang Seng was down o9nly 0.3%.
Europe is almost all down this morning --- OK, skip mostly and put in ALL down, but that's only when I peeked here. My expectation is that we'll drop down and test the 8,600 level, maybe pop up to 9,500'ish, and then the all-time retirement slammer will be along this fall. --- Whether that happens, or not, we should know by November's elections if George is just putting his foot in his mouth, or perhaps this will turn out to be a decent money-making and money-retention plan.
From time-to-time I get notes from readers telling me they think the market is rigged...which it is. But such trivialities can be safely ignored if you just crank the fix into your trading plans and use them to your advantage.
Remember that in spite of the Plunge Protection Team (a/k/a the Presidential Working Group on Financial Markets) which was set up after the 1987 mini-crash, there will still be fairly wide-ranging moves in markets. Recall in particular that from October of 2007 to March 2009, the price levels of the market were cut to less than half. The implied reality is that no matter how much money the Working Group has, it's not going to be enough to hold back the tide of the market when things turn decidedly down.
What they can do (and likely did) in situations like March 2009, is enter the market using arbitrage to the upside at a key inflection point, to turn things around. If you keep this in mind, you might be able to keep ahead of events, or use closely placed stop-loss orders - to keep at least some of your winnings.
I haven't said much about stop losses - as I'm not a big fan of them. But the idea is that let's say you short a stock at $10 and plan to buy to cover at $8.
In a normal market decline, you would sell at $10 and if your timing was right, you'd sell to cover at $8 and would make $2 profit.
When you're playing with short positions, however, there's always the risk the $10 stock would go up instead of down, and if the stock when to $15, you'd be on the hook for $5/share.
The stop loss order can be used in situations like this to limit your losses. The way you might do it is to play a stop-loss order at $10.25 or maybe $10.50 per share. The idea is that if the stock rallies from $10 up to your stop that you would automatically close the position with a loss of only $0.25 or $0.50 per share and then you'd be out with a minimum loss.
That said, there are two issues with stop loss trading. First is that often times the logical stop-loss levels become targets for counter-trend rallies. so let's say you sell at $10 a share looking lustfully for a move to $8, but because you're a 'smart' investor, you set a stop loss at $10.50.
What happens? The stock rallies to $10.51, then proceeds to $7.50! Not always, but often enough to teach the ugly reality of the market likes to 'stop out' the little players. I think of the problem very much like keeping a human in the decision-loop for handling of nuclear weapons - the stop-loss tries to automate a trading decision.
The second problem with stop-loss orders is that in violent market moves, there may be no buyers at the stop level. So while you may have placed a stop at $10.25 or even $10.50 for a down side play, the stock could violently rally and not be available even at $10.50. In fact, it could be that a particularly violent move (on news like a high premium acquisition) might not find any covering stock for sale for less than maybe $14 or $15 a share, in which case, you're on the hook for $4 or $5 a share.
Worked on the long side, in this example, you'd go long at $10 expecting $12.50, and would place stops at maybe $E9.75 or $9.50. Again, same thing except 'right side up': You'd be long at $10, the pro's would drop the stock to $9.49 to hit your $9.50 stop, then promptly rally to $20 while you go Tourette's-like filling your immediate vicinity with expletives.
King of a long-winded way to begin the last work day of the week, but my point is worth-making I think (since I don't see it mentioned elsewhere): If you think any market is rigged then all you need to do is put an estimate for the rigger's intentions into your trading plan and essentially play alongside the House.
And what's driving the House here lately? Ah, into the rest of the morning's financial musings...
GDP Out Latest from he Bureau of Economic Analysis - which we call the federal department of drat throwing...
Let me see here...3.7% annual growth in Q1 and now 2.4% annual growth in Q2...yep, that's a withering green shoot to me...
Wonder if Yogi Berra is teaching press release writing? Maybe he has an accelerated decelerated accelerated course for slow editors like me?
Or this part...
Which is a change of 1.0004 times....are they kidding? And the noise floor / margin of error in this stuff is what? Get me my crack pipe! We need to maybe have some rules on reporting statistical noise, maybe?
How Much Cash? One of my favorite numbers updated by the Federal Reserve weekly, but usually only reported here monthly (when I remember) is M1. This can be found in the current H.6 Money Stocks measurement. A month ago, M1 was going up at an annual rate of about 7%, now the rate of increase year-on-year is only 4.9% in the latest.
Still, when you look at the two-year change, M1 is up an amazing 23.2% and no sign of runaway inflation...which certainly builds the argument that the Fed is trying to step on the gas just enough in the face of inflation to keep liquidity in the system, but not so much as to set off rampant inflation.
Rail Time Indicators There's a really important economic indicator that I've been watching the past many months - don't talk about this one too much - but it's the monthly data from the Association of American Railroads. Their June traffic stats were issued a couple of weeks back but serve to reinforce what's in the Baltic Dry Index decline recently:
The Journal of Commerce carried a story in the same timeframe about how 23.7% of American railcars were idle...
Add the rail data to the Baltic Dry Index (which Bloomberg tracks over here) and you might be able to get a good sense of where the economy is - and where it's going. My read of it (again, not investment advice) is that despite relatively good earnings so far for Q2, there's not much going on for Q3 - so profits may be making some kind of high point and the question "What will drive next quarter" should soon be making the rounds. A "Beats us" answer would drive the market back below Dow 10,000, I'm guessing/bettering in coming weeks.
Government Land Buying? So, we have states going broke, huge tax hikes coming down the pike and now we read how the Consolidated Land, Energy, and Aquatic Resources act of 2010 is being pushed by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Cute part of the legislation is that it's off budget - which as far as I'm concerned is a term that should never have been allowed to be used in Washington.
As www.landrights.org sees it, this is (yet) another attack on those of us who live by choice in rural America since...
And speaking of Oceans, and such, you saw where the Obama administration recently used an Executive Order to sidestep Congressional approval to sign up the US for the Law of the Seas world government agenda without the People's representatives getting so much as a vote on it?
Just one more reason why all need to be replaced in November... which will set up the lame ducks to approve Middle East war expansion on the way out before the new members of Congress go back to start fixing things... --- Isn't ruling by
Royal decrees what America balked and revolted against in the 1770's?
Oh, we're the world's policeman. I forgot that section of the
Gulf Hype As long as things are getting under my skin, the MainStreamMedia are all set to happy talk the small reopening of some closed finfish and shellfish waters in Louisiana on Thursday. Details of the openings here, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the larger areas still closed.
The Feds have opened some waters also:
Wonder if the testing was for oil and Corexit?
Oddity on Venus Now that we are in the Cardinal Climax part of astrology, I've been keeping an eye out for stories about "What's UP?" and there are a couple to be aware of because - as any collector of 'olde sayings' knows, "As Above, So Below..."
The first is a story from the Examiner.com about how "Three planets Venus, Mars and Saturn form triangle in western sky late July 2010" which comes along with the formation that has astro money guys like Arch Crawford and Bob Hitt concerned about major market declines in here.
The second story is even more interesting: A YouTube video "What the Hell Just Happened to Venus?" can be seen over here which appears to show something almost like an ejections of some kind coming off the cloudy planet.
Scary possibility? OK, how's this: You know James McCanney has been a big proponent of the idea that there's a strong electrical connection between the Sun and the planets, right? So ask yourself is this video some kind of discharge event happening to Venus? And if so...what would an equivalent event be like here on....well, you go noodle that. I've got even weirder stuff to deal with as we continue...
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Coping: A Curious Pyramid Dream Every so often, I have these very life-like and highly detailed dreams in which all kinds of oddities happen, including elements of what later turn into headlines. My "Irwin Allen's Dream" 18-hours before the BP Gulf mess, being one example and then a week back having a pipe bomb dream and then seeing three pipe bombs found in a California park...Let's just say it's an interesting string of things.
The dream out of last night was particularly interesting as it brings up something I hadn't been thinking about consciously, but which popped up because of my recent focus, perhaps, on a major earthquake expected in the next day or three. You do remember that the predictive linguistics have a major quake happening this weekend and that once again, there seems to be a high profile /elite's wedding in close proximity?
In the case of our May 2008 warning prior to the China quake, there was the Jenna Bush wedding. Now, with another massive quake lurking in the linguistic wings, we have the Chelsea Clinton wedding about to pop...so both Clif and I have been noodling "What is it with quakes and weddings?" (bad jokes about 'I felt the e4arth move!" aside, please, this is a PG rated site).
So back on my dream: I was in some kind of 'classroom setting' and a middle aged teacher of some kind was explaining to me why there are so many pyramids around the world.
The explanation was that the earth goes through periodic upheavals (remember Venus?) and that if you were draw a pyramid inside the earth, it could be arranged such that the pointy parts of the pyramid could be arranged to touch the various mountain peaks which are above the sea floor. Meaning there was a pyramid that could have as its base the Rockies in North America, the Himalayas as another, and so on around the globe (Europe).
There could also be another pyramid draw which would hit the various ocean ridges where sea floor growth issues forth from such as the eastern Pacific range and the mid Atlantic range.
This 'teacher figure' then went on to explain that every so often, one of the pyramids swells up while the other one sinks and that's how we used to have places deep in archeological history like Lemuria and Atlantis.
Over the longer span of history, as the rotation of prominence of one pyramid or the other changes, you get continental subsidence which is why all the sea life up in the Rockies and Himalayas and so forth. Oh, and the underwater ruins that have been discovered in deep oceans.
Anyway, this was quite a dream and it made some sense...so I figure if you don't have anything to do this weekend and you need an UrbanSurvival homework project and it helps to be a retired geologist with a good handle on undersea ocean ranges, too, you could put together a short analysis of how such internal pyramid formations within the Earth could be inscribed, whip out some drawings for our Monday edition and then write the definitive book.
Which...and this is the cool part...would explain why there has been a long history of pyramid-building in many cultures. Maybe the 'secret of the pyramids' was to pass on this key point of knowledge (which is speculative for now) and to pass on a warning to future generations that this is how the world changes and it brings with it pole shifts and all kinds of other implications.
I suppose I should thank the makers of a particular double-filtered vodka for properly preparing me for such nocturnal whatever they are's...Or, more likely, with the vacation done I'm already working too hard trying to divine meaning from news....hmmm...
Could it be, though, that small bands of survivors on each continent after the last age of cataclysms were trying to pass on something as simply as this with all their the pyramid building? Did Earth at some point "Go Venus" like that video as part of the changes? Even stranger would be if this turns into shake & quake weekend. guess I'll keep the big ham radio antenna pointed out West...
TEOTWAWKI Dept. A note from Dr. Barry Warmkessel on our present earthquake watch points out that there's a time line of comet-associated events in "Bible Code" that mention some dates including this year. Scroll down to Table 3A here...If I'm reading this right, something like a passing comet this year, a strike of some kind in 2012 and then follow-up 'great terror" in 2014.
Say, isn't that when all the healthcare changes will be in place?
Send your comments to george@ure.net Reader Action Department: The Case for XFII Once in a while in more reflective moments, I find ask the question "Am I smart enough to find The Next Big thing before half of creation beats me to it...and six ETF's are built around it, and 33⅓ insiders make all the money on it? What I keep looking for is some simple way to sort through all the opportunities that come by us in life and why hasn't someone reduced it all to a simple algorithm? Doing so seems like a worthwhile task. Lots of variables, but most of them seem nested in some way, so why not build an algorithmic approach? Think about this: rather than trust the touting tag teams from various investment outfits or certified (whatevers) we ought to be able to look at their courses of study and come up with a pretty good pass at automating financial advice. And in a bigger sense - a whole life management system...and all it will take is an industry standard for data exchange...
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Dream A Little Dream... If you have an especially vivid dream that seems to have something to do with the future, please write it down so others can look it over for possible future/predictive values. Simple go to http://www.nationaldreamcenter.com/ and click over to the DreamBase - commercial-free and open registration...
Cookie Video The folks at Maxa Research have put together a short video (sound track by guess who?) that shows the Maxa Cookie Manager. You can see it here.
I don't usually get all whipped up about software, but this is one of those dandy tools that just simply works great. First thing I put on my new computer when I got it was Avira Anti-virus and Maxa Cookie Manager (MCM). Either follow the on-screen download instructions of simply click:
Once you try it out, to upgrade to the fully functioning version, just 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.
"Live on $10,000" A Year Having a hard time making ends meet? (Like who isn't, right?) A good starting point to better match up income with outgo is our $10 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. A bonus section called "How to Build Anything" should instill confidence if you've never taken on a home improvement/home creation project before, too..... Click here for the index and details.
Yet Another A Gardening Pitch No time like summer to do the work to get ready for bountiful harvests in the future, regardless of what the economy does. My friend Gary Seman, who's been an avid 'make do' gardener for years has put together a 70-page ebook on survival gardening using things like old tires to make raised beds and it's really worth the $15 bucks, IMHO:
What makes his ebook so interesting is that it is all based on a few hand tools and he has this back-friendly "no tilling" approach that saves a whole bunch of effort...to get there, he's big on kill mulches and such, too.
Also not to be missed is the vertical hydroponics work of 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...
You may get sick of me saying "Learn to Garden!" so much, and I'm certainly no expert on the subject, but short of running out of water, which is why you want to live on a creek or river if you ever have the opportunity to make a choice, gardening and full stomach is extremely important.
Pass It On A different take on things - that's what you'll find here most mornings. If you know of anyone who might also like our content, simply click here and send a link to them. Or, if you hated what you read, send the link to all your 'worst enemies'. Like they say in Burbank, "Ain't no such thing as bad press..." ---- Last week's report is always here
Thursday July 29, 2010 Beethoven Does Wall Street Shade of "Roll over Beethoven" the markets may have started to roll over yesterday and although the futures were flat at first check today, we might see one more pop into early next week...to drive us closed to the 10,600-650 kind of level which would make for a really grace end of financial life on earth high water mark before we descend into the abyss.
Main driver this morning should be the weekly unemployment data just out:
You'll recall last week's data was soft... --- Gold was up for a while early on this morning and then turned down. It's been buoyed by good earnings from outfits like Eldorado and from Goldcorp.
Several readers took my to task over my recent skepticism about gold, noting that there is almost always some downward pressure at the end of the month. True, but I cautiously hold that some of the price move is more than that and that when the Fed consumer debt numbers come out in a week or so, we will see that deflation is really a threat to be considered. And, in such case, gold may go down in nominal terms, but should do better than retain its purchasing power. --- While the futures are likely to pop up a bit, off in the background, there are still BIG issues to deal with, like the year-to-date foreclosure data:
Doesn't exactly make me want to run out and buy property..,. think I'll put on some Beethoven and go Rip Van Winkle for a year or two...maybe then...
Quake Watch With linguistics pointing toward a possible large quake in the next few days, as possibly Northwesty, reader comments are coming in like this one:
Yeah, funny how that timing of emergency drills and the real thing work out somethings.
Not escaping notice was the 5.2 quake off the coast of Oregano last night.
The aware observer (or old news nose knows news) would observe that there has been a tremendous amount of energy released in the Western Pacific around the Moro Gulf, west of the Mariana Trench over the past week. And even a 6.4 shaker in that region this morning.
So....lots of energy on ONE SIDE of the Pacific, but not much on the other.
Toss in the Orange County Register's story on "Green slime in surf zones still a mystery" which some quake predictors are wondering if it's linked to undersea somethings...and you've got a real question about whether SoCal might be where the next big quake comes from.
Clif offered this further bit: "There were SO CAL geographic pointers in the mix. I chose the PNW due to a *slight* preponderance of those geo references. Probably i am wrong. "
Not sure why earthquakes seem to be one of the highest 'hit rate' areas in data - wondering if it's because the archetype concerns are so strong - many it has something to do with DNA programming of the prehensile brain? Who knows...
Arizona-Go-Round Police in Arizona have been barred from asking about a person's immigration status as a federal judge blocked key provisions of the state's tough new anti-border jumper law.
Best bet seems that this will head for the US Supreme Court since while under the Constitution, the feds have lead on border issues, the question is what can states do when the feds were deliberately not enforcing all the laws on the books? Oughta be a real fine money generator for the right wing email fundraiser brigades.
Before the Supreme Court, though, a trip to the Ninth Circuit is on for today.
No Dough - You Go Another California budget crisis looms as state furloughs are planned to help California deal with a $19-billion budget hole. --- Interesting technical question here which I plead ignorance on: When a worker is furloughed, with the expectation that they will return, is there a way that the Labor Department can NOT count them as unemployed? Just thinking out loud here that thousands of Cal workers could be 'involuntarily unpaid vacationed' and wonder if there's a way to weasel out of adding these workers to unemployment numbers (or adjusting the workforce down by that many)?
Quick: Be surprised either way. --- A report that "One in five Californians say they need mental health care" sure sounds low, doesn't it? Maybe if one in five don't need it, yah think?
Speaking of Paranoid Dept. You see the USA Today article on how "Doomsday shelters making a comeback"? Gee, let me see here...uh... oh yeah... "China conducts naval drill in disputed southern seas" comes to mind as a reason. Here's another: The KGB Lite is getting expanded powers...
Another psychological benchmark from Wired "iPad owners are 'selfish elitists.' Critics are 'independent Geeks.' is sure an interesting read. --- Speaking of elites...you see the tab for the Chelsea Clinton wedding?
Let them eat what? I have no idea why I'm not on the guest list...
New Highpoint in Skype Phishing Usually, the phishing messages around the net are easily spotted, but I got one this morning which is a phishing message for Skype users that you ought to be aware of: This morning offers a €10.00 Skype credit if you're dumb enough to click through the link.
What makes this one especially dangerous is that the use of the logo is good, the offer is very believable and is bound to snag a few.
Remember: Whenever er you get such messages, look at the link the email is trying to get you to click. If it is anything other than the name of your expected destination, don't click! This Skype phish making the rounds goes to a non Skype site. but otherwise it's very well done!
Oh, What a Feeling Dept. Yeowch! Toyota is facing another recall: 412,000 Avalons from 2000-2004 and some Lexi 470's from 2003-2007. More details in this story link. The good news, such as it is? The company has been doing a stand-up job on the repairs and isn't trying to weasel out of anything...which is a nice business ethic to see.
Tanker Boom An explosion on a Japanese tanker in the Straits of Hormuz is being investigated. No one is saying terrorism, pirate, or Iran - yet - (or are they? ) but a Japanese ship certainly is a twist...
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Coping: Back in the Saddle at the Ranch Cool being back at the ranch after 10-days of working vacation in the Pacific Northwest. A number of observations about life in the Big City versus life in the rural parts of East Texas are with considering..a nice set of contrasts...
For one thing, there's the matter of noise: In the Big City we were constantly assaulted by the noise of people on the public fishing pier out front of the hotel - even at 3 AM, there were people out tossing in crab rings, along with various other baits and tackle trying to catch dinner.
Back at the ranch, there was plenty of noise but it was of a different sort. A rain shower or two had come through and so on the trip in to the ranch from the airport we had what seemed like a Biblical flood of toads jumping across the road in front of us. Getting out of the car, our ears were treated to the chorus of toads and the various night critters. Big change, that.
Another thing we take for granted out here in the outback is dark. May not seem like a big deal, but in the city it never really gets dark. Out here, when the lights go out, unless you've had the sense to put on the head-mounted night vision gear, you're going to trip over objects in the dark that you'd swear were somewhere else.
Not altogether a 'big city is bad' experience. There were some parts of city living that I'd forgotten about. For example, the close proximity of restaurants meant it was super easy to put on 6-pounds in 10 days. If I had stayed another week, I'm sure the BP would be up into the danger zone. In the country, if you're hungry, there is no fast food joint down the street, or in the case of Tacoma's waterfront, no assortment of fish & chips options within a 5-0minute walk. Out here, if you want to eat, the choices are a) drive into town (16-miles) or b) make it yourself and ain't no room service to pick up after you like there is in a hotel.
The last point of comparison is the water. In the Outback here, we have very soft water. Why, you can simply say the word soap and spend the rest of the week rinsing to no apparent effect. Pacific Northwest water is different. You can soap up all day and then about 16 drops of water is all it takes to rinse off. The Northwest water is more drying to the skin, the water here much gentler.
May seem like little things, but taken as a whole it's these little textural differences that make Place 1 different that Place 2. --- A couple of travel notes, since I haven't been out on the road warrioring for a while:
The Microsoft semi-ergonomic keyboard (USB) was really not so bad once I used it for a week, or so. A number of readers asked how it was that my typing had improved so much on the trip, but I assured them that back at home, I will quickly get back to higher levels of errors.
The Iomega 1TB hard drive - a back-up - failed to booty on anything when I got back here, which seeing as it was only a back-up, was not a complete catastrophe, but it was disappointing. Tried everything I could think of, different cables, different computer, the whole lot and nada, zip, kaput. So I have another unit to add to my collection of $100 paperweights.
Cousins, a restaurant on B concourse at DFW (near gate B27) has pretty good BBQ (brisket & pulled pork) and is a local to Dallas place. Nice to see fast food has not entirely taken over the planet. After so much time see-fooding/sea-fooding, there's something warming about BBQ brisket and corn on the cob (plus a Bud) to reestablish presence in the South.
TSA was really on the ball...Elaine had forgotten to sign here passport, so she had to get out other forms of ID and sign in front of a TSA fellow, who then closely inspected the signatures and looked at Elaine several times to make sure it was the same person. The time getting through the cattle chute was fairly short and like I said, they were really paying attention.
I'd show you a million slides from the trip, but you'd be bored - and so would I. Already seen it all first hand.
Government's Leading Edge Reader sends this note about how the government is [at last] looking at the web in order to figure out what's going on by investing (apparently) in several outfits that can possibly 'see into the future' using web-based technologies...
What's interesting about outfits like Recorded Future is that in some ways, they are a bit late to the party. In the months after 9/11 - back in 2001 - Clif & I proposed the web bot technology be used by government to get ahead of coming events, but all we got was a "Sorry, Charlie" from I think it was DARPA that reviewed the first round quad-charts and in a separate submission a nice letter from the Big Alphabet Agency that said "We find your technology meritorious, but we don't have specific funds for such.....yada, yada, yada..."
Still, interesting to watch the development of such things, for sure. Many different approaches are possible, including data-mining/cross correlation efforts, predictive linguistics and so forth. --- There's a very interesting (if not downright Orwellian) question here: To what extent can (or should) citizens of a country allow government, or more dangerously, corporate interests, access the future?
Think about future marketing programs where predictive sciences would be used to fine tune a marketing message in order to get the maximum results. A campaign would start, a predictive future for its outcome at a particular budget level figured, then tuned to optimize return on investment (ROI).
All of which leads, I suppose, to the larger question about whether marketing is the new 'global religion' since predictions (which is right next door to prophesy) were once the domain of religious leaders and spokespersons with their revelations about what's coming down the pike.
In this version of Brave new World, it may be that marketing departments will start moving into prediction space...clearly, there's money to be made there. The only question is whether that's right. In other words, as we have figured from some of our successful experiments that we don't talk about, it really does seem the future is somewhat malleable. Who you gonna trust to hammer it out?
In a three-dimensional world, government has been very aggressive in controlling/sanctioning air pollution, water pollution, and simple things like speed limits.
Questions going to come up in a few years "Should government regulate messing about with the future?" Like broadcasting, the future is something that was (once upon a time) just there until science came along with tools to exploit the technology. Then it went to market and eventually became so powerful that regulation was desired.
Same thing can happen with futuring or predictive technologies, which is covered a bit in last week's Peoplenomics report: How long before we get to a place where people will 'subscribe' to a particular kind of future via software? Move over Orwell, you didn't press the line of inquiry far enough.
Something to think about isn't it? You have until Nov. 8-14 or so to formulate your answer. --- One other thinking point on this stuff: Clif's website www.halfpasthuman.com features a 'dancing skeleton logo' and now we're seeing the logo pick up interest...a graphic getting traction in the global mindset. Evidence? Oh, sure: The Dancing skeleton t-shirt/tie dye on sale here - nothing to do with Clif, BTW.
Fine example of how seeing even a glimpse of the future here and there can help harmonize with it. You don't really think names like half past human or the logo were just random ideas, do you?
Seeds and an August Seed Special Everlastingseeds.com has an UrtbanSurvival/Peoplenomics seed special going which you might want to click to here. Complete garden seed kits of heirloom seeds in a hermetically sealed can...which is really neat. I figure if the corporate and global PTB are putting away seeds in a seed fault, we might want to think about the same thing. --- A couple of readers have asked about Everlasting Seed's business name "AIG Services" - no, that has nothing to do with the AIG of government bailout infamy. --- Don't remember how we got on the topic of seed collecting a while back and a reader sent in this really useful write-up on what to do with your harvest of heirloom seeds and how to hold over seeds for future years...the kind of information that is NOT taught in most schools...our thanks to a reader named Chuck for his efforts here...
By the way, among the new in-laws that resulted from the wedding Elaine and I attended up in the Tacoma area were some folks from Maine (the Maine-iac) side of the family now... They offered a really simple gardening hint: To keep raccoons away, simply plant a little mint around the garden. They swear it works...but I'll have to see if to believe it. With our luck, raccoons around here will likely take to mint as a new favorite seasoning...just the mere thought of getting corn past the raccoon-feeding stage would be a miracle. Every corn crop we've done so far has ende3d up in the belly of the masked monsters.
Speak Easy I noticed that Nuance Software has release plans now for DragonSpeaking 11 and the home version is only $99 bucks or so.
Details: Dragon Naturally Speaking Home 11
Wall Street Journal has figured out that "Americans cut back on visits to doctor".
Gee, lemme see: Got record numbers of unemployed and disappearing workforce members with little, or no, dough to go. A lot of us are waiting for the free lunch to get here.
Be nice if we had a few more jobs with benefits...but now that we're gonna get taxed on health benefits... wait... I need to take some meds. Wonder what Capt. Morgan has in the way of Thursday medication.... isn't it 5 PM somewhere?
Wednesday July 28, 2010 What the Market Is REALLY Saying The first look at the futures this morning said it all in the ugliest little four-letter word in the world of investing: flat or the other one - down. To be sure, there were a fair number of optimistic headlines about that world markets were going up in part due to strong earnings, but olde timers in the market sit back patiently and wait for the quality of earnings to come out and - in conjunction with that - the prospects for equal - or better - earnings yet to come.
As a gut check, I called Robin Landry Tuesday and asked if we had made it to the kind of bounce levels we discussed a week or two back and his answer was "Minimally, yes, but I'd like to see a bit more upside toward the 10,650 area into early August before we go down." But, Landry is eyeing additional short positions as am I. No, THIS IS NOT TRADING ADVICE - just midweek ramblings as we pack up our 10-day, wallet-busting but heart warming, trip to the Seattle/Tacoma area and head for the ranch in East Texas.
There were other signs, too, that the market is nearing another turn. The Dow Transports, for example, dropped 1.31% yesterday and even folks with only a few years experience trading ought to recognize that under Dow Theory, that'd be considered a negative divergence. Back when it was started, Dow Theory looked at rail traffic, which turned rail stocks, and these were a pretty good indicator of future economic activity.
Times have changed and there are a lot more moving parts than Midwest grain moving to eastern markets. Why toss in a few airlines if you will, some trucking companies, and a few what-have--you's, but the idea's the same. Closely related is the Baltic Dry Index which has just hit pretty serious lows and is bouncing a tad. A longer than one year look at the BDI trend is even more worrisome.
All of which might be easily explained if that was all there was wrong. But, it's not. Tuesday's trading looked to me like the classic painting of the tape to try and round up a few more bulls for slaughter...and coincidental, or not, one web site I use for my daily review of the previous day's activity decided today, or all days, to reset most of the previous day's results to zero. Perhaps so people wouldn't notice elsewhere that the NASDAQ Composite dropped Tuesday, as did the venerable S&P 500. "Nothing to see here, move along..." was what monkey mind was supposed to think.
Maybe the market is just taking a breather before making one more assault on 10,650. But under Joe Granville's favorite metric - on balance volume - the market was turning. On the NYSE, the upside volume lagged downside - but only slightly but the NASDAQ was better than 2:1 down and the AMEX almost 3:1 down.
Adding to what I consider limited upside is the consumer confidence figures from The Conference Board:
Then there was the news out of Case Shiller/S^P which publishes what I reckon to be the gold standard of housing reports. And no reason to believe in mythical recoveries here, either:
Depression era thinking is really simple. In normal expanding economic times, people see prices generally rising and have an incentive to take on debt. The two most common mantras in real estate (just to pick on one obvious sector) are: "Buy which the prices are low" and "You'll be paying it back with cheaper inflation-ridden dollars.
So much for the normal case. When a society is going through the macro econ move away from what's labeled "The Virtuous Cycle", its reciprocal, "The Vicious Cycle" sets up - which is where I think we are right now: People notice that prices for many things are not going up as fast and they notice that housing prices are now just back to 1998 valuations! If you'd bought a home then, you'd be 10-years in and still with about the same pricing power in the market.
As people become more thoughtful in their spending, the number of jobs created slows, the burden on people with jobs to pay for those not working goes up, whole governments get into trouble (take California, please!) and we sit nervously by trying to see a clear path to the future.
There may not be one.
Even gold is getting a a proper ass-kicking as inflation and deflation duke it out to see who will win. The LA Times headlines, for example, that "Gold falls to three-month low as economy jitters fade."
The headline belies an asymmetric kind of thinking: That in times of economic uncertainty, people will invest in gold as a "safe haven" - a hedge against rising prices. But what few contemplate is what happens to gold when incipient deflation is rolling to the fore: Its price goes down.
Well, long-winded enough, already. But the main point is that I may add to my short positions later this week to dollar cost average down my entry costs and then wait for the market to come around to my way of thinking.
Since I'm flying today, think of this as the 40-thousand foot view of things: Deflation on the front end, and then as the Congressional Budget Office warns, the national debt will be pushed beyond sustainable levels and in the wink of an eye, the conditions for a massive Weimar-like inflation will be in place as a consensus develops around renouncing debt through inflation which the Weimar Republic masterminded as a way around war reparations in the early 1920's.
Of course, along the way, our collective nuts go into the vice as the Center for Economic and Policy Research asks in a Dean Baker article "Has the Congressional Budget Office Joined the Push for Cutting Society Security?"
Along the way, first we get deflation, then we get hyperinflation which will give the 20-somethings their chance to buy into real estate and other long term assets including, yes, equities, just like the OFG (olde farts generation) had its buy-in window in the early 1970's.
There I go, again, getting long-winded. My whole point as the blood pressure comes up to high/normal is that the market is saying something here that should be pretty obvious with a little study. And you know what that is? I'll tell you:
WTF?
Reading the Bots? The BIG WAR to Come A report in the well connected Middle East watching www.debka.com has it that Iran's president thinks the U.S. and Israel are plotting war within three months.
The way long-term data sets are adding up in predictive linguistics over at www.halfpasthuman.com it seems he'd be better off putting his window at 4.25 months, but he's got the gist of things right - seems the Nov. 8-14 window is where the world 'glows up' although the gory details really have to wait for the next web bot run - focused on long-term value sets - which should be out around August 10th, or so.
Of course, no war until the markets are well into free-fall and that means we can expect something tied to Iran to pop us as an excuse to launch warfare. It oughta be a bait & switcheroo to keep the public's mind off the horrific loss of retirement nest eggs when the market implosion comes along and nothing builds a better demon than one that is blamed for taking money.
Only question is how this will be dressed up so as not to be too apparent to the masses.
Leaks Case As the Pentagon has gone looking for the source of 91,000 documents on the various wars in the Middle East/Sandbox, the Found of Wikileaks, in a BusinessWeek interview, has defended the release of documents that get into the nitty gritty of the wars.
The Border War A group billing itself as "Americans for Legal Immigration" is calling on the "Obama administration to ensure a smooth exit for illegal immigrants who are trying to leave the US" because of the weakening economy here. --- Meantime, a move to merge the federal case against the Arizona immigration law into another case is being opposed. And, on the other side, the State of Arizona is asking a federal judge to dismiss the Obama administration challenge to the state law.
All of which sets up a much broader question which is extremely important to Constitutionalists like yours truly: Is the concept of States retaining all powers not specifically ceded to the Federal government still in place? Or, has Washington declared it self lord & master over local government in all matters, ceded or otherwise?
So there's a very much broader issue in Arizona's immigration law...the way Washington has been able to throw its weight around traditionally has been by tying requirements for things like national speed limits and what have you, to revenue sharing with States. But, since there's no money on the table, can the Feds keep up the push? And worse (from the centralist's perspective, anyway) is the prospect that States reasserting control over their own destinies is anti centralist.
And, just to keep the larger context here, of the real battle over State-Federal relations in focus, did you see the Boston Globe's story about Massachusetts legislature angling to get around the Electoral College?
If you are tuned into it, the larger contexts are a lot of fun to watch - intricate choreography at times.
Death Sentence for Gang Member As long as we're on the topic of leaking borders and such, did you happen to catch the death sentence handed down in the case of an MS-13 gang member? Here's the Department of Justice summary:
Of course this opens the discussion of whether the crimes in question would have ever occurred in the first place, had aggressive border control been in place, and to gain a gang member conviction while at the same time fighting tougher State laws (talking Arizona here) sure seems like a program of closing the gate after the horse is out...but I suppose that's how government grows - by being reactive instead of proactive.
Viagra Extension? Very good piece in the NY Post this morning details how the Pfizer folks may get an extension of the patent on Viagra by coming out with a kids version to treat a lung disorder.
Swell. (Get it? Swell...damn I need to bring a crew of headline writers with me on road trips...)
Might change prospects for Pfizer's earnings going forward, maybe?
Plane Bad Not the kind of headline I like to read on a day when I'm living on airplanes: A crash in Pakistan has killed 152 people.
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Coping: Net Crash Plans Speaking of crashes, a reader from the UK sent along this note about government planning to reboot the internet after a catastrophe:
Been watching the whole "Internet Kill Switch" discussion with some concerns, since my consulting from the East Texas Outback depends on a robust net.
One thing that Clif mentioned in a chat earlier this week is that the 'data gap' which is evolving may turn out to be the turning off of a lot of blog sites. Think of it as an (only slightly) warmer and gentler form of net censorship.
We can see the topology of this news space changing dramatically based on two recent developments.
One is the evolution of serious legal action against web sites that are posting whole articles on the internet, and often with minimal or no attribution. A recent Wired story covered how this is developing. As tempting as reposting and cross posting of stories may be, it's in the same dishonesty category as people who rip off my ebooks and distribute them as torrents, or the slime bags that rip off the www.halfpasdthuman.com reports.
It's one thing to outline a context and link to source material - but its quite another to build a business on the backs of others. Original works and original contexting is one thing; wholesale theft of IP is another.
The other angle developing is the shutdown a week, or so back, of Blogetry.com operations hosted by Burst.net. The hosting company involved offered a press release explaining why 73,000 blogs were taken off line:
Since the web bot project depends on postings made by the general public on discussion boards, the shutting down of 73,000 blogs at a whack turns off millions of words of context from which language shift can be evolved.
We hear that other governments are making similar moves, and a recent CBS News story about blogs being shut down in China is worth your time. Other countries are experimenting, too, such as Australia and I have to wonder if government rewiring there has something to do with Australia being 50th in global internet speed measurements done by Akamai Technologies.
As the summer progresses, I'll be continuing to evolve ways to make sure UrbanSurvival and our premium www.peoplenomics.com content is still around. For now, seems pretty easy to accomplish: All that's needed is to limit/eliminate public posting and keep content in line with common sense...not posting how to make a bomb details and such.
Still, the news space topology is changing and for anyone from rabid activists down to small home-based business users, it's something to keep an eye on, along with internet ID plans which will no doubt follow a (real of put-up) terrorist attack on the net which could be sold as the reason for even further restrictions. And that could chill public discussion to such levels as to put a stake through the fledgling science of predictive linguistics.
Unless we roll into an SMS approach....hmmm....
Shake and Quake Reader wants to know:
East answer! Things like War come from other entities. Earthquakes come from the collection of dots called the Terra entity. Things like North Korea, Bomb Iran, etc come from other entities like PTB or GlobalPop.
Which gets us to some noodling another reader offers as we blow out of town in advance of a possible Northwesty quake late this week...after hearing Clif on CoastToCoast Monday night:
You might think so, but sorry to say, after you've been a time monk for a while one of the terrible truths that Clif has evolved is "If George can think it, that's no doubt NOT going to happen..."
That said, you've thrown three darts, so here's another dart from a different reader:
Hmnmm...already all in place...don't need to reinvest anything - just get active in the National Traffic System which is designed to handle life & death matters, property, health & welfare traffic in event of a major emergency.
It's a very well thought out system with local, district and section levels. One of the easiest ways to get involved is to join a local ham club. The Palestine, Texas ham cloud's quarterly hamburger dinner is next Tuesday night at the club house. If you don't live nearby (not expected) a visit to the www.arrl.org site can hook you up with a local club (with lesser burgers to offer than ours, of course) and you can get starts from there.
The most important part is becoming a regular on any of the traffic nets - such as the Maritime Mobile net on 20-meters (14,300 kHz USB) or a state level net like the Texas Traffic Net, nightly on 3873 kHz, LSB.
With a quake possible, good excuse to dust off the ham gear...
Tuesday July 27, 2010 An Earthquake Warning In case you missed Clif, chief time monk, High's appearances on CoastToCoast last night during the show's first hour, the most important thing he had to say (very near term) was a heads up for the West Coast over the possibility based on predictive linguistics of a major quake toward the end of this week or maybe into the weekend...
This just fell out' from the processing of the long term data set values which should result in a longer view of the data...out to beyond the end of this year. The expectation is that there will be a new report available sometime around the August 10-period. But, the reason for mentioning this now is that there is still plenty of time to get the stored water checked, food, first aid kits, and such on the West Coast.
With any luck, this will be one of those calls that is wrong, but if you live on the West Coast the cost of even modest preps is very low and the past hits of the predictive linguistics project, such as the spectacular 2008 China quake argue that there's a chance the call will be right... --- The fact that Elaine & I are exiting the Pacific Northwest tomorrow (Wed.) morning shouldn't be viewed as cowardice on our part, but got to admit, the timing is interesting. And don't forget the astrological Cardinal Climax starts in the Thursday-Friday period as well. Which gets us to...
Fading Hours of Pump & Dump? First look at the futures this morning showed a drive to open to the upside is likely to carry over into this morning's trading - baring sobriety arriving.
One thing likely to drive markets will be the 10 AM (eastern) release of the Case Shiller/S&P 20-cities housing index. Reason is not just the high quality data, but that CS/S&P has been most excellent at providing deep history so you can 'return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear" when housing prices weren't referencing year-ago ** already depressed ** levels. This report lets people (who have a mind to root around a bit) suck out what the situation is like compared with the peak.
Same kind of thing with the Dow: Stock pimps talk about the fine gains we have had since March 2009 but most won't mention that stocks are at levels lower than they were during the Internet Bubble when the Dow as over 11,000. Don'tcha hater having a long memory?
Dudley at BP Robert Dudley might be well advised to remember the words of (I think it was Ed Acker) who upon taking command of Pan American World Airways said "It's like taking the helm of the Titanic..."
The losses by BP are put at $17-billion or so, which gets me to thinking about a question to ask an old friend of Sillycon Valley venture/Dow 30 finance experience today who I'm hoping to see today: "Say, how would you book the losses from something as big as The Spill? I mean, do you book the liability in the quarter incurred, or do you only book the loss once the cost of clean-up in known? Don't remember the chapters on booking catastrophic losses from the accounting texts.
Tony Hayward is throwing in with the Russian oil interests...one of those "aha... I see..." moves when watched from the standpoint of "Is there a schism in the oil patch?" standpoint.
Leaks & Wars Researchers are poring over the documents on the Afghanistan War released by Wikileaks which total something in excess of 90-thousand pages.
One finding making the round already is that the Western side has a 'hit list' of key individuals and that seems to be managed down in stories that refer to "When it comes to war, killing the enemy is an accepted fact."
Accepted? By whom? Why, the people doing the killing, of course! Certainly not the folks on the other end.
Then - in conundrum wrapped up in a burrito, served inside a number of nesting dolls way - we are reading about people who thinks some of this may be disinfo or packaging how the wars will fail...
Especially with the Brits holding a (well-buried) public inquiry into the Wars which will hear from from chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix today who will repeat how there were no weapons of mass destruction and how Western leaders blew that off....because of what? Another agenda, maybe? --- Key thing that military planners seem to under-estimate is the veracity of the 'enemy'[ which they are facing invaders to what is a 'home land/home soil' theater. The Russians learned about that the hard way and I would have thought we might have learned a little something from our Southeast Asia stint...but apparently not...
History books are chockablock full of countries replaying the mistakes of others - and since there is some continuity of the PowersThatBe - we get some continuity of the techniques used to control civilian populations. Why toss in runaway media moguls who have war as an agenda and we've arguably made only the smallest moves forward as humans since the Spanish-American War circa 1898.
Damn, you drive a hard bargain. None then. War settings change, but runaway media tycoons seems to rhyme.
Climate Migration So global warming will lead to an increase is Mexico to US migration says a new study out.
Not exactly what you want to read if you bought a McMansion a few years ago within 50-miles of the border...
Venezuwarla Hugo Chavez is still angling to invade Colombia, looks like from here. Chavez pictures himself the Simon Bolivar of the region.
It's OK, and since I picture myself the Einstein of economics, no reason Chavez can't dream bigt (verging on delusional), too...
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Coping: With What We Call Money Jack Lessinger's books - as you'd expect from a professor emeritus of business from the UW here in Seattle - view economic history in terms of its social component and really as a dance between me, me, me societies which turn into us, us, us societies and visa versa. Business history suggests that when Socionomics argues that when you roll from me to us, you also get little economic disorder which we call 'depressions' - which if no one has mentioned previously to you - is exactly where we are right now.
Part & parcel of the period is a rethink of money and there are a number of stories that get around to the fundamental change in our relationship with this particular section of the fundament.
"Record number of fake ₤1 coins could force reissue" reports the UK's Telegraph. But it doesn't stop there...counterfeiting seems to be on something of a tear lately.
Kentucky TV outlet WHAS has a story on how counterfeiting tied into a dope ring. Elsewhere, we read how fake $20's are showing up in southern Maine. And on, and on the stories go.
The amateur long-term investor would probably also keep an eye on other stories, too, which get into this whole area of humans defining values. Ah, here's a story about "Counterfeit smoke, unchecked, growing in NY".
This revaluation is also causing stress along the southern border with Mexico where FrontPageMagazine is headlining "Mexico Drug War spills into U.S."
Not like Clif & I are noticing the shift - the meme showed up a couple of days back in another Telegraph story; this one by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard "The Death of Paper Money": which gets around to how a rare book on the Weimar Inflation is being bought up like crazy by Fleet Street types who are trying to figure out what's ahead on the money front. --- The main feature of the me, me, me (Little Kings) kind of world is an excess of all kinds of just plain old stuff.
The problem at its core is that our relationship with money is going through one hell of a large (think 40-80-year cycles here) change.
While up here
visiting with long-time friends who live in Bellevue I was turned onto a
neat Peter Walsh book titled It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff
The point I'm making this morning is that although I've written about the meaning of all these self-storage operations opening up around the country over the past 15-years or so, I've been a little remiss in rolling their appearance into a change continuum that encompasses our whole relation with values.
What I'm seeing now can almost be laid out as related - hierarchical - mass social change:
All of which has me head down, deep in thought and working on a report for Peoplenomics this weekend about "What are the "New Monies" and how do we pick the future winners?"
Too much to go into now, but since there is the long socioeconomic cycle and since our relationship with money is changing at a deep archetype level, there's a huge leap forward available to the early adopters of this new next that is out there is almost ghostly form right now.
No Homer Simpson "Doh!" moments yet. However the 'prepper movement" seems to be part of this larger meme (thought virus) going around. The preppers (like us) are already 'getting it' that there are things which money can't buy in some situations so we're storing food, getting into gardening, eliminating debt and so forth because in a curious way, freedom still isn't free and a lot of people in America are actively engaged in buying their freedom at a very personal level.
"We can always go live in the motorhome somewhere..." or "We could live in the car..." or "We need to put in a garden..." -- all expressions of the change continuum, where faith in traditional stores of value are quickly eroding: One dollar that bought a steak dinner in 1913 will buy whast was about 4.6 cents worth of goods today. So the change is driven by money's purchasing power being hollowed out.
Like I said, deep ponders, and much research to do before this weekend.
I'll leave you to wonder: If there was no such thing as money, what would you add or subtract from your life? Maybe some insights from that Walsh book about too much stuff....but the real indicators of fundamental change are right in your face when you think about it: "Micro-credit pioneer Yunus to start on The Simpsons."
"Doh!" Blind George just trips over the elephant...again...
Buying the Future OK, so this is all about more conventional money, but the US News/Yahoo story "The Best -- and Worst -- Places to Build a Nest Egg" is a pretty good read. Best state they figure is Wyoming...
Monday July 26, 2010 Gertrude and the New Math So, you wonder, as you tighten the ViceGrips and apply them to an unbruised part of your forearm this morning, trying to "Pinch me!" because reality has become so fleeting: "How much did all those bailouts cost us US tax chattel?"
Umm...think it was $1-trillion or so? Why, that's be 7-8% of Gross Domestic Product for a whole year...and that'd be big, right?
You'd be wrong - way too low. So how about $13-trillion, then? Nope. Still waaaay low.
No, the New Math is that Wee the Sheeple are on the hook for as much as (gulp!) $23.7 trillion dollars. About 2-years worth of everything made by every man, woman, and child in America.
Or, about $76-thousand for everyman m, w, and c in the country. Toss out the retired/dead, and underage and put it in the context of about 155-million in the workforce (don't worry, that number if constantly shrinking, in another sleight of hand show up the statistical midway a bit...) and it pencils out to about $152,903 for every worker bee in the country.
I mention this 'inconvenient truth' as a tone-setter for the rest of this morning's cheer with the Cheerios: The European markets are flat after their stress tests last week - a kind of open-book pass/fail exercise with only a passing outcome allowed - you don't really thing the whole sorry mess of the financial collapse is going to be unveiled in prime time, do you? --- A little later this morning, when the Long Island set gets its coffee, the new home sales will come out, but to me, tomorrow's Case Shiller/S&P 20-city index is a lot more meaningful. The reason is that while the sales may be up compared with last year, it's the longer-term view that matters.
Pretend for a moment that you've pushed aunt Gertrude off the edge of a 40-story building and she bounces one or two stories off the pavement below. "Aunt Gertrude is up!" you cheerful report.
Well, not quite.
(Somewhere along in here somewhere, I have to put in a disclaimer that any relation between the wild-ass examples used here and any person living or dead, is purely coincidental. Don't try this at home. Offer void where prohibited, Member FDIC, operators are standing by, and this is a free call. However, if you're name is Gertrude, stay out of tall buildings for a while - doubly so if you're with nephews and nieces...).
The point is that housing numbers comparing things with last year's eye-to-eye with the pavement is not going to capture the larger context.
Consumer confidence, also due out tomorrow may give a better hint. Less so, the durables orders Wednesday, the ritualistic weekly employment report at 7:43 AM Thursday, then PMI on Friday.
Layoff, George Now that we have firmly in mind how deeply in a sling our collective financial butts are, we can move on to some genuinely good news on the mass layoff from just out from the Labor Department:
Real reason for the improvement? How about this one: No one is left to fire.
Leaks To Come Heads up from a reader here:
Its only money...filthy, disgusting, soiled money. Send along all you care to...LOL --- Predictably, the US is not very happy about all this, and no doubt, this will turn out to be a very damaging problem for the Obama administration. But, tell me again: Why are we there?
Road Show President Obama is hitting the road this week to talk about how 'things could be worse.'
Yup. Elections could be further away than November, maybe? stopped, I suppose.
Unless he's got a Santa bag full of presents to hand out, I don't see much change in ratings from all this - just larger tax bills to 'filler up' for Air Force One.
Health Rationing While the US is rolling into a national healthscare system, we notice that the UK's much hyped-about National Health Service is starting to ration many types of care. Bit off more than they could tax, it seems.
Royalty excepted, of course.
Speaking of which...
BP Takeover? Speculation is starting up whether an American will take over the helm of BP. --- On any other Monday, I would launch into a diatribe about how this is all going to come down to a demonstration of corporate superiority over just plain humans.
Look, if you pushed aunt Gertrude (earlier disclaimers still apply) off a building, the cops would come, haul you off, CNN would have a dandy trial to talk about and that'd be that.
Now, if you were a corporation doing the pushing, you'd just cut off a toenail and say "There's your real culprit" while the rest of your body flies off to the Cayman Islands or Bermuda.
That's essentially what I expect here. The US toenail of BP will be sliced off and the rest of the company will go on its way.
And the funny part? No one will say WTF?
So, since this ain't most Mondays, and I'm on vacation, I won't mention it.
Slow Speed Bot Hit Remember a couple of years back when the old ALTA reports from www.halfpasthuman.com were talking about "...the fungus among us..."? This is a really interesting prediction to be seen coming true, but at almost glacial speed...But once again, the "Lethal fungal infection" in the Pacific Northwest is popping up in near cyclical fashion. ---
Tah Tah - some lady named Gertrude's holding on line 2.
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Coping: Time of Dreams First thing this morning to note: My friend Clif will be on CoastToCoast AM with George Noory tonight (check local radio listings). The topic seems to be a little discussion of how things are going processing the longer term data sets in the predictive linguistics project ()web bots) and some of the issues which keep building toward this monster 'tipping point' this November 8-12.
If you're new to this site, the broad brush overview from 90-thousand feet is that yes, Clif can see some aspects of the future based on language shift on the internet. And the present period we've just been through (roughly March to July 8/15) marked a major period of 'building tension'. These are global emotional periods when tensions are building - the breathe is sucked in (in an anticipatory way - as opposed to release language where the word "Wow!" and an exhalation of breath/emotional release is experienced.
As the summer progresses, we are in a period which is saw-toothed in nature, having peaked, we go through some number of (smaller) up and downs until a week or so from now (maybe even later this week) when we begin to see serious degrading of the financial system. I mean to the point where the mass hypnosis that purports paper-with-ink has some almost magical power about it (depending on the number of zeroes on it) breaks down.
As a reminder of how funny humans are in their relationships with value, I have a number of Z$1-trillion dollar notes pasted up over my main multiple monitor display at the ranch down in East Texas; testimony that Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe Dollars we indeed a current affairs rhyme off the Weimar runaway inflation of the early 1920's. While the market decline most people think of as the Internet bubble pop of the early 2000's was likely the modern analog to the US market break in the early 1920's, we're left with a body of further research to be done into the 'two-part' nature of massive economic depressions, none of which will likely matter, since by the time the fall gets finished up at the winter solstice, there will be perhaps hundreds of millions fewer people around due to 'release events' of the early to mid November release language that the focus on paper and zero's will likely be replaced with more practical pursuits, like finding enough calories to keep eating...little details like that.
So serious is the potential for caloric disaster (on top/in addition to whatever other foibles humans gin up, that I ordered a small greenhouse for the ranch in order to have a way to grow cold-weather veggies this winter in a controlled environment. Over at www.harborfrieght.com they are under $600-bucks for now (shipping extra) and while we will get a lot of cold frames in, this is certainly and easy off-the-shelf solution to expanding food storage. ---- Getting off the ranch has been a great exercise in discipline (getting the columns done in a timely manner from out here 'on the road' and it's brought with it a certain reprioritizing of life's choices. For example, we are contemplating a small business acquisition which is in the pipedream stage, which would give us an excuse to spend time both in Texas during the fall/winter/spring and then spend summers in the Pacific Northwest. The old saying "You can't have your cake and eat it too" was obviously half-baked by someone without an MBA. Of course, there's the high workload issue, but the upside is a never-ending supply of challenges, the overcoming of which in large enough piles constitutes personal success, regardless of the number of zeroes on the table. --- OK, so much for the philosophical stuff, back to focus now...
Remember on Friday morning of last week, where I wrote in part) about a strange dream in which...
An alert reader sent in a note Saturday going to the idea "Say, did you happen to notice that there were three pipe bombs in the woods story popping on CNN and other media that was about one more more pipe bombs being found in a California park?"
No, I hadn't caught that but it's not too surprising. However, all the context my Thursday night/Friday morning was clearly woodsy setting and pipe bomb, which is admittedly weird as hell.
Just like dreaming about a murder/fire in an oil warehousing facility of some kind about 18-hours before the blast and problems of the BP oil rig...which again, was one of those advance dreams of things that were in in our 'future'.
In a subsequent conversation with Clif, he mentioned that my characterization of his views on dreams were not quite right. He admits that dreams may occasionally have predictive content but there is so much 'noise' around them that most people can't pull enough of a signal through to make sense of things.
It's here that we find agreement. True, I may have the odd/occasional dream that seems to precede events by roughly18-hours, or so (the oil dream and the pipe bomb dream both giving about that much lead time) but the deeper issue is how does one filter that kind of noise out?
Which is why, in terms of 'getting the future right', Clif's approach is superior. There's only the odd dream that I experience, and the number of daily inputs on the www.nationaldreamcenter.com site is fairly low, so I can't hold up dreams as being anywhere near as accurate and language-shift...no two ways about it. Dream-based predictions (like Friday's pipe bomb dream) may be interesting, but from the scientific perspective that lack key validation handles.
One dreamer, getting two for two at an archetype level (oil/warehouse/murder and woods & pipe bomb) may feel like a solid "hit", but statistically 'n' is too small to be meaningful. In predictive linguistics, we've got a a fair number of 'n's and what develops as a hit rate higher than the noise floor - which is both way cool, and something of a bummer, since to stare into the future, especially when there's crap coming down the pike in November, anyone looking out in that timeframe can get seriously depressed about things.
Nevertheless, tonight's appearance by Clif on Coast will be worth staying up for, since he'll be chatting (presumably) about the long term data sets which are now processing, and which should be out in Shape of Things to Come report form around and likely before August 10th.
My personal expectation is that as we get closer to that date, we'll see the prequel to the disastrous fall/November period ramping up, which seems likely to include terrible market action since the so-called "Cardinal Climax" begins later on this week - a period astrologically which no one alive today has seen before.
Guys like Arch Crawford, Robert Hitt, and Jeff Harman see it plain as day in the astro charts. Arch summarizes what's going on 'upstairs" this way...
What should we expect? Well, from chatting with Clif, the middle east war and other possible flashpoints and problems seem unlikely before the global economic meltdown; no point having a global whatever until the last possible reflation of the global money system has been completed as the last drop of blood wrought from that turnip, right?
I know, I know..."George all your focus on seeing the future...predictive linguistics, dream work, astro-economics...are you nuts?"
Well, yes, certainly. But that doesn't stop me from 'running the Greeks' (click here for an explanation of what the Greeks are from the Options Industry Council) and augmenting judgments about market choices with predictive linguistics, astro, and dream hints. It only takes a slight difference in rates of return over time to make a huge different in outcomes.
Or, as my friend Howard Hill sagely explained once, think of only a quarter point spread between one market player and the next. Over time that quarter percent difference compounds such that the small change on the front-end becomes a massive change on the back end. A short study of long tail analysis puts all this into proper perspective.
Some investors make decision based on pure technical analysis and I have no problems with that. Except that when non-technical works - whether predictive linguistics, astro, or dream - show potential the improve returns, then rigorous pursuit of those fields becomes a worthy effort.
The only major drawback I've seen is that it's often times hard (ok, impossible then) to figure out how to make money on some of the bigger web bot hits. How could anyone have profited from 9/11 (and what did happen to all those option buyers, huh?), or the Shuttle Disaster, of the NE Power Outage, or the China Quake, or any of the other 'hits' which Clif's work has produced?
If the period in early to mid November does result in some blinding flashes of light/flash frying of humans, not sure what to do with that information - I mean other order some more goodies from Shane over at www.ki4u.com.
Of course, the predictive linguistics project could be completely wrong. In which case, 105-110 days from now the world will be going on about its 'normal' path and I will be holding a bag of far lesser valued short positions. Next new moon is August 10th, says a reader.
Speeds of Discontent Just when I thought I'd purchased the be-all, end-all in computers, along comes an email this morning with the latest out of TigerDirect:" a 24GB, 160 GB SSD monster i7 box. Now I'm wondering how out of date I'll be with just 12 GB....
Hmmm...more sparklies to tempt the monkey-mind, I suppose. But on Monday mornings it's always nice to have some reason to get out of bed and go start working on client projects and what have you. Hunger works, too...
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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Squash
and relatives are a good place to start for beginners, because they
are quite easy. You can spread them out on a paper towel, or if you
wish to not waste even a paper towel, old news paper is just fine.
You don't have to worry about cleaning them up too much, but do get
them spread out, so they are only a seed deep. All of the orange
crud will dry and you can get a handful when dry and rub them
between your hands and all of the pulp will separate from the seeds
and you can just puff on them a bit and the "chaff" will blow away.
A hair dryer or fan can do the same thing. 
from Amazon.
and well worth the $20-bucks or so, we were told. In fact, this
couple we know has gone so far as to resolve not to buy a new thing
unless and old thing is thrown out. I've thought
about getting a copy for my shoe-a-holic sister....but that's another
story, Imelda.
