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Published Monday - Friday about 8 AM Central Time Except Holidays....many major typos are fixed by 8:30 daily
Saturday November
7,
2009 07:55 AM CDT New
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Next Week's Showdown Things in the financial markets should be interesting as the Dickens next week, since a number of major economic drivers are piling up the pressure. Let me run through the list for you:
First - although it's not a BIG pressure, America's banking system is still over-extended to the point where FDIC had to reorganize another five banks this week, the largest of which had 63 branches in the SF Bay area:
The year-to-date today is 120 banks reorganized impacting 1,378 branches and since IndyMac last year, we're up to 3,985 branches impacted and 142 banks. Nothing as big as WAMU's 2,239 branch operation, but stick around, this really is a Depression, whether mainstream economystics will admit it or not. --- There's a headline in the LA Times today not to be missed: "Fannie Mae to allow borrowers in foreclosure to lease back homes" is the gist of it. ---- Bottom line of what's going on in real estate presently: Everyone involved is hoping this Fannie plannie stems the amount of property that is flooding onto the market.
Elaine & I have noticed that in many markets, homes will go on the market for six months or so, then be taken off the market with a note that 'Deal Pending - Back up offers welcome" which really means the house isn't sold...but it helps everyone's statistics. The foreclosure holder claims a sale, looks like the house has moved, but in reality....well, what's reality anymore in finance, huh?
Crazy, huh? Then they can say "Oh, so sorry - deal fell apart - and recycle houses on and off market to 'paint the tape' on housing numbers. Is this a great country, or what? --- The ongoing problems of banks may fade to the background next week because the much larger problem is the systemic inflation that continues to evolve. If you need evidence of inflation expectations, you have no further than the price of gold to go looking: It closed this week in the $1,095 range and next week could easily be seen closing over the $1,100 mark.
The Dow had a fine gain for the week and might go on to a new high next week, but "new high" would only be for the period since the march low this year: Recall the Dow in October of 2007 hit an intraday high of 14,279.96. With this week's close at 10,023 and change, my calculator says the Dow is off its high by 29.9% basis 2007 - and even more if we consider the effects of inflation.
And just to keep things in perspective here, let's recall that the Dow hit an intraday high of 11,908.50 in first week of January way back in 2000, which using the Fed's own numbers means that to just break-even on a purchasing power basis, the Dow needs to be at 14,743.86 - but it gets even better! We are almost through with 2009 and throw in another 4% for inflation to ballpark it and the Dow would need to be north of 15,333.
My surly attitude on this stuff has been known to flood my email with complaints that I'm not being fair because I don't count splits and I don't count dividends. But my usual retort that I also don't back out Dow components which have bitten the dust. I may be one of the few people who actually made money on Lehman in its final days. Nor - if you invest via mutual funds - do I back out fund management fees, commissions, tax bracket creep, and so forth. But enough on that old thread. ---- Then there's the little matter of the Federal Reserve (we know they're not really 'federal;' but that's another discussion) which put out the Consumer Debt Report on Friday. The scary fact is that consumer debt is dropping at a 7.2% annual rate.
But no one is writing yet about what this really means and why? Because it's disastrous - that's why!
When you look at the Fed numbers, you'll see the consumer is dropping debt at the fastest rate since 2004 on their report. Yep. Consumers have gone on vacation - and still no one on Wall Street has figured out the obvious implications of crashing consumer spending.
Here's a hint: The Second Depression is picking up speed.
You have to be really precise in your thinking on this stuff because it's not always evident. But look back to 2005 - just for the sake of discussion. The consumer debt was increasing at a 4.5% annual rate. But we need to correct for the underlying change in pricing due to inflation. This means that real growth in 2005 should be around 4.5% consumer debt, less 3.99 % inflation for a real economic growth rate of around 0.56%. (This is using the BLS inflation numbers compiled by John Williams at Shadow Government Stats)
Why do all that math? Because if the Consumer debt is really declining 7.2% annualized, we still have to back out the underlying inflation which I'd guess at around 4%. All that printing up bail-out money has to show up somewhere, eh?
That means that real economic growth is likely negative something like 11% - which (hate to tell you this) is why the unemployment rate just ticked past 10.2% (officially) this week.
But even worse? What if the Shadow Government Stats site which only has BLS figures in their calculator through August of 2009 is right - what if the August 2008 to August of 2009 BLS number is right and inflation is running (better have a nitro pill ready for this one) 14.94%.
THAT means that the true decline of economic activity will be -7.2% and then we discount those dollars by the annualized inflation change.- which means economic activity is dropping by something closer to 20% annually. --- You saw where the NY Times is reporting 17.5% for a broader measure of unemployment. As one reader commented: "Look! Someone else is getting it!" Indeed. --- This is where a little Saturday morning/deep thinking comes into play: On one side of the trades down on Wall Street (besides the 'tape painters' you've got people who are buying the Dow and other stocks because they believe company market share means something.
On the other side are the bears who can pencil things out as I have, and they'd be short in here.
My best guess (and no, I don't make recommendations on investments, sorry you're on your own here) is that the market will go off to set a new high next week, or the week after, and we could see 10,400-10,500 in the Dow.
That in turn - following yesterday's discussion of 'time to crash' behaviors - would put the next real low sometime this winter to early spring 2010 and then one last good run back up from there before the end of economic life on earth begins in the August/September period of next year.
What I'm telling my kids is pretty simple since no one has money left to invest: Get yourself into jobs which will be needed no matter what and do whatever it takes to keep those jobs. Son's an EMT, one daughter works in a grocery store as a check-out clerk and the other daughter is working for a state unemployment office. Than heaven, they seem to be taking old dad's advice for once.
With any luck, they might buy some gold or silver colds along the way, too.
Highly Recommended Reading I keep forgetting to mention - till just now - the most excellent series my friend Howard Hill has done recently.
Howard is one of the brightest people I know and his view is the real insider's deal.
Wild Viruses Department US Army has specialists headed for a remote part of Afghanistan where a strange Ebola-like virus has sprung up. My question is the obvious one: Is this a natural occurrence or the next phase of escalation is what could be biological warfare? --- Meantime, there seem to be two media factions reporting on the Ukraine situation. Some are quite precise that the country is suffering 'normal' swine flu but has gone into a panic mode while others paint a picture of pneumonic plague busting loose. --- Curiously timed: A report that Lake in the Hills, Illinois will be holding a pneumonic plague drill this weekend.
No Health Insurance? Jail Time in Pelosi Bill! Sounds outrageous, but a press release from republicorp Dave Camp is headlined:
Remember, this is from the republicorp side - but jail time??? I'm going to be looking around to see what kind of contributions Ms. Pelosi has been getting from the insurance industry. Elections cost money, I hear.
Global Coastal Event Western Australia sea level rises doubling world average. A third of an inch in a year - roughly.
Why are you reading my column when you could be building a boat?
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Coping: With Hunting Season It's barely thinking about becoming daylight as I write this - but in a few minutes...no, there goes a shot now - the deer hunting season opens in this part of East Texas. This is when a lot of families supplement their annual food budget with venison that can be either a) the cheapest meat in the freezer or b) the most expensive. It all depends on how good a hunter you area and whether you invest in the latest high tech tools along the way.
Although we've got a fair little collection of long and sidearms, most of their purpose is to deal with the nasties that come wandering through the property. Nothing worse than wild pigs. They can do more damage to land than a drunk city slicker on a Caterpillar D-3...they are plain terrible.
Snakes, too, although the local copperhead population seems to have thinned out a bit since I've beaten the brush back a fair ways from the house. Even the scorpion count is down this year - something Elaine's quite thankful about.
Wonder why the local volunteer fire department has it's fall BBQ next weekend instead of this weekend? Not only would hardly anyone show up because of deer season, but I expect most of the department wouldn't be available for BBQ'ing - they'd be off in the woods, too.
As I've said before, although I've the skills to do it, going hunting seems a lot less sure than running in to the grocery store. No messing about with field dressing, finding someone to cut and wrap and all that. Nossir, just a few pieces of paper and you're done in no time. When the stores in town run out of chicken, I'll think about hun6ting more than hogs and snakes, but turning vegetarian might be a time-saver option worth considering.
Oh! There went another shot off in the distance. Most important thing about now till the end of the year is remembering to wear the orange vest and hat out in the woods
I have to give credit to Texas Parks and Wildlife. The latest statistics I could come up with (it's early) showed the accident rate was still below 3 accidents per 10,000 hunters. And just for the record there were only 4 fatalities in 2007.
The reason I mention this is really two-fold. First, hunter education is really paying off. The studies show that most accidents involve some kind of violation of law - and usually ignoring some of basics of safe hunting. Often times, alcohol is involved - and the riskiest time is around dusk, not early mornings when people are still sharp.
The second reason is to point out something that folks who are down on gun ownership don't talk about very much because it would weaken their argument to throw out the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms: The number of boating fatalities is on track to exceed 30 this year. As of June 18th - latest press release I could come up with, 18 people had already died in boating accidents this year in Texas.
No, I'm not saying that hunting is safer than boating. About 4-8 hunters per year die here out of the more than 1-million who go hunting. If I could find a reliable statistic on the number of people who actually went boating we could do a meaningful comparison. But, alas, registrations won' t work simply because so many of our neighbors out here have registered bass boats and such, but never seem to have time to use them.
Good thing, too, otherwise there's be no bass anywhere in America - they'd all be fished out by now.
The conclusion I can arrive at fairly safely is that there are idiots in the woods and there are idiots on the water, and on the freeway, too.
Another thing that do-good/gun seizers don't think through: As states have gotten better at managing deer seasons - the number of deer/car accidents is going up. In fact here's a note from a couple of months back that says car-deer accidents are up by 18% in the past five years in some areas.
Maybe hunting isn't such a bad thing...or maybe cars are.
Saturday Morning Email Festival Here's one for you:
Assuming you haven't been elected to high office in China in recent dreams, I'd say you've either got to swear off - or at least change brands.
Because if neither one of those works, then it's another tiny indicator that as we move closer to 2012, the veil or boundary layer between our reality and another one next door might be getting thinner. Go read Haunted Mesa by Louis L' Amour and you'll get the drift.
Next email, please?
Ah! Fine point on 'dead cat bounce' - Zeus my cat and I go around and around on this one all the time. He's expressed a preference for "dead politician bounce" but I explained to him that would likely get a visit from Homeland Security. Then I went through a list of other possible 'bouncers' and just hadn't put brain cells on the task until this morning. The two cells that remain undamaged - but the weekend is young - will try to remember to use something less commonly loved than cats. Salamanders, skinks, and snakes come to mind. Can't help you much on the issues in the second paragraph, sorry to say. Journalism schools seem to attract students that didn't have the GPA for Med School or the math skills for Engineering. What can I say? --- Send your comments, electricians, and Grimm tales to george@ure.net The UrbanSurvival Mall: Peoplenomics This Week 2012 - The Bigger Picture Think you have a handle on 2012? Ha! Not hardly! On Tuesday night of this week, Cliff High will be rolling out his research - along with some spiffy graphics on his site www.halfpasthuman.com as part of an interview on the Jeff Rense show. We will hold off on "the Single Person's Marketing Plan" until next week because I wanted to spend some time this weekend bridging the gap between the historical basis of 2012 - and the critical issues of survival of possible events in that timeframe. What do the Dogon People and their stories about Sirius (Later Osiris in Egyptology) have to do with the breakdown of the former Soviet Union? And what does that have to do with economics? Get ready to grab your blinders firmly...you ain't gonna like this at all. More For Subscribers Subscription Information
"Live on $10,000" Updated With another round of layoffs due to start later this month...a round which will start to axe many of the middle managers who have managed to avoid the HR grenades...might I suggest a preemptive tactical move? Voluntarily dropping your lifestyle back a bit, since we're all being marched down that road by either circumstances or some out-of-control-PTB types who write checks to Washington lobby and to anti-reformers in California! A good starting point, at least if you've still got $10-bucks is my e-book "How to Live on #10,000 a Year...or less!"
It's an automatic download. It's written in an information dense style: The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the cheap, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you have a little hustle left... Click here for the index and details.
MyGroPonics My commodity broker JB Slear and I have written a simple book to get you started on high density hydroponics. It's an example of how someone with a little creativity, access to a few 'dollar stores' and willing to try out some new farming techniques can grow an amazing amount of produce sin a very small space - like even an apartment balcony (if it gets some sunlight). Sound interesting? It's just $10 bucks here...
No, when you tell your browser to 'empty your cookies' of web sites you've visited, it probably won't get them all. Why? Because there is a whole class of 'browser-independent' cookies that will gobble up space on your hard drive, but more important is they will sneak out information about you without you being aware of it. Ever week I get emails like this one:
Test drive it free by downloading it. To upgrade to full functionality will be $35 bucks. Is your privacy worth it?
Once you try it out, click the
upgrade button (!) on the upper right hand side for the $35
unlock to get it to remove even those nasty and highly intrusive
'non-browser specific' cookies. Bonus: You computer
may run faster. I've taken
Attn: Mac Drivers: MCM does support the Safari Browser, but that does not mean it is compatible with Mac OS. Maxa-Tools only support the Windows world....so far. Given Jens and the other engineers time...
Feeling Thorny? Want to be a thorn in the side of the Old World Order? Simply click here and send a link to this site to everyone on your distro list...Nothing more dangerous than sharp, clear-thinking upstarts who ask a lot of questions, eh? Unless you believe WTC-7 fell over on its own, of course.... ---- Last week's report is here. For back issues of this site, click here. (Goes back to 1997!)
Friday November 6, 2009 10.2%!!! The Jobless Prosperity This morning's report report is a few minutes early since we have to go load some goats which are going to the 'all terrain self-powered brush mower' auction today. Banging heads with Boer goat bucks makes infinitely more sense than the economy here lately, anyway.
The reason I say that - with some degree of confidence - is that almost every day there's a headline out somewhere that says "World unemployment up despite economic recovery". Every time I read something like this I invariably go into an econoplexic state. My eyes glaze over, I work, I spend, I eat...yet somehow there's an air of surreality to it all. It's like being in dreamland - but different.
Over and over I ask myself "How can an economic recovery be claimed when global unemployment is rising?" After mention of the productivity numbers earlier this week, a couple of readers explained it this way: "What happens to all the work that an increase in productivity concurrent with layoffs mean? Just that the work is now being done by the remaining employees who have to work harder and harder..."
OK...that makes sense...sort of. Not to dwell too long on this - there are goats to round up, so on to the jobs numbers:
Two numbers to keep a close watch on: The CES Birth/Death Model (the estimate [made up] jobs for the current month) totaled 86,000.
And the Table A12 U-6 Labor under-utilization rate (the PhD's turned burger flipper rate) was at 16.3%. A year ago it stood at 11.1% --- Not good for the market - and gold is set to make a run at $1,100 an ounce. Not only that, but silver is perking up, too.
Stock Crash Date Madness IF the stock market goes on to set a new post-March high today, there would no doubt be dancing in the street, at least on Wall Street. The reason is that what would happen IF the market rallies to something like the 10,200 range, or better, that would push any chance of a major Crash in the market out until sometime next year. Not likely with the jobs numbers, but go with me on this.
A handful of market timing experts believe that crashes don't happen until a Fibonacci number of days after a significant peak. The most common numbers are 34 days, 55 days, and 89 days.
On a simple calendar basis 34-days from today is December 10th, 55-days is December 31, and basis 89-days we're up at February 3rd or so.
Since markets never perform exactly as they should, another group of market-gazers thinks that it's the number of trading days. So would need to take the raw day count, divide by 5 and multiply times 7 to come out with trading days, plus add thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years in for three more days on top of that which might look something like this in Excel where A8 if your Fibo number: =((A8/5)*7)+3.
This pencils out to 12/26 (not making the weekend adjustments here) which would really mean around 12/28 basis the 34 day Fibo date. January 25 or March 13th for the 55 and 89 day sequences.
But then again, by the time you figure in all the other possibilities (lunar cycles work, on-balance volume studies, relative strength indicators, the MACD, fast and slow stochastics...etc.) market technicians usually cover the board so that a mathematical "cause" for every date on the calendar is possible.
The Dow closed Thursday within spitting distance of the October 22 close of 10,081.31 and on an intraday basis was still 140-odd points short of October 15th intraday peak.
If the market doesn't hurry up a bit, we will get to the 34 calendar day Fibo on 11/25, the 34 day trading Fibo around 12/9 while the trading day Fibos would be out at 1/10 and 2/26. My, how that calendar gets covered up with bets, huh?
My investment advice? Very simple & straightforward: Take whatever 'fast money' you were planning to bet on the market and head for the nearest Casino. For Dallas folks, for example, Shreveport's got some nice spots. Try betting Fibo numbers on roulette and enjoy the good food and drink. I've had decent luck on 34 in the past and best of all, there's no management commission involved.
The chance of coming home broke is about even, since to my way of thinking, only a madman would bet on stock growth when job growth is globally nil. Consider taking in a show or two, also. The song and dance down on the street is a little old by now. Especially when you can read how the G-20 thinks it's too early to take the global economy off life support... Sheer genius on their part, for sure.
November 5th Date It's becoming clear - at least to me - that the events of October 25'ish (Obama declares National Flu Emergency) and the November 5 date where "Martial Laws Declared in Ukraine over Mystery Epidemic" is likely the stuff which the predictive linguistics were pointing to.
Al the lockdown language is there, too. As in this Time article here.
While some blogs are referencing "pneumonic plague" outbreak, the WHO hasn't yet, far as I've been able to tell.
Reader note on point:
Tragedy at Fort Hood
Afghan Failure Possible I don't know if you've thought this one through yet (it's early - we understand) but when I see a headline like "Gordon Brown: risk of British failure in Afghanistan is real" comes along it implies something else: US failure in Afghanistan would likely be a concurrent development. But hey, it only took the Russian 10-years to figure out the country was 'unwinnable'. --- Meantime, not much coverage in the West of "Saudi Jets bomb Yemeni Houthis.
I mistakenly thought that when Saudi jets started striking targets in Yemen that someone would stand up and notice "Aha! new war!" But I was mistaken. Yemen must not have enough oil, eh?
Slipping Toward Showdown Meantime, the IAEA says Iran has a key piece of technology that would push them along the development path toward nuclear missiles. Clocks ticking on this one, for sure. Israel's patience wears thin as this story in today's Jerusalem Post underscores.
Migrantmandering You know what "gerrymandering" is, right? That's where one political party, or another, redraws the lines of an elective districts to give one side political advantage. So fast-forward to this week in Washington where the democorps have kept the Census from asking the ugly question "Are you a U.S. citizen?" - to the dismay of the republicorps who were pressing for it to be included.
Fine theatrics, huh? Deserves a new word. --- Meantime, I've been reading over the proposed Census questions and discussion of how to fill out the forms (76 pages of .PDF here).
I have to admit a high level of disappointment that there are specific questions about "Hispanic Origin (See pages 4 & 11) while other minorities (Black/Africa-America, Chinese, Japanese, and in my case Danish & Scottish ancestry) don't merit such specialized treatment.
What ever happened to true equality in America? Or is this what 'some are more equal than others' is all about? I'll send 10 kroner to the first Scandinavian action group that sues for forms in Norwegian or Danish. Reverse discrimination is, after all, still...what?
Swiss Cheese or Software Department The headline "Microsoft to fix holes in Windows, Office" advising of six security patches to come next week has me wondering which has more holes. I'll take a pickle with that, too.
Spendroids People lining up overnight outside a Verizon store to be the first to buy the new Motorola Droid? ---- Is the word "gullible" in the dictionary?
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Coping: Woo Woo Rising Department Shamanism is making a comeback in Mongolia, turns out, according to a story off Eurasia.net.
I've sent a note to our correspondent in Ulaanbaatar to look into this and report back, but there was one part of the article in particular which seemed to hit a funny (as in 'odd' not haha) kind of resonance in me.
Specifically the part about:
These elaborate instructions may sound strange, but if you have ever read any of the Don Juan Matus books by Carlos Castaneda, you can find similar strange sounding bits here at there.
One of the core concepts of the nagual - a kind of Mesoamerican shaman/healer type - is that they too work on something called "the assemblage point" and the field of subtle energies around people. It's kind of like an 'egg" of energy around people. Think of it as your 'personal energy space'.
In the world of shamans and naguals, things like sickness, misfortunate, poverty, and so on are due to disruptions in how you are assimilating yourself into the overall flow of the Universe. In Castaneda's books, the odd sharp thump on the back near the left shoulder blade by a skilled practitioner/Nagual, is said to be all that's necessary to induce a sudden shift in consciousness of the student. (Helps to have dropped a hit of datura (dangerous toxic stuff! Warning!) or peyote ( see legal issues) here, of course.)
Nevertheless, the field of shamanism seems like one which ought to be studied in a more methodical manner than we presently do; a consequence, I suppose of academic specialization.
Remember, the concept that humans arise in holographic fashion from waves within a sea of energy is not exactly a new concept. It's been around for thousands upon thousands of years (and longer) and may be found in Vedic, Jain, and Hindu traditions and embodied to some extent quite literally in traditions like Yoga.
What I would propose, therefore (and give credit if you make the ultimate best-selling book and academic career out of this if you would, please) is that a scientifically rigorous study of all religions and shamanistic practices be undertaken with an objective of quantifying and codifying direct manipulation of our immediate circumstances.
In other words, build up a huge SQL database of practices for various conditions and using the multidisciplinary approach, sort out what the common elements are among the practitioners and then reduce this do outputs anyone can perform.
It may be that upon study across languages and cultures, that it's the throwing of a liquid in a certain way, while facing in a certain direction, that bring about significant effect.
Not saying it is the case, but it is possible that much of the power of a religion or shamanistic tradition may come from simple physical acts, such as cutting the air in front of a practitioner in a sign of the cross, or tossing water left-handed over that way.
Design of the project would be somewhat complex since each of the practices would need to be analyzed and inputted, along with generalizations. Maybe in one culture, water is thrown, in another goat's milk, or some fermented juice or other. The database would need to be built-up using not only the specifics but then would need to be generalized to cardinal positions, solids, fabrics, liquids, metals...that kind of thing and the results cross-tabbed.
Would such a project be worthwhile? To my way of thinking Hell Yes!
It would be tantamount to converting religion to Open Source if the outputs were worthwhile.
And since we have the theory (Radin's work on entanglement, the multiword's interpretation of quantum mechanics, etc.) it seems all we need to do is run some diagnostics/analytics to get more direct access to a whole lot more horsepower for humans to use.
I know, I know. "George, sounds fine and all, but you've missed the point that true 'assemblage' takes place in the mind, not in the physical world..."
That may be, materialistic reductionist fool that I am, but why not go do a thorough study of physical commonalities cross-culturally, just to check? Could be just like a Twilight Zone episode, that the levers to manipulate reality are really physically at hand, just we haven't spent any time for the most part, focusing with intent on pulling them this way or that. We might just be brushing them in passing once in a while - which might be why so many religions have ascetic practices; as they develop conscious awareness of potential levers in the vicinity of.
I don't have 60 years to run off into the woods an be a practicing ascetic to figure out which levers do what and become a wizened one. So can we throw some code at this and go open source, please?
You'll please excuse me now: I have to go throw a bowl of water. First, a check of the Open Source Religion database to see if there's a correlation between bowl shapes or if a glass of water (tumbler) would work as well. Let me build the query here: Is this a form-based ritual (throw from bowl) or an action-based ritual (throw liquid from anything handy)? See how useful Open Sourcing traditions out of all religions could be?
As long as we're at it, let's also gather data to see if there's any correlation between general level of health between people who bless their food in some way before eating it and those that don't...if it's statistically significant, that oughta be in our Open Source Religion project, too, I'd think. Along with levels of health between people who use incense and.....and....
Mark on Your Calendar November 14th - a week from tomorrow: If you live in Dallas, Houston, or any city within a couple of hours driving distance of Elmwood, Texas, be sure to plan a family outing to c the best slow-cooked BBQ you'll find. Google Map link here. Elmwood's Volunteer Fire Department (web site) puts this on twice a year (fall & spring) and there's a big-screen LCD TV being raffled off, too. I think it runs from 11 AM till about 2 PM...or whenever the BBQ runs out.
Thursday November 5, 2009 Special Update Middle East Warring Usually reliable sources turned me on to reports earlier today that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) was bombing parts of Yemen because of an increasingly large Shiite rebellion in the region.. Now comes an AP story that is confirming that "Saudis Bomb Yemen rebels across border" so it looks like bombings in the Middle East is flaring up.
The price of gold and the price of oil not showing any particular movement yet, but the session in stocks still have almost 2-hours to go and commodity prices...well, that's a crap shoot for you. --- Meantime, plague or swine induced pneumonia? That question still swirling around Ukraine. But what's clear is that 95 people are dead according to local media and in other reports
Productivity and Other Myths I've whined about this before, but I believe if you're going to have whine, have lots of it - never too much whine or cheese to go with it, I say! So ask yourself this one: How can productivity increase when the number of jobs is going down? Well, the answer (this is an ugly one) is automation. In other words if 100% of everything was made by machines, then productivity could reach close to 100%, less whatever the breakdown rate of the machines is and whatever eddies and back currents might be left to be wrung out in distribution and inventory turns.
With that are foreplay, here's the latest edition of factory owner wet-dream economics:
Best I can tell, we should have started crashing the economy years ago. Just think how high productivity could have been? Why, there's no limit except 100%, is there? Fire everyone!
Ooops! Forgot: we're already doing that...
Victims of Productivity 14-week extension of unemployment benefits was passed by the Senate Wednesday. Green shoots! Green shoots!
Lorem Ipsum Fedum I suppose the FOMC statement is not exactly 'lorem ipsum' text - used by page layout people (and graphic artistas) as dummy text to see roughly how a page would look, but it's close if you compare the following:
Which looks to my eye remarkably like:
See? Makes about as much sense to me, honestly, or near enough to pass for honesty inside the Beltway.
Free Money Department The Banksters of England are getting another $40-billion worth of easy money to spur economic growth. Unsaid: That if the economy was recovering nice and strongly they wouldn't need to keep going through quantative easings, would they? Don't know why I was compelled to point out the obvious. Maybe I should just shut up.
Money In the Air Here's something for travel agents and airline yield management types: If you take the report that "Orbitz Swings to Profit" in the Wall St. Journal's fine online edition, you can see they have revenue of $187-million expected on $2.57 billion in sales which pencils out to airlines, hotels, and car outfits paying booking commissions of 7.28% roughly. Interesting number, huh?
Return of Reasonable Earlier this morning the Dow futures were showing down a tad. Gold was still within striking distance of the $1,100 mark, although Kitco was showing the high was $1,095.20 at their end of things....
Good News For Mice Zeus the cat - our once wild feline male until he visited Dr. Snippet in town - was shocked by the headline, but there it was: "World first as swine flu found in US cat..."
I've always suspected there was something wrong with Zeus - his piggish ways at the food bowl - maybe this is it?
A while back Zeus asked me about ordering some D-Conn and was stumped as to why his search for D-Conn led him to (among other places) representative Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.
"Zeus," I explained pulling up the Google results "You're looking for d-CONN for mice, not the D-Conn as in rat...see how case-changes changes things in specified searches?" Dumb cat.
Zeus claims to have a doctor's exemption letter, but I've informed him that there would be no exemptions issued by here Ranchland Security. As things have worked out, I've got him doing extra chores around the place (detailing cars and such) and he's living in mortal fear of a mandatory shot screwing up his fine sense of smell, night vision, taste buds, and what have you.
"Zeus, these are things we have to do for America."
How Many Satellites? How much junk is circling the earth now? Nearly 20,000 if you count spent rocket stages and such, and there are plans to throw another 500 up between now and the end of the year according to this report.
Weasel Words & Government Department The headline in the NY Times that "E.U. Leaders Bolster Internet Access Protections" comes atop a very revealing story which anyone interested in 'net freedom' and 'net neutrality' ought to read.
Underlying all this is digital copyright law and how it's going to be applied.
Ever since I started up UrbanSurvival, I've made it a point to cite sources with links and I never use more than very short extracts because I respect the intellectual property of others. As changes in copyright laws come down the pike, it will likely put a lot of sites - especially the so-called 'forums' where people have this nasty habit of posting entire articles and claim that it's their right to do so. Posting an entire article is not defensible, in my view, but other's don't seem to understand what short extract as - parts of a larger discussion means.
The problem is that there has to be a line drawn somewhere - between the "wild westers' who want no restrictions at all and some governments which would like to be able to shut down and seize servers and such without due process.
Keep an eye on this one - could be a biggie since what happens there is likely, in some form or another, to happen here, too.
How Many Downloads? Within weeks of crossing the 2-billion downloads mark - that's some kinda bandwidth, huh? - Apple's App Store out with word that they have 100,000 Aps to choose from.
If things are really boring in your life, you might consider buying an iPhone just so you can access this huge shopping time sink. Wonder how long it would take to read the product descriptions alone?
Obama Kinder Bad as talking to my cat is, it makes more sense that the report from Big Hollywood titled "ELEMENTARY EPIDEMIC: 11 Uncovered Videos Show School Children Performing Praises to Obama."
40 Somethings Speaking of kids and such: Sesame Street is about to turn 40. --- Know what's weird about America? I never realized until this morning but we may live in a land where there are more iPhone aps than intelligence and spirit raising television programs to watch. Just sayin...oh....you know...unintended consequences...over powered by monkey mind...the whole lot of it...
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Coping: With Season Endings Wasn't it just recently that the World Series used to wrap up in October? Seems like there have been book titles to that effect like "The Boys of October: How the 1975 Boston Red Sox Embodied Baseball's Ideas- and Restored Our Spirits" comes to mind. Seems like it's been getting later, if my only point.
Now, the numbers are coming out and looks like great ratings for Fox averaging almost 20-million viewers per game. I made it through the whole season with only one hotdog and no beer. That's a first....but easily done when I kept the TV off.
Not to harp on "What's wrong with America" this morning, but the elections coverage story that showed Fox had just over 4-million viewers of election coverage has me wondering the obvious: 20-million for the Series: 4 million for elections...So are American's therefore five times more interested in baseball than politics?
This is why Washington doesn't take calls from the home district very seriously. Got download a new ap or something...it'll pass.
Ever have one of those nights when you wake up and for some reason you just can't get back to sleep? I must have been awake from about 2 AM until 3:30 AM and looked at the clocks two, maybe three times in that period. The tiny transistor radio I use to catch CoastToCoast snips had fallen under the bed the previous night and I was too lazy to retrieve it...so this was a classic toss & turner.
Time's been acting weird the past week or so...probably a time hangover from Congress declaring what time it is without sending me a reminder in the mail.
Jack & the Space Elevator Don't know if you've ever read the Arthur C. Clarke books and caught the concept of the 'space elevator" but it's an intriguing concept. Since the earth is rotating around the polls for another...er.. 1142 days anyway... Clarke figured there would be enough centrifugal force from the rotation of the earth to put some kind of modest weight out in space and then simply build an elevator to go up and down a big cable. Clever, huh?
Well fast forward to now and we're reading now this space elevator has now come a step closer to reality with a one kilometer high test of a robotic cable climber working its way up to the helicopter.
I mention this as the last item in today's report (rather than put it up next to the number of satellites story in the news section) because I want you to do some serious pondering on something.
I know you're skeptical of all this talk about previous high civilizations and 2012 and so on. But when you read about how the 'space elevator' components are being tested, doesn't it make you wonder why some things keep popping out of the human archetype?
Like what? Oh...how about Jack and Bean Stalk?
Wednesday November 4, 2009 Glittering All Over the Place Break the $1,100 barrier today? Maybe. The price of gold did a moonshot on Tuesday when word of a major gold sale from the IMF to India was announced. Gold (chart above) continued its move early this morning and there's a good chance today we could pass the $1,100 mark. The question, however, is when does a pullback begin; or does one happen in here at all?
The challenge to all this for the aware investor is sorting out what's really going on here. True enough, the headlines are saying that the price of gold has gone up about $25 in the last 24-hours. nice move, yada, yada, yada. But there's another possibility - and this is The Big Ugly that no one else will be mentioning in headline today: The purchasing power of the Dollar just went down more than 2-10th's of one percent. Shhhh! Don't say that too loudly!
The Big Ugly is something the Fed will have real problems with when it creeps out. For today's meeting of the Fed, no move is about a slam dunk. Despite some statistical hints on the economic front that a bottom may be in, Americans are pretty damn skeptical since unemployment is still sky-high and outsourcing is continuing. Just yesterday Acme & Acme...I mean Johnson & Johnson announced they would be laying off around 8,200 of their workforce.
Against this background (unemployed, record foreclosures, continuing mass layoffs) you can't really be surprised that the republicorps posted big governorship wins in both Virginia and New Jersey. As that famous economist Bob Dylan said: "You don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows". Besides, any economist without a discography (like Dylan's), or at least a humorous anthology, must surely be a fraud.
You could do worse than join me as a member of the Bob Dylan/Mark Twain School of Economics. Their stuff made sense: "I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position." said Twain. Or Dylan's "Democracy don't rule the world, You'd better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that's better left unsaid." Truly. --- Local government, unchanging as the sunrise for at least three more years, still has its hooks out - as stories from news outfits like the Sandusky Register leak that "Home prices drop steadily but tax valuations show little change". Being repeated almost everywhere - which means local government hasn't come to terms with economic reality yet and consequently, government has been one of the more secure places to work, at least as long as you don't have a partisan label on your nameplate.
Even in places like lesser-hit Texas, I'm expect to file a property tax evaluation appeal if our assessed value goes up - which it shouldn't...but like I said, local government still hasn't tasted cake like the working class...yet.
Bottom Line here: Gold may go up further, gold may have a pullback, Fed's not likely to do anything today but they are being herded into a box canyon on rates. Oh...did I mention beer's still too expensive?
Ain't economics simple?
More good reading: BBC financial editor Stephanie Flander's piece "The Economists New Clothes".
As We Go Crashing ...at least we're going slower....a tad slower.... "Pace of job losses slows: ADP Report shows payroll decline lessons. Challenger report points to fewer job cut announcements." Hard sell at Acme & Acme, though.
Woo hooo! Is this a green shoot or....uh.....If this was an airplane, we'd all still be in the crash position to survive impact. Green shoots would be the flying equivalent of the seat back trays coming down and cocktail service coming through the cabin...so let's not get that precise. Let's just memer on..."Good Times Are Just Ahead!" You Acme-ites with us or against us?
Sick America Government having its hooks out is not just something down at the county assessor's office. It's also going on in Washington where unsatisfied with how many billions in secrets under the TARP and a trillion dollar healthcare plan, we're now reading how a "Proposed law would require pay for sick workers."
As a self employed person, I have to figure out how to handle the accounting of telling myself to stay home, since I am home, and how to pay myself which I'm already doing. These ideas from Washington are obviously the root of many substance abuse problems. I spend weeks trying to get this stuff right. --- Word that a girly-girl fight on a subway results from a cough in New York is a fine thing. Figure it'll all be repackaged by government PR wonks as the rollout of a new national fitness program, or some such.
Vote for Money The report that the "House repudiates report on Gaza war" doesn't mean to me that the UN investigation is wrong in its conclusions. Only that there was more money on the table behind rejecting it than embracing its findings. Congressional elections come next year and checkbook democracy is hard at work for you.
Washington Truth: Can't say No to Dough or you Go. Too bad no enterprising member of congress has figured up a rebate plan for folks in the district...ooops! Forgot about pork...sorry.
Why The Country's In Trouble The report in the Washington Post this morning that "Policies sought to add jobs without piling on the deficit" is amusing.
The fact, as any damn fool can see, is that there really is no free lunch. Yet, after making so many promises of free lunches, dinners, healthcare systems, etc. the folks in Washington have kinda gotten into lockstep group-think on this track. Looking under this rock and that for an idea which will magically unwind economic reality but just for this one special cause...that of employment is crazy. But then, consider who is doing the searching...
Unfortunately, every special interest group with a spending agenda has already looked under every rock, tilling up whole fields, too, trying to find the next magic bullet. Why, their perseverance inspires awe. As in "Aw sh*t, are they trying that same old answer again?"
Address This Web's about to run out of addresses in 2010.
Shake & Quake 5.3 off the Oregon Coast this morning. If the 2012'ers are right...this level of quake oughta be a nonevent by 2011. Not even worth mentioning amongst the 7's and 8's which ought to be along by then. Earthquake insurance? Going the route of buggy whips. You saw recently where it was estimated a 7.2 shaker in California could cost insurance outfits $19-billion?
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Coping: The UrbanSurvival Computational Challenge As I promised - last night Cliff High was on with Jeff Rense to talk about some of the work he's been doing related to 2012 and what could happen then as 111 centuries of tension-building in the sun comes to a head and the world faces the potential of a magnetic reversal which hold the potential to make things quite bad here on earth if it works out as it seems to have perhaps a dozen times previously. You can click over here to get a summary. Quite interesting reading. (20+ pages if you print it to read offline.)
Those stories about biblical floods came from somewhere - and was the story of Sodom & Gomorrah more than just a story? Are those so-called 'natural reactors' where high levels of radioactivity occur naturally really 'nature' - and all the rest of it.
The emails have been running like this from a ham radio/broadcast engineer type in Hawaii:
I'm one of those 'proportional response' kinds of guys. In other words, if I think there's a nonzero chance of global systemic social breakdown and then ballpark the chance at 2½ percent on any given year under present conditions, then over time I move assets and plans around such that 2% (or more) of my financial and physical effort can be brought to bear on the systemic meltdown problem. Which is why I probably have $6K worth of long-term stored food and another $20K in related long-term preps; everything from water to power to ammo to medical supplies and so forth. With me?
Using this approach, I figure I'll be able to stay ahead of the pack in terms of readiness for (fill in threat) and as the probability rises - as shown by early indicators) I will keep scaling in to threat-mitigation. It's almost like a dollar-cost-averaging approach to potential future calamity.
The approach emphasizes diligence in research and it's here that I come to the nubbins of the current problem. I need more data.
To be sure the Patrick Geryl, Calleman, etc work is interesting, entertaining, scary, and you know the rest of the list. But, given that we have some exceptionally bright readers, it would be nice to have someone who is an expert on computation fluid dynamics actually do some modeling. After all, both 11/11/2011 and 12/21/2012 are known dates and therefore the positions of the sun, the earth's position in orbit as well as tilt relative to the sun are known.
We also have a pretty good handle on the viscosity of water and rotation speed of earth. So given all of that (and toss in a handful of the previous work in solar dynamics if it can be found) then it ought to be easy to compute some important possibilities.
Again, all of this needs to be broken down into a series of tables so that we can have access to a wide range of scenarios so that a dumb person like me can look at data as we get closer and say "Aha...astronomical tables are drifting this much, so we could project the rate of change entry to be this much...and since we're at 32º degrees north, the ocean run-up ought to be this from rotational dynamics and the water washing toward us from equatorial bulge letdown should be this number here.
Then, if you would please, also whip up a Google Earth overlay using their topo data and do the computational overlay that would give general areas of the USA (throw in other countries, too) a planning guide for what the combined equatorial and oceanic rises would be.
If you've got any time leftover after this, an analysis of 'best places' to stand offshore on an unsinkable sailboat would also be appreciated. Part of me wonders about standing off near the poles (south pole being warmer that time of year, which would imply going on a world cruise in the spring of 2012 to make it south far enough with plenty of time on the clock) or whether simply 45º latitude would be best since as that 13.5 mile rise from the equator travels toward the poles, wouldn't it really stack up there as all the energy gets compressed?
Problems, problems...always computational problems. If the equatorial dynamics are such that things would 'stack up' at the poles, then it would wash ice masses into the oceans which would be one more rise factor - so it's things like this that could account for past accounts from antiquity of water rise coming in stages. The three (as some reports have suggested three stages) could be from oceanic moment, equatorial let-down, and then ice cap scrub off with some lag time between events. --- For now, I'm deep in my research: Is the 2012 stuff right? Big question. However, while I was noodling on the advance copy of Cliff's work released last night, I got to thinking that the PowersThatBe seem to always do their deeds with prior notice. Is it possible that 9/11/2001 was actually an encoding of 2012 in some bizarre way? I mean 9+11=20 and then if you remove the zeroes and flip the numbers in 2001 you could get *12*....for a 2012 hint.
Naw...too much coffee, I can tell. Or, is it?
Send me the computational results - even an educated guess would be fine since my background in computational dynamics where there are messy things like different heights of continental land mass barriers and such are kind of weak, to put it mildly.
At least I can see how three sets of ocean rises could occur. The amount of volcanism that would occur if the earth really were to stop rotating completely as 13.25 miles of earth drops to zero ought to be a once in a lifetime event. A very short lifetime at that. But, no point going out without a fight, eh?
Bottle of El Don to the best answer over the next couple of months. You bring the supercomputer and I'll pour shots for us.
2012 Emails A really good one from our reader who does the long-term EQ studies::
Things just keep adding on, don't they? You got that supercomputer booted up yet?
World Ungovernment Have spent a few minutes this morning rolling this email around - worth some serious thinking:
Damn fine point, all...and it's why I don't get all worked up with some of the folks who put a lot of emphasis on 'direct action' and such. All things tend to work out over time - just as the weather and seasons are cyclical, so too are grand plans for global conquest. Haven't seen one of those work out too well from the longer term.
Texas Humor You might like this one which arrived in an email this morning - a kind of mood changer from all the seriousness of the day:
And drop by tomorrow morning...we'll have more for you then.
Tuesday November 3, 2009 After the Dead Cat OK, so when the market tanked 250+ points on Friday, what should the market have done on Monday? A bounce, got it - the so-called Dead Cat Bounce. (A term my cat Zeus detests, b ut go with me on this and ignore him for a minute...).
So usually when a bounce happens, it will come close to either 38.2%, 50%, 61.8%, 75%, 80% and so forth...all well-described technical bounces. So out comes the calculator:
Thursday to Friday decline last week: 249.85 Dow points.
High of Monday compared to the Friday low: 170.85 points.
Divide 170.85 by 249.85. Answer: 68.38% which is close enough to 61.8% for me.
Another way to work it would be to look at the Friday low to Monday high run (218.79 point) and compare this with the Thursday high to Friday low, which would give you a 62.58% bounce which is even closer to the idealize Golden Ratio which is roughly 61.8%.
Not to draw this out (since I don't get paid by the word) but the upshot/generalization is that the DCB may be over and the markets may move lower today. What's this headline here? "US stock futures follow global markets down."
Why, golly sakes, how about that? You are looking surprised, right?
Dollar Bashing Department Here's a very interesting press release for you: Author Says G-20 Meeting in Scotland this Week about Dumping U.S. Dollar:
Kinda poetic, ain't it? Going to a legendary site of ball-bashing...except this time it's not golf balls... it's ours.
20% A Week Inflation Where? Right here in the USA. Proof needed? OK, then, how else would you explain the projected cost of the new healthcare bill going from about $1-trillion last week to $1.2 trillion in a report this morning? I figure that as 20% a week inflation, don't you? Seems it was down around $900-billion the week before...so there's something of a trend here, isn't there? --- No, don't bother calling Washington about it. The people back there aren't responding to pleas an d calls from the home district anymore. They didn't in the 2008 print out of money for bankers and they're not going to stop now. There's an "election" to raise money for and things like healthcare are a golden opportunity for fund raising, right? --- No point signing my petition to ban all members of the House and Senate from accepting a single damn dime from anyone outside of their home district. They'd NEVER pass that kind of pro electorate legislation. Why, that would destroy one of the main funding vehicles for MainStreamMedia! Get serious.
BBC No, not the esteemed broadcast journalists...I'm talking the British Bailout Crap which is under the heading "RBS, Lloyds get $51 Billion in Second Bank Bailout" from the UK's generous taxpayers. So, let's see...um...how brain dead are the UK's inhabs?
Let's consider the facts: Got Gordo Brown at the helm, the world's most intrusive camera system, and enough people spying on one another to make the STASI envious. Why these frogs are halfway to boiling - print up more money and hand it to the banker class! You bet!
High Costs of War Before you read the WSJ story "Suicide Toll Fuels Worry that Army in Strained" you might want to click up the 1970's Johnny Mann Singers version of the M*A*S*H Theme. Original title if you weren't conscious yet: "Suicide is Painless." It's not - as any surviving family knows and the Army is learning.
This Means What? The headline "Clinton urges restraint in push for Mideast peace" has me wondering WTF? Restraint in the pursuit of peace? I must of skipped a brownie or something. Oh, I see...she's really asking for folks to set aside their differences - check. That makes sense...much as anything does in that part of the world.
Climate of Abuse
Apparently, no one has explained to Africa's leadership that globalism has usurped the whole concept of level playing fields and this current nonsense about global climate change is nothing more than a new & improved version of colonialism as the expense of guess who? Why if all people in the world were equal, about the first ones to give up something would be the 20,000 square foot house/private jet setters and we just know they are not our equals.
Look: if genuine global equality (all souls weigh the same) was followed as a concept, there'd be 100% turnover of the global elite and that would never do... Would someone please explain to them how this industrial-colonialism stuff is politically correct and they are the bottoms, please?
Sheesh. Gettin so a fella can't dream of setting up sweat shops without crossing the palms of petty bureaucrats at ever higher levels of the game...
Czeched Off That one small step for globalism...as a "Czech Court gives go-ahead to Lisbon treaty."
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Coping: Flu, 2012 and Inconvenient Facts After I posted the couple of articles yesterday having to do with the 'swine' flu, it struck me that perhaps some discussion about inconvenient facts ought to be undertaken because inconvenient or everyone constructs their 'personal reality' from bits & pieces of what's widely available.
So let me start with this email:
Agreed! This is the part where we need to be extremely precise about what's being said. First, I didn't say the government has a patent on swine flu. What I did say is that there is a patent application circa 2005 for work in the field with assignees. A couple of readers sent me notes, the gist of which were "You're a nutjob - there is No Such Patent" and indeed there isn't. But the swine flu patent application was on the PatentStorm web site and it was showing as a patent application in the USPTO.gov searchable files.
My opinion after sleeping on this for a day is that there are any number of legitimate reasons why a group of researchers would be working on swine flu in 2005 and that government - particularly the Ag Department which claims jurisdiction over swine prior to market - would have an interest in such a disease.
Is it out of the question that the filing in the USPTO database is read? No. As of yesterday, the application was real as well as the proposed assignments. If they disappear today, oh well. --- This whole question of how we deal individually with clumps of 'inconvenient facts' is of critical importance now. Especially since we are quickly heading toward elections in 2010 which have the potential to either save - or sink - this Great Nation.
Wielding the power of mass media (the MainStreamMedia - MSM) incumbents with only a single term in office run up enough favors that they are able to effectively 'buy the office' by spreading half truths about their performance.
The inconvenient facts of the Obama administration, to generalize this a bit are:
The net result of which is Obama's poll scores have dropped quickly, but the PowersThatBe - which cut the checks and pull the strings in Washington have not grown noticeably tauter or looser. The Big Agenda - government beyond the people by a professional governmental managerial class - is sailing on as though nothing has happened.
And the list goes on. --- Faced with all this, each of us wakes every day and using the best media inputs we can find - given our own bent and prior programming, we update our 'operating Boolean Truth Tables".
Problems arise quickly, however, when a THEN conclusion slaps us upside the head and we retreat from acknowledging or accepting it as TRUE.
Some TRUE items, even when true reserve a 'fudge factor'. For example, even in a politician can show me piles and piles of IF/AND data and content they must mean TRUE about something, I'd never 100% accept it since the source (a politician) is never to be completely trusted and therefore whatever they claim has retains at least a 10% margin for BS. OK, 50% margin then. "Change" - remember that one? LOL.
On flu, we don't yet know what level of TRUE to reserve for possibilities that there is a global biological warfare outbreak between the various factions within the PowersThatBe and millions of 'regular humans' are caught up in it without being aware, but combined into a truth table of a particular sort, that is a supportable conclusion.
Am I saying "Its So! " No, of course not. But am I reporting that some interesting IF/AND data is going into my 'personal truth table' which has certain distasteful THEN consequences, well, yes. I leave a backdoor out with my xx% BS factor, but the truth table loading continues. --- Another topic that much floats about the net discussing is the matter of 2012. Is there some kind of Mayan Calendar that completes then? Is there something meaningful in the Cross at Hendaye related to that time as well?
Uh....the IF part of this is all pretty clear when you get back to the hieroglyphic level and start to read things not based on our current projections as to the intent of authors, but rather look strictly as the events they were pointing to.
Is the Biblical reference to Noah's Ark just a fable...or is it a handed down bit of history that is much less mythical and a whole lot more IF/AND than is normally thought to hold true?
You see what happens, right? Like tumblers falling in a lock, once you read the Bible as a historical timeline and match it up with Hendaye Cross, Mayan Calendar and the Vedic and Jain traditions going back many thousands of year, well, you have a problem.
That's what Cliff High will be discussing in some depth on the Jeff Rense radio program tonight. Click here to catch it live. 7 PM tonight. Also, be sure and check Cliff's web site, www.halfpasthuman.com when Jeff's show starts because he will be posting a tremendous amount of back-up material and some really cool graphics of what may be out there.
Notice I said may. In this case, I've got the may conclusion from this truth table up in my high 80's to low 90th percentile. The BS factor is continuing to come down. The reasons?
Just two of them to ponder here:
IF: Cliff's work in predictive linguistics has - since 1997 come up with references to "sun disease" and we're not talking Stanford University Networks" - we're talking "Biog thingy in the sky up there" which I know to be TRUE because we have been bouncing that one back and forth since before 9/11 - the first major tipping point discussed in advance as an output from the web bot project in June/July of 2001.
AND: even one of the following is partly true:
THEN it follows that we may be in a period of building government control as the power elite try to save their own bacon with 'secret survival projects' OR we might soon be seeing a noticeable increase in geologic activity as stresses within earth build up prior to 2012. OR nothing will happen and it will be another Y2K type event.
As to the first expectation, I assume you've read enough headlines to decide if government is coming more intrusive? And on the second point about earthquakes and such, a reader has generously contributed his latest update on magnitude 5.0 earthquake activity since 1973:
Is it all conclusive yet? No. Am I shopping for a 'survival pod' boat, just on the off chance that the data is correct? Well, now that you mention it --- YES!
Am I looking for the next mega quake? Daily - since there's what appears to be a long term trend reversal evident and sunspot activity has been extremely low this year. The solar cycle is late and is that a symptom of 'sun disease'? Maybe. --- I've always predicted my personal directions in life not on the maximum financial gain path. If I had, I would have been making piles in the internet bubble in the 1990's, then rolled into house flipping in the early 2000's, and I'd presently be looking for the 'next hot trend' in money making. That's not my approach, though.
Instead, my personal truth table is all about staying in the game of life with as little downside risk as possible. So confronted by something like global pneumonic flu will quarantining at the ranch for 6-months be an issue? Nope. Not that I'm looking forward to it, but it's doable.
Same thing with 2012. Is a small boat of the able to withstand rolling in violent oceans and a cobbled up sailing rig a sure-fire ticket to survival? Of course not. But it does shade the odds.
Best of all, if NOTHING happens, I still get to do some sailing again - a fine thing as I've been a small boat type since birth.
To the degree that anyone can, I recommend living life using this "heads I win - tails I win" approach.
One entry among my list of personal truth tables is this:
Personal decision: Steer clear of herds and steer by a different star...even if it turns out to be Orion.
If the 2012 researchers are right, we might get to name a new North Star some day. My jobs is to be ready to get my kids to that opportunity should the situation arise. Got enough stored away between your ears to write - and pass on - a scaled down version of Chapman Piloting & Seamanship? Or, have you ever considered some of the management lessons that work on land that can be discovered from a read of Storm Tactics Handbook: Modern Methods of Heaving-to for Survival in Extreme Conditions?
Like I said...everyone's got their own 'truth table" and it's the filling it out based on latest inputs which I find incredibly interesting. Here's a typical reader reaction:
Yes, latest I heard is it is on tonight and best way to get there is either be on time (their streaming bandwidth has limits - it's a finite world, darn it) so the best option may be to subscribe to Jeff's site where you can get downloads of past shows. Come to think of it, if you're listening to that right-left political drivel on the MSM, a subscription to Jeff's site - and George Noory's CoastToCoast achives - might open your head to whole new layers of thinking. Not saying I agree with some, most, or all of it. But gee, don't you think there's something more to life than Pelosi-bashing by the right to listen to on those car speakers? The world of .MP3 downloads has opened up some remarkable opportunities for 'concept chasing'. People being predictable - since most never go questing for new concepts & truth tables to try on - remain limited and range-bound within a very small hunk of mental real estate. Those are the corner posts of your personal coral. When you stop acknowledging corner posts and 'boundaries of inquiry' you'd be amazed what's out there. Something to ponder next time you gather fresh inputs for your personal tables whether its flu, 2012, or whatever. My First Rejection Slip You might recall a number of weeks back I told you I was entering the Washington Post's search for a new 'pundit' to write something new and fresh for the paper. Well, what do you know, they wrote back:
Not that I feel bad about rejection of this sort, since I read a few days ago that despite a rise in profits (much of it from their Kaplan higher education unit) the Post is still faced with falling circulation: In comparison, UrbanSurvival's rate of growth is a little different: In 2008 YTD through October, 8,617,453 pages are been served to interested readers like you. this year that number is up to 13,766,191 for the same exact period. Faced with the facts that a) the Post's circ is down more than 3½% and b) UrbanSurvival's readership is up...uh....59.74%....I'm left pondering which is the most likely case:
Damn those truth tables, anyway. Monday November 2, 2009 Government Complicit in Swine Flu? No, I don't recall seeing this one before, forwarded to me by a friend who got it on Saturday but see if this sounds a little suspicious - an application filed in 2005:
You can read the rest, but as my friend who sent it on asked "How much smoking gun do you need?"
I'm not ready to jump to any conclusions yet, without more reading. Besides, best I can figure, the government maybe saw this coming years ago and this is nothing more than reasonable research and possibly a preemptive move to keep the big pharma outfits from owning the underlying virus as well as their unique 'solutions' to dealing with it.
Of course, there's the next level of disease issue: Who then owns the thawed out Spanish Flu virus - the companies that thawed and cloned, or the Inuit people's from whom the virus was taken? Moot point since Big Pharma may not own the government, but through the captive regulator process, they've made a pretty damn substantial down payment on it.
Meantime, Ukraine is looking more and more like linguistic predictions of 'masked men' this fall.
Spanish Flu : Born Again Bioweapon? The hardest daily decisions in most newsrooms is deciding which story to 'lead' with. In television, that would usually be the story with their the catchiest images to would hold people over through breaks while in print it's a combination of exclusivity, insight, quality of writing, and the bent of the publication (news, glitz, business, sports, etc.).
Since the focus here in on long wave economics - and how they come creeping through to form a control layer over much of human behavior - you'd think the decision to lead with something like the Sunday Financial Times article by ace economist/realist Nouriel Roubini where he explains the "Mother of all carry trades faces an inevitable bust" would be a simple call to make; that's definitely 'above the fold, page one material.
But, around here, decision-making is never so cut and dried. Life has become incredibly complicated since mid 2001 when I started writing about a 'predictive linguistics project run by Cliff High at www.halfpasthuman.com - although at the time, there was not HPH and Cliff was much more reclusive. Here lately, the linguistics have - since last spring - been pointing to an October 25/26 turn date which would lead to a period of extremely high building tensions from that 'turn date' until two or three weeks later, by which time we should all be able to look back over our shoulders and say "Damn! That's what a turn date's all about..."
The hints are sketchy - but that's the nature of the technology. The event is supposed to be something on the order of 85% economic and 15% other and it arises from the GlobalPop portion of the modelspace, which means whatever it is, it should be more or less planet-wide and not just some series of events that puts the fear of God into some fraudsters and greedsters down on Wall Street (or in Washington, where they also seem drawn in sizeable numbers).
today, my bet - subject to change at whim - is that the 'swine' flu story will be "IT" in retrospect. Not only did president Obama issue the national state of emergency right on schedule, but there has been steadily building concern around the topic such the by the end of the week, the shutting down of most of Europe comes into view as a 'nonzero' possibility and with that would come the fulfillment of economic impacts.
Moreover, the whole 'swine flu' story is developing almost along two tracks in the public mind: One track follows the 'offishul' (sic) version which is that the 'swine' flu just arose ad hoc in a swine population in Mexico and spread to the USA and elsewhere. The second track notes that the evidence is thin on the swine part and that the dispersal and now coming of the killer version/bleeding lungs part of 'swine flu' to eastern Europe seems mighty awful suspiciously like a low-grade bio-war between East and West. But let's not get ahead of ourselves - this story will be incubating for another week or possibly longer.
The BIG story this morning, economic in nature, is that "Swine Flu Grips Ukraine". It's in the Wall Street Journal, after all, so it must have something to do with economics, right?
And indeed it does: Ukraine is something of a bread basket area to Russia populated by smart, hard-working people. Since independence in late summer 1991, Ukraine has been evolving into the 29th largest economy in the world on a mix of agriculture, aerospace, and manufacturing while being a critical chunk of real estate to the Russians since goods like natural gas from Russia to Europe through its borders.
As of this weekend, 53 people have died of swine flu, some by what's described as bleeding lungs which hark back to the 1918 Spanish Flu and cytokine storming where the body's defensive mechanisms got crazy and attack the host body itself.
Responding to the situation, the government is closing down schools, some businesses, banning large gatherings, and is trying to buy another 700,000 doses of Tamiflu from Roche. A stock to watch?
The thing we probably should watch over the next few days is how the neighboring countries fare. Already Hungary's health minister says the "Ukraine flu epidemic to create emergency in Hungary" as it may also do in Romanian, Moldova, Slovakia, Poland, Belarus, Russia, and anyone pulling into port from he Black Sea or the Sea of Azov.
Now we go into deep background mode on this with an email I received from a particularly well informed reader who expects this will be one for the history books that should be watched closely:
All of this is puts us on the scale of impact somewhere in the middle between inconvenient to bad on one end of the scale to horrific and Biblical at the far end. But the linguistics seem to be pointing to the most terrible of all yet to come with temporal hints around the time of the Whistler Olympics (late February to mid March) for another round of dispersal.
The nonzero probabilities keep adding up and at some point, even the most skeptical human has to reach the point of non-coincidence and conclude what's for now only a possibility: Namely that the factions of the PowersThatBe are at war with one-another and we - humans down here at the worker bee level - are the unwilling cannon fodder for the coming year or longer.
CIT Bankrapture Sorry, I can't take credit for the term "bankrapture" - it was sent in by a reader. (I did come up with Bankoween Saturday though and nice to see that propagate4d out onto the net...).
Bankrapture is what happens with a story that has been building for weeks - if not months - finally moves from speculation to court filing. With the CIT filing this weekend, we've now seen the 5th largest filing in US bankruptcy history.
CNN|Money/Fortune has compiled a handy list of the 10 Largest US Bankruptcies which you might want to jot down and keep pinned on the wall somewhere.
Think of it as Stockiflu to be administered when you hear another claim that "the economy has bottomed" or "things are beginning to improve". Clinical signs there of deliriums investums.
Gutting the Gutsy Meantime, Congressman Ron Paul (one who still deserves to be addressed The Honorable) says "Be pared for the worst" because 'The large scale government intervention in the economy is going to end badly."
Oh, and Paul's effort to audit the Fed has been effectively gutted. All at once now: Look surprised. --- Hope you weren't just munching into breakfast at that headline...sorry.
The Weak Ahead After losing about 260-points last week, the Dow is in dangerous territory in here with some fearing the worst (more declines) this week. But maybe not. The BIG NUMBERS which come out in a flurry on Friday include Average workweek, Hourly earnings, Nonfarm payrolls, Unemployment rate, Wholesale inventories and the mother of all: the Fed Consumer Debt report. --- Although I got the general idea right that the stock market would be taking it on the chin in here, my gold put options are turning into a dumb idea (I cleared some Friday) since the dollar is heading back down early this morning and gold seems to be going up.
From a trading standpoint, I guess a 125-150 rally (50% to 61.8%) from the Friday nosebleed ought to be expected before confidence runs out again. Short violent rallies are a characteristic of long-term declines, but as usual my only investment advice is "Live fast, die young, (but as late as possible) and leave a good looking corpse."
The "Ure Indicator" (Dow moves about 10X gold) suggests an early 70-90 points up, but I don't stick my hand in that garbage disposal. Don't know who's at the switch anymore. But see here: stock futures up before the open. How about that? Who needs circuit breakers who you control the switch?
Call THAT an Election? Let's see...charges of rigged elections, the opposing candidate resigns rather than put up with the charade and the headlines richly declare: "Karzai declared elected president." in Afghanistan. Why, I can see the strings from here.
Delay of the Day "Iran seeks experts opinion on UN fuel plan" as Iran drags this out...and out.....and.....
Most important move on this particular chessboard: "US and Israel reiterate to Moscow: Military option is on the table." And about the same time as the Ukraine super flu breaks out? Only a coincidence...nothing to see here...move along...
Leftover Spooks Department Dandy InformationWeek article on NSA plans to build $1.5 billion Cybersecurity Data Center. Don't look now but you're in it! Of course you won't really have arrived as a high impact human until you have your own subdirectory in it. None of this showing up in SQL tables on the fly, nossir...
(You guys just want me to upload my computer via FTP every so often, or do you already do that with online backup services? Just curious... No, make that just paranoid.)
Suspicious Death Follow-up A second - private - autopsy may be performed on that British nuclear expert who plunged from the 17th floor of the UN CTBTO building in Vienna recently. Worked on a lower floor, I hear, and at 3:10 AM in controlled access building...
--- snip and save section ---
Coping: Fall What? You know when youth is, right? That's when you make fun of people who aren't bright enough to remember when the time change happens. And so our story begins.
On the recommendation of my commodity guy JB, I decided to take Elaine to see a movie Sunday ("Law Abiding Citizen"). We showed up at the right time only to discover a nearly empty parking lot and a theater staff that looked as us (mainly me) funny when we asked about seating.
"Oh, they'll be seating in lemme see here....an hour and 20-minutes."
"Naw, that cain't be right! I thought the movie started at 2:05?"
"It does sir..."
"Well, what time is now?"
"12:37"
"You sure about that?
"Here, it's on the cash register and look on my cell phone..."
Crap. It started dawning on me. "oh oh...shoot, I thought it was next weekend, but that's the opening of deer season...damn it...got 'em confused..."
After a discussion with Elaine about what to do we decided to try the local bowling alley which has a half-dozen pool tables and so some munchies, bottled water (and hand sanitizers later) we were back and saw the movie - a little more violent that I had expected and the good guy wasn't so good but I suppose the message was Law Abiding Citizens aren't necessarily so - or something like that.
After so, after half a century of making fun of people who didn't have the presence of mind to reset their clocks he4re I'd gone and done it. I am terribly disappointed in our kids, though. Not one of them called me at 2AM to remind me to reset my clocks to 1 AM in the middle of the night Saturday.
Just as well, I suppose. They'd probably have called collect.
Surreality We're getting into a time when the word 'surreal' is due to be wandering through. Noticed that Sprott Asset Management's October newsletter was titled "Surreality Check part Two: Dead government walking..."
A Google News search on the term "surreal" finds the concept popping up in stories about president bashing, some tinsel town filler and a couple of car racing events.
Another place to look for it is at the workplace. This is probably the day with the best odds of the whole year to make it to work on time.
Roads to Isfahan and Lincoln You will be able to follow who's up on things - and who's not - when the net makes the transition from Tehran being to capitol of Iran to something else. --- I've long advocated moving the capitol of the USA, too, come to think of it. I always thought that something a lot more central would be dandy. Somewhere in one of the square states, for example. Why, just consider the huge boost it would give to the economy of the Midwest.
Besides creating a huge land speculation boom - just what we need for a change - moving out of Washington would give us a chance use more modern positioning techniques which in turn suggest that a self-descriptive name would be awesome.
And instead of the District of Columbia, how about we call the governmental environs something like "America".
Some examples of the new naming protocol: Tomorrow, America or my favorite Forever, America.
The new seat of governance should have different quarters, eights, or sixteenths for the different major lobbying groups. You'd know where you were just by knowing which quarter you're in. We'd put the booze lobby in Tipsy, America while the petroleum lobby would be in Greased, America. Won't go into all the diplomatic quarters - those would be after country names like China, America or Israel, America, or Russia, America. The partnering nature of foreign relations would become more apparent.
It could also focus on some underlying disconnects between industry and purpose. For example, instead of having a quarter called Pharmaceutical, America, we should maybe goal set it as Healthy, America. The financial services lobbyists might be placed in Value, America, while the gun lobby and defense industries could share Defend, America.
Yeah,
no chance in hell. But to my way of thinking, no one
should live in this country without reading THE definitive book
by Trout & Ries Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, 20th Anniversary Edition
One of the central points of the book is that a business or entity becomes what it says it is. So if after 20-years of saying "Quality is Job 1" should anyone be surprised that Ford just reported a billion dollars in earnings today and didn't take any public dough from trough to do it?
Of course not: Institutions become what they say they are, so it makes elegant sense that if we were to describe our capitol as "America" that's a word with positioning power several orders of magnitude more distinct than "District of Columbia"...
And wouldn't it fix a lot of our ills if instead of am amorphous conglomeration of inferences that go with the world "Washington" that we call it something more descriptive like "Freedom, America" or 'Tomorrow, America"? Forever, America sure has a nice ring to it. So does Integrity, America.
Maybe if reporters of all nations had to report from Integrity or Tomorrow benchmarking national progress and goals would be clearer.
Since we can't change the world, though, I guess I'll have to be satisfied for now calling our ranch Uretopia...and Washington the District of Confusion. I just thought it was a capital idea. How about Lincoln, Nebraska as a possible location....
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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contends OR
is not 100% incorrect OR
is 100% wrong OR
can be read as support of historical floods are period
recurrent events OR
is correct that archeology has been dragging its feet on
revising history to include periodic/episodic cataclysms,
OR
is correct, OR... 
."
People would literally fall dead walking across the street.
The bleeding out of the lungs was most likely the result of
a "cytokine storm" that so increased the vascular
permeability in the air sacks that blood filled the lungs.
The reason why the mortality in the 1918-1919 pandemic was
concentrated in the 18-25 yo cohort was that they had the
most active immune systems. 
.
If you read nothing else about sales and marketing, this is it.
