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- Friday about 8 AM Central Time ....some typos are fixed by
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A Few Weekend Notes This being the weekend (Saturday, oh-dark-thirty as I write) the content shared M-F free (for now) is only available to subscribers to www.peoplenomics.com. This is where I do 'in depth' reports - usually a similar column to the weeklies here on Saturday and then a 'biggie' on Sunday. Not sure where we will go this weekend, but the part two weekends have been "The Diaspora Handbook - Parts 1 & 2" were presented and if you live around the Gulf, you might want to too 'em over.
Subscriptions to Peoplenomics are what powers this site, the www.nationaldreamcenter.com site, and the mirror site, www.independencejournal.com site; your support is appreciated.
As for schedules, Monday is a holiday in the US, but since lusting after money (allong with sex & power) doesn't really take days off, we'll have a regular, although possibly shorter report here on Monday.
Till then, stay out of trouble, count your fingers both before and after fireworks, and remember only you can prevent forest fires. --- Culinary Note: Rather than the usual 4th of July fixings (brats, wieners, hamburgers, tater salad, beer, etc.) I've decided to put on my Chef George hat again and do Chinese cooking. I figure eventually we'll all be eating Chinese food, so I might as well get a jump on things; think of it as prepping the palate for the post-Dollar world.
Not to put too fine a point on it,
but the way I figure, China's ascendant right now based on their
positive mental attitude (PMA) as much as anything. When I
see things in the Amazon store like
Fortune Cookies Individually Wrapped 1 Lb - Buy 4, Get 5 Shipped!
Gee, you don't think there's anything to this "You are what you think!" stuff, do you? Gets me to pondering just how much US foreign policy is driven by "super-size us!" Friday July 2, 2010 Special Update Oil Outlook Darkens NOAA has just released the latest computer runs which model where the oil from the GOM disaster is likely to go in coming months. Here's the latest 90 day forecast. This is a summary chart of the "Percent of Spill Scenarios that will cause a dull sheen in a given grid as of Day 120 for a 33,000 barrels/day release for 90 days"...
Let'see if tyhis qualifies as "good news", shall we?
Our guess: If they used more pessimistic numbers (such as the 'closer to real' 60,000-100,000 bbl/day flow rates) things would be very much worse than even this. Not a happy situation indeed, although it does bring into focus why the past couple of weeks in our www.peoplenomics.com reports, we've been working on The Diaspora Handbook.
EmpSit: The 800 Lb (Misleading)) Statistical Gorilla Ah, the monthly unemployment report shows the unemployment rate (this'd be the offishul one) sank to 9.5% in the latest report out this morning:
I know "How can you have 225,000 Census temps drop and only 83K in new hiring and show an improvement in the unemployment rate?"
Here: Chew up this blue pill while I explain: You go over to the stats and scroll down to the workforce number. If jobs suck, just throw out as many workers in the workforce as you can. You'll find the civilian labor force dropped by 652-thousand for the month. Cool statistical trick, huh? I mean who'd have thunk it with all the people graduating from school and all, but remember, we are taken for fools in this stuff...
You see, if the labor force didn't have half a million people disappear (as the stats would argue) then the labor force would have been 154,393,000 which would make the employment rate 90.10 percent which means the unemployment rate would really be 9.9 percent.
Tisk, tisk...can't have that - so left ship off the equivalent of everyone inside the city limits of Seattle and forgitaboutit.
But not so faster, buckaroo. The Alternative Measures of Labor Underutilization table A-15, line U-6 reports a drop from 16.6 percent to 16.5 percent, which I think is within sampling error of no change.
Next, we haul out the ever-popular CES Birth-Death Model where the "we can't prove it, but we think the following jobs were created" guesses are summed up.
Since I'm an aspiring fiction writer, having 80,000 jobs made up in leisure and hospitality might play, but having 24,000 new construction jobs with the housing numbers out this week? Hand me the ViceGrips...time to start pinching myself. Guessing 147,000 new jobs just seems wildly optimistic, but take away half those and the report would really fall apart.
So June payrolls down and unemployment rate improves - that's how it happens. The only question is "Who's gonna believe that?" The answer in a half hour when the opening bell rings down on the street...
Where's My Holiday Rally? Seeing the markets pop back up a little bit wouldn't surprise me much today - not a huge rally, but there's an historic tendency for markets to put on a little 'good show' when the Nation gets into long holiday weekends.
Back in my earliest 'news days', I remember having nothing to read in the way of real news over my first Fourth of July. The newsroom jokes centered around "Let's rewrite Hints from Heloise?" to "How about we rewrite the farm report from last week? No one'd notice..."
The next major holiday that weekend that came along didn't see these same mistakes made - I had the crew store away 'undated feature material' so over the next couple of days, look for lots of fluff & puff in headlines since the talking heads won't be turning out as much stuff since many of them get holidays, too.
Peace at last? For another week...maybe....
The Depression to Come Seen your house repo'ed? Lost your job? Think the Greater Depression is already here?
Obviously, your confusion is excusable...it's still on the way, but not here yet. A dandy note in the 'expert view' section over at Forbes contributed by Delta Global Advisors chief economist Michael Pento reads like notes from around UrbanSurvival...and well worth your time.
So is the Christopher Rugaber/AP story "Weak economic data suggest recovery is fizzling".
Credit Union Woes/Grows Several times I've gotten emails asking "Are my savings in a credit union any safer than in a bank?" I dunno. Depends which bank and which credit union, I suppose, doesn't it?
Still, what I do know is there are three credit union mergers/losses to be watching:
No big financial reporting feeding frenzy, but worth noticing that banks are not alone in the tough times as we sink...
The "Israeli Mistake"? Article in the J-Post this morning says Israel is planning to apologize to Turkey over their boarding of a gaza-bound ship on the high seas. But even with some bucks to compensate flotilla members who were injured, we wonder if Israel will be able to get relations with Turkey normalized.
Was the boarding case the Israeli mistake in linguistics for a couple of years? Nope. Not big enough. THE mistake is still ahead, sorry.
See the Asia Times article "Anatomy of an attack on Iran" by David Moon. In particular, read this:
Then click over here are see when the dark new moon date is this month.... it's what day? I won't spoil it for you.
Watch Left Field North Korea could get hot too, since the US and China are playing "Chicken" in the Yellow Sea.
Bait & Switch What's a president with sagging popularity, a weak/auctioned congress to do with confronted with unhappy voters, a runaway environmental disaster and wars going badly?
Switch contexts! Bring on the emotionally hot "Immigration Issue". Yeah, that'll keep them peasants off balance for a few minutes.
And if it doesn't? What then? Ah...here's the answer...
Buzz Control CNN's iReport carries the headline "Facebook has deleted Boycott BP, leaving almost 800,000 fans hanging..."
If you think this is wrong, just wait until corpgov gets the new internet kill switch. Oh boy, won't that stifle dissent! --- Oil Related: Read Gordon Long's analysis of how BP's collapse could bring dowen the world...or at least give a Lehman-sized run at it.
Poor Pay for Cali Workers Word that Gov. Arnold is about to axe California state worker pay to minimum wages until the state figures out a budget oughta make this a glum weekend in the Golden State.
Quake Watch Since we're getting closer by the day to the remaining Great Quakes which keep popping out of predictive linguistics due over the balance of this year (as many as a half dozen left to go) we might as well get ahead of the curve a bit by reviewing reader Tony Ring's most excellent monthly earthquake data he's parsed off the USGS database for us:
This is an ultra-long view of the data - goes back to 1980 up there on the left and through June of this year on the right. Say, you don't see anything worrisome in this, do you?
Diaspora Department China is planning to move just under 350,000 people because of water availability.
Big Wet Spot Northeast Mexico is awash in hurricane Alex remnants.
Not getting much MSM play: Flooding in Romania has killed 22 people.
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Coping: Here Come Tax Hikes The story "Six Months to Go Until the Largest Tax Hikes in History" got me to thinking about things.
True, there are many Americans who ask "What do we get for our taxes? Mine are too damn high..." And, it's a fair question. But the other side of it seldom gets answered: What are we not getting because we pay our taxes?
A pretty decent lifestyle, compared with mob rule comes to mind. Not that mob rule ever works in the long term - can't think of any countries ruled by mobs that are seated in the UN currently - so that's one thing I figure our taxes buy.
Then there's the matter of national defence. Not that I support all present military adventures, but the other side of it is that we haven't had many airplanes fall out of the sky lately so despite the tax gripes (and the horror stories of six-year olds being on no fly lists and such) the fact is that (for now, knock on wood) things in the homeland seem pretty safe.
All that costs money - and since congress is a 'least pain' seeking enterprise, that is, seeking the least-painful course between total business domination and voter revolt in the home districts - someone's gonna have to pay.
The lasting legacy of the Bushies has been an attack on non-business-owning workers and an elevation of the bidding for corporate favors, which the Obama administration hasn't yet solved because democorps eat at the same trough. Consequently, I figure our taxes (or protection money, if you want to think about it that way) will go up. --- The impact of the tax hikes is, however, something I do have a little bit of control over where they hit in our personal lives. How much of a hit?
The bracket change that Elaine & I are in means that we will go from about 33% to 36% - another $1,700 per year, roughly.
I sit back and wonder "How does this fit into the Big Picture of Life for George & Elaine?"
For sure, we will be able to make up for some of the tax hike by reducing our cost of food. More and more is coming out of our garden, which at this time of year means eating cantaloupe and squash like crazy, along with fresh tomatoes with everything, including in the scrambled eggs for breakfast. Sp the garden will save us something.
We don't have many improvements left to make on the house, either; the new A/C, new furniture, up-to-date electronics, yada, yada...is all in and done. So what we save on decorating knick-knacks will save something, too. Property taxes shouldn't be going up too much, either, and if they do, a simple appeal of valuation should keep things in check.
Cars and transportation? Since I sold the 'red demon', my bill for Porsche parts will fall to zero - not that I spent that much, but it takes an item off the insurance. And since the Dependable old Daewoo has been sold, I figure my savings on the auto front alone will more than make up for the tax hike. I keep looking at buying an airplane (business use) but prices are s,till drifting downward as many owners of planes who are selling them have not yet recognized that we're in a falling employment/deflationary environment. Give 'em time.
Personal communications keeps getting cheaper; the annual ham radio club membership is still the deal of the century for keeping in touch on 2-meters, and the Go Phone with it's buy-them-as-you-go cell time plan contains our annual phone costs at something reasonable. Putting kids on a 'communications diet' doesn't seem like a bad thing either, especially since folks oughta be able to use government as the scapegoat - no point kids not tasting how government impacts their lives, too.
Moderation in finance may help, too. I'm solemnly sworn to try and hold my investment gains to 50% for the year, although I shamefully am running a bit ahead of that at the current rate. No doubt, that'll moderate, making my short-term taxable gains smaller.
All of which is to say that despite taxes going up, too many of our finest young people off defending oil & mineral-rich lands, and the droning whines from both sides of the political spectrum, there still isn't a better country to live in, near as I can figure.
Something that I assure you, we'll be keeping in mind this weekend as we observe what could be America's latest birthday observance before the corporate checkbook revolution is complete.
Enjoy it while we can.
And that might be a while: A new "Study says about 15% of people have genetic profit for long life."
EMP Question Inquiring mind wants to know...
It would provide some protection, for sure. Especially if the roof and metal sides were bonded and grounded. (Won't vouch for electrolysis effects where the metal touches ground, though. Still, for mission-critical electronics, I'd still put 'em inside a metal garbage can. I'm not sure where to find a big enough garbage can to store solar panels. Wrapping them in hardware cloth might work.
ZZZ Question Someone wrote in and asked (in so many words) "If you can Clif look at such terrible things in the future, how it is you sleep seeing the horror of what's to come?"
Simple. Can't speak for Clif on this but a retooled of The Serenity Prayer, using the more appropriate term "Universe" (important to keep the scale right) is one starting point. Self-medication, liberally applied, is the other.
Dream Places Although the odds of us moving are pretty low - if no one buys our homestead here in East Texas, lots of people have been using the economic slowdown in the Post House Flipping era to settle down in nice places. Here's one:
Heard a lot of good things about Idaho, but not enough ocean sailing there for my tastes - and winters are cold. We're still trying to figure out what's really better than where we are. Even Eastern Oregon has its drawbacks; not having producing oil wells within walking distance, just for openers, comes to mind. Oh, sure, some of the wells product only a barrel or two of wellhead condensate per month, but a half barrel of that will get us into town for groceries should it every come to that. Of course there may not be much in the way of groceries in such times, but that's another matter.
Time will tell - and like I've said, we're not exactly desperate. Worst thing that can happen is living happily ever after here....
7-11 Watch No, we didn't say that Israel would attack Iran on that date - just that in the linguistics that's about ther end of building tension and the flip over into release language.
A kind of WuJo note: A reader told me Thursday that she's been absolutely bedeviled with seeing 7:11 several times a day now. My advise was to name between 7AM and 8 AM and again between 7 PM and 8 PM...that oughta cut down on it.
'Token White Guy' Department Our former Houston Bureau Chief, who's been doing a little gold and oil development and trading of this 'n that down in Indonesia, happened to catch a piece on Lew Rockwell's site about how "Chinese companies 'rent' white foreigners. True that, he reports:
In fact, if you are an Asia gazillionaire and would like some 'token white folks' to trot through your next gala, send Elaine & me first class tickets and we'd be pleased to show up. I promise not to say anything particu7larly inflammatory and Elaine's not only good looking, but a good conversationalist. Our contact information is below. She'll sip white wine and I'll drink just about anything short of hazmat leftovers. We clean up good.
Unlike the Treasury Secretary, however, the closest to Mandarin we get is oranges. So if Tim tops the token list, so be it, our feelings aren't hurt...too badly.
Only catch to our offer? I get to write about the experience...which in itself would make such a command performance worthwhile. here lately the only use we've had for our passports is as phto-IF when traveling.
Hell, I'll even were the Chauffer's hat if I get to drive a Bentley. Little weak on wrong-side-of-the-road driving, though. been a few years...
Here's another reader note from overseas, along the same lines:
If the prose is familiar, it's because this reader is a professional clown, who has written in before ( he took umbrage as his profession being likened to actions by congress, if I recall).
I'm pleased to report, as your chronicler of change, that a professional clown is representing us as "Uncle Sam" in Shanghai.
It's ever so much more honest than having the State Department to it.
Send your comments to george@ure.net Reader Action Department: A Diaspora Handbook - Part Two Kitting Out the "New Nomads" Universe mostly speaks in a voice quiet enough to be ignored. But this week it was screaming at me about finishing off the "Diaspora Handbook". Not only did a client call and ask me to write up an 'escape plan' which would involve potentially fleeing from the south Florida area, but a different friend called and described his situation in South Florida and wondered "When do I need to be out of here?" To which my obvious answer was "You're still there? What part of yesterday isn't clear?" So this week a discussion of some things you may wish to quietly ponder if there's any chance at all of you becoming one of America's "new nomads" in the future. Where's the VW Microbus when we need it, huh?
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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 www.nationaldreamcenter.com and click over to the DreamBase.
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 1, 2010 Monkeys, Markets, & the Middle East I've spent a little time this week talking with my predictive linguistics pal Clif High about how the rest of this year could work out, given that we are already starting to see some 'linguistic fill' on language sets that ought to accompany a war in the Middle East.
Not to put too fine a point on how the 'secret sauces of time monks' work, but if you had a series of "Shape of Things to Come" reports and you could glimpse some ways into the future, what are some other tools that you could set up which would be closer to real-time than the months-long process of of sending out spiders and then shoving 100-million data reads through 400-odd executables hung together with baling scripts and chewing code in order to get a 'full' report on the future?
One way might be to set up a news-reader parser and run it against the distilled word-use expectations to see how things begin to fit in the run-up to war expected shortly.
Hypothetically, if you'd done this (in your ever so abundant free time) you'd notice that as of a couple of days ago, the Israeli attack on Iran would have passed about 9½ percent fulfillment on language use alone. That is, if you hypothetically were looking at (rss/atom) newsfeeds and such.
You'd start to get real puckered when stories like the one about Fidel Castro predicting 'nuclear war', not so much because of how Cuba/Venezuela and others will 'play' their cards, but because the linguistic expectations are being set just so...in a way that gets us all toward the post-apocalyptic world as shown in movies like "The Postman" and "The Road" - which unbeknownst to me showed up in Wednesday's mail, so as soon as I was done being interviewed by Devvy Kidd last night, first thing that slaps me in the eyeballs is the grim cannibalism scenes from "The Road". Like Universe is sending hints via timing of other? Hold that thought as example #1 which we'll return to in a minute. --- To put this discussion in the larger context (which is getting me damned by both peaceful Israelis and peaceful Iranians, FWIW) remember that in the SOTTC reports we were going to have a US general with mal/bitter words which was filled by General McChrystal's interview with Rolling Stone. That would be 'flavor guidance' for the July 11th-ish events, and these in turn would jointly be a kinda of soup-base for the real SHTF events of Nov. 8-12 this fall.
In order to make sure the SOTTC report is properly interpreted, after our 'gaming' this week of how this might all work out (which is to say badly) Clif wrote up a little article "Tick...tick...tick - Israeli Mistake, Confusion, and a chart" which you can read here. You go read it and I'll make sure these screen characters are still here upon your return, since Clif's report was wholesale ripped-off, you might as well get a sense of how things operate in the background which we haven't much talked about before, although this is just the scratching of the surface. --- Back? Good....
If the possible use of language-shift as a way of peering into at least the vaguest outline of the future seems a little far-fetch, and I'll grant you - it is - please feel free to read through the archives of this site where you'll discover that yes, there may be something to the idea that with enough processing horsepower, and a bent toward radical use of language, the future can be pretty accurately inferred.
Still, if you're skeptical, a general outline of concepts and processing path is outlined in this 75-page PowerPoint (as a .PDF) from last August when it was discussed briefly in public by a certain wild-eyed trader. --- As often happens when I get a report from Clif - and when we've noodled around the general linguistic expectations, I'll go to the Rolodex and send out bits and pieces to various contacts I have and solicit their best inputs, so that when I write my columns about what may be ahead for markets, they pick a kind of middle-ground between what Clif writes from the pure language side, and often as not, the runaway machinations of my own monkey mind.
Let me reframe this discussion and stir-fry it for you.
Clif's SOTTC report - output from the rickety time machine - is now 'in the wild' all over the net, since some stoopid MF really doesn't want us going about our pursuit of unraveling time in advance, so we persist...
But the next layer of analysis is what happens if you turn it over -- Clif's summary of change-to-come -- to an experienced 'war gamer' type. You ask 'em something like "Is there a credible way we get to his outcome?
Since Clif and I have problems figuring how we could see such a 120-day gap between a possible Israeli attack in mid July against Iran, followed by three months of 'simmering' time before global thermonuclear war, I reach into the Rolodex, send a request, and here's the analysis that comes back from an expert 'war gamer' that explains our three-month hysterisis period between nuke production strike and GTW in November. Please appreciate that for reasons I hope are obvious, the identity of the war gamer must remain anonymous.:
How to Have a Bad Summer:
Pentagon-class analysis, indeed, but for purposes of matching up linguistics and events as they arrive real-time, a kind of mental shorthand is needed. you know, an analogy that's simple, compact, & portable.
The big picture is that Iran is off on its own self-interests while Israel has its set. The two are set to collide.
How the collision will occur is almost analogous to the 'crumple zones' in an automobile. The 5 MPH bumper will be the first part of the car sacrificed...that'd be the initial attack on the Iranian facilities.
Next to go will be an overwhelming response within the proximity of Iran by its naval forces liberally equipped with SS-N-22 Sunburn missiles.
What I don't tell my experienced gamer(s) up front is that in the linguistics we have the loss of at least one US aircraft carrier (and other surface assets) in long-ago modelspace in the ALTA reports. Revealing this to the 'gamer' might color his vision, and besides, we hope that stuff is all wrong. Still, it lingers in a way that makes it being a processing artifact extremely unlikely, so time monks walk around depressed about the prospect of a carrier sinking as one 'read' of the future costing 6,000 lives as a whack....
With the 5 MPH bumper gone and the impact zone extending aft toward the passenger cabin, we can envision multiple rounds of shuttle diplomacy trying to defuse further escalation, but likely for naught. The Muslim states would be likely respond with some type of oil embargo, which would then cause the US to consider the "restrictions on travel" which have also been in the linguistics for a number of years - a worrisome fact in itself because in general, the larger the lead-time with a linguistic shift, the larger the headlines seem to be upon arrival in real-time.
I don't suppose we need to discuss the possible impacts of having a female Secretary of State in the possible crisis? Yes, all for women's rights, personally, yada, yada, yada...but the reality on the ground in the M.E. is that the flashpoint groups, especially the more extreme Muslim states have little-to-no regard for women, as evidenced by the murder of Benazir Bhutto.
As the sheet metal crumples even further aft, events compound for the US with continuing impacts from the Gulf, which while they may have remained manageable in "normal times" (given that the Gulf alone may infer at least a 30% decrease in stock market values as key Southern production capacity is stripped offline by pollution effects) the further weight on the President will be the need to remain 'in control' of the situation; The first job of leaders is to lead.
The presidential decision-making processes outlined clearly if you know where to look, such as the "Overview of United States of America's National Security Strategy 2009" which lays out the pre-Gulf Spill expectation sets, that become even more oil-dependent with the Gulf going effectively offline.
Was the gulf disaster a deliberate prelude event? It'll never be known positively since a negative can't be proven...no point going there. What is....is. --- No, Global Thermonuclear War (GTW) is not in the cards for sure this fall, it's just that the magnitude of the tipping point Nov. 8-12 is about 4½ days, which dwarfs the 2001 9/11 tipping point which was a matter or only 3-4 hours of 'tipping'. Moreover, the emotional release period of 9/11 (wailing the loss of lives) was about a week's worth; this November release period yields a 'wailing/mourning' of 2½ and then tapering off.
It's also global in nature, although it begins in the US and propagates.
Does is have to be GTW? No. It could be something else; but it would have to be HUGE and start in the US. Maybe a New Madrid 10.0+ quake, east coast subsidence, and then rest of world shaking itself to death would approximate the change state, but Clif's not so sure. The reason?
The November tipping point is an all-entities affair. In modelspace, an event like crustal shift would likely peek out of the Terra entity first, then spread. Sorry, this tip doesn't do that.
Other possibles? Oh sure...aliens showing up and blasting cities to smithereens with death rays as in "War Between the Worlds" would do it, or so might the Earth swallowing up whole regions with an outbreak of sink-holes which - are they? - related.
You've seen all the sink-hole stories? Amazing change-state going on there.
But, unfortunately, Occam's Razor says the simplest explanation has better odds than most, so as I go through the headlines, stories like Debka.com reporting that the "Secret Israeli emissary fails to cool Turkey's animosity" and the J-Post headline "Iran: Sanctions won't stop us" remind me that we're on something of a clock.
While the Dakota Voice headlines today "Another report of Israeli preparations for Iran Strike", recent US ship sailings including the largest ever joint sub deployment from the west coast a few weeks back, all point to this summer being 'break point'; jets and equipment can't be moved up for an attack and then left indefinitely. There's a logistic and maintenance clock now running.
Sorry to begin with such a detailed discussion about something not specifically economics or Second Depression related (although it is, in 72-point bold), but trying to scalp a few bucks out of day trading seems sheer folly and a distraction against the bigger picture - the rock ledge the lemmings are about to run off this fall.
And as though to make its point, an email popped into my inbox while I was chatting with Clif about this stuff earlier in the week: "Waiting until November will be too late. Act now!"
We now return to our regularly scheduled (and some what less serious) morning report. We'll advise you where to tune for news and official information when it all shows up.
Hopefully, we'll be completely wrong.
How Go Markets? Futures are down this morning, and since this is the beginning of Q3, there are plenty of reasons to expect there to be low prices for a few more days. Big players jam down everything after unloading them a week or two before the end of quarter which is why the decline, got it?
Now what happens is the Big Boyz will force things down for another day or two, and then jam them up...so I am looking for a low in the next week-two Maybe around the 12th? Then a rally 'round kind of thng. Wars are good for the economy, eh?
I could draw how I expect stocks and metals to do as an overlay on Clif's chart, but that'd only be about money and that game is over, plus or minus a few months.
Laughable to think in terms of rich in a radioactive world, isn't it?
Construction spending and auto sales in the session today may provide a push this way - or that.
Reader note:
Think that was fun? Wait for the next couple of weeks....
The weekly unemployment numbers just out:
Corrupt Markets Great read over at Raw Story about how "MSNBC's Ratigan: Stock market an 'obviously corrupt' fraud." --- Had a great conversation with my friend Howard Hill on this very point yesterday while I work on a gravity monopole detector as a vector for a new black box trading tool. Howard figures that there is so much frontrunning going on, that even if I could get a 75% correct call rate out of a black box, it would likely be spied after 20-30 trades. Seems all the frontrunning programs are set up with pattern recognition so that anyone who comes into the casino of Wall St. with a real winning system (like card counting, eh?) is found out about by The House and the house then frontruns the trades - or makes one go deliberately south in order to spoil the new black box.
Just so's you know, apparently the frontrunning systems (according to rumor) won't hit until after some number of successful trades...so run your system accordingly.
Junk Buyers The Federal Reserve "..Made taxpayers unwitting Junk-Bond Byers" says a Bloomberg report. --- "Read the prospectus before investing" apparently doesn't apply to the know-it-alls in Washington, which might go some distance to explaining why we're in crap-soup as a nation.
Gore's Warming The headline that in Oregon, the "Portland Police reopen Al Gore sex abuse allegations" might explain why Tipper split, huh?
Speaking of Divorce Lawyering You see the Tiger Woods settlement reports?
Whale of a Tale A monster whale-munching whale has been identified. But only 17-meters? Wonder if it's related to the smaller killer whales?
Wrong Solution I couldn't help but think while reading the report that a "Doctor testing dangerous drug to 'prevent' lesbianism" that the medical types involved in this don't understand that a wide range of sexual preferences is a business model.
How so? think about it: In an old-fashion hetero world you've got only one product line to sell. Male/Female products.
But, thanks to marketing of multiple preferences, you now have male/male marketing, female/female products and marketing, and old-style male/female marketing. See the magic? One market becomes three, or if you toss in trannies on both sides, maybe five.
So come on! Get with it! Sexual orientation is a business model!!! Why ever would you think it otherwise?
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Coping: Personnel Notes Say, here's a reader note with explaining:
Let me explain how he did it: Eat enough onions and no one will come within 10-feet of you. No human contact means no sickness. Capiche?
930 Replacement With my red car gone, and looking at airplanes, several people have sent me reports on the new 'flying car' that's making the rounds.
Unfortunately, it's a two-seater and about $100K over my budget, but otherwise interesting.
Collect Numeric IP Addresses Reader sends this:
Well, should be obvious that we're NOT supposed to know any large Truths - that'd make us...well...equals...and despite all the talk about equality in the world today, real equality comes from equal access to information.
So to be an elite you just need better information, which is why the linguistics project is such a thorn, but the readership has been small...
So start to collect numeric IP addresses and set up all your favorite sites as numbers - no verbose/spelled out addresses. That's a way better start than most people will have... --- Sorry for the short coping section, real work in the first part of today's report. Time for more coffee now... TTFN
Wednesday June 30, 2010 The D Word Gets Traction Although I've been writing here about Depression 2.0 rolling out since 1997, or so, it's been interesting to see how as the evidence mounts that this won't be a double-dipper, but more a dip & crash affair, how the term "Depression" is starting to sneak its way into the MSM.
"High unemployment, lower stocks and growing worries. Is this 1930 all over again?" wonders a Tech Ticker/Yahoo headline.
Uh...you mean like what's been our masthead (top of page) for a half dozen years kinda thing? Why, who'da thought? --- Today's market action should pop up a fair bit just based on all the green lights coming out of Europe already today. So far though, they are mixed.
When we see big declines like yesterday's little nosebleed, it's not uncommon for there to be a bounce anywhere from about 33% all the way up to 70%, which has me wondering if I should blow out of all short positions in the preopen market - and I may (or may NOT) be out of shorts by the time you get around to reading this. (Since THIS IS NOT STOCK MARKET OR FINANCIAL ADVICE - just ramblings of a trader, no harm, no foul.)
Hand me a dart, wouldja?
Housing Improves One reason (or at least it may be called a reason by some) is that the US Housing picture actually improved a bit in the latest Case-Shiller/S&P Housing report out Tuesday:
I happen to think this report is 'golden' - damn fine work and about the only caveat to keep in mind is that it reflects conditions in April and we're within spitting distance of July now.
Where the housing data turns into a roulette wheel is when you consider that it clearly documents the first dip but since the rise in housing YoY hasn't rolled over yet, it doesn't point to any second dip. Give it time.
Later on today, there's a purchasing manager's report which may give a little better sense of what's ahead, but even more oughta become evident when the Construction spending coming out tomorrow along with car and truck sales.
Friday will be the 'biggie' though, with employment, nonfarm payrolls, hourly earning, average workweek, and factory orders all landing.
Cash? Gold? Or what?
Beats me... I haven't seen much movement, either and I've been looking. Still, a couple of thoughts: The linguistics do get things wrong - it's not a perfect system and more often than not they are off by a day or three. I'll just keep watching. --- Tuesday it became apparent to me why I have been following what I figure to be a reasonable mix of assets: part gold and silver (half a dozen coins and a gun to protect 'em) and a TreasuryDirect account with some dollars in it (protected by a halfwit congressman and a couple of useless senators, but only until November elections, I hope).
So one of my friends calls up Tuesday and says "George, is it time to sell my gold yet?" We chat, I waffle.
30-minutes later, a different friend calls up: "George, I just bought a little gold - should I buy more?" We chat, I waffle some more.
I've thought about emailing them each other's phone numbers, though...it would sure reduce my workload. When the change in gold/silver direction becomes apparent, I'll move as necessary. Month-end gold and silver prices have always been a little dodge-headed (to use a cowboy term). --- Couple of other things - gold related... Remember that idea about strapping a gold coin on your wrist in lieu of an overpriced wristwatch?
And my commodity broker JB was a little more direct...
OK, bad idea. How about Derringer earrings? Next!
Hurricane Hunters & Fishers Although we have our 'survival platform' in East Texas fore sale (brochure), it's nowhere near certain that Elaine and I will actually move to the Pacific Northwest. Despite summers being a more humid version of hell, the other three seasons of East Texas (too windy, too cold, and too rainy) are passable, except during hunting season when things usually take a turn for the worse.
Several people thought - when I first mentioned this a few weeks back - thought we sounded desperate about moving; we're not. I have been dutifully checking our GPS position every day and, near as I can figure, the GPS reassures me that my office is still within 2DRMS error of where it was when the oil spilled 500+ miles away.
On the other hand, the first hurricane of the season, Alex, is about to make landfall on the Mexican mainland south of the Rio Grand Valley (RGV). If you happen to own a kite shop in Corpus Christi, this could be a godsend.
If you happen to be
planning some Saturday lake sailing on Mexico's lakes in the
region (like
Sugar
Lake/ Presa Marte R. Gomez) you have just time to order Lin
Pardey's Storm Tactics Handbook: Modern Methods of Heaving-to for Survival in Extreme Conditions, 3rd Edition
If you're wondering why the storm is not coming more up into Texas, the answer is simple: The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Associate has a webinar today called "Thunderstorms and ATC" which I'm sure helped frighten Alex away. --- If Elaine and I don't sell our homestead/goat ranch/ survival platform, we'll probably get an airplane (which explains why I'm doing webinars on severe weather flying, and such). Still undecided is the Big Question of whether staying here with a small four-place bug-out flying machine is best, or selling here and going back to the PNW with maybe getting another 40-50 foot sailboat bug-out option is a really hard choice. I refuse to give in to the clothes and shoe barge requirement that goes with any boaty plan discussion.
But then again, marinas just rent 'holes in the water' with three cleats to which mooring lines are attached and a plug-in for boat power, which is also a racket...so these are things we think about for hours on end, or at least till cocktail hour's long over the horizon and dinner ends up being at 9 PM...
Terra - Not So Firma At leasta in Oaxaca where they had a 6.2 overnight. Location is south of Acapulco a ways but makes me wonder about what this will mean up the fault line to the north...you know, up past Puerto Vallarta and up in the Sea of Cortez....
Mexico - A Narco-State? I was remarking yesterday on the murder of a Mexican regional governor this week and asked our Mexico correspondent "Is it entirely wrong of someone in the US to get the feeling that Mexico is descending into third-world drugvolution?" His answer?
There's a grand historical rhyme going on between Prohibition in the US (which ran from 1919 to 1933 when the Volstead Act was passed allowing some booze to be made again) and the modern, if not misnamed, "War on Drugs".
We could argue about the level at which anti-drug policy has been played as being different - and whether the starting date of 'the war' was 1973's formation of the DEA, or was really when it became a cabinet-level effort in 1993 under Bill Clinton is not the point.
Only that it rhymes and when a real Depression is underway, decriminalization of drug (or booze) is allowed by government for two reasons: It placates the people and it cuts costs of government. No doubt in my mind that in a few short years as deficit reduction plans go up in smoke, a different kind of smoke will become less illegal and thus the financial clout of drug cartels - on both sides of the border - will be eliminated.
But for now, it's a dance on both sides of the border and as our correspondent points out, the market is presently winning despite the press releases and hype.
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Coping: Musing on Newsing and Speaking of Speaking A number of items have been piling up on the 'news hook' under the general term "speaking".
I suppose, though, that an explanation of the words "new hook" might be of interest, too, since I can almost hear shoulders shrugging as I write it.
News hooks once upon a time in the days of real (e.g. non corpgov news) were real. Folks like me would go into a newsroom with multiple teletype services (at least the AP and UPI wires and for folks with big budgets maybe a newspaper 'A' wire and a sports wire, too) and they would tear stories off the wire service and hang them on various news 'hooks' which were oftentimes just 16-penny nails smashed into a piece of 1-by-4 which was convenient to the teletypes.
This was back in the day when the AP and UPI news was distributed on a leased telephone line and the printers were the old Model 20's. Here's a sample video of one of the old machines running.
As you watch the video, realize that the clear plastic cover of the Model 20 flipped open and stood back from the front at about a 45º angle and the top edge of the plastic was sharp.
After a while, a junior newsman, or copy editor in a paper, would get pretty adept at ripping the copy nice and straight and that's where the term "rip & read" news came from; newscaster like yours truly who might come to work early Saturday morning and instead of doing a 100% rewrite of a story, we'd simply 'rip & read' the first several hours until the aspirin and coffee kicked in.
The Model 20's were a great inspiration, too, since in most radio newsrooms the teletype(s) were located close to the newsroom and the sound of the machines in the background was a real part of the newsgathering 'feel'. Not only did they add a certain 'feel' to the newsroom with their distinctive cross between heavy grease and Cosmoline smell and the black ribbons with white paper (AP) or blue ribbons (UPI) and yellow paper, but they served as a kind of metronome for when the coffee eventually kicked in - give young up and coming news reporters a 'metronome' to write against.
So if I can seemingly crank out tons of original copy early in the morning, it's less a credit to any skill, so much as a deep-seat personal competition to turn out as much usable copy in an hour as the teletype next door. --- Occasionally, Universe provides amazing sync-winks that aren't apparent at the time...in fact you might not even 'get 'em' until in this case about 40-years later.
This tale begins in about late 1972 when I was news director using the air name "George Garrett" (following Ken Matler, who followed BR Bradbury in the job) and doing morning news at KOL in Seattle at the time we had just received our first IBM Selectric...which was really cool because at last I could outdo the Model 20. On this particular morning, I remember turning on the Selectric only to hear some odd noises and the machine wouldn't type.
Opening it up, I discovered that a mouse had overnight crawled into the machine and made itself comfortable. KOL at that time was down on Harbor Island (which friend & famous author Burl Barer writes about here) nestled among the Port of Seattle containership operation which was booming at the time. No shortage of mice.
Everyone in the station got a good laugh out of it - even got a mention in one of Emmett Watson's columns back in the day. He was the Seattle answer to the SF Chronicle's Herb Caen...and was an early promoter of Seattle's quality of life movement, founding "Lesser Seattle" in answer to the business community's promotion of the northwest via a promotional group called "Greater Seattle".
All of which gets a long way from the now appreciated sync-wink Universe, which gets to what point?
I was really one of the first people on the planet to have 'mouse in the newsroom' - it wouldn't be until the mid 1980's that mice became even someone common at the editor's desk.
As usual, I was way ahead of time...again....and in a way that profited me not a bit. Universe and I have that sort of relationship, I guess. --- On a more practical note, I was a guest recently on an internet radio show called "Second Opinion" with Dr. Ron Klatz...and I forgot to mention it. But no worries - you can hear the interview here as an audio stream.
Coming up this evening I'm scheduled to chat about this and that (more'n likely oil dislocations and the currently evolving economic Depression and how to turn those lemons into lemonade) with Devvy Kidd, who's got a long history of newsing and Constitution supporting; not particularly blessed pursuits in the eyes lately of what I call corpgov, which seems to have a little more hemmed-in version of what freedom is.
To go with your coffee: A delightful nugget to ponder, this quote dropped on me by a friend in amongst yesterday's emails:
Yep, that Jeffersonian view of freedom still rings true, at least with a few of us, though the numbers seem to be dwindling. Traded away for 'special privileges' which more often than not translates to 'some are more equal than others.'
Just Send Money Again today, my inbox is flooded with the usual junk emails, which gets me around to my first project every day. I collect emails with heading like this one which says "Save up to $100" with XYZ's Fourth of July Sale".
Then I send out a handful of apologetic notes that read "Dear XYZ, due to the economy, I am unable to buy any products at this time. However, if you wouldn't mind terribly, please send me that $100 I saved as I could sure use it now..."
I go out to the mailbox every day...hoping....
Wednesday at the WuJo (The WuJo for the newbies is where science and woo woo duke it out on the matte finish screen...)
Those 8s that people are putting in their wallets continue generating stories of uncommon financial events shortly thereafter:
We'll take this as an indication that Bentonville, AR's economy is way better than the rest of America.
Tuesday June 29, 2010 Crash Window - Day Eight Day trader barf bags at the ready? This oughta be a screaming "Downside Dandy" today. In case you're a bit slow on the uptake, the European markets are down about 2 - 2½ percent in the preopen to the US markets, which means that the Dow and other major indices could easily shave off, oh, about 200-300 points for the day when the carnage is done later on.
A number of things seem to be driving this. As you may be aware, oil which has been up a bit on hurricane jitters has come down under $77 which is what? Deflationary.
Then there is the matter of Japan which reported that its economic recovery dreams stayed just that - dreams - in May. Until the US car-buying mood, or some really hot new electronic whizzies come out, I'm not holding my breath. I don't think you should either, since personal electronics is almost to Star Trek tricorder levels now, anyway. Pick the aps, download them for your personal lifestyle, and there you go.
Since the overly-hyped G8/G20 this past weekend didn't pass a bank tax, which would have resulted in banks having another teat to suckle, w8ild-eyerd speculation on the banking sector being the new "financial answer to utility stocks of the 1930's Depression" have just gone 'poof'...which is really what the noise will be as trading continues to the downside this week.
You are permitted not to notice, though, since the real noise will be coming from the pits where there oughta be much gnashing of teeth and blood pressure problems to be entertained with. Double up the meds day, for sure.
To help you remember the thresholds, the NYSE/Euronext has a circuit breaker page that you oughta have bookmarked, since the downside action might accelerate later in the week. Might even want to print this out from their website and put it in your wallet/purse for the next few weeks since we might actually need to refer to it:
Since Robin Landry has a downside target of anywhere from 8,600 down to 8,300 for this move, before we rally back to the 9,500 range (and NO this is NOT trading advice...just what some of us smarter than the averages bears are doing), this oughta be just a fine day of trading. --- I'd be watching the market really close around 9 AM Eastern (1/2 hour into today's trading) since that's when the Case Shiller/ S&P 20-city real estate numbers come out. Potential market mover. And an hour after that CONsumer CONfidence is due.
Parachutes ready? Boy, I love being short in this kind of markets. Yee haw!
Secret Agents Remember the old Johnny Rivers' song "Secret Agent Man"? Think there was even a TV show by that name for a while, but going that far back into the memory vault hurts at this hour. Instead, be entertained with the report in the NY Times about the bust of 10 people as suspected Russian spies.
Why is this important? Why now? Well, with the Russians having an interest in what goes on along their southern (Muslim leaning) tier (places like Georgia, Abkhazia, etc come to mind) the timing means something since the US and Israel reportedly are put outposts into Azerbaijan to facilitate hitting Iran later this year. Think of this as a little rap on Moscow's knuckles.
Wonder if Obama and Medvedev will tweet this one out in public? LOL, just kidding. (Wonder if Apple had given them red iPhones?)
Annie Get Your...er...Lawyer? Hell, old as I am, I can't remember back to 1946...and maybe you can't either. So a refresher from Wikipedia is in order.
"Sherman, set the way-back machine to 1946...we're off to see Ethel Merman in Annie Get Your Gun".
Wait! No, we're not going to get into the Mr. Peabody & Sherman scandal again! This was just a cheap writer's transition to bring up the topic of guns.
Which - as this horrible exercise in 8th grade level writing continues- saw the US Supreme Court come out strongly in favor of in a Monday decision and which is likely to result in a flood of lawsuits in gun-control states like New Jersey.
I'd continue this scatter-gun of concepts, but by now, you're probably wondering if someone has taken leave of their senses. Surprised you'd ask.
Mexico saw a brutal assassination of a regional governor candidate yesterday.
Been a while since I have heard from my friend & correspondent in Mexico City, but one of the questions I ought to ask him is "Is it entirely wrong of someone in the US to get the feeling that Mexico is descending into third-world drugvolution?"
Well, Well Department Not too much of a surprise in this, but BP had apparently staked its future on offshore deepwater drilling according to inside documents summarized in the UK Guardian. --- While we're on Diaspora watch, which is probable later on this year as the spill impacts widen out, Steve Quayle spied this story about foreign troops doing training up in Tennessee and sent it along.
I think it's fair to say that Steve and I are both wondering how many foreign troops there are in the US at any one time, especially how many might be used for domestic [whatevering] when evacuations around the Gulf become obvious/necessary this fall due to pollution impacts? --- Good questions these, but the MSM (MainStreamMedia) will probably keep dancing around the hard questions. Must not be much money in truth-telling, huh? Defend the paradigm because that's where the profits are - I see the logic, alright...so fine, whatever. Not everyone is an idiot.
"Where's My Change?" Department Apparently, you and I may not be the only people wondering if the present occupant of the WH is a short-change artist. Both houses of Congress are planning to debate the war(s).... you know, the one(s) that we were promised would be over?
Mass Consciousness Alert Wonderfully informative article from the www.trendwatching.com folks about the phenomena of "Mass Mingling". Dangerous stuff this: People meeting people...talking real life stuff. You know this has to scare the crap out of the PowersThatBe.
Peasants of pre-revolution France come to mind? I think of this as "The masses starting to mass" part of global consciousness rising...
Fashionable Protest / Million Dollar Idea There are times, I think to myself "Self? You know people do the damndest things..."
Take for example the report today that "Israeli diplomats sport jeans, sandals in wage protest..."
While it's an interesting story to read, it strikes me as one of those huge paradigm defender telltales/revelations. Grand lesson in perception management come from this story...
The way I figure it is this: The people I know from my software days, most of whom still wear jeans, sandals (and drank coke, ate Twinkies and such) were really very comfortable and made more money than most people can imagine.
Most of these silicon forest /silicon beach denizens don't wear more than sweatshirts and jeans even in the finest restaurants...they don't have to...even now. For all I could testify, the folks I know with Amex black cards may not even own ties...at least I've never seen any of 'em wearing one.
So how is it that people still wear 'suits'? Apparently, clothing is an important statement of 'royalty' in today's diplomatic world. Which shows you how out of touch diplomats (in general) are with global humans. Most of us wear jeans and a golf shirt, sneakers or Hush Puppies and we're very damn comfortable, thank you. --- All of which gets me to a whole new fashion statement I may try out: I'm thinking about taking a 1-ounce gold Maple, putting a strap on it, and wearing it like a watch.
Why? Well, one of the great benefits of becoming truly independent is being able to ignore time. But, since people put watches costing thousands on their wrists in order to impress other people, I got to thinking, why not just strap on an ounce of gold and call it good?
When someone asks (as they invariably will, seeing an ounce gold coin on the wrist) "What times is it?" I'll be able to look back and say quite honestly "I don't know...nor do I care..."
About here I expect they'd say something like "Isn't that a wristwatch?"
"No, that's a .999 fine Gold Maple leaf. I don't watch clocks. I t reminds me to watch my money. I wear so I can point out to the Rolex types that they're on the clock. I'm not."
Why this isn't a
fashion astounds me. Dressing down diplomats seems like a
good thing, too. ==== snip and save section ====
Tuesday at the WuJo Coping: Mapping Internal Lands Several times in the past I've written to you about incredibly vivid dreams I sometimes have. One of them, if you flip back to the April 19th edition of this column under the headline "Irwin Allen's Dreams" I told you about a strange but incredibly vivid dream I had the night before the Gulf oil disaster. If you missed the column, here's what I wrote about the dream:
Of course, about 18-hours later the events down in the Gulf happened and I've wondered ever since about the proximity of this dream to events that happened 18-hours later - the explosion and fire on the BP rig that will eventually lead to Diaspora. Locals down around Houma call the spill site "the Wall" for all the rigs visible on radar to captains of workboats.
So on background, the first thing about these vivid dreams is they are so lifelike that they have an almost syrupy/fluid-motion to them that is so smooth that it's almost like this reality. Several times when I was young, I 'touched' this syrupy stuff that seems to be the boundary layer between realities - when very ill with childhood asthma. Hard to describe it, but with just the right thinking, focus, and lack of fear (it's very scary this boundary stuff, down at a core of being level), there's this almost velvety-nature of things at the transition layer between realities...through the velvety-syrupy stuff there are other worlds, but I digress. --- This morning my dream was from the perspective of a person who is in some kind of cleaning, project management role in a seaport town. Wasn't a terribly big place, but there was construction of a new building going on next to some kind of a warehouse that was involved in some kind of parts storage for industry. There were boxes and boxes of bears and other parts for equipment. Much of it was lined up in what I took to be east-west rows, there was a back door to the place through which I'd entered (northwest corner of the building) and there was a locked front office door to the east.
I mention all of this because *I started to note specific locations in the dream as best I could and was searching around for names and the only one that came in the location was "Vdniw" something.
I was shortly engaged in a conversation with a rumpled black-pinstripe suit-wearing man of medium age, who was just coming back from lunch (which is why the front doors of the place (older-style wood with glass inset double doors and a rough wood floor) and I was inquiring after his health/stress levels.
Was not quite sure why he was so stressed, but as he took off his coat to go into his [messy] office in what would be the southeast corner of the building, he expressed an incredible amount of gratitude that I was asking about his health since he was very stress by local-goings on and about the status of new construction nearby and what was ahead for the future of his business. --- About here my alarm clock went off...and it was time to get up, throw back some coffee and get out to the office and start to checking on markets and such.
But not without looking for "Vdniw" something. Closest place that seemed to fit was (don't laugh) the coast of Bulgaria. Microsoft Streets & Trips got to a region/province of Vidin in Bulgaria. Obviously, that wasn't right, so I pulled up some pictures of Varna, Bulgaria only to find that the "feel" of the town in my dreams was very similar to the right side of this picture; on a bay or inlet, a rocky shore, not sandy, somewhat protected, and so forth.
Had the impression it was a partly cloudy day, too. That seemed to fit well with the forecast today for that part of Bulgaria...
And that it was lunchtime but because of local custom, lunch was early and the businessman/warehouse manager fellow was coming back about 12:45 PM (local time) in the dream. Which is odd, because that happens to be exactly when I was having this dream inb Bulgarian time, before the alarm clock went off in East Texas....
Had my mind somehow clicked in on the perceptions of a young man (late 20's or so) working in Bulgaria? Much different way of life was touched - a higher level of feelings and less on numbers and Western thinking, too. --- Along about here you're probably wonder "Why are you going into all this?"
Well, it gets me on to a new project that I'd never given much thought to: Mapping out these little 'snips of places' that pop out of dreams every so often.
From what I saw in the dream, I could draw at least a rough map of the place...a general map of what the water/land boundary looked like as well as a picture of what the construction and warehouse were.
I then got to thinking about other 'dream locations' I'd had in the past and decided when I get some time to start making some sketches of what the landscape has been like in many of my vivid dreams. The reason? Well, there has been a wide variety of cities, topographies, and so forth that have accompanied dreams of helping people flee from evil, being around when great earthquakes were starting, or, in more common dreams, just chatting with a warehouse manager in what seemed like a Black Sea port.
I probably should post this over at the National Dream Center, too. If you ever have a vivid dream, feel free to post it there because every so often we get some really remarkably coincident dreams which may, or may not, have prophetic value.
When I say remarkable, I mean like when a woman in Maryland has an almost identical dream as a man in Massachusetts, and such. Some day we oughta talk about that one, but not yet. Maybe September.
Main thing to suggest
this morning is that you might consider in addition to a 'dream
journal' keeping maps of those internal lands. Don't know
where they come from, but they are vastly different than just
'noise' generated by random thoughts. The internal lands
seem to have a whole different layout, but they are internally
consistent -- in other words not weird/hallucinogenic
qualities - they have a hardness or permanence about them. I keep coming back to the premise of the novel "Dimension Barrier" that I'm working on, the general plot of which is that as we get closed to 2012, an increasing number of people start to have very vivid dreams and at the exact crossing of the galactic plane, people are able to pick "one side or the other" of the mirror (between two realities) to stay on.
The mapping process might be a useful tool, both for exploration of internal lands, or perhaps to be used as a guidebook given hints as to which alternate reality the mind has decided to enter.
Just as Louis L'Amour's "The Haunted Mesa" looked into other worlds of Southwest Indian lore, perhaps 2012 will bring us smack-dab in the face of the 'real-time' version of living the Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation of physics. Perhaps some portion of humans will be able to transcend the boundaries to other realities for a time...
Consider, if you will, time-stacked realities, where in one reality, people are living similar lives to ours, yet they are 'offset' by some period. In the case of the "Irwin Allen's Dream" story, with significant precognitive content from an oil-related warehouse/murder/fire, the offset was 16-18 hours before the event in this timeline.
However, in this morning's vivid dream in Black Sea kind of port place (not a very big town, BTW, the town was maybe only a few thousand people in size) the dream timeline offset seems to have been in the 10-30 minute range.
The MWI and 2012? Certainly might be useful to have a pocket map of the different realms and temporal offsets, thus the map sketches. --- See you in Varna for dinner? Has me thinking I should pay particular attention to what happens in Bulgaria over the next couple of days, too...
WuJo 2: The Dream States Also, speaking of the WuJo (where science meets woo woo stuff for pondering and combat), this note from a reader is related:
Hmmm...which is why that velvety-syrupy layer is both challenging and frightening to touch.
Speaking of which, at a practical level, I tried putting on a trade using kinesiology techniques outlined by Hawkins work. I was specifically expecting the market to drop 100-points on Monday, but looks like my body may not be as good on specific timing, but judging by the futures and how Europe is doing, later on today, the "body knows" ought to help my trading account turn over another significant digit...
Learning point for me personally? Sure: When using kinesiology for trading, focus on the date-stamp more because apparently while the body may have some 'physical knowing' about the future (direction and magnitude of a move) it has problems with specific time framing.
This is likely because the body is a wider-spectrum antenna for time-related events than the conscious, and thus (to put this in radio receiver terms), the input questions much be more focused/time bounded because it's a very wide receiver.
Of course, you already
knew that if you'd read
Dean Radin's paper from July 2000 on time-reversed human
perception, or if you've read any of his recent works
including Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality
All of which leads to the startling conclusion (at least around here) that humans really can out trade computers. Because computers and high frequency trading systems are reactive to the event horizon: They can't compute the future, but with a lot of self-discipline, humans can.
HF trading my get to do a flash trade in a couple of milliseconds, but go read Radin again...humans have up to 6-seconds in a lab setting. With eTrade's 2-second executions means a human could beat the box.
Slow learnings, for sure, but better than a sharp stick in the eye so far...
Monday June 28, 2010 Jackboots and Jawboning I oughta begin by apologizing for being such a grump on this, but with all the hype, I was expecting the G8 or G20 this weekend to materialize at least some newly released version of 'the universal free lunch'. Instead, seems we got little more than a few burned out police cruisers, more platitudes, undoable promises, and more of the same-old crap from the international financial cabal that profits by exploiting wage-rate differentials around the world.
The closing statement of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper sounded OK when I read it...
But, after some contemplation I couldn't write down even one (or two) ways that a nebulous term like "reenergized" presented me with any more information about the future of international finance than I was pondering between morning toast and evening toast times on Friday. No meat to it.
Undeterred, I went on to read Harper's summary of the G20 which included this remarkable assertion (if you pop enough NoDoz to read this far):
That one stopped me cold: Halve the US budget deficit in just three years when Obamacare is being rolled out? Are we - the US public - taken as complete idiots?
I clicked over to the Congressional Budget Office and see how this statistical sausage would work:
This leaves me wondering a few things like "How are we going to pay for healthcare and manage to see an increase in GDP from 2010's estimated $14,429 trillion pop up to $16,598-trillion - a 15% increase in three years - with a flat recovery and no sign of new jobs in meaningful numbers?
Maybe some insight will come with Friday's Unemployment Rate report. How fast Census is laying people off may swing that report to negative which brings me back to asking where's the 15% growth coming from?
One way the US could (at least with something of a straight face) promise to cut its budget deficit in half is to expect that current plans to make that portion of your healthcare - that's employer-paid - show up as taxable income in 2011 won't be changed....so you'd pay tax on it with the first reconciliation due in April 2012. But maybe the voters will have their say in November to the point where that little 'Gottcha' will be changed. Poof, there would go deficit reductions. --- A few readers wrote in that they were appalled by the protesters at the G20 - the burned out police pictures and such. But wait! As a report from Global Research points out, the odds that the crowds were incited by police/agent provocateurs is very high. You see, by whipping up crowds, the police get bigger budgets and the general public is scared away from meaningful protest for fear of official reaction.
Almost too convenient the cruisers being left in camera view - and I'd love to see if the cruisers which were damaged were high mileage units...such would be a dandy investigative piece for a journalist in Toronto, but don't hold your breath. Who had checked out - and abandon those vehicles? --- The problem with budget projections and purported agent provocateurs is that they are share a common mythical twinge. I remember 'active agents' from the antiwar protest days of the 1970's and I don't seem to recall budget projections ever coming true.
Yet this morning, world stock markets seem to be taking the bait happily, as the MSM decries those who protest, thus obliging the corporate masters of The Game. It's all about perception management...
We live in a world where perception is reality - and to the aware observer, this weekend didn't offer many incisive new insights into reality.
Personal Income Are you getting 'aheader or behinder'? The government's latest Personal Income report has just been released...
Time to vape up to buy this one. Am I the only one to figure out that if 9.7 percent of the workforce is unemployed then to have personal incomes go up by 0.4% in a month really means the people still working would have to make even bigger increases...or do they count surviving workers only? Hmmm...
If you're wondering how the personal income figures could be this good when foreclosures were running 322,920 homes in May alone, your guess is as good as mine.
Rethinking Climategate/ Oil Spew There's a good Newsweek piece if you haven't read it, "Newspapers retract 'Climategate' claims but Damage Still Done."
Problem here lately seems to be the larger questions of whether humans are already past some point-of-no-return with the Gulf Oil Disaster which might make climate the least of our concerns shortly.
I received the following this weekend from a commercial airline captain:
Meantime, Tropical Storm Alex is missing the oiliest parts of the Gulf but will likely do some serious watering (if not flooding) of the Rio Grand Valley by next weekend...
But, of course, this doesn't stop the oil spewing - and the story out this weekend from NaturalNews about how "The Coming Gulf Coast Firestorm: How the BP oil catastrophe could destroy a major U.S. city" is certainly worth a read.
This weekend, Peoplenomics.com subscribers got "The Diaspora Handbook Part 2" which covered specifics of how to get out of harms way. When's a matter of taste, but early is better than late, I figure...
Happy talk? "Oil spill's economic damage may not go beyond Gulf" says a headline. Right.....we'll check on the cod fishing grounds next spring, shall we? I hear 'one third of the oceans' on pretty good authority...
Passings Senator Robert Byrd passed away this weekend. A bit of bio from the Senator's web site:
Regardless of your politics, an amazing contribution to the Country.
Auto IPO Tesla Motors is planning the first IPO for an automaker in in half a century. PayPal found Elon Musk has most of his fortune tied up in this one.
Silver Tip I see (now that we're at a change date today in the inguistics) for silver & gold that there's a headline that "Silver in Best Streak since 1980 asd Economy No Hurdle" is making the rounds.
May take a couple of days for the directional move to change - if it does - remember language changes don't always result in price changes. Just that how people relate to the metals at an emotional level is now changing in language.
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Coping: Yes, It's a Depression When I started writing this site as a master's capstone in the 1990's, I'd done a lot of research on Depressions and financial manias, going back to the Tulip Mania days and following Kondratiev long waves back to the 1200's in Europe which looked at grain prices and how they cycled regularly.
When the site began, even thinking about another Great Depression was terribly out of vogue.; let alone, doing anything proactively to lessen its impact on average folks.
It's with a sense of bitter-sweetness that I notice that the NY Times had a Sunday op-ed piece by Paul Krugman under the headline "The Third Depression". Professor Krugman knowing, as all students of depressions do, that the panic of 1873 and the resulting Long Depression certainly qualified, as did the 1930's debacle.
Krugman's got it right, too, when he writes:
This is a tough one for people to understand, but there's spending - and then there's - spending.
Some spending (like our Middle East wars) perform some nominal economic function - pumping up defense stocks and keeping the unemployment rate from revealing itself where it would really be if all of our forces were home. Maybe as much as 2% higher unemployment is not a happy policy problem...so the wars have to stay; at least that's what I expect experts are muttering well away from cameras and microphones.
They may be right, too.
Down underneath Depressions is a deep malaise in an economy. Not enough growth, not enough demand, and stagnation of many sorts.
Depressions tend to happen (interestingly) 8-12 years after major wars.
The 1873 Panic came following the US Civil War - which while devastating to the South didn't take much production capacity offline in the North.
The Great Depression of the 1930's came 11-years after the end of WW I.
Many have suggested that the Korean War helped the US avoid an economic mess following the end of WW II, and certainly the Cold War was a boon to industry.
Even the peak of the Internet Bubble in the early days of 2000 followed the end of the Cold War (from the wall coming down in 1989) by 11-years.
Just some things to think about while we sit waiting for events of November while the linguistics reports forecast. Not that one should look forward to such horrors as those to come, but on the bright side: Maybe they will do what brushfire/perimeter wars haven't: remove sufficient production capacity to get the economy rolling again replacing capacity and rebuilding consumption.
Some 'bright side', huh?
Farmers, Spacemen & the Nanny State Every so often, a story comes along which leaves me shaking my head. such was the case last week when a note from the American Farm Bureau included an interview with a rig farmer who had video's tagged by YouTube as "inappropriate for anyone under 18".
You can read about it here.
Not sure why that is...a guess would be that someone complained...but only a guess.
Still, leaves me wondering how out of touch people are with the reality of eating.
Or screwing, for that matter. The story out today is that there's no screwing allowed on the International Space Station. Say, this is life changing news, isn't it? Why, I'll cancel my astronaut application right away!
Maybe in toto these stories have something to do with the president being given an 'internet kill switch' by a senate panel last week. Seems to me graphic pigs and screwing in space are direct threats to America. Give Obama the kill switch! not
To see stories like this gets me to wondering if there's not something lurking in our future that no one is talking about.
Oh, sure, it's somewhat reassuring that Russia's president and ours can now follow each other on Twitter, but that doesn't mean that free-speaking and free-thinking Americans are very near to losing the free internet.
Ironic stuff to be weighing this close to the Fourth of July.
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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I don't see fortune cookies associated with non-Asian
countries, do you? We really need some forward-looking,
motivating kind of food and happy meals just don't do it for
me...
from Amazon and get it overnighted before setting out on any
planned Saturday worm-drowning adventure south of the border.
or
.
![[Image of 5-day forecast and coastal areas under a warning or a watch]](085231W5_NL_sm.gif)
