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News Stew on High Simmer this Weekend The world news stew is on a high simmer this weekend. This as we meander through the next few days, waiting to get to the zenith of the context shift we're expecting (March 28/30), we're watching a couple of stories that could develop into something really meaningful.
And all of this before our "context change" hot date.
About the only thing unanswered in my head is this: "Why would anyone go long stocks in this kind of a world? Gold and silver went up this week - which makes sense. But why would the market climb a wall of worry this high?"
JIT Breaking Down Oh yeah, one more thought: Our tracking of "shortages" continues to show a steady rise...
Some 7.62 ammo is appearing, but other shortages continue - like large quantities of dehydrated foods. More for subscribers in our Sunday afternoon update.
In the Bookstore "How to Live on $10,000 a year or less." $10. And with a special bonus for a few weeks - but I won't tell you what it is...you'll just have to be surprised when you order. For the first 40 people who order the book...
Peoplenomics Our $30/year subscription service, www.peoplenomics.com this week has a "Plan A/ Plan B" approach to preparedness. It's designed to develop a shelter in place or bug out option. Spreadsheet with checklists of things to have on hand for either eventuality, too. Subscription information here.
Promote this Site? Last week we had 144,375 page views. That's an increase of 72 percent since the same time a year ago. If you wouldn't mind telling a few friends about it, I'd appreciate it. Even better: send an email to every one in your email system and I'd be delirious, although there are rumors that's a semi-normal state for me. Click here to send a note.
Friday March 24, 2006 Bush Not Bound to Congress? Here's an eye opener from one news source: George Bush apparently doesn't feel he will have to comply with the law about telling Congress about how new Patriot Act powers are being used! Sure, who needs Congress and laws in the US anymore?
Chinese Doing OUR Nuke Inspections? Son of Ports Deal? First, the Bush administration puts its corpgov "foot in it" with by trying to hire Dubai Ports to run America's critical East Coast ports. Now, no sooner does that half-baked idea slither off the radar (for a while) than we receive word that the administration is hiring a Hong Kong (read: Chinese) outfit to help detect nuclear materials inside cargo passing through the Bahamas for the US (and elsewhere).
The Chinese are having a virtual love fest with Iran and Russia at the moment. So to my simplistic way of thinking, this is about as close to hiring the fox to watch the hen house as you can get. You'd think with huge numbers of unemployed Americans that the administration could do better than farm out this kind of work to other countries. Or, am I missing something?
Trouble in Belarus We see that police have been busy arresting protesters in Minsk, the capital of Belarus overnight. We're watching this rather closely because of the high probability that the US will somehow become involved in one of these internal power struggles in Russia's backyard and that could lead to a serious international crisis between now and real open conflict August 31 +/- a week.
Violent Iraq The waves of violence in Iraq's civil war continues with Thursday's death toll at 23.
Reebok Recall 450,000 charm bracelets are being recalled after an apparent lead poisoning death where the bracelet is suspected as the source. (Wonder where they were made? Wanna place a bet it was offshore?) Semi-hushed in US mainstream media - advertising, don'tcha know...
France on Simmer Depending on which report you want to read, France is either trying to end excessive worker rights and benefits ...or....the New World Order Corporatists are trying to bring in long-hour labor camps. Whatever, the French are trying to pour oil on the waters and work out a compromise to keep the corpgov backers happy while getting the students to calm down. I'm sure that most citizens here in "barista and greeter land" could care...
By the way, this is National Manufacturing Week. I ran a quickie report from the Labor Department's database this morning (because I am always curious about such things). In February 2006 on a seasonally adjusted basis there were 10,154,000 manufacturing production jobs in America. 10 years earlier, the number was 12,531,000. That's a 19% drop in 10 years. All of which explains not only our Balance of Payments Nightmare, but also...
The Real Unemployment Picture You don't hear much about the unemployment situation from me lately. But it's still going on and I apologize for failing to update a couple of charts for you. For example, released without a lot of fanfare on Wednesday of this week, we see in our 6-month rolling average (red line in chart below) that BLS reported mass layoffs are rising again. Not something getting play in mainstream media controlled by the powers that be...
Although the "official" unemployment rate is 4.8%, the effective unemployment rate, if you back out the MBA's flipping burgers and software engineers working at Big Box store greeters, you end up with 9% by the government's own "Alternative Measures of Labor Underutilization" - the U-6 table where the real state of affairs is reported (less "corrections, 'natch).
Is the Top In? I've been watching the Dow and other averages a bit this week, and I'm beginning to wonder about my natural optimism and expectations for a break out to new all-time highs. As the market heads to an even (or down) opening this morning, there's some suggestion that mergers and acquisitions are going to help. But a number of factors are starting to bother me - most of them have been mentioned here before, and my "shortage indicator" continues to creep up.
Our "shortage of the day" report comes from a hospital worker who writes that his hospital is currently out of "thermal patient blankets" - very common fare and never a shortage before.
And other readers continue to notice bumps out there:
I don't usually offer much in the way of financial advice, so I will stick with what's observable. First, today is the 6-month anniversary of Hurricane Rita. And it was just around that time we had Katrina. So I think (looking at probabilities) what may be driving some of these prices higher is all the damage done at the production level back then - which is just now working its way through the supply chain. This is just the sort of thing we were mentioning to our Peoplenomics subscribers in the recent in-depth report "Death by JIT?". On the other hand, could it be some scheme to ruin our health? That's possible, too. But that would require some extraordinary coordination and I tend to discount that.
Having said that, I'm adding more vitamin C to our stores...
Bonner: Hyperinflationary Depression? My pal Jas Jain is still looking for the collapse of housing prices (and reports are definitely running in his favor of late...) but in my annual forecast (Dec '05) I suggested we would see 6.5% inflation on a TTM basis before the deflation gets us. Today, a very good "think piece" from Bill Bone is worth a read here. Title is "The hyperinflationary depression." Think Weimar Republic and a shorter depression (3-5 years) instead of the longer US Depression (10-years) which deflation brought.
Green Language, Eclipses, Arrows While Cliff and Igor (EYE-gor, as in the Mel Brook Frankenstein movie) continue to pound code trying to get the work-around for the posting of web bot reports running, I've been doing a bit of reading up on "green language" and wondering about how that might be applied to the flow of terrorist warnings from Osama bin Hidin and his henchmen.
One of the thoughts lurking off in the back of my mind is that I don't seem to recall a late 2004 prediction of a "black wind" from al Qaeda as having been fulfilled. So with the eclipse coming up next week (which has lots of crescents associated with it, and falls on some kind of harmonic of the 9/11 date) I wonder if something is coming next week.
Meantime, with the shortage reports meandering up and all the rest, the HPH crew is taking breaks from their bot tuning work to let fly some arrows with old fashioned bows:
Unlike guns, things like arrows and crossbows don't reveal your position with a loud bang. Why people ever bother with tracer rounds (equivalent to "shoot at me here" rounds) is beyond my ken. So on my list for the weekend: shop for something stealthy for aerobics and whatever.
Better'n Vegas The CDC Flu Calculator. Let's me guestimate that I have a 1:4 chance of getting bird flu.
Thursday March 23, 2006 As we reported earlier this week (in Monday's report to be precise) China and Russia are joining up forces behind Iran which will squeeze the administration into an interesting box. And the story is going mainstream. --- A documentary on Link TV last night (which is on again this afternoon) made the interesting point that nuclear non-proliferation had been a materials issue before the current gang of neoCONs grabbed power in DC. They threw out previous doctrine and came up with a "hit list" of rogue regimes to change out instead of working on source control, the first of which was Iraq - and we see how well that's going.
So now, it seems to many deep thinkers on the subject that because we have not been paying enough attention to loose nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union (focusing instead on "regime changes") we will at some point likely see nuclear weapons used against us - acquired from sources while we've been distracted by the regime change concept.
I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes worried that Osama's next attack won't be on us soil, but will be a takeover of a poorly guarded Russian missile site....
Hillary Sides with Law Breakers Hillary Clinton says she will seek to block legislation which would criminalize undocumented workers. A quick reality check: Isn't it a crime to enter the US illegally? The real lowdown? Seems to us that demo Hill is trying to keep a coalition of minorities together so she can push her bid for the White House in '08. Oh well, such is the price of our effectively one party system where the corporations buy both democrats and republicans for similar prices and ends. And then they erect as many barriers as possible to keep new parties off the ballot. "Vote for change" is the jingoism, but none seems evident to me. Same actors, same corporate dynasty running things.
Water: Next Corporate Theft? The Chinese media headline sort of says it all: "World Water forum ends, water not human right." This should give corporatists a green light to keep buying up utilities and public works every time a national runs into trouble, effectively stealing national resources from indigenous peoples. Yee haw! Go greed! Let's make a "Third World Water ETF!"
Bird Flu or Safety? Seems now that Europe is saying that 93 mainly African carriers have been banned from European airspace due to safety concerns not bird flu.
Email of the Day This one in about 7:58 AM:
Nothing would surprise me...nothing. If we get a terrorist attack any time between now and May, a certain number of people will link it to 9/11 awareness and falling presidential poll results, I'm sure.
Ammo and MRE's I've three items to cover with you right off this morning, but I will click through them as quickly as I can.
First, I talked with Larry Pratt, Executive Director of Gun Owners of America, yesterday about the current shortages of 7.62X39 ammunition. He happens to be a member of Sportsman's Guide so while he was on the phone with me, he tried to order 1,000 rounds of 7.62. He was skeptical of the reports, but said that GOA had been hearing about these shortages for several months but that he was still able to buy it.
I told him I would buy the 1,000 rounds he was about to order (didn't show out of stock) so he went ahead and placed the order. He said words to the effect "Aha...see!" Then he looked at the order confirmation and the estimated shipping date: May 29th.
Pratt will be at a meeting tomorrow with UN Ambassador John Bolton will be on hand - and he's planning to ask staff if this is some kind of "backdoor UN gun control" move. There are lots of rumors going around, including changes in currencies and exchange rates impacting the Eastern European factories, to Russia taking production for its use, to conspiracy theories. Pratt's trying to find out what he can and says he'll get back to us if he finds anything - which is very much appreciated.
BTW, a reader told me that CDT had some rounds in, so I ordered a 640 round tin and I will follow up next week to see if it really ships. Previous 7.62 quantity orders have been accepted online but haven't been filled by the warehouse, so we will see. The reporting reader says he just got shipping advice on a 1,000 round order, so it may be things are loosening up a bit. Time will tell and I'll keep you posted.
Second item on our "encounter with scarcity": I talked to "The Freeze Dry Guy" and he confirms that yes, there is a real shortage developing in some of the freeze dried foods although he has some stock left. He specializes mainly in protein-rich products, by the way. Eggs, meats, things like that. Separately a reader offers this link to the Mountain House site that showed 31 items out of stock as of this morning. I don't know if that's unusual, but the Freeze Dry Guy says it's unusual - and he's been in the business for something like 27 years.
My third item this morning is use of the term "Shortage" on my benchmark news search engine dropped down overnight to 13,100 hits:
Newest shortage news:
Linguistic Lesson The good news is: The Web Bots may be back. Cliff and Igor up at www.halfpasthuman.com were in the dumps yesterday when they found that the web bot ALTA806 linguistic shift reports had been posted on 28 sights around the net. To explain how this works: The language of the internet is generally a fairly predictable playing field. I like to think of it as a large quiet pond where you can catch an occasional small ripple of change with the spiders and wanderers that go out and report interesting language snippets which are then modeled. But what happens, as we found out when the technology was in its infancy, was that if we posted too much onto even one web site, the effect is much as throwing a large boulder into the small quiet pond. It messes things up.
Whether it was deliberate, or unintentional doesn't matter. What does matter is that there appears to workaround which can be implemented with perhaps 30-hours or so of work in prolog. (Most folks don't know that Microsoft started using bit of prolog in its NT software kernel years ago because it's a very effective "database in memory" useful for certain kinds of problems (registry operations in NT, for example). You might also be interested to know that prolog is the only language I'm aware of that compiles on the fly and is thus more efficient than pure C by a factor of 5 or more, depending on application.
So this morning, as Cliff and Igor eye this rather elegant regex solution (might be 12,000 lines of prolog) I want to run a little experiment with your help. Elaine has come up with a dandy little linguistic phrase that we will be able to uniquely trace back to her first use in an email yesterday. The phrase is "I haven't had time to Beagle up on that yet..."
"Beagle up..." is the phrase we would like to start propagating as this test. Think of it as a modification that lives between "That dog don't hunt" (Beagle) and "to sniff out". Just for fun and grins, make a couple of occasions to use the phrase for a couple of weeks intensively, then go cold turkey on it. Pretty soon, you are likely to start hearing people say "Yeah, let me Beagle up on that..." (meaning to study up on it). That's how language propagates.
Linguist Cliff offered an interesting challenge to me yesterday while making the point that most people are not conscious of how much their language "leaks" information about themselves. "Try talking without using any of the phrases that are catch-phrases of your friends." I tried it - and it's tough. I know people who say "Let me see now..." or an engineer buddy who uses the phrase "riiiight...." the word "right" drawn out like a long Missourian drawl. (Like Bill Cosby says "Right...." in the famous Noah comedy act. "Noah, how long can you tread water? Right...."
Once you get into the study of language it's very interesting. A sensitive person can sort out who your friends are by simply listening to which phrases you are using compared with the people around you. Enough of the theory class for this morning. If you're really interested, you'll beagle up on it yourself.
Bar Busts The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission is now busting people in bars even if they aren't planning to drive! North Texans think this goes too far. Can you spell power-crazed government? This is just one more nail for the restaurant industry - which with bird flu, could be one hell of a short play... But remember "encounter with scarcity." Is this well orchestrated fall-out or a set-up?
Dollar Up The dollar looks to be near one week highs as the Fed meeting is just around the corner.
Naked Truth One in three in England make phone calls in the nude. I don't know why that kind of survey takes place...I mean I'm trying to think of why such a survey would be taken. Oh well, go marketers!
Wednesday March 22, 2006 Gulf Production Drops: Permanent? Earlier today I mentioned that there were fuel price issues in certain parts of the world - and that gasoline prices were starting to go up around our nation. Since that report this morning I have received word from one of my sources in the Oil Patch that what MMS is not saying in their reports is that much of the lost production in the Gulf can not be rebuilt at $70 oil. The numbers just don't pencil out. Mind you, this from a senior fellow in a firm which lost about a dozen production platforms. Adding to the problems: Insurance claims have been filed, but look for long wrangling with the insurance industry over the payouts. Says our source: "...the production losses you see daily are very unlikely to ever come back online..."
Oregon Bird Rumor We picked up a rumor today that large numbers of dead birds were washing up on beaches around Bandon, Oregon. I called the Bandon Police Department, but nothing to report. So a call to the very helpful local Coos County Health Department got us on the right trail. That lead to the Oregon Fish and Wildlife folks...
Turns out that yes, a large number (read: thousands possibly up and down the coast) of dead birds have indeed washed up on the Oregon Coast in the past few days. But it's only one species and it's ocean-going birds. Not thought to be bird flu - for now. So while residents of the region may see people in what look like hazmat suits, its thought to be due to storms or something else. It's more likely a replay of a "natural" bird kill similar to one last year that caused the death of hundreds of birds (different species last year). High risk business, this being a bird off the Oregon coast...
Radio Appearance I've been invited to be on the Steve Quayle Show tonight. Three topics: 1)Oil going, going... 2)The Web Bot project being torpedoed, and 3) the disappearance of certain calibers of ammunition from public accessibility. I'm thinking of it as "source point" gun control. Put in a request to the NRA for comment...will report back when I hear from them.
Web Bots Broken Well, there goes our "window into the future." I just had a call from Cliff of www.halfpasthuman.com and it looks like the whole web bot project is toast. Why? Someone (who broke copyright laws) has posted portions of the ALTA806 series on multiple web sites and forums around the net. While an occasional reference from one specific site (UrbanSurvival) can be filtered out, when large portions of the report (with linguistic references) start showing up all over the web, it causes something that can only be likened to a circular reference (to put it in spreadsheet terms).
So, unless the sites that have ALTA806 extracts posted remove them, the whole project is toast. Because the linguistic references now propagate out and muddy the language, the 20 or so sites that have portions of 806 posted literally impact the whole rest of the internet, mean about 300 man hours of programming time to fix. Cliff and Igor this morning are thinking "not worth it." So the project may be dead and if it continues at all, may do so for only one private entity and we won't even take a stab at data interpretation.
The curious thing to us is whether this was a deliberate attempt to abort the project or whether it was just someone who didn't comprehend that posting the copyrighted material would screw up the incredibly delicate language-shift measurement system. At this point, it doesn't matter. HPH will be checking in a few days to see if any of the posts are down to a level that can be filtered out, but for now, it looks like the project is kaput.
Damn.
Will IRS Sell You Out? Here's a juicy one to raise your blood pressure a few points without coffee: The IRS is considering a plan whereby commercial tax preparers would be allowed to sell your confidential information - right up to selling a copy of your tax return to to private data brokers!
The IRS does not classify this as a major change in policy. But check out the fine wording of the proposed changes:
How many times will they need to hear "No"? Hearing on this comes up April 4th. Is one answer: Don't use a commercial tax preparer if you want your information held strictly confidential?
Restriction on Travel Arriving Yup, right on schedule. We're seeing the beginning of restrictions on travel. At first, low key, Africa-Europe airlines involved, but nevertheless, as we expected, unfortunately. All this is part of the global warm-up for bird flu. The feds meantime are telling schools here in the US to "get ready" - but they are also saying that they're not being alarmist...
Encounters with Scarcity Our expectations that the "shortages" would also show up has popped up a fair bit in the last 24-hours, with our search engine benchmark increasing 800 returns since yesterday morning at the same time: 13,800 shortages references today:
Among the more interesting shortages:
Energy Problems Lingering You don't hear much about energy shortages. Oh sure, gasoline prices seem to be edging up, but the fact that they are not bumping up against new highs daily means most of the sheeple have put it in the "no problem" category and are back to taking the availability of gasoline as almost totally for granted.
What you may have forgotten is that we have not recovered from Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. I am almost constantly getting reports from friends in the oil patch that the big Mexican "find" getting a lot of play the past few weeks in the industry is based on seismology and modeling and has yet to be proved out. BUT what has proved out is that we are still down a tremendous amount of Gulf of Mexico (GOM) production right here in the US according to the most recent (March 8) update from the fed's Mineral's Management Service shut in report:
Worldwide rig utilization is essentially 100%. So when you read that Crude is trading over $62 this morning, you shouldn't be surprised. One reason why crude may be going up is that BP is reported ready to bring its Texas City refinery (closed since September) back on line in a couple of weeks - and that means it will be needing something to process. Around the country though, in places like less-than-urban California, people are filling up and saying "Ouch!" Me, for instance. I filled up our pickup track with Chevron's finest (which I will explain in a minute) and it set me back $48.00! And this is in a county that's loaded with still producing a oil and gas wells in Texas, for heaven's sake! OK, why the more expensive gasoline? I have found that depending on vehicle, you can get substantially better mileage with high octane compared with 87 octane "regular." It's worth running a few tanks as a test - and assuming you are a "route driver" with a fairly consistent "foot" you should find the results interesting. We get 2-3 miles per gallon more in the Daewoo. The Dodge pickemup is new enough to our fleet (which includes a Huskee lawn tractor and some small lug-things-around trailers) that we have no idea whether high octane will matter. Yeah, I know, why not just put 2 oz of acetone in each 10-gallons of gas because it's reported that this can increase mileage anywhere from 2-15%? Well, I keep reading the disclaimers about such experiments and getting stuck on the "experiment at your own risk" disclaimers and wonder "Hmmm...do I have any plastic parts in the fuel system that I will ruin with such efforts?" So far that has kept me from becoming Mr. Science. Wet is Good This is World Water Day." We'll drink to that but who knew? The World Water Council president is talking about shortages of that fresh water we so take for granted. Kuwait is a bad rap in a UN report on water waste. India has shortages of water developing.
Bush: Out Selling It was nice to see Helen Thomas back at the presidential press conference yesterday. With plummeting approval ratings, Bush has decided to get public and visible. Not that democrats in New Mexico are impressed, they're pushing impeachment. Bush did rule out amnesty for undocumented workers, but how long that will fly with the corporate cash-slingers that hang like flies around CONgress is anyone's guess.
Prediction: CONgress will be bought with promises and "mobilized grassroots support" and then it will be sent to Bush who will reluctantly ((we'll be told) would sign it then because it will be wrapped up as the will of the people and CONgress. We'll see in a few months... The other approach is to just do it, but label the amnesty something else - that'd work, too. So the corporations behind the curtain have several ways to get 'r done.
OK, maybe I'm a bit cynical. Go read Ladson Geddings' piece about CONgressional Reform...
The Runs An Olympic runner was outrun by muggers outside Bucharest. Olympian was 49, the gang presumably younger.
Silver Did I mention the silver ETF got a nod this week and that's why silver is over $10.50 at times now? Remember who told you in July that he was getting into silver between $6.94 and $7.23?
George on Speed Yup - thanks to East Texas Broadband, We're now plugged in to the internet with our own static IP address. About 1.2 MB up and 1 MB down and suitable for VoIP. Ping times down to around 30 ms from 600-900 (and sometimes >3000 ms this week) on the satellite system (WildBlue). I'm gonna wring it out for a while though before recommending it to my neighbor, but it's as much of an improvement from satellite as satellite was from dial-up. Same price, too.
First project this morning:" catch up on new subscriber entry...but that should go quickly now.
One other computing note: Microsoft is delaying the release of it's latest operating system Vista. Lots of focus on security enhancements, we hear.
Tuesday March 21, 2006 Ammo Shortage Update You may remember when I stumbled into the U.S. ammunition shortage here in the homeland a couple of weeks ago, that I was only having problems finding 7.62X39 ammo for my coyote gun here at the ranch. Kind of odd, I thought at the time. Then last week, tentative purchases of both 7.62X39 and 9 MM Luger were canceled because my source was really out of stock, but had taken my order, leaving me with the impression the goods would be shipped. They weren't - because they didn't have any - so I got a refund. This morning, I've got to head in to town, and so I will be trying to find some ammo to round out our stores.
While I'm out, though, I may look at some weapons from previous times. A good hunting bow and a cross bow or two come to mind. It's infinitely easier to make arrows from locally available materials than try to cobble up our own black powder should the grid shut down at some point in the fuzzy future. Still, such arms can take out a coyote, deer should meat food become short in supply, and they have the bonus of being silent. --- Over at the www.nra.,org web site, I put in the term "ammunition" and was rewarded with results of pistol matches and such, but when put in the search term "shortage" and hit "Go" what I received was a message informing me that "An error occurred during your search. Please try again later." I'm surely doing something wrong. I will try to get some comment from their PR office later today. --- The current shortage of ammunition may be traced to several stories: One is the report in Defense Industry Daily from September of 2005 which seemed to deal with .50 caliber. No mention of my 7.62 issue. the anecdotal posts around the web, such as this one, seem to mostly blame the War in Iraq. --- Regardless of the cause - the breakdown of the "Just in Time" manufacturing model that we covered for subscribers in a recent issue of Peoplenomics.com, I have continued to receive emails on an almost daily basis on the subject. This one is typical:
Another reader writes in:
Not to put a conspiratorial bent on things, but the Second Amendment (Right to Bear Arms, if you're still groggy from last night) doesn't mean much if you don't have any ammo. Part of me is extremely concerned and I do not want any US Serviceperson to ever worry about ammo supplies. But the flip-side concerns go to planning by the Rummy Boyz and what about State's ability to raise a militia (now that the National Guard is largely out of the country) should a bunch of OTM's have snuck in through our still porous borders, kept that way by what I'd argue are treasonous money grubbing politicians. Best money can buy...
Shortage Update Beyond ammunition, there is the evolving "shortage" meme, but once again the chart and the reports are somewhat divergent. Fro example, a reader writes in:
With that in mind, we have updated our daily tracking of "shortages" reported on one of the news search engines:
Speaking of shortages (and of food in particular) Israel has opened some of the Gaza strip crossings, apparently tired (for now) of starving Palestinians. Say, didn't the Germans try that around Warsaw's ghetto back in pre/WWII days? Ben's First Speech Ben Bernanke's first speech was given in the most manner possible, last night. The People's Economist taps his china board and screams at you: "When the market is closed!". Ah, just so, the idea being that I figure I can judge the aggregate of the Fed Chairman's confidence and the relative volatility of markets by simply looking at when the Chairman speaks, to some extent. --- So what did he really say? Even more of an eye-opener was that Bernanke's citations as sources, included himself in 4 out of 7 notes - a remarkable 57% of the time. Bernanke then wound up is speech by saying:
Reality checks? Yup, that'd be refreshing. I think the American people have been patient waiting for their "reality checks," don'tcha think? So how soon?
I may be wrong here, but it seems to me the speech was more Greenspeak and a restatement of previous (or continuing) Fed policy of "stability uber alles." Javohl, predictable markets are great so long as the easy money injections keep working. But what's the plan when they don't?
There's a wonderful myth afoot that Baby Boomers will be able to take their accumulated stock market profits and savings out of the markets in an orderly fashion. Such a capitalistic wet dream might be possible if the world wasn't running out of resources and if new investors were available to step in an replace the investments being withdrawn. But that doesn't appear to be the case.
Here is some serious reality checking for Mssrs. Bernanke and friends from the People's Economist:
Sorry, I didn't mean to get sidetracked, and don't let those 240-species a day figures get you down, their probably wrong. Might only be 25 or might be 2,500. The fact that CO2 levels haven't been this high since the dinosaur die-off shouldn't bother you either. Hell no.
I think the esteemed Mogambo Guru, between medications, would liken this to "playing craps on a sinking ship," but I am not qualified to interpret reality as only the Mogambo can. (IRAOTMC) So heck - go ahead and Buy and Hold! The Ultra Rich need fodder! Volunteer today!
Reality Check #2 Got the latest from Gary Lammert (comments/interpretations in blue):
Sino-Russian Kissipoo As we reported yesterday, there's a literal love fest breaking out between China and Russia. Concern: Two out of three Super Powers could wax the other one. Go look at a map! Look how they are joining up on Iran. (Makes me wanna pour some Bushmill's in the coffee...)
Pick Up Sticks That's the job in Innisfail Australia in the wake of Cyclone Larry.
Monday March 21, 2006 LEI Drops Unexpectedly The Conference Board's Index of Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) unexpected dropped 0.2% in February. I've been told by more than one respected market technician that now that I've become bullish (or at least could see a way to retest old highs, they are going short as I'm the best market turn picker around. "Wong Way George" I think one said...
Statehood for Alberta? Maybe at economic gunpoint... We get news tips all the time - but here's a really good one to start the old noggin churning:
Sounded tantalizing, but when I went to the site, and I think this is the right one: report on the Athabasca Tar Sands and how America has been eyeing that. (report here).
Nevertheless, no doubt that our vision of "The R&R Wars" [religious and resource] certainly supports things like the the US attempting to annex the energy and resource rich areas of Canada. Let me see, there's the grains of the heartland, the energy of Alberta, and the trees and fisheries of B.C. Yup, as I see it, that would make a fine 51-5x state block. Why would Montreal beef?
Petrol Patrol Along the lines of energy, we have to note that Boone Pickens is talking about global gasoline prices of $5 a gallon. While it's already more than that in many countries, it's less here in the USA, but only for a while figures Pickens.
Shortage Reports I am continuing to receive reports of various kinds of shortages both here at home and internationally. A other examples from this morning's news reports: But the most interesting on is this report (take it for what it's worth) about where all the 7.62 x 39 ammunition has gone:
If you work in a place that sells ammunition, and you have had anyone come in with a blank US Treasury check lately to buy ammo (or anything else for that matter) please click here to send me a note - and be sure to include your phone number.
Angry Earth? Cyclone Larry Parts of Queensland, Australia have been leveled. "Worse than Winifred in 1989" says an Innisfail resident. Some media call it the "atomic storm."
Have We Ceded South America to China? One of our correspondents who does something semi-military and writes in from various hotspots (Afghanistan and Iraq's green zone among only places) who calls himself "The Wandering Texan" is back on US soil and wonders why no one is paying attention to Chinas take over of many things south of us:
Actually, there's more truth than fiction to this. The current run of the stock market is likely the result of Easy Money Ben more than anything else. I think of it as the baby Boomer's version of the old Roman "circuses and cakes" approach. Paper and sitcoms for all! Meantime, Russia and China are going kissipoo. Jobjackings We heard an interesting report (not for attribution) that a big bank up in Washington State is planning to axe 15,000 positions around April 3rd says the whisper. Only an unnamed bank and unconfirmed report - so far - but then again, nothing would surprise us. Meantime, outsourcing to India is on a roll with Dell to double its staff there by 2009. We're the competition for Indian "freshers" (kids right out of college) to go up dramatically. Animal Inventory Shenanigans I received an interesting email that suggested we devote some coverage to the government notion that every animal in America ought to be RFID chipped for tracking purposes. The email I received said in part:
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Saturday
March 25, 2006
07:05 A CDT
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