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7.0! Pacific Shakes! The latest coming out of the earthquake-active Pacific Plate today is more than alarming - it verges on frightening. The reason? The quakes today are not "aftershocks" of the mega-quake in December - instead they are large discrete events which are encircling the Pacific plate.
This morning, depending on whether you believe the USGS report, or the international earthquake reports, we had either a 6.9 or 7.0 event just off the Philippines:
Meantime, the volcanoes that are popping off around the world are spewing out more dangerous ash and sulfuric acid clouds. A reader in Saipan just sent me this:
If you are a reader in an earthquake or volcano impact areas, CLICK HERE to send in a first hand report so we can share it with readers in the USA who are experiencing a virtually media blackout of this possibly once-in-a-lifetime building story. Miraculous Art A reader sends along this shockingly small art site - its all about a fellow who paints portraits on short length (less than a half inch long) piece of human hair! http://www.worldartmiracle.com. Even more shocking is that this fellow does it without magnifying glasses. Our question? Why the hell isn't this guy with record-setting eyesight and eye-hand coordination in medical school being a surgeon? He could make a fortune reconstructing nerve damage!
Live on Less than $10K a Year: Monday's the day - I will get the "Live on $10,000 a Year" e-book up for sale. Or, get it along with the rest of the Inside Report series - , click here. To read last week's report, click http://www.urbansurvival.com/lastweek.htm For a more complete library of past columns, click http://urbansurvival.com/library.htm Click here to tell a friend about this site. 80,614 page views last week - there are more rational people out there than I thought...
News Sources are available, too, in case you want to search more. And we offer our News Scanner service, over here. I also added the time to the Dateline on the masthead so you can see how current the update is.
Friday Did Employment Improve in Jan? No! The lie this time is in the shrinking denominator. Let's start off with the "official" report on the unemployment situation in January. From the Labor Department where I have highlighted a few things.:
Wow! It sounds almost too good to be true, doesn't it? Well, before you tell me again how brilliant GWB and Our Favorite Knight of the Printing Press are, let's do a little math exercise, shall we? The figures at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm show that the civilian workforce declined in January. From 148.203 million to 147.949 million. What happened to 254,000 people in this month's report? Did they all retire or die? If we assume that the number of the people in the country which constitutes the civilian labor force was the same as December (148.203) the much touted 5.2% number becomes 5.37% which rounds to 5.4% - which is, sadly, the same unemployment rate as December. Now, the interesting things here are a) will anyone in the financial press be as skeptical as I am that a quarter of a million people just "Poof!" disappear from the labor force? and b) explain why if things are getting so much better, why the number of unemployed long term, when you count long term unemployed and under employed like the engineers flipping burgers and IT professionals making sandwiches for minimum wage has remained stuck at 9.3% of the workforce once again showing no improvement from December? The Hype Festival is now underway as the insiders unload their stocks onto the unwary.
Good for Boeing Out there at the ol' Circle B, another bang on the register for the Commercial Airplane Division with a $1.8 billion sale to Japan Airlines: http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050204/japan_boeing_10.html That's the good news - the bad is that this won't bail out the U.S. trade deficit which sucks and the noise is getting louder all the time, which is why Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and others, are betting heavily against the dollar. BTW, the buck declined a bit on the initial news of a weaker than whispered unemployment report, but the hype has pushed the buck back up. Perhaps people don't know how to read or ask questions in the pits. There's more testosterone than logic in the market's I've played in, that's for sure.
G-7 Trouble? The Group of 7 top industrialized countries will be meeting this weekend to talk about how the global economy operates. Every few months, the boyz from these countries assess the fine state of corporatism and jockey to make sure they are getting their fair share of the global pie. But this weekend might be a little more interesting than most with reports of some dissention over debt plans. LINK. We've sensed a bit of distance developing between Bush and Blair - and should the US not support the British debt plans, this would just be a further point to observe. The foreplay is underway already...for example...
Greenspan's Hype The latest speech by Sir Alan is out today and is says that the Fed Boss sees some relief coming for the balance of trade deficit. The whole rap is on the FED WEBSITE but here's a few remarks which we read and predicting inflation in prices of imported goods:
Stripped of FedSpeak, what Easy Money Al is saying is that our balance of trade will straighten out quickly if the price of Hondas and Toyotas goes through the roof. And that, pal, is inflation - and that should be wildly bullish for gold prices. That is, if anyone takes the time to figure out what that FedBuzz "However, we may be approaching a point, if we are not already there, at which exporters to the United States, should the dollar decline further, would no longer choose to absorb a further reduction in profit margin" means inside the US. Inflation. South Korea Nuts? The defense experts in South Korea have rewritten the defense plan for their country. What caught our eye in the report at http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/02/04/news/korea.html is that the report envisions the US providing 690,000 troops should they be needed. Now, here's an interesting question: Where they hell are they supposed to come from? Everything we've got in the way of resource is tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, so what's with this kind of number - unless of course all those rumors about a return of the draft are real. (Hey! Wouldn't that reduce unemployment, too???)
Mad Cow in Japan Theory intact - namely that people in Japan didn't have to worry about Mad Cow because of how animals are raised there. Here's a REPORT of a mad cow case. But the cow wasn't raised in Japan - it apparently is a case of eating tainted British beef.
Earthmoving & Changes Well, as I told folks listening to Alex Merklinger's Mysteries of the Mind show last night, we're about to enter another period of building earth movements, if our observations are correct. The smallish 3-something out east of Shakerville was interesting: LINK. What we're starting to see are a series of events on the Eastern side of the Pacific plate - that's the West Coast of the Americas - showing signs of movement. Some examples over the past few days:
Meanwhile, the volcanic ash continues to fall on Guam - and the local TV reports at http://www.kuam.com/news/12480.aspx are not getting attention in the US mainstream press for reasons unknown to us.
The India-China UFO Story I will pass this along because I mentioned in on the radio interview last night on Alex Merklinger's Mysteries of the Mind. I explained that some of the web bot sweeps have been bringing back almost casual conversation about an alleged UFO base being found in India's Kashmir area. Reports were that one tractor-trailer rig brought out some kind of mercury plasma engine that was used in the craft which were discovered. Also mentioned, was a second tractor-trailer rig with a maneuvering system for a 5-6 story tall large spacecraft. The background is that supposedly, much of the mystical literature from the region is based on "space gods" who fought periodically among themselves.
I mention this because there was also some mention of fighting with Chinese troops in the area - the location of the find is very close to the Chinese border, and you know China would love to get their hands on such a find. Thus, we're looking for a "cover story" to pop here in the next few days - perhaps over the weekend - of renewed fighting which will likely be mis-labeled as fighting between India and Pakistan, but which will really be - if the story is anywhere near pieced together right - fighting between the Indian military and the Chinese over ancient relics.
One reason we're interested is because of reports about all the ancient relics that reportedly were looted from ancient sites in Iraq before, during, and after the war. I'm collecting data on that if you have first hand knowledge Click here.,
Meanwhile we're watching regional military movement stories out of India like THIS ONE. But, as I told Alex, it's not the usual fare for coverage on this site because our focus is economic - and just because we have better sources than most, doesn't mean we publish everything that comes to our Inbox.
Alex and I then kicked around one of our favorite mysteries - the reports from back around 1909 that a team of explorers found a cave hewn out of solid rock - and polished to a smooth marble-like look in the Grand Canyon. Alex related that this cave was reportedly huge - big enough to hold 50,000 people. Reports from the period LINK were that Egyptian artifacts had been found in the cave. More interesting are reports that to this day, visitors to the Grand Canyon are kept away from this area by machine-gun toting guards. If you have any first-hand knowledge of the "keep out zone" Please click here and fill me in. Confidentiality will be respected, as always.
There's a lot of unexplainable stuff from history out there. Here's an EXAMPLE. But, it's not the focus of this site because we like to keep our information actionable. If you want UFO stories, we're more inclined to look at things like anti-gravity technology and companies that may be developing marketable products. We're still looking for the real deal on UFO's - and the folks at American Antigravity may have issues scaling their technology. On the other hand, it does work at the model level....so who's to say that someone back in ancient times didn't get there first? If I sudden start building a mercury plasma anti-gravity engine, I'll let you know...
Next Month's News I think I have mentioned on numerous occasions that while we will not publish large parts of the www.halfpasthuman.com web bot information (subscription only) we do have permission to use snips here and there in the public interest and concern, so I have to admit to watching a curious forecast in a recent data run that talks about Sun, fire in the sky - and some forward looking warnings to come about the dangers of looking at the sun and some unusual behavior. So, being steered by this, we are following the developments posted at www.spaceweather.com about the HUGE sunspot activity which is on the back side of the sun, but which should be coming around the limb (the edge of the sun) in the next week or so. This is seriously big. Another thing which caught our eye, while watching for the "sky fire" kind of event was this article about how the HAARP project has been used to light up part of the sky. STORY. It's certainly interesting...
Web Billing at Work Interesting trend spotted in the NY Post editions today: People who surf the web too much at work may start getting bills: http://www.nypost.com/business/39824.htm Sounds like an interesting idea, seeing as web play is just one of the many reasons that we think the latest "productivity" figures are hosed. More productive time dribbles out the web than anything that's in second place. Smoking took less time and didn't run in background...
Denying Attack Plans We see that the Administration and the Secretary of Oil are denying plans to attack Iran in the near future: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050204/D881NHOO1.html There are probably four things causing the Administration to say this. First, the Russians who have built most of the nuclear infrastructure for Iran have told Washington there will be a response if Washington destroys their investment. Secondly, the U.S. now knows what was obvious to sane people - the fighting in Iraq has continued despite the "elections" (story following this one). Third, the cost of a ground war is horrific and at some point Congress will stop writing checks because wars are inflationary; although arguably, inflation is just what the world teetering on the brink of deflationary collapse could use a bit more of. Fourth: When government says don't worry (we don't have anything on the agenda) it probably means there is something on the agenda, but we'll have our dirty work pulled off by some other country. Take Israel, for example...
Still a War In Iraq, the vote counting continues with the Shiites leading by a wide margin. Not unexpected, but not the kind of thing that will pull the country together - that's our fear. Story. And a female Italian journalist has been kidnapped in Iraq. Scoop.
Speaking of hot zones: a Boeing 737 has reportedly crashed in Afghanistan: DETAILS
Hot Water ...for a university professor for his remarks on 9/11: LINK.
Thursday Guam: Volcanic Ash Warning Reinstated Just in to Urbansurvival.com:
Fresh Ice Sheet Warning The new issue of New Scientist puts out a more scientific version of the Antarctic Ice Warning that we've been discussing for more than a year. READ. Thanks to tipster BD for spotting this important article...
Could a sudden rise of sea level, a break-down of the paper money confidence game, or a series of massive earthquakes do in civilization as we know it? Oh sure. In fact, here's a NEW BOOK about the collapse of societies.
Suspect Productivity #'s Government figures came out this morning making the audacious claim that productivity in 2004 was up 4.1 percent. LINK. The problem with the story - and the whole string of productivity numbers - is that they measure productivity by what can only be described as fantastic calculations. For example, higher chip operating speeds of computers figure into it, but the fact of humans not being able to increase their reading or writing speeds doesn't... when you look at the 2002-2004 period, the assertion is that productivity is up 13.4% which, sadly, doesn't pass the smell test around here.
Iraq War - No Change Not that we expected the elections to change anything, but the Arab Press is zooming in on a continuing series of attacks in Iraq. LINK.
Climate Change Timeline A group of British scientists has outlined some of the events that will come with global warming. DETAILS. It's pretty much what we've been mentioning here, except of course, the "official" timetable isn't as frightening as some of the empirical evidence, such as the summer snowfalls in Australia that we mentioned in yesterday's report. BELOW.
Speaking of which - the cold and wet snap in Australia may have finally broken after bringing snow to the Melbourne area. DETAILS.
State of the Union The President's State of the Union fell on skeptical ears among Democrats. As we have been telling you for some months now, the presidential plan to allow some money to be siphoned out of Social Security and put into financial markets came out. Democrats, being unamused, say they will hold Bush accountable for what happens. STORY. Not that Wall Street won't get the "raid the cookie jar" treatment it wants...absent fundamental reasons to buy stocks, the Street is looking for any way to keep the bubble alive. This might do it, at least for a few days... Meantime, even harsher than Democratic remarks assessing GWB are the words of Fidel Castro about Bush. Story.
The markets are acting a bit oddly this morning. Gold has nose-dived $6 - which we don't take as a good sign. The reason? The drop in gold and the rise in the dollar means that the expected rate of inflation is coming down. This is bad because we have the specter of global deflation ahead if gold breaks much below $410, although a bounce off the $410 range is something we half expect.
Pope Pooped The Pontiff will spend as least the next week in hospital recovering from his bout with a respiratory infection and Parkinson's: UPDATE. He reportedly spent a restful night.
Leaky Border Chronicles In the Houston Chron TODAY a story about how four people involved in cross-border smuggling of humans have skated past justice. Go ahead, ask if we're surprised by this....
Creeping Capitalism An interesting trend story in China today about how the Chinese will soon let state owned enterprises (SOE's) go bankrupt if they aren't doing well. DETAILS. The phrase that caught our eye in particular is "socialist market economy" which sounds suspiciously like some creeping form of capitalism rebranded....
Calendar I'm supposed to be on Alex Merklinger's Mysteries of the Mind radio show tonight. Also, the business acquisition I've been working on for almost a year here in SoCal should close today...it's down to lawyering and accountants.
Wednesday Earth Changes Update Freak Snows Hit Australia - Is the Day After HERE? Art Bell and Whitley Strieber's book, which spawned the movie Day After Tomorrow may sound like fiction to skeptics, but the premise of period of global weather extrmes was proven out today in the land down under. From a reader in Australia, this just in: "Rain/Floods/SNOW/freezing temps in height of summer, 36c one day, 12c max the next. Yesterday we had the lowest ever temps in Melbourne, around 12c, even colder than many July winter days, and just the day before it was 32-36 stinking HOT (near 100F). news.com.au , abc.net.au , heraldsun.com.au No these are not July images, this is Feb summer http://www.ski.com.au/snowcams/vic.html http://forum.ski.com.au/ultimate/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=11;t=012447 This at a time when Moscow is recovering from 7-feet of snow - after a warm spell that got bears coming out of hibernation. Guam Sickened by Volcanoes! There are now 1,500 volcanoes popping off around the world. Most concerning? Remember the area out by Guam where that sub ran into a previously uncharted undersea mountain a few weeks back? Well, today people are going into hospitals there due to volcanic ash and dust! http://www.abc.net.au/ra/news/stories/s1294530.htm More Details: http://www.kuam.com/news/12435.aspx
Pope Health Watch Although the health of the Pope is OK for someone in the hospital with flu and Parkinson's, judging by reports coming out today, our Houston Bureau has just sent up an interesting "backgrounder" that makes for interesting reading. Several readers asked about the prophesy I referred to earlier today, relating to which Pope will be the last one. Here's the report:
Our Earthquake Watch: Feb 7-8, 14th. Although the present level of earthquake activity seems to be quieting down, we're planning to be especially vigilant around the 7 & 8th of this month, and again on the 14th. The reason? Quakes often happen in conjunction with moon movements, and we've noticed what looks like a 14 - 15 day wobble of earthquake data. The moon traverses the equator every 14.4 days in its walkabout, so such a pattern is hardly surprising.
USGS has posted an official viewpoint on the Andaman Sea Swarm that we posted about a week ago. It says in part:
More - very interesting details - at this LINK. Moreover, the USGS data charts out like our plot presented last week. Here's the USGS chart:
While the number of quakes has dropped somewhat (this'd be a good thing) there are some troubling events - or more properly a lack of events around part of the Pacific Plate. The 4.2 in Baja DETAILS this morning is just one example. But we haven't seen much of an increase in West Coast of the US activity. Could pressures be building?
Out of Australia comes this eyewitness report from a reader:
We admit the official explanation offered that it was a "sonic boom" seemed to stretch credibility a bit think. We wouldn't be surprised to learn than it was some kind of space object blowing up on re-entry. Another reader has been collecting facts and passes this along:
One last item: one of the data snips from the last web bot run caught Cliff's eye as he was scanning data, prompting us to add Panama - and the Canal - to our searches...
This was in data about 2-weeks old... Web Bot info at www.halfpasthuman.com One last thing just in from a reader: Are the Russians moving some of their key people and military to "safe places" prior to the you-know-what hitting the fan? Read this! Almost Got Bin Laden Report out of Russia today - on how close Ossama bin Laden came to being killed or captured. BREAKING STORY. Look for millions of other media to pick up this one, but this is apparently close to the sources....but the key point this appears to be PRE 9/11...
Fed Rates Look for a decision this afternoon from the Fed to raise rates by another quarter of a point. Story. The Fed's in a box here, and anything other than the market whisper number could be a disaster. With the build up into the Fed meeting over the past couple of trading sessions, our inclination is that this might well be a "sell the news" event.
About the Housing Bubble We mentioned it maybe a year or so back - that real estate appraisers were under intense pressure from borrowers and lenders to inflation appraisals - but it seems that the story has come back into bloom again with DETAILS in catchy "Realty Times" piece about the FBI getting involved in the fray.
Now, in case you have been asleep at the switch here, what are the reasons for the real estate bubble which has propelled the consumer spending for the past several years - I mean besides the odd crooked appraisal here and there?
If none of these conditions existed, I seriously doubt the price of new homes would have escalated to present levels.
Sea Levels Rising Then there's a report out of the BBC today that sea levels are rising faster than anyone expected (except perhaps our readers): BBC REPORT. We've pointed out the dangers of rising sea levels, especially the threat they pose to the transportation of food and oil around the world. "But," asks one reader, "If sea level rises to where oil refinery docks and mooring points no longer work for moving petroleum, why wouldn't we just build more facilities at higher levels?" A damn good questions. However, the problems are two-fold. First, finding a big enough hunk of waterfront suitable for a refinery is no minor trick anymore. Secondly, the time it takes to build a refinery - even excluding the environmental impact process - is several years - four or five, anyway. And, should the ice slide off the Antarctic shelf tomorrow into the oceans, that would put us "out of time." Clearly, the threat of a period of shortages and peril is there... Besidfes the BBC Report, here's a LINK that suggests the West Antarctic shelf will raise levels 16 feet globally: which would put refineries out of business. Like we've been saying, this is a non-trivial threat but no one is break ground on new refineries... A few readers get it...like this guy who writes:
I know he's making a point here, but gee, no one in government seems to get it...
Falling Autos As we've written extensively on in the past, falling auto sales were a major precursor to the Great Depression in 1929. Sles had been falling in August and September of that year. So, it's against that background that we note US automaker performance in January: STORY. Not much to be happy about, except that maybe rebates will return shortly if sales aren't up this month - and February is seldom a "barn burner" of a sales month.
Depression Marker Not to put too fine a point on our belief that we're just replaying the Great Depression in slow-motion, but there's a report on unemployment in German that harks back to 1933 and the days when Hitler was rising to power. STORY. (This is a slow loading page, so plan on a cup of coffee or a beer while it loads...)
Taking Back the Democrats There's talk that Howard Dean will be heading up the Democratic Party. LINK. No question about it, the Democrats have become a me-too kind of group. That's thanks in part to the phenomenal job of plagiarizing of campaign issue phrases by the Republicans. Whatever happened to the Republicans and thrifty and Democrats as the big tax and spend party? It's all so backwards now....
Were Sunnis Cut Out? Al Jazeera has a REPORT this morning that thousands of Sunnis were not able to exercise their right to vote this past weekend for a number of reasons including a lack of polling places and ballots for them...
Cell Wrecks As if it wasn't apparent to begin with, there's a new study out today which says yes, if a young person is on the cell phone, the odds of an accident go up. DETAILS. Not that this comes as any shock to us. I can't count the times here in LA-LA land that people are seen running red lights and they share one common denominator: their too busy on the phone to keep their mind of driving. Locally, the cops are starting to bust people who are not on hands-free systems...
Prayers for the Pope The Pontiff is in hospital today trying to recover from a double-whammy of the flu and Parkinson's acting up at the same time. STORY: A few, upon hearing this, voiced the concern that when this Pope dies, could the next Pope be the last one in terms of apocalyptic prophesy? Hopefully, we won't be answering that one any time soon...
Bill to Run World? The buzz has been percolating around the world - Bill Clinton's stepping up to the role of Tsunami Relief Ambassador has folks like Senator Jesse Helms warning him that he would not make a good President of the United Nations with Koffi Anan retires: DETAILS. Scary thought. Although Bill's cleaned up his act, what about other nations with less economic and military power? What about someone who can lead with vision and moral authority and is from a more rational (less drugged) country?
Our Newest Buzz Words! Cobbled Optimism Yes, time for us to sit down in front of the byte sniper and call your attention to mind-twisting phrases pimped by corporatist whores. Pardon us for being so direct in our expression, but here is a story about how down numbers are made to sound like uppers: LINK. The headline if you are too lazy to click the link goes something like "Manufacturing Activity Grows, Misses Views." This is gobble-de-speak for the Manufacturing outlook has gone down from a previous month. We need to add this to our Dictionary for a New Economy at http://www.urbansurvival.com/dict.htm
By the way, if you are doing some business writing and you don't have time to thoughtfully compose the right mix of phrases, you might try this LINK. It makes writing like a Federal Reserve Press Release accessible to the masses!
Volunteer Counsel Sought One of Elaine's sons is going to court in Phoenix Arizona on the 25th of this month in a show-down with the Arizona DES crowd. Basically, he will be going in armed with receipts and proof of paying exactly what was ordered by a court in a child support case. However, because bunglecrats and bureaucrats can't add (or think straight) he is facing a new-car-sized bill for back support based on what is an honest-to-God clerical error. If you are a real attorney with a real bar number and are available on February 25th, he's going for a Rule 60 Relief of judgment dismissal motion and I would feel better if he had counsel other than himself in this. We'd PayPal a few bucks along. (ex post facto...) Sad as it is, judges don't take regular citizens as seriously as they take cohorts...I mean colleagues... in law. If interested and qualified, click here. I realize real justice may not pay well, but it's bound to get you some good karma. This case does have the potential for being a landmark, because DES (it is alleged) has completely blown its responsibility to be accountable for financial reports, which gets back to our initial impression: administrative incompetence.
New Info Added: 10:15 PST 12.0 Coming? Ecuador Lookout! The phone rang a few minutes ago and Steve Quayle was on the line. "George - You have got to see this story out of Ecuador! There's a press report that more than 300 earthquakes of magnitude 4 have happens in the past 11 days!. I'm sending you the link."
About 12 seconds later: LINK arrived.\
Steve then sent along a link to an Ecuadorian seismology site where bulletin #36 is posted at this LINK and translates roughly as:
Then we chatted about what it means. First, it substantiates the viewpoint that I expressed over the past couple of weeks (see Past Issue). Second, there's more going on off the coast of Ecuador than is being picked up and reported. Thirdly, and based on an hour or so of number crunching I did yesterday, I expect the reported quake levels will rise from their present period of quiescence to sizeable levels in about a week's time.
Does this means another mega quake? Maybe, but the odds are too hard to calculate (I'm an MBA - not a trained geologist). Nevertheless, the trend of increasing quakes over time is apparent in the U.S.G.S. numbers when you back out "no magnitude events" and the reality of continuing tectonic movement around the Pacific Ring of Fire can not be denied. The question is not if this causes some impact on the U.S. mainland down the road, but rather when. There seems to be a 9 and 15-day cycle in quakes, so if the pattern I'm watching is real, look for big shaker news out 5-9 days from today.
More volcanoes have popped off in the last week than have popped off in all of 2004. The single volcano in New Guinea released more sulfuric and carbon dioxide (not steam) gases than all the volcanoes of 2004. The release was so big according to Russian sources that it disturbed the upper atmosphere.
Although we can’t reveal the actual contents of the www.halfpasthuman.com web bot run which is just wrapping up, we can report that the number of languages in which people discussed “noises coming from deep within the earth” was 28 and in the next day’s data gathering, the number of languages discussing noise from the earth had jumped to 36 – and this is from a sample of 9-million reads.
Separate from the Russian backchannel and the web bot runs, the bot spiders have found 422 earthquake discussion forums. The volume of discussion going on these sites is noticeably up just since Friday of last week such that the amount of posts being made has doubled since last Friday. This is to the point that people who are “regulars” are remarking on the amount of data beginning to pour in.
One other thing from the Russian sources (a geologist who works for the Dhumma) He says if you look at the disposition of the quakes from the Nicobar Islands and over to the Ecuador area, the Nicobar quakes are marginally above the equator while the Ecuador quakes are marginally below. If you then juxtapose the write ups about the quakes, he’s afraid we may actually see a plate shift involving the Pacific Plate. He believes the Indo-Australian plate has either fractured or is in process.
All the quakes since the Cayman Islands quake of 6.8 in December seem to be pointing to a major movement of the Pacific plate. The timeline? No one knows, but the Russian thinks we could be within 90-120 days. His fear is that if the Indo-Australian quake was a 9 (9.2), the possible pending move of the Pacific plate would be a 12.
One of the Russian’s concerns is that if there is an event of this size in the Pacific, and the plate moves, a 12.0 near Ecuador, buildings in Europe and even Moscow would collapse.
We’ve picked up some reports in one of the Hindustani papers that people who live in the Nicobar Islands are reporting “groaning from the earth” such that people can’t sleep.
Now, flash back 12,000 years and you’ll find that the Chaldeans left Western Indian for what is now the Middle East because of quakes that made living in the area unthinkable. Could it be that history is repeating itself here? Ask me in a couple of months. Or, if we really have a 12 event, ask anyone else who survives.
One last thing: The bots noted a week or two back that Chandler's wobble is off in the latest results - and we're outside of historic means. This means the earth's spin has changed...
The Circular Enemies One of the major drivers of conflict globally has continued to be the size and strength of various completing military interests - fueled by the money plunderers behind them. Besides the often touted role of the Bush family in World War II, we have yet to see any substantial change in the dynamics of money-warfare. This morning, I'd like to put some of this into perspective. For instance...
War Is About Money If all of this seems a little confusing to you, not to worry. This isn't complicated. Two stories this morning put things clearly into perspective.
Thus, as I read rants from people who are upset about the OUTCOME of the voting in Iraq, I have to sit back and take Iraq as merely a small war on a much larger playing field - one that is run by corporate interests to further their agendas: Manufactured diseases and cures, making seeds illegal to control food supplies, and bankrupting countries to gain control of their water, mineral rights, and anything else of value. Speaking of which...
Bird Flu We're continuously suspicious of the origins of "new" diseases - because they fit so well into the new paradigm of life in America - "We have a pill for it..." Another person has died of so-called "Bird Flu" in Vietnam: DETAILS. The warnings and pronouncements are real - bird flu poses a huge danger to the world: SCOOP. The problem with diseases like small pox and polio has been learned by drug companies...the economic incentive is not to wipe out a disease but rather to contain it. Even better if it can be contained in area ripe for economic redevelopment. That type of thinking explains, for instance, why the fight against AIDS is less successful as you go down the national per capital income list..
Stocks to Open Weak At least that'd be a good guess. ODDS.
Ethiopia Hosts Rastahs I get accused of focusing only on "negative" aspects of the news. But, it's simply not true. For example, here's a commemorative gathering in memory of Bob Marley: DETAILS BYOG (bring yur own ganja mon...Aieree...) One reader writes that Canada's attitude toward ganja is changing and writes...
Can't help you there - as we're in a state where "tobacco" shops sell hookahs and the ranch is a state that doesn't have a three plant misdemeanor threshold like California. The spirits lobby still pass out plenty of "daush" (a Russian mafioso term for cash) to keep the status quo...Why would anyone suffer a hangover, otherwise?
Growing Numbness There's nothing inherently good or bad about almost anything we cover. Values are assigned by folks depending on what side of the issue you happen to believe in. Internal dissonance occurs when you have a set of beliefs and live contrary to them. For example, if you think the U.S. should not invade oil-rich countries, but drive an SUV, as some fundamental level, you're crazy. If you detest the stripping away of American freedoms, yet still travel by airports and airplanes, you've not living your conscience. If you are appalled by "lowest/dumbest common denominator" television programming and yet you don't read books, you're out of step with your beliefs. The results, which are slowly washing over the country appear as a growing numbness to all but packaged news and unoriginal thought.
Fed Decision Ahead No surprise: Up 25 basis points. Press Release. If you're crazy enough to be long the markets, we'd suggest a strong cup of coffee and a read of Financial Directions at this LINK. Headline" Global Slump Ahead..." Duh...
Britain Goes Partly "Texas" We notice that burglars are no longer such a protected class in England, which sounds like it's taking a page out of Texas Justice: STORY. Basically, if you're home is invaded in Britain, you're now less like to be prosecuted for defending your property.
Winning Against IRS I admit to being remiss about failing to post this - spied by our Texas Bureau: We The People .com has won a huge battle with IRS: Story. You can resist an IRS "summons" if it's not backed up by a Federal Court order...
Monday Gorby: Elections Fake! Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev calls the Iraq elections "Fake" - Details. While the elections were held in Iraq this weekend with a lot less bloodshed than many had feared, the outcome is a yawners in a lot of ways. Let's run through a few of them, shall we?
In all, the election has not resulted in what the public had been looking for - a major turning point which would mark the return of some of our sons and daughters who have been standing in harms way. But the days after the election, we're afraid, will bear an uncanny resemblance to the days before the election - controversy over mission and continued bloodshed on both sides.
Too Much Freedom: Tax the Net Plans Coming Yup - we have warned you time and again that the internet is just too much "freedom" - so look for the government to find a way to tax it into submission. Sure enough, here comes a plan for a 3% "telecommunications tax" which would have a chilling effect on the net: Link. The logic is: The tax is already applied to phones...." But the reality is that Bush's War is costing a bundle and "someone must be made to pay..." That'd be you, Pilgrim.
Predictable Rally With the elections over - regardless of your take on them - and talk of taxing the internet - we half way expect the market will put on an early rally today, but whether it can last until the close will be another matter. At some point, the reality of this week's Fed meeting (tomorrow) will start sinking in with the hype-timists.
Incredible Claims The Commerce Department issued a report this morning that personal incomes shot up a whopping 3.7% in December - which makes the report in-credible to our way of thinking. Story. One major factor cited is the payment of a dividend by Microsoft. Still, there are some things in the report that sound almost like the truth. For example, the report that personal incomes were up only 0.6% for the month if you back out the Microsoft dividend. That's probably still high, though. Commerce figures incomes were up 5.4% for the year, but spending up was 6.1%. So buried in the detail is the fact that consumers still spent 1/2 of 1% more than they made. Don't even get me started on the predatory lenders who are profiteering on low income homeowners in all this...
As we pointed out to Inside Report subscribers in our e-book on how to live for under $10,000 a year, one of the reasons for the housing bubble in the U.S. has been the emergence of predatory lending for low income home owners. And, if you want to read about adventures in Heartless Usury Land, click over to the paper "The Impact of Predatory Loan Terms on Subprime Foreclosures: The Special Case of Prepayment Penalties and Balloon Payments" at this link for a reality check.
Earth Changes We're in a period of quiet for a few days, until the cycle resumes, but nevertheless we have continued to see an unusual number of quakes in the Nicobar Islands area, plus people in Arizona are wondering what gives with the two 4.0 quakes the past few days up in the Winslow area Northeast of Phoenix.
Mount St. Helens is also continuing a big dome building event: Story.
Dollar Fall: Say Cheese! Great article in the NY Post this morning about how the real impact of the falling dollar is now being felt in the kitchen - with rising cheese prices: http://www.nypost.com/business/39158.htm This continues to make the case for Velveeta in the mac-and-cheese, I'd say...
Also in the Post - Christopher Byron's article on the quality of decisions being made by Dow Jones when figuring its acquisitions: http://www.nypost.com/business/39142.htm
News from Elliott Wave International
Write when you get rich,
George Ure, People's Economist
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Bulldog Editions when noted are the "early editions". Check back later for a more complete update. Bulletins as warranted. Normal byte times are 8:30 AM (or earlier) CDT Monday-Friday. Weekends as the spirit moves us. |
Updated: Saturday, Feb. 5, 2005 09:35 PST
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