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Unusual Sunday Update 10/8/2006 5 AM Is Mt. Rainier Awakening? One of the things we've been watching for this fall is a major "earth change" event, west of the Rockies, which could have an impact of commerce such that the economy falls apart, and which could cause the interruption of normal commerce with Asia and thereby cause shortages of various goods. So it's in this context that we report last evenings 4.6 magnitude earthquake at Mount Rainier in Washington State.
Local press reports aren't making a "big deal" about it, except to put in a bit of historical perspective. Yet, we draw this to your attention because Mt. Rainier is a biggie and if anything starts to happen with Rainier, then millions in Western and Central Washington could be impacted. including, and especially the big cargo operations at the ports of Seattle, Tacoma, and Everett.
Saturday October 7, 2006 More Pages of "Secrets Revealed" Just about everyone I ran into yesterday (which is four or five) was talking about the Mark Foley, republican been outed scandal that is just beginning to take legs in Washington 's District of Corruption. One of my neighbors, noticing that I've put a small sign down at the corner for a state representative candidate asked "Since when did you become political ?"
As explained here many times, I'm not political, at least not in the republicorp and democorps write a check, buy a friendly ear sort of way. I vote for the person, what they stand for (measured against the Constitution and Bill of Rights) as best I can make out in the preconscious class struggle between haves and have nots and between corporate/government being masters of humans, or the other way around. That's not easy sometimes. Dan Tancredo and Ron Paul are truly among the few shining stars who deserve the term "statesmen." The rest? Vote 'em out, sez I, arghhh (in my best pirate brogue).
That said, the republicorp has really stepped in it, and so the size of the Rove promised "October Surprise" should be a big one. (A key Karl Rove aid has resigned in the midst of the mess. Why? asks ABC.)
Already, people are saying that if there is an attack on America in this period that the administration will be totally suspect, at least by the voters I've been talking with.
Now, into the pot of the simmering mess:
By the way - speaking of keepers, I hope you noticed that Ron Paul has introduced legislation which would end automatic citizenship for babies born of illegal parents in the US? That's what I'm talking about when I say Ron Paul's a keeper. No other country offers such automatic citizenship, so why should we?
That's the kind of issue that we should be focused on - that and whether CONgress should reassume its Constitutionally mandated role of creating money instead of paying banksters to print it and then supporting -by paying interest to - the bankster cabal which wraps itself in the false name Federal (it's not) Reserve (which is has none of, save the credit of the People making us (gulp) collateral for the banksters!).
But the biggest non-surprise to the true Impendent believes in Independence, is that the corporatist powers behind the curtain have pulled the plug on the republicorps because they properly sense that the people have lost faith. Big duh.
The catch is that the PTB are split into factions and not all are on the same page. So now, it's only how the battle (between the factions) will work out - and given the resources of both sides, the kind of October Surprise I fear most is the kind that you respond to with mass evacuations and potassium iodide or mandatory inoculations with some untested drug.
Like the depression-fighting economic bonanza that is the War on Terror, and the construction bonanza that was the Leveling of Lebanon, there's a lot of money to be made in bombings and attacks by hidden Powers that Be on the civilian populations of the world. Eisenhower warned of it way back in 1961***. Something to think about over the weekend. Pray to God/Universe/pick your divinity that I'm wrong and just worry too much about the future of the Republic for which we stand.
Four Wars Worry It's not like we really need something to worry about on the home front. Depending what you want to count, we've got four wars to deal with and none of them seems to be headed in the direction of a happy outcome. For instance:
And the other conflicts are still percolating: Sudan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Mexican border, the number of low intensity conflicts (LIC'[s) is an arms merchant's dream.
"Contaminated Air" week - Time Monks Have to tell you a quick one about the time monks at www.halfpasthuman.com who are due out with the first in the latest linguistic look at the future later today: Earlier this week they sent an advisory out to us subscribers and it warned about "contaminated air" - specifically because the "contaminated air" according to linguistic immediacy values might show up before the first in the series was delivered because the linguistics were so "hot". On Tuesday they told their subscribers:
Well, that was in the Tuesday heads up. So as the week progressed, we had a massive global story develop - which you may be blissfully unaware of, living in the US and watching Mainstream Media (MSM) here - but HUGE forest fires in Indonsia are cloaking a whole region of the planet now!
What's all this mean? Just that when the time monks start talking about "contaminated air on Tuesday" as having super high immediacy values, we were not surprised in the least by the chemical plant or the Indonesia forest fire stories at week's end.
THE most overlooked story in MSM this week? Another contaminated air story! This time revelations (think secrets revealed) about a nuclear accident in the Los Angeles area that released 300 times more radioactivity than Three Miles Island. Not a peep on national media that I've seen!
Peoplenomics: Should We Build a Fallout Shelter? The pace of international developments has continued to increase this week to the point where someone asking whether now Kaplitalist Russia is on a collision course again with the Capitalist U.S.A. can't be dismissed as a Cold War memory or ravings of a loonie. While we read about some Russian bombers making practice bombing runs toward Alaska in more aggressive than Cold War fashion, the National Review is looking at global affairs and wondering if Hugo Chavez and the Non-Aligned Nations might be the leading edge of some new Cold War. It seems to us that odds of that are good, but there are some escalation paths in Super Power relations that could lead to mushroom clouds long before Chavez and the readjusting Oil Cartel figure out what's going on. That being so, we might want to revisit the decision-making process to see if construction of a fallout shelter might be in order. But let's start at the top - with the increased tension developing between the Super Powers. --- If you're not a subscriber to our premium service, click here for subscription info. Just $30/year.
Personal Depression Proofing Get a copy of our our $10 ebook "How to live on $10,000 a year or less" in the Peoplenomics Bookstore.
Pass It On Click here to send an email to your friends telling them about this site. I'd appreciate it. Tell them that this is on of the best NBSN sites on the web. --- Oh? You don't know what an NBSN site is? Ah. "No BS news." Our philosophy in picking stories is really quite simple. A huge amount of the news that is shoveled out by mainstream media is backward looking, or personality oriented. Now, no quibble with folks in Hollywood who want to be famous and all, but it doesn't impact my life in the slightest. Nor, I expect, does it yours.
The time monks up at www.halfpasthuman.com make two interesting points about such news: First, they can't do predictions about events related to movie stars and starlets because they are usually quite "hot" from an emotional linguistics standpoint all the time. This leads to their second point, which is calling such "people/persons/celebrity coverage "The Cult of Personality."
There's little return in getting wrapped up in the personalities that are making headlines, and it could be argued that the cult of personality fulfills, down at some societal archetype level, the same role that circuses and cakes did in Roman times. Being a country engrossed in spreading Empire, you see the parallel, I hope. uild a Fallout Shelter? The pace of international developments has continued to increase this week to the point where someone asking whether now Kaplitalist Russia is on a collision course again with the Capitalist U.S.A. can't be dismissed as a Cold War memory or ravings of a loonie. While we read about some Russian bombers making practice bombing runs toward Alaska in more aggressive than Cold War fashion, the National Review is looking at global affairs and wondering if Hugo Chavez and the Non-Aligned Nations might be the leading edge of some new Cold War. It seems to us that odds of that are good, but there are some escalation paths in Super Power relations that could lead to mushroom clouds long before Chavez and the readjusting Oil Cartel figure out what's going on. That being so, we might want to revisit the decision-making process to see if construction of a fallout shelter might be in order. But let's start at the top - with the increased tension developing between the Super Powers. --- If you're not a subscriber to our premium service, click here for subscription info. Just $30/year.
Personal Depression Proofing Get a copy of our our $10 ebook "How to live on $10,000 a year or less" in the Peoplenomics Bookstore.
Pass It On Click here to send an email to your friends telling them about this site. I'd appreciate it. Tell them that this is on of the best NBSN sites on the web. --- Oh? You don't know what an NBSN site is? Ah. "No BS news." Our philosophy in picking stories is really quite simple. A huge amount of the news that is shoveled out by mainstream media is backward looking, or personality oriented. Now, no quibble with folks in Hollywood who want to be famous and all, but it doesn't impact my life in the slightest. Nor, I expect, does it yours.
The time monks up at www.halfpasthuman.com make two interesting points about such news: First, they can't do predictions about events related to movie stars and starlets because they are usually quite "hot" from an emotional linguistics standpoint all the time. This leads to their second point, which is calling such "people/persons/celebrity coverage "The Cult of Personality."
There's little return in getting wrapped up in the personalities that are making headlines, and it could be argued that the cult of personality fulfills, down at some societal archetype level, the same role that circuses and cakes did in Roman times. Being a country engrossed in spreading Empire, you see the parallel, I hope. Friday October 6, 2006 The Jobs Report The Jobs report we are gathering around this morning has nothing to do with Apple, Steven, or backdating options. It's the other Jobs that the market watches - the employment picture. And, as we would expect in the next-to-last report before the "elections" (more on voting machines in a second) there are no surprises:
The two keys that we report religiously with each report - simply because they often tell a different tale than the TV talking heads - are the U-6 Labor underutilization numbers (PhD.'s flipping burgers report) and the CES Birth/Death Model (the "made up, but we think this is what happened") report.
The Table A-12 U-6 Numbers first: The rate made a big improvement from 8.3% in August to 7.6% in September.
Now, the CES Birth/Death wet dream...I mean statistics. The The report this month is that the CES Birth/Death Model added 28,000 jobs to the economy.
Let's see how the CES Birth/.Death Model impacts the employment report. In August, for example, when the Employment Report proudly boasted that the economy had added 250,000 jobs between July and August. According to the CES Model, 121,000 jobs can from an "estimate" of jobs created - not actual noses, actually counted.
This being an election year, I'll point out that the prime minister of Hungary is facing a confidence vote after admitting that his party had been cooking the books on economic numbers for years - and I'd just have to guess there would be at least some pressure on the Labor Department to make things look at rosy as possible for the republicorps who are facing a tough one at the polls although a majority return to the trough seems likely.
Now let's see how 2005 looked with the CES Birth/Death Model. We find that the government offers at least two sets of data: The original data reported to the public and then a "rebenchmarked" series which is shown on the current data page. I'll call current data #1 and unrebenchmarked (think of this as the "original guess" as series #2:
So, while I'm sure that we're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for statisticians to work all this out for the Labor Department, I'm going to propose that the Labor Department hire me to be their resident linguist and GS-18 Consulting Obfuscationist. If nothing else, an MBA and being able to invent bureaucratic terms like "unrebenchmarked" ought to qualify me at DOL - and if I can dream up even more dismal terms for the already dismal science (like calling this year's tweaks "recalculated unrebenchmarked historical data series" then perhaps I could qualify as a Fed Research Fellow.
About Those Voting Machines Oh the joys of voting machines. Almost as much fun as making up "adjustments," huh? Suffolk County is suing New York over voting machine guidelines. In Ireland, if the voting machines break down, you might be able to play chess on them. A federal lawsuit is planned here in Texas by some counties against machines which don't offer an audit trail.
Strike? What strike? Not much in the mainstream about the "national strike" that was to take place yesterday. The strike getting some coverage, against Goodyear, is not related. That's about Goodyear's plans to close a couple of plants including one 40-miles up the road from us in Tyler, Texas.
Foxes Counting Chickens The House is opening an investigation into the Mark Foley pages & sex scandal. While George Bush is standing by Dennis "ignored it" Hastert, we've been reading that there is more to come - maybe lots more.
Pumpkin Rot There are reports of a form of fungus damaging pumpkin crops this year. Bad news for jack-o-lantern artists.
YM Marketing Virus I received a Yahoo Messenger note today from what I thought was a colleague - who in turn said "Huh?" So it looks like someone has figured out how to send YM's that point you to a site which in turn tries to install a virus. --- All of which gets me back to my earlier position that virus writing and putting unwanted software on anyone's computer ought to be a capital crime.
Stop that President! As the idiocy of no-fly list madness continues to spread, we are reading that the speaker of Lebanon's parliament and the president of Bolivia. Now, I don't make any claims to be a security expert, but I would have to put the odds of the president of Bolivia hijacking and aircraft at about zero - right down there with the 80-year old women who are being frisked every day. --- Not that voting next month will change anything...but this is crap. Profiling is a good thing. I will fly with a plane full of presidents and 80-year old grannies any time over flying with 3 young Saudi men aboard, thank you. And having Saddam Hussein on no fly lists? Goes to show the quality of the list, don'tcha think?
No Comet in Sight As we reported yesterday, there's no sign of confirmation of a rumor comet to hit earth later this month. So, I guess the biggest clue is that I haven't gotten a note from my insurance company canceling my "comet crashes into your house and wipes out all life on earth" insurance which I pay thousands for every year. LOL
Thursday October 5, 2006 Comet Rumors Update Not much to report on the comet rumor itself, but an interesting/enlightening email from a reader about the damage potential from a comet versus an asteroid:
As I think I expressed this morning, I'm pretty skeptical of "end of the world in three weeks" reports. So why do they pop up on the 'net so much? It's like the old newspaperman used to say "They sell papers..."
Korea Warned
Our Wednesday morning polls results are tallied: We had 280 responses\. Of those responding 151 said to attack Korea. 11 said either attack no one (or some other country or the Bush administration) and 118 supported attacking Iran.
Although totally unscientific, the poll showed a couple of things. First: The administration won't have any problem rallying Americans behind the notion of a pre-emptive attack on North Korea because the perception - at least among our readers - is that North Korea poses a far greater danger to the world and us the US than Iran. Folks seem to recall that the state of war with Korea is only an armistice.
Don't know if they are going on similar poll results, but the administration is pushing for economic sanctions for Iran.
The only thing we have to sort out is which of the three outcomes will occur: A US pre-emptive bombing run on NK, a North Korean nuke blast, or none of the above. Judging by the stock market's performance the "none of the above" option seems to be on the mind of investors, but between other arriving events and the employment report due out tomorrow, all that may change. Especially because of the October 28th problem. What October 28th problem? Ah...glad you asked...
The web site is in Cyrillic (Russian) so you'll need to bone up on your automatic translation engine skills, but it seems that some Russian scientists are worked up about the possibility of a comet hitting earth later this month. Before you run out and try to find something to hide under, here's some mechanical translation:
If I am following the reports correctly, there are supposed to be some "early arrivals" preceding the main comet itself - and the spotting of a meteor up in the Pacific Northwest this week may (or more likely may not) have been related. Sorcha Faal's web site has an article on it, but we're watching the Russian site directly to see if there will be an update. I'll post it (translated mechanically) if there is. --- A comet smashing into earth would certainly be something to behold. We know that Russian scientists reported in March of this year that a meteorite over the Tunguska area back in 1908 may have something to do with our global warming now. At any rate, an impact event (or event an atmosphere brushing) could be cataclysmic. --- There is also a large body of scientific discussion about the role of comets in shaping of the earth's surface. I'd assume that Michael Paine's article on how a large asteroid would effect earth would be roughly analogous to what a comet would do. A quick read of the "Siva Hypothesis" of periodic mass extinction events is worthwhile. --- Of course, we've read about comets and catastrophe's before. As best I can recall, the predicted impact of a great comet with Earth in Greece at the time of the opening of the Olympics in 2004 didn't happen; I've had enough coffee today that I think I'd remember it. --- Still, we'll keep watching to see if this story "gets legs" but in the meantime, the advice from the time monks to "look up" from a few weeks ago certainly starts to make sense. The web bot project running (and hunting data off obscure Russian discussion forums in addition to English language sites) perhaps we'll see something in the bot run due out Saturday of this week - the first of the new series.
Any public perception of a world ending comet hanging about would presumably have an impact of markets, but then again, reality doesn't seem to intrude on bubbles until the bitter end.
War Over Georgia? While we have a question or twenty about the Russian comet story, the mainstream headlines out of that part of the world involve the growing tension over the fate of Georgia. As you may know, municipal elections are being held in Georgia today and things are tense. And more evidence of the urgency of things comes from reports that Russia has decided to clamp down on work permits issued to Georgian nationals working in Russia.
In the background of Georgia, of course, we know it's all about money and energy. And Pravda has a good backgrounder on how Europe is trying to set itself up as an "axis of energy" with recent agreements involving Russia, France and Germany to oppose "USA global hegemony."
Al Qaeda Leader Alive Naturally, any time we talk about oil, that brings us to Afghanistan (Pipelinestan) and Iraq (OilWellistan). The latest is that the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq is alive, although frankly, there have been so many reported deaths of "al Qaeda" leaders (starting with the 9/11 hijackers who were reported alive after 9/11) that I've given up trying to keep it sorted out.
And we see that NATO has taken over security of Afghanistan. A move to avoid being left holding the bag? I can hear the election pap now: "Oh, we are in Afghanistan in support of NATO..." will spew the republicorps rerunning. Yeah, right...
Party Fund While all of this is going, not to mention the daily bombings and loss of life in Iraq and Afghanistan, we're shocked to read that CONgress has allocated $20-million bucks to celebrate the end of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Has CONgress been smoking bad crack in the District of Corruption? Are they on a different planet? Help me here...
Who Knew? ....and when? That's the question and Dennis Hastert's (go) job is on the line as the ethic committee is readying for an investigation. This is like foxes convening to count chickens, but whatever... --- And you've heard, goes a sick joke circulating in emails worldwide today, that "CONgressmen don't use bookmarks, they just bend over their pa
Rice Knew The UK's Times Online reports Condi Rice knew about the threat of a 9/11 -like event in advance. A George Tenet - CIA briefing on the looming al Qaeda threat was apparently brushed off says the new Bob Woodward book "State of Denial" - which sounds adeptly titled.
Hot Border Watching the India - Pakistan border: More gunfights reported there with 10 killed.
Bank of England Pass No rate change from Her Majesty's boyz. (Course the Crown has the good sense to do its banking in Scotland, but that's another deal...)
Peeking in on California We notice Peking's coverage of the California governor's race.
Wednesday October 4, 2006 Stand By for Nukes? The great hue and cry is going up all over Asia as North Korea has been hinting again that it is about to conduct a nuclear test. Curiously, in an advisory sent out yesterday our friends who produce the future predictive web bot runs at Half Past Human, where the first report from the new run is due out this weekend, pass along the hot linguistic "contaminated air." This has me checking my potassium iodide pill supply, although the friendly time monks offer that with what's coming in the next few years, I might want to pass ours on to younger people. Their view is that we're looking at the ramp up of global tensions now to March of next year, then a release period into next fall, and then an even more dire outlook for late 2007-2008 (oh boy), such that we may find developing cancer will be the least of our worries. Not a happy bunch, these guys. They directed me to maps of the Jet Stream (and how it's split at the moment). Point taken.
Nuke Poll Here's a really grown up policy question. If you were President and you only had the military resources to attack one country for going nuclear, which would it be?
Results tomorrow morning. Welcome to the world of resource constraints. I haven't made my mind up yet...tough call.
Phony High I've been telling you for a couple of weeks (or longer) that the "new all time high" in the stock market is a farce and charade because of inflation. The Dow peak in 2000 may have been eclipsed in an absolute numbers way, but come one, look at inflation! The Dow to our way of reckoning (relying on the Minneapolis Fed's inflation calculator (see bottom of left menu for the link) and the BLS inflation numbers YTD show the "peak" needs to be north of 14,000 to be legit.
Go read fellow skeptic Michael Nystrom's summary over at Bull Not Bull and you'll see a much different picture than the mainstream hype. Nystrom's quote of the week was his "The only thing between us and a crash is the November Elections.
And if that strikes your fancy, the Mogambo Guru's report this week (courtesy of www.dailyreckoning.com ) characterizes the economy this way in his newest:
The next culinary delight for the Mogambo (or fairy tale for the rest of us) will be Friday's employment numbers.
Oh, What A Feeling Toyota stomped the US carmakers in September, except ford which was up a tad.
Georgia on My Mind We've been throwing darts at the calendar (which made a bunch of holes in one of our LCD monitors, because the calendar was an on-screen pop-up) trying to guess when Russia will move militarily against those Western bankster-backed upstarts in Georgia. Russia is ramping up a huge "diss Georgia campaign" because of the arrest of a pack of Russian spies, but then again, Russia is nervous about their neighbors on the steppes.
The US and EU are urging Russia to lift its Georgia sanctions, but I've got a dime (a major investment around here) to bet that Russia's position will be something like "So if two Israeli soldiers being kidnapped is reason to bomb most of Lebanon back to the Stone Age, what's the problem with us going into Georgia to get our guys?" Yup, that's backed up by Russia's recent draft of 123,000 new Army inductees who will start reporting for duty/training in a week and a half.
Hastert Hangs spIn The republicorp spin machine is going all out these days, trying to paint the idea that the Representative Mark Foley case is an isolated incident and "not a partisan issue." But already there are stories linking Foley to Jack Abramoff. So the speculation ramps up whether Hastert and other "knew but didn't speak" republicorps will survive this next month's elections. It seems to us, and you'll pardon the sick double entendre, that the republicorps are doing a lot of butt covering lately.
Arrest that Critic! Comes now a story out of the Rocky Mountain News about a fellow who is learning first-hand that the price of criticizing (VP "Hair Trigger") Dick Cheney is arrest. --- I of course use the term "VP" in this story advisedly: Stories are continuing to emerge about how secret last-minute software patches were installed in advance of the 2004 software run... I mean election! --- And you've seen that Dennis Kucinich is introducing a bill that would require hand counts and paper ballots? --- OK, even more obscure then: Out on Guam already 2006 voter returns using electronic voting are under attack. It'll be interesting to watch that one.
Tomorrow's National Strike Tomorrow is when a "National Strike" will take place here in the USA. What will be interesting is who will observe it. Most of us have to work. Voting is only about 30-days off - and that's what matters. (If there's a paper trail!)
10-4 Good Buddy This being October 4th,. it's the day as an extra class ham radio operator, I give a perfunctory nod to Citizens Band Radio, a rage a decade or two back. CB radio is interesting not so much because of its subculture, but because it reminds us about how fads run. Back in December of 2001, in the wake of the internet bubble popping, one of our early "Inside Reports" (now www.peoplenomics.com ) looked at the stages of fads:
If there is a lesson to be remembered on 10-4 ("good Buddy!") it is, from the economics perspective, that Ecclesiastes 3 offers a cornerstone to our investment thinking: "To everything, there is a season and a time to every [purpose under heaven."
The Great Wheel turns and brings with it the end of the long count of the baktun and the arrival of the Hunab Ku, 2012, and see yah later for paper assets. 10-4?
Davis for Texas State House Speaking of ham radio, I don't usually mention politics, but I'd suggest if you live in Texas State Representative District 8 you look at Sharon Davis' site. KB5KQL.
Jumbo Bumble There's a further delay to delivery of the first AirBus A380 is being reported. Will we live in a world of Spruce Goose and Composite Crow?
Tuesday October 3, 2006 Our Thumbnail Survey of Business On Monday morning, I asked readers to send in an email and pass along what they could about how the business they work for is doing. In other words, whether the business is doing better than earlier this year, or if they have seen a recent slowdown.
The results are interesting and will take hours of analysis, but the gist of it is: Depends where in the country you are located, and what line of business you're talking about.
So far, out of 313 responses, there have been 88-responses saying that business is either unchanged or UP while the balance (225 as I write this) report business is down. In some cases by more than 50%.
The MBA in me demands some rigor here in terms of drawing conclusions; here's a list of reasons why this survey should be used only as a "soft" data point. First, the folks who responded read this web site and thus have some economic concerns beyond what most Americans have. Secondly, the response came in over one day. Thirdly, there's not a high degree of precision in terms of location. And that list of conditions continues.
Nevertheless, it's interesting. Here are some of the businesses reporting no change in sales or actual increases:
Businesses reporting declines include the following:
I'll get into a more detailed analysis of the responses for Peoplenomics subscribers this weekend, but I think you see what I was hinting at yesterday. The notion is that we are on the leading edge of the recession and in some businesses, sales are off 30-50% already and that's before the general public wakes up to what's happening.
The comments cover a wide time frame, too. Deliberately, I was trying to leave that open-ended so people could report the time frame they felt most relevant. Many self-reported 6-month and 1-year trends, but about a third reported the impact became noticeable in August, particularly after mid month.
When I read the reports (thanks for sending them in!) what I see is that commercial jobs and "must haves" (like auto insurance) are keeping the economy together while at the same time, large CAPEX items than can be postponed, or smaller discretionary income related expenses are already slowing. Even government programs, not directly related to war on terror spending are slowing as more government resource is pushed in that direction.
To see this developing now is worthwhile because it gives me enough confidence in the slow down working through the economy to say I now see virtually no chance of a Fed rate hike at their next session and perhaps a 60-40 chance that they will actually ease rates in order to keep the remainder of the economy percolating along. Without a robust consumer, ready to borrow all those newly printed dollars into existence, the Fed knows it could easily get behind the eight-ball. And being a good student of the Great Depression, I expect Bernard Bernanke knows better than anyone else that if consumer spending collapses, and with a drought in place, a Second Great Depression could become more than a theoretical possibility written about by some grad school student.
Wine & Great Financial Detective Work There goes Bart over at www.nowandfutures.com - looking into the Treasury Department Term Investment Options. The story of how this works may sound a bit complicated, but his chart is compelling. Bad times for the market appear to be immediately ahead.
Bart's other claim to fame, and this is interesting work, is his reconstruction the Fed's M-3 money growth numbers. As you'll recall, the Fed buried the sausage on this one earlier this year because they didn't want the size of the bankster's money pumping operations to spook the markets. As his M-3 reconstruction work shows, since the Fed hid the real numbers, it looks like M-3 is currently exploding at a nearly 11% annualized rate.
When I look at the Fed's official M-1, what I see is that "official" money in circulation (e.g. federal reserve notes/fiat/scrip) is actually down 0.7% in the past year. I know that sends my friend Jas Jain dancing with delight of his deflation forecasts coming true, but Bat's work showing M-3 (reconstructed) increasing at 10.5-11% annualized argues something different.
The judgment call you get to make as an investor related to the importance of printed paper and digidollars. If you believe that only paper dollars are meaningful, then by all means, use M-1 which is actually deflating and put everything into cash and treasuries assured that :"Cash is King" in a major recession or Depression.
On the other hand, if you believe that digidollars are more important (t |
![[Most Recent USD from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/indexes/idx24_usd_en_2.gif)
