Quake Advisory Update

Our friends that scan the future has issued an extremely rare Public Advisory.  If you haven't read it, please click here to do so now. It's not the biggest story in most media, but we fear that it will be within a month.  So much for the burden of even getting a glimpse of the future.

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What seems to be continuing prequel activity is making headlines in a number of places.  An earthquake hit the Amani Islands in Southern Japan early this morning, the other end of the country from adjacent to the 8.3 earlier this week, but the meme I'm following is "ring of fire quivers."

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Not in Panama City (Panama) but 130 miles south, we note the 5.2 quake on Friday.  It was felt across the country.  And, continuing our tour around the "ring" we'd have to point out the 5.4 magnitude quake in New Zealand this morning.  Say what you will, none of these fit our constraints of "aftershock" from the 8.3 Kuril Island quake - too far distant, too much on the "ring" and extremely worrisome.

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Magna Utah's quake, early this week, points up one of the problems of seismology: Sure, quakes go on all the time - and at what threshold do they becoming meaningful? And not that all the action is limited to the Pacific Plate.  Folks in Trinidad and Tobago are talking about a 4.5 quake early Friday.

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You may recall that Elaine and I left California in October 2005, to return to our ranch here in East Texas, in part because of building concerns I had about an earlier web bot forecast that pointed toward an October event that year.  We left the state on October 2, and arrived back at the ranch a few days later.  I told a number of friends before leaving about my concerns - and was not surprised when, on October 8th, a hugely devastating quake hit Pakistan.  That quake, by Reuters report out this week ,still has in its aftermath, thousands of tin shelters clinging to mountainsides.

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In going public with a specific warning, as we have, Cliff and I are really stepping out on a limb here.  True, the technology that predicts future developments has been accurate in the past.  But, because it's a new technology, we except missteps and errors, so nothing would please us more than for this to be a "false alarm."   That said, however, our  construction projects here at the ranch have taken on some increased urgency, as we may have "house guests" sooner than we thought, depending on how the Pacific Northwest fares in [potential upcoming events.

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As I mentioned on Steve Quayle's show last night, some very interesting things to stock up on right now - should such a devastating quake occur) would be items imported from Asia.  I'm going through our pantry today and trying to identify foods that I would like to have on hand that come from Asia.  I may, for example, buy a gallon or two of soy cause, order another 30 pounds of my favorite Rose Brand Chinese egg noodles, and then there's Chinese oyster sauce and lichee nuts.  All these things may go to short supplies or not available at all should a massive Pacific-wide quake wreak havoc.

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More important from a business standpoint are things like flat screen TV's and monitors for computers, not to mention the computers themselves.  I may treat myself to a new laptop a little earlier than planned this year.  IF a mega-quake - once-in-a-thousand year event occur, tsunamis could conceivably take out electronics manufacturing in US supply centers such as Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and many other island/coastal countries.

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Once again, I am probably way overboard on this.  Cliff blame "monkey mind" for trying to prepare for every contingency.  His view is that "Most people won't do anything in advance."  But, if I could offer suggestions, they would include for folks living below 3,000 feet on the West Coast of the USA  things like:

• Have good walking shoes and winter-suitable foul weather gear for everyone in the family.

• A good supply of fresh water.  A gallon per person for at least a month is a start.

• A medical kit.

• A supply of "packable" foods (MRE's, for example) so if you had to, you could get by for a month - or longer on foods at home.  Cliff's down on MRE's, preferring other kinds of foods - granolas, wheat, pastas, but many of these take fire.  We may have solar ovens, but odds are near-certain that most folks don't.

• A place of refuge in mind.  Should such a mega-event take place, you'd want to have a map and a "landing zone" in a place you could get to.  For our family in the Seattle area, we have friends in Eastern Washington.

• I'd be keeping the gas tank full - as Pappy used to say "It doesn't cost any more to run it full."  Most cars will give 300-mile range, but in that, you might want to plan your "exit to high ground" and just assume that overpasses will be down, and you'll have to go around major fallen obstacles.  Hey, maybe all the SUV's so in this country will make sense after all!

In the meantime, we may be dead wrong on this prediction, but we are passing on the information just in case we're right - and the technology has yielded accurate forecasts may times previously.

Mob Mayhem

The G-20 finance ministers meeting in Melbourne, Austalia has a less than warm greeting today as an angry mob battled with police. Police blame about 100 hardcore anarchists; no popint trying to blame the banksters.

Say What, Where?

George Bush visiting Vietnam chose to defend the Iraq War there.  Even Tony Blair is admitting that Iraq is a disaster.  Wonder if Henry Kissinger offered Bush any thoughts on Vietnam while consulting on Iraq? Oh, and Kissinger on Iran is interesting, too.

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Meantime, one-time CIA Boss Robert Gates is lobbying senators who will vote on his nomination to be SecDef post Rumsfeld.

Silicone Breast Implants Back.

Yeah, I thought you'd want to read that story...     pervert!

Economic Notes

Dow up 36 or so on Friday, drop in housing starts, moderated CPI and a Starbucks report held the market's attention.  Not ours. 

Instructions for Readers

www.UrbanSurvival.com and its different looking mirror, www.independencejournal.com are updated daily between 7:30 and 8 AM Central Time.

The author of this site publishes a once-weekly in depth report dealing with topics related to the global economic picture at www.peoplenomics.com.  We often rely on www.halfpasthuman.com for their breakthrough work in predicting future developments by analyzing linguistic shifts.  Called the "time monks" (because they don't use the technology to make money, that's why we will often have in depth coverage of items before actual news headlines.  The December West/US earthquake, for example, or the peak in emotional tensions due at the Ides of March 2007.

Peoplenomics: Are Democrats Good for Investors?

As we noted in this week's ChartPack (click here), there's been a global stock market euphoria based on the idea that the neocons have passed their zenith and the United States may soon return to the ranks of more sober and measured citizens of the globe - perhaps rethinking Kyoto Protocol ratification, slowing down the wild west creation of paper assets, and who knows, maybe even changing our position on occupying Iraq and threatening Iran. Oh sure, there are reports that global fisheries will be GONE in 50 years, and OK, maybe there is something called peak oil, but who cares about that when there's money to be made?  And that's a good starting point for this week's report.

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No Turkey

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Pass it On

If you enjoy this free site, please consider subscribing to our $30/year Peoplenomics reports. One other thing you could do is click here to tell your friends about this site.  The more, the merrier, or so they say.

Friday November 17 2006

URGENT:  PUBLIC EARTHQUAKE ADVISORY

For more than 5-years, UrbanSurvival has been reporting on the unique work of a genius-level fellow who has figured out how to use the internet to project high probability future events.  We have accurately nailed significant aspects of 9/11, The Anthrax Attack, Space Shuttle Disaster, NE Power Outage, and the Banda Aceh quakes, along with more recently, the October Hawaii quakes. In fact in August of this year I was interviewed for a documentary which will air this winter and in the interview outlined the October event. Needless to say, the interviewer was impressed when Hawaii "hit."

Now, we offer an urgent warning to the public about the potential for a major earthquake event based on the linguistic shift work going on since 1998 at www.halfpasthuman.com and reproduced here.  Permission to repost this advisory is permitted with links both to this site and HalfPastHuman.

Introductory Note to the reading public:

Our work is based on assigning emotional values in the form of numbers from a scale of our own devising to quantities of conversations lifted from public fora on the internet. We then look for "oddities, outliers, and anomalies" of expression which may or may not occur within the conversations being processed. Through an arcane, complex, and complicated processing through software which we devised, the changes in language around common subjects are extracted and loaded into our modelspace {ed note: Intellicad, CAD program}. Through further jiggery/pokery we tie these extracted bits of language together and then produce forecasts of the emotional outcomes of probable future events. From these emotional outcome summations we attempt to trace back the flow to a cause or source or trigger for the emotional summations received. Sometimes this gets remarkably close to actual manifesting circumstances. But of course, mostly it is wrong.

In reading the text below, please note that the phrases in single quotes are those which arise, in those words, from our processing.

Public Announcement:

Sure hate to do this. The ramifications are not good for anyone. AT THE BEST, we are incorrect, and nothing will occur. NOTE THAT- the best possible outcome is that we are wrong yet again, and will, in 30/thirty days time, slink off to mull over the foolishness of humans, and the self-deceptive capability of the human mind.

However, the worst possible case is that we are correct in our forecast as what we have is a rising amount of 'emotional tension summations' around the idea of a very large pan-Pacific plate earthquake which will involve extensive volcanic activity.

Yep. That's the problem. The most recent processing of the 2/two report streams that we have open at the moment are stating pretty clearly that the recent earthquake activity in the Pacific basin is *not* over. Rather the interpretation of our data suggests the reverse, and that the Hawaii earthquake, the recent 'rising of land' near the island nation of Tonga, and the Kuriel Island 8.3 earthquakes are merely the 'set up' for the next event in which an earthquake in the Pacific plate induces {ed note: from the human perspective} both volcanic activity, and propagated earthquakes on both sides of the Pacific plate.

No, we do not get dates, exact or vague. Our work does NOT involve prophecy. We do not get messages from god or anything approximating that. So we do not get dates for events. We base our emotive quantifiers on a time scale of lunar months, and as the majority of the current indicators for a pan-Pacific plate earthquake are coming from the immediacy value set which has an emotional range of '3/three days out to 3/three weeks' {more or less}, we are of the opinion that the potential for the earthquake event is most likely within the next lunar month or slightly less than 30 days, thus prior to December 17th, 2006.

Our interpretation of the data set is going to a 'newly emerging mountain' as a result of or cause of {ed note: who is to say which is the cause or effect} a large, perhaps 9.5/nine-point-five earthquake in some 'great ocean depth'. The modelspace interpretation suggests that this first event will set off a series of very widely dispersed 'after shocks' which will affect both the east and western edges of the Pacific plate. We note that most of our geographic references are for places north of the equator and thus the idea that this will be a northern Pacific focused planetary change. There are some indicators for volcanoes south to about 9/nine degrees latitude to become active coincident with the 'plate quiver'.

The lexical clues which we have suggest that 'isolation', and loss of both 'power' and 'food' will result. Further there are 'aftermath' indicators for people having to both 'leave/flee low lying areas' as well as 'camping out {on} slippery/slick rocks'. This latter phrase comes from a lexical grouping describing people 'fleeing rising waters' to more height, even at the expense of what is described as 'necessary foods/sustenance'. Further there are threads within this area supporting the idea of 'food drops' to these unfortunates who are having to live on 'weather exposed rocks' amidst 'sloshing waters' long after the earth has 'subsided to relaxation of strain'. There are other indicators that some coastal areas, especially very low lying, now inhabited places which will be 'left to the waters' as a result of this series of 'plate quivers'.

We have more data interpretations, but the astute reader will grasp the general idea from the above extracts. Please note that our reports in total are expensive and we are NOT trying to elicit new subscriptions. Please note that any additional data will NOT tell you anything with surety about your personal safety.....let me repeat that for those who have yet to have their coffee hit their commute dulled brain cells. DO NOT THINK TO BUY OUR REPORTS on the idea that the whole of the report will provide you with any more specific details either timing, or geographic. Save your money or if so inclined, use the funds to get prepared for potential future events. What we have is condensed above. If anything appears within the processing which warrants more discussion it will likely be posted at Geo Ure's site, www.urbansurvival.com/week.htm  or posted here at Halfpasthuman in a publicly available form. Again, this is not a solicitation, rather is offered as a 'for what it is worth'. Further discussions of the data set and any additional information which may arrive prior to the end of December will be posted on Geo. Ure's site should they be meaningful.

What we have suggests that if you are on the west coast of the north American continent, or on the east coast of Asia, or on any Pacific plate based island, that it is likely that you will be impacted to some degree by the suggested events rising from our rather dubious processing and software. What we have suggests that you pay attention now if you are in the affected areas and see to the care and well being of your personal situation so that you may be of assistance to those who will be directly impacted by these earthquakes and subsequent volcano activity.

 Take heart from the fact that we are frequently wrong. After all, no human has any clue about what is really going on in the present, let alone the future, and we are all just guessing our way through life, universe, and everything.

Yes, we have hopes of being very foolishly wrong. However we note with real sadness that our approach to this work actually did catch the pan-global emotional wave which resulted from the Sept. 11 attacks on the USofA, and we caught it in June of 2001. It is this past history which prompts this posting.

Still, here is hoping we are wrong.  

Cliff

Disclaimer: Note this report is offered for entertainment value only. Any resemblance between the events portrayed in this report and any developing reality is purely co-incidental and in no manner represents foreknowledge on the part of the authors of this report.

Note that this information is derived from humans expressing themselves on the internet. As such, human emotional values and the words used to express them are being sampled and interpreted here, NOT THE FUTURE. Any resemblance between this report and future developments is entirely in the mind of the perceiver and does not exist in reality. The Authors cannot be held liable for accuracy of lack thereof in this report. Authors cannot be held liable for human interpretation of this report nor any action any human takes as a result of this report. Any human foolish enough to alter their behavior based on this entertainment-only analysis demonstrates themselves incapable of rational appreciation of reality, and the authors are explicitly held harmless and blameless for any and all such mental aberrations on the part of the reader.

The text above is the usual disclaimer on the ALTA reports. We have need of such as the current social order is very litigious and has an over-production/over-capacity of attorneys. We do not wish to waste the remaining time between now and HK (Hunab Ka) in useless activities in courts involving money which we do not have in any event. Hence, the disclaimer above which covers the material above.

The Newest Time Sinks

As if the Internet wasn't enough of a time sink (e.g. you can sink hours and hours into it with nothing to show in return) I can't ignore THE story of the day for gamers: PlayStation 3 is launching today.  Apparently thousands of people lined up to be the first ones to buy this heavily hyped box.

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I'm not much of a games fan, although I'll confess to owning a few.  Top of the list is Microsoft Flight Simulator.  I've got the metal boxed version of Century of Flight, but I will likely break down and buy "X" but not till I finish and move into my new office here at the ranch.  "X" seems like it would delay me finishing things.  But for my money, it'll be hard for anyone to beat Leisure Suit Larry.  Especially the convenience store scene in the first version...

The 2-Standard Deviation Rally

You may recall a few weeks back - might have been a month ago - I mentioned the possibility of a rally here that could take the Dow to the rarified airs of 17,000 before we get the worst crash in history - even worse than 1929.  With the Dow passing 12,300 on the close Thursday, I called Robin Landry, who runs the Raymond James office in Shawnee, Oklahoma, to ask him (as someone who had the good sense to exit the Big Cities, as we have, what the heck was going on.  "It's a 2-standard deviation rally," he explained:

"All of my senses tell me this is all going to end – and end very badly – the problem that you have when they’re throwing money into this market, I don’t care how (reverse repo's that you’ve talked about) they’re putting so much money in this thing that it can not go down until some event stops it.

The last time I saw the market going up and doing these things was in October of 1998 until 2000 – but we had a better read on things – they hadn’t hidden M-3, for example – and there was a Wall of Worry about Y2K and right now no one is worrying about anything.

The number of letter writers that are bullish is WAY up there – and there’s too much complacency – the VIX (the volatility index -G) will tell you that. I sit at my screen the past three days trying to say “OK, what technical can I use as a signal to buy?” And every time I look at it – and I see the divergences of a larger degree and stuff – it says “Don’t get caught in this thing!”

I can take from a monthly, weekly, daily, and what I noticed the market is doing is it starts up – and I have my 2-standard deviations, the 5, 10, the 20 and at the 30-minute, it shows the market is coming back to the middle of the regression channel. You can’t even get to the mean of the channel. "

"When you get to the 60-minute is that you have an up week, then you have a down week, then an up, then a down, then an up…What we had this week is an up, for options week. I expect that we will probably begin a pullback late (today) but whether that starts a more meaningful decline, my wave count is still that we are in a third wave from the lows in July, then we should a 4th (decline) and then a fifth completing in the first quarter."

George: "Robin, that’s where I got the idea of this Ides of March crash scenario that the web bots seem to be hinting at, except they have the dollar beginning to come under pressure as early as next week."

“If the dollar continues to come under pressure, then why is oil dropping down $2.50 yesterday? And gold down again? I agree, it’s just short term action, but if the dollar is going to decline in a major way, I believe gold and oil will go up. I still believe that we’re in a wave four in gold and oil and that they appear to be taking on a triangular pattern, which still has a little more to go, and then they will take off and go up.

If that happens, that would be up while we have wave four in the stock market. Now, that may seem reasonable, BUT there’s nothing even close to reasonable in this market.

So the logic that one tries to apply when the market is acting illogical doesn't work – which might means that I am more illogical than the market. Which is what makes it so frustrating: When the things that have always worked come to a point in time – the technicals – come to a time when they don’t seem to work, it’s when I get very very nervous.

George, they always work in the longer trend. I sat here yesterday watching every little indicator to verify the wave count and it just amazes me.

For instance, the Dow came off in the final few minutes Thurday, but when I look at the high of last week with the oscillator, that was the third wave, then the low last week was wave four, and this rally would be what we count as wave five going up. This means it COULD be the end of the whole rally.  But is it?

Let me tell you how close we are to that all changing: This oscillator I developed is one that told me that I have used with great success since 1992 when it said get in for the big run and it works with every degree of the counts.

So what was last week’s high? On 11/7 at 11:30 the Dow intraday hit 12,136.92 The oscillator that I use had a peak two hours later at 12,119.1. The high Thursday – which was the high for this week was 12,325.67. The oscillator going to the close, was at 12,118.7. Now, if this oscillator gets higher than 12,119.1, the whole wave count changes again, and what it’s counting at Wave Five now, would be counted as Wave Three and off we would go to the upside.

This is what’s so frustrating: Every single time the market starts to turn down, we get a little surge…we stay in this 2-standard deviation trend channel... "

George: "Robin, do you think these surges are the result of purely market action, or does it seem – not saying anyone could prove anything, but does it feel like a manipulated market? "

"I believe that there is some manipulation going on that has resulted in the same type of situation that we saw going into 2000 and some people are giving analogies to 1929 trusts. I believe the trusts of 1929 are the hedge funds of today – and these funds and all of their managers have been left out of this rally (as I have in most of my managed accounts).

As a result, I see them as undergoing performance anxiety resulting in them buying into the market, covering their shorts at the end of the day, or early in the day (mostly at the start of the day). So whether, it’s the Plunge Protection Team, the institutions trying to get in on any little move or dip – that’s why we’re not getting any dips – and so now the anxiety has gotten so high that when it opens this morning, some of them jump on thinking 'If it goes up, I’ll be OK…'  That's the thinking out there.

So what happens is that for someone like me with 30-years in the market, when you come into times like this – I get nervous. This is the third time I have seen this, I wasn’t around in 1929 - but this is the worst I have ever seen. The frustration for me is that my experience says do not buy into this.

If this continues, then George, the little decline that we had in the stock market earlier this week that I’m counting as a little tiny Four inside of this third wave up, and completing a fifth – if it pulls back down and then breaks through the regression channel of the hourly, then we know that we are going to be in a down week of 300-400 points – or maybe less.

Two weeks ago the correction was only about 240 points top to bottom, the one last week was just over 100 points. If we break that on the hourly then what you do is go to the daily to see if it violates the wave count inside ther daily.

In the wave count on the daily – where I have told you we are in a third, fourth and fifth to finish, that would be a clue that we would start into a Wave Four down, they never dropped out of the channel on the daily. This thing keeps subdividing.

Since July we have been just stuck in a 2 standard deviation regression channel."

Robin thinks if we are in the fifth of the fifth we could see this rally extend to 13,425 to (Hold on you’ll love this) 17,228. That would be the greatest explosion/extension ever and interest rates would be going up – everything thing would be going up – gold, silver – you name it…just as it did from 1974 to 1981.  But then (perhaps around the Ides of March) it would also necessarily end, and when it does, the market could collapse to the 3,000 range.  But for now, it's been a hell of a time to be long.

By the way, there is one other point to be made.  The Fed is not the only outfit hiding numbers - disposing of useful information that would help investors - like the broadest measure of the money supply, the M-3.  The Fed did away with that back in March of this year and that has allowed the true magnitude of the money sloshing around to be mostly hidden from public view.

It's not, however.  There are some folks who have created M-3 replicas based on other available data. Credit where due: My friend Bart at www.nowandfutures.com has reconstructed what he calls M-3b, which has a five 9's correlation with Fed M-3 backtested to 1980.  As you can see here, M-3 has gone merrily sailing skyward.

I should also point out that the NYSE also changed one of its key reporting metrics which also has the effect of hiding the magnitude of machine-to-machine program trading in the markets.  Basically, the NYSE stopped reporting both sides of program trades and instead, now reports only one side  of program trades.  So when you look at the more recent available program trading number (29.3% of all action on the NYSE the week ending Nov 10, for example), you can double that to call it 60% - and that's a good approximation of what the program trading really is, had the reporting methodology not been jiggered.

Butt Check

If you're still still smoking, this is the day of the American Cancer Society's "Great American Smoke-Out."  Years ago I gave up smoking - in my youth I was a 2-pack-a-day reporter.  Haven't had a cigarette since the mid 1980's.  I think my attitude toward smoking is summed up nicely in one of my favorite all-time songs: "Cigarettes and Whiskey (and wild, wild women):"

"Cigarettes are a blight on the whole human race

A man is a monkey with one in his face;

Take warning dear friend, take warning dear brother

There's a fire's on one end, a fools on the t'other." (chorus)

By the way, this is one of those songs that the Muppets did (in my view) better than even the old country originals.  Problem is, I haven't been able to find it on a CD anywhere...dang.

Clear Channel Buyout

We can't help but comment on the buyout of Clear Channel Communications announced on Thursday.  Don't you think it's curious timing how less than two-weeks after the power balance shifted in Congress, that Clear Channel - voice of so many conservatives - changed hands? 

Dream On Department: I haven't looked at what the break-up value of Clear Channel would be, but wouldn't a return to local  radio programming be a refreshing change?  That just about assures it won't, though.

Gas Up

Although oil is bouncing around a bit, the prices at the pump are going up, says the Southern California Auto Club. I think something deep in your reptilian brain is screaming "It's just because of the holiday - prices always go up before a holiday and Turkey Day is next week!"  But alas, it's the after elections, time to get the voters back, I'm afraid.

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You'll notice not too much on the international news this morning.  I'm just focused on fun and with a zillion projects at the ranch this weekend, the latest expansion of fighting in Darfur / Chad seems a bit remote. But then again, so is Britain's move to ban junk food ads from kid's TV.

Thursday November 16 2006

Earth Gets Even

The big quake in the Kuril islands yesterday was a real eye-opener.  In case you've been in suspended animation, an 8.3 quake caused wide area of the Pacific to be put on tsunami watch, and Crescent City had some damage as the waves arrived at the Eastern Pacific shoreline.

As the headline implies, though, we're not just considering earthquakes in here.  Folks up in the Pacific Northwest tell me the weather coming in from the Pacific continues to give them a real thrashing.  As Channel 4's web site reports this morning, "100,000 without power as strong windstorm blasts area..."  They mention winds that are in excess of hurricane strength, but no one seems to want to talk about that.  Just that it was windy.

A little closer to home, here in East Texas, we had a few hours on the generator on Wednesday as power was taken out by high winds here that touched 50 MPH.  But that pales in comparison to the winds that roared through Alabama yesterday.

Want a nightmare scenario?  The Pacific Northwest weather seems to be alternating between blasts out of the Gulf of Alaska and Pineapple Express moisture.  So imagine that a very intensive low pressure comes into the Northwest in the first few days of December - and further, let's just guess that Stan Deyo's work might shade toward that timeframe, too.  And then we get something bigger than the 8.3 that happened in the Kuril Islands this week but this time centered in the Pacific Northwest - maybe something like southern Vancouver Island.

If you look at the US Geological Service web site, you'll see seven earthquakes in the past two days with magnitude 6.0 or greater.  That's a huge amount of energy being released. As I look at the Pacific Plate map, it seems like there are lots of "big dots" on the West side, but relatively fewer and much smaller quakes on the East.

What does all this mean from an investment standpoint?  Only a few things:  One is that 'market madness' and 'derivative delusions" can be easily over-ridden by earth change events. What would have happened to the USA if the December 2004 Banda Aceh tsunami had happened off the West Coast here? Look at the National Geographic photos and think to yourself "What if this was Seattle, San Francisco, L.A. or Vancouver BC?" Oh, and shorting insurance stocks might get interesting in the next few weeks, too.

The Carbon Market

I don't know if capitalism will be able to survive climate change, but if you want to see adaptive capitalism in play, just read up on how Australia is planning to link up its "carbon market" with other such markets around the world. I've got mixed feelings about this.  Sure adaptive capitalism sounds good, but at some level won't this turn into another craps game for high rollers simply for the sake of keeping global financial markets coming up with new and even crazier reasons to print more money?  Some environmentalists are reported by the AP as 'optimistic' about future US positions on climate.

Bush: "Committed to Asia"

The George Bush traveling road show in Singapore is making big headlines about being "Fully committed to Asia."  And why not?  They own most of our paper debt that keeps us alive as a country. 

I was reading a report the other day on national holdings of foreign exchange and gold.  You know where the USA is?  #10 on that list!  Japan is number one, China number two. And you'll love this: We're just barely ahead of Malaysia!

Rebellion/Revolution

I haven't mentioned the web bot's having us in the revolution/rebellion mode globally for a while, but if you want a current example, check out the haps in Tonga.

Too Good To Last

I was really pleased to report a week or two back that India and Pakistan were engaging in peace talks again.  Oops!  Too early, turns out.  Pakistan has fired a new medium range missile good for 800 miles or so.

Counterfeit Drugs

Up to 50% of drugs sold online may be counterfeit says a new report.  Also on the subject of drugs, we note Wal-Mart is extending its generic program.

Kaizen Cowboys

Toyota is opening what's billed as its most advanced US facility tomorrow in San Antonio where the new Tundra will be produced. Some of these will sport 5.7 liter V-8's and haul 10,000 pounds on the hitch.  Toyota dualies? Hai!

Headline Madness

"What's in your coffee this morning George, writing such an obtuse headlines?" you're asking yourself.  Well, what's going on is that the headlines of the day - those headlines for the masses - are not reflecting the underlying reality of what's really going on, versus what passes for going on.  If your coffee has kicked in, get out the biggest Magic Marker you can find and write neatly in large block letters: 

"Reality Runs Orthogonally to News Headlines"

Examples?  Sure.

Jas Jain as Rod Stewart

We begin this morning with by recalling the old Rod Stewart ditty titled "Every Picture Tells A Story".  No, I'm not thinking of the wisdom in "But remember one thing don't lose your head to a woman that'll spend your bread".    Nope, I'm thinking about the part that goes "So remember, every picture tells a story don't it." 

And with that, here's a frightening chart Jas Jain put together:

"Jas thinks the stock market may be getting a bit bubbly.  But in my quest for precision thinking, I prefer the term hydrogenated markets.  "Why?" you're wondering.  Think about it: The term term "bubbly" in my mind is associated with a rollicking good time, party atmosphere, loud music, and so forth.  As in "blonde companion and a bottle of Dom Perignon. Bubbly" 

Hydrogenated markets, on the other hand, as anyone who has ever read the "Oiling of America" knows, is hard to associate with anything other than slow death through arterial sclerosis. Sort of like the purchasing power of many portfolios with the illusion of new highs in the Dow, but six years of inflation unaccounted for since the True Market Peak in 2000.  Today's Dow might taste good at the moment, but over the long haul, it'll kill you.  That sort of thing - that's what Jas is getting at.  Quite so.

And, it's part of the reason that November 24th looms.  Besides news events that could pop that day (or Turkey Day, for that matter), it is also what we refer to as "National Call Your Broker Day," the day when most brokerage firms back in the old days (when brokers actually offered sound advice) recorded their highest number of phone calls in a single day.

Thrashing The Mogambo

I didn't intend to back the Mogambo Guru into a corner yesterday, but a reader sent me an email that I had to forward to the Mogambo ("the angriest guy in economics") for comment.

"Hey George-

After peering into The Mogambo Fountain Of Eternal Wisdom (TMFOEW) I recall a statement about "peak oil" he made a few years ago and I'll try to always remember it.

It goes something like: "We will never run out of oil-we're going to run out of money, thanks to the morons at the fed"

Next slurp- reader"

Not a bad point: If we need gobs and tons of money for oil exploration why isn't a runaway printing press at the Fed a GOOD thing?  I mean, if the Mogambo sez so...   I sent a polite inquiry to the MoGu:

Hahaha! Mogambo caught in a squeeze: "Fed is making too much money". But Wait! "Fed is not making enough money to trick fools into drilling for more Oil."

Triumph is claimed by the People’s Economist! He taps on the chalkboard and demands an explanation….excuse..or Mighty Mogambo Revelation (MMR)…

G

Imagine my surprise when I received a nearly coherent reply!

"Dear George,

The Mogambo smiles, and concedes that the short term is erratic enough to produce waveforms that transcend the mean, and routinely do. And I will happily concede that it may truly have been your awesome genius that allowed you to accurately forecast such short-term movements, and all we lowly creatures stand in your shade.

On the other hand, check with me again next year about this time, and God help you if things have turned around until it is I, The Mogambo, who is standing and tapping on blackboards and demanding an explanation, and then when recess comes, I'm going to tear into you and rub your face in it, saying "You want some more short-term dirt, George? Huh? Do ya, George? Ya want some more?" and then you will learn an Immortal Mogambo Lesson (IML) that the gain you get for being right pales in comparison to the Viciousness Of The Mogambo (VOTM) the next time I am right about something and your credit rating mysteriously gets ruined and your whole life has turned to crap.

So, I smile, and bow, and congratulate you on your little victory. But you know what I am thinking.

But to argue that continuously consuming a finite resource cannot have a point when 50% of it is gone is to argue the ridiculous, as in 100 - 50 =100. So the only question is "when?" And with the easily-found oil all gone, it becomes difficult and expensive to increase production to meet a demand-driven increasing consumption.

And drill for oil now? Hahaha! Much better for the oil companies to wait until the crunch comes, as Congress will then lard out tax incentives for drilling and exploring and synthesis and blah blah blah!

-Mogambo

Hmmm... food for thought there.  I wonder if I should send the Mogambo my new book "Noise Trading Market Perturbations Using Nonlinear Asset Allocation Models for Dummies."  Naw.

Wednesday November 15, 2006

One Day Late Release Period: 8.1 Quake

A number of readers have been bugging me: "Where's the November 14th release [of tensions] that the time monks at www.halfpasthuman.com have been talking about?  I thought there was one due on the 14th?"

CNN is reporting that an 8.1 (preliminary magnitude) quake hit this morning near the northern islands of the country and a tsunami of 2-meters was possible.

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The time monks have been doing pretty well lately:  Their prediction some six months back about "new land" in the Pacific has come through with a newly emerged island in Tonga drawing scientific attention.

But looking ahead, the next dates to watch seem like around November 24th for a market/dollar moving event (with the dollar likely to head south) and then around December 5th's full moon, with a BIG quake [West coast] seemingly possible. The Middle East fighting pops in December (Iran?) but the whole stew doesn't boil over until the middle of March next year.

Not giving away all of the ALTA series work here, but we're allowed to give things that could have an impact on large segments of humans, and around each of these 'hot dates' of major change, keeping a clear head will be important.  The moon today is in its last quarter, so figure three weeks to when language lines up for another whack on the planet.

Looking into the future like this is not for those with a weak stomach, and if you don't have a family income of at least $100,000 a year and have 4-months of food stored, you've got more important places to spend you money.  But that said, the time monks are accepting subscribers for the 0907 run which will look at the period between now and next September.  Ok, not exactly, the 9th lunar cycle of 2007 (I need to be precise).  For information, click here.  Or, perhaps by December 7th, you'll be saying "So that's what a web bot release period feels like."  Sort of like the Nov 14 release was felt in Japan this morning. And that's a small one. Nov. 24th and December 5th should be bigger, if I read things right.

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Of Spilt Beans and Jailing Jack

One-time District of Corruption Lobbyist Jack Abramoff will report to a federal prison today today to begin six-years of big house time for his conduct in Washington. But the key to this story to my way of thinking is summed up neatly in this paragraph:

"If it were up to the Justice Department, however, Abramoff would not be heading to prison, at least not yet. He could hold the key to a sweeping corruption case involving Congress, members of the Bush administration and their aides, and prosecutors said putting their star witness behind bars would impede the investigation."

In other words, Abramoff has not yet finished spilling the beans, but he's being hustled off to prison now.  Which strikes us both as curious - and not so curious.  You see, other headlines claim "Abramoff fingers 6 to 8 'seriously corrupt' Democratic senators." Yet another headline says Karl Rove was among those who might also be named by Rove.

So, as I wrote in last week's report to Peoplenomics subscribers, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."  Stinks.  New brooms don't necessarily sweep clean, but they seem to know where under the carpet is, much better.

Rethinking Peak Oil

I think Matthew Simmons summed up the problem neatly in his book "Twilight in the Desert" when he outlined how hard it was to come up with reliable forecasts about the future of oil because of the wide variances in definitions and statistics used.  So, forgive me if I take with a grain of salt - or three - the report from Houston that Cambridge Energy Research Associates says there's at least another 24-years to go before Peak Oil arrives.  They figure at the current bur rate, the world can go another 122-years before running out - and that's way longer that most Peak Oil experts have cited.

In the interest of being balanced, after you read the Houston/Cambridge news reports, you might want to flip over to Matthew Simmons's site and see the PowerPoint (as a .PDF) that he  gave in late October to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil in Boston where slide 8 sums up the problem faced by investors trying to decide how to play 'Peak Oil':

"􀂄 Recent studies continue to argue “Abundant Energy Forever”:

– IEA Study

– EIA Study

– CERA Study

– ExxonMobil advertisements and Long-term Supply/Demand Study

􀂄 All envision major growth in oil and gas supply while prices stagnate or decline.

 

􀂄 All grounded in theories with little factual detail:

– Reserve appreciation

– Technology advances

– Yet-to-be discovered new oil

– Vast stranded gas

– Boundless unconventional oil and gas

– Demand growth is faltering."

Ah!  If your coffee has sunk in you'll catch the reference in October to a CERA study(s). Which gets me down to my personal position on this:  We need to be very clear that yes, there is plenty of oil (in this regard CERA may be right) but the other side of it is that new oil will be darned expensive, so give that to Simmons. 

As the People's Economist, I scratch my head once in a while and ask "So where is the end of economic cheap oil and what are the socioeconomic changes that will become apparent when we get there?"  Answer that one with any degree of precision, and your nest egg will grow for sure.  Except, of course that when the magnitude of the change becomes apparent, the planet will likely see flurries of exogenous (non-marketplace) events that will tip the apple cart, and in this sense, the Iraq War may be just a leading edge of the end of economic peak oil.

In addition to Iraq (and perhaps Iran before year-end), we're already seeing major energy-driven merger changes in the airline industry (more on the latest merger today in a moment) but certainly fewer airlines will make it easier for a few surviving player to take excess capacity offline as the economics of flying change dramatically, in response to the break-even cost of operations implied by an escalating oil price.  I assume you know the biggest chunks of an airline's budget is usually oil, once any major pension plans have been scuttled, right?

India-Pakistan Peace

India and Pakistan are resuming peace talks.  Good for humans, but a bad deal if you're a big-time arms dealer, or sell centrifuges; that sort of thing.

Al Jazeera's Uplink

Respected (within the Arab World) Al Jazeera is launching a satellite news channel from its home based in Qatar. From a strategic marketing standpoint, it seems likely to become a CNN alternative for 40-million households.

Mergers and Power Plays

Starting with the latter first: Big changes are in store for Volkswagen/Porsche it looks like as boardroom personalities duel. US Airways is proposing an $8-billion stock and cash deal to merge with Delta.

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On the finance side, Deutsche Boerse has pulled back it's offer to Euronext, which means the competing NYSE Group proposal will come to a vote next month.

Tuesday November 14, 2006

Evidence of Climate Change

I think I mentioned that in February of 2007, the UN will have a new 5-year study on climate change out. Might have mentioned it to Peoplenomics subscribers...anyway, there's some prequel stuff out today that is worth reading from the A.P.  A few highlights:

"-World temperatures have risen to levels not seen in at least 12,000 years, propelled by rapid warming the past 30 years.

-Greenland's ice mass has been melting at what NASA calls a "dramatic" rate of 41 cubic miles per year, far surpassing the gain of 14 cubic miles per year from snowfall.

-The levels of oceans, expanding from warmth and from land-ice runoff, have risen at a rate of about 2 millimeters a year between 1961 and 2003, and by more than 3 millimeters a year in 1993-2003. "

Curiously, while scientists seem to agree that a further increase of 1 or 2 degrees (F) in global temperatures would cause HUGE changes (rising sea level, freak weather, etc) most investors are curiously ignorant of climate change.  "Aw, it's just a bunch of environmental hooey," goes the thought process. Except, of course, in places like Australia where a 1,000-year drought is already expected to cause a 'rural depression' and Kenya where drought is taking hold. But don't let me take the fizz off your option expiration week here.

In fact, the science is being rejected in Australia where the Reserve Bank is now rejecting the 1,000-year claims and is downplaying the significance of the drought.  This seems to me to be a new high water mark in denial - as banksters claim expertise at weather.  This is just marvelous!  Of course, if the banksters didn't deny climate change, that might upset the investment apple cart, and we can't have that now, can we?

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This is not the whole report, out today, but it's a start - with a lot more coming between now and February.  But if you're a long term investor (which lately means holding a position more than a month or so) then this kind of information ought to be high on your reading list.

Hostages in Baghdad

Gunmen have seized about a hundred hostages at Iraq's higher education ministry. Almost as interesting as the story is the news frenzy of 'live this" and 'live that' which come from such events. The time monks mentioned something about a 'release event' on the 14th, prior to a larger one around the 23rd/24th, so I reckon this won't go well.

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George Bush held his meeting in Washington yesterday seeking "fresh perspectives" on conduct of the War, but if those fresh perspectives were to involve talks with Syria and/or Iran, forget about it.  Tony Blair on the other hand might be open to such talks.

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I understand the value of direct confrontation, but drawn out wars like Iraq don't make much sense to me.  I'm a great believer in letting the aggressive side think they've won, wait till they let down their guard, and then when they're least expecting it, attack their weakest and most unguarded point with overwhelming force.  I wonder how history would have looked if the moment US troops showed up, the fighting had stopped 3 1/2 years ago.  Would the US still have built a massive ongoing presence? 

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The USA is a "right now" country, but militant Islam is not.  Look how much time elapsed between the first World Trade Center bombing and the second. And no one knows how long before the next attack on America's heartland.  The al Qaeda /militant Islamists are playing a very, very long hit-and-run game plan.

Since 2001, the US has been edging toward bankruptcy defending against all manner of possibilities and carrying out a hugely expensive war - and all the while all our enemies have been doing is waiting for our spending to slow, then they'll almost certainly hit us again, and lacking a better response, we will resume our lurching toward bankruptcy. Asymmetric warfare, no?

Rudi Runs

No surprise here: Rudi Giuliani is making moves like he might run in 2008 as a republican.  That makes it McCain versus Giuliani at the Convention.  Hillary unopposed on the other side of the corporate contribution ledger.  Hmmm...

Dollar Poll

Yahoo Finance has a poll up last night about where people expected the dollar to head in the next couple of months.  54% said "Down" 32% said "Up" and the rest waffled and expected not change..

Flu Pigs

One of our readers has been watching the 'dance' going on about bird flu. 

We know that the pig is where the dreaded H5N1 will complete its binary-bioengineering into the pandemic flu. Now, has the govt finally caught on? - they're obliquely promoting feral pig hunting, even hiring crews to go out and bring 'em down. In Canada there have been thousands of pigs killed in arson fires at swine producers' farms.

There is also the posssibility that the disease has advanced further than what the naive press have described? We already know the low-path strain of H5N1 is here now . . . and it could and can join with enough of a human flu strain inside a pig to give genesis to the feared pandemic.

The enclosed headline "Wild Pigs fair game" got my attention because we've had some wild pigs rooting about our area of East Texas.  Seems that the pack of wild pigs that hangs around Mound Prairie Creek occasionally gets too big and we'll see tracks down at our creek, which is one of the headwaters. I've never gone after wild pig, which as any Asmat will tell you is as dangerous as headhunting.

Meanwhile, a couple of doctor friends tell me they're just a little suspicious of reported plans to set up bird flu web sites aimed at kids.  Can you say 'conditioning'?

Medical Cost Question

Here's an interesting question that came up in a conversation Elaine and I were having last night:  If I had a chronic skin condition (atopic dermatitis eczema) and asthma, wanted to get two simple and common prescriptions (triamcinolone [triam] ointment, 0.1%, and Albuterol for the occasional breathing issue) from a doctor, what do you think the doctor would charge?  I mean if the ONLY item discussed was the two prescriptions?  Send your guesses here.  I will let you know in a couple of weeks, likely.  E thinks $125, I'm guessing more.

Downside of Outsourcing/Jobjacking

The 'only-budgets-matter' (heartless ogres in Accounting) who ship all those USA IT jobs to India are having an impact.  Besides causing higher-than-reported unemployment and underemployment in the USA, they have also managed to create a skills shortage in India. Next thing you know, India will start 'backsourcing' to us, maybe?  Well, at least it's a dream...

Meantime, the head of the Dallas Fed says skilled workers are hard to find. Oh?  Gee, maybe if workers were paid more...but that would result in labor cost inflation - and the Fed's doing just fine on that score with wild-eyed republican 12-year spending spree inflation, thanks.  And deftly, they will had the reins of government to democrats just in time to leave them holding the bag for the recession which I expect to evolve into depression. 

Roger's Right

My friend Roger Reynolds, who sends out short epistles about America's financial madness now and then under the subject: "Shame on your Federal Reserve!!!" has a very good point which bears repeating:

"Everyone should watch the EURO and the DOLLAR charts. $xeu and $usd on stockcharts.com. WHY??? Recently the dollar fell and gold/silver surged. The last 2 days the dollar has rallied and gold has fallen back. Therefore, It appears that "IF" the gold/silver is to have a BIG move, then it will likely be accompanied by the dollar falling HARD and the EURO surging. "

Roger's email (I hope he won't mind my giving it out) is randkreynolds@usa.net.  Tell him you want to be on his mailing list.

Monday November 13, 2006

Iraq Wakeup Call

The leader of Iraq is scolding his parliament, promising changes will be made in government, and in other ways trying to whip up some old-time enthusiasm for Iraqis to take on more of the War effort since the US vote has made it clear that we have not issued a blank check and we're not in the War forever. On the other hand, it's hard to whip up nationalism when 35 police recruits were blasted to smithereens overnight, and the US death toll has gone to 2,848, although the debate continues about how many additional have died, after being med-evac'ed out of the War zone.

Something like 75 more bodies have piled up in the last 24-hours, and it's against this backdrop that a prestigious panel meets in Washington today to try to come up with new ideas. Odds are that there won't be any easy answers.

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From a high level perspective, I argued this weekend in my in depth Peoplenomics report this week, that although the democrats won, there's so much "inertia" behind a war of this size that no changes will happen for a long time - and almost certain not till mid March at the earliest.  Most of the press reports I've seen don't envision any phased cuts until mid-2007, as this Boston Globe report points out.

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I had a conversation with a friend about that on Sunday afternoon.  "George," he suggested, "You're not grasping the magnitude of the change.  It's a major step in what Strauss and Howe wrote about in The Fourth Turning," he said.  "This is a huge change and after Iraq, we probably won't fight another war for a decade or two, it's that big."

While I agreed with my colleague that yes, the vote was a significant renunciation of neocon, republican, and heavily corporate-influenced government, and yes, the new polls show George Bush's ratings are in deep do-do, changes in the course of the ship of state come slowly, just as putting the rudder hard over on a supertanker takes miles to work out.  So it will likely be in Iraq - months and even years if a pull-out decision is made.

---

Our conversation then turned to fate of Vice President Dick Cheney. We agreed that Cheney's influence has waned since the first of the year, when his hunting accident made headlines.  Now, there's open speculation about what will happen to Dick Cheney. The Australian today reports that:

"If Cheney quits, Bush could appoint in his place one of the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. "

"I think McCain would be the shoo-in," my friend suggested.  "People want action and they want it now.  Don't under estimate how angry people are about the War."

True, and yes, there were impeachment calls heard new Independence Hall this weekend, but I keep coming back to the inertia point.  A Peoplenomics subscriber sent in this:

Hi, George.

Hear! Hear! Your analysis of the Democorp sweep of Congress hits the nail on the head! The only potential benefit that I see is that it may (emphasis on may) result in a slowing of our descent into fascism.

There are a couple of points, however, on which I might disagree with your report. In my part of Texas, (Fannin Co.), Libertarians were on the ballot in almost all the races, although I don't think any of them won. On the issue of Meaningful Global Warming Legislation in your 'Score Card', you listed the Libertarians as having a "Commitment to sustainable living". On some of the Libertarian-leaning websites that I visit (lewrockwell.com, mises.org, freemarketnews.com, etc.) many of the contributing authors regard global warming as either a) a non-issue or b) solvable through the workings of a 'free market' (which might actually be true, but how will we ever know? ;-). Still, as with certain factions of the evangelical crowd, some Libertarians are definitely greening up.

You wrote: Folks then in Rome - and now in America today - tend to be too late figuring out that the same kind of thinking that gets us into a mess won't necessarily work to get us out.  Or, as a friend used to tell me, "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got."

Absolutely!! Or as Albert Einstein put it: "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them";  And also, "Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage, to move in the opposite direction."

I didn't mean there were no Libertarians on the ballot, just the corporate coffers remain shut up tighter than Ft. Knox to anything by the bi-party system. The reins of power held by corporations haven't really changed hands. But, it's a good show - a bread and circuses thing.

Still, there is speculation around the web this morning that Dick Cheney might be next to go as George 41 exerts some "familial influence" over George 43's operations.  I asked Peoplenomics readers about who might make a good VP once Cheney goes (due to health reasons, or whatever).  One reader replied "Truthfully, I can not think of a truly qualified person who would, or should, accept such a position - regardless of political convictions. They are all of the same mold, and then some." 

That may well be, but either Condi or John McCain, I figure. McCain is already lining up for the GOP White House ticket in 2008, and the use of the VP position with its planes and percs would sure be a boost. But, Cheney's not gone yet, so let's not get ahead of ourselves.

As I sit staring into the abyss this morning, corporations are backing two parties only, the war is still going on, government's still printing tons of paper money to pay for all this, which is inherently bad for the future of the dollar (a fact hidden from most eyes by other distractions) and with Thanksgiving directly ahead, the mindless market rally seems likely to continue. 

Oh, those are coffee grounds, not an abyss?

Russia: Empire Lite

For a couple of months, we've been watching the developments in Eastern Europe and wondering how Russia will fare over the longer term.  Specifically, there has been tension about once-Soviet Georgia and today we see that a vote in the province of Ossetia threatens to pit the West against Moscow.  Ossetia has long wanted to be separate from Georgia and the pro independence vote would turn into a difficult mess.

Gold's Direction

A couple of readers have told me they are bowing out of gold today - and it seems based on the prices today that a lot of others may be thinking like this:

"George, I'm selling 20 ounces of gold and 1,000 ounces of silver tomorrow. Goldbugs getting all lathered up again.

I'll buy gold at $400 and silver at $6 sometime during 2007 as the recession unfolds and one hell of a deflationary scare rears its ugly head again.

Good luck George."

I'm not selling either our gold or silver coin, yet.  Here's why:  If the web bots are right about the pending decline of the dollar, then Gold would likely hold its value in terms of purchasing power.  Now, while its true that consumer prices may fall, and that's the traditional definition of deflation, there's something else going on in the background.  Specifically, the US dollar is dropping.  Not a lot yet, and it has bounced this morning, but I expect the dollar to really be whacked in coming months.

Here's the thing:  I see limited down-side risk of deflation because deflation is much less desirable than inflation.  When inflation goes way up, as it might to bail out a whole trainload of derivatives players, or to keep house prices from complete collapse, holding gold will be a genius-level move.  On the other hand, if you think the dollar is not completely debt-saturated, and can rise again to new heights, then by all means, sell gold.

You'll notice that I am not making any recommendation.  All I can do is point off to the time horizon and ask you this:  Pretend for a moment that over time you have to put all your money in one of two places: Hard assets (like gold and silver) or paper assets like bonds and dollars.  Which would you pick?  Ignore for a moment the fact that bonds recently had a kick-butt once-day showing, and forget about the balance of trade, oil prices and all the rest.  Try to remember the 'paper cost' of the war and the stock market bubblator.

It all boils down to a judgment call.  Can we have deflation when the dollar is collapsing?  In a true massive deflation, the price of foreign goods (with honest money) would drop precipitously. So yes, if the money was "honest" I would be stuffing cash under the mattress myself. But the money is not honest.  And that's the bet.

For now, I'm holding the 'yellow dog' thanks.  But, I'm also working on a domestic inflation/foreign deflation spreadsheet for next week's subscriber report because there are some very counterintuitive results possible. Just remember, the rise in gold over the past week or two has been almost the inverse of the dollar's decline.  Today's drop in gold is the inverse of the dollar's gains.  Just try to keep that in mind.

If you see the dollar returning to its once-held glory and going on to new highs, then gold's a bad bet and bonds ought to zoom skyward.  But if you think we're printing way to much paper (without enough something real [like manufacturing or resources] to back it up) then gold's luster returns.  Also, severe deflations last 10-year or longer, severe inflations less than half that, so from a policy standpoint, inflations and hyperinflations are preferable from a governance standpoint.  And you get to pay off your house with cheaper dollars. In deflation, you'd likely lose the house.

News from Elliott Wave International

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On to Our Chart!

Instead of our customary chart, this week you get a free peak at one of our other charts from www.peoplenomics.com - this is our "Global Markets Equally Weighted" chart:

Write when you get rich,

George Ure, The People's Economist