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Military Footwork In my view of things that are "driving" world events, things don't get much more important than food or oil. And, since the War in Iraq is more about oil than giving everyone who's a resident a purple finger, it's important to watch the price of oil, related commodities and military footwork globally.
With this in mind, and with my expectation that we're at some point headed for a "Manufacturers' Resource War", I read some of the headline this morning with some concern. Not like right now, skip breakfast, and go worry, more like, this doesn't sound like it moves us away from the potential for any future showdown....
One concern is that the Financial Times is reporting today that the US has growing concerns about the quantity of Chinese made arms that are showing up in Iraq. This doesn't come as any particular surprise - the Chinese have a 'left over' arms-building infrastructure that goes back to the Vietnam War days. Although the weapons have also been found in Afghanistan, I expect that problem has more to do with where international arms dealers can get their best prices. And you do know who the biggest global arms makers are, right? Yes, that'd be the USA...
Pakistan's Slide As we expect to see attempts to remove president Musharraf to succeed later this year, it's interesting, having the libretto at hand from the web bot project: The headline today is that the "State of the state is not acceptable" says the country's minister for political affairs. Seems to me that Pakistan is a rich take-over target by the militant jihadists. Why? Not only does the country have good manufacturing capabilities, but remember Pakistan has nuclear weapons. If you were in India, I wouldn't need to remind you of that, or of the dangers a militant government could provoke in the region, especially Kashmir. --- Another story to underscore the threat: "Islamic militants fire at Musharraf aircraft" headlines Britain's Times Online. They're only going to have so many failures and then the law of large numbers will catch up, it seems...
Depleting Resources The Daily Mail is asking a highly pertinent question about this Live Aid to Save the Planet concert with the headline: "Live Aid is promoting green to save the planet - What planet are they on?" They go about a fine job of exposing what we'd call over coffee "environmental hypocrisy." Just more of those inconvenient truths, huh?
North Korean Oil The first shipment of heavy oil to North Korea under the latest arms/nuke talks is scheduled for next week. What is that, something north of 1.7-million gallons or so at 7-pounds per gallon? Or, if it's bunker C, then perhaps 1.4-million gallons. I wish there was more detail on what kind of oil is in play here. Maybe I have been watching Monk too much.
Cheney's Big Problem While the web bot predictions include another round of Dick Cheney's volatility later this summer or in the fall, we're busily watching the impeachment polls that are underway. Almost half of the country, says one poll, favor impeachment of George Bush and, not surprisingly, Dick Cheney's future is even less certain.
Rains Leaving? Those record temps that are baking Lost Wages and are hooked on Phoenix, seem likely to head to our neck of the woods and points in the Northeast next week. The rains, at least for now, seem to be on the verge of leaving. I expect they'll be back, though.
In the meantime, our closest local reporting spot to the ranch is Tyler Texas, where it's now 44.17" of rain for the year to date. As our Houston Bureau noted in a pithy note this week: "When the droughts end in Texas, they tend to end with floods of Biblical proportions." Yes, so we've noticed. Two local discussion points about the weather here yesterday: The neighbor's pond, which he put in to try raising shrimp is now full. With all the talk about tainted seafood products from China, seems that a freshwater shrimp operation in the States might be a good idea.
The other thing was the washout of one of the roads leading to the ranch. What was normally a small creek turned into a raging torrent that undercut the road, caves in half of it, and has left an asphalt bridge that might support a human but wouldn't support a car.
Oh yes, and discussion about how various septic systems did in the 'gully-washers'. Our conventional system with an over-sized leech field did fine, but the anaerobic owners were just tickled pink with their prospects as that kind of system is less susceptible to ground saturation. This is a great time to own a septic company in North Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
X Marks the Box Looks like Microsoft will be spending more than $1-billion to bring their XBoxes up to snuff. The report doesn't seem to have hurt the stock much this week, though.
Now, if I just didn't have all the issues with Vista I've been having. XP SP-2 seems oh so much faster and reliable. And, before doing my roll-back to a restore set point on my new super laptop, I got my first BSOD - which is a 'blue screen of death' if you're not a techie type.
Goldman Threats We read that Goldman Sachs has been getting threat notes from "A.Q. USA" according to a report out of the Philly News.
Speaking of Business News See this? Oil is up to a 10-month high and there's a report that the Rupert Murdoch deal to buy the Wall St. Journal will come to pass next week.
Personal Agenda I got the $600 pre-Revolution Cuban cigar out of the refrigerator - so it's safe. I have an appointment on my roof to run to, putting up an improved vertical antenna for ham radio use. Got one of the radios fired up on PSK and made a few contacts yesterday. Today, with a new antenna, and a second air conditioner in the office, should be even more fun...
For Peoplenomics subscribers, details about the trade I discussed last week are here. I entered the trade on Friday about 1-hour before the close.
Peoplenomics: Time to Take a Flyer? This being a holiday week (and with that I expect some rally action into the 4th or just after) I'm once again drawn to the idea that indeed, the global marketplace may be back close to consumer debt saturation, as explained in this week's ChartPack (see: "Pondering My Shorts") and because of that, I'm drawn almost magnetically to looking at opening a trading account because I sense a low probability way to make a 20-50 times return. Frankly, it's so simple, I'm amazed that people aren't lining up outside brokerage firms to play it. The odds are nowhere near even 50-50, but they're also not as remote as Power Ball tickets. It also means having $500 dollars you can throw away and not care about because there's a very high chance that this will be a losing trade. This is not a trading recommendation. It's just something I'm considering in my personal account. With that disclaimer aside, let's talk about casinos, leverage, and house limits for a minute...
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Buzz You might want to tell all your friends that you read UrbanSurvival or Independence Journal. That way, they'll marginalize you as a "nut job" and won't bother speaking to you about jobs, the economy, and such. Click here to warn them.
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Friday July 6, 2007 The Employment Report I'm expecting to see a lot of happy-talk about the new employment report released by the Department of Labor this morning. It reads in part:
Let me pop a cynical pill here and extract some pertinent facts:
The cheerleading is likely to be in high gear today. Ah, here's a headline "Employers Boost Payrolls by 132,000" An up morning for the Dow almost certainly... Hot or Wet? If you have dry skin, you would have loved being here at the ranch last night. We were awakened four times overnight by the NOAA weather radio going off to advise us of the various flood producing rains tripping through our part of East Texas. This morning I found just a shade under 3 inches of rain in the gauge, and that's since I emptied it at 4 PM on Thursday. That, partner, is some serious rain. Not counting this morning's deluge, Tyler, Texas was over 41-inches of rain year-to-date.
Curiously, this latest batch of rain seems to be headed along toward Shreveport, and I keep coming back to the web bot project's discussion back in January of the Red River/Mississippi problems that were forecast. The Red River separates part of Texas from Oklahoma, and then comes down to Shreveport and off into the Mississippi basin. I'm not too worried about Shreveport, though. They are still down about one inch from normal rainfall. It's upstream and to the west where things have been soggy.
On the other side of the weather coin, we can't help but notice that Las Vegas hit 116 with an extraordinarily dry three percent humidity. --- Although a few readers have been critical of our focus on weather and ag coverage of late, the impacts on the family budget are quickly approaching.
I've been saying for a long time that all these minor extremes (so far) of weather will not be good for agriculture prices. I'm apparently not alone in that view. Peter Brabeck, the head of the largest food producer in the world - Nestle - has been adding up pressures on agriculture and figures that food prices are set for a long term inflation. He's looking at supply and demand changes, including the rush into corn ethanol, which seems to have kicked up soybean prices a notch. And these forces go bouncing around the global supply chain.
There's not a tremendous amount you can do about such things. The prudent moves have been spelled out both here on UrbanSurvival and on our subscribers only newsletter Peoplenomics since before the internet bubble burst.
You may recall that I wrote a paper back in September of 1999 called "Death by Dot Coms: When Barriers to Entry Fail" In that paper I explained in easy-to-understand terms why the internet bubble was bound for trouble.
Today, I look at the "shortage meme" that the www.halfpasthuman.com web bot reports have identified (along with "restrictions on travel") and tell you as directly as I can: The food/shortages meme seems to have legs and you might consider getting a personal strategy ready to deal with it.
I've got Elaine thinking about a new ebook "Urban Survival in Urban Chaos" which will consider (among many topics) why people are so prone to buying ammunition instead of a good supply of sandbags, and to reiterate the need for stored food, water, a 'strategic retreat plan' and maybe some caching of goods along the way. No matter how much of a 'bunker' mentality evolves, as one reader notes, when the crap hits the fan, there are usually forces of officialdom that are anxious to take whatever plunder they can find. A true enough point and the reason why strategic retreat is a necessary part of personal planning for extreme socioeconomic upheaval that may be in our future.
The Wars We don't have to look past Page One headlines in LameStream Media to find evidence of how human conflict plays out. In Nigeria, there's a low intensity conflict (LIC) with lots of Western mercenaries in play along with various kidnappers, extremists and guerrillas. One side is threatening to kill a 3-year old kidnapping victim, and the tensions in country have kept Nigerian oil prices high, along with global prices, as well. --- Although a serious challenge to West-friendly president Musharraf seems to be in the cards for this fall, he's trying to crack down on some of the most radical of Islamists in his own country. The strategic problem remains that Musharraf is painted as pro-West and that makes opposition to his government a rather easy 'sell.' --- And for even more lessons in how governments and people don't seem to be able to 'play nicely with one another' we can also look to the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank. --- All of the wars around the world, not to mention border conflicts like the Mexico border/drug running debacle which CONgress and the Bush administration have all failed to address (or hold the top brass of Border Patrol responsible for) has continued to victimize the American public, and the hard-working rank & file Border Patrol Agents who are really doing their best to enforce border security while higher-ups seem to have another agenda; namely pushing forward the integration of Canada, Mexico and the US into a major trade block which will become the North American Union.
Oh look, "Harsh US immigration rules force Microsoft to open shop in Canada" reads a headline.
The Cigar Adventure Been really busy this morning, so an update on the "How to smoke a $600 cigar problem" in Saturday's report. This morning I spent the first half hour of the day trying to figure out why Vista would no longer recognize the wireless adapter in my new laptop. It recognized it when I hit the rack last night. Apparently, my computer lost part of it's mind overnight. Perhaps we share more traits than I thought...
Thursday July 5, 2007 A Chinese Market Crash One of the things which Cliff & I talked about with George Noory on www.CoastToCoastAM.com last night was how the current release period, going on now through September 19th would be at least one-third economic in nature. Along with that, we're likely to see something of a jobs/employment collapse. I mentioned in the final hour of George Noory's show that there were huge doings in the Chinese stock market overnight - which dropped more than 5% in a crash that would be equivalent to about 800 Dow points down in a day had the events happened here instead of there.
Curiously, which the Chinese market seems to me to be huge news, the headlines in most of the conventional media seem to go toward the idea of a bit of a relief rally: We got through the Fourth of July holiday without a major terrorist attack in the US, plus there's some optimism about how manufacturing numbers will come in. Throw in a dose of merger and acquisition news and you've got a start, at least, which would be on the upside. But, as I said overnight, nothing would surprise me less than a 100-point drop today (maybe tomorrow) as optimism can only hang in there so long without some supporting facts to go along with it.
That Flood Meme I won't bore you with another recitation of the outlook for weather woes. I will point to the cause of a landslide that hit southern Puebla state Mexico killing 40 was rain which weakened a hillside. --- Not from the web bot project, but a simple projection of mine: If you combine floods with the loss of bees, you could construct a future with food shortages ahead. I see that Senator Boxer is trying to fund research into the bee die-off, but around here, bees are scarcer than free lunches. --- A reader here in rain-soaked Texas offered this assessment of the C2C show and the weather:
Just call me Evan.
In It For Oil The headline "Australia admits it is in Iraq for oil" is refreshingly honest. Now, how come Australia gets to be honest and we don't?
Not only are they being honest about their motivation in the war, they're also saying (and this does sound like something of the stuff Cliff was mentioning last night about the military planning going on for sudden catastrophic climate change) that "Climate changer will 'change army's duties'. My thoughts: If we get into global food shortages, armies might be used for distribution, food protection, that kind of thing.
Terror, Inc. 25 people were killed in a karaoke bar explosion in China. Chinese leadership say they'll hunt them down... --- Meantime, one of Osama bin Laden's cohorts is calling for "Muslims to Unite in Jihad".
Better Late Than... A report out in the NY Times says about 25% of airline flights are late.
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