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Pray for Bush With George Bush going in for a colonoscopy today, Dick Cheney will become President for a while as the CiC is under anesthetic. Which explains why I'm praying for Bush's speedy recovery...
Top In? Earlier this week, I put up a technical note for subscribers to Peoplenomics.com. In it, I reported that to equal the top in 2000, we would need to see a weekly closing high north of 13989 in order to eclipse the old high on an inflation-adjusted basis. We didn't make it this week, and I have doubts about next week with more earnings to come. --- Speaking of which, I am kicking off a new project for subscribers this weekend: $1,000 to $1,000,000 in Commodities? I will be posting my trades as I go. Up about 70% during the first week of trading, so the project is off to a good start. At that rate, in 15 weeks, I'd have some real money...we'll see, though. --- Although gold had a pretty good pop late in the week, I'm holding some close in gold puts for the coming expiration. Why? Although the dollar is trading near a record low vis-a-vis the Euro, the other thing to watch is that the 10-year is back under 5%. And, gold tends to get bashed down nicely just before deliveries. But more for subscribers tomorrow.
Global Coastal Events? Say, here's something to make you lose sleep: State Farm is dropping 50,000 homeowner policies in coastal Florida. --- Ain't much sunshine in the Sunshine state if you're in the construction industry there.
Constitutional Crisis Besides the ruling by decree story, which we covered yesterday, the other big happening now in the Constitutional Crisis is George Bush telling the Justice Department that they can't be involved in prosecuting congressional contempt charges. And, Bush Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten is facing contempt charges...
Japan Power Crisis In the wake of the earthquakes, we continue to watch what will be happening in Japan as industry is being told to be prepared to limit power use.
Pakistan Tensioning The tensions keep mounting in Pakistan, where the country's chief justice has been re-installed over the objections of president Musharraf.
Defending Products China is making a fair bit of press about shutting down three companies over safety concerns. As long as they keep the US hooked on their products, the US is somewhat limited in Taiwan policy, among other things.
Breast Milk and Butane The Transportation Safety Agency is allowing small butane lighters and more than 3-ounces of breast milk (outside of natural containers) onto airplanes starting on August 4th. Still, thinks like mouthwash and shampoo will remain verboten. Which means you won't be able to wash your hair in the aft lav on that next business trip.
Peoplenomics: Conspicuous Deconsumption I wouldn't want to live in Phoenix when the US invades Iran. That Joe Lieberman has been laying the groundwork for another war is being adequately covered elsewhere. But, what is getting very little discussion (i.e. none to speak of) is how the next expansion of the Middle East conflict will have horrific lifestyle impacts throughout America. Not the least of which would be regional power brown-outs and black-outs. Not to pick on Phoenix in particular, but if the "authorities" decide in the wake of Next War - provoked by an ostensibly terror event an almost a sure bet with the roll out of a new Osama bin Laden video this weekend - that electricity from the local Phoenix nuclear power plant needs to be shipped elsewhere, then Phoenix instantly becomes one of the most unsustainable huge population centers in the world for five or six months out of the year. Phoenix without air conditioning? Check. Not to mention water issues and how would people garden anything more than cactus there. And that's only the tip of the iceberg as we review some of the implications of how the West would fare in an oil embargo, or worse, the shutdown of the Straits of Hormuz. Own a mortgage in Phoenix? As the old Clint Eastwood line went: "Are you feelin' lucky, punk?" More for Subscribers Subscription Information
"No Incumbents in 2008" Bumper Sticker To get your "No Incumbents in 2008" click here. They're just $5. And no, that would not keep Ron Paul from running for the White House - he is not an incumbent there - having never held that job before, got it?
Pssst! Pass It Along I'd really appreciate it if you would tell all your friends that you read UrbanSurvival or Independence Journal, or Peoplenomics. That way, more people will become aware of what's going on in the economy, and with more smarts, maybe we can wake up America. Click here to warn them.
Be a "Third Worlder" -- Right Now! Order our handy ebook "How to Live on $10,000 a year or less - and learn to live like a Third World person now. It's coming anyway, with big job layoffs this summer - and by ordering now, you can beat the rush...You may have more time to read this fall if the economy falls apart as I expect...
Friday July 20, 2007 Ruling By Decree One of the reasons the Iraq War is going on is because there really are extremist groups which do mean harm to our great country., Missing, however, is the public trial of those responsible for funding those groups - as some number of those involved would be senior US government types. Funding 'rebels' sounded like such a good idea when the Russians had the opium poppy crop profits in Afghanistan. Now that the US is running things, well, that means times have changed. Still, where's the follow-up? --- Meantime, this week, the White House has issued another in its continuing (and escalating) "ruling by decree" series called Executive Orders. The latest claims to allow "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq".
While there's been some discussion in the British press about how this will only be used as a tool to fight terrorists, a few media in the US are serious enough to wonder who gets to define what constitutes a terrorist and what' about that Fifth Amendment?
And, what about Free Speech? The wording seems such that if aggressively interpreted and enforced, it would open the door to a wholesale squashing of US civil liberties long taken for granted. The key part is the "aiding and abetting" language. So are the anti-war candidates, like Hillary, Obama, and others as enemies? Is this the basis for canceling elections? Jailing people who report who farmers in Iraq can't save seed from year to year and must buy corpgov seeds from agrifirms? Is that obstruction of reconstruction? Reporting war casualties of soldiers who were wounded in-country but died in a German hospital, for example, is THAT obstructing the 'reconstruction'?
Worse, because I might have sent money to the Ron Paul campaign (Peace, Progress, Prosperity kind of thinking) does that mean that I am somehow obstructing Iraq reconstruction and my property could be seized? And by knowing me, does my lawyer stand at risk?
Troubling at best, and it causes me to look back on the Constitution for any mention of imperial decree powers...The Framers didn't mention 'executive orders' - that's dates to when CONgress started to abdicate its true role to hold the balance of power. That's toast.
Is Bush about to bring us "Madison's Nightmare"? James Madison, fourth President, was very worried about big standing army and the potential for a single party to consolidate power and force a single party system on the country.
Having blondish hair, and a Teutonic/Scandahoovian background, having held a White House Press credential and such, I would expect to face a bit less peril that brunette or darker haired or skinned humans. But that might only last so long as I toe the CorpGov Party line around here. I'll be calling my Congressional representative and Senators today on this one.
Speaking of Scandahoovians A 10th Century Viking Treasure has been unearthed in Britain. Worth a million now days.
Resignations Beginning? The predictive linguistic work of www.halfpasthuman.com says there will likely be lots of Bush administration people resigning through the fall (as Secrets Revealed continue to pour out). So, it's along this line that we not the sudden resignation of Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson. Who will be next?
News Shifts There has been a fundament change in how the world operates, thanks to the arrival of the internet. Off in the background of the drama of the Wall Street Journal's possible sale, and now the drama of one of its board members quitting over the sale idea, there's word that ad sales are slumping. It would seem like a timely time to sell, if that doesn't sound a little too much like the coffee is sitting on top of a dictionary and I'm too lazy to move it, kind of wording.
Marshall McLuhan hit on the idea that the 'medium is the message', and while that might be hotly debated by some, there's no question that America has become media obsessed.
Almost daily, we're treated to story about this star, or that, like this morning's report that Tom Cruise filming an anti-Hitler drama is causing an uproar in Germany. I'm in awe of the fact that some people only care about foreign exchange rates insofar as they're able to read a foreign celeb story (like Barbara Streisand's gig in London at L600 a seat) and figure out the price if you were refinancing your home for a seat - ($1,230.66, not including bank fees).
With the weekend upon us, and me wondering about taking E to a movie or two, I sit back and ask "By doing that, what would I be supporting?" I look at every dollar spent as a vote for this or that; a bit extreme perhaps, but voting with your wallet enables a person to vote every day of every year, and by intelligent voting in this many, corpgov (or what Ike called "the military-industrial complex, which would have pharmaceutical companies and media thrown in if the speech were updated) at least might have to consider the consequences of something at some point. Or will they?
Quake Fallout OK, a poor choice of terms to use when talking about nuclear power, perhaps, but Japan says in the wake of the quake, things won't be fine on the line: industry will have to save power.
Lower Open Headlines have it that stocks will open lower this morning - thanks Caterpillar, Microsoft, and a few others. This might be a key closing week - if the Dow fails to close on a weekly basis above 13,989.9, I'd be comfortable next week entering into a few puts on high-flyers and await profits in the fall fall. The dollar is flirting with 80.30 again, and gold is ticking up a bit as a result.
Thursday July 19, 2007 Wow, Bart My friend Bart over at "Now and Futures" (which regularly posts the M-3 reconstructed figure I've mentioned to you many times), sent me a mind boggling email yesterday which is compelling and frightening:
Having read a lot of Fed reports, I admit that I hadn't seen anything that related to the ongoing collapse of marginal real estate securities, so I clicked over to the report and went sniffing around for 'line 34'.
Turns out there are actual two references. One set is for large domestically chartered banks, adjusted for mergers, while the other is for small, domestically chartered banks.
You have to scroll down to page 13 of the report: The "new line" says that the week of July 4, the size of the Big Bank securitized real estate loans was $1,211.0 billion, i.e.. $1.211 trillion, and I don't see that this is a total which includes the $653.7 billion of MBO's (line 31).
Same kind of thing for the Small Banks - except the numbers are a lot smaller: "Only $270.9 billion in MBO's, and "only" $41.1 billion in securitized real estate loans.
Still, thanks to the Fed report, looks like securitized real estate loans are $1,252.1 trillion and MBO's they track are $924.6 worth of MBO's.
Maybe we need to update the saying of the late Senator Everett Dirksen, who if I recall correctly said "A million here, a million there, pretty soon you're talking real money..." Today, it's more like a trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you're talking real money...
"Wow, Bart...great catch." Along with M3 reconstructed going up at 13.5%, I mean.
Asymmetric Warfare on the 'Net I posted a note yesterday about how the US government might be planning a clampdown on internal security. As luck would have it, I'm blessed with more than a few .mil-type contacts who review things around here for reasonableness and accuracy.
And trust me, the author of the note is in 'the business'. Sooo... after checking with a couple of other sources, they confirm my first source is quite right,; some of the units mentioned either haven't existed for a few years or they ones which do have no capabilities as described. This leads me to think I'm seeing how the internet may have become a disinformation platform and someone might be trying to foment/exploit the divisiveness around the Iraq/Middle East wars in America's social network....
Quality of Ron Paul And once again during the Bernanke testimony yesterday I didn't see The Honorable Ron Paul getting face-time on the toob. and a reader sends this:
Again, I'd hold this up as an example of Ron Paul being a 100% quality guy, and I doubt any of the other wannabe's would show such class and statesman-like conduct. Problem is, of course, the damn adage "Nice guys finish...." where?
Bean Town Bummer My cohort Michael Nystrom has his soap box wheeled out today with a good rant on Boston's crumbling economy. Good photo essay on collapse of a shopkeeper economy. --- A couple of people wrote in about the economy and the BLS Report (which one reader calls the Bureau of Laying Statistics) and said if we're in a housing crunch, how come the CES Birth-Death model created so many new construction jobs to make it look like the economy is not yet on life support?
Well, partner, you know I think Stephen King could write a wonderful horror book "The Statistician..." Make it a plot by some guy at the top to roast the numbers, seize power, start wars, rule by Executive Order...Oh, who would believe it?
Pakistan's Coming Revolution With the US occupied in Afghanistan, Iraq, and holding on elsewhere, it's clear to me that the extremists of Islam have their eyes set on nuclear power Pakistan as their next target of opportunity, and linguistically that's in the web bot runs for this fall. So, when you read headlines like today's "Pakistan attacks kill up to 33" you're not to be surprised. AQ is hanging around the Pakistan side of the Afghan border, it seems. |
