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Rude A Quakenings

We're continuing to keep our eye on the swarm of earthquakes off the coast of Oregon.  Why?  Well, remember that we had a swarm of quakes a month or two back down in the Salton Sea area of California?

 

This may sound high speculative but it seems to me that when one end of a massive fault zone (California) has a swarming event indicating earth movement, and then an area off the northern end of the same structures goes through another major swarming event like the one that's going on this weekend off Oregon, then the people in between (e.g. Californians) may wish to prudently prepare for a major earthquake which could arise from a sudden evening up of forces along the north-south fault lines.

 

It's a weekend, so no excuses for not being ready for come-what-may - you've got the heads up and the time to go shopping.

 

Bring Back Jack Department:  GE's Stumbles

The idea that there's still another shoe to drop in the world financial mess was getting moves along in the investment community's collective subconscious Friday by several events that were feeding on one another.  First, there was the surprise miss by GE of it's targets.

 

this is a significant development because GE is a large enough company that they may be considered almost like their own kind of mutual fund - the company is that broad in its coverage that the under current seems to have been "If this can happen to something as large and well-run and GE, what could upcoming earnings confessionals be like from the other players?

 

About the same time, billionaire George Soros was getting a lot of face time on the tube over his new book, which among other things notes that the current global financial crisis is the worst challenge to come along since the Depression of the 1930's.  Some headlines about his remarks carry a lot of its content:

• "Beware of credit swaps: Soros"

• "Subprime may lead to $1-trillion worth of losses"

• "We need a Basel III for a new order: Soros"

• "Global finance relies on a false paradigm"

 

Well, you get the idea.  It's likely still worth buying the book because the underlying theory of Soros - that of something called reflexivity - doesn't get as much play as the headline-grabbing remarks:  Google's news engine hits 889 times for "Soros" and only 32 times for "reflexivity" - Soros's pet theory.  Like most good ideas, it's not sound-bite proof.

 

Put all of this together and the markets start chasing their own tails...and by the time all the circular referencing was done, the Dow had dropped 256-points, and I was handed the topic for Peoplenomics.com subscribers Sunday:  "Implications of a Fifth Wave Failure".

 

Another Soft Week?

As we look forward to the coming trading week, there appears to be some sentiment left to go to the down side.  Out of Canada, the outlook is plain gloomy.  On the north side  headlines like "Royal Bank sees US consumer confidence at new low" appeared while on the south side, "Consumer confidence falls as expectations for future financial conditions continue to deteriorate".

 

Grounds/Groundings

So after this morning's interminable wait for Mr. Coffee to produce the wake up juice, the result of someone forgetting to insert the filter basket, and dumping in the coffee sans filtration (I told you, I am a genius, right?) I read about how more American Airlines planes are being grounded for the wiring checks of DC-9/MD-80's.  American says it should all be over today.  All the delays (restrictions on travel hit from the linguistics noted) the email was chock full of questions like this one:

"George,

Consider the possibility that the fuel that's not being burned by the cancelled commercial flights is being diverted and stockpiled as war materiel, either for direct use by U.S. forces (Navy frigates run on jet fuel also, I believe) or for lend lease to Israel, in the time monks' upcoming Middle East opera, if actualized. There's only so much to go around, and American Airlines management, being based in Houston, could be thick as thieves with Mr. B. Mr. G.W.B, that is."

I've mentioned how many times that I served for a couple of years as VP of Sales, In-flight, and Communications for a small regional jet carrier in the Caribbean.  From personal experience, I can tell you that when there's something like this that comes along, the way it's handled it to first whip out the spreadsheet and figure out what's the least possible impact to have on the bottom line while still complying with the regs.

 

So the question is open: Was this really the least revenue impacting approach that American could have taken, or is there something else to it?

 

Hu's Kidding Who?

"China's Hu: Tibet is an Internal Matter." Oh yeah?

 

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Coping: With Fire Ants, Ultra High Tech

We continue to accrete responses to the problem of fire ants and I have to confess that I'm in awe of how some readers think about such travails.  Here's a dandy example of someone who could easily be working in the Pentagon as a DARPA liaison:

Dear George,

You're a radio guy, why not try Royal Rife's technology for your fire ant problem? Here's the Gist: Every organism has a resonant frequency range. When exposed to that frequency, the organism self-destructs. Think of it this way: When the fat lady sings, the wine glass shatters.

Case in point: When the dreaded MRSA Staphylococcus is exposed to a positive-offset frequency range from 376.27 to 381.00 KHz for a period of about 4 minutes, the organisms shatter. (Source: "The Cure for All Diseases" by Dr. Hulda Clark.)

According to a graph in her book, the resonant frequency for ants is around 1500 KHz.

Back to Dr. Rife. He isolated a germ on a microscope slide and exposed it to different frequencies. Sure enough, when the germ shattered, he found the frequency. After that, he was able to zap the germs at will with his transmitter, called "The Rife Machine" back in the 1930s.

Hulda Clark has a nice little gadget that does the same thing for under $200. It's a "poor man's Rife Machine." Apply the electrodes to your body, insert the disease chip and your infection is gone. As the germs are dying, you can actually feel little sparks as they wink out. Very cool! [BTW: I found a way to enhance its effectiveness by piggybacking the transmission through a cheap IPod to car radio FM transmitter... but I digress. ( www.drclark.com  )]

My suggestion is to put a few ants in a jar and place it next to a low power transmitter. See what happens when you very slowly change the frequency from 1200 to 1700 KHz. There should be a point where the ants simply die.

After Dr. Clark invented her Zapper, she made the invention public domain and even published the schematics in her book. You can make your own for $20 worth of Radio Shack Parts. Once you've determined the frequency and built your gadget, zap your garden.

Incidentally, this is not science fiction. The PTB have advanced versions. Think back to 2003 when SARs struck Toronto. A major North American City is struck by a highly communicable aerosol droplet-borne virus, truly an "Andromeda Strain" scenario. All of a sudden — POOF — it's gone! Very strange. Was this miracle due to hand washing? Face masks? Stellar public health measures? Even stranger was the absence of self-congratulating by the CDC and local authorities upon the "success" of their containment efforts. It's like their mouths were duct-taped.

On September 28, 2005, Tim Bolen ( www.bolenreport.net  ) was interviewed on Coast to Coast. He casually mentioned that the US Air Force has a transmitter that can "eliminate all the Anthrax on an airbase in 40 seconds." He went on to explain that the Russians are way ahead of us in this technology and that's the real reason why both sides eliminated their biological weapons programs in the 1980s.

Well George, if you happen to have any radio parts laying around your shop, you may be able to solve your ant problem in a couple of days. And the Zapper, with its anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-everything effects, is a gadget that should be in the Clip-and-Save section of your newsletter.

OK, OK, this reader has really stumbled onto one of my formerly secret projects here at the ranch: Working on ways to dramatically increase the radiated power of a ham radio antenna by employing advanced physics.  It's all George Noory's fault (www.coasttocoastam.com ) and

I suppose that demands an explanation, so here goes - and I will try to keep this brief:

 

A week or two back, Noory had Joseph P. Farrell on his show and I happened to be awake (with my gout at maximal pain about that time) and so unable to sleep I listened to most of the interview Noory did concerning Farrell's new book "Secrets of the Unfed Field: The Philadelphia Experiment, the Nazi Bell and the Discarded Theory". 

 

The long and the short of the book distills down to this:  Even though Einstein's Unified Field Theory may not have been perfect in some of its predictions, it was still close enough to be engineerable and as a result, during WW-II both the Germans and the U.S. were busy building radical new technologies, any one of which could have changed the outcome of the war.

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Side note: It helps if you've read Farrell's  "Hitler's Suppressed and Still-Secret Weapons, Science, and Technology" because although parts seem highly speculative, there's no doubt that the technology being developed during the war on both sides was very advanced - so much so that the F-86 fighter of the Korean War era may not have been as good in certain regards as the WW II German ME-262 jet which was entering limited production by war's end.

 

A little more obscure, but definitely a good 'trainer' for thinking outside the box, is P.D. Ouspensky's "Tertium Organum: Or, The Third Canon of Thought" which is has some dandy instruction in how to build multi-dimensional mental constructs, which when you're studying Riemann-space can be a useful tool to have handy in your mental tool-kit.

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So back to the point: Without the rotating magnetic fields, which seem to have been at the core of the Philadelphia Experiment (and perhaps the Nazi Bell, see: Die Glocke ), the simple application of  RF at sufficient levels to do cellular damage of the sort that could kill a fire ant seems pretty far-fetched.  The reason is low frequency RF (under 10 MHz or so, quickly loses its ionizing effect. 

 

On the other hand, the heating effectiveness (ionizing) of RF increases at the frequency increases.  That's why a microwave oven operates around 2.4-2.5 gigahertz, near the resonant frequency of water, which coincidentally is worth thinking about when you sit your wireless router (2.4 GHz also)  next to your arm which also operates in the same microwave region.  Your wireless router may not work when your microwave is warming up your coffee nearby, too.

 

So, if you want a little 'science' project for yourself this weekend, please do some research into rumored scalar wave theory, come up with a ham radio antenna that will dramatically increase the efficiency of coupling RF into the aether, and send along plans to modify a 200-watt 160 meter ham radio rig to used this antenna to zap fire ants.

 

Tell you what: Just for good measure, put the work in the public domain because it would have obvious application to the search for free energy or the often cited zero point energy search, too.

 

No fair sending in Crossed Field antenna plans - these are pretty well documented, but as far as I've been able to tell, the waves generated by such antennas are not scalar in nature, which is to say that they seem to behave according to the regular everyday inverse square law which simply says when you double the distance from a radiator of energy, the field strength is quartered.  Scalar waves supposedly cheat physics by only losing half their energy at twice the distance.

 

I know the pseudo-science folks would argue that's because I don't have a scalar wave receiver, so sure, go ahead and send those plans in too, along with the scalar antenna, and I'll see you on the 20-meter SSTV frequency (14,230.00 USB - those funny warbling tones which is folks like me sending pictures around the world) and we'll see if we can't weasel our way into some weak signal record books.  Want to start on the 20-meter (three links follow)  QRP    CW    frequencies?  Sure, I'm good with that.

 

In the meantime, while I appreciate the theories about the resonant frequency of fire ants, the empirical tests show that non-ionizing radiation (absent the rotating magnetic fields?) is not going to blow up fire ants. 

 

What surely would work would be a microwave signal blasted into the grou8nd at sufficient energy levels so as to just cook the critters.  Unfortunately, I don't have the money to spend that HAARP does, and the power levels necessary to cook fire ants 4-10 feet underground would require a bigger investment in equipment, than just pouring a cup of gasoline on the mound for 30-cents, or putting powdered dry ice down the hill and smothering the buggers.

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And you thought I was preoccupied with something as mundane as long wave economics? Ha!  There's a very simple reason to remain well-read in the area of pseudo-science:  Some of it isn't pseudo and as Farrell notes, once something is even partly understood to the level that it is engineerable, then the door opens to all kinds of technical innovation. 

 

Occasional reads of sites like www.americanantigravity.com have definite high pay-out potential for the aware investor looking for something with as little more impact that a few more pixels of resolution being added to a cell phone cam..

 

And where would you like to invest your money?

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Send snip and save comments/suggestions to george@ure.net

 

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Around the Ranch: Zzzz...

 The Saturday morning report was about an hour late Saturday for the following reasons:

• I filled up Mr. Coffee's hopper without the strainer basket in it.

• My cranky knee is aching because I overdid things yesterday (again)

• I'm still sorting out the decline in the market Friday

• Client workload

• Had to do the animals this morning (feed/water) because E is sleeping in

• I broke my glasses and am doing the best impression of Mr. McGoo ever.

 

Yeah...not the usual ultra-smooth flow of things,  So the Saturday report wwas posted late

 

This Week for Peoplenomics Subscribers

Personal Planning: 14,966 then Crash 2.0?

Lot's to cover this weekend: I'm going to show you the Elliott wave count that would put us in the 'fifth of the fifth" which could lead to a Fall in the Fall, and we're going to consider a batch of historical data to ask the question "How would you have played The Crash of 1929? - What would have tipped you off?" But before we get into hypothetical topics, let's start with a little chart work and I'll show you how I pencil in a Dow of 14,966 as one projected rally high for the summer....

 

             More for Subscribers (login here)         Subscription Info ($40/year)

 

Tell Your Friends About This Site!

If you know anyone who is interested in preserving the Constitution, fighting usury from banksters, and shaking off consumer hypnosis, tell them about this site.  Click here to send 'em an invite...

 

Mr. Cheap's Tricks

There are lots of ways to save money on food, shelter, transportation, and such.  It just takes a little reading and one source of good ideas is  our handy ebook "How to Live on $10,000 a year or less.  Still just $10.

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Last week's report is here.    If for back issues of this site, click here.  (Goes back to 1997!)

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I promised Elaine that I would unload some of my equipment, so if you're looking for ham gear, especially the older tube-type (EMP resistant) type, send me a note and I will send out the list of what I'm selling off when I get it together.    Click here to  Put Me On Ham Gear List

 

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Friday April 11, 2008

Personal Planning: Adventures in Real Estate

A couple of years ago, when Elaine and I were out in Burbank, I started watching real estate prices like a hawk.  Not that I'm bound and determined to buy more real estate (30-acres with animals is enough work, thanks), but I figured when the current recession  that might shade to Depression, ends it might be a dandy time to buy a few fixer homes and operate them as inexpensive rentals. I've had a rental before - and it was fun.

 

Not that we'd be trying to 'get rich', but a few paid up homes might be a dandy source of income in the event that Social Security becomes meaningless due to how government manages it.  in other words, a fall-back income stream.

 

I've also become a big fan of small town American.  I think it's where the future lies and I've got some company in thinking this, notably urban geographer Jim Kunstler and others who cite cities in the 15-40,000 range are about optimal because they are big enough to have a robust local economy on the one hand, but small enough so that they are 'walkable' and so that there's a genuine sense of community.

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It was therefore with some interest that I reviewed a link this morning for homes that people can get into in the Detroit Michigan area for next to nothing down.

 

If you click here, you'll find about 922 homes which can be had for $5,000 or less.  While some of them are for the land only (with houses either severely damaged by fire, or due to be demolished as unsafe, there may be a couple of gems in here.

 

I've written previously in the little eBook "How to Live on $10,000 a year, or less..." that a person who is industrious, is willing to live below their means and doesn't mind a little sweat equity can do extremely well for themselves.

 

While I'm not really keen on moving into Detroit, it should give you an idea of just how band things have become in the Motor City environs in the context of what I call Bushvilles.

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As I was getting ready for a chat with Alex Ansary on "Outside the Box" (WTPRN) on Wednesday night ( the show was postponed till next Wednesday due to technical issues), I decided to see what I could come up with in the way of a small family farm. 

 

The search restraints over at www.unitedcountry.com were that the property I was looking for had to have at least 10-acres of land and must have at least one bedroom on it.  Oh, and the price had to be $50,000 or less.

 

The very first house I found looked like it would be perfect for a small 'urban flight' family:  An A Frame type house with two bedrooms, one bath, a small lake, on a state highway, with a well, close to town and 25 minutes from Marshall Missouri.  In a big city 'burb, this is the cost of a kitchen remodel.  What's more valuable?

 

Similarly, a 20 acres property with a three bedroom, two bath mobile with central heat and air in rural Arkansas looked interesting, too. With a $10-thosuand dollar down stroke, the monthly payment before taxes would be $293, and with an ag exemption (tree farming maybe?) the taxes would likely be well under $1,000 a year.  I'd guess $500 to $600.

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No, I'm not suggesting that you blow off the HOV/Corporate treadmill lifestyle.  Rather, this is about opening your head up to a little different way of thinking: QOL which means quality of life.

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My commodity broker pal has been thinking about it.  He and Mrs. Commodity Broker live in the L.A. area and  I don't think I'm out of school saying that their monthly nut could be cut about in half by a move to somewhere else.  They're thinking over a place near Prescott Arizona. 

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Whether you listen to Jim Kunstler's view that suburbia is dead, or consider the advise of oil experts who argue that suburbs are not energy efficient, my strongly held view is that times are really changing and this is not the same world you grew up in.

 

Just like there are only two ways to own real estate (100% borrowed, or 100% paid up free and clear) the same can be said of the real estate.  Long term, it's got to be in a vibrant core city, or it's got to be far enough from the core that it has some land and that land can be brought into some kind of production.

 

One of my heroes in this regard has been Jack Lessinger, professor emeritus of business from the University of Washington.  Lessinger's works include "Penturbia: The fifth migration" and "Schizomania: Split Society, Perilous Economy, 1990-2020" which is about the odd bumps and grinds that society goes through on our way from the Little King era of big government to the 'next economy' which will be populated by people who have made better QOL decisions than our energy-rich predecessors.

 

Lately, Lessinger has had a site up called "Predicting 2020" which focuses on one of my favorite topics: Long-Run Economics.  Lessinger's web site counsels us that:

1. Periodically, a mass society is shaken by a contagious new vision of the good life.

2. As the “contagion” spreads, vision explodes into a mania to transform the way we live—our values and attitudes; what we want and how we get it.

3. The new mania arouses new demands and supplies—a new economy.

4. Driven by the mania for many decades, an economy defies the law of diminishing returns and perishes.

5. Every “economy” is perishable. It lives and dies.

6. Before an aging economy perishes, an opposing vision arises. It aims to correct mounting excesses.

7. Two conflicting economies overlap. One rises, the other falls

8. Schizomania begins when opposing manias create a peak probability of depression. The Great Depression was caused by conflict between the industrial and consumer economies of the 19th and 20th centuries.

9. Depressions are not preventable.

10. Four U.S. economies rose and fell since 1790. A fifth is now rising.

11. Franklin D. Roosevelt helped to jump-start the fourth, today’s Consumer Economy

 

I mention all of this because it's over weekends that most folks have the time to talk with the other members of the household.  Husbands and wives may not have time for a lingering branch water during the week, but on weekend, the longer range ideas and goals can be dusted off for review.

 

I'm not saying that blowing out of big cities is a good thing for everyone.  But, for a certain kind of modern day rural pioneer is does make sense.

 

Rural America still has lots of growth potential and one way to spot opportunity is bring the big city yellow pages out here and compare it with the local phone book's yellow pages.  Then go through the two side-by-side and see if there's not a need for one of the big city businesses.

 

It is, as Warren Buffett says, a matter of spotting genuine value when we make the long term investment decisions in our lives. 

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Speaking of the Sage of Omaha, I didn't mention his annual letter to shareholders when it was released recently, but he makes a pretty good point about Bubbles:

"You may recall a 2003 Silicon Valley bumper sticker that implored, “Please, God, Just One More Bubble.” Unfortunately, this wish was promptly granted, as just about all Americans came to believe that house prices would forever rise. That conviction made a borrower’s income and cash equity seem unimportant to lenders, who shoveled out money, confident that HPA – house price appreciation – would cure all problems. Today, our country is experiencing widespread pain because of that erroneous belief. As house prices fall, a huge amount of financial folly is being exposed. You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out – and what we are witnessing at some of our largest financial institutions is an ugly sight."

To be sure, just how ugly is still being revealed. 

 

With any luck, "Fed" chairman Ben Bernanke will be right when he argues that the "economic woes [of today] nothing like Depression" of the 1930's.

 

Unfortunately, however, while they may be nothing like the 1930's at the moment, we are still waiting for the other shoe to drop in the derivatives world. 

 

Broker friend Robin Landry told he this week that he attended a conference recently in which some of the 'still under wraps' data was talked about and it was just plain scary.  While he continues to expect a rally to new highs to develop, there's nothing technically that precludes a fifth wave failure and should that arrive, bar the door - the market could take out 7,400 on the Dow and perhaps much lower.

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As I've chronicled for Peoplenomics.com subscribers, there has been a 'right shoulder' forming in my global index (a kind of composite view of some of the G-7).  These central banksters will be meeting this weekend to try and decide where to go next in the global currency game.

 

But while they do, and while there's still time to make major lifestyle moves, a few hours of long range planning and conscious lifestyle decisions seems like a fine investment to make over the weekend. If you can tear yourself away from the Masters long enough.

 

Readings: Rogue Economics

Seems that (look surprised here) the past decade of growth globally has been accompanied by a dark side.  Which is to say, that as the global economy seems to have flourished, there has been a corresponding increase in what author Loretta Napoleoni figures is an emergency corrupt and brutal capitalism.  It goes on my reading list - you might consider it, too.  Unless, of course, you'd just as soon not know about things like slave labor and sweat shops...

 

Slow Friday?

I usually worry a bit when the news headlines start to feel boring and stale.  Maybe its because so many people are worried about taxes and such - whatever the cause, the headlines are like taking 50 mg of Benadryl - it's enough to cause heavy eyelids.  Spill your coffee on yourself, if you find the eyes closing...I've found that a good scalding chases off slumber at least for a few minutes.

 

It's on days like this one that I drag out "fill-in the blanks news reporting" to at least wade through boring mornings in the newsroom while patiently waiting for all hell to break loose so there'd be something fresh to report.  In the meantime...

 

Still Flying

(Blank airline) has filed for bankruptcy, but plans to keep flying.  Blank= Frontier.

 

War News

We could run almost any day:  "New US air strikes kill x in Iraq"  Today, x equals12.

 

More Fill Ins?

How about this one:  "Israeli army kills y and z in Gaza fighting"  Today, y = boy and z = two gunmen.

 

Late

"House votes to put