|
|
Powered by subscribers to
Peoplenomics.com
|
|
Published Monday - Friday about 8 AM Central Time Except Holidays....many major typos are fixed by 8:30 daily
Saturday, January
16, 2010 07:55 CST New
here? Visit our
FAQ
This site is supported by subscriptions: For additional content, please subscribe to Peoplenomics. . Content mirrored at: www.independencejournal.com, Kindle (.MOBI) version here
Saturday Reader Note This is a long weekend for many people due to the Martin Luther King Day observance Monday. The weekend reports will be posted Saturday and Sunday for www.peoplenomics.com subscribers and a short Monday report will appear here and things should be back to what passes for 'normal;' on Tuesday when trading resumes. The weak close Friday (-100 on the Dow) means my entry into a couple of short positions on financial stocks I waded into when it seemed like the market was at (or at least within trading distance) of a Big Bounce top this week. Next week should tell, one way or t'other. See you then...
13:15 - Another Linguistic Note Six Great Quakes to Come Had a chance to chat with Cliff briefly today about the predictive linguistics and what's ahead for the balance of this year. For one thing, he's had time to look at the data again and nope, although Haiti is a terrible mess, and there's some linguistic fill beginning which could link 'diaspora' to the Haiti quake, a review of the data says no, the diaspora/people moving about due to changing circumstances really is 220-million.
True, there's some linkage of Canada and fast-track immigration for refugees, and the rising use of the term 'diaspora', but there's a lot more to be worried about later this year.
The problem is that as we look at the data, there are at least six great quakes due during calendar 2010 and possibly many more. After six, we stopped looking - not a pretty sight. We assume you know a 'great' quake is one with magnitude 8.0 or larger, but in a social sense, Haiti is a 'great' quake based on extreme loss of life.
From the period (approximately) July 7th onward, the data features six clusters of data that will be larger than the global horror that followed the 2004 tsunami. And - sad to report - the data suggests that 220-million will be moving around just on the [american continent] which means additional quakes can be expected this year of larger magnitude including some hints that one will be on the US West coast.
Among the problems with predictive linguistics technology is that it's not precise. How people use language is drifty on a good day. Although the US quake(s) seems to be California'ish, it could be as far north as Vancouver Island. Such is the imprecision of the data. No, can't narrow it down to the Long Valley caldera, Yellowstone, or something as simple as that.
What is clear is that our 'context shift' is 'terra entity', we can't offer any further insight except to say that the data also suggests that by the end of this year, we may see more than a billion people involved in diaspora else; particularly India/Pakistan/China and there are some indications that dislocated people will stream north toward Siberia/Mongolia as a result.
You might ask "Why wasn't this in the Shape of Things to Come report? Fair question: not trying to hide anything...remember, though, we've been saying for the past 9-months (roughly, could be longer) that looking into the data from late 2009 onward for quake activity was pretty much pointless. Gets to be too much. Our accuracy is occasionally very good with isolated near-great quakes like our call on the May 2008 China event, but even if we had been translated into mandarin prior to the May 'wedding quake', would it have modified anyone's behavior or saved lives? Likely not.
Add to that the problems we had sorting out the 'print through" on the Lacey Peterson trial/Redwood City (Sept. 2004) quake which preceded the Dec. 2004 tsunami? The Peterson trial was interrupted by the Redwood City quake and some linguistics (courthouse emptied) were fulfilled, ;leavings us to scratch our heads and pondering "Damn...where's the land driven back to previous age, 200-thousand dead and all that language?" Showed up - all right - about 120 days later.
All of
which is not supposed to make you feel better - or worse- about
what's ahead in the second half of this year - our timing sucks
when there gets to be overlap, print-through, and multiple
images of the same thing. Go look at how clear the Wedding
Quake hit was
before
and after
the event. (Scroll down to the May 12, 2008 entry "Oh,
THAT Quake...) So whether we get a half dozen seven-oh's this year with huge loss of life or a series of 8's and larger is really outside the scope of this project. Not much anyone can do about it, except have food, water, seeds and a mindset that will allow you to start over and prosper under the most adverse adverse conditions imaginable which by year-end maybe upwards 1.4-billion people will experience..
Best we hope for is to be wrong and it will be media buzz only - always hard to distinguish from physical/objective reality. Our fishing grounds are internet fora, which oh, by the way, may go down in late summer as a global phenomena. So yeah, in addition to working on his survival pod-boat, Cliff's looking at a satellite-based internet system.
Mine's been in for a couple of years seeing this period coming. Oh, might want to mark down your home/residence's lat/lon by GPS and keep it handy for a couple of years. If it starts changing outside the 2DRMS error of SA(ASM if you're in green), it'll be time to gear up.
Why, I bet hardly any of your friends noticed the proximity of Haiti's quake to the news stories about how the "Earth's magnetic north pole marching toward Siberia at 37 miles per year" did they
Market Note My friend Robin Landry called this afternoon for a few minutes to advise that the market around noon-thirty my time set a new lower-low based on recent trading. "If this thing breaks down in the final hour of trading today, Tuesday could be real interesting" he said. Yup. Like I told subscribers a couple of weeks back, I'm fishing long-term puts. If the market breaks down from here, I may earn a glass of Italian vitamins with dinner.
NYSE closes Monday for MLK Day. A shorter report than usual Monday.
09:35 -- Occasional Linguistic Fill Notes "Haitian Diaspora" With former president Clinton mentioning the 'Haitian diaspora" on an MSNBC interview last night, struck me as we should look at the use of 'diaspora' as it pops up related to Haiti.
Sure enough, got 93 'hits' on the phrase on Google's news search engine right now and no doubt that will continue to build.
We had discussed 200,000 - but we also had references to 220-million. Still, decimal points are a real soft spot of the web bot processing. Cliff points out there's a big linguistic difference between millions and thousands, but bear with me for a sec. What IF the number turns out to be 200 or 220-thosuand and the directional language we were seeing was not 220-million north to Canada, but instead 220,000 north to the USA?
If I were a betting man I'd lay down a few cents betting that within a few days to weeks, we will hear about calls for the US to accept (200,000 to 220,000) Haitian refugees in the US on an emergency/humanitarian basis.
Our time machine is rickety and all, but may be offering hints on this one...and we're just too dense to get it all sorted right. Quick! Build more SQL predicates!
Sure builds the fill for the descriptors fit 'the land where people eat dirt' doesn't it? More on that as Cliff runs linguistic fill stats. Bet me on the 'humanitarian' wave of refugees? Timing fits with all the talk about violence in the streets and imagery of national collapse, too.
Port Data and CPI Time once again to open the mat to all comers at the Complete Reality School of Economics. Sure, there are other schools that purport to teach economics, but they blithely ignore huge data sets that support the cyclical nature of economies finding solace and followers in the the reductionists' quest for a formula that works.
The curriculum here in the complete reality school is a little more harsh. Got three items to go over this morning and we'll just slowly work up to the CPI figures just out. Save the best (whopper) for last. Let's start with yesterday I was comparing the 1929 Crash track with the 2007 Dow collapse track with the 2007 decline and correcting both for inflation. Folks tend to forget that there was deflation going on in the Dow of the early 1930's but deflation going on in 2007 and since, so adjustments to both data sets should be made before feeding to the brain visually.
As you can see, something happened in early 2008 that broke the close relationship:
Obviously, something happened in March/April 2009 that broke the tracking with the 1929 event. Repeat after me: Easy money! for Banks! But to suggest we're out of the woods is ridiculous since on a purchasing power basis, the Dow adjusting for inflation needs to be around 15,000 just to equal 2000 purchasing power. I fully expect a big draw down on the Dow next week once we get through options expiration this afternoon. Gold's down early which means the index options must have expired at the close Thursday. How about that? --- So that's one reliable data set. Our second Complete Reality School data set is the west coast Ports data.
Port of Long Beach was down 13.6% for the fiscal year overall, and imports were down 10.1% the the FY, but down even more (-13.4%) in December. No recovery there.
The Port of Los Angeles was only down 4.41% compared with December 2008 and look at this! Exporters were up 40.23% for the month. Still, for the calendar year, Port of L.A. is down 14.02% overall. Damn, thought we might had something going there.
Up the coast, Seattle, Portland and Tacoma are still running numbers, but Oakland loaded inbound was up 17.9% in December. For the year they were down 8.2% on twenty-foot-equivalent units (TEU's). No surprise why Oakland doing well - they are close to many Asian ports. 5,230 maybe to Oakland from Tokyo while Los Angeles is closer to 5,440. Couple of hundred miles at 20 knots is 10-hours of operating costs inbound and another 10-hours outbound. Seattle is a little closer than LA to some ports, but 5,260-miles only gets about even with Victoria, B.C. or Port Angeles, WA., then there's the run down Puget Sound in the Vessel Traffic System which means a slowdown to pick up a pilot at Port Angeles and then there's fees for that (both ways) going to Tacoma or the POS. Toss in lots of recreational boaters, occasional fog and it's more workload in the wheelhouse.
Interestingly, when you consider the distance from Seattle to Chicago versus L.A. to Chicago, it's roughly the same; I wonder if Warren Buffett went through all this before he & Charlie Munger anted up for Burlington Northern?... --- OK, time to roll out the Big Kahuna of numbers: The Consumer Price Index. But wait! Isn't this the Complete Reality School of Economics? LOL - read on...
Pretty tame inflation - and don't let your lying eyes fool you when you go to the store and notice your marketbasket is costing more than it should. Sssshhh! Make sure you got the toothpaste with lots of fluoride in it.
Inevitable Think I'm a gloomster, do you? How about Patrick Buchanan. He's asking "Is America's financial collapse inevitable?" We try to be a little more detached around here asking instead "How much money can we make in this collapse if we time it right?"
Much more interesting to watch with money on the table along side the banksters.
Eye See New eye test out says it can spot Alzheimer's before the onset of...er.....where was I?
Say What? Joe Biden has a meeting on transparency. A closed meeting. --- Think anyone will notice if I swap the Scope for Crème de Menthe today?
But Weight! There's more! "The floor of a Weight Watchers clinic in Sweden collapsed beneath a group of 20 members of the weight loss programme who were gathered for a meeting. "
Can I go home now?
--- snip and save section ---
Coping: As Goes Haiti... While the world variously a) time is running out for key kinds of aid to send Haiti, and b) while certain 'religious leaders' say things that can strike me as mean & hurtful and the Obama administration calls stupid (which I happen to agree with), and c) while media's chock full of imagery about the worst loss of staff life in UN history and d) the US military is organizing to go in and help (NORTHCOM to the rescue certainly would undercut some conspiracy theories, wouldn't it?), there's a side of the Haitian disaster that most regular folks don't think about. It's the kind of thing that causes me to wake fitful and sweating an hour earlier than usual: Haiti is filling out all kinds of predictive linguistics expectation around the 'people behaving badly' archetypical imagery that come visiting third rock for the next few years.
You see, what most people in America don't want to wrap their heads around is that the worst of Haiti is what a large chunk of America could look like with just a single large social contract failure. "Haiti's health system crumbles under quake as disease "outbreaks loom" sounds like it's an Island of Hispaniola bounded problem. But, it's not.
As terrible these stories are, the worse are just now developing. That the story from channel 2 - the CBS O&O up in New York. They report "Gangs Armed With Machetes Loot Port-Au-Prince Central Business District Resembles Hell On Earth As Bodies Pile Up And Armed Men Battle Over Food, Supplies." --- Now sit back with your comfortable cuppa Joe this morning, close your eyes, and ask "If these here United States were ever hit with an unstoppable, organization-crippling exogenous event (to use an economist's lingo for an 'outside event), what would happen here in the USA?"
My suspicion? The violence being wrought by machete-wielding gangs of Haiti could be a prototype for how things could go here if the 'stuff hit the fan'. American's are a kind and generous people - but only to a point. Remember that somewhere between 21 and 50% of households own guns here.
Here's an ugly thought I'm pretty sure the current administration doesn't want to deal with: When administration members such as Cass Sunstein make revisionist arguments that the "the Supreme Court has never suggested the Second Amendment protects the right to have guns...not once..." Maybe because the legal system hasn't bothered to push a case up that has a simple answer since the Second Amendment is pretty simple and clear: While gun control advocates continue back room maneuvering to outlaw private gun ownership in the US (through such vehicles as UN super-laws), I seem to recall that when the US was in Haiti - the early to mid 1990's - there was some effort at gun control, although the level of US involvement is debatable. U.S. policy at the time worried about the FRAPH and other local paramilitaries.
My Big Ponder of the Day is whether strict gun control would change the kind of violence rearing its head in Haiti now. Or, whether having a well-armed population would keep things more orderly? --- Machetes and knives are high-energy-input devices. It means that reasonable (at least at times) people like me would be would not be likely to become involved in physical street-level violence over food. Mr. Pudgy is in better shape than most from hefting those bags of feed and toting those bales, but a 25-year old could mince me in short order without my 9 MM equalizer. Which gets me to the point.
Guns are equalizers across a broad social strata - as reckless as that claim may sound to gun control proponents. Rather than have control of large urban areas decided by the most physically fit, older (and perhaps more reasonable) people can selectively enforce social order. Haven't see this obvious leveling of the playing field discussed in the gun control debate. Hunger and despotism reveal people's nature which - case youi missed it - is violent.
My idea of gun control continues to be a 2-foot pattern at 100-meters with an iron sight and fist-sized grouping with a pistol at 10-meters. Haitian gangs makes me think about things like this. Especially the headlines "Who's running Haiti? No one, say the people..."
One rogue state with a couple of high altitude electromagnetic pulse devices and we could find out right here. Sobering stuff.
Not Defending Banksters My discussion yesterday of the legit role of big national bankers got me in hot water with a reader out in the Odessa-Midland area of The Republic:
I would never argue against local sustainability! Good heavens, man! My only point was that rather than risk systemic failure such as could be triggered by bank runs that a measured migration path approach oughta be planned. In other words, given the choice of going from a 2010 lifestyle to a sustainable lifestyle post 2012, I would prefer not to make a stop part way there in the late 1800's, know what I mean? That's the risk with promoting bank runs.
At the WuJo: Data Request Here's one for Cliff:
Might be an interesting stat.
Hey! Speaking of which: Remember what, six months back, Cliff said that shows like Coast-to-Coast AM with George Noory would be going mainstream in 2010? Well, check out the latest in The Atlantic... Article is titled "The Listener"... Best of all - we get absolutely precise linguistic fill on C2C going mainstream with this quote:
LOL, congrats to George Noory (and Lisa Lyon who books the guests). The MSM being upstaged by C2C sounds like social consciousness arising, doesn't it?
Bitch Out Your ISP, Please UrbanSurvival is updated every morning more or less precisely between 7:55 and 7:58 AM using multiple clocks including Internet Time and WWV/ WWVH time.
Apparently, incidental reports hint that you may not be getting the freshest copy of Urban since some readers are reporting it comes up a day late!. If you logged on to get today's report (yes, it's Friday - woo hooo!) and you got Thursday's report instead, please call your ISP and inquire WTF? Our ISP is tested on two networks (our link to fiber and a satellite backup) but there are some ISP's (eh? oh hell...) that does caching of content so you may be getting used news, so to speak. Call, gripe, advise.
.MP3 Edition Coming Speaking of things around here, I am planning next week to get up even earlier) and do a morning .MP3 on an experimental basis. Was talking to some friends this week and they told me a lot more people would catch Urban and Crazy George's comments if I had a podcast version. Since I have all this fancy studio gear, I figure what the heck. Depending on how the experiment goes, I will likely become available as an option via subscription for something like $50/year (or $40/year if you're a Peoplenomics subscriber but that would also include the PN issues as MP3's too)
My friends who know such things tell me more people would listen than read because hard to do that in the car plus drink coffee, make phone calls, put on make up, yada, yada...
We plan to find out. The cost may seem steep, but bandwidth and high reliability servers aren't cheap...and each podcast is several megs. More Monday when we kick off the free week-long experiment.
Deep Email Whew...deep on here, but since we're in a Complete Reality mindset and playing in the WuJo to boot, why not end on this philosophical note? All promoted by my "I find this rerun boring..." comment on Thursday...
Glad you mentioned that, since I noticed, too, a bit of a somber note in Les' most recent where he wrote:
Been meaning to mention that there's a simple cure for bummer days - renunciation of all but one or two core beliefs. A Constitution, and the highest of all...Love - A belief and personal experience of Universe and how IT dances with (and occasional on) each of us.
But beyond that, remember that even dreaded events like 2012 may be only tools of manipulation,. for those that build beliefs while sincere may themselves be unwitting tools of mass delusion. --- A long time ago in deep pain to the psyche brought on by being a professional news-chaser, I arrived at the only way I could cope each day.
I simple got up, had my coffee, and paused on the way out the front door long enough to acknowledge the Universe, look at the Cascade Mountains (when it was clear) and realize how small each of us is compared to the whole fabric of complexity.
With that, I'd [mentally] say "OK, Universe. Here's my ticket for another "E Ride" (Disneyland's best & scariest rides back in the day) "Let 'er rip!" And off I would go, start up the old news cruiser, turn on the scanner and go chase down harsh reality.
That process - a combination of surrender to whatever Universe has in mind for the day's events while at the same time viewing Life as a Disney ride on steroids - a kind of Space Mountain puker at times - was - and to this day continues - to allow me to tap into some different level of personal energy. I remind myself that my job as the 'rider' of this Ride is to go along with all that happens and to revel in the experience of it all.
Richard Bach said it best in the introduction to his book "Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
"In the path of our happiness lies the learning for which we have chosen this lifetime."
I expect Les (like every other human including me) forgets every now and then that Life is just an E ride. That's what makes this such a great ride. The more we get scared, the more we buy into something, the more exciting our battles with dragons and shadows.
Part of my role (at least for now) is to write about the most
frightening parts of the monetary aspects of The Ride, but in
such a way such that just between us, we can laugh and revel in
the wonderfulness of the ride and how even the scariest parts
aren't real. The horror of taxes and wars and
pain...they are all transient. Oh sure, while we hold on
to the safety bars of life it's easy to think reality is
real, but like Alan Watts asked in his
The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
By doing this, the EVERYTHING can find ways to keep entertains and occupied through unlimited periods of time.
Think of it like The Huge videogame - the Ultimate's time sink.
But don't tell Les - or anyone else - about this subversive way of thinking. Don't want to spoil The Ride for everyone else. Just yet. ---
If Richard Bach ever gets down to Texas,
I'd like to have another bottle of wine with him. Haven't done
that since '73 or '74 I think it was at the Olympic Hotel Golden
Lion Grill one afternoon, a lunch hour that stretched into three
hours of great conversation. Maybe Hugh Downs could join
us, too....been a long time. Best bottle of wine in my
life. Send your comments to george@ure.net Shop Till Your Drop Ideas: Peoplenomics This Week A Simple Tactical Trading Plan for 2010 and $1,000 Having outlined the case for P-3 to arrive in 2010, the next problem is "OK, what to do with that information?" Right. No point having a sense of the future if it is not the basis for appropriate action. So we begin this week with a discussion of my favorite topics when comes time to invest -- "casino theory" -- and an important corollary I call "index theory". By combining the two into a short "Options School" I think you'll find my personal trading plan for 2010 to be pretty interesting in the potential for even a small investor like me. So we begin by exploring 'casino theory'...
More For Subscribers To Subscribe, CLICK HERE
Maxa-Cookie Manager Been a while since I've updated you on how many cookies and web bugs have been removed from my main computer by the Maxa Cookie Manager from Maxa Tools: 1,602 web bugs and 54,131 cookies so far. It's amazing.
Take it for a free test drive by downloading it. To upgrade to full functionality will set you back $35 bucks, but Christmas is coming... Is your privacy worth it? Once you try it out, click the upgrade button (!) on the upper right hand side for the $35 unlock to get it to remove even those nasty and highly intrusive 'non-browser specific' cookies. Bonus: You computer may run faster.
Attn: Mac Drivers: MCM does support the Safari Browser, but that does not mean it is compatible with Mac OS. Maxa-Tools only support the Windows world....so far. Given Jens and the other engineers time...
"Live on $10,000" A Year With another round of layoffs due to start later this month...a round which will start to axe many of the middle managers who have managed to avoid the HR grenades...might I suggest a preemptive tactical move? Voluntarily dropping your lifestyle back a bit, since we're all being marched down that road by either circumstances or some out-of-control-PTB types who write checks to Washington lobby and to anti-reformers in California! A good starting point, at least if you've still got $10-bucks is my e-book "How to Live on #10,000 a Year...or less!"
It's an automatic download. It's written in an information dense style: The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the cheap, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you have a little hustle left... Click here for the index and details.
MyGroPonics My commodity broker JB Slear and I have written a simple book to get you started on high density hydroponics. It's an example of how someone with a little creativity, access to a few 'dollar stores' and willing to try out some new farming techniques can grow an amazing amount of produce sin a very small space - like even an apartment balcony (if it gets some sunlight). Sound interesting? It's just $10 bucks here...
Pass It On A different take on things - that's what you'll find here most mornings. If you know of anyone who might also like our content, simply click here and send a link to them. Or, if you hated what you read, send the link to all your 'worst enemies'. Like they say in Burbank, "Ain't no such thing as bad press..." ---- Last week's report is here. For back issues of this site, click here.
Thursday, January 14, 2010 Data Correction Turns out that although the chart shown this morning is correct (based on what the Smithsonian database was showing for 2009 quakes, if you put in a longer term baseline, the data levels out and other volcanoes show up. See longer term data page here. Curiously, the number of volcanoes displayed in a particular year vary (most oddly to me).
For example if the 2008 data is searched for 2008, the data just below for 2007 shows 10 volcanoes the preceding year. But if you then search 2007 the database shows no, there were actually 70 volcanoes that year, not just the 10 under the previous search. Could be some parsing to fit page layouts or something, but in any event, different years yield different search results.
But it gets way stranger, the deeper I go into the data, the more confusing the picture since in 2008 we're informed there were 74 volcanoes, yet the 2008 data shows only 42 listed. So are there multiples?
But wait! Worse still, in 2007 there were70 volcanoes at the top of the page, yet the list showed only 38.
And even worse (this is turning into an analytics workshop I'm saddened to report) the following volcanoes from 38 shown for 2007 had one 'doubled counted' (presumably from more than one eruption(?) [Chikurachki] and the following volcanoes were previously erupting in 2007 but show as eruptions in 2008's list of 42 out of 74 shown at the top of the page: Bezymioanny, Chikuchki, Etna, Galeras, Huil, Nevado del, Kliuchevskoi, Llaima, Ruang, Reventador, and Soputan.
We see here why the coffee hasn't pierce through the veil of complexity at the God-awful hour I started writing this morning and if you have a half day with nothing to do, you' re welcome to go back through the Smithsonian data which here in the last half hour has gone from pretty clear to incomprehensible. Now the question: Is this by accident or design?
Screw it - back to watching my options and client work.
These Shaky Times Word out of Haiti that upwards of half a million people may be dead (although headline writers have been known to exaggerate) from the earthquake this week is a ghastly thing for sure. And the TV .snip of Pat Robertson saying 'they have been cursed' and that Haiti 'swore a pact with the devil' rubs me very much the wrong way, but that's not worth rehashing.
However, it does once again go to why my colleague Cliff and I have been busy with personal planning and projects since if the predictive linguistics are right about what happens between now and 2012, this week's horror won't even rate a warm-up act status for what still lies ahead.
Also not worth restating (but I will anyway) is that the predictive linguistics fall off to near zero (which is what a 97% reduction in data points after 2012 figures to) since our readers already know that is either because the internet is displaced, the grid/energy has failed, or that's a processing artifact and no one will be using the net in 2013.
Alarmist? Nope. Just trying to keep it real.
With that: A good starting point might be a click on the data posted by the Smithsonian Institution which lists recent volcano eruptions by year. Boring? Hell no - especially when you plug it into a spreadsheet and turn it into a chart...like so:
Solves global warming, doesn't it? Why, it might even lend street creds to the Gaia hypothesis if one were so inclined. --- This weekend Peoplenomics.com tackles "Fight & Flight: Pre-Planning the worst." Could the next couple of years see mobile & modular homes (mostly built on steel beams and designed to be well-shaken while being trucked about) get 'even' with site/stick-built homes after years of being dissed in tornado footage? Given the choice between a modular or a brick home, for example, in a big EQ it's a no-brainer for me...
Moving Up Doomsday Later today, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is planning to move the hands of their "doomsday clock" today. Mind you, this is mainly nuclear threats and I expect one or two minutes closer to midnight since the risk of terrorists getting hold of nuclear material either jacked from the former Soviet Union (FSU) or made in (chose as many as you want here:) Iran, Pakistan, North Korea just keeps going up. It has been '5-minutes to midnight' You'll know its midnight when the lights go out and/or you start glowing in the dark. Hope you read that Rand paper I referenced last week on the 'road to total war' and how civilian populations get to be pawns in power struggles between powers. Not very comforting.
No Comfort: Food If nuke jitters don't keep you up, maybe you need to read Andrew Simms' piece in the Guardian "Nine meals from anarchy" or even more disturbing, Stan Deyo's "Strategic Grain Reserves - Sold Out?"
Then there's that Seed Story out of yesterday's report. Remember this is the one where a USDA fellow contacted a reader over some seeds purchased on eBay. Here's the follow-up:
Hmmm (some reader comments in the "Coping" section following).
Crimes of the Times Department After an opening session which was highlighted by repentant, but not bonus-returning bankers, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is about to sit down to Day 2 of its hearings into why the world ran up the the very brink of financial disaster. Don't hold your breath looking for straight skinny. Like the Pecora Commission which in the 1930's tried to figure out "How'd this Depression Get Here?", this one seems to be stumbling around in much in the way blind to the obvious.
While attorney general Eric Holder will be telling the panel today how the USDOJ is using 'every means at their disposal' to root out crime, we're still unclear how that kind of claim can be made with a penny stock in diamond shares scandal off in the wings, naked shorting hand-over-fist, and misleading claims about bundled debt and related derivatives. But, if this really is the DOJ's best, you and I have missed out on some easy money. Stanford and Madoff aside, where's the enforcement against the root cause of economic calamity - the greedsters on the street? Where are the appraisers, no-doc loan artists, and slippery mortgage operators going to the iron bar hotel in the aftermath? Why hasn't DOJ noticing that there's nothing in the Constitution about bailing out private companies and millions of reg'lar voters are pissed about the buyoffs in congress on that front which ought to be investigated, know what I'm saying? How is it calls from the district can be over-ridden by a few well-placed campaign checks to incumbents? . Hand me the BP cuff ag - I'll have blood squirting out my eyeballs in a minute.
Seriously: Being honest has once again cost you and me billions. Such fools we are and then to hear this? Another whopped of the scale used when WTC-7 was "pulled". What the old saying about a whopper being told often enough becomes 'truth'?
Unthankful Bulls Markets have done a marvelous recovery since March - although on the flip side I see the bull bear ratios are around where they were in August of '87 prior to the mini-crash later that year. Still, scanning through the latest Gallup poll data it sure looks like bulls are not very thankful that the Obama administration and Fed have held things together with only 40% approving how the economy is being handled. Ill-mannered bulls are once again mistaking blind luck and longwave economic cycles for actual brain cells and trading acumen. Russian roulette players can also be right five out of six times. Once.
Beige Book, Not-So-Green Christmas A colorful section of stats: Fed Beige Book figures "economic activity remains at a low level, conditions have improved modestly further, and those improvements are broader geographically than in the last report".
Boring Retail Numbers:
Green shoots! Green....er...... (You don't really want me to mention how if inflation is running 5% then there is no growth going on do you?)
No need...you'll see in this here handy chart that general merchandise was up only 2% so the economy is still shrinking!
Step rigcht up and get'cher green.....oh forget it....
Healthcare's Bumpy Road Not sure who's got the right skinny on healthcare. One set of headlines has "Democrats report progress in health talks" while another headline claims republicorp Eric "Cantor: This health bill can be defeated". Who's going to be right? I expect the majority dems, but we'll just have to wait. Sit on your wallet while we do. I wish there was real-time mandatory reporting of campaign contributions at times like this...and again suggest putting national politics on eBay would do more for transparency than anything the Obamastration has done so far...
Obamavision No...tell me it ain't so: "Obama musical set to open in Germany." Hmmm...Let me just guess: A song & dance show? Been playing in Washington for a year already...if'n you follow.
Boston Legal Interesting story about a reporter (supposedly) being knocked over (or was that 'tripped'?) while outside a democorp state AG fundraiser put on says another source was put on by the healthcare industry. --- A now 73 YO friend of mine from the news-chasing days - a fine AP broadcast desk writer back in the day - told me once why he'd given up voting...a result of covering too many campaigns and seeing the whole charade at play. "Just encourages them..."
Cold Waters While "Million in India throng the Ganges for a Holy Bath" I figure most Americans will stick with the big walk-in shower.
Getting in cold water seems to be a seasonal rage. Up in Philly, it's "Take the (Polar Bear) Plunge" as a fund raiser this weekend for Special Olympics. Same kind of thing in Kansas City, too...in fact a number of big cities this year. Only thing I'm ever interesting in dunking is doughnuts. --- Figure we're about a week and a half from the next "Big Cold Snap".
--- snip and save section ---
Coping: Promoting Bank Runs? WTF There's a post on a website (which I will not post a link to) that goes to the idea of promoting a bank run. The thinking (such as it is) suggests that since big banks aren't cleaning up their act, and since people in Washington have so far failed to do anything really meaningful (witness bankster bonuses this year - and for what?) that Americans should all quickly as they can pull money out of national banks and shovel it into local banks.
Like so many idea spawned of hot heads, it might sound like a good idea on the surface, but hold on a minute and let's think it through. Some points:
1. Big national banks provide a lot of clearing and other services which are used on a wholesale basis by by community banks. Electronic infrastructure, ATM's - you know - the hardware end of things.
2. The only people who win in bank runs are those who make the first moves. They get their dough but the people who are slow to move could get screwed out of access to their dough as a result. FDIC has how much money left?
3. Not sure, but under the Patriot Act isn't promoting a bank run on largish national banks something that could be construed as an act of economic terrorism?
But the real problem (as explained to me by my friend Howard Hill) is that national banks perform a very important intermarket leveling function. When a local bank makes a loan, even if it begins with an extremely sound balance sheet, if the community has a real streak of bad luck (military base closing, auto industry dies - that kind of thing) the local banks will be much quicker brought to the brink of collapse and unable to do workouts and such since their only loans are in that one community.
The big national banks (everyone loves to beat on - including me) do serve a leveling function because when things are going terribly in Michigan, they might be doing so-so to pretty good in Texas, so in a sense the national banks spread risk around the country.
I'd direct you to the list of bank failures on the FDIC web site, where seems lots of them are community/local banks in SoCal, AZ, NV and other once 'hot' real estate markets. 'Scuse me if I don't get all rabid about pulling all my dough out of a national bank. Besides, I might need to access the money in Canada or Peru some day and the local bank doesn't have a branch there, but the Big Evil National Banks do...
Seedy Business Several readers have commented on the eBay seed sale story:
Which is why the roundups come in fall & winter, but that's another history book... Don't know what the danger is is from sweet corn seeds, but the lessons of history bear repeating.
Polling Issues One reader is confused by polls she's been seeing lately:
Well no clue....but I try never to think on Thursday. Just like Friday through Wednesday, if I were to noodle it. Never happy answers that came back for a whole lot of work behind the eyes.
WiiFlix Nintendo is planning to add NetFlix to the Wii console. Wonder if it will be a download, or what? should keep Wii in the game (a horrible pun, sorry) with X-Box and PlayStation. --- Speaking of games people play: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare2 has just popped the $1-billion barrier in sales. Point, click, retire....
Bothers me when violence gets packaged and sold. I can hardly wait for the next release of Rape, Pillage, and Plunder 6: Global War. 'Cept it's not a game. World's living it. ---- Common sense....ain't. --- CBS-2 in Chicago offers this insight to the American mindset: "Chicago Alderman Declares War On 'Avatar' James Balcer, A Veteran, Says Blockbuster Film Portrays Military In Negative Light."
Great Hack of China Gotta check out the InformationWeek story this morning that a "Chinese Spy Agency behind Google Cyber Attack, Report Claims".
Optimal Complexity: This is Complicated "IRS commissioner doesn't file his own taxes." Figure's the tax code is too complicated. --- Curiously, though, sensible as a simple national sales tax or VAT would be, America's now likely past the point where any such proposals would have a snowball's chance in hell of happening. The whole 'tax business' has become a huge institutionalized part of the economy. With a vastly simplified tax code, what would happen to accounting software, tax software, seasonal prep firms like H&R and the list goes on and on and....
At some point, systems evolve in an ever-increasing complex fashion until they pass thresholds - as taxes have done. The first threshold is they become accepted. Income tax did that long ago. Then they become 'growth' industries and the roll-up of accounting firms, tax software outfits and such gets us past that threshold. Now we've got a tax system which teeters at the point I think of as "optimal complexity."
That is: It employs about as many people as it can, takes on a life of its own, has a whole cadre of special interests going in Washington, and yet for people on Social Security or military retirements (or both) the filing process is simple.
Where dynamic systems get into trouble is when they get pushed through points of optimal complexity. That may be what's ahead for taxes...so we'll be watching for that one. --- Another example of how my "Optimal Complexity Theory" is to look at what's going on with electricians. One of Elaine's boys is an electrician up in Colorado and he tells me that electricians are looking at adding continuing education credits and such for Master Electricians. I found this interesting as the Dickens.
Here's a trade where there have been lots of layoffs and cutbacks due to the collapse of commercial and residential projects. And so as a 'value builder' the electricians are optimizing complexity by adding continuing ed. and other requirements which will (presumably) drive up the price point of those who remain in the field. Useful concept, this 'optimal complexity stuff'. Not static...always drifting this way or that, but it sure explains a lot of what goes on both in the headlines and behind them. --- You saw where IRS is adding requirements for continuing ed? Another example of optimizing complexity; self-organizing behavior to optimize a system to provide maximum employment, pricing, on relatively fixed demand. Fixed demand in the sense that the tax code is already incomprehensible. But even without tax code changes, 'continuing ed' adds to the systemic juggernaut's life...got it?
The one question which hasn't come up yet, although give it a couple of years to simmer: Is the last stage of complex system development prior to collapse 'optimizing complexity' and how many government operations, plus civilian trades, crafts, and so forth are at this stage right now? --- This
is not an academic question; it's a much more urgent
matter in real-time.
Recall that Joseph Tainter (The Collapse of Complex Societies (New Studies in Archaeology)
From the systems standpoint, attempts to optimize complexity might be viewed as alarms indicating that the zenith of complexity has been reached. It would certainly fit with the economic long wave and even more so, it fits with the postulated Grand Economic Super Cycle - a period of five successive economic long waves of 48-83 years.
Social consciousness does not turn on a dime. It takes time for things to 'sink in' as the global mind is a bit thick-headed. But we're witnessing a context change: food supplies endangered by weather, climategate being revealed, the doomsday clock being moved today, and oh yeah, the markets may start down next week when options expiration is over tomorrow.
Fun to watch how the profile of the Second Depression is unfolding: Not the big 'whack-at-once' of the first one. Instead we are in a decades long decline which is being characterized by systemic optimization strategies and pushing out payment for past excesses for as many years into the future as possible. Yet the result, I fear, will be the same as it was for the Anasazi, Chocoans, Minoans, and the list goes on. If complexity and limits to growth don't get you, the volcanoes will. Remember the lead story this morning?
Life's a lot like going to the theater at Stratford:
It must be 'as we like it'. Still, while I can't speak for you, I find this rerun is getting boring.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 Crisis? What Crisis? Pleased to report that the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission finally put something on their web site this week other than a logo and a second page which merely announced today's hearings in NYC. Of particular interest is the "Selected Financial Market and Economic Data" - a handy .PDF summary of the mess we're in. A couple of charts, if you please?
The very first one claims that financial services - at its recent peak - made up about 6% of US GDP. But somehow that doesn't pass the 'sniff test'. Why, for example, I'd sure want to find out whether a traditional 3-4 times multiplier shouldn't be applied to account for all the indirect jobs that out fascination with faulty paper wrought; You know: Jobs like the paper being delivered, the copiers and printers, the buildings and real estate, and the Beemer and Mercedes dealerships than thrives on the sector - and thanks to phat Christmas bonuses this year, still aren't exactly suffering like, oh, say the families under the overpasses in the Midwest.
But at least someone is trying to figure out what the hell happened, and gosh, it's only 15-months since the October 2008 global panic and just 10-months since the market lows. --- You're not old enough (more'n likely) to remember that in the wake of the 1930's collapse congressional hearings were held. The globalist spew from that was that the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act had to get some of the blame and globalists picked up the "Free Trade" mantra and have spouted it ever since.
Except for the fact that it's just dead wrong it wouldn't be a bad thing. But it is. You see, there really is a way to make the world operate smoothly and efficiently. Granted, ity won't provide for 18-20% of an economy making up financial services (and you know the kind of servicing goes along with toxic ASSets, I suppose). The WAY of reasonableness is the Purchasing power Parity concept.
In effect, PPP (discussed neatly at the About.com site here) implemented as a means of setting tariffs on all goods would end perhaps 90% of the long-chain-molecule business model. Under this model (most widely used today by megacorps, Jobs that would pay $20 an hour for customer service - just to pick one - could be exported to India, but the workers there would need to be paid at a rate which would provide an equivalent standard of living.
$20 an hour ain't that much: On a 2,000 work year it's about $40,000. But it will buy a nicely equipped auto, for example. Under PPP theory, if megacorps were forced to pay workers in India enough so they could be an equivalent new car (nicely appointed at the same level), they would have no motive to job-jack. American jobs would stay here in America and IT directors, web developers and so forth would not be so hastily exported.
Under PPP, if the jobs were exported, the goods (or deliverables in the case of intangibles like telephone work) would be taxed (tariffed) as a rate sufficiently high to ensure workers doing the same job in different country would be be paid at the same level. No, this is not supposed to make telephone C/S workers rich in India; it's designed to keep American jobs at home. And the tax/tariff money would all go into a pot and would fund unemployment expenses.
Now let's bring this around full circle: Today's agenda (here) doesn't provide for anything other than three panel discussions. Oh-oh: Tomorrow's meeting is only two panels and these are made up of (hate to spoil it) the "usual suspects" - named 'federal officials' (Panel 1 Thursday) and State and Local officials (Panel 2 Thursday.
Just like the elusive 'change' that was supposedly to accompany the arrival of Obama, seems like this is shaping up as another clusterf*ck. The people steering the Great Ship of State onto the rocks are meeting to discuss whether the compass works instead of how to steer away from the obvious rocks still ahead. We're captives of a business model that has passed its useful limits.
Until there's a fundamental change in the underlying rules set, the model will keep yielding the same output. The definition of insanity is, after all, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. Without fundamental changes to the model, we'll all be back beating our heads on the wall in unison; probably before the year is out. --- C-SPAN is planning live coverage here. In a a highly civilized market (like Seattle) you might have time to get AmazonFresh to drop by popcorn and beer for the afternoon session. Dry salami, a half rack of Natural Ice, couple of kosher dills, and a loaf of French bread for me while you're at it. I'll try not to breathe in your direction...mint flavored floss, too, and a gallon of milk....where were we? --- Commission chairman Phil Angelides opening remarks about a B+ for at least saying:
Unfortunately, the 1930's blame placement exercise wasn't exactly a screaming success. Just for fun, let's roll out the Wikipedia entry on the 1930's Percora Commission:
Since history rhymes, let's swap parties (say, there's some real progress since the last Depression, huh?) and see what to expect in a perfect rhyme if we imagine reading a 2012 Wikipedia about the Commission:
My point being that if history is any guide, there should be a fair amount of theatrics to this as events move along. Time'll tell, I suppose. But those who don't learn the lessons of history...yada, yada, yada....
Doing a Job on Us The White House credits stimulus with us to 2-million jobs being created. --- Cleverly, the weasel-wording is the phrase "created or saved. Which gives them a loophole big enough to drive a T600 through. --- If you don't know what a T600 is, the odds just increased that you're a middle-aged corporate suck-up who is totally out of touch with what real working Americans do to keep you going to those conference room jobjacking strategy plans year after year. The T600 decoder ring is here. All Hail Renton & Denton! No "Ma wants Pa to get a new Peterbuilt" jokes, it's just too early and this is a G-rated site.
Double Dip? US Chamber of Commerce president Thomas Donohue says the country is facing a possible double-dip recession and have five ways to start to fix that:
All sounds mighty familiar and no mention of wage-labor spreads exploited by globalists which result in jobjacking, but fine, it's a start. --- Since I do consulting work (besides writing about economics, I do have some redeeming purpose) I keep getting jobjack emails every day from China and India. Here's a couple of examples of how the internet is helping erode the US' standard of living...
Another? Sure! Got tons of 'em...
As a consultant this puts me in an absolutely awful spot. Do I tell clients who want to grow their bottom line NOT to go with least-cost sources like outfits behind these emails offering CAD and web design - or the scads of others that want to do IT, offshore machining/manufacturing, customer service and the list goes on? Or do I recommend the company pay more but keep jobs here in the USA? Obviously, I put both options on the table and I'm pleased to report clients really do try to keep jobs in the USA. But think about it: If your livelihood and standard of living for the spouse and kids was dependent on maximizing profits, what would your call be all BS aside? You really willing to sacrifice some personal income to keep jobs here? Or, do you take the money and run since "Oh hell, the economy is going to blow up anyway...let's do this just this once - it won't matter..." Numbers du Jour Oil inventories come out at 10:30 Eastern. Oil (ahhl, round these parts) was a shade over $80 when I checked earlier.
But the real crunchy stuff will be out after lunch when the Fed's Beige Book and the ongoing serial fiction called "Treasury Budget" comes out. Not that it's entirely fictional. Just since so much off budget accounting going on, black budgets etc. that none of us civvies gets a straight/complete picture. Which is fine, I suppose: We'd all be scared spitless if we knew.
Quakes Picking Up?
Given the Northern California quake and now this one, I'm reminded how the last half of the moon is claimed by some to be the most dangerous since land-tides figure into quake activity as a driver. --- Coincidence: I was reading a research point from Charles Hapgood's "The Earth's Shifting Crust" about the time of the quake. Hmmm... --- Oh and check this out:
Come on, you're not really surprised since we've been talking about Diaspora here for six months and a 'things coming along shortly' are you?
Close Shave Today If you're reading this morning's report, earth survived a 'close shave' with a mystery object that's coming within 80,000 miles of Earth. Be interesting to see if we have another big quake today...not sure how the hyperdimensional math of such things works out; distortions of the fabric of space-time never was one of my stronger points. I'll defer to your expertise here. Might make a dandy Burma-Shave poem I cobbled up for the occasion:
If you're too young to remember Burma-Shave signs, click here for the low-down. You're probably too young to shave anyway.
--- snip and save section ---
Coping: With Street-Level Economics I wrote up Tuesday how 'The Eyes Have It" when it comes to spotting local economic trends. To drive the point home a bit (although hardly necessary, since you're bright enough to keep coming back here...) I'd like to share a couple of good ones from readers:
Nothing particularly sly about stating the obvious ;-). Another one:
With "Equality" of Outcomes Remember when women's rights was all the rage? Well, the 'price of equality' seems to be showing up observes a reader:
There's a reason maybe that men had (*until the past 20-years or so) been the mainstream of the 'death professions' - soldiering, policing, fire fighting, mining, high work iron workers, and such. Not that anyone gets out of life in the past 2010 years 'alive', but the point is that for all the corporate hype and people being mesmerized into mass consumption 'gotta have it madness' the payoff is more and more a non-gender-specific heart attack and serious illness rate.
As a male - admittedly often guilty of putting women on a pedestal, opening doors, and other senseless and certainly no longer justifiable actions --I expect Universe will be lowering the additional longevity women had enjoyed over men. Used to be something like 7 or 8 years on average, if I recall. Stress does that.
But it ain't proper to bring up the topic and I found a fair number of the papers once listed on topic have been 'disappeared off the net'. Surprise, surprise - it might tempt people to reassess the mindless consumption/time-on-treadmill problem. Lordy! Can't have that. Poof - questioning the ruling paradigm is verboten.
So much for 'equality' though, huh? Women get hoodwinked into trading in the traditional stay-at home roles to head for life on the treadmill with men and not only do they get cut down by the Grim Reaper earlier, but since the TV is raising the kids, instead of a mother whose mission is keeping the home operating smoothly (more difficult than even the worst day building PowerPoints) we get the bonus of a couple of generation with a higher portion of brat-kids turned criminals for lack of strong families.
There's even some economic grace to it: The moms going to work created the need for more police, more guidance counselors and created more legal and prison jobs to boot. Dandy how 'the system' creates jobs by letting kids run amuck. Screw tests scores and mom supervising homework. All kids are 'special' to the point these days where I want to step outside and puke.
Great trade-off, don'tcha think. But as Legendary Bill said: "Wait! there's more!" As an extra special bonus the economy craters and those 401-Karrots all turn out rotten.
Don't let my Folger-powered attack on the insanity slow you up. Consider it a gentle reminder that I'm obviously a throwback.
Here, let me get that door for you....oops! Forget myself. Get'cher own damn door. Only one paradigm at a time around here. I'll keep opening Elaine's, door, of course. She's got the good sense to appreciate a throwback. Am doggone me, I'm still pleased to be one.
Hijacking State's Rights Continues Am I the only one who eyes with some suspicion the Obama administration signing this week of a new "council of Governors" executive order? -- Seems to me that America has done just dandy - better than any other country in the world in the same period until the Bankster Coup got underway - with a separation of powers. Now, we have the change artist trying to blur the lines. States are being set up to give more to the feds, in order to get more back, but of courser when the money comes back to the states it must be inspected carefully.
For strings.
Computing Large Four monitors in a massive extended desktop comprised of four 24" LCD's, i7 920 series, 12gB and 1 TB mirrored Windows 7 64, and more bandwidth than DSL Guilty of dreaming! A Canadian reader called me on it:
T'ain't just Canadia (yeah, a made up country, LOL) where www.kijiji.com works, does fine here and some good computerly bargains around here, too.
Here Comes the Seed Police! All the warnings here about getting your heritage seeds before the government moves on food supplies of just regular folks may have seemed alarmist and dire...a little "Too much tinfoil, George!". But if you think I'm BS'ing about the government seizing seeds purchased from places like eBay, try this email on for size:
HOLY SMOKES! Please keep us informed GT! (readers initials). Folks gotta hear the follow-up to this one. make copious notes and tell us what's going on...risk of disease, or what? Ask how the guy got your name and personal information! Jeez Louise! I think SITC is "Standard Industrial Trade Classification" but how the hell did they get eBay information about your purchase. Press that point - how did they find you...
Damn straight...there's got to be a rational explanation - or things are much closer to hitting the fan than I ever thought... --- Next thing you know, America will be like the conquered lands in the Sand Box where Iraqis (for example) are prevented from holding perfectly good heritage seeds over from season to season on some flimsy grounds or other in order to force them to purchase each year from the terminator seed promoting Frankenfood companies who oughta themselves be 'rounded-up' if'n you follow.... Seeds of revolutionary change? Sure as hell sounds like it to me.... ---- Tinfoil hat please? Let me see council of 'special' governors to hijack states rights, seed police, crashing economy, limits on money market withdrawals under Rule 2.7a provisions, mandatory flu emergency hasn't been lifted, government's still running climate-change ads despite climategate...oh yeah, land of the Free? Yeah, sure, you bet'cha....
Quick - Run! Interesting article suggesting jogging barefoot may be better than wearing shoes. That's what we like to do around here: Find some silver lining for the coming time when no one will be able to afford shoes...
Tuesday January 12, 2010 Rally Reservations, Trade Gap Up Biggest financial story of the day may turn out to be "China's central bank raises reserve requirement ratio by 0.5 percentage points from Jan. 18." This was presaged by yesterday's story that China has displaced Germany as the biggest exporter in the world - and what's worse: This comes as the US continues to stagger from dunderheaded political policies bought and paid-for by globalists with a pure profit agenda that doesn't include consideration of preserving the recent high standard of living in the USA that incase 15-million unemployed aren't hint enough, is on the skids.
What's happening is a huge roll-over. The middle class in China is about to (if it hasn't already) surpassed the middle class of the United States. They're quickly getting to where they don't need us and if you doubt it, go read the "China's the world's biggest exporter" stories again. --- Mark my words: There will be horrific financial fall-out from this since one of the traditional tools of economic recovery is lower interest rates. Low reserve requirements encourage lending. Higher reserve rates chill lending a bit but they increase confidence of currency investors, shoring up the balance sheet of a central back.
Reserve requirements are just a first step, but after that come outright rate increases and competing rates around the could begin to rise quickly, and when the recovery-that-doesn't-include-the-US gets traction, the globalist 'hot money' will flee for higher yields, leaving the US without interested parties to soak up our huge federal bond offerings. Which are about to get even larger due to how many wars, how many bailouts, how many flu panics and how many healthcare and unemployment extension programs and all the rest? ---- You may think I'm a lunatic for scaling into short positions in financials (more in today's Coping section) but I don't like what I'm seeing at the grassroots level and I'm starting to get emails about another 'big bank failure' out there in the wings that could pop shortly; as early as this week. -- Gristly stuff, eh?" Let's me serve you some more hell-baked-for-breakfast in form of today's Balance of Trade report just out admits the balance of trade is getting worse with imports up more than 3-times the increase is exports - which sucks mighty big time:
Here's the problem in a nutshell: The US has been buying its own paper assets according to well informed reports around the net. About 80% of US bond offerings were bought by - our own government -- after briefly cycling the debt through the open market. Yeah, sure, that defines Ponzi scheme, but only until the whole international investment community begins to lose faith in the Almighty Dollar. Till then, it's been working fine. China raising it's reserve rate is like the Godfather clearing his throat at the negotiating table. It means sometime.
Here's what a student of longwave economics won't lose sight of: The US government continues to lose money on bad investments in AIG, automakers, and mortgages to the tune of $68 billion. And states like California are desperate for federal help to save things like the California welfare-to-work program. And with the price of gasoline at $3 a gallon and oil seeming to head back toward $100/barrel, who's going to take all that paper of ours without it yielding a higher rate of interest now that China's gone and raised its rate? The only thing that held the December unemployment rate at a nominal 10% was jiggering workforce numbers such that 661,000 workers just stopped wanting work on paper! Without that statistical balderdash, the unemployment rate would be up to 10.4%! And the real rate likely twice that and clearly in the (1st) Depression-era range. --- From the longwave economic perspective, the first Depression was blamed on speculators and the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act. But those were not the underlying cause. The real cause is of all depressions is excessive malinvestment - just like it always is whether you're talking the 1930's or the 1630's Tulip Mania. We went malinvestment crazy in the services industries, to overbuilt housing and all the rest and unlike the tariffs of the 1930,'s we're now in a game one level 'upstream' from that where global competitive currency valuations are the new game.
All thanks to abandoning the once-great production economy believing that financial products was an industry. Surprise, surprise, Sherlock. Finance is a service not a core business. Am I the only one who read the books in grad school about the difference between line and staff functions? Accounting is and forever shall be a service. Not a national salvation founded on free lunches. --- What pushes currency valuations around? Surety of return and safety (which is why folks in the Middle East are looking at a currency basket instead of solely US dollars. It's why gold is shining and it's why the Euro looks like a decent bet even though America was once the world's undisputed economic juggernaut. The 1990's were the new Roaring Twenties.
Considers this: If you were betting trying to pick an economic Winner, even as a patriot American just assessing relative strength and growth potential, who would you vote on to become the most successful fro0m today forward in economic growth?
Call me a damn fool but it's not a difficult pick so far as my money's concerned. A big swig of coffee please, to get that bitter pill down. America can still win. But to do so requires leadership and so far in Washington "No Change" is the answer loud & clear.
Not Just Urban Maybe I'm not a total knot head on employment numbers after all: John Crudele in this morning's NY Post is reporting "How nation's true jobless rate is closer to 22 percent." RFO bro. That makes two people telling it like it is.
Let the War Begin: It's a Hit None of the West's secret services will own up to this, I'm sure. But the headline that a "Bomb blast kills nuclear physicist in Tehran" sure seems like it might track back to Virginia or a small Middle East country. Iran's blaming the US and Israel. --- Watch the headlines closely over the next few weeks. Could it be that this is the US/Israeli attack on Iran? Lot cheaper than massive bombing raids, for sure. Might recall another Iranian scientist went missing last October.
Not Right/Left The UK Telegraph features an interesting story on the most important conservatives in the US. And another on the top 100 liberals. --- Interesting perhaps from a scorecard standpoint, but I look at it as missing the whole point that politics is NOT about right/left. It's about 'haves' and 'have-nots'. Anything that promotes right/left oughta be read with suspicion as a PTB distraction, IMHO.
Gun Confiscation Notes The Philippines has a new nationwide gun ban and their rounding up people - 70 so far - since the ban too effect Sunday.
Passings Vice President Joe Biden's mother is being laid to rest today.
New Wave filmmaker Eric Rohmer at 89.
Spin Up CTA Since I'm running something like an ultralight version of a real news operation (a fraction of one person, but going to original sources and such) I often these days find myself making notes on what to expect to happen when in our immediate future. Here's an example of a story that will be making headlines on January 14th:
Time to dig through the dusty albums in the back room for an old Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) song for the occasion:
"It's later than you think." Really later. Much, much later.
--- snip and save section ---
Coping: With Street-Level Investing I must not get out much. For what it's worth I decided to play hooky from the office for a couple of hours on Monday and catch up on supplies which I need to keep the home office working smoothly and since I had to do a little banking and pick up my brother in law at the airport in Tyler, I headed north to the 'big city' on Monday to take care of business. A few observations along the way... --- First was the traffic. Kinda light. Even though my arrive in the Tylerplex was close to 'rush hour' the place lacked the frenzied feel of a pooping/happening economy it had last fall. Not many folks out and about. Must have been just me. --- Folks in the Big Bank were cheerful and polite...even remembered me so I didn't have to produce 14-hundred pieces of ID to get a little grocery money. "Hi Mr. Ure..." Great! No signs on the bank's doors which were closed to conserve heat (still cold here), which was odd - usually there's some marketing message or other and notices about this or that fine print with our accounts...you know...bankly stuff. But none of that.
I was the sole customer in the place and I didn't have the heart to tell the very nice staff people that I had an order trying to bottom fish 10 option contracts short this bank, since it has been one of the real movers from the March bottom. Something things better left unsaid. --- The next stop was Office Mack's (if'n you follow) where laser toner, CD blanks, pens, and legal pads were on the list along with peel & seal envelopes. Maybe 6-customers in the store and as many (or more employees again). Hmmm...no green shoots frenzy here, either.
Great polite staff, no holes on the shelves and so on...EXCEPT that I was sort of looking at computers. UrbanSurvival (and the rest of my business life) runs on a 32-bit machine with a 15.4" LCD and a 17" LCD for the second monitor. I'm serious about buying an 18.4" machine with the i7 Intel chipset, 500 gb of 7200 rpm drive and a minimum of 6 gb of ram so I can put four cores and W7 64-bit to full use.
Biggest screen they had was 17.3 and no i7 product on the shelves. Next? --- Went to the Best Box. There, I would have bought a 'close enough' box - a Panasonic 6gb, Core 2 Duo, 500 gb and most important 18.4" laptop which was offered at about $800 and change. "I'd like one of these, please..." "Sir, we don't have any of that model in stock and I think they are being discontinued..."
Why of course! The i7 chipset is out! "Getting any in?" "We have a truck unloading now...I'll check..." (pause while he fires up a terminal). "Sorry...none in today..." "I'll check back..."
I've been looking at an HP which uses DDR3 and sports a 1333 MHz front side bus...so maybe I'd just keep my money in my pocket for a while...
On to the Drug Emperor's place. They've been remodeled since the last time I was in and they're becoming something of a hybrid between Whole Foods and an online health food store. Couldn't find but one or two items on my drugstore list (Vitamins and they had a heck of a deal on Folgers) but what I went in for was nowhere to be found. I really need to get out more and not try to do too many things on one shopping trip. I can see how Elaine's trips to Tyler turn into five-hour marathons.
Last stop before the airport was Home Despots. Place was busier than I expected, with the bulk of activity being in the plumbing department where people were poring over which plumbing parts and glues they would need to get their water back on. A helpful clerk confided "You should have seen it yesterday..." I cleaned out their screw-in 1½ chair slides and got back on the road making a mental note that there was not anything that 'popped' as being worth investing in.
My point? Yeah there is one to this: Whenever you go out & about the best single investment tool you have is what? Your eyes.
My trip confirmed that there wasn't much happening in the banking sector. And, except for the reworking of housing loans, there's not big push to get people to take out loans for cars, trips, home improvements and such. That stuff ought to be plastered on the bank doors. It's not.
Office Mack's was as expected - which would rate it a hold - I notice that they moved around software and skinnied down their computer offerings (17.3" display was the largest they had in stock in a laptop, BTW) and the 'clearance area' in the back of the store wasn't brimming over. I'd rate them a hold just based on eyeballing.
The Drug Emperor's probably onto something with the health food-grocery migration path and the Home Despots looked like they actually had more customers than staff, so they too would be a hold if I were rating based on 'eyes'.
Seems terribly obvious. But, you know how many people drive around shopping and fail to connect the visual input/current shopping experience with forward earnings?
I won't bore you with the definitive lesson delivered by my first stock broker, but you can find that tale by checking the UrbanSurvival report for the week ending July 16, 2005 and search for the term "bowling" and you'll find it (along with the misspelling of alleys as 'allies". My typing has improved. Honest.
The whole point: Next time you have to get out and about - treasure the opportunity to visit the globalist's world and bring along your scorecard. Check yourself for a while (paper trade it) but over time the most solid financial inputs around are those you ferret out on your own first-hand.
If a retailer has more staff than customers? May be on the hold-to sell side. If a retailer has customers liked up two and three deep? The retailer is likely a hold or buy and the manufacturer may be a buy if a lot of the people are buying the same thing. Easy, huh? You too could be a financial genius. --- Does it work at the airport, too? Of course. The plane coming in had 33-seats and my rough count was 22 passengers. That pencils to a 66% passenger load factor (e.g. 22 out of 33 seats occupied) and if we knock off one for a mileage program payout, that would put the load factor down in the 63% range. Once you figure out that most airlines have a break-even passenger load factor around 70%, then decisions like "don't buy airline stocks" becomes real simple.
Some of the big airline stocks have run from July lows ($3.18 for UAL, just to pick a well-run large airline) to $13.11 at the close yesterday. If you'd had the gumption to buy in back last summer, your could have a 400% return with enough above that to pay commissions. Continental Airlines has run from around $7.70 last March to $20.03 at yesterday's close.
Based on a too-small sampling of only one flight of a Continental feeder partner at a regional airport, and on a Monday night at that, I sure wouldn't be buying airline stocks in here. That's NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE - just me explaining how I make my own investment decisions. I haven't owned airline stocks in a serious way since I loaded up on UAL puts prior to the 1987 mini-crash. I'm just explaining that usually when I get a three-bagger (300% return) or a four-bagger/home run (400%) return in something I tend to take at least my initial stake (plus a nice dinner out or a new toy) off the table and play with house money from there.
The other key point is that if you're paying attention, there's almost some stock going up, although financials and airlines look like they've had a fine run for now. Are they ripe for shorting? I just bought 10 put options for Jan 2011 on a major financial stock yesterday, if that's any clue. And although my bottom fishing the bank hasn't been filled yet, I may toss the line in there again if we get another little rally in financials.
Tax Man Cometh Department Hmmm...press releases about tax time are popping up. Example:
Ugh. Sure glad we got our Q4 mailed in back in December.
Reader/Reporters Send in great news tips all the time. Example:
Yeah...I've bookmarked the "Current velocities of the Gulf Stream" page - updated daily. Does get 'gappy' this time of year - question is whether it ever perks up again... --- Trust you saw we have one sunspot going. When you see 1040 (the sunspot not the tax form) realize that it's not really a new spot...just 1035 (or was it 1036?) renumbers. Deniers welcome...bring your own cold weather gear though. We're just chilling.
Monday, January 11, 2010 Staggering Toward The P2 Top There's a chance that I'll start entering the market on the short side this week, after months back swearing off the market due to global systemic risk. The reason? It's now real clear to me that the wave structure of this market suggests (and this is NOT investment advice) that the Dow could begin a new decline any old time that could land us in the vicinity of Dow 4,400 later on this year (next fall, perhaps). America is quickly failing to keep up with China, as their banks now rival ours. And you saw where China has zoomed by Germany to become the world's biggest exporter - and this despite falling US trade! A kind of economic "While you were sleeping..." we lost the war. --- The Big Picture view is that the market decline from October 2007 highs to March 2009 lows constituted P1 (primary wave one down) and the recovery since March 2009 (67% rally by the S&P, isn't it?) has been P2 (primary wave 2) and when P3 (primary wave ___- come on figure it out...3 you dolt!) will take us either down to hold around Dow 6,617, or we'll slice down through that and be headed toward a stopping point hopefully around 4,400 but it could be lower - much lower, depending on momentum, mood, and money flow at the time.
In the meantime, the price of gold in the early going suggests a rally today which will push the Dow ever closer to a perfect Fibonacci bounce (11,244) and in the meantime, our broader indicator of U.S. markets - the Aggregate Index (bottom of this page) has now completed a 51% retracement which would make a fine stopping point although a 61.8% retrace or even 75% is possible according to my coffee grounds skrying method.
Futures are up before the open... --- If the Dow doesn't perform as expected (rally) today, it could mark the start of a breakdown of the Dow/Gold ratio. Proponents of this theory have watched with close attention as the Dow has been elevated while gold goes up, and falling when gold drops. The theory is that both are being priced as inflation hedges insofar as gold is the premier hard asset while share of the U.S. market could be construed as a 'hard asset' as long as the high-consumption paradigm is alive. --- This weekend's Peoplenomics, however, offers a wake-up call in this regard since there is a way to look at the Federal Reserve G.19 numbers out Friday and hypothecate another 7.65 million people becoming unemployed in the next six months which if it happens would hit the U.S. with a 15% headline unemployment rate this summer and something north of 22% if the marginally attached and underemployed are counted. Statistically, we're not supposed to have another Depression though; which is simply ensured by not counting as unemployed people whose benefit have run out. What's the old saying? Liars can figure and figures can lie? --- Trade balance is due out tomorrow and along with that we will round up our monthly Port data survey this week - always one of the finest indicators of reality ex Wall Street ex bankster-blather, ex Washington. A sequence I'll be looking for will be a drop in the West Coast Ports data, a decline in rail traffic, to be followed by a turn downward in the Dow Transport Index which incidentally was up more than 2% on Friday. Till then, I'll mind my shorts (so to speak).
I pointed out a fair number of other factors to be aware of as we watch the numbers come in, such as the prominence of student loans in nonrevolving G.19- backed by government that places something of a floor under how far that portion of the index can fall. But the scary part if you've missed is, is that credit card type (revolving) debt is dropping at an annualized rate of 18.5% and that's pretty clearly a Depression. Only thing that's a question is how soon commercial real estate plunges as a consequence of broke retailers.
It may also be part & parcel of the 'context' change ongoing.
Chain Reactions? Here's a novel theory to kick around: Suppose that...
Just thinking out loud here...
Can You Underbid India Department As we continue to bemoan the underbidding of American jobs to the global hordes (who now have internet capability thanks to globalists) we see MSNBC's fine "The rise of the permanent temporary workforce Pay is falling, benefits are vanishing, and no one’s job is secure" as a statement of the sad but obvious.
What we're suffering through is web-based colonialism at its worst. You lose. No tariffs on imported data and so as a result, off goes your job to the global lowest bidder. --- Even when the US tries to do something right on job preservation, we botch it. See " WTO panel to look into US tariffs on Chinese tires." --- A Short (Impolite) Editorial: Screw the WTO. US Governance begins and ends at the Constitution of these here United States and no bankster-backed carboneer, wage-rate differential playing globalist horseshit, thank you very much. If we need tariffs to keep nickel-an-hour job-wreckers from outsourcing our last IT department, then congress - if they had any balls left that hadn't been leased out to special interests - could do something about it. Either that or we outsource all of Washington to global third parties while we're at it. Think how much that would save, Capiche? It'd be a globalists wet dream, I'm sure. --- Thus endeth today's rant. Hand me that BP cuff, wouldja?
The Polar Bear's Privates Start saving up for orange juice and strawberries. The cold which has been gripping the Southeast is still gripping and crops are slipping. So while you're sipping, I be lipping that prices go up from here. Whew! I just had an attack of gangstah-economic-rap which has passed quickly.
Unlike the cold which is pushing toward the worst winter since 1989.
You saw, of course that "Heavy snow halts planes, trains, and carts in Europe." ---- Our quest for the best description of the depths of cold ("Colder than a....") of last week was a politically correct disaster. The descriptions included colder than polar bear's [short for Richard] and numerous other northern unmentionables. So much for audience participation. The entrants were either too lame or too rude for the most part. --- Even East Texas has been slow to warm. I spent a good chunk of Saturday fixing a busted waterline and with lows overnight into the low 20's I'm keeping the primer and PVC cement warm in case. Fortunately, this was one of those situations where we didn't need to make a plumbing supply run to town since I keep a fair stock of unions, caps, spare hose bibs and what have you on hand for just such events.
Preparing for disasters ranging from earthquakes to windstorms to global economic collapse may seem silly - until you need the parts as people in many parts of the South do now. Spring will be a fine time to fill out the 'emergency plumbing parts kit' again, although I may run into town this week just to see how well the local big box stores have held up. Field reports from Oklahoma and elsewhere are welcome. --- The UK's Mail Online headlines it as "The mini ice age starts here."
Wherever Hugo Not quite sure was Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is thinking with his plans to devalue Venezuela's current by 50%. One possibility: It's a very clever way to increase prices of foreign goods and thus stimulate local production in country. OR the wild-eyed socialista has run his country to the brink of financial ruin with spending on massive arms imports and other human-negatives and he's now got to face the music. Whatever. --- Except, of course, Chavez et al now have more incentive than ever to bump up oil prices and you see where US gasoline prices are up a dime in just the past week? About 20% of our US petroleum comes from Venezuela. There are impacts wherever Hugo.
Tired and Worn Out But, says an Associated Press impact report "Road Projects don't help unemployment." 'Spect you figured that out without help. 'Course what road projects do accomplish now and then is payback to campaign contributors. How many 'bridge to nowhere" projects do you care to count?
Round Ark, Quake Shakes Interesting historical tidbit floating around (poor pun follows) about whether Noah's famed ark was rectangular (as in TV and movie depictions) or whether it was round.
People who have turned believer in pole-shift or crustal slip in 2012 and who are prepping survival boats in particular will find this of interest. --- It hasn't escaped notice of many that this weekend saw a 6.5 magnitude quake in Northern California up around Eureka. But here's the thing to really be pondering. It wasn't too long ago we had a pretty good-sized quake down around Baja, was it a 5.8 felt in San Diego December 30th? A 4.0 on January 3rd...A 4.6 just north of Acapulco in the past 24...
Now this one in Northern California? What's in between? Some of the most populated real estate in the country, isn't it? Time to stock up on water and food for at least a week.
Toss in the report recently that the famed San Francisco sea lions who kept boaters (like us) from using Pier 39 back when, have fled the bay area...and there's a whole lot of pieces fitting. And questions, too. Like is the little 4.1 Milpitas (south bay) shake in the past week a pre-shock?
Better to need and have than not and want.
Scan This Comes now a report that full body scanning technology may damage human DNA. However, I'm not sure 'damage' is the right term. Oh sure, the stuff might change DNA and that might take some folks down Thalidomide road.
But look at the bright side: Maybe a super smart human could arise from the DNA changes. No, I'm not holding my breath, either - but could we teleconference and eat sandwiches while we're Webex'ing...just kinda pretend we're out on the road lunching with the client?
Great Peter Lauria piece in the NY Post this morning about how CNBC's "Marriage from Hell" about the breakup of AOL Time Warner got one-seventh of the views that their "Marijuana, Inc." feature did. Duh...just what any doobie brother would expect. --- I'm developing a pet theory that the national fascination with drug testing in corpland has actually widened the gulf between street-level reality and corpgov reality. Just a theory, mind you to light up your Monday as we zig-zag through the headlines.
--- snip and save section ---
Coping: With Another Brutal Monday I only spend a few minutes on planning until after breakfast on Mondays. Reason? Things that have piled up over the weekend need to get cleared. Managed to overwrite the Saturday report on the Peoplenomics website - maybe someone saved a copy...? Then there's the subscriber who lost a password, the one who didn't get the logon instructions...the usual stuff. Then a client project or two come up on the Merry Go Round of projects, and somewhere in there Monday is office cleaning day and the burn piles of deadfall from the trees and a bit of old logging remnants have been burning all night, so off on the tractor to check them and push up the remains of the smoldering piles.
Tonight, Panama Bates come back from his South American adventures, so looking forward to that. But, for the most part, Monday sure feels like Monday around here. If I didn't use software to track all the ToDo items, I'd be lost. Not that it solves everything; shoot, I probably have just as many 'undone' items come the end of the day as I would have with a manual ToDo list, but this way I can be quite specific in by criticism/self-criticism for not getting them all done...
Hot Date? Hardly! Still, what's billed as the "World's first sex robot revealed."
The old slur "You can be replaced with a battery-powered device" comes closer and closer...
At the WuJo: Delirium Disease? I mentioned last Monday that a few people had written in saying they had experienced post flu delirium. Seems to be a real phenomena:
Not the lone account of this:
Another?
So today's thought from the WuJo is this: What if swine flu was both an engineered disease but in addition to making people sick was also designed to make them mentally susceptible to some kind of suggestion...or even more sinister...was designed to prevent or slow the arising global consciousness? Ponderings....The Guinness case is especially interesting since I would have thought that vitamin B rich brewskis would be a good thing, not bad....hand me that bottle opener?
Quick & Better Government Reader's got it all figured out:
Yes he credits Dvorak Uncensored for the idea. But I still like my Saturday plan to put politicos up for bid on eBay so at least we'd be able to see who's buying who for how much... --- Hell of it is that the very people who would diss such ideas as 'patently unconstitutional' would be hard-pressed to find Constitutional grounds for special interests and their bribery-not quite-in-the-open. I know - he who has the gold rules...
Now get out there and wage something productive...and if you get bored, ask why are US Immigration authorities still approving foreign work visas when we've got an official 10% and U-6 unemployment of 17.1% going on? Answer: you're not just bidding against interest supplies, corpgov hacks are bringing in people by the planeload every day...Gotta love life in the checkbook republic.
Before the chart, a little background: Once upon a time, a long while ago, I observed during my quest for 'truth' in economics, that the PowersThatBe, the talking heads on the teeve, and the other information sources that actively engage in the programming of humans not to think, had conveniently swept several trillions of dollars that disappeared in the Internet Bubble's bursting (since spring 2000) under the rug. Surely, it wasn't unnoticed by the thousands of people who called brokers and said "Where is my money?" "Gone, but hang in there as you're a long term investor!" was about all they heard back.
So one of our charts for Peoplenomics subscribers oughta be widely circulated - it shows that if you line up the peak of the Dow in January 2000 with the peak in early September of 1929, we're on a very very close replay track. Much closer than even the chart shows if you were to back out inflation, and put in the effects of 1929 deflation, but that'd be real work, and I'm sort of lazy if the truth be told.
No, it's not a perfect replay of 1929, but history doesn't repeat exactly, it only rhymes. So think of this as the rhymes and the crimes chart:
"George, that's only a coincidence!" your monkey-mind will protest.
Why sure it is...you bet. A 9½ year long coincidence...yessir....just a coincidence, I'm sure...
Write when you get rich,
George Ure, The People's Economist
|
Further
Readings
Bots:
NE Power Outage
Favorite Places
Coast to Coast AM
Moral Equivalent / War
Our Favorite Tool: Minneapolis Fed Inflation Calculator
Our Suppliers: Graphics By
Machine parts: www.emachineshop.com
Printed Circuit Boards
Commodity Trading
Bullion Buying/Selling
Web Hosting
Radiation Monitoring
Emergency Food Stores
Tequila
Organic Heirloom Seeds:
|
||||||||||||||||
|
This is a Free Financial News and economic information site updated daily except Sundays. If you can not get to www.urbansurvival.com from your corpgov workstation, please try our mirror site: www.independencejournal.com . This site is also available at www2.urbansurvival.com and www3.urbansurvival.com which may not be blocked. · Bulletins are posted as our work schedule permits and as events warrant. · I try to publish Monday-Saturday by 8 AM Central Time/ 9 AM Eastern with 7:55 Central pretty normal. If you're easily offended by the occasional typo, then check about 8:15 Central we usually proofread and spell check after the first post. We've had some amusing typos in the past... Sometimes a Saturday issue will be dropped due to projects & chores on our ranch. · Financial and news judgments of the publisher are not to be considered "advice" · Please read and understand our disclaimer · All original content © 1997-2010 by George A. Ure except sources as linked. Very short extracts are occasionally used under 'fair use' but never entire articles without permission. That would be beyond 'fair use'. · Copyright of all linked articles is cited under fair use as this is a topic specific site (long wave economics and humanistic economics, which we call "Peoplenomics"
Our premium service, which contains more in depth reports is available on a $40/year subscription basis. Details at www.peoplenomics.com/subscribe.htm.
The "web bot project" indicates a reference to the time predictive technology embodied in the "Asymmetric Language Trend Analysis Intelligence Reports" technology pioneered and operated by Tenax Software Engineering for www.halfpasthuman.com. An intro to the technology is here. Extracts, when used, are with exclusive permission and any references on other web sites must contain a link to both this site and HalfPastHuman's main page: www.halfpasthuman.com.
Site Contact: george@ure.net
© 2010 Copyright Notice: The author(s) of this site requires that any links or use of material from this site include the author's name and a link to this site. All links included in our material must also be included in citations. Address questions to: george@ure.net. Copyright infringers will be pursued, and please note that Fair Use requires identification of the author/source and we require a link which when you think about it is really minimal recognition of our works and the works of those who are quoted herein.
|
|
|
".
If Universe really is everything, the great Game of Black
and White consists of universe cutting itself into
zillions of little pieces and going through a marvelously
complete adventure of putting ITSELF back together again.
explained that many previous high cultures have gotten to the
point where - when the marginal rate of return payoff for
additional hard work falls below a zero return - people simply
walk away from society and great devolutions take place.
