Published Monday - Friday about 8 AM Central Time ....some typos are fixed by 8:30 (in theory)

Friday  February 4, 2011        08:10  AM CST   
New Here?  Visit our FAQ              

This site is supported by subscriptions:  For additional content, please subscribe to Peoplenomics. .

Content mirrored at: http://www.independencejournal.com/,      Mobile & Kindle (.MOBI) version here

 

Reader Note: Weekends, update content is available at our subscription website, www.peoplenomics.com.  $40 for a whole year....

 

Is 9 Percent Unemployment Credible?

The first use of the ViceGrips (the better to pinch ourselves with) is to read this morning's unemployment report:  Just 9% is what's claimed:

The unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage point to 9.0 percent in January, while nonfarm payroll employment changed little (+36,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment rose in manufacturing and in retail trade but was down in construction and in transportation and warehousing. Employment in most other major industries changed little over the month.

 

Household Survey Data

The unemployment rate (9.0 percent) declined by 0.4 percentage point for the second month in a row. (See table A-1.) The number of unemployed persons decreased by about 600,000 in January to 13.9 million, while the labor force was unchanged. (Based on data adjusted for updated population controls. See table C.)

 

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (8.8 percent), whites (8.0 percent), and Hispanics (11.9 percent) declined in January. The unemployment rates for adult women (7.9 percent), teenagers (25.7 percent), and blacks (15.7 percent) were little changed. The jobless rate for Asians was 6.9 percent, not seasonally adjusted. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

 

The number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs fell from 8.9 to 8.5 million in January. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) edged down to 6.2 million and accounted for 43.8 percent of the unemployed.

Our favorite details: The CES Birth Death Model showed a drop of 339,000 for the month, and since 23,000 CES jobs were lost in manufacturing, we're wondering where the January growth really was? 

 

ViceGrips ready?  CES took out 23,000 manufacturing jobs and at the same time the report claims that "Manufacturing added 49,000 jobs in January."  That means manufacturing would have added 72,000 jobs in January and that's on top of swelling inventory numbers reported two weeks ago.  Wait, did I catch a whiff of something?

 

Well, here's another thing: the Civilian Labor Force just up and statistically dropped by over half a million people (Table B) while the number of "not in labor force" went up 157,000.  So right there is your "increase" in the jobs.

 

Oh wait...in the data tables here, we see the labor force went from 153.156 million to 152.536 million.  Where did 620-thousand people go?  Rapture or something I missed?

 

Without this disappearing people, the unemployment rate would be around 10%.

 

I'm trying to figure out where 236,000 Hispanic workers statistically  disappeared to from the Labor Force number, too, as long as I'm doing a missing persons summary.

 

The hard core unadjusted A-15, Table U6 is still 17.3%...up  dramatically from the 16.6% rate.  So did a bunch of people just fall off the counting due to benefits running out?

 

St. Louis Fed Truth Detector?

So, you're thinking to yourself, maybe George is just overstating things when it gets all worked up, vexed, and disconcerted by the employment report.

 

Nope.  I and pleased to share this (shocking) reality check from the the St. Louis Federal Reserve web site:

 

 

Think of the series as something like the BLS  Labor Participation rate less unemployment rate.  Oh, and this is my expectation for markets in a nutshell - just in general outline form.

 

Oh, and the Baltic Dry Index is still sinking, too...

 

Egypt:  The Business Model Rules - For Now

I was struck Thursday by the report that Egyptian president Mubarak said to ABCNews that he was fed up with being president, but that to leave might cause Egypt to descend into 'chaos'.

 

What Mubarak and whoever his advisors still don't "get" is that chaos is assured if they don't step aside.  Might hold together over the weekend, but I'm guessing no later than mid next week, things will really be in the crapper.

---

Seeing Hillary Clinton's performance was embarrassing, too.  Why would she be calling for "talks"?  The people of Egypt want change not talk.  Obviously, the PowersThatBe/PowersThatWere have missed a key point: 

 

Smoke and hype only sells for so long - then people 'take it to the street' and Tunisia and Egypt go.  And the longer & harder the US tries to defend the corporatist paradigm, the more bad press we're going to generate.  That much is clear.

 

What should be clear, I think, is that the current business model is going down the road and the Obamanistas are negotiating not so much peace as moving those Mubarak business/military deals lasting as long as possible.  Wrap that up under the banner of 'talk' and 'orderly change' and maybe someone will salute it, but not me.

---

Game Theory 101:  Everyone is trying to not take sides; understandable since Egypt has been a fine business model so far.  Cheap Canal rates, good defense customer, charade of 'peace talks' in the Middle East...which moves at glacial, revenue-optimized speed....and each of these plays into multiple business models, not the least of which is arms sales. 

 

I'm sure you remember that the US is far and away the world's largest arms exporter?  While it would be nicey-nice to naively believe the US is involved in global politics for humanitarian reasons, such as spreading democracy, the fact is, the economy would already have further/more noticeably imploded, if we didn't have US Arms Dealers profiting at every turn.  And don't even get me going on the FMS (Foreign Military Sales) programs.

 

The US "pitch" globally is insincere and people see it: We're a peaceable, democratic people but one of our largest national business models is based on making things so that other nations may kill people and break things.

 

The corporate apologists claim that If we don't make them, someone else will."  And that's true, but only so far as it goes.  The whole international community including the UN is a sham if - after 50+ years - there has been next to no progress on limiting international arms profiteering.  Good money in death, is there?

 

Indigenous and thinking peoples around the world are waking up to, thanks to the telecommunications revolution.  Only thing that remains is how the global mass consciousness will deal with it.

 

But it's clear that Iran is ramping up its PR campaign to oust Mubarak, with ayatollah Ali Khamenei urging revolution against Mubarak who they characterize as an "enemy of the Palestinians" and "The most important protector of the Zionist regime' (referring to Israel).

 

Our past corporate-driven agenda is catching up with us.

---

The US may be heading down the road of decaying Empire because we have - and continue - to fail to exercise our moral leadership when it comes to arms and revolutions.  The reason?  We are not willing to suffer the changes in lifestyle that would come from rethinking the death industry.  Yes, things would decline and maybe death industries will always be around.

---

About here, I might toss out that besides leaders, there's more finger pointing going on.  I refer you to the Reuters story that "Vodafone accuses Egypt govt of co-opting network" to send out their provocateurs.

---

So if I sound a little bit cynical on the topic of Egypt, please forgive me.

 

This is a conflict between business models as I see it, and the US/West doesn't really want things to change, as least in ways which might impact oil prices through the Suez, or disrupt pending military sales.  Business models need to evolve is the thinking; that much is obvious.

 

Presidents Washington and Jackson advised against 'foreign entanglements' but they didn't have to face monthly unemployment reports like the one just out, either.

 

So I'm pretty much frustrated by the whole conflict, since B-school training makes me look at the whole thing like it's a product recall problem in a marketing class.  The "Mubarak product"  has been recalled by consumers, but the parent company spent the first 2-weeks of crisis waffling on whether the product ought to be recalled, while the consumers in the Middle East made it clear to everyone but an idiot that they aren't taking no for an answer.

 

After Snow

The Blizzard of 2011 is finally petering out.  The Wayfaring Traveler blog has a dandy picture of what life was like in northern New Mexico, when the heat went out.  Here at the ranch, we have about an inch and a half on the ground and the wisdom of my leaving our back-up gas heater in place in the house paid off handsomely...or should I say it was comforting?  Gas still off in parts of New Mexico at press time.

 

Hospitals in Dallas are none too keen on the rolling blackouts in this region.  Short - 15-minutes outages - are just disruptive as hell to medical electronics which need to be reset with changes...

 

And, although Mexico made an offer to sell Texas power,  they've reportedly now back out of it.  Seems sending 10% of their population to the US, many packing drugs as border crossing payments to coyotes is OK, but selling power to Texas when we need is it not.

 

With friends like this, we haven't fenced our border?  Gag me.

---

Oh, don't read - whatever you do - this Free Republic article under the headline "Will ATF Gunwalker Scandal Take down President Obama?"

 

(more after this...)

 

 

Kinder, Gentler Cyclone

A reader/report in Oz sends this on Yasi...

Dear George...you already know by now that the Cat5 Cyclone Yasi [the biggest ever in Oz's history] just hit Queensland with devastating destruction across a wide area.I could go on-and-on to emphasize that this was a MONSTER of a Cyclone.....Here's the MIRACLE part..Apart from one poor bloke who was asphyxiated from generator fumes , THERE WAS NOT A SINGLE DEATH OR SERIOUS INJURY...go figure !....You can throw this right into the WOOWOO file and I'll be flickin' off a note to His "duly appointed" at the Vat to see if they will Beatify Yasi....To even the ledger, there was a "new bub" born in an Emergency shelter during the height of the storm.....LUVNKISSES...

You do that and let us know...

 

Budget battle Looming

And if being out of power, natural gas, and all the rest isn't enough of a challenge, comes now the story of how our political "leadership" (I use the ViseGrips to be able to write that) is now heading toward a government shutdown because of budget disagreement.

 

Another Piece of 9/11

Don't know if you happened to notice it, but the Washington Post this week had a story about how a leaked diplomatic cable has revealed three more people involved in 9/11.  Three previously not admitted members of what seems to have been a Washington & NYC surveillance team.

 

Now, since this information should have been available to the 9/11 Commission report, we have to wonder if the lack of this item (which further leads to asking how many other teams, and who paid for all this?) can be taken as "it follows..." evidence the 9/11 report was a whitewash?  Which of course....since it didn't include the mover/moving company and such.....

 

Thanks KatRita

Census says says the number of people living in New Orleans and environs is down one third in the past decade.  Seems to me, as the country slips into a second dip in the economy, real estate in Louisiana might be a long-term "sleeper". Inland from Corexit, of course...and with a bass boat in the yard, just in case or flooding this spring...

 

Oy!

Oysters  are vanishing due to over harvesting at disease according  to  a new report due out from the American Institute of Biological Sciences.

 

Not sure what "functionally extinct" means, since I can still find 'em in the store now and then.

 

Maybe the term is like "functionally literally".  Doesn't seem mean we do very good at electing people....

 

(More after this ad)

 

 

Coping:  Hard Data, Soft Data

We begin with a short story:  On Thursday afternoon, I suggested to my visiting son that we 'make a fire' since it was cold as hell outside, snow was expected today, I had a good Texas-sized bonfire ready for burning, and why not?

 

He asked the reasonable questions like "Dad, how do we start it?"  To which I explained that in a true 'survival' situation we wouldn't be so wasteful of fuel, but in this case, I figured about 3-4 gallons of diesel on this somewhat soggy logs ought to get them going.

 

Sorry I didn't take pictures of the fire.  The pile of wood was about 6-7 feet high, stacked up to allow both good air flow, but not so much as to let all the heat escape without drying the other wood and, in turn, getting it read to burn.

 

Once the 'core' of the fire took off (about an hour and several good doses of diesel) I tossed a few more logs on the fire; tossed, that is, if you remember these logs were 10-14" in diameter and anywhere from 4-10 feet in length - bucked to approximately the 500-pound lift capacity of the tractor bucket.

 

With the fire site was about 400 feet south from the house, wind from north at about 4 gusting 8 kept the smoke awake just perfectly.

 

So the 'art' I was showing was how to a) pick up a log onto the bucket forks without getting dirt into the load which would dampen the fire, b) how to angle in to the fire to place the wood just so in that tee-pee shake that works wonderfully (once burning), and c)( how to accomplish step [b)] by driving into the fire, dumping the load, and retreating before the tires catch fire, or the glasses you're wearing melt.

 

As I said, it was a marvelous fire.

 

Panama and George then went for an evening hike of a few miles, and since temps were still in the low 20's, upon return, they stood around the fire for about a half-hour, telling - near as I can figure - life adventure stories.  I hope Panama told George about having to run a particular PT course twice in it was either Ranger school, or SF training (forgot which) and I expect George would have told his streaking naked through a dorm at the University of Washington, or repelling down the site of a 12-story hotel in Seattle on a bet.

 

Fires serve a dandy function when times are bad, cold, or just as a bonding kind of experience.  A shared fire is a bridge-between humans.

 

But that's not the point of the tale.  There's something else.

 

Occasionally, I'll write up something either here, or on the Peoplenomics side which may not seem particularly like "hard" data.  Like this morning's jobs report.

 

Sometimes, information that's soft - like our review of the Texas-sized bonfire with 10-15-foot high flames for an hour or so once it really got going - is just as important.

 

The reason is contexting.  Sure, the jobs data is important if you're trading the market actively.  But, if you're not, and if you happen to ever be in such a situation where you put a fire together outdoors, maybe you'll think back to this little discussion about soft data.

 

You see pictures of people, oftentimes in movies, sharing a 55-gallon barrel in which something (trash, some old pallet wood, of whatever, is burning.  You also will nearly as often find people standing around the fire barrel warming themselves.

 

The soft learning point is that warmth is easy to share, can't be boxed up and stored, naturally attracts other cold humans, and when two or more people are huddled around a fire warming themselves, they're going to talk.

 

Mostly, they don't seem to talk about sub-routines in a complex PERL script, the prospects for closing the big sale in Chicago, the next options trade which might be placed next week when we hit our spiral calendar and Gann date around Feb. 8th.

 

Rather, they talk about 'humany' stuff.  Where they've been, what they've done, some joint sharing of "how could we cook steak-on-a-stick on this?" and all the other things that go with living in the present.

 

Sure, the Super Bowl this weekend will provide some opportunity for gathering/sharing of 'soft' data, but odds are a good-sized warming fire on a cold days outdoors would be as good - or better.

 

Too many times, both in our "leadership" and in other people, we focus on the "hard" data and more often than not, those data points are what we can measure that make us "different" from others. 

 

The soft data (clustering around a fire, for example, or gathering to watch the social-ritual of war on TV with a side order of cheerleaders) is every bit as important.

 

Not everyone is out to get us, and warming our hands around a fire, or putting off that terrible thirst & hunger that seems to accompany watching football, is a fine time to practice 'soft data gathering'.

 

Like who'd be dumb enough to take the Steelers and five.  We'll just send them along to the next fire down the road.  Here they had a few cans of beans going, too.

 

Friday at the WuJo

Listen - Here

You know what we've been considering for a good lone while, namely that what might be hinted at in 2012 is another 'Universe' could pass through ours and we might get 'windows' to move between realities?

 

Well, toss this one on the fire:

I would like to share with you a couple of experiences I recently had. At 2 am on Feb 2 (this is in florida, by the way) I heard a very interesting 'harmonic' in the air. It was somewhat similar, in respect of tonal color, to an airplane. The difference lies both in the 'presence' of the fundamental tone - omnidirectional, if you will - and also in a distinct sounding of a 5th, also 'omnidirectional'. The wu-wu aspect of this all was in the way that the source of the sound seemingly moved.

 

The second experience was earlier tonight. I was outside smoking a cigarette. I observed a spider walking towards where I was seated. All of a sudden, the spider adopted a rather peculiar posture, similar to priests, with arms raised 'on-high', as if dumbstruck. About 45 seconds later it resumed it's walking, which only lasted about 10 seconds, and then the same thing happened. I was reminded of the 'drooling people, in mid stride' idea expressed in the Shape reports. Quite interesting.

My guess - and it's only that - is that the ramp up to this kind of thing will be distinctly nonlinear.  So we're not even to the real rising part of the hockey stick yet.

---

BTW, Elaine & I are doing the occasional post on the blog portion of the www.nationaldreamcentger.com site.  Interesting stuff comes through there.

 

Bot Notes: Saving Face

A reader note about one of the items in the new Shape of Things To Come report makes for some interesting thoughts:

"Hi George, this is [name], the guy up north of you by [place]. Maybe you remember I am the one that called the web bot hit on the helium shortage a few years ago.

Anyway, regarding the last report from HPH...specifically the part that talks about the cosmetic problems coming. The disfiguring and scarring by reaction to the cosmetics.

Did you ever see the first Batman movie in which Jack Nicholson played the Joker? If not, then let Me explain that he concocted a combination of cosmetics that if used together disfigured women and men that used the products.

Everything is a business model....Seems like a good time to be shorting cosmetic stocks in the not too distant future and by the same token it might be profitable to go long on stocks that supply the tattoo industry with products like ink, needles, and other sundries, etc.

Just a little note to let you know that I am very aware and appreciate what you and Clif are doing.

One last thing, don't you think it might be a good karmatic experience to mention this potential problem on your website. If not, then you will have to bear the burden of looking at a LOT of butt ugly women in the near future. I will too and I will think of you every time I am disgusted...LOL

If you don't, then every woman that scars, I will tell them that you chose not to warn them and perhaps might have saved them the anguish and lifelong agony that they are experiencing. I am also going to tell them where you live...LOL

No really, maybe you should ask Clif if you can mention that part and save face....(Pun intended)

LOL, yes, I'm pretty sure Clif wouldn't have a problem with mentioning it, because 1) everything's a business model and the public might benefit from at least a low level awareness and 2) because the PTB/PTW do seem under some compulsion to publish their plays in advance.  And as one highly placed PTB type in SoCal told a mutual acquaintance, "the movie is the message."  So, yes, if I were lecturing at the Nano-Warfare Design College, I'd make sure that one of the papers in my lecture series would be an assignment to watch "Batman & Joker".

 

Along the way, some of the smarter students would discover there's a whole Batman Wiki project.

 

The point, however, would not be to rehash movies which might be "hints in plain sight" but rather to look at various distribution channels for different ways to distribute digital nasties.

 

Might be something - as was hinted in by the Batman flick - a binary agent, or, alternatively just a solo nano device which has to be in place for some period of time before activating.  Oxidizing surface layers, or long term moisture activation, for example.

 

So might a very cautious person start to stockpile and then do a rotating inventor of six to nine months, if make-up, personal hygiene products and the like are used?  Yeah, maybe...

Nothing would be more damaging to America than an attack on our appearances.  Might reveal a part of us we're not really fond of.

 

Still...even to think in this regard (movie ---> linguistic hints --->  Preparation and isolation plans) is a fine example of the linguistic dissection hints that goes into analyzing one of Clif's reports.

 

And if that's too deep for you, just set up a news flag on cosmetics and keep watching to see if ugly developments arise.

 

 

Send comments to george@ure.net

---

Last week's report is always here.

 

---

Thursday February 3, 2011

Economy Teetering

While the Dow was off seeing the north side of 12,000 for the first time in years, there was more trouble brewing on the horizon.  The closely watched Baltic Dry index - an indicator of future shipping and trade activity - has dropped down to levels not seen since going into the March 2009 lows.

 

Still, the BDI as it's called, tends to get down to terrible lows before - rather than after - major market lows.  Which may explain why mainstream economics seem to hold it in disdain:  It works and it's predictive and that might require something other than pots of oil, incantations and books of arcane formulae.

 

On the other hand, a couple of good numbers came in this morning, which we'll get to in a sec...

Camels, Horse, and Molotov's

Fresh violence is feared in Egypt today, following reports of gunfire and Mubarak backed 'fake police/agitators being reported in the crowds.  As Al Jazeera is reporting this morning, it's the loyalistas versus the demonstrators, who are labeled 'pro-democracy; but which version & vision of that we're not clear.

 

Have to admire the Egyptian military for trying to stand between the two sides - good decisions being made there, but as I watched the live coverage on Al Jazeera last night, I couldn't help but wonder "Which of those Molotov cocktails being tossed off the buildings would be the spark that ignites the nation?

 

Or, the region...

 

Yemen Next(?)

People are flooding into the capital of Yemen today, apparently not happy with the plans of the president there who is refusing to step down now and instead plans to serve out his term.  Day of Rage their calling it.

 

Blizzard Follow-up

The folks at FEMA has declared Oklahoma a disaster area:

•FEMA is authorized to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in the designated areas. •Specifically, FEMA is authorized to provide emergency protective measures (Category B), limited to direct Federal assistance, under the Public Assistance program at 75 percent Federal funding. FEMA’s mission is to support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain, and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards.

Meantime, we've had a few of those rolling brownouts that were going around Texas yesterday.

--0-

Snow, or no: Back to work at Ft. Riley, Kansas today: "Fort Riley returns to normal operations Thursday, 03 Feb. Employees report at regularly scheduled times. DCG(R), 1ID directs that at -20F or below unit PT is cancelled. BDE CDRs retain the right to conduct PT if the temperature stays above -19F. "

---

Here at the ranch, I canceled PT first time it got down to 50º in the fall of  2007 and just never got around to reinstituting it...one of these days....maybe...

---

And When It Melts...

A reader suggests looking at the Intellicast observed snowfall map here.  And then goes on to ask: "How many 100, 500, 1000 year floods will happen this spring with the amount of snow cover across the US?"

---

We were talking about Howard Hill's roof rake quest yesterday - and today we're reading in the Hartford Courant that his fears are justified with all the roofs collapsing around the state.

 

Cyclone Passes

Not as bad as some people feared, but take a look at the pictures out of Australia where cyclone Yasi's been through Queensland.  Almost reminds me of the aftermath of a hurricane down in Florida...right down to the palm fronds.

 

And a reader suggests the Australian Broadcasting site for more, like this one.

---

Our Indonesia Bureau Chief offers this:

"Just so you know, you are not suffering alone. We are also getting freak weather!

It's 85F, light and variable winds and almost no rain in sight. It's the 'no rain' part that is the freak. Being rainy season, it should be raining, usually in the afternoons and evenings. The past week has been dry, though. I suspect Australia is stealing all our water.

Happy snow forting!"

I'm just sure they'd rather give some back....

 

The Daily Data

Main feature of markets this morning is likely to be the employment report just out:

"In the week ending Jan. 29, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 415,000, a decrease of 42,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 457,000. The 4-week moving average was 430,500, an increase of 1,000 from the previous week's revised average of 429,500.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.1 percent for the week ending Jan. 22, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate of 3.2 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Jan. 22 was 3,925,000, a decrease of 84,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 4,009,000. The 4-week moving average was 3,929,500, a decrease of 50,500 from the preceding week's revised average of 3,980,000.

UNADJUSTED DATA

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 459,683 in the week ending Jan. 29, a decrease of 26,633 from the previous week. There were 533,320 initial claims in the comparable week in 2010.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.7 percent during the week ending Jan. 22, unchanged from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 4,619,319, an increase of 5,274 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 4.4 percent and the volume was 5,683,683.

The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending Jan. 15 was 9,298,859. "

Retail figures this morning also pointed up.

 

Later on this morning, we get factory orders but most important will be the unemployment rate numbers which could be all over the place.  Reason is that normally there's a CES Birth/Death Model correction this time of the year, and if my hunch is right, it will put still more 'lipstick on the pig.'

 

Won't make it any more believable to people who are being cut, but for the undecided on such things, it will be another 'government says, therefore it must be true' to point toward.

---

A friend (who's planning a $100-million hedge fund based on his research, so I listen closely)  tells me to keep an eye on February 8th (next Tuesday) since that will be a harmonic in his work off last May's mini-crash which worked into lows in July.  Manic low, spiral and other calendar calc, and off we go to a manic/panic echo high Feb 8th he's guessing.

 

The interesting part of this is he could be right:  The situation in Egypt might go into a holding pattern....or, if things collapse quickly, the market may blow it all off for another trading week.  We shall see.

 

Happy (?) 16th Amendment Day

If you want something hotter - and more worrisome to the PowersThatBe/PowersThatWere, you can skip the birth certificate discussion and move on to he more finance-critical issue of whether the 16th Amendment was really ratified on February 3, 1913, as claimed by (who else?) the government.

 

Also a fine day to read the Supreme Court decision in Pollock v. Farmers' Land & Trust Co.  According to Wikipedia:

The Court reasoned that a tax on income from property should be treated as a tax on "property by reason of its ownership" and so should be required to be apportioned. The reasoning was that taxes on the rents from land, the dividends from stocks and so forth burdened the property generating the income in the same way that a tax on "property by reason of its ownership" burdened that property.

Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented:

"When, therefore, this court adjudges, as it does now adjudge, that Congress cannot impose a duty or tax upon personal property, or upon income arising either from rents of real estate or from personal property, including invested personal property, bonds, stocks, and investments of all kinds, except by apportioning the sum to be so raised among the States according to population, it practically decides that, without an amendment of the Constitution — two-thirds of both Houses of Congress and three-fourths of the States concurring — such property and incomes can never be made to contribute to the support of the national government."

But where things get murkier still is on the issue of adoption.  A review of this part of Wikipedia lays the groundwork.
 

But if you click over to the Give me Liberty website, you can find a very different account of events.  Their article claims that of the 48 states, 8 states did not approve or ratify, 2 were barred by the own constitutions, and there were other issues with 11 states.

 

Since 36 states were needed to officially ratify, some have held that only about 27 actually ratified it.

 

Which leaves some adherents claiming that the federal government doesn't have the legal authority to tax.

 

Like it, or more likely not, the power to tax comes from the possession of overwhelming force.  And since regular citizens don't have that and government does, the point of whether to file an income tax return is kinda moot.  File, or else.

 

Lots of people have tried to skip out on it, and every year about this time I start to get a whole flood of emails from people asking me is this new latest scheme or that is 'legal'.  Don't waste your time asking.  Whether it's legal as tax avoiders claim isn't something I'm going to get involved in.  That's a road that often enough ends in a 6 by 10 box that I'm not interested.

 

Like spending money on a radar detector, investing in tax-dodging scheme is a questionable investment.  And no, I don't own a radar detector anymore, either.  Driving is much more relaxed.

 

Coping: The Alternative Retirement Plan

A reader - seeing the state pension story out of New Jersey titled "Christie says 'sue me' as Pensioners Challenge Cuts" brings this comment:

"George, this is a tough one for me. Lets ignore the merits of what the pensions pay out, if it is fair, etc. The problem I see here is just how can anyone even remotely believe that they can prepare for retirement when pensions can be cut, SS benefits will not amount to anything for people below the age of 50, your IRA/401(k)/403(B)/etc can be reduced to zero in a "fat finger flash crash", your dollar is reduced to cents of buying power; and even with the best laid out plans, black swans seem to be breeding like roaches. Perhaps the best way to play the game is not to play at all."

A familiar rant around here is this:  America has been in habited for 50-years with what I call 'paper salesmen' - namely the financial services industry's retirement game.

 

Here's the notion - which maybe 90% of the older generation bought into:  If you buy enough paper - and it says the right stuff on it - then you will have a 'life of plenty'  when you get to retirement.  Now, as we are learning today, this doesn't always work.  And not just in  New Jersey, but also in California, and other states which are up against the budget wall.

 

Is there/ was there ever a viable alternative? 

 

Oh, sure.  Look at it this way:  Assuming that someone works for $15 an hour - far from a princely sum, to be sure, and they do this diligently for 2,000 hours per year for their 40-year working life,  they should be able to figure out how to buy a little something for retirement.

 

As I've told you before, you go to www.unitedcountry.com and you'd be amazed as the number of small town homes on a couple of acres you can find in the Midwest and how inexpensive they are.

 

The homes meeting the one acre, 2 bedroom category isn't huge, but you can find them in Missouri, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Kentucky and such places.

 

May not be the biggest, grandest properties, to be sure.  But given a choice between 1800 square feet and land to do some gardening on, in / near a small town where you can walk many places, or living at someone else's leisure in a big city - where everything is a bill - I think you can guess at what the choice is?

 

By saving for medical emergencies, and through some diligence when it comes to hobbies, a person facing retirement either now or in a few years, can put themselves in a position much better insulated from economic disasters, like the rounds of state retirement system cuts that seems to be in the works.

 

Frankly, I hate to see it:  Just another example of promises made, promises broken.

 

But, given that's a repeating pattern, a thinking person always has the option of doing something other than what the rest of the herd is doing.

 

Street Level Economics

Shopping spies:

Hey George, sorry to clog up your inbox but I thought this was concerning. My wife goes grocery shopping once a week and I asked her to tell me if she noticed any increases in prices. Small increases she wouldn't but a $1.00 jump on a pound of ground beef within a week I thought was worth the email. We have not seen an increase in bread or cereal which I thought would be the big indicator that beef was going up. Can you help me understand why this is? Was there a big herd die off that I haven't heard of?

Price-demand curve function:  Hungry people will pay more for food than full people.  Historically, something like 23-30% of household income went for food - and here lately, seems to me we're at about half that.  Housing comes down, food goes up...rotation in economic cycles.

 

Here's something the USDA put together a few years back (1997):

"Although food spending has increased considerably over the years, the increase has not matched the gain in disposable income. As a result, the percentage of income spent for food has declined. Food expenditures by families and individuals were 13.8 percent of disposable personal income in 1970, compared with 13.4 percent in 1980 and 10.7 percent in 1997 (fig. 29, table 99). The decline is the direct result of the income-inelastic nature of the aggregate demand for food: as income rises, the proportion spent for food declines. Expenditures for food require a large share of income when income is relatively low. As income rises, there is more money to spend on personal services and other discretionary items. Some of these additional services are purchased along with food and this explains the increase from 1970 in the percentage of income spent on food away from home. The share of income going for food is often used as an indicator of affluence, of either a family or a nation. The figure has sometimes been misused to prove that food is a bargain. For further analysis, see U.S. Food Spending and Income: Changes Through the Years (Alden Manchester, AIB-618, ERS, USDA, Jan. 1991).

Then in 2006 we find a report putting food at 13-14% of household, with 55% at home and 45% away.

 

A much more recent list from the Census Bureau puts the figure at 6.8% in 2008 (different statistical basis likely) but look at the countries in the 40% percent of income for food: Azerbaijan, Belarus, Indonesia, Kazakhstan and so forth.

 

Trend is for places with the most spendy real estate to have lower fractions spend on food.  We call this "progress."  Till you get tossed out when the prices collapse.  The we call it "Change."

 

EBM School

"Everything's a Business Model" is our motto around here.  And here's another reader catching on:

"Maybe there is something to your "Everything is a business model" philosophy. I excerpted a quote from an article "Middle East Dreamtime" that was in the Daily Bell 2/2/11.It was about the US manipulation of recent events in Egypt. Thought you might find it interesting:

"Picture the elite's surge toward world governance as a business model – the largest and richest business in the world. The corporation has no name and no outright branding, but it palpably exists. Promotions are its hallmark. Fear is its strategy of choice. Once strategies are put into play they are extremely hard to halt. Even when one goes awry, like global warming, the machine grinds forward because there are simply too many moving pieces..."

Fact is, if the whole world could learn to get along, we could invest more globally in human development.  But that would put the whole arms/police/legal industries out of work, or at least lower the workload a lot.  Can't have that now, can we?   Nope - that would mean large portions of the population would not be beholden to a business model and freedom like that is dangerous stuff.  Why, already in the last month we've seen the Internet turns off places because people got a little too free....

 

Thursday at the WuJo

Snow Circles?

Everyone knows about crop circles, right?  But have you heard about the snow circles that are showing up around treats in the Gloucestershire, England area?  The pictures off Signs of the Times were somehow missed when they appeared in December, but worth mentioning now since so many more people have snow to look at...

---

Interesting reader comment on the snow, too:

In 2000 I attended a lecture at UC Irvine by Ralph Cicerone, atmospheric scientist, currently president of the National Academy of Science. The topic was global warming. He was emphatic that the earth was indeed warming up,(mostly, but not totally by human activity) and while no one was sure exactly how this would effect the planet, he believed the weather would become more extreme and unpredictable. Violent, more frequent storms, colder winters, hotter summers, flooding. Within 10 years, he said, the milder seasons, spring & fall would begin to disappear, and we'd be left with winter & summer, not necessarily at the time of year we'd expect them. It was hard to believe at the time.

Sadly the concept became politicized--especially since Al Gore publicized it. And you are helping to keep people's minds closed by (wrongly & simplistically) dismissing it when the weather turns cold. It may cause you some discomfiture to acknowledge that global warming is real. The monster storms, arctic blasts, massive flooding, etc. just keep on coming...just like Ralph, Al, (and Mr. High) said they would. "

I don't look at it so much as an argument in science any more so much as a showdown between competing business models.

 

Credit to Dads

A reader up skiing in Canada spied this gem in a gift shop at Whistler Mountain:

 

Not that all kids are spoiled, just many of them are.

 

Frankly, the national bank of dad has probably forgiven more debt than all the TARP monies and then some. 

 

Still, nice to see that someone besides me sees it for what it is.  Intergenerational sharing, some times involuntary.

Remedial Math

Then out story about 1111 got this note back:

I dont know why the following gets so much attention but it does and I find it rediculous.. This can be done every year... last year I was 43 + 67 for the year and magically = 110.... this year I'll be 44 + 67 and again = 111, next year I'll be 45 + 67 and again = 112 (looks like simple addition to me but far from strange I think).

I try not to do any addition of anything but caffeine at this hour...

 

---

Wednesday February 2, 2011

Snowpocalypse Now

Got an email this morning from the Army that "Only mission essential Fort Riley Military and Civilian personnel need to report to work on Wednesday, Feb. 2. "  Reason?  That huge winter storm which is blasting eastward this morning and socking it to the East Coast now.

 

This is a current (as of press time) snap of the NOAA satellite image of water vapor...see how it's being sucked up and to the east?  Not good if you've already got a full roof of snow in the Northeast.

 

24-inches of the crap in Chicago which caused a rare shutdown of O'Hare.  That'd be that blue water vapor concentration coming down to Chicago...

 

Seeing as my son is flying down from Seattle today to spend some time at the ranch, I don't suppose I have to remind you that this will likely mean delays in flights out west because of delayed equipment arrival?

 

This being Ground Hog Day, we can blame this one squarely on Punxsutawney Phil, the crackhead rodent that people in Pennsylvania look to for knowledge about weather trends.  He's predicting an early spring.

 

My take on this is a little more acerbic:  I figure residents of a state who look to a rodent of the family Sciuridae for weather forecasts probably also believe in the mythical free lunch, since with a little more financial acuity, they might not be in a $4-billion state budget hole.  Just sayin...some folks are easily snowed.

 

Especially this morning.

 

Oh, and Al Gore's website notes that heavy snowfalls are consistent with global warming.

---

A reader in Oklahoma sends this:

Wow, this blizzard was SO awesome. Needless to say we stayed home today (& will tomorrow). Here in our little exurban paradise we had a legitimate 12” of snow in less than 15 hours, with drifts of over 2 feet.

 

When I went with [daughter] to help feed horses & goats the boy goat pasture had an almost 3 ft drift between the gate & the goat house. I would have had trouble getting there to feed but oldest goat Pippin plowed through it for me & I just followed him. T-town is totally shut down.

 

At the airport they had 14”, which broke both the 24 hr & single storm record. There was a partial roof collapse reported at the Hard Rock Casino. One reliable person from Claremore claims 18” of snow.

 

Since we’ve broken the snowfall records, we might as well do some damage to the night-time low records. Tomorrow night could get down below the record of -7F. Snowplows, ambulances & police cars were all getting stuck in the snow today. Parts of I40 & I44 were shut down. We won’t see the good side of freezing until Saturday, & then just barely. Just for contrast, last Saturday we broke the record for highest January temps with some NE OK stations hitting 80F. Tomorrow we may warm up to 11F. Check out the attached picture. That is Legolas the rescue lab. He’s tall for a lab & he’s buried to his chest. See the green chairs almost buried to the arms?

Winter of 2011 goes toward the record books....

 

Australia's Next Disaster

Cyclone about to hit shore there - send in pictures, please.

Loop of this latest cyclone here.

 

Learn gardening while your weather-bound.  Famine could follow  such things...

 

Hunting Al Qaeda's Planners

There is a developing spectrum of reports which may be leading up to the use of a 'terrorist' nuke here in the US if you connect the dots a certain way.

 

A beginning might be the Telegraph report out of the UK "WikiLeaks: FBI hunts the 9/11 gang that got away." is a good starting point.

---

Flashback:  The reason this is such an interesting story is that this search for an unknown team echoes something I told you about a few years ago, I think.  My 'consigliore' - a lawyer up in Ohio - reported to his local police department that right before 9/11 he saw a group of Middle Eastern types including one who was the spitting image of Osama bin Laden, driving around Columbus taking videos.  He duly reported this to the local authorities and nothing came of it.   But I remember when he told me this story "Oh-oh...ain't that strange..."

 

Well, now, turns out that story may have some legs under it - and odds, near as I can figure it - are very high that prior to 9/11 there was a lot of video being taken by al Qaeda types and this Telegraph story tells me there's something there.

---

Next dot to connect is the story out this week that Pakistan - which we remember from earlier reports has already promised at least one nuke to the Saudis - has a growing nuclear stockpile of perhaps 100 - or more - nukes.

 

And the next dots are small, but important:  In Egypt, the word is the Islmaic Brotherhood will not accept the Mubarak promise not to run for re-election as sufficient response to their demands, so that tinderbox continues with a slow burning fuse which may be going off as early as this weekend.

 

The way Human Events has it figured, an "Islamist Future Looms in the Mideast."

 

The president of Yemen is throwing in the towel in 2013 - but even this announcement - and a similar dodge being tried by the government of Jordan playing musical cabinet ministers - will not likely meet the demands of the increasingly polarized Brotherhood followers.

 

And this , in turn, will leave Israel in a lurch, with a very interesting view of things in the Debka report "Separate whirlwinds demolish two Middle East figures in one day."

---

Then there's the matter of markets.  Whether the attack of 9/11 was a bait and switch to keep the public from realizing the Second Depression was dawning, of whether Osama bin Laden is a better market trend picker than most, is something that could be hotly debated, I'm sure.

 

But if the Dow heads up to the 12,100-12,200 level and then collapses under the 10,000 range, I'll be the guy checking the old fashioned D cells used by my old field survey meter.  Al Qaeda might be better market timers than me.

 

Economic Data

Signs of Recovery: First thing up this morning is the monthly reading on job cuts from Challenger, Gray & Christmas...

CHICAGO, February 2, 2010 – The slow pace of downsizing that marked the second half of 2010 appears to be continuing into 2011, as employers announced plans to cut 38,519 jobs in January. While that is an increase from the previous month, it marks the lowest January total on record, according to the report released Wednesday by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. January job cuts were up 20 percent from December, when planned layoffs totaled 32,004; the lowest monthly figure since June 2000 (17,241). Compared to a year ago, however, last month’s job cuts were down sharply, falling 46 percent from the 71,482 job cuts recorded in January 2010. The 38,519 job cuts last month represents the lowest January total since Challenger began tracking monthly layoff announcements in 1993. Historically, January is the heaviest job-cut month. From 1993 through 2010, employers announced an average of 104,560 job cuts to start the year. October, the next largest job-cut month, saw an average of 84,218 cuts over the same period. CHICAGO, February 2, 2010 – The slow pace of downsizing that marked the second half of 2010 appears to be continuing into 2011, as employers announced plans to cut 38,519 jobs in January. While that is an increase from the previous month, it marks the lowest January total on record, according to the report released Wednesday by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. January job cuts were up 20 percent from December, when planned layoffs totaled 32,004; the lowest monthly figure since June 2000 (17,241). Compared to a year ago, however, last month’s job cuts were down sharply, falling 46 percent from the 71,482 job cuts recorded in January 2010. The 38,519 job cuts last month represents the lowest January total since Challenger began tracking monthly layoff announcements in 1993. Historically, January is the heaviest job-cut month. From 1993 through 2010, employers announced an average of 104,560 job cuts to start the year. October, the next largest job-cut month, saw an average of 84,218 cuts over the same period.

Still, while it's a sign of recovery, a long rounding bottom is what seems to be in store, if the market doesn't tumble before busting out higher.

 

Still, a second data point  which keeps things in perspective is the latest Mortgage Banker's Association weekly report where I've highlighted a couplke of things:

WASHINGTON, D.C. (February 2, 2011) " The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) today released its Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending January 28, 2011. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, increased 11.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 13.2 percent compared with the previous week. The previous week did not include a holiday adjustment for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The Refinance Index increased 11.7 percent from the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 9.5 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index increased 16.7 percent compared with the previous week and was 21.4 percent lower than the same week one year ago.

"Applications increased this week relative to the holiday week," said Michael Fratantoni, MBA's Vice President of Research and Economics. "Looking over the past two weeks, purchase applications are flat, and refinance applications are down about five percent."

The four week moving average for the seasonally adjusted Market Index is up 1.0 percent. The four week moving average is down 1.5 percent for the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index, while this average is up 1.7 percent for the Refinance Index. "

Question is:  Is the stock market getting ahead of the rounding bottom - if it keeps rounding and doesn't head seriously lower?

 

Healthcare Juggernaut

Good AP story worth pondering:  Now that a judge down in Florida has ruled against some key parts of the Obamacare legislation, their headline is "Too big to stop?  Obama's overhaul lumbers on..."

 

This puts the capper on living 62-years.  Never thought I'd live in a world where there would be calls for an "Overhaul to overhaul the overhaul's overhaul."  But, we're getting there quick. 

 

Good choice not dropping acid in high school.  Otherwise, I'd be convinced we're all living in some kind of flash-back world...

 

End of World: Delayed

The headline at Before It's News is grabby - I'll give it that: "NASA Issues 2012 Warning on Possible End of The World".

 

We track this back to the Solar Storm Warning Site, which headline "NASA 2012 Researchers say intense solar storm coming in 2012" and on that site we find the NASA story circa 2006 "Researchers say a storm is coming--the most intense solar maximum in fifty years."

 

All of which would be scary, except for one thing:  All of this hand-wringing is based on a normal recovery from the solar minimum. But, as any ham radio operator who has invested in 10-meter and six-meter gear anticipating great sunspot propagation in 2012-2013 will tell you, the current Solar Cycle 24 has turned into something of a dud, astrophysically speaking. 

 

While the old 2006 story keeps recirculating, the fact is - in case no one pointed it out to you - is that the Marshall Space Flight Center (where they launch marshals?) issued a press release early this year which dashes talk of the world ending (at least from this cause) in 2012:

Current prediction for the next sunspot cycle maximum gives a smoothed sunspot number maximum of about 59 in June/July of 2013. We are currently two years into Cycle 24 and the predicted size continues to fall.

Predicting the behavior of a sunspot cycle is fairly reliable once the cycle is well underway (about 3 years after the minimum in sunspot number occurs [see Hathaway, Wilson, and Reichmann Solar Physics; 151, 177 (1994)]). Prior to that time the predictions are less reliable but nonetheless equally as important. Planning for satellite orbits and space missions often require knowledge of solar activity levels years in advance.

A number of techniques are used to predict the amplitude of a cycle during the time near and before sunspot minimum. Relationships have been found between the size of the next cycle maximum and the length of the previous cycle, the level of activity at sunspot minimum, and the size of the previous cycle.

Among the most reliable techniques are those that use the measurements of changes in the Earth's magnetic field at, and before, sunspot minimum. These changes in the Earth's magnetic field are known to be caused by solar storms but the precise connections between them and future solar activity levels is still uncertain.

Of these "geomagnetic precursor" techniques three stand out. The earliest is from Ohl and Ohl [Solar-Terrestrial Predictions Proceedings, Vol. II. 258 (1979)] They found that the value of the geomagnetic aa index at its minimum was related to the sunspot number during the ensuing maximum. The primary disadvantage of this technique is that the minimum in the geomagnetic aa index often occurs slightly after sunspot minimum so the prediction isn't available until the sunspot cycle has started.

An alternative method is due to a process suggested by Joan Feynman. She separates the geomagnetic aa index into two components: one in phase with and proportional to the sunspot number, the other component is then the remaining signal. This remaining signal has, in the past, given good estimates of the sunspot numbers several years in advance. The maximum in this signal occurs near sunspot minimum and is proportional to the sunspot number during the following maximum. This method does allow for a prediction of the next sunspot maximum at the time of sunspot minimum.

A third method is due to Richard Thompson [Solar Physics 148, 383 (1993)]. He found a relationship between the number of days during a sunspot cycle in which the geomagnetic field was "disturbed" and the amplitude of the next sunspot maximum. His method has the advantage of giving a prediction for the size of the next sunspot maximum well before sunspot minimum. "

Does this entirely negate the "Boeing Engineer" story?   That was the one where a  reported Boeing engineer had moved to high ground because of uncertainty about the local interstellar cloud of dust...  No, story is still valid, but since I became aware of this, several personal strategies have changed and you might as well be aware of them.

• Despite protective transient protection on key systems here at the ranch, the possibility of solar driven EMP is down.  Now, that doesn't mean some global nuclear conflict could make them useful at some point, but the odds of even that (with stories of how Russia may go through a further reduction into smaller cooperative states) may be lessening.

• On the other hand, the possibility of extreme weather has escalated, and so too with it, have plans for how to deal with floods, tornadoes, and other supply-chain kinds of disruptions.  Fact is, we have a huge transition to a period of solar cooling driving a lot of moisture out of the global warming evaporation and even a small 3 or 4 tenth's of a degree drop in global temps could mean massive weather problems.  Ask folks in Australia about this, or just wait a couple of months....if the snow doesn't cave in your roof in the meantime.

• With the sun's cooling and spot reduction, we could see reduced agricultural output.  Mass production of things like drought resistant seed stocks might turn out to have been a bad investment if instead the world turns out really needing cold-resistant seeds.

So, in case the conventional/MSM media haven't mentioned this to you, while one interpretation of the interstellar cloud was that it would really cause the sun to fire off, the other possibility is now before us:  It could just further reduce heat/light output from the Sun.

 

Oh, and besides ruining food output plans, that kind of mass cooling would almost certainly bring on all kinds of earthquake activity since the shrinking of cooling earth would cause what?  Even more quakes.

 

But the scariest possibility of all?  In 2013 there will still be life and although food prices might be two to three times larger as a fraction of household budgets,  you'll still have to file your income tax return just like in 2012, 2011 and so on. 

 

Maybe that's the scariest prospect of all.

 

Coping: With Blizzards and Cold

Not that I mind the cold snap, but it's not making my life any easier, and I'm (for the most part) a pretty happy-go-lucky sort.

 

Because the wind was blowing out of the north at 30+ and the temps were into the low 20's, our local ham radio club scrapped plans for the usual first-Tuesday-monthly ham club meeting.  Seems (other then me) there aren't too many people anxious to show up for a hamburger feed while standing around pontificating this fine point of radio, or that.

 

Another problem here at the ranch which has come into focus is household instrument calibration inconsistencies.  Seems not one of the thermometers around here, digital or analog, agree.

• The one on our north deck said it was 31 degrees.

• The one on the south deck/screen porch insisted it was 16.

• The one in the shop said 23.9 (digital)

• The one on the ham radio tower at the 18' foot level checks in with 17.4.

• And remote reading one for the greenhouse says an even 19.

I was going to look at the one on the front porch, but decided that in order to take micro-climate effects of proximity to the house out of it, I'd just go with the three coldest and guess it's about 17, or so.  Maybe I'll just go with damn cold and let it go at that.  But that north deck one hits the trash this morning since it's the outlier.

 

A Timely Ad Series

You may notice that this morning's report has three new ads from Emergency Essentials, with whom I've done business for going on six years now.  The thing worth noting is how timely these are.  One ad is for 3-day packs MRE's.  Timing-wise, nothings a better example of how prudent it is to keep at least 6-days of food on hand for everyone in the family.  Storms, blizzards like this one going on in much of the country, floods (those'll come later this spring), and hurricanes (later still) are all examples of Ma Nature come-a-calling without sending an engraved invite.

 

The other ad - the small ones about their baking sale - is just as important when it comes to keeping spirits high.  Don't know about you, but nothing is better on a solidly frozen morning than being able to whip up something hot out of the oven.  The kinds of smells that can't be beat on a cold morning - to pick a favorite assortment - would be cornbread, bacon, and coffee.

 

Admittedly, that's not going to be a popular choice with the cardiologists who read this column, but as Tim Ferris notes in his book (The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman - $14 at Amazon), when you're cold, you burn through calories at several times the usual rate.  A low-dose aspirin's in my mix, too, just to shade the odds against a Big One.

 

Nice thing about a blizzard is that you don't have to mess with ice packs on your upper back to get your body into super cal burning mode.  Just getting the mail, shoveling the walk, or knocking down some ice dams ought to be a start for most people.

---

Speaking of storm notes, my friend Howard Hill has been going nuts trying to find what he called an "roof rake'.  No idea what such a thing is, but apparently he waited too long into the season before getting one and now can find 'em, although persistent a fellow as he is, I figure he's still on the hunt for one.  Has something of a footrace going between storms and roof of his elderly house being seriously damaged by the weight of snow. Up in the Northeast, this winter is one for the record books.

 

So, if you think I'm nuts for thinking MRE's & baking, maybe you haven't been outside yet this morning.

 

Year of Ones

Option timer Robin Handler's been collecting one's:

This year we will experience 4 unusual dates: 1/1/11, 1/11/11, 11/1/11, 11/11/11 . NOW even more odd, go figure this out. Take the last 2 digits of the year you were born add that to the age you will be on your birthday in 2011 and it will equal 111. How is that for strange?

Call me at 11:11:11 on 11/11/11 to discuss this once again.

 

Hyperchronism Marches On

Despite people wanting to pass of my focus on hyperchronism, described by chief time monk Clif, as nothing more than mistaken perceptions of people, I keep getting reports.  Like this one:

"hi george, strange thing happened tonight as we were leaving the grocery store parking lot. my husband said, "weird i just had a vision of this place deserted." the second he said it, i got a flash of an extremely clear picture of the starbucks to my right and the bank across the street, empty, dusty/dirty, trash lying around, boarded up or broken windows. very much like a ghost town from the movies. i also got an immediate physical nausea, like a lead weight had hit my stomach.

 

we discussed it as we drove home and we both had the same image of the same corner, along with similar impressions of how it felt. my conclusion was that either my husband had a premonition and transmitted it to me or we went through a time bubble or place where an alternate universe synched up with us. i'm more inclined towards the premonition tho. when you linked that psychic program last week, i played it for a couple hours and had results similar to your daughter. however, i had a methodology to it, i found i could tell which symbol it was by the sensation in my stomach. in the beginning it was a tingling close to my sacrum but the longer i did it and the better i got at it it become stronger and moved into my stomach and became nausea. i actually had to stop playing with it because i was starting to feel ill. anyway, i thought you might find it interesting."

Corrections

Here's a good one from a 'serious weather dude':

George,

I just wanted to make some corrections to yesterday's write up with the electromagnetic anomaly. I'm not disputing his hypothesis, but wish to make a correction to his meteorological explanation. My corrections are in the parenthesis as I am unable to use HTML on this email.

(reader)

---------------------------------------------------

Ok, so you have two high's separated by a low. (Actually, on this surface weather chart you have 1 broad area of high pressure that is separating two areas of Low Pressure.)

Now, the one thing these want to do is come together and as they do the surrounding lines get wound tighter and tighter around the two highs. When this happen you get high wind speeds...turbulence. (This is called a tighter pressure gradient and the lines are called isobars. As the area of low pressure rides up the ridge of high pressure, the gradient tightens and as a result surface wind speeds ((this is a surface chart)) become higher which can cause surface to around 1000mb streamline turbulence. High wind speeds do not necessarily mean any type of turbulence).

We sit corrected.  And, as often happens, dumbfounded.

 

---

Tuesday February 1, 2011

Stormy Tuesday

I arrived in my office a few minutes later than normal, since a major winter storm sweeping down our way from up north: there we a couple of stops along the way.  Covering up a water faucet since it could drop below freezing and it made sense to put the insulation on while it was still 39º outside. 

 

Of course, what didn't make sense was doing this in the midst of 2-3" per hour rainfall, but what's a little water, eh?  Better a little rain than to be shutting down the water to do plumbing repairs when the big storm headed into the Southeast shows up over the next day, or so.

---

In Chicago, the Sun-Times headlines mayor Daley as proclaiming the Windy City will be ready for the forthcoming Blizzard of 2011.  And it's no wonder, since the citizens of Chicago seem easily snowed; almost a historical norm for them and no prospects of that changing anytime soon, considering what's going on in the mayoral contest.

---

Meantime, back at the water faucet, a couple of covers installed, and by now quite wet, it was back to the house to pick up my editor, Zeus the Cat, who was doing his dead-level best to hang tooth and claw onto first the floor, and then Elaine's arms, so he wouldn't get carried over to the office.  Not that it's a bad place to do (his own computer and chair and such) but he doesn't get to control what's on TV over here.

 

Being dumb, as most cats are, he doesn't understand that in either place, all that's being watched is Al Jazeera/English on Galaxy 19, transponder 26, channel 10.  I made a mental note to remind you this morning that Free To Air television is something quite difficult to 'turn off', unlike some communications channels where a simple call to a network exec, and presto!  You're out of the loop.

 

Which is where we pick up this morning's adventure of chasing news and markets...

---

The main event of today should be the million-person demonstration in Egypt today, made only slightly less dangerous since the military there promised it wouldn't fire on Egyptian citizens.

---

The Egyptian difficulties are returning a kind of 'mixed bag' for investors.  Since the military has decided to be human-neutral, the odds down at the betting parlor named Wall Street, have changed on the future price of oil.  Oil's dropped a bit.  And the reason?  It's looking more like the Suez Canal still remain open, the price of oil has fallen and this has touched off something of a rally in global markets.

 

So, as we push electrons up to our server, and while the giant crowds form up in Egypt, at least for the moment Asia, Europe, and now the US futures were looking pretty good.

 

All of which sets up the expectation about here that most of the day should be "contained" to use a military/first-responder word.  The situation may, or may not, result in president Mubarak blowing town, but expectations are that the demonstrations will peter out and just wither up and blow away.

 

'Course, that's not what my expectation is:  Just in the past hour or two, Al Jazeera has been reporting that the Muslim Brotherhood has announced that it will not negotiate with the Mubarak government.  And that means this is far from over and no definitive indicators yet as to which way events will break.

---

While watching the events of Tahir Square where the demonstrations in Egypt are centered this morning, Elaine had one of those curious insights of her's:

"Tahir Square...the look, the feel, is almost like Tiananmen Square back in 1989...remember?"

Indeed...remind me to keep an eye peeled for a similar face-down event in coming hours in global media...odds seem to favor a media focus on that kind of human against the machine kind of imagery.

---

The 25th spiral calendar harmonic off Tiananmen Square incident stand-off between "tank man" and Chinese tanks sent to enforce "order".  Just something to make a note of on the calendar:  The 25th spiral calendar cycle off the Tiananmen showdown comes on 7/28/2011 - so late July of this year could (if you believe in such timing systems) be a time to keep an eye open.  For what?  Glad you asked...

 

Ahead in GlobalRev: Russia's "Second Ending'?

Spied a very interesting report out of the Kavkaz Center with the headline "Russia is dying, confirm parliament experts" which goes to the idea that Russia's devolution into a conglomeration of loosely affiliated independent states.

 

As we like to engage in the practice of extensible thinking, we are starting to wonder if something of this grand scale could arrive this year as part of GlobalRev.  The report of "Kyrgyz demonstrators protest mining project" just sort of nudges things along..

 

GlobalRev, X

Of course, which country slides into global revolution is a matter of some speculation.  For example, there's a Naked Empire piece wondering "Is Pakistan on the verge of collapse?"  Worth asking, since they have nukes, at least one of which is promised to the Saudis...

 

The WaPo this morning headlines that "Jordan protests pressure king, but respect for monarchy remains" but we have to wonder how much the same story could have been written about Tunisia and Egypt a month or two back?

 

Demonstrators and police were slugging it out last week in Yemen, too.  So the prospect of another 'flash mob' kind of uprising against the existing power paradigm is likely possible in at least 10-countries in the Middle East which causes a lot of concern in diploomatic circles.  Could Sudan be another flash-over point?

 

Blizzards and Economic Data

As the "Blinding snow hit Plains, Midwest" this morning, we've got a couple of key economic indicators coming out as we blow through this week, including the Construction Spending report later on this morning and the auto & truck figures this afternoon.  Tomorrow, a couple of more "look-ahead" orients numbers arrive with the Mortgage Bankers housing sales and the Challenger jobs numbers.

 

Won't show up for a week, or longer in data, but I find myself wonder "What will the impact of the Blizzard of 2011 be on some of those reports?"

 

Factory orders and the initial unemployment claims come Thursday along with factory orders, but Friday is the unemployment report, which comes bundled with  average workweek and hourly earnings figures. That will be the one to watch closely.  Readers are calling it this way:

"I can tell you that just from what I read unemployment is way higher than twenty percent. Absolutely no jobs to be found especially for the older generation. Everyone is looking for someone younger that will take less money. but enough on our job hunts here..."

BUT:  Key thing to remember is that the December unemployment report is always a little questionable since there's all the seasonal hiring around Christmas.  What Christmas???

 

Lawyers and the Healthcare Law

A judge down in Florida has struck down the national healthcare bill as unconstitutional.  This is seen as possibly being the key case, when it goes up on appeal, which it almost certainly will...

 

Commodity Case

Interesting press release from the Commodity Future Trading Commission this morning:

"Washington, DC - The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced that it obtained a federal court order freezing assets held by defendants Robert J. Andres and Winsome Investment Trust (Winsome), both of Houston, Texas, Robert L. Holloway of San Diego, Calif., and US Ventures LC (USV) of Salt Lake City, Utah.

The court’s order also prohibits the destruction of books and records. The Honorable Senior Judge Bruce S. Jenkins of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah scheduled a hearing on the CFTC’s motion for a preliminary injunction on February 14, 2011.

The order stems from a CFTC civil anti-fraud complaint filed under seal in the federal court on January 24, 2011, charging Andres and Winsome with fraudulently soliciting individuals to invest in a commodity futures pool. The complaint also charges defendants with misappropriating participant funds and concealing their fraud by issuing false account statements to pool participants regarding the profitability of their investments.

Specifically, from at least May 2005 through November 2008, Andres and Winsome allegedly fraudulently solicited and accepted at least $50.2 million from at least 243 individuals to invest in a commodity futures pool operated by Holloway and USV. In their solicitations, Andres and Winsome falsely claimed a successful track record and guaranteed the return of participants’ principal and profits, the complaint charges.

The complaint further alleges that Andres and Winsome deposited approximately $26.4 million in USV trading accounts and withdrew approximately $15.7 million from the accounts. However, contrary to Andres’ and Winsome’s claims of consistently profitable trading, USV’s and Holloway’s futures trading was not successful, sustaining overall net losses of approximately $10.7 million, according to the complaint.

Defendants allegedly traded only a portion of Winsome’s pool’s funds and misappropriated the majority of participant funds to pay purported “profits” to pool participants in a manner akin to a Ponzi scheme. Holloway and Andres also allegedly used participant funds to pay personal and unrelated business expenses. Holloway used participant funds to pay for houses, cars, home furnishings, jewelry and lawn and maid services, the complaint charges. Andres allegedly used participant funds to invest in unrelated businesses, including $4.2 million to purchase an aerospace consulting business, and to provide money to his wife. "

We like to remind readers that these are only allegations until proven, but worth noting.

 

 

(more after this ad)

 

 

Coping:  You Ain't Gonna Like This, But...

Got an email from a reader last night, who may - and I emphasize this is only a long-shot maybe for now - have come up with a kind of 'grand-unified-theory' of all the strange  crap going on globally as far as the weather is concerned.

Hi George, your not going to like my working hypothesis, but I bet it's right.

 

I am sure you have read the information about the electro magnetic anomaly that is developing off the coast of Florida. There's one in the Gulf of Aden too. There's a reason for that. That's because electro magnetic poles always come in two's. One North and one South, but now we are looking at an East and a West pole as well.... Under my working hypothesis that's not good.

 

To explain allow me to switch to a weather map.

 

 

Ok, so you have two high's separated by a low.

 

Now, the one thing these want to do is come together and as they do the surrounding lines get wound tighter and tighter around the two highs. When this happen you get high wind speeds...turbulence.

 

Now imagine you have two electro magnetic poles and now the lines we spoke about are lines of electro magnetism.

 

As pressures from the build up of electro magnetism animals (including humans) are going to be adversely affected.

 

The greatest amount of force will be in a straight line from Florida to roughly Minnesota.

 

Any life form along that route MIGHT be adversely affected.

 

These lines will still be felt hundreds of miles away but to a lessening amount.

 

In addition to carbon based life forms having problems you can expect anything that uses electricity to also have problems. AC, DC, I don't think it will matter.

 

But wait there's more!

 

These lines will also be passing through the Earth's crust and acting upon the plates and it's fractures...like the New Madrid fault.

 

This will probably go a long ways to explaining Clif's latest HPH report.

 

As I say, this is a working hypothesis and may not happen...but then it seems like it just might.

 

Oh by the way, same thing is going on in the Gulf of Aden too, so that area should end up having much the same problems as Cliff has described. Oh wait...it is, my bad.

 

Best wishes to all. Red, Deepnaharta, Texas

That is kind of an interesting theory.  Still, until I can levitate, bend spoons like Uri Geller, or I begin drooling and take on a vacant look to my eyes (like there's a light on but nobody home), I won't worry to much.

 

Oh wait, I look like that every morning... lemme hold out for levitating, then.

 

Pictures of Strangeness Dept.

Got copied on an email to Clif & Igor up at www.halfpasthuman.com which came from a reader in Australia who'd just read the "toroid" references in his copy of the HPH report.  This is seriously strange:

"I was intrigued by the references to Toroid phenomena at page 11 of your recent report onwards.

Today is Sunday 14:51 AEDT 30.01.11 in Sydney Australia. My wife, [redacted], pointed out a design which appeared in the North North Western sky not too far from the Sydney CBD around 13:00 hrs local time. I attach a series of photos which I took on my mobile 'phone camera. The quality is enough to magnify the images up to 800% using Microsoft Office Picture Manager. The images are original as attached.

The appearance was a "sky-writer" smoke trail but the consistency of the smoke-trail was longer lasting and thicker than what is normally seen above Sydney for adverts/messages by such aeroplanes. There was also a distinct "bluish" tinge to parts of the "smoke". It was a large object about 1,000 metres width and at an altitude of about 10-12,000'

"Ghost Toroids" in the sky? Spooky after reading your report.

What intrigues me is that someone paid a deal of money to have this done - without any obvious discernible message to the pop. of Sydney below.

Yeah....that is pretty damn weird.  Ghost writers in the sky?   If you ever see something like this, do us a huge favor, would you?  Run inside and get on the computer and see if there's a concurrent radar anomaly showing?  Be interesting as hell to see if there's an correlation there...

-----

Next strangelet comes as email from daughter Denise - the one who sees shadow people, records EVP voices in cemeteries, and get's plenty of orb in her pictures.  Oh, not to mention scoring a good bit higher than chance on psi tests when she's doing binaual beats into her head, but that's not this morning's point.

 

Nope, this is about an email with this in it:

"Took a hike on the Twin Falls, Snoqualmie trail. Communed with nature, it was fun. Took a strange picture. Maybe it is just a digital effect, maybe it is one of my magic ghostie interdimensional friends. It is attached. Check it out. Tell me your thoughts. What on earth is that seated orange thing in the middle? "+

 

(Now you see why I recommended she buy a Wacom Intuos4 Medium Pen Tablet - hard to write with a mouse, lol.  She'd want me to loan here the $340, so maybe I should just shut up...  Still, her mousing writings are...er....sorry,  I digress...)

 

Well, I have to admit some intrigue with this one.  So I fired up Corel Photo-Paint and blew it way up...

 

What was so interesting about this was that when she took the picture, she swears there was nothing there - specially this orangish color.

 

Of course, first thing I thought was "With your birthday coming up late this month, dad, maybe Denise is just 'funning you' with some Photoshopping..."

 

But no, when I looked close there were things in the foreground and I know from life's experience that my kids would not be patient enough to pull of - like install foreground items like this has.  The kids, like me, like short jokes, short work, and short cuts in general.

 

So I wrote her back suggesting alternatives:  One is that it was nothing more than one of her digital anomalies that she's always snapping (orbs and so forth) OR, it's a  picture - an afterimage perhaps - of a wood nymph of leprechaun.

 

I sent her a note saying that if she manages to catch one of these, not to settle for a pot of gold; instead hold out for a three year options forecast with quadruple picks for each trading day so she can get some serious money ahead in the deal.

---

If you notice this site entirely disappear someday with rumors that Elaine and I were last seen in a yellow Lambo convertible headed for our new corporate jet at the airport, this'll be what happened.

 

Meantime, she calls it her "wild natural elemental dryad".  Anyone with enough psychedelics in their past recognize it?

 

Survival Notebook

From the outbox:

"Hey, SurvivalWoman:

 

Noticed the article on your "useful first aid and remedy kit."

 

Good, but you didn't mention that the alcohol might want to be of the Everclear type available at the local liquor store.

 

Reason?  Not only is it tradable but in the event of a serious injury (broken leg, or something which gets into serious pain) you can always pour a couple of shots with something to reduce it's impact (water, juice, or whatever) and thus has a kind of anesthetic.

 

What makes this anesthetic interesting, is that the patient feels so bad after its use (as it metabolizes) that they generally don't need to be as immobilized...that just happens natural - like.

 

Also does a better job of flambé of squirrel, too...or if you have some canned pie filling, cherries jubilee...know what I mean?

Sensible, that's us.

 

Pass

I'd like to thank the reader who signed me up for an adult chat forum.  Thanks, but no thanks...

 

Emails We Do Like...

On the other hand, this was good:

"Been stuck lately, mentally, trying to figure out how to proceed. Your daily was just what I needed. So, thanks. Even if you feel like you didn't do anything."

Was it our Egypt coverage?  Wonderings on government statistical methods?  I had to know...

Provided the thing you're going to do is legal, moral, healthy and will make you a million bucks (or more, then share! LOL!) then it makes my day worthwhile...

So come to find out:

"It was just you mentioning kalapa and the 10 dimensions was what I needed in part, spiritually speaking."

Oh....that!

 

Here's why being around the WuJo is so much fun:  I may sometimes be mistaken for someone who's anti-government...which I am not.  It's often safer to whack around in the weeds at the edges of reality to scare some of Life out into the open so we can all get a good look at it.

 

If we're going to get this plane of existence to work a little better, I figure some attention to higher planes is in order (as above, so below).  In keeping with this, those planes which run orthogonally to all three/four sensed dimensions are really worth thinking about.

---

Speaking of which, a medical-academic flying sort I know of has a very interesting list of the "16 steps in the evolution of consciousnesses."

 

I won't tell you specialty, but it's intimately close to the topic and you might be able to guess...the further hint being that he pushes people between 'em.

 

I take his observations incredibly seriously.  And since they're compact and I like short cuts...what we we talking about again?   Bring your own elementals...

 

Send your comments to  george@ure.net  

 

 

---

Monday, January 31, 2011

As Falls Egypt....

With demonstrators vowing to stay in the streets until their is a change of power, and with a coalition government between a returning political figure and the Muslim Brotherhood in the works, we will see this week how a major GlobalRev flash point fares.

 

First, we can notice that the markets are weak this morning and it's possible, depending on news flow, that they could move much lower through the day.

 

As this week's adventure begins, we find that Al Jazeera is reporting that a million member demonstration is being called for tomorrow in an effort to topple the Mubarak government.

 

Well, at least sort of.    Follow closely here:  A couple of things are going on with Al Jazeera's coverage.  No, I'm not talking about how they got kicked out of Egypt yesterday for what I thought (from watching a fair bit of it) pretty balanced reporting of the goings on.  Still, this morning comes word that 5- Al Jazeera journalists have been arrested.

 

But what's even more interesting is that Al Jazeera reporting seems to be (by reader reports) being blocked in some parts of the US.  And no, this is not because Egypt is blocking their broadcasts:  Al Jazeera is headquartered in Doha, Qatar, so if you can't get access to their website www.aljazeera.net it's possible that you 'uncle' is protecting you.

 

So that gets us around to what to do should the internet ever go down in the USA.  Our friends up at www.halfpasthuman.com sent us a little research you might want to be aware of:

"bunch  of people getting nervous

heard from old friends in the switching biz that govt's all over are nervous  http://openmesh.wordpress.com/

(snip)

"Providing local information during an “internet kill switch”.

Due to recent events in Egypt and the speed of the shutdown.

Most of these projects are open to contribution and further development.

 

B.A.T.M.A.N –  http://www.open-mesh.org/

 

Roofnet | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet

 

GNUnet | https://gnunet.org/

 

Netsukuku | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netsukuku

 

Open Mesh Project | http://www.openmeshproject.org/

 

OLPC Mesh Network | http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Mesh_Network_Details

There are others, too, and the OpenMesh  site is where to find 'em...but we put a few up here from their site since dispersed information is more robust.

---

OK, so besides the asymmetric information warfare aspects of this and the million person showdown tomorrow, what else is going on? Markets...nervous markets.

---

A while back - six months was it? - we were chatting about how gold would do in the coming crisis period.  I told you then about my friend Howard Hill's explanation of why gold will come down in any market decline - because when people in one sector (say stocks or commodities) get a margin call, they will have to sell anything to keep their positions and if that includes gold or silver, well, then so be it.

 

Sure enough, here comes the fulfilling headline off Reuters that  "Gold Falters as safe-haven rally fizzles".  More from Howard in a sec...

---

Meantime, back at the GlobalRev, we're reading in the UK Mail this morning that the death toll from Egypt 's revolution is 102 dead, thousands of prisoners let out of prisons, 30-thousand Brits stuck and American's being told to get the hell out.

 

Yeah, I know, you had plans to fire up the Gulfstream and head for a romantic candlelight din-din at the pyramids, right?   Might want to catch this from the State Dept. before you spin up those turbines...

"January 30, 2011

The U.S. Department of State recommends that U.S. citizens avoid travel to Egypt due to ongoing political and social unrest. On January 30, the Department of State authorized the voluntary departure of dependents and non-emergency employees. Violent demonstrations have occurred in several areas of Cairo, Alexandria and other parts of the country, disrupting road travel between city centers and airports. Disruptions in communications, including internet service, may occur. The Government of Egypt has imposed a curfew from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez until further notice, and U.S. citizens should obey curfew orders and remain indoors during curfew hours. U.S. citizens currently in Egypt should consider leaving as soon as they can safely do so. Cairo airport is open and operating, but flights may be disrupted and transport to the airport may be disrupted due to the protests. Travelers should remain in contact with their airlines or tour operators concerning flight schedules, and arrange to arrive at the airport well before curfew hours.

Speaking of dinners, you see the write up on the Alfalfa Club din-din this weekend in today's WaPo?  Bush II's first dinner in DC since elections.

 

Markets and Data

Right out of the chute this morning we have the personal income and expense figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis which - I've heard, really is more than two guys and a laptop with Excel...

Personal income increased $54.5 billion, or 0.4 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $47.3 billion, or 0.4 percent, in December, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $69.5 billion, or 0.7 percent. In November, personal income increased $44.9 billion, or 0.4 percent, DPI increased $39.0 billion, or 0.3 percent and PCE increased $35.4 billion, or 0.3 percent, based on revised estimates.

Real disposable income increased 0.1 percent in December, compared with an increase of 0.2 percent in November. Real PCE increased 0.4 percent, compared with an increase of 0.2 percent.

No word on how much of the personal income numbers were based on money saved living under an overpass which is still rent-free in some places.  BUT here locally the buzz in East Texas is 25 teachers will be let go this month and a local steel forming business has gone from 8 lines to 4 and those may be cut to dour days a week.

 

Still, it's the local conditions I become aware of and I hold it up next to the rosy report on the personal savings rate and try to figure how the government arrived at this one:

Personal outlays -- PCE, personal interest payments, and personal current transfer payments -- increased $67.5 billion in December, compared with an increase of $33.6 billion in November. PCE increased $69.5 billion, compared with an increase of $35.4 billion.

Personal saving -- DPI less personal outlays -- was $614.1 billion in December, compared with $634.4 billion in November. Personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income was 5.3 percent in December, compared with 5.5 percent in November.

I'm still trying to figure out how, when housing equity is such a huge fraction of the average American's net worth, how the government hasn't figured out that whacking housing equity reduces the effective savings rate to a massively negative number.

 

I mean, here's the deal, right?  My understanding (which is never perfect, mind you) is that it works this way:  Say you buy a house for $200,000 and you agree to make payments on it at $1,600 a month, right?  Sure there's interest and taxes, but the argument could be made that buying house equity is a form of savings, right?  So, whatever the principal is that's applied to the $200 house price must be savings, right?  Yeah, the house value on the street at this moment may be less, but when you get it paid off in xx years it should be worth more than the $200,000.  (Missing is the discussion of the $80/loaf bread by then, but that's a different rant...)

 

But is that the right way to figure?  Not NO, but HELL NO.

 

In the People's Economist's view of things, the money paid on principal should be compared to the current market value of the house.

 

That's because if you paid $200,000 for the house, and it's now worth $100,000 (and these are common numbers, BTW) those payments on principal would be money down a rat hole because you'd be upside down owing $100,000 more than the house could fetch today if you sold today.

 

Oh sure:  Reporting savings related to housing equity my way would tend to overstate the savings rate when times were good and inflation was percolating along.  But, it would screw the savings rate to some huge deficit number monthly if reported more candidly.

 

But that doesn't change reality and in fact, you'll find that much of the consumer spending in the overshoot/housing bubble period was funded by people extracting equity from homes and now millions of people are upside down and are making payments which are NOT in any way, shape, or form savings.

 

"Depends who's telling the story, then doesn't it?"

 

Yup.  People in Washington or what you could get on the market real.  The correlation between 'em, near as I can tell is largely coincidental.

 

Oh, and if you back out the 20% of Americans who are unemployed, a 5.3% savings rate implies those with jobs are saving 6.625%.  Again, I mean look like a fool but....no one I know is doing that...

 

Raw Corporate Power in America

So, who are the Koch brothers, I mean besides rich, rich, and then some?

 

Well, they are billionaires and they have funded some of the Tea Party movement, but as those watching closely know, the Tea Party is quickly being turned into a group that largely does what the Washington lobbyists want done and that's where we come up to current events.

 

In Rancho Mirage, California this weekend, about 2-dozen protesters were arrested for trying to protest the Billionaires Caucus which, among others, featured a command appearance by House republicorp leader Eric Cantor of Virginia.

 

And their point was what?

 

The issue on the table here is not that the Koch brothers are rich.  Sure, why not, this is America after all. 

 

BUT where things get contentious is when ANYONE with very deep (verging on unlimited cash) decides to underwrite efforts to pass legislation, or promote legal decisions which actually put corporations - like the owns they own - above humans in the laws of America. 

 

That's what the recent Citizens United Supreme Court decision did.  Said corporations can spend as much as they care, even if that raises the price of legislation above the ability of grassroots types to participate. 

 

No checkbook? So sorry... No democracy for you.

 

Which has gotten working-people oriented groups like MoveOn.org circulating a petition which is really damn simple:

"Corporations aren't people and shouldn't be able to corrupt our democracy. We need as many state legislatures as possible to get behind the call for a constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United ruling."

And it's here, in rulings like Citizen's United that the Great Bait & Switch happens.  The backing of the Tea Party sounded like a good thing, but to Free Traders (really Free Raiders) that means that corporations, not just humans get to have whatever they want.  So, if a corporation has money and can override the 'will of the people' what happens?

 

Oh, little things like billions of dollars in TARP funds for certain banks, but not others.  A stimulus bill that didn't do diddly squat, and, oh, capital gains rates about half of what working families pay, if the money isn't shoveled through offshore accounts. 

 

But, the RRR wing of the MSM (Rabidly Right Radio) won't put it in those simple terms, since they get paid extremely well to hornswaggle the public into believing more corporate influence is 'good for yah'.  Yeah, sure, you bet'cha.  Wanna talk jobjacking?

 

Which leaves most of us in a terrible fix:  I really like the Tea Parties ideals, but really don't like the implement plans being played out by the corpgov'sts level, which instead of putting humans first is putting unlimited spending first under the guise of 'freedom'. 

 

Such is life this Monday in the Checkbook Republic for those with the deep pockets.  You?  Oh, you get stuck with the tab.

 

Higher Food Seen

Welfare for the rich (bailouts) lead to printing money...and that leads to....gee, lemme see....inflation maybe?

 

If the idea that corporate interests are now able to bid up the price of law to levels where normal folks can't afford it, maybe it's a good thing that kind of news makes you lose your appetite.

 

Especially since the MSNBC piece "An eras of cheap food may be drawing to a close..."

 

Let's see here, flooding in South Africa, Panama, Brazil, Australia, forecasts of a worse than normal flood season in the US, inclement weather seems to be rampant.  Seems to me that the use of the word "may"  (lead to) in their headline reflects undo optimism.

 

There Go Alternative Screeners

Yup - TSA says it won't go beyond the 16 airports which have elected to do their own screening instead of using TSA. 

 

Not sure what will happen next, but if I were at the two-dollar bet window in Vegas, my money would be on ferocious checks of the private screening system with an eye toward banning them and consolidating power in TSA.  If I just had two-bucks to spare, that is.

 

Weathering Heights

Blizzard watch in Chicago  (No, not a Rahm snow job - this time), a genuine for real deal from the National Weather service:

...BLIZZARD WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM TUESDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON...

A BLIZZARD WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM TUESDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON.

* TIMING...SNOW WILL INCREASE IN INTENSITY AND BECOME HEAVY AT TIMES SOUTH OF INTERSTATE 80 TUESDAY AFTERNOON...GRADUALLY SPREADING NORTH INTO NORTHERN ILLINOIS BY TUESDAY EVENING. SNOW...HEAVY AT TIMES...WILL CONTINUE TUESDAY NIGHT INTO WEDNESDAY MORNING. SNOW SHOWERS WILL CONTINUE NEAR LAKE MICHIGAN IN NORTHEAST LLINOIS WEDNESDAY MORNING...SHIFTING INTO NORTHWEST INDIANA DURING THE AFTERNOON. NORTHEAST WINDS OF 25 TO 40 MPH WITH STRONGER GUSTS WILL RESULT IN BLIZZARD CONDITIONS DEVELOPING TUESDAY EVENING AND CONTINUING THROUGH THE OVERNIGHT HOURS.

* ACCUMULATIONS...SNOW ACCUMULATIONS IN EXCESS OF A FOOT ARE EXPECTED OVER MUCH OF THE WATCH AREA FROM TUESDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON. LOCALIZED TOTALS IN EXCESS OF 18 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE...ESPECIALLY NEAR THE LAKE.

* HAZARDS...WHITE-OUT CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED AT TIMES TUESDAY NIGHT AS VERY HEAVY SNOW AND STRONG WINDS RESULT IN BLIZZARD CONDITIONS. SNOWFALL RATES OF AT LEAST 2 TO 3 INCHES PER HOUR ARE POSSIBLE...ESPECIALLY WITH ANY THUNDERSTORMS THAT OCCUR.

* IMPACTS...CONDITIONS WILL RAPIDLY DETERIORATE FROM NORTH TO SOUTH ACROSS THE REGION TUESDAY AFTERNOON...WITH TRAVEL LIKELY BECOMING VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE AT TIMES TUESDAY NIGHT INTO EARLY WEDNESDAY MORNING. SNOW IS EXPECTED TO FALL SO HEAVILY AT TIMES TUESDAY NIGHT THAT PLOWS WILL BE UNABLE TO KEEP UP WITH THE SNOW...WITH MANY SIDE STREETS AND UNTREATED ROADS BECOMING IMPASSABLE.

"Hey what about Howard Hill?"

 

Oh, yeah, his house in CT is in jeopardy from heavy snow fall, ice, and ice dams on the roof and you have to read his notes on the FCIC report.

 

Snow due here tomorrow afternoon.  Cats are buttering us up to come inside...they know...

 

Monday at the WuJo

Coping:  Time & Troubles

We keep getting time slip reports...

"You asked if anyone noticed any time loss.

When I was at work (Denver, Colorado) I think early this week (my short term memory is not what it once was) I noticed my watch read 7:50 AM (as I recall) and the display on my cell phone read 8:13 -- about a 23 minute difference.

This is unusual for my watch. It is a good quality Swiss Army watch with analog hands, and usually keeps perfect time.

I thought maybe the stem got pulled out and stopped, but it didn't seem to be out when I reset it to match the cell phone...."

Aha!  There's another one of those 20-30 minute range gaps that we've been talking about.

 

All of which has gotten me to thinking about the possibility that under the Many World's Interpretation of quantum mechanics, the world which we experience may actually be a series of multiple realities where everything that is possible actually happens.

 

The MWI is way cool, since it provides a specific mechanism for things like "prayers to be answered" by simply jumping onto an alternate reality next time one comes along that's headed toward the future you want, rather than the one you don't.

 

Sounds cool,. alright...until you start getting steely-eyed engineers writing in say "No way!"

GCE George;

 

I learned in US Navy nuclear power school (nuke school) about the GCE. This stands for “Gross Conceptual Error” where although the observation and logical reasoning following may seem correct, the foundation is seriously flawed. Seeing as how you’re a patented electrical engineer, I will make large allowance for the fact its DC not AC where your expertise lies.

 

Now your particular GCE lies with your experience with hyperchronism and your attempts to explain some of it. While far from a WuJo master, I have worked with and made AC for some 34 years now. I remember start-up testing at the South Texas Nuclear Project down the road a bit from you in Wadsworth, where the NRC wanted us to drive grid frequency (Hz) as high as possible. Since Texas has only 2 interconnects with the rest of the national grid, they were opened and with both units cranking our max power for a grand total of 2,500MW, we raised the frequency from 60hz to 60.5hz.

 

So, with that in mind for a sense of scale let’s look at the idea of “time bubbles” where relative time speeds up or slows. While it may well be perceptual, spiritual, or other dimensional, it is not in our “normal” world ruled by simple physics and electrical laws (like Ohms, Faraday, Kirchhoff etc) as illustrated by simple observations.

 

Are breakers popping? Do we see or hear of massive unexplained 345kv transmission lines exploding? Reports of local transmission lines vaporizing with no explanation? If time were affecting the physical world, then there would be “out of phase” conditions everywhere which would result in catastrophic failures in electrical equipment.

 

To speed up a electric clock (vs. a battery quartz or mechanical spring clock) the frequency must be raised (or lowered) at that point, then when the time distortion ends, to prevent breakers tripping and worse the clock would have to return to “normal” space time perfectly in phase with the 60hz grid to which it is attached.

 

Even if it returns in phase, where did the power come from and or go? There are really few secrets about the grid in our industry. We call, and are called by system dispatchers daily to raise and lower load, so we do talk and know generally what is going on statewide and nationally sometimes.

 

Long ago when Dresden 1, 2 and 3 (nuclear plants supplying Illinois) tripped one night we saw it as a tiny “blip” in grid frequency on the eastern tip of Long Island at the Shoreham nuclear plant (RIP) and reported it to the NRC.

 

So George, while time bubbles and such may occur at many levels where the WuJo meets our reality, it is not manifesting itself in the physical world as yet. But, we do know what to look for when it does. Thank you for all you do."

Well, hold up there.  Yes, I do understand AC enough to get Smith-Chart questions right and complex impedance issues, albeit at RF, but that's AC, too.

 

What I'm suggesting is that due to the "reality locking" that occurs as one reality 'fades out', the other is fading in.  If the fade-in and lock was not extraordinarily smooth we would all be noticing 'jumps' in TV programs and the back porch frequency (of television/video blanking interval) would reveal a timing mess.

 

However, long, long ago, ancient Sanskrit advises us that reality that we experience is like 'riding a wave front' which is an intersection of at least three planes of energy, and that these infinitesimally small units of time/space are called the kalapa and they come and go at several trillions of times per second.

 

Yep, that's up there above terahertz waves where physics gets a little wonky, but this kind of light speed creation/dissolution, recreation/new synching of reality probably is a big hint as to why various spiritual types down through history has always gone around talking about "The Light!"

 

So here's the model I would offer back (and pardon the crude drawing, it's early and the bean juice is still soaking in...

 

As you can see in this example, there doesn't need to be any 'conflict' between realities, and in fact, inconsistencies between timelines of one reality, would necessarily synch up in order to present huge amounts of energy from being expended; and thus we may find that 'smooth synching' is the norm...as I am sure you've noticed.  Those individual cycles are not time stamped, either...but wouldn't that be an interesting notion: Micro-encode them with noise, huh?  Decode the micro encoding and find what?

 

Thanks to the "observer effect" -- noted in Schrödinger's experiment (which may explain why my cat Zeus runs like hell when I call him, he's 3 for 3 so far in my Schrödinger box ;0-) -- provides that if a critical mass of humans collectively as a function of mass consciousness to go off on a different future, the existing track into the future gets revised and a new one replaces it.  One simply dissolves away while the other - headed toward a slightly different future - resolved into 'real' and we jointly go down that new path together.

 

Sometimes the transition to a 'new future' is slow - as we saw in the case of Tunisia and we're seeing in the headlines today about Egypt.  But, the speed of transition can be as short as a single kalapa's existence which could be as short several trillionths of a second.  And no, there would be nothing discernable in the powerhouse at the local nuke plant.  The 60 hz AC is still being produced, and since a new 'zero axis' came along with it, the 'new cycle' on the new track would be in phase because you measure what?  Amplitude and phase, of course!

 

What is specifically NOT measured is orthogonally related higher dimensions of Hilbert Space.

 

A dandy video of how this works (up to 10 dimensions, which may be a limit on Hilbert spaces, or so goes debate) you can envision how this may operate.

 

To help, a review of this YouTube video on how 10-dimensioned space works, is really good, short, and entertaining.

 

So while I would readily agree that power plants around the world are NOT blowing up due to time shifts, as the explanation above (and the video which is excellent, so do take time to watch it!) show, there is a way of looking at physics which provides for the occasional oddity in shared reality while at the same (time) flowing in mostly expected ways.

 

State Guns

I reported to you last week how the state of Utah was working a bill through their legislative process to name the Browning 1911 as their state gun.  I also suggested Texas choose the nuclear warhead B83 as its state weapon, since we make those and they are much more efficient at killing people and breaking things.

 

In response to this, a reader's been thinking about this and has it figured this way:

"Since Utah adopted the 1911, is there a marketing opportunity somewhere for Alaska to adopt the AK and Arkansas the AR?"

As some point, the well will run dry and people will stop sending in such suggestions.  When they do, I can move on to the next set of bad puns, such as naming Missouri the Ammunition State.

 

If you're wondering "WTF?"  Simple: A soldier has hears this on the range or in combat all the time:

"I need 'mo ammunition!"

Groans, rimshots, and the soft rustle of readers reaching for aspirin while asking "Why do this to myself?"