Friday June 3, 2011    07:45 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/,      View as Blog  (.MOBI) version

 

Corporate Tax Breaks vs. Jobs

As we roll out the monthly jobs report from the Labor Department (in a sec.) the main thing to be aware of is how corpgov is doing a "pully-wooly" on the whole notion of trading unemployment compensation funding for corporate tax breaks.

 

The scam comes in a variety of flavors:

• Political hacks -  and these are the savior republicorps at work - gives out corporate tax breaks while cutting tax credits for the poor. Think upper Midwest gov. on this one.  Must be something in the water west of Illinois since they're also into no-bid contracts for Big Corps to run what would otherwise be profitable state revenue generators.  Sweet.

• Oh and a republicorp prez wannbe on the east coast, too, if you insist on having a good memory.

• A different hack grants corp tax breaks and funds it by essentially reducing the amount of time people in that state (southeast corner) can receive unemployment comp.  Think they're down to 23 weeks, or so.

• In Massachusetts, lawmakers are questioning whether corp tax breaks really work at all.

• California has been extending tax breaks for another five years for the state's film industry.

• Meantime, the LA Times has a piece about how corporations would like to have a lower income tax rate over a shifting landscape of tax incentives!

So as a lead-in to the jobs numbers:  Corps are getting the dough that used to go to workers, states are cutting bennies and claiming unemployment is "improving" and as we'll show in a sec, even things like historical data is being revised by the Labor Department. 

 

Can anyone be trusted?  'Fraid we know the answer to that one.....

 

The Unemployment Number Questions

Now:  If you go to the US Department of Labor website, they go through a whole litany of methodology here, and while it seems like the incidental phone call system would make for a pretty good data collection scheme, but who gets called?  Only people on unemployment - the telephone numbers don't appear in celestial visions.

 

And then people's phones get cut off for nonpayment and a huge statistical crack opens up.  The survey contacts 60,000 households for the Current Population Survey, so when your phone is cut off, and you move to an underway, benefits are gone...Presto!  You're no longer unemployed.

 

Thus, when states report that "unemployment is down" they can do so with a straight face because how noses are counted varies from state to state and if the simplest measure is used, namely how many people are getting UI checks, then obviously if you cut the benefit period from 99-weeks to 23 weeks - as some states have gone through, you'll get a statistical improvement in the UI rate.

 

And in states like Florida, gov Rick Scott is claiming credit.  This seems a little disingenuous since Florida is cutting UI times to a max of 23 weeks from 26, which should improve the UI data, right?  Gotta love them office holders.

 

How about Mass Layoffs?

 

 

I'm still scratching my statistical bald spot wondering what this means: "With the release of April 2011 mass layoff data on May 20, 2011, data suppression procedures will be updated in the MLS time series database. These changes may affect data as far back as 1996. Similar changes were made to quarterly extended mass layoff data on May 11, 2011."

 

What's a "data suppression procedure"?  I must have missed that class...

 

By suppressing the right data, my chart above is all screwed up and BIG UGLY MASS LAYOFFS got toned down.  Example:  May layoffs in April of 2010 were 200,870 when initially reported.  Here, what I logged at the time and the archived press release agree - which we'll return to in a sec.

 

After data suppression?  Down to 159,358.  Cool, huh?  40,000 fewer people in April 2010 got unlaid off. Without pay, of course...  

 

Even cooler?  Look what the "data suppression/revisions do to February 2009 mass layoffs: 143,997 was what I recorded in my spreadsheet at the time of release back in March 2009. 

 

But now when I look at "Series Id: MLSMS00NN0119005 (1)" I see that the Bush presidency hangover just got worse by...er....171,510 unemployed.  The database now shows mass layoffs seasonally adjusted there at 315,507!

 

Wanna bet me that we'll get a speech from the democorps in about 12-months that says something like "...When I took office, mass layoffs in February 2009 were 315,507  (or some higher number since we know it's drifting....)..." 

 

Cool way to demonize the other party, huh?  Expect to see congressional hearings on this?  No way.  Both sides go to the same trough and this is just how the pull-wooly goes.

 

But wait: What now shows in the news release archive is a third number: 295,477.  So who do I believe?  I'm taking a couple of days off as soon as I finish writing this morning.  Maybe I'll have an epiphany.  Or not.

 

Still, going into this morning's numbers, this all reminds us of the specially ground glasses we have to wear when looking at BLS data:

• What ends up in the database drifts over time. 

• Whats in the "archived press releases" apparently also drifts.

• I didn't have a "data suppression" class in B-school through MBA.

• Accuracy of telephone incidental surveys is, well, questionable.

• Corporations are reaping huge tax breaks from money/funding which should be going to unemployed people.

• And last, but not least, NO ONE is talking about virtual employment which means the workforce in India (and elsewhere) which crosses the border and steals American jobs every virtual day.  But since these people make nowhere near minimum wage, let's pretend they don't exist even if the US "recovery" has done wonders for India.

Now, with some AstroGlide and a quick (insert your favorite vice), here's the new BOHICA:

"Nonfarm payroll employment changed little (+54,000) in May, and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 9.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains continued in professional and business services, health care, and mining. Employment levels in other major private-sector industries were little changed, and local government employment continued to decline.

Household Survey Data

The number of unemployed persons (13.9 million) and the unemployment rate (9.1 percent) were essentially unchanged in May. The labor force, at 153.7 million, was little changed over the month. (See table A-1.)

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (8.9 percent), adult women (8.0 percent), teenagers (24.2 percent), whites (8.0 percent), blacks (16.2 percent), and Hispanics (11.9 percent) showed little or no change in May. The jobless rate for Asians was 7.0 percent, not seasonally adjusted. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

In May, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) increased by 361,000 to 6.2 million; their share of unemployment increased to 45.1 percent.

Key data points for the aware:

• The "labor force" number grew by 272,000 people

• The "employed" grew by 105,000 - a neat trick with 143K+ hitting mass layoffs, huh?

• The CES birth/death model (estimated new jobs) was up 175,000 for the month with a purported 67k new hires in liesure hospitality and 57k newbies in business and professional services.  Oh, and ViseGrip me: Construction was up 25,000.  (Yeah sure, you betcha...)

And the Table 15, U-6 total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force went down from 15.9% to 15.8% which, in case you skipped stats class, is about in the noise.

 

Super Bugged

Attack on the food chain or natural event?  199 new cases of e.coli in Germany in the past couple of days. 

 

Couple of readers are wondering if this is the remake of the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack up in Oregon. Took several months to catch them...

 

Global Water Crisis

If you want to be up to speed on how fresh water is going to be one of the real treasures in the future, see the NY Times story "Plan for China's Water Crisis Spur Concern..."

 

Not sure what the investment play on this would be if you're into preserving wealth:  Buy a glacier, or something?

 

ViseGrips Friday

Word that "A solar-powered B8ikini will charge you tech devices" has me wondering if the power output will be itsy-bitsy, tiny-weenie...

 

Praying for Graduates

Tough call for a Texas judge who has banned public prayer at a high school graduation.

 

Sure, sure, understand the separation of churches and state thing.  But, given the leaking Japanese reactors, the odds of having to do military time, soaring tax burdens, screaming runaway cost of college, sexual diseases, creeping fascism and the like, I guess the judge's decision puts a capper on it:

 

Today's kids don't have a prayer.  It's just now literal instead of figurative.

 

Crime of Embedding

OK, no more embedding of vids from YouTube around here.  Since it's about to be turned into a felony under Senate Bill 978.

 

New word:  Jackclicks  The distinctive sound of made by a certain kind of eboot.

 

Deep Thinking Dept.

Some really revolutionary stuff is going on in Physics, and the Everett Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics is picking up steam.

 

Some remarkable implications are coming from all the work, and summed up nicely in this report in NewScientist.

 

The full paper "The Multiverse Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics" is here.

 

A well-educated reader says it's a kind of "Ure's Cat" model of things:

"Submitted for your consideration," a multiverse interfacing with our own corner of the universe, glimpsed through a window to multifarious, shadowy networks synergistically synchronizing via the world wide web. Thoughts and desires converge. Reality flirts with fiction. The past dances in step with the future. There's a signpost up ahead! You're entering . . . The Time Monk Zone!"

Well, not entirely, but near enough.

 

As I read the paper something really struck me:  The concept of decoherence.

 

Suddenly my website makes sense along with financial markets and all kinds of growth curves:  They are nothing more than initial fits of organization - imposition of order on chaos.  But they require a continuous stream of additional energy in order to maintain their "orderedness."

 

Otherwise, they devolve, like everything else in the multiverse, into unitary non-superposition's  which is the world we observe.

 

Don't look now, but I'm falling in love with decoherence since it seems to explain just about everything. 

 

Including my morning writings.

 

Dumb Question of the Week

With the US Public Debt at $14.284 trillion, and with the Fed rate at 0-0.25%, why doesn't the US government call every current bond & debt and refi everything at zero percent? 

 

Presto!  Debt crisis ends, compounding stops, and we get a second chance!

 

Too simple?  I'm sure....but still, gotta be a way to get there.... if interest = zero, then compounding goes to zero and we can work on the principal....

 

(more after this...)

 

 

 

Coping: Some Kind of Holiday

We gotta get out more often.  Getting ready to take a 2½ day weekend has been excruciating:

• Peoplenomics will be updated a bit later than usual Saturday morning.  Or not.  Depends on the internet connectivity issues at our hotel.  I'm assured there will be none, but you know how that goes.

• Sunday's Peoplenomics report is done - and that should go up per normal again with another asterisk; results may vary.

• What really gobbled up time was synching the laptop to the main cpu because that entailed:

  • Updates to W7 on the to-go box

  • Updates to AntiVir, Maxa, MalwareBytes etc and fresh scans

  • Then the actual fill transfers

• Getting the "normal" Friday office work done early

The easy part for me was packing:  two pairs of pants, couple of shirts, shaving kit, 3-minutes good to go. Or so I thought.

 

Elaine on the other hand spent most of Thursday in "I haven't worn this for a while, I wonder how it looks?" mode. 

 

Happy vacation pointer #1:  "If looks great, dear..." when asked.  Actual looking is optional but non-looking must be done discretely on pain of death.

 

Happy vacation pointer #2:  "Of course you can drive..."  Just don't reveal where you hid the keys until the last possible second before announcing "Hey!  I found them!"  Then possession is 99% of the law kicks in.

 

Happy vacation pointer #3:  "Yes dear...."   Use this one a lot.

---

Something happens to travel planning as we age.  When I was a kid, I'd toss a pair of jeans, couple of shorts & socks in a grocery bag and I'm out for a week.

 

Now, the checklist includes data services, coordinated computers, mail handoffs, external keyboard & mouse.  The shirt/pant combinations have to stand for management approval, and "You're not going to wear THOSE shoes, are you?"

 

With the end of the line out there in the next 40-years for sure, I now take pills that would never have considered as a kid.  The medical kit now includes:

• Benadryl

• EpiPen

• Albuterol inhaler

• QVar inhaler

• Some other Dr -issued pill

• Ubiquinol version of CoQ10

• Vitamin D

• Tart Cherry extract pills

• Colchicine

• Good multi-Vit

• Baby aspirin

• Skin cream

• Ace bandage for knee (in case)

• Documentation on all of the above

• Plus the car first aid kit, of course.

It's like packing a medic unit.  All that's missing is large bore wringers and D5W for accidents and hangovers...

 

And even hotel arrangements:  King bed, non-smoking, yes Jacuzzi is fine, you say the upgrade to a suite is what?  How much?  Then show booking, although the www.branson.com service simplified most of that including show tickets and ideas of where to eat.

---

The financial part has changed vastly.  As a kid, I could take off for a week, sometimes two on a $100 bill in my VW bug.

 

Today? Seat belts,  LifeHammer?  Fire extinguisher?  Cellphone & charger?  Ham gear?  Chewing gum?  Candy?  Audiobooks? Kindle?  Android?  Is the stove off?  "What should we leave the a/c on?"  Iron?   Hell, I can't get out of the driveway for under a hundred; no wonder being a recluse is appealing.  Iron?  "You think the dishwasher will be OK?"  Iron off?

 

Got credit cards?  Checkbook?  Traveler's checks?  Some cash - but not too much?  Debit cards?  You remember you PIN...we don't use em hardly?  Maybe we should stop by the bank...

 

Near as I can figure it, we will have spent more time in fixing-to-get-ready to go than the actual trip itself.  But better than staying at the ranch ... maybe.

 

Panama Bates is on guard in our absence, although he may need help when we return.  Acute peace and quiet is a mighty dangerous thing.

 

Iron?

 

Fjords in Our Future?

Interesting new discoveries under the ice down in the Antarctic.  Which, last time I checked, you can't visit since it's not exactly a country.  Do a 'float by" maybe but that's it.

 

 

Send Ure comments to george@ure.net

---

Last week's report is always here.

 

---

Thursday June 2, 2011

Peoplenomics Note

A special update from Robin Landry (with chart) is now available on the subscriber's site. www.peoplenomics.com

 

Our Deteriorating Future

Tuesday might as well have not even happened.  The Dow which popped 128 Tuesday promptly turned around and fell a stick of gum less than 280-points on Wednesday leaving the week down 152 (or so) net.  And it's about to get a whole lot worse over the next few months, or so it seems.

 

As you know, Clif (www.halfpasthuman.com) has been planning to come out with a new web bot run shortly (predicting the future on changes in language use on the 'net) and - so we suspise - there may be forces afoot which aren't all that keen with people reading these reports which reveal what both Ma Nature and the PTB have coming. 

 

Reason for thinking this?  Beyond the normal semi-paranoid state?  An ultra-sophisticated attack on his key machine that started off as a cookie and then spread into the OS including things like the Windows recover.sys files such that the whole modelspace on this particular machine and the first 15-20 pages of the pending report was trashed.

 

What made it worse was this particular attack went off and started rewriting the hard disk in background so that the first notice of anything being out of place was the pop-up advising the machine was out of hard drive space. And from there things got worse.  Igor reported from the server farm that the main Cisco router which has only 1½ ports open has been more of less hammered too, but that one remains "turtle hard."

 

But reloading modelspace and going through the interp is extremely time-consuming and he'd just gotten as far as starting the "blink" processing, so basically 4 to 5 man/weeks of work trashed.  So he'll be doing good to get the next "Shape of Things To Come" report out by the 4th of July.

 

Meantime, alerted to what to look for I rescrubbed everything here and found 5 latent cases  on my main machine but they were caught early and - as in Clif's case - in some of my backup/recover files were infected, too, but mine was recoverable.   Damn.  Someone must not love us.

---

We don't ask question like "Why?" but the reason may be humankind is about to hit a real downward slide.  Our summer of hell which had figured prominently over the past several years has morphed, but whether the outbreaks of gang violence in places like Miami, Nashville, Chicago, Boston (yada, yada, yada) was an offshoot of the GlobalRev meme or something else (like plain old humans behaving badly when times is tough) will have to wait for modelspace reloading, blinking and more drudgery for Clif.

 

Still, he got far enough into interp to conclude that the conditional of financial markets is about to deteriorate, precipitously, with "losses [in thousands]" and references to "treasures lost".  Lots of references to "shocks" such that it'd be like one day the market drops some large number of points, but then the next week or several will be spent talking about the speed and width of the decline.

 

Oh, ain't that peachy?

 

Specifically, the deterioration can begin just about any old time (linguistically) but the bulk of the harm should be evident in the time band between summer solstice and fall equinox (June 21 to around September 21 or so) although things keep dropping till almost Christmas.

 

I'm doing something on a personal financial level I've never done before, working up a personal net worth hedging strategy and more on that this weekend for Peoplenomics.com readers. Oh - and I'll post a note on Peoplenomics when Robin Landry comes out with an updated chart but the key levels to watch will be around 12,098 first, and if that falls, down in the 11,800 kind of range, and once that fails (if indeed it does) then "Katie bar the door..." as Robin put it.

 

Our deteriorating future, meantime, is becoming rapidly apparent in headlines

that are making the rounds prior to the unemployment report tomorrow.  We're all set for a fine fairytale there because I'm seeing stories like "More job seekers give up, reducing unemployment."

 

If I were of a conspiratorial bent, I'd come up with some wise-ass remark like "This is classic marketing 203:  seed the market to precondition people for the "sales pitch" to follow.

 

In other words:  I expect an improvement in the unemployment numbers tomorrow, not because things will have gotten better, but already in advance I'm seeing advice to look at the number of "discouraged workers" who've just given the hell up, and are off into mooch-mode or the underground economy and therefore won't count.

 

Neat way to explain cognitive dissonance which happens when you have 20 friends, 10 of them are unemployed and another one just got pink-slipped and you're thinking the unemployment rate is going up.  No, the PowersThatBe are just saying they may not count those people who aren't actively looking anymore.

 

So while the drooling lefties are claiming to be improving the country, the rabid right is pitching in to even more totally F/U the situation by stealing money from unemployment comp and handing it over as still more tax breaks to business like that's going to feed people and reducing the number of weeks of total unemployment comp.

 

Which, as you know, makes it that much faster to manufacturer disposable people.  Which, since corpgov runs both troughs that the politiphiles feed at (republicorp or democorp) results in the continuing concentration of wealth in the hands of the tax-advantaged few while maintaining the useful right/left mantra which makes MainStreammedia pretty much worthless.

 

(As I started off this morning my blood pressure was 118 over 81 but now that I'm squirting blood out of my eyes while I type, I should just chill or switch to decaf, I 'spose.)

 

And word that the Student Loan Bomb is going off later this year, which may limit access to financial aid, means the 'free ride' in higher education may be over this fall, too.  In previous Depressions, there had been a "new frontier" where people could be usefully applied and a wise person in the 1930's would have gone to school to become and engineer or lawyer.

 

This Depression is different (still not called one yet, except around here mostly, where we marked its onset in the Spring of 2000 when the market hit its all-time high on a purchasing power parity basis).  There's no obvious way to keep the growing population growing, so here come the rads, and did I mention gas rationing as the economy implodes? 

 

It's only a matter of time till Israel pops Iran and that ,will fit into the PTB agenda nicely, reducing the number of humans further if there's a big release of plutonium.

 

The CNBC  headline "Horror for US Economy as Data Falls off Cliff" references the wrong Clif but the rest of it seems right....

 

And the gloomy prospects for reg'lar workin' foke are apparent when you read things like "The Evolving Structure of the American Economy and the Employment Challenge" off the Council on Foreign Relations website. If you can manage 55-pages of attention, see if you're job /class survives.

 

Of course, what I found interesting was a search for the word "disorder" in this CFR doc. didn't find any occurrences which is 5 shares of interesting, since I don't see how we can get glum about the economic prospects of Americans working and not remember that in the last Depression, people 'took it to the streets'.  Still, worth reading as one aspect/attribute assessment. 

 

Note that policy-types seem drawn to bounded thinking.  So what's been GlobalRev around here since the get-go is tidied up as MENA (Middle East/North Africa) in foreign policy which doesn't explain dancing at the monument and busts by the park service, or the mass uprisings in eastern Europe, yada, yada, but bounded thinking preserves 'comfort zones' and perpetuates the illusion of control.

 

Which is no longer in the house, but WTF, others are kinda slow getting it.

 

Don't mean to sound depressing, pissy and gloomy (DPG we'll call it) but like Mulder said "The Truth is out there." And, until the crack attack on the rickety time machine, looked like it was due to drop by between the Solstice to Equinox to kick our ass.

 

We've been heralding the Second Depression since 2000 when it started as the modern analog to the Roaring Twenties (the Internet /VC Bubble) popped.  I've been a nutjob, marginalized ever since 9/11 which was the first "instant fix" applied.

 

Now, stories that we're on the verge of a great, great depression (See: "Wall Street baffled by slowing Economy, low yields: Trader") may seem surprising by some.

 

All depends on how much of that alternate-reality Kool-Aid you've downed.

 

I suppose I shouldn't bitch.  My portfolio, heavily bearish, was up 9.38% yesterday, after being down 3½ percent the day before.

 

I think the Wednesday market session did answer one thing:  It's the market participants that are crooked/baked/smoked/vaped/tranks/wonky as much as anything.

 

Pagin' Contagion!

In Asia overnight, the Chinese market dropped 1.58%, Japan was down almost 1.7% and in EuroLand, The City was down 3/4's of a percent while the more realistic Germans and French were down more than one percent each.

 

The folks at Moody's have raised the odds on Greece defaulting, which comes as no surprise.

 

Data to Mull

Weekly Jobs report's just out:

In the week ending May 28, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 422,000, a decrease of 6,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 428,000. The 4-week moving average was 425,500, a decrease of 14,000 from the previous week's revised average of 439,500.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.0 percent for the week ending May 21, unchanged from the prior week's revised rate of 3.0 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending May 21 was 3,711,000, a decrease of 1,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,712,000. The 4-week moving average was 3,737,750, a decrease of 10,000 from the preceding week's revised average of 3,747,750.

Next, we slide to the BLS Productivity report, also out within the past half-hour:

Nonfarm business sector labor productivity increased at a 1.8 percent annual rate during the first quarter of 2011, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The gain in productivity reflects increases of 3.2 percent in output and 1.4 percent in hours worked. (All quarterly percent changes in this release are seasonally adjusted annual rates.) From the first quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of 2011, output increased 3.2 percent while hours rose 1.9 percent, yielding an increase in productivity of 1.3 percent. (See tables A and 2.)

Labor productivity, or output per hour, is calculated by dividing an index of real output by an index of hours worked of all persons, including employees, proprietors, and unpaid family workers.

Unit labor costs in nonfarm businesses rose 0.7 percent in the first quarter of 2011, as a 2.5 percent increase in hourly compensation outpaced the 1.8 percent gain in productivity. Unit labor costs also rose 0.7 percent from the same quarter a year ago. (See tables A and 2.) In the first quarter of 2011, the consumer price series increased at a 5.3 percent annual rate, resulting in a decline of 2.6 percent in real hourly compensation.

BLS defines unit labor costs as the ratio of hourly compensation to labor productivity; increases in hourly compensation tend to increase unit labor costs and increases in output per hour tend to reduce them. Real hourly compensation is equal to hourly compensation divided by the consumer price series.

Factory orders will be out around 10 Eastern, but for now, the futures point to a dead cat bounce today, which means we might make it back to about where the market closed last Friday, 12,441.58 which would be as good a dart-throw as any.

 

As usual, this is not investment advice of any sort whatsoever.  We're talking darts and I'm lucky to hit the broad side of the barn.

 

Picture This! Dept.

We Have a Weiner?

The question of the day is whether the pictures of representative Anthony Weiner circ'ing on the 'net are his....private parts...or a photochop.  But it'd be nice to get straight (lol, poor pun, sorry) answers instead of essay-length talk-arounds, noted a reader.  Wouldn't it, though?

 

Why We'll Drive

A Texas woman got a $2,350 settlement from TSA after her breasts were exposed in a "vigorous frisking" at a Texas airport.

---

The least TSA could do would be put in a bar, soft lights and mood music for such occasions...I'll drive or walk, but I'm sure the restrictions on travel meme will get there, too.  It already has on I-10 and I-20, of course.  But that don't matter to the Right Coasties who live in the fin-bubble.

 

Driving Through Tennessee

STILL haven't heard back from the Tennessee Tourism people about my questions about how much cash a tourist could carry without running afoul local gendarmes drug/cash searches on local freeways.  Travelers checks and plastic for us, though...

 

But here's one more reason I'm worried about driving through TN: Sharing a NetFlix of Rhapsody password in that state may soon be a crime!

 

Still, Tennessee may be on to the coming Global Economic Solution:  have one half the population get locked up, hire the other half to guard them, and have government agents confiscate everyone's money.

 

Cool.   gotta get me some of those high boots and a brown shirt. 

 

Makes Me Wanna Cuke

"Spain threatens tro sue Hamburg over cucumber slur."

 

This leaves German politicians in a pickle...

 

Coping: Compacting Knowledge & Action

Had a great conversation with a consulting client yesterday, and after my notes on brevity in writing, when the client said something to the effect "...you're going to write this up and send it along..." I decided to do a graphic, since a picture tells a thousand words and often more.

 

Which gets me back to a familiar discussion area:  Compacting meaning and knowledge.

 

One of the most useful tools ever continues to be Inspiration 9 (About $50) which is a simple-to-use program which allows you to dash out business ideas and toss them around as work plans or flow diagrams.  No, it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Microsoft Visio Standard 2007 Version Upgrade [Old Version]  (About $110) or the newest  NEW Visio Premium 2010 (Software) (just over one kilobuck) but since it was designed for grade-schoolers, Inspiration takes about 2-minutes to learn and should someone ever want to use the diagram as a basis of writing verbose descriptions the product collapses the diagram labels into an outline which then pops into Word (or for the cost-conscious, OpenOffice).

 

Another organizer/knowledge tool of interest is Post-It Digital Notes.  One of the reasons I have four screens with data sliding everywhere is so I can multitask more effectively and my Post-It notes can be set to pop up on any of the computers around the ranch if I were ever to get that diligent.

---

Another thing I'm working on is a compact collection of the right books going into possible global socioeconomic collapse.  Since we're at the end period of nonlinear growth meets planetary limits, I figure the money invested now will serve me (should I live so long) or my kids & heirs, if not.

 

I'll be putting that list together, probably as a Peoplenomics report, but a fine starting place is collecting "rules of thumb" books.

 

Yeah, sure I have the more or less complete library of military home / distant study courses - a good investment and not too expensive in electronic format, but in event of real collapse, where's the power to run a PC going to come from?

 

So, I'm collecting real paper book.  Just about to run me out of my office, but most of the basics of medicine (including communicable diseases) are there, along with construction shop practice, farming (cup o' compost tea?) and a reader donated collection of the earliest issues of Mother Earth News.

 

Anyway, something to think about:  If everything were to fail, assuming you have a steady eye, high ground, and defensible perimeters, food, water, meds and so forth, there's nothing like knowledge and the most portable/compact form I've seen are the "rules of thumb" books.

 

 Pocket Ref 4th Edition (About $10) is the best all-round one I've gotten so far

 but my copy of  Handyman In-Your-Pocket ($10.30) hasn't arrived yet.

 

Some "rules of thumb books" sound mighty damn interesting, like Rules of Thumb for Chemical Engineers, Fourth Edition. My problem is that one didn't sound $100 worth of interesting.

 

Art Parma's Pilot's rules of thumb: Rules of thumb, easy aviation math, handy formulas, quick tips ($8) is a flyer's gem.  Provided you remember the cosine of the runway heading, from memory.  Most planes I fly don't come with cosine tables, but I'm gonna have to remember to bring them so I can use one of the navigation 'short cuts'.

 

Tomorrow: Monthly quake data, unemployment and a less cynical George.

 

Or not...

 

---

June 1, 2011

Market: Crazy or Manipulated?

Time to get out the ViseGrips in the wake of the market's rally Tuesday.  Oh sure, a 25-50 point rise after making it through a three day weekend might have been  reasonable, but 128?  Ha!  Let's review how crappy the economic outlook really is:

• The Case Shiller/S&P housing numbers put us back at 2002 housing prices and that alone should have caused the market to do no better than break even for the day.  Deflation vs. denial.

• Then there was the cratering of consumer confidence - at a six month low - another real bummer which should have caused the stock tout crowd to at least admit there's no prospect of rapidly rising earnings just now - and with so many people homeless, down trending looks more likely to us...

• Cellphones got labeled possible cancer-causers, and since one of the finest scheme to shear poor people's meager incomes from them is to sell 'em huge gobs of airtime, that in a more realistic economy should have trashed markets globally.

But did it?  Hell no.  We ponder why that might be...

 

Maybe it was the anticipation of monthly inflows from the auto-investing robo-workers, or maybe some quasi-gov't agency is buying stocks through offshore proxies again, there's just no telling.  Besides, what's wrong with the US buying the US's debt, besides the circular reference of it all?

 

Tuesday's gain was a sobering reminder to those of us who are honest bears  (who think the rally was just the kiss of the underside of an ascending trend line that's been broken) that it takes nerves of steel and an ability to suck it up in the face of martkets exhibiting record level of "irrational."

---

One reason cited by financial pundits Tuesday was the prospect of a bailout deal on Greece.  But, go look at the problems of Greece as summed up in the Robert Samuelson piece in this morning's Washington Post and words like ""...Europe is staring into the abyss..." again should be sobering.  Just not on Tuesday.

 

I spent to time on the phone with Clif High who's predictive linguistics forecasts have another big market nosedive peeking out or computer modelspace later this year and no, as a junior time monk I'm sworn to secrecy until the June report comes out, but here are two morsels to munch with your Wheaties:

 

First is the question of global financial contagion.  In an internationally linked system of markets (which implies the possibility of massively correlated hyper-volatility events, or MCHVE) why would anyone plugged into the global markets think the US or Asian blocks could survive an utter meltdown of the E.U. pyramid scheme of more unelected layers of government than a birthday cake unscathed?

 

Second: With more than 10 percent of American's taking anti-depressants, about 31-million worth, and now with  even children under six reportedly being drugged, too, we have two further problems to consider going forward.

 

One is we're already seeing good 'linguistic fill" on the [drug shortages] of earlier Shape of Things to Come reports with all kinds of headlines popping (link).

 

Since there's no way in hell that 31-million adults, plus who knows how many six year olds can all go through treatment as a single cohort, you should be scared spitless of the potential outbursts of drug withdrawal violence that would logically accompany drug shortages when we run short of (gulp...) anti-depressants.

 

Then there's the other problem:  Is there some kind of flicker vertigo analog in human consciousness that works in concert with serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRI's) to modify normal consciousness?

 

Problem I see is that "good science" when pushing this drug, or that, involves itself in single variable justifications.  Actual drug for this group, placebo for that group.  Results to the FDA and after a few cursory glances back come keys to the printing press and corporate drug money is made hand-over-fit. 

 

But don't you suppose that there's a whole range of environmental multivariates which ought to be studied, too?  Maybe in total isolation, SRI's work fine, but SRI's are used "in the wild".  So where's the work on the combination of SRI's, flicker input to the visual cortex [see: PubMed: "Flicker illness: an under recognized but preventable complication of helicopter transport"] and pushed along with pulsed RF from, oh, lemme see, cellphones?

 

There is no, at least any I've seen.

 

"George, there's no mass riding of helicopters, so stop whining about flicker vertigo..."

 

Right.  You ever look at the refresh rate of full 1080 HD screens?  Remember the Japanese kids who were sickened in 3D game testing?  You miss the 3D gaming warnings?  Now toss in SRI's to the mix and tell me there's not a pile-on effect, just like drugs used in combination can have devastating effects. 

 

Meaning: Right in front of us a cleaving of the mass consciousness may be underway.

 

But don't worry about it - it will stay a matter of [informed] speculation since it'll never be tested in "clean" research report because there's just too damn much money involved.  Industry's got too much of an interest in keeping you in "pill health."

 

And besides, if the second consciousness group (C2's) are still buying their doggy downers, making momentum trades, pouring money into their not-yet-confiscated 401(k)'s, what's the issue?

 

Well, except for the markets acting even more irrational than usual, I suppose there is none. 

 

As a bewildered bear it sure explains the developing gap between the aware/undrugged/unplugged and the over-connected/doped up/screen monkeys who just might be the fill set for the linguistic predictions of "drooling masses" later on when drug supply chains dry up and global events get even more chaotic.  Think of that future as the next level up from "Shock & Awe"  - catatonic from cognitive dissonance as a sufficiency narrowed worldview fails to cope.  Lock up.

 

Maybe...just maybe...the casino down on Wall St. is honest.  Maybe it's the players who are the problem.  Maybe it's always been that way.  Trank me.

 

Another Day, Another Stat

Actually, a bunch of them.  Let's begin with the look-ahead job reports.  First out this morning was the Challenger job report:

CHICAGO, June 1, 2011 – The pace of downsizing remained virtually unchanged in May, as U.S. employers announced plans to cut 37,135 positions from their payrolls during the month. That is just 1.8 percent more than the 36,490 job cuts in April, according to the report released Wednesday by global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.

 

The May total was also about the same as a year ago, declining just 4.3 percent from the 38,810 job cuts announced in May 2010. May marks the third time this year and the tenth time in the last 14 months that announced job cuts totaled less than 40,000.

 

Employers have now announced 204,374 job cuts in 2011, 21 percent fewer than the 258,319 planned layoffs reported in the first five months of 2010.

Then we move on to the ADP Employment report:

"Employment in the nonfarm private business sector rose 38,000 from April to May on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the latest ADP National Employment Report® released today. The estimated change of employment from March 2011 to April 2011 was revised down slightly to 177,000 from the previously reported increase of 179,000.

 

Today’s ADP National Employment Report suggests that employment growth slowed sharply in May. Employment in the nonfarm private-business sector rose 38,000 from April to May on a seasonally adjusted basis.

 

A deceleration in employment, while disappointing, is not entirely surprising. In the first quarter, GDP grew at only a 1.8% rate and only about 2¼% over the last four quarters. This is below most economists’ estimate of the economy’s potential growth rate and normally would be associated with very weak growth of employment.

 

May’s ADP Report estimates employment in the service-providing sector rose by 48,000, marking 17 consecutive months of employment gains while employment in the goods-producing sector fell 10,000 following six months of increases. Manufacturing employment fell 9,000 in May following seven consecutive monthly gains."

Wrap iot up in yesterday's housing double dip and things feel less than chipper. 

 

The government figures on payrolls will come out on Friday and it's always Marquis de Statistics trying to figure out how the three sets of data could possibly be looking at the same cohorts. 

 

Which explains why Elaine and I are blowing town for a weekend up in Branson, Missouri as soon as the government figures come out Friday.  Maybe a couple of shows and meals out will improve my outlook. 

 

DSK and Missing Gold

Several readers have asked me to comment on the report that the jailed ex IMF boss was popped for discovering the US gold stores are gone.

 

No need to comment.  Old reporters know that "No comment" means "Got me!" when a newsmaker dodges a simple, direct question.

 

Near as I can tell, financial institutions which say "No audit" are really saying the same thing.

 

Which is why I'll be you dollars to doughnuts there will never be an audit of the gold holdings in Fort Knox.  I mean of the sort that drills random bars and such.

 

The Wages of Sin Dept.

New Jersey residents have a chance to get rid of governor Christie who cut huge corporate tax breaks earlier this year. That is, if they can somehow get him to take the payback for such larges as the monied backers are trying to get him on the ballot as a presidential wannabe in Iowa.

 

Meantime, we notice that Texas' guv Rick Perry has vetoed a bill related to online sales tax collection from outfits like Amazon. Which I'm confident will boost his campaign fund-raising.

 

Again: eBay is better suited to running America, since those of us with less than a million or two have become completely irrelevant to how the country's run. Reserve price has just gotten too high.

 

See You In September

NATO has extended its "mission in Libya" till at least September.  Never let a good war go to waste, says I.

 

Wag that dog, argggh...

 

Yemen Worries

Massive fighting reported in Sanaa overnight.

 

Vaping Of Europe

Remember that nasty "restrictions on travel" meme?  It's back as the "Dutch government to ban tourists from cannabis shops."

 

Next thing you know, they'll ban touristas from the porn district and then they'll have no tourism at all.

 

I'm giving up Gouda cheese in protest.

 

EuroCrap

All kinds of gastrointestinal issues with 365 new e. coli cases popping up in Germany.  16 deaths from this so far and now the authorities aren't sure if it's poisoned cucumbers or something else...

 

I'm giving up on fresh produce, in case.

 

Last Shuttle

The touchdown of Endeavour ends the shuttle program.  But two further thoughts.

 

#1: I predict the shuttle will be brought our of retirement so some yet unforeseen mission.  bet me?

 

#2:  If the Navy puts ships in mothballs wouldn't NASA use mathballs?

 

 

(more after this...)

 

 

 

Coping: With the Decline of Civilization

The number of page views of www.urbansurvival.com on Memorial Day was 44,172 down 4.1% from 2010's page views for the holiday of 46,061.  There's a bad message in there.

 

If I were in the newspaper business, about here I'd be calling for staff meetings, hiring circulation consultants, running focus groups 24/7 to tweak page layout, cutting staff, using more freelancers, going to even thinner paper, and even smudgier ink.

 

Fortunately, around here, much cooler heads prevail (mine) sine I recently installed my latest "do it yourself" summer haircut which is remarkably similar to a cue ball.

 

Part of the reason for lower readership this holiday was that much of the country was not able to read my site.  One reason I was so anxious to see my son go help out as an EMT in Joplin Missouri's clean-up was so that the 211 readers from that area would get back online and start reading my columns again.

 

If he's not too busy, I'd like him to help out in northern Alabama for a while, too, since about 163 readers are still offline there.

 

Thanks to the marvels of drill-down reports, I can honestly say world conditions changing has led to a good part of our traffic decline.  In May of 2010 Russian readers consumed 17,908 pages while this May, Russian readers only viewed 4,794 pages.

 

Our readership in France is about half of what it was a year ago, 7,761 pages there for the month versus 14,104 in 2010.  But sure as some countries drop, other arise.  Australian readership was up 30.2%. 

 

Here again, we note that readership was down in New Zealand from 6,157 pages last May  to just 5,965 page views this May.  I'm assuming that's because not all Christchurch readers are back online.

 

Ecuador readership is up an astounding 44%, no doubt because our friends Dr. John and others are spreading the rumor that there are still a few rational thinkers in North America; curious skepticism is a good traffic-building approach.

 

Last May we dished up 2,496 pages to Japanese readers.  This month the answer is near enough zero that it didn't even register.

 

India readership was down 8.6%.  Obviously, this means that the rate of job growth in India must be about 8.6% to account for people not having the time to read these columns.  My, doesn't jobjacking pay handsomely?

 

To be sure, American readership was down a tad, when all the smoke cleared.  But once again, the answers are simple and in plain sight.  Folks don't want to spend too much time looking the unblemished truth in the face; it's just not fun.

 

Like it or not, president Obama is a shoo-in for a second term, cash is going away, freedoms will continue to erode, and gas rationing will be here within a year and other things people don't want to think about. 

 

I lent out my copy of Joseph Tainter's "Collapse of Complex Societies" but I've read it enough times to be reminded that one of the easy metrics of global systemic collapse might very well be a decline of internet use, as in Joplin and other disaster-hit regions.  Japan, for instance, but toss in Syria, Iran, Egypt, Libya and on and on....

 

Discounting the equally frightening prospect that the number of literate people in the world has now peaked and is entering decline helps only a bit. 

 

Still, I'll compulsively say it again:  The Good Old Days have been & gone and the global future isn't going to feature much human equality, so much as corporate feudalism based on differential wage rates, against a backdrop of resource depletion, earth changes, and pollution from both chemical and radiological sources.

 

Who'd want to face that kind of bummer face-on? Simple answer:  4.1% fewer people this year than last.  Traumatic Stress I think it's called.

 

Or, denial for short.

 

Tuning the "Interesting Index"

A couple of readers caught the math error in our Interesting Index proposed in Tuesday's report.  Typical:

"Consider this:

Lived in 36 places * 02 countries = 72

72 * 21 jobs = 1512

1512 * 0 kids = 0

I have not yet been born. Hmmmmm...."

Good observation!  Another reader write in "What about us bachelors?"  So, we revise the formula to:

 

(1+ #kids) X (cities) X (countries) X (trades/jobs) = Interesting Index.

 

We also had some discussion about whether marriages ought to count.  Since Elaine and I have both been previously married (2X each).  But the problem comes up when people get up into five or six marriages - and beyond.

 

Way we figure it, about one marriage per 20-years is reasonable since people, like wine, seem to change over time.  On t'other hand, if someone's 50 and is onto their 5th or 6th marriage, it could indicate a serious learning disability, although that gets my math-head testing thoughts like...

  ..... IF (age/20) is ≥ ∑ marriage 1...marriage n and IF L_s ≠  hetro, then substitute ∑ relationship 1...relationship n if  t≥ 1-year....   ...and everyone starts to glaze over...WTF?

 

So now that the use cases have gone forth and multiplied I now have to toss out the formulistic version of the Interesting Index, as another one of those million dollar ideas that sounds oh, so very nice on the surface but then sinks in a sea of conditional complexities when taken to wide application.

 

Damn. Now I'm back to subjectively liking people, or not, (which depends on who's picking up the tab, or if no tab, then a random number generator works) and that's not replicable ...which ultimately explains why the world is a mess. 

 

But at least we're clearer on that point.

---

Elaine meantime, has continued going back through cities she's lived in, with her total now up to 38. Which brings her revised "Interesting Index" (adding X # marriages) up t0 14,364 before the unofficial  "cute blonde" or "massage therapist" bonus points.

 

My Index is stuck at 3,888 which makes Elaine 3.7 times more interesting than me, which seems to square up with field observations in group interactions.

 

Toward Better Writing

"You've got to stop using DragonSpeaking - your columns are just too wordy."

 

It was my coauthor Howard Hill on the line dropping another hint about verbosity.

 

"Howard, I don't use DragonSpeaking for anything except emails, in fact haven't even charged up the headset for six months..." I quickly explained.

 

"You mean you write all that with your fingers?"

 

"Well, yeah, of course..."

 

A short discussion of writing for column inches, or desired page length, brevity and other nebulous concepts followed, at the end of which I placated Howard by promising to work harder on sharpening my writing skills.  That seemed to satisfy him.

 

What I didn't reveal is it’s not on my schedule until mid 2017.  In the meantime, one of the joys of pushing electrons instead of cutting down trees and buying smudgy ink is that online columns don't have to fit into X column inches.

 

Not that I wouldn't love to be a newspaperman someday, mind you.  It's just the Nature Conservancy or the Sierra Club might have a problem with it:  There there simple aren't enough trees.

 

Reporting celebrity Z got popped on a DWI can be done briefly enough.  But incredibly complex economic stories of the sort we cover here, forecasts, prognostications and accompanying political blather,  are best served up with a little scene-setting.  Think of it as a kind of foreplay since most economic stories end at the same place: “BOHICA.”

 

Before I can transition to writing on paper products, economic editors need to invent the written analog to AstroGlide and put it in a style book. 

 

Till then  I’m not verbose.  I’m a gentleman, or nearly so.

 

Send Ure comments to george@ure.net

---

Tuesday May 31, 2011

Housing Data

Just released by Case Shiller/S&P the 20-City Housing Numbers:

"Data through March 2011, released today by Standard & Poor’s for its S&P/Case-Shiller1 Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, show that the U.S. National Home Price Index declined by 4.2% in the first quarter of 2011, after having fallen 3.6% in the fourth quarter of 2010. The National Index hit a new recession low with the first quarter’s data and posted an annual decline of 5.1% versus the first quarter of 2010. Nationally, home prices are back to their mid-2002 levels.

As of March 2011, 19 of the 20 MSAs covered by S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices and both monthly composites were down compared to March 2010. Twelve of the 20 MSAs and the 20-City Composite also posted new index lows in March. With an index value of 138.16, the 20-City Composite fell below its earlier reported April 2009 low of 139.26. Minneapolis posted a double-digit 10.0% annual decline, the first market to be back in this territory since March 2010 when Las Vegas was down 12.0% on an annual basis. In the midst of all these falling prices and record lows, Washington DC was the only city where home prices increased on both a monthly (+1.1%) and annual (+4.3%) basis. Seattle was up a modest 0.1% for the month, but still down 7.5% versus March 2010."

 

The chart depicts the annual returns of the U.S. National, the 10-City Composite and the 20-City Composite Home Price Indices. The S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, which covers all nine U.S. census divisions, recorded a 5.1% decline in the first quarter of 2011 over the first quarter of 2010. In March, the 10- and 20-City Composites posted annual rates of decline of 2.9% and 3.6%, respectively. Thirteen of the 20 MSAs and both monthly Composites saw their annual growth rates fall deeper into negative territory in March. While they did not worsen, Chicago, Phoenix and Seattle saw no improvement in their respective annual rates.

“This month’s report is marked by the confirmation of a double-dip in home prices across much of the nation. The National Index, the 20-City Composite and 12 MSAs all hit new lows with data reported through March 2011. The National Index fell 4.2% over the first quarter alone, and is down 5.1% compared to its year-ago level. Home prices continue on their downward spiral with no relief in sight.” says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Indices. “Since December 2010, we have found an increasing number of markets posting new lows. In March 2011, 12 cities - Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Portland (OR) and Tampa - fell to their lowest levels as measured by the current housing cycle. Washington D.C. was the only MSA displaying positive trends with an annual growth rate of +4.3% and a 1.1% increase from its February level.

“The rebound in prices seen in 2009 and 2010 was largely due to the first-time home buyers tax credit. Excluding the results of that policy, there has been no recovery or even stabilization in home prices during or after the recent recession. Further, while last year saw signs of an economic recovery, the most recent data do not point to renewed gains.

“Looking deeper into the monthly data, 18 MSAs and both Composites were down in March over February. The only two which weren’t, are Washington DC, up 1.1%, and Seattle, up 0.1%. Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit and Las Vegas are the markets where average home prices are now below their January 2000 levels. With a March index level of 100.27, Phoenix is not far off.”

o, not only do we seem to be stuck in a jobless recovery, but deflation of housing prices is solidly underway.

 

The market, which had looked to open higher before this announcement will likely face a headwind now...

 

Russian Rate Move

Wondering why your bank if paying a lousy 1/4 percent interest?  Well, Russia has raised rates to 3½ as they're trying to stay ahead of inflation.

 

My, what a novel idea, huh?  Don't suppose anyone here would figure that out, do you?

 

Barack Woods

I notices where president Obama was able to get in his 70th round of golf yesterday.

 

That works out to every other weekend since taking office, or thereabouts.

 

Out in the outback, I've been so busy it's been about three years since I dumped the spiders out of the bag and headed over to Pine Dunes.  Obviously I'm either working too hard, or the guy in the White House is....well, let's not go there.

 

I've publicly offered to pay for a president round of golf at the local club three times now.  Frankly, I'm giving up asking.  I can take a hint.

 

Life in the Police State

Couldn't help noticing that Iran's PressTV picked up the InfoWars story "Big sis pre-crime system to scan Americans for 'Malintent.'

 

Of course, how long Iranian packets will continue reporting what the MSM in America are burying is an interesting question, since as Antifascist Calling reports, it's "Back from the Dead: the Internet Kill Switch" which is why I keep telling you to store numeric IP addresses and remember the UrbanSurvival SSL layer is https://www.urbansurvival.com and Peoplenomics is at https://www.peoplenomics.com. 

 

I figure the kill switch may leave SSL sites turned on in order to preserve online commerce.  Because if that's not left on, you'd see some mighty big names with mighty deep pockets getting guess which kind of angry?  Besides, how many blogs have SSL layers installed?  Presto: Most opposition to global insanity is shut off...make new SSL layer's an administrative nightmare...oh this is too good. I should be charging for such advice.

 

Iran's Double Dealings

While Iran's taking every 4Gen potshot they can think of and turning it West, we noticed the report last week that "Watchdog finds evidence that Iran worked on nuclear triggers."

 

Naturally, this threw Iran into BCM (butt covering mode) with headlines about that "Iran says nuclear bomb would be 'strategic mistake." And that - in turn - has generated headlines like the J-Post note: "Ya'alon: Military strike may be needed to stop Iran nukes."

 

Great!  Why with the Pacific already near glowing, what's another nuclear mess for the world to cope with? I oughta be designing Geiger counters.  Seems like an up & comer and sooner than later.

 

Presume you saw where Germany is planning to "abandon nuclear power by 2022"? And if solar, wind, and hydro dreams fail, there's always Bonn fires...

 

GlobalRev Notes

Everything from people rebelling onboard a jetliner at Heathrow after a seven hour delay, to a gun battle on Miami's South Beach, to what?  Killer cucumbers snuff 14?

 

Did I, or did I not tell you: World's in a terrible pickle?

 

Ifd you're looking for a place to sit out the next three or four years, as the collapse of complex societies gets really organized, we notice that Canada is #8 in this year's "Global Peace Index - interactive map here.

 

Iran came in at #119, Israel at #145, so that's simmering along with Mexico's slow-motion drugvolution landing our porous border pals at #121.

 

Japan is #3 in the Global Peace Index and sounds good on the surface, but the index isn't weighted for radiation, near as we could tell.

 

Our own U.S. came in at #82, peace-wise, with countries like Brazil (#74) and Argentina (#55) ahead of us.

 

Denmark is #4, so all the butter, hams, and pastries seem to make for a peaceful state.  Colombia is down at #139, so too much coffee, perhaps.

 

New Zealand, is #2 peace-wise, so again, an ag rich country.  And their survey this year picked Iceland as the #1 most peaceful place.  Mighty fine evidence that a country can buck the global banking system and remain at peace.  Now, if they could just work up some warm palm tree lined beaches...

 

(more after this...)

 

 

Coping: The "Interesting Index"

Elaine & I take begin what will be about 5,200 miles spread over 20 days of driving, transiting enough states to develop butt calluses, and staying in a variety of circumstances.  If you perceive there's a difference between the Detroit Westin and a small motel in Gallup, NM, for example.

 

Trip One is to Branson, Missouri this weekend to look over what's five hours up the road from us in the way of entertainment.   We'll see if the town's dried out, but not too much so. And one of Elaine's boys has 40 (organic) acres and a mule team to work it.

 

Trip Two is to the National Society of Newspaper Columnists convention in Detroit  mid-June .  Ostensibly this is an attempt to reform my bad habit of never proofreading anything except bills and tax documents.

 

Along the way we're planning on Nashville, Oak Ridge, Dayton, Chicago, plus wherever else we 'run outa steam' which usually coincides with dinner time.

 

By the way, I never heard back from the Tennessee Tourism Office about those police searches for cash that were reported on Nashville TV a while back.  I'll risk it it, though, since there aren't too many other ways to get to Detroit short of the grope & cope at the airport.

 

Trip Three comes in mid-July when Elaine's class reunion in the Arizona high country takes place and from there, we're on see kids near Delta, Colorado with maybe a stop for the Durango and Silverton Railroad, if I can get our schedule to hold still long enough to make a reservation.

 

Naturally, all of this travel has me figuring how much time to efficiently spend with the new people we'll be meeting.  I'm just busting with pride today to unveil my soon-to-be-patented Interesting People Index.  It's sure to change the social fabric of America for the better.

 

Here's how it works:  I figure that how 'interesting' a person is has a lot to do with how much they have actually done in life.  Which set me to working  on measurable metrics that I could apply to people we meet along the way. 

 

In particularly, the metrics have to be non-obvious, since the last time I started a conversation off with "Say, you're not going to bore me, are you?" I wore a drink home.  Fortunately, I've learned a lot about behavior in the four decades since that learning moment.

 

My new technique is a very simple formula:

 

Numbers of kids times number of cities lived in, times number of countries lived in, times number of different jobs held  all equals some number.

 

This is the "The Interesting Index."

 

In my case, it pushes like this:  Lived in nine cities, if I count a remote military site, fathered three kids, lived in two countries, and held 18 trades.  DJ, R&E mechanic, library worker, airline VP, yada, yada.  This makes my "Interesting Index" score 972.

 

Elaine has lived in 31 cities, six boys, two countries and times nine trades which pushes her "Interesting Index" up to 3,348.  Since most men find her way more interesting than me, I suspect there may also be a hidden variable; blonde bonus points, or good figure points to work into the Index.

 

There's not much math to this and it can be gathered in polite company.  Usual social chit-chat can be quantitatively analyzed.  I mean if moon phases and stock market moves can be, why not?

---

I ran this by my friend Jeff. who dropped by a piece of ham radio gear Monday. and he raised a good question:  What if someone is a real expert in a particular field and has remained in it for 25-year, or longer?

 

Hmmm....Simple:  Count each 5-years of employment as a different trade. My business logic is impeckerble on this:  The first five years are spent learning a new job.  The second five years are spent trying to keep it and avoid the layoff monster.

 

The third five years are spent gunning for that person who tried to get you fired in the first 10-years.

 

By then, into the fourth five years, you have to relearn the whole job from the ground up since all the technology has changed by then.  And the cycle repeats, although you can bet virtually no one you started working with will still be around 20-years into it.

 

The next problem was Big City versus Small Town scaling.

 

"Might work on a sophisticated group columnists in Detroit," I heard my friend thinking "But what about in uphill Arizona?" 

 

Fair point: The Interesting Index rewards the tumbleweeds and Jacks (or Jills) of all trades in life.  Did I mentioned Elaine's handy with a gas welding rig? 

 

Just then, further inspiration arrived: "Why not a reciprocal of the index?"  Genius!  Although, not mine.

 

Suppose I go to the reunion and can't find a 600 or higher Index person to talk with?  A person who has two kids, one country of residence, three trades and has lived in one city their whole life would have an Interesting Index of just 6.

 

But with the reciprocal, that'd be a (calculator, please?) 0.166 which is a much bigger number than my reciprocal of 972 which is.... 0.0012088065843621 (roughly).

 

Since we've already had the good sense to flee the city and corporate rat race, we should really be more interested in the lowest index, i.e. the biggest reciprocal index people.  Simplicity has value.

 

Either way, our travels this summer should yield valuable data.  I figure the odds of wearing a drink are small with this ploy, and besides: if I haul out a calculator after asking "How many cities have you lived in?" folks will just assume I'm either an accountant, actuary, compulsive texter, or plain crazy.

 

No matter: All this makes my Interesting Index  theory so, you know... interesting.

 

Helping in Joplin: Part 7

George II reported in dead tired this morning after his overnight EMT shift in Joplin where he's been helping with tornado relief.  Been there six days and in that time has managed to pull two 24-hour rotations and four 12-hour stints...  I'm cautioning him on burn-out.  That's when mistakes happen, and don't want that. 

 

I Sit Corrected

Several people wrote in that I should properly call residents of Vermont, "Vermonters" not Vermontans or Vermontians.

 

I'll give in on this one, but people from Maine are still Maniacs.

 

Around the Ranch: Amber Waves, and All

So well-versed is our other Reader in the polite ways of the Texas outback, that a definition was offered for Oilman2, who's about to close (he hopes) on a 20-acre patch of dirt near Crockett, Texas.

 

"Know what you call it when you drive by someone on one of our back roads and they don't wave back?"

 

I give up.

 

"A drive-by snooting..."

 

 

Send Ure comments to george@ure.net

---

Last week's report is always here.

 

---

Monday May 30, 2011

Waiting For a Big Quake?

Earthquakes sometimes  almost seem to have a preference for holidays.  Examples like the 1964 Good Friday quake in Alaska and the Boxing Day tsunami in Banda Aceh are just two examples that come to mind.  (Not bad considering it's a holiday morning).

 

Our reason for being "en garde" is that looking at the publicly viewable magnetometer array at the University of Alaska's High Altitude Auroral Research Program (HAARP) we see that there have been some very serious 'hits' to the magnetosphere with a peak deflection around 08:00 UTC on May 28 and a secondary hit about 09:00 UTC on the 29th.

 

All of which is not to claim that HAARP is causative, the theory of Dr. Fran Acquino ["High-power ELF radiation generated by modulated HF heating of the ionosphere can cause Earthquakes, Cyclones and localized heating"]  aside, and especially ignoring the complex modulation waveforms which are used by HAARP which are often questioned as whether a complex modulation wave-front could mimic ELF in the 2.5 Hz range.

 

No, instead we'll leave that for brighter minds than ours, but since the US markets are closed for the holiday, we might wonder about the magnetometer readings, since it's the kind of deflection levels that preceded the Japan quake more recently.  And, in the spirit of "Your money doesn't know where it came from", so too, we'll take clean data sets wherever we can find them.

---

Or maybe the ground will shake tomorrow when the latest Case Shiller/S&P 20 City Housing report comes out tomorrow morning....which leaves us.....

 

Waiting for Markets

Gold was down a few cents early on, but I'm not going to be surprised if it doesn't drop several dollars tomorrow and take the Dow and other market averages along with it.

 

Money News has a good article on how gold and silver are becoming more accepted at legal tender in additional States. 

 

But, as this week's Peoplenomics report points out, my research seems to indicate that Clif's 2013 'data gap" - which has evolved into a "data wall" where there's just nothing on the net as we know it after June, or so in 2013 - may be the result of governments worldwide having to shut down the free-running internet because of peer-to-peer currency systems which are popping up.

---

Government can stand only so much dissent, but start competing with their money games and now there's one reason for the 'data wall".  Likely: one reason why all the 'net big-wigs were in EU land last week for the eG8:  They're gonna wrap up controls on the net in all sorts of patriot-sounding double-talk and then squash everyone but the corporate blessed. 

 

Bet me.

 

Government hates competition, fears it...and with more reason as we go along in the jobless non-recovery...Despite all the talk about China's bad/nasty internet controls, they're coming West sooner than later to prevent the 'net from launching A Second Government which might be more democratic that the effectively eBay'ed, lobbyist-ridden, corrupted shell of the Framer's Vision that serves in....oh-oh, getting carried away, am I?  Fine then...

 

Second Government online might be the real-world equivalent to Second Life.  But if BitCoin and other P2P currencies pop up much more, first government's got a BIGGY to worry about.  Don't need no streets to take to...a few clicks could do it.

 

Some Memorial Day

Not much in the way of ending war to be seen this Memorial Day:

• Afghanistan rages on.

• New defense minister nominee in Iraq was wounded in an explosion.

• John McCain says if the US - not NATO had led in Libya, Gaddafi would have been gone by now...

• US is going to demand UN action on Syrian nuclear activity.

• Yemen and Syria are shooting at their own people...

• And in Georgia, authorities are pretending like the riots and government shootings there didn't really happen.

You'd maybe be tempted to thing there's plenty of wars going on.  But think again:  "Hard up for arms sales, Taiwan turns to its own defenses..."

 

And if that's not enough, the CNBC headline 'Homeland -Security Business Still Booming Ten Years Later" is sure something to think about.  A Nobel what prize?  Well, how about a new head of the Joint Chiefs, then?  Good solid pick, seems....

 

But, all in all, seems to me that as long as there's plenty of wars and war-making, that will keep people from questioning the jobless recovery which hasn't gotten us back to 2004-2005 levels of employment. 

 

Medicine Shortages

Great.  Another kind of shortage to worry about.  All of which makes the case for getting thin, getting fit, and trying to avoid being on meds whenever possible.

 

Trouble Among Crime Labs

There's an eye-opening piece out of the Detroit Free Press this weekend on how crime labs around the country are suffering from budget woes.  If that's where it all ended, fine, so what? But, it seems not:  Seems like management bungled and botched results are in there with a heaping helping, too.  Worth a read and remember, just because you haven't committed a crime, innocent people get jailed, convicted, and occasionally killed in executions, too.

 

I swear, I'm innocent!  Well, sort of, anyway....

 

(more after this...)

 

 

Coping: George, a Socialist?

Sunday morning, first thing to hit my eyes was a reader complaint that had come in via email overnight under the subject line: "You're not a socialist?" and he began by flipping my own words back on me:

"We begin our usual Saturday morning ruminations by noting that the GOP - always edging for a fighting with the Democorps

???????????????????????????????????

Since the coffee was already kicking in, I sent off an uncharacteristically cogent reply:

You know, if you actually read on, it might occur to you that the drooling lefty label and the rabid righty labels are merely distractions (an artificial construct) to keep your independent decision-making (as a sovereign individual) boxed up neatly in one of two very-easy-to-manipulate boxes (Hartmann or Limbaugh, makes no difference).

But, since you took up the lefty label on only a headline (drooling lefties are always edging for a fight with the rabid righties, too, as we also note often) I have to assume you’re firmly locked into yesterday’s paradigm right-left, are unable to rethink reality, and are quite comfortable with the emergent corporate fascism.

Have fun.

Then came a thoughtful reply back:

Well it has occurred to me that it is the same game with two different names-both toward one world order. But I think the tea party people are different. Both parties hate them because they're afraid of truth. At least the righties let them in the door, the lefties see them with white hoods on. I was completely in your's and Clif'’s ball park until the "secret word" only showed the true colors of righties. I'm sure you will correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that mean the lefties are something different? I will continue to purchase all of the important info you both allow us access to. I may not swallow everything the two of you say (or anyone else), but I respect the hell out of what you guys are doing, enough so as to be prepared to survive 90% of anything that comes my way for the last 3+ years (only 700' ele).

I've gotten into this discussion many times, with many people including my friend Howard.  He's postulated by the Right is something akin to a mafia with organized violence, while the left is more like an uncoordinated group of pickpockets. 

 

I still lean toward 'crooks a crook' but his point about scale is pertinent.  Thieving a whole generation's retirement's pretty much in-your-face and I keep wondering how long before the government gets sued over ginned up CPI numbers being used for SS & military pension calcs.  Takes money to make money, so that's the barrier there, I suppose...

 

Like this reader, I'd held high hopes for the Tea Party, but as time has run along my faith in 'em has waned, especially when I reported to you the Think Progress piece last week "After Promising to End Earmaks, Tea Party Freshmen Hog Defense Pork."

---

Being a 'socialist' isn't all bad.  Take, for example, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

 

Oh, sure, when I look over his record, there's plenty to disagree with, in particular his support of NAFTA and comparing global warming deniers to holocaust deniers is over the top.

 

But, to his credit, Sanders has introduced the Senate companion bill to HR 1207 which would conduct an audit of the Federal Reserve.  If that's a socialist, we need 400 of 'em.

 

Main thing about Sanders is, he's someone who has been consistent and since he was able to run for senate after serving in the house, I have to conclude he's doing a fair job of representing Vermontonians, or whatever they're properly called.  (Vermontans?)

 

Ultimately, much as I'd like to fit into a convenient box, like socialist or Tea Partier, the reason I'm not asked to appear on television and radio shows much might be because I don't fit a mold.  How so?

• Extreme fiscal conservatism:  gold and silver are real money, and have we audited the Fed yet?  Where 'solid' money?  Where's thrift?

• Extremely strong on borders and immigration. 

• Very much anti-corporate shenanigans, not limited to online job-jacking and calling for a tax on foreign labor employed and demanding payments into unemployment funding for every overseas worker that has underbid an America job.

• Very pro civil rights but at the same time mindful it means "everyone starts from the same set of starting blocks; equality doesn't mean we all finish the race of life exactly the same.

• Very pro progressive tax rates and higher capital gains rates....the only excuse for capital gains in the first place is a shortage of capital.  Do away with them completely and call it all regular income.  If we want money, Tim and Ben crank the stuff out by the trillions when needed.

• Strongly for a band on inheritance over $1-million, plain and simple.  People with more dough ought to figure out ways to improve the country and world which they visited. Got enough spoiled kids in the American Aristocracy already.  Time to end that racket.

• In favor of decriminalizing marijuana, if for no other reason than to hold down booze prices.  But at the same time, mandatory jail for anyone dumb enough to drive impaired.

• Everyone gets to own guns, any kind they feel like, up to .50 caliber.  No private ownership of anthrax or nukes, however.

• Phasing out of entitlements and a plan to reduce student loan amounts.  Over time, as enrollments drop, higher ed will find a way to deliver services cheaper. Any fool can set up a reasonable online degree system with ebooks and the MIT open courseware/ or other open cirricula for maybe $5,000 for a four-year degree.  Google should start a college and book it on ScibD.

• I'd also press for what I call the Five Year law:  If you get a ticket - or even jail time for a nonviolent crime, your record would be automatically expunged five years after release provided no new similar offense.  I'm hard on crime in one sense: Do the crime, do the time.  But paying the debt to society shouldn't drag on for 30-years...and for some folks, it has.

Well, pretty clearly, I'm not a socialist since I'm strong on borders and offshoring/jobjacking.  But I'm not a conservative either.  Think of me as an "equal opportunity pisser."

 

If you find a party that can get behind all those views, let me know. I haven't found one yet.  The name "Reasonable American Party" sounds good to me...but lacks marketing pizzazz...

 

Flee The City?

A couple of readers have suggested watching this video on YouTube, which deals with the dangers of being in big cities in event the wheels really come off the economy.

 

Might want to spend some time at www.unitedcountry.com surfing cheap blocks of farmable land...just sayin'

 

Helping in Joplin: Part 6

G2, my EMT son who's helping out in Joplin with the American Red Cross disaster relief effort just touched base wrapping up a 12-hour overnighter.  He managed to sleep through the presidential trip yesterday, having been on the night shift at his shelter.

 

"Sorry I didn't answer when you called, I was right in the middle of suture removal.  Been using some really great equipment - the Red Cross has this place stock really well.  Had a patient with a 19-inch gash on his calf & leg and was using some of those new silver-treated wound dressings.  Seriously, the wound care up here is as good - maybe better - than what someone would get in a big city hospital..."

 

Nice to know.  Treat aggressive. Weather's warming up - should be in the mid 80's up there today again.  And G2's off to his the rack withy another 12-hour nights shift ahead. 

 

"Damn, we've been busy...great team..."

 

Yeah, we know.

 

Send Ure comments to george@ure.net

---

Last week's report is always here.