Ahead of a major holiday, there are only two questions that really matter.
The first is “Do I cut the lawn before the Holiday, or after the Holiday?” Do it before and the place will look strack for guests. Do it after and you won’t spend valuable pre-holiday time when you could be shopping for steaks and brewskis. (I’ll be mounting up as soon as the column is posted. Not that we have friends, but that’s what obsessive-compulsive is all about….)
The other major question is how long can the market remain irrational? The correct answer is “Longer than any of us can remain solvent…” Still, I’m expecting down 50-70 for the day and it’s easy to see why:
(continues below)
The answer lies in our Aggregate Index way of looking at things.
This odd bit of Ure-science is based on the fact that there is only so much money in the world and a good bit of it comes off the table for weekends, depending on how much faith (or blind stupidity) there is flowing globally.
Even if you’re not a www.Peoplenomics.com subscriber, you can still get a sense of what we do around here by looking at how various global markets acted overnight. Let me run you through the list:
- Australia: Down 0.63%.
- The Nikkei 225? Down 0.64%
- The Hang Seng, though: Up 0.03% – which is essentially flat.
- Spinning the globe to France: Down 0.77%
- Germany is down 0.57%
- And the UK? Too early for a meaningful quote.
What to do with all this crap?
We might observe that when we add the five valid marks from overnight it comes to? -2.58%.
Since we have five markets the average is -0.516%
Now let’s say the S&P closed Thursday at 2,415.07. This times 0.00516 (our average, as a percentage, yah?) suggests the S&P might lose 12.76 points today.
Less, of course – can’t have Great Again doing too big a loss. So maybe half that…but we shall see.
Why Such a Strong Rally?
This is an equally trivial calculation. It’s just most people are too damn lazy to consider the facts even though they are staring in the face.
Simple look to the latest Federal Reserve H.6 Money Stocks report here.
There are two windows we can see the Money Supply jumping out of. The FIRST window (January, February, and March) the M1 was up 4.4% annualized. That’s cash and equivalents.
The SECOND window is more recent: This one slides from May 15 back 13 weeks. And it offers that the annual rate of printing up M1 weas screaming up a 9.1% rate.
I don’t care how slow you are in math: When the first three months of the year are up 4.4% on flowing cash and the most recent 13 weeks to mid-month was up 9.1%, the Fed can be seen behind the curtain turning on the nitrous oxide tank, renting avgas containers, mashing up C4, and looking for rusty steel wool to make thermite to get the market moving up.
Their motivation?
Well, the Fed would love to be able to raise rates. But they can’t very well get ahead of the market and raise rates, so they’re inducing a kind of financial euphoria where something as trivial as a quarter-point hike of rates wouldn’t be noticed.
Except not only is the financial nut job in the woods noticing (and telling his lone reader, you) about it, but the whole Bond Market seems to be laughing at the Janet Posse. The 10-year Treasure chart here suggests rather than thermite, the Fed should open talks with Pakistan, North Korea, or Iran to get something even Bigger to goose the rates up.
Of course, when this much money is being huffed by the deep breathers of finance, there will be spillover. The semi-parabolic rise in Bitcoin was around $2,589 when I looked this morning. Pretty amazing for a few ones and zeroes, but I was shocked at tulip bulb prices circa 1634. Ecclesiastes teaches there is “no new thing under the Sun” and it works in finance as Ponzi and Madoff could both attest.
So the Fed will no doubt keep pouring avgas on the bonfire of the equities once we get past the end of May sell off (which might run into mid June at present rates). But they are fighting a terrible battle against incipient deflation as evidenced by the 10-year rate going exactly nowhere in response to the Johnstown Flood of cash.
I could have saved them all the aggravation and frustration. All they would have need was to read our April 1, 2017 Peoplenomics.com report in which we posed the question: “Are Federal Reserve Rate Hikes Over?”
But like the old Outback saying goes here in East Texas: “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make ’em think.”
We are arriving at the (predictable) backwardization of economic flight controls next. It’s the sort of thing usually followed by a fairly predictable Crash. And then we get War – and some yet-to-emerge centrist Democrat who will blame all our ills on Trump.
As it was in the Hoover, is now, and ever shall be: World full of greed. Amen.
Dose of Daily Data Fairytales
GDP first, or durable goods? Here is our first press release du jour:
“New Orders New orders for manufactured durable goods in April decreased $1.6 billion or 0.7 percent to $231.2 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This decrease, down following four consecutive monthly increases, followed a 2.3 percent March increase. Excluding transportation, new orders decreased 0.4 percent. Excluding defense, new orders decreased 0.8 percent. Transportation equipment, down following two consecutive monthly increases, led the decrease, $1.0 billion or 1.2 percent to $78.5 billion.
Shipments Shipments of manufactured durable goods in April, down three of the last four months, decreased $0.7 billion or 0.3 percent to $233.0 billion. This followed a 0.1 percent March decrease. Transportation equipment, down six of the last seven months, led the decrease, $0.4 billion or 0.5 percent to $77.2 billion.
Unfilled Orders Unfilled orders for manufactured durable goods in April, up two consecutive months, increased $2.4 billion or 0.2 percent to $1,122.9 billion. This followed a 0.3 percent March increase. Transportation equipment, also up two consecutive months, led the increase, $1.3 billion or 0.2 percent to $766.6 billion.
Picture? Sure…
May I have Envelope #2, please?
“The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the “advance” estimate issued last month. In the advance estimate, the increase in real GDP was 0.7 percent. With this second estimate for the first quarter, the general picture of economic growth remains the same; increases in nonresidential fixed investment and in personal consumption expenditures (PCE) were larger and the decrease in state and local government spending was smaller than previously estimated. These revisions were partly offset by a larger decrease in private inventory investment (see “Updates to GDP” on page 2).
Or, don’t bother and just stare at the following picture:
And so the futures are soft (-20) as in a mild Viagra shortage. (ahem…)
UPS Learns:
Smoking is bad for you as UPS Fined $247M for Illegally Shipping Cigarettes.
But come on, how are they supposed to filter ’em out and be kool?
Gianforte Wins: Montana’s Answer to Hulk Hogan?
I just bet a real wrestler would laugh off the (left-leaning media hype) about a “reporter body slam” as a pant load…just a guess, mind you. But from a real body slam, the reporter wouldn’t have recovered so quickly.
Go watch the vid of Hulk Hogan slamming Andre the Giant on YT. Seems to me the hysteria over “body slam” is just a wee bit overdone, know what I mean? Oh, hysterical, then.
(More conspiratorially, just the (???) trying to “stage” an event on the GOP right before an election…but we don’t need to go there, so let’s take our meds and move on…)
Oh, did you see how before this “event” The Guardian was trying to link Gianforte to “Russian companies” in this April 18th story? =
But the republican’s scored a big win in Montana over the democrat singing in a nudist camp contender.
While it’s being reported that now-congressman Greg Gianforte apologized, there is still the matter of an assault charge.
Still, we think there is something to the comments of republican Trent Franks of Arizona who says the left in the press have gotten totally out of hand blocking the path for newsmakers and getting in their faces…. ambush journalism, anyone?
Bloomberg Rocks It
At least one news org seems to remember what journalism is about as they write in part here “…Maybe Flynn committed treason. But so far no one has presented any evidence, just innuendo. That’s not justice. ”
NSS.
McCarthy was on the republican’s heads, the Obama/Clinstonista crap is on the democrats. Soft coup of the left, anyone?
Holiday Health Food
Sheesh: Surprising hot dog facts.
I was a little confused when I read how “Most of us will never get the chance to drive the Weinermobile….”
Didn’t Huma get that? I mean frankly speaking, and all…
Another TV Show to Miss
As late night host stogie-smoker “Letterman: Trump makes me sick.”
Ure: Smoking makes you sick.
Jupiter’s Travels
Tough Choice of reading materials involving Jupiter.
Choice #1: Ted Simon’s classic book on riding a Triumph motorcycle around the world in the late 1970’s. Totally cool adventure story – I interviewed him when the book first came out in 1980. Still a damn fine read.
Choice #2: Latest from NASA wherein Jupiter reveals the “brand new” and “unexpectedcd” sayeth the gray lady report here.
I’d go with Simon’s book…back when the world was not quite so insane.
Thought you might like this website George. They have an interesting video series.
https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/
Thanks for the website reference I favorited it
Another trained scientist that follows the Electric Universe thought is over here – http://www.suspicious0bservers.org/.
One of his best videos for those that are finally realizing that what we’ve been led to believe ain’t necessarily true is his “I Wish I Knew This When I Woke Up” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-auk5ZsP2M.
Ben Davidson gives daily updates on Space Weather and how it affects earthquake activity. He’s closing in on perfect for his quake predictions.
Two comments: 1) Coast to Coast guest Wednesday night, Kirkpatrick Sale, has published an updated version of a previous bestseller. New one is “Human Scale Revisited”. He says larger is worse, and that all the big scale societal constructs are globally going to crash sometime in the near future. He says the only way to go is return to small, local communities. 2) Gianforte > sounds like a setup to me b/c most of those paparazzi types are super aggressive and don’t back off. I would give Gianforte a commendation, not a jail sentence.
On Gianforte, when these ‘reporters’ charge their ‘victim’ and shove their microphones in their faces is this not the definition of an assault?
If Gianforte is prosecuted can he not use a self defense response?
I also think a countersuit of The Guardian would be appropriate, no?
P.S. It’s comforting to see a Republican with something “down there” for a change!
Many of us have already returned to the smaller communities, we see the writing on the wall, or, in the Agenda 21 cities as they roll out the UN version of democracy with a twist, I can paraphrase Obama, “What you paid for, you don’t own. What you built, is not yours. Your yard is our yard. Your car is our car. Your children are our children only to educate them against you. We will use you up and spit you out to provide for everyone that is not you. Everything you have is ours and we shall distribute it equally to everyone but you.”
George:
In my previous life as USPS Supe, it was part of my job to regularly seize contraband cigs that were being sent through the mail. Now, you may well wonder why would we waste our time doing this? Well, those cigs were being ordered by Asian Mom/Pop stores and it wasn’t just one carton at a time – parcels always contained at least a dozen cartons with several parcels in a single shipment. The BATF had us seize them because NO TAXES had been paid on those smokes [with Customs Declarations ALWAYS marked “gift”], so we snatched them. Since they were all packaged identically, it was really pretty easy to spot them [Asian cigs are also stronger than American blends and you could frequently smell them as well]. I would pull them from the mailstream, send a curt form letter to the recipient and then [here’s where it got REALLY ridiculous!] lock the contraband into the same fierce cage where our stamp-storage safes were kept. It was so secure that if that little room was ever emptied it’d make a dandy jail cell. Repeat offenders could even be duly reported further up the foodchain for fines and/or loss of retail sales permit. I never did.
BUT: going from the ridiculous to the insulting, those cigs were actually ordered through the official VietNamese Post Office! You see – over there, the Postal Service not only oversees major telecommunications they also offer banking services and operate a huge online General Store where you can buy anything from smokes and booze to clothing, fresh flowers and food conveniently shipped directly from the Post Office to your door!
It should also be mentioned that it is very common for PO’s in other countries to be very active in the retail/financial/telcom arena… and they always turn a tidy profit [especially since they also charge insane prices for a single stamp]- for example in Germany, DeutschePost has been into banking services for decades.
Every few years some DC Yahoo thinks the USPS should do likewise and they’ll timidly test the market with tepid results.
But, my all-time favorite scheme was to sell advertising space on postal delivery vehicles you see everywhere, every day. It was claimed this would be done “tastefully” and only for “desireable firms” which I suppose meant that ads for “Eat Till You
BUST Night!” at Ernie’s House Of Pork wouldn’t qualify. I suppose we should be grateful that concept also went nowhere!
BTW: those cigs would pile up and sit on top of our safes for months until the Postal Inspection Service would finally show up to take them all out for a big bonfire of the vanities and I’m fairly certain at least a few of those agents would stand downwind during the blaze. As you do.
Hi
Here are some random thoughts that came to mind while reading your column today. (My thoughts don’t meander quite as far as Bryces Lazy Porch Garden)
With all due respect to Bloomberg for its reporting: impeachment is a political process with a legal framework not a legal process involving politics. Meaning that all the congress has to do is hold a vote finding Trump committed an impeachable offence.
I am surprised that you did not discuss Bill Maher’s 100 rouble bet that Trump would be Impeached by Christmas, of this year. I fear that Bill Maher might win.
Another thought: isn’t it is interesting that now that Fox News is basically circling the toilet bowl the faux conservative movement has bitten the dust, meaning there is now not a single mainstream media outlet that supports the president!
Hi I’m still working on time time is the hardest to predict but events yes they do happen will happen but like I said again time that’s the hardest one there’s so many factors to determine that and we won’t go into that right now here but I think George and the few others know what we’re talking about how time can be manipulated so I’ll just let it go at that y’all have a good day and may all beings be lovingly fulfilled so be it
My thought for today is buy a book I mean I’m talking about a physical book something with paper in it something that’s not digital digital can be wiped out at least you can use the book for toilet paper or to start a fire or for support buy a book not digital okay and may all beings be lovingly fulfilled so be it have a nice day oh and give your cat a hug
George, why am I not surprised that you would get all cutesy condoning violence by a US Congressman against a reporter. Banana republic stuff. Are tax cuts for the upper 2% and kicking 23 million off of medical coverage really worth it? And how are you going to feel when the Lib-tards see that it’s a successful tactic for getting votes from the distractible rubes and co-opt it for themselves? I personally call it the “Wrestleization of America.” Mike
You fall for the most ridiculous crap – go read the report, not the slanted news! the 23-million don’t have coverage NOW – this is just more of the Obama/demo soft coup BS –
But let’s move in the right direction. Maybe had Rubio not slipped in the risk corridors provision which no one talks about we’d see more benefit of this attempt to insure all people. Why continue this fake fight over health insurance.
Go read the report..the 23 mill are not covered now – this is made-up statistical torpedoes
Yeah, Mike, you really show your your ignorance. MILLIONS OF US who had great insurance and thus ACCESS to AFFORDABLE healthcare were stripped of our policies due to the obummernoncare BS. The fact that you cannot SEE that crappy law and what it did to the USA demonstrates your lack of curiosity, fact finding, research, and intelligence. Obama stuck it to the USA, not Trump.
Did anyone think this funny: G-7 leaders (Godfathers/mothers) meeting in Sicily.
Great catch
The link to Ted Simon’s book got itself scrambled – at least on my computer. Here’s a link that works. Looks like an interesting book that’s a much better way to spend a rainy summer day than staring at your iPhone!
http://www.amazon.com/Jupiters-Travels-Ted-Simon/dp/0241101808/
Why does it matter if the body slam was exaggerated? Gianforte should have been able to handle ant microphone shoved in his face. Seriously, how can anyone defend his ridiculous response. This man is not much of a man in my opinion, rather just another bully who doesn’t like being questioned and can only hide his inner bully for so long. I have followed you for years, Gerorge, but you aren’t as level headed and fair minded as I thought.
Ure always follows the rules of baseball.
If you are in “my space” and I ask you three times to remove yourself (or stop the behavior that is pissing me off) then you get whatever it takes to restore “my space” to acceptable parameters.
Remember it: baseball rules. 3 strikes and duck.
And what about the person who feels “their space” begins 250′ away – like some form of personal, public restraining order?
George, you’re waaaay off-base on this argument as you thoughtlessly promote acts of violence to defend one’s perceived boundaries. It’s those precise same boundaries that have allowed the era of political correctness to grow like a vicious cancer and it’s about time people began to reaffirm some measure of personal self-control -not over others… but over THEMSELVES. Nuff’ said!
Try to remember who’s the journalist here. I have NEVER seen anyone who “thinks their personal space” goes out 250-ft. In fact, I have never seen more than 3-feet.
But what I have seen – and this goes back to 1969-1970 were some young journos who were “trying to make a name for themselves” by getting aggressive and being thoroughly useless pricks (and prickettes).
They’d ask (as is common on television now) completely idiotic questions because one of the fallouts from ENG style reporting is that reporters have lost the ability (in a standup when doing a wrap) how to paraphrase a question into the newsmaker’s response. So instead, they will ask on-camera or on-mic questions that REFLECT REPORT BIAS in how asked – and then they get pissy when the newsmaker deals with them.
One of Washington’s senators (think it was Scoop Jackson) did a classic. This new reporter asked one of these ramble-on’s of opinion where eventuallyt there was a questionmark, though it had nothing to do with sentence structure.
The senator looked ‘m in the eye and says “No.”
A long pause.
Then the twerp who I felt like punching out ( because he was waisting everyone’s time and we all have deadlines) said “Well, what do you mean by No senator?”
“No.”
A few of us older newsers hauled the kid aside later to tell ’em: Ask one sentence questions or you’re an idiot.
Apply that standard to today’s reporters and there, by God, is the unanimous jury for you.
There are damn few actual reporters today…mainly its a pack of jackals that will spew a paragraph of opinion (the set up) and then ask a preconceived conclusion with a question mark after it. m(Egomaniacly reporters want comment on their opinions, which is why they even bother with the QM.)
A year later – I think it was in Seattle City Council setting, the same reposer went off on another ramble. City council member looked at him silently when he finally finished blathering.
Eventually the pol spoke – a full 30 seconds of silence later.
“I’m SORRY but which of your 9 questions did you want me to answer?”
Journalism schools – who have gone down the Saul Alinksy leftist path – seem no longer able to differentiate between “hard news” – features – and op/ed.
In the ME ME ME world of Generation Brat, it’s all MEMEME…which makes it almost universal op/ed bullshit by people unqualified to hold their own pants up, let alone be left unsupervised around grownups while armed with question marks…
Some of these days, some Newsus Giganticus will figure out that people don’t watch TV for the clever questions of the biased reporters, but to see WTF is going through the head of newsmakers. But for now, the networks that are sagging the most learn the slowest.
And those that have gone the T&A Anchor Net route have confused sex with news…but truth be told I would rather look at a babe than the news myself.
So I turn off the news and go find Elaine and look at her for a while.
Then I feel better.
Wait! Did you ask a question? Or with zero reporting experience are you reporting on your experience in LALA / dream land?
George,
My mildly negative comments above were not worthy of such a angry tirade from Ure’s truly. As you clearly pointed out, I am not a reporter or a journalist – nor would I wish to be if it reduced me to such withering prose [but I am a published/performed playright currently adapting one of my scripts into a screenplay -so I do know my way around convoluted syntax]. However, since in your opening sentence you proudly claim such memembership in the 4th estate, be that as it may. You must’ve be a prodigy though, since you were only 18 years old in 1969 and already assessing the true nature of news reporting… Orson Welles would’ve been proud!
But, I DO know this: no reporter ever asks a question that can be answered with a single word; and, true journalists have only three objectives… to recognize a story, to probe for facts and then reveal them honestly to the public. Whatever happened to the five-W’s, anyway? Everything else is mere editorialising and useful only for fishwrap – and THAT’S the advice you should’ve given “the twerp” although I admire your restraint in not decking him, in the process.
Which brings me full-circle: you are defending a politico who cannot control himself when deliberately manipulated by a biassed press. The overriding problem here is that there is no longer any HONOR among the press-at-large and with the profitable proliferation of tabloid reporting there is certainly no incentive for them to gain one iota of the integrity of an Edward R. Murrow, even if they could struggle to such a lofty level of professionalism. So, here we are.
Finally: I wouldn’t be so quick to disparage the “Saul Alinsky” approach of “hard news, features and op-ed” since those three elements are also what comprise your daily columns. Back in Murrow’s day an assumed 48pt. line separated news from entertainment. Today there is no line to cross and that’s the greatest tragedy of all.
BTW: Although the question I asked earlier was purely metaphorical[hence the exaggerated 250′ figure] and didn’t require a direct response, you graci
ously provided many other answers to what makes George tick. And -as the old saying goes- even a broken clock is correct twice a day. It’s only the rest of the time that becomes troublesome.
Ah, we will continue to have several areas of disagreement. But I don’t regret the long dissertation on my part. By the way in 1929 I was 29 and had worked (already) fouyr years in broadcasting both on the announcing side as well as engineer. My first full time news gig in a major market started at age 21.
I am a harsh critic of the press, no question about it.
When we see stories the Hillary uranium deal going before a grand jury, or the foundation, then I will regain some respect. the press has, however, until that time comes, a terrible issue with lop-sidedness and those who don’t recognize it as open and blatant should stick with fiction or wean themselves off SMS-think…
“By the way in 1929 I was 29 and had worked (already) four years in broadcasting…” ??
Hmmm might have meant 1969 – didn’t have my contacts in lol