As gamblers and adventurers, most of us go through Life with a storyline and plot holding our course for us. While the id and ego fill-in with a heroic personality. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes not.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between Humans and Physics. The latter is where pseudo-randomness occurs while the former is trying to “understand it all.” Which gives rise to Religions, Superstitions, Cults, and Charlatans. Plus, or minus, a soft world government orchestrating God-knows-what besides taxes, movement restriction, and pedophilia.
The Gambler’s Dilemma
Decades ago, in the midst of a world-class divorce which cost me a million – I stumbled into a simple coping mechanism. I’d pretend that every day when I woke up, I was being escorted onto the scariest ever E Ticket Ride at Disney. Something that would make Space Mountain look tame.
Because Life is a lot like that. We’re “on for the ride” – have no idea where we get off, and to some degree (50 percent?) the outcome is only partially under our control.
I’ve begun to wonder of late whether exerting control greater than 50 percent constitutes a “winning Life” when the LRE (*life review experience, commonly reported by near-death experiencers) in The End, shows up. We all get to find out. Judge for yourself.
Which has what to do with economics, markets, and squeezing a good life out of Turd Planet?
Here, too, we’re stumbling into walls a lot. But metaphors and allegories are useful as hell. Everything to Parables to Masonic plays and Plato in the cave with Glaucon.
The role of such psychological supports is they are onboard directional indicators. They serve like the “continuation algos” in GPS. That will – for a short time, anyway, keep us “on course” when “signal” has been lost. Values matter hugely.
Signal Recovery
Humans lose their way every night. When you go to sleep, you can’t prove that the waking world you woke up in the next day is the same that you dozed off from the night before. Yet, on waking, we go through ritual and discovery to help reassure ourselves that – identical to GPS – we are still in the same (general) location, and we can keep-on keeping on into the New Day ahead.
Which is where this morning’s metaphor springs from. As long as the specific Bets placed in previous waking days look about the same, we will go through another well-bounded day being “role fillers” and “cued Actors” in the Cosmic drama of Universe.
The very limited role of UrbanSurvival in all this is to point out specific features on today’s E Ticket Ride and raise questions or point out important details and scenes that may be missed in the careening ride through Life.
Good with that?
Surveying The Park
For our Amusement: We can make useful plans by simply taking a look at the Reality Park we’re sharing. In this one:
- Our Economy is still in the economic ICU because of corruption and Covid; we hope you see the differential gradients.
- Worse is that Covid began The Great Quitting. Where people by the millions have renounced commuting in favor of work from home and in the process have destroyed commercial real estate.
- Serial arrests and trials of all manner (arising from both crooked “Parties”) tell us our choicing of Leadership sucks.
- And markets inform us that most of our financial decisions are based on financial absurdity.
This last is laughable to the extreme. Imagine, if you can, a time traveler going back to 1946 – right after World War II and proclaiming “In the Future we will invest in money itself.” Get the straight jacket. Investments can (or, at least shouldn’t be) piled on top of one another to compound gains. Why, that’d be a Ponzi scheme. Yet here we are in present – swimming in ’em.
Just delightful, ain’t it?
Now, into the Casino
The “machines” with the highest payoffs this weekend include the following:
- Taiwan: Weather in that part of the world is good for invasion this month. And look at the news flow related to it: The Trouble With Taiwan – CounterPunch.org is worth a read. The Hill has been wondering Is war in Taiwan inevitable? It depends on whom you ask… And here come the partisans, driven forward by government agendas and God knows what else: Former NBA star Howard stirs Chinese anger by calling Taiwan a country | Reuters. The Payoff Table on this one is high. Win and we may contain our successor Global Empire Builder for a while longer. Lose and we collapse supply chains, set up massive shortages but long-term return to our resilient roots. How you “score the jackpot” here depends on your Age.
- Ukraine: The payoff table on this one is high, too. If the West wins, the European Union – a kind of globalist good-old-boy club – will have an opportunity to wrangle more countries into its ranks. This increases revenue which, in turn, makes the EU look like something other than the yesterday’s news and global power that it really is. Russia looks at the war as existentialist in nature, so Vlad Putin has set up a line of trip wires and red lines not to cross or he will go nuclear. Tensions are high as Ukraine promotes Remembering first fallen US volunteer fighter buried in Ukraine (kyivindependent.com) which tells Russia (and argues for world opinion) that any U.S. forces in-theater are volunteers, not “officially warring.” Putin, though, says launching of depleted uranium into his country will unbind his restraint on use of fissile materials coming West. While the wheels of this machine spin into the weekend, the Arms Shipments are speeding up. With predictable blow-back: Russia Threatens to Destroy U.K. for Giving Ukraine Storm Shadow Missiles (newsweek.com). Fact is, a lot of arms are going “elsewhere” (which should scare hell out of Israel because violent Middle Eastern groups are on the “getting” end. However, Ukraine’s selling the “We’re doing our best” in Ukraine’s Dogged Effort to Get Weapons to the Battlefield, Not the Black Market. All guns and money, though: US ambassador accuses South Africa of providing Russia weapons, ammo (navytimes.com). And the wheels go round-and-round, into the weekend. Meantime, though, the drums beat for “War!” Russia denies reports of Ukraine breakthrough ahead of counteroffensive. Countdown to tactical is still on and even more so since we’ve had radiation sensors in for a month now to see which reactor birthed fire when its unleashed.
- Commercial Real Estate is Dead. Co-victims of Covid will be the banks, insurance companies, and other long-term players who will be stiffed as insolvency must – eventually – come to light. But the wheels haven’t stopped yet, so train-spotting is the day game on this one: Where the Highest Levels of CRE Distress Are Right Now | GlobeSt. Along with another “spotter report” in Which cities have the emptiest office buildings? It’s not New York or San Francisco… Our Houston Bureau reports (spoiler alert) that places like Houston and Dallas are hardest hit. But that’s as much to do with the Buy’ed ’em foxtrot-uniform energy polices striking the heartland. The Wall Street Journal is leading the chorus whistling in the graveyard on this: Stop Equating the Latest Bank Failures to the 2008 Crisis. Strangely, my consigliere actually agrees. “The REAL comparison will be to the early late 80’s into 1990s banking debacle. Which wiped out most of the banks in Texas, and virtually ALL the S&Ls. People just don’t read their economic history on the late S&L Collapse.” No doubt, he will be correct. That’s why he gets a monumental retainer.
- Corruption Goes Partisan: Speaking of which, my consigliere will NOT be volunteering his expertise pro bono to the Santos case. “Yes I’m admitted to the Federal Bar but not a case I’d touch.” That’s the wheel-spinner where Rep. George Santos Skewered As ‘A Disgrace’ In Democratic Challenger Ad. “He’s a poster child for the rest on the Hill, panned our advisor. We trust the GOP ad with Hunter Biden on the rotisserie will be along momentarily. Huddled around this machine we see the World Liar Finals playing out, too: Ex-CIA Director John Brennan testifies before House weaponization panel (nypost.com). Inspecting the machine’s cartoonlike face, we notice it looks like a crowd of Pinocchio’s.
We could go on all day with this line of contexting. Point is, living life is always a gamble – usually a good one. But, this weekend, we have a lot that can go wrong ahead of Monday. If there’s a lesson from gambling, it all comes down to “Don’t.”
OK, So You Don’t Listen…
Some balance of trade minutia was just dropped. Don’t mean a hill of beans. The wheels will keep spinning:
“Prices for U.S. imports increased 0.4 percent in April following a 0.8-percent decline in March, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Higher fuel prices drove the advance in April. The price index for U.S. exports rose 0.2 percent in April, after declining 0.6 percent the previous month.
Imports
U.S. import prices advanced 0.4 percent in April, the first monthly increase since December 2022. Despite the April rise, the price index for U.S. imports declined over the past year, falling 4.8 percent on a 12-month basis for the second consecutive month. Those were the largest over-the-year drops since the index decreased 6.3 percent in May 2020.
Exports
U.S. export prices increased 0.2 percent in April, after declining 0.6 percent the previous month. Higher prices for nonagricultural exports and agricultural exports in April each contributed to the overall advance. The price index for U.S. exports fell 5.9 percent from April 2022 to April 2023, the largest over-the-year drop since a 6.7-percent decline in May 2020.
Could you have worked for a Big Six accounting firm? Imported prices are going up at an annualized 4.9 percent rate. While export revenues were going up at a rate of 2.42 percent. Want to tell us how that works out over time, Einstein?
Meanwhile, the BTC level was down into the $26,350 area when we looked. We’ll spend today in Science Lab watching to see if Lower BTC drives > Lower tangibles like the PGM group which in turn should drive > markets into the shitter by the close. A good time will be had by all.
Delusionally: BTC Bulls Need Progress on the US Debt Ceiling to Deliver $28,500 (fxempire.com). But wait, says someone in our crowd of “wandering gamblers.” “Isn’t Bitcoin supposed to be INDEPENDENT of Federal monetary screw-ups?” Well, yes and no. You need to understand how intermarket arbitrage works and that’s not on the tour this morning.
Still, we can hint at $23,000 (or lower) by the close Monday. But that, too, would be another wager. And our wagers are purely for entertainment.
Cutting Room Floor
Some things are outside (but just a bit) of our Gambler’s World in Crisis framework. Not too far out, though:
Democrats (*and other communists) are holding Social Security hostage, exactly as predicted here. As if our opinion of Chucky Schemer couldn’t go lower, we noticed Sen. Chuck Schumer warns of “social security shutdown” if U.S. defaults on debt. Makes us upchuck.
Our “Earthquake Tireds” data and comment quest was right. In addition to the 7.6 in Tonga (right in the predictive window) we may have just seen a foreshock as 5.5 magnitude earthquake in Northern California knocks out CHP 911 dispatch (eastbaytimes.com). Surely, you ain’t surprised? (“And don’t call me Shirley…”)
The Second Mexican-American War resumes today, With Joe Biden Officiating as Title 42 restrictions end and the Invasion resumes. What is Title 42? US Covid-19 asylum policy explained. We have already lost this border war – one reason we told friends long ago “You don’t want to buy property within 500 miles of the border, no matter what.”
Are we the only ones who remember 26-time Epstein traveler Bill Clinton screwed the country and border back in his term? The President’s News Conference With President Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico. Where NAFTA and Border 21 were advertised in advance? Where the Mexican prez (at the time) said:
“We have spoken about our border, and we agreed to work to make it clean and safe and to make it an opportunity for productive activities and well-being. This is the intention of the Frontera Veinte-Uno program or the Border 21 program between our nations.”
Democrats, in intervening years, have pretty well shoved Border 21 down the memory hole. But websites like https://border21.com echo the warning of “botched borders over time” to all who will listen/read. Which is damn few children since the Greatest Generation has mostly checked out as these half-assed pansies of Wokeness and Correctitude showed up dancing the Marxist jig. Turning once Fortress America into the United States of Victims. (“Now, where’s my money?”)
Naw – maybe that’s enough “hard reality” for one week. Except to say anyone stupid enough to confuse “equity” scamming with “Equality” shouldn’t be a citizen.
More on the Peoplenomics side tomorrow. Enjoy the casino and have a few free drinks. Dulls the pain of our failing Reality.
Write when you get rich,
George@Ure.net

