Here’s How “Head & Shoulders” Works

With the Dow set to collapse down a hundred or more, think of this as a sore shoulder at that.

No, this is NOT a discussion of a shampoo, but a lot of the bulls are about to get a little cleaning when the markets open this morning because of how things lined up in the pre-open.

Even if you don’t subscribe to out www.peoplenomics.com newsletter. there is one chart which we discussed this weekend which you might want to take note of because it’s looking like a powerful head and shoulders formation.

The first bump in the Dow on a weekly chart on the left is called (cleverly) the left shoulder.  This happened back on May 13th.

The larger bump in the middle is the “head” (July 29)  while there’s  fair to middling chance that we will fall off the right shoulder as soon as the market opens this morning.

That red line is a moving average trend line and if we were to plug the futures price of the Dow in, it would be below that trend.,  But more on this for Peoplenomics readers on Wednesday because there is about, I expect, to be all kinds of crap hitting the market in a major way this week.

Want the shopping list?

  • Congress, which is acting like partisan idiots (no a new act, mind you) is about to let the US government go into shutdown over the budget.  This scares the hell out of global markets and Asia was bleeding red all night and there are serious cuts and contusions in European markets this morning, also, as a result.  What comes around goes around I figure.
  • The REAL scary word is deflation because that means the global financial system is imploding and anyone with half a nickel’s worth of gray matter will wake up any old time now and ask really pertinent questions.  “How come if ya’ll corp-types got all the free money on earth and no barriers to trade, we still are getting the second depression, huh?”  Smoke, mirrors, lies, and bullshit never seem to go out of style.

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Coping: A Man’s Home Is His Castle…No! Really! It Is!

(Near Weston, CO)  OK, you’ve heard the term before “A Man’s Home Is His Castle!”  All sounds good, but the courts have continued to water it down (the legal notion of home as a as one’s inviolable castle) , yada, yada, yada…but what happens someone actually starts to dream about building their own castle – for real –  with all the modern accoutrements including wireless, solar, highly insulated panels, and all the rest of it?

We  found out Sunday as we arrived at the home of long-time readers Shirley and Mike Bean who started off to use their life’s masterpiece as a bed & breakfast, but for now, it’s theirs to share with a just friends.

So, how would a modern-day castle work?  Who would design such a thing? 

The answer is Mike made his mark in mechanical and solar engineering in Hawaii (back when the islands had just poked out of the Pacific, right?) and he did OK in engineering, playing the markets and real estate such that he was pretty much able to check out from “civilized life” in the land of prefabs and coups(condos) and tiny homes and decided to really “roll his own” – a spectacular one-off Castle in the Pines at 7,700 feet in the mountains.

So what does a modern castle look like when you come in the front door?  Here’s the entryway into the Great Room:

Upstairs, the kitchen as everything (yes, big gas stove for gourmet cooking and there’s an icemaker in the fridge, I mean what’s a castle without a martini?) and looking up from the Great Room (where this morning’s report is coming to you from) it looked like this last night just before dinnertime.  That’s Elaine and Shirley looking down from the dining hall which is one level up with a panorama down into the great room…

The ladies ( I prefer wenches of the castle) deliver drinks  downstairs to the men of the House and when done,  up we go to the dining hall, and a feast on Burgundy elk, harvested in season on the property.

Now, this is not a remodel.  This is a serious ground-up effort that’s 6,500 square feet.

Interestingly, we have something in common in our fascination with the castle era and lifestyle.  We’ve both been members of the Social for Creative Anachronism, and like Elaine (oops!  Lady Elaine) and me, they also dropped out. (I could never figure out the org chart of the SCA and apparently I’m not the only one.

So here’s more of what the local Renaissance Faire types are missing out on:

So, this morning I have to sit back look at the pile of crap that needs doing in Texas, wander around the castle rooms….and ask myself….”So if the world ends tomorrow, do I have anything anywhere near this cool (less the boiling pots of oil up on the parapets) to make our stand in East Texas?”

No…not even.

What’s the coolest thing about the home?  Besides eye treats in every possible place?  The answer I think is the people who built it.  How many people do you know who have set their eyes on a big, serious dream and then set about building it and seeing it through to completion?

We’ve been fortunate enough to meet two such couples on this trip and – if you live in a small apartment or condo – it’s especially encouraging that people can still find a patch of ground and built a dream with their own hands from the ground up. 

It’s not common, but it is seriously cool and an inspiration to anyone who’s ever picked up a tool with the idea of creating a “life’s work.”

Government: Buying Friends?

With plenty of people asking about the role of government, and especially given the cozy, soft-ball questions from the mainstream media, you can’t imagine how happy I was to see a good-sized report on the growth of government public relations efforts over the past 20-years, or so.

This one isn’t a particularly easy matter of public policy (though the Statesman article makes it clear that maybe the pendulum has over done it…a lot) but having tried to deal with government in the early 1970’s – just as the government PR move was coming along – I can see two sides to the story.

On the one hand, public officials can literally be hounded too death by reporters at all hours of the day and night.  And most don’t have the luxury of personal protection other than a key contact in the local police department in event of issues.

But the other side of it is that PR types can – and do – serve as gate keepers.  And that means less access and more “soft-ball” questions.

Where the role of PR morphs into propaganda orchestration is when gag orders come down for Department Heads from an “executive.”  I remember the days when a county official, like the county engineer for example, could talk openly with any reporter who wandered along.

But not these days, at least to the degree as previously.  A county executive, mayor, governor, or even president, can quash and squash reporter inquiries.  This gives the executive even more power than they really need as well as it gives them a way to slip untold numbers of stories under the rug if they don’t seem to pass PR muster.

Ultimately, if comes down to the executive level tightening up their reins on control and the co-opted major media who go along with this crap get more access at the expense of the little guy.

Makes you wonder how many people remember Ben Franklin was at one time part of the alternative media?

Fukushima Fears Slowly Growing

While we actually looked at a home on a golf course during our Seattle area visit last week, we ‘re both in no particular hurry to sock away a few profits from our life in Texas and then turn around and invest it in an area which is downwind and down-current, from Fukushima.

Reader John sent an email this weekend which edgesd up to the point:

I have been looking over responses to the latest information. The official responses are now admitting localized trouble, ie FDA banning of seafood from most of Japan. But they are adamant that dilution will prevent any effect on CONUS.  As you know from reading EneNews and other sources, there are educated opinions to the contrary.

If we use the “follow the money” method, it might be construed that both sides have something to gain from their statements.

So another method of reasoning is necessary. I propose that, although the ongoing catastrophe is enough to make us stop eating seafood, it is not enough to make us emigrants. But criticality of the reactor 4 cooling pool rods could easily cause us to take a one-month vacation to the dry side of the state.

Our canary indicating permanent relocation is the evacuation of WA or CONUS by those American experts watching Fukushima. But how do we keep a close eye on them?

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Peoplenomics: How Transparent Economics Would Really Work

(Elko. NV) Thursday morning’s UrbanSurvival report (*available here) rather cynically lambasted the whole US government reporting system for p[resenting the public with mindless statistical gobbledygook which is almost impossible to sort out in any kind of meaningful way. So I thought it would be instructive this morning to look at how we could rewrite economic reports so that the general public could get something useful out of them. However, before we go into this, we begin with our trudge through the headlines to see if the world survived another night. Which it would have to (logically) in order to be posing rhetorical questions like this, but we’ll do it anyway while the coffee kicks in.

A Couple of Fearless Forecasts

The main forecast of this morning are pretty simple, really.  For one, I expect sometime either today, or next week, Gold will wake up to a $40 (or so) beat-down which seems to happen often enough at the end of the month.  But this morning, in a fine reversal, gold is trying to break to the upside…

Still, within a week, I figure we could see gold back under $1,300….

And since that will mean international “hot money” will need less US paper to buy the Dow, it should result in the bottom give out from under the Dow and the S&P which are edging down toward their 50-day moving averages, although at glacial speed.

Still, today’s line in the sand is 1,701 and change on the S&P – last Friday’s close, and a mark less than that could spell further market downside next week.  We shall see.

So for this morning, Mr. Cheerful is swilling decaf and looking at the just-released Personal Consumption and Expenditures report wondering how long before “the music stops” in the worldwide financial game of musical chairs…

“Personal income increased $57.2 billion, or 0.4 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $56.2 billion, or 0.5 percent, in August, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $34.5 billion, or 0.3 percent. In July, personal income increased $21.2 billion, or 0.2 percent, DPI increased $32.7 billion, or 0.3 percent, and PCE increased $18.3 billion, or 0.2 percent, based on revised estimates. Real disposable personal income increased 0.3 percent in August, compared with an increase of 0.2 percent in July. Real PCE increased 0.2 percent, compared with an increase of 0.1 percent.

Personal outlays — PCE, personal interest payments, and personal current transfer payments — increased $38.4 billion in August, compared with an increase of $22.2 billion in July. PCE increased $34.5 billion, compared with an increase of $18.3 billion. Personal saving — DPI less personal outlays — was $580.7 billion in August, compared with $562.8 billion in July. The personal saving rate — personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income — was 4.6 percent in August, compared with 4.5 percent in July.

Go on, see if you know anyone who actually saved 4.6% of their income in August…send in examples please, because NO ONE I know is stacking cash at this kind of rate.

The Dow futures were down a  bit when I looked but whether the 50 is crossed by the S&P toward the close is the one thing that really could matter today.

Bond Bombshell

Go ahead, try saying it out loud a few times – this is one of those “conditioned response tests” which shows rats may be considerably smarter than humans.  I’ve been sitting here in the client’s guest house this morning muttering this for a couple of hours now and “blond bombshell” keeps getting in the way or, the word just turn into verbal mush. 

Fortunately, my application to be a speech pathologist was turned down, so I had to stay in the business track, which gets us (eventually – but I could go off even further into the weeds if you want) to this note from our Jakarta Bureau Chief:

Hiya chief!

Thought this article would grab your attention.  Aren’t you expecting the world to end in October, led to Perdition by the bond markets

Couldn’t hurt to listen to Paul Craig Roberts again…he sounds like you

The question remains: Is the rupiah falling or the dollar rising?  Is this a currency war? 

Peace, love and happy motoring!

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Coping: Friday at the Wujo

OK, the first serious problem for us to snipe at this morning is far more serious than the problem of “Subaru’s everywhere” that we seem to have gone through a cloud of earlier this week. 

this problem involves something which hinted at a couple of times previously:  the blurring of the boundary between the waking state (such as that is, among only partially awakened society) and the the lucid dream state.

An email from reader Tim sums it up…

George,

We are having déjà vu and dreams about people just to b contacted by those people at the time of the dream (voicemail or email). People having dreams about us then contacting us and mentioning things they saw in the dream that are true but they could not possibly know. I don’t know what is going on but it’s starting to seem scary.

Then there is also weird ghost spiritual stuff, don’t think I’ve read anything about that kind of stuff on ure site, im not sure how u feel about that type of stuff, I was a skeptic but now I believe. I hope 2014 is better, it feels like we r going downhill.

Tim

Remember the Russian Mastroyoska dolls (one inside the next, inside the next) that Ii have used as a convenient illustration of the “nested problem” issue?

Here’s the real difficulty that the evolution of mass consciousness on the Internet may bring with it:

Let’s assume the biggest doll – the outer-most one – represents human consciousness.  And let’s further imagine that the “next one in” this nested reality is the one representing lucid dreaming.

Now, let’s go one more inside of that…with me so far?

What IF – and it’s only a thought (and on decaf this morning, so only a half-formed thought on its own, anyway) – there is a controlling “next one inside of that” which is rule of All, Universe, or whatever you want to call it.

What happens when the reality that we are building in the “here and now” becomes  only itself another doll within a doll?

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Incomprehensible GDP Review–Market Dazzle Rally

You will want to have at least two cups of coffee on the burn this morning in order to sort through the monthly Gross Domestic Product data just out from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. 

That’s because in any college finance class, we we all taught to FIRST report some kind of a baseline hard number and then reference all following percentage changes to that hard number.

Well, as we continually complain around here, the way the BEA works, they don’t bother with such economic niceties:  The just launch into a double-triple serving of self-referential percentagizing ( if I can take some indecent liberties with language here) as they assume that you’ve remembered enough quadratics from school that you can solve for X if you really cared to get to the bottom of things.

Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the second quarter of 2013 (that is, from the first quarter to the second quarter), according to the “third” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

In the first quarter, real GDP increased 1.1 percent. The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the “second” estimate issued last month. In the second estimate, the increase in real GDP was also 2.5 percent.

With the third estimate for the second quarter, the general picture of economic growth remains largely the same (for more information, see “Revisions” on page 3). The increase in real GDP in the second quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), exports, nonresidential fixed investment, private inventory investment, and residential fixed investment that were partly offset by a negative contribution from federal government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

Well, of course they did!  (WTF?)  As the late Billy May said “But wait!  There’s more!!!

The acceleration in real GDP in the second quarter primarily reflected upturns in exports and in nonresidential fixed investment, a smaller decrease in federal government spending, and an upturn in state and local government spending that were partly offset by an acceleration in imports and decelerations in private inventory investment and in PCE.

The price index for gross domestic purchases, which measures prices paid by U.S. residents, increased 0.2 percent in the second quarter, 0.1 percentage point less than the second estimate; this index increased 1.2 percent in the first quarter.

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Coping: Limitations to What You Can Prep For

A hell of a mess and a touch of Wujo up in the Denver area?

My sister, Suzi, just got back from a Denver conference and told us at lunch Monday that the Denver area itself is still “open for business: and there were no noticeable impacts on either her conference, or travel.

But not everyone is so lucky as to be right in Denver proper.  Take my buddy Patrick, who lives

Hi George,

Attached is a pic of my house. It has been condemned. I send this in that even having a prepper mind set and concern I was not prepared for this. I did not expect this and was not able to get to my emergency supplies. a lesson learned.

Lyons, CO was hit hard in the floods. My house (above) was ground zero.

I have noticed something about the people in Lyons and other places. Everyone is complaining about their memory. Myself as well.

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Chicago: The "Soft Entrance" of Martial Law?

(Grants Pass, OR) We continue our adventuring around the country this morning with a trip over to the east Bay area and a day of consulting tomorrow. But, on our way, we’ve had plenty of time to see some interesting things in America, including having the luxury of watching the follow-on to the Chicago shootings debate this week and a shocking move on the part of the Secretary of State. But, as usual, before we get into those items, a discussion first about how a few other headlines are rolling… More for Subscribers How to Become a Subscriber Subscriber Help Center

Housing Prices–Still Firm

Just out from Case Shiller/S&P this morning:

New York, September 24, 2013 – Data through July 2013, released today by S&P Dow Jones Indices for its S&P/Case-Shiller1 Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, showed increases of 1.9% and 1.8% from June for the 10- and 20-City Composites. For at least four months in a row, all 20 cities showed monthly gains. Phoenix posted 22 consecutive months of positive returns. Although home prices in all the cities increased, 15 cities and both Composites saw these monthly rates decelerate in July versus June.

Over the last 12 months, prices rose 12.3% and 12.4% as measured by the 10- and 20-City Composites. The year-over-year returns show a brighter outlook with 13 cities posting improvement in July versus June values. Las Vegas increased the most from +24.9% in June to an impressive +27.5% in July.

The chart above depicts the annual returns of the 10-City Composite and the 20-City Composite Home Price Indices. In July 2013, the 10- and 20-City Composites posted annual increases of 12.3% and 12.4%, respectively.

“Home prices gains are holding their 12% annual rate of gain established by the two Composite indices in April,” says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “The Southwest continues to lead the housing recovery.

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Waiting on Housing Data

A quick reader reminder that we will update with the Case-Shiller/S&P Housing Index about 8:15 Central when the data comes out,  A leveling off of sales may be anticipated, I think, because at some point the “easy money” VC folks (that’d be the vulture capitalists) will run out of free money to buy up money from bank REO departments.  Oh, and we here the rental revenue isn’t so free and easy, after all.

That worry may be somewhat premature, since the Fed blew its chance to begin the inevitable drug abuse withdrawal from the coke of “free money”.  And, to be sure, there is some evidence the Fed may be right.

When I looked this morning, the dollar was running about 0.7411 to the Euro, which means although there was some drop down in the few days after the Fed meeting, what we’re seeing is a persistently high dollar and the effect of this is what, class?

Obviously, anything denominated in paper (housing, gold, oil, etc) should be dropping in a nicely synchronized deflationary way.

So yes, oil was back down to the $104 and change level, gold ought to fall down below the psychologically important $1,300 range, and housing?  Well check back in a few minutes for that.

The key moving pieces of the big, globalist, clockworks of capitalism, are continuing to show a weak Europe, a troubled European Central Bank and it all adds up to the serious investors greatest nightmare: A Muddle Through which, because of low beta/volatility makes investing about as much fun as watching paint dry.

More after this:

Prepper Note in Passing…

By the way, since we’ve been writing about the prepper space since before it was a space or niche, I wanted to point out how little emphasis is placed by most prepper sites on useful home equipment like sewing machines.  The way I figure it, people can (and have) lived without air conditions, but sewing machines, even running on a small inverter and car battery, or old lawnmower engine and scrounged up alternator, could still be one of the most useful tools out there, especially if you’ve got an assortment of old sheets, used denim, and even scraps of leather and so forth.  So when I put an ad up like one that suggests you consider a sewing machine, it’s not like we haven’t put some thought into it, and yes, Elaine’s good a good sewing machine and has made a lot of clothes, including women’s suits and so forth.

OK, back to passing headlines…

Kenya Mall Inaction

Even as we continue to hear about how Americans are involved in the Islamic militant attack on a shopping mall in Kenya, we continue to be appalled at the lack of response by the Obama administration.

I bet it would be different if Kenya has an air defense system linked with Syria and controlled pipeline rights of way, huh?  Not that the Kenyan government can’t handle it, but the precedents are out there is the administration was willing to play more than a TS chit on this.  (Definition #4 if you’re young)

Principles or Money?

We note the reports this morning that while Texas senator Ted Cruz is looking to filibuster as efforts to defund Obamacare, which has turned into a corporatists and congress versus we the people economic class warfare too, that Cruz is running into opposition from his own party.

Why, if I weren’t traveling today, I’d be running out the details of those opposing defunding to see ifs there was a correlation between campaign contributions for the next election cycle and Big Money from the beneficiaries of this change in healthscare,

No, I’m not claiming there is a correlation.  I just wouldn’t be particularly surprised  by it.

Oh, and on the class warfare angle, I’m sure there’s a more watered-down way to characterize the special dispensation/delays for big corporations to comply with the AHCA, but none seem to be coming to mind just yet.

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Coping: Side Trip to Dulce?

Sometimes there are nagging questions that demand an answer.  Like an itch that won’t go away on its own – with a thorough scratching – there are questions in this life which just intuitively need to be asked, poked around at, and so forth. And once such “itch” is the area around Dulce (Dull-say) New Mexico.

An article posted Monday over at the UFO Digest website offers a lot of additional information about supposedly goings-on down that way in an article titled “MORE UNSETTLING EVIDENCE OVER DULCE PART IX.”

If this was the only article on the web, it would be easy to dismiss the place as just another artifact of the odd mental aberrations that bubble up to the top of urban legend lists.  But this one is special, indeed, because there are so many “pointers” around that suggest maybe there could be something to this talk about Dulce.

The Doc Vega article is a fine starting point because there are many framing references to the story that could be cast as making sense.  For example, the notion that the US would have a semi-prepared backup site which could be used for nuclear development work – not terribly far from the Trinity site (near Alamogordo, NM) would certainly make sense.

But still, there are other bits – like the supposed fire-fight between off-worlders and military forces that have been hinted at in relation to other locations.

Still, the supposed tie-in with human abduction cases, cattle mutilations, and much more, is intriguing even if not particularly well-suited to tracking back to first sources.

One little oddity, which is just as likely to occur from my ignorance of how Google searches work than anything else, is what I’d call an anomalous result from Google.  As you know, if you put a + sign in from of a search time, the world’s most popular search engine will return [+keyword 1 +keyword 2] all page references on the web which contain both terms.

At least, most of the time, that is.  You see, when I casually put in [+Dulce +ufo] I got exactly one result and two ads.

On the other hand, when I put in a different city name and +ufo, I get tons of results. 

For example, the small town of Stephenville, TX, where there was a decent UFO sighting a few years back came up with a whopping 105,000 hits.

All of which could be blown off, except that if the search is modified to include the state abbreviation (NM) the results for [+Dulce +NM +ufo] we find 92,000 listing and (without the + operator) we can get for simple [Dulce ufo] more than 1.5 million search returns.

Maybe search operators don’t work like they have previously, or (screams my inquiring mind) maybe the search results are somehow different on this one?

Moving on, we come to the Wikipedia entry on the supposed base which begins…

“Dulce Base is an alleged secret alien underground facility under Archuleta Mesa on the Colorado-New Mexico border near the town of Dulce, New Mexico in the United States. Claims of alien activity there first arose from Albuquerque businessman Paul Bennewitz.

Starting in 1979, Bennewitz became convinced he was intercepting electronic communications from alien spacecraft and installations outside of Albuquerque. By the 1980s he believed he had discovered an underground base near Dulce. The story spread rapidly within the UFO community and by 1990, UFOlogist John Lear claimed he had independent confirmations of the base’s existence. Political scientist Michael Barkun writes that Cold War underground missile installations in the area gave superficial plausibility to the rumors, making the Dulce base story an “attractive legend” within UFOlogy. According to Barkun, claims about experiments on abductees and firefights between aliens and the Delta Force place the Dulce legend “well outside even the most far-fetched reports of secret underground bases.”[

In a further entry about source Paul Bennewitz, Wikipedia’s entry here reveals some interesting additional background about the source of the story.

All of which would put it into the “blow off” pile which wouldn’t be worth our mention, except for an intriguing bit of HUMINT which came my way a couple of years ago from a now retired person who, shall we say, looked at radar for a living.  He provided me with some (on background only) information about an object which had come in up over the Montana area, had done an approximate right turn, and had transited the South Dakota/Wyoming area in the Denver ATC airspace on a track down toward  fairly empty part of New Mexico.

Interestingly, it wasn’t specifically tracking toward Ducle, but rather some Native American lands which are rugged and remote but a fair distance from Dulce.

Oh, and the speed of whatever it was that tracked was into the thousands of miles per hour.

It’s here that being a journalist has some of its most difficult decisions.  We have on the one hand an intriguing story (based largely on a single source, now dead) but we have some totally unrelated anomalous data from a super high creds source who shared some track info, not unlike the data what shows up on Flight Aware, except that our old plane moseys along at 1/300th of the speed of the anomalous craft.

The odds of doing any breakthrough research at Ducle seems mighty slim.  But, since the other source allows us the luxury of some very rough triangulation, we can speculate all day long on what might be out there.

As a result, every time we’re in a position to to come through that part of the country, as we will be Saturday, or so, we wonder about staying up last on a high mountain peak or a mesa down south a ways, and just keeping our eyes open for the next “Fire in the Sky” kind of event.

If we apply the same kind of stringent math and analytic techniques that serve us so well in electronics and analysis of markets,  you can quickly see how such investigations are almost certain to be unsuccessful to something like four (or more) places to the right of the decimal point (i.e. odds of success about –.000003 percent).

Still, the way of the Law of Large Numbers work, it’s kind of like buying a Lotto ticket.  Oh, sure, the odds may be one in 8-million (or higher) but if you don’t at least buy one lotto ticket, your chances of winning become a certain zero percent chance of winning.  Or, as an ex Los Alamos fellow told me once:  The odds between one lotto ticket and buying 10 is small, but the certainty of no chance without buying a ticket is what you need to consider.

As indeed we do, as hints and snips have us wondering about disappearing civilizations (like Chaco Canyon/Anasazi) and what may be out there waiting to be discovered on, in, around, or between some of the mesas and mountains in America’s real outback country.

Reader first-hand information (particularly sightings and directions in this area) are always welcome, as well as a track intersection analysis of UFO databases.  We can always look at data, but like finding the next Microsoft in a “pink sheet” stock, we recognize the odds of success are low.  But like buying a lotto ticket once in a while, I might be convinced.

Thinking Points:  Change versus Revolution

As I expected would happen, by exactly non-violent peaceful change, “let’s invent ourselves into a better future and skip the barricades and guillotines” attitude didn’t sit with with a lot of readers.  Like this feller, for example:

I’m sure you are aware that there are many forms of revolutions other than blood and gore tho there is nothing that the powers fear more than a little unrest from the sheep and a tax revolution would fit the bill very nicely.WE CAN SET AND MUMBLE FOREVER ABOUT THE ROTTEN CORRUPT GOVERNMENT IF ONE WHISH’S TO CALL IT THAT BUT WITHOUT A FLAT OUT TAX REVOLUTION NOTHING AND I MEAN NOTHING WILL CHANGE AND IF IT SHOULD CAUSE PUBLIC UNREST SO BE IT.!!!

Another wrote:

Come on!
Pelosi went to Soros’ wedding! As did Bono.

The kleptocracy will not be fixed except by force.

If you mean “force” as in economic means, or in the proposed national trucker’s strike in a few weeks, then sure…I’m all in.  But, if you’re talking force of a harder form, count me out.

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Greenspan on Forecasting and Futuring?

Although we’re still on the road up in the Pacific Northwest, this promises to be a very critical week for markets on a number of accounts.  One of which is the supposed “critical period” just ahead which former Fed boss Alan Greenspan seems to hint at per reviews of his new book The Map and the Territory: Risk, Human Nature, and the Future of Forecasting which will be released on October 22 and which ain’t cheap. ( In fact, it’s $28 and change for the hardback and $19 for the Kindle version. )

Still, it may be worth your time to read because what goes on in the mind of the Fed head can cause dread, or in its stead, financial dead, so to speak.  With the White House signaling that Janet Yellen’s nomination to replace outgoing Ben Bernanke is perhaps within days of happening, we will be looking forward to any insights from Greenspan – even the ones that the MSM hates to deal with, namely, the reality of hyper-complex economic realities that can’t be distilled down into 10-second radio “actualities” or 10-second video clips.

And speaking of Ms Yellen, pardon me, but when establishment news organizations start waxing eloquently about how Yellen will bring “..a tougher tone to the Fed” I’ll just step outside to gag for a minute.  This is PR playbook-sounding hype…and in reality I don’t expect Yellen to be any more fiscally restrained than Bernanke (or Greenspan before him).  While the reason is simple (I mean why risk blowing up the whole economy, right?) it would at least be refreshing to hear something other than pro-business pandering. 

It’s like a wolf-pack explaining to the chickens how the pending wolf-in-charge is ever-so-much-interested in the health of chickens than previous wolves.  Yeah, sure, you bet’cha.

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Coping: You Is What You Eats

A couple of people ask wondered “How come you’re not ranting and raving about the Monsanto case which is about to go to the US Supreme Court?”

Oh…you mean stories like this one, over here?

Gosh, I have a whole notebook full of excuses, none of which you’d care about.  But the main reason is that…

a) The odds of the US Supremes doing anything other than rubber-stamping GMO-pimping industry filings is pretty much near zero. Their lawyers make more than the public’s lawyers. And…

b) There’s an old saying “God grant me the wisdom to change the things I can change, see those things I can’t change, and the wisdom to know the difference between the two…”

In other words, this decision is already around the corner and up your street – past the realm where mere mortal (victims) and the childish sales job on “right action” or demonstrations is meaningful.  We’re in pay to play country on this.

I figure it’s just a matter of time until it’s all a GMO world and a done deal,  since the SipCops subset of fools on the hill seems to be building precedent (a form of legalese for irrationality but beyond the Kafkaesque challenge level) as life is patented by the the biff chemcos and and the Frankenfirms which assert rights specious rights to pervert and then patent life forms.  No long-term environmental impact statements needed for when their evil spawn goes wild and displaces au natural heritage seeds, either.  Just roll with the flow, and pass out the dough.  Been that way for years.

Not to worry, we’ve got a provisional patent application in the works which means even less sense.  Essentially, my PPO says that because I have changed the water levels of the Pacific Ocean this week, by sticking my left foot into Puget Sound, my solitary act of displacement means that I now lay claim to every conveyance upon ALL oceans and use of tides and water for transport, since I personally corrupted the existing order of things.  GMO meaning, in my filing George Modified Oceans.

I own it.  I can hardly wait to send out my infringement notices to all the world’s fishermen, too.  Use of my ocean…screw ‘em!

Of course, since I don’t have a political slush fund worth billions (not saying the gmo-daddies do either, but it’s fair to say they control at least 18-cents more campaign dough than I do) there’s no way the SupCos will find for Ure Tides LLc.  My plans for GMOs will be laughed out, but the structural resonances are there.

Now, if I could bundle, buy some consensus on the hill, well, that would be a different deal.  Besides, inside of all the chemmiecos, there is open talk at yes, indeed, GMOs is all about selling pesticides, fertilizers, and seeds. 

About the only point where it actually comes down to really trying to feed more people, at lower costs, is when marketing (or major court whining’s/pleadings) is involved. 

Here’s the RFT (raw frigging truth):  If the Frankenfood people were really ALL about helping peeps live longer, stronger and healthier, wouldn’t they all be not-for-profits so they could toss more dough into their efforts and skip the tax load.  But they don’t, do they?  None of the GMO’s has announced (when I checked this morning) any plan to “go free” and recyle 100% of their revenues into helping the lil peeps.  That’s how this rolls, Bo.

Shit, Georgie…I never thought about it THAT way….

Well, WTFU (wake the something up) and smell the Fair Trade coffee, boze.

You see, besides being up here on family business in the PNW, I also met this weekend with a client in the natural food space who was up here for meetings and without letting on who, where, of what this source is keeping me up on the leading edge of organic foodies…

We were talking about standards and how the Organic standards are getting watered down and replaced by focus on Non-GMO and gluten-free, etc.

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