Month: June 2014

LW Economic Conundrum: New Caliphate / No Border

There are always multiple ways to view history – even as it is occurring before our very eyes.

When the US was in its last economic depression, we had the roll-out the new government in Germany back in the 1930’s.

To follow up on my Sunday post about the new [global] Caliphate, I’ve been eyeing a timeline of Germany in the 30’s (try here) to see if the ISIS/ISIL people are somehow (perhaps unwittingly) falling into an historical rhyme with Hitler’s rise to power?

As long-time readers know, I’ve been debating for some months now, whether the economy peaked (for good) in 2000 (the Internet Bubble) and whether the present illusion of recovery is simply due to massively dislocated economic resources.

In 2000, the high Dow was around 11,723.  And, when we put that into the Minneapolis Fed Inflation calculator, we infer that the Dow would only need to be at 16,080 in order to have held onto parity on a purchasing power basis.

Since the Dow closed Friday at 16,851, an initial argument could be made that investing in the Dow would have netted a person a 4.8% return since 2000.

Frankly, holding on to the Dow stocks for 14.5 years for a real return of 4.8% doesn’t exactly get me excited, but maybe you have a lower threshold than I do.

But just “buying the Dow” was an incredibly risky thing:  The Dow gets jiggered because of the changing economy and when companies run into bad sledding:

AT&T Corporation, Eastman Kodak Company, and International Paper Company were replaced by American International Group Inc., Pfizer Incorporated, and Verizon Communications Inc..

SBC Communications Inc. was renamed AT&T Inc. after it acquired the original AT&T.

Altria Group Incorporated and Honeywell International Inc. were replaced by Bank of America Corporation and Chevron Corporation.

American International Group Inc. was replaced by Kraft Foods Inc.

Citigroup Inc. and General Motors Corporation were replaced by Cisco Systems, Inc. and The Travelers Companies, Inc.

Kraft Foods Inc.

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Coping: With Renting Your Life / The New Slavery

I’m heavily into templates.  You know  – everything from some simple task like drawing, painting “by numbers” or any of the million and one things that go into making hypercomplexity work.

Short form there’s no question that templates work.  Take Obamacare, for example.  The idea is simple:  spread around costs more equitably and everyone should be better off.  But the real outcome of Obamacare (which missed the mark [single-payer]) is nothing more than a conglomeration of bad ideas, but ideas which profit the insurance industry.

Not a day goes by that headlines don’t cross the wires that back-up my assertion

    And the problem just gets worse from there.

    In the past week, I’ve been going around with my local doc’s billing office:  When I moved from a high-end (car payment sized medical payment monthly) to Medicare, I duly informed my doc’s office.  Yet, somehow, the latest “lube, oil, and filter” bill went to the old insurance outfit and so far it looks to be resolved with a $65-dollar copay for services that in fact should cost only about $250 (max, being generous here) but that get billed to an insurance company at just under $500.

    One of the biggest scams in America – that somehow the Federal Trade Commission doesn’t touch – is this horse-pucky of billing different people different rates.

    It’s like when I had my (burst) appendectomy back in 2006, or so:  There “rack rate” was $17,000 and change.  But the Big Insurance Company rate was only $7,900.

    The FTC (and other pseudo-consumer groups) make specious arguments that the reason this is all “OK” is that the Big Insurance Companies have was amount to “bulk purchase agreements” where statistically they will buy so many surgeries per year and that’s why the insurance company gets a lower rate.

    But, in fact, the delivery is the issue here:  The Big Insurance Companies were buying healthcare wholesale – marking it up dramatically – and then retailing it at a higher price than their costs so in practice, they made money both on the mark-up as well as an intricate system of co-pays.  Toss in the annual deductible, that varies by plan, and excluding certain procedures and costs, and pretty soon you’ve got a hugely profitable business.

    The real money is medicine is not in making people well.  It’s in the continuous bloodletting of their wallets.

    And that’s where we are with Obamacare.

    The reason that the insurance industry gives millions to the political campaigns of senatoids, congressoids and state legislators is not so they will come give vision and motivation speeches to their executives cadres.  That’s what they’d ask you to believe, but any fool can see the ugly reality here is simple:  They’re just looking to keep “buying” that amazing profit margin that comes from a multi-tiered business model based on entirely fictional costs.

    Thinking back to my appendectomy, I say a $6-single tablet of Tylenol on my bill.  Arguing the point it was explained to me that yes, the pill was almost free, but I was paying for the record-keeping.  Eventually we negotiated our way through that, the Big Insurance Company that had screwed up on my coverage finally paid the bill (the $7,900 one) but not before the “direct payment good squad” didn’t first try to extort $17,900 out of me for the same service.

    But this is a fine example of how “law” – nominally supposed to protect people – fails but it readily twisted into a profiteer’s delight.  If law were rational (no worries, it’s not) it would note that the hospital end customer is the patient who receives services is being unequally billed.

    The reason, obviously, that the FTC (or whoever) isn’t all over this like white on rice is because it creates jobs, and for the past 40-years, increasingly more campaign money.  Hence, the twist in contract law:  The services are sold to an insurance outfit, which then is doling out the healthcare, so under contract law the two services (deliver to potentially the same person) are treated as different sorts of transactions.

    Same hospital, same docs, same nursing staff.  The FTC has no balls in this, however, because there’d be a massive unemployment problem (and there for the juicy campaign dollars) as a result.  So now, with few changes, everyone is being herded into the insurance industry at gunpoint.  What’s not to love?

    That was sad, though momentarily I had held out the impossible hopes that Obamacare would resolve such crap.  So far, it hasn’t.

    In fact, next level play has arrived:  In a follow-up to our meeting last week, Oilman2 has spotted the “new game” – which is where the doctoring business is now busting people – sending them down the road  – because of their credit scores:

    Three weeks ago, wife went to our family practice physician. We been using her since she started practicing medicine 20 years ago. She has been in independent medical corporations until 6 months ago. She joined a hospital corporation due to the Obamacare paperwork and malpractice insurance regulations changes (squeezing more out of doctors for less coverage). Now she can do as she normally does, operating under the hospital corporations better malpractice umbrella, and off-loading paperwork. Instead of 3 nurses and 6 admin to handle claims, she has 4 nurses and ONE admin.

    Her copay is now $55 instead of $35. She cannot accept cash, checks or debit cars – just MC & VISA – no AMEX.

    The wife and I have 3 credit cards that have zero unpaid balance, 1 car financed with draw on specific account where we keep 2 notes worth of balance, a mortgage and a note on the farm which we are never late on.

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    Remember our “New [global] Caliphate” Peoplenomics?

    [Editor’s note:  Don’t use used to us publishing Sunday updates.  But more or less exactly as predicted in our Peoplenomics “First Things” section from June 18th, we note with no surprise that ISIS/ISIL is now proclaiming itself to be a “new Caliphate” which – if history is any guide – seems likely to suck in other interest groups and could press the formation of the “New [global] Caliphate” predicted in our report.

    Because of the potential historical importance of this, I’m  putting a small section of one of our Peoplenomics reports out for general public consumption because this is an issue of immediate (and like growing) concern.]

    From Peoplenomics #667-A, June 18, 2014:

    First Things

    Mapping the New [global] Caliphate

    Here’s a look at a Peoplenomics project that’s in the “research in progress” stage  but is obviously coming into view:

    [Map derived using Microsoft Streets and Trips 2013]

    Obviously, this is the al Qaeda/Wahhabi/extremist map that headlines infer, and no, it’s not a “done deal” yet but the headlines make a strong case that the reason we haven’t experienced a terrorist attack on America is that we’re being infiltrated by Other Than Mexicans (OTMs) through our leaky border, and no point poking the sleeping US giant, as long as we’re ignorant of the overall expansionist game plan of the Global Caliphate leadership.

    Our view of this global caliphate evolves from watching the pattern of conflict that is now in play globally and applying the headlines to the underlying map contours you can draw in the borders much as I have above.  In this sense, the headlines of the day make perfect sense – if you’re on a Caliphate Building Mission:

    “Militants strike Iraq’s largest oil refinery.”

    “Algeria says killed 50 militants in 5-months.”

    “Libyan general wages war against Islamist militants in Benghazi.”

    Chad, being low on easy resource is lower on the food chain, but still in May “Nigerian extremist strike and kill again.”

    —

    I could go through each of the countries on the map, but this “big picture” of the New [global] Caliphate is not in the MSM because people don’t seem to do well with anything other than byte-sized morsels of news, and people’s attention deficit really plays well into the lower tech, more focused thinking of people not raised on cell phones.

    Nevertheless, off at the other end of the Global Caliphate, which is slowly becoming an emergent fact, slowly and over time, we read this morning how president Karzai in Afghanistan is blowing off claims that there was widespread election fraud in his country’s presidential polling.

    Hmmm…wonder where their voting equipment came from?

    Notwithstanding, the Taliban/Pashtun are much closer ideologically to the Sunni, since they’ve been screwed over by the Iranians (Shiites) in the past.

    So when news from that part of the world includes stories like Abdullah Abdullah is charging election irregularities and wants vote counting stopped, the impartial observer looks at the warscape and figures it to be little more than a birth pang of the New Global Caliphate’s birth.

    Not all Americans are so confined by their thinking, but a vast majority tend to look at conflict as somehow relating to borders.  But to the thinking person, there are many kinds of borders:  The kind laid out to define political divisions, but also the type which are based on resources, religion, rainfall, mountain ranges, and the cultural bonds of people.

    Which is precisely why the political border in Ukraine is so contentious:  The Russians have installed a lot of their culture and people in Ukraine over the past 200 years and they would like to consolidate that social grouping as retained as a part of Russia.

    The US/West backed government in Kiev, which is asserting its autonomy, is declaring a unilateral ceasefire in the contested eastern portions of the country, but what seems likely is that we’ll see a tit-for-tat with the border moving more westerly if the Russians will play nicely (the western “carrot” idea) or the fighting will increase if Russia insists on asserting and dialing back gas deliveries.  That’d be the stick.

    Oh, to be sure, there are some American’s who see this big picture, but with a different slant, more along the lines of that proposed by the late Project for a New American Century.  But while that concept was wrong for so many reasons, we still wryly note that Dick and Liz Cheney write in the Wall Street Journal’s OpEd last night about the “Collapsing Obama Doctrine.”

    Could it be that the Dick [Cheney]-haters and Zionist bashers missed something?  The map argues the point well.

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    When Hyperinflation Comes a-Knocking

    With some key Fed comments this week, and the new-backward clocks of Bolivia, we consider a new way to perhaps make some serious coin over the next could of years. And in headlines this morning, a number of our unconventional worldviews are being validated by crossing headlines. It’s an easy read this morning because a lot of what was once-upon-a-time highly speculative outlooks around here seem to be materializing out of the fog pretty much as expected. Not that’s it’s good, but it is what it is… More for Subscribers ||| SUBSCRIBE NOW!

    EU Grabs the European Midlands

    I appreciate your interest in economics when there is so much other great material on the net to pick from this morning (like “how to talk to fish”).

    But this is where we hold the financial séance daily and where dollar’s make sense.

    Like the EU’s Great Land Grab of former Soviet Union lands, Ukraine, Moldova, and Schneepenheiser…no, make that Georgia.

    But it’s not over till the fat lady sings and if you wade through the fine print of this CNN report, you’ll find the Ukrainians are still referring to Crimean territory as part of Ukraine.

    And that means only one thing:  More conflict to follow in the region. The Fat Lady may return.

    And for those keeping score of such things, the EU effectively picked up more territory this week than ISIS/ISIL.  But for the long haul, the pen is not mightier than the bomb, so roles will reverse next week, we’re sure.

    The EU is running out of countries to annex and Vlad ain’t interested.

    Shoot & Bomb Dept.

    Human Rights Watch says it has located an ISIS execution site.  Number of dead could be as high as 200.  More comment on the roll-out of the Global Caliphate in the Coping section which follows.

    On the other side of the war front, the “Torah conditions for 3rd Temple now met?” wonders WorldlNetDaily’s Bob Unruh.

    And the money machine is already gearing up, reports warhammer:

    George,

    All this responding to armed chaos is getting expensive:

    <http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140626/CONGRESSWATCH/306260033/Contingency-Spending-Request-Includes-6B-New-Weapons>

    So much for all that sequester bluster. Thank goodness the U.S.

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    Coping: Future Wars, the NGC, and Nostradamus

    It’s about time we have the same conversation here in public that we had with our Peoplenomics.com subscribers a couple of weeks back:  When you look at the data, there is indeed a New [global] Caliphate [NGC] emerging and you can see it clearly when you look at a map of North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia Minor.

    [Map derived using Microsoft Streets and Trips 2013]

    What I’ll propose to you this morning is that when you map out the major trouble spots in this part of the world, you can quickly see which country is at the center of things.

    Not coincidentally, I figure, the country is also where the 9/11 perps came from, but most of the American public has forgotten that thanks to the spin and hype that accompanied the U.S. intervention in Iraq in response to 9/11.

    Wrong country, pure and simple.

    In order to understand the future dynamic *(2016/17 for war lite and 2022 for global war) it’s useful to keep an eye on these boundary lines.  Because the West is almost moving its boundary lines forward, too.

    In fact, just this morning, the European Union signed alliances with Ukraine, Georgia, and Modova…and as I’ve shared with you for months now, the situation in Ukraine was not a Russian advance, but rather the Europeans going on their same crazy expansionism that started back in the Crusades and has only taken periodic breaks.

    Fact of the matter is that we (‘Mericans) live in a country that Chris Columbus claimed as part of the Spanish front of globalism in the late 1400’s which persisted far too long.  As indigenous peoples in the Philippines might argue.

    And the arising of a “police state” is hardly anything “new” – it’s all be done before but previously it lacked the high tech “touch.”  Shortly after Columbus’ time, it was called the Inquisition and non-conformists were being burned in Salem more than a century later.

    One can only conclude that there’s a rhyme of history in there somewhere, and my friend Robin Landry – a great student and practitioner of economic cycle analytics in addition to his Elliott work – would no doubt point to this as the socioeconomic 500 years cycle with the USA’s revolution in 1776 the 250-year cycle.  And he’d be right, of course.

    One of the longer-playing dynamics of world history are absorbed, we can also see how revolutions and the 500-year cycle play out.  As a broad brush, a 500-year cycle began about 1,000 A.D. and 250-years (very roughly) before that, Islamic forces conquered Spain under the leadership of the Umayyad Caliphate.  Wiki it:

    The Umayyad conquest of Hispania is the initial Islamic Umayyad Caliphate‘s conquest, between 711 and 788, of the Christian Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania, centered in the Iberian Peninsula, which was known to them under the Arabic name al-Andalus.

    The conquest began with an invasion by an army that (according to traditional accounts) consisted largely of Berber Northwest Africans and Arabs, and was commanded by Tariq ibn Ziyad. They disembarked in early 711 at Gibraltar and campaigned their way northward. After the decisive Battle of Guadalete against the usurper Roderic and the support provided to the Saracens by the legitimate heirs to the throne, the initial raids became, to the surprise of the raiders themselves, territorial gains successfully conquered and retained. The Visigothic kingdom splintered into client-dominions of the Umayyads. Over the following decade, most of the Iberian Peninsula was further occupied and brought under Umayyad sovereignty. In 714 Musa ibn Nusayr headed north-west up the Ebro river to overrun western Basque regions and the Cantabrian mountains all the way to Gallaecia, with no relevant or attested opposition. However, these northern areas drew little interest to the conquerors and were hard to defend when taken.

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    Plane Stupids: Global Media Madness

    Our overnight data run with www.nostrcodeus.com web-sweeping software about puked on the word autopilot which was not how I planned to start this morning’s column.

    And what it brings into focus is how mass media is massively manic.

    Here’s the deal:  The MH370 flight went missing back on March 8th.

    I’m an Excel jock, so everything is a date range to me:  that was 110 days ago.

    Fast forward to this morning and Google News pops with 12,300 results for “autopilot” and leading the pack is Australian officials announcing that the planes autopilot was likely on.”

    A short class in common sense, if we could?  Being a pilot, If I have an autopilot, I use it.  Duh.  There’s plenty else to do when flying besides hand steer.  (Since I don’t have an autopilot, Elaine flies the plane while I navigate or talk to ATC.  In a jet the autopilot doesn’t go shopping.)

    The idea that the “autopilot was on” is about as useful, pertinent, predictive, or significant as “The aircraft’s collision avoidance lights may have been on.”

    Useless.  Noise.  Impertinent data based wholly on speculation.  Insanity.

    I want to learn more about all those computer scientists onboard.  But to tell the public that the “search zone” is moving is an insult to at least half the public’s intelligence.  Obvious to even us barely above average types:  If you don’t find wreckage one place, you move on. Do we need a media frenzy to remind us?   Oh FMTT this is stupid.  Announce finding the bloody plane or STFU.  Move on.

    Useful:  If your IQ is above 100, you might want to blacklist any media outfit that doesn’t label this as pandering and hype which it is, and it’s so labeled here.

    If I get time, I’m planning to launch a “How many reporters does it take to change a  light bulb?” page.

    More after this…

    (I may have to enroll in something…)

    Personal Income and Other Humor

    I don’t know how many of the gub’munt statisticians go on to become joke-writers for late-night TV, but when you read this morning’s personal savings numbers, it becomes clear that the question is a reasonable one:

    “Personal income increased $58.8 billion, or 0.4 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $55.6 billion, or 0.4 percent, in May, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $18.3 billion, or 0.2 percent. In April, personal income increased $49.9 billion, or 0.3 percent, DPI increased $50.8 billion, or 0.4 percent, and PCE increased $2.3 billion, or less than 0.1 percent, based on revised estimates

    Personal outlays — PCE, personal interest payments, and personal current transfer payments — increased $18.0 billion in May, compared with an increase of $2.1 billion in April. PCE increased $18.3 billion, compared with an increase of $2.3 billion.

    Personal saving — DPI less personal outlays — was $620.3 billion in May, compared with $582.7 billion in April. The personal saving rate — personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income — was 4.8 percent in May, compared with 4.5 percent in April.

    Of course, paying off your credit card isn’t really savings, any more than filling your car up with gasoline is savings but I’m not doing the accounting.  Leave the definitions loose enough and I can show you anything you want for a number.

    Stock market looks to open about flat this morning (at least that was the earlier reading) and gold was going through its end of month beat down.

    Life in the Datamocracy

    *(this will be reposted on my www.datamocracy.com site this morning, too)

    The courts have really talked out of both sides of their mouth on life here in the information age

    For one thing, the Court has turned down Aereo, which was in the nifty business of pulling “off the air” TV signals and piping them down the internet.  No biggie?  Well, the real deal is the Court just got into the “defending dead industries” position with this one.  Cable operators gotta love it, though and the satellite guys too.  I look for industry contributions in 2016. The internet is gonna cream ‘em though…give it time.  It’s coming.

    Meantime the other Datamocracy headlines this morning include how a federal judge has ruled that warrantless bulk surveillance is legal. Oh, crap, like that’s a surprise.

    Of course a court’s also saying that what’s on your cell phone can not be searched without a warrant, but it’s likely to be only a matter of time till that falls, too. Police will press on this issue as hard as they can…

    And then it will go to the Supreme Court and there will go that Constitutional guarantee about privacy of your papers.

    Six Country War 

    It’s now a REGIONAL WAR IN MIDDLE EAST

    Other than the mythical savings rate and searching for search news, the elephant in the room is there are now six countries involved in the fighting with ISIS/ISIL and the Saudis on one side and Syria, Iraq and Iran on the other. 

    Six countries, in all, by the account on the Debka site over here.  “As firs US advisers reach Baghdad, Iranians and Saudis airlift weapons to opposing sides in Iraq.”

    I promise to take your editorial guidance here, but when six country are throwing in weapons isn’t that up to your definition of regional war?   It is mine…when Syrian planes are bombing runways with Saudi plans on them.

    Cashing In on Fads

    Fine example about to pop:  GoPro – the portable camera folks.  Can a great product make a great company?  Put’cher money on…new shooter….coming out….

    Free Lunching Notes

    From our news analyst fellow in Winnipeg:

    Dear Mr.

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    Coping: From the Cynic’s Notebook

    It’s the little things that remind me of how we got to be a confused, bewildered, and mostly paralyzed by cognitive dissonance in this country.  Come to think of it, without a southern border we may not even be a country any more.  Maybe that’s like computer software with a memory leak…without borders were just…leak , leak, leak ourselves to death…

    A major dissonance arrived in Wednesday’s mail.

    There it was:  A nice direct-mail piece suggesting that I subscribe to Alaska Magazine.

    Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the magazine but they are really quite gorgeous.  The photography captures all the majesty of Denali down to the fishing boats of the southeast.

    It’s along the lines of Arizona Highways, but when you set a copy of Alaska on the coffee table, I notice drinks stay cooler longer.

    I appreciate the state, having been to Alaska a number of times, worked there, heard the ice on Turnagain Arm scream on a stormy winter’s night.  Seen the sun never set.. UFOs, top secret airplanes…love the place…but that was back in the day.

    As I considered subscribing, the mental image of some hearty photographers sitting around a big A-frame on a lake populated by bush pilot sea planes, swigging coffee and pushing their Mac’s to the ultimate in graphic excellence disappeared.

    I read the mailing address as follows:

    Well, that turned into a quest for truth – and yes, the outfit has its editorial office located in Anchorage.  Likely this was a marketing outfit’s address, but this is the kind of thing (in Monk or Rainmaker fashion) that sticks in my craw, demands attention, and I feel compelled to dig out the answers.

    That in turn led to trying to sort out why MapQuest couldn’t find the real Alaska Alaska office on Arctic Slope Avenue while Google Maps put it on Danner Avenue? 

    That was only a sideshow to the question of whether I could set a seaplane down on nearby Taku Lake.

    Damn!  Now I have to re-cultivate some friends in Anchorage to tell me which street name is current…Where’s the number of the Bush Company?

    I’m sure one of these days the DSM-6 will be revised to offer some clarity on when a “healthy sense of inquiry” becomes a problem.  But, how could that be so for a writer?  Except in a column, like this one…

    One of these days, I’m going to skip my anti-cynicism meds and begin my long-delayed campaign to start up the U.S. Department of Dissonance.  (My lawyer says U.S. will have to mean UrbanSurvival, otherwise I will be in hock to China for life.)

    It’s a big job…but we’ve got to start somewhere.

    Being a realist, though, I don’t expect any more success than when I campaigned to change the name of the New England Journal of Medicine to “What’s up, Doc?”

    Still, it’s the patriotic thing to do. 

    (But then so is annexing Canada.  I mean if Mexico can do it, then by God, why can’t we move our homeless to Vancouver?)

    Tunes of Mass Consciousness?  Ohrwurms

    Attention audiologists and woo-woo researchers.  As they used to say in CB-land, get’cher ears on for this morning’s discussion…

    No, I don’t usually get up at 3 AM, but for some reason this morning I couldn’t get back to sleep.  Besides, the 1957 Mills Brothers song “Glow Worm” was going through my head.

    All of which gets me around to wondering if mass consciousness (that some call universal subconscious mind) not only connects people in odd and mysterious ways, but also supplies a “play list” to go along with glimpses of future, wildly entertaining dreams and (with work) limited access to the future…

    I haven’t touched on this phenomena for several years but the more formal name for it is involuntary musical imagery (INMI).

    The Atlantic had a good article on point back in January.

    But if you woke up this morning with “Glow Worm” going through your head, drop me a note.  I’m trying to decide is my “mental jukebox” is replaying songs from back when I was in grade school, or whether the Universe sends out nostalgia waves in addition to more common waves like gravity and light.

    (And please, no emails point out light is only a wave some of the time, the rest of the time it’s a particle. I’m just looking around for the glow worm wave.)

    Noise for Clear Thinking and “The Hum”

    We we chatting Monday about how adding the right kind of noise might improve your thinking.

    We had some pretty good input, too, like this from recording engineer/reader Dave:

    Check this article about sounds in a quiet environment:  http://designingsound.org/2014/06/the-negative-space-of-sound/

    As for adding noise we sound guys do it during mastering CDs and we call it dither.

    Since I’m an old broadcast and audio guy I was reluctant to share that with you because once we start talking about dither, then I’d need to explain the subtleties of my favorite recording/mathematical wet spot:  Signal to quantization-noise ratio…

    I should ask brother Dave whether that would be a productive use of your time because quantization error rides off into the sunset as A/D converter speeds go up in sample speed and A/D steps…but we’ll save that for another morning.

    Reader Sherry has found the discussion of noise useful:

    This info really helps my understanding of my mother’s behaviors.  She had a mild form of schizophrenia.  I grew up in a small house that had a radio and television on all the time. Mom said she couldn’t stand quiet since it allowed her to hear things that weren’t there.  She needed that input to allow her brain to function at daily activities.  She also said when she was really scared or upset, she saw faces on the wall.  Now I get it.

    Going back to the studio for a minute (Dave, cue up the sound generator, rig up a spectrum analyzer and lemme do the 10-second lecture on “pink noise…”

    As you’re tinkering around with adding noise to your thinking (assuming you have either a digital audio workstation (DAW) – if not, go download Audacity and have fun!), we should have a quick discussion of the difference between “white noise” and “pink noise.”

    (Raise your hand if you know this one…)

    White noise is just that – totally random noise like what you get between FM stations (assuming no adjacent signals and a long list of caveats).

    Pink noise is (how to put this?) organized white noise.  Pink noise is spectrally evenly distributed (so you will have a comparable signal at 20 Hz and you will while making dog ear’s hurt when you tune up your MacIntosh 2300’s into some horn tweeters at 22KHz.

    Back on point, just the “right” noise is not only associated with peak intuition (and learning) but also seems to correlate with peak experience.  Reader Mark has just such an experience:

    George, interesting point, about “being in the noise”. I remember each one of the “moments” the music was loud.

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    Datamocracy: Can the Internet Replace Government?

    We’re going to ponder upgrading America to Internet-based democracy this morning.

    In a 1979 paper, a very forward-thinking researcher described the problem of “datamocracy” and proposed “Strategies against computer abuses and in information tyranny.”  Unfortunately, that horse if out of the barn now…so it’s time we look at some of the options ahead.

    After suggesting innumerable times that Congress adjourn after immediately installing a secure online “Congressional Session” software package, and seeing that nothing is coming for such forward thinking….well, about here we get into some really revolutionary stuff.

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    George Gets Punk’d

    Well, we can’t be right all; the time, can we?

    “Hello George:
    While I am in no way enamored of the leadership or policies of President Obama, in the interest of fairness, the brief YouTube video where Obama speaks of surrendering rights to an all powerful Sovereign is cleverly edited with certain phrases taken out of context and then strung together to make it appear more sinister.
    The full context of the speech is here.
    More on how this was done here:

    Here’s the actual context of Obama’s comments:

    Leaders and dignitaries of the European Union; representatives of our NATO Alliance; distinguished guests: We meet here at a moment of testing for Europe and the United States, and for the international order that we have worked for generations to build.

    Throughout human history, societies have grappled with fundamental questions of how to organize themselves, the proper relationship between the individual and the state, the best means to resolve inevitable conflicts between states.  And it was here in Europe, through centuries of struggle — through war and Enlightenment, repression and revolution — that a particular set of ideals began to emerge: The belief that through conscience and free will, each of us has the right to live as we choose. The belief that power is derived from the consent of the governed, and that laws and institutions should be established to protect that understanding.  And those ideas eventually inspired a band of colonialists across an ocean, and they wrote them into the founding documents that still guide America today, including the simple truth that all men — and women — are created equal.

    But those ideals have also been tested — here in Europe and around the world.  Those ideals have often been threatened by an older, more traditional view of power. This alternative vision argues that ordinary men and women are too small-minded to govern their own affairs, that order and progress can only come when individuals surrender their rights to an all-powerful sovereign.

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    Just In: Housing Price Gains Stalling

    Hot of the press release from Case-Shiller/S&P/Dow Jones:

    New York, June 24, 2014 – Data through April 2014, 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, show that the 10-City and 20-City Composites posted annual gains of 10.8%.

    (The chart above depicts the 10-City Composite and the 20-City Composite Home Price Indices. In April 2014, the 10-City and 20-City Composites posted year-over-year increases of 10.8%.)

    This is a significantly lower rate when compared to last month. Nineteen of the 20 cities saw lower annual gains in April than in March. California (Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco) saw their returns worsen by approximately three percentage points. Boston was the only city to see its annual rate improve.

    The 10-City and 20-City Composites increased 1.0% and 1.1% in April. Seven cities – Cleveland, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, San Diego and San Francisco – reported lower returns than in March. Boston rose 2.9%, its largest monthly gain in over its 27 years of history. San Francisco rose 2.3%, its sixth consecutive price increase.

    “Although home prices rose in April, the annual gains weakened,” says David M.

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    Holding German Gold

    Special morning for us:  There will be an update about 20-minutes past 8 (or whenever I get to it) with this morning’s housing numbers, but there is much other action about this morning so here goes…

    The biggest story on the financial side is that the US is keeping Germany’s gold.  You may remember a couple of years back, the German’s pressured the Fed to deliver back to German homeland all $14-billion worth of that yellow dog, that along with silver, is about all that keeps rabid central bankster in check.

    Whether the Germans are backing off because of internal political disagreements (unlikely) or because changing the amount of gold Germany has would upset the economic applecart and might reveal how little gold is in bank custody will no doubt be the grist for conspiracy boards for a long time to come.

    Nevertheless, we’re reminded that the last time a major world figure, Hugo Chavez, wanted to repatriate a bunch of gold to Venezuela, he ended up dead, shortly thereafter.

    We also remember the death of an American President, John F. Kennedy was linked to a precious metals decision.  Wiki Executive Order 11110:

    This executive order delegated to the Secretary of the Treasury the president’s authority to issue silver certificates under the Thomas Amendment of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, as amended by the Gold Reserve Act. The order allowed the Secretary to issue silver certificates, if any were needed, during the transition period under President Kennedy’s plan to eliminate silver certificates.

    Since we’re big on “templates” around here, constructing one that says “Mess with precious metals in government hands can be a lethal mistake” may be a pretty good one to keep in mind.

    Up dramatically earlier, the PM’s are back down from earlier levels, but we now have silver at $21 as of press time.

    Take from it, what you will.

    “Let Them Eat (yellow) Cake!”

    Warhammer notes that Iraq’s invaders and now talking a nuclear end to Israel:

    George,

    There’s always a fair share of chest thumping happening in the Middle East at any given time, but this chilling claim by ISIS takes the cake – a Uranium cake!  “Iraq Invaders threaten nuke attack on Israel” reports WND.

    If true, that Pakistani sympathizers provided ISIS with one or more nukes, Israel and the West’s collective worst fears are now realized. And for ISIS, as well as for Iran, nuke weapons are seen as necessary commodities in order for a true military-political caliphate to be realized.

    This is a most curious claim, one that might legitimately be taken lightly – for now. That said, the situation seem to be getting more complex and interesting by the day in and around the Holy Land.

    I am trying to grasp how Shi’ite Iranian theocrats are digesting this bit of Sunni ISIS news. I would have thought it more likely the opposing Islamic factions would severely wound each other in a protracted conventional religious civil war. Now, if nukes really have entered into the equation, perhaps Iran will seek a truce with the Sunnis in order to first liberate the Middle East from the infidels before settling their messy little family affair.

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    Coping: With Corporate Feudalism Futility & Future

    Oilman2’s kids are a damn-sight better’n most.   What a lot of kids don’t realize is that parents really do hear what the kids say.

    So here’s an insight into the mind of the today’s “low 20’s” in East Texas…language warning….but this is real:

    I went to my Moms Friday and met my son and 2 friends at the farm, where they were clearing the fence line. After they decided to take a break, they walked back to the tractor shed where I was twiddling with the ignition switch on one of the tractors…

    (overheard when they were behind shed)

    “My Dad owned 3 different companies, and every time it was a greedy partner that sank them. Every time one greedy guy screwed up an ongoing, working company. My Dad even had my grandfather working for him, so it hurt us twice!”

    “Hahaha dude. As soon as the word corporation gets tacked on, the bullshit starts.”

    “Yea, but you can’t make the big bucks without getting big in business.”

    “Well, whoever the dick was that decided bigger was better and more is better ought to get his ass kicked. Why the fuck does everything have to be fuckin huge to work?”

    “Don’t know, but the real thing is all we got is time. We trade our time doing something for money. It’s always money, and it’s always more-more-more or you are classed a loser.”

    “Our generation is all losers then bro – we got nothing and all our parents are both working their asses off. Look at us out here doing this, just hoping we can get a shot at even making a living.

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