Year: 2015

That’s a joke today, isn’t it:  Separation of Church and State?

The visit of the pope to the U.S. (will he bless the congressoids?)  and his decision to insert himself into the immigration problem (the lack of sensible border control in the USA thanks to a misguided White House caretaker) keeps reminding us of ancient misdeeds and off-planet intervention.

It’s a complex tale so I will keep this short for you – since if you had any interest in their work, you’d have wolfed up the information at www.thechronicleproject.org yourself, though they don’t venture in the politics of religion and other economic business models as we do. 

I believe it is important to understand the larger historical context of the current “Diasporas to Overthrow Order.”

The reason for war is conquest.  Yet we can see alternatives to stick-fighting in a couple of religions and in ultra-socialist politics.  There are two other ways to wage war “by other means” which I view as being used right now as reported in contemporary headlines..

Method #1 is by playing (and winning) The Sex War.  This is when a “religion” takes it upon itself to simply out-populate any competition.  The titular head of one such group will be speech-making in Washington today.  The Muslim side wasn’t invited to Congress this week.

As if this un-American approach to warfare used by Spain to effectively rape and pillage and wrest self-determination from South and Central America,  is not vile enough, let’s toss in an order or three of genocide against indigenous people.  As his policies read, the Washington interloper adopted the second alternative to war long ago.

The result of too many humans has always been nothing more or less than Border Crushing with tides of humans and the warfare over soil and resources that follow.

Toward this end, the population promoter is quoted (in part) as saying of illegal immigrants

“The Church in the United States knows like few others the hopes present in the hearts of these ‘pilgrims.’ . . “

Is THAT what illegal border-crushers who are attempting – with some success – to overthrow national borders globally are now called?  Pilgrims?  Hand me the ViseGrips.  I need a solid pinch.

The message (Pop-Bomb)  is convoluted, though, because the papal marketing machine used conflicted  “values” to mask the agenda.  On the one hand promoting anti-abortion measures to existing followers  while at the same time showing solidarity with the LGBT crowd whose beliefs are the antithesis of procreation.  Confused?

You are supposed to be.  That is how cognitive discontinuity works.  In this case, it’s all stitched together with “forgiveness” as the glue, so the context will appear to make sense at some level ikf you don’t inspect the idea closely.  It then gets into your mind like a worm.

The pope’s promotional program fails, as I see it, to adequately address one of the few surviving core concepts in the bible that has not been modified for expediency’s sake during the past 1,000 years of religious manipulations:  The little matter of contrition before forgiveness:

“Contrition:   the state of feeling remorseful and penitent.”

Someone comes at you with a weapon and deadly intent.  Do you forgive or disarm? 

To Ure’s logical mind, you first “disarm or dispatch”.  If the perp survives disarming, then forgiveness can follow (after trial, conviction, box time, counseling and  – here is the key – sincere contrition.

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If you’ve ever wondered how I compose the charts and expectations used in Peoplenomics outlooks, this is the issue for you…today and Saturday’s will be “chart school.”

All those damn “squiggly lines” will not only make sense, but hopefully some money for you!

This morning we will interleave the drawing of lines on charts with a discussion of prospects for Q4 which should get us into the new year.

Normally, I would say something about how useful this information is to anyone – even people who think they are non-investors because they have their money in “safe.” retirement vehicles.

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Here we go again with another “I told you so.”

But did I, or did I not write in Monday’s column that “…The futures were up about a hundred on the Dow when I looked, but by Friday, says our model, we should be flat to down a tad for the week”?

Well, sure as Sheboygan, the Dow rose smartly on Monday about 125 points.  But since we like to hang around infallible, the Dow Futures are pointing down…um…lemme see here…down 232 points.

This should be on our way to an ideal decline this week of what? 

(Don’t rush me, I’m an old man…)

To about S&P 1,926 by the close Friday.  Plus or minus a stick of chewing gum, or a cheeseburger, depending on which one fits best at Miller Time Friday.

As long as we’re in the “Told you so” mode, we might as well keep going. 

Remember our source (“the talon”) who said his read of the numbers as a high-powered fixed income guy – was that the Fed looks like instead of raising rates, they would roll with another quantitative pleasing to pump up the Street?

Quick!  Look surprised as John Stepek wonders “What if the Fed’s next move is to print more money?”

Well, yes, that’d be along the lines of a QE-4, and we’re good with that, since we already know the markets will light off in…nope…that’s in the Peoplenomics bailiwick, but you get the idea.

If there is one job I curse myself for not pursuing as a young man, it was planning to grow up and be the guy who sells the specialized inks to the U.S. Treasury.

That should have been a slam-dunk Big House on Long Island, for sure.

Japan was down 2% last night, China is alive, and Europe is  trtying its best to drop 3%.

My wild-ass investment idea of the day is thus this one which I figure should cause the phone to ring off the hook with job offers for the rest of the week:

How about I start a hedge fund that invests only in countries that have strong borders and sound immigration policies?

Here’s the initial position:  I would be shorting most of Europe right now, America would be a hold, and island nations which people would have to swim to (like Australia which is wisely shutting up on the military-aged me from Muslim countries) would be longs.

I would also be long countries that we losing the riff-raff.  So long Mexico, Central America, and so on.

All because, as any damn-fool-conspiracy-nut should be able to figure out (I mean besides me) is that with the PanaMex highway deal coming, and with the Ultra-Rich having already bought up most of the land along the best beaches, and such, the reason for walking immigration is to lower the population, drop prices one last time, and move as many criminals to the USA as possible.

This gives the PANAMEX corridor people all the more opportunity, provides millions in future corporate prison inmates to the USA, which will justify even more H1-b visas for Nigerian prison workers.

You see?  It all fits together in a unique (sick and twisted) sort of way.

“Think like a Ruler!” is what I’m always reminding Elaine. Everything is a business model and we are all ruled…

All that remains is for (*the Mexican state of) Quintana Roo to put gambling in from Cancun down to its southern end and presto!  The new megalopolis of the rich.  Complete with water features and antiquities.  How does it get better?

Papal Hype

Headlines like how the “Pope brings tough love to America” lead me to suggest that the Vatican start accepting more refugees.

He’s welcome to pack up his “tough love” stuff and take it with him.  We have enough problems, and most start at the top…not with the silent majority.

VW Bugged

Yes, the scandal with  [we have to say alleged]  pollution fibbing is widening and now involves 11-million cars.

I’m still looking for a low priced VW Thing, by the way, if you happen to run across one in good condition.  Love ‘em.

Booing Cruz

Stephen Colbert and Ted Cruz went at it last night – the account of it is here.

Cruz believes the 10th Amendment leaves gay marriage decisions to the states, apparently, and that didn’t set well with the 3.8% of the population that is impacted by the issue.  A loud percentage, I will give you that.

Meantime, Scott Walker’s campaign is toast

Robo-Sex

Love this headline:  “No sex please, we’re robots!

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Maybe it is not the best use of my time, but Elaine’s not keen on doing it, so it falls to me to suffer through one of our periodic “Bureaucracy Days.”

There are only a couple of things I have to work on that are specifically related to this marvelous system of government we have, but they are the sort of things you can’t live without.

Take getting the car license current, for instance.

I sent in what used to work in Texas to get the car licensed.

That included a check for about $70-bucks, a copy of our current car insurance, and their forms.

Should have been done with.

But Monday’s mail brought an “Application declined” letter stating that I had failed to include a copy of the current vehicle inspection report.

Not to bore you with details (but I will…) Texas used to have an inspection sticker program.  The old way was simple:  You went to an authorized inspection station, paid them $14-bucks, and they would issue an inspection sticker.

The county auditors (who issue the car license) didn’t used to give a rip.  They just wanted proof of insurance and money.

NOW what has happened is Texas has done away with the inspection sticker and in its place is an electronic system. 

Yeah, with license plate readers any sticker system is outdated, stupid, and sucks, but hey, this is Texass.

Here’s what the bottom line is:  Whereas before, you could get the inspection sticker when it was convenient (and there was a 5-10 day grace period after the end of the sticker month) NOW you need to get the insurance first (or the inspection station won’t check the car), THEN  you get the inspection certificate, and this allows you to go to the County Auditor’s Office whereupon they will THEN accept your money for the registration sticker.

It all goes into the cop accessible computer system, and you get something to block your vision to put in the windshield with is 99 kinds of stupid.  More civilized states have plate tags.

Since this is September 22nd, and we are off traveling again on the 29th or 30th, and since we will use the old Lexus to drive to the airport, I can’t trust that mailing in the certificate will work.  Car goes in the hangar when we travel.

If I get the certificate today (which is a fair assumption), and were to bring it home, Susan the Post Office Delivery Representative (or whatever the politically correct and approved designation of the mail carrier is, anymore) will have already been – and gone.

So the Ure mail-in application – (form, check, insurance whizzy, inspection certificate) – would not be picked up until the 23rd,  which means it would arrive at the Clerk’s office on the 24th and be ready for pick-up on the 25th, which is Friday.

To Postal Person Susan’s credit, it might get here – or not – on Saturday.  But if it doesn’t then  it would be at least Monday.  And I will be busy getting ready for…

Thus, to eliminate the postal time-lag, I will be doing everything in person.

It will take me one hour of travel time and likely a half-hour of monkey-motion (wasted do-nothing time standing in line and such) of my extremely valuable time in order to get a sticker.  I can recapture 30 minutes by reading the Kindle while waiting.

That’s the car.  Now, let’s talk about drugs.

When you get older (and if you take any prescriptions) there are mountains of small details that mount up into half a day of bureaucracy time.  For example, some of my time today will be spent begging with the local pharmacy to let me get more than 30-days worth of medications so I don’t have to come into town so often.  More than once a month gripes me.  They fall back on “policy” which is a buzzword for “made up rules you can’t question” which makes me see red.

“Look you stupid so and so – I am not planning to die for 90 days, so why not do three months instead of one?”

They won’t give in, I’m sure – but that’s how corporate-government bureaucracies work.

“George, that’s not a whole day’s work…Ure exaggerates again/still…”

Au contraire!

The car and the pharmacy are just the warm-up.  After I get this one, the rest of Bureaucracy Day will be spent on two more “must do” projects…

The Medicare Mayhem

We are only a couple of weeks from the annual Medicare Roulette Game. 

Every year, us seniors get to bet our lives and finances on beating the insurance companies.  They spend 365-days a year trying to screw money out of everyone, we only have a few weeks to sort it out, and in the meantime, life goes on.

This year, I’m doing my damnedest to be ahead of the curve.  Since we’re both over the 66 barrier, here’s what happens according to the Understanding Medicare Dates flyer over here  (which I don’t):

If you are not on Medicare yet, all I can tell you is that in order to make an intelligent decision on which plans to buy, you need a week or three to weed through all the options and smoke out what makes sense.

As they have come in, I kept all of our “Monthly Prescription Insurance Benefit” papers.  (*One of the joys of our high speed Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 Deluxe Bundle Scanner for PC (PA03656-B015) (Except ours is the earlier one that came with Adobe Acrobat 10 but it was a few more bucks)  I can pull anything out of the hat and look at the cost benefit.

How the Prescription Insurance Scam works:  I take several prescriptions:  The generic Singulair, an Albuterol inhaler (lifetime of asthma) , HTZT for blood pressure, and Allopurinol for gout prevention along with with more vitamins (and a baby aspirin)  than you can shake a stick at. 

The monthly cost of “insurance” is about $30 bucks, or $360 per year.,

I have co-pays which come to about $180 per year.  So my out of pocket is $540.  The annual cost of the drugs is about $480, so the insurance company wins this spin.  Bastards.

It’s even worse for Elaine.  Her cost – like mine – is around $360 per year for the prescriptions and she doesn’t have any meds at all.  Just a glass of Riesling with me on the deck every afternoon around 4 PM. 

But, because you can’t buy the coverage when you NEED it – you have to plan in advance…we look at this as a complete waste of money…which is what home insurance is, too, at least till the house burns down or the burglars show up when you’re out shopping.  There;s precious little difference between government insurance of any kind of sex workers.  Everyone will get screwed seems to be the deal in either case.

Still, since you were wondering (or not), this is how I will spend the rest of my Periodic Bureaucracy Day.

Not to put a bug in the ear of Organized Labor, but should we each get a couple of days per year as paid holidays to do things like sort out Obamacare, Medicare, Car licenses, Drivers license, annual physicals, time to appeal property taxes, and so on?

And I ain’t done yet.

Airplane O-Ring Madness

If you haven’t figured it out yet, Elaine and I are taking off next week to fly to the national Baby Beech fly-in which will be held in an unnamed city on the upper Mississippi.

The long-range weather forecast is calling for rain.

Although our airplane has already had a ga-zillion dollar annual inspection, complete with engineering for an Alternative Means of Compliance and bureaucracy of the FAA adventure, and did I thank Waylon up at Mags E.R. in Arkansas for the most excellent 500-hour overhaul (with fresh yellow tags) for the mags?

Back to point:  We may be flying through rain.  And I think the FAA and Beech left Service of the Gas Caps off the annual inspection list. 

If it’s already been done, we’ll do it again, anyway…mainly because I know how gravity relates to air speed.

It’s not a big deal to overhaul them:  Remove a cotter pin, the castellated nut, and take out the plunger – latch post.  Put on a  two-bit 1/4” O-Ring with a bit of lube and reassemble.  Which the Mechanic will do so it is signed off to the bureaucrats satisfaction…

Thanks to some fellers in the  Beechcraft club (a wonderful resource) I found the required O-Rings to replace the existing ones…and then found no end of debate on which lubricant to use.

One school of thought says Easy-Turn, which is a fuel lube.  The other school of thought says Dow Corning DC4 – which is silicone-based is better.  I got both.

Here is where Bureaucracy steps in. 

The O-Rings come to $5-bucks.  The lubricants *(since I got both) to put them on right, come to about $30.  (A drop of oil would work back in the old days, but not in “modern times”)

And since there are two sizes of O-Rings, do I need to buy a Certificate of Compliance ($15 each size) to put that in the logbook?  Or, do I need a certificate of compliance at all?

The odds of this ever being an issue (legally) are infinitesimally small.  If I flew for hours on end in rain (no fun in itself) and water got into one tank, could I experience enough water to have one tank fail?  Not after maintenance…but it’s one of those things.  Plan for the worst, route for the best – and no rain if possible.

IF we flew through horrific rains and if both tanks got so much water that the engine stopped, just how sleazy would an insurance company be?  (The correct answer is “as sleazy as they would manage in order to avoid a claim…).  So:  how much paper trail do I do now?

This little gem too, is on my “Bureaucracy Day” list – a chat with the Jeremy the Mechanic about how many of these certificates, if any, will be necessary if I fly through repeated torrential downpours on the way to hang out with equally crazy people…And when can I fly the plane over to his place to have him perform the maintenance and sign the logbook.

What we have here is a peach-dandy example how a $3-dollar preventative maintenance issue which I ought to be able to do myself balloons into a $250 problem consisting of certificates, special lubricants, two shipping charges, 20-minutes of Mechanic time, a piece of emery cloth plus 1.3 hours of flight time ($65 of fuel plus engine reserves plus two landings)…

This is how The System provides for Full Employment.  And maybe that’s why John Kerry is in such a rush to bring in military-aged Muslims and let the Mexico border keep leaking problem kids.

I must not appreciate something about how all this all stiches together into a robust country, but I’m not sure what I’m missing, exactly, either.

The Problem with Damascus, II

Oh crap. 

We were talking about Damascus…and after a flurry of emails with Chris Tyreman of www.thechronicleproject.org, come to find out that the description is not “Ruinous Heap” at all.

Yet another mis-translation seems to rear its head in the bible.

What translates using Self-Defining Hebrew (SDH) is not “ruinous heap” but is really more like the word Diaspora from the city itself…and friend, we are there right now. 

But more on this Thursday, since I will be huddling with Chris on Skype  hopefully about 1 PM his time today so I can jot down more notes and expand on the details in Thursday’s report…

Hangar Talk:  Baked Wood

I happened to catch a new alternative to pressure-treating wood that made it into one of my (too man y) woodworking magazines. 

The idea is that some hardwood kiln operators have found that if they keep “cooking” wood which goes into a kiln for drying, an extra-long time, the wood changes.

It’s being sold on the market as thermally modified wood – and it is both harder, more insect, and more rot resistant that conventional wood.

It’s also not cheap.  But it’s the new “trick pony” for us wood scrapper types.  The Wikipedia entry on it says in part:

Thermally modified wood is wood that has been modified by a controlled pyrolysis process of wood being heated (> 180 °C) in absence of oxygen inducing some chemical changes to the chemical structures of cell wall components (lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose) in the wood in order to increase its durability.

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Think of the process like writing of the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

Except, Wednesday’s Peoplenomics will give our fearless forecast of what to expect from the 4th quarter of this year.

In the meantime, there is little point to getting worked up about the news this morning:  The futures were up about a hundred on the Dow when I looked, but by Friday, says our model, we should be flat to down a tad for the week.

Since my idea of bread-making is to to kneed twice and raise a few zeros, Q4 begins to look more interesting than the slop in the market recently.

Just not this week. 

There is an Atlanta Fed note on inflation due out later and as the week comes down to the finish, some durable goods hype on Thursday and GDP Friday won’t even move the excitement meter.

Corporate Responsibility

We hear a good bit about it – and young people today unlike some of us grays at the same age – actually hold corporations to account for their actions.

With this in mind, go read Bloomberg’s coverage of Volkswagen Drops 23% After Admitting Diesel Emissions Cheat and decide for yourself what this will mean for the automaker.

There’s a really healthy mood swing going on in America right now:  People are not putting up with establishment BS in everything from presidential politics to emissions fudging.  Corporations and politicians that don’t walk their talk will be buried, em masse, shortly.

Carson Calls ‘Em Like He Sees ‘Em 

Dr. Ben Carson is taking a lot of heat for it, but when  he says he would never support a Muslim for president of the U.S.A. he’s tapping into the same “straight talk on issues” vibe that launched the now fading Trump’s rise.

I say Trump fading because in the latest CNN/ORC poll, when you get into the details you’ll see that Carson and Carly Fiorina are about even but Trump has lost a bit of his luster.

ISIS/ISIL in Africa

Bok Harem is loyal to the Islamic State, which around here we’ve labeled the go at a Global Caliphate.

And in Nigeria last night, it looked like they were using the ages old playbook of setting off bombs around mosques to strong-arm support.

Meantime, Obamafication Continues

Not satisfied with maintaining a leaky border with Mexico as part of the swamping of America agenda, SecState John Kerry says there will be 85,000 more refugees accepted in 2016 and 100,000 in 2017.

What the hell?

Am I the only one who can look at the data and figure that H1-b visas are likely now over 150,000 a year and how many OTMs are there?  Some estimates put the H1-b numbers over half a million.

Is Kerry nuts?

Toss in the refugees, H1-b’s and leaky border and the phrase “all enemies, foreign and domestic” really begins to bite.

What’s more, my characterization of Washington as a three-ring circus is ever more accurate.

Meantime, in Europe, the Big Lie about being Syrian refugees is falling apart.  Seems only a quarter of the herd of humans is from Syria and Afghanistan – the rest are from places like Nigeria, Pakistan, and Albania…and are just looking for a better life (or the dole).

Even with the Lies Exposed, the US lamebrain media will keep spouting the same old crap and Fearless Leader will keep packing in the poor, the same way the Catholic church is eyeing refugees to refill their pews

.Meantime, the papal diss of air conditioning is providing some blowback, so to speak.

By the Numbers

There’s a report out today that one third of the people born in Britain this year will suffer from dementia.

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Reader Jeffrey G was on a tear last night – he was clipping and sending articles out for all he was worth.

Unlike many, though, since he is a ‘spectable lawyerly fellow by day, there was actually something of a theme to the suggested reading he passed along.  And now, I’m about to pass some of it along to you because it centers on this thing I call the “Upright Ape Problem.”

And that is?

Well, there are a couple of ways to look at it.  Let’s say you have a bible handy and some ancient history books to go with it:  There is not much agreements…unless…..

About here,  our readership will split into two halves.  One half will be the pure science people who will argue that the bible is just plain wrong and that Creationism is a “cute story” but nothing more.  The other half, noting how many of the bible stories are based on fact (the burning bush was found to be an area of natural gas seeps, for example), disagree,

I hold to a kind of middle ground.

This may sound cowardly at first, but the nice thing about the position is that I don’t get into arguments – because there is a set of circumstances that fit ALL of the available data.  It’s just not too comfortable, is all.

First, some of the readings from Jeffrey G’s notes:

Latest find in Spain complicates the human evolution story further.  There may have been another type of human besides those recently discovered.  Gotta keep digging.

And now, on our stage, The Tree of Life!!!!!  Really, a pretty prodigious task, when you think about it.

By the way:  You may wish to bookmark the link http://blog.opentreeoflife.org/ because there is plenty of room for contributions to the thinking, not the least of which is research into the DNA development of the troop of monkeys that includes you and me.

More on the human genetic manipulation controversy.  But, as Eric noted earlier, it is a genie that we are not going to get back into the bottle.

And so it goes.

Ure’s Middle Ground

As you may be aware, I have been closely tracking the work up in Canada of www.thechronicleproject.org.   This is a small Jewish studies group that has found what seems to be an “error checking” method built-in to ancient language.

Using it, a new (and startling) view of ancient times is coming into focus.  For example, not only does it seem that the Garden of Eden was guarded by light-sabre (laser) wielding robots, but that’s a theme that has been leaking into human consciousness a fair bit.  Like the past 15-years, or so.

Here are a couple of examples:

Our Jewish Robot Future: A Novel About the Garden of Eden and the Cyborgian Transformation of the Human Race

And Is Jehovah an E.T.?

There are any number of ways to approach the problem, and the Tree of Life DNA study will likely yield good results on the current state of the apes.  But it may be 10+ years into the future when not only has the current state been adequately defined  but additional data from antiquity has been added.

The results of this should be interesting because it might point to external intervention in our DNA much as we are doing now.  And, according to the PopSci article,  our brother and sister apes are about to start wandering down the dangerous path to become self-modifying apes.

We go to the zoo and look at the primates with some curiosity.  One of my theories is that this is really their clever manipulation to come look at us.  “See that Human, Genovi?  They trade options and derivatives…so whatever you do, don’t grow up and be one of them.”

Well, why not?  This week’s apes du jour have already figured out fire, steam engines, internal combustion, nuclear power (and bombs), along with integrated circuits and basic recombinant DNA.  And how to use tax loss carry-forwards on made up money.

So what’s another sharp stick in their inventory?

I won’t spoil the fun of reading through the Chronicle Project work, but there seem to be a large number of items in the upright ape Instruction Book that humans may not fully comprehend, yet.

To be sure, most “scientific” types take traditional Jewish/Old Testament lore and blow it off. Two obvious ones being the prohibitions on eating pork and shellfish.

To the “science minded” these make total sense – when  viewed from the context of managing an ape herd at a time before the apes had invented refrigeration.  It’s easy to blow off, too.

Contemporary apes, thinking themselves superior (and our fridge makes both cubed and crushed ice admittedly), believe that with the advent of cold storage, the prohibitions no longer makes sense.  Enter the reformed branch of Judaism and steak & lobster specials.

That seems like a reasonable thing to do, at least based on the current levels of science.  But there may be much deeper problems – Problems down at the DNA level which humans have not figured out yet, simply because we have not adequately studied public health as a massive Big Data problem.

If – as some suspect – ancient texts are more instructional than the rest of the population believes, there may be – hidden in a mound of data yet unrecognized – some very good reason to follow ancient dietary rules.

For example, wouldn’t it be interesting to see comparative causes of death, health of offspring, and IQ testing over three or four generations of humans where a control group at port and indulged in steak and lobster, versus those who eschewed shellfish and pork?

There are other dimensions of this problem, too.  Is there a different “quality of the person” that’s involved?

Then we come down to even more fundamental issues:  Does anything with DNA act as (for lack of a better word) a “soul perch”? 

We know from a spectrum of research that yes, humans have varying abilities to plug in to a different reality where psi is real.  We have well-documented statistical evidence to that effect, but again, we’re not perfect at the implementation level of presenting the phenomena on demand.

I gravitate toward the idea that humans may have been purpose –bred by some externality which has been passed along in myth.  Toward what end can only be speculated.

Steve Quayle’s book Genesis 6 Giants Master Builders of Prehistoric and Ancient Civilizations hints along in this direction, but stops short of going down the Jehovah as an E.T.

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With the Fed decision out Thursday, Fed Chair Yellen’s remarks, and our Peoplenomics Oscillator as guidance, our present outlook for the rolling Long Wave economic top is for a modest market decline to the 1,820-1,850 level around the time of the next Fed meeting.

George;

Hats off to; you.  As you said the first direction is the ultimate direction. First a slight drop and then to a 200 point rise and then to a loss.  Unfortunately I don’t have any money on the trade but will be armed the next time.

That is October 27-28  and I will try to get the day right – so much for personal time-warping this week.  It’s one of the side effects of always living 10-minutes in the future.

As to what the Fed will do then?

One of our well-placed sources, who I’ll henceforth refer to as Talon, believes the Fed will attempt another quantitative easing.

It has been “street wisdom” by many armchair economists that quantitative easing was over and done with because – as markets were in serious trouble – the results were becoming progressively more costly.

The flip side, however, is likely also true.  With markets attempting to put in a Wave IV bottom in  here, having completed a massive Wave III up from the lows of 2008-2009, a quantitative easing might, indeed, be just the thing to get markets kicked up above technical levels required for the rally to become self-sustaining.  Optimism, due in part to the presidential cycle, is back.

This sets up the possibility of two things:  A much higher market for several years, and since the rise from the 2009 low to the 2011 high was on the order of ….no, let’s hold that back for www.peoplenomics.com readers. Tomorrow’s report.

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Alas!

After yesterdays discussion of ways to improve the political process, we seem to have gotten exactly nowhere.

Critics of the Ure Plan, under which the candidates would huddle among themselves and spare us voters their egomaniacal histrionics forced me to review my thinking. 

That’s OK…I do it all the time myself.

The problem I come down to is that there is no political party today that endorses my platform.  Let me summarize it for you in just a couple of areas:

Economy

• Honest money. 
• Usury rate caps like we had in the 1950’s and 1960’s of 12% on all levels of credit.
• A flat income tax with a rate of 15% with an exclusion of the first $20,000 gross per person.  Takes care of the poor, low income, and seniors.
• Simplify the tax code and no special breaks for the hedgies, bondies, or any other capital class.

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Something is “Missing in Action.”

A couple of weeks ago, I told you how the markets would NOT collapse with the passing of the Jewish Elul 29 holiday this past Sunday.  Well, guess what…

I also broadly hinted as to my feelings that those promoting such simplistic thinking were engaging Beliefs instead of engaging Facts.

To begin this morning, a couple of points in passing.

At the close last Thursday, the S&P 500 stood at 1,961.05.

On Wednesday, the S&P closed at 1,995.31.

This is a 1.74% gain.  Not a collapse.  Not even close.

Not that our work around here is perfect:  Due to a change in wave counts, we are now anticipating the retest of the market’s recent spike low will come as late as the end of November, but our downside objectives are still the same.

One more up week for suckers is likely, however.

In market forecasting, you can either pick a time or a price.  Seldom will you hit both.

Thus, this morning’s first item:  Schmita was not a collapse. 

The Believers in such pap will no doubt seize on whatever happens to drive the markets down from here, but that’s what statisticians would label “cherry-picking the data” to support a view.

In real economics, we look at the data to tell us the future and we look at past data for guidance; that much is true.

But we don’t selectively blame things like an alleged “Schmita collapse”  – as 14-years ago in 2001 – on holidays.  Not when just a few days before the Twin Towers were attacked and the markets closed. D’oh.

Our work also stays with a single asset class, not switching between bonds and stocks as may be convenient to weave a story.  Sell a book, and lasso some of the herd.

This is an important thing to keep in mind with the Fed decision this afternoon.

If the market tanks, it will be Fed policy not Schmita.

But our odds-making based on the data now hints that the Fed will pass today and will instead raise at their late October meeting, instead.  Though how they read the fresh data today is anyone’s guess.

That is our present “best fit” of our models.

Some people will continue to believe in markets driven by Schmita.  Around here though, we believe in markets driven by Excel.

We respect the new moons of Elul 29 for the simple reason that the Moon phase is a cycle, and people living in tune with celestial events are following a larger set of Laws not coded in algorithmic trading.

Data Drivers

With the markets flat early on, we have a couple of fresh data points this morning which should influence your thinking about the economy:  First is the Housing Starts report:

BUILDING PERMITS   Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in August were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,170,000.  This is 3.5 percent (±1.4%) above the revised July rate of 1,130,000 and is 12.5 percent (±1.9%) above the August 2014 estimate of 1,040,000.
Single-family authorizations in August were at a rate of 699,000; this is 2.8 percent (±1.7%) above the revised July figure of 680,000.  Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 440,000 in August.

HOUSING STARTS Privately-owned housing starts in August were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,126,000.  This is 3.0 percent (±11.3%)* below the revised July estimate of 1,161,000, but is 16.6 percent (±10.4%) above the August 2014 rate of 966,000.
Single-family housing starts in August were at a rate of 739,000; this is 3.0 percent (±9.5%)* below the revised July figure of 762,000.  The August rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 381,000.

HOUSING COMPLETIONS Privately-owned housing completions in August were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 935,000.  This is 6.1 percent (±12.5%)* below the revised July estimate of 996,000, but is 3.3 percent (±12.7%)* above the August 2014 rate of 905,000.
Single-family housing completions in August were at a rate of 646,000; this is 1.6 percent (±11.0%)* above the revised July rate of 636,000.  The August rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 283,000.

Then there’s the Current Account (deficit) to consider:

Current Account   The U.S. current-account deficit—a net measure of transactions between the United States and the rest of the world in goods, services, primary income (investment income and compensation), and secondary income (current transfers)—decreased to $109.7 billion (preliminary) in the second quarter of 2015 from $118.3 billion (revised) in the first quarter.

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You’re wasting our time!

Elaine and I were among the millions who suffered through the worst case of “dick measuring” and name-calling either one of us has heard since junior high – so make that 50-years –in the insipid debate last night.

The debate format, too, was horrible.  I was appalled that Dana Bash’s name made it on screen in a huge font, but the names of who was speaking – the candidate names, which is the whole point – showed up in an unpredictable, haphazard way.

The streaming sucked, too.  Is is really important that four more posts have appeared?  The appearance of self-promoting add-ons seemed to coincide with when our stream dropped. 

In the end, out here at the end of the string, the most reliable audio came from our Amazon Echowhich grabbed the stream off WGTK out of Atlanta.  The CNN stream was a throw-away out here.

As for opinions?  Winners?  Sure.

Dr. Ben Carson blew his chance to challenge by speaking political gobbledygook.  Previously, he’d been dignified and more on point.  He spoke politick last night…bad move.

A few came up in our estimate – Cruz and Carly – although we have plenty of questions there, as well.

The main gripe was the personality content and in this regard these talking heads wasted our time. 

Yet, there is another way.  The Ure Plan

The American presidential nomination approach is broken and this year’s slate of candidates can change the future – if they have the cajones to do so – by simply breaking with bad historical precedent.

Here’s how it would work:

1.  All of the candidates (15) who made it to the debates last night should type up a one page resume and take a jet to some conference center for a week, sit down, close the doors, and sort out ALL their minute differences.

Then cut the pie between themselves.  How about you be President, you be VP, you fix HHS, your take Defense, you take Commerce, and so forth.

I would recommend Jackson Hole on the theory that if it is good enough for the Fed…

2.  Once the doors are locked,, the candidates would vote amongst themselves on who would be the best person to fill all of the key positions in a new Republican administration.

The voting would be simple:  Each candidate would initial which jobs they see themselves holding not just for president but for other key posts as well.

Tabulate the results.  Re-vote, tab again until consensus is reached.

As an example, since Chris Christie is a former U.S. Attorney, he might check president and vice president, but he might also be the best guy to be U.S.

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Let’s begin by describing where we are in the economic Long Wave.

The week ending September 18, 2015 is analogous in my work to the week ending March 1, 1928.

If you remember our previous discussions, the Fed has the same problem  now that it faced back then:  Money was sitting on the sidelines (mainly in bonds) and was not out chasing higher return potentials in the secular economy.

To counter this, the Fed raised interest rates (reported here as the discount rate) several times leading up to the ultimate blow-off top September 3 of 1929.

As you can see, the 1920s Fed began with a hike in August of 1927, and since we are in the analog to March of 1928, we note that the Fed increase is way overdue.

However, the Fed was not as subject to public scrutiny back then.  Communications was mainly in long boring tables of data published in back sections of big city newspapers.  In today’s world, reactions will be faster.

The good news about reactions being faster, though, is that the speed of trading can  reduce the evolution of “information asymmetry” within the complex global financial system.

We have seen recently, for example, how the Shanghai market has managed to decline from a 52-week of of 5166.35 down to as low as 2,289.87 without the world falling apart.  I believe it is significant that a market can lose more than 50% of its value without imploding the world.  It proves something but we can’t be certain what.

I like to think that when the Fed talks its next move a year in advance that everyone except a few wild-eyed traders can see what’s coming.

What the Fed should do, as I see it, is a 10 basis point increase.  This would be proportionate to a “normal” 25 BPS increase at higher interest rates.  It would signal to the bond market that the Fed thinking is that things really are improving, yet at the same time, it would avoid potential bloodshed if a larger increase was enacted.

Even so, a 25-basis point hike would not be the end of the world.  You see that “velocity of money at M2” chart?  That gives you an idea of the “inventory turns” of money.  In a fractional reserve system, such as ours, the turn-over rate is critical.

During the ramp up to the Internet bubble peak (1997) the turnover of money was around 2.2 times per year.  Here recently, the turnover rate has been much lower:  1.497 times and 1.5 times per year in the most recent two quarters.

The job of the Fed right now (which would be in keeping with their dual mandate) is to provide stable prices and good employment.  The road to both will involve, as I see it, some increase in the turnover of money.

Raising the interest rate is a prickly problem to understand.  But it goes something like this:

If you have a bond with $100 of face value, paying 1%, the price of the bond will be discounted to maturity some amount based on prevailing inflation expectations.

Thus, in a world where there is zero inflation, the 1% bond will have some value we’ll call X.

Now, however, let’s increase the inflation rate to 10% to illustrate a point.  The NPV (net present value of the bond will drop – very significantly) in order to compensate for the higher inflation rate.

Frankly, I can almost hear the backroom discussions at the Fed.  It might go something like this:

“Yeah…if we raise interest a big, where would the money go?  Normally, we should create jobs with infrastructure projects like highways and housing, but in this economy of Apps and stupid things like a $100 pencil for a tablet, where will be bond money go?”

“I think maybe into consumer goods.  But if prices go up a bit there, it won’t hurt us too badly….”

“Well, if we do that, it will be price-driven inflation, not wage driven.  Shouldn’t we see some of that first?”

“Yeah, but the prevailing inflation rate is really much higher…what’s masking the real increase is the massive declines in oil prices.  You filled up your car lately?”

“Yeah, but I thought our plan was to press energy down so government could up taxes more so we could get more tax revenue for infrastructure, before we raise interest rates…let state and local take some heat…”

“Yeah, but states are in trouble because of defined benefits and their retirement funds will grab anything that comes in so I say raise now…”

That’s all hypothetical, but you can see how the dance goes.  Round and round.  At some point in this dance someone is going to get their foot stepped on.

The argument could be made that the bondies have done massively well as the rest of the country suffered through real estate equity evaporation.  So it’s their turn at the wheel.  If the bondies take a hit, well so be it.

The bondies will scream like it’s rape, but it’s really just rates.

Besides, there are two aspects to any long-term bond investment:  rent on money and risk of default.  The bondies need a lesson or two that they’ve managed to dodge so far.

Should that money chase $100 laptop pencils?  No.  But there’s this new field called photobiomodulation I’ve been telling subscribers about…

Futures were about flat going into the morning’s first numbers…

Data:  Save By Auto Sales, Redux

Hot off the press release:

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S.

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