The Secret of Happy Retirement is what?
Reduce your operating costs in advance of retiring.
A number of readers have written in (a few trolls, I suppose, too) and have whined about my recent travel discussion, pictures, and so forth. Sorry, that’s not flaunting – that’s sharing.
Word of an Iran deal this morning hasn’t goosed the markets. In fact, the Dow was about flat when I peeked at it.
What was moving was the price of oil, which was down into the $51 range. And that is likely because if the deal is approved by the US (big hurdle there) then oil supplies will be plentiful and with the US rig count up a tad, looks like Boone Pickens might be off on his $70 oil by year end call made just last week.
Interestingly, the European markets were down. We can only attribute to the notion that war is good for the economy and peace is a loser. Hence, if the Iran deal is a solid, there won’t be all those bunker busters and arms sales.
President Obama “has the gloat on” about the deal and says he will veto any attempt by congress to block it.
For a constitutional scholar, the real problem may come if congress over-rides the veto, but that will have to await disclosure of what’s specifically in the deal.
And given how the TPP misdealing’s went, I don’t expect that today. But go ahead, surprise me, please.
Meanwhile, a court in Iran has issued a $50 billion judgment against the USA which would be almost comical, except I suppose there will be people in Washington who will support paying it.
“If you want a deal bad enough, you’ll make a bad deal” may be about to ring true.
The idea of having “foreign supervisors” ruling Greece is not playing well. We may get a chance to see how NATO will react when Greece boils over…that’d be interesting, we think.
As you read more details over here, think of the world EuroCoup.
Fell in the fresh report out just a few minutes ago from Census:
The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for June, adjusted for seasonal variation and
holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $442.0 billion, a decrease of 0.3 percent (±0.5%)* from the previous month, but up
1.4 percent (±0.9%) above June 2014.
This is a pretty damn interesting tale unfolding.
You can piece together bits of it if you know there even is such a thing as ProxyHam and it was described as a $200 way to set up a really secure internet access route.
CSO Online has coverage of the mysterious cancellation of a talk at Def Con about ProxyHam, but here’s the gist from the article about how it works:
ProxyHam is a Raspberry Pi computer with Wi-Fi enabled. There’s three antennas; one is used to connect to a public Wi-Fi network, and the other two are used to transmit Wi-Fi signals over a 900 MHz frequency.
By using a 900 MHz radio, ProxyHam can connect to a Wi-Fi network up to two miles away, and blend-in with traffic on that spectrum.
We found in the Big City that many of the people we ran into were actually crazier than us. And that’s going a stretch. But not to worry – it will all make sense, once you understand my Crack-Pot theory that may work out.
(Palestine, TX) We’re back.
I’ve been saving the best picture of the trip for this morning. It’s looking down at the dual suspension bridges of Tacoma on departure morning last week. With Tacoma Narrows Airport the flat spot in the upper right.
Click to enlarge.
Smoke from forest fires in Eastern Washington blew smoke all the way over into Montana.
As you can see left, the Cascades and Rockies were “smoky mountains” but the scenery wasn’t bad.
The old Beechcrate performed admirably, with performance helped by UPS’ing 50 pounds of excess clothing home. Two pair of cut-offs and a couple of short-sleeved shirts and I could travel the world, at least three seasons.
R&E – our readers in Sheridan, WY – put on a tremendous feast Friday night. Lobster, corn, bakers, and hand-cut 2 1/2” rib steaks. Simply amazing – and our sincere thanks. Prior to Wednesday, we didn’t even know we had readers in Sheridan!
Saturday, I spent $100 on testing my gambling theory: Ran the $100 up to $367.50 before leaving the casino with my experiment money all gone. But I did narrow down the next round of experiments, now planned for the Peoplenomics.com cruise in early September.
Panama held down the ranch, although we did suffer one casualty: The washing machine has died – and this after repairing it not 2-months back. That becomes yet-another-project for our insurmountable to-do list.
In some ways, it is great to be home, sleep in our own bed – that kind of thing.
But on the other, living a dream vacation is pretty good, too.
One problem if you’re traveling this time of the year is heat.
Elaine solved that with a one-quart spray bottle of the sort you can pick up at the dollar store.
Filled with water, and with all the vents in the car or airplane open, you can spray yourself down pretty good and keep your cool nicely. No recommended for leather seats.
In our case, it was about 90 at times in the cockpit, even though we took off at 6:30 AM Sunday from Dodge City, KS. They had 102 yesterday (in our honor?) and today they’re staring at 104F by late afternoon.
Being home, I’ll start the process of catching up – and that’s always fun with a stack of bills and the usual junk mail to sort through. Emptying voicemail ought to be fun, too.
Hot weather seems to have settled in for summer here in Texas. Rain shows and mid 70s or cooler returned to Seattle almost as soon as we left.
Seattle has had 37.43 inches of rain over the past 365 days. The closest weather station to us reports 55.40 inches. That’s a far cry from the Texas drought of a couple of years back.
But climate drifts around a great deal…something easily exploited by political charlatans and non-profit fund-raisers.
OMG – there I went, again. Somehow a reader got the idea that I was anti-climate change. Which is not quite true.
What I AM is anti “Climate Change as a Taxation Scheme” and it’s coming, whether you like it, or not. The non-profits are already shaking down the weaker-minded of the middle class.
The REAL reason for climate change is obvious: Sawing down the Amazon rain forests and raping the hillsides of South America is a fine starting point. But, we don’t hear the climateers talking much about that. Nor is deforestation in Africa making the big headlines. Not in the corporate playbook, we imagine…
We also don’t hear about the massive land-clearing and trashing of Indonesia (Irian Jaya in particular) of a couple of years back..
Please notice that the UN is not mandating that the rain forests be restored and that rooftops be colorized in such a way as to avoid heat islanding, or any of the other OBVIOUS solutions that are readily at hand.
Instead we get the charlatans who don’t mention rain forests, but are of the same ilk as the “no borders” people and those who believe whatever this week’s popular media chant might be.
Life’s a lot easier if you don’t think.
Sadly, we run on data around here: Please refer to the highlighted yellow line for the “offishul” inconvenient truths:
Yes! In the past year 22,678 record highs were set.
But Ures truly won’t hide under the bed just yet, since 27,993 new lows were set, as well.
The official data tabulations are over here – and if you don’t like it, go argue with them.
Don’t waste your time writing me about the monthly records, either. That’s because the data set is small and within bounds for normal noisy data. Scream elsewhere.
I’m sure that brainwashed climateers will take me to task for using full year data sets only. Earth averages things out. They will no doubt cling to the increase in high minimums without referencing to the continuing paving over of ‘Merica and heat islanding is the gift that never stops giving.
That’s why we get out and do our annual aerial survey just completed. We look at the new stuff that wasn’t there before…and there’s lots of it. Something like eight 100-car coal trains coming out of the Gillette, WY area are keeping the lights on in the Midwest.
The worse news is that after looking at the data, I’m rather easily convinced that it follows – to some extent – the comings and goings of solar output (heat from the Sun) which is evidenced in the following Space Weather Prediction Center chart:
The bottom line here is simple:
I am open to the idea of climate change. I am also open to the idea of demons, apparitions, ghosts, UFOs, and great conspiracies in government.
But in all of these cases, it comes down to the data – and a whole bunch of it, if’n you please.
And instead of whipping up “man made global warming” means an excuse to tax cars, increase taxes, and restrict people’s freedoms?
Get back to me when ruined rain forests have been restored under UN mandates in Africa, South America, and Indonesia, to name a few. End corporate exploitation of native peoples and theft of their land – oh, and did I mention their water?
In the meantime, data infers that the world isn’t ending and it’s doing what it always does with climate.
Change.
Cutting down the rain forests is likely a bigger deal than anyone thought. I mean besides the biodiversity consequences. The actual year of trashing is hard to pin down, however, because when the rain forests go, it is accompanied by huge land-waste fires which cause unbearable smoke, but which also reflects some heat back into space. Cools things…but then comes the heat in the future.
The Union of Concerned Scientists pretty much nailed it down in their 2011 report on Tropical Deforestation:
Reducing growth in the demand for commodities
that drive deforestation will be important to future successes,
but so will increasing the productivity of currently
used lands and directing agricultural expansion
into grasslands rather than forests.
This has been one hell of a week on the Internet.
Today we have a couple of personal action steps you might want to consider to increase your personal resistance to being hacked.
Not only have we suffered a massive melt of computer trading that led to trading halts at mid-week, but we had the head of the Office of Policy Management step down as 21-million current and former federal workers had their personal information hacked.
As it’s not just in the government sector: UrbanSurvival’s server farm was hit with a massive DDOS attack on Friday, as well. Peoplenomics was down only briefly.
Despondency: “a state of low spirits caused by loss of hope or courage.”
Or, today, a state of low spirited caused by the loss of connectivity for a digitally connected world…
If you have had problems getting into a lot of websites today, don’t feel alone.
Something I’ve worried about ever since I wrote “Broken Web The Coming Collapse of the Internet” (Amazon) may be breaking out – and we’ll have more in our Peoplenomics update tomorrow.
For now, here’s what’s going on at our server farm:
Hi George:
We have an announcement within your client area regarding the massive DDOS attack we are being hit with. We will update that announcement periodically. Our datacenter is trying to mitigate the problem at the moment.
(Sheridan, WY) The mountain air must be clearing my head a bit too much.
When I see the stock market set to rally almost 200 points out of the chute this morning, I reach for the traveling ViseGrips and give myself a pinch.
Today’s rally will be largely based on the reports that the majority of the Greek parliament will endorse the latest bailout plan. The French are calling the proposal complete and it looks like the powers that be will rubber stamp this with the only question being how bad will the austerity measures be and how much will be stolen outright from the public?
The devil is in the details, though.
Main features of the deal include Greece cutting back on early retirements – retirement ages will move to 67 by 2022 and the sales taxes will be going up top 23% and all kinds of gory details over here.
No doubt, the market rally this morning will have something to do with these developments, but unfortunately for the whole world, this only sets up the fifth wave blow-off we have been telling Peoplenomics readers about.
Then there’s the matter of corporate earnings which are floating about. Many of them subject to stock buy-back puffery. Even Forbes notices three ways buy-backs hurt investors.
Sure, some corporations are to report bigger earnings, but come on, stock buy-backs have a very dark side to them. What it means is that management of many companies can’t think of better investments. No new plant and equipment, money into research and developments…you name it.
Accounting chicanery comes and goes in seasons. Remember the last time we had a good dose of it? That was when EBITDA was making the rounds in high tech firms as the Holy Grail of growth models.
The wreckage from that kind of thinking was the tech wreck and people tend to forget that accounting’s hand was in that $5-7 trillion dollar disaster.
So when you hear about Greece, and when you hear about corporate profits soaring, look at the underlying qualities of what’s really going on. Greece just put on the yoke of debt and check to see if there have been stock buy-backs when big earnings come in.
Remember, false profits have great press agents.
Meantime, China is papering over its mess.
Oh, yeah.
“Whatzzit mean?”
Simply this: The Federal Reserve is drying up its easy money policy. This means with less money being printed (by the truck load) the value of the money sloshing around will go up.
That will a) strengthen the US dollar, b) bring down the stock market (it takes less of powerful dollars and more of wimpy dollars to buy the Dow) and it means c) despite the HS&J (hype shuck and jive) about the TeePeePee, US exports will not be going up because our dollarsized goods will go up in price overseas.
Should I mention gold goes down?
Bet that makes you feel, swell, doesn’t it?
Still, when you see outfits like Ford planning to cut Focus and C-Max production (and maybe move it offshore) we have to remind you of a Trumpism:
“If you want a deal bad enough, you will make a bad deal.”
We are a country awash in bad deals, thank you.
And that gets us to…
After deftly steeling the “straight talking” mantle from the remains of the GOP, The Don told Anderson Cooper of CNN that he still doesn’t know where Obama was born.
Not a point in this campaign, but if you’re a conspiracy theorist, interesting to note The Don’s point about how some birthers have been promoted after dropping their inquiries. Like Hillary, for instance…
In an UrbanSurvival bar room poll conducted last night (sample =8) Trump is the clear leader over everyone with the one caveat that people worry he’s a Perot, II.
What most people seem to forget is that Ross Perot dropped out of the presidential bid back when under conditions that could be fairly labeled “duress.” Go over to AboveTopSecret and read some background info.
The biggest question about Trump is how will utterly corrupt corporate-owned government silence him?
Another leak on the tube Thursday was Boone Pickens (or energy fame) saying that he expects oil will pass the $70 mark by the end of the year.
When it comes to oil supply? “We’ve turned over and it’s down from here. A thousand rigs makes a lot of difference” Pickens told CNBC.
How long have I been writing to you about the Manufacturer’s Resource Wars? That’s what we’re in and nothing in the data, whether you’re talking oil, gas, bituminous, or lithium, suggests anything else.
It’s a slow game, but a big one.
Once again, our way of looking at things is showing through. Oh, sure, the headline is that 1 in 15 Americans is impacted by the Federal OPM hack.
But doesn’t that also mean government is too big?
New word: “Distractophy.” Means the art and science of a made-up distraction, usually to keep people’s minds off the reality of what’s going on in the important world, as opposed to the MFW = media fiction world.
Take the Confederate flag distractophy, please.
In the latest hype, high school sports is coming down with political correctness disease. Can’t have teams with those colors and called rebels, can we?
I can hardly wait for the next shoe to drop as political correctness disease sweeps America.
Yeah…let’s forget the horrible costs of Obamacare, which go up again in 2016. And let’s not talk the service economy bubble, the open border, the questionable presidential dictates, or how China is buying America out from under us.
Hell no. Have some more of this-here Kool-Aid.
I’m gonna start another distractophy right here: It’s way more important to rename the Dixie chicks something like the Tampa Tramps or Houston Hoes…because yes, brothers and sisters we have lost our collective minds.
My friend “warhammer” – the oak cluster dude has some good insight into what starts next week:
“George,
Found this little gem on joint military exercise Jade Helm 15 (aka JH15) while cruising the NET this AM:
http://american3rdposition.com/wp-content/uploads/Jade-Helm-Martial-Law-WW3-Prep-Document-1.pdf
If you lean to the ‘domestic conspiracy theory’ side of the isle, the ‘no media access’ aspect of this exercise proves that JH15 is the first step toward an Orwellian American future.
Knowing what I do about exercise planning and execution, I believe there are several more viable ‘real world’ purposes for this two month, 7-state ‘joint’ exercise (meaning more than one branch of the military is participating, not that weed will be liberally provided). An exercise of this size and scope is quite expensive and resource intensive.
Two scenarios, both involving areas far from the 4-corners region of the U.S., are my personal, plausible ‘real world explanations for this massive (and expensive) exercise.
(Sheridan, WY) If you follow Interstate 90 long enough starting eastbound from Spokane, you will eventually get to Billings, MT. And from there, it’s an hour south to Sheridan, WY.
Our original plans had us departing this morning from Sheridan after a single night and the uneventful trip down here from Missoula, MT Thursday.
The most exciting part was our fuel consumption which was higher than planned, by a bit: Headwinds. We landed with about 7-gallons useable remaining on board. 45-minutes of gas is closer than I like.
And since Ures truly was not going to gamble on a “go round” in case I misjudged a landing, when it became apparent that I was a bit high on the final approach into Sheridan, Elaine got to experience her first serious side-slip. By cross-controlling the old Beechcrate, I can drop altitude like a freefalling safe – somewhere around 3,000 feet per minute. Not the kind of thing to do if you haven’t practices a lot which some I know has.
It’s just the grown-up version of correcting for a strong crosswind when landing.
Slips are cool, though. Instead of the runway being directly in front of you, the airport is suddenly off to the side when your in the slip. It’s the big sideways airframe that slows you down. But you can’t do it for long because the fuel in your tanks (what there was of it) runs to hide and the next thing you know, you’re fuel starved the engine. The sideways action forces the fuel down to the other end of the tank…away from the sump and pick-up.
All’s well that ends well. 50.8 gallons to fill up is a bit of a wallet bite, though..
Bighorn Airways where the marvelous lady at the front desk finds us the only hotel room left: A queen at the such and such hotel. This Rodeo Week here. Rooms are scarcer than the Truth in Washington.
Mr. Charm, promising the hotel front desk lady a place in Heaven and a winning Lotto ticket if she would upgrade us, managed to secure us the only King left within a hundred miles. It was either my charm that worked, or the pile of small bills I left on the counter. “Latte money.” She’ll be wired for a week.
A leisurely lunch (room wasn’t made up yet) and we found the wifi log in and discovered that an exceptionally nice couple who read the column and live in Sheridan had left us a note that they’d been readers for years and would we want to get together for a “Howdy?” – which of course we did.
After a decent nap, we sauntered down to the bar – met this delightful couple, and shot pool for a while and hatched further plans which includes a bbq tonight and going to the rodeo…which will be way cool.
You can get a sense of what a real old-time rodeo in Wyoming is like by checking out the event website over here.
To be sure, we might have been able to depart Sheridan this morning, but there are rain showers south and I have a Peoplenomics report to prepare for tomorrow morning. When the markets close today (2 PM Sheridan time) I’ll get the chart work done and by 4:30 or so, we should be ready to resume something other than being data-crunching machines.
But who would have thought? Two UrbanSurvival readers live in Sheridan and they are really neat people. The power of the Internet continues to amaze me.
So the plan today is (roughly in order): Hit the hotel breakfast buffet, catch up on sleep, write Peoplenomics, attend BBQ and rodeo and then off in the morning to McCook Nebraska and then on to Dodge City and then back to the ranch on Sunday.
Our hosts promise us the world famous Indian Relay Races are the best part..which is good because I may not have to stay up past my bedtime. Although it will take calculus to figure what that is in this time zone.
Winding up the tripping about means we will be done Monday with the travelogues and we can get back to the business of Urban Surviving which is considerably easier if you get out of the urban part and head for the woods while the world goes through what will either be the birth pangs of a new way of being, or (more highly probable) the death throes of a nice idea that got corrupted and consequently implodes.
The good news is that we still have time before the glorious start or bitter end, which is what weekends are all about. Garden, hydroponics and other self-support mechanisms. They are available…just like the clues in a video game. But it’s amazing how many people miss the clues hidden in plain sight in the game or in real-life.
It takes a new kind of “looking” that few people work on. It’s not an app seems to be the reason.
Been a while, by the way, since we’ve played pool.
Last time, I think it was 75-cents a game.
Nowadays, it’s a buck.
The good news is that if you stay away from pool long enough, you can lose whatever accumulated skill you might have gained.
Toss in delightful conversation with friends and we can no proudly report that on an hourly basis, pool is still 50-cents an hour.
Get this: It can be 4-bucks an hour if you’re good, fast, and can run 3-4 balls in a row. but the worse you are, the longer it takes to clear off the table, the cheaper the cost!
No doubt Adam Smith missed this part about Pool in his hidden hand discussions, but it’s got me researching for you what other extravagances in life are like this: Inflation adjusting.
Bowling might go into the pile.
When you were younger, do you remember rolling back-to-back games as fast as the ball return would permit; even going two balls sometimes so the only speed bump was machine set time? Remember the sweat and intensity of it all?
Been thinking about this (maniacal) approach a bit.
Today, there’s no way that I would roll them out this quickly. Sweat aversion.
It would be more like roll. Observe, sit down and discuss the roll. Talk about Obamacare a bit, sip a drink. Chat about the weather and local this & that’s. Then, maybe 5-10 minutes later, work up the energy to go lift the bowling ball again. They seem to have gotten heavier over the years.
Another roll.
Another 10-minutes of chit-chat and then 3-minutes of Tai Chi posturing to get the balance right and then another roll.
Approached this way, 2-4 people can turn a line of bowling from a 12-minute speed event into an hour, or better.
One thing’s for sure: Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” was OCD-ADHD and didn’t have arthritis.
(Missoula, MT) A couple of months ago, I told you about what I saw as a major battle to come at S&P 2,.040 because that would be where things could begin to get “interesting” technically.
Obvious, since that column, the averages have continued to move up and yesterdays low, just over 2,044 was just below the 200-day moving average. The simple 200 DMA is about 2,055 right now.
This morning, we look for Plunge Protection Team types to be wiring in positions via options to lever the market out of panic mode, which we’re verging on, but not quite there, yet.
The reason is simple: Markets can’t crash from the top – they crash from major support zones and bottoms of trends. We’ll go through some of my wonky chart ideas for Peoplenomics readers on Saturday (or Sunday, depending on weather and getting home), but the main point is that there are a lot of reader of UrbanSurvival and PN who don’t understand what’s really going on here.
Ure-Think 101
If you’ve just started reading UrbanSurvival, there is some important background you need to know in order to be on the same page, around here:
The first is that we have a very odd (as in peculiar) view of markets.
You see, there are two ways to look at markets.
One way – the hook, line, and sinker most people have swallowed, is that “the numbers are what they are.. .”
While this is (nominally) true, the “numbers” are very misleading unless you bore down into the detail layer. For example, look at the number of people employed in manufacturing in the United States.
Horrible nominal number – and since 95% of everything is made elsewhere – this means we have a circular shopkeeper economy going on (and the concurrent digital diaspora) which means if your job can be done by a smart English-speaking Latvia, good luck holding it: No reason for an employer to keep an expensive you around, especially with high healthcare costs, so….
Still, everyone was touting the markets hitting new highs, just a couple of weeks ago.
The Nominal Numbers said “time to party.”
But the problem with nominal numbers is they don’t reveal the truth of total purchasing power in the economy.
On the Peoplenomics.com side of the house, we have been using a metric for years now, that attempts to quantify a RELATIVE VALUES APPROACH.
Easily done:
Simply take equal numbers of dollars in 1999 and put them into the Dow, S&P 500, and the NASDAQ Composite.
Thanks to the last time $7-trillion (or whatever) of assets were deflated (the Internet bubble crash, remember that?) we have not seen a real positive return on investing.
To underscore the point, I will show you this chart that we don’t usually mention, but it’s the Aggregate Index.
Assuming we want our hard work to result in some positive gains, let’s see what the aggregate index in 2000 should be at today. Remember, in 2000 it was 13,091.93…and if you can’t trust the Fed’s inflation calculations, who can you trust?
OK, fine…so let’s lay this out on a chart, then, shall we: Only, I’m too lazy to actually do an inflation adjusted chart at this hour, so I’ll take the slipshod way out so I can get to the airport: I’m simply going to rotate the Aggregate Index chart so you can see where things need to be and where things are…
The point is that “compounding inflation” is something that no one talks about. All that makes the nightly snooze headlines is the nominal (non-adjusted) number. And since no one talks about the bloodbath in American high tech stocks in 2001-2003, well, it must not have happened.
Except, that it did.
Now, when you throw in the effects of personal wealth destruction caused by the Housing bubble collapsing six years ago, what do you come up with?
The Tainter Problem
Joseph Tainter wrote a fine book titled The Collapse of Complex Societies (New Studies in Archaeology) which will set you back $50. Here’s the key part from Wikipedia in case you’re too time compressed to wise up in-depth:
Tainter says when a society has a negative return on harder and harder work, at some point, people give up on cooperation (and government) and just walk away from the mess…
Tainter begins by categorizing and examining the often inconsistent explanations that have been offered for collapse in the literature.[4] In Tainter’s view, while invasions, crop failures, disease or environmental degradation may be the apparent causes of societal collapse, the ultimate cause is an economic one, inherent in the structure of society rather than in external shocks which may batter them: diminishing returns on investments in social complexity.[5] Finally, Tainter musters modern statistics to show that marginal returns on investments in energy, education and technological innovation are diminishing today. The globalised modern world is subject to many of the same stresses that brought older societies to ruin.[5]
However, Tainter is not entirely apocalyptic: “When some new input to an economic system is brought on line, whether a technical innovation or an energy subsidy, it will often have the potential at least temporarily to raise marginal productivity” (p.
(Missoula, MT) This place is a post-card.
But getting here?
Well, that’s another tale…
We got out of Tacoma Narrows Airport about 6 AM and managed to claw our way up to 7,500 feet and followed IJ-90 over to Ellensburg, WA.
The old Beechcrate ran perfectly and fuel consumption was “right on the numbers,” too.
And about 11-something local time (Mountain) we showed up at the ramp at Northstar Jet Service where ground-boss Todd served up the best customer service you can get, along with the rest of the crew.
From there, off to the riverside Doubletree and the view (above) which was from the window at dinner last night.
Visibility getting to dinner was less than ideal, however.
Smoke – from multiple fires in the Omak and Central Washington area – meant having to drop altitude and remain nap-of-the-earth for a good bit of the Ellensburg to Spokane leg. Things didn’t really clear out for good flying until we were 70-miles east of Missoula, again, following I-90.
This morning, an abbreviated column, since the hotel courtesy bus will be departing the hotel at 5:15 sharp. And with Todd’s help at Northstar, we should be fueled and wheels off by 6:00 AM, or so.
I’m figuring the flighty this morning will only make it to Sheridan, WY because tomorrow morning there may be adverse winds and rain. Saturday morning, we’ll press on to Dodge city and then home to the ranch Sunday.
We’ll see about getting out tomorrow, but a day of writing Peoplenomics would be useful since there is much to learn from the micro-calamities of the markets this week.
More important, however, is what is ahead – which is always useful to game out.
There have been a lot of useful comments about recent columns. There are found on the “comments bubble” but one set of remarks from long-time reader Ray H really stands out (as always) since he’s about the closest thing to George-think you’ll find:
Greets, George…
‘Don’t like ccard fraud; it’s inefficient, and a pain in the butt (and yeah, I have the T-shirt, also.) I avoid this now for pleasure trips, by using a debit card that’s on an insulated account. Before a trip, I’ll spreadsheet the trip, cover every eventuality I can think of, then budget an additional 25% and shove this total into my account.
(Tacoma, WA) As we head out this morning (wheels up around 5:30 AM with any luck) we have gotten what we came for: A key insight into what’s going on in the world.
As insights go, this one is pretty good: The nutshell idea is that digital communications are having the same effects on the economy of the World that factory automation had on the United States in the run-up to the Great Depression of the 1930’s.
So yes, we will have the world’s first global depression. And this is progress? Well, yes, and no. And that’s what we will address this morning.
(Tacoma, WA) After my discussion of irrational markets Monday, apparently someone woke up, came to their senses, and figured out that Greece doesn’t matter as much as the bankster-class would have us think.
Besides, says one knowledgeable reader: The Market Manipulator have made more on Grecian formula panic than anything in months…many times what what the deal costs are/would have been.
The problem facing Europe is simple:
Imagine a camp of homeless people with no jobs and ho hope. Lazy, over-fed by decades of U.S. charity (in things like defense, feeding the NATO machine, and so on), and not wanting to face competition from machines – or China – head on.
What to do?
Well, you find a bunch of financial bullies, make up a currency – let’s call it the Euro — and then come up with the Guido and Luigi of trade in order to force others to buy the bloated cost goods from the homeless camp factories. Wait! Is that the WTO?
Capitalism Flows Like Water
This is a hard one for people in positions of power to grok: Capitalism – enabled by free telecommunications costs which have arisen post TCP-IP – means that the lowest cost workers are now “flowing in” to all high/over-priced labor markets (Europe and the US) and as they do, social change comes along with it.
It is as Ure Pard wrote:
There is a tide in the affairs of labor
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyages of containerships
Are bound in shallows and inventory build
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current as it comes,
And lose our ventures.
But, not without a fight.
So it happens that today the Euromeisters are hoping, wishing, and praying that the kindly people of Greece will bend over just one more time. A quickie for the road, perchance?
If you squint your eyes, just so, you can see how this “Tide in the Affairs of Labor” is driving everything. A great Digital Diaspora has begun and Ures truly will now show you some examples which will become crystal clear as soon as a point them out.
And you won’t like it any more than you liked the hollowing out of Detroit.
But it all comes back to the fact that even though horrifically slow – glacial speeds are common – in the end, it IS THE END and it’s where economic cycles of creation and destruction come from.
You saw it first in places like H1-b visas. You saw it when the factories of Ohio were recreated in Korea, Japan, Indian and Thailand.
So let’s not lie to ourselves about how the Digital Diaspora works out. It’s coming to get you, your job, and your standard of living.
And if you don’t believe it, let me give you more pertinent examples fresh from this morning’s headlines.
A headline in the UK Guardian makes the point more eloquently than I can:
Economic exodus means two-thirds of Puerto Ricans may soon live in US .
Let me ‘splain you this: Economic Exodus means DIGITAL DIASPORA.
But not everyone sees the Digital Diaspora (DD) in harsh contrast, as we do.
Take the politically correct sheriff of San Francisco: “S.F. Sheriff Defends Releasing Killer, Calls Trump ‘Opportunist’”
But while Bay Area residents are having a gay old time living in denial, the rest of the world’s thinkers, including many of Mexico’s elites see it clear as day. They just don’t call it the Digital Diaspora because that would make the problem clear to the public which would then be less docile and more angry about the binary boinking and theft of lifestyle.
Still, as this note in the Daily Beast reveals “Mexican Elites Secretly Agree With Donald Trump.”
Squint your eyes again.
This time see the middle ground MSM (Like the Washington Post) trying to stir up Diasporians by snooping around Donald Trump properties resulting in stories like “For some workers at Trump’s D.C.