Year: 2015

This is going to be one hell of a Monday, so don’t expect a dynamite column  tomorrow.  Come to think of it, if you’re looking for a a dynamite column, check out the San Francisco Chronicle archives and look for some of Herb Caen’s work.  It’s more dependable and only slightly less dated.

Caen, as with most of my literary heroes, have been dead a good while.  1997 for Caen.

In fact, come to think of it, the only really good newspaper columnist I worked with for any period was Emmett Watson, of the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

Read More

A look at the Futures board (over here) said everything you’d need to know about the markets in a single compelling sweep:

• The Eurostox 50 was down 1.7% at first glance.
• US marts are staring into a one-percent drop at the open.
• If the US keeps pace with floundering Europe, we could drop 300 on the Dow today.
• The price of oil continues to implode and we’ll get to what that means down in the Houston area later on, but the short answer is “grim.”  West Texas Intermediate was down around $36 and change.
• And running counter – never a good sign – the price of copper is back up to the $2.10 range.  We follow copper closely because the price of copper is a very good indicator of war-threats.  When copper goes up, it means the odds of war are spiking.  You need copper to make bullets, after all.  Unless you’re firing some of the epoxy-coated steel casings coming out of Russia as 7.62X39 (AK-47 rounds) but you can have a conversation with our armorer about that offline sometime. Berdan’ed what?

A fair question to begin with is?  “Why are things sucking so much?”

Since you may not be a www.peoplenomics.com reader, the answer is simple and has been in sight since Tuesday’s close.  The S&P has dropped under both the 50 day moving average and the 200 day moving average briefly.

When this kind of thing happens, you will sometimes see a bounce as the commercials will load up on the short side.  Next week, I expect the market to be down even more.  Let’s all try to stampeded the Fed, shall we?

Read More

Living out “in the woods” as we do, there is nothing so important as a good, reliable pick-up truck.

And, among pick-up trucks, the ONLY ones that have ever made sense to me are full-size, half or three quarter ton trucks.  Something you can lay a sheet of plywood in and have it supported its whole 96-inch length.

The reason is simple:  Seems like we are always going into town (Lowes or McCoys) and picking up something that won’t fit in Elaine’s car.  Whether it’s treated “peeler poles” for landscaping, a hundred T-posts, or several sheets of plywood, finished MDF, or sheetrock, there is nothing so useful as a pickup bed that is at least 4 feet 1-inches wide – even with the bed liner in.

Read More

Whilst we sit around and twiddle, waiting for Janet et alia to do their thing next week, we can’t hope but sit back and appreciate the “ViseGrips Moment” in here.

To the good:

• The U.S. unemployment rate is still very nice.
• The U.S.

  Read More

It was time once again this week to head into the doctor’s office Monday for a blood draw – and as expected my cholesterol was still high.  The blood pressure was OK, but the whole thing got me to thinking that it’s time to haul out the “personal chemistry set” and do some more tweaking.

I have not been terribly worried about weight loss.  I’m down to “pre-cruise” levels and the general energy levels are very high.

But in going through the “chart review” with the doc, I realized that many of the vitamins I have been trying have eventually fallen off my daily regimen.  Most of them for the simple reason that they didn’t provide any noticeable improvement in cognitive function – which is what got me started on the whole process in the first place.  That and gout.

Read More

A report very much geared to the immensely important problem of where to park your retained earnings is on tap this morning.

While that would have been an easy question for us to answer back in 2003 when our Simple Strategy was to buy gold at $275 and put an equal amount of dough into U.S. Savings Bonds, the problems in today’s world are incredibly more complex.  At some points, rates will bottom and head up again.

Read More

Yes:  The market will drop 200 points today.

Yes, it is due to trade with China collapsing:  “Commodities rout deepens as Chinese trade data signal weaker demand.”

And yes, the Baltic Dry Index is at 551 and dangerously low, as we have been telling you for months.

We begin this morning by wondering whether the Federal Reserve will really go ahead with its announced intentions to raise rates a week from tomorrow.

The reason is that events are starting to pile up against a rate hike.

Let’s consider the problem broadly:  America has roughly $18-trillion in public debt and it all needs to be financed.

The Fed, which is looking to raise rates a quarter, would increase the cost of paying interest on that debt $450 –billion.  That expense has to be born by someone (check the mirror for the answer).

In long wave economic theory, there is a good case to raise rates when times are bad and when deflation is running amuck.

The reason is the most of the One Percenters have their dough tied up in interest-rate related investments.  Obviously, if rates are low, say 2%, a million dollar nest egg is only going to generate $20,000 of interest income per year.  But, when the Fed is watering down the purchasing power of the fiat Federal Reserve “Notes” by 5.9% per year, 2% returns are losing on a purchasing power basis.

When the interest rate is higher, say 5%, then the interest income on a million buc ks pencils out to $50-thousand a year.

As interest rates have fallen, it is this very dynamic that has forced the One Percent to concentrate larger and larger pools in fixed income products.  Why take chances, right?

So in order to have a workable $500-thousand a year income with a 2% interest rate, you need $25-million to play with.

As the money piles up around the edges, the rates keep coming down and sooner, or later, you get a deflationary depression as prices collapse.

The magic is to increase the interest rates.  And the way to do that is increase the cost of money…and the latest Fed Money supply figures show there has been no growth in M1 – ion fact it was dropping 9-10th’s of one percent per year if you look at the 3-month average.

All of which is foreplay to rates going up..

But the problem to behold this morning is whether Yellen has played this game of “chicken” too long?

We are seeing some impressive arguments against the rate hike in a quick scan of business data this morning.

First, and foremost, the National Federation of Independent Business is our with their just-release take on how the business climate looked for small business in November.  Here’s a telling quote under their headline “Small Business Optimism Collapses in November after Three Stagnant Months”:

“Uncertainty in DC, federal agencies playing politics and a President that is willing to punish the current economy for inconsequential environmental benefits in the future indicates that business conditions will not be revived anytime soon. Even though there is talk that the Fed will be raising rates this month, it will hardly signal that they are feeling more optimistic about the economy.

“Overall, the outlook remains the same with a slow 2 percent-ish growth and there is still not much pressure on prices from Main Street.

Read More

That headline off to the right there should give you a pretty good idea about what being “tuned-in” to “the force” is all about.

We received an email from what sounded like a county government worker who was being blessed with the job of installing a whole bunch of new lights – and the job would take place ahead of Thanksgiving.

But the really AMAZING part of this reader’s description of a sold change in the pace of the news flow is how absolutely-freaking good his call has been.

Read More

We don’t look for any major melt-up in the market today.

In fact, it looks like we will get some continuation of the rally that started last week.

But the big story to focus on this morning is the president’s latest “talk around” on Islamic terrorism – now come to America – while his attorney general is attempting to hush the issue with vague threats to prosecute those who don’t “drink the Kool-Aid” of White House jingoism and sloganeering.

To begin with, the president’s speech: So far as we know, he have never been able to call out Islamic jihadists directly.  And if you’d like to read his latest “talk-around” it is available on the White House website here.

Obama did get close to calling out Islamic jihadists, but close doesn’t work when plain speaking is in order:

Here’s what else we cannot do.  We cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam.  That, too, is what groups like ISIL want.  ISIL does not speak for Islam.  They are thugs and killers, part of a cult of death, and they account for a tiny fraction of more than a billion Muslims around the world — including millions of patriotic Muslim Americans who reject their hateful ideology. Moreover, the vast majority of terrorist victims around the world are Muslim.  If we’re to succeed in defeating terrorism we must enlist Muslim communities as some of our strongest allies, rather than push them away through suspicion and hate. 

That does not mean denying the fact that an extremist ideology has spread within some Muslim communities.  This is a real problem that Muslims must confront, without excuse.  Muslim leaders here and around the globe have to continue working with us to decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology that groups like ISIL and al Qaeda promote; to speak out against not just acts of violence, but also those interpretations of Islam that are incompatible with the values of religious tolerance, mutual respect, and human dignity.

More important, to the aware reader, is the administrations continued deference to terminology like ISIL instead of ISIS.

Read More

So here we are, with only a couple of weeks to go until Christmas.   Elaine and I are wondering about setting our “big projects” for 2016.

Part of it will be determined by how Panama and his lady friend/intended do in their house-hunting.  But it seems the odds that they will be successful WILL work out one of these times.

I may have mentioned that Panama is the only person I have ever met – over the course of fifty-plus years to have three solid home purchase offers blow-up.  All were for a variety of reasons, but that’s the thing about “Luck.”

With most people, when luck runs with you, you’ll do things like I did on the latest road trip – and actually come out ahead several hundred dollars in a casino.  Then it runs against you.  It might be a flat tire, getting in the slowest possible line to check-out at the grocery store, or some other nit like that.  Small pluses, small minuses.

Read More

With the Holidays immediately before us, a few notes on personal futuring are in order.

Whenever you have people over for the holidays that you don’t see all the time, it’s a unique opportunity to got “knowledge trolling.”

By the time most of us get to “investing age” (which we define as having more than $50 bucks left-over on payday), we have some fairly concrete expectations about the way we thing the world ought to work.

However, as our investing results often feed back to us, our expectations are often wrong about the future.

Read More