Year: 2015

Just for grins, we re-watched the Tom Clancy thriller “Shadow Recruit” last night because underlying that movie was a very possible scenario that might fit unfortunately well in times like these.

Although the whole plot is more completely revealed (spoiler alert) over on the Wikipedia site here, the main idea was that a major player could collapse the US into a Greater Depression by simply timing a major selling event (of Treasuries) within minutes of a major terrorism attack.

And, given how the 10-year has been doing lately, down to just 1.78 yesterday at the close as measured by the ^TNX, it begins to look like our posted intermediate term outlook could come sooner than later.

Remember, the old low (1.63) set in June 2012 could fall, and taking out that really means the Fed will have to do something – even if it’s wrong.  And I have every confidence…..

Meantime, the price of oil was up a bit, Asia was down more than one percent, but Europe down only marginally, which means they are waiting for key economic data from the US before deciding how to collapse the Euro.

Forbes is wondering what the Swiss know, and we’re not sure why Forbes can’t see lifeboat building when they see it.

Not that they’d planned that, of course.  But just like a test pilot doesn’t intentionally rip the wings off an airplane, the world has never test-flown a purely made-up notional currency backed by nothing but a multilingual chorus of me-too’s.

With classic understatement,econo- princess Chris LeGarde of the IMF suggested “strong headwinds” are facing the global recovery.  The what?  And she said the Swiss negative rate move was a surprised, but sounds like she wouldn’t recognize incipient deflation if it pistol-whipped her.

Ure’s Discontinuity Revisited

In the interest of keeping the Fed and the IMF on the right track, here’s the ultra-short version of where we are in  the Global Economy for those who missed it, including Ms LeGarde:

Say you have a stock with one dollar of earnings.  When prevailing rates are 5%, we see that is about a $20 stock.  When the prevailing rate drops to 1%, then that same dollar of earnings is suddenly supporting a $100 stock price.  And, by the time rates drop to a quarter of one percent…then what happens?

Stock price zooms up to what?  $400-bucks.

With long-term rates dropping since 1981 (chart here for non-believers) we can expect the market to keep zooming ahead as rates fall until the bottom quite literally falls out.  Then you get the second Mother of All Crashes and the stupid will not understand why nonlinear periods occur in markets.

They’ll be off looking for scapegoats (short sellers and hedgers) when the real problem is the numbers when rates drop past the public recognition point.  Which is why another QE may be needed…to pump up prices of commodities, which in turn supports rates which in turn lowers stock values which in turn buys another 2-years.

Simple, huh?  If only William of Ockham had managed a fund.

Say, did I mention the Baltic Dry index is down to 741 this morning?  Not a particularly encouraging sign, is it?

So the whole problem is rate-based.  If you want to save the world you raise rates instead of further lower.

Reason?  The closer you get to the edge of the cliff, the more likely someone will panic, or try to pull off a Clancy-like terrorism followed by panic because the closer you are to the inflection point, the less powder and bonds it would talk.

That’s because even without the Clancy plot, if rates keep failing, the worse it’s going to get until ultimately at the inflection point (where prices collapse in a heap) there is no exogenous force required  – shit just falls.

The problem (and one we might get into for Peoplenomics subscribers tomorrow because we have an answer – though it may not be perfect) is that only market performance over time will resolve whether we are on the final upside of the discontinuity, or, whether we are already past the crescendo and this bobsled isn’t already heading for the first turn.

Stay tuned for more on this exciting match-up, coming soon to markets near you.

But not till next week – we still have options to get through today and the Consumer Price Index which hints at what?

CPI and Inflation

And what?

BANG!  Serious Deflation

Just out is the Cost of Living report.  Ugly…but this is what happens when deflation comes-a-calling…

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) declined 0.4 percent in December on a seasonally adjusted basis, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 0.8 percent before seasonal adjustment. The gasoline index continued to fall sharply, declining 9.4 percent and leading to the decrease in the seasonally adjusted all items index. The fuel oil index also fell sharply, and the energy index posted its largest one-month decline since December 2008, although the indexes for natural gas and for electricity both increased.

The food index, in contrast, rose 0.3 percent, its largest increase since September. The index for all items less food and energy was unchanged in December, following a 0.2 percent increase in October and a 0.1 percent rise in November. This was only the second time since 2010 that it did not increase.

The shelter index continued to rise, and the index for medical care posted its largest increase since August 2013. However, these increases were offset by declines in a broad array of indexes including apparel, airline fares, used cars and trucks, household furnishings and operations, and new vehicles.

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The is something of a mystery surrounding market action this week. 

Usually, we expect something of a bounce into option expiration, but there are so many forces running contrariwise in this market that it’s worth looking at a list of factors rather than zooming in on one thing or another as a sole cause:

• Deflation is still here, and still very real.  Then 10-year Treasury hit 1.78% yesterday and if you look at the maximum zoom-out over the past 50 years, or so, here, you will see we’re getting mighty darn close to the 1.63% level set in 2012.
• Negative interest rates (typical of deflationary depressions) are driving up the cost of cash, noted a recent Financial Times report.  Meantime, rates around Europe and heading toward zero for “those still standing.”  The Swiss when to a –0.25% rate in mid December to beat the rush.
• The US Velocity of Money calculations refuse to budge significantly off historical lows.

And if this isn’t enough for you, the latest producer print index numbers are just out:

The Producer Price Index for final demand fell 0.3 percent in December, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Final demand prices decreased 0.2 percent in November and advanced 0.2 percent in October.

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We haven’t touched on the World of Woo-Woo (WoWW) for a while, but, as one reader noted over in the discussion forums this week (long time reader up in Arkansas) “it’s like the veil is getting thinner…”

Well, it sure seems that way to me.

First, a word of three about dreaming:  I have predictive dreams and “remote viewing” dreams often enough that I don’t  particularly care for them.

There are dozens I’ve experienced over the course of the past 20-years and the ones that “come true” all have aspects of them which make them quite remarkable. 

Likely, the best documented was the Horizon Offshore oil fire a number of years back – something I wrote up 18-hours before the actual event under the headline “Irwin Allen’s dream” after Hollywood’s “Master of Disaster.”

The dream wasn’t perfect – in that there was supposedly (by the dream) a murder element to things and something to do with a cook/kitchen.  Never saw anything come out about that.

It’s also one of the reasons that I started a project back when called The National Dream Center because enough people have sufficient dream content about the future, that the project seemed more than worthy of at least starting.

Since March of last year, the very serious Chris McCleary has picked up the project, expanded it, and is using some of of www.nostracodeus.com code to help sort out word occurrences and such and if you haven’t read the Dream Center outlooks for 2015, they can be found over here.

Lots of foreplay…on to the dream.

First of all, it was in my favorite dream state:  I had been awakened by my alarm clock at exactly 4 AM, but there was something telling me “go back to sleep” which I promptly did and for exactly one hour.  (It means this morning’s column is written in a bit of a rush.)

The first off thing about the dream is was not exactly a commentary, but more a “showing me” something about an area to the east and a bit north of San Francisco.  There were two time references in it:  One was for an approaching weekend.  The other was about April.

First, though, a word about who was giving me the narrative/view of things:  It happened to be an old news colleague with whom I’ve worked in Seattle radio.  From there, he went on to become a famous newscaster in the SF Bay area for something like five years, and then his career took him to Los Angeles and a famous FM morning show there.

What makes this is odd stand-out dream was that I haven’t thought about him in YEARS.  In fact, when he later in life moved back to the Seattle area, he called up and told me he’d bought a home in a really cool area and let’s get together kind of thing.

Turns out, the house he bought was literally across the green belt from the home I’d purchased in 1973 and his was four houses further down the hill.

And in fact, the last time I’d seen him that I could remember, he’d some how come up with a Mason jar of really good moonshine (the real stuff) and a buddy of ours (*then news director of a/the big news station in San Diego) came over and we’d spent the afternoon chit-chatting about news stories.

It was typical stuff – lots of “gallows/newsroom humor” punctuated by moonshine sipping, and so on.

He passed away something like 20 years back and haven’t thought about him in years, so it was odd in this dream that a personality of the news business was present (unseen, soft of off-stage doing the discussion) and that was notable, I think.

As to the earthquake part, there are actually two.  One (and they are possibly a pairs) are in the 5.3 and 5.6 category and they connect with “Thursday” or “Friday” and after this, people who are involved will be going back to the city (this happens east of San Francisco).

One of the returning news crews will be stopping (on the way back to the city) to have something that’s like an apple fritter or apple scone – as a place somewhere in the area that is famous for those.

There were other oddities about the story too:  Lot’s of dog references, a kind of map of a state or national park area (it was shown as a kind of green glass layer under the area.

All of which sounds like a pretty ho-hum news item.  There was some snow on the hills, and a ski area up a ways, and after peaking at the ski area, there’s a small hydro project somewhere on the eastern slopes.

But the single most important takeaway was this:  “The Big Quake is in April and is a 9+”

There were no indications of where the 9+ would be – and not even any indications as to what year it would be.

What I do know, from having lots of this dreams,. is that the ones that “hit” seem to happen less than a week before the actual events, and often only 24-hours, or so. 

As to where, I got the impression it would be just before starting up into the hills, was south of I-80,  but location was fuzzy at best.  The “green area” (with the glass under it) was basically due east of San Francisco, then up toward Reno (and north of there) and then coming back down toward the north end of the Bay.

That’s about all I  can tell you, except that the dog part somehow involved the UN or UN something having to do with dogs and that the damage from the precursor quake’s would be minimal.  B-roll kind of news story.

Normally, I’m not sure I’d even mention this except that when I got up and started to look at the USGS quake reports from overnight, there’s a whole slug of them continuing in the area just into California from the Oregon side east of Klamath Falls and Lakeview, Oregon.

Although this is extrapolation from here forward, if you go to the area where the quake swarm is happening now up in NorCal, and then draw a line to the next 5.3-5.6 quake that happens in the state sometimes (at least in the dream) before this weekend, then wherever that line goes when it extends out toward the coast/San Andreas, is where the bigger quake, coming in April may be.

All kinds of disclaimers follow here:  Odds of the small quakes (the 5’s) are small.

Odds of getting April massive quake, even smaller.

But there has been a tendency of big quakes to happen in that spring equinox window:  quakes like Fukushima and the Alaska Good Friday quake, come to mind.

So I thought I’d share as it’s one of the strangest damn dreams in a while.

One other personal note:  It seems like this kind of dream shows up when I have taken myself off flour / gluten products for a day, or two.  Maybe (and this is an odd thought) maybe dreams with precognitive content depend on a person’s body and “field” being relatively pure.  No alcohol last night, either.  Hmmm…

If that’s the case, the idea of periodic fasting and low inflammation foods and all that “purification of body” before performing real magical stuff may not be all BS after all.

Remind me to pick up another pound of salt to put in a circle, next time I go to town.  Ever wonder if demons are more repulsed by sea salt or iodized?

Remember, all this dream stuff may, or may not work.  And as to the April part, perhaps it’s just my mind going to what’s next after the big March in Paris.  April would follow March, right?

UPDATE:  This quake near Portola would fit except it needs to be much bigger…so another one (or two) larger to follow?

Something Else Going On?

Meantime, from out trusty news analyst up in Winnipeg:

Dear Mr.

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Welcome back to another fun-packed week here in the modern replay of the Roaring Twenties.

This week, we’re sure that you’re going to enjoy yourself because before you get another ass-kicking Greater Depression, you first need to have a sizeable blow-off top.  This is the pause the refreshes.

To do that you need falling commodity prices…and toward that end, we begin this morning’s Epistle with a reading from the Book of Goldman, where we discover their Old Testament (about oil going to $80) has been replaced with a new passage that mentions $40-something. .

I may have to send them a resume:  We’ve been nattering on about $35 oil (and maybe a spike into the high 20’s) for months now.  Nice to see the mainstream is figuring things out.  But just in case, repeat after me:

Roaring Twenties.

Just in case word from Goldpersons doesn’t move markets, we see further evidence of the current “It was the best of times…”   elsewhere.

Credit Michael Sanserino of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (posted on the Detroit Snooze site) for observing that while the price of gasoline is way, way down, the IRS has done something kind-hearted:  They have increased the auto used for business mileage allowance to 57.5 cents per mile.

Let me see…521-miles a month would pay for a $300/month car lease…194-miles per month would pay for insurance.  Drive 1,000 miles a month on 28.5 gallons of gas is only $60, so let me see here…$472 for a thousand miles, so with tires and brakes, IRS is about right…toss in Triple A and a breakdown or two and it’s spot on.

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One of these days, I really need to grow up.

How many hobbies is too many?  I have found out!

I was working on my electronics bench Sunday trying to clean up that part of my life and it occurred to me that yes, a person really can have too many interests and hobbies.

Take that odd little symbol on the right, there.  The triangle is one way to represent an antenna in schematic diagrams use in electronics.  That little crow-footy thing is a ground. 

As in “Hmm…haven’t had time to play with the ham radio equipment much, lately…”  In fact, this was brought to my attention when (about 3:38 PM, I realized I had missed checking into the Texas RACES net a couple of hours earlier.

Oh-oh.

Emergency nets are important.

But then, too, so is the local repeater Monday Night Social Net which I haven’t checked into for…maybe 6-months now.

Granted, I still do some solid electronics work.  For example, just in the past couple of weeks I have modified all three of our old-style MXL 990 Condenser Microphone studio mics by changing out capacitors, a move which makes a $100 mic sound as good as a $1,000 mic.  And with one more upgrade, about as good as a $5,000 mic, but that would be ridiculous.

(I picked up the mod from Silent Sky Studio over in Alabama, and only works on the old (through-hole, not SMT versions of the 990s…which are getting hard to find.  Check out Microphone-Parts which has updated electronics for the newer MXL’s and new mic capsules, too.)

And Sunday I decided to (once again) try to sort out what’s wrong with an old Swan 350 transceiver.  Got some tubes ordered…and that’s a time-sink, too, because finding vacuum tubes is work.

But there’s a list of 20, or so, decent little (and some big) projects that need to be done to keep the radio gear 100%:  The largest will be bringing down the antenna tower for it’s annual going-over which will involve some welding in order to put the support for the low-band antennas back where it should be. 

As long as it’s down, there’s a new tower raising and lowering motor to be installed and, long as that is going in, some new high-tech plastic line instead of galvanized wire to raise and lower it.  Fortunately, there are some smaller projects (repair the antenna rotator plug, for example, which is a 1/2-hour project, but it will take a half-hour to find the part…I assume you know how many 10-minute projects turn into 5-hour snipe hunts looking for THE critical part.

All of which would be an amusing discussion of a hobby except that list doesn’t begin to list the competing hobbies that are also vying for time.   The new deck railings with the hydroponics on top in some metal gutter, for example, is one of them.  Picked up some of the parts last week.

But for that to come together, it means spending an hour or two up in the greenhouse, because it’s time to get seeds started on the heat mat.

But the really BIG time sink, turns out, has been the airplane.  You don’t just get in and go somewhere…that’d be too easy.

Elaine really likes Santana.  And they will be doing a show over in Biloxi-Gulfport at the Beau Rivage or some such in March.   I know that’s a long ways off, but here’s what happens:

If we drive to Mississippi, it’s almost 400 miles of driving.  At an average speed of 50 MPH that works out to 8-hours by the time you get the poddy stops, gas, stretch legs or a coffee stop…

The airplane turns it into a 2:40 flight, so pop over the morning of the concert.  Can’t do that in the car because the last thing I want to do after sitting 8-hours in a car is go sit some more.

But the closest airport is a 20-minute ride from the hotel/casino.  So that entails a call to the airport to discuss that problem.  Rental car or taxi…turns out to be a push.

And then, since it will be almost spring, the weather research begins.  I don’t do IFR (instrument) flying.  Not that I can’t develop that hobby, too, it’s just more money into the airplane.  66 is coming along sooner than later for Ures truly.  Instruments for the plane and the training would be $4,000 and that doesn’t pencil if you have 5-7 years of flying left. Even I can be that rational.

Course there are other competing hobbies: the shop with all the power tools going unused is a crime against humanity.  So is not using the studio enough…

Oh, and we’re actually going to go on a cruise this winter.  Sure, what’s one more time thing.

Now, I’m not complaining.  Normally balancing all of these things would be trivial if I had nothing else to do.  But work is more important than any of the above, so to me, that one comes first (duh).  And then there’s Peoplenomics, and our little chats here.

There aren’t too many projects left on the house (a week’s worth) but that’s if I am not dealing with website issues, with viruses, with reader feedback, and all the rest.

So the plan (for now) is the balance of this year, we are planning to travel as much as we can.  A cruise, some concerts, a trip to Key West in the airplane, and maybe up to Fairbanks in late summer (this is proving a hard sell to Elaine) and then we plan to sell the air machine.  We’ve seen most of the country already, anyway, except going down to the tip of Florida and we didn’t get any further northeast than Hartford, CT.  Got the other corners covered, though.

Next year, with major house projects done (landscaping finished, hydroponics on the decks installed) that should leave more time for ham radio and music and podcasts, and composing and…

All of which is shared as a cautionary note.

Sometimes I have pointed (in jest) to people who watch sports as a “hobby” and made light of their interest in sports and very little else.

But these people don’t have to worry about keeping the rust of the jointer table, and they don’t have to replace the dad-gum batteries in the drill press laser guide.  The laser light going out on the chop saw doesn’t bother them either.

What’s more, when their kids play sports, they are totally into it.  They know the moves and can actually coach.

With the Super Bowl fast approaching now, I need to cut them some slack.  The whole family gets to use the Big Screen and Home Theater.  Most wives don’t have a driving interest in chop saws.  Fewer still see the pressing need jointers or dovetailing jigs and routers.

So later on this month, if you hear the sound of a chop saw and air tools during The Big Game…that’s would be the greater fool who has fallen into one of life’s most insidious traps:

Too many interests in too many things. Attention Deficit Hobby Disorder is what ADHD really means.

My rock polisher sits in a box too, along with the 49-cc engine to turn one of our bikes into a moped….so let me know how the game was.

(You become a senior citizen when you’d rather shoot landings, work on the garden, or run power tools than look at this year’s crop of vixens cheerleading.  Kinda like a dog chasing a car…what would they do if they caught one?  Especially if they already have one…know what I mean?)

Latest Dieting Research

On a more practical note, I did  have some computer time (4 AM Sunday) to do a little bit of research on how to lose weight.

Scandinavian and Scottish genes like to stay warm when it’s cold out and winter is a tough time to keep fat off.

But it turns out there is some pretty convincing research on something called intermittent fasting.

The way it works is simple enough:  One day you eat about normally.  On alternating days you only eat 1/4 of your normal food intake.

There are several ways to get into this, including the 5:2 method described in the Wall St Journal back in December 2013.

The research also answered another great question for me:  How is it that my wife can still wear the same sized clothes she was wearing in high school?

Well, turns out in the researching, that there’s another way to lose weight:  Eat all your food for the day in a short window of time. 

In Elaine’s case, she rushes around doing homemaker magic and doesn’t slow down for breakfast until 10:30 AM, or so.  And usually, we try to eat around 4 PM, or so, because I don’t like going to bed full.

The payoff seems to be that if you confine your eating to a 6-8 hour window, then your body has the 16-hours it needs in order to drop into fat burning mode.    The research also seems to suggest that the “common wisdom” of eating small bites and this and that throughout the day is actually wrong if losing weight is the goal.

Sure, this keeps the blood sugar levels normalized, but if you’re going to lose weight in a serious way, you need to go 16-hours (or longer) with minimal food.  And there was even some discussion about an “eating every other day” approach.

That latter idea has a certain sensibility to it (not that I’m going to be that sensible!) in that wandering humans didn’t always have 3 to 6 squares per day.  In fact, they often got only a meal every day or two…or in the case of Roman Legions, they might get a bite of something for breakfast and then march until dark and then get some vittles.

The key (for me) is to begin the fasting upon waking.  That way, I am already past the “sugar burn” part and I can make it till dinnertime.

What screws me up is eating breakfast.  That starting me being hungry for the rest of the day.

None of this is medical advice, see your doctor before yada, yada…but it’s a ripe research area is you are finding those few extra pounds from the holidays are sticking around a bit longer than desired. 

There’s a Wikipedia entry on intermittent fasting over here.  Just remember as you read anything in the field that there are billions upon billions of dollars tied up in the whole business of selling diet whatevers…and those people can edit Wikis, too.

The way I look at it (already having found what really works great in terms of vitamins and energy levels) is the more a diet regimen costs, the less likely I’m inclined to try it.  I’d recommend a similar level of skepticism…

Around the Ranch

I mean besides running out of time for my own life?

Congratulations to George II who completed his annual re-cert to be an EMT-trainer.

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Quick!  What’s the difference between freezing rain and sleet?

I ran into this very useful graphic the other day in a NOAA presentation on winter weather that shows the difference between freezing raise (which we are having a bit of in Texas this morning, sleet, snow, and plain rain.

The Dakotas and down to Denver are expecting some serious winter weather and it will push down to the Republic this weekend and move eastward from there.

This is about the best graphic I have seen on the differences – and it’s one of those things that popped out of winter flying practice yesterday (outside air temp 19 at the time) and this is what the neighborhood looked like from 2,800 feet.  The grey trees are mostly oaks, a few hickory, and the deep green are southern/lob lolly pines.

The usual lush green down here turns a kind muddy brown in the winters and I was hoping to get “before and after” pictures of snowfall.

For better, or worse, though, looks like the forecast has dropped snow, so we will have to wait a while for the “after” pictures.  Understanding the weather, though, is really useful, weather you’re boating or flying.  Or, today, just living in the Dakotas or east of there as winter slides another one in this weekend.

Jobs Report:  Improved  (sort of…)

No doubt about where the market “should” end today after the manic rally the past couple of days.

Right about where it opens this morning.

And there’s a solid reason why:  The markets are often rather predictable to people who spend any amount of time learning different methods of market analysis.  And for the moment, the market looks like it will slowly edge up to new highs right around the end of the month.

Not a shoo-in, but near ‘nuff.

Should it happen, and we get new highs, that would push the “crash” potential out 55-days from the new highs, which means no crash until the end of March, which would be fine with us.  Although we havfe studied whatever we can get our hands on relative to Great Depressions, kit’s axiomatic that we don’t really want one.  But we can see the potential for one developing.

Just not today because the jobs report is out.  May I have the envelope, please?

“The unemployment rate declined by 0.2 percentage point to 5.6 percent in December, and the number of unemployed persons declined by 383,000 to 8.7 million. Over the year, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons were down by 1.1 percentage points and 1.7 million, respectively. (See table A-1.)

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for adult women (5.0 percent) decreased by 0.2 percentage point in December, while the rates for adult men (5.3 percent), teenagers (16.8 percent), whites (4.8 percent), blacks (10.4 percent), and Hispanics (6.5 percent) showed little change.

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The  nice thing about being delusional is you can do it all the time.

Take the market, for example, please.

The price of oil has rallied (all the way up to $49) and the market believes this to be splendid.

Similarly, the 10-year Treasury is up to 1.95% which is about as close to hanging out the “Free Money!” sign.

And while this continues, our view that we’re now in August of 1927 remains pretty much intact.

Oh, sure, the world could roll over and collapse into an economic heap, but until one of the financially important markets makes a mistake, it’s not likely to happen.

Even the Russians have quieted down a bit.  But off in the background, they have one-upped the West are are now inviting foreigners to serve in the Russian military.

And it’s not like other important fundamental state-changes aren’t happening:  One of the radical Muslim killers in France has reportedly turned himself in.  Yet to markets, which should be taking the Islamic take-down of Europe far more seriously, it’s been like trying to talk to drunks in mid-binge.

Maybe people who run markets really don’t study history, or, if they do, they must have missed the Moorish invasion.  To help out, a little Wikipedia help is in order:

“They grew well beyond the Arabian Peninsula in the form of a Muslim empire with an area of influence that stretched from the borders of China and India, across Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula, to the Pyrenees. Edward Gibbon writes in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

Under the last of the Umayyads, the Arabian empire extended two hundred days journey from east to west, from the confines of Tartary and India to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. And if we retrench the sleeve of the robe, as it is styled by their writers, the long and narrow province of Africa, the solid and compact dominion from Fargana to Aden, from Tarsus to Surat, will spread on every side to the measure of four or five months of the march of a caravan. We should vainly seek the indissoluble union and easy obedience that pervaded the government of Augustus and the Antonines; but the progress of Islam diffused over this ample space a general resemblance of manners and opinions. The language and laws of the Quran were studied with equal devotion at Samarcand and Seville: the Moor and the Indian embraced as countrymen and brothers in the pilgrimage of Mecca; and the Arabian language was adopted as the popular idiom in all the provinces to the westward of the Tigris.

The Muslim conquests brought about the collapse of the Sassanid Empire and a great territorial loss for the Byzantine Empire, eventually also resulting in its collapse. The reasons for the Muslim success are hard to reconstruct in hindsight, primarily because only fragmentary sources from the period have survived. Most historians agree that the Sassanid Persian and Byzantine Roman empires were militarily and economically exhausted from decades of fighting one another. The rapid fall of Visigothic Spain remains less easily explicable.”

For the exceptionally stupid, this is what is going on globally right now.  And it’s being facilitates in fine Ju-Jitsu fashion, by leveraging the West’s insane addition to political correctness which, as we shall observe, is getting us into more trouble than it is getting us out of.  Remember, a good portion of the people coming in through that 700-miles of still-porous border with Mexico are OTMs – other than Mexicans and folks are coming from all over the world.

We are idiots and thus, doomed.  Don’t tell the markets this.  For them it’s the Roaring Twenties at least for another day. 

Tomorrow that might change with the release of new unemployment figures.  But already we have some samples and indicators of how that will play:

The new ADP jobs report out Wednesday was like candy for the market.  Up, up, and away!

And this morning’s Challenger jobs report showed something even more amazing: 

All of which should, by all rights send the market into a screaming rally that could last through the end of the month.

Based on these latest events, we are on the verge of rethinking the outlook for a market collapse from a low around February 19/20./  However before that comes off the table, we still need to see the Dow break back up above the December highs.

That would mean a rally up to 18,054 and since futures are suggestive of 200 points today, that would only get us close: around 17,800 maybe?  And that could be very bad because it would be a Fibonacci kind of bounce from recent lows, and then the market could start down next week, again.

Regardless, the Roaring Twenties is where we’re stuck for a while longer.  So grab your favorite flapper and let ‘er rip.  Why, just a decade to go and the zoot suit will be back.

Want even more gas on today’s screaming rally?  The Gallup polling organization has a hotty ou:

WASHINGTON, D.C.

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