News

(Phoenix, AZ)  As the weekend begins, there are a couple of items that are making us very nervous about being so far away from the ranch back home in Texas.

We have also gone into “gas tank never less than 3/4-full mode.  That gets us the largest number of options.

First, a couple of items to put it all into perspective.

We had a very nice dinner with Elaine’s son who lives in Phoenix, last night.

But getting back to our temporary abode was a bit more difficult than expected.  I made it to the final turn, from where a six-block stretch would have finished up the day. 

Instead, I turned right (instead of left) and didn’t figure out the error for five miles.  So a 10-mile detour, late, in the dark on the way home to the hotel/resort.  Is this a teaching moment from Universe about the dangers of turning right, when sometimes left works?  I doubt it.

But it underscored the importance of operating on home turf.  Areas you know well – and now, thanks to a late night navigation error, just how important “home field advantage is, has really sunk in.  Again.

The real star of Friday here in the Phoenix area was electricity.

Power went off at our hotel about 10:30-11:00.  And it was off until almost 1:00 PM.

Large portions of the Maricopa County area were offline, although the local news-talk station didn’t know about it, until my long-time friend up in the Seattle area called to inquire.  This morning there is no follow-up on the cause, but the outage probably impacted more than a 100,000  people.

Since the outage was of less than three-hours duration, it hasn’t made any of the news organizations in the area…and the power was on all night by all accounts.  That cacophony of cell phone and wake-up call happened at precisely the same time.

The reason I have been so nervous about the week-long period of events ahead, and why it’s a good time to be mentally braced for it starting today, has to do with this email about what may be a prophetic dream by a reader named Dave.

This came in Monday and I wasn’t going to mention it to you, but now that we’ve had a power outage and the Muslim crazies are about to kill 200 in Mali, time to get the antennae up:

George,  I don’t know if you remember the email I sent you a few months back about the dream I had many years ago. It was about the new fangled lites that were coming out. When those lites came out, in the dream, I was installing them when all hell broke loose on the planet.

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The monthly rush to speculate on whether and when the Fed will actually get around to raising interest rates is underway in earnest.

The minutes of the previous Fed meeting seem to hint that the “recovery” may be far enough along to raise rates in December.

But before you get really excited, let’s look at a little hard reality.

First there is the 10-year Treasury.  Check the chart over here and you will see that in the past year we have already seen almost 2.5% and on Wednesday, the 10-year closed at 2.269%.

What that seems to tell me is that the market isn’t too sure about this yet.  If it was, the rates might already have moved back up to nearer that 2 1/2% level.  Or, they will edge up in coming weeks ahead of the mid-December meeting with the decision due on the 17th if I’m  reading their calendar right.

Gold is looking pretty skeptical, too.

As the pre-open chart from our friends over at Kitco shows (click here for current), there hasn’t exactly been a rush to load up on the yeller dog.  In fact. I would think that if the Fed really were about to raise rates, rather than just talk our ears off, again, we would be seeing a lot more reaction than the muted response evident so far.

Still, the hype machine is ramping up:  “U.S. Federal Reserve signals December rate hike more likely” is how one outlet is seeing it.

Here is the exercise I keep running through my head.

Let’s say that the Public Debt is really $18.7-trillion dollars.  I know, it’s more, you know it’s more – likely closer to $25-trillion – but let’s pretend, since that’s how mass delusions work.

Let’s also think that the current interest rate is 2.25% for the long term debt and say that it goes up to 2.5% by the time of the Fed meeting and they really raise and it goes to 2.75% subsequent to their meeting.

At 2.25%, the interest ALONE on the federal debt is (at least) $420.75 billion per year. 

Let’s also assume only working people pay for the national debt.  As one of about 148-million people working, your piece of the rock is $2,842.90 per year just for the debt service.

Now, let’s see what 2.75% does, shall we?

Clicks up to $680 billion of interest expense and your working person’s share is what?

$4,594.60.

In other words, the portion of working person debt service will go up how much?  61.6%!

Now pretend you are a working person.

Let’s see what’s on the horizon for 2016 just on Obamacare:  Penalties are going up dramatically – to 2.5% of modified adjusted gross income.  If you make $80,000 as a couple and have skated on healthcare, that would be a potential hit of  $2,000 for not getting Obamacare. 

Since two people are working, that’s an increase of $2,000 on top of $3,503.40 which is two working people’s share of the higher interest rate on the national debt.  $5,503 or $458.61 in monthly income.

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(Phoenix, AZ)  Time to consider changes to the UrbanSurvival web site.  You’re a reader, so time to toss in your 2-cents worth.

Yeah, I know… been a semi-daily fixture of how many mornings now since we fired off the site in 1997…

But this trip on the road has about killed me:  I awoke yesterday morning at 3 AM local time, wrote the column until 6 AM, and went back to bed for two more hours of sleep.  And here I am this morning – 3 AM again – finding out that the wake-up call on the hotel wake-up system must be set to a pretty good clock, as both the cell phone alarm and the landline go off within a second or two of one-another.

Not to whine (although this may be taken that way), but I am thinking about changing the publishing schedule around here so that Urban would be published after the markets have closed for the day.

On days when there is “offishul big news/bs” – things like the purported inflation data, housing starts, retail sales, and unemployment, I would do a “special update” on a weekday morning.

But the amount of brain power available at 3 AM in the Mountain Time Zone seems less than at 4 AM in the Central Time Zone, even though by circadian department says it’s the same thing and I’m a moron.  Or, did they say buffoon?

So here’s what’s up for discussion:  Flex Publishing.

There would be an UrbanSurvival report available from, oh, around 8 PM on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings.  Our Peoplenomics.com subscriber newsletter would be out on Tuesday evenings and Friday evenings.

And, on days of meaningful reports, a short update – but not every day.  Or, I would include a link to the propaganda/.gov posting the news.

The idea is that Elaine and I would then be (more or less) on the same “sleep cycle” and I wouldn’t be sleeping in “split-shift” fashion.

Not that the clarity of thought would improve; no promises there.

However, it would be useful –especially when traveling – to be able to watch the evening news shows and then sleep 8-hours, rather than going to bed at 6 PM when the rest of the (west coast and mid-west) world is still meandering home from work.

There are several publishing time options that  work better (for me) than the current regimen:

Publish at 8:00 AM Eastern, which is what we do now.  Benefits:  We can size up overnight futures and morning press releases.  Neutral:  We can still do a long drive or flying jaunt – we just expect more turbulence and hotter weather in the summertime.  Negative:  Split-shift sleeping or going to sleep in late afternoons.. Elaine hates the schedule and we try to find deals on hotels with a sitting room and a separate bedroom to she can remain normal.  Well, as close to it and being married to me permits…

Publish at 10 AM local time regardless of the time zone.  Benefits:  Sleeping until a regular hour.  Negatives:  When we fly the airplane, the BEST time to fly is from 1-hour before sunrise until about 1 PM in the afternoon.  (6-hours of flying is about 750-800 miles, and that’s a pretty safe number.  Flying more than 6-hours a day with one or two stops gets up into the unsafe area from fatigue.

Publish One Hour Before Market Close:  Benefits: We can be pretty clear on the trajectory of the market for the day.  If not, we can find an animal turd, give it a good throw, and use that as approximation.  Other benefit:  Regular sleep.  Negatives:  The day is not over and I don’t have time to look at closing numbers which are more meaningful once hot money has closed its positions.

Late Afternoon Publishing:  Benefits:  I get a whole days of flying, driving, project working, or whatever.  Elaine and I can sleep uninterrupted.

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(Sedona, AZ)  Very much a “to the point” column this morning as we discuss our “secret mission” of the current road trip.  You didn’t think we would be driving and leaving the airplane home in the hangar without a damn good reason, do you?

Then, Saturday we will focus on the art of “investing” again, versus “trading.”  But this morning’s column is about the “softer side” of how that investing stuff takes place and how to trouble-shoot our own thinking when we start to make bad investment decisions.

So this morning a bit of analysis of investment and trading using a very neat tool called Life Loops.

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(Las Vegas, NV)  Hot off the press this morning:  Consumer Prices up 2-10th’s of a percent for October:

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.2 percent in October on a seasonally adjusted basis, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 0.2 percent before seasonal adjustment.

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(Las Vegas, NV)  The big story this morning will be how global markets react – or don’t – to the outrage in Paris late Friday.

As you can read in the reports out this morning, the French have conducted 150-some raids and have arrested a large number of people.  And it all seems to have calmed markets a bit – with the French market about even, so far.

We do notice a few domestic oddities,  like the break-in this weekend at an Army Reserve training facility in Massachusetts.  No inventory details on what was taken but oh, my, how quickly terrorism is downplayed.  Logically, there’s no way to know that, but for the press?  They gobbled it up.

The U.S. market futures are up fractionally, so if some terrorism funding group was trying to make a killing (financially) on the killing (literal), it may not work out.

At the big picture level, we may be in a decline to lower levels to come this year, but there are times when an emotional releasing event – like Paris – can be a very interesting item to consider as we weigh what is ahead for markets.

In the large picture, we have been completing three waves up since the market lows in 2009.  From there, leg one of the rally was from 2009 to late 2011, which we can label (1).  Then we had a decline which would be the (2).  Then a hell of a run to the top of (3) until a few months back.  then we declined in a series of movements that still holds as a I, ii, iii, iv, of the larger (4) and we are likely somewhere around (5) with a I done with this possibly being a ii. 

We would expect a iii to follow, then a bounce, and lastly,. a final decline that should still get us down to the 1,860 (or so) level on the S&P.

But it will be hard to call precisely because we see so many cross-currents to this market.  The best we can do is look at the numbers as they come in a process that is very much like golf.

You go out, hit a ball (analog:  make an investment) and then swing (some time) at it.

If it lands on the fairway, it’s equivalent to beating inflation by a bit and if it lands “in the rough” then it seems you may have lost a little money.

It has little to do with the meaning of life, which is largely egoic and ambition-driven once you’ve got enough to eat and a place to call your own.

Meanwhile:  The Idiots Continue

Reports that the G20 promise to do more intelligence-sharing but that they are still not changing positions on Syria (hence refugees) is taken around here as evidence they may not be as much brains as people in the world.

At the seasonal/mind tripping margin, we have noted the G20 is in Turkey – which means an early Turkey dinner.  Yet another subtle timing matter, yet subliminally important.

Political Spillover Runneth Over

To begin with, governors of two states have decided to stand up to the Obama administration which is trying to stack Syrian refugees into the United States.  Then there is the presidential side of things…

Donald Trump approval is up to 42% – and he notes that France is very, very anti-gun and gee, don’t you suppose a few armed citizens might have reduced the body count?

Then there’s Ted Cruz who makes the point that you-know-who in the White House doesn’t seem particularly driven to defend America.

With Marco Rubio waffling on immigration policy, the GOP (lobbyist bottoms) are lining up to pimp Rubio. 

I’m thinking that we could rename the White House the Waffle House, but the brand is taken…

Meantime, on the other side of the aisle, the political money bag was non-responsive to the question “ Was Isis under-estimated?”

Let me see here:  Clinton can’t take responsibility for Benghazi, email server crimes (which the FBI is still working as an active case) and now, can’t take responsibility for a lot of the serial policy screw-ups (and mis-assessments)  that have unraveled that part of the world.

I’m doing my damnedest to look surprised, but failing miserably.

Teeing Up the Week

We have the Empire State Manufacturing Report from the NY Federal Reserve.

The November 2015 Empire State Manufacturing Survey indicates that business activity declined for a fourth consecutive month for New York manufacturers.

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(Las Vegas, NV)  While you were working on useful things in life this weekend, Elaine and I were driving out to Las Vegas where my youngest daughter is tying the knot later this morning.

I was going to suggest an early ceremony (so I could be done for the day) but since my column will be wrapped up by 6 AM no one else seemed to be interested in a 7 AM knot tying. So much for kids and respect.

On the way out, we have had three nice things happen to us.

First was a Saturday stop at an Indian casino west of Grants, NM.  We were driving along, happily minding out own business while snooze-control held us at one mile-per-hour under five-over, when suddenly nature called to Elaine.

Since a casino was at the next exit, that was a simple-enough decision.

While Elaine was doing [whatever] Ures truly stuck a $10-bill in a penny slot and on his third spin run $10 up to $20.

Being no fool (having trained myself on money management which is the most important part of slot play) I quickly cashed out and ran to the teller cage and still got back to meet Elaine who looked…uh….relieved to see me.

This was going to be a great trip.

Second story:  Sunday,  at the MGM,  we decided to live thrifty and do the buffet for lunch.  After an all-you-can-eat (and drink)  (two glasses of bubbly) I was $60-bucks lighter…but we wouldn’t need to eat for several weeks, if you know what I mean.

As we came out of the casino, Elaine came to an unexpected stop.

“That one,” she said, pointing to a one-armed bandit.

In went a $20-bill and in ONE pull (I kid you not) I hit for $65…and as soon as the total $85.00 was displayed, I was hitting “Collect.”

Third story:  After dinner with the kids last night, I took the winnings and went for a walk – following behind Elaine who (it turns out) was experiencing a rising awareness of “hot machine awareness” which was incredible.

About 20-minutes of play later, we were up to a family fortune of $130 and change.

The key thing about slots (and options, too, but that would be a much longer column) is that you need to be able to recognize when you get to the top of a two-standard deviation trend channel.

If you can do that – and back it up with the discipline to actually collect your winnings and walk out of the casino – then you will have a bright future as a gambler.

It won’t let you quit your day job, but it will mean you’ll be able to afford a cup of coffee now and then, which gets me to the second lesson in money management of the day…

Travel Notes –Las Vegas/  A Tale of Two Casinos

I would like to do a quick little comparison between the two hotel-casinos that we have stayed at the past couple of nights.

In the one corner, we have the www.twinarrows.com casino which is about 25-miles east of Flagstaff, Arizona.

The other is the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, on the strip and in the middle of all the action.

The rooms are nearly comparable.  Although in fairness, the MGM room is a little bigger and has one additional chair.  But the Twin Arrows casino had a work table in addition to a computer spot.  They also had a night/closet light that would go on while toddling to the sitting room, if you know what I mean.  Not destroying the night vision, but enough light to keep a person from walking into a wall.

As for machines, yes, they have slightly different machines and the MGM has many more dining choices – it’s a bigger place.

The MGM has a bathtub with a shower curtain.  The Twin Arrows casino offers a large tile shower with glass walls.

The Twin Arrows casino was completed in 2013 at a cost of $225-million and has about 267,000 square feet of space, overall.

All of which makes it a tiny spot, compared to the MGM which, according to Wikipedia:

“ [is…] owned and operated by MGM Resorts International, the 30-floor main building is 293 ft (89 m) high.

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(Amarillo, TX)  This morning we do a little forensic accounting as we look forward to the Monday opening of global markets to see what effect the killing of nearly 120 people by crazed Muslim extremists in France will do to global markets.  A sizeable decline is possible to likely.

You see, the paradigm of the national security state is that such things can be prevented – if we just give up enough of our freedoms.  Hence, we’ve gone along with the airport pat-downs and such.

But Europe?  Their immigration policies have been even more stupid and inane than those being followed by the Obama administration which is seeking to admit even more people – many single military aged males – into these United States in coming months.

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Here I am, swilling enough coffee to fill a swimming pool, and the best I could get out of my blood pressure this morning was 131/87 pulse 76.  Let’s fix that, shall we?

The way we will start is to look at the Retail Sales debacle.  Up one tenth of one percent while the money supply has been going up many times that paltry about…so it LOOKS like retail is up.  It’s not.  UNITS are down (Peoplenomics readers know this because we actually do count container arrivals)  Ain’t really up…just takes more paper to get what you need…. 

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for October, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $447.3 billion, an increase of 0.1 percent (±0.5%)* from the previous month, and 1.7 percent (±0.7%) above October 2014.

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I’m sure that more than a few people would like to know how the launch of my new novel has gone… It will give you some insight into what goes on – the nitty-gritty of book writing. 

Lots of people harbor the dream of writing a good adventure novel, but few get around to it.  There is also a saying (though I can’t cite the source at this hour) which says everyone who has lived a worthwhile life has a good story or two inside them.

It’s generally thought to be a function of how many places you’ve been, what you’ve seen and done in life, and how well you can blend it into “scenes from a movie” and then capture that to paper.

That’s also why I am skeptical of reading young authors.  Real experiences is what makes a person interesting.

The book, by the way, which is titled “DreamOver” may be found on Amazon over here.

First, the price of the book is $3.99. 

Let’s talk about pricing, since I brought it up.  The Amazon Kindle self-publishing route is a good business model.  Authors can get up to 70% of whatever the sales price of a book happens to be.

But, the author doesn’t really make that.

First day sales of the book came to 104 units.

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It has been around here as a background topic for years. 

We’ve seen the de-emphasis of cash in Scandinavian countries.  There, almost everything is on plastic.

Elaine and I depart tomorrow morning at Oh-God-Thirty for our trip to marry off my youngest daughter and you know much of a role cash plays in trip planning these day?  Almost – but not quite – none.

The only places where I plan to use cash are down to tipping and casino use.

Tipping because there is no other way to pay the people who get things done (try putting a valet tip on plastic…which I will – we like that kind of research).  Casino use of cash is also a no-brainer.  My whole “stake” is $100 and that begins each day of play – when it’s gone, that’s time to leave the casino.

It’s going to get a lot worse.

Over here, in this article, Apple’s Tim Cook is predicting a generation that won’t know what cash is.

Cash has been slowly getting hammered.  Since it is stock and trade in the drug world, police have been making assumptions that have led to a lot of innocent people having their cash seized under civil asset forfeiture laws, which are an abomination and affront to Constitutional law.

Now, looks like the Apple folks are upping their game in the cash-replacement world.

It seems to us that government may have “dirty hands” or “sticky fingers” in all this.  Rather than be a country where a presumption of innocence was a foundational cornerstone of law, we have quickly moved into a world of presumed guilt.  Unless you have money, in which case, there’s always court shopping…

Who am I to question a bright fellow like Tim Cook, right?  So I did some research on how much coin in being produced by the U.S. mint:

If Cook is right about disappearing cash, we should see much smaller numbers if we pull the data from 10-years ago, right?

Turns out, in the easy data retrieval we can only get as far as 2011 data:

Hmmm…lots and lots more coin is around…

It may seem a bit quirky of us, but things like the U.S. Mint Annual Report (here) make for interesting reading.  There, for example you can look at longer timeframes for  coin production, but if you’re not careful, your thinking can be skewed.

In other words it may look in this chart like there is a lot of “noise” to coin production, but in reality – because so much of the Mint’s output is numismatic (collectable) coins – the demand varies a lot with disposable income.    Notice how the chart above looks for 2008-2009 when we were making a good attempt at economic collapse.

The actual “cash” used involves a lot of paper, but that comes from the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, not the Mint.  And it’s NOT U.S.

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Finally!

It’s done.

$3.99 on Amazon.

DreamOver: An Action-Adventure on the Frontiers of Reality

Here’s the plot summary:

“Commander David Shannon is an electronics whiz aboard a black-ops submarine that has just finished testing under south Puget Sound. Waking from a dream, he realizes that some kind of “presence” was with him in his dreams.

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