News

The first thing we get to straight is that the market should end the week within a few points of the target number I mentioned in yesterday’s column:  1960.48.

As any damn fool can see (yes, I qualify) the end of the world has not come over the horizon yet.

In fact, far from it, I am still sticking with my prediction of new all-time highs by mid-May.

Be advised, as always THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE.  That would involve me trying to sell you something.  Other than a subscription to Peoplenomics.com, I offer only commentary and things to think about.

Which is why – unlike George Soros, who is becoming somewhat famous lately for talking-his-book – we have to sit back and watch the Madness of Crowds.

This is a none too obscure reference to?   Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds.

Granted, the book was published in 1841, but we don’t like to be too aggressive in our reading recommendations – besides, we wanted to see if the book would remain popular.

The original work was done as a three volume set and in volume two the topics included the witchcraft madness the world went through, the Crusades, and other such cases.

The good news (*you can find it on Gutenberg, too) is that voting in a neighborhood organizer as president for two terms may not be the craziest thing crowds have done, after all.

OK, well close, but there are other examples to consider.

To my way of thinking, here is the Kindle eBook that is probably the single best value in the field of investing out there:

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds: Volume 1, 2, and 3 (Illustrated and Bundled with Psychology of the Stock Market and Irving Fisher on Investment)   That’s a whopping $1.19 on Amazon.

Fisher is the fellow who called for perpetual rally at exactly the wrong time in 1929, but his notes on how to ride a bull market are useful for review.  Especially when the market looks oversold and when good news comes along to stampede the herd  t’other way.

Jobs Picture Improves

Well…sort of.  let’s run through the press release and then focus on a few specifics:

“Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 292,000 in December, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.0 percent, the U.S.

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This being Friday, and all, the futures were indicating a modest rally today – which should land us very close to my “number” for this week (1960.48 on the S&P).

So to mark the occasion, I’m now working on my next career:  As a comedy writer…  Since life “is-what-it-is” there’s no shortage of material.  And that’s before hitting politics and economics.

I’m guided in this endeavor by one of the finest collections of bad jokes out there; the Federal Register.  Allow me to elucidate.

So there I am staring at a project that requires a super good, durable paint job.  And it involves aluminum, so the paint must be preceded by either Alodine or Zinc Chromate ( to MIL-DTL-5541) to prevent a future paint flaking issue – a couple of clicks and it’s on the way.

Then I come to paint selection.  I know from past experience that white kitchen appliance epoxy enamel is a fine match for the paint I have in mind. 

I make the mistake of reading the fine print…

Hold the phone, Jackson.  I think we have crossed over into another dimension.  A dimension not only of sight, but of bureaucracy.  There, at the signpost up ahead:  California!!!

I have never been out to Catalina.  But in order to perpetrate a potential act of civil disobedience (which would be labeled domestic terrorism for budget and narrative purposes), I am considering importing a can of this illegal spray paint of this epoxy appliance enamel to Catalina.

I can see it now:  Getting on the boat at wherever the boats to Catalina come in…facing down a body scanner or having some Gestapo agent frisk me, looking for cans of….spray paint!!!

Is ALL spray paint illegal on Catalina?  I frankly don’t know.  What I DO know is I’m not the first to notice this.

It seems highly paradoxical that one of the most unwrecked places on the planet has to be one of the most regulated.  It’s like there is an unwritten formula of life that says something like “Pollution times regulations must always equal this value.”

Under this formula, highly polluted places in Asia are under-regulated (they sell cigarettes like crazy in Indonesia, says our correspondent down in the Dark Side).  But if a place is “pristine” the only way to make the “formula” work is to regulate, regulate, regulate.

How insane is this?  You have to keep the past couple of weeks of headlines in mind as you read about these thoughts of defiance.  I assume you know that California has a HUGE MOTHER of a natural gas leak going on – big enough to cause all the global warming in the world by the sound of it.

Yet verily,  the righteous are protecting Catalina. Oh, freaking, goody.  But the “secret formula is intact.”

I am happy for the sea lions, whales, and whatever else the greens are protecting out there.

But here in  different state (Texas) of mind, we find outdoorsy preservation projects are sometimes helped by a good coat, or two, of dangerous amine-containing fast curing epoxy enamel.  (Baked in the oven for a couple of hours at 180-degrees when Elaine goes shopping when I have time to air the house out afterwards, is better…usually the cardboard I set things on for curing doesn’t catch fire.)

Turn about is fair play.  I’m putting the imperialistic greenocrats of California on notice:  When I get elected County Commissioner here in District 3, one of my first acts in office will be to promote a 100% ban the sale of Sea Lions and whale meat in Anderson County, Texas.

And to show my sensitivity to environmental issues, I will also press for a ban on whaling in the county, as well.  Perhaps an environmental tax on new cars made in Japan as punishment for their past sins against whales could be passed, too.

My First Campaign Contribution Arrives

My buddy Jeff from the local ham radio club has become the first person to step up and contribute to my campaign fund.

My campaign fund now stands are precisely $1 U.S.

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I began with, a nice dish of organic chicken stroganoff over (also organic) Yukon gold potatoes for breakfast.

Then, for dessert, it was a hot peppermint cocoa…

“Hey!  Ure!  WTF with the culinary crap?  Where’s my insightful look at where the market is going today?”

Easy, there big fellah.  I’m making a point.  Pay attention….

The point is the market is in the process of making a January low that may have a 50-50 chance of being the low for the whole year.  With options expiration next week, who cares if we are down another 400 points on the Dow today?

In my world, things look very far from grim – we’ll get to that in a sec.  But first, even if I pencil in a 44-point further loss in the S&P today, that still doesn’t get us out of my “target” green circled area for this week – and in fact, with even a small rally at the close tomorrow, we are likely to be right in the green, so to speak:

Sure, it would be more graceful if we could get down into the yellow circle, but that’s just wishing and hoping.  The deeper the pullback, the more upside money may be made…everything has a gold or silver lining to it.

How can I blithely not buy into the current doomporn outburst?   Let me count the ways…

1.  Man With Knife Shot Dead After Trying to Attack Paris Police Station – which means that we could be rounding a corner where force is met with force in Europe when people start misbehaving.

2. In the Middle East, Iraq is offering to mediate between Iran and Saudi Arabia.  Depending on how this goes, we could see a chill-down in regional tensions.

3.  The ADP Jobs Report yesterday was pretty good, really.  And this morning, we have the Challenger Job Cuts report just clearing:

A strong economy, coupled with what appears to be a growing reluctance to announce layoffs during the holidays, contributed to December experiencing the lowest number of monthly job cuts in more than 15 years, according to the report released today by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.

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The fact of China shutting her market again last night has many readers nervous and uncomfortable.  One of our Peoplenomics subscribers, in fact, sent in this:

“Mr. Ure,  It is now Midnite MST.  China is shutdown again. US Futures and oil commodities are down.

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It is an odd topic to be on this morning, after being a guest on a highly regarded national radio show (Coast2Coast with George Noory) last night. 

Especially on a morning when speculation over whether the NK nuke test fired the Hydrogen “bigger bomb” material.

While the show always has an interesting assortment of people on, few bring their comments from previous years with them.  I happen to be an exception, I suppose.

But my optimism about 2016 could quickly fade late this year, or early in 2017.  So this morning a kind of summary of where we are in the rhymes of history and how you may wish to prepare for what comes next.

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Before anything else this morning (including our latest “told you so” on markets) we have to look at couple of immigration stories under the harsh light of cash flow analysis.

The first story to consider is this:  “U.S. Begins Immigration Crackdown on Central Americans. “

Again, government is operating as a bad comedian – telegraphing the punchline ahead of time: These “raids” have been carefully announced weeks in advance – giving the serious criminals plenty of time to relocate and to avoid the “sweep.”  Theatrics or Kabuki, it’s a poor show.

As an aficionado of classic R&B, might I suggest an old Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams song captures the reality nicely?

Meantime, back at hard Reality: The Obama administration is about to shed immigration caps through the presidential decree process – also known as executive orders.

If this seems contradictory and confusing, please consider that it is merely a “flow of funds” problem.

The reason for the publicly touted “raids” is that Americans are reading stories, almost daily, about the mayhem the non-assimilating populations are causing in Eurabian cities like those in Germany.

But when the facts are collected, it becomes apparent that the immigrant population of America is still on trajectory set to grow the immigrant population massively: In fact “ Immigrant Population to Increase 715% by 2060, Census Data Show.”

What we come to is that the ugliest secret of capitalism is alive and well:  Capitalism – in order not to fall apart – must always operate in the “growth mode.”  By doing so, there is a good chance that a virtuous cycle can be realized.  think of it as positive feedback.

But when growth disappears, what happens?  Suddenly the reverse occurs.  Demand for social services climb, the cost of government soars, and programs sold as a social net – like Social Security – face long-term bankruptcy because of actuarial finance:  The demand for benefits will outstrip the income within 20-years, or so.  Answer?  More people to pay more into the system!

This unfunded long-term retirement liability is powering the EU’s inflows, as well.

Which means, simply put:  Government must ensure growth at any cost.  The German stock market has outperformed the other markets of Europe since 2009 in large part because they have embraced immigration.

The Krauts got onto the mechanics of this when the Wall came down in 1989.  Rather than experience a mini-depression from assimilation of East Germany, there was something of a boom.  And so with their economy needing constant reinforcement, bring in the foreigners!

Yet there is a terrible cost of unchecked immigration.  We’re just seeing reports this morning of how more than 1,000 immigrant men went on a rape and pillage New Years:

German police hunt for group of up to 1,000 men ‘of Arab and North African origin’ who sexually assaulted numerous women and threw fireworks into crowds at Cologne train station on New Year’s Eve…

The U.S.

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No, I have not personally orchestrated a global financial hiccup in order to add drama to my radio appearance, but…

1.  I will be on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory from 12 midnight to 2 AM Central (10 PM to Midnight Pacific.  And if you’re on the East Coast, you’re already so dad-gum smart you probably know the time already.

But just to make sure, especially for readers who happen to work in government, that would be when it’s dark and the little hand is on the one…

2.  NO!  I am not that George Ure – the one whose name appears in the current Journal of Clinical Virology as a contributor to a study “Performance of Determine Combo and other Point-of-Care HIV Tests Among Seattle MSM.”

That’s my son, George II.  And yes, Dad is always proud of resume fodder.  Same kid who won a Seattle-King County Red Cross Hero of the Year award for disaster work in Joplin, MO a couple of years back…and who has been doing range-testing of texting extension thingy under canopy for some New York RF engineering outfit.  Getting 14.4 miles out of it…but more on that some other morning.

Dad is hounding him to finish his paramedic cert and go the physician assistant route…but I never listened to my dad, either.  (Especially when he was right about things…)

3.  My left hand is puffed up size of a small golf ball thanks to tripping on a big steel sliding door whizzy down at the hangar on Monday.

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The new year started with a near 7% drop in the Shanghai stock market, so thanks for that, China.

The tumblers in the great lock of history are falling into place quickly.  With the Dow set to open down about 300-points and the Eurostoxx 50 was already down 4%.  (In fairness it bounced so as to only be down 3.5% a few minutes later…)

Just to keep this in perspective, 4% of last week’s closing Dow would be almost 700 points to the downside, so even if we drop, oh, 350-points today, there’s not often a one-day drop of this magnitude without follow-on selling into the next day.

How this all works out – and how important it is – depends on what you do for a living.

Since much of UrbanSurvival and our subscription www.peoplenomics.com is future-oriented (so you will be rational when the irrational happens), we see this as a precursor to violent conflict to the two factions of Islam.

It is a precursor because the Sunni Saudis have broken relations with Shiite Iran and it doesn’t stop there:  Bahrain this morning (also Sunni) threw out relations with Iran.

If you are looking at things from the strategic Saudi angle, this makes a lot of sense. Because the price of oil is so low (and as the late Matthew Simmons pointed out in his landmark book Twilight in the Desert years back) the Saudis are getting killed to the tune of perhaps a billion dollars a day by low oil prices.

Water-cut is their problem – that how much water comes up with how much oil.

Since the Kingdom is run on a kind of royal welfare system that money shortage from cheap oil and water-cut is a major problem.

We see in the context of great books (like Report from Iron Mountain)_ whether useful fiction or a leaked and changed around playbook, that the Saudis have a serious issue in keeping their civilian population under control.

That – sadly – is one of the traditional uses of warfare:  To keep civilian populations under the thumb of government. 

In the current case, a “good war” with an “evil empire” will be quite saleable within deeply polarized nations of Islam.    It will not only be a war (really caused by low oil prices) but a war during which control of their civilian population will be key.  As we told you long ago, never forget the Saudis were buying at least one atomic bomb from Pakistan.

We are also looking at this as a stock trader this morning.  Since 2015 was a “”whole freaking year” of no real advance in prices, we should be seeing in here a  major decline I have been warning Peoplenomics readers about for weeks.

In fact, here’s a chart with my green target area for this week’s close circled, as well as a yellow (worst case) level.

As we’re currently expecting things to roll, the decline this week (and perhaps next, but less likely) will be brief and hard, hitting one or both of our targets.  I suspect both, but I’ll update the chart tomorrow to see which target is hit, although if money (and hanging onto what you have) matters, you’d already be reading Peoplenomics so this stuff wouldn’t come as  Monday morning shocker.

But from there, we should see a major turn of fortunes as the commercials load up at bargain prices over the next couple of weeks and then run things up a bit as they did in the late fall of 2008.

There remains a good chance, though that optimism  will persist through the presidential follies, although if they don’t, then Depression II could be along in just a few minutes time.

Our best guess, however, is that the current escalation path toward war will be shortened because neither the U.S. nor Russians (who are backing the Shiites by backing Assad and selling nuke plants to Iran) will stand for it.

In many ways, the U.S.

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This will be one of our most to-the-point columns in years.  It will make an interesting companion to this morning’s Nightmare on Wall Street which will break out shortly.

It has to do with a Machiavellian nightmare that I had this morning about 5:00 AM.

Before I lay it out for you, first a word or three about Machiavellian Intelligence, borrowed from Wikipedia:

In cognitive science and evolutionary psychology, Machiavellian intelligence (also known as political intelligence or social intelligence) is the capacity of an entity to be in a successful political engagement with social groups.

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Yes, the banker class has been planning this since at least 2008.  We found a document to support that assertion.

Yes, we have made much in in the past couple of weeks about what is really going on with the global economic picture.  Most notably, we explained that the main reason why there has been such a huge – and sudden – trade in human immigration is for one very raw fact:

Immigration allows governments to “make-up growth.”

The mechanics of this are simple – and crystal clear when you review the data from our Wednesday report.

Today, we tackle a slightly broader issue:  How are some of the other ways that “Growth can be made-up?”  but more to the point….who’s been planning this?  The answer won’t surprise you.

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The Migrations are colliding and… Yes…they should flower in conflict in?  2017.

Earlier this week, I asked readers to submit their opinions as to which of our articles have made the most difference in their lives – and would be suitable for submission in annual “column writing” competitions.

So to start the year off, here’s a recent article from our subscriber side, www.peoplenomics.com where we deal quite seriously with the future before-it-gets-here.

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New, Fabulous Ure Crackpot theory time!

Lookie here:  I don’t know if the moon going Void of Course on December 18th has anything to do with things, but this week has turned into a real crap-storm of “best laid plans of mice and…”

The the big puddle-dumper (and now 43-people dead if our reader clicking the counter hasn’t missed anyone) has thoroughly screwed up the idyllic life here in the woods at Uretopia.

For one, during the storm we had a big power outage.  How big, exactly?  Well, big enough to wipe out an inverter on the back-up power system, getting past a big-ass surge suppression system (and did I mention my EMP preps?) when the power came back on.

Well, now we get into a story of cascading failures. 

You see, on that leg of the AC power in the shop/office is a branch off to run the back-up well pump and the small freezer for the things in our long-term storage that need to be kept frozen.  Granted, there’s not much, but there is Panama’s stash of used-to-be-frozen Belgium Waffles, too…

So when the power came back up, the obvious thing to do would be pull the output line off the inverter, wire in a big herc’ing plug kept for just such emergencies…and then plug the former inverter output into the the former inverter input (which transits a 20-amp outlet box purpose-made by the designated system designer.  (Yeah, me.)

Well, fine…it all worked…for about 30 minutes.  The wireless router for the office came up (the satellite router is on hot UPS power and never goes away, at least for several hours).

The CLICK!  A heard – so much as seen– there was a flash of light from a nondescript location in the office and the breaker, now feeding this part of the office (being jumped around the inverter) fails.

Well, crap. 

So I click back through all the things that could go wrong and it occurs to me that it might have something to do with running over the schedule 40 buried conduit that takes power from the office and runs 20-feet underground over to the former wood crib, to which we added a roof and tons of insulation – where the freezer is housed.

With power off, I ohmed things out at that end, but even with the follow-on leg (up to the greenhouse) disconnected, I found myself total screwed.

Night before last I was arguing with myself about cutting the cable at the conduit inlet (which would give me occasion to install a waterproof outdoor outlet that I nave no use for) so I decided to have a glass of Grandpa George’s Scottish Cure and think about things.

No, nothing wrong with Sched. 40 buried a foot…so it MUST be something else.  My infallible engineering doesn’t fail that easily.

As soon as Peoplenomics was done (disengage economic brain, re-fire the electrical engineer brain) it occurred to me that something in the office might be at fault…

So I pulled everything in my office off the circuit and by God, it held.

About here, although my beard is too short for real beard-stroking, I sat down and have a cup of hot soup.. .since in the midst of working on the inverter in 35-degree weather, I wrenched my back (lower left) and it hurts like hell.  Where’s my Oxy dealer, when I need him, right?

Finally, with Elaine looking on, I started plugging things back in, one at a time and sonofagun if it didn’t turn out to be one of those three  Sceptre 246X-1080 24” LED monitors that I had explained in a Peoplenomics article (or here, mind is going) about how cool it is to refurb old electronics by replacing the capacitors in the power supplies.

Except that was a year to 18-months back (calendars and I aren’t on good terms…especially today)…and it was time for one of them to fail again.

How, exactly, I don’t know.  That falls down the “To do” list.  I can get by with two monitors.

Knowing that the inverter was going to need a trip to the doctor’s office, I decided to give it one more test as I was getting ready to box it up.

Just as I was doing this, all of a sudden (I can’t make this stuff up) there is a gentle pushing on my butt as I’m bent over in the king of all awkwardness positions.

One of my neighbors has a 6-month lab pup (nice dog, actually) but as young dogs will sniff the damnedest places.  This one decided to sniff Mr.

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Where to hide?  I mean besides moving to Ecuador, as some of our reader have, that’s the topic this weekend as we roll out our look ahead at 2016 and explore some of the (amazingly-poor) economic choices before us.

To underline how bad things are, let’s take a look at where the stock market is likely to close today:  Looks to me like the S&P 500 will close right around where it is:  2,063.36.

Where was it at this time a year go?  2,058.90.

That means the total return on stocks is 2-10th’s of one lousy percent.  If you want to call that an Economic Recovery, pass the pipe.

Needless to say, the me-too-media (MTM) will not be screaming this from the rooftops because it blows the “narrative.”  (Narrative is another word for fairytale only this one if far more Grimm.)

And let’s not forget the President Doolittle has consumed the same Kool-Aid as Eurabia (formerly the EU):  The Washington (rotten) core somehow believes that immigration is the answer to economic growth.

It’s not.

Although, in terms of providing a short-term economic stimulus, it can work.

We presented some convincing evidence (complete with charts from Eurostat) in  Peoplenomics yesterday that make the case.

But here is the “thinking” that has gone viral among the bleeding hearts in the District of Corruption:

“Since we don’t have organic growth of the economy, if we import 5% more people, that will result in 5% growth.  That’s because everyone will need a place to live, there will be auto sales, new grocery stores, and even more people to pay into the Social Security Ponzi scheme that has been beggared, along with the Highway Trust funds…”

HS&J – hype,. shuck, and jive.

As a result, we looked at the European “import economic expansion model” to see how that’s working out.  Instead of long-lasting economic stimulus, what Eurabia as done is import an occupying army.  But before losing Germany, they will buy a bunch of things.  And that causes “economic growth” – so goes the storyline.

Way to go, Angela Merkel.  Who would have thought the Great American Democracy would follow the megalomaniacs of the Ure-a-pee’in Union down this dead-end (and the bridge is out) road?

2016 (Q3/Q4) should see the implosion of Germany and then the banko E.U. begin in earnest.  We here in America will benefit for a short time (6-months?) but then the contagion will spread here in 2017.

And that’s regardless of what happens in our presidential contest – where we still expect the Obama-wing of the GOP to scuttle real change (Trump) and broker the convention and run with the put-up wet dishrag candidate (Busk the X).

Elaine and I sit around almost daily, shocked in the horror of what’s to come…and wondering why the rest of America slumbers on.

Or, should I say “¿Por qué la gente estúpida de Estados Unidos todavía durmiendo?”

The answer is obvious: “???????, ??

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