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Peoplenomics: Straight Talk About the Future and Futuring

The title of this morning’s discussion is pretty straight forward – as we have a number of items to mull over as we continue plodding along our methodical path into a future which, to many, is terribly uncertain. But such high-powered thinking can’t be done on an empty stomach, so a few crumpets and coffees while we dash through a few headlines including retail and CPI, and then this morning’s chart pack before we get down to the serious business of making the “great bank-shots” of Life…those personal financial decisions which grow the nest egg. More for Subscribers ||| SUBSCRIBE NOW! ||| Subscriber Help Center If you’re not a subscriber, be sure to read this morning’s update at www.

Peeking Behind Some Headlines

As we assemble, once again, to watch the sun rise over the cuckoo’s nest (it’s clear in Washington DC this morning), we can’t help but be somewhat bored with the lack of substance to the day’s headlines.

Why, you’d think in a world full of terrorism, nuclear weapons, climate change, pandemics at every turn, not to mention Planet X, that something more than an unfortunately ‘routine’ bombing outside the Iranian embassy in Beirut killed 23, and there’s no winner yet in Mass Media’s current contest to see who can report the earliest date that the Obama administration knew their website wasn’t going to end happily.

Both stories, however, are worthy of some elucidation while we wait for markets to do more than noise trade pending data later this week.  We can start with the more pleasant of the two:

Fox snooze is leading the “early warning” pack at the moment, revealing HHS warned about the website issues in March, but please!

Are you and I the only humans left who understand the difference between “information” and data?  Data is just that – a fact or factoid – as opposed to information which has some actionable aspect to it.

Suppose for a moment that I could produce a document dates June 26, 1953 which warned that The Obamacare website is not going to work out of the box.  Fine.  So what?  Would there be any other way of seeing the present clusterf*ck revealed by the next earlier date?

Congress, in case you haven’t noticed, is sitting on its thumb (changing hands now and then) on most matters – and the odds of them doing anything other than buttering their own bread is (how to break this to you?) incredibly small.  Other than give you a reason to absorb 18-minutes per hour of commercial content, is there a point?  Ha ha ha!  Hardly .

Now this Iranian Embassy bombing deal?  That’s a different kettle of fish.  Let me ‘splain you, Lucy.

We know that the Israelis and Saudis were starting to work together in preparation for war with Iran, specifically to wipe out the Shi’ite’s chance of getting a nuclear weapon, while the Sunni/Saudis already have theirs and more on order from Pakistan.

A half-way reasonable guess is that the most militant Sunni groups (Wahabi/ al Queda sound familiar?) may have supplied the human material to pull off this morning’s suicide bombing, and thus, in the great chess game of camel countries, try to goad the Iranians into some kind of major attack or response which could be punishable by what?  Why, an attack on their nuke plants of course!

Hey! Since it’s Tuesday, let’s toss in the heavy water plant, too!

With our web-scanning software colleague Grady over at www.nostracodeus.com has put up this morning’s data and the hot word of this morning is “Israel” and the surrounding word mix has increased the “spicing” of the words “rapid” and “protocol” which seem to be a broad hint to be looking for more goads and tweaks (a “protocol”) designed to elicit a [“rapid”] repose at some knee-jerk level from the Iranians.

it’s always useful – when marketing a war – to have some marketing tools at hand.  So an expectation-setting this morning would be that we’re now into what might be considered the goad and tweak protocol looking for a marketable justification for what would otherwise be counter-sold as a vile first-strike.  Particularly vile if first-use of nukes is employed which then blows back on the Israelis and falls out on the Russian’s southern tier.

Key lesson:  Apparently, you don’t need to be a gringo to be an Infidel.  Although we’d suspected as much, that, of the morning’s headlines, may be as close to actionable, as we’ll get on the first cup of coffee.

So we’re back where we started yesterday, distinguishing our efforts here at thinking the unthinkable, while the mainstream media continues unthinking the thinkable.

More after this…

(which is also actionable, since the software is usually out before the first of December so you can start working on your taxes over the holidays which is really a nice add-on to a Yule log – a Yule owe, lol….)

Market Records and Obamacare Weighs

OK, it’s nine days early, but the turkey so far this week – playing the old game of “Close, but no cigar” – is the Dow which failed to hang on to a momentary spike over the 16,000 level yesterday.  And the gravy was the S&P which spikes briefly to 1,802.33 and failed to hold.

Looking at the headline this morning we are not totally surprised.

For one thing, the president “stuck his foot in it” by claiming that 100-MILLION Americans have enrolled in Obamacare.

If nothing else, this alone should scare the markets into retreat this morning because this guy’s handling of math might have some bearing on how he looks at the economy.  You think?

Another sector to watch in the coming week or three might be the prescription drug boyz since the epic fail of Obamacare signups “…May Shave 30% from US Drug Sales…” reports Gloomberg.  I’m pondering that as a possible short in my own account.

Oh, and another nightmare for the markets may be found in the “80 is the new 60 when it comes to retirement” story in the NY Post this morning.  Here’s why:  We are already in a collapsing jobs market, right? 

One of the traditional ways for young people to move up the corporate food chain has been for the “old flux” to retire.  So what follows is if the geezers don’t pack it in, the young pups becoming limited by the “gray ceiling” and guess what?  No family formation, big home sales fall and the Millenials who are New Minimalists anyway simply stack cash in safe places but not the market ‘cuz they’ve seen how that screw turns already.  That ought to scare the hell out of the street, but they are still wired direct into IRAs and pension funds, but there again, retirement plans are drying up among the working class…..

President Obama’s job approval rating is now down to a career low.  If his track record doesn’t start to improve, he’ll end up ‘stealing defeat from the jaws of victory.”

Now heap on top of that the report that US banks had to take extraordinary steps when the US default loomed a month and a half back and – in case you’ve forgotten – there was really nothing solved other than a ‘kick the can down the road’ and that road ends in January, so that would be the logical time for the markets to sober up about how F/U’ed the countries finances really are.

I made a note tomorrow morning to see if I could figure out where comet Ison is, since its passing could mark a kind of starters gun for things to really hit the fan.  Holiday cheer and joy may hold the markets up for a while longer, but this whole economy and our approach to it, needs a couple of months in rehab.  We have to wonder if that might not help some policymakers, too.

Actual Data

Enough opinionating!  How about some facts…like this on the Employment Cost Index just out:

Compensation costs for civilian workers increased 0.4 percent, seasonally adjusted, for the 3-month period ending September 2013, following a 0.5 percent increase in June, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Wages and salaries (which make up about 70 percent of compensation costs) increased 0.3 percent in the September quarter, similar to the 0.4 percent increase for the previous period. Benefits (which make up the remaining 30 percent of compensation) increased 0.7 percent, compared to a 0.4 percent increase for the 3-month period ending in June. Civilian Workers

Compensation costs for civilian workers increased 1.9 percent for the 12-month period ending September 2013, unchanged from the 12-month period ending in September 2012. Wages and salaries increased 1.6 percent for the current 12-month period. In September 2012, the 12-month increase was 1.7 percent.

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Coping: Regulating Ourselves to Death: A Primer

It’s axiomatic “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help…”  How many times this has been passed around in “joke form” lies beyond count, but as Peoplenomics subscribers have been reading of late, Ures truly has been trying to write a book about how we really can turn America around and gain back some of the leadership roles we used to hold.

For now, however, as noted:

    • We have the most people in jail of any other large country in the world
    • We tolerate government lying to use in uncountable ways.  The most recent little “stretch” came in the report that the Census faked a jobs report which was touted in the last election.  Hats off to John Crudele of the NY Post for reporting what the rest of the press-sycophants, many of which land gov’t jobs, seem unable to bring themselves to reveal.
    • And, even when we do (occasionally) figure out we’ve been lied to (Mideast war premises make the case here) we just can’t seem to get up the gumption to a) reassert Congressional  authority for war-making and b) we can’t seem to impeach anyone, no matter how grave the moral missteps.

    This is just some of our national problem.  Other aspects (political  correctness disease, not to mention a gourmand’s appetite for the Free Lunch) also figure in to things.

    Then there are mornings like this one where a logical framework or design pattern jumps out at me, demanding to be given voice, so people can adjudge for themselves, the correctness of our mental framing constructs.

    Case #1 – Regulating Energy Scarcity

    I mentioned the other morning that Oilman2 if out on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico presently, where he’s trying to bring in a new well.  But he’s got a problem – common to all exploration types – trying to find “up and coming rock stars” in the oil industry…

    You remember me talking to you about the “missing generation” in the oilfield?

    Recap: The last downturn was in the mid 1980’s. Several colleges eliminated their Petroleum Engineering programs due to lack of enrollment. The tech bubble ate many prospective oilfield entrants in the early 1990’s. Our business did not really rebound until about 1997. The issue is that there are not enough experienced personnel. Drilling is not taught in college, engineering basics are. Drilling Engineers are made via on-the-job training as entry level apprentices….

    I am 56, last year of the boomer generation, The other supervisor is 61. The guy managing the rig is 63.

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    40 Up, 16,000 in Sight and other Holiday Cheer

    The trading indicator, which Peoplenomics subscribers see twice weekly, has really ticked me off this year.  I am *(as you probably figured) a dyed-in-the-wool bear who loves to make money on the short side of markets and who does extremely poorly when ‘gut trading” in a rising market.  The Indicator, however, with a single weekly exception, has been resolutely bullish since last December and continues its long position, even now.

    Historically, Fall has been a great time for markets to pull major dives and yet, at least so far, we haven’t exactly gone off the high board.  While there’s a chance of a decline come Wednesday, we can’t help but wonder if some of the “enduring optimism” (financial snort) hasn’t been due in part to the busting up on regular economic reports thanks to the government shutdown when 83% of government couldn’t even get the regular statistics turned out…

    I mention this because the Cost of Living report which has been previously issued around the 14th of the month won’t be out until Wednesday.. 

    In the meantime, when it comes out, the market is likely to be further cheered by what will be (predictably) lower than expected inflation, despite the wholesale printing of money.  There is, you see, a well-orchestrated international G20 print festival going on, and as long as the illusion persists, we may expect the following to continue as a consequence:

    • Gold will not drop through the floor ($1,200) until the ravages of deflation become clear and the printing speed globally may prevent that.
    • The Dow and US stocks will continue to climb as long as the money is being “watered down” while at the same time, falling yields are putting even higher targets (think Dow 20,000 and S&P 2,000) in sight.
    • And electronic digital replacements like Bitcoins should be doing very well indeed. And they are.

    So the Good Times should arrive once again this morning with the Dow set to tack on another 40, which will put 16,000 in sight for tomorrow, if not this afternoon, and even with a modest pullback at mid week, the mistletoe is coming along with the eggnog down on The Street.

    Time to order your Stock Trader’s Almanac 2014 (Almanac Investor Series) if you’re a bear like me.  It might help to jot down the license number of the bus that’s been running over us bears lately.

    Us bears, that is, (like Ures truly) who are addicted to disaster porn and don’t follow our own well-performing systems that we developed to keep us from losing money. 

    One of my buddies called to tell me he was loading the boat on SDS call options (on the 2X S&P short ETF) for December.

    “You are???”  I asked incredulously…

    “Well, January might be better, but I’m thinking that the budget crisis will come back and maybe worse than before…”

    Maybe.  But what’s going on right now is sort of living synchronized water ballet or parallel fed printers:  The printing presses are getting warmed up in the EU and the if the German Court says the German people really can be put in debtor yokes to bail out Greece by an unelected government, well, then I’m afraid my friend won’t even get the license number of the bus. 

    If the republicans can learn to articulate, well, maybe.  But absent that, the last go-round scared them and for all they are, they are not complete idiots and the budget “crisis” might be short-lived.

    It’s a race, to be sure.  But sometimes the best way to make money, is to sit on your wallet until a clear change of trend becomes apparent.

    And it doesn’t seem to be on tap this morning.

    Global Warming to Cooling?

    We’ve been considering the notion of late that the transition from high solar output to much lower output of the Sun – the lowest in more than 200 years – would cause large temperature gradients, and with them, extreme weather.

    The national coverage, like this report over here, don’t go into this global warming cum cooling issue, but we know from our required flying education in meteorology that high temperature gradients (between hot and cold) are one of the predictors of extreme weather.  Toss in some pressure gradients and it’s a pretty simple matter to figure out when is a good time to go flying and when’s a good time to sit on the ground.

    This morning, winds are strong and not much fun up in the Ohio/Pennsylachia area and out on the Oregon Coast.  We are only a month, or so, from the onset of winter and the storms are a hint.  So keep at eye out for temperature gradients and you’ll develop and eye for this stuff, too.

    More after this…

    Shaky Monday News

    I assume you saw my 7.8 quake showed up, more or less on schedule, a couple of days late, this weekend?  Can we relax?  Lemme see…how’s about we start off with this which popped in from the Jakarta desk overnight?

    Hiya chief!

    Can’t say we don’t get good shows around here…  Mount Singabung popping.  [Hell of a picture! – G]

    Sinabung is located in north central Sumatera near Lake Toba, which itself is the crater of a supervolcano similar to Yellowstone Park.  I’ll let you know if the lake starts boiling.  May want to seek a fresh planet at that point.  Luckily, there are an estimated 8.8 billion of them in the Milky Way.

    Sampai jumpa,

    Bernard Grover

    Managing Editor, Indonesia Bureau
    P.S.- all the Philippine crew have checked in with minor damage.  Most of the bad stuff is limited to the southern end of the country.  Folks still say the 10,000 estimate is well short of the real situation and that likely thousands have been washed out to sea.

    If you haven’t read on the Toba catastrophe theories about, this snip out of Wikipedia ought to get it onto your learning list:

    The Toba supereruption (Youngest Toba Tuff or simply YTT[2]) was a supervolcanic eruption that occurred sometime between 69,000 and 77,000 years ago at the site of present-day Lake Toba (Sumatra, Indonesia). It is recognized as one of the Earth‘s largest known eruptions. The related catastrophe hypothesis holds that this event caused a global volcanic winter of 6–10 years and possibly a 1,000-year-long cooling episode.

    The story continues over here at the Wikipedia site.  So if you’re thinking Obamacare is a problem, just imagine the global impacts of another supereruption and picture how that would change people priorities around about what’s “important”.

    Toba’s not enough?  Well, how about the article this weekend “Volcano discover smoldering under a kilometer of ice in West Antarctica:  Heat may increase rate of ice loss.”

    Now close your eye and imagine that puppy going kah-blooey! 

    Kind of like Mt. Etna which is going off light up the sky over Sicily.

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    Coping: With Monday Morning Brain Optimization

    OK, the alarm goes off and you’re laying in bed wondering “What now?  Another Monday?”

    Ah…perhaps, or perhaps a very different kind of week.  At least that’s what I tell myself when I get up on days like this, full moon still lighting up the yard like Vacaville prison lights.

    How to do it then?

    There are only a couple of small things that need to change (inside your head) in order to have an entirely different kind of week, I’ve found.  One is having crystal clarity of purpose, which is sort of like the whole book that Gary Keller wrote:  Picking out the ONE medium-sized thing you are 100%, unstoppably committed to getting done this week, and doing it.

    The other is to “own” how you feel.

    A lot of this “how you feel” stuff is pretty easily nailed down because a lot of it flow from consciously optimizing how your body and brain work. 

    Everyone’s got an optimized state which they can achieve if they simply makes notes on, and use, the tools which are readily at hand for most folks.

    I can tell you what my routine is in the morning, but I’m not sure it will help you, but there are some basics which may advance the cause a bit.  So here’s my morning”start-up” checklist:

    1.  I try to get eight hours of sleep.  Not a lot more, but seldom less than seven.  There’s a optimum sleep amount for everyone and for me, 7 1/2 to 8 1/2 hours is ideal.  Some people work a lot better on more.  Elaine’s a 9-hour person.  And I know people who get along on as little as 5-6 hours on a continuous basis.

    2.  I have a morning routine for meds, vits, and a bit of food:  It’s up, pass the overnight recycling liquids, dress, pills with water, half a cup of coffee while checking markets and breaking news headlines, and then finishing off the morning’s recycling with solids. 

    3.  A couple of bits of something in the stomach.  This morning it was the egg whites from a couple of hardboiled eggs.  Other mornings it can be a slice of cheese and a slice of apple, just something really light to give the stomach something to work on.

    4.  After that, it’s a 16-ounce coffee cup and over to the office.  The coffee is decaf (2 tablespoons) with a heaping teaspoons of Kona hard stuff (from my friend Hank in Hawaii).  I’ve learned that if I go any heavier on the Kona, the BP will get up into the 125-127 range.  Without it, the BP will be in the 115-120 range.  And pure Kona?  Well, the scatter chart says 135 is common with what’s now about 20-oz of high octane.

    If this sounds a bit obsessive, yes, I suppose it is.  But getting the most out of a body and mind is not something that just happens.  Starving until you get a McMuffin is not my cuppa joe.

    5.  When I get into the office, after a bit of dry food for the cats, is check the temperature.  I think best when the ambient temperature is 65F.  Any warmer than that and I get, well, just not as sharp.  Any colder?  Well, then the number of typos seems to increase as the finger dexterity is somewhat temperature-related.

    6.  A check of ionizer is done, as well:  It is on, or did I turn it off while at the electronics workbench the previous day?  Blowing ozone in your face is not a good idea, but having a modest ionizer?

    This is another one of those things which most people don’t understand  or pay any attention to:  Levels of ionization may have a HUGE impact on how you feel.

    There’s an easy test you can give yourself, to find out if that’s you, or not.  Simply think back on some of the more pleasurable experiences in your life.  If you come up with things like “outside after a thunderstorm”, at the ocean with crashing waves, waterfalls, really looking forward to the daily shower (best in morning, again), then you may be ion-sensitive.

    The whole detail level is in Ion Effect: How Air Electricity Rules Your Health by Fred Soyka and Alan Edmonds.  It’s an older book (1979) and in it, you’ll meet up with the Meltemis, Santa Anas, and Siroccos that are the positive ion winds around the world.  These are highly correlated to people active nutty and, sadly, in some cases suicidal.

    A home or office ionizer doesn’t have to be terribly expensive.  Something like the FIVE STAR FS8088 Ionic Air Purifier Pro Ionizer Cleaner with UV, new runs less than $60.

    7.  I don’t run incense, most of the time, but if you’re serious about brain optimization, the reason aromatherapy has a decent following, is there’s something there.  Incense is fairly inexpensive, and if you won’t mind people thinking you’re covering up a doobie or something, it can also add to mental clarity.  If they ask, tell them not to worry until you break out the patchouli.

    Musk is something cited as a “balance and order” aid, Lotus is good for heightened intelligence, and vanilla might be good starting points to experiment with.

    This may seem like it’s a bit elaborate, but these little “personal findings” continue throughout the day.

    8.  Breakfast, more and more, is becoming a high protein affair.  Toast is down to a couple of days a week, and in its place, beans and meat, meat and eggs, eggs and beans or beans and cheese are becoming favored.

    Here’s why:  I discovered in making personal notes about gout that one of the reasons I tend to run my body chemistry set “close to the line” is that there’s a mental place, just short of gout which is absolutely amazing.  I can work at what are (even to me) impressive rates.  If I modify the diet to get back too quickly to the  other side of a gout attack, my mental clarity fades./

    No, I don’t get “stoopid” – it’s just that edge is gone.

    The mind is a marvelous tool, and keeping it sharp and ready for action is (since everyone is different) a matter of experimental.

    But for me, the “right” mix (since most of my work is done between 5 AM and 3 PM) follows this pattern with the carbs and veggies around noon and a high protein meal (fish and veggies is great!) for an early dinner with a glass of wine and then being up for several hours after eating so as not to go to bed on a full stomach.  That’s just asking for acid reflux, restful sleep, and putting on weight.

    So there you have it.  Something you can do this week:  Optimize your brain a bit.  Watch television which focuses on thinking, even if it’s just episodes of Elementary, and see if you can’t find the time to do a Google search on “brain food” to see what things you can do to improve you’re brain function.

    No, you’re not going to “Go Albert” overnight – it can take a couple of weeks to notice the difference.  A new route of research I’m into now involves seeing how I respond to a low glycemic index diet – you can find odds and ends about that around the ‘net, too.

    If you’ve found any other ways to “brain optimize” (exercise and fresh air are givens, of course) please send them along.  If we get any worthwhile suggestions, look for more on this “brain optimization” stuff.  Nuts for memory and broccoli for cognition and vitamin K, for example.

    The most important part, is to keep detailed notes on your experiments and give every morning’s “brain-check” (done about mid morning, which for me is right after my column is done) on a 1-100 scale (100 being high) and change variables for a week each and see if there’s any change.  It’s surprising how quickly things like excessive carbs, cals, or booze shows up in slightly lower scores over time.

    You won’t have “best I’ve ever felt” every day, but you can move the numbers around and if you go through life doing that, it’s a pretty safe bet most of your coworkers won’t do it, so progressing upward becomes a lot easier.

    Cream rises to the top, as they say.  Petty office politics, nepotism, and corporate bullshit aside, it goes without saying.

    Progress!  In Airports?

    As any long-time reader knows, I have been quite critical in the past of the crackdown in security around airports.  But when someone in TSA gets something right, I figure it deserves public mention far and wide.  Here’s a note from Arizona reader AJ who I reckon is referring to Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport…

    I have just returned from Mexico into our border state here in Arizona and there were some surprises, this time. As I de-planed  on my way to escalators down to  immigration  I was astonished to see that our normally stark, vacant and officious  corridors  of totally blank walls were now decorated with colorful art works having to do with our beautiful state.

    As I moved through customs to the baggage claim area , sniffer dogs who patrol the luggage carousel were not there. Upstairs at terminal B I was met with more TSA agents than I had ever remembered stationed at that location..and apparently their tiresome queues had been simplified for passenger convenience and  numerous agents exuded a totally unfamiliar aura of  warmth and friendly welcome … as I proceeded on through to the security area, no one was encouraged to pass through  their toxic scanners, and a friendly sounding agent kindly informed us that we no longer were required to remove shoes and belts, computers can now remain in their casing and liquids and gels need not be separated from our belongings.  

    While it could be that the recent shooting at LAX by a seriously pissed off citizen prompted some serious re-evaluation of an agency that has greatly offended and alienated our  good citizens who are just now beginning to push back… with cell phone cameras and now guns…from  increasing reports of invasive, humiliating attempts to intimidate innocent passengers, especially people of color, pregnant women and nursing mothers,small children,  elderly and disabled. And it could also be that this new face of  TSA is only a pilot project at  Phoenix airport or only one terminal at that airport…time will tell….

    But like I said, this seems to be progress and hope it goes viral.

    Like the old self-abuser said when asked why he was beating himself: “It feels so good when I stop…” 

    Totalitarian Lite seems to feel that way, too. But we’re not complaining.

    Peak Oil, Like It Or Not…

    A number of readers sent me proverbial “poison pen” emails a while back when I pushed out some of the numbers from my friend Oilman2 which suggested that while fracking and the new generation of oil fields in the Dakotas, the born-again activity out in West Texas and some promising drills up in Utah look good for the moment, the reality was likely to be that we really are at Peak Oil and that shortly, the “last train out” on cheap solar, low energy input agriculture, along with several other life-changers (ultra high mileage, very small cars) will become de rigueur.

    Expect it to be a five to seven year “saw-tooth” of good news and bad as we finish off the oil that’s easy to get.

    “Ure nuts!” was the general thrust – and accusations followed even more harsh, particularly as we’ve been pointing out that earthquake (not to mention pollution of ground water) are also the unhappy byproducts of fracking.

    On point?  Reader Paul spied this:

    “Frack This: …studies are proving fracking IS causing earthquakes in ngas states, so they have the Madrid all loosened up now and this :  $100 M in natural gas being burned off monthly in ND.

    , I am not concerned with the money lost but the number of these burn off valves (estimated in the thousands or tens of thousands one can hardly be sure, with the uses of psyops operatives in local areas calming folks saying all is well….SO question is now why are they deliberately heating the atmosphere artificially and blaming it on human activity, we are a cancer on the earth I think their mantra is…there must be millions of these worldwide….why I don’t know but from what I saw in the sky about 300 ft from my eyeballs and about 300 feet up was so freaking big…I didn’t even see the whole thing, it could have been the tail end or half who knows but big enuff to scare the shit out of me…..lizards like heat so who knows anymore…

    “What about abiotic oil?

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    A Quake Note

    You know something is going on when the first email on a lazy Sunday morning is from a buddy on an offshore oil rig in the GOM: “,,,just sitting here drilling this well and we popped a 7+ mag quake south of Argentina… Oilman2 tends to watch such things when he’s got a bit down in the Gulf. As you may recall,this was a little slower arriving than I had anticipated (Friday would have been more to my liking theory-wise) but we’ve now had a 7.8 quake in the area down off the Antarctic early this morning:

    Peoplenomics: Shopping List for a SuperCountry (Part 2)

    We desk a couple of additional ideas this morning on ways that America could start the process of climbing back up the ladder of international prestige and stature. But we have many other items first including a key cyber hacking sentencing this week, and a couple of quakes overnight including one near Tokyo. So bean up, clean the glasses, and down to it, shall we? More for Subscribers ||| SUBSCRIBE NOW! ||| Subscriber Help Center

    Difficult Tune For Wall St.’s “Hallelujah Choir”

    “Happy Days Are Here Again” is getting a little nauseating.  The market has continued to rise, off into record territory and people are taking this as “proof” that the economy has “turned the corner.”

    But has it?

    Isn’t it just as possible that most of the rally is purely technical in nature, and that as bond yields have continued their collapse toward zero, that prices of stocks could be going up based on nothing more than flat dividends are looking better compared to lousy bond yields?

    So it’s with the rose-colored glasses off that we read this morning’s Empire Manufacturing Report from the NY Fed which begins:

    The November 2013 Empire State Manufacturing Survey indicates that manufacturing conditions weakened somewhat for New York manufacturers. The general business conditions index fell four points to -2.2, its first negative reading since May. The new orders index also entered negative territory, falling thirteen points to -5.5, and the shipments index moved below zero with a fourteen-point drop to -0.5.

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    Coping: With Nostracodeus Development

    In Thursday’s column I mentioned some of the “hot” words that were trending in our www.nostracodeus.com word frequency analysis software.

    One of the trends was related to “air travel” so we kept an eye out on the news sites for something to pop up out of the ordinary.  Along came a report of a Boeing 737 emergency descent involving a Southwest Airlines jet and a curious report over here about a man reportedly falling out of a.Piper PA-46 Malibu 8-miles southeast of the Kendall-Tamiami executive airport.  So that trend call seems to have been reasonably good.

    Next was the word “hezbollah” which was trending and this showed up in the NY Times (and other media) as Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasrallah announced that his forces would not be withdrawing from Syria.  Not that this announcement is even close to a surprise, but the language was trending off in that direction in advance.  I’d give us a half-point on this; the headlines were there, but the Hezbollah make semi-regular headlines, so it’s interesting but in and of itself not totally convincing.  Not as good as the “air travel” call.

    The same thing can be said about the Taliban, to some extent.  We see the headlines that the “New Leader of Pakistani Taliban could splinter group” alright.  And yes, it was correct to anticipate some “news” from these folks, but again, in scoring how well one can see into the future, we continue tinkering with software and words.

    A word of two about the process involved.  The notion that we’re presently playing with is pretty simple:  By simply counting word frequency across a large collection of news web sites, we believe that there may be hints of the future involved when words sort of (how to put this?) start popping out of the noise floor.

    The basis for this is well-established, at least if you’ve studied Dean Radin’s works, and in particular if you’ve read “Time-Reversed Human Experience.”

    There are many other good papers, however, on how humans perceive “time” and how events show up in time.  One, for example, describes “The failure of Weber’s law in time perception and production.”  (Bizo, Chu, Sanabria & Killeen, 2005).

    If you don’t remember Weber’s Law (Weber-Fechner), Wikipedia puts it in a sentence:

    Weber’s law states that the just-noticeable difference between two stimuli is proportional to the magnitude of the stimuli.

    And this, you’d think would be a nice linear thing, but turns out it isn’t. 

    The reasons for looking into such nooks and crannies which range from quantum mechanics to behavioral psychology, to database design, and lands on one of a half-dozen servers where experimental databases are capturing “news” from dozens of sources, is that if you read what passes for “news” long enough, after a time you begin to notice a pattern of rhythm to it.

    Where things get interesting is when you start marrying up some of the “new technology” that coming down the pike in the way of learning engines with large databases.

    In a typical Nostracodeus collection process (which takes a couple of hours) the system may collection “reads” of several thousand pages of web content.  This, next, is slammed into a fast database which then starts to sort out words in a number of ways.

    The “direction” in the future we’re able to “look” is steered by the kinds of websites which are scanned.  For example, in the predictions yesterday about the air travel, Hezbollah, and Taliban, the run (going from memory) had “eaten” something like 750 news sites.

    What will be coming next will be a series of explorations which will explore more particular kinds of web sites.  For example, we know there is a community under the heading “Science” and so Grady will be loading up a mission and running that to see what and how the language in the science community cycles.

    Once we have a “cycle length” figured out, we can then anticipate when a particular topic might begin making headlines again, and then look for subtle changes in the occurrence of keywords immediately before events.

    One area which may be undergoing a “just below the perception threshold” stage right now could be climate change.  A few headlines have popped up recently, like the one : “IPPC  chairman: We may “pass on a lousy, spoilt and defiled planet..””  Toss in the headline “Destruction of Brazil’s Amazon jumps 28%” and you can see how climate change is “lurking” just off stage, but ready to jump back into the headlines with the arrival of the next major disaster.

    Take the recent typhoon which swept through the Philippines.  A key story which didn’t quite make it into the “viral” or “top of mind” discussion among humans involved how the “Philippines delegation speech moves UN Climate Change Conference to tears…”

    The future of such “news prediction” efforts seems bright.  Web traffic to the Nostracodeus site continues to climb quickly and it’s likely due to people wanting a little more certainty or predictability about the future; beyond the odd hints which pop up in the mainstream media.

    And there’s plenty of room for experimentation and development, too.  While one approach may be based solely on talk among humans, this approach is genuinely different:  It focuses on the mechanisms by which semi-ordinaria climbs the rungs of awareness – and seeks out who is helping(or retarding) along the way.

    Once we get the “steering” down the way we like it (and related mathematical slicing and dicing of the database and an API built, the next step will be interfacing to “learning software” which can then take the analysis to the next step.

    We are, you see, simply applying to the flow of news, what governments and major corporations are already doing in their development of Big Data handling of your individual website clicks.  When you click on a page, say, about woodworking, and two sites later a pop-up comes up urging you to visit this woodworking site, or buy that fancy new tools, none of that is coincidental.

    That’s the field in marketing that resides at the intersection of Big Data and Predictive Analytics trying to get you to stop sitting on your wallet.

    Like it, or not, Predictive Analytics (PA) is here to stay.Why?  Raw, naked power.

    One of the PA books I’m reading at the moment (focusing on machine learning) recounts a college project where Supreme Court decisions by justice San Day O’Connor were fed into a “learning engine” which came up (without humans telling the machine how to do it) with an algorithm  which was able to predict with 75% accuracy what her decisions would be in advance.

    This compared to a panel of legal experts who were only able to guess with 59% accuracy, and then only after many tedious hours trying to comprehend what the underlying data sets (past court decisions) implied.  I don’t know about you, but to me, that’s pretty damn impressive.

    So that’s where Nostracodeus is heading at the moment – and maybe as early as tomorrow morning, Grady will start jotting down some of our development notes along the path.

    Like most folks, I’m extremely interested in getting a better grip on the future in order to make better strategic living decisions of the sort outlined in the ebook I wrote with Gaye Levy titled 11 Steps to Living a Strategic Life.

    It all comes down to this, I think:  News, without context, projections, and well-considered actionable responses to its content – is simply a waste of time.

    On the other hand, when you source not only news but actionable alternatives, well now you’re into this whole new area of “predictive living.” or PL – which we’ll get into in a future edition of Peoplenomics.com.  Why there?  Peoplenomics when comes right down to it, while focused on economic angles mainly, is about this whole “life management” stuff.

    And like any other management problems, if you string enough good decisions together, you can end up in a winning position…which is what we aim for around here.

    Friday at the WuJo:

    This is a peach of a report – if you doin’t mind a little “throne room” aspect to oddities:

    WuJU- Funny one here G man I had to laugh about it yesterday am. So I was taking a crap yesterday am in my master bedroom bathroom when I realized after the fact that there was literally one sheet of paper left on the roll. So I had to Waddle to the bathroom my son uses and finish the job in there. I had to go to the linen close after to get some new rolls to bring to my bathroom when I walk in my crap is gone and flushed with no toilet noise and there is a full roll on the rack. I just had to laugh and say out loud. Ok I am glad you care about my craps now! So either I am nuts which is entirely possible or the universe has a dandy sense of humor and is enjoying messing with me..

    Hmmm…well, the Universe is flush with surprises…

    Cheap Web Hosting Reminder

    From EWMD’s old timer at the helm:

    This is a reminder that our annual birthday sale begins today and will end tomorrow at midnight. Results are already great and we hope you will be able to take advantage of it. It would also be very helpful to us if you can let your friends and family know about it via social media and other means.
    We had to make a couple of corrections to our original announcement sent out earlier this week.

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    Another Obama Secret Deal

    If you like Obamacare, you’re really going to love the details coming out about the Trans-Pacific Partnership plans which have been outed by Wikileaks. They’ve issued a press release:

    The TPP is the forerunner to the equally secret US-EU pact TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), for which President Obama initiated US-EU negotiations in January 2013. Together, the TPP and TTIP will cover more than 60 per cent of global GDP. Both pacts exclude China.

    Since the beginning of the TPP negotiations, the process of drafting and negotiating the treaty’s chapters has been shrouded in an unprecedented level of secrecy. Access to drafts of the TPP chapters is shielded from the general public. Members of the US Congress are only able to view selected portions of treaty-related documents in highly restrictive conditions and under strict supervision. It has been previously revealed that only three individuals in each TPP nation have access to the full text of the agreement, while 600 ’trade advisers’ – lobbyists guarding the interests of large US corporations such as Chevron, Halliburton, Monsanto and Walmart – are granted privileged access to crucial sections of the treaty text.

    The TPP negotiations are currently at a critical stage. The Obama administration is preparing to fast-track the TPP treaty in a manner that will prevent the US Congress from discussing or amending any parts of the treaty.

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    Coping: A Chat With the Dust Bunny Crowd

    After options expiration tomorrow, we may see something of a pullback in the markets (like next week) because we will have completed a technical count under Elliott wave theory and markets have earned a little rest.  But as we’ve been pointing out to Peoplenomics.com subscribers, our long-term indicator has been correctly bullish since last December with only a one-week fake-out along the way.

    A number of things account for this:  One of which is obviously the “easy money” Fed, some of which is bound to flip over into equity buying pressure.

    But another, less commonly understood dynamic is that as lower interest rates come to the bottoming-out period, the higher stocks can move because they really compete with bonds.

    When the bonds were paying 5%, the yield on holding stocks had to be competitive (somewhere over 5% generally).  So a $100 stock would have to pay $5-bucks.

    As yields have come down, though, and now around 1 1/2 percent, that same $5-bucks worth of earnings and dividends baked in the stock price would support a stock price of $333. 

    And that, in ever-so-simplified terms, is why markets tend to go parabolic in ending long wave economic declines.

    What also happens is that when yields begin to rise, stock prices not only collapse (according to whatever the new rising interest rates dictate, but they over-compensate because the worrywarts come out of the closet to lead the Hand Wringers Choir about the lack of consumer purchasing power (look at health insurance impacts, residual debt loads and such) and it usually gets coupled with companies generally under-spend on research and development.

    The really, really good times, from an investor standpoint turns into really, really bad times, and the Great Wheel turns, kind of thing.

    CEO styles will be changing, too, which is one of the reasons Ford’s CEO, Alan Mulally, might be a good choice to run Microsoft – an idea which is already getting some play over here.

    The reasonable way to look over the current news-scape is with a cool eye and a longer-term view… Meanwhile, what I refer to as the “dust bunny crowd” is sucking down the “disaster porn” like there’s no tomorrow.

    I got news for ‘em:  There will be a tomorrow.

    Today, the GridEx II power grid test will wrap up, and pardon me, but haven’t the lights stayed on  meeting our expectation-setting?  Are the exchanges likely to open in a few minutes?  Yes, most assuredly.

    Not that things can’t go wrong in a heartbeat in today’s world. But a few Chinese troops working on joint disast5er-relief training in Hawaii is not an invasion.  Nor, so far, does GridEx look like “social engineering and martial law.’

    To be sure, there is the possibility that sunspot AR1890 could pop with an X-class flare, but that doesn’t end life on earth.  Nor would an M-class flare off AR1897.  More likely than a massive power outage would be a large earthquake in the 7+ range, because we’re “due” any time based on an uncritical eye at the charts.

    And this morning’s view from the real science types at the Solar Influences Data Center?

    COMMENT: The strongest flare observed during last 24 hours was a confined M1.4 flare (peaked at 15:20 UT, on November 13), originating from the NOAA AR 1897. We expect C-class and possibly M-class flares, while X-class flares are possible but not very probable. Catania sunspot group 35 (NOAA AR 1890) is at the moment close to the west solar limb, therefore, we maintain the warning condition for a proton event during the following hours. The Earth is still inside a slow solar wind flow with the speed of about 370 km/s.

    Consequently “solar activity at record levels” is a fear to take with several Tums since the sunspot number is 128 reported this morning is the “Boulder number” which is about 25% higher than the ISES number, so even with the spot-a-lurking, the way the data seems likely to come out in a couple of weeks, it might look something like this dummied-up view:

    Not exactly the end of the world.

    In fact, the weakest in 200 years, or so.

    I’m afraid despite all the worries about sunspots, the biggest [rational] fear a thinking person can have is about economic meltdown when the paper money notion blows up.  THAT’s something to really worry about…oh, and what to do with the dust bunnies under the bed where such thinking leads.

    On the other hand, our resident war-gamer is still tracking the pending Middle East war:

    Good Mornin’ George,

    The outcome of this complex political row with Iran will likely lead to war one way or the other.

    Relax the sanctions and Israel may feel compelled to take unilateral action against Iran. Keep the clamps down hard on Iran, and their economic desperation may just as well lead to war with the Islamic Republic’s anxious militarily striking out regionally in desperation, worst case against Israel.

    Look for Russia and China to quickly, deftly try to exploit every sign of weakness shown by the U.S. and Europe.

    If you’re really looking for something to worry about, although it’s not here yet, this is a dandy choice because you can just imagine the radiation to be released when the centrifuges in Iran are bombed while in operation. 

    Believe it, or not, that’s one of the reasons I’m building a new room on my house:  A closed cell foam sealed, positive (pressurized and well-filtered) air area.  It may seem like the modern analog to a 1950’s-style bomb shelter, but give it time.  I tend to be way early on things, but seldom wrong in the longer term.  It should work well for the whole range of NBC concerns – and you did notice the metal roof, right?

    Prepping Notes: New Food Line

    What’s the point of prepping, if all you’re going to do be be hungry?  I don’t know about you, but I have this 2,500 calorie habit called eating…

    I received a nice note from Preparewise about a new line of long-term stored foods that’s now available.  One of the reasons I like Legacy Essentials is they are high quality and certified GMO-free, plus they have gluten-free options. 

    If you have any special dietary needs, brands like Legacy are doing some very good things and they have the largest serving-size in the industry.

    What’s out now includes milk, (white and chocolate) whole eggs, honey powder, blueberry pancakes, shredded potatoes, real cheese blend and chopped onions. Importantly, each is rated for a 25-year shelf life.

    They were out of stock on the Legacy Essentials powered eggs, but that should be back in shortly.  I suspect it’s because the eggs are especially good – word quickly gets around in the prepping community as good powdered eggs are hard to find…  So whether you’re just getting started, or topping off, it’s a worthwhile produce to check out. 

    Even if you’re not a prepper, the blueberry pancake mix and powdered honey is a good combination to try as a dangle a toe in the waters of prepping move. 

    We appreciate your support of our advertisers who keep the lights on around here.

    A related (odd note, but one that came up at breakfast Wednesday here at the ranch) is that something like 17-states now have road-kill laws which make it legal to pick up road kill and take it home. 

    Thanks, but when disaster hits, I’ll be the guy with the blueberry pancakes with honey and butter on ‘em.

    Web Hosting Deal

    As long as we’re spending money this morning… We continue to be quite satisfied with our cloud hosting from www.emwd.com and every year, Brian Carpenter, who runs the company, has a birthday sale with some pretty good discounts:

    Basic hosting: $4.60/month for the life of the account.
    Standard hosting: $4.60/month for the life of the account.
    Cloud VPS servers: 10% off

    This is our BEST deal to date!

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    Shopping List for a SuperCountry: (How America Can Recover with Best Practices)

    Ures truly is about to write a small book which – I hope – will generate new thinking in America about where we are as a country, and more importantly, how we can easily return to our once-great condition. The answers are simple, and I believe there would be a tremendous “return on investment” but neither of the financial parties is presently able to stand up to the purchase orders for legislation (lobbying) that keeps meaningful change in check. So today we’ll delve into a Shopping List for a Super Country as soon as we update a few headlines and get some coffee going around here… More for Subscribers ||| SUBSCRIBE NOW! ||| Subscriber Help Center ON your reading list:

    Ure’s Minimum Gets Traction

    OK, science isn’t ready to admit to Ure’s Minimum yet, but the idea that the Sun is really the cause of global warming surely seems to at least having a chance of surfacing now that headlines are about like “Scientists Baffled by Lack of Sunspots” and “Strange Doings On the Sun…”

    This latter one is a milestone of sorts, since it appears in the Wall Street Journal.  And that is important because (a hush falls over the assembled multitude) there IS a huge economic angle here.   Not only was this an exceptionally quiet (verging on non-existent) hurricane year, but the dramatic heat gradients in the atmosphere when you go from building/rising Sun outputs to talking off the edge of a cliff…well, that powers storms.

    Like the one this week in the Philippines.  And, speaking of which, it is still going on, heading into Southeast Asia now. 

    Governments and agencies are pledging tens of millions in aid, but as our Jakarta Bureau reported overnight, this is a considerably larger event than Katrina/Rita, just to give you a sense of scale of things, so recovery won’t necessarily be without a lot more pain and suffering to come. 

    Hiya chief.

    Want to update you on regional events concerning the deadly typhoon rolling around these parts:

    A lot of folks, including me, have not heard from our people in the Philippines.  My cousin lives in Luzon and I know a number of folks in Manila.  We, of course, hope that the lack of comms is due to downed or overloaded circuits.  What we do know is that the carnage is horrific, likely on a par with the tsunami in Banda Aceh in 2004.

    Reports show (graphically) hundreds of bodies floating in rivers and ponds.  Entire villages have simply been erased.  Landslides are still on-going as floods of water run downhill.

    As the storm continues across Asia, I have several acquaintances who have bugged out to Jakarta from Ho Chi Minh Cityj, Vietnam.  Whoever can afford it is getting out of the country ahead of landfall.  According to the folks I know, the airport was jammed and every flight out is booked solid.

    On comparison, the typhoon is far worse than Katrina, so that should give Americans a sense of scale, not to mention the destruction is spread across an entire region and not limited to a single city.

    It remains to be seen what will follow, but we are relatively safe here in Jakarta, since typhoons, like hurricanes, rarely cross the equator.  More as events warrant.

    Sampai jumpa,

    Bernard Grover

    Managing Editor, Indonesia Bureau

    Pictures of bodies piled in the streets make for mighty challenging reading while wolfing down the Corn Pops.

    Meantime there’s the little matter of the ongoing shaking and quaking (related to the crust of Earth expanding and contracting, perhaps?) going on in places like north of Japan off the Kamchatka where we noticed a 6.6 shaker overnight:

    Location with respect to nearby cities:

    172 km (106 mi) S of Ust’-Kamchatsk Staryy, Russia

    300 km (186 mi) NE of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, Russia

    305 km (189 mi) NE of Yelizovo, Russia

    321 km (199 mi) NE of Vilyuchinsk, Russia

    2733 km (1694 mi) NNE of Tokyo, Japan

    With some X-class leftovers due in the coming 24-hours, don’t be surprised if we get some big headlines about quakes as the week toils onward.  Solar Data Analysis Center reports:

    Since the CME-less M2.4 flare which peaked at 11:18 UT on November 11, only six C-class flares were reported. We expect M-class flares and possibly but not very probably X-class flares, in particular from the Catania sunspot group 35 (NOAA AR 1890) and NOAA AR 1897. The Catania sunspot group 35 (NOAA AR 1890) is situated in the western solar hemisphere and still has the beta-gamma-delta configuration of its photospheric magnetic field, therefore we maintain the warning condition for a proton event. From the currently available data it seems that the CME first observed in SOHO/LASCO

    So we watch, and wait,…

    The Daily Obamacare Problem

    This is becoming so predictable, we almost feel like setting up a website to just track related issues.  But here we go again with reports that “Problems with federal health portal also stymie Medicaid enrollment.”

    One of these mornings I’m going to wake up with nothing to report about Obamacare.  That will be news, I tell you…

    That won’t be today, however, since the National Review has writ large on how James O’Keefe’s undercover videos are now ratting-out little gems like:

    “You lie because your premiums will be higher,” one navigator advices an investigator…”

    You have to read the whole thing over here.  Damning stuff….more in today’s Coping section.

    More after this…

    Grim Christmas?

    We are still a couple of weeks out from Turkey Day, but with all the softness in the economy, not to mention the coming collapse of disposable incomes when Obamacare bills start hitting the checkbooks, we notice that a lot of major retailers are ramping up their Black Friday events.  As you might see above, this is already in Amazon’s playbook.

    And, over here is a story that “Walmart to launch Black Friday sales earlier” than normal. 

    As always, the problem for companies is how to post year-over-year sales growth when year over year incomes (how to say this politely?) plain old suck.

    Markets Stuck on Boring

    Our usual rants about markets and the economy will return to their more rabid state once something meaningful besides noise trading and waiting on data happens.

    With Veteran’s Day and noise trading Monday, the markets are set to open down about 20 at the open, but that’s so insignificant as to lull us to sle…..zzzz…….zzzz….

    Bitcoin’s Fame Groweth

    Regardless of your take on Bitcoin, the idea is getting some serious attention in places like the Chicago Fed which has an article in the “Fed Letter” for December which has just been published online.

    I’d summarize it for you, but you really need to read it…it’s pretty good.  Especially when the article reflects the central banker view and says (in tiny part) “A fiduciary currency like bitcoin is useful only insofar as others accept it broadly.”

    The problem is really one of taxes…and if bitcoin transitions to the realm where cash (which is presently the backbone of the underground economy) manages to remain aloof (and not reporting to the IRS like PayPal and others now have to…) well, then, yes, bitcoin could continue to grow.  Fraud and other issues aside, of course.

    Iran – Israel:  the Wait

    Listening for shoes to drop is what it’s like at the moment following the (predictable) collapse of the Geneva peace talks.  A note from our resident war-gamer on point:

    George,
    A very public and very intense diplomatic row  between the U.S.

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