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Coping: Effects of George-rograde

I am pleased to report, first off, that Elaine is almost back to her normal self.  So, too, is the computer which had lost its power supply…so most things are back to whatever it is that passes for normal, anymore.

Thanks to the readers who sent in explanations of WHY everything seemed to be hitting the fan, all at once.  Reader Pat for one:

DON’T travel (or buy anything) during Mercury Retrograde….I keep tellin’ ya.  Oh well, hope the rest of your trip is good.

Well, funny you’d bring THAT up.  And what morning would be complete without a note from Bruce:

Typical mercury in retrograde for us. We clear the calendar of any new projects while mercury is in retrograde. Good time to finish stuff up tho.

Also should have asked at the desk for a power supply. Most hotels have a box full left behind by travelers. If there is a large hotel close, ask there too.

Well, sadly, my portable is a Samsung and they use an odd-ball power connector size, so I picked up a Rocketfish- Universal AC Laptop Power Adapter 8 Tips MOST COMPUTERS RF-AC9023 which worked fine, except for the $65 hole in the wallet. Woin’t leave home without it, now.

When we arrived up here, the weather was perfect and even today, Branson is looking at beautiful, clear skies after getting a pretty solid freeze last night.  But we’ll probably take off early this morning and head south, since the weather is about to change on us.

Coming down into Branson, if you look closely, you can see just to the right of the vertical card compass there is a freeway visible, and then a hill, and then you can land on the airport (those stripes for the threshold area).  Normally I’d have been more properly lined up, but there was a bit of wind sheer – a northwesterly above, and nothing down low, so a gentle roll left to line up “on the numbers.”

That gray patch is really a 20-40 foot hill so you really, really, really don’t want to land short. 

I hate like hell to be a weather-chicken, but if you’re a long-time reader, you’ll remember that the last time I didn’t listen to my gut on weather, we got socked in up in the Northeast for an extra week.  I didn’t mind the 31,000 Hilton Honors points, …it was the money paying for the hotel nights that earned them that stuck.  Besides, there’s too much going on in real life to mess about. Vee vill keep to zie skedule, jahvohl?
 
[Aspiring writers note:  The correct German grammar is closer to “Wir werden, um den Zeitplan zu halten.” but the average America doesn’t know what a Zeitplan is, and unless I explain how it means the Fed is not giving Germany back its gold that we’re holding in “safe keeping” (my butt, right?) no one would care.  So we write in a kind of Sergeant Schultz broken German way so people won’t have to think too much, which is why we don’t have more Libertarians, but we seem to have gotten off the track a bit.  It’s a cheap pseudo-lingo for  lazy ‘Mericans.]

So, more’n likely (barring a weather forecast change) we’ll be southbound this morning with a slight tailwind at the get-go with clear skies instead of 20 knots on the nose with rainy and showery condition (maybe with a bonus thunderstorm cell)  and marginal IFR later on this weekend. 

But that’s how life is sometimes:  You shave the odds in your favor – and besides, it gives us a chance to do it again in the future.

Not Harry Reid

So as we were walking into the local computer emporium in pursuit of the aforementioned power supply, I chanced to notice that the fellow at the front door bore something of a resemblance to Harry Reid.

I mentioned this fact to him…and he didn’t seem any much please by the remark.  I told him it wasn’t meet in a mean-spirited way, or anything.  Robin Landry, who I’ve been meeting with on market outlooks (more for Peoplenomics readers tomorrow on that) noticed the distinctive chill, too.  “George, I don’t thing he particularly liked that…”

I was running on fumes from lack of sleep and mentioned it again on the way out. 

Robin Landry gently  suggested I work on my people-skills a bit and then launched into a reminder about the dangers of flying cash registers. But I assured him no offense was intended. Which got me around to seeing people don’t hear intensions, too well.

I made a note to apologize next time I buy computer parts in Branson.

—

The people up here in Branson are just as helpful and friendly as ever.  The server at dinner last night was an art major at the College of the Ozarks, which is a pretty good school to consider, since the school places a big emphasis on mixing the “doing” with the “learning.”  Since so many students work, a lot of them graduate with zero – none – of that awful finance aid albatross around their necks.

Why more schools don’t do this is beyond me, but maybe it’s because college students used to be the ones doing so many of those “jobs Americans don’t want to do”.”  And, since so many are NOT working, it drives the immigration agenda, perhaps, but we don’t have any hard data to confirm that.

It just looks that way, sometimes.

—

And, in keeping with its fine tradition of making fun of me, my I-Ching Inbox decided with Elaine being down for the count for a day due to iffy lump crab, to send a constant stream of specials on seafood delivered overnight.

Touching, how Universe rubs our faces in stuff, now and then…payback for my Harry remark, I’m sure.

The Weekend Reader

With the onset of Fall weather in a few places, it’s time to consider putting something into your head besides the next episode of Elementary, which is a lot of fun, if you’re not hooked on enough of the boob tube already.

Reader Zero has a suggestion:

I got this book: E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality (Hay House Insights) by Grout, Pam (1/28/2013)  (About $11-bucks, Amazon – G)

someone like me…

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Yo-Yo Markets – Driven By Obamacare Failure?

Earlier this morning, the futures were pointing up a bit more than sixty points.  Which means, simply put, that the markets are confused, don’t know which way to turn, and there’s no telling where things will go when things finally turn up or down in a meaningful way.

Think of it like a big herd of cattle, they almost get into a stampede one way, but then think better of it, stop and reconsider their situation.  Down 54-points yesterday and then back up this morning – what kind of fun is trading in this kind of market?

Still, there’s plenty of reason for the herd to be confused.  If you haven’t been keeping track, consider:

    This last one is HUGE because the market has been wondering how to come up with enough consumer discretionary funding to bolster earnings in order to show some respectable returns because if bond yields rise, that could kill the bull market.  On the other hand, if the healthcare rules are relaxed – even if only for a year – that would buy time to make the computer systems work and would give people (and Congress) some time to rethink their role as “enforcers” for the Insurance industry.

    As of this morning, the speculation seems to be that signup windows will be postponed until sometime in 2014, but if a two part word whose first part is spelled ‘cluster’ comes to mind, that’s a reasonable take on things here.

    Another thing that’s happening is that the economy of Europe is starting to show something other than a “flat-line” display on the life support monitoring statistics.  As this story in the NY
    Times     this morning points out, the region has now put together 4-months in a row of small, but measurable growth reported by EU purchasing managers.  That helps spike the punch a bit more down on the Street.

    Not that relations with the US/Obamanistas will improve overnight.  Germany and France are still plenty-pissed about the NSA spying on them, but again, president Obama is something of an expert at “no flinch” poker.  While some might opine that’s more runaway ego, more than poker-playing skill on the world stage, we just follow the data and look where it points:  up…only a bit, but up, nevertheless.

    One economic number out this morning to consider in here:   The Balance of Trade figures.  This is an important one to watch because it is directly related to how much debt the US will have to pawn off on the rest of the world.  Still, anything that’s even a modest improvement will certainly be welcomed.  Numbers please?

    The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S.

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    Coping: With Crap Out Thursday

    Time for a little “Adventure Travel” story – the kind that never shows up on television.

    The day started off just perfectly!

    I’d done the Peoplenomics column yesterday, and while it wasn’t destined to win a prize in journalism, it was a pretty darned interesting topic – how to turn your home shop into a business.

    As soon as it was done, we were off to the airport, where the old Beechcrate was ready to roll and we took off was right on schedule at 8:45, which put us into Branson, MO about 11:52.

    Normally, about here, I would put up a scenic aerial picture of the city of Branson, but that gets into the interesting developments since, and we need to hold that thought for a second because I don’t want to get the story out of sequence.

    For now, let’s just say I don’t have the means to put the picture up, but if you click over to Flight Aware here, you can look at our path and just imagine beautiful skies, only a 10-knot headwind and visibility from here into next week.

    The cabin-top vortex generators I added had boosted our speed by another couple of knots and that was just cool as hell. The latest are just behind the top of the windshield and they reattach turbulence where the air flows up over the Plexiglas any tends to tumble, causing parasitic drag.  135 MPH in a Musketeer?  What and experience!

    As we’d planned, our friends met us at the airport on landing and we loaded up our gear and headed to el ‘otel…where check-in was fine, the computer worked fine on the wifi and we were off to an afternoon of adventuring in Branson which included things like a nice lunch out, go-kart racing (which screwed our backs up, but whatever), 18-holes of golf (putt-putt, but still two hours of laughs) and then after all that, it was time to eat again.  Fresh air – and being out of the office – does that.

    After a delightful evening, we all headed back to the hotel and turned in early thinking this would be another fun-packed day, along with about 6-hours of chart comparing and market seeing/forecasting…life doesn’t get much better.

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    Peoplenomics: Turning Your Home Shop Into a Business

    Because the scent of fall is in the air, lots of folks will be turning to their home shops now that the good working weather is here, and turn on some of the long-delayed home improvement projects. But can you get more out of your home shop? Well, the answer is an unqualified….maybe! This morning George (the tool man) looks at some ideas and opines on how an attractive home-based business for those who like to work with their hands might make sense as an economic insurance policy.

    That Long-Delayed Employment Report

    We were sort of expecting an “upside surprise” to the unemployment report for September, which was delayed from several weeks ago by the charade of “Poor Me” going around Washington.  But better late than never, as they say, and so this morning we can finally catch up:

    Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 148,000 in September, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 7.2 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in construction, wholesale trade, and transportation and warehousing. Household Survey Data The unemployment rate, at 7.2 percent, changed little in September but has declined by 0.4 percentage point since June.

    The number of unemployed persons, at 11.3 million, was also little changed over the month; however, unemployment has decreased by 522,000 since June. (See table A-1.) Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (7.1 percent), adult women (6.2 percent), teenagers (21.4 percent), whites (6.3 percent), blacks (12.9 percent), and Hispanics (9.0 percent) showed little or no change in September.

    The jobless rate for Asians was 5.3 percent (not seasonally adjusted), little changed from a year earlier. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.) In September, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 4.1 million. These individuals accounted for 36.9 percent of the unemployed. The number of long-term

    Both the civilian labor force participation rate, at 63.2 percent, and the employment- population ratio at 58.6 percent, were unchanged in September. Over the year, the labor force participation rate has declined by 0.4 percentage point, while the employment- population ratio has changed little.

    This has apparently pleased the markets which a few minutes after the report showed they would about hold their own at the open.  The Labor Participation rate held steady at 63.2%.

    On the other hand, the number of people working went up 133,000 which would be a good thing except that it’s made even better by a rare negative CES Birth/Death Model contribution.  We read that as underlying strength.

    What’s more, even  the alternative measures of labor underutilization improved a tenth of a percent.

    Next month ought to be an interesting read.  As we told Peoplenomics subscribers, the actual amount of “stuff” going through west coast ports is up about 3% and what they might lead a wild optimists to think is that things are improving.

    Bu8t not necessarily in the markets.  My friend Robin Handler of the Options Signal Service has recently reiterated a warning about November, there’s the little matter o0f how Israel will resolve its red line in the sand with Iran, love fest with the Washington crowd, or not.

    And then there’s just that damn market seasonality.  Just like a horse gets conditioned into being spooky (knowing they are everyone else’s food in nature) so too, the small investors (us) ought to be properly spooked when we realize that with the pop of the public debt to the penny north of $17 trillion, and gross domestic product coming in around $15.5 T we’re still spending 9.5% more than we’re making as a country, plus or minus a cheeseburger.

    If it was just spending along, we could tighten the belt (everyone would whine, but we’d be surviving).  But unfortunately, something like 56% of the deficit is debt and that has been kicked down the road until early next year, still compounding as we go.

    So could the market decline over the coming month or two?  Heck yes.  Is America dead and gone?  Ask me in five years.  We may still be here in name, but will it be recognizable as the same place?  That’s the real question to be asking in here and answers aren’t easy.

    Headline Madness

    If our occasionally too blunt reporting on things rubs you the wrong way, just remember, we don’t do the “spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down thing around here.”

    Elsewhere?  Different deal.  Go read this one:

    “CNN Poll: After shutdown, America is less optimistic about economy.”

    So did you catch the part which says “…71% of those questioned say that economic conditions are poor right now…”?

    To my way of thinking a headline that says “less optimistic” and content that says 71% think poor is like cheerfully headlining that someone is only partly dead.

    Cognitive dissonances are all over the place and it takes mental fortitude and a cheerful inner core to see through the crap and keep on keeping on…Oh, and it helps to have bills and like three squares a day, too, I suppose.

    More after this…

    Healthcare Obamacle

    If you’d like to see how some of the folks of the New Daily News did when they got online and tried to sign up for Obamacare, you might find their report of interest.  (Mixed results, if you’re lazy.)  And there’s some good advise on point from Consumer Reports.

    Also: Big insurers are avoiding exchange states…

    Meantime, on the other side of the pond, there’s a story out of the UK about how doctors there are getting a bonus for putting people on – you got to love it – death lists.  Now, I don’t mind someone getting a spiff for putting Ures truly on some death list, or other.  But what’s insulting about this is the amount:  A lousy 50 pounds!  That’s about $80 US dollars, such as they are.

    Now, I’ll admit that the average human is worth less than $5 bucks – sez so right here – but I’ve got a couple of gold crowns which ought to make me worth a lot more should I make it to the UK death list.  What’s more, I have future tax generating potential because I plan to work until I die…that’s the point, right?  Always paying, never taking?

    I won’t waste any more electrons pointing out the selfishness of the Brits (smart part of the Ure clan got out a hundred plus years ago).  But I will say this again and write it down somewhere:  This kind of dollar-driven death crap will come to ‘Merica despite the protestations of my liberalista friends.

    Just like the “check’s in the main” and “Social Security will never be used as a national ID system.”  Oh, and remember “You’ll be able to retire with full benefits at age 65”?  Liberals don’t have very good memories. 

    Drones Criticized, But…

    Amnesty International is off barking up the wrong tree again, talking about US drone attacks in Pakistan.

    What seems misunderstood is that the military just follows order from the Commander in Prize.  And it’s here that people get all tangled up in themselves. 

    You see, AI is a fairly liberal group.  So rather than blow the problem (warring in Pakistan without an invite and without a Congressional declaration) back at the White House occupant  they blow it up as something America did and does.

    Wrongo.

    It all come from the Prizer and if you want to turn off a war, close Gitmo, or any of that, you go to 1600 Public Relations Avenue and offer a round of golf.

    Speaking of which, the DiC (Duffer in Chief, not what you thought, OK?) was out for a round yesterday with staffers. 

    Question:  Who carded what?  I can never seem to find that…and is there some kind of rule that you don’t beat the boss?

    Madness on Syria

    Speaking of muddled thing, as we are, there’s another report about how diplomats are saying on the one hand that Syrian president Assad seems to be consolidating power, on the one hand.  And on the other, he still needs to go.

    Why?  Because he lost a popularity poll?  Even if he used nerve gas, I seem to remember that his forces were and are fighting a Western-backed rebel force which includes (to this day) al Qaeda affiliates….so I’m stuck in WTF mode…

    Polls are Closed

    But if they were open, one poll says that almost half say to replace everyone in Congress and we couldn’t agree more.  Unfortunately, that almost half seems to turn out to be the half that doesn’t vote.

    D’oh.

    Meantime, an independent Marianne Williamson, best selling author, is planning to tackle Henry Waxman in California.

    I’ve got $10-bucks for anyone running against Feinstein, too….

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    Coping: Redundancy, Redundancy

    If this morning’s column turns out to be a bit shorter than usual – and missing a dandy feature like an incredible Wujo story which I had planned for this morning (damn!) it’s all because we had a power outage out here at the end of the string last night which took out the power supply in the main server.  I can restore from backups, or just write this morning’s column, so I picked the latter.  You’ll have to come back Thursday for the good stuff.

    Normally, when something like this happens, it’s no more than a half-hour worth of nuisance because that’s about how long it takes to tear open the box, toss in the power supply, and reboot.  However, I didn’t have a spare power supply sitting on the shelf and…after three years of non-stop work, this one finally gave out.

    Keen lesson in here:  Usually I have a space 600-650 watt supply on hand…but the last one hadn’t hit the “time to buy one of those” order (they’re not free).  So instead of our usual operating post, this morning’s column is coming from the Win 8.1 laptop and it seems to be working just fine, although we won’t known until this is actually published.

    Message:  If you’re a serious computer user, a spare power supply is something (besides some plugin  hard drives) to keep on hand.

    I know it may sound absurd to have a laptop in a metal garbage can (which is where this one lives) but in the event of something really bad – like an EMP attack on the US – odds are fair that a lot of cars will keep working.  But it will be the “hidden electronics” – the stuff which really glues modern life together (routers, power supplies and such) — that you may need some stock of.

    Of course, the logical question is WHY would you want a computer at the End of the World?  Well, lots of people who prep have all kinds of stuff on hard drives which they really need to have printed out.  Without the hard copy, you’re “electron dependent” and that means when the power goes out, you could be cut off from your library.

    Which then gets us to the matter of printers.  I just ordered a Brother HL-2270DW Compact Laser Printer with Wireless Networking and Duplex for about a hundred bucks.  Since I have hundreds of manuals on everything under the Sun, I thought it would be useful to print everything off and have backups on paper.

    The wireless is a no-brainer.  But the duplex printing is really key.  Duplex (meaning prints both sides) cuts the paper use in half, which seems like it ought to pay for itself in short order.  Plus, the current Brother printer I have has been blazingly fast and still seems to work OK…it’s just I don’t want to manually flip pages.    Elaine has an older ink jet which takes 31-hours per page in draft mode.  She wins a new printer.

    Weighing on the Weather

    Our consulting war gamer did a fine analysis of correlations between the lack of hurricanes this year and cold winters.  But not much, if anything to be gleaned there.  1904 and 1913 (*if memory serves) were the only ones.  The original email is on the dead server which I need to operate on this morning.

    And then came a dispatch from our Jakarta Bureau Chief

    Hiya chief!

    Weighing in on the weather:

    For many years, I have (had) noted that everytime a TS or hurricane came through Houston, the following winter featured snow.  In ’72, we got back-to-back storms in July or August, as I recall.  The following January/February,we had feet of snow lasting a couple of weeks.  If you know Houston, you know that’s about as rare as down on frogs.  But the pattern holds up.  Snow after Katrina/Rita, snow after Carla, snow after Alicia, etc.

    As for the feller writing in about the trees not turning, it’s called Indian Summer, though the term is no longer permissible and so most folks have forgetting about it.  Comes around every five years or so.  Never much of a worry down in Houston, where everything stays green until mid-December, when the leaves all die at once and fall off in clumps.  But always heard my northern cousins (Dallas area) talking about it.

    For what it’s worth.  Could be worse.  Could be hot and humid all year ’round.  Enjoy what’cha got!

    The Indonesian Bureau Managing Editor,

    Bernard Grover

    Hmmm…a thought provoking point there on Indian summers, which means I shall henceforth be referring to them as Zombie Summers…zombies being the modern catch-all for what we no longer dare speak which is nuts, but that’s ‘Merrica for you…

    Oh and here’s an email on that point from reader Joe K…

    George,

    I’m an urbansurvival freebie blog reader for a couple of years now, reading from central Argentina.  This is my first email to you, in response to Saturday’s post.  Very intriguing to see those thought processes develop in you.

    Good call on the evolution of “the Others,” now being represented by zombies.  But I still find your dismissing of this evolution as being about PoliticalCorrectness to be incomplete: the zombie Others represent our fear of being compromised into a life of stupidity and drudgery, and of those who have already succumbed. 
    Wheres the noble savages were slaughtered in support of modernity – out with the old and in the with new –  killing zombies questions modernity and what it produces.

    Thanks for your work!

    Joseph

    Yet another sage observation.  I know there’s a billion dollar business in there somewhere.  I have to come up with a way to monetize zombies.

    Look,  if the humane societies can raise millions in support of dogs that bite people and promote the cult of picking up warm, steamy lumps of poop with plastic bags in foul weather, people will buy damn near anything.  Yet, we let these cult members vote! Is this a great country or what? 

    I wonder if Adopt a Zombie has potential?

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    Truth or Tuesdayquences

    You know what happens tomorrow, right? The Labor Department is scheduled to release the long-delayed employment situation report which was stalled by the government shutdown, although we’re still mystified why 83% of government couldn’t have just kept going better, but don’t get me started on that. This morning, the markets are milling around as nervous as cattle outside the slaughterhouse, as the price of Oil slipped under $100 on the future’s market which some (Ures truly) would point out is a major hint that pernicious deflation is still in the wings. This morning, the Insurer in Chief will explain how the Obamacare computer system is all screwed up (we hold these truths to be self-evident) and how this is unacceptable (no shit?) and how fixes will be found.

    Coping: Whether Winter?

    Our long-time reader Ray H is getting a bit concerned about the lack of “real” Fall just yet and he wonders just what the heck is going on in the upper Midwest…

    First up, saw in the local paper that this weekend will mark the annual pilgrimage of nature lovers, to the Brown County (Indiana) State Park. Brown County comprises several thousand acres of old-growth deciduous trees, and proffers an explosion of concentrated natural color when the trees begin to feel the onset of winter. My experience has been that the colors come out in-force, in northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, the first week of October, the southern portions of these States, plus Iowa, the northern half of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio (and points east) during the second week, and the southern parts of these, the third, hence the attraction toward Brown County, which is in Southern Indiana.

    This writeup was fresh in my mind last night when I stepped-out to sniff the air, and noticed that my trees were still green and leaves had not yet begun to drop. I’m really preoccupied, trying to build a shed and rebuild two rooms before the snow flies, so I guess I just didn’t notice that which was right under (over?) my nose. Point is: This is indescribably odd! Odd enough that I’ll probably fire off E-Mails tomorrow to a couple of well-known meteorologists with whom I’m acquainted. In 50 years of weather-watching, I’ve only twice seen any quantity of leaves on a maple or oak after November 1st, and then, not very many.

    Normally, the leaves here are brown, or red-or-yellow fading to brown, and about 60% off the trees, by October 20th. If anything, temps have been cooler than normal since mid-July, and nights have been in the 30s for the past week — had our first hard frost in September so, if anything, the color should have come early and the trees, be pretty much denuded by now.

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    Weekend Reflections: Life, Making Sense

    As I was sitting in my office this morning, going through tons of work and trying to process the impossible complexity of trying to figure out when/if to ever retire, how/when to sign up for Medicare and how/which Part B provider to pick –should I live that long – the phone rang. Daughter #2 (Allison). What followed what a joyous description of a romantic evening here and he squeeze are planning. Apparently, they’re going out for Sushi, which is fine, but I bit my tongue and didn’t ask about the radiation monitor. Then came the revelation/capper.

    For Peoplenomics Subscribers: Where To from Here?

    The market this week put on a very impressive rally, but as our little exercise in developing a simple trading system seems to be hinting, all the hoopla this week about “solving” the crisis (which is spelled similar to circus) hasn’t really fixed much of anything. This coming week should be really key since we are now past euphoria of options expiration, too. So this morning rather than roll through repetitive headlines, we’re going to focus on what Peoplenomics is all about: Trying to stay ahead of economic trends and look off into the future a ways… More for Subscribers ||| SUBSCRIBE NOW!

    72 Day Timer: Too Big to Bail, Too Big to Fail

    ‘Come Watson, you must see this!”

    “See what, old man?”

    “Behold the difficulty in  which the Moriarty administration now finds itself!  After a shameless charade of a shutdown, to they now risk interference with high-level trading models by reports economic data due some weeks back, or will they delay the inevitable until next month’s reports?”

    “You mean with 83% of workers still on the job, they haven’t had the numbers in their back pockets all this time?”

    “It matters not!  All that matters at this instant is when, not how, Moriarty will release the data!  Get my mouse, Watson, we’re on the click!”

    And so, as the great criminal enterprise known as runaway corporatism begins this morning, one of the oddest of problems of all to ponder, as we go into the weekend, is when all of the missing economic data from the shutdown period will be unslung and flung on the Street.

    Natürlich, Ures truly is not the only one eyeing this Case of the Missing Data.  So’s the New York Times.

    While the market should (by my trading model that I so studiously ignore, and thus lose money in spite of its being ridiculously right) tack on another major rally today or Monday, the seat belts should be fastened about Tuesday when the last month’s unemployment data is revealed.

    Not that it will tell us much, mind you:  The Labor Department is highly expert at turning sow’s ears into silk purses.  However, the long-term observer will focus not just on the “headline number” but on the underlying collapse in manufacturing (the jobjack number) and the labor participation rate.

    The really interesting confluence of data will come when the CPI figures come out on October 30th and then the next unemployment numbers are due the following week.

    In the meantime, for Peoplenomics subscribers, we’ll do our fearless review of West Coast Port data tomorrow morning.  The brothers and sisters of the ILWU didn’t walk out and so we have at least some guidance available there.

    In the meantime, the Fed H.6 Money Stocks report reveals they’re is goosing M1 and M2 at an 8.2% print rate, and if prices aren’t keeping up, the reason is whatcha call deflation.

    But that’s not the whole story.  If you look at the Fed’s H.3 report, you’ll see the banksters’ reserve balances are up (very roughly) a HUGE 60.2% from the same period a year ago.  We’re obviously in the wrong business or just need a rich uncle.

    Are the problems now over?  Well, no.  Lots of experts are skeptical that anything different in the way of an outcome will happen when it comes around again, shortly.

    In the meantime, euphoria and fall are having a grand battle of it.

    More after….oh, you know…

    This is Sick Dept.

    The Obamacare story just keeps getting better and better.  Now, we’re seeing reports that insurers are getting the wrong data.

    Seeing how F/Ued this is really makes me appreciate Microsoft a whole bunch more.  My Windows 8 updated worked like a champ out of the box.  For a hell of a lot more money, seems to me the error rate in O/care is not something that would play in the halls of Redmond, know what I mean?

    In the real (i.e. nongovernmental) world of software, we do things like look at the user experience, redundant data checks, test release candidates, and oh, yeah, have customer support that can actually answer questions.

    This is getting just rucking feediculous.

    Damaging Doctor-Patient Relations, Too

    A side effect of the evolving, Obamacare-driven distrust of the insurance-industry backed premium-care system is a deterioration in doctor-patient relations, as I can attest to personally, since I went in for my periodic checkup this week.

    Since I still own me (not my straw man, though) I think I can tell you this story without myself suing me for violation the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act privacy regs.  However, I don’t put me, suing myself, entirely aside since we live in that kind of a world now, but here’s my personal healthcare experience:

    Went to the doctor and I said, “Do I need to do anything about this [small] navel hernia?”

    We’d talked in the past about it…it hasn’t changed any, and his answer was doctorly spot-on:

    “Well, if it starts to bother you sure, but it looks stable and lots of people go to the funeral parlor with them…”

    My doc is a straight-shooter, but thanks to O/care and the healthsurance scammmers (which is what I call it when different carriers have different rates for the same operations, which in God knows any other industry would be felonious price-fixing) I found myself asking very difficult questions on the way home:

      • Did my doc do my a favor by keeping me from getting technical unnecessary surgery?
      • Is he secretly watching the debate between webbing and re-sewing approaches to navel hernias?  My long-life friend gets an occasional twinge from his still…hmmm…
      • Did he recommend not worrying about it because I would likely have signed up for Medicare and thus, my surgery would up Medicare costs?
      • Or??? Was he protecting my Big Insurance Company which doesn’t pay a dime until I hit the $5,000 mark annually but then covers everything up to $2-million a year?
      • Was he simply marking type to see if it changes any more over time?

      Once upon a time, when you went to the doc and asked him a question, you got a simple answer. But with increasing public awareness of how the accountants are going to do for medicine what they did for American manufacturing, well, sh*t, now I just don’t know what to think or believe.  You know about doctor junkets from the pharma boyz, right?  Toss that in, too. 

      He’s a serious workaholic, my doc, who I can’t even talk into a quick 9-holes of golf…with me paying…which is about as tough a problem-solving option as I’ve ever come up with.  I figured on asking about the 5th green, or so, to see if it could screw up his short game.  But he’s too busy to play free golf so you KNOW all this medical froth is ruining relations and working docs to death in the process, right?

      In the meantime, I’m being very careful not to lift weights over 100 pounds or so.  Although I maintain my sharp mental focus and intellectual acuity by vigorously working out with smaller weights of, oh, about 1.5 ounces at a time, PRN.

      We’re on Roaming

      At least in a manner of speaking as our Winnipeg news analyst notes:

      Dear Mr. Ure,

      Do all roads lead through Rome? Those who prefer a mountain view to the seven hills may wish to embark upon an easy search of publicly available whois records. This is not investment advice. 

      Who, Me?  Dept.

      Edward Snowden says he took no secret files to Russia with him.  But, lemme ask you this:  Did he say anything about located elsewhere servers?

      I can overlook this one:  After all, the kid was raised in a country where the President was saying “Depends what you mean by sex…”:  So, I guess, “take with him” could be rather narrowly defined, too.

      Traffic Advisories

      It’s a good thing our consulting client in the East Bay doesn’t have to deal with this crap most mornings:  Bay Area Rapid Transit is out on strike this morning.

      Soooo… if you live, in say, Oakland, and see yon sign on the BART website, it may be faster to swim than drive around.  And if I were a cop,; I betcha the whole monthly quota could be bagged on the 280 coming up from San Joser (sic) later on this morning.

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      Coping: With a Short Intermezzo from Bruce

      If you believe Don Juan, in Carlo’s Castaneda’s books about the way of the nagual, you’ll not doubt be familiar with the concept of “petty demons.”   And they’re not all bad, as oftentimes in spiritual pursuits, it’s the “petty demons” that offer much truth about ourselves.

      Reader Bruce is one of mine.  And he (more or less constantly) reminds me that Elaine and I could be hanging out in Ecuador, with a higher standard of living than what we enjoy in East Texas, should we elect the “exit” from the great ‘Merican Ponzi. 

      As is evident, I have no intention of fleeing America, although we do have second thoughts about this ‘Merica –place which has materialized – a kind of caricature of a Constitutional democratic republic – which presents itself daily as though suffering from some degenerative disease.

      As such, each of us gets to watch reruns of House and then get up every morning with our diagnostician’s hat on, pick up the morning news, and try to get at the root causes of that which ails us.

      To my way of thinking, that’s as it should be.  My life has purpose, meaning, and so the Great Wheels of Progress turn.

      But now and then extremely cogent and challenging emails float up from Ecuador which do provoke thought. 

      Like this one:

      Subject Line: no, not tough questions, tough answers

      George,

      To put it bluntly, the part of you asking the question is not the part that can understand the answers. 

      In Western cultures, the onus is put upon a person (expert) to supposedly come up with the answers.  In eastern schools of thought, the onus is on the questioner to understand the answer given. The true teacher is one who does not supply answers to someone who cannot understand. And one who does not give an answer if he does not know.

      Tough questions, damn straight.  And if you get any particularly keen insights that explain how this all works, send you answers of no more than 2,000 words, plus 25-cents in coin and two box tops to Crazy George at UrbanSurvival.com

      This is the reason why when chela’s (defin. 2—g) would enter the ashram of a master they would be given months or years of mundane duties to in order to get their mind into a place where they were teachable.  Here is the principle they are working with. This is so prevalent in western culture.

      Noise Level

      The other problem is terminology.  In your WUJO post you are using lots of technical/computer technology.  Much of this terminology did not exist 20 years ago, so there was no way to express these ideas in the english language, nor could we really even consider them as possibilities for describing reality until they came into the language.  Ingo Swann, who developed the methods for teaching remote viewing, said that it was not possible to understand the principles and teach this until the word and concept of transducer came into the english language.  It is also why, in his writings, Ingo would go to dictionaries and get ancient/original definitions of words and define them in his writings before using them.  Its called creating a foundation upon which the information comes to rest so that it actually has value.  Adapting the new information of a teaching to your paradigm will not give you what you are seeking. Its like building a dwelling on the ruins of an old without clearing the ground.

      Now the problem with the language and terminology you are using today is that once the terms get into common parlance, there are multiple definitions, especially on the personal level. They cannot be used for teaching because they usually mean different things to different people, so you get different understandings when attempting to communicate this.  This is why the Hindus will say that the true teaching cannot be transmitted verbally.

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      Go Gold: Thank the Ponzgress

      Thank you Congress.  By running back to the printing press you have jammed up the price of gold more than $35 bucks (some are excitedly saying $50), which is fine by us, but is this really the rational thing to be doing in here?

      With stock futures pointing to a slight pullback at the open this morning, down may 50-75 points after yesterday’s nosebleed-inducing rally, there I was by the phone when long-term reader Nick called.

      “So, George, let me see if I have this right:  Congress needed to pass the debt ceiling so that we could keep paying our creditors, right?”

      Well, uh, yeah….

      “So wouldn’t it be safe to call this just one big Ponzi Scheme – you know – like the one Charles Ponzi set up where the new “investors” coming in had their money paying people their “returns”?”

      I bet you know what happened next, don’t you?  I spent the next few half-hour on the phone with him explaining that the difference is that when “crime” is done by government, (not Chuck Ponzi) under the color of law like this, it’s call monetary policy.  It’s theft, but Theft Lite.  It’s good for you.  (“Git those hands back up where I kin see ‘em pardnah…”)

      OK, just more smoke and mirrors, since there are some who argue that there never was a crisis in the first place.

      You mean theater to perp the bigger shake-down?  Gee, gosh, golly, look surprised!  Emergency! Emergency!  Everyone run from Street!

      If you just went out back next week, printing up hundred-dollar bills when you happened to  overdraw your checking account, you’d be a guest at Uncle’s (we’ll leave the light on for you) Iron Bar Hotel.  The main difference, of course, being that Congress has an Army, and consequently taxes (including Obamacare) is magically not an insurance industry shakedown (look up protection racket).  Instead, it’s national health care.

      Of course, any competent business man can see that this just “kicks the can down the road” and as of this morning I think our next attempt at actuarial suicide will come in just 73-days.

      Still, the Markets ought to now roll on to new heights, at least until the called-back federal workers getting a 16-17 day paid vacation (for not going to work) in this shows up on people’s screen.

      All of which sets up furloughed workers who do get paid with the future prospects of getting almost four months a year of vacation.  Here’s how:  Say you’ve been around a good while and you get four weeks of regular vacation.  Maybe you could roll up some comp time and get that up to five weeks, right? 

      Now, let’s say that this kick-the-can crap (coming back shortly, remember)  can be scheduled to occur four times per year.  That would make it…uh…64-calendar days or about 9.1 weeks, which when added to the five weeks of earned vacation is 14.1 weeks.  OK, it’s only 3.68 weeks of vacation.

      If I had suggested this to you six months ago, you’d have been right to call Ures truly a raving-mad lunatic.

      Now, I’m an economic policy realist and I’m kicking myself six-ways to Sunday for not getting a cushy federal job back in the day.

      But it certainly explains a lot of past government hiring actions, like those thousands of new employees at IRS and DHS, for example.  My theory, waiting only to be proven out by events, is that the federal government won’t really be doing any more actual work.

      They’ll just be beefing up to handle all the vacation time.  God, we’re generous with all that free tax loot, ain’t we?.  Makes me ever so much more anxious (even eager) to send in my Q4 tax payment in January.  You too, I bet?

      Oh, here’s another meaty morsel in all this:  Mitch McConnell cut his state a fat hog – to the tune of $3-billion in earmarked funds for Kentuckians, as part of this..

      Best government money can buy.

      It’s just too bad that voters can hold multiple state residencies, otherwise I’d be inclined to take up residence in California. Nevada, and Kentucky, just so I could vote against the folks who jammed this through, rather than fixing our underlying (we’re bankrupt, right?) problem.

      The way I figure it, about 3/4th of the senate needs to be shown the door at the next election and a like fraction on the other side of Ponzgress.  Which leaves only the matter of keeping the country from being repo’ed out from under us by corporations (and China) between now and then.

      Reader Charles figures it this way:

      …All that was done is the Clowns all crowded back in the car to drive in a circle in the Main Ring and get out to do it all over again several weeks along!

      Bread and what?

      Look, if this was really such a big deal, how come the president is waiting until this morning to sign this and get things back on track?  I know if you or I were in the White House, we’d be up till 3 AM, or whatever it took, to get ‘er done.

      So the urgency is, how shall I say, a little suspect at a minimum.

      Who’s Healthy?

      Meantime, that blip on television of a House stenographer is out and about on the ‘net.  In case you missed it, this woman got up from here House job writing down what was going on and blurted out:

      “

      “The greatest deception here is this is not one nation under God. It never was. Had it been, it would not have been. No. It would not have been. The Constitution would not have been written by Free Masons. They go against God. You cannot serve two masters.

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