Housing is HOT

(From anchor, 5-miles offshore from Belize City, Belize)  Just out this morning is the S&P, Case-Shiller monthly housing report and it looked pretty good from the headline numbers:

New York, February 24, 2015 – S&P Dow Jones Indices today released the latest results for the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices. Data released today for December 2014 shows a slight uptick in home prices across the country. Nine cities reported monthly increases in prices.

More than 27 years of history for these data series is available, and can be accessed in full by going to www.homeprice.spdji.com. Additional content on the housing market can also be found on S&P Dow Jones Indices’ housing blog: www.housingviews.com.
Year-over-Year

Both the 10-City and 20-City Composites saw year-over-year increases in December compared to November. The 10-City Composite gained 4.3% year-over-year, up from 4.2% in November. The 20-City Composite gained 4.5% year-over-year, compared to a 4.3% increase in November. The S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, which covers all nine U.S. census divisions, recorded a 4.6% annual gain in December 2014 versus 4.7% in November.

The fastest year-over-year gains were in San Francisco and Miami, where prices rose 9.3% and 8.4% over the last 12 months. Twelve cities, including Cleveland, Denver, and Seattle, saw prices rise faster in the year to December than a month earlier. Las Vegas led the declining annual returns with 6.9%, down from 7.7% annually.

Month-over-Month
The National index was slightly negative in December, while both composite Indices were positive. Both the 10- and 20-City Composites reported slight increases of 0.1%, while the National Index posted a -0.1% change for the month. Miami and Denver led all cities in December with increases of 0.7% and 0.5% respectively. Chicago and Cleveland offset those gains by reporting decreases of -0.9% and -0.5% respectively.

The two charts that matter are here (click to enlarge):

  and  

We’ll go through some discussion and analysis of where we are in the Long Wave economic cycle in tomorrow’s Peoplenomics report.

The market was about flat when we got a first snipe at it this morning, but oil was down under $50 (however briefly) and that may color how Janet Yellen holds forth on Capitol Hill today.  No double, people will be hanging on her every word…

For the moment, with 20-minutes before the opening, Dow was up 25 and the price of oil peeked above $50…

Major Gold Probe Claimed

There’s a report (Daily Sabah) that the Justice Department and CFTC have begun a major investigation into 10-banks for precious metals price fixing.  I’m sure this will gain some traction with the metal community as it spreads, but it doesn’t mean gold is going to the moon; at least not yet.

The problem globally is that since the 1981/82 peak in bond rates, the falling rates have a problem over the next year, or two.  What happens to the economy when the bottom is in basis the 10-year?

As I’ve explained before, the case is generally bullish for stocks.  We seem to be rerunning the market’s climb from 1921 until September of 1929, and while this looks like a major 5th wave (in Elliott terms) remember, these in commodities are often where the largest gains are made.

Also worth noting is that the Fed bumped rates a tad in (going from memory) 1927 and it didn’t defuse the bubble.  As one of the guests on CNBC properly noted Monday, a ‘one and done” is not going to end the strongest job market in 17-years.

Still, as historical rhymes go, a one percent increase ought to be about “it” because we’re now at the place where GDP (more figures later in the week) is going up slower than compounding interest on the federal debt.  Worse:  When the Fed raises rates it will up the federal government’s borrowing costs, which will then speed up the compounding problem, which is the same kind of dilemma that presented to the Fed in 1928.

In some ways it’s graceful.  In others, scary. 

The problem with longwave deflationary bottoms in markets is there really isn’t much of anywhere to park “smart money.”  Energy is a problem, but when the worm turns, as oil shows lately, down come prices.  Scratch that oil and gas deal.

Housing, thanks to Obamacare, is not likely to offer much opportunity (other than refi’ing to lock ultra-low rates.  Most young people don’t have 3-nickels to rub together, so no downstroke on a new home for them.

That leaves rentals are a promising avenue, but it’s far from ideal, too, since people need jobs and income in order to be able to pay rents.  Another dead end.

Despite the reports of a metals price-fixing probe, the real bang in gold and silver may be a couple of more years off, simply because the government hasn’t come to terms with deflation, so until they do that, hyperinflation (the only road out, and it leads to war at long wave economic bottoms) is coming, for sure.

Just a matter of timing. 

“So What War, Ure?”

Glad you asked.

Grady reports some oddities regarding military build-up language in the daily www.nostracodeus.com data runs.  Which wouldn’t be such a big deal if the Canadian government hadn’t started doing military recruiting on television lately.

Then look at what’s going on in background:  Mitre Corp, a federally funded research and development outfit) has outlined plans to test wideband HF radio technology in the HF radio spectrum which may interfere with ham radio communications.

I’ve got mixed feelings on their development work.  I’ve worked with some of their engineers when FS-1045-FS-1051 automatic link establishment was being rolled out.  That’s essentially a low-speed global store-and-forward system  to ensure military survivability of a communications platform.  Think of it as 60 WPM email.

I expect that where Mitre would be going would be a spread-spectrum bigger brother to ALE, but that would increase the noise level on the ham bands…and that’s where ham radio types (like AC7X) get angry.

The problem that no one talks about (with ANY) HF technology is what happens in the blackout period that can be a week to 10-days after a HEMP event, or was I the only guy to read the Eniwetok data or did everyone miss the H-bomb tests blowing out street lights 700-miles away?

In lay terms:  Bouncing data around ideas have been popping up since the ONRL/University of Alaska HAARP project.  And now, with lots of data, you could (just saying) model the behavior of the ionosphere and develop an adaptive spread-spectrum approach to a high speed orderwire that could be more resilient.

Resilient for what?  Oh, I dunno.  Nuclear winter gets cold, I suppose, so after GTW (global thermonuclear war) you’d want to be able to chat with the survivors I suppose.

Not that anyone would be inclined to pay (expletive deleted) in the way of taxes and what have you, if “winning” gets to be ownership of a 25,000 mile diameter nuclear waste dump.   But thinking the unthinkable is what FFRDL’s (federal funded research and development labs) do when they aren’t looking at things like “email cookies” and such..

With the money being spent…do you know how many people could be taught Morse Code which is still faster than texting?   Co-located  with an biological computer capable of adaptive performance without screwing up the ham bands.  DX pile ups excluded.

Yes, Russia is eyeing what move to make next around Ukraine and north overs the Dnieper-Donets petroleum basin.  But who was it (with firestorm raids) that moved the world into a mindset where mass casualties of civilian populations was made acceptable behavior in war?  Who invented MAD?  Same things as blowback from Afghanistan.

American inventiveness comes at a price.

Speaking of Geniuses

Some folks in the UK are now talking about trying to do more to stop radicalized Muslim extremists who fight for ISIS from taking holiday or making homes in the British Isles.

So let me see if I have this right:  We have 9/11., let’s the Saudis (where the Wahhabi sect is HQ’ed) fly home unimpeded, go into the sandbox wars again, and then all the anti-terrorism surveillance state crap including live cameras everywhere but up your sitter-onner (and we’re not sure about these) at airports that have facial recognition.

Oh, I should mention that the UK has more cameras per person than any other police state lite in the world.

And now (drum roll please) they are actually thinking  about using their tech to halt the invasion.

I mean, did they figure this out all by themselves? 

(I won’t rub additional salt in this by mentioning we had to bail them out of two world wars and Lord Chamberpot was the original appeaser…so let’s not go there.)

Terrorist Revenue

Meantime, ISIS has kidnapped some 90-Assyrian Christians in Syria. 

Revenue, revenue, revenue and everything is a business model, especially war.

Sidebar:  Multiple drones have been spotted flying over Paris landmarks, but authorities aren’t sure who’s behind it.  My money is on kids, hackers, wannabes and a side order of real estate outfits.  And three wannabe terrorists, probably in the mix, too.

Lying to Ourselves

I’m no fan of the Obamanista’s rewriting of history.  Historical Revisionism is popular with socialists and liberalists alike.

But the head of the V.A. saying he “misstated” a few things, and sorry about that, doesn’t wash with straight-talking Texans.

Back home, we call that lying and get the soap out.  Probably more SF and Ranger vets in Texas than anywhere else…but only a guess.

Soap isn’t particularly popular in Washington, though, which is why so few come clean.  None too popular in NY Network halls, either, I hear.

When you do it, it’s a lie.  When a department head does it, it’s a misstatement.  When Obama does it, it’s a Royal Decree  Executive Order.

Attention Arkansas

Global Warming should arrive tonight.  Ice storms and power outages in the forecast.

Serious Health Notes

A 1,000 year old mummy has been found in a Budda figure.  Apparently this is thanks to CATSCAN technology.

I’ve thought about having a catscan of my brain, but expect I’d be disappointed in the results, should they find one.

Marijuana meantime, is now legal in Alaska.  Roast a bowl and let’s see if blubber would be any more appealing with the munchies, shall we?  All in the name of science, mind you.

And a new study finds that peanut allergies can be cut by early exposure.  I suspect this would be true as long as only survivors are counted. 

www.peanutsurvival.com is daughter Denise’s site.  I need to have her so more research on  where peanut oil extractives were used as vaccines adjuvants.  That keeps circling around the net.

And our final health note of the morning:  We sort of knew it all along, but here comes hard science saying fluoride in water makes people gain weight and is a depressant.  Which is why government insists on “helping us” eh?