George Ure

If you are a serious news junky, oh boy, do we have the concept for you!

When the market starts acting up – as it has this week – our thoughts naturally turn to the only two things that matter:  Making a buck and staying ahead of the herd.

Almost a year ago, we treated our www.peoplenomics.com subscribers to a few thoughts on how easy it is for a dedicated person to build a very impressive home information platform.

You don’t really need a genius level mentality:  Just a natural sense of curiosity and a desire to stay out front of trends.

Here’s an extract from the article where we discuss how to build such a system to actually take in HUGE swaths of data and distill it down into something that makes sense.  So, for those who have been wondering what Peoplenomics content is like, this is a portion of our report for last April 5…when we were fixing to get ready to see what’s been coming and which is now by some accounts here and now…

—————- commence extract ——————–

Business and Personal Applications

Just because of insider trading rules one can’t completely toss out the use of various technologies on the web to “smooth one’s way.”

Keeping tabs on developments at a competitor’s web site, for example, is perfectly reasonable and yet not many people use the ability of the internet to really exploit competitor weaknesses.

The process is the same, however, as an old-time monarch off spying on an enemy.  The process begins with just a single name – or two – of the company in question.  Then you’re off to social media to see who they are connected to.  The government uses social mapping techniques which means nothing more than seeing who has what connections on Linked-In and Facebook, for starters.

Once you have a couple of executive email addresses collected, you can start scanning the internet using a large engine like Google and seeing which forums, alumni associations, or other affinity/interest groups the person is associated with.

Search Engines and Meta Searches

Simply used:  If you employ Google or Bing (lots of people do) you could be missing content on the web.  That’s because these are single engines.  Big, powerful, but don’t get me wrong – there are other search engines out there.  Like www.webcrawler.com.

Even the venerable WebCrawler has become limited in recent years, so there’s been a rise in the big meta-crawlers like www.dogpile.com and www.clusty.com or www.zapmeta.com.

If you’re not used to meta engines, they take a bit of getting used to, so start with some known results off Google and Bing (like your own company) and then run the same search on the meta (multiple search engines with one click) sites.

Use of Imagery and Media

If a picture is worth a thousand words, Google has tabs that will allow you to display only image or video results.

Everyone knows about Google Earth and Google’s street views, but not so many people know about freeway web cams.

If you’re a news junkie, you’ve got a couple of ways to go:  One is to rely on a camera directory and linking service, like www.trafficcameras.com  which I have used to zoom in on Salt Lake City, for example.

If your interest is in a specific area, like Salt Lake, for example, you don’t need a directory.  You can just bring up the Utah Department of Transportation site’s traffic cameras.

Now, lest we forget, there are many other online sources that can provide valuable intelligence for personal and business use that are seriously under-appreciated.

One such example is immersive local media.  I’ll show you how this works in a moment, in a real news-chasing/news-junkie’s world.  But a quick visit to www.iheartradio.com or www.streema.com will allow you to listen to local radio stations virtually anywhere in the country. 

A Real News/Intelligence Operation

How can a person use such “intelligence” in a useful manner?

It becomes really easy if you understand some of the functionality in Windows and other operating systems. 

I’ll use a current project as an example.  You know I had a weird dream back in January about an “April 9+ earthquake,” right?  This is a fine example to use because it will allow me to use some concrete examples of how to “set up” for an area.

The first thing to do is set up the master folder on the desktop.  To do this, simply right-click,  select “NEW” and then select “FOLDER.”

In our example this morning, I have called my master folder Big Quake.

When you have many projects going, you can quickly discard a lot of research by putting things into a master folder. 

In addition to Big Quake, I have other folders for the cities where our kids are:  Phoenix and Payson, AZ, as well as the Seattle-Tacoma area.

The next step, once you have your state’s set up is to consider the kind of intelligence folders you want to include.

As you can see on the right, I’ve been preparing for the Big Quake by dropping tons of shortcuts into their appropriate folders.

If/When a big quake actually happens, I’ll be able to quickly open the appropriate folder, then have “one-click” access to tons of information.

The ready access to information is what separates the “men from the boys” in the breaking news world and this is one way to stay far, far ahead of the crowd.

I use the same strategy for major long-term news stories.  You’ll remember my recent post on the UrbanSurvival site where I posited that we are drifting toward a Shi’ite versus Sunni war in the Middle East?  That kind of information is easily organized in this manner.

Sure, there are other information management tools that could be used for the purpose – like Microsoft OneNote,  but selecting the “RIGHT” tool for the mission is always critical.

Let me see if I can explain it better.  OneNote and other PIMS (personal information managers) work well on wide data.

Wide data might include a ton of clips and notes about a particular topic.

But hierarchical systems work best when you want to organize something in phonebook-like fashion – which is what reporters and intelligence types often need.  Along with investors, of course.

The “height versus width” analogy is also useful when sizing up people for promotion when you’re running a business.  And, if you’re wanting to move up the food chain, it’s good to remember that the good manager not only has decent width of knowledge, but to be really good, you’ve got to have vertical skills as well – knowing all the high people or resources to reach out and utilize.  It’s this gridding concept that makes like a very manageable game.

In practice, IF one were building a home intelligence platform for either writing, news collecting, or investing, the “right” thing would be a combination of approaches:  There is some hierarchical data about companies (like where to find the latest 8/10K filings, as well as setting up Google news searches for your target of interest (set the Google news alerts to send as soon as things happen – you don’t want a daily digest -that’s too slow for us!).

Getting Full Use of Shortcuts

Once you have a file structure, the next problem is learning to use shortcuts effectively.

It’s similar to creating a File, except when you get prompted to create a shortcut, you can put in a web address.  And name your shortcut.

Let’s say that you were interested in just how “hot” things were getting up in Ferguson, MO during the recent problems.  You might find a stream looked good over at http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/ctid/1573/web. 

You would paste that in as the shortcut’s target and give it a useful name.  Admittedly, my name wasn’t particularly creative, but it was easy to create.

Some other housekeeping details:  On the www.broadcastify scanners you need to select which feed you want and yes, a serious news junkie would have a subscription to several such feeds in order to really be “plugged in” to what’s going on.

In our little exercise (building a modest intel platform in advance of a POSSIBLE earthquake) a couple of hours of effort results in a very solid little platform that will give me seismographs, cops, first responders, traffic cameras, a whole slug of news-talk radio stations and much more.

If/when something happens, you will want to have all your news or intel gathering preset as shortcuts in an easy to use format.

On our media server, the shortcuts become streaming music pushbuttons for Seattle’s KNDD and San Francisco’s KMEL, along with all news stations up and down the coast.  Takes only a few minutes to set up and it’s really fun once you master some of the basic concepts here.

And yes, the same principles apply to keeping track of companies.  However, just be aware of what we talked about earlier:  If you have 20 company CEO’s Facebook pages on shortcuts, along with their chiefs of marketing and accounting (a surprising number have FB, Linked-In and/or Twitter accounts) just be aware of what we talked about earlier with regard to the “public information” problem when you go making trades:  Too many winners which cause the options writers to write big checks can trigger a visit.

Not that L-I, FB, and Tweets aren’t public…but you start getting too good at this stuff and you can pop up in filters.  You don’t want that – remember “The Man” has an employee in the gubmint which is not there to ensure “fairness.”  If you don’t KNOW that “fairness” line is a load of crap, go ask those winners in Atlantic City who won because the House made a mistake and they seized on the opportunity.

Judge basically told them, if it wasn’t luck, they wouldn’t keep their winnings…

Life ain’t fair – and there’s nothing more asymmetric than information warfare – in either direction.

Oh  – if nothing else?  You’ll have a dandy time on your desktop with local all-news stations in the top 50 markets because you can get a very good sense of what’s going on around the country by not only listening to local news and comment, but also listening to local weather and advertisements…

Have fun with it!  It’s the replacement for shortwave listening, but that will be back after the big EMP events to come…but maybe those won’t be in this lifetime….

———————- end of extracted portion ——————-

This concept has a simple and direct application that is of interest to skitterish investors.

You set up a Google News alert.  Use a couple of key words like “gold –sports” so you get stories about gold but not the asinine stuff about “gold medals” in sports.

Set your Google Alerts up to send you an email any time a new news story crosses.  Or, maybe you might want to have something like “Deutsche Bank” as a news alert.  It’s all up to you.

Now comes the important part:  In order to manage all this wave of content that will come into your email inbox, make a new subfolder somewhere called “Gold”  (or DB, or whatever).

Then, when the next Google Alert on point lands in your Inbox, right click (in Outlook, anyway) and create a rule.  If I was tracking concerns about famine, my rule and alert might look like this:

Now the key thing here is set up your automation sources (Google News is great for this) and then let your email program do all the dirty work of routing all your email to where you want it to go.

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With the Dow futures down a couple of hundred (actually it’s more), the first thought that crossed my mind was “Gee, one of the Chinese markets must be back from going Lunar…”

Well, sure as (Insert your favorite term here), yes the Hong Kong market was back and instead of being King Kong, it had a better than 3% beat-down. In fact, it was almost a 4% beat-down.

Now, should the U.S. go through something like that, based on the Wednesday close, of 15,914, the drop would come in at 613 points..

Is this what I expect today?  No, of course not.  That would be too simple and too logical.  At least until Janet Bringer of Free Money is done talking to the Senate.  Then?  Well, you never know, but a couple of hundred down pretty much seems baked in the cake.

Besides, Ms.

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Say, that does sound like a power breakfast, doesn’t it?

Naturally, we don’t condone drinking before 5PM at the absolute earliest.  This may explain the numerous globes I keep on hand… (kidding, of course…)

But the three concepts do all tie together.

The first point is that the Robotics Industry Association issued a mighty savory press release Wednesday which we want you to read carefully because, in case you haven’t noticed, there is a future coming.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA – Robot orders and shipments in North America set new records in 2015, according to Robotic Industries Association (RIA), the industry’s trade group.

A total of 31,464 robots valued at $1.8 billion were ordered from North American companies during 2015, an increase of 14% in units and 11% in dollars over 2014. Robot shipments also set new records, with 28,049 robots valued at $1.6 billion shipped to North American customers in 2015.

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I bet you don’t know what Convexcatious Economics are, do you?

Done feel bad, Tonto:  I just made it up.  Has do with with an odd state of simultaneous convexity and concavity of formerly partial-workable mathematical hieroglyphics (mined from thin air) used by quants.  Some of which should be starting to seize-up now.

And therein lies this morning’s grief counseling session as the Dow futures point down 135.  (Don’t call it the LONG GRINDER DOWN yet, but we are moving that way a bit.)

One of the big discussion points on the net today is the little matter of Janet’s talk tomorrow with the House banking folks, which will be followed with her talk with the Senate banking types on Thursday.  Re-runs are a pernicious effect of capitalism.

Tomorrow’s Peoplenomics report will be especially interesting.  Not only should we have a look at the pre-game speech around 8:30 tomorrow, 7:30 Central, but if conditions warrant, we may go through and do some analysis. 

Like the days when the Housing data from Case/S&P and whoever hits, it’s possible we will have a two-parter for subscribers.  Though I avoid actual work like the plague.

But that’s not the biggie. 

The biggie is this problem Elaine and I have been struggling with – and I know we are not alone on this – a subscriber asked for a discussion and simple model.

I won’t get into too much detail here but the problem is simply stated this way: 

If you believed that we were going into the summer of 1929 – and remember the market hit its high in September of that year – would you sell everything and go to cash stored in government bonds, and wait out the two to four years for a good bottom to be in, and then move into that dream home which would be for sale at about 17-cents on today’s dollars?

Our problem, out here on the ranch in East Texas, is “Where would we go?” 

We were cruising through a bunch of homes on www.Trulia.com  yesterday asking the same  question as before:  If the world is going to get really, really ugly, do we want to be on 30 paid-off acres with low taxes (road issues aside), or do we want to be in an urban area where there will be gobs of people, some of whom many not be inclined to “play nicely with others” if you follow.

Anyway, it’s a hell of a topic…and we’ll get into the models and thinking on that tomorrow on the www.peoplenomics.com side of things.  Subscription details above and we have an extremely high satisfaction rate because people can ask common sense questions (like this one) and we kick things around and sometimes come up with cool ideas. 

I mean besides being in cash or short with out Aggregate Index models and such since December or early January, depending on how you use the model.

Which circles us back to the problem this morning:  I mean other than going back to bed and just waiting for the Fed boss to chat up Congress tomorrow.

It will be the end of the week before the titans of Asia are back on their usual schedule because of the fire-monkey Lunar New Years (I know, you’re thinking “Aren’t fire-monkeys something that come flying out of the butt after extreme spicy food? “ No…this is a Chinese calendar deal…).  But volatility is in the bag for the rest of the week, seems to me.

The futures are looking to open down a bit. (-135 is now a bit.)  About the only real news items driving today seem to be that the National Federation of Independent Business report is out:

After Modest Gain Last Month, Small Business Optimism Takes a Stumble

NFIB Survey shows small business owners wary of future economic conditions.

A couple of highlights from the report, if I may?

About a quarter of the survey respondents (which are small businesses) were planning to make capital expenditures.  But on the flip side, the percentage that actually expect the economy to improve was down 21%. 

But there were 29% more with job openings.  Offsetting this, though the earning trend was down 18%. 

You see how this goes, right?  Here is something bad, but over here is something good, but wait!  Here is something good  but there is something bad.  Goes back and forth and that’s when sometimes a headline as a thought summary actually does work, unless you happen to be an NFIB member and can compare your company with others…  In the meantime though, details are over here if you need them for a school report or for something to “wow” the peeps in the conference room when you talk about “Gee, how are we going to increase sales when the economy sucks wind?”

See where we are??  Yes, we have finally arrived at the first legit point of this morning’s ramble: Does the Fed really have the legal power to take rates negative?

There’s a marvelous Bloomberg piece over here which is wondering much the same thing.  What they have some to is “Fed May Lack Legal Authority for Negative Rates: 2010 Memo.”

Sorting through the Fed mess right now is almost hopelessly complex unless you know what the hell an IOER is (the Bloomberg story didn’t cover this in detail):  It’s the rate the Fed pays as Interest On Excess Reserves.

What will the Fed do?  I mean come on!  they have had almost six years to study the 11-page memo over here…and someone besides me may be wondering “How do you raise rates on the one hand – the touted Fed hike – while going to negative rates out the back door without everyone seeing what the Fed is doing as a HUGE PONZI  deal?”

Granted, you won’t have six years to figure it out, but the 11 pager is over here.  About the time you grok to what’s hap’nin, the Fed will have danced past the Fools on the Hill with Janet leading and you’ll be late to the party once again.

That’s OK; we’re going to help.

The guts of the 2010 Fed memo is on Page 7 which says (in part, but this is what matters):

“Legal and Practical Obstacles for Setting the IOER Rate Below Zero There are several potentially substantial legal and practical constraints to implementing a negative IOER rate regime, some of which would be binding at any IOER rate below zero, even a rate just slightly below zero.  Most notably, it is not at all clear that the Federal Reserve Act permits negative IOER rates, and more staff analysis would be needed to establish the Federal Reserve’s authority in this area.  In addition, the Federal Reserve computer systems used to calculate and manage interest on reserves do not currently allow for the possibility of a negative IOER rate, although these systems could be modified over time if needed.18  Moreover, if negative IOER rates were to pull Treasury bill yields into negative territory, the Treasury would encounter difficulties because it cannot accept negative rates at its auctions, although presumably it could modify its systems as well.  Finally, as discussed further below, at sufficiently negative IOER rates, DIs might opt to shift a significant quantity of their reserve balances into currency.

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For a good while I have been writing you the occasional note about what it’s like to age.  Although I am not keen on the idea, it certainly beats the alternatives.

In the past, we have explored different additives and supplements like L-Arginine, and what’s the best vitamin I have found and so forth.  Stevia in the tea and so forth.

A couple of updates as we do a drive-by of these this morning:  I have been using Source Naturals L-Arginine L-Citrulline Complex, 240 Tablets-1000mg which seems to be a very good energy-booster. No change on that one.  Ditto the best vitamin I have found so far:  NOW Foods Adam Superior Men’s Multi, 90 Softgels. 

Not that Elaine every doubts my judgment (she still gets in the airplane with me driving, right?) but she did a whole passel of research on her own and ended up with (look surprised here) the female version of the formula I take –  which has some lady-stuff in it and is under the Now Foods Eve, Women’s Multi Vitamin, Softgels, 180-Count brand.

There are a couple of other things that seem to optimize me:  I am a huge fan of Source Naturals Huperzine A, 200mcg, 120 Tablets but my buddy up in Gig Harbor, who will be coming down here for about 10-days in April thinks that they shouldn’t be used all the time.

On the other hand,  there have been some really savory research papers and they all seem to point to the same thing:  Huperzine A does seem to help the brain function better…and I will leave it to you and your doctor to figure out what the right period of use should be.  (Readers have suggested I need more brain function, lol.)

Now, this is not to say that Huperzine A is the only show in town when it comes to brain enhancement.  There are several others that I should mention in passing.  Now Foods Soy-free Phosphatidyl Serine Tablets, 150 mg, 60 Count might be worth a try along with some of the more conventional anti-aging of the brain supplements…Gingko Biloba comes to mine.  So does coffee.

Another one that I take rather religiously is NOW Foods L- Carnitine Tartrate 1000mg, 100 Tablets.  Here’s a 2002 article off the PubMed government database with some thoughts on how it may help after exercise  and this one on general cardiac assistance.

Here’s a PubMed article out just this month that explains how a moderate carnitine deficiency makes myocardial injury more dangerous (if you happen to be a lab rat).  So, even though I don’t think of myself as a rat, there seems to be some good for the heart and possibly brain from this stuff.

And, let’s not leave out my life-long buddy’s recommendation to me on Rhodiola Rosea, which is now in the mix.

REMINDER:  This is NOT healthcare advise.  Talk to your doctor before “owning and playing with your own personal walking/talking chemistry set. “

Eventually, though, we are going to get to the point of this morning’s discussion. 

Namely, I am back on kelp pills now.  Not a lot, just one per day.

A little discussion is in order.

The other day, a kindly reader suggested that I look up something called “pulse pressure”.  Turns out (and have fun running this down) that if pulse pressure (the big number minus the little number) is greater than 50, or 60, it is a better indicator later in life of heart problem potential than blood pressure..

Since I put my numbers in the column, the reader said my “60” was a little on the high side and maybe I should do some additional reading.

A bit of family history here.  My dad’s side of the family has always high very low pulse rates.  In fact, when my dad was recovering from a spinal fusion in the 1960’s (an occupational hazard of being a fire fighter and running into a burning building with 120 pounds of hose on your shoulder with absolutely no warm up) the nurse at the old Seattle General work him up and asked him if he was alive.

“Well, yeah…I was asleep, though…”

His pulse had dropped to something like 43 and they seemed concerned about it.

My resting pulse, when I am not augmenting with vitamins just right, tends to drop way, way down, too.  It was common of one of my aunt’s to nearly faint after sitting a while…takes the heart a number of seconds to ramp up from under 50 to a useful 65-70 without getting dizzy.

So there I was reading about bradycardia  (slow pulse rate) because when I am in a serious writing mode, I go into what I describe as something of a “writer’s trance.”

My breathing gets deep, the heart slows down.  I mean 52-55…and for me, that has been “the zone” for a long time.

What was going on?

After a couple of hours of reading, it became clear (at least to me) that there might be something like a sub acute iodine deficiency at play.

Now, I want to say this again:  This is absolutely not something to mess with unless your doc is onboard ahead of time – it’s not proper to tell him about it during an ER visit if you follow.

But here’s the point:  I went through some of the symptoms of the bradycardia and iodine deficiency and it was I found myself saying “Hey!  That’s ME!!!”

Turns out that a LOT of people don’t get enough iodine.  And, if you look around the web, you will find there are many, many discussions about it.

Today…after being on this slight iodine enhancement with one Kelp pill per day, I am seeing a change in my heart rate and BP.  As of earlier today it was 115 over 75 which is a pulse pressure of 40.  But even more significant to me, my pulse rate was up to 71 resting, instead of the low 50’s….

Hot damn!

This got me into a discussion with Elaine, since she has been shy on iodine, too.  (She’s convinced that a shot of Glenlivit (12) or Glen Fiddich (15) helps her to feel good.  And who would argue the point?

My next experiment will be with an experiment I found over the course of my travels around the web.  Has to do with buying some 2% iodine solution and making a circle of the tincture on your stomach.  The “Equipment” for the experiment is a $12-bill with which you buy J.CROW’S® Lugol’s Solution of Iodine 2% 2oz and make this 50-=cent sized painting.

If I understand what I am reading:  If the iodine circle disappears in less than 12-hours, then it’s something to be looked into by a doc because it may signal your4 body is so short on iodine that it is resorting to transdermal absorption.

In the meantime I’m wondering how much of the processed food out there actually uses iodized salt in it?  If you have any results on this, please advise.  Sea Salt doesn’t have nearly as much iodine as iodized table salt, but the thinking is that trace elements matter, too…

WARNING:  This is all part of a conversation and is NOT MEDICAL ADVICE.  Talk to your doctor.  Get proper tests done.  This is just a cheapskate in the woods talking here and I don’t want to hear from your next of kin.

Still, it’s an interesting enough path to go down on research that I thought I would pass it along.  Some of the symptoms of iodine deficiency according to what I read include a slight puffiness, some fatigue (mine may come from actually working so much) and a few others.

I never for one second in my under 50 years thought that I would become one of those health obsessed oldsters who takes a dozen vitamins a day.

But with 67 coming later this month (the precise day is classified) I am pleased to still be around, feeling good and just as spunky as I was at 50.

Mr.

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I’m sure someone will notice that Denver won the Super Bowl on Sunday, proclaim that it’s a bearish signal and may in and of itself account for the market getting creamed today.

Nothing could be further from the Truth, however.

As we put pixels to photons (or whatever), a few very uncomfortable facts have to be held. in mind.

1.  Amidst all the HS&J (hype, shuck, and jive) around sports this weekend, most people failed to notice that Iran is on the verge of abandoning the U.S. Dollar (USD) as the basis for settling their oil business.

To make this a kind of triple slap in the face, it tells us a couple of additional things, as well.  One is that while many in the West think that the EU will collapse into the Second Depression ahead of the U.S. Iran by virtue of the militant brand of religion-marketing, may have grand designs on eventually subsuming Europe which is already well on its way to becoming Eurabia.

Here’s the count:  To think the Euro is better than the Yen, Rubble, or Dollar?  That’s one.  Two, to have an invading force already hard at work changing loyalties in the EU is number two.  And number three?  We just pissed away $150-billion and the Obama administration appeals distinctly like a troop of idiots, even with what’s her name trying to run for office.

2.  Second point is this:  As we have been explaining, China is trying to build a Middle Class.  And they are working on warrior values and chivalry (see Coping section).  And North Korea is their lap dog.

The launch of the North Korean long-range rocket this weekend is being widely condemned, but guess what?  They did it.

In response, the U.S.

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First item of business is pretty simple and straightforward: 

China is now in the process of recruiting more male teachers in order to teach young Chinese boys how to grow up to become men.

I can’t make this up.

Says so, right here in this article in  the NY Times this weekend.  A key quote from a teacher’s talk with students about history:

““Men have special duties,” he said. “They have to be brave, protect women and take responsibility for wrongdoing.”

Which gets us to a very interesting question:  How is it that the Chinese have re-contacted chivalry while the U.S. largely can’t even spell the word anymore?

What the Chinese are doing is an affront to every sexual minority marketer in the land formerly known as America!  Why, at this rate, China will raise a middle class with a values system that we have – over the past 50 years – turned our backs on in America.

The word Chivalry, by the way, in common  use means:

“…the combination of qualities expected of an ideal knight, especially courage, honor, courtesy, justice, and a readiness to help the weak.”

Something is terribly wrong in China!  Has the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee failed to remind their comrades that total equality for women, gays, etc.

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This morning we do a second chapter of our Second Depression Handbook as we look at a very important link that all major depressions seem to hold in common.

Along with that, we’ll have a few remarks on other items, including our earthquake discussion on “earthquake tired” from the UrbanSurvival column of Friday which – as a whole bunch of readers have noted, nailed the 6.4 in Taiwan.

But above all, we will look at the issues in the charts as next week shapes up to be a kind of “last chance” in our Aggregated Indexes work.

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Yeah, yeah.

We will get to this morning’s jobs report in a sec.

But first, a number of readers have asked me whether the world is ending.

The answer, I’m afraid, will not be very satisfying.

The main attention-getter seems to be the Baltic Dry Cargo Index.  That index as of this morning stands at 298. 

To put this into perspective, we know that when the economy has been percolating along in the past that this index has been previously in the 1,000 and higher, level.

There are likely two things going on here:  First is the economy is experiencing another near-death experience.  As explained yesterday, you don’t have a percolating economy unless you have growth.  To have growth, however, government has (stupidly) put us into a box.

We have trapped millions of young people in the New Vicious Cycle:  Can’t get job, so can’t pay college loans.  Since the jobs they are finding pay terribly, they have to spend every dime on mandatory health care.  Everyone knows healthcare for American could be 20-50% CHEAPER if we we cut the insurance companies out of the middle of it…but no one in Washington, which we call the District of Corruption with reason, is willing or able to do anything because the insurance types are like the unstoppable force in physics.  If you want to get re-elected….and so it goes.

So the normal recovery from this mess is not happening yet.

Since people are seeing disposable incomes decline (a fact papered-over in nonsensical government schemes to count paying off your car as “savings” and such) there is not much going on.

In 2008, the labor participation rate was about 66.7% and unemployment was 5.5%.  We’ll get to this morning’s report in a minute.  But the main thing to focus on is quality of jobs.

Now back to this cargo thing:  Yes, the Baltic Dry is screaming “End of the World!  Everyone Flee from Street!”

But there are some important differences between now and 2008.

I don’t know how many transportation companies you’ve been in senior management of.  My only experience was in the airline industry.  But here, the cost of jet fuel was about 50% of costs.  And some portion, perhaps 7%, was in the debt service of a couple of tax-advantaged off-shore leases.

Here’s my first point (I know, you’ve been waiting patiently):  In summer of 2008 the price of oil was running $145’ish.  This morning it is in the $33 range if we split the difference between West Texas and Brent. 

A little simple math: The cost of oil is 23% (22.75%, but it’s easy so we don’t mess with decimal points until after noon, or so) of the 2008 level.

And when we look at long-term Bond rates, the 10-year was running right around 4%.  Today, the 10-year is 1.86% (*although this is all hopelessly simplified).

Another measure in the HARPEX container index.  This one hasn’t taken out the 2009 low  of 275.  Instead, it is edging up and down to the recent lows of 383.  In a really hot economy, talking 2007-2008 here, this index topped 1,400.

Now, a really great indicator that we talk about with subscribers over on our www.peoplenomics.com site is the Association of American Railroads’ Rail Time Indicators report.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Feb. 3, 2016 – The Association of American Railroads (AAR) today reported weekly U.S.

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The first bit of Woo this morning was that after working for about 8-hours on Thursday, I decided to take a 2-hour nap. 

This is not common for me, at all.  Usually I’ve got more pee & vinegar in me than a SaniCan outside a salad bar.

This was odd in that it felt like a phenomena we have talked about before:  something I call the “earthquake tiredness.”

It doesn’t happen all the time, but the sequence of events seems to be something like this:  I’ll be going along with the usual energy levels, and then at no time in particular, there will come this wave of dog tired over me. 

It usually passes after a nap – anywhere from 2 to 12 hours will do the trick – and then all the energy levels are back to normal, if not higher.  Thing is, there is usually a 6+ earthquake along in the 48-hours after the nap.

For sure, you could make the argument that 6+ quakes are frequent enough that I should not be surprised by the proximity of one.  And I’ve been through all the math.  Still, it’s a different texture of tired, if that makes sense.

Doesn’t seem to be health related.  I’m smart enough to check blood pressure on the spot and take a second baby aspirin and 500 mg of turmeric, but it doesn’t seem to be related to a health issue.  BP 68/127 with a serious load of Folgers.

My pet theory is that some people – millenniums back – somehow got an “early warning” about quakes to come down at the DNA level.  By warning the Neanderthal versions of Ure to sleep in advance of a quake, we could be out of the caves and such.  Those who didn’t have the gene were at higher risk.

To tell the truth, this is an absurd projection on my part.  But, here in the past 10-years or so, I’ve seen even dumber things that this turned into a 10-minute set of talking points and a big name publisher book and a 300 page book.  ISYN.

Besides, now that I have explained the theory, there should be no quake for a while in order to make a fool out of you-know-who.

Which isn’t that difficult, just so’s you know.

The Case of the Flipped Battery

There is one other minor woo to mention and this is a lot like a scene from The Adjustment Bureau, which is one of my favorite flicks.

I have a cheap Sony portable radio on the nightstand on my side of the bed.  (Specifically it is a Sony SRF59SILVER AM/FM Walkman Stereo Radio which I bought for $18.98 on May 7 of last year and which is presently selling for $37 something here in the land of “No Inflation” but that’s not my point…)

The thing about the radio is that it runs on a single AA battery and that will last several weeks of intermittent, got up to pee and can’t get back to sleep, kind of listening.  Half the time the radio gets left on.

Anyway, I have a routine with the radio.  When I am about to sleep again, I simply lower the radio to the floor next to the bed by way of the headphone wires and then lower the headphones as low as I can and drop.

Every “next morning” the radio is there and ready to work again.  If I forget to pick it up, the Elainamator will ensure nothing is on the floor not properly authorized.

So one night last week, the radio wouldn’t work.  “Well, fine, battery is due…”   So I went out to my media chair beside which there are two shortwave radios, a Sony SWF-7600 and a Tecsun PL-660.  Swiped a single battery and put it in.

Nothing!

Then, on a hunch, I flipped the battery in the other way.

Presto!  It works.

But then so did the battery I took out…

Naturally, I figured the spousal unit had “helped”  but she denied ever having touched the radio.  I got the short “I don’t pick up after you…” reminder.

Now this has been bugging me since last week.  Who the hell turned the battery around?

Elaine didn’t (she can be taken at her word).  The cat doesn’t usually get the right batteries – he says the AAA’s are easier for him to paw.  And that’s it.  We’ve been home…no one else comes in the house.  No cat stations around here for Z.

I know this may sound like a trivial thing to mention in a column, but I am worried that this could be a sign of early onset dementia with my too quickly advancing age.  Only a couple of weeks until 66 disappears into the sunset of memories.

Which get’s me to wondering:  Is one of the signs of early on-set aging putting batteries in radios backwards while sleep-listening?

There is no logical answer on this one.  Other than the Philip K.

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We begin with the daily reading of Gospel here at the East Texas Synod of the Church of the Almighty Basis Point, which my buddy Howard founded.  Please open our Hymnals to Page 317 and read from the book of Fortune.   

“And thus, there came a Miracle on the street.

Lo, the market dropped 300 points.  And verily, the quote of the flaming Dollar fell with it.  And by the arrival of the Faithful’s tears, it had fallen from 91.50 to 90.03 Europe.  The archangel Angela was blessed.

So the Son of Profit spoke to the assembled Multitude:

“Yee see?  The dollar dropped 1.6%!

And this means, from it’s low in the Session of the Almighty, that the daughters of Profit Dow and Profit NAZ should rise according to their effort.

And it was So!

The Daughter Dow, who had Fallen to her (15,960) knees was immediately healed by the 1.6% currency swing and rejoiced to the close up 183.

And the People were Amazed and fell silent. 

“How can this be?” they beseeched. “Is this Fall of purchasing power also connected?” they wondered…

And the Son of Profit spoke again:

“Yea verily, it is so.  More paper is needed when the underlying value fails in the judgment of Global Eyes.”

He then continued:

“Yea, though we walk in the Valley of Rate Hikes, certain asymmetries will arise that will call Your Faith into question.  Remain faithful to the Basis Point.

Fear not.  For the Archangel Janet shall pump you and please you, and make false profits arise unto you and give you some peace.

Amen.”

Somewhat sated, the crowd wandered off.  Still Dazed and confused, for they knew not in their Hearts why a Fed rate can go up and  the 10-year Treasury rate fall in massive disproportion.

So as they left, the Son of Profit called after them:

“You ain’t getting this shit, are you? Come back here!”

And so, with another turn of the Orb is upon us, we stand well-satisfied with the currency exchange-rate bump which goosed the Dow that propelled the Gold that expanded the Silver that lived in the House that Jack built. 

And all traceable to the Burning Bush, which we all know is powered by gas seeps and sitting on a Queen or Jack-sized formation in the land of Profit.

We now return you to the un-sane world to continue the dispensation.  Gimme an Amen and drop something in the collection plate.  Thanks, Bubba.

Related?  This Is How the National Prayer Breakfast Got Its Start or Ben Carson: Evangelicals should think twice about Ted Cruz.

Or These Are The Most (& Least) “Sinful” Cities In The U.S.

Dollar is down a good bit today, ergo gold is up…

With futures down 79 are we the only place on the net that understands it takes more paper to buy value and stocks should rise later today?  After the opening – which we call the amateur hour…

Note from the Alternative Reality:

This is some discussion about how artificial intelligence may really be working the markets.  But I prefer the first version this morning.

That’s because in the AI version of markets, only the big dollar AI crowd can do the pump and dumps leaving the rest of us (not running a Yale endowment) to be the dumpees.

Sons of Job:  Cuts up 218%

Keeping with our light-hearted (or light-headed) view of things this morning, here comes the Challenger, Gray and Christmas (so as not to be confused with Challenge, Gray and Chanukah) Job Whack Report.

Oh, wait, the press release seems to read more politely:

“Last month represents the highest monthly tally since July 2015, when cuts reached 105,696.

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I was about half-way through an interview with Jake Fox at Black Tower Radio up in (is that you?) Rochester when the global, repetitive nature of the human condition hit me like a ton of bricks.

Jake had made the mistake of asking a logical question and I’m not sure he was prepared for an answer of the length delivered.

I don’t do a lot of radio interviews lately – just enough to get back into my “talker mode” from the broadcasting days now and then.  Heck: One question and I can go on seemingly forever, or until the engineers turn the transmitter off at 3 AM for maintenance.

I figure this ought to make me a marvelously popular radio show guess because with one well-chosen question, a host can send out for a pizza, detail their car out front, or take a good nap.

But it wasn’t the length of the answer so much as the image the flew by as I was speaking that I caught and wanted to share with you this morning.

The answer I was giving morphed into a rap on why the planet is (more or less) screwed.

Went something like this:

The reason that kids today aren’t buying homes is so many are looking at the world around us and asking “Why would I bring an innocent child into a world in these conditions?”

So demand for Housing ain’t what it used to be.

Except everyone in government knows that without growth, the whole economy implodes because growing an economy is the one thing that (crony) capitalism actually does well.

Knowing this dirty little secret, government does what it does best:  Makes up money and grabs more authority.  The attack on cash is just a convenience for government to grab every nickel they can.  Little to do with terrorism or crime, but you knew that…

The growth problem is why there is a new real estate loan I heard about the other day:  It would allows first time home buyers a chance to buy a home with 3% down.  97% of the purchase would go on an ultra low 30-year mortgage.

Off site reference read about Conventional 97 Loans here.

Don’t have a down payment?  Fine.  This new program will give you 3% for a down as a second mortgage.

But now here’s the making up money part.  After making your payments on the second for some period (like 3 to 5 years) then the second is forgiven and you effectively would have gotten a new house on something right next door to zero down.

Except  that I’m not too optimistic about this since people today are not likely to actually have money for this because of student loan debt. 

I trust you saw the note the other day about how student loan debt was heading for the 20-trillion range in a few years and will collapse the economy on its own weight?

But that’s the way things are because so many people have been pushed at gunpoint (If it’s an IRS declaration, it might as well be) into buying Health Care Insurance./

So we begin to see the awful pattern start to emerge here:  We are not able to sell a lot of whatever the Next Big Thing is because people don’t have homes and home equity.

They don’t have homes because their money is going to insurance companies.

And even when that’s done, there is the series of student loans that have millions buried. 

And once all that’s done, we’re back to realistically looking at the world and seeing infinitely increasing taxes, continuously watered-down money, and now let’s toss Zika virus into the the great testicular roulette wheel of Life.

Somewhere, I paused for a breath and the topic went on to other matters.

One of the “learnings of the day” was that all of the rally in the stock market Wednesday can be attributed to the drop in the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar.

Yeah, I know…that’s not supposed to work that way…”strong dollar” has been one of the silliest political idiocies ever uttered.

What that does is means we have been paying artificially low prices for imported goods, which in turn has resulted in cheap energy and cheap goods from China (and a lack of plants to make things being built in America.).

There is, under the hypercomplexity model, not end of clever ways to apply economic patches, work-arounds, and hot-fixes.

But, in the End, all we are doing is trying to keep a Swiss-cheesed inner tube pumped up by putting on patch after patch after patch.

No one is talking about how the layer of patches is now several feet thick all over the inner tube.  Instead, they utter even crazier ideas like how a Constitutional Convention might be able to “build us a new tire…”

Sadly, when we talk about things like building a new tire, the odds become nearly 100-percent that it won’t be as good as the old tire.

When you step back mentally, far enough, what fades into focus is this idea that the whole World is evolving like a Microsoft operating system.

I mean, the idea is great…but it’s going to need a few patches, maybe a service pack or three, a heaping side-order of hot-fixes, and for those terminally incapable of thinking life a software engineer, a bevy of Mr. Fixit’s to attempt to put things right.

I’m pretty sure if Bill Gates, or whoever is running the joint up in Redmond these days, was running the World, that we would be on Service Pack 2 with at least 3 patches for security features and a whole bunch of new drivers to install.

And that’s why the presidential election is such a disappointment on the republican side.  The R’s don’t even have a Release Candidate yet.

And have the democratic Release Candidates could be indicted and taken off the table.

We live in a world where, like God, we’re busily creating computers in our own image.

As we look around the sorely F/U’ed world today, we can’t fault the Jews, Muslims, and Christians going off on their end times search for one very simple yet profound reasons:

The World needs a major Update not just a pile of new hot-fixes.

Why heck, everyone who’s sane is “looking for an update” and can’t say as I blame ‘em.

As for religions as business models, have you ever wondered how they only release a service pack every 2,000 years or so?

– – – – – – –

There.  A short column for a change.  One that seems to make sense.  Don’t look for that to be a trend…

I’m off to work on  the next chapter of “Peoplenomics:  Second Depression Handbook” while there’s still time.  It’s appearing for Peoplenomics subscribers one chapter at a time as written.  The book will be along one of these days, but a month or three near as I can SWAG.

Getting Older – Ham Radio is still a Pleasure

Late this month, I will be having a birthday as #67 shows up.  Been a fine ride and I am in no hurry to leave.

Most important thing about Life I’ve learned, by the way, is this:

If you live a life where you’re honest with yourself and color inside the lines of society, you don’t have to every look back over your shoulder.  And you can keep an eye on what’s ahead.

Yesterday, my friend the retired Major who’s been a pal since we were both age 3 and some fraction sent me a marvelous book:  Reflections Transmission Lines and Antennas (Radio amateur’s library).

He’ll be coming down to visit around the first of Tax Month, or so.  Since we are both fairly serious about the hobby, we will likely be putting up a few antennas, taking the tower down for fresh cable up to the beam antenna.  Yes, even LMT-400 ages and I need to do some welding on the tower, too.

We didn’t get into ham radio until age 13 in any serious way.  In 1963, however, we were busily assembling ham transmitters from kits.  For me an Eico 753 kit with factory-made Hallicrafters HA-5 VFO.  He was more a Heathkit man; HR-10 receiver, DX-60, and the matching VFO.

Over the years, we’ve had different ham radio adventures.  But some of them are really pretty neat.

His son (driving C-17’s for Uncle presently)  married the daughter of a construction magnate who lives not far from Gig Harbor, WA.  And being a smart fellow, he’s picked up a ham ticket to keep a  handy-talkie for prepped for  “…in the event of an actual emergency…”

The construction magnet and my bud were able to use little handy-talkies as the CM pre-ran an ultra-marathon course a while back.  That course was from Ellensburg, WA down to Yakima along the Wenatchee River.  The radio only had 50% coverage though because the ultra-marathon course was hilly and there weren’t a lot of repeaters around.

Fast forward to this weekend:  the construction magnate will be running a warm-up marathon up in the San Juan Islands of Washington State.

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