George Ure

For one thing, the price of oil is back under $31 basis the West Texas.

Oddly, Asia was not in the crapper and in fact the Shanghai market was up better than 2%.

Europe, on the other hand, is doing its damnedest to drop that much.  In doing so, the U.S. will like fall 1%, or so, and that should set up a decline in China overnight.  Back in serious trading days, set-ups like this would have me eyeing Asian ADRs (American Depository  Receipts, stocks traded by proxy here).

Well, gee, ain’t this gonna be fun.

I suppose you wonder what’s going on.  The answer is simple.

As you know, we recently hit a major trend channel bottom and we have bounced off that to the upside.  The market now should march a ways up the slightly climbing trend bottom for a ways while everyone comes to terms with the idea that a Wave IKV bottom is really in.

From there, we should make a major move up to about the middle of the trend lines, then pull back, and then go on to new all-time highs.

BUT (and this is a big booty of a BUT if you know what I mean…) IF the market slams down through the bottom of the trend line and stays there for a while…only to come up to the bottom of the trend channel, then we will have to renumber the wave count.

In the “Nightmare on Wall Street” version of the future, we would discover that what seems to fit as a Wave IV was really the beginnings of a I down.  And the recent decline to the trend was just a (1) of I down.

And if that’s the case, we would have to brace for THAT in turn forming an even larger 1 down…and pretty soon my friend Robin Landry’s work, that looks for a sub-1,000 Dow over time shows up sooner than later.  Until the wave structure delivers some new highs, we are still in the danger zone where a Failed V could occur…so we will sit back and watch the herd to see which way they’re going to stampede.

No point trying to be in the middle of the stampede, is there?

Zika virus is a terrible new “left field” event.  A few technical details from the WHO – which has declared a pandemic now:

Key facts

Zika virus disease is caused by a virus transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes.

People with Zika virus disease usually have a mild fever, skin rash (exanthema) and conjunctivitis.

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(Shreveport, LA)  So, you’re wondering: What are George & Elaine doing in Shreveport?

Answer:  I have made a resolution to keep our old Lexomobile until the eventual arrival of “self-driving” cars.

We will also cover the world’s most convoluted accounting problem, too…but in due course.  It’s going to take a bit of explaining.

There is a piece from a while back (maybe a year?  One loses track of time at this stage of life) about how such machines will change the way we live.  By the time the analysis was done, it was almost too good to be true.  The only part that is not-so-good is the price.

Still, consider what it’s going to be like to have a car which…

• Will find its own damn gas station with the cheapest price.
• Will wash itself when it needs to be cleaned.
• Will schedule and keep its own maintenance appointments
• Will potentially END any concerns about drunk driving.
• Will allow you to completely relax and watch the scenery go by…
• And, in the twin bed version of the driverless, you can actually nap, snooze, or sleep all the way across the country on trips. 

To be sure, the media has taken a kind of delish delight in reporting the occasional mishaps that the driverless Googmobiles and others have run into.

Still, it smack of an “anti-future media” and what I mean by this is we have (as a country) lost some of our native ability in American to (language alert) make really cool shit.  Sure, some things like the silicon dolly voice come out of Cupertino, and elsewhere.  But the minute it hits production levels that make sense for the American market “Poof!!”  The manufacturing goes offshore and the money (in Apple’s case) that piles up from huge success hangs offshore too.  No point paying taxes on it, I suppose.

Since we may only buy one more vehicle in our lifetime (assuming someone doesn’t offer me a trade for the old airplane that involves a 911 or Cayman), we sometimes have to leave Palestine, Texas and venture out into the noisy world in order to get certain things done.  For reasons that should be apparent to any free-market economist, the largest Lexus dealership in the world is not in Anderson County, although there’s a good Toyota dealership.

The new dealership in town can’t make a Lexus key.  Lexus here in Shreveport can do so, but only barely.

Lexuses (Lexi?) from the mid 2000’s had one weak spot in their key design.  The plastic that should protect everything has a weakness right where the key stem attaches to the plastic body holding the electronics.  For all we know, there may be a ham sandwich or bag of cat food inside there, too.

Anyway, ours broke on the last long road trip and Elaine didn’t like my idea of repairs.  It involved an assortment of Duco Cement, Super Glue, model airplane cement, and electrical tape.  T’wasn’t pretty, but it did the job.  Until last month.

I ordered a replacement key online – I thought with the push-buttons, but no,  I got the valet key instead.  It will do everything the “special key” will do…it’s just you can’t do it from across the street.

Naturally, the valet key from online needed to be cut and “programmed.”  Which was done for $50-something.  But the dealership didn’t have our old-style key in stock.

After a turn around the dance floor trying to figure out how to solve this, we noticed a display for something called an “Eternity Key.”  Basically, it lets the dealership take the old electronics and key stem and put it into this new “military grade plastic” housing. $117 and change.

Don’t even ask what a military grade of plastic is.  In my short exposure to product design, we just used glass-reinforced injectable goo and it worked fine.  I suppose a stronger binder and a different ratio of glass filling has been assigned a “MIL-STD” but the display either didn’t mention which standard, or I was too dumb to find it.  Regardless, no one in the waiting area was able to inform us on point, either.

After going through the chairs a while longer in the waiting room (1-hour 10 minutes and by now 4 pm) everything was done.  We had two keys that worked and look good. As opposed to a blank part  and one gob of goo with push-buttons when we walked in.

Cost of the repair?  A shade over $187.  But with a “special” key, you really don’t have too much choice.

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A fiery cup at the speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a mighty “Where goes Silver?” echoes across my front yard as the Sun tries to figure out where Texas is.

This may sound a bit melodramatic, but it mat have been the highlight of the day.

You see, Japan was up 2%, the Shanghai was down almost as much, and this morning the mumbletards of Eurabia are down over one percent.

That doesn’t bode well for ‘Merica , formerly a land of borders and common sense.

The Dow will open down a hundred and something and oil has been kicked back under $33 for West Texas and EU oil is down too.

In fact, if there’s anything good in this morning’s review of the futures, the price of copper (a fine little indicator of war jitters because countries are reloaders, too) is back down.  So all the crap over the weekend about South China this, and new islands that is just filler between Iowa stories.

Say, Ted…

-Not to get off onto a side track so early in our morning cuppa, but did you see this Times of Israel note?  “Now deeply Christian, Cruz’s fervor once wasn’t so obvious.”

And there’s this headline, too: Bible prominent in final Cruz pitches to voters.

So here’s the thing:  I get that Ted is trying to work…I mean appeal to…the religious right.

I must be a little off, though, because Ure’s truly was under the impression that America held to the separation of Church and State.

Here’s the thing:  I don’t have any problem with Ted being a Believer and all, BUT when politics and religion mix, its something to keep an eye on. 

Seems to me the only difference between Christians and Muslims getting mixed into politics is which book they reference. 

I’m sure the Texas senator has done the calculus on this, but  beyond a certain point, there may be more moderates to be gained than Born Agains.  Something to ponder, although it’s really too late.

I just go looking for where the church and state have merged and I come up with places like, oh, you know:  Tehran.

Admittedly, on the other side, a large portion of America’s younger voters have no clue what “core values” are…but can we keep ‘em in separate buildings?

Our Lady of Teflon

Meantime, that 22-emails from the Clinton private server have been deemed too classified to be made public.

No worries for the Teflon Lady, though.  A former Inspector General says there will be no indictment.

You and I are not above the law, you see.  But there are “somes that is”…and it’s what keeps America a bad joke in more mentally-honest countries.

I’m trying to work time into my schedule to write a book which might have a title along the lines of:  Masters or Organization:  Gotti and Clinton.  You compare organizational geniuses you want, I’ll pick my own.

Side bets on a low-level bit of collateral damage will be all she wrote?

Personal Incomes and More Fairytales

Just out:  Personal Income and Expenditures….a nearly incomprehensibly discontinuous report where the math never works out.  Here:  Hot off the press release:

“Personal income increased $42.5 billion, or 0.3 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $37.8 billion, or 0.3 percent, in December, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) decreased $0.7 billion, or less than 0.1 percent. In November, personal income increased $44.3 billion, or 0.3 percent, DPI increased $33.4 billion, or 0.2 percent, and PCE increased $59.4 billion, or 0.5 percent, based on revised estimates.

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Being a (semi) retired management & software “slinger” it’s fun every so-often to see if one “still has it.”

So there we were, Sunday morning, coffee on the deck… and we hear noise at the local gravel crushing site down the road from us.

Crap!  It was supposed to be closed by now.

Here I was, thinking I would not really have to go through with my promise to run for County Commissioner if nothing was done to improve the state of local roads.

So far, nothing has changed but I was cool with “letting the clock run.”  Until Sunday morning at a quarter to 8 when heavy equipment noises including the obnoxious back-up beepers started going, again.

What to do?

Well, off to the web services provider.  Bought a website domain name and the cheapest possible hosting plan I could find.  $27 and change for the whole thing. First month of hosting included and $8 a month thereafter.  Works for me.

From there, it was a matter of…

1. Installing the publishing framework.
2. Writing some content
3. Going out and taking some road pictures
4. Adding the pictures to the website  (which meant optimizing and various  monkey-motion)
5. Finishing the optimizing process  (Ure, the speed-tuner)

The result of 5-hours of “Ure-time” may be seen over at www.fixandersonroads.org. 

Not like the local powers (that want to) be aren’t in the dark about what’s going on here.  In fact, I sent a nice email to the County Judge advising him (and the editor of the local paper) of my intentions to get serious on the campaign. 

None of which matters a bit to anyone outside of Anderson County, Texas, except it explains why everyone hereabouts drives a pick-up truck:  It’s slightly faster than driving a Caterpillar D-6 into town, although that’s really a better choice, until you get up to the noisiest piece of road ever driven, which is the local Farm to Market road.  Abbreviated in Texas as an “FM” road, as opposed to a County Road which goes as a “CR.”

But there is one little item that slapped me in the face yesterday as I was screaming through content-generation.  In the tradition of Barrack Hussein O, let me quote from myself here:

“The Ure Vision

Pronounced “Your Vision”

1. Money should be spent based on numbers of users.  Busy roads should get more, quieter roads should get less.  Businesses that damage roads (overweight trucks) should be required to post a damage bond.  The County should allocate funds on condition and traffic counts.  Ever see a traffic counter in Anderson County? I’ve been looking for one for 12-years now!

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Today begins to look like an interesting day to think about getting back into the long side of the market.

Not that we will actually be so silly as to do that; the tools over on the www.peoplenomics.com side of the house are not giving us a green light yet and I invented those tools to keep our personal finances out of the ditch since I am one of those people who tends to fall in love with positions.

Still, we have to look at some of the factors that could lead to rational exuberance – and one of them slapped my yesterday on a drive through Jacksonville, TX.

The price of gas at one of the off-brands on the main drag through town was selling Regular for $1.499 per gallon.    

The Triple A National Fuel Gauge Report shows $1.813 nationally this morning against year-ago prices at $2.044.

Since it seems like most of the cars being sold are getting reasonable mileage, it gets me to wondering whether car travel might be poised to make a recovery this year.

While it’s a bit early for thinking about driving vacations this year with the weather still kind of Itchy and Scratchy for a while yet, it is something to think about when the boss isn’t around.

There is a technical problem:  Even with a strong rally today, the market will not have really gone anywhere this week.  Remember that last Friday’s S&P close was 1,906.90.  So the markets need to “put on some beans” today just to get back to break-even.

Even so, the Futures are kinda pointing this way.  Some reasons?

Well in the Pacific, Japan and China were both up over 2 1/2%.  In Europe, France and Germany were coming up on 3/4% increases, but the Brits were up 1.25% already.

If that kind of EUphoria carries West, that would pump the Dow up 200 and something by the close.  And more important, that would breath live back into the S&P and pop a gain of 20-something for the week.  Any port in a storm.

Still, there’s a long ways to the close and being in cash means we can focus on the important part of life:  Trying to figure out who we pissed off in some previous lifetime to end up on this planet for this time around.

And trying to figure out what really matters besides health, heart, and pocketbook.

GDP’ing All Over Ourselves

Hot off the press release:

Real gross domestic product — the value of the goods and services produced by the nation’s economy less the value of the goods and services used up in production, adjusted for price changes — increased at an annual rate of 0.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015, according to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

In the third quarter, real GDP increased 2.0 percent. The Bureau emphasized that the fourth-quarter advance estimate released today is based on source data that are incomplete or subject to further revision by the source agency (see the box on page 4 and “Comparisons of Revisions to GDP” on page 5).

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Everyone loves a bit of mystery in life.

Since everyone is working (and who has time to call the old folks?) it was a pleasure to catch up a bit with youngest daughter on the phone last night.

Yes, this is the one that got married a few months back after the World’s Toughest Mudder at the MGM Grand.

Turns out their marriage is off to a great start, since they are both into trivia and games.

In the Ancient Book of Ure, there is a set of instructions that says Sex is good for a while, brains are good for a very long time, and the heart is forever.   Mystery keeps everything lasting forever.

As it turns out, daughter (who is a serious gamer) and hubby love to “do mysteries” for one-another.

Since the daughter picked up the latest symphony tickets, she’s having fun with a local mystery she cooked up for the other half.

He has to find his concert ticket.

Gamers have a marvelous sense of play.  So her “mystery for the hubby to solve began with an email from a non-existent spy organization.

He bit.

So a subsequent email explained there is a missing document and he’s being run all over the house and around the neighborhood trying to follow clues that he hopes will get him to his concert ticket, or the daughter will go with a friend of hers.

The game must has consequences, apparently.

I can’t spoil it all, but one of the clues that has been found was in a water bottle with a secret compartment.

Water bottle with a secret compartment?  Oh sure, she explained.  See Amazon and pick one up: Bottle Safe – Dasani.

When introducing the prop, you can get really surreptitious and mix it in with a case of real water, if you want to.

This left Dad with an increasingly familiar “Well, I’ll be dipped and rolled in it…” feeling.  So, there is a glimmer of playfulness and some intelligence in these 30-somethings, after all.

Another clue was on the backside of a picture in the living room.

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Not to ruin breakfast, but check out the latest not-so Durable Goods Order just released by Census:

New Orders  
   New orders for manufactured durable goods in December decreased $12.0 billion or 5.1 percent to $225.4 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today.  This decrease, down four of the last five months, followed a 0.5 percent November decrease.  Excluding transportation, new orders decreased 1.2 percent.  Excluding defense, new orders decreased 2.9 percent.       Transportation equipment, also down four of the last five months, led the decrease, $10.1 billion or 12.4 percent to $71.3 billion.   

Shipments 
   Shipments of manufactured durable goods in December, down two of the last three months, decreased $5.4 billion, or 2.2 percent, to $235.8 billion. This followed a 0.6 percent November increase.  
   Transportation equipment, also down two of the last three months, led the decrease, $5.4 billion or 6.7 percent to $75.1 billion.      

Unfilled Orders  
   Unfilled orders for manufactured durable goods in December, down following two consecutive monthly increases, decreased $5.6 billion or 0.5 percent to $1,187.6 billion.  This followed a 0.1 percent November increase.  
  Transportation equipment, also down following two consecutive monthly increases, led the decrease, $3.8 billion or 0.5 percent to $795.2 billion.

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I can’t count the number of emails making their way around the net in the past 24-hours with provocative headlines like “Fed’s Murdered (the vic) at Roadblock…”

Toss onto that the flurry of emails on the Fed action (not raising rates) at their decision meeting Wednesday that sent the market down more than 200 points before the close.

And with that, we have the “debate” tonight with up to 80-odd percent saying they won’t watch it because no Trump, no audience. 

That and the water heater in Panama’s apartment blew out yesterday..mind you it was covered by a six year guarantee so it failed at 75-months.

Time to do some “cool head” exercises.

Talked to Elaine.  “Dear, you know that porch and desk paint we put on (and discovered after the fact that it said not for exterior use)?  Well, it’s flaking in one spot…:

Yes sir, this was one of those days to be sure.  “Chill, dog,” I told myself.

I don’t have a hot temper  If I did, I’d been doing box time by now.  Seriously.. In fact, I’m more toward  the other extreme:  I like to maintain a kind of Raymond Reddington personality; 5-jumps ahead and ready for whatever.

So this morning a couple of ideas on how to maintain a good attitude so as not to screw up the weekend.

1.  Yes.  One of the people involved in the stand-off in Oregon is dead.  Sorry about that.  BUT you can bet there will be a ton of lawyering on the part of the family members who survived and we will see a ton of videos on Youtube,  Ultimately, though, both sides are partisans.  The demonstrators were distinctly anti BLM and, by extension, anti-government.

I’ve worked in some fairly regulated industries in my time; higher education and broadcasting.  Without exception, I’ve never seen a government auditor get angry.  They don’t have to.   They have the power to tax, the power of a standing Army, and a damn fine Navy.

And, did I mention the government has outlived all of us and can make up money to boot?

I used to tell my kids it is always smarter to run away from al fight you can’t win.  Only an idiot picks a fight where the outcome isn’t certain.

Look, I don’t think BLM land should be off the tax roles.  Since the Feds have some much land, only those areas that at unfenced and open to real public access should be called “public lands.”

Anything else is a real estate operation – and what is the Fed Gov running a real estate operation in huge areas of the West?  State could likely do a better job of it and would certainly meet the test of government closer to the people which is, to my way of thinking where it belongs.

I am sad for the family’s loss, but it was not a fight where there was a clear set-up to win.  The only way to change government without risk of death is at the polls or in a courtroom.  When people forget this, which does happen when wrapped up in a serious grievance, the first rule of fighting is broken.

Never pick a fight you aren’t certain you can win.

There is a word that people often forget, especially when emotions run high and a crowd of people becomes self-reinforcing in their views.  That word is pragmatic.

It means acting in accordance with the data, not theory; high-minded or otherwise.

It’s all about living in the world that is, not trying to live in a world that may become.

The Oregon group was, in a sense right:  Why does GUS (government, U.S.) hold claim to so much land?  I mean other than it’s power and requires taxes to run, and a big supporting infrastructure?

The key is the manner of change:  Confrontation with a government (see Army, Navy,a Air Force and ownership of the Courts) is very unlikely to result in a long-term change to a world without BLM.   Because we live in the world that is, and in this world government is self-reinforcing, self-perpetuating, expansionary, and armed to the teeth.

Sure victory for the 98-pound weakling doesn’t come from getting in a ring with a prize fighter.  Rent lawyers and send them into the ring. 

2.  The Fed is trying to do the right thing on rates, but it isn’t working out well.  See the top story in the news section (when I get to it).  The markets are not likely to call apart today.

Again though, while I don’t think there should be a) a Federal Reserve and believe Congress abdicated by giving private banksters control of the nation’s money and b) the Fed rents us our money and has systematically watered down its purchasing power to only 4.2% of what it was when the banksters got the vault key in 1913, we need to remember here that the same observation about keeping cool applied to the banksters, too.

Like BLM, the Federal Reserve has what it has (power) and by extension, they are backed by Congress (crooks of a feather?) and they, in turn, are backed by a damn fine Army and a first-rate Navy.  (I haven’t mentioned the Air Force, but count them and the Coasties too.

See the previous rule:

Never pick a fight you aren’t certain you can win.

Bitcoin isn’t going to win, unless its part of some negotiated lay-down.  And gold and silver and cash are slowly being criminalized.

It may be too early to pop learned questions on you, but I don’t suppose you know who Mohamed A.

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