George Ure

(Somewhere off Belize City, Belize)   There was, as far as the crew was concerned, a first yesterday at about 4 PM as the RCCL Explorer of the Seas and our own ride, the NCL/Norwegian Jewel were both leaving port at Cozumel, Mexico.

Spontaneously, passengers on both ships lined up on their balconies and along the rails to cheer the “late arrivals” coming back from shopping and excursions ashore.  An example is the lone female runner above who was roundly cheered – and I mean with the kind of applause and hoopla that would be found at the end of a marathon.

I wasn’t sure what to make of it:  Were the cheers sincere, or was it a kind of ‘piling on’ – like booing is when a bad call is made in sports?

Hard telling,

Cozumel itself was a lot bigger than when I’d been here in the 1990’s (ferry over from Playa del Carmen)  and again in 2002 (Holland-America’s Masdam).

First time here, as my traveling companion from the 1990’s reminded us by email, it was a time when riding ATV’s into the hinterlands of the island of Cozumel might result in an unwanted encounter with masked banditos.

That was then.   Today, it was almost as many police as it was tourists; at least that was the talk shipboard from the returning explorers.  A good thing.

A reality check over Monday breakfast, however, decided against the shore excursion.  What do we really need?

Elaine and I have gotten into the habit of traveling light in our old Beechcraft, so we’re painfully aware that “The more you buy, the more you schlep…”  I don’t need another T-shirt, golf shirt, or aloha shirt.  Elaine prefers going up to Seattle now and then for Nordstrom’s Rack, but even that joy has declined in recent years.  Place has change  – or, God forbid – we have…

We both hate knickknacks (more crap to dust and move). 

Jewelry purchasing in foreign places is as likely to be plated as solid, I didn’t bring my stone and acid to test karat claims, and  as E noted “Why buy more jewelry to wear in Palestine, Texas?”  Practical point there.

Speaking of Texas, a couple or four items of interest:

Apparently there was some snow/freezing rain back home.  Damn shame to miss it.  When snow is a novelty, not the opening scenes from Day After Tomorrow, snow, ice, and even the odd power outage can be fun.  Especially when a day or two later its back to the high 60’s.

Panama hasn’t had to shoot any perimeter intruders, but he did spot an outside water pipe break (very close to the outside air conditioner unit).  A really odd break of the house water shut-off valve, turned out.

Until I called, I had visions of the water line break occurring over the big air handler under the house in the crawlspace.  That would not only have drenched the air handler, but would have likely spewed up on the kitchen floor and I was already head-tripping about how a complete kitchen remodel would be next.

Fortunately, the break was outside so other than moving 600-gallons of mud around, and fishing pipe under the AC compressor outside, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.  Although, Elaine’s a tad disappointed in no new kitchen.  I’m thinking about church Sunday.

Apparently, when we packed, we took all our luck with us. 

To this day, I’m convinced Panama used up all his luck during two combat tours in Vietnam, a string of purple hearts, SF and Rangers.  That takes a good pile of luck to pull through all that.

I end up lucky wherever I go, except it tends to run in five minute streaks.  I can win like crazy for 5-minutes in a casino and then the winds of Fate change.

Which leads me to wondering whether people only get just so much “luck” in life, and when you’ve used it all up, you die.  (Or leave the casino broke.)

It would certainly be anti-climatic for the afterlife to begin this way: “So what am I doing here at the Pearly Gates?”

“Oh, you used up all your luck.  Did you bring warm weather clothing?”

I made a note to try to take a little luck  with me.

Back to Texas notes:

We had a fine conversation with a fellow Texan from Bryan, Jerry, who’s been cruising (his wife’s insistence) for about a dozen years.  He reports that despite what some people might claim, the cruise industry really has helped to spur tremendous economic growth around the Caribbean.

When the cruise stop at Honduras opened up, his wife (a retired school teacher) would bring paper and pens & pencils to the local Honduran school folks.  A few boxes each trip.  People-to-people humanitarian aid; from the heart.  The kind of stuff government don’t seem to be able to figure out.

Or, when they do, there’s always a damn 98% handling charge.  Sometimes it’s hidden by inflation, but that game hits the knee of the curve and it’s no Laffer matter.

Then there’s the other question about “techno conquest”:  Is progress having a smartphone, which in turn means you have to work to support the phone instead of just going fishing, knocking a few coconuts, and kicking it?  They didn’t get to vote on that.

About mid-morning E & I wandered into a Trivial Pursuit tournament where we had our you-know-whats handed to us by a group called the Cal-Tex Team.  I’d argue that four people against two wasn’t a fare match-up from the start.

Our lack of exposure to popular culture (if that’s what watching TV shows like Friends can be considered) worked against us.  I mean seriously, is knowing that Lisa Something was the female star of the show… I’ve been testing that piece of the great puzzle of Life trying to figure out what knowing that will do to improve my lot.

Elaine’s not going to learn anything about fitness, exercise, clothing, makeup or being glamorous from such blocks of Life-minus-time expenditures.  I’m not going to learn intermediate aerobatics, fine points of falling trees, or how to use a cut-off tool more smoothly on the metal lathe, either.

Life has a currency:  Time.

Like luck, you only get so much of it.  And it’s what you buy with the currency called “time” that matters when the move to underground housing comes along.

Internet at Sea, II

If you’re wondering how you missed Internet at Sea, I, it’s because you missed some of the fine print in Monday’s report.

Over on the comments side, there was one from a fellow who said (in so many words) that “If George can effectively work from the high seas, then I might take a cruise after all…”

The simple rules of making it work:

Speeds are fastest when people are off the ship.  Slowest speeds come around 7 AM when everyone gets up to post of FB or to check email from back home.  My response time when I post the Coping section (around 6 AM Central) is pretty good.

By the time we get to the 8 AM posting time for the news and press release festival, however, everyone is uploading encyclopedias and trying to get Amazon to stream.  Forget that.

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(Somewhere off Cozumel, MX)  As promised, this morning’s report is coming via a shipboard internet connection as we attempt to relax, although the truth is, that is one of the few things in life I’ve never really gotten the hang of.

There are a couple of things we have learned, so far:

1.  People don’t really “dress up” for cruising anymore.  Elaine, who’s been on far many cruises than me over the course of her lifetime, has seen the attire worn shipboard through a whole cycle.

Back in the early days of cruising, there was a certain minimum expectation about clothing:  Tie at dinner, and the most famous and glamorous were invited to sit at the Captain’s Table.

That doesn’t seem to be the case, nowadays.

The Captain is a very businesslike fellow and though there has been a photo-op with him, the number of people I saw wearing jackets was nearly zero.  I felt like the odd man out.  Thankfully, I didn’t wear a tie.

But even at the most upscale restaurant on the ship, I was severely over-dressed, as was Elaine.  Live and learn, I suppose.

2.  The main reason to be early at the port of embarkation is to get a seat.  The actual door-opening to board was about noon for a 4 P.M. departure.  Since this was a capacity cruise (2,300+ people) the seats in the waiting area at the port began to fill up quickly.

To kill time, we sat around reading or, as Elaine likes the upper reaches of the smartphone games, that was a way to get to level 1,500-something of a game and kill an hour and 20-minutes.

3.  Buying a “any restaurant you want” was a smart choice.  Not that the food in the ships always-open buffet is a bad deal, but the optional other restaurants on the ship are much nicer than 1,000 of your friends being lined up for the carving station at the buffet; that kind of thing.

On the other hand, the break-even point for booze and the unlimited drink package is around 6-7 drinks per day, per person, when you run out the numbers.

Other thank being hard on the body, we didn’t do that and I think it’s been a good (at least cheaper) choice.

Internet connectivity shipboard is fair, not particularly fast.

What they don’t tell you in advance is how to set your email client to download headers only.

Once you do that, net download speeds become acceptable.  On the other hand, downloading big email attachments can be a time and money consuming pursuit.

They aren’t kidding, though, when they advise before hand that the definition of “high-speed” internet connections on ships is a lot different that internet connections on land.

Other than Elaine misplacing her guest card (so we both had to get new ones; hers was found not 15-minutes after we got the new ones) the trip has been uneventful.,

Ship board gaming is almost a mirror image of how trading options works.

In the stock market’s options arena, I will usually study a position and enter it when I think the time is right.  From here, the price, no matter how patient I am, tends to crater to half what I paid for it.  If I hold on long enough, the value comes back and I make a little bit.  Sometimes.

Viewed as a graph, this pirce chart looks a little bit like a bit “U” with the right side price often ending just slightly above the left-side entry price.

Now, on shipboard gaming, my experience is about the mirror of that.

Sunday, being a sea day, I figured the Lord’s work was to make me rich.  So I went into the casino with a pair of $10-bills.

In short order, couldn’t have been more than 30-minutes later, I was up to just under $70. Better than a 3:1 return on my initial $20.

A person with half a brain would have cashed out at this morning.

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Oh, my.

It’s getting thick now…

Thick as a good carbonara over linguini.

All this talk about deflation which, as we noted previously, was a kind of verboten word prior to the NFL scandal put the word back front and center of public mindset.

Ever since, it seems, the word has been showing up in all kinds of news stories as expected:

The Financial Times has an HSBC fellow explaining how deflation in Japan could roll over onto Korea.

Then a think tank is saying that prices are stable for about half of Japan’s core CPI numbers.

The Markit Eurozone numbers just out suggest the world won’t end this quarter in Europe, though (chart left).

Normally, I would be holding up US consumer prices as we talk about incipient deflation in America, but since the Lazy Department doesn’t have its poop in a group, we have to wait until mid next week to receive the Official Narrative from the Obamanistas.

But it’s clear to the keen observer what the game is:  Global, synchronized monetary inflation at screaming rates, but done through quantitate easings, so the public doesn’t catch on.

The fact is, the global bankster class is scared spitless that global deflation is here and while it might provide more of our Roaring Twenties ahead, when it ends, there will be violence of the hopefully just financial sort.  (Yes, you could read that as a double-entendre if you wish…but I assure you, I’m not that clever.)

Say, here’s a story about how scared the EU conquesters are…the only piece not dialed in is the rational for the EUkraine war, but if you think about it…

Spin to Win

With the Baltic Dry Index up another 2 this morning to 511, we love reading articles telling us it doesn’t matter.

But, if this author’s premise were near the mark, either the balance of trade would improve (don’t hold your breath) or the economic recovery is a lie (longer conversation).

Keeping an Instant War Handy

We read the trite statements of the obvious now – fully four or five months since we pointed out that the EUkraine battle is merely a skirmish in the Manufacturer’s Resource Wars – about how NATO and Russia are on a collision course.

Ya’ll get new glasses, or just waking up enough to figure this crap out? 

Go read the petroleum report (see yesterday’s column for the link, I don’t like doing work twice) about now the Dnieper-Donets Basin in HUGE and Russia now owns the ground above the southern part of it.

Here:  Take this tumbler and press it up to the doors of the Halls of Power and let’s see if we can hear what is being said…

“Now, let us read from the Book of Ure, Chapter 1990, verse August, line 2:

Veerily, it was said by the Elder Bush:  there are trials and tribulations being thrust upon these innocents and the demon spawn is slant rig drilling by Evil Empire into the sacred soils of Kuwait.

And so, be instructed, we must have war to right the wrong, to unslant the drills, and partake of the greater gains for all of us.  Amen.

And so, the flock, having bidden the advice of the Sage of Hong Kong to be of a sheeply manner, had their eyes bound up tight, so as not to hear the failing money-changers of Europe.

And so we see in today’s parable of the crippled banker: “ECB: Bankers Saw QE as Only Way to Fight Deflation” evidence of how it is that the Church of the Almighty Demon Dollar must maintain multiple séances.  So as to be able to conjure an instant and (nominally,  “just” war, on demand.

And it was so.  Amen brother, gimme a hallelujah  and a 10-spot on  S&P in the second. Meet on the circles, part of your hair, being all-knowing power is totally rare. ”

(Thereafter, it falls into a jumbled mess of speaking in tongues that doesn’t make any sense.

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Yesterday was spent doing all kinds of things of a rancherly sort.  I’d been out admiring our “south 16 (right) and it was time to go up and talk to my neighbor around how to set his fence for an entrance.  Wants an electric gate.

To get ready, he’d cleared out some cedar underbrush and  while he was burning some small logs in a well-cleared area, we jumped in his 4X4 and he gave me a tour of his fence work.

Between his property, his brothers, and parents, there’s a good 3+ miles of fence line, but he’s got most of it cleared either side of the fence back about 8-feet, or so, allowing it to be bush-hogged.

Then the fence line itself is given a dose of Round-Up and the fence line stays clear.  Strack.

That’s the way most fencing is done around these parts, cleared, bush-hogged, and poisoned.  Needless to say, my fence lines don’t look so neat, and no, I don’t use Round-Up.

This spring I’m looking at using something that would be organic..like salt water (fairly strong salt solution) on the theory that it, too, will kill things where applied, but won’t have such disastrous environmental consequences.

Still his fence lines look amazing.

But that’s not the story.

When we got back to the burn site, one of the logs that has been ablaze has decided to roll down the hill, and caught the dry leaves on the surface on fire.

Two people, one with a rake and one with a tractor had the situation in hand in about 10-minutes time.  The tractor put down an outer perimeter, the rake man pulled dry leaves out from around brush that was left…

Afterwards, we spent a little time on the “narration” of this, since when his S.O. came home, she would no doubt see the burned patch of about 100-feet, or so, up by the front entrance to the property and start asking questions.

“Controlled burn…that’s what this is….”

And so it was. 

I made a note of that:  In the future should we ever have a fire jump outside the immediate burn area, I’ll use that “controlled burn” approach and hope Elaine will believe it, as well.

Come to think of it, though, that’s not the story, either…

—

Figures out from the US Department of Agriculture show that all these homesteading sites that are popping up like fleas on a dog lately, are tilling fertile soil.

Some new 2014 data on farm sales have been released and here’s what they show:

The percent of all farms by sales class are:

* Sales Class $1,000 – $9,999: 50.6%

* Sales Class $10,000 – $99,999: 29.9%

* Sales Class $100,000 – $249,999: 7.0%

* Sales Class $250,000 – $499,999: 4.7%

* Sales Class $500,000 – $999,999: 4.0%

* Sales Class $1,000,000 or more: 3.9%

People are buying up land, something I knew would be coming as we slide down the deflationary skids toward hard times.

A lot of people don’t see if, yet, but that’s what my models have always predicted – a return to the thinking that was behind one of the most popular books of the last Depression:  Five Acres and Independence: A Handbook for Small Farm Management.

Since being published during the last really “Hard Times” this book has sold on the order of 3-million copies, and there’s a lot that can be improved upon today.  For one, we don’t have to wait for the Rural Electrification Agency to come through and put up power, since most last has power to it now, at least at one corner or edge of most properties.

No doubt, a lot of the properties above are bug-out options  that people see a future near for, although in truth, there may be a lot of “squaring up: in there, too.

Take my neighbor and I:  Behind his place, and mine, is about a 20-acres parcel.   About 150 feet of it runs along the back of his property and 450-feet runs along the back of mine.

We kicked around buying it, and each taking a piece of it to “square up” our property, but so far the owner hasn’t shown much interest in selling, or has, and just hasn’t mentioned it to us, yet.

The last asking price we heard was around $75,000 – which pushes out to $3,750 per acre.

That’s actually not a bad price.  Outrageous, but considering demand locally…

Land with good road access may go higher:  There have been some pieces of land go for $5,000 an acre, but that would a piece like ours.  Something with a creek on it, some elevation, decent soil, and above all, some standing timber.

Even though we did a selective cutting in 2004 (which made enough money to buy the tractor and some implements brand new), there’s plenty of wood left.

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Peace can show up, any old time now in EUkraine.

As you would expect, with a whole petroleum reserve underground, the fighting is continuing while the parties who stand to benefit in the long-term are talking about the need for the terms of the cease-fire to be imposed.  Each looking at the other.

So when you read headlines like this one about how Leaders Agree to press forward to Ukraine Ceasefire, have a clothes pin and some Charmin ready.  Because the behavior stinks and the cover about “democracy” sounds like cow chips from the male of the species.

By comparison, the “You cut, I’ll pick” protocol of the drug trade is highly refined and civilized.

If you’ll just read the full geology report over here, you’ll understand one of our unconventional tenets of modern economic:

“If there’s value below ground, there’ll be fighting above ground.”

Works like a charm to analyze global chaos which turns out to be not so chaotic, after all.

Whose Side Is He On?

The story “Obama says world should address ‘grievances’ terrorists exploit” should give you some ideas.  Say WTF?  The main beef of most terrorists if we aren’t sharing their belief system.  Grievances are an excuse, at least in large part.

Could America give away even more foreign aid than we do?  I mean and not go broke?  And our corporate interests are mostly transitioned to China, so go talk to them about corporate social responsibility.

I want you to forget about all the arms we sent to al Qaeda affiliates in Syria, how much military materiel was left behind in Iraq, who trained the locals to repair it, and what happened in Benghazi or who tradee how many from Gitmo?

No, sir, I want you to suspend your memory when your read the news…

Check out the NY Post’s headline about how Obama is refusing to admit to Muslim terrorists at the summit.

Lemme see….is it LA gang members who are blowing up stuff in the Middle East and whacking innocents in Paris, Your Excellency?

I voted for him once…not the second time.  But then, I’m a fool me once kinda guy and I’ll take my cartoons uncensored, thank you.

Speaking of Assault Rifles, Terror, Etc…

I trust you have been following the stories about how the administration is trying to ban AR-15 ammo that has been around for years?  Here’s an example of what’s making the rounds.

The number of law enforcement people shot with such rounds from legit sportsmen?  Zero, last time I checked.

But don’t let that fact stop the government…the very government that cooked up Fast and Furious/gun walker scam to actually bring such arms to drug cartel henchmen and still hasn’t really laid it all out.  And yes, the Bushies have a lot of explaining to do, as well.

And while the new AG promises to be even more anti-Second Amendment than Mr. Holder, we can’t help but notice the unconstitutional abuse of privilege being placed on federal firearms dealers whose banks are being told in no uncertain terms that they will be subject to special audit if they supply credit (as in card services) to gun dealers.  This has been the  Obamanista playbook for over a year… 

Maybe the Hong Kong due was telling us something…

The Hong Kong Hint

That reference, in case you missed it, is to the leader of Hong Kong who has told pro-democracy leaders, in so many words to stuff it.  The pertinent quote?

““Last year was no easy ride for Hong Kong. Our society was rife with differences and conflicts.

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Time we had us a little coffee-side chat about going on cruise ships for vacation.

The occasion of this discussion is a fellow who left a comment (in our comments section) that went to the idea that the only reason people take cruises is so they can brag to their friends about how many cruises they have been on.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I mention cruising because, for many people, it is a very cost-effective way of traveling. The traveling part is included, the meals are included, there is entertainment, nice exercise equipment, and a whole lot more.

I don’t know if the reader was practicing up to be a “troll” who lives under a post, but the suggestion that cruising is an ego-trip, demands some public discussion so that MY decision isn’t taken out of context as an erudite expression of self-interest.

Cruising is practical.

Let me do a little comparison with other popular “vacation” approaches and you’ll see what I mean.

RV

I have yet to do a recreational vehicle vacation.  To me, it’s just another driving trip but with some major differences:  The “car” is longer, requires much more attention to driving, sucks down a lot more gas, and in many places, you have to pay $30 (and up) to park it.

Say you drive 400 miles in a day.  And let’s say that the terrain is like Utah or Colorado:  You’re looking at 100-gallons of gas or diesel, so round off to $300 to be on the safe side.

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Futures are up 30, oil over $52.50…

Not to put too find a point on this being a replay of the Roaring Twenties, the end of which was overseen by president Hoover, but here we are with markets setting new highs and the future ahead looks…well…problematic is a polite term for it.

Just as the original Roaring Twenties ran from the end of the 1921 market break up through the September 3 peak in ‘29,  an astounding eight-year run, the current run should also end in about 8-9 years which means by this fall, but more likely next year’s fall, we should be seeing economic reality set in.

And there are other indicators, as well. But since this is a shortened work-week, here’s the picture I drew for Peoplenomics readers a couple of months back:

The key thing I look for are the ratios.  For example, we know that the run-up from 2009 to present has been a factor of (roughly) 2.72 times.

Now, let’s look at the chart above:  Where would 2.71 times the 1921 low have placed the Dow back when? 

The answer would be (63.9 x 2.72) =173. 78. 

Given that my chart here is a couple of months old, we can see we’re in  the period just ahead of what should be a screaming rally in stocks that could last another year, and maybe till the closing hours of the Obama presidency.

Then, we would slip into the soup of  Paul Krugman has described in his book titled The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century (Updated and Expanded).

Still, for now, it’s not exactly secret that our Trading Model has been mostly long since 2009 and keeping an eye on the longer-term rhymes is where we can find ancestral evidence of market bubbles going to such extremes:  From the 1921 break’s low, the Dow rallied to 5.96 times that value before breaking.

If we then look at 2009 and use a starting level of 6627 and apply this kind of wild blow-off excess, we could actually make a case for a Dow 39,500.

Yeah, sure, there is fear (and a lot of loathing) whipped up by the rabid right radio rhetoricians (RRRR) but the fact is that the economy doesn’t seem poised for collapse yet, this morning.

I’ll grant you, it’s not likely to play out so smoothly and predictably, but we’ll have some further comments on where smart money might be going in tomorrow’s Peoplenomics report.

In the meantime, Elaine and I are off on our cruise this coming Saturday, so don’t look for really long columns (though quite likely more interesting than usual).  But I wanted you to understand why we are taking time to “sail and smell the roses.”

The picture is not nearly so clear today, as it was in the 1930’s blow-off.  For one, the impact of inflation was pretty low.  In fact, according to the Minneapolis Fed inflation calculator, One Dollar in 1921 was buying about $1.05 worth of goods in 1929.

Using the 2009 low, we see that despite the deflationary picture in general (and given away by the ultra long-term view of the Treasury (^TNX) chart, we still have 10% inflation since 2009.  But whether that will be additive, or subtractive relative to the Dow 40,000 target becomes an interesting area for speculation which we’ll save for the subscriber side.

There’s also the coupling effect of the global economy…so a long discussion about whether we’re running on a clock (the time domain) to blow up, or whether it’s a set percentage increase (the dollar/value domain) should be covered on the subscriber side.

CAUTION:  Whenever I talk about upside potential, a downside reversal is almost always at hand.

Still, the holiday weekend is over…the world hasn’t ended, although the new generation’s Hitler analog ought to be working his way into power in a country where unemployment is high and nationalism is important, so keep a close eye on challengers to Putin/Medvedev.

Watching Brother Alexei

All of which wouldn’t be worth doing except we have a convenient country with high unemployment, strong nationalism, and frankly, a strong challenger who has already been through his Mein Kampf jail time in the person of Alexei Navalny.

You might remember he, and his brother, was boxed up by the Putanists because of politics and ultranational worries.  They seem to be able to read history, like we can.

At any rate, Navalny is back in custody, and with that, calls for another jail term.  But history argues that if Navalny is to be the ultranationalist analog, he will beat this rap and will quickly ascend into a position of strong challenger to Putin/Medvedev.

Or, I could be looking in the wrong place.

Muslims Taking Over France

There goes the Louvre off our tourist bucklist with video of how a Jewish journalist was spat on and called names walking the streets of France in clothing indicating his religion.

Meantime, Jews are being called on to return to their homeland is Israel and Billy Graham turns weather forecaster says there’s a storm coming with the latest ISIS beheadings.

See how easily played the liberals of France were?  Think there’s a lesson in there somewhere?

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