George Ure

We were (correctly, turns out) guessing that markets would open a little lower this morning because in the great game of Money, we have just been through options expiration.

What oftentimes happens is you get some weak prices immediately after and then the Big Players step in and load the boat. 

What it means, though, is that likely we will see new market highs this week, absent some event out of left-field.

Asia was up overnight, and so is part of Europe when I checked, and with the dollar down a bit, that means it will take more “money” to buy stocks and that will complete the illusion of stocks going higher.

In terms of economic news? 

Tomorrow we get the consumer price report – always good for a laugh – because last week I carried $200 worth of groceries up from the car – in one hand!

Meantime, the Cleveland Fed president and the Fed’s Vice Chair both have speeches today so if you find yourself desperate for something to read, the Fed Website will likely have text up later.  Bring coffee…everyone spouts pretty much the party-line especially when the Fed Statement was essentially neutral last time around.

Cruz’ing

I know a lot of my liberal friends (at last count, I had exactly one) would have expected us to lead with Ted Cruz dropping his hat in the ring for the White House.

Of course it’s not exactly news since he’s been running the whole time, but now it’s official.

The Washington post figures Liberty University is the perfect place for his launch…but whether it will be Bush-Cruz or Cruz-Bush is about the only strong ticket on the GOP side.  Sure, Rand Paul will be announcing April 7th, but this isn’t a quest for quality, it’s a quest for money.

By the way, notice how Cruz tilts his head back a bit – as though he’s looking down.  Very subtle thing, but very William F. Buckley-ish who had the same kind of look.  It must appeal to republicans.

Yes, Bush can write a bigger check and having two former presidents in the family doesn’t hurt tactics-wise.  But the Bush can can be painted with elitist and aristocracy labels, just as anyone with the name Clinton can be.  The only thing left is for the primaries to decide how serious we really are with the “new broom sweeps clean” concept.

Hillary, as I see it, has a lock on brooms. (rim-shot)  And, oh yes, O’Malley might be that stupid.

Now, About the Recovery

We can’t help but recall those famous words “It’s the economy, stupid!” as the report comes in about how more and more people are taking the cash-advance against their IRS refunds than ever before this year.

No Explaining “the Kneelers”

I don’t understand the British.  I mean, sure, I understand “The City” and how it wants to rule the world financially – got that, roger, check.

But when the remains of a former king are pulled out of the ground, put in a coffin and parades about and headlines like this “County swells with pride after thousands line streets to see Richard III procession “ result, I just shake my head.

Glorification of the Ruling Class at its finest…how people could have stood and soapboxes and proclaimed themselves free…just stumps me.  And now this.

The ‘Lost City of Mosquitia’

Government of Honduras has sent troops into the rainforest to protect a lost city that has been found in the wilds just over the hills from Trujillo where we were last month.  Seems likely the drug cartels and rebels will try to loot the place before real archeologists can get in there to comb through and catalog things.

Alzheimer’s Prevent Health Note

Madison Avenue Mike has been sending along some interesting things to be up on, including this press release about how a new mix of dieting techniques may stave off Alzheimer’s:

“A new diet, appropriately known by the acronym MIND, could significantly lower a person’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, even if the diet is not meticulously followed, according to a paper published online for subscribers in March in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Rush nutritional epidemiologist Martha Clare Morris, PhD, and colleagues developed the “Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay” (MIND) diet. The study shows that the MIND diet lowered the risk of AD by as much as 53 percent in participants who adhered to the diet rigorously, and by about 35 percent in those who followed it moderately well.

“One of the more exciting things about this is that people who adhered even moderately to the MIND diet had a reduction in their risk for AD,” said Morris, a Rush professor, assistant provost for Community Research, and director of Nutrition and Nutritional Epidemiology. “I think that will motivate people.”

If they remember…

Climate Swings

We’ve had over 10-inches of rain here at the ranch so far this year, although officially our patch of East Texas comes in at 9.03, down in the dry end of the county.

By comparison, Boeing Field in Seattle – notorious for rain – has had 9.99 inches year to date.

By comparison, Sacramento has had only 3.04 inches of rain, year-to-date, while Bakersfield has 1.86-inches while el Centro comes in with 0.58 inch.  Key food producing areas, capiche?

All of which is worth mentioning now because if you don’t plant veggies this year, the California vegetable basket prices are likely to be through the roof.

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Elaine work up in a kind of Yogi Berra mood this morning.  There’s nothing like a discussion at 4 AM about the boundaries of intention to kick-off Monday.

On  her side of the ledger, the science is pretty obvious:  She figures that when people are born,  they are like fresh sheets of paper – blank – and ready for imprinting. The “printers” are the parents, schooling, expectation-setting, and social context – all of which turns the blank-pieces of humans into nice, malleable republicans and democrats and keeps most people coloring inside the lines.

Not that I disagree. 

BUT I think when we get to a certain age – if we’re reflective about it – we can see back over Life and understand that who we are now intended it to play as it has.  In other words, while intention may be a 90-95% before the fact thing, there may also be a larger than expected after the fact power, as well. 

And we know this, how?

By examining our intentions both before and after an event, of course!

Here’s an example:  I intended prior to the weekend to get one MAJOR project done this weekend.  And, I did.  It happens that with all the instruction, our 2014 income tax return – this weekend’s project – ran 65 pages of print out from TurboTax (half or so was comparisons and non-filed stuff).  Like I said: MAJOR project.  And it only took about 7-hours of work because everything is scanned, and that which isn’t may be conveniently plug & played from people like brokerage accounts.  It’s really pretty slick.,  No more downloading compulsive gambler options reporting software.  Zing.  Done.

Here’s the thing:  Yes, I intended before the 7-hour project to have it done.  So that’s our  90-95% intention part.

However, the future self looks back, intending (ex post facto) that it be done.  And that’s the feeling I have this morning:  One of both intention and satisfaction.  Intending it be done and filed, if that makes sense.

But – here’s my point – the “satisfaction” one feels at the end of a big project may be a sense of accomplishment or whatever you want to label it, but I maintain there’s a backwards intention involved in getting there.

It’s open to debate, of course.

The one really useful thing to come out of the discussion was that children have a “parent gap.”

That is, there’s an age between about age 18 and 30-something when young people don’t call parents.  We’re not sure why, except it seems to coincide with whenever a parent puts the foot down and turns off the “National Band of Mom and Dad.”

At some point (early 30’s) it must occur to the young that the loan officers might know something about life, after all.  And, for many,  the period from 35 up is spent trying to set right things screwed up earlier in life.  And screwing up new things, too.

Is this what Monday mornings are for?

There is an Honest Rich Guy

After a governor stuck his foot in it, claiming the horror story writer Stephen King didn’t pay taxes in Maine, King has quickly set the record straight.

Governors sticking their feet in the mouth is nothing new, of course.  What is refreshing is that at a time when a lot of pseudo-patriots demand a “right” to keep secret accounts offshore, here’s a rich guy who’s willing to stand up and pay his fair share – and then some.

Nice!

All of which brings us to massive overhaul of the Tax Code which is unfair and unjust – but I didn’t see you’d filed for office with a better, alternative plan.  When you do, send me a note… but in the meantime, I don’t have much use for people who try to avoid taxes.  And I’m particularly not fond of corporations that hide big dough offshore in tax-havens.  Those I vote against with my wallet when I can.

Meantime, Stephen King earns our Monday Diogenes Sinope nod.

*Diogenes made a virtue of poverty. He begged for a living and often slept in a large ceramic jar^[4] in the marketplace.

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If you’re reading this morning’s column, I assume you forgot to call in sick and fly your Gulfstream up to Greenland for the eclipse today.  Just a guess, mind, you.

Got to love the headlines about it, though.  Not to burst your bubble, or anything, when when you read headlines like “Total solar eclipse provides a spectacular celestial show” don’t get too worked up.

Around here, when we see stories like this, we take an East Texas Outback kind of practical approach, which includes laughing our butts off at live coverage of darkness on television.

Since you’re NOT in Greenland this morning, I’ll help you simulate an eclipse:   I simply get a paper bag, go outside, and put it over my head.  When I’m tired of seeing darkness, I take the bag off.  (I’ll ignore the peanut gallery suggestion I use a plastic bag…)

People who get worked up over eclipses aren’t particularly bright unless they want to have some fun with it.

For example, say you are driving on a freeway just as a total eclipse happens.  And let’s say the eclipse is around noon and you don’t slow down to the posted “Night” speed limit.

THAT would be an interesting court case – because it would depend on whose definition of night is used and in today’s legally bound-up-in-a-ball-of-yarn world, everyone has their own definitions.

The FAA uses one hour after sunset for flying.  Boaters have nautical twilight, civil twilight (the implication is sailors aren’t civil, ahem) and regular sunrise which is when the upper limb of the sun cracks the horizon.  But what if you’re in the mountains?  I know some places up in Idaho and Washington State where, ‘specially in winter where because of the steep mountains) the sun doesn’t come up until an hour or two after it’s supposed to.

But you see the point, right?  People who get worked up about eclipses define the attention-deficit, super-saturation economy of idiotic consumers who can’t remember that it was dark last night.

Hell, I should sell “Eclipse simulator” bags.  I’d be rich.  FMTT people are dumb.

Now, as to the point (“You’re not there, YET???” – no, I get paid by the word, lol), let me point out this starts a very important clock ticking toward my odd dream back in January about a major quake in April.  That’s because the Kahunas (religious types of the Polynesian people) noted over the centuries that eclipses come along and they are followed by earthquakes.  From an October 20143 column I wrote:

Michael K. Lee is reportedly a teacher of religion and history out in Hawai’i and somewhere along the way of studying how the Kahunas work their stuff, he did some work and Presto!  Out popped some working earthquake predictions.

I’m not the first guy to notice his work.  Graham Hancock (great fan of his work) had a write-up on it a while back.  Apparently, the EQ risk is greatest after the eclipse has gone by.

So not to be eclipsed by events – and since everyone is a predictor of the future, anymore – I’m going to step out on a limb and predict a 7.0 earthquake somewhere in the eclipse area in the next three days.

Lee’s work, notes a Hawaiian earthquake site, has windows after an eclipse that can go for upwards of 16-days.

So if a quake comes along, is a biggie, and happens in the eclipse path, and happens in the next two weeks, or so, remember where you heard it first.

Unfortunately, there may not be enough data to discern how the Kahunas dealt with total eclipses.  We should find that out with the big quake I expect in April.  My dream says US West Coast, but if it’s a 9+, remember where you read it first.  April 9 in the dream, but other people have darts later in the month.  We shall see.  But yes, the eclipse might matter as foreplay if the dreams –and the Kahunas – are right.

Oh, and a coincident indicator to keep an eye on:  Train derailments.  Like the big one in India this morning which killed 31 people in the northern part of the country.  Also note there was a derailment up in Poughkeepsie this past week.

If you’ve been following how memes “leak” from the future into present reality, the coincidence of timing of headlines like “Only Congress can derail the Iran appeasement train.”

Elaine reminds me about Lynn McTaggart’s The Intention Experiment and we’re investing another cup of coffee into wondering if mass media has more impact than most commonly believed.

Quadruple Witching Day

The market always seems to bounce around a bit at the end of the quarter.  Things were down a bit yesterday – 117 points on the Dow – but the futures argue all of that will come roaring back today.

There’s like a mechanical reason for it:  Thursday is when the index options come off the table.  And today is when stock options come off.

I assume you understand the principle called arbitrage?  Wiki it sometime:

“In economics and finance, arbitrage (US /??rb?tr???/, UK /??rb?tr?d?/, UK /??rb?tr????/) is the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets: striking a combination of matching deals that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices. When used by academics, an arbitrage is a transaction that involves no negative cash flow at any probabilistic or temporal state and a positive cash flow in at least one state; in simple terms, it is the possibility of a risk-free profit after transaction costs. For instance, an arbitrage is present when there is the opportunity to instantaneously buy low and sell high.”

Understand this concept, you might be able to look at the action around the quadruple witching today and make some inferences about the market’s next turn.

People who bought the options at yesterday’s low will be forcing delivery at today’s higher prices.  It’s like printing money if you’re a big enough player.

Biggest commodity gainer this morning is orange juice, futures up over a hundred now, and the Baltic Dry keeps inching its way back up….up a baker’s dozen this morning to 584, which is still in the 2009 range.  Oil $45 and change.

Great Set-Up Line

My one-man “Anyone but Hillary, Please!” campaign apparently makes sense:  Rasmussen Reports shows “54% Think democrats should run a Fresh Face in 2016.”

Meantime,  After the tax hikes while Martin O’Malley was guv d’ Maryland, we wonder if he could carry his own state…but that still leaves 49 other states filled with “some of the time.”  CBS Affiliate in DC quip of the day “Expert: ‘It’ll Take A Lot More Than Drudge To Push O’Malley Up In The Polls’.

Meantime, Senator Chuck Grassley is still trying to nail Hil on her “special assistant” but that is sounding like a broken record.  Hil’s stonewalling has worked so far;  remember what I said about some of the time.

Fractured Muslims

One Prophet?  Peaceful, did you say?   So why are all the dead people around from the mosque attacks overnight in Yemen?  Look for 50+ as a final body count.

Own the Future Through Search Results?

It’s an interesting question – one which I kick around especially since Grady and I look at www.nostracodeus.com data daily and note the gap between coming events and what gets reported/emphasized by the MSM.  I wonder, for example, if the future can be molded by changing search results just so by the big search engines?

A story exactly on point in the Wall St.

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The Federal Reserve meeting Wednesday went exactly as our Model had been suggesting (on our www.peoplenomics.com subscriber site):

The global index we measure had broken out a couple of weeks ago to new all-time highs and this, argued our domestic (US, Aggregate Index) was set to drag the US markets higher.

By implication, then, the Fed would do nothing to upset the markets and since mention of the word “patience” was conspicuously missing, it became clear to Fed-watchers that no news was good news and rates would be where they are right now, for a long time to come, and it opens the door for even lower rates and – as my friend Jas has been predicting – a drop in long-term treasuries to the 0.75% range.  Which, to put things into perspective would be less than half the 10-Year’s current 2.05%, or so.

What’s not appreciated widely, is where we will be 10 years from now.  While it’s true that nearly free money is great for high capex projects, like oil and gas exploration, when the worm turns, we will get to see some horrific energy prices.  But those could be as much as 10-years out.

It all depends on how long the Fed holds money rent so incredibly low.

A look at the chart from the US Energy Information Agency of crude oil prices over the past several decades doesn’t describe Peak Oil very well, nor was it intended to.  This is price only, not production (which is where you can see the peak). 

The price information is key in setting the ultra-long-term price expectations, though:  And since we know oil prices were up around $136 a barrel in 2008, an inflation adjust price today would be in the vicinity of $151.  It’s obviously nowhere near that.

What we’re seeing, instead, is a good old-fashioned deflationary spiral.

To be sure, there are economists who push off concerns of a deflationary spiral and excessive pessimism, and it’s exactly this sort of thinking that qualifies as a “wall of worry for stocks to climb.”  So we’re still expecting higher prices immediately ahead – or at least that’s what our Model says.

As long as oil prices stay in the recent price channel to the downside, the administration is getting a freebie economic stimulus.  And while that may sound peachy on the surface, it’s not, quite.

Being an economist in contentious times is some of a risk.  Paul Krug man is finishing this out first-hand.  Despite having a better track record of understand what’s going on than 99% of his peers,  a key Swedish Riksbanker is telling whoever will listen, that Krugman should read more and write less.

Which is rich, coming from a bank that is complicit with the EU, which in turn gets us into discussion of the ECB’s $1.4 billion dollar ego monument to banksterism which almost opened in Frankfurt, German on Wednesday.  I say almost because of the demonstrations of Blockupy that went seriously sour with some 350 people arrested.

P.T. Barnum was partly right, you can’t fool all of the people, all of the time, and at least 350 of them live in Germany, or elsewhere and have the brains to see the economic handwriting on the wall:  The EU as an economic experiment is likely to fade – the topic of a finely timed Peoplenomics piece Wednesday.

We also reminded readers of the long-term option for the megalomaniacs who will continue to hold sway in northern Europe have been honing:  A kind of Grand Teutonic Lodge of Money Masters.  (That would be what it will be in fact, but for marketing purposes they might fuzz it up to the “Not going to pay freeloaders (like Greece) that is running your life whether you like it or not, and we’re going to ensure you have to rent your life and will never own anything of consequence without our control Bank.”

Slow to Learn in America

Tom Udall may be retiring from the Senate shortly.  The reason?  A bill which he introduced turned out (says so right in the document properties) was written by? The American Chemical Council according to this report. Tisk, tisk.

Wait!  I know, you’re thinking wasn’t Udall a strong New Mexico  environmental guy and why would he back a bill that would replace tough state laws with a national dangerous chemicals bill that would be a plum  (or cherry) for the chemical industry and would save them billions and allow a return to more toxic times?

.A couple of weeks back, the NY Times revealed this about Udall and his co-sponsor  David Vitter from Louisiana:

“Millions of dollars in campaign contributions were also distributed among the political accounts of the lawmakers involved in the debate, including Mr. Udall. First elected to the House in 1998, Mr. Udall had never before received a contribution from the Chemistry Council. The industry also made donations to Mr.

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That thing over to the right is a robot…a quadruped…and one of the fastest in the world.

And of high interest to the military.

Reason?  Because when you take off a couple of hundred pounds of packs, the robot, which has an onboard engine to power it, makes a dandy mobile weapons platform or battlefield surveillance drone.

And that gets me back to a childhood where I read every scrap of science fiction I could get my hands on, because deep down inside, robots are (and were) a major fascination.

Let’s cut to the chase, though, because the precision of our collective thinking will define future choices in terms of policy. 

I have, on several occasions been less than 100% precise in my language use about robots and often lump them into the same bit-bucket as robotics and the evolution of the “replacement for your bag of skin filled with bones that presently passes for human bodies. 

Good news and bad here:  The human body comes with a whole range of sensual pleasures such as food, sex, sound for the sake of art, eyes to behold majestic scenery, and so forth.

The Kurzweilian future envisions a world where the line between humans changes up a bit.  A robotic arm here, an artificial leg there, a nano-tube artificial lung, and first thing you know, the major parts have been replaced and we begin to become something else.

Reader Keith called me out, on a further level of distinction, and I’d like to share this with you because it is very good insight into a whole range of problems describing the evolving world of possibilities and how we use language amongst ourselves to talk about it.

Specifically, he’s worried about precision when it comes to discussion about robots becoming “aware.”

“George,

   Not to “pick nits,” but isn’t “self-awareness” actually better characterized as “other-awareness”? 

Humans (and smarter animals…you should meet my parrot) are completely self-absorbed until they realize that there are entities “out there” which are separate from themselves; but can be manipulated into serving the greater good of the newly aware “self” intelligence. 

For instance, a healthy human child becomes aware of “the other” (usually Mom and those big soft serve feeding devices) at a very young age.  The child quickly learns that the “other” can be manipulated into action to serve the self by screaming it’s foul little head off until this mysterious other arrives with pacification devices.  Animals however take longer to develop this sense of self. 

For instance, we’ve all (we country folk) seen a rooster “attack” its own image in a reflective surface.  The bird has no sense that the reflection is “itself.” 

However, IMHO, animals who are raised by humans develop this sense of self at a relatively early age (quicker than they do in the wild).  You can accuse me of anthropomorphizing, however a parrot chick that is raised by hand understands “me” and “mine” very clearly. 

They may think their people are birds; but they, like the infant, know that if you make enough noise, you will get that other to bring you objects of pacification.  Mango is nesting so the “need” is balls of newspaper for her to shred for her nest box.  She asks for them: “Mango want paper.” It’s not grammatically correct; but it is as clear as a bell.

I’ve blithered enough…I’m trying to be aware of the needs of the other…so I’ll hush.”

Hardly a blither!  Indeed, if anything, it gets us to the problem which algometicians (new word, use it often and PayPal me a dime each time, please.;  It’s the people who create algorithms for programmers…) and their acuity of thought.

On the one hand, we know that first robots will learn the basis of looking ahead x-number of moves.  Then, with some work, they will develop weighted future-potential matrices and will be programmed to make choices based on a programmable set of “values.”  From there, they will self-optimize, and presumably the onboard values will include high-standing for “others”.

As with any marketing analysis, we can see how the “new niches” will lay out, using this type of model.  We can see not only where we are, where we might be going, but with a new Star Trek movie ion the works, it also gives us some keen insights into the Prime Directive.

Our guest level (and PhD level prof, by the way) who points out the importance of otherness as a key metric is exactly right.

A couple of reads on point are worth reviewing:  “Chappie and the Future of Moral Machines” is one of them.  The other is a note in Forbes about how “Clearpath Robotics Raises $11.1 Million To Build Ethical Industrial Robots.”

We run into all kinds of problems looking at the borderlines:  A “thing” becomes a “machine” becomes a “robot” becomes a “human?”

That’s a stretch, but we need to begin looking at definitions carefully, since we are building and deploying all of them right now.  A thing might be a load of iron ore, a machine might be an ingot of iron, a machine might be that iron changed into a production line part, a robot welding up product under computer control, and the human might be the banker behind the scenes, making sure to take enough “skim” so that no one else gets to make or keep as much money as he/she/they do.

Sounds like a pretty quirky thing to be talking about, but another articles out in the past week about a robotic arm that can reproduce itself is also very disconcerting to me and folks like reader Ken:

computer arm that replicates itself.. this is scary.. what is even scarier is the new software in the cloud seri Or Watson that answers questions.. I have an acquaintance  that is a retired scientist and worked on robotics.. anyway in his retirement he is attempting to write his legacy in the form of a computer program that can be self recognizing and learning from what it encounters..For me that is a scary thing to have a computer that has access to the cloud..

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The market’s jump yesterday was very good news, indeed.  With the Dow popping up 228-points there are a couple of ways to read the Dow. 

One way – and this is the one I’m inclined toward – is this is a massive “Buy the rumor” event.

If you watch the market long enough, you can get a sense of it:  Sometimes, when “planned news” like the Fed announcement tomorrow afternoon is due, you’ll see a big run-up ahead of time.  This is oftentimes followed by a major decline after the news comes out.

That’d be about the least surprising result.

There is, however, reason to expect the markets to keep going up; not the least of which is our Trading Model which has been a poster child for this particular blend of crack and Starbucks that seems to be powering the market upward.

Same kind of thing as was going on in 1928-1929  until things broke.

Sit back and you can see why stocks are something of the “only game in town” at the moment:  Housing prices are going up about like the general rate of inflation as measured by the CPI.  With that stuck at less than 2 percent, it’s not too enticing to run out and buy a home.

To be sure, there are still hot markets.  Our San Francisco real estate broker/watcher was reporting brisk growth in sales and prices there.  But just last night, Sacramento Channel 13 was running a story about how Drought is forcing new restrictions on water use at hotels and restaurants.  And west of Suisun, (locals call it “sih-SOON”) there isn’t much better to report. The whole state is still stuck in drought and it looks to Ures truly like the Dust Bowl replay for the Greater Depression will be centered in the California agricultural heartland.

Not that it stops there:  Two more counties up in Oregon are looking at drought restrictions, now, too.

Somewhere, along in here, you’re going to be glad you didn’t build that marina to retire to up at late Shasta. 

For those who missed Ure’s Complete Economic History, Volume IV, you’ll see the explanation of what’s at work in California right now, despite all the protestations from naysayers who insist it will be pouring buckets any old minute, now.  Volume IV consists of single page, reproduced upper right:  Humans got along for millions of years without the web or software, but few can go more than 120-days without food.

Without calories, your body will lose 0.5% of its weight, just supporting itself.  (Marvels of writing up my diet book…).  Which means, even from being technically obese, I can tell you with fair precision that I would be down to 93w pounds by September 18th on the current diet plan.

That said, I could turn off all my computer gear, and leave it off for a couple of years, and let’s toss in the television while we’re at it.  Come back in 5-10 years, but keep shoving calories into the old pie-hole, and I will be as rotund as ever, and perhaps a bit brighter, too.

And that’s the problem of California in a nutshell.

Just like an overweight person (obese) a little belt tightening is a good thing – helps slow the drain on natural resources.  But carried too far (to September with no rain, for instance) and the state will be taking on all the aspect of anorexia.

Not that it’s the only economic fly in the ointment.  The people in Europe have figured out that printing up money is an easy fix to deflation, so they too are now in the Global Competitive Devaluation scramble.  Overnight, the Germany DAX blew through the 12-grand mark (or is that marks, lol). 

So it’s with this kind of pressure on that the Fed will gavel-in this morning and tomorrow afternoon will tell us what we already know:  We’re screwed.  But that’s just my sense of it, and remember:  I’m  a crazy man in the East Texas Outback who just doesn’t much give a rip one way, or the other, having designed (close as I can figure it) a “crash-free life.”

Few people understand this imperative well, let alone do something about it.  So even though the market is up, we’re reminded that markets are subject to gravity, too. 

Oh, and weather forecasts.

Housing:  Blame Weather?

A serious bummer is out from the Census folks this morning:  Housing is on its ear:

The U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development jointly announced the following new residential
construction statistics for February 2015:
BUILDING PERMITS
Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in February were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,092,000. This is
3.0 percent (±1.7%) above the revised January rate of 1,060,000 and is 7.7 percent (±2.0%) above the February 2014 estimate of
1,014,000.
Single-family authorizations in February were at a rate of 620,000; this is 6.2 percent (±0.9%) below the revised January figure of
661,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 445,000 in February.
HOUSING STARTS
Privately-owned housing starts in February were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 897,000. This is 17.0 percent (±9.5%) below the
revised January estimate of 1,081,000 and is 3.3 percent (±12.5%)* below the February 2014 rate of 928,000.
Single-family housing starts in February were at a rate of 593,000; this is 14.9 percent (±10.0%) below the revised January figure of
697,000. The February rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 297,000.
HOUSING COMPLETIONS
Privately-owned housing completions in February were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 850,000. This is 13.8 percent (±9.0%)
below the revised January estimate of 986,000 and is 1.8 percent (±11.7%)* below the February 2014 rate of 866,000.
Single-family housing completions in February were at a rate of 595,000; this is 12.1 percent (±10.0%) below the revised January rate of
677,000. The February rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 236,000.

You just know this leaves government in a box:  How can housing collapse due to record cold and snow on the one hand, and a straight face be maintained about Global Warming?  A sane person would note that “Gosh, George, they’re calling in climate change, not warming anymore!”

Right – presactly: And your BS detector isn’t going off because????

I’m reminded of the guy who falls off a tall building.  On his way down, about the 25th floor, he says “You know, this ain’t so bad…”

And that’s how markets are taking this one so far:  The Dow futures are only down 35, and – many will rationalize – they really ought to give back a few cents of that 228-pointer Monday…

The pavement ought to be more in focus by tomorrow afternoon.  The surging dollar on the one hand, and is there a quiet “Weather War” on the other?

Israeli Elections

Big day for Benjamin Netanyahu today.  Since there are so many dual-citizens both in government and finance in the USA, I think a fair question to be asked is “How many of them get to vote?”  I’m not sure how voting in Israel works, that way; definitely a hole in Ure’s knowledge bank.

But that might have something to do with Netanyahu’s appearance in Congress…if dual citzs get to vote, that is.

Virulent Bid Flu?

Thousands of birds – snow geese – have fallen from the sky in Idaho.  So much for being good for the gander.

Revising St. Patrick’s Day: V.

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