George Ure

People say a lot of things about Oregon…and not all of it is good.  For example, there are some local issues related to people collecting rainwater – that falls on their own land or property.  And, since people in Oregon are fiercely independent in their thinking, Oregon is pictured (variously) as a land of heathens, stoners, and revolutionaries.

But please take note, even Oregon scores big in one category around here:  They are in the process of preserving industrial arts in schools.

A long time reader will know this as a familiar harangue: As long as people have access to industrial areas, or even a few used tools off Craigslist (or cheap new ones from Harbor Freight)  you can play “bend me, shape me, any way you want me” to your heart’s content.

Reader Michael’s observation:

George, The State of Oregon has awarded grants to Oregon high schools to initiate a number of acronymious programs. See link and doc for details on where the state is going–they think and/or hope, I guess. You likely will recognize the programs, though I have not been able to, for the most part.  Collectively, it is probably an indication of where the nation is headed. 

This may be a kind of “old story” since the state school folks out there put out a press release on topic in January of this year, but check this out:

In a major expansion of career readiness investment, 140 Oregon middle schools and high schools – serving more than 90,000 students – will receive Career and Technical Education (CTE) Revitalization Grants totaling $8.87 million, Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian and Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction Rob Saxton announced today.
The CTE Revitalization Grant funds will benefit students, schools and local employers around the state in fields such as health care, advanced manufacturing, construction, engineering, agriculture, renewable energy technology and more.

As a former vocational college director, I can assume you that one of the reasons people “fail” in school is that the content in a lot of programs just plain sucks.  In order for a school to really be a remarkable life-changing place, the number one focus of the entire staff has to be delivery of truly superior course content.

Oh,; sure, kids will drop out (8-12 and postsec) for all kinds of reasons, including home financial issues, drugs, peer pressure, and all the rest.  But a first-rate product that really grips kids and makes education relevant?  Kids (and adults) will line up for that kind of education.

‘If schools across America were more in the business of empowering the young – and showing them the tools to “make their own futures” I have absolutely no doubt that dropout rates could be cut in half – or more.

Can you imagine a teacher sending you home with a shoebox and telling a student “I want ya’ll to bring us something from home that will fit inside this shoebox – with the lid closed – and we’re going to teach you how to scan it with a laser modeling platform.  They we’re going to modify it in some way using surface modeling software (like SolidWorks) and then we’re going to print whatever this new thing is.

It might be something as simple as a customized (hand fitting) remote for the television, or something as arcane as an all-plastic clock.  But who wouldn’t find that kind of content engaging?

It’s onlyh one example, but the Joseph Carter School (in awards announced in April) is scheduled to receive $72,329 in award money and perhaps $10,150 in matching fees for a program called “Greenhouse: GHrowing Minds, Skills, and Community;””

Three CTE programs will benefit from the new learning laboratory: the CTE Agricultural Sciences students will have year-round experiences working with a greater diversity of plant-life and will be expanded with new course offerings, the CTE Family and Consumer Sciences (FACS) students will use campus-grown herbs and vegetables for food preservation education, and the CTE Business/IT students will gain experiences in marketing, 3-D design, and sales.  Partners will provide grassroots support for greenhouse development, CTE expansion, and meaningful work-based educational experiences.

So while the number of Americans wallowing in constant political whining about this and that continues to grow,  there are some people in public schools around the country who are handing out the kind of skills which will eventually empower people and given then the hands-on experience that is so necessary for the tactile learners and the mixed input learner.

I think in time we’ll look back on the experiment over emphasis on “head schooling” instead of a mixed approach with hands-on, will be seen as a serious mistake in education overall.

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But only if you’re willing to look with fresh eyes.

Last week I was busy pointing out to you how there were (mysteriously) 73,000 fewer people employed in the USA in the latest Labor Department jobs report, but somehow 288,000 new jobs had been created.  In the process, 806-thousand just raptured out of the stats and so forth.

By now, I’m sure you’re sick of me telling you there’s something rotten in Denmark, and being half of Danish background…hold it.  Let’s not go there.

Instead, let’s go to the Federal Reserve Consumer Debt report* released yesterday which shows what?  The economy hasn’t moved an inch this year, statistically speaking. Especially when you look at “not seasonally adjusted” numbers:

Give me a calculator and let me seasonally adjust numbers and I can turn mashed potatoes into a Fortune 500 rocket ship in no time at all.

So we look at the total consumer debt (credit cards and nonrevolving like mobile homes and student loans) and we surely should see something going on.  But….well…non-seasonally flipped, mind you…

Ures truly looks at the March data just out and says it’s down a tad from January, so why are the financial press sugar coating reality for us?  Can anyone stay “We’re at the financial stop light, it’s stuck on red for a while, so we’re just going to sit here until it changes?”

No can do, chum.  Instead we see reports with mind-numbing headlines like “U.S.

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As you may (or should) know, the Federal Reserve has been printing up cash (M1) at the rate of 10.8% over the last year, and during the last three months that rate is just a shade under 16% annualized (15.9%).

What this means, if you’re a foreign buyer of American assets, like China, the cost of buying America is coming down, but to a domestic US investor,; the effect is driving up of prices which is why – in large part – why the prices of stocks seem to be setting new highs, except you can’t buy as much with the money.

Is this is a great economic program, or what?

Say something was worth $86.28 last year. A monetary argument might be made that because US dollars are so cheap presently, that a foreigner holding US dollars might pay as much as $100 for it this year and still buy the same asset.

The price seems to have gone up.  But, in reality, the utility value of the asset hasn’t gone anywhere.  But the money has been cheapened.

How much?

(At last, we arrive at this morning’s first economic thought!)  Well, enough so that the headlines are screaming that the dollar is down to a 6 1/2 month low.

It’s a neat dance to watch, too. 

If you’re wondering why the price of gold has not broken to new lows (especially because there are less people working in the most recent reporting month by the Labor Department’s own number) the answer is simple:  With the US dollar sliding, it takes more dollars to buy a real asset.

Hence, gold which is an economic truth detector , has remained in the $1,300 area.  Had the Fed not stepped up printing, it would likely be close to $1,122 right now…but such is the magic of printing money.

The currency machinations don’t just impact gold, silver, or commodities like oil, either.  Globally there is a lot of deflation about making it hard for foreign companies to find enough good ways to spend their money.

And this gets us to the second key economic thought of the morning:  the Consumer side osf Merck (New Jersey, USA) is being purchased by Bayer, AG of Germany.  Why? 

Again, look at what cheaper dollars means.  Because Bayer is buying cash flow and earnings.  A year ago, even using the smaller 12-month M1 currency factor, the cost of buying the cash flow from Merck consumer goods just dropped about 11 percent in one year.

Companies (like Bayer, but basically all of them) are constantly trying to answer the simple question “Where can I get the biggest bang for our bucks – and marks?”

The Answer this morning is Buy American.  And another US taxable income stream….but I’ll let you work out the details of the impact on the corporate tax base.

I’ve told you many times over the past 17-years of this column that one of the major distinctions between the Second Depression and the Great Depression will be the role of global competitive currency revaluations.

Just yesterday, Dave Hodges Common Sense Show explained in some detail (here) how “World War III has already been lost and the Chinese are in the process of Occupying Amerika.”

Concurrent with this, the US government has been trying (stupidly) to play both sides against the middle.  We were off selling financial assets to China, but China took the US bonds, mixed in some drug cartel money, and put together massive funds which have been buying up huge assets in North America.

And, in case you didn’t follow developments in foreign markets this week, please note that the Chinese Hang Send was down another 1.28% in trading overnight and is well under the 22,000 level.

Not that China has to worry:  We keep hearing reports about how Chinese interests are buying up lands in or around many of the US national forests in places like Arkansas.  But, says the Arkie rumor mill, they’re not even coming to the US to look at what they purchased.  They just send money and buy.

China is in a different game than Germany.  The Deutschers are looking to add cash flow to existing companies.  China, on the other hand, is looking to invest in future resource (like timber) other goods their 1.3 billion or whatever it is, people will need in the future.

But that’s the game right now:  Foreign companies are fighting over the scraps of America, and because of the sins of both political parties in the past, the raptors are now starting to pick over the bones of America.  And the attacks on private gun ownership, the ever-increasing and all-pervasive electronic surveillance of even those  citizens who are “pure as driven snow” is all designed to ensure the raptors get their fill. Undisturbed.

Aided and abetted by a packed Supreme Court which has put America’s electoral process on the block so the corporate stranglehold on the future can’t be broken.

And that’s why tomorrow’s Peoplenomics report will update you on the Growing War on Cash.  the reason for this?  People will eventually be reduced to voting with their wallets.  But if you control the banks (check) and you can see what people are buying in near-realtime (check) then you can have a massive police state (check) where the Internet can be controlled (bye bye net neutrality…another campaign lie) and the raptors are just starting to get on pace.

The most money we print, the lower the buck will fall, the cheaper we become and the fatter the raptors.

What would once have gone by another name – treason – has gotten respectable using a different alias. 

Business.

Balance of Trade

The new Balance of Trade figures were just released in the past few minutes.

Not at all surprising, despite the efforts of congress and the White House, the country is still down another….well, you read it:

The U.S.

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Nothing like new adventures in the World of Woo-Woo to set things on course for the day:

Hi George,

I had a strange bit of woo-woo yesterday.  I was folding clothes in my bedroom and dividing mine to stay in the house or go out to my workout room.  A little later I took the clothes out to the workout room, dumped them on the floor, and then proceeded to put them into drawers.  As I picked up the last sweat shirt, I noticed something blue on the floor.  I picked it up and it was underwear that my youngest son would have outgrown about two years ago.  No one has any idea how it got there.  I know it wasn’t there when I started folding clothes.

Best,  Dennis

No telling how this kind of thing happens.  But like the other stuff that goes missing, hides out in some alternate dimension for a while, and then shows up back in this one – but at an unusual place (or one we have looked at previously) – the article involved is definitely more “personal” in nature.

I don’t know why this might be the case, except that maybe (as a wild guess) it has something to do with the way humans manifest things from their “field”. 

Stand by while we collect data on what colors of underwear seem to disappear most often…

WoWW 2

This report from reader Jeff is pretty good – and notice again how it is a “personal” item?

Back in younger days I had a set of Keys go missing. Set in same place on dining room table every day. Son was over (1st grader) and when we needed to leave keys were gone.

He swore he didn’t touch them. Several years later was moving and wanted to take the table apart to move. Leaned table on its side and the keys fell out from under the table.

Whether he put the there or they “moved” never know but after remaking about a dozen keys and then getting locks changed it was an expensive WoWW.

One other research note if you’re following along:  A lot of the WoWW stories seem to happen in the proximity of young children – right on up through about mid-teen years.

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Oh boy!  Here we go, again.  Another one of those “hide under the bed” or cuddle with your squeeze in silent fear stories – the stuff of horror tales – is coming true right before our eyes.

Not following?

Let me begin at the beginning then.  With Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein, then. 

You remember the plot, I’m sure:  “Mad scientist” type gets a body of a recently dead fellow, except he really gets the body of a just-deposed murder, and shocks it back to life using electricity.

If you’re over 40, or so, you will remember this as a fine and scary black and white movie.  But since, oh, about 1960 or so, this was the first of our “Horror Stories” that came true.

You’ll recall my great^{^6}grandfather, Andrew N. Ure (1778-1857) was doing research in his Glasgow (Scotland) University digs in the period immediately following 1801 when he’d picked up his MD ticket (such as they were at the time).

In his researches, he had become fascinated with the work of  Galvani and others who had begun to study how electricity could be used to cause muscle contractions.  The family “PR problem” was that he was experimenting on a convicted murder/thief’s body; that of one Matthew Clydesdale.

Fire up the source cells and apply the juice and what happened?  From Andrew’s notes:

“Every muscle of the body was immediately agitated with convulsive movements resembling a violent shuddering from cold. … On moving the second rod from hip to heel, the knee being previously bent, the leg was thrown out with such violence as nearly to overturn one of the assistants, who in vain tried to prevent its extension. The body was also made to perform the movements of breathing by stimulating the phrenic nerve and the diaphragm. When the supraorbital nerve was excited ‘every muscle in his countenance was simultaneously thrown into fearful action; rage, horror, despair, anguish, and ghastly smiles, united their hideous expressions in the murderer’s face, surpassing far the wildest representations of Fuseli or a Kean. At this period several of the spectators were forced to leave the apartment from terror or sickness, and one gentleman fainted.’”

We all know what happened next:  PR trouble showed up in the form of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein published anonymously in 1818 in London as a poke at care-to-guess-who?

Curiously, the name (Frankenstein) was the name of the scientist, not the monster; in the book the large Lurch was known as Adam:

The creature has often been mistakenly called “Frankenstein”. In 1908 one author said “It is strange to note how well-nigh universally the term “Frankenstein” is misused, even by intelligent people, as describing some hideous monster”.^[30] Edith Wharton‘s The Reef (1916) describes an unruly child as an “infant Frankenstein.”^[31] David Lindsay’s “The Bridal Ornament”, published in The Rover, 12 June 1844, mentioned “the maker of poor Frankenstein.” After the release of James Whale‘s popular 1931 film Frankenstein, the public at large began speaking of the monster itself as “Frankenstein”. A reference to this occurs in Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and in several subsequent films in the series, as well as in film titles such as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

All of which gets us to how this first Horror Story became real.  Fast forward to the mid-1950’s and going into the 60’s under Wikipedia’s entry about “defibrillators…”

You see, the horror story evolved and began to “come true” over about a 40-year period of time when medicine, if you’ll forgive me, made some “shocking advances.”

-chest method[edit]

Until the early 1950s, defibrillation of the heart was possible only when the chest cavity was open during surgery. The technique used an alternating voltage from a 300 or greater volt source delivered to the sides of the exposed heart by ‘paddle’ electrodes where each electrode was a flat or slightly concave metal plate of about 40 mm diameter.

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Let the good times roll?  Well, IF you believe the latest figures out, then unemployment dropped dramatically tis month:

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 288,000, and the unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage point to 6.3 percent in April, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment gains were widespread, led by job growth in professional and business services, retail trade, food services and drinking places, and construction.

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The first stop (after the headlines, o’ course) is in the World of Woo-Woo (WoWW) where things continue to heat up. 

Reader Dian’s got a case here which defies explanation:

Hi George,

I’m a long time reader and I’ve always been interested in the WoW reports. I don’t know if mine counts because it isn’t about any disappear/reappear event. Tuesday morning I was in the shower getting ready for work, and expecting the appearance of my house cleaner. I heard a woman’s voice say, very clearly, “May I come in?” and although a little surprised (we have two bathrooms) I replied “Of course”. I peeked out from behind the shower curtain, and no one was there. The house cleaner didn’t show up until 2 hours later, so I have no idea who the new lady in the house is … just thought it was interesting.

Hmmm…the obvious question:  Any details of the voice?  Young/old, cute, ugly sounding?  Impressions?

Young, soft, female, friendly – not anyone I know or have known and no Texas accent – but loud enough to be heard over the sound of water in the shower.

Yep, that’s an odd one, alright.  Let us know if you hear the voice again.  Ask something liker “Come on it…and gimme them Lotto numbers for Saturday’s drawing…”

(If that works, send half, lol)

How Reality Works

Reader Bill’s been looking at all these WoWW reports and he’s come up with a theory which I kinda thought was self-evident:

…spent my early career years partly on a “6-plate, flat-bed Movieola” 35mm filmediting bench.  So, when I saw your graphic representing the Universe bifurcatingupon someone, somewhere making a Quantum Observation (a.k.a. “decision”). and two film tracks proceeding forward in time forming a “Y” at the decision point, it fit right into my World View.

Now, here’s the New Idea:

While folks discuss the split point voluminously, they never mention the two  tracks reintegrating, rejoining, a bit down the road.  No reason I can see to forbid a Perfect Reintegration — and maybe several more splits and splicings as we bump along on the road to wherever we’re all going…

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Yes.  If the market collapsed between now and the end of June, I will be fabulously wealthy. 

And I was doing fine living out this delusion until three things happened Wednesday:

1.  The Fed took a middle road.

2.  The Peoplenomics.com  Trading Model was back in bullish mode this week

3.  I ran out of Tums

When all three things stack up like this, I buy the most highly levered insurance policy I can find.  In  this case (one minute before the Wednesday close) I bound a put option on a triple levered downside (bear) ETF product.  That way, if there is a melt-up, the ETF bear product will drop like a free-falling safe and my put option will protect me from losing my shirt.

I might have just gone to cash, but it I wanted to do that, what’s the point of gambling?

With that, Personal Incomes are just out:

Personal income increased $78.4 billion, or 0.5 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $68.0 billion, or 0.5 percent, in March, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $107.2 billion, or 0.9 percent. In February, personal income increased $54.3 billion, or 0.4 percent, DPI increased $47.6 billion, or 0.4 percent, and PCE increased $54.7 billion, or 0.5 percent, based on revised estimates. Real DPI increased 0.3 percent in March, the same increase as in February. Real PCE increased 0.7 percent in March, compared with an increase of 0.4 percent in February.

And the choice parts:

Personal outlays — PCE, personal interest payments, and personal current transfer payments — increased $109.7 billion in March, compared with an increase of $57.2 billion in February. PCE increased $107.2 billion, compared with an increase of $54.7 billion.

Personal saving — DPI less personal outlays — was $487.7 billion in March, compared with $529.4 billion in February. The personal saving rate — personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income — was 3.8 percent in March, compared with 4.2 percent in February.

The market looks to open about flat, though gold is down.  But the real thing to watch is the Baltic Dry Index which continues to decline and is now down to 943 in this morning’s reading.  Which means choppy to down more often than not.

Still, I one a put on a put (which is like a call, but without having to give up being a bear to do it) because…well…either money in that or in Tums.

Waiting on War

Notice how since pro-Russians are taking more real estate the story has been driven from lead item in most media outlets?

Ethics of state death penalty and the Dow closing at a record high (not accompanied by the S&P or NASDAQ, so it reeks of painting the tape) displace it.

You’re not supposed to think through the implications of China becoming the world’s largest economy, either.

Nope, nothing to see here, move along, citizen…

Hey, Al! Department

Dear former vice president Gore;

Did you see what the National Weather Service delivered this morning?  A frost advisory for parts of Texas.  Here it is MAY and where is our you-know-what?

Here Come the Drones

Quietly released as a safety advisory to pilots:

April 21, 2014, the FAA announced that the first of six selected test site for performing unmanned aircraft system (UAS) research is now operational in North Dakota.
The FAA granted the North Dakota Department of Commerce team a Certificate of Waiver or Authorization (COA) to begin using a Draganflyer X4ES small UAS at its Northern Plains Unmanned Aircraft Systems Test Site. The COA is effective for two years.

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