George Ure

As we brained out with Robin Landry (and which was described for Peoplenomics subscribers) the market is at a critical juncture between now and a week hence.

Not only are there all kinds of astrologically significant events, but there will also be a flood of data, much of it delayed from earlier release times by the short government shutdown in which, as we recall, 83% of government workers couldn’t get the reports out on time, but that’d be sour grapes on my part.

This morning, you’ll want to drop by about 8:30 AM Central which is when the industrial capacity and utilization report is due out from the Fed.

And tomorrow we get retail, producer prices, and just to get you in the habit of coming back by around 8:30, the latest Case Shiller /S&P housing data will be in.  Wed have to suffer until next Tuesday to get unemployment and personal incomes.

With all this (and I didn’t mention the GDP figures Wednesday along with CPI and a Fed rate decision [although don’t worry, they’ll print like crazy]) the markets this morning are putting on a good show of “timid.” 

Futures had the Dow down about 14 earlier.

Beyond An Unhappy Dick

Former VP Dick Cheney is none too pleased with the state of affairs in ‘Merica.  “Mideast allies no longer trust the US, Enemies “don’t fear us” headlines the CBS version of the story over here.

Our resident war-gamer has been sizing this up:

George,

The nascent millennium’s master of ‘realpolitik’ – former VP Dick Cheney, gave a rather frank and pessimistic set of comments on ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulous.

The trouble with leveling the playing field when dealing with rogue nations such as North Korea and Iran is something Cheney sagely hits upon, which is the irretrievable loss of the use of the element of fear. 

“Realpolitik” is the philosophy of “peace through strength.”  Simply stated, if you fervently believe your system of government is better than another, and the other is causing major problems, you rattle your sabers and parade your horses in order to send a very clear message.  This tactic works very well in the Far East as well as the Fertile Crescent, where male dominated societies understand the power equation.

Cheney is not by any means advocating a first strike on Iran.  He simply and elegantly states what, to him, is the obvious:  “Our friends no longer count on us, trust us, our adversaries no longer fear us . . . We’ve turned our back on the region.” 

Old schoolers such as Cheney and Henry Kissinger understand the differences between when you can hold out the carrot and when you demonstrate your strength with a big, heavy stick.  New kids on the block, such as just about everyone in the Obama administration, actually believe that if they set the moral example and make various unilateral concessions, the problem children of the world will suddenly wake up, smell the roses, start hugging each other and singing Kumbaya. 

Ya know what?  It just ain’t gonna happen!

Ideologically driven nations such as “Red” China (remember, our principal importer and largest holder of U.S. nation debt is a King Kong-sized communist empire) and their regional puppet North Korea, plus theocratic nations such as Islamic Iran, are difficult to diplomatically reason with.  Their ideology or theology override negotiation and reason.  They will exploit any weakness an opponent (anyone but “them”) and shun more powerful but reluctant opponents.

Allowing Iran to join the nuclear club would be a tragic mistake of historic proportions.  Unlike North Korea, Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism and shows strong intentions of unifying regional and eventually global Shi’ite Muslims under one rule . .

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Sometimes, its almost as though some kind of “cosmic censor” wants me to post a report that comes in of something seriously off in the WuJo Department at some other time, other than when it arrives.

This following story definitely fits into this category.  That’s because when I was going to publish it last Monday, it simple disappeared off Outlook.  Yeah, I know, that can’t happen, but it did and all manner of search would not bring it back, even after re-indexing the Outlook file using the .PST Repair too.  Now, how odd is that?

I was going to publish it last Tuesday, but if you’ll remember, the power supply went out on the main tower here at UrbanSurvival – the big fancy box with two “big mutha” dual video cards to drive our four monitors.  I ordered a big replacement – more on that in a minute – and figured I would report this great WuJo story on Thursday or Friday from Branson, MO.

Well, everything else I copied from the hard drive here worked fine, but that one stinking email?  Nope.  So I figured to finally get it on this week.

So without further delay, this one is a grand little stumper:

“Dear Sir,

You’re not going to believe this.

Why not?

Because I am the one who experienced this and even I don’t believe it.

But, no matter how many times I replay this experience in my memory from several weeks ago, I cannot deny that it happened; nor can I make any sense of it at all in terms of the ‘normal’ progression of time in accordance with only one temporal frame of reference.

First, a little background:

My usual exercise routine requires that I run for approximately 2 blocks, then walk for approximately 6 blocks, then run for approximately 1½-2 miles back to the place where I started; something that variably takes between 30 and 38 minutes.

Secondly, there is nothing wrong with my watch.

But this is what happened:

I left on my run at precisely—I waited until the second hand hit the 12 on my watch—5 minutes til the hour (that is, 55 minutes after the previous hour) and ran for approximately 2 blocks. After walking about 5 blocks, I looked at my watch and it showed 44 minutes after the previous hour; that is, 11 minutes before I started; something that, possibly, in some way, is related to the event recorded in the following video:

ANGEL SUPERHUMAN Teleportation caught on CCTV in China? – YouTube .

I continued to walk for 1 more block, then ran approximately half of the 1½-2 miles at the end of my exercise.

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Earlier this morning, the futures were pointing up a bit more than sixty points.  Which means, simply put, that the markets are confused, don’t know which way to turn, and there’s no telling where things will go when things finally turn up or down in a meaningful way.

Think of it like a big herd of cattle, they almost get into a stampede one way, but then think better of it, stop and reconsider their situation.  Down 54-points yesterday and then back up this morning – what kind of fun is trading in this kind of market?

Still, there’s plenty of reason for the herd to be confused.  If you haven’t been keeping track, consider:

• The unemployment report yesterday was a non-event.  It was about where everyone thought it would be.
• Forbes is out with a report this morning that posits “Four Reasons china will keep buying US Treasuries.”  What this means is we can continue to print up money, hand over fist, and still have some headroom through Fed buys, even if China slows a tad.  Which means markets can keep going up.
• But the B I G story of this morning is how there are some democrats who are starting to break with the party line and thinking that maybe there should be some kind of delay on Obamacare.
• And amplifying the point, there are reports that the contractors are (quick, look surprised) pointing at the Obama administration’s crew in charge are being the reason for the delayed.

This last one is HUGE because the market has been wondering how to come up with enough consumer discretionary funding to bolster earnings in order to show some respectable returns because if bond yields rise, that could kill the bull market.  On the other hand, if the healthcare rules are relaxed – even if only for a year – that would buy time to make the computer systems work and would give people (and Congress) some time to rethink their role as “enforcers” for the Insurance industry.

As of this morning, the speculation seems to be that signup windows will be postponed until sometime in 2014, but if a two part word whose first part is spelled ‘cluster’ comes to mind, that’s a reasonable take on things here.

Another thing that’s happening is that the economy of Europe is starting to show something other than a “flat-line” display on the life support monitoring statistics.  As this story in the NY
Times this morning points out, the region has now put together 4-months in a row of small, but measurable growth reported by EU purchasing managers.  That helps spike the punch a bit more down on the Street.

Not that relations with the US/Obamanistas will improve overnight.  Germany and France are still plenty-pissed about the NSA spying on them, but again, president Obama is something of an expert at “no flinch” poker.  While some might opine that’s more runaway ego, more than poker-playing skill on the world stage, we just follow the data and look where it points:  up…only a bit, but up, nevertheless.

One economic number out this morning to consider in here:   The Balance of Trade figures.  This is an important one to watch because it is directly related to how much debt the US will have to pawn off on the rest of the world.  Still, anything that’s even a modest improvement will certainly be welcomed.  Numbers please?

The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S.

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Time for a little “Adventure Travel” story – the kind that never shows up on television.

The day started off just perfectly!

I’d done the Peoplenomics column yesterday, and while it wasn’t destined to win a prize in journalism, it was a pretty darned interesting topic – how to turn your home shop into a business.

As soon as it was done, we were off to the airport, where the old Beechcrate was ready to roll and we took off was right on schedule at 8:45, which put us into Branson, MO about 11:52.

Normally, about here, I would put up a scenic aerial picture of the city of Branson, but that gets into the interesting developments since, and we need to hold that thought for a second because I don’t want to get the story out of sequence.

For now, let’s just say I don’t have the means to put the picture up, but if you click over to Flight Aware here, you can look at our path and just imagine beautiful skies, only a 10-knot headwind and visibility from here into next week.

The cabin-top vortex generators I added had boosted our speed by another couple of knots and that was just cool as hell. The latest are just behind the top of the windshield and they reattach turbulence where the air flows up over the Plexiglas any tends to tumble, causing parasitic drag.  135 MPH in a Musketeer?  What and experience!

As we’d planned, our friends met us at the airport on landing and we loaded up our gear and headed to el ‘otel…where check-in was fine, the computer worked fine on the wifi and we were off to an afternoon of adventuring in Branson which included things like a nice lunch out, go-kart racing (which screwed our backs up, but whatever), 18-holes of golf (putt-putt, but still two hours of laughs) and then after all that, it was time to eat again.  Fresh air – and being out of the office – does that.

After a delightful evening, we all headed back to the hotel and turned in early thinking this would be another fun-packed day, along with about 6-hours of chart comparing and market seeing/forecasting…life doesn’t get much better.

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We were sort of expecting an “upside surprise” to the unemployment report for September, which was delayed from several weeks ago by the charade of “Poor Me” going around Washington.  But better late than never, as they say, and so this morning we can finally catch up:

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 148,000 in September, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 7.2 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in construction, wholesale trade, and transportation and warehousing. Household Survey Data The unemployment rate, at 7.2 percent, changed little in September but has declined by 0.4 percentage point since June.

The number of unemployed persons, at 11.3 million, was also little changed over the month; however, unemployment has decreased by 522,000 since June. (See table A-1.) Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (7.1 percent), adult women (6.2 percent), teenagers (21.4 percent), whites (6.3 percent), blacks (12.9 percent), and Hispanics (9.0 percent) showed little or no change in September.

The jobless rate for Asians was 5.3 percent (not seasonally adjusted), little changed from a year earlier. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.) In September, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 4.1 million. These individuals accounted for 36.9 percent of the unemployed. The number of long-term

Both the civilian labor force participation rate, at 63.2 percent, and the employment- population ratio at 58.6 percent, were unchanged in September. Over the year, the labor force participation rate has declined by 0.4 percentage point, while the employment- population ratio has changed little.

This has apparently pleased the markets which a few minutes after the report showed they would about hold their own at the open.  The Labor Participation rate held steady at 63.2%.

On the other hand, the number of people working went up 133,000 which would be a good thing except that it’s made even better by a rare negative CES Birth/Death Model contribution.  We read that as underlying strength.

What’s more, even  the alternative measures of labor underutilization improved a tenth of a percent.

Next month ought to be an interesting read.  As we told Peoplenomics subscribers, the actual amount of “stuff” going through west coast ports is up about 3% and what they might lead a wild optimists to think is that things are improving.

Bu8t not necessarily in the markets.  My friend Robin Handler of the Options Signal Service has recently reiterated a warning about November, there’s the little matter o0f how Israel will resolve its red line in the sand with Iran, love fest with the Washington crowd, or not.

And then there’s just that damn market seasonality.  Just like a horse gets conditioned into being spooky (knowing they are everyone else’s food in nature) so too, the small investors (us) ought to be properly spooked when we realize that with the pop of the public debt to the penny north of $17 trillion, and gross domestic product coming in around $15.5 T we’re still spending 9.5% more than we’re making as a country, plus or minus a cheeseburger.

If it was just spending along, we could tighten the belt (everyone would whine, but we’d be surviving).  But unfortunately, something like 56% of the deficit is debt and that has been kicked down the road until early next year, still compounding as we go.

So could the market decline over the coming month or two?  Heck yes.  Is America dead and gone?  Ask me in five years.  We may still be here in name, but will it be recognizable as the same place?  That’s the real question to be asking in here and answers aren’t easy.

Headline Madness

If our occasionally too blunt reporting on things rubs you the wrong way, just remember, we don’t do the “spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down thing around here.”

Elsewhere?  Different deal.  Go read this one:

“CNN Poll: After shutdown, America is less optimistic about economy.”

So did you catch the part which says “…71% of those questioned say that economic conditions are poor right now…”?

To my way of thinking a headline that says “less optimistic” and content that says 71% think poor is like cheerfully headlining that someone is only partly dead.

Cognitive dissonances are all over the place and it takes mental fortitude and a cheerful inner core to see through the crap and keep on keeping on…Oh, and it helps to have bills and like three squares a day, too, I suppose.

More after this…

Healthcare Obamacle

If you’d like to see how some of the folks of the New Daily News did when they got online and tried to sign up for Obamacare, you might find their report of interest.  (Mixed results, if you’re lazy.)  And there’s some good advise on point from Consumer Reports.

Also: Big insurers are avoiding exchange states…

Meantime, on the other side of the pond, there’s a story out of the UK about how doctors there are getting a bonus for putting people on – you got to love it – death lists.  Now, I don’t mind someone getting a spiff for putting Ures truly on some death list, or other.  But what’s insulting about this is the amount:  A lousy 50 pounds!  That’s about $80 US dollars, such as they are.

Now, I’ll admit that the average human is worth less than $5 bucks – sez so right here – but I’ve got a couple of gold crowns which ought to make me worth a lot more should I make it to the UK death list.  What’s more, I have future tax generating potential because I plan to work until I die…that’s the point, right?  Always paying, never taking?

I won’t waste any more electrons pointing out the selfishness of the Brits (smart part of the Ure clan got out a hundred plus years ago).  But I will say this again and write it down somewhere:  This kind of dollar-driven death crap will come to ‘Merica despite the protestations of my liberalista friends.

Just like the “check’s in the main” and “Social Security will never be used as a national ID system.”  Oh, and remember “You’ll be able to retire with full benefits at age 65”?  Liberals don’t have very good memories. 

Drones Criticized, But…

Amnesty International is off barking up the wrong tree again, talking about US drone attacks in Pakistan.

What seems misunderstood is that the military just follows order from the Commander in Prize.  And it’s here that people get all tangled up in themselves. 

You see, AI is a fairly liberal group.  So rather than blow the problem (warring in Pakistan without an invite and without a Congressional declaration) back at the White House occupant  they blow it up as something America did and does.

Wrongo.

It all come from the Prizer and if you want to turn off a war, close Gitmo, or any of that, you go to 1600 Public Relations Avenue and offer a round of golf.

Speaking of which, the DiC (Duffer in Chief, not what you thought, OK?) was out for a round yesterday with staffers. 

Question:  Who carded what?  I can never seem to find that…and is there some kind of rule that you don’t beat the boss?

Madness on Syria

Speaking of muddled thing, as we are, there’s another report about how diplomats are saying on the one hand that Syrian president Assad seems to be consolidating power, on the one hand.  And on the other, he still needs to go.

Why?  Because he lost a popularity poll?  Even if he used nerve gas, I seem to remember that his forces were and are fighting a Western-backed rebel force which includes (to this day) al Qaeda affiliates….so I’m stuck in WTF mode…

Polls are Closed

But if they were open, one poll says that almost half say to replace everyone in Congress and we couldn’t agree more.  Unfortunately, that almost half seems to turn out to be the half that doesn’t vote.

D’oh.

Meantime, an independent Marianne Williamson, best selling author, is planning to tackle Henry Waxman in California.

I’ve got $10-bucks for anyone running against Feinstein, too….

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Our long-time reader Ray H is getting a bit concerned about the lack of “real” Fall just yet and he wonders just what the heck is going on in the upper Midwest…

First up, saw in the local paper that this weekend will mark the annual pilgrimage of nature lovers, to the Brown County (Indiana) State Park. Brown County comprises several thousand acres of old-growth deciduous trees, and proffers an explosion of concentrated natural color when the trees begin to feel the onset of winter. My experience has been that the colors come out in-force, in northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, the first week of October, the southern portions of these States, plus Iowa, the northern half of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio (and points east) during the second week, and the southern parts of these, the third, hence the attraction toward Brown County, which is in Southern Indiana.

This writeup was fresh in my mind last night when I stepped-out to sniff the air, and noticed that my trees were still green and leaves had not yet begun to drop. I’m really preoccupied, trying to build a shed and rebuild two rooms before the snow flies, so I guess I just didn’t notice that which was right under (over?) my nose. Point is: This is indescribably odd! Odd enough that I’ll probably fire off E-Mails tomorrow to a couple of well-known meteorologists with whom I’m acquainted. In 50 years of weather-watching, I’ve only twice seen any quantity of leaves on a maple or oak after November 1st, and then, not very many.

Normally, the leaves here are brown, or red-or-yellow fading to brown, and about 60% off the trees, by October 20th. If anything, temps have been cooler than normal since mid-July, and nights have been in the 30s for the past week — had our first hard frost in September so, if anything, the color should have come early and the trees, be pretty much denuded by now.

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