George Ure

Thursday morning, we recounted one of our Wujo tales, wherein a reader reported on the case of mysterious sandals that seem to have gone walking about on their own.  At the end of the column the WjD (wujo detective degree abbreviation) asked a number of questions which might lead directly to a simple solution to this apparent contradiction between observed reality and more or less normal events.  We have some answers:

“Logically, the dog fetched them from the stairs, brought them inside (do you have a pet door?) went up stairs looking for the kid, not finding him, notice someone in the recliner and dumped them under there…???”

LOL, nope no doggie door.  Also “Indy” is a 8 month old German Shepard Rottweiler mix.  It would be hard to miss if he had fetched them and placed them under the chair.  Though Indy could have moved the chair since he is coming in at 80lbs now.  The sandals were under the chair to the point that you could not see them unless you lifted the chair.  Weird to say the least.”

Unless someone comes up with a way to physically reduce paper, we’re going to have to add this to what’s turned in to an overstuffed filing cabinet that is labeled “Unsolved.” 

The Four Horsemen’s PR Failure

A reader asked me recently to give my personal assessment of what’s coming our way in the immediate future so as to help figure out what would be the right preps to lay in and so forth.  I thought about this, and while it’s never easy to lay out a whole future in a quick two minute read, I decided this morning to take a whack at it since reader JC and I were just talking about this one the phone this week.

Markets

Without the specifics of a Peoplenomics report like the one planned for tomorrow where we’ll dig into more detail, the current decline of the market, seems to me that over the course of this fall we could see a decline of the S&P 500 down to the 1,540 range (or lower) and that would set up a rally which would last either into next March-April, or it would continue upwards until next summer and then begin a massive decline which could go lower than the 2009 lows.  Even so, this picture may take an additional year or more to work out.

What will determine how that plays out will be how long the financial system can hold together globally in “synchronized printing mode.”

Earth-Changes

We are in a curious place where the arrival of comet C-ISON which should be quite bright in November, is being described as being the “blue Kachina” of Hopi lore.  This series of native tales has been handed down over the years into the New Age crowd and there are continuing resurrections of the story, including this version of things posted in July.

Reader GC has been thinking some of this stuff through and he points out that NASA has been running its Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy down in the Southern hemisphere again.  After doing three weeks of flying down there, another deployment is planned in 2015.

“SOFIA PREP FLIGHTS ARE VERY SIGNIFICANT FOR THE VERY FACT THAT THIS IS TAKING PLACE IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE !!!!
THIS FAR-INFRARED TELESCOPE IS KEY TO THE OBSERVATION OF A BROWN DWARF STAR ENTERING OUR SOLAR SYSTEM MASKED IN A MASSIVE DUST CLOUD !!!!
IF A KILLSHOT TAKES OUT ALL COMMUNICATIONS TO SATELLITES THIS IS SET TO KEEP AN EYE ON THE DARK STAR. “

To be sure, running through a cloud of “red dust” (which seems likely to include a lot of rusty water) seems like it might cause a lot of rain and a “red moon” we need to recall that the red moon part of predictive prophesy could come from earthbound dust, too.  And what about the Australian dust storms of a while back – in January?

Also in the end times discussion there are other parameters and the one that is really falling into place is the “third of the earth’s oceans” being “bittered” which Fukushima is doing a splendid job of.

So ONE possible future looks like massive market collapse, bounce, heap this fall.  Wars and rumors of wars when we are collapsing economically.  Blue Kachina is due right on schedule, we’ve got the bittered waters, so all we need are some left field events and that would wrap things up neatly.

Still, these left field events will be the make or break, so we just keep scanning the headlines for hoards of locusts, pandemic diseases, and lost Horsemen on variously colored mounts. 

If you see four lost-looking riders, tell ‘em there’s a natural-born cynic over at UrbanSurvial who’d like a word with them about their marketing roll-out. 

Unless we get a few mega quakes to spice things up a bit, and really damn soon,  the locust swarms in Kazakhstan, Madagascar, even here in Texas, are hardly worthy of 2,000 years of hype!

Any real Four Horsemen, LLc  worth its rep ought to be embarrassed to fall back on trivial, annual, and quite natural occurrences and setting up their appearance.  Why, even Tepco’s crappy smokefest on Fukushima is such a slow-motion affair that any reasonable “End of Worlder” would get bored spitless by now and simply wander off.

Not that I don’t get people writing to me everyday, as they come up for Kleenex after sniffing the dust-bunnies over this headline, or that.  But they’re mostly getting rewrite of decades-old material. 

The Four Horsemen really need a new media strategy so as a stopgap measure, we’re going to suggest a massive event involving social media and in the next month or so.  Their that or an 8+ earthquake…you know…something with some pizzazz to get this roll-out of the End of the World back on track.

Reader’s Writes

Reader Andy, of in the hinterlands of the Northeast (as much as they are hinterlands) makes a good note about my recent discussions about fracking and in particular those waste water injection wells:

In your recent discussion of fracking (“When the Saudis Speak…”, July 30), you mentioned “shark tooth spikes,” links between water injection wells and seismic activity, and other issues.  Conspicuously absent was the issue of possible contamination of water supplies.

I know you’ve mentioned this subject in the past; I recall that you once linked to an article about fracking-induced contamination of the Susquehanna River with radionuclides.

Some shills in the MSM are claiming that the EPA has “debunked” the “myth” of fracking-related water pollution.  I disagree.  For instance, a University of Buffalo study found that fracking can release uranium from Marcellus shale. 

Some academic researchers are also questioning the EPA’s numbers about methane leakage from natural gas production.

I hope you can explore fracking in more depth in US/Peoplenomics…

Yessir, Andy as soon as the weather cools off about 20-degrees and Oilman2 and I can have a glass of interview juice on the screen porch.  He’s been busy as heck with things in the oil patch (Including just going through some kind of periodic ‘rig control school’ which I think readers would also find interesting as the Dickens).

And as long as we’re on shaky ground…

Try on this from reader Jeff:

“Hi George,

Love your site and your insight.

I was reading about the sun’s current magnetic pole flip. A couple of items got me thinking in particular –  first that it happens every 11 years at the solar maximum and second, it’s usually accompanied by CME’s, flares, and other fun space-related events.

You have probably already referenced this (because you have foresight like that and are ahead of the hip curve), but I did a quick Excel pattern auto fill with 11-year increments and some interesting dates showed up. I’m not a huge numbers person or sign seeker, but I found it interesting that 1969 (lunar landing) and 1859 being the year of the Carrington Event (specifically interesting about this is that it happened during the first part of September, which according to the news story is the same timeline as the completion of the flip) caught my attention.

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Ure’s truly did not win the PowerBall last night, and if you have time to read this, neither did you by the looks of it, although a number of lucky people did.  Turns out the winners included one in Minnesota and two in New Joisey. (sic) The good news, such as it is, may be that there’s another column to read although I was anticipating being able to post my farewell, audios, sayonara letter.  Maybe (hopefully) next time.

This leaves me stuck in my “get rich slow” rut, which isn’t bad, but I’m an impatient cuss.  Markets are due for a modest rally at the open today since even a bleary-eyed amateur chartist should be able to count five waves down, so we should get a wave two in hear sometime, perhaps seven points up to the S&P 1,700 level, but we shall see.

One of the charts we serve up for Peoplenomics.com readers is a Global Index I devised a number of years ago.  And looking at it, reader Yohan wonders if I have considered an unhappy ending of global finance that would look like this (with his counts added)

It might work out that way, after all Japan was down another 1.59% overnight, but Europe is up a tad this morning, we the real key will be whether we get a quick bounce to S&P 1,700 for a day or less and then head down globally next week.

The bad news is that if we have just been through a Wave 1 down, and we scramble up a bit for a Wave 2, then Wave 3 down could be interesting since economic fundamentals are less than encouraging.  Particularly the Federal Reserve’s Consumer Debt report out late yesterday which showed, importantly I think, that Americans are back to sitting on their credit cards.

In the report, credit cards and the like are called “revolving” credit (like a revolver being pointed at you, I suppose) while “non-revolving credit” includes mobile homes and education loans.  The part that matters is shown to the right.

Yes, overall consumer debt was still going up at the 5.9% rate, but revolving debt (which I think of as largely consumer discretionary, except by people who have to bend plastic to eat) was down nearly 4%.  Again we see non-revolving debt (like student loans) up 10% but a lot of what’s driving that is likely to be people driven (from desperation) to buy education thinking there might be a job out there if they could just complete that online brain surgery degree.  Either that, or the number of people who said “Screw it!”  and just bought a pair of jet skis and headed to the lake is up.

Hard times make desperate people, and desperate people recognize that low interest rates won’t last forever and when they go up, no telling how bad things will get for the US dollar.

Oh, and on an inflation-adjusted basis since 2000, the Dow would have needed to hit 15,897 by January 1st of this year.  Since we can kick in another 3% for the year-to-date’s wild-eyed printing, that would point to an inflation-adjusted double top of the ultra long-term Dow around 16,373 but this isn’t an exact science because I haven’t been able to find any credible papers on the effects of quantitative easing on the effective long-term inflation rate.

Still, if it’s any help (and from an inflation standpoint it is) the reason we don’t see more inflation like  we should from all the printing by the Fed is that the money is going into dark pools on the sidelines and consequently, M2 Velocity continues to crater.  With it, job creation and some other inconveniences (government running out of dough and such) wander along.  But, we can’t have a delicious concentration of wealth omelet without breaking a few workers now, can we?

Which is not to call workers “eggs” – more like chickens or sheep would fit – so come this fall it’ll be “over easy” as the corps skate on ‘Bamacare and we the people will go nicely with cheese and toast again as we get “crack up” and the yoke is us.

Say, This is Exciting

Well, not really, but it is an employment indicator that some people (with no lives otherwise to speak of) follow closely:

In the week ending August 3, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 333,000, an increase of 5,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 328,000. The 4-week moving average was 335,500, a decrease of 6,250 from the previous week’s revised average of 341,750.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.3 percent for the week ending July 27, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending July 27 was 3,018,000, an increase of 67,000 from the preceding week’s unrevised level of 2,951,000. The 4-week moving average was 3,023,750, a decrease of 2,250 from the preceding week’s unrevised average of 3,026,000.

If you have a job, this may not matter much…

New Concept: MultiWar

In most of the MSM (mainstreammedia) there’s a propensity to cast wars into a simple binary model for ease of reporting purposes.  But, in fact, due to heavy communications, massive social and religious complexity, we are beginning to appreciate that there is a new form of warfare emerging which we call the “multiwar.” 

From a design standpoint, it means a war with multiple sides and instead of a traditional mano y mano (man and man) binary, we see developing in Syria the idea that there may be three (or more) sides. 

Obviously, the MSM reports on the Assad (existing) government, which is backed by the Russians.  And, in good binary simplifications, the “rebels” are oft shown as “freedom fighters.” 

But now we see some US intelligence types as drifting toward our multiwar construct with as Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell considers that al Qaeda taking over the Assad government is becoming a real possibility.

This trilateral war might even become quadular (other Ureism)  in nature, depending on interests of  nearby Gulf states. 

From an analytical standpoint, we hark back to early Star Trek days and 3-D chess. Yet even here, the propensity to confine the game to simply two players was persistent.  In hypercomplexification, the global geopolitical game is multiplayer and multilevel.  So perhaps as a thought model, the Langley crowd should drag out the 3-D chess set, make up some basic rules, and have three players now, instead of the binary baseline?

From the War Gamer’s Desk: 

EBM Holds True, Again!

Love to see my high-powered theories work out in real-life:

Good Morning George,

Here’s a supporting piece of evidence for Ure axiom that “everything is  a business model.”

Eisenhower’s farewell address warning comes to mind:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”

~ President Dwight D.

Read More

Ure’s truly did not win the PowerBall last night, and if you have time to read this, neither did you by the looks of it, although a number of lucky people did.  Turns out the winners included one in Minnesota and two in New Joisey. (sic) The good news, such as it is, may be that there’s another column to read although I was anticipating being able to post my farewell, audios, sayonara letter.  Maybe (hopefully) next time.

This leaves me stuck in my “get rich slow” rut, which isn’t bad, but I’m an impatient cuss.  Markets are due for a modest rally at the open today since even a bleary-eyed amateur chartist should be able to count five waves down, so we should get a wave two in hear sometime, perhaps seven points up to the S&P 1,700 level, but we shall see.

One of the charts we serve up for Peoplenomics.com readers is a Global Index I devised a number of years ago.  And looking at it, reader Yohan wonders if I have considered an unhappy ending of global finance that would look like this (with his counts added)

It migtht work out that way, after all Japan was down another 1.59% overnight, but Europe is up a tad this morning, we the real key will be whether we get a quick bounce to S&P 1,700 for a day or less and then head down globally next week.

The bad news is that if we have just been through a Wave 1 down, and we scramble up a bit for a Wave 2, then Wave 3 down could be interesting since economic fundamentals are less than encouraging.  Particularly the Federal Reserve’s Consumer Debt report out late yesterday which showed, importantly I think, that Americans are back to sitting on their credit cards.

In the report, credit cards and the like are called “revolving” credit (like a revolver being pointed at you, I suppose) while “non-revolving credit” includes mobile homes and education loans.  The part that matters is shown to the right.

Yes, overall consumer debt was still going up at the 5.9% rate, but revolving debt (which I think of as largely consumer discretionary, except by people who have to bend plastic to eat) was down nearly 4%.  Again we see non-revolving debt (like student loans) up 10% but a lot of what’s driving that is likely to be people driven (from desperation) to buy education thinking there might be a job out there if they could just complete that online brain surgery degree.  Either that, or the number of people who said “Screw it!”  and just bought a pair of jet skis and headed to the lake is up.

Hard times make desperate people, and desperate people recognize that low interest rates won’t last forever and when they go up, no telling how bad things will get for the US dollar.

Oh, and on an inflation-adjusted basis since 2000, the Dow would have needed to hit 15,897 by January 1st of this year.  Since we can kick in another 3% for the year-to-date’s wild-eyed printing, that would point to an inflation-adjusted double top of the ultra long-term Dow around 16,373 but this isn’t an exact science because I haven’t been able to find any credible papers on the effects of quantitative easing on the effective long-term inflation rate.

Still, if it’s any help (and from an inflation standpoint it is) the reason we don’t see more inflation like  we should from all the printing by the Fed is that the money is going into dark pools on the sidelines and consequently, M2 Velocity continues to crater.  With it, job creation and some other inconveniences (government running out of dough and such) wander along.  But, we can’t have a delicious concentration of wealth omelet without breaking a few workers now, can we?

Which is not to call workers “eggs” – more like chickens or sheep would fit – so come this fall it’ll be “over easy” as the corps skate on ‘Bamacare and we the people will go nicely with cheese and toast again as we get “crack up” and the yoke is us.

Say, This is Exciting

Well, not really, but it is an employment indicator that some people (with no lives otherwise to speak of) follow closely:

In the week ending August 3, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 333,000, an increase of 5,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 328,000. The 4-week moving average was 335,500, a decrease of 6,250 from the previous week’s revised average of 341,750.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.3 percent for the week ending July 27, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending July 27 was 3,018,000, an increase of 67,000 from the preceding week’s unrevised level of 2,951,000. The 4-week moving average was 3,023,750, a decrease of 2,250 from the preceding week’s unrevised average of 3,026,000.

If you have a job, this may not matter much…

New Concept: MultiWar

In most of the MSM (mainstreammedia) there’s a propensity to cast wars into a simple binary model for ease of reporting purposes.  But, in fact, due to heavy communications, massive social and religious complexity, we are beginning to appreciate that there is a new form of warfare emerging which we call the “multiwar.” 

From a design standpoint, it means a war with multiple sides and instead of a traditional mano y mano (man and man) binary, we see developing in Syria the idea that there may be three (or more) sides. 

Obviously, the MSM reports on the Assad (existing) government, which is backed by the Russians.  And, in good binary simplifications, the “rebels” are oft shown as “freedom fighters.” 

But now we see some US intelligence types as drifting toward our multiwar construct with as Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell considers that al Qaeda taking over the Assad government is becoming a real possibility.

This trilateral war might even become quadular (other Ureism)  in nature, depending on interests of  nearby Gulf states. 

From an analytical standpoint, we hark back to early Star Trek days and 3-D chess. Yet even here, the propensity to confine the game to simply two players was persistent.  In hypercomplexification, the global geopolitical game is multiplayer and multilevel.  So perhaps as a thought model, the Langley crowd should drag out the 3-D chess set, make up some basic rules, and have three players now, instead of the binary baseline?

From the War Gamer’s Desk: 

EBM Holds True, Again!

Love to see my high-powered theories work out in real-life:

Good Morning George,

Here’s a supporting piece of evidence for Ure axiom that “everything is  a business model.”

Eisenhower’s farewell address warning comes to mind:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”

~ President Dwight D.

Read More

We begin this morning with a note about the bombing (via drones) of militant installations in Yemen.  This marks part of an aggressive US effort to stamp out what is seen as a threat which has resulted in the extended shutdown of 19-embassies in the Middle East as tensions are running high.  Word is that the terrorism escalation was commenced when a leading terrorist leader sent word to the Yemeni factions that it was time to roll with an attack on America.

We hit first and more is likely to follow..  Since the intercepted telephone call from Ayman al-Zawahiri originated in Pakistan, we will likely see additional drone strikes there, as well.

Yemen is a very dangerous place:  It sports, last time I checked, the highest birth rate in the world and a lot of very poor people who are easily converted to militants by marketers of terrorism which are not in short supply there. 

As a result of today’s drone (or bomb) attacks, the US and British have told citizens to leave.

While you undoubtedly have enough common sense not to visit Yemen without coaching, the
State Department this morning issued this travel warning:

The U.S. Department of State warns U.S. citizens of the high security threat level in Yemen due to terrorist activities and civil unrest. The Department urges U.S. citizens to defer travel to Yemen and those U.S. citizens currently living in Yemen to depart immediately. 

On August 6, 2013, the Department of State ordered the departure of non-emergency U.S. government personnel from Yemen due to the continued potential for terrorist attacks.  

U.S. citizens currently in Yemen should depart. As staff levels at the Embassy are restricted, our ability to assist U.S. citizens in an emergency and provide routine consular services remains limited and may be further constrained by the fluid security situation.

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You can almost feel the tensions mounting as the US has extended its embassy closures due to concerns that an al Qaeda/militant Muslim attack would occur on American interests somewhere following release of recent video on the ‘net.  Worst of all, there’s no clear timing indicated and threats have been followed by action anywhere from a few days to almost a year in the past.  Which brings us to this morning’s developments and a few observations, starting with this report from Bernard Grover in our Jakarta, Indonesia bureau:

“Gizmos & Bombs, Chief!  Timeline:

Saturday night-public water system for west Jakarta crapped out when the pump(s) caught fire. Estimate 7 days to restore. Water trucks to deliver starting tomorrow.

Sunday 7pm-internet crapped out. All 3 systems I use. Just now able to tie my tablet thru my cell phone others still out.

Sunday 9:30p-the Buddhist temple 600 yards away (that I attended just Saturday morning) had a triple bombing. The two later eplosions were timed to hit after first responders arrived. 3 injured. Police anticipated 2nd and 3rd, and waited to enter. Suspicion falls on Myanmar sympathizers, but the jury still out. This morning’s Kompas strangely silent, but TeeVee full of it.

“Buddhist temple bomber disrespects sanctity of Ramadhan: Minister.”

The sound was of large fireworks, which are common here at the end of Ramadhan, so no one panicked immediately.

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My friend Howard disagrees with my contention that government buying and federal pressure is the reason for the ammo shortages in America.  In fact, he sent me a very long emails about this:

“I’m amazed how frequently you don’t listen to your own core principles. For example, if everything’s a business model, then why can’t you see that who profits is the main way to see who is causing a situation?

Thursday, you repeated the completely spurious conspiracy theory (not once, but twice!) that Obama and the supposedly anti-gun crowd have engineered an ammunition shortage.  Complete bull shit, to put it mildly.

Who profits? If every deranged and even the sane gun nuts are frightened into buying mass quantities of ammunition, the same way they bought guns from a bogus fear of shortages and seizures during the first four years of the ONLY ADMINISTRATION TO EXPAND GUN RIGHTS IN OVER 50 YEARS, then the manufacturers and right wing fund raisers make out like bandits, which they are.

1) Plant fear of what might happen that will create shortages or even outright banning.

2) Schedule a plant shutdown or other temporary supply chain interruption.

3) Release tons of mainstream media press with video shots of empty shelves.

4) Double the price of the product, all the while selling more units.

Rinse and repeat.

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