George Ure

‘Come Watson, you must see this!”

“See what, old man?”

“Behold the difficulty in  which the Moriarty administration now finds itself!  After a shameless charade of a shutdown, to they now risk interference with high-level trading models by reports economic data due some weeks back, or will they delay the inevitable until next month’s reports?”

“You mean with 83% of workers still on the job, they haven’t had the numbers in their back pockets all this time?”

“It matters not!  All that matters at this instant is when, not how, Moriarty will release the data!  Get my mouse, Watson, we’re on the click!”

And so, as the great criminal enterprise known as runaway corporatism begins this morning, one of the oddest of problems of all to ponder, as we go into the weekend, is when all of the missing economic data from the shutdown period will be unslung and flung on the Street.

Natürlich, Ures truly is not the only one eyeing this Case of the Missing Data.  So’s the New York Times.

While the market should (by my trading model that I so studiously ignore, and thus lose money in spite of its being ridiculously right) tack on another major rally today or Monday, the seat belts should be fastened about Tuesday when the last month’s unemployment data is revealed.

Not that it will tell us much, mind you:  The Labor Department is highly expert at turning sow’s ears into silk purses.  However, the long-term observer will focus not just on the “headline number” but on the underlying collapse in manufacturing (the jobjack number) and the labor participation rate.

The really interesting confluence of data will come when the CPI figures come out on October 30th and then the next unemployment numbers are due the following week.

In the meantime, for Peoplenomics subscribers, we’ll do our fearless review of West Coast Port data tomorrow morning.  The brothers and sisters of the ILWU didn’t walk out and so we have at least some guidance available there.

In the meantime, the Fed H.6 Money Stocks report reveals they’re is goosing M1 and M2 at an 8.2% print rate, and if prices aren’t keeping up, the reason is whatcha call deflation.

But that’s not the whole story.  If you look at the Fed’s H.3 report, you’ll see the banksters’ reserve balances are up (very roughly) a HUGE 60.2% from the same period a year ago.  We’re obviously in the wrong business or just need a rich uncle.

Are the problems now over?  Well, no.  Lots of experts are skeptical that anything different in the way of an outcome will happen when it comes around again, shortly.

In the meantime, euphoria and fall are having a grand battle of it.

More after….oh, you know…

This is Sick Dept.

The Obamacare story just keeps getting better and better.  Now, we’re seeing reports that insurers are getting the wrong data.

Seeing how F/Ued this is really makes me appreciate Microsoft a whole bunch more.  My Windows 8 updated worked like a champ out of the box.  For a hell of a lot more money, seems to me the error rate in O/care is not something that would play in the halls of Redmond, know what I mean?

In the real (i.e. nongovernmental) world of software, we do things like look at the user experience, redundant data checks, test release candidates, and oh, yeah, have customer support that can actually answer questions.

This is getting just rucking feediculous.

Damaging Doctor-Patient Relations, Too

A side effect of the evolving, Obamacare-driven distrust of the insurance-industry backed premium-care system is a deterioration in doctor-patient relations, as I can attest to personally, since I went in for my periodic checkup this week.

Since I still own me (not my straw man, though) I think I can tell you this story without myself suing me for violation the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act privacy regs.  However, I don’t put me, suing myself, entirely aside since we live in that kind of a world now, but here’s my personal healthcare experience:

Went to the doctor and I said, “Do I need to do anything about this [small] navel hernia?”

We’d talked in the past about it…it hasn’t changed any, and his answer was doctorly spot-on:

“Well, if it starts to bother you sure, but it looks stable and lots of people go to the funeral parlor with them…”

My doc is a straight-shooter, but thanks to O/care and the healthsurance scammmers (which is what I call it when different carriers have different rates for the same operations, which in God knows any other industry would be felonious price-fixing) I found myself asking very difficult questions on the way home:

• Did my doc do my a favor by keeping me from getting technical unnecessary surgery?
• Is he secretly watching the debate between webbing and re-sewing approaches to navel hernias?  My long-life friend gets an occasional twinge from his still…hmmm…
• Did he recommend not worrying about it because I would likely have signed up for Medicare and thus, my surgery would up Medicare costs?
• Or??? Was he protecting my Big Insurance Company which doesn’t pay a dime until I hit the $5,000 mark annually but then covers everything up to $2-million a year?
• Was he simply marking type to see if it changes any more over time?

Once upon a time, when you went to the doc and asked him a question, you got a simple answer. But with increasing public awareness of how the accountants are going to do for medicine what they did for American manufacturing, well, sh*t, now I just don’t know what to think or believe.  You know about doctor junkets from the pharma boyz, right?  Toss that in, too. 

He’s a serious workaholic, my doc, who I can’t even talk into a quick 9-holes of golf…with me paying…which is about as tough a problem-solving option as I’ve ever come up with.  I figured on asking about the 5th green, or so, to see if it could screw up his short game.  But he’s too busy to play free golf so you KNOW all this medical froth is ruining relations and working docs to death in the process, right?

In the meantime, I’m being very careful not to lift weights over 100 pounds or so.  Although I maintain my sharp mental focus and intellectual acuity by vigorously working out with smaller weights of, oh, about 1.5 ounces at a time, PRN.

We’re on Roaming

At least in a manner of speaking as our Winnipeg news analyst notes:

Dear Mr. Ure,

Do all roads lead through Rome? Those who prefer a mountain view to the seven hills may wish to embark upon an easy search of publicly available whois records. This is not investment advice. 

Who, Me?  Dept.

Edward Snowden says he took no secret files to Russia with him.  But, lemme ask you this:  Did he say anything about located elsewhere servers?

I can overlook this one:  After all, the kid was raised in a country where the President was saying “Depends what you mean by sex…”:  So, I guess, “take with him” could be rather narrowly defined, too.

Traffic Advisories

It’s a good thing our consulting client in the East Bay doesn’t have to deal with this crap most mornings:  Bay Area Rapid Transit is out on strike this morning.

Soooo… if you live, in say, Oakland, and see yon sign on the BART website, it may be faster to swim than drive around.  And if I were a cop,; I betcha the whole monthly quota could be bagged on the 280 coming up from San Joser (sic) later on this morning.

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Thank you Congress.  By running back to the printing press you have jammed up the price of gold more than $35 bucks (some are excitedly saying $50), which is fine by us, but is this really the rational thing to be doing in here?

With stock futures pointing to a slight pullback at the open this morning, down may 50-75 points after yesterday’s nosebleed-inducing rally, there I was by the phone when long-term reader Nick called.

“So, George, let me see if I have this right:  Congress needed to pass the debt ceiling so that we could keep paying our creditors, right?”

Well, uh, yeah….

“So wouldn’t it be safe to call this just one big Ponzi Scheme – you know – like the one Charles Ponzi set up where the new “investors” coming in had their money paying people their “returns”?”

I bet you know what happened next, don’t you?  I spent the next few half-hour on the phone with him explaining that the difference is that when “crime” is done by government, (not Chuck Ponzi) under the color of law like this, it’s call monetary policy.  It’s theft, but Theft Lite.  It’s good for you.  (“Git those hands back up where I kin see ‘em pardnah…”)

OK, just more smoke and mirrors, since there are some who argue that there never was a crisis in the first place.

You mean theater to perp the bigger shake-down?  Gee, gosh, golly, look surprised!  Emergency! Emergency!  Everyone run from Street!

If you just went out back next week, printing up hundred-dollar bills when you happened to  overdraw your checking account, you’d be a guest at Uncle’s (we’ll leave the light on for you) Iron Bar Hotel.  The main difference, of course, being that Congress has an Army, and consequently taxes (including Obamacare) is magically not an insurance industry shakedown (look up protection racket).  Instead, it’s national health care.

Of course, any competent business man can see that this just “kicks the can down the road” and as of this morning I think our next attempt at actuarial suicide will come in just 73-days.

Still, the Markets ought to now roll on to new heights, at least until the called-back federal workers getting a 16-17 day paid vacation (for not going to work) in this shows up on people’s screen.

All of which sets up furloughed workers who do get paid with the future prospects of getting almost four months a year of vacation.  Here’s how:  Say you’ve been around a good while and you get four weeks of regular vacation.  Maybe you could roll up some comp time and get that up to five weeks, right? 

Now, let’s say that this kick-the-can crap (coming back shortly, remember)  can be scheduled to occur four times per year.  That would make it…uh…64-calendar days or about 9.1 weeks, which when added to the five weeks of earned vacation is 14.1 weeks.  OK, it’s only 3.68 weeks of vacation.

If I had suggested this to you six months ago, you’d have been right to call Ures truly a raving-mad lunatic.

Now, I’m an economic policy realist and I’m kicking myself six-ways to Sunday for not getting a cushy federal job back in the day.

But it certainly explains a lot of past government hiring actions, like those thousands of new employees at IRS and DHS, for example.  My theory, waiting only to be proven out by events, is that the federal government won’t really be doing any more actual work.

They’ll just be beefing up to handle all the vacation time.  God, we’re generous with all that free tax loot, ain’t we?.  Makes me ever so much more anxious (even eager) to send in my Q4 tax payment in January.  You too, I bet?

Oh, here’s another meaty morsel in all this:  Mitch McConnell cut his state a fat hog – to the tune of $3-billion in earmarked funds for Kentuckians, as part of this..

Best government money can buy.

It’s just too bad that voters can hold multiple state residencies, otherwise I’d be inclined to take up residence in California. Nevada, and Kentucky, just so I could vote against the folks who jammed this through, rather than fixing our underlying (we’re bankrupt, right?) problem.

The way I figure it, about 3/4th of the senate needs to be shown the door at the next election and a like fraction on the other side of Ponzgress.  Which leaves only the matter of keeping the country from being repo’ed out from under us by corporations (and China) between now and then.

Reader Charles figures it this way:

…All that was done is the Clowns all crowded back in the car to drive in a circle in the Main Ring and get out to do it all over again several weeks along!

Bread and what?

Look, if this was really such a big deal, how come the president is waiting until this morning to sign this and get things back on track?  I know if you or I were in the White House, we’d be up till 3 AM, or whatever it took, to get ‘er done.

So the urgency is, how shall I say, a little suspect at a minimum.

Who’s Healthy?

Meantime, that blip on television of a House stenographer is out and about on the ‘net.  In case you missed it, this woman got up from here House job writing down what was going on and blurted out:

“

“The greatest deception here is this is not one nation under God. It never was. Had it been, it would not have been. No. It would not have been. The Constitution would not have been written by Free Masons. They go against God. You cannot serve two masters.

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As promised, reader Bill (he’s about the 200th Bill around here, so it’s easy to get confused) sent in his WuJo experience:.  Wujo being, if you’re a first-time reader, those events which DO happen but logically should NOT happen…

A couple of weeks ago, my wife was sitting at the head of the kitchen table going through the Sunday coupon insert. Sitting at the other head of the table was my mother and under the table was the dog. On the chair to her right (a 90 degree angle) was a plastic shopping bag that she was putting in the pages that she didn’t want so that they would eventually go in the garbage. I was going to eat my bowl of cereal for breakfast, so I took the bag and put it on the back of what is now my chair, as I was eating, she was still putting the unwanted pages into the bag. At some point, she stopped and we were talking, I don’t remember what we were talking about. With our small conversation over, she returned to her coupons, she reached for her bag and it was gone from the back of my chair. We looked all around and found it on the floor, behind my wife and to her left. It was laying there sort of like if you took a bag in your left hand, put it behind your back and dropped it. We were both amazed and sitting there puzzled. In no point in time did anyone of the three of us (My wife, my mother nor me) got up or move and the dog was still laying on the floor under the table.

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Take me off your contact list, please.  The latest pisserlation (a revelation which causes you to get what?) is that the NSA – already seized by Gestapo-like management, is now ripping off your email address book contents, according to the Washington Post this morning.

What the article doesn’t get into, in much depth, is the why they’re doing it.

So here’s the deal, down and dirty:  The intel agencies (Stasi lites?) believe that they can build up a who profile on every single human being in America by bits and pieces without outright breaking the law.

You need to closely study the Wikipedia entry on “social mapping”

In social geography a social map is the cartographic, twodimensional representation of social institutions or processus projected on a plane. The first social maps date from the early 20th century. A recent example is the mapping of the residences of U.S. Facebook users and their social links [1].

In marketing a social map is a visualized analysis of a digital identity of a person, brand or company. A social map shows exactly where a digital identity is created, formed or discussed and sets each element in context and proportions.

These social map created an intense discussion about digital reputation and digital identities. For companies a so-called Corporate Social Map is still very new and an unusual methodology, but also very effective and meaningful.

Conspicuously missing is what it means to government and law enforcement.

Basically, it takes guilt by association (an address book entry) and attempts to electronically morph it into probable cause.  

Since everyone on earth is connected to everyone else on earth, the wet dream here is to develop software that will ‘see through’ the six-degrees of separation’ problem and will turn everyone on a contact list into a suspect.

Of course, by weighting other contacts into the mix, we can see how it might, in theory, actually work.  But, the downfall is that the digital underbelly of everyone is exposed…except for the HMFICs who are running their own game.  Yes – the same guys who talk about –  but don’t deliver what?  TRANSPARENCY.

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Sheep, banksters, and Tarriers served up this morning:   A Monday slap of Reality is ready.

There was (predictably) no breakthrough this weekend on the debt ceiling or the budget, so this morning, the market is looking (at least in the futures, and early on) to open about 80 points down.  And to see the market blow down several hundred points between now and Thursday shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

The Rest of the World (RoW) is becoming afraid of two things:  Namely that we American’s really might be as crazy as claimed by some and that worse,  the fear-mongering bankster class might actually be partly right about their “End of the World” yammering’s.

Me?  I don’t buy it. 

Americans were told by the hundreds of thousand just four years ago about how we should tighten the belt a notch and get on with working and spending.  We did our part and then some.

Now, when the same is expected of government, there’s a tremendous hue and cry about how whole this isn’t the country isn’t sailing off the edge of the Earth, yet, but you can hear the waterfalls from here…  (There’s a famous painting, or two, devoted to that…)

So here we are Monday and as we begin another “…work all day for sugar in your tay…” (the Tarriers part) we can assess the overnight global picture this way, looking for signs and portents as we do:

China up 1.16%

Japan up 1.48%

France down 0.10 %

Germany down (0.08%

And the UK up 0.14%

“So,” you’re thinking “If the end of the world is really that close, how come the global collapse is not on right now, then?”

Fine point:  At least in the early goings today, what I’d expect is a lot of ‘hot’ money blowing town looking for a more rational parking place.  That’s why other countries are UP.

The Hype du Jour this morning is that Senate democorps have a new budget front to push.  Yippee skippy!

The House is playing with (itself and) another short-term debt bill accompanied by the most bolloxed-up inability to articulate the concept of “Up to our collective asses in debt” in a way the sheep can grok as you’ll ever see.

Scare stories galore including this one about ripples at the State levels.

Hats off to our Veterans who went to the Memorials this weekend and tossed the barricades back to the White House.

Not to downplay the technical dangers, here, especially with IMF Money-Princess in Chief Chris Legarde calling things “very very disturbing,”  (no shit?) but a lot of our 99er-friends who lost homes and savings in the 2008/2009 collapse see poetic justice in the wings. Want me to mention the MF Global screw-job perp in here, too, long as we’re sharpening our words?

What the Fools on the Hill may not comprehend: “Too Big to Fail” may no longer apply.  And if that’s the case, we could be “Look out below!” for the markets.

A short story and  further smack of reality here, if I may?

Every so often, when Capt. Midnight has time, he called me from the rural part of Virginia or other east coast areas when he’s off adventuring.  And usually, our phone calls will be interrupted with cell drop out once or twice during a call.

When he rings back, the common laugh-line is “Damn third world phone system…”

Except we both know that is not a joke.

This morning there’s a really good interview by Kopin Tan with legendary trader Jim Rogers in Barron’s online over here.  The paragraph I’d point out to you is this quote from Rogers:

“When I was selling my New York house, I almost backed out; I just couldn’t bear the thought of leaving. But now I’m very happy here. I fly to New York and I realize I’m in a Third World airport. Then I get into a Third World taxi onto a Third World highway. The difference now just slaps me in the face. New York is a wonderful place, with the people and the vibrancy, but I can find the same vibrancy, if not more, in Asia. “

As an occasional trader who is one foot in technical analysis and one foot in fundamentals, what I look around and see is very similar to what Rogers is describing.

What we have before us is a country on the verge of technical bankruptcy, an administration which has promised more than it has performed, backed up by a congress that’s the laughing stock of everywhere but Greece, Iceland, Cyprus and the other Euro countries which are are the same track.

When we should be taxing machines that replace humans, we instead provide real (tax and other) incentives to rip jobs out of America and stash untaxed money offshore.  Slick, huh?

Businesses here, no longer fettered by monopolistic requirements such as make sense when placed on utilities (which telcos are) have systematically underinvested bare minimums to make as much money as possible.  But at its core, we’re still coasting on infrastructure investments made a decade ago.

Free lunching is not limited to the masses of the poor – works in telecom too, which is why you can’t hardly find American tech support to save your soul.

So yeah, people are a bit skitterish.  Like reader Andy:

G,
If the gov defaults, any recommendations in terms of having cash on hand, paying off debt ect
that you might share.
What will happen to the banks?
I can’t believe it has gotten this far.
But maybe it is good.
After all, you have been preaching that this insanity must stop and so this could be where it does.
What then?
Andy from Ohio

In order:  Yes, always have 90-days of cash on hand, but own a gun and keep your mouth shut.

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“She travels like a rocket with her comet team, and there’s never been a planet Janet hasn’t seen…”  That’s one of the lines in the Schoolhouse Rock episode which I mention this morning because I loved the rally yesterday.  OK, so a little later than I expected, but the bottom line here is this:  The prospect of a new Fed boss who’s going to make Ben Bernanke’s helicopters look puny could just push the market on to new highs any old time.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but the latest Money Stocks report from the Fed shows M1 up at an annualized 8.3% for the month recent three months and similarly, M2 is up 8.2% for the three months, so maybe Led Zeppelin should rename word the song printing a stairway to heaven…

But, before we go there, the troublesome 1,690 line on the S&P remains and it’s best captured in Forbidden Zone’s “Bim Bam Boom” in terms of how it all works out.

As long as I have my world’s first EconoJay  (e-J) hat on this morning, here’s a song to play which summed up what we figure will be Interplanet Janet’s Fed policy in a nutshell.

Now, this is where things get interesting. I don’t think the prospect of buying a stairway to heaven (or printing it, either) will work, so Ures truly waded back in to his next wild-ass short side trade at the market highs yesterday.

NO!  This is NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE.  This is a crazy man barking at the moon, but is there a chance that the market could briefly venture over that 1,690 level today and touch back down on Earth before the close?  We should know in a week or two who’s more irrational: me or the markets.

Budget Follies Will Decide

I should play poker with John Boehner sometime…and hopefully, if we ever do, he should bring a big bankroll with him because I’m gonna get rich off off him. 

Why?  Lousy poker player.  Obama called his bluff and Boehner folded…so this morning more talk is expected, but Boehner, who’s quickly losing support of the Tea Party wing for being to accommodative on the debt ceiling is also basically handing over the GOP’s future in 2016 by not hammering on the reality of what’s going down.

The issue, as I’ve tried ever-so-gently to explain is compound interest…and nothing more.  All Boehner would need to say is “Our Country is Blowing Up and the American people will not see their home foreclosed, the job-jacks to India, and then bless this administration’s bankrupting the US dollar to boot!”

Boehner won’t have the balls to get down and call it like it is.  Nor will he point out the heresy of claiming poor on budget and then having shock troops enough to turn away veterans from the Memorial while allowing pro immigration promotion at virtually the same time.

Nor, will he say the boondoggles which Faux News has been rolling out, are mostly at the feet of Fearless Leader not actuarial science.

Still, the government remains shut down, and despite the Interplanet Janet blastoff to the markets, I wouldn’t be surprised by a first stage burnout when people figure out that gravity (and pernicious debt-driven inflation) are not so easily fooled.

But for this morning, we should see a few more of the people, some of the time as futures are pointing to an effort to achieve orbit.  My money says it may look like Sputnik, but remember, the first satellite was up only 90-days. 

The markets should be so lucky.

With public confidence in both the poker player in chief and the inarticulate budget-aware realists cratering, polls are showing a high level of distrust and disgust.

It’s one thing to say the markets can “climb a wall of worry.”  It’s entirely another question when we ask “Can markets climb an asylum wall?”

More to the point, when was the last time a market staged a serious rally when 60% of poll respondents said to fire every member of congress?

Look for video later this morning as truckers plan to Ride for the Constitution.  And to be followed Sunday by a Million Veteran March at 9 AM at the National World War II Memorial.

Enough is too much and potential is high that this will be a change point weekend.

More After This…

JP Bleedin’

So, how does it feel to post a loss of a third of a billion plus?  Might want to ask the execs at JP Morgan which took a $7.2 billion legal hit this quarter.  Meantime, where there’s a fail, there’s a sale, as we say around here.  So word’s out this morning that JPM is looking to sell its commodities biz. 

Always ready to snap up a deal, I’ll call a couple of buddies and I’m sure we could make an offer.  I’m thinking about a $1,000 in cash and the seller to take back a note with no recourse to buyers.  Want in? LOL….  Oh, did I mention the no liabilities for past transactions clause?

Mideast Killing Fields

There’s so much murder and mayhem going on in the Middle East these days it could provide many lifetimes of storylines for someone like Joseph Wambaugh.  Here’s the latest body count:

Syria:  190  Number of civilians executes says Human Rights Watch.

Iraq: 42:   Number of people executed in a “clean up the streets” campaign following sectarian violence.

Also related:  the dynamite-paid Peace Prize has gone to a chemical weapons watchdog group.  Wiki fact check:

Dynamite was invented by the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Germany, and patented in 1867.

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