What we have today is the “target-rich environment” for investigation, introspection, and investment. There are so many pieces in play, it’s hard to know where to start.
This being Friday, though, let’s get the little (but important) items off the list first:
You will recall our target level from our Elliott Wave spreadsheet modeler for a possible Wave 2 bounce of Bitcoins from their top was $16,297. This morning it was $16,000 so definitely zeroing-iu on that objective. We could go as high as $19,500, though, since under Elliott, a retracement of up to 100 percent of the initial decline is possible. Rare, but possible.
(Continues below)
Of course, above and we go to the $35,000 range – in theory – while a drop below $11,000 spells the end of the Mania and the return to “normal” – if your idea of normal is texting instead of speaking.
Gotta say, I’d think that with phone calls so easy – and withj voice-driven dialers – if people had something to say to one-another, they’d use the fastest and least intrusive means available. They don’t. So our label of the Phone-ee people as “button-pressing apes” remains vaild.
Oh,, sure, people argue “Security!” as a justo for texting. But even here, there are alternatives. Learn to speak an obscure foreign language. Works faster than texting and is quite secure, unless you run in circles that speak Swahili or Aztec dialects of Peru. And then there’s high-speed Morse, of course.
Of course those options actually involve learning and thinking, so I can understand how the Lazy99 stupid people roll. It’s also why there is a one-percent.
Next up, we have the stock market: We’re halfway to our 2,750 region on the S&P, and don’t be surprised to see the Dow pop another hundred today…which gets us to the Jobs Report just out from the Labor Department:
“In December, the unemployment rate was 4.1 percent for the third consecutive month. The
number of unemployed persons, at 6.6 million, was essentially unchanged over the month.
Over the year, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons were down by
0.6 percentage point and 926,000, respectively. (See table A-1.)
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for teenagers declined to 13.6
percent in December, offsetting an increase in November. In December, the unemployment
rates for adult men (3.8 percent), adult women (3.7 percent), Whites (3.7 percent),
Blacks (6.8 percent), Asians (2.5 percent), and Hispanics (4.9 percent) showed little
or no change. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)
Among the unemployed, the number of new entrants decreased by 116,000 in December. New
entrants are unemployed persons who never previously worked.”
Our nickel worth of notes:
The Labor Participation Rate was unchanged @ 62.7%
The portion of the population working hasn’t changed.
Importantly, the U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force was up 1/10th to 8.1% long-term unemployed.
And the CES Birth-Death model month-on-month estimate of new jobs actually took away 180,000 jobs.
Where’d Climate Change Go?
Sounds like something out of a sci-fi book: “Quietly, overhead, the Sun was going out…”
While it does, and we ought to have the new solar cycle progression tomorrow or Monday, the media’s stupid, shrill, scream to draw ad money continues. For example?
Bombogenesis? YHGTBSM!
Sessions is Wrong
With the US Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, trying to stuff the pot genie back in the hookah, the keen observer of Economic Cycles will be laughing at how the present-day parody of the 1920’s blow-off top is working out.
First, as background, have a read of “New Pot Policy by Trump Administration Draws Bipartisan Fire” so you’ll follow our wryrony. (*wry irony, if the bean hasn’t kicked-it yet.) Roast ’em kiddies, it’s time for the ever-popular…
Friday Potonomics Lecture
One upon a time, the US had a previous “war on drugs” and it ran the social underground during the run-up to the Great Depression. In other words, during the 1920’s Prohibition. Incept? 1920. Terminus: December 4, 1933.
Notice anything odd?
“Garsh, Mickey…you mean that Prohibition finally ended just as the Great Depression was hitting its depths? Giving people a legal course to get high and ease the woes of poverty? Oh, and paying a tax,, too?”
Exactamente!
Bingo, bongo, my hookah honeys. Old Jeff Sessions – whether he realizes it, or not – is doing the same thing that happened just ahead of The Crash of ’29 – when the powersthatwere all doubled-down on the Prohibition.
And it follows: the S.A. gangs are walking in the same gang ruts that the Scicilians wore back then – along with the Irish mob, depending on city and century.
Point?
When you take a look at longer-term history, just like some states and municipalities were harder (or looser) on alcohol in the 1920’s, the same is true today.
And just as the Flappers were the sexual revolutionaries of back in the day, we have the Hundred Genders Movement, as we like to call it, echoing the same macro socioeconomic wave today. Wiki me, Alexa:
“Flappers were a generation of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles, and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms.[1] Flappers had their origins in the liberal period of the Roaring Twenties, the social, political turbulence and increased transatlantic cultural exchange that followed the end of World War I, as well as the export of American jazz culture to Europe.”
Yep. Gay and TG rights advocates of today may be portrayed by future historians as also being brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles, and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms.
Granted, the music is different, but it’s the new “sexual mores” are all part and parcel of the giant historical rhyme we are meandering through now. Lik,e a maze, but with higher Uh……………………………taxes and shrill social.
The hard times will be here soon enough. And when they do, the Great Hunger of the 1930’s will return, the money will become scare, and hard times will be upon the land again. Like it, or not, that’s how history rolls.
Is Sessions an idiot, as many of our readers feel?
Ummm….The Truth in the Big Zoom Out is both Yes and No.
Yes, he’s trying to yell at a great social tide that runs a certain way every three generations,. or so. That always ends with wet feet.
No, he is following his conservative leanings and what much of the Southern base holds to. The same South that preaches temperance on Sunday but all hit the package stores Friday… Maybe no has passed Jeff a good hand-rolled hogleg, yet…
It’s still not to late to read Strauss and Howe’s The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy – What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny.
Unlike many writers on contemporary events, I try to remember that being a reporter, writer, commentator is a three operation process: There’s input, followed by cogitation and reflection, and this at some point results in output.
What makes this website different than the wasteland of social media is we try to spend as much time on inputs and information-gathering as spewing. While we may not have a viral video, or 93,000 Likes, we do have a certain peace of mind and perspective that keeps the blood pressure in-check and our spirits and energy high.
Everyone – bar none – is locked in the Dance of Destiny at some level.
We hold to the view that President Warbucks is walking the same ruts as President Hoover. In turn, Jeff Sessions’ attack on pot laws is his effort to turn back the tide of history. Which, oh, by the way, always fails.
History is bigglier than Warbucks and Sessions combined.
Are we thrilled about having a real estate mogul on Pennsylvania Avenue when he’s off the links? Frankly it doesn’t matter. It’s the same as the successful mining engineer (who was Hoover) the last time this cycle came around.
I know it’s crazy, but thanks to the mind-warping and spew that comes out of Social Media, people these days will glom on to something like Bitcoins, Hundred Genders and Social Justifiers and before that it was global coastal events that would sink us all in a grand cataclysm around, oh, December of 2012.
Those things work(ed) because people intuitively KNOW that cycles are REAL.
But they are also soft.
Rather than study the work and weritings of the great researchers, Chris Carolan, Peter Eliades, Steve Puetz, Jim Goulding (and maybe me) it’s easier to justr spew. Even though there’s a bunch of us who have been “in the loop” on this for decades now…
Back in 2003, for example, my friend of mine (bond tradcer) Jim Goulding wrote a marvelous short book “Winter is Coming” in which he summarized some of the expectations for this period. The link will get you to the Kindle version. It’s a bond trader’s take on how the rubber of Strauss and Howe meets the economic road.
All of us have been plagued by the same issue, though: Nailing the timing. Like I said, the cycles are soft. No one bangs a gong.
2018 should be it. But. until we have that fateful morning when we wake up and the Dow has dropped four thousand points overnight, we can’t be sure.
Or, until the flash-bangs of nukes begin, or Taiwan falls, or Israel is vaporized… then you’ll know The End of the good times is here. Depression follows.
Between now and whenever?
Each of us has evolved a “Way”. Eliades has prodigious research. Carolan has the Spiral Calendar, Arch Crawford is expert in astro-econ, I work on Aggregate Markets, while Puetz has a Grand Cycle theory – and his work on crashes is marvelous.
But there are mechanical aspects, too. Which is why the Youssefmir, Huberman, and Hogg work on Bubbles and how they form proximate to news events is also useful.
For this weekend, though, you can relax. We normally don’t see a BIG BAD-ASS CRASH for a couple of months from new market highs. We expect the earliest for the collapse will be the “sell in May and go away” window this year.
But barring flash-bangs on the Peninsula, a summer market absolute high makes more sense with a horror Octoberish of this year.
After that? Depression. That’s to be followed with the long wave trough war, which my consiglieri’s work has pegged (since 1979 BTW) in that 2023-2025 area..with 2024 the center of the data curves.
I have probably said too much, but then not enough… so more details for Peoplenomics subscribers tomorrow.\
We calls ’em like we sees ’em…and for now, Warbucks reprising Hoover pulled the bonus Congressional Election Cycle. Which means instead of crash in the first year of his term, it’s counting more like the third year will be it.
Gosh, I bet this feels good, doesn’t it? Our model has been long for more than a year…and we can see the way to another 9-months of upside and a Dow stretching toward 30,000. Gold should hit its $2,500 target, too.
We do recommend that you set aside $40 of Ure winnings for Peoplenomics because I won’t often be this clear in public. Just a low-profile crank in the East Texas outback.
RE: “Bombogenesis:”
NOAA enlightens us: “Bombogenesis, a popular term used by meteorologists, occurs when a midlatitude cyclone rapidly intensifies, dropping at least 24 millibars over 24 hours. A millibar measures atmospheric pressure. This can happen when a cold air mass collides with a warm air mass, such as air over warm ocean waters. The formation of this rapidly strengthening weather system is a process called bombogenesis, which creates what is known as a bomb cyclone.”
According to HuffPo, McGill University John Gyakum along with the revered late Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorologist Fred Sanders, first coined the term in a paper they published in 1980. They used the phrase to describe powerful cyclones that get their energy from rapid drops in pressure caused by hot and cold temperatures colliding.
So there you have it.
Thanks Warhammer! I had never heard of a bomb cyclone till this year.
I whole heartedly agree with your comments on texting. Since this is the de riguer way the 99ers prefer to communicate, I wonder when we will see a return to silent movies with all dialogue texted on the screen?
According to HuffPo…Maybe they meant to term the weather event…a BIMBOGENESIS…..and hit the next key over….PC not….
Bimbogenesis? I love bimbos!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82LSFob0b3U
Our local newscaster solemnly intoned on Wednesday (1/3) that the temperature at night had dipped below zero EVERY DAY THIS MONTH!
SHEESH! GMAFB!
73s.
Re: pot
I said some 45 years ago (I’m 72) that our generation would legalize pot. It has taken longer than I imagined, but here we are. And, having had a buddy ‘back in the day’ who was an alcholic, pot head Nam vet, pot is less damaging than booze for the long haul. And, being of a Libertarian bent, I say legalize, then we can tax and control better and cut off the gangs’ business.
I had the opportunity to toke some weed but never did; contact highs were enough for me. I will have a little wine now and then, but prefer to live a sober life.
It should have been legalized years hell decades ago.. just from weighing out the good from the bad..I still think it is a miracle plant.
It use to be a major cash crop in the USA. Henry ford was going to use it in making body parts for his cars. it literally has so many good aspects that I am amazed.. but then there are a lot of the puppet masters that don’t want to see this one legal..
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2012/12/05/how-hemp-became-illegal-the-marijuana-link/
I am with you on that to.. right now we already know that one in three use it for recreational purposes.. forget the life saving pharmaceuticals instead lets prescribe opiates.. and they are willing to use this even though it is deemed illegal. so legalize it.. take the profits away from the cartels.. of course I am sure they have lobbyists to trying to keep it illegal.
regulate it.. a son in law owns a big business he argues he doesn’t want anyone working for him that uses it.. I told him they already are statistics says that.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-marijuana-traffic-death/after-states-legalized-medical-marijuana-traffic-deaths-fell-idUSKBN14H1LQ
http://rogersandmoss.com/blog/14-criminal-law-articles/56-two-years-later-has-the-legalization-of-marijuana-affected-crime-in-colorado
https://www.vox.com/2016/4/29/11528410/cannabis-gateway-drug-theory
https://www.nature.com/articles/6603236
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/21/17/6475
http://mct.aacrjournals.org/content/10/1/90
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3202504/
the list is big.. it is just a good plant all the way around.
Now I am not a marijuana user and probably never will be but the good definitely outweighs the negative.
Thanks, George, great stuff today.
You’ve moved me to sign up for PN.
I especially appreciate the consistency of message, and that some of your best commenters show up on a couple other important sites I read. Also, thank you for the stream of reading suggestions. A good teacher opens the gate, shows the path, gives some definition, and provides the swift kick.
P.S. Our local Safeway sells Rose brand egg noodles, now. I think I must have a neighbor who reads you too!
Who’s ripping off and reposting our content? Sheesh…no honor among thieves, is there?
So, depression between 2023-2025? That’s a pretty short depression even if that is only the trough. The problem that I see is that with thousands of nukes all over the planet, we don’t have the option of a World War to end the depression has we did in WWII. Maybe we just have a massive spend on productive infrastructure and a huge emphasis on birth control? Nah…, too simple and too humane. Humanity prefers pain and complication.
No, no – that’s the global war – and THAT could be over in five minutes
Depression starts this fall or 2019…
I figured the fall of 2017.. boy was I off on that guess
Texting is abbreviation.
It’s like the impersonal telegraph Vs pony express (where you could sometimes still smell the scent of the writer).
It’s like impersonally calling someone Vs walking two blocks for a site visit (not missing the face to face).
It’s like posting here instead of corresponding via. USPS chain-letters.
Text – “Can I still use the roaster you talked about at the Christmas party?”
Phone – “Hi, Aunt Mable, it’s me, Steve F again…, no, Steve…. blah, blah, blah, blah… blah, blah, blah, blah…”
Answer 1: Don’t call idiots
Answer 2: We have a rooster you can borrow
Prohibition creates black markets. Perhaps that’s what .gov wants.
Jeffry is another bought pharma dog
I hate phones. The coming of emails was such a joy. Anyway, to each his own.
Since you mentioned blood pressure, this video is the best, most concise I have ever seen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0w7buQrnAw 4 ways to reduce blood pressure without patent medicines.
As my PN subscription comes up for renewal this month I am more and more aware of how I depend on your columns for my sanity. Thanks for providing the lantern!
Don’t want to argue about global warming, been addressing it for over 30 years. And I won’t argue that media continues to overhype in both directions, and can’t get their facts straight. But there is a simple explaination for periodic deep freezes like we are going through now. And they can happen any year, but happen most often when the polar vortex weakens. Check out this SciAm article for clear explaination:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/what-is-this-polar-vortex-that-is-freezing-the-u-s/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-digest&utm_content=link&utm_term=2018-01-05_top-stories
a man after my own heart.. thank you for sharing that.. definitely better said and with less words than I would have used..
And why can’t we just call it a Northeaster like we have for hundreds of years?
Thank you. Yes!
I have a relative who has had a long term boyfriend who was a ‘medical pot’ provider from the beginning in our state. Made somewhat of a living from it, until it was full legalized and now everyone can grow it, which makes his product ‘passe (with an accent mark above the e)’. I suspect that he may welcome Sessions’ change though he won’t admit it.
History is a ‘funny’ beast. Although something looks like it will work out the same as an earlier time, most often it won’t. Today’s general population is not as versed in ‘being prepared’ as my grandparents’ generation was. I see much more ‘civil unrest’ if currently we have a depression.
(Herbert Hoover was actually a nice person who was a bad president and latter served in an honorable social work capacity. I don’t see Donald Trump ever doing anything so noble when he leaves office.)
I wonder if we’d even have NYC as a viable habitat if it wasn’t for Donald Trump. I went to a medical school in NYC in the late 70’s and early 80’s and it was very dangerous and decrepit. If Donald Trump and his over-the-top ideas hadn’t overwhelmed the corrupt regimes there, I doubt that anyone would want to be there now. I believe his ideas and promotions(and rehabbing/repurposing midtown buildings) was an essential ingredient in the NYC renaissance.
President Trump is opinionated, bombastic, intelligent, and genuinely cares for people and his own ideas. I expect that he will be a positive influence on humanity for the rest of his life. He can make mistakes and big ones, but he does seem to find and correct most of them.
I do think that Sessions’ push to enforce the law is more about making sure that CONgress changes laws to be more in accordance with the wishes of the people, rather than just choosing which laws to enforce. Prohibition is stupid unless you have an insider game.
Oh, later, latter, ladder . . .
Unfortunate though this may be, texting is also to be preferred by many with impaired hearing, though the more traditional among us delight in e-mail for longer discourse.
Don’t y’all love it when I say imagine.
https://youtu.be/pinUWsMfono
Imagine a pyramid structure it’s made out of 21 blocks high and 21 blocks wide.
imagine if you will our president who we love is one block
An his goal like he said is to drain the swamp.
As a triangular with the top of the Triangular sharp and piercing he got down to the bottom of the 21 block triangle and it’s coming up through the bottom layer the 21 block wide he’s piercing it he’s doing it by himself but he’s got two helpers one on the left one on the right that gives him a pyramid structure.
As he rises from the bottom of the pyramid structure he himself encounters 21 wide l.p.
Each layer at the bottom of the swamp that he penetrates upward through the 21 blocks he Gathers 2 more.
One block on his left one block on his right he gathers those there under him they form a pyramid with him as he goes up.
The further that he goes up the more blocks he adds underneath of him.
As he approaches near the top of the pyramid coming from with under he is squeezing all the last remanences of blocks that follow the top of the pyramid.
By now he’s got so much support that there’s only one or two or maybe three things left that the guy at the top of the pyramid can do what do you think those three things are.
So if you were Donald Trump and you came up through the bottom of the swamp knocking them out left and right left and right continuously and then you’re left with only a few at the top what would you do.
To assure that our planet still survives because the people at the very top have the ability to destroy this planet so what would you do who would you count on for help who has more resources than the people at the top of this world ?
If youre gullible to believe that YouTube video.
Ill throw another one at you.
Not that there aren’t kids who can do what this kid can do but the elderly lady I believe is a YouTube frauder .
Until proven otherwise
It must have been perplexing for the Incas having to try to comprehend the Aztec dialects.
I think Sessions coming down hard on pot is awesome.
One of the fools, or his(her) lobbyist handlers, comes up with an idea for a new law or regulation. The fools bounce it around for a while, then create the new law.
Nobody considers whether the law is necessary. They don’t consider repercussions or unintended consequences. They often don’t even consider whether the law is LEGAL or enforceable.
What they DO consider? Writing the law in an as-complicated a manner as possible and using as many big words as possible, to provide for its broadest possible application, to ensure they can weasel out of any responsibility for misapplication or unintended consequences of the law, and so their fans in the “4th Estate” will believe they are supremely intelligent, and strive to convince We, the People, that our “leaders” are smart enough to decide every facet of our lives, for us.
The Federal Government has no legal purview over drugs. The fact they’ve given themselves oversight of both legal, and illegal drugs is not relevant.
Pot supporters have begun to scream “10th Amendment Rights.” Funny, most of them haven’t been concerned with the erosion of the 10th that has occurred over the past century, or so.
BTW, this is NOT an issue of States’ Rights, but an issue of gross Federal overreach against the Constitution itself.
I don’t want to see Justice create a crack for smoke to sift through, or even legalize pot. They didn’t have the Constitutional authority to “illegalize” it, and my hope is that that “authority” itself, which they usurped, is broken and returned to the States…
Hmmmm.. much to think about.
Global coastal event! Hahahahahaahahahah!!!!
Thanks G.
Still banned from glp. they love to hate me. Lol
Maybe go see what the dog is barking about tomorrow. Will comment at length later this weekend. I’m rolling tomorrow at work. Time to lay low. I have some books i have been meaning to read. :)
Practically everyone gets banned at one time or another at glp. Reasons can be : telling the truth, mere mention of the word ‘tavistock’, etc.
Not familiar with Tavistok? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavistock_Institute#Focus_of_conspiracy_theorists.
More on the quantum “attack” on crypto ‘currency’. http://www.cryptogon.com/?p=52167 The idea of the ledger is what has non-traders excited and quantum resistant ledger lets ’em keep that part of the excitement.