Future on Rails – Double-Down on Warming?

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The Future is sometimes terribly easy to see.  But, when you look at it square-on, it can be really ugly.  As a result, faced with a declining set of prospects of achieve “health, wealth, and happiness” people turn their faces.  Averting their gaze is what America is doing a  lot of right now.

Tomorrow, an interesting piece on the  Peoplenomics side of the house.  As we wildly consider what life will be like in 2030.  It’s not particularly pretty.  But, it’s a useful exercise since it begins to inform present-day actions.

Spending, personal planning, even commitment to health and things like exercise, can all be easily-changed, though, once you attempt to write down your personal future.  It’s been an eye-opener for me in a useful way.

The Future On Rails

Another item on the docket tomorrow will be a bit deeper discussion of the Federal Reserve’s (Bernanke-inspired) L4L –  lower for longer – response to collapsing markets.  

In the latest confessional posted after the close last night, we see the Fed is whipping out M1 at a rate that will roughly double the money supply by next March.

While this wild spree of paper-making seems like a good thing – since it has kept Depression at bay for now – we think there has been a serious miscalculation made by the Fed which bears some deep pondering.

Underlying Economics

You see, in a normal economy (whatever that is), if you double the money supply, you’d have a semi-predictable doubling of prices to follow.  But, what I haven’t seen a Fed paper on (yet!) is the likely impact of BOTH a massive upward bump in the money supply with both a concurrent decline in the number of people employed AND a massive decrease in high-consumption lifestyles.  Down-scaling sucks, but that’s the direction of sustainability.

We can see some of the evidence, already.  Gold is up, silver’s up, oil’s up, and so forth.  Going up quickly are “all things imported” and a good bit of what’s made here.  Which pivots us into the Producer Prices report just issued by the Labor Department…

Demand Destruction

What?  You were expecting something else?  With money being made-up all over the place?  People social distancing?

“The Producer Price Index for final demand fell 0.2 percent in June, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This decrease followed a 0.4-percent increase in May and a 1.3-percent decline in April. On an unadjusted basis, the final demand index moved down 0.8 percent for the 12 months ended in June.

In June, the decrease in the final demand index is attributable to a 0.3-percent decline in prices for final demand services. In contrast, the index for final demand goods rose 0.2 percent.

Prices for final demand less foods, energy, and trade services advanced 0.3 percent in June, the largest increase since a 0.3-percent rise in January. For the 12 months ended in June, prices for final demand less foods, energy, and trade services edged down 0.1 percent.”

In a way this is good news for the Fed – as long as prices are contained, print, printg, and print some more.  Except not for you and me…

This Ripples into Markets

Is the “third time a charm?”  Take a little explaining, but follow along as you’ll find this useful.  Especially with Dow futures down 174 at click time.

Before the data came out, the markets were discounting the future a bit.  Our Aggregate Index work revealed that despite hype and hoopla, the market has remained (so far) unable to peek and hold above overhead resistance on the right side of this chart:

One of those “old axiom” among traders is that if a market can’t break above resistance and hold there) then a major decline can follow.  (Relax – this isn’t investment advice!)

What would be very nice to see would be the market have a strong finish into the close today and then fall on its ass Monday.

There are uncountable moving parts to all this – left field events and such – but it looks like one way the future could “be on rails” since the Fed’s M1 was only up a tiny amount this week.

Still, too early for “election jitters” to hit the market.  We look for that a month from now.  As one of the more common “date ranges” for the annual high to come it would be from the third week of August to the second week of September.  After that, if you want to be bullish on America’s future (which stocks are a weak proxy for) have at it.

We plan to be under the bed with the dust bunnies this fall because we can’t make out a “happy ending” to a great deal of what “passes for news” in times ahead.

Double Down on Warming?

Climate hysteria or good science?  Take some reading time and devote it to the paper “Overlapping Magnetic Activity Cycles and the Sunspot Number: Forecasting Sunspot Cycle 25 Amplitude.”  If you’re not interested yet, read through the paper’s abstract because if correct, global warming concerns might be set to reignite:

“The Sun exhibits a well-observed modulation in the number of sunspots over a period of about 11 years. From the dawn of modern observational astronomy sunspots have presented a challenge to understanding–their quasi-periodic variation in number, ?rst noted160-years ago, stimulates community-wide interest to this day. A large number of techniques are able to explain the temporal landmarks, (geometric) shape, and amplitude of sunspot “cycles,” however forecasting these features accurately in advance remains elusive. Recent observationally-motivated studies have illustrated a relationship between the Sun’s 22-year (Hale) magnetic cycle and the production of the sunspot cycle landmarks and patterns, but not the amplitude of the cycle. Using (discrete) Hilbert transforms on 270 years of (monthly) sunspot numbers to robustly identify the so-called “termination” events, landmarks marking the start and end of sunspot and magnetic activity cycles, we extract a relationship between the temporal spacing of terminators and the magnitude of sunspot cycles. Given this relationship and our prediction of a terminator event in 2020, we deduce that sunspot cycle 25 will have a magnitude that rivals the top few since records began. This outcome would be in stark contrast to the community consensus estimate of sunspot cycle 25 magnitude.”

What makes the paper so interesting is that on the high-end of this forecast, a solar peak exhibiting more than 305 sunspots is possible.  And the outlook is in stark contrast to what may be turning into a weak “legacy consensus” that no, we could be in a period of solar quiescence on a scale similar to the Maunder minimum.

Jury’s Still Out

A thoughtful read has us keeping both doors open and looking for additional inputs.  Can five scientists be  right?  Or,  are they falling victim to one of the oldest problems in financial technical analysis?

Which you can encapsulate this way:  If you are in  pattern-seeking mode and you have an unlimited number of math models you can test fit, eventually you WILL find one that fits.  (*The five may be this far along.)

But, as in financial markets, the ultimate “Ground Truth” is that  “past performance is no indicator of future results.”

Oh, and the more complicated the “fitment methodology” the more prone it seems to be to failure.

Still, worth keeping an eye one it.  Perhaps, like a broken clock, Al Gore may be right.  Once a century.  Still, that’s enough to build a $300-million dollar fortune, if you get in with the right crowd.

In the Shorts

BOHICA, brothers and sisters!~

Has someone read the Microsoft book on beta testing on the public? Spotify Experiencing Global Outage; 1000s Of Users Report App Crashing Immediately After Launch.

Oh-oh…leading edge of Climate Hysteria II (CH2) sensed in “Relentless heat wave to bake the U.S. for “multiple weeks”  Grown-ups in the room will recognize this event as “Summer.”

President Bluster’s tax returns can be called by a Court, but not by Congress.  Notwithstanding, the NY Times is salivating at their release in “Trump’s Taxes May Be Released — Eventually.”  Around here, it’s an article of faith that Trump has overstated his income by about the same degree a used car salesperson overstates mileage estimates.  OK, more then….

What???? No Foundation??? Chelsea Clinton is reportedly in the ‘very early stages’ of forming her own venture capital firm.

Awe, Rats!

Ratting Out Your Neighbors gets traction on a second front: Uncle Sam wants you! To report stimulus fraud.  What’s interesting is that with all the U.S. criticism  of China’s “tattle-tale” system, we’re going down the same (app development) path toward social scoring.  You did call in all the people you knew who didn’t mask-up, didn’t you, comrade?

Guess we’ll have to take hamster steaks off the dinner menu: Seems the European hamster added to ‘critically endangered’ list.  It was fine while it lasted; a kind of ultimate portion-control.

You do know that according to a new study Rodents feel peer-pressure to be helpful, right?

(Vape me!)

POTlitics in Illinois continue to bring surprises as Illinois social equity program flawed, advocates say, but it’s best in cannabis industry so far, reports the MJBD.

Useful hints on investing in the ganj in The Motley Fool’s 3 Ways to Collect a Dividend With Marijuana Stocks.  Can’t grow or smoke in Texas, but a stock’s a stock, right?

As long as we’re throwing money around, see the NASDAQ.com website about the “yeller dog” that Bit-crazies love to hate: The Gold Rally May Have Just Begun: 5 Top Picks to Tap It.  Meanwhile, digital tulips are $9,164 a click.

And yes, silver is right behind gold says here: Silver Could Be At The Very Beginning Of A Monster Move Higher.

CV Watch

Since it’s time to do the every few months check-up, which will have to be an in-person for a blood draw, we still see a major state-change in how health services are delivered amping up.

Anyone got a USB potassium-level sensor in the market, yet?  Entrepreneur article worth a look is Opportunity in Adversity: Telemedicine-Watershed Moment?  High-level stuff.  I want a piece of the telemedicine remote chemistry instrumentation market. (TMRCI)

One other virus note:  Keep an eye on the pseudo-drama called “Where will the GOP Convention Be?” Relevant now that a Judge refuses to order Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner to allow Texas GOP convention.

12.3 million “19” cases and counting. (Republican’s have trouble with the math of viruses.)  Our updated forecast numbers for Labor Day and Thanksgiving will be on the Peoplenomics.com site tomorrow.

(With hamster sausage off the menu, no telling what breakfast will be today…)

Write when you get rich,

George@Ure.net

44 thoughts on “Future on Rails – Double-Down on Warming?”

  1. can someone please explain with ppi and all flation indicators down the yellow stuff is up . please explanations as to the fed pumping is not working and its lost but yellow goes up ?

    • Because the banks keep getting more free money , so they use the ETF to short contracts and buy up all the gold stuff at a smaller price. And that boys is how the crooks get richer. PITCH FORKS PLEASE

  2. i think that taleb bloke may have the best way to hit them .. whats the use in the money when its rigged .. you can trade a bit to pay the bills and buy some yellow ones and sell . but I think his name is nassem tallib .. take out of the money deep down hayburners with time and rotate and keep going on and on .. we sold 90 buck contracts for 12 grand in feb/ march.. its time for that again .. close in the money rolled shorts and open up extreme leverage September 2020 and cheapest month jan / feb 21 .. this evil and attitude in a full depression is truly a pathetic insult to some .. some just accept and jump on . others ride it .. thanks to the 30 or40 yellow dogs I keep they can keep entertainment .. big games a coming

  3. Morning George,

    I’ll admit I’ve been derelict in reading the column lately. It’s been a very, very busy 3rd quarter for me.

    It’s good to see that not much has changed and that we’re all still on the brink of destruction from any number of threats. Business as usual around these parts!

    Climate studies is something that I’ve had some interest in for quite a number of years. I think the study about the sun is a good illustration of that fact that we don’t know much of anything about how things work. Back when old Al tried to sell us on ‘settled science’ I new it was a con game. Science is never settled. Ever. So, when they try to sell us the line that ‘we’ understand the earth’s climate so well that we can predict the global effects of a minute atmospheric trace gas, you better keep your hand on your wallet. We’re probably a 100 years from having a good grasp on climate. Hell, we don’t even know why ice ages happen, and yes, we happen to be in one right now. It’s been going on for the last 2 million years. Why? Nobody knows! There is SO much that we don’t know. Not only about the earth, but also about how the earth is effected by the rest of the solar system and the larger galactic neighborhood. People tend to forget that the earth doesn’t exist in a pristine bubble. It’s two dimensional thinking from two dimensional people.

    • “It’s good to see that not much has changed and that we’re all still on the brink of destruction from any number of threats.”

      I know Maj.. I am surprised that we have avoided the calamity of calamities.. so far.. I think it is a dart throw.. just put the blind fold on and toss the dart to see what else is going to happen in the next few months..
      we were actually out visiting tonight and everyone wanted to know what I thought.. I said I am not sure but by golly when it happens it is going to be pure hell….
      I truthfully hope that all of us are all wrong on what to expect.. just keep on pumping out the joy juice and make that damned noodle float along.. as long as we have faith that it is good then it is..
      I totally see digital currency coming up.. but I doubt seriously that it will be BC… You could stock up on 2nd LIfes.. Lindo dollars and use it at the restaurant.. where with BC they just start laughing..
      War.. I for some reason doubt that War on the USA is eminent.. the reason I feel that way…Every one hates us.. they hate the fact that we just march in and steal from them destroy the cities homes and lively hood of those living their.. and they would not shed a tear if we all just curled up and died..
      But..
      as the Covid19 proved.. they are tied to our consumption.. totally.. the third world countries where we just drop out pain brown bags filled with money want that money.. the industrial nations.. they own us..we depend on them.. a few years ago they discovered that the guidance chips were flawed in programming.. and our military might all depends on their manufacturing plants.. IF.. they were to do anything.. let us spend our selves bankrupt then step in.. if a major natural catastrophe hits.. then come in and be the savior for the survivors.. we seen that to with ventilators.. we didn’t have enough and they stepped up to be a good neighbor..

  4. Mornin. I’m up at lake Gardner fishin today bout 6 miles from the granit mines out on the Mount Loop Hwy, north of Granite Falls Washington. 8 miles from the Ice Caves.

    Has world ended yet? Well give it a little time. Seems the only thing out here biting are the skeeters. But I didnt come here to catch. I cam here to fish.

    Hope you are all having a stellar day. Catch up with ya in a month or so.

    Off to grab my fish beater.

  6. Fwiw, Indianapolis now requires people to wear a mask everywhere. People I know who live there post “it’s about time, now the rest of Indiana needs to do this.” I disagree, but saying so gets a barrage of crap thrown at me like monkeys do at zoo patrons. I only disagree in rural settings, not the cities. Here where there isn’t many people, we just don’t go looking for people. Problem solved. It’s the places where people are stacked on each other like firewood that I see the mask necessity. Come fall, and schools resume (hopefully), I am prepared to hear that all the kids will need to have them. Considering classroom sizes, I don’t know if even that will be much good, but we’ll roll with it anyways.

    I do wonder, how difficult this is for hardcore asthmatic people. I have a slight problem with astrhma, and wearing anything over my face for long tends to induce it. Could be the environment doing this, but idk.

    (Share Your Brilliance – Send In Your Comments” lol. You must be tired of hearing S O S!)

    • Hmmmm
      Singapore has about 24 million people. “Social distancing ” would push most of them miles out into the ocean. The don’t do masks, gloves and such.
      Total deaths from COVID-19?
      7

      What do they use?
      Vitamin C, Hydroxychloroquine, zinc, D3 and such.
      Too bad they don’t have the benefit of our “advanced ” medical system. They could kill far more people if they tried.

    • Yes, here in OHIO, DeSwine wants people to wear mask at church now. PITCH FORKS PLEASE. Cant wait till this globlist is gone.

    • Two weeks after coming back from vacationing in the viral/bacterial soup South of Ft. Worth everyone’s just fine. Glad the U.S. didn’t turn out to be like China and Europe but I think it’s because we’re more spread out plus keep things cleaner plus our obsessive health regimens in general that differ from how things are over there. There’s no one out there that could have predicted that, though, so I have no problems with the shutting down of the country. Arm chair quarterbacking after the fact is disingenuous. I don’t think a single person on this site would have done things differently given the intel that we had back in January and February.

  7. George,
    First to worst.
    Wow.
    So, the US, #1 in science and medicine, is now LAST in the World in fighting the Virus. We’re currently projected to have 200,000 virus deaths. And Florida has a 1/3 positive rate. Worse than Third World Countries.
    Wow.
    Thank you anti-science Conservatives for making masks a symbol of some delusional cultural war.
    So, are we talking about 150,000 extra lives lost and $10 trillion of extra damage to the economy?
    Whereas Canada, the EU, NY, etc. have smashed it.
    But at least we made the Snowflakes cry.
    Pretty embarrassing.
    Best, Mike.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/09/canada-coronavirus-us-justin-trudeau-donald-trump

    • Come on MIKE, these cloth mask don’t do squat. A surgical traps 40 percent at best. And of course its 95 out and 65 percent humidity. give me a fricken break. Noboby here is anti-science. But damn, they change there requirements(government) daily. Oh, and the n-95 mask, wear that for a few hours and pass out from CO2 poisonings.

  8. Never had hamster, but on a visit not Machu Picchu, I had the pleasure of ingesting one of their local delicacies…Cuy…which is a Guinea Pig. The Peruvians have been eating this dish for over 5,000 years. I have to do it, it was damn good. Pretty sustainable food source too. Those critters propagate at light speed.

    On another note, you said Trumps net worth is inflated..duh…and that’s not the only thing he has miscalculated. Look at his tweet from yesterday…first, what does for the 1/100th time mean? Let me guess…For every time he said he said it 100 times, he in reality said it once? I am confused. The rest is Trump math in full view, or what the rest of us call gibberish.

    @RealDonaldTrump
    “For the 1/100th time, the reason we show so many Cases, compared to other countries that haven’t done nearly as well as we have, is that our TESTING is much bigger and better. We have tested 40,000,000 people. If we did 20,000,000 instead, Cases would be half, etc. NOT REPORTED!“

    • The president is unclear, but I do believe that he’s trying to say that if we tested a much larger sample, the rate would be lower. I agree generally, since we don’t test randomly and have no idea what the infection rate is in the general population. To get a test in many areas, there needs to be history and/or symptoms justifying the test, and no sane person would voluntarily get this test unless they felt they needed it. Both factors push up the implied infection rate.

      I won’t voluntarily get a test – I’ll just keep my distance and up my immune function. Most people I know agree.

      • I have been tested 4 times, because my job keeps me active and I have to be out most of the time, and plus, don’t like not knowing. I didn’t have to have a symptom. That’s a fallacy! All I said is that I am out several days a week meeting with people. That’s good enough for a lot of medical folks. Keeps me sane as well. Plus, I have a record of who I meet with, so if I did test positive, the contact tracing is easy. It’s all in how you position it. Positioning also happens to be my job.

        Why do Trump supporters always have to explain what he meant to say? If he is unclear, he is either dumb and clueless, or is just another political slime ball playing a game of guess, to keep his base happy and the rest of us scratching our heads.

        Either way. It ain’t good!

    • I liked this one from today. Trump’s doctors were surprised he proved himself all there. It’s comedy gold! Which is fitting since he’s like a comedian doing schtick on the comedy tour.

      “I actually took one when I, uh, very recently, when I was, uh, when I was — you know the radical left was saying, ‘Is he all there? Is he all there?’ And I proved I was all there ‘cause I aced it, I aced the test, and he should take the same exact test, a very standard test at Walter Reed Medical Center. I took it in front of doctors, and they were very surprised. They said, ‘That’s an unbelievable thing, very rarely do people do what you just did.” DJT 7/10/2020

  9. Hi George,

    Just wanted to pass this on. I haven’t researched this tweet but Bush & Obama worked hard to weaponized medical care for the criminal pharma cartel.

    Have to have updated vaccines before one can get their prescription refilled?

    thttps://twitter.com/writtenconcepts/status/1281300965799399424?s=21

  10. “Ratting Out Your Neighbors”

    We’re surrounded by rats and double agents. Some folks love the attention of being the rat.

    You have to admire the Clinton’s for their extermination skills.

    • @ OOWS

      RATS will be the end of this Republic…..as many will refuse to ‘go quietly into the night’ after being…”ratted on”

      Semper Fi

  11. Why doesn’t the Texas GOP convene in Terlingua? Lots of UV. Just local rattlesnakes to deal with – no dangerous Harris County TX snakes.

    • N__
      There are a lot of snakes in the beltway of the DC bubble.. I think the GOP is use to being a snake wrangler

  12. Well lookey loo – Chelsea starting a VC firm – what are they going to be specializing in one wonders; Andrenochrome&Child Sex Slaves ?

    Tough market that – as U have to be “Dark” to the public with a limited amount of customers. Oh I know they could do Bitcoin futures – as that market is only for “bad, tainted greedy souls”..

    Bitcoin = new hotness, US Dollar = old busted jawn

    Takes a Village no doubt, and as Trump was quoted as saying “and Hilary took several ” in Haiti..name Laura Silsby ring a bell with anyone – wonder why she changed her name to Laura Gayler.

    got ghislane m. – now if if they can just track down rachel chandler..

    National Suicide Prevention Hotline -1-800-273-8255 *Operators standing by.

  13. About your comment on used car salesmen and odometers…years ago I knew quite a few car dealers from calling on them for Radio ads. One of their fav jokes was:

    Prospect: How many miles are on it?
    Salesman: How many do you want on it?

    • Everybody knows it is difficult or impossible to roll back a mechanical odometer, without it indicating it’s been rolled-back (the numbers cease to line up in a straight line.) AFAIK you can’t roll back electronic odometers.

      Little-known factoid: EVERY used car dealer is friends with mgmt at a wrecking yard. Nobody tampers with odometers any more, they replace the gauge cluster. It’s faster, easier, and (considering labor cost) cheaper than doctoring the existing meter — and BTW used car salesmen (of any gender) DO replace the gauge cluster when necessary to make a sale… After all these years, they’re still the stereotypical dishonest bastards when they need to be…

      • @Ray

        and when THEY leave the car business they become POLITICIANS….rope party for most of them…federal state and local…

  14. “this wild spree of paper-making seems like a good thing – since it has kept Depression at bay for now – we think there has been a serious miscalculation made by the Fed which bears some deep pondering.”

    Hmm.. like if you soak or cook pasta to long it inflates really big then turns to mush. Hmm makes sense to me .

  16. Well where do i start. Mnuchin says no 600 in next stimulus package. Lets see, the families with three jobs before corona ( haven’t quite replaced them yet.) That makes 28 million families losing their houses. I know a lot of you think the 600 hundred is not necessary, but hey three jobs are hard to replace in this economy. Pitch Forks PLEASE. Market up 300 plus points today. Woo Hoo. And of COURSE the banks get theirs.(PIGS). George what a POS situation this is. And remember 28 million families with pitch forks is the final nail in TRUMPS coffin.https://www.marketwatch.com/story/goodbye-extra-600-unemployed-workers-should-not-get-benefits-higher-than-their-old-wages-in-next-stimulus-bill-mnuchin-says-2020-07-09?mod=home-page

    • “And remember 28 million families with pitch forks is the final nail in TRUMPS coffin.”

      The sad thing is you may be right — sad because the economy would be 10x worse under Biden and the erosion of our Rights, far worse than that. Trump is accomplishing more, with less to work with, than any President in history, save possibly Washington during his first term, but folks tend not to care when they can’t afford their homes and brain-numbing vices…

  18. Comrade,

    Thank you for reminding us of millionairess, and can you believe it, newly-minted 40 year old Chelsea! Batter on deck? Yes, maybe the current Potus and his octogenarian Vegas financier are ready to be placed on waivers?

    Come on, check out Chelsea’s IAC/Expedia sugar daddy following placement by mommy, dearest. Founder of the Fox Network, enabled introduction of “doh” into the English vernacular, and alleged gay man married a fashion designer who had divorced her bisexual German aristocrat spouse according to Wikipedia. Oh, and lest one forgets, daddy is a multi-billionaire.

    As Freddie Mercury might say:

    “God Save the Queen!”

  19. Michigan sheriffs and police are going along with fining Michigan citizens $500.00 for not wearing a mask.

    Law enforcement doesn’t want to hear about political dissent, $500.00 fine.

    Who saw that 6 months ago?

    • Steve, izzat just in the cities, or are they tagging drivers and people out in the woods, also? Indy just went full-on mask-Gestapo and I expect all of Indiana to follow, Ohio is about to get stupid as well, Kentucky is already there. Apparently the rule: Six feet “social distancing” OR mask, is either too complicated for the masses to understand, or not draconian enough for the PTB…

      • “Public places”. Inside cars and houses should be OK.

        All business can now refuse service for those without masks.

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