NON-SUBNSCRIBER NOTE: My latest book “Test-Fiutting Apes: How economics goes bananas” is now available on Kindle.
In the Peoplenomics report yesterday, I was anticipating that we would have one more up next week, before the gates of hell open and we descend into the depths of Depression.
You may find this difficult to believe but Ure is guilty of misplaced optimism – and worse, a small mathematical calculation error.
I simply forget that the Ballistics of Money are also influenced by the thickness of Hot Air.
Problem? Meet Reader…
I’ve always considered myself good at making “introductions” though not at the Trump (or Epstein) level. My hobby is collapse spotting and one of the surest signs it’s time to “move to the lifeboats” is the 85-day moving average. Which with a hard down day again, has firmed up its eventual topping.
We MIGHT drop to that line – and bounce – which would leave the end of Act 2 (of the “Great Downside Play”) time for an intermission because Act 3 “Collapse: It’s what’s for Thanksgiving.”
Greasy Market Stuff
The source of market angst is Brent crude. When the early futures go higher on Brent crude, we naturally anticipate any good Aggregate Index ought to fall to – as Yoda instructs – maintain balance in Universe.
So I asked one of those (lesser liars) paid AIs – the ones who have been to software rehab – asked them to “run the inverse correlation between that “greasy kid’s stuff” and marvelous green stuff.
It did so. Reluctantly.
“Over the long haul the relationship is sloppy: ten-year Brent vs SPY correlation sits around +0.22, which is the statistical equivalent of two drunks sharing a cab and insisting they are going the same direction. One-year numbers flip the sign. Recent rolling windows (40-day) have been living in the ?0.3 to ?0.7 neighborhood ever since oil stopped being a demand signal and became a supply-shock tax.
That is the regime we are in.
Brent spent last week trying to remember how to trade below $100, then remembered geopolitics and jumped roughly 4 percent on Wednesday (settlement near $103). Thursday morning it is still hanging around the $100–105 band depending on which screen you trust.
When that happens in the overnight session, the equity futures do the polite thing and lean the other way. Not a crash. A correction of posture. The Universe balancing the books.”
The mechanism is not mysterious. Higher front-month Brent feeds higher diesel, higher jet, higher feedstock, higher 10-year yields, and a Fed that suddenly looks less “data-dependent” and more “hostage-to-Hormuz.” Equities discount the second-order squeeze before the first-order CPI print arrives. Energy stocks get a bid; everything that uses energy gets a haircut. The aggregate index — the thing the talking heads treat as a single organism — therefore sags while the internals rotate.
That is why the inverse still works in the short windows even when the long-run scatterplot looks like modern art.
The lesser liar’s output was useful for one sentence: “When early Brent futures gap higher, expect the green stuff to give some of it back before the cash open.”
After that it started hedging like a compliance officer. I stopped reading. I stopped asking. And – the biggy – I stopped caring. Because as I read market history, we are at the brink (or close enough we can see it from here) so we have already been working on our Depression Skills.
One of which was discovering TDS 1040 hydroponic water was the (poor pun here…) root cause of only a handful of tomatoes this year.
In fact, that whole line of inquiry was so damn interesting that I linked up two AIs, wrote a story outline, and before cocktails last night. I’d written a 28,000 word novella which will be on Peoplenomics one of these weeks.
The novella title? “The Brine Line” and it’s a salty saga in that strategic fiction category where my mind seems to drift when I give up on reducing complex Python to long-form AI taskers…
The AI Gulf Deepens
Oh yeah – the anti-AI hate may be the next Great America Divide Monetization. By now, all observers might agree that we have run out of racial minorities, sexual minorities, and it’s too early in “hate cycle” theory to roll out the “commie plot” stuff.
BTW: I have a whole book on AI impacts (“Thinking: On the Gallows”) which will be up soon on the Peoplenomics subscriber site.
So let’s divide over AI. And this is where it gets interesting. Let’s begin up in Illinois: JB Pritzker – It’s time to rein in AI. I signed an… | Facebook.
But, let’s also remember many strong religionists are already calling AI the anti-Christ.
And here’s the (long-term, big zoom-out) weird thought: Is AI the “issue” that will reunite the democrats with the religious right? Oh, this is so interesting, I can hardly wait to move on. How about we do just that?
Turn on the News Compressor
What changed overnight is not a new war. It is talk stacked on top of still-live pipes. Yesterday’s tape bounced Brent ~4% to $103 settle after Pezeshkian’s “never surrender” line. This morning the diplomatic layer is a bit thicker and Brent was up to $104.90 when I looked.
Middle East / greasy stuff: Shuttle talks are the first useful U.S.–Iran contact in months. Neither side moved a written position. Iran still conditions Hormuz reopen on blockade lift, asset unfreeze, and “end the war on all fronts.”
China: Xi is in Washington. Red carpet, flyover, state-visit optics. Agenda is tariffs, rare earths, AI guardrails, and — whether anyone puts it in the communiqué — Hormuz and Iranian oil that used to go east. Odds of happy-talk language today: high. Odds of a real Hormuz clause: low.
Russia/Ukraine: Rubio floated a limited grain/energy ceasefire after seeing Lavrov. Overnight reality: Russian strikes on Kyiv and the northeast, maternity clinic damaged, eight dead. Odds of a real energy ceasefire this week: 35%.
Fed box (background, not overnight blink): Warsh already hiked 25 bp to 3.75–4.00. Trump is back to “cut to 1%.” I used to keep VideGrips handy for stuff like that.
Drought Monitor still has roughly half the Lower 48 in D1–D4; D0+ is the rest of the breadbasket dehydrator.
What Comes Next (besides more coffee)
- Trump–Xi photos. Spare me.
- 24–48 hours: Watch whether “energy truce” language survives the next Russian or Ukrainian infra strike. But diesel is up another penny $6.5141.
- Another tanker, pipeline, or Riyadh-class event puts the fear back into crude and freight. Odds: 60%.
BlinkLab signal this morning: modern conflict attacks the systems behind the battlefield, then holds a press conference about balance.
Greasy kid’s stuff still leads; marvelous green stuff still second.
At the Ranch: Failure of Shock-Talk?
You may notice a bit fewer posts in our Comments section for a week or three. Because I was deadly serious about stronger moderation. Profanity used to hijack eyeballs isn’t going to fly as easily. And, calling me (or my work product) names is also a quick way to be shown the door.
However, in general, I can almost convince myself that “there is a tide in human affairs” and it may have finally run its course.
In the longwave econ world, events, complexities, and cycles – coupled with the unmerciful impact of compounding interest – are all teaming up to do America some major hurt. Yeah – sure – we don’t need more human suffering, but there may be an upside. In economics depressions people can actually “clean up their acts.”
The Great Depression offers a hard version of that lesson. Consumer installment credit outstanding fell from $3.15 billion at the end of 1929 to $1.38 billion in March 1933 — a 56 percent drop. A lot fewer purchases could be put on tomorrow’s paycheck. But don’t mistake all of that for voluntary thrift: output fell roughly 30 percent, unemployment reached about 25 percent, and deflation made old debts harder to pay. People cut back because they had to; many lost everything anyway.
The more durable cleanup was in the rules. Roughly 9,000 banks suspended operations from 1930 through 1933. Congress created federal deposit insurance, which began in 1934; only nine banks failed that year. Hard times can force a reckoning, but suffering alone fixes nothing. The upside comes when people and institutions remember what broke and change how they operate.
That’s just the money side. Let’s talk interpersonal relations and violent crime.
Looking 66 large cities from 1931 through the first half of 1939, the FBI found a general downward trend in both robbery and auto thefts, as well as in reported criminal homicide.
But none of it came quickly. The best mental model of it I can think of is tempering of metal on a hot forge in the shop. Metal loses temper and then regains it. In social history, this “tempering” process takes on the order of years.
The (homicide) death-record rate took time though. It rose from 8.4 per 100,000 in 1929 to 9.7 in 1933, then fell to 6.4 by 1939. The worst economic years did not bring an immediate improvement.
One More Rhyme Time Crime Note
The Nancy Guthrie case has the ingredients that made the Lindbergh kidnapping national news back in ’32: a familiar family, an abduction from home, ransom claims, and a country watching for an answer. But the cases stand at different points. Lindbergh’s 20-month-old son was taken in March 1932; his body was found nearby that May. Guthrie, 84, disappeared from her Arizona home at the end of January, and nearly eight months later investigators still have no public resolution. The comparison is the reach of the story, not a verdict on how hers ends.
That’s all background, but social change takes years and seldom moves in one direction. Maybe those who live through the next hard stretch will come out a bit more polite. I’d settle for breakfast without the name-calling.
Between now and then? “Comments” that begin “Fried Chicken and Buttwiper ?” and are aimed at another reader – and not of general interest to people in the middle of breakfast – will be flushed.
Write when you get rich, or at least polite (or housebroken),
George@Ure.net
THANKYOU!!!
Well, I couldn’t remember where the Joy of Breakfast had gone…
I second that!
“misplaced optimism – and worse, a small mathematical calculation error”
I don’t know…. Don’t forget fractals also calling for crashes ‘next month’ over the years. I can no longer keep track of the crash calls. It’s as bad as Nostradamus calls. The only way to add it up is the models are wrong/don’t work. PRoaby the way the human mind works. Like Johnny Carson complaining about the postal system back during 1972. Still the same convo.
A week or two back discussion surrounded markets usually go down into midterms… and this midterm will be the same.
At least the blockades are working. Regular 87 octane self serve gasoline is only $4.89 a gallon. If you can afford gasoline, you’re flush.
I may have been incorrect over the shiny new factories. Xi may be bringing BYD assembly jobs to America. That’ll reignite America’s “Big Four” taglines, even though Stellantis isn’t, well, you know.. And since local Libs don’t like it Trump must be right.
Trump imitates art:
The Campaign – Maximizing Profitability – HD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRivpStByUw
OowS : “… since local Libs don’t like it Trump must be right. …”
Strangely that ^ does seem to apply, hey?
No matter what. OrangeMan bad.
Don’t speak NY …
E
ps – where is the avalanche of folks who called 45/47 nuts to insist on assuming control of Greenland? Done and dusted. It’s not that hard to admit you’re wrong, or were wrong. Try it sometime
The local radio has painted Detroit autoworkers as troubled. Autoworkers admit the BYD as “significantly more affordable.” The BYD Seagull is under $10,000.
According to the Googler, the cheapest so-called American car is the Chevrolet Trax starting around $20,500. So-called because the Chevrolet Trax is made in South Korea.
The Libs are right.
Greenland is under the umbrella now. Just like Riyadh.
Olga Morales, (Venus on a Fibonacci pattern)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbRwppWea94
Did you know that Venus creates a repeating cycle approximately every eight years?
On this chart, I’ve marked each Venus retrograde return against the S&P 500.
Look closely at what happens around these repeating points in 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023, 2025 and 2026.
This beautiful rhythm of Venus and its possible connection to financial markets is one of the hidden threads running through my book, Conversations with Gann
The 8 yr crash cycle appears to be real:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_market_downturn_of_2002
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_flash_crash (weirdly based on high speed trading, spoofers, algorithims, glitches, etc and could AI make it worse lol)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency_bubble#2017_boom_and_2018_crash, + 8 = 2026
Personal note, I’ll be off line living in another country for awhile, so wont be commenting for a few weeks..
“If you’re a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he’s good, the older he gets, the better he writes.”
— Mickey Spillane
“China: Xi is in Washington.”
Nostradamus Quatrain V-2
Seven conspirators at the banquet cause to flash,
Against the three the iron, out of the ship:
The one will have two fleets driven to the great [one],
When by the mail. [The] Denier to the facade draws him [in].
Nostradamus and the Third Age of Mars, Volume I, G.A. Stewart, 2017
Page 432
On April 6th, 2017, from his home at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Donald J. Trump sat down to a banquet dinner in honor of China’s President, Xi Jinping. Just before dessert was served, the Commander-in-Chief of American military forces ordered the United States Navy to unleash a barrage of 59 cruise missiles targeted against Syria.
https://theageofdesolation.com/nostradamus/2026/04/13/g-a-stewarts-timeline-part-iv/
Will Trump be giving orders to launch missiles again?
As seductive as hydroponic, sounds, an organic living soil approach to gardening will produce consistent results and rebuild the soil microbes year after year. 30% shade cloth will help reduce temperatures and reduce water loss. Some folks like to do raised beds depending on the soil quality. My lifelong buddy that moved to Texas a couple years ago discovered he had to plant his tomatoes earlier in the spring, around the equinox, to get a good yield.
Wise man – the rains in second half of year leach out the high tds tap water – going early catches the low tap high rainfall window problem solved – but not so much in a greenhouse
re: Oh Human Oldspeak, Thou Hast a Song
feat: “1984”, Studio One, S6E1, Eddie Albert, Sept. 21, 1953
Recent sighting of American billionaire Ms. Kim Kardashian at London Fashion Week which wound up this past Monday September 21st offers food for thought into next spring and summer’s trending lines. The event began in 1984. Recent years have seen the confab centred within the confines of Senate House in Bloomsbury.
Senate House is now a Grade II listed Art Deco structure constructed between 1932 and 1937 with assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation. Although not ranked amongst the wonders of the world like the Colossus of Rhodes, its out-of-place dimensions are perhaps reminiscent of Stalin’s Seven Sisters in Moscow. The London edifice apparently offered George Orwell opportunity to envision Winston being employed at Senate House with the Ministry of Truth in his “1984” novel. His wife Eileen Blair worked in Senate House during WW2 for the Ministry of Information that was responsible for government publicity and propaganda.
Yesterday UK PM Burnham made an announcement. He is establishing a “National Centre for Information Defence”. Critics have offered the new body a “Ministry of Truth” moniker. The group will concentrate on battling alleged Russian disinformation.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, DJ George claims to have plucked the chords out of shock rockers while cutting his cloth according to his means.
Bonds Are About To Crash The Stock Market
by Quoth the Raven at Zerohedge
There. I’ve said it. I’ve gone from pussyfooting around and saying the AI bubble could pop in 6 to 10 months…which I still believe…to the very definitive statement that if the bond market keeps acting like this, the equity markets will get slaughtered. And I mean, wrath of God type shit.
This isn’t even a particularly sophisticated thesis. After all, if I’m delivering it, it can’t be. It’s just math. […]
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2026-09-24/bonds-are-about-crash-stock-market
Note : the title ignores Egor missive to avoid use of the *C* word but…
Totally correct. It’s just math …
Not FA (never is).
Egor ~ __|____ ~~
Gann was on top of the woo woo:
https://www.astrologyforganntraders.com.au/have-you-heard-of-w.d_1.-gann–
‘Gann’s research spanned mathematics, astronomy, cycles, and ancient texts. He was a 33rd-degree Mason and embedded spiritual and astrological teachings within his writings—most notably in The Tunnel Thru the Air (1927), a prophetic novel encoded with trading secrets.
‘He made history with his accurate forecasts, most notably predicting the 1929 stock market crash months in advance.’
Needed a break – made the mistake of checking my email – and I quote:
I warned that no government systems were built with sophisticated AI agents in mind. It is a whole new tier of mainframe security that needs to be addressed. Immediately. This latest breach – of a government system – shows you why. The A.I. agent did not go rouge, as being reported. That is fear-mongering bullshit. The agent was tasked to find very specific information, when it could not locate that info, it simply went deeper into the system files. Though it was not tasked to breach those areas of information., those files. It was not specifically told ‘not’ too – so it went ahead with the task it was ordered to preform. Get the info. It did. However you want to view this latest breach, it was not all the A.I. Agentic’s fault. More correctly along the lines of an operator error. [ It was not an attack, that’s media, money-based bullshit hype.] And the computer industry currently has no answers, or safe-guards for that.
Marcus Tiberius Aurelius
100 percent spot on.
yeee hhhaaaaa !!!! ride em cowboys !!! git that AI inta yah !!!
you know whats happened ? AI is now being used to destroy USA by Kaos . you know who chaos is . call maxwell smart !!! this is hillarious its cooked . you gunna get the turkey before thanksgiving.aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!! it all caught up , the robots delivered
hey george the other george and his crew are gunna screw you all . he might be old but he is a strong capo plenty of soldiers everywhere . donny is weak he livin in la la with his young un
Let’s play bumper-pool with hurricanes!
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_cp2+shtml/241449.shtml?cone#contents
Hurricane WARNING will likely be posted later today for the Big Island. Saturday will be a doozy.
also Kash Patel said you can bring your dog friend or horse friend or cow friend “lover” into the FBI for any job application . heck hed love to meet em as well .. good on him , caring type Kash
re: Mistress for Exile program
feat: cash & carry
A current review of CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC websites yields zero results while searching by name for the late mistress to a now-incarcerated former FBI agent. However the same search at the “Daily Mail” site offers their following public link of this past Monday:
dailymail.com/news/article-16142857/
Readers will note the publicly listed background detail includes a stint of years as U.S. vp for an Israeli company. That firm’s website outlines company customers including law enforcement and military entities.
One item of coincidence perhaps worthwhile mentioning pertains to the incarcerated individual whose being one-person-distant from #47 began in 1996. His Wikipedia page notes post-FBI employment with a property management firm based in New York. Its namesake parent is headquartered in Toronto. A vice-chair of the time to another New York spinoff from the Toronto parent is frequently referenced by #47 as the “Governor of Canada”.
whats that noise ? tick tick tick tick .might ring a bell any moment
T-Rex, bang a gong, get it on.
Need some rain? Take some of mine… please! I’m in the 30″+ area;
https://40meter.net/uploads/Screenshot2026-09-24082006.png
And NOLO bumper-pool is still on:
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_cp2+shtml/242055.shtml?cone#contents
And it’s already raining! 1.5 inches in the gauge this morning.
http://weather.hawaii.edu/satellite/anim.cgi?chnl=13&domain=haw&satplat=goes17&platform=full&anim=on&duration=3&incr=1
(Scuba gear at hand)
(“The more durable cleanup was in the rules. Roughly 9,000 banks suspended operations from 1930 through 1933. Congress created federal deposit insurance, which began in 1934; only nine banks failed that year. “)
hmm..didnt congress knock the legs from under gold…
then again..this time..the devaluation of the currency is due to the federal reserve and irresponsible use by the country….and the fiat currencies.. basically aren’t covered with anything tangibe..and why you might ask…well there’s a song…that comes to mind..Oh Billie Preston….
https://youtu.be/IX2bE-OBtwk?si=fFycQ7sL9xX790BG
in my opinion is the….. if……IF the monetary anchor is no longer a fixed physical quantity of an item , what ultimately constrains the creation of money?
I got an idea…If we’re going to have money backed by something nobody gets to spend, see, or independently verify whenever they want… why not peanuts….
“In Peanuts We Trust.” …
And every denomination could have a different Mr. Peanut portrait:
$1 — Mr. Peanut with the top hat
$5 — Mr. Peanut tipping his cane
$10 — Mr. Peanut in a monocle
$20 — Mr. Peanut looking suspiciously at the Treasury
$50 — Mr. Peanut with a wheelbarrow of peanuts
$100 — Mr. Peanut surrounded by auditors asking, “Where’s the nut?”
I’m missing something here…
IIRC Brent was over $100 for very nearly two years, under Obama. Howcumzit hundred dollar oil is so much more of a problem now…?
It’s all a psy-op.