Just out is the press release on housing…
New York, February 23, 2016 – S&P Dow Jones Indices today released the latest results for the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices. Data released today for December 2015 show that home prices continued their rise across the country over the last 12 months.
Probably this Sunday, or next, I will get around to filling out the paperwork and file my federal tax returns.
Part of me realizes this is a joke. I couldn’t find a definition of “money” – but there is no problem defining gross income or net income or taxable income or AGI…but seems like there’s not much out there I the way of definitions of “money.” If you find it in the IRS Code, please send it along. I found money laundering but not simple money, but then I’m dumb as a stone at times.
Still, Joke or Not, bureaucracies take themselves entirely seriously…so we respond in kind with a totally accurate tax form. It is, after all, only money.
Before you start, get all of your data (1040’s, 1099’s and so on) into a single file folder. Load up the right version of TurboTax or whatever you’re using.
We use TurboTax Home & Business 2015 Federal + State Taxes + Fed Efile Tax Preparation Software – PC/Mac Disc an d it sets us back $80 a year. It’s a deductible expense if I recall right.
But on the other side, TurboTax has an article here on eight things you maybe thought were deductible and which aren’t.
I won’t go into specifics of what we expense when traveling, but I do work everywhere I go, even on cruise ships. But things like cruise expenses don’t show up, and neither to hotels…even though I work at least four hours at each stop.
Sure, I could be more aggressive, but I don’t begrudge the government its due. So I don’t write off my hotel or anything for myself, or the cost of local newspapers in places like Phoenix or Las Vegas or wherever we happen to go. I’m more than reasonable in what’s claimed. Even though I have to work product in every city I lay my head down in. It’s the nature of being a writer for a national (and international) audience.
Wait..maybe I’m and idiot…my consigliore thinks I should claim much more than I do, but I always like to have an extra ace to play if it’s ever needed. No, I didn’t set the airplane up as a single-purpose LLc, either. We don’t use it enough to matter and I’m sure that could become contentious. I doubt my “need to travel but don’t want the government checking my junk…” as junk-checks are taxing in a way is an argument…but I digress.
On a weekly closing basis, it would sure be nice to see the S&P climb over the 1,950 level and stay there for a week or three, then pull back, but not to new lows, so I could load up on some out of the money options and make a bunch of dough.
It would be nice, but we will see.
In the meantime, this week is a busy one. We have the Case-Shiller/S&P Housing Price Index out tomorrow…so a two-parter tomorrow.
Which gets us circled back to this morning and the Chicago Fed’s National Activity Index which is reported as…
“Led by improvements in production-related indicators, the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) rose to +0.28 in January from –0.34 in December. Two of the four broad categories of indicators that make up the index increased from December, and two of the four categories made positive contributions to the index in January.
The index’s three-month moving average, CFNAI-MA3, increased to –0.15 in January from –0.30 in December. January’s CFNAI-MA3 suggests that growth in national economic activity was somewhat below its historical trend.
Here on the far side of 67, I have to report that there actually is a very cool part of aging that doesn’t seem to get much attention either in pop psychology, nor in the MSM treatment of the condition. This all has to do with some very personal woo-woo, but is makes for a fascinating read. It began for me back in about 1992, or so.
Time for the 5th chapter of our “Second Depression Handbook” to roll out.
We bounce this morning into the 5th chapter of our planning book on the Second Depression. I still hold to the notion that we are not yet in a position to have the kind of down-and-out grinder of an economic catastrophe that Depressions are.
Simple: There is still too much government can do to avoid the issue. But roll forward a couple of years, out in the 2017 to 2018 period, toss in a new and failing administration, a return of the California drought, and increase in trade warfare, and massive population displacements due to too many people and not enough jobs…well, now we’re getting somewhere.
A point and to-the-short discussion this morning.
First is the Leading Economic Index, released by the Thursday which work the bears up for the last hour or two of trading:
The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for the U.S. declined 0.2 percent in January to 123.2 (2010 = 100), following a 0.3 percent decrease in December and a 0.5 percent increase in November.
Very quietly this week I pass a wholly artificial boundary called a “birthday.” Everyone has one, but few people use the occasion for the purpose of hard introspection or to sit back and reflect on their learnings in the past year.
I’m pleased to report in this morning’s State of the George report, that the state of George is good. This process I go through is very much like the annual employee evaluation so cherished by human resource types.
So we begin with the basics: Would I still hire me to do whatever it is I do?
The basics first:
George is still happily married. His health is robust. His mind still (somewhat) agile, and his sense of wonder and awe at the simplest things is unabated.
What do I have to show for the past year? A good bit, really. But therein lies a nested topic for this morning: What are the metrics by which we measure our lives?
Religion once served that purpose, almost universally. But there is a new “religion” on the block and we call that Science and bow down to it as surely as we’d have bowed to Jesus, Moses, or Lao Tzu or perhaps the Buddha.
Indeed, when we pass the collection plate anymore, it’s less likely to happen in a Church, but instead it will be passed by Government, which has ascended as a new religion in the sense that it holds what seems an unlimited growth of Issuing Decrees, a right once reserved to the Vatican or the Caesar.
I feel like Prince BoCheesly, second in line to ascend to the throne as King of the Economic Universe and heir to the Fount of All Knowledge this morning as the S&P (which lately has been the S & P all over the place) arrives in the long-awaited showdown area.
To be sure, I have referred to this generally as the “1950” area of the S&P but to be more precise, it is 1,940.24 recorded on January 19th.
Here’s “the deal” – We can count a one down, two up, three down, four up, and five down to finish between January 29th and ending on February 11th. From there, we have gone nearly straight up.
It’s OK to take today off since we get inflation data tomorrow. There is still deflation about, since a year ago gas was $2.27 and now it’s $1.72 nationally. (We don’t do additional decimals points until noon if it can be avoided.)
Projecting the futures pricing onto the action today, we would expect a close (ideally) around 1,933.82… but that is asking a bit much since the real-deal here is 1,940 and change which could fall tomorrow – depending on how the Cost of Living data comes in.
For this morning, we will have to suffer through Philly Fed data and later on the most-favored economic anagram – the Leading Economic Indicators – which used to be the LEI and that’s all the help on the anagram I’ll give you.
Now, about this Philly Fed stuff:
“Firms responding to the Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey reported continued weakness in business conditions this month. The indicator for general activity remained slightly negative this month, edging up only marginally from its reading in January. Other indicators offered mixed signals: The shipments index remained positive, but new orders and employment indexes remained negative and declined modestly.
There is not a lot going on in the news, here lately, so I figured this morning we could just kick back with a cup, or two, and commiserate about Life in general and how things work out – or don’t.
On the way out to the mail (our driveway is about half a block long) the peace and quiet of the neighborhood was still being disturbed with my brother-in-law. Panama was down range with an AK making sure that neither of those two hard drives (the ones that were non-op in the article earlier this week) were never going to be salvaged.
At the mailbox, I turned and sure enough, the jonquils were coming up around the perimeter and that reminds me to remind you that with football season over, it’s time to start watching out for snakes if you’re in southern climes. In northerly climes, simply watching the news out of D.C. should satisfy the effort.
The first package in the mail was a box with two old electron tubes in it: A pair of matched 12AU7A’s. You probably don’t give a rip about a 9-pin miniature base dual triode type vacuum tube. Statistically, they went out of production around the time you were born.
They do, however have a role inside my old vacuum tube volt meter (VTVM) along with a 6X4 rectifier tube. And therein was the first first business point to make with you: have you noticed hos people put tons of effort into preparing for things like EMP and yet it never occurs to them that the kind of materials that would be needed in a post-EMP would would likely all run on vacuum tubes.
This astounds me, but when I look at who wins political offices, it sort of all falls into place: We don’t live in a land of deep thinkers anymore. And we don’t seem to care if we have jobs…thus the magic of socialism’s selling feature (something for nothing) that presently propels the candidates on one and a half sides of the aisle.
Then I got back to thinking about the problem in the news that I’d been pondering so deeply that I needed the walk to the mailbox to get the blood pressure back down.
That was? Well, I hope you noticed the report in the WaPo Wednesday about how the Southern Poverty Law Center was claiming that “Hate crimes were up 14%” in the year just past.
Huh? Did I miss the memo from Hate Crimes-R-Us or something?
The news page at the SPLC says, in what looks on their site like 72 point font, or better:
The number of extremist groups operating in the United States grew in 2015 – a year awash in deadly extremist violence and hateful rhetoric from mainstream political figures, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual census of hate groups and other extremist organizations.
Say…you’re not a racist, are you? No? Well, neither am I, neither is Elaine, and I’m convinced that Panama and his significant aren’t either. What’s more…since we actually live in the South, none of us has been invited to a Klan event. We also scour the web looking for extremists and no sign of any increases we could find.
Not that racism has gone. It hasn’t. But there’s a agenda going on to melt-down all social grievances into one pot and that simply doesn’t work.
More people calling BS on force-fed sexual minority ads and such? Sure. But that’s not a hate crime – yet. That’s called free speech and/or a difference in values. I for one don’t care if you want to change sexes – that’s you’re deal. If you can’t read the data on how that impacts later in life, I don’t care. But I sure as hell don’t want to pay for it UNLESS you want to buy me a new airplane. Because that’s my hobby. You pursue yours on your own dime, thank you.
Lookie here: That’s not hate. That’s called fiscal responsibility. Do what you want…but don’t stick me or us with the bill. Worse, don’t stick me with the bill and then call me guilty of a HATE CRIME because I protest the doctor bills and the increase in taxes because you sucked government into a guilt trip. Not my deal…no money. Take out a loan like I’d have to for liposuction.
On inspection, however, it appears that the SPLC may have a further difficulty – and I’m too lazy to read their report to see how they dance around it: Is a person who goes to a Donald Trump rally, who doesn’t want any more illegals (and let’s toss in 10,000 Syrians being shipped into America) really a member of a “hate group?”
Not in my world.
Is someone who is willing to take legal political action (writing to whomever or voting) in an organized way part of a hate group because they don’t want a factory built in Mexico, not America (like Carrier is doing) engaged in hate? (This is a trick question because IF living your opinion in a politically active way is hate, then what in God’s name is global warming?)
In other words, as I glanced through the report, there were a large number of “hate” designations applied to what in an earlier time – back when we were a country that enjoyed free speech, free assembly, and freedom of thought and didn’t have a left leaning agenda – that what is pandered as “hate” now is nothing other than a difference of opinion.
Another sample from the groups press release:
The Year in Hate and Extremism — by Mark Potok — The number of hate and antigovernment ‘Patriot’ groups grew last year, and terrorist attacks and radical plots proliferated.
This one concerned me. We are seeing a left-driven agenda that has been smearing the label Patriots for some number of years now. It started, arguably with the OKC Bombing – and despite there being reported “other parties” to that, no other were brought to trial and there’s a fair body of thought that there was something (like an agent provocateur) in the woodpile that never made it to the public’s attention.
This kind of “willing to accept answered questions” is apparently dangerous stuff, however.
In fact, when I went looking for the source of the purported “52 deaths” due to domestic extremism cited by the SPLC what do you suppose I came across? The same claim being made in an Anti-Defamation League report released in January. The ADL report wasn’t so quick to go off on the “patriot” types at all. And in fact the ADL report made it clear in their body count of 52 that…
“Usually, right-wing anti-government extremists account for the next highest number of murders each year (Table 2), but in 2015, in a disturbing development, domestic Islamic extremists were responsible for 19 deaths, almost as many as were white supremacists. All of these deaths stemmed from two shooting rampages: the July 16 attacks by Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez on military targets in Chattanooga and the December 2 rampage by Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California.
In 2015, a record number of Americans were arrested for alleged crimes related to Islamic extremist activity, almost all of them in support of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Hold or Fold on Gold – Confiscation Ahead? It’s the fourth chapter in our Second Depression Handbook that we’re writing for subscribers on-the-fly deals with confiscation odds and that means we will be taking a look at the events of 1930-1934. This was the period that included the calling of both gold and silver in the Great Depression. Some interesting clues are there for the taking.
We will review some important historical information and provide important background on what was going on in the handling of the nation’s money back then.
More importantly, we can then project what all this could mean for modern day investors as we try to out-wit Washington’s klepto-class when comes to moving assets from today into a very uncertain future in the 2017-2020 timeframe.
My friend Robin Landry and I are both watching the 1,950 level on the S&P closely. He’s looking at it from the Elliott wave perspective while I’m looking at how our Aggregate Index approach would begin to look at those levels.
Somewhere in that vicinity, 1,950’ish, the market will make a commitment on whether to turn into a major fifth wave up – that could power the market to new highs between now and the fall of 2017, OR the market could just be doing a bounce up, completing what would be a wave 2 (in Elliott wave counting) of larger I down and from there we are off and running with the Second Depression right now.
It is hardly an academic question: Trillions of dollars are riding on the outcome world-wide and that’s not even the half of it. The more important question is what about people’s lives that will be impacted?
Yesterday, the Japan market took off like a rocket. Overnight, though not has high, the Shanghai market put on a pretty good showing, up more than 3%. Europe is flat to up and the US futures are screaming rally early on.
Still, we should have a lot better handle on things as the week moves along. There is, to begin with, the Empire State Manufacturing Survey just out:
“The February 2016 Empire State Manufacturing Survey indicates that business activity continued to decline for New York manufacturers. The headline general business conditions index edged up three points, but remained firmly in negative territory at -16.6. The new orders and shipments indexes indicated an ongoing decline in both orders and shipments.
Say, you want to make $50-bucks easy, right? That is how Monday afternoon penciled out and I’ll tell you how. It’s good Depression thinking to learn.
I apologize for inflicting another update on you – I should be asleep – and so should you. So much are the wages of food and having brain on fire disease, I suppose.
The first – and most important point – is that the Asia markets which all the other pundits have been warning would be going over the cliff not only didn’t collapse overnight, but they actually looked pretty good.
Take for example Japan: Up over 7% (as pretty nifty trick) and while China’s Shanghai was flat the Honk Kong index was up 3.27%.
France and Germany are up almost 3% and the Brits are up two and a quarter percent.
Hardly end of the world stuff, I think you’ll agree.
This weekend we went through a lot of charts over on the www.peoplenomics.com side of the house, but the bottom line is that while there is a bearish count, my friend Robin Landry thinks we could jump up a bit from here…but the real battle line will be 1,950 on the S&P.
You see, it’s pretty common for the markets to decline below key support and then rally back to (and slightly above) support.
But it is there that we find out if we are into the (delayed appearing) fifth wave. Or, if this kiss and die mode of the market in a major depressive run-in is in play.
Either way, for the next week or two, the sunshine should come out – thawing both the eastern part of the igloo as well as the moneyed types on Wall Street.
For for now, sit back, enjoy the flight, and hope the pilot comes back soon.
Still, Ures truly is not to upset – it just means the fifth wave if/when it comes may bring us all the way to the fall of 2017 before things really come crashing down. If so, we will get new highs first,
I will get to fly an airplane for another year, and then we batten down the hatches…
I woke up chilled and sweating at the same time about 3:45 this morning. My brain was on fire with an all-consuming idea…
Would president Obama do anything so audacious as nominate Hillary to the Supreme Court seat left open by the death over the weekend of high court justice Antonin Scalia?
“That’s about the most plum loco thing you’ve ever written, Ure…”
Whether it is or isn’t…think about this:
Do I think Obama is dumb enough to do this? Maybe. That would put two socialist leaning people in positions of power…and that would further his agenda of reshaping America into something it was never going to do. (You fill in the blanks, comrades…o))
The way I see it, the Obamanistas are in a position here to offer Hillary a deal of a lifetime. IN return for donating most of her IGG (incidentally gotten gains) from happytalking Goldman and the like, she would get a SupCo nom and that would keep peace in the party, trim back the Clinton fortunes and roll them over into the democratic coffers and everyone goes away happy.
Crazy theory of mine, but I’m sticking with it until Obama has a better idea. (That’s been a long wait… And since he’s keen on really bad ideas, this would just be a capper…)
From Our News Analyst
Yet another excuse for government to license the web – when it cuts into corporate cash flows:
Dear Mr. Ure,
This “Science Alert” report advises that a Russian academic is laying siege to paywalls of 130 year old medical and science journal publisher Elsevier. One wonders if their parent RELX in London will defend vigorously at the moat, or wheel the business model into the barber-surgeon quarters for a haircut and bloodletting.