We will be having a blessedly short communion around the coffee pot this morning because this is President’s day.  The Markets are closed and if I had a lick of sense, I’ve be off sawing zzz’s for all I’m worth – which on an inflation-adjusted basis isn’t much.

There’s much to be said about this being Presidents Day.  Starting perhaps with the first data point in our discussion this morning:  This is ALL happening on the wrong day.

You see, George (the other one) was born on February 22.  And if you want to toss Lincoln into the mix, well, he was born on February 12th.  I don’t care how sleepy-eyed or hung over you might be this morning, the calendar math on this isn’t wrong:  Today is neither of those dates.

Here’s the real lowdown:  This is a peachy example o how corporations have taken over government.  Why?

Well, back when, the President’s Birthdays were observed – on their birthdays.  I know, I know…too damn logical when corporations were just in their ascendancy to power. 

This figured that it would be “better for business” if all holidays were on Mondays or Fridays, so they didn’t screw up the work week so much.

As you may remember, Ures truly grew up in Washington State.  When I was a boy – back in the pre-historical (BC – as in before computers) times we celebrated not one but two holidays in February.  My mom had a sweet tooth for chocolate covered cherries and Lincoln’s birth triggers an almost Pavlovian visit to a downtown candy store because when Lincoln arrived, Valentines followed shortly thereafter. Pappy was no fool. 

Granted, this was in the 1950’s.  That was back when America had the actual by-God remnants of a Union movement.  Unions back then typically held two items above all (after the 40-hour work week, a minimum of two weeks of vacation, and almost mythically – employer-paid healthcare).  twelve holidays per year and a usury interest cap.

As I have mentioned – repeatedly – the big problem with corporations is that they have been in the slow-motion process of stealing back every gain made by Unions they can.  In the last 50-years of air consumption, I have seen employer-paid healthcare put on the run, the number of paid holidays dropping from as many as 13 down to some companies where there are zero – maybe half a dozen “personal days” and that’s it.

Then there’s the usury cap.  Up until the 1960’s or so, this prohibited loans from charging more than 12% interest.  Then, a couple of upper Midwest states removed the interest caps, bank card outfits flocked to the Midwest, and state repealed the interest rate caps because they “didn’t want to lose business.”

So by the time it got to be 1971, the Uniform Holiday Act was made the law of the land and there went holidays – from birthdays to a corporate scam.  Expediency rules over profits, time and time again throughout history.

Now let’s consider my second point:  Punctuation of today.  This note in Wikipedia nails it:

“Because “Presidents’ Day” is not the official name of the federal holiday, there is variation in how it is rendered, both in the name of official state holidays and colloquially. Both “Presidents Day” and “Presidents’ Day” are common today, and both are considered correct by dictionaries and usage manuals.

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Ever have a hunch about an investment? 

Ever get a “vibe” off something when you so much as look at something?

Well, that’s our slightly off the deep-end report this morning. 

Although, as usual, we will be nose to the grindstone and present our typical collection of charts (11 in all this morning) as we also ponder the extremely important question:  Is the bottom in?

Bean-up and let’s roll.

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While we wait a few seconds for the Retail Sales figures and other fresh data to land, the biggest story in the greater scheme of things is likely the discussion in the Washington Port this morning about how “Einstein predicted gravitational waves 100 years ago. Here’s what it took to prove him right.”

This overcoming gravity is not going to be a “fast mover” because there is so damn much engineering ahead, but the discovery of gravitational waves could signal the dawn of a new technology on the horizon; one that science fiction writers have been telling us is coming ever since H.G. Wells penned The Time Machine.  Time and gravity is the game.

Wells was not the first, of course, but the discovery of the phenomena of gravity may be expected to be closely linked with time since what we’re talking of here is reverse-engineering the glue of space-time. 

Adoption can’t be allowed to be too quickly, however.  After all, if there is anything dangerous about anti-gravity it is that it is a “top of class” disruptive technology.  Would you want to work at Boeing if uncontrolled anti-grav was popped out of Apple or Google?

There are some who believe that anti-gravity has already been discovered by military and black project teams and has been a known commodity for a long time.  Perhaps, suggest some, ever since Roswell or every since Operation Paper Clip.

The economic impacts could be immense.  Not the least of which is finally getting a kind of global transportation system that would not pollute as much as high altitude “smoke burners” produce now.

Whether gravity technology can be distilled down to a flyable essence remains to be seen, but while we are all glued to the screens looking at what will happen in the next 20-minutes of markets, the next 20-years (or longer) is an important horizon, too.  So for this reason, we begin this morning with a reminder that the day is coming when…

Historically, the market didn’t really do much for the micro-trend traders on December 19, 1974.  But that was a day when the entire world changed and a disruptive technology that is still disrupting today was factually born.

You see December of 1974 was when the Altair 8800 computer was introduced.

Sure, we had known the technology of computers was coming and was out in the wings somewhere.  People like Ures truly were being force-fed Venn diagrams and unions of set theory by the School Mathematics Study Group courses in the mid 1960s. 

Initially the textbooks changed – in 7th grade I got my first-even paperback textbook.  SMSG content hadn’t come from a traditional textbook publisher because what was “needed to be known” wasn’t so tightly defined yet.  Paperbacks were faster to the classroom.  We knew, as students, that we would need the set theory, we would likely need to be able to communicate and function in Base x but little did we know that hex would it IT.  We hated base 6.

Today, Robotics is in a similar situation:  Kids are playing with small processors and learning to program motion and even voice responses and a whole lot more.  So again, in some ways, the major technology-shifters become apparent in what kids are being instructed to learn and there’s something to come from observing the hobbies, too, much as the CPM users groups were important signs for investors.

And what better way to see a great company evolving (back in the day) than by joining the local AUG – Apple User Group.  Comparing the mindset of the Commodore User Group with the AUGs was useful.

The same is going on with robotics today.  The Arduino and Raspberry Pi fans are walking down a familiar road.  At some point, as Robotics rolls out full-on, perhaps in 20-30 years, there will be some follow-up to Ure’s truly asking “But where is the next technology after robotics?”

The answer to that seems likely revealed in the Washington Post piece – and when we get gravity nailed, it’s likely the first-cousin time will also fall out of the engineering processes.

Which leaves only one question about the greater schema:  Is it all baby-steps to the stars, or do we have a Flash-Bang and Over event along the way?

7-billion people have an interest in the answer.

We now return you to the minutia of the moment.

So We Rally, Huh?

No, market collapses don’t happen from the top.  And today is a low-prob(ability) day for one, too, unless there is some kind of out of left field event that no one sees coming.

I mean what if the orbiting North Koreans actually put up an EMP device?  You see, THAT would be a left-fielder for sure.

But absent that, most of the day’s news flow is sadly predictable – a point we’ll return to after we toss around the data:

Retail sales press release is out:

The U.S.

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If you are a serious news junky, oh boy, do we have the concept for you!

When the market starts acting up – as it has this week – our thoughts naturally turn to the only two things that matter:  Making a buck and staying ahead of the herd.

Almost a year ago, we treated our www.peoplenomics.com subscribers to a few thoughts on how easy it is for a dedicated person to build a very impressive home information platform.

You don’t really need a genius level mentality:  Just a natural sense of curiosity and a desire to stay out front of trends.

Here’s an extract from the article where we discuss how to build such a system to actually take in HUGE swaths of data and distill it down into something that makes sense.  So, for those who have been wondering what Peoplenomics content is like, this is a portion of our report for last April 5…when we were fixing to get ready to see what’s been coming and which is now by some accounts here and now…

—————- commence extract ——————–

Business and Personal Applications

Just because of insider trading rules one can’t completely toss out the use of various technologies on the web to “smooth one’s way.”

Keeping tabs on developments at a competitor’s web site, for example, is perfectly reasonable and yet not many people use the ability of the internet to really exploit competitor weaknesses.

The process is the same, however, as an old-time monarch off spying on an enemy.  The process begins with just a single name – or two – of the company in question.  Then you’re off to social media to see who they are connected to.  The government uses social mapping techniques which means nothing more than seeing who has what connections on Linked-In and Facebook, for starters.

Once you have a couple of executive email addresses collected, you can start scanning the internet using a large engine like Google and seeing which forums, alumni associations, or other affinity/interest groups the person is associated with.

Search Engines and Meta Searches

Simply used:  If you employ Google or Bing (lots of people do) you could be missing content on the web.  That’s because these are single engines.  Big, powerful, but don’t get me wrong – there are other search engines out there.  Like www.webcrawler.com.

Even the venerable WebCrawler has become limited in recent years, so there’s been a rise in the big meta-crawlers like www.dogpile.com and www.clusty.com or www.zapmeta.com.

If you’re not used to meta engines, they take a bit of getting used to, so start with some known results off Google and Bing (like your own company) and then run the same search on the meta (multiple search engines with one click) sites.

Use of Imagery and Media

If a picture is worth a thousand words, Google has tabs that will allow you to display only image or video results.

Everyone knows about Google Earth and Google’s street views, but not so many people know about freeway web cams.

If you’re a news junkie, you’ve got a couple of ways to go:  One is to rely on a camera directory and linking service, like www.trafficcameras.com  which I have used to zoom in on Salt Lake City, for example.

If your interest is in a specific area, like Salt Lake, for example, you don’t need a directory.  You can just bring up the Utah Department of Transportation site’s traffic cameras.

Now, lest we forget, there are many other online sources that can provide valuable intelligence for personal and business use that are seriously under-appreciated.

One such example is immersive local media.  I’ll show you how this works in a moment, in a real news-chasing/news-junkie’s world.  But a quick visit to www.iheartradio.com or www.streema.com will allow you to listen to local radio stations virtually anywhere in the country. 

A Real News/Intelligence Operation

How can a person use such “intelligence” in a useful manner?

It becomes really easy if you understand some of the functionality in Windows and other operating systems. 

I’ll use a current project as an example.  You know I had a weird dream back in January about an “April 9+ earthquake,” right?  This is a fine example to use because it will allow me to use some concrete examples of how to “set up” for an area.

The first thing to do is set up the master folder on the desktop.  To do this, simply right-click,  select “NEW” and then select “FOLDER.”

In our example this morning, I have called my master folder Big Quake.

When you have many projects going, you can quickly discard a lot of research by putting things into a master folder. 

In addition to Big Quake, I have other folders for the cities where our kids are:  Phoenix and Payson, AZ, as well as the Seattle-Tacoma area.

The next step, once you have your state’s set up is to consider the kind of intelligence folders you want to include.

As you can see on the right, I’ve been preparing for the Big Quake by dropping tons of shortcuts into their appropriate folders.

If/When a big quake actually happens, I’ll be able to quickly open the appropriate folder, then have “one-click” access to tons of information.

The ready access to information is what separates the “men from the boys” in the breaking news world and this is one way to stay far, far ahead of the crowd.

I use the same strategy for major long-term news stories.  You’ll remember my recent post on the UrbanSurvival site where I posited that we are drifting toward a Shi’ite versus Sunni war in the Middle East?  That kind of information is easily organized in this manner.

Sure, there are other information management tools that could be used for the purpose – like Microsoft OneNote,  but selecting the “RIGHT” tool for the mission is always critical.

Let me see if I can explain it better.  OneNote and other PIMS (personal information managers) work well on wide data.

Wide data might include a ton of clips and notes about a particular topic.

But hierarchical systems work best when you want to organize something in phonebook-like fashion – which is what reporters and intelligence types often need.  Along with investors, of course.

The “height versus width” analogy is also useful when sizing up people for promotion when you’re running a business.  And, if you’re wanting to move up the food chain, it’s good to remember that the good manager not only has decent width of knowledge, but to be really good, you’ve got to have vertical skills as well – knowing all the high people or resources to reach out and utilize.  It’s this gridding concept that makes like a very manageable game.

In practice, IF one were building a home intelligence platform for either writing, news collecting, or investing, the “right” thing would be a combination of approaches:  There is some hierarchical data about companies (like where to find the latest 8/10K filings, as well as setting up Google news searches for your target of interest (set the Google news alerts to send as soon as things happen – you don’t want a daily digest -that’s too slow for us!).

Getting Full Use of Shortcuts

Once you have a file structure, the next problem is learning to use shortcuts effectively.

It’s similar to creating a File, except when you get prompted to create a shortcut, you can put in a web address.  And name your shortcut.

Let’s say that you were interested in just how “hot” things were getting up in Ferguson, MO during the recent problems.  You might find a stream looked good over at http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/ctid/1573/web. 

You would paste that in as the shortcut’s target and give it a useful name.  Admittedly, my name wasn’t particularly creative, but it was easy to create.

Some other housekeeping details:  On the www.broadcastify scanners you need to select which feed you want and yes, a serious news junkie would have a subscription to several such feeds in order to really be “plugged in” to what’s going on.

In our little exercise (building a modest intel platform in advance of a POSSIBLE earthquake) a couple of hours of effort results in a very solid little platform that will give me seismographs, cops, first responders, traffic cameras, a whole slug of news-talk radio stations and much more.

If/when something happens, you will want to have all your news or intel gathering preset as shortcuts in an easy to use format.

On our media server, the shortcuts become streaming music pushbuttons for Seattle’s KNDD and San Francisco’s KMEL, along with all news stations up and down the coast.  Takes only a few minutes to set up and it’s really fun once you master some of the basic concepts here.

And yes, the same principles apply to keeping track of companies.  However, just be aware of what we talked about earlier:  If you have 20 company CEO’s Facebook pages on shortcuts, along with their chiefs of marketing and accounting (a surprising number have FB, Linked-In and/or Twitter accounts) just be aware of what we talked about earlier with regard to the “public information” problem when you go making trades:  Too many winners which cause the options writers to write big checks can trigger a visit.

Not that L-I, FB, and Tweets aren’t public…but you start getting too good at this stuff and you can pop up in filters.  You don’t want that – remember “The Man” has an employee in the gubmint which is not there to ensure “fairness.”  If you don’t KNOW that “fairness” line is a load of crap, go ask those winners in Atlantic City who won because the House made a mistake and they seized on the opportunity.

Judge basically told them, if it wasn’t luck, they wouldn’t keep their winnings…

Life ain’t fair – and there’s nothing more asymmetric than information warfare – in either direction.

Oh  – if nothing else?  You’ll have a dandy time on your desktop with local all-news stations in the top 50 markets because you can get a very good sense of what’s going on around the country by not only listening to local news and comment, but also listening to local weather and advertisements…

Have fun with it!  It’s the replacement for shortwave listening, but that will be back after the big EMP events to come…but maybe those won’t be in this lifetime….

———————- end of extracted portion ——————-

This concept has a simple and direct application that is of interest to skitterish investors.

You set up a Google News alert.  Use a couple of key words like “gold –sports” so you get stories about gold but not the asinine stuff about “gold medals” in sports.

Set your Google Alerts up to send you an email any time a new news story crosses.  Or, maybe you might want to have something like “Deutsche Bank” as a news alert.  It’s all up to you.

Now comes the important part:  In order to manage all this wave of content that will come into your email inbox, make a new subfolder somewhere called “Gold”  (or DB, or whatever).

Then, when the next Google Alert on point lands in your Inbox, right click (in Outlook, anyway) and create a rule.  If I was tracking concerns about famine, my rule and alert might look like this:

Now the key thing here is set up your automation sources (Google News is great for this) and then let your email program do all the dirty work of routing all your email to where you want it to go.

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With the Dow futures down a couple of hundred (actually it’s more), the first thought that crossed my mind was “Gee, one of the Chinese markets must be back from going Lunar…”

Well, sure as (Insert your favorite term here), yes the Hong Kong market was back and instead of being King Kong, it had a better than 3% beat-down. In fact, it was almost a 4% beat-down.

Now, should the U.S. go through something like that, based on the Wednesday close, of 15,914, the drop would come in at 613 points..

Is this what I expect today?  No, of course not.  That would be too simple and too logical.  At least until Janet Bringer of Free Money is done talking to the Senate.  Then?  Well, you never know, but a couple of hundred down pretty much seems baked in the cake.

Besides, Ms.

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Say, that does sound like a power breakfast, doesn’t it?

Naturally, we don’t condone drinking before 5PM at the absolute earliest.  This may explain the numerous globes I keep on hand… (kidding, of course…)

But the three concepts do all tie together.

The first point is that the Robotics Industry Association issued a mighty savory press release Wednesday which we want you to read carefully because, in case you haven’t noticed, there is a future coming.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA – Robot orders and shipments in North America set new records in 2015, according to Robotic Industries Association (RIA), the industry’s trade group.

A total of 31,464 robots valued at $1.8 billion were ordered from North American companies during 2015, an increase of 14% in units and 11% in dollars over 2014. Robot shipments also set new records, with 28,049 robots valued at $1.6 billion shipped to North American customers in 2015.

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I bet you don’t know what Convexcatious Economics are, do you?

Done feel bad, Tonto:  I just made it up.  Has do with with an odd state of simultaneous convexity and concavity of formerly partial-workable mathematical hieroglyphics (mined from thin air) used by quants.  Some of which should be starting to seize-up now.

And therein lies this morning’s grief counseling session as the Dow futures point down 135.  (Don’t call it the LONG GRINDER DOWN yet, but we are moving that way a bit.)

One of the big discussion points on the net today is the little matter of Janet’s talk tomorrow with the House banking folks, which will be followed with her talk with the Senate banking types on Thursday.  Re-runs are a pernicious effect of capitalism.

Tomorrow’s Peoplenomics report will be especially interesting.  Not only should we have a look at the pre-game speech around 8:30 tomorrow, 7:30 Central, but if conditions warrant, we may go through and do some analysis. 

Like the days when the Housing data from Case/S&P and whoever hits, it’s possible we will have a two-parter for subscribers.  Though I avoid actual work like the plague.

But that’s not the biggie. 

The biggie is this problem Elaine and I have been struggling with – and I know we are not alone on this – a subscriber asked for a discussion and simple model.

I won’t get into too much detail here but the problem is simply stated this way: 

If you believed that we were going into the summer of 1929 – and remember the market hit its high in September of that year – would you sell everything and go to cash stored in government bonds, and wait out the two to four years for a good bottom to be in, and then move into that dream home which would be for sale at about 17-cents on today’s dollars?

Our problem, out here on the ranch in East Texas, is “Where would we go?” 

We were cruising through a bunch of homes on www.Trulia.com  yesterday asking the same  question as before:  If the world is going to get really, really ugly, do we want to be on 30 paid-off acres with low taxes (road issues aside), or do we want to be in an urban area where there will be gobs of people, some of whom many not be inclined to “play nicely with others” if you follow.

Anyway, it’s a hell of a topic…and we’ll get into the models and thinking on that tomorrow on the www.peoplenomics.com side of things.  Subscription details above and we have an extremely high satisfaction rate because people can ask common sense questions (like this one) and we kick things around and sometimes come up with cool ideas. 

I mean besides being in cash or short with out Aggregate Index models and such since December or early January, depending on how you use the model.

Which circles us back to the problem this morning:  I mean other than going back to bed and just waiting for the Fed boss to chat up Congress tomorrow.

It will be the end of the week before the titans of Asia are back on their usual schedule because of the fire-monkey Lunar New Years (I know, you’re thinking “Aren’t fire-monkeys something that come flying out of the butt after extreme spicy food? “ No…this is a Chinese calendar deal…).  But volatility is in the bag for the rest of the week, seems to me.

The futures are looking to open down a bit. (-135 is now a bit.)  About the only real news items driving today seem to be that the National Federation of Independent Business report is out:

After Modest Gain Last Month, Small Business Optimism Takes a Stumble

NFIB Survey shows small business owners wary of future economic conditions.

A couple of highlights from the report, if I may?

About a quarter of the survey respondents (which are small businesses) were planning to make capital expenditures.  But on the flip side, the percentage that actually expect the economy to improve was down 21%. 

But there were 29% more with job openings.  Offsetting this, though the earning trend was down 18%. 

You see how this goes, right?  Here is something bad, but over here is something good, but wait!  Here is something good  but there is something bad.  Goes back and forth and that’s when sometimes a headline as a thought summary actually does work, unless you happen to be an NFIB member and can compare your company with others…  In the meantime though, details are over here if you need them for a school report or for something to “wow” the peeps in the conference room when you talk about “Gee, how are we going to increase sales when the economy sucks wind?”

See where we are??  Yes, we have finally arrived at the first legit point of this morning’s ramble: Does the Fed really have the legal power to take rates negative?

There’s a marvelous Bloomberg piece over here which is wondering much the same thing.  What they have some to is “Fed May Lack Legal Authority for Negative Rates: 2010 Memo.”

Sorting through the Fed mess right now is almost hopelessly complex unless you know what the hell an IOER is (the Bloomberg story didn’t cover this in detail):  It’s the rate the Fed pays as Interest On Excess Reserves.

What will the Fed do?  I mean come on!  they have had almost six years to study the 11-page memo over here…and someone besides me may be wondering “How do you raise rates on the one hand – the touted Fed hike – while going to negative rates out the back door without everyone seeing what the Fed is doing as a HUGE PONZI  deal?”

Granted, you won’t have six years to figure it out, but the 11 pager is over here.  About the time you grok to what’s hap’nin, the Fed will have danced past the Fools on the Hill with Janet leading and you’ll be late to the party once again.

That’s OK; we’re going to help.

The guts of the 2010 Fed memo is on Page 7 which says (in part, but this is what matters):

“Legal and Practical Obstacles for Setting the IOER Rate Below Zero There are several potentially substantial legal and practical constraints to implementing a negative IOER rate regime, some of which would be binding at any IOER rate below zero, even a rate just slightly below zero.  Most notably, it is not at all clear that the Federal Reserve Act permits negative IOER rates, and more staff analysis would be needed to establish the Federal Reserve’s authority in this area.  In addition, the Federal Reserve computer systems used to calculate and manage interest on reserves do not currently allow for the possibility of a negative IOER rate, although these systems could be modified over time if needed.18  Moreover, if negative IOER rates were to pull Treasury bill yields into negative territory, the Treasury would encounter difficulties because it cannot accept negative rates at its auctions, although presumably it could modify its systems as well.  Finally, as discussed further below, at sufficiently negative IOER rates, DIs might opt to shift a significant quantity of their reserve balances into currency.

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For a good while I have been writing you the occasional note about what it’s like to age.  Although I am not keen on the idea, it certainly beats the alternatives.

In the past, we have explored different additives and supplements like L-Arginine, and what’s the best vitamin I have found and so forth.  Stevia in the tea and so forth.

A couple of updates as we do a drive-by of these this morning:  I have been using Source Naturals L-Arginine L-Citrulline Complex, 240 Tablets-1000mg which seems to be a very good energy-booster. No change on that one.  Ditto the best vitamin I have found so far:  NOW Foods Adam Superior Men’s Multi, 90 Softgels. 

Not that Elaine every doubts my judgment (she still gets in the airplane with me driving, right?) but she did a whole passel of research on her own and ended up with (look surprised here) the female version of the formula I take –  which has some lady-stuff in it and is under the Now Foods Eve, Women’s Multi Vitamin, Softgels, 180-Count brand.

There are a couple of other things that seem to optimize me:  I am a huge fan of Source Naturals Huperzine A, 200mcg, 120 Tablets but my buddy up in Gig Harbor, who will be coming down here for about 10-days in April thinks that they shouldn’t be used all the time.

On the other hand,  there have been some really savory research papers and they all seem to point to the same thing:  Huperzine A does seem to help the brain function better…and I will leave it to you and your doctor to figure out what the right period of use should be.  (Readers have suggested I need more brain function, lol.)

Now, this is not to say that Huperzine A is the only show in town when it comes to brain enhancement.  There are several others that I should mention in passing.  Now Foods Soy-free Phosphatidyl Serine Tablets, 150 mg, 60 Count might be worth a try along with some of the more conventional anti-aging of the brain supplements…Gingko Biloba comes to mine.  So does coffee.

Another one that I take rather religiously is NOW Foods L- Carnitine Tartrate 1000mg, 100 Tablets.  Here’s a 2002 article off the PubMed government database with some thoughts on how it may help after exercise  and this one on general cardiac assistance.

Here’s a PubMed article out just this month that explains how a moderate carnitine deficiency makes myocardial injury more dangerous (if you happen to be a lab rat).  So, even though I don’t think of myself as a rat, there seems to be some good for the heart and possibly brain from this stuff.

And, let’s not leave out my life-long buddy’s recommendation to me on Rhodiola Rosea, which is now in the mix.

REMINDER:  This is NOT healthcare advise.  Talk to your doctor before “owning and playing with your own personal walking/talking chemistry set. “

Eventually, though, we are going to get to the point of this morning’s discussion. 

Namely, I am back on kelp pills now.  Not a lot, just one per day.

A little discussion is in order.

The other day, a kindly reader suggested that I look up something called “pulse pressure”.  Turns out (and have fun running this down) that if pulse pressure (the big number minus the little number) is greater than 50, or 60, it is a better indicator later in life of heart problem potential than blood pressure..

Since I put my numbers in the column, the reader said my “60” was a little on the high side and maybe I should do some additional reading.

A bit of family history here.  My dad’s side of the family has always high very low pulse rates.  In fact, when my dad was recovering from a spinal fusion in the 1960’s (an occupational hazard of being a fire fighter and running into a burning building with 120 pounds of hose on your shoulder with absolutely no warm up) the nurse at the old Seattle General work him up and asked him if he was alive.

“Well, yeah…I was asleep, though…”

His pulse had dropped to something like 43 and they seemed concerned about it.

My resting pulse, when I am not augmenting with vitamins just right, tends to drop way, way down, too.  It was common of one of my aunt’s to nearly faint after sitting a while…takes the heart a number of seconds to ramp up from under 50 to a useful 65-70 without getting dizzy.

So there I was reading about bradycardia  (slow pulse rate) because when I am in a serious writing mode, I go into what I describe as something of a “writer’s trance.”

My breathing gets deep, the heart slows down.  I mean 52-55…and for me, that has been “the zone” for a long time.

What was going on?

After a couple of hours of reading, it became clear (at least to me) that there might be something like a sub acute iodine deficiency at play.

Now, I want to say this again:  This is absolutely not something to mess with unless your doc is onboard ahead of time – it’s not proper to tell him about it during an ER visit if you follow.

But here’s the point:  I went through some of the symptoms of the bradycardia and iodine deficiency and it was I found myself saying “Hey!  That’s ME!!!”

Turns out that a LOT of people don’t get enough iodine.  And, if you look around the web, you will find there are many, many discussions about it.

Today…after being on this slight iodine enhancement with one Kelp pill per day, I am seeing a change in my heart rate and BP.  As of earlier today it was 115 over 75 which is a pulse pressure of 40.  But even more significant to me, my pulse rate was up to 71 resting, instead of the low 50’s….

Hot damn!

This got me into a discussion with Elaine, since she has been shy on iodine, too.  (She’s convinced that a shot of Glenlivit (12) or Glen Fiddich (15) helps her to feel good.  And who would argue the point?

My next experiment will be with an experiment I found over the course of my travels around the web.  Has to do with buying some 2% iodine solution and making a circle of the tincture on your stomach.  The “Equipment” for the experiment is a $12-bill with which you buy J.CROW’S® Lugol’s Solution of Iodine 2% 2oz and make this 50-=cent sized painting.

If I understand what I am reading:  If the iodine circle disappears in less than 12-hours, then it’s something to be looked into by a doc because it may signal your4 body is so short on iodine that it is resorting to transdermal absorption.

In the meantime I’m wondering how much of the processed food out there actually uses iodized salt in it?  If you have any results on this, please advise.  Sea Salt doesn’t have nearly as much iodine as iodized table salt, but the thinking is that trace elements matter, too…

WARNING:  This is all part of a conversation and is NOT MEDICAL ADVICE.  Talk to your doctor.  Get proper tests done.  This is just a cheapskate in the woods talking here and I don’t want to hear from your next of kin.

Still, it’s an interesting enough path to go down on research that I thought I would pass it along.  Some of the symptoms of iodine deficiency according to what I read include a slight puffiness, some fatigue (mine may come from actually working so much) and a few others.

I never for one second in my under 50 years thought that I would become one of those health obsessed oldsters who takes a dozen vitamins a day.

But with 67 coming later this month (the precise day is classified) I am pleased to still be around, feeling good and just as spunky as I was at 50.

Mr.

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I’m sure someone will notice that Denver won the Super Bowl on Sunday, proclaim that it’s a bearish signal and may in and of itself account for the market getting creamed today.

Nothing could be further from the Truth, however.

As we put pixels to photons (or whatever), a few very uncomfortable facts have to be held. in mind.

1.  Amidst all the HS&J (hype, shuck, and jive) around sports this weekend, most people failed to notice that Iran is on the verge of abandoning the U.S. Dollar (USD) as the basis for settling their oil business.

To make this a kind of triple slap in the face, it tells us a couple of additional things, as well.  One is that while many in the West think that the EU will collapse into the Second Depression ahead of the U.S. Iran by virtue of the militant brand of religion-marketing, may have grand designs on eventually subsuming Europe which is already well on its way to becoming Eurabia.

Here’s the count:  To think the Euro is better than the Yen, Rubble, or Dollar?  That’s one.  Two, to have an invading force already hard at work changing loyalties in the EU is number two.  And number three?  We just pissed away $150-billion and the Obama administration appeals distinctly like a troop of idiots, even with what’s her name trying to run for office.

2.  Second point is this:  As we have been explaining, China is trying to build a Middle Class.  And they are working on warrior values and chivalry (see Coping section).  And North Korea is their lap dog.

The launch of the North Korean long-range rocket this weekend is being widely condemned, but guess what?  They did it.

In response, the U.S.

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First item of business is pretty simple and straightforward: 

China is now in the process of recruiting more male teachers in order to teach young Chinese boys how to grow up to become men.

I can’t make this up.

Says so, right here in this article in  the NY Times this weekend.  A key quote from a teacher’s talk with students about history:

““Men have special duties,” he said. “They have to be brave, protect women and take responsibility for wrongdoing.”

Which gets us to a very interesting question:  How is it that the Chinese have re-contacted chivalry while the U.S. largely can’t even spell the word anymore?

What the Chinese are doing is an affront to every sexual minority marketer in the land formerly known as America!  Why, at this rate, China will raise a middle class with a values system that we have – over the past 50 years – turned our backs on in America.

The word Chivalry, by the way, in common  use means:

“…the combination of qualities expected of an ideal knight, especially courage, honor, courtesy, justice, and a readiness to help the weak.”

Something is terribly wrong in China!  Has the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee failed to remind their comrades that total equality for women, gays, etc.

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This morning we do a second chapter of our Second Depression Handbook as we look at a very important link that all major depressions seem to hold in common.

Along with that, we’ll have a few remarks on other items, including our earthquake discussion on “earthquake tired” from the UrbanSurvival column of Friday which – as a whole bunch of readers have noted, nailed the 6.4 in Taiwan.

But above all, we will look at the issues in the charts as next week shapes up to be a kind of “last chance” in our Aggregated Indexes work.

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Yeah, yeah.

We will get to this morning’s jobs report in a sec.

But first, a number of readers have asked me whether the world is ending.

The answer, I’m afraid, will not be very satisfying.

The main attention-getter seems to be the Baltic Dry Cargo Index.  That index as of this morning stands at 298. 

To put this into perspective, we know that when the economy has been percolating along in the past that this index has been previously in the 1,000 and higher, level.

There are likely two things going on here:  First is the economy is experiencing another near-death experience.  As explained yesterday, you don’t have a percolating economy unless you have growth.  To have growth, however, government has (stupidly) put us into a box.

We have trapped millions of young people in the New Vicious Cycle:  Can’t get job, so can’t pay college loans.  Since the jobs they are finding pay terribly, they have to spend every dime on mandatory health care.  Everyone knows healthcare for American could be 20-50% CHEAPER if we we cut the insurance companies out of the middle of it…but no one in Washington, which we call the District of Corruption with reason, is willing or able to do anything because the insurance types are like the unstoppable force in physics.  If you want to get re-elected….and so it goes.

So the normal recovery from this mess is not happening yet.

Since people are seeing disposable incomes decline (a fact papered-over in nonsensical government schemes to count paying off your car as “savings” and such) there is not much going on.

In 2008, the labor participation rate was about 66.7% and unemployment was 5.5%.  We’ll get to this morning’s report in a minute.  But the main thing to focus on is quality of jobs.

Now back to this cargo thing:  Yes, the Baltic Dry is screaming “End of the World!  Everyone Flee from Street!”

But there are some important differences between now and 2008.

I don’t know how many transportation companies you’ve been in senior management of.  My only experience was in the airline industry.  But here, the cost of jet fuel was about 50% of costs.  And some portion, perhaps 7%, was in the debt service of a couple of tax-advantaged off-shore leases.

Here’s my first point (I know, you’ve been waiting patiently):  In summer of 2008 the price of oil was running $145’ish.  This morning it is in the $33 range if we split the difference between West Texas and Brent. 

A little simple math: The cost of oil is 23% (22.75%, but it’s easy so we don’t mess with decimal points until after noon, or so) of the 2008 level.

And when we look at long-term Bond rates, the 10-year was running right around 4%.  Today, the 10-year is 1.86% (*although this is all hopelessly simplified).

Another measure in the HARPEX container index.  This one hasn’t taken out the 2009 low  of 275.  Instead, it is edging up and down to the recent lows of 383.  In a really hot economy, talking 2007-2008 here, this index topped 1,400.

Now, a really great indicator that we talk about with subscribers over on our www.peoplenomics.com site is the Association of American Railroads’ Rail Time Indicators report.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Feb. 3, 2016 – The Association of American Railroads (AAR) today reported weekly U.S.

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