I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic lately because periodic “life reviews” are a good thing. What I found was a collection of seven skills which can be brought out an applied just as you’d employ a business process to roll out a new ERP platform.So after the charts this morning, a review of these seven critical skills that differentiate humans from robots.
I was wrong. As turns out, the reported legal basis for the indictment of two people for videotaping Planned Parenthood persons was NOT based on their use of undercover/covert recording.
“Mr. Daleiden and Sandra S. Merritt, 62, were indicted on felony charges of tampering with a governmental record with the intent to defraud — specifically, falsifying California driver’s licenses to pose as biotechnology representatives and infiltrate Planned Parenthood centers and research conferences.
The story out of Houston about a grand jury reportedly returning grounds for indictment of two people involved in the “undercover recording” of a video of Planned Parenthood officials has been getting a lot of traction.
Despite speculation of a “runaway prosecutor” or other less than honorable motivations, there is clear reason in Texas state law which all well-schooled reporters should be aware of: Most states prohibit the undercover recording or video of a person without their specific consent, if they are not public figures and if they are in a place not accessible to the general public (as in a private office).
I sent is a note to Mr. Limbaugh to point out the Texas laws: which may be read at http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/PE/htm/PE.21.htm#21.15. See the yellow highlight: Prohibits unauthorized recording…
Sec. 21.15. INVASIVE VISUAL RECORDING. (a) In this section:
(1) “Female breast” means any portion of the female breast below the top of the areola.
As expected, a pretty good housing report today from S&P/Case-Shiller:
New York, January 26, 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 November 2015 show that home prices continued their rise across the country over the last 12 months.
Monday was spent, much as Sunday, on the back of the old Kubota as spring clean-up time is here. The brush has been beaten back by Winter and it’s easier now before the creatures come out in Spring.
For those who have never lived on a large piece of land, keeping it up involves a tremendous amount of work and no small measure of diesel. So far, about 10-gallons into what will be a 20-gallon project, about half of the open part of Uretopia Ranch is looking very much like a state park. Or will when the tractorfying is done.
There is a lot to go, yet. And the “burn pile” is still smoldering after three days of fire. It is astounding how much wood comes down as “deadfall” around here. Plus, this year we had three old trees, perhaps late victims of our drought several years back, that needed to come down.
The test is simple: I put the tractor in compound four-wheel low and smash into it with the loader bucket at about 7-feet off the ground. If it survives 3-4 whacks, then I figure the tree remains are good for another year and not likely to come crashing down on us. But this year, we had some trees that we’re up to tractor abuse. I look at the process as training sessions for an auto accident.
Broinlaw Panama and I hold differing views on old trees. He’s a fan of leaving them for the wildlife. That’s fine, if the residents were restricted to some neat bird species, but once they fall, things like snakes winter-over in them. And to my way of thinking, the fewer dead trees within 500-feet of the house, the lower the odds of snakes.
With the brush slicked off, the hawks and vultures can see anything heading for the house and do their jobs.
Every year about this time, I get started on the project. It’s time and diesel and while the diesel prices are nice, the time is a real pain. And that’s our jumping-off point for this morning’s discussion.
It’s about our shrinking future.
I sometimes think farmers may be the most intelligent people in the world because there is not a lot of interruption when working the land. Uninterrupted thinking time abounds. I spent the tractor-back time working out the next Peoplenomics report. It will cover seven essential skills for the future.
I wanted to get you started thinking about this today with a few reflections on space – the kind of square footage that makes life good. How much is enough?
– – – – –
To begin with, there is a simple calculation we can do to begin “bounding” the problem of so many people but only this much land.
We look up the amount of land on the planet and divide among the number of people.
A quick Google (because my calculator and I aren’t on good terms until 10 AM, or so) and we find this:
The total land surface area of Earth is about 57,308,738 square miles, of which about 33% is desert and about 24% is mountainous. Subtracting this uninhabitable 57% (32,665,981 mi2) from the total land area leaves 24,642,757 square miles or 15.77 billion acres of habitable land.
Since we know that there are about 7-billion people in the world, we can guestimate that each human has (in theory) a little over 2-acres per person.
If we were alert enough to remember there are 640-acres per square mile, this would mean averaged out, about 300-people per square mile would be a reasonable shot from the hip. You take the arid Nevada country east of Reno which is technically habitable; we’ll stick with the 90-foot pines and 60-odd inches of rain in East Texas, thanks.
Of course, even the land mentioned by the cite is not all useful. A lot of it depends on whether the land gets enough rainfall. A lot of land up in Nebraska or the back-side of the Rockies is pretty dry and not exactly warm and inviting. Not desert, but not fun. Even for those of us with modest means an only a single-engine, this is fly-over country.
That’s why although Tornado Alley has a bad rap in terms of mobile homes being blown around, it also is generally where there’s enough rain to where a family could make a stab as living off the land. They did…and then came Phillips and then came fracking, but another diversion from point.
East Texas, and the huge areas north of the Southern coastal states and south of the Appalachia and west farm lands, is really great property to hold. Although places like Mongolia have amazing grasslands, the climate is less friendly. And except for the mountains east of Salt Lake (the Wasatch) a whole bunch of Utah, Nevada, ands even Colorado and Wyoming is hard-living country.
Eastern Montana, the Dakotas, Wisconsin and Minnesota are pretty good, too. Except they have this beast called Winter up that way. Gentlemen don’t do winter.
The mind plays things back when your only job is to turn the tractor around and cut another swath and cast an occasional eye at the burn pile.
The haunting question always comes back to this: How much space does a human need to live an optimized life? And who is doing the optimizing?
The space question is pretty easy to answer. Prisons have that down to something of a science. A really minimalist lifestyle in a 6-foot by 8-foot cell can be done, especially if it comes with bedding and meals done elsewhere.
The interesting thing to note is that humans, like all animals, get to range. Even in prisons, inmates are usually allowed to move around a bit. The showers, the meal areas, the “day room” and so on. Plus a decent exercise yard,.
Our weekly chart reading, not to be confused with fortune-telling, on our subscriber side (www.peoplenomics.com) holds open the idea that as the week dawns, we are really in “make or break” time for not only the Global markets, but for the U.S. as well.
Friday, thanks to a couple of good rallies on Thursday and Friday, we were left sitting exactly on the bottom of a long-term trend channel which spans from 2009’s low through present day.
The fact that at first glance the Dow futures were down around 50 points is hardly conclusive evidence of what’s ahead for the week; stocks have moved that much in an hour (or less) recently.
It’s in situations like this (with the import/export data as presented on the subscriber side) and with Housing figures due out tomorrow morning, we expect that the bottom is in. Should any of our offspring call to wonder if it’s time to get back into stocks, we would only send them the trend channel chart which has a look of “completeness” to it if this is the fourth move since 2009.
The other big deal this week (as if housing data is not enough) is the Federal Reserve begins two days of meetings tomorrow. Although it is not getting too much press yet, in our long wave economics studies, there’s about an even-money bet that the Fed will raise again.
Not to sound like the Proverbial broken record, but in our parallels to the 1921-1929 market run-up, we estimate our position on the present timeline as somewhat analogous to the week of 10/27/1927 at the earliest, although it is more likely the week of 7/12/1928.
Admittedly, this is a fairly long stretch of history, encompassing a 9.5 month window, but equating the fiscal policies of one era with another is never exactly precise for numerous reasons. Not the least of which is that what was used as “money” through the 1920’s orgasmic peak was still being marked to something of underlying value: Gold and Silver.
The fiat (paper) money of the day was largely Silver Certificates which featured a promise of convertibility at any Federal Reserve Bank. The Wikipedia entry on the Silver Certificate gives us some other interesting background:
Silver certificates are a type of representative money issued between 1878 and 1964 in the United States as part of its circulation of paper currency.[1] They were produced in response to silver agitation by citizens who were angered by the Fourth Coinage Act, which had effectively placed the United States on a gold standard.[2] The certificates were initially redeemable for their face value of silver dollar coins and later (for one year – 24 June 1967 to 24 June 1968) in raw silver bullion.[1] Since 1968 they have been redeemable only in Federal Reserve Notes and are thus obsolete, but still valid legal tender and thus are still an accepted form of currency.[1]
Large-size silver certificates (1878 to 1923)[nb 1] were issued initially in denominations from $10 to $1,000 (in 1878 and 1880)[4][5] and in 1886 the $1, $2, and $5 were authorized.[5][6] In 1928, all United States bank notes were re-designed and the size reduced.[7] The small-size silver certificate (1928–1964) was only issued in denominations of $1, $5, and $10.[8] The complete type set below is part of the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History
While we don’t expect the physical size of the U.S. Dollar to change, there is, nevertheless, a major campaign against paper as government ramps up its attacks on holding cash. The outsized mania to enforce total “accountability” on the transactions of citizens is nothing short of economic slavery combined with warrantless search, but the public’s attitude toward what “money” is has gone completely off the rails.
As evidence consider this: In the UK recently, following the death of David Bowie, some 38,760 Brits signed a petition to put David Bowie’s face on as unit of Kneeler currency.
From the exchange of nominal paper for a measurement of long-term precious metals to a simple pledge of value from a government which buried a ton of tax hikes in the Affordable Care Act to a suggestion in England that a note which we’d call a Bowie…it all serves to demonstrate the drift encountered when trying to make sense of one Economic Age versus another.
To be sure, while this looks like the week of June 28, 1928, the pre-Depression Fed raised rates in February, April, and July.
Since the Fed raised in December just past, the greatest chance would be that they will not raise at this meeting, but will wait until the subsequent one to raise again. Still, in terms of the “being on our schedule” another rate hike this week is not out of the question. The current Fed is running a tad behind the ‘28 Fed.
The first hike (in December) began to have its expected effects, as explained for subscribers. If you’re not one, you can click over here for the Fed H.8 report and see where the money has already started to move.
I would be blowing my own horn if I sent an email to my local serious bond trader-friend Don and reminded him that this is the first part of “Where will the money come from to blow the top off the Dow to an explosive Fifth wave finish?”
These things take a while to wind through the bowels of money-changing.
That noted, when you see that banks were running from the theatre after the last Fed hike, screaming that they were giving up on cash, trading assets, and interbank loans….well, the money has to go somewhere. And that somewhere is likely to be the stock market which is why I put it “out there” in a recent radio interview that we would likely see new all-time highs before Summer.
Seriously: Where else is there to put money?
Oil? Who wants to play “catch falling knives” although big players like the Saudis will likely use the period of weakness to roll-forward from some of their domestic assets into those of other countries, like the U.S.
Real Estate? Watch the home prices tomorrow morning when they come out. Although some markets are hot (SF, Seattle) others are not and the angle of the dangle begins to wangle. Childless coupling means smaller homes work. The Ure progeny are zero-for-three passing the mid-30’s…
Which also reminds us that the macro-trend to micro-homes and an all computerized life is driving, too. Who needs a computer room, or a library, or a den when you have a tablet with Win-10 and all spreadsheets synched, a zillion eBooks, and Tinder?
Put your life savings in Bonds? You mean here at the end-stage of a decline in the long-term yields that has been underway since 1981? You’d have to be mad.
Welcome back from a really cool weekend. (Sorry, just trying to be current with the weather mania going about…)
While we are sitting around waiting for markets to open, we have one item on the agenda that, while not life changing, in an of itself, is nevertheless extraordinarily interesting.
It is a learned report out of the Australian National University that may explain why we have not been having aliens lining up to knock on our doors and save us from ourselves.
They may all be dead.
Gist of the idea? Well, aliens may not have been able to save themselves, any more than we look like winners in that department yet, ourselves here on Earth.
“The universe is probably filled with habitable planets, so many scientists think it should be teeming with aliens,” said Dr Aditya Chopra, lead author on the paper, which is published in Astrobiology.
The thing is: It doesn’t seem to be teeming at all.
The statement from the Australian National University continues this way, and throws in a climate change zinger in the process:
“Life on Earth probably played a leading role in stabilising the planet’s climate,” he said.
Dr Chopra said their theory solved a puzzle.
“The mystery of why we haven’t yet found signs of aliens may have less to do with the likelihood of the origin of life or intelligence and have more to do with the rarity of the rapid emergence of biological regulation of feedback cycles on planetary surfaces,” he said.
“) we discussed the value of using readily available web-based tools to help you spot trends.We are paying a lot of attention lately to the word “trend” for another reason: We’re writing a book on our word-frequency approach to Big Data and how it can be used to improve expectation confidence in coming events.
Two-hundred points up, straight ahead.
The big driver this morning could be damn near anything you want it to be:
Oil is back up to almost $31-bucks.
German and Kneeler markets are clawing toward 2 1/2% gains and the French CAC-40 was up almost 3 1/2%.
Even more promising was Asia: Japan screamed ahead almost 6% (!!!) and the Hang Seng was up almost 3%.. Even the Shanghai market put on some beans.
The major problems have been pushed out to next week, or the week after. If we rally back to our long term trend line levels, that have been developing since the bottom of the Housing Collapse in 2009, there will be a critical path choice made.
If the market can power-through the overhead trend line (and stay there) then we will take our long-awaited 5th massive wave to the upside as arriving.
But, if the market only rallies to the trend line, and then turns down again…well, we call that a “kiss of death” and the only place to be in that case is hiding under the bed because it will mean seven-years of recovery is toast.
Off in the background, two major pieces are moving around.
For one, there’s the presidential politics. It’s hard to get excited about an election where the choice could be something as far-fetched as Yet Another Bush against Yet Another Clinton, yet there’s enough “thumbs on the scales” trying to hold to the Old Way in Washington (the seat of the Checkbook Republic) that it could happen.
Still, we won’t get pessimistic about “the fix being in” until we see if the FBI Director still has a job after the Hil investigation is done, and whether the Traitorcans will broker the GOP convention to an insider.
The rally I’m expecting really hinges in many ways on this notion of legitimate change.
One of my daughters called last night to proudly say she was pleased that Bernie Sanders is coming on strong. But dear-old-dad reminded her that he’s been around Washington a long while – long enough to be part of the problem, as I see it. Still, she’s hoping and planning on a Sanders sticker. I went to be praying that it wouldn’t be a Sanders-Clinton ticket…
Still, based on pole data, that could be Trumped with Cruz, but there is too much potential for real change for that to ever occur. The repeating nightmare was that Washington would embrace a socialist in lieu of even more remote outsiders.
Things are nevertheless entertaining. The WaPo story about the Trumpster and National Review going at it is good. And there’s a good bit of waffle/position drift apparent as we catch the daily Limburger. Seems it’s the conservation “I’m holier than thou” contest.
The other Big Screen event to watch, and it could overshadow the farcical politics would be a War Distraction. A note from our defense expert warhammer explains:
Israel Warms to Sunni Powers…
Happy Friday, George!
As Winter Storm Jonas finishes its assault in the southern U.S. and churns up toward the northeastern seaboard, some surprising news is swirling out of the Middle East indicating Israel is cozying up to several Sunni Islam states in response to Iranian sanctions being lifted:
Such news may be surprising to some, but not to those who’ve tracked the Jewish state’s recent open dialog with rational Muslim rulers.
I’ve been munching through lots of books lately.
Not that I don’t have a Kindle-full, and hundreds of volumes in the library which is spread throughout the house and spills over into my office in the other building.
At the moment, though, I’m taking a break from reading the usual line of journals, economics books, economic histories, and so on. Not that I need to, but I’ve come to appreciate that exceptional people read out of their field, a good bit.
I just finished a mystery type book by K.J. Janssen, who as it turns out have been by the site a time or three.
While we wait to see the market open (which won’t be nearly as exciting as yesterday when things were down more than 500-points on the Dow at one point), I happened to be reading through the latest press releases out of the IMF. This one on Virtual Currencies caught my eye:
Virtual currencies (VCs) and especially their underlying technologies are a potentially important advance for the financial sector that could increase efficiency and financial inclusion, but can also serve as vehicles for money laundering, terrorism financing, and tax evasion. Achieving a balanced regulatory framework that guards against risks without suffocating innovation is a challenge that will require extensive international cooperation, says a new staff paper, “Virtual Currencies and Beyond: Initial Considerations,” released today by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) during the World Economic Forum.
A good bit has been made lately about the limitation of Bitcoin to about 3-transactions per second and being a possible stumbling block and end of the experiment.
But then the inventor appeared.
What IF a new layer were added to Bitcoin that would process financial transactions based on their size? In other words, if you buy something with a Bitcoin worth the equivalent of $1 dollar, it would process on a server over in, oh, say Connecticut. But, if the purchase was for $1.01, then that with route to a different server, say one in Hawaii.
In background, each of these servers would move money between themselves, and life would go on.
Right now, it appears the overhead of Bitcoin (processing all transaction as they are) tops out at $6-billion (in dollars) worth of BTCs sloshing about.
But with Ure’s option, slicing up the BTC servers to automatically load-balance by transaction size, might see the increase in capacity massively increased..
Just on whole dollar (or BTCs), the implementation of multiple blockchain processing by transaction size between 1 BTC and 1,000 BTC would add a 1,000-times increase to processing. Instead of limited at 3-transactions per second, this tiered server approach would allow 3,000 transactions per second.
Not enough horsepower? Route at one-half a BTC levels, which doubles capacity, again to 6,000 transactions per second. At one USD per transaction, what is that? $36-trillion of capacity?
Of course, there would be overhead and a continuously updated clearing table to deal with, and there would be a fair bit of monkey-motion between servers (and that’s power and cost) so that would tend to limit things. But, on the flipside, you look at going down to Satoshi-level clearing and now you multiply the clearing capability by one million times!
Pretty soon, derivatives could go BTC.
This might not be practical, but I was sitting here looking at the IMF paper and thinking about the Hearn comments on the speed bump and with one architectural change in software design, the whole process could be “opened up” – or so it seems to an old software geek like me.
If you want to run this up the flagpole with the BTC folks, that’d be fine. My consulting fee is two BTCs….I’ll send the wallet details when the payment for this rather elegant solution is ready.
Or, more likely, I’m failing to properly comprehend the problem.
The Dow futures are down about 80 (or were when I looked). Our Peoplenomics readers have been in cash or short for weeks.
And the most exciting thing to look forward to today is waiting to see if the market will go all the way down to the major support around 1,740-1,760 before we get the next rally.
Once the coming rally gets organized, the critical level will be the bottom of the trend line, and if turned back there, we should all be starting to attend religious services. You’ll want to pray that the modern equivalent of the Roaring Twenties hangs on another couple of years – which it should.
Still, fifth wave failures are not terribly uncommon, and if it comes, we will be able to run out some numbers on “How far is down?”
It’s like the bass singer who used to be on the Lawrence Welk Show…”Howe low can you go?” [I haven’t seen a deep-voice play on South Park or the Symptoms (sic), or a more contemporary analog would have been cited.)
But speaking of missed comedy, we do have the Phlly Fed Business Outlook to deal with:
“Manufacturing conditions in the region contracted modestly this month, according to firms responding to the January Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey. The indicator for general activity remained negative this month; however, it rebounded from a lower reading in December.
When the markets go down 500-points in a day, you can sort of get the feeling that all is not well.
The natural thing to do – when they rally and cut the decline in half (this is all in a single day, mind you) is to rationalize “Gee, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
The sad truth is that it is very bad – and a drop below the 1,740 level on the S&P is when we should all be under the bed sniffing the dust bunnies.
The reason is the vicious cycle problem. When things begin to go great, there is a “pile-on” effect that economists call the virtuous cycle. But when something begins to go wrong, as it is right now, we have to look at all the data and begin worrying in all earnestness about flipping from “virtuous” into “Vicious.”
A recent-experience example was the Housing Bubble. It began as an attempt by the government to kick-start our way out of the first starting point for the Greater Depression. That window happened in 2001 and was actioned by Osama bin Laden, who we seriously believe had the cooperation of at least some governmental elements, including quite possibly some shadow government types who have never been brought to justice.
Depressions are power progress-killers. And, if I were a member of a shadow government, I would have to admit that the events of 9/11 actually did some good.
The major good?
By fall of 2001, it was apparent that the tech bubble was finished. Depending on which estimates would believe, the total cost of the Tech Wreck was on the order of $5-trillion dollars, although some accounts mention half this amount.
9/11 did several key things, in terms of pulling economic levers.
First, it took the blame which should have been placed on the backs of greedy venture capital types and shifted it onto the persona of a “terrorist.”
Secondly, it gave the United States a “cause” to immediately wage a war…any war…and that took a lot of job-age males and kept them out of the labor force.
Third, it set up a massive new industry (the security state) which has taken on a life of its own. Well past the hiring of what is now estimated at 56,000+ direct jobs, but when we use the economic multiplier effect (all these people eat, for example, and some fraction will use daycare) an easy argument could be made that TSA alone is responsible for 134,000 jobs – and has been, come this fall, for 15-years.
Four, it provided for the evolution of the security state and Gen-4 warfare. Battlefield robotics are coming. There’s a million square feet up at Provo for sampling your data. And we even learned recently that the CIA spied on members of the U.S. Congress in the process of surveilling foreign political visitors.
Five, it continued to “de-focus” public attention from the definite replay elements of the previous economic collapse. You will recall that in the depths of the Great Depression, the government embarked on several wide-spread job creation programs. The most notable were the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).
I found it extremely interesting that the country laid the groundwork for massive civilian employment of young people with the Volunteers In Service To America (VISTA) program. The first batch of 20 VISTA workers were turned out in 1965.
That program was something the country “got right.” It had been a kind of article of faith that this Kondratieff fellow might be right about economic super-cycles, and an ideal 56-year harmonic off the Great Depression collapse was seen in 1987.
Good news on this front: The Fed managed to “paper-it-over.”
The bad news was that it was only a first-blush encounter with widespread collapse. It was a state-change event, as well. You will remember that long-term interest rates had peaked some six years earlier.
Despite the interventions, the systemic problems persisted and a major period of decline ensued in 1990-1991. The U.S. did what it does best – and off to war we went on this pretext of that.
Most people are “average” because they behave in “average ways” and don’t anticipate properly. On the other hand, the “above average person” does anticipate and observes threshold levels that dictate action. This morning we will cover why the S&P 1,740 level is critical and why you need a fairly robust plan of action if you’re going to preserve capital and be in a position to prosper while others try to simply “muddle through.