One of our readers up in Illinois (Tom the Toolmaker) is going to love this little tale.

As I think I mentioned, Elaine and I are “remodeling” the area between the house and the 40-x 40 pole building that houses my palatial office, Panama’s digs, and a whole bunch of shop equipment. 

Part of the process – which we arrive at today – involves the application of ground cloth – better know in some parts of the country as “weed barrier.”

And I hate putting it down.

That’s because it will take a few hundred ground cloth staples, which are nothing more than bent-up #8 steel wire about 6-inches long.  In the past I’ve cursed this aspect of landscaping because it means walking on your tired-old knees to put in staples in a 1,500 square food area,

Not my idea of fun…no sir, not at all.

But here’s the trick I wanted to pass along:  I’ve found that whenever I find myself shying away from a large project, there’s usually a reason for it.  The reason in this case is sore knees.  I used to have gout (celery seed extract, bilberry, blueberry, and black cherry extract have killed that problem) but I’m still incredibly gun-shy about getting down on the knees.

“OK, genius:  Solve the problem,” I told myself.

Easily done:  I’ve been telling Peoplenomics™ readers for years that I’d a HUGE fan of structured problem – solving.  Once you get the knack of it, there is no other way to approach most (physical) problems in life.  I believe the best single book out there continues to be And Suddenly the Inventor Appeared: TRIZ, the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving.  It ain’t free – try $40-bucks.

The point is this ground staking problem lived in the physical domain.

Under TRIZ (the theory of inventive problem solving) the “inventor” always begins by inspecting the problem – first up one side and then down the other.

Somewhere in following steps, you envision the ideal solution.

Recognizing that “on my knees” was the key deal point of the problem, the ideal solution would be something that would allow me to put in the ground staples without bending over.

Once this became clear, all that was required was a few minutes of visualization of the forces involved and a trip to the workshop. 

In a matter of 10-minutes, a number of slices on the table saws, including a 30-degree angle cut, so the staple wouldn’t slide out at the top, I had created a dandy stand-up ground staple installer.

It’s just  short hunk of 1X4 that is screwed and glued onto a piece of 2X2 and it holds about the top half of the staple.

To use, I simply put a staple in my installer while standing, lower it to the ground and put down. 

Granted, the staple only goes in about 3/4ths of the way, to I flip the tool around where there’s a slot in the 2X2 that pushes the staple down to within 11/2 inch of the ground cloth.  A firmly planted heel does the finishing touch.

This may not be the biggest breakthrough of the week, indeed, it’s pretty simple.  But being inventive – and our use of tools – is what sets us apart from gorillas.  So inventing a tool for every task is something I always try to remember.

In order to have an above-average output level, you need lots of tools and to understand that everything has a recipe to it.

A Recipe Discovery Moment

Speaking of which, one of these days I really will finish “Victims of Process:  How Unwritten Recipes run Your Life.”  The book is a compendium of my experiences in life using the “recipe approach.”

To show you how it works, Elaine and I were talking about her flying lessons.  She’d backed away from learning to fly the airplane because it is a very complex task and she wasn’t comfortable with many parts of it.

When we got to talking about it last night, she revealed something very interesting.  Both her flight instructor and I had overlooked explaining some of the key “hidden recipes” to flying.

The one she brought out was this (paraphrasing):  “When you do the run-up, you turn the key and say one-two, one-two, then you pause and say one, one.   Why do you do that?”

Well, I explained, there are two complete ignition systems on the airplane.  Either one will run the plane, but we always run on both at the same time.

“Huh?”

Yep.  Think of an airplane engine this way:  “It’s built for ultra-high reliability.  This means that although it’s a four-cylinder engine, each cylinder has two sparkplugs.  There are also two magnetos – one for each system”

The counting, I explained, was to ensure that the ignition systems were in the BOTH position because while either one will run the engine fine, there is a small drop in horsepower when you don’t have dual ignition.  The counting out loud ensures the pilot has tested both and has returned the switch to the correct position for take-off and normal operation.

Should one of the plugs become fouled in flight, you can shut off one system or the other, which will oftentimes smooth up the engine while you make it to the nearest airport where you can find a mechanic to find the fouled plug.”

Well, the light went on.

Something that had been one of those great “secret recipes” of flying.  But now that she owns that answer, she’s sneaking back toward lessons.

But the point is that people aren’t often “dumb” about anything.  Rather, it’s just a matter of sharing the right recipe so that they understand what you’re talking about.  In this case, once she heard that there are two ignition systems and the counting ensured I tested system two, then system one, then confirmed I was in BOTH for take-off, she “owned it.”

Flying – and many other pursuits – are what I would call “fully rationalized.”  In other words, there’s a reason for everything we do.

Just like building a good house is fully rationalized and a poorly built home is not.

The difference?  In a poorly built house, door swings will be wrong or awkward, for example.  Or, plumping won’t be installed in a thoughtful manner.

When you’re building an electronic device?  Same thing:  The time to make sure all the wiring and connections are right is when you’re in the layout phase of a printed circuit board.  Now after you have a nearly completed board.  When this happens, you end up installing cuts and jumps which are about as good an indication of incomplete engineering, as you’ll find.

When it comes to interior design, I am not the recipe king:  Elaine’s head, however is perfectly wired for “whole vibe” design.  Me?  No sense of interior design at all.  But hand me the Skil saw, a cutting rig, anything with electronics to it…and I’m that guy.

Recognizing that each partner has different strengths and weaknesses makes for a good relationship…one of the most important “hidden recipes” in life.

The old saying “Women marry men hoping to change them, while men marry women hoping they’ll never change…” doesn’t have to be a hassle.  Provided both parties see the wisdom in the old saying and are able to step back when they don’t have the right recipe.

Speaking of Airplanes:  Hot New GPS

I think I’ve raved about the iFly GPS systems made here in Texas?

Well, as a long-time customer I managed to get one of the first iFly 740 GPS units that they are now shipping.  Click over here and roll down to the Specifications tab and have a look.

I did the burn-in on the 740 last night and OMG what a delight.

Just as an example of state-of-the-art in VFR GPS platforms, the iFly now allows you to overlay weather on top of a sectional or IFR chart.  This used to be a separate screen.

Another is selective WAAS enhancement.  The new unit has built-in WAAS (wide area augmentation service which yields precision as good as 10-feet).  But, since we also have WAAS data interleaved on the ADS-B wireless data stream, the new 740 selects the better of the high precision streams.  It’s almost like having diversity-receiver capability.

But the main reason I upgraded (no, not free) was for the increased screen brightness.  Yes, the old 720 (on the left)is a grand piece of gear and sunlight readable, but in really bright glare, on the yoke, it can be hard enough to make out fine print that you’ll play with the +/- buttons to zoom in an out.

No more.

The iFly 740 (on the right in my un-retouched snapshot from the kitchen counter) is vastly more readable with 1,300 nit brightness.  It’s really impressive.

Since we fly a lot in the sun and have a low-wing airplane, this improvement in visibility under very bright conditions is a real plus.  Either unit displays ADS-B traffic on the sectional, but the new 740 adds a 30-minute onboard battery backup, as well.

The WAAS GPS doesn’t drift around when you’re not moving like the 720 does (in the non-WAAS mode), either.

We don’t waste money on the airplane – and the only reason we can afford it is living in an old trailer in the woods and having no bills.  But like the other recent additions and changes to the plane (not to mention having aggressive maintenance), it’s all about safety and being able to get in and go somewhere if we need or want to.

I’m sure you’ve seen people with cars that are the same way:  Some people maintain their cars so that they can jump in them and drive across the country without giving it a second thought.  Others though, will have half-bald tires, the oil needed changing six months ago, and that slow radiator leak is a problem…

That’s what separates a good car from a bad one, or a classic airplane from a junker. Though not to be confused with the Junkers J-1.

Having Fun With Jade Helm?

My son’s buddy got a new Inmarsat satellite telephone.  Apparently, prices have come down on these things, although $250 a year sim card) and $250-$500 for a used unit on eBay ain’t free.

But he decided to try it out yesterday…and since my son knows that sat-phones are tightly monitored and since Jade Helm is going on (maybe in the ramp up, I figure) it would be interesting to see how alert people are…

My son called to test it, speaking in code, and doing his best imitation of Michael Weston/Burn Notice.  He mentioned grid coordinates and will advise when package delivered and so forth.  I might have mentioned “Hi Bumblehive” or something similar.  I wanted them to know we were just playing.

This could be an interesting experiment, however.

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California water story is in the Coping section (follows this section) this morning…

This could be a pretty interesting weekend for the markets if you like playing weekly options.  (No sane person would, but scratch tickets sell, too, for reasons I’ve never understood either – even when I buy them!)

So here’s the deal:

ADP came out with a job growth number of 180+ thousand on Wednesday.

This morning we see the Challenger, Gray, & Christmas just cut report for March (unless you’re blind, it’s there on the right and, if you are, it was down 36,594).                                          

Here’s why it’s Economic Roulette:  The market (US) is closed tomorrow for Good Friday.  And, in the details to the Challenger press release this morning we read this:

CHICAGO, April 2, 2015 – Following two consecutive months of job cuts in excess of 50,000, the pace of downsizing slowed significantly in March, as US-based employers announced plans to trim payrolls by 36,594 during the month, according to new figures released Thursday by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.

The March total was 27.6 percent lower than the 50,579 job cuts in February. It was the lowest monthly total since December, when 32,640 were announced. Despite last month’s decline, the March figure was 6.4 percent higher than the same month a year ago (34,399), making it the fourth consecutive year-over-year increase.

Through the first quarter of 2014, employers announced 140,214 job cuts, up 15.6 percent from the 120,341 cuts tracked the first three months of 2014. The first quarter saw 17 percent  more job cuts than in the final quarter of 2014, when 119,763 job cuts were recorded.

Of the 140,214 job cuts announced in the first quarter, 47,610 were directly attributed to falling oil prices.

So here’s the “real deal:”  With 34% of the job cuts coming from the oil sector, and with oil stubbornly under $50 and likely going lower again, shortly, how will tomorrow’s March Unemployment report come out?

If you like scratch tickets, the weekly index options are one way to play it.  But, it may be a little early.  The shake out in the oil patch will be long and painful in a 50 Shades of Oil kind of way.  So it’s too early to yell Uncle! (or whatever your word is).

And if you don’t know what the “your word” reference is, you need to cut economics and go back for a a remedial sex ed course.

Futures are down about 25 – I’m guessing sell-off toward the clothes….or something spelled like that, lol.  More coffee!

In the Wake of Peoplenomics™ Yesterday…

This from our Winnipeg Bureau is worth mentioning:

Dear Mr. Ure,

This may be an opportune moment to visit the public face of Darpa’s “information innovation office” as the window for researchers to join its dark web search engine construction venture draws to a close. The project appears designed to serve internal customers while drawing upon the metadata of general citizenry for predicting patterns of behavior. Perhaps more specific rules of the new war will become apparent as the software gels. However, going forward, being more average than average could be a most profitable risk-aversion strategy?

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Resurrection and Drought for breakfast this morning:

We first covered the coming California Drought/Panic (and potential Diaspora)  back in January of 2014 for our Peoplenomics.com™  subscribers.

What I like to do with Peoplenomics™  (much more so than UrbanSurvival) is look into the future –toward where the data has been pointing – and project what that future will be like when it shows up.

So fifteen months ago, we were considering how the federal protections of frogs and such would lower reservoirs and how the rains had not come, nor would any be expected.

We know a couple of things about California – things modernists and Millennials try to paper-over with scare-tactics about Global Warming and – quick, hide under the bed! – climate change.

The fact of the matter is that climate always has been – and always will be – changing.

Al Gore and others currently reinventing climate as a business model tend to gloss over things like the floods in China 75-years ago – long before the effects of pernicious climate change.

To put a little hair on it, while the USA was going through the worst of the Dust Bowl from a lack of rain, as many as 3.7-million people died in China’s Great Flood of 1931. A factor not so deeply pondered in modern times is that populations density on the planet was much, much lower in the 1930’s…which means that a (population-inflation-adjusted) number could be in the vicinity of 6-10 million dead.

On the one hand, we can see that floods and droughts seem to be spread out over time and over large continental-sized areas.  And, if we care to review the data, we will see that even in fairly close proximity, huge swings in climate always have been occurring at regular intervals.

2013 saw massive devastation in Afghanistan and Pakistan due to?  Floods

Yet, right next door, temporally speaking, we had the drought of 1998-2002 in Pakistan and right now, the D-word is showing up in headlines again:  “Ray of light in Pakistan’s drought-hit Thar desert.”

That BBC headline is perplexing.  It leaves us staring into the coffee grounds this morning and wondering exactly what it is when a desert – already so-named because of a lack of rain – has what?  A lack of rain.  Most perplexing, indeed.

So let’s sit back and consider this California Drought problem a little more closely; without the climate hype and without the globalista’s minions who are trying to consolidate power, raise money, impose taxes, and thereby control lifestyles via whatever levers they can pull.

Don’t be fooled:  There are lots of levers to be pulled:  Racism, Terrorism, Global Warming….but it all comes back to what’s clearly explained in Report from Iron Mountain.  This book – whose origins are still debated – explained back during the Vietnam era what the problem of government was:  There needs to be a massive external enemy that presents such a threat, such an all-pervasive problem, that people will yield their freedom to government.

The book, by the way, points to only a few options, several of which are man-made disease, a massive global healthcare system, aliens from space (grown in Earth-based labs, of course) and a number of other problems.

Climate, I’m sure, would have been included in the book, but it wasn’t until the California Drought of the mid-1970’s that drought really surfaced as a government/citizen control point.

As I noted in my Peoplenomics report (again, this was 15-months ago):

Keep an eye on the major cities of California because a severe hit from the drought could be in the making there.

Just this week, the San Francisco Chronicle (the Chron) was advising its readers to be ready for things to get really, really tough.

Back in 1973 I was offered a job at KFRC and there was a drought on at the time.  The radio station was full of “If it’s yellow, let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down” pointers for the local people.  Putting bricks in toilet tanks was promoted, too.

That 2013 was a record dry year is not enough to get people to thinking about relocation.  But another year, a serous lack of water continuing, and that could all change.

But the big picture is already shifting.  In a report this summer for the Hoover Institute at Stanford, Carson Bruno wrote that there was already a 2% net out migration in the 2004-2012 data:

“Looking at age, we see the red flag: individuals are coming to California in their early 20’s and not sticking around. We find that only college-age individuals see a net in-migration into California; all other groups witness a net out-migration, with the 40-to-54 age group — those in the prime of their professional careers — having the highest level of net out-migration.  Despite college age individuals experiencing a net in-migration, the drop-off in the 25-to-39 age group suggests that these individuals are not staying within the state, likely due to the high cost of living in California and/or the lack of employment. “

How Climate Hype Works

To be sure, California has a water problem.  No arguing the point.  As I pointed out in the more recent Peoplenomics piece “The Grand Canals of Earth and Mars – where we talk about two proposals to save California from the drought, there are some solutions available, but they will be the largest geoengineering on the planet yet, and their impacts will likely far surpass even the Three Gorges Dam project in China.

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With the government routinely building files on all of us – as part of Total Information Awareness – due in part to a need to prevent terrorism, but also spot people who may have holdings outside of “officially approved asset channels” that can be seized, we have to look at government surveillance and ask some simple things.

One interesting question would be how hard would it be to build an intelligence platform to help guide us in our various investment decisions? 

Another would be how to use global intelligence (and big data in particular) to feather our own nest both professionally and personally?

Seems a worthy goal for anyone venturing into the realm of Peoplenomics to look at what the government has developed and ascertain how much can be “borrowed” for our own purposes?

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My favorite economic press release is just out:  The Case Shiller/S&P Housing report:

`New York, March 31, 2015 – 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 January 2015 show that home prices continued their rise across the country over the last 12 months. However, monthly data reveal slowing increases and seasonal weakness.

Year-over-Year
Both the 10-City and 20-City Composites saw year-over-year increases in January compared to December. The 10-City Composite gained 4.4% year-over-year, up from 4.3% in December. The 20-City Composite gained 4.6% year-over-year, compared to a 4.4% increase in December. The S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, which covers all nine U.S. census divisions, recorded a 4.5% annual gain in January 2015 versus a 4.6% increase in December 2014.

Denver and Miami reported the highest year-over-year gains, as prices increased by 8.4% and 8.3%, respectively, over the last 12 months. Fourteen cities reported higher price increases in the year ended January 2015 over the year ended December 2014.

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There are only a handful of economic stories about the Second Depression that really matter this week.

First we are expected to have a major rally this morning.  This is because our Trading Model has arrived at a make-or-break point which will be working out over the next couple of weeks.  One solution is for another screaming rally upward…the other one is really grim.  Not that we care – we just go where the numbers say.

The second big item this week is that it’s a four-day trading week – markets take Good Friday off, and this Friday is better than most.

Number three on our list is tomorrow Case-Shiller, Standard and Poors, Dow-Jones, Case Logic (and whoever else wanders by) Monthly Housing report.  This is the gold standard of what’s really going on in Housing – and is closely watched.  I expect it to be levelish.

There’s a big shift going on with more people moving into rentals (which is why you see apartments going up all over the place) but single family housing is stable except for hot/crazy/manic markets like the Bay area and a few others.

Fourth and final big deal this morning is it’s the end of the month and so the price of gold is getting clobbered – down $15 when I looked earlier, but down $30 or more wouldn’t surprise Ures truly over the next couple of days. 

Money is a fiction. 

This is a little-discussed point but we begin the week recognizing that a piece of paper with some ink on it is NOT wealth.  Wealth is something that lives between the ears.  It’s a product of attitude and application; a natural consequence of seeing opportunity and doing something about it.

Most people are poor between the ears.  And what’s inside manifests on the outside.  If things on the outside aren’t going well, the problem is usually – care to guess? – where?

Crisis in the Wings?

When stocks stop trading – we get very interested.  So go read this and take note.

Personal Income (lol)

It’s great fun to be writing a novel.  It has helped me develop a greater appreciation for press releases like the one out this morning on Personal Income and Outlays – a finer work I could not have crafted in a million years.  (I’m just too honest for that – and I think fiction should be believable…).

“Personal income increased $58.6 billion, or 0.4 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $54.2 billion, or 0.4 percent, in February, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $11.8 billion, or 0.1 percent.

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Elaine and I had a wonderful weekend up in Oklahoma – long conversations comparing market and futuring outlooks, plus a good amount of time was spent on the subject of prepping.  On the way back (somewhere over the Red River, I think it was), I made a note to discuss prepping as an important change in people’s outlooks compared to past Depressions.

There wasn’t any prepper movement in the 1928-1930 period, at least in a large enough sense to have been lumped as a “movement” and carved into the history book.

This time around, prepping is huge.

The numbers are pretty impressive.  Two years ago, the number of preppers in the US was placed in the vicinity of 3.7-million people.  That covered those who would admit to being preppers – and I doubt that half of us would admit it.  And since 2013, I expect the number has likely increased again, such that the number of  people who are prepping is likely in the 10-million range.

Fine:  Why?

A number of points come to mind.

1.  The US Government is broke.  Sad to say, but the gap between GDP and Public Debt to the Penny has been consistently growing – although in fairness the gap’s rate of increase has slowed a bit.  GDP can be thought of as in the $17.7 trillion range while US Debt is over $18-trillion.

2.  Government figures shield some HUGE lies.

Here’s one example:  The current US Consumer Price Index agues that the unadjusted Cost of Living change for the past 12-months has been a great big goose egg.  Zero percent.

However, if you like to eat, the cost of Food is up 3%.  Also, while healthcare is up a modest 1.8%, the things you buy for healthcare (medical commodities – a buzzword for prescriptions and such) is up 3.9%.

What saved the day was energy prices coming down dramatically – but you only felt that if you drive or use lots of energy.

Remember, now:  This is the February 2015 data.

Because we like to see the Big Play, let’s go on and look at food and medical items in the 2014 period.  Here, food was up 1.4%, medical commodities up  1.7% and healthcare was up 2.4%.

Where the public’s faith gets broken, in all this, is when things like this year’s “new estimation system” come into effect:

Effective with the release of the January 2015 CPI on February 26, 2015, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will utilize a new estimation system for the Consumer Price Index. The new estimation system, the first major improvement to the existing system in over 25 years, is a redesigned, state-of-the-art system with improved flexibility and review capabilities. For more information on this new system, please see ttp://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpinewest.htm.

So yes, if you eat there really is more inflation than reported. 

Oh, and even better, under the new estimating system, if something is out of stock?  It’s just going to be “made up.”  In fairness, it’s called imputed pricing:

Imputation of sampled items unavailable for pricing. When a sampled consumer item is temporarily unavailable, its price change is imputed by the price change of other items within a geographic area. In the current estimation system, these missing prices are imputed by all the price changes within a CPI item stratum. CPI item strata, though, are composed of one or more elementary level items, or ELIs. In the new estimation system, the price change will be imputed by price changes within its own ELI, instead of by all price changes within the potentially broader item stratum.

This – and other statistical whitewash (like bimonthly averaging) is particularly good because it means that the consumer prices for a baseline year, say 1994 (because government is presumably too embarrassed to put older data on the table) is not really an apples to apples comparison.

The previous changes were largely hedonic; which means if steak gets too expensive, people will eat hamburger, but we’ll just call either one a meat price and report no changes.  In other words, changes in consumer choice get written the hell out, and the public can’t figure out why our standard of living is cratering.

Imputation and bimonthly averaging have another – darker – side:  They are tools which could be used to whitewash things like widespread food shortages.

Why would this be a reason to prep?

The picture at the top of this morning’s column is a freeze-frame of Google’s excellent and continuously updated news scans that aggregate content from feeds all over the place.  Every morning I do a large number of keyword searches which – when coupled with the overnight www.nostracodeus.com data runs – gives us a pretty fair sense of what’s going on.

All of which gets me to the first reason that people are prepping:  They don’t 100% trust the supply chain, the quality of goods in it, the accounting methods used to report on it, and the cost of it all.  Toss in California’s drought not lifting and at least the food side of prepping becomes understandable.

If you want to get a whole different view of two year food inflation on a real apples to apples basis, go look at the retail beef pricing over here:  You’ll find that compared with a year ago, 93% ground beef has gone from $3.27 a pound last year to $3.60 a pound this year.  That’s better than 10% price inflation.

If you drink milk, then you’re enjoying lowered prices in many parts of the country, but the downside is that falling prices are likely to drive a stake through the heart of California’s dairy industry – already hard-hit by drought –  and that will mean soaring prices in the future as farmers give up and herd sizes come down.

Still, nothing that can’t be easily hidden with a phone call to change the recommended dietary intake levels, right?  You just know too much animal protein is bad, right?  Here, don’t worry about wheat belly, let’s load up on those poor folks foods….yum, starch and fried foods…yum….healthy….   (I trust you’re awake enough to recognize sarcasm when I write it?)

Headline Provide Additional Clues

Another area which reveals why people are prepping are stories like this one from Russia Today that go into some depth around a military operation called Jade Helm.

The preppers I’ve talked with about this are all over the board:  A good number point out that story, in particular was from RUSSIA today, which they point out, does have some skin in the game of keeping America riled up.

But then comes the Florida Sun-Sentinel coverage of mock round-ups of civilians in Broward County.  Explain that away…

Unfortunately, the real problem is that your government removed the prohibitions of posse comitatus that previously prohibited use of the military on US homeland soil.  The Wikipedia background is a “must know:”

The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385, original at 20 Stat. 152) signed on June 18, 1878 by President Rutherford B. Hayes. The purpose of the act – in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807 – is to limit the powers of the federal government in using its military personnel to act as domestic law enforcement personnel. It was passed as an amendment to an army appropriation bill following the end of Reconstruction, and was subsequently updated in 1956 and 1981.

The Act only specifically applies to the Army and, as amended in 1956, the Air Force.

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