Coping: With Our Unruly Board of Directors

Ask a simple question and oh, do the answers get complicated.

But since you (and both of our other readers) were appointed to our new Board of Directors Monday, we have seen lots of good – mind expanding – ideas to deal with our June bug problem.

If you just got out of rehab and missed it, the airplane hangar is over-run with June bugs, but how to deal with them is what’s on the table.

First, Ures truly was reprimanded by the BOD for being too quick to use off-the-shelf pesticides.  They work, they’re quick and all the labels promise.  But they are not necessarily good for the earth and that was the main complaint.

I don’t care about killing the critters – repelling them would be fine and its here the Board’s guidance gets a bit wonky.

Other than the moth balls joke, the best suggestion was that we order some peppermint oil (done) and see how that works.  So I ordered 16 oz Peppermint Essential Oil (100% Pure & Uncut) – GreenHealth which will set us back a $35 bill, which wasn’t planned.

The suggested use would be to mix with water and spray along the whole perimeter and keep them out that way.

Apparently, the little critters don’t like the smell and are put off to the point of going elsewhere.

But there were other home remedies offered, including putting a mixture of oils, garlic cloves and cayenne pepper all around, but that didn’t seem like a good idea, at all.  We figured it would smell like we just flew in from Italy, or something.

Peppermint oil supposedly works well as a pest repellant.   We’ll find out this week, I suppose.

A dissenting group of the Board offered a different approach: get an animal.

A few suggested rats or mice, and yet more voted for a cat.  And here’s a particularly grotesque one for you (weak stomach alert!):

Take a course in STALKING MICE,and a follow up 3 course meal of rat,cat and dog for dinner -by your local china town restaurant ,,just joking of course ,a sick joke neither the less, just joking, except that is what people did during the last depression

Yeah…we seem to forget that during the last Depression people ate all kinds of other foods.  I remember (being not exactly rich when I was young) eating horse meat.

And this gets us sidetracked on a different kind of discussion:  If you were hungry and needed some protein, how far exactly would you go to eat?

I know that many cultures eat rat and some eat large prairie dog kinds of critters (Mongolia if I remember)  and yes, one of our prepping options around here is a .22 with scope to have a kind of last-gasp option with things like raccoons, possums and squirrels.

Speaking of which…You saw the story about the Florida man being warned about stalking nuisance squirrels?

I know this is a little off-track but I’m burning daylight until the peppermint oil gets here and we won’t know until I do some field testing Friday.

So in the meantime, our first board meeting has been a rousing success.

It’s given me a multi-zillion dollar idea for a new book. I’m going to title it:

The So Gross You’ll NEVER want to Eat Again Diet.

It will be filled with gross tips on what people eat when times get tough.  Perhaps a whole chapter on the Donner Party and then selected reads from Upton Sinclair.  I remember losing a pound, or two, when I read The Jungle which (if you forgot) was about the packing houses in Chicago.

Given the deterioration in American society, I figure this can’t help but be a best-selling.  Just remember, though if you start receiving loads of invitations over to dinner – especially if you’ve been power lifting and bulking up at the gym to be sure and find out what’s on the menu.

Like that old Twilight Zone episode – “To Serve Man” – know what I mean?

Let me know how breakfast was… think I’m gonna pass!

Read More

Mr. Ure’s Free Campaign Advice

First: I won’t dignify the candidate’s run for the White House by repeating her name.  From here to the end of primary season, I’ll refer only to “She of whom we don’t speak.”  [SOWWDS}

If SOWWDS wants an ad. she can buy it.

But I will offer some free campaign advice:  Change ad logos.

The one rolled out Sunday – which showed up uninvited in my email – begging for money, no less – is a fine example  of political spam.

What’s more, it’s easily spoofed by anyone with PowerPoint handy – as you can see.

An arrow pointed sideways?  Isn’t America supposed to be “up”?  Maybe our lone remaining democratic reader will disagree and can explain it to us.  But the majority around here (you and me) are tired of sideways, same-old, and do-over richy-rich aristocrats who should have been put out to pasture long ago.

The second bit of free advice is double-check your work.

Says over in this report that “Clinton’s press office left an embarrassing typo in its press announcement, saying that she had ‘fought children and families all her career’. 

Nice move.  Around here we call that “truth in advertising.”  Take it from the world leader in typos.  Can’t run a campaign?  Then can’t run a country, I figure.

Third – and final suggestion for this morning:  Any time a multigazillionaire lawyer uses phrases like “everyday Americans” sit on your wallet.

Related:

From our news analyst in Winnipeg, which may be the last remaining rational spot on the planet:

Dear Mr.

Read More

Coping: Everyone Needs a “Board of Directors”

Best I can remember, the first time I heard the phrase was at the kitchen/dinner table at about age 8, or so.

My mom had some question or other, and pappy didn’t have an answer.  “I’ll ask the Board of Directors tonight at work.”

We were eating at 10-minutes to five so pappy could leave the house by 5:15 and drive the 20 minutes, or so, up to the fire house in West Seattle.  Engine 37 is at the highest point in the city.

A little trivia here:  The reason fire houses were always built at the tops of hills if possible, was so the horses could have an easy – and fast – run downhill to a fire.  Most people don’t know that one – not sure if it’s in Trivial Pursuit, or not.

Anyway, pappy was almost always early for roll-call, but he always scheduled enough time for a bridge opening.  The high level West Seattle Bridge hadn’t been built yet.

The board of directors were the other firemen on his crew.  Fire departments in big cities had different shift, but they followed a paramilitary org chart; platoons, battalions, and such.  And pappy’s “board of directors” was the crew he worked with.  There wasn’t a lot of turnover in platoons.

Gather any three or four firemen, you could get an answer to just about anything, and while washing hose, cleaning up after drills or training, it was always good to have a fresh topic to kick around. Made the work go faster.

My mother’s question – and don’t hold me to this – was about some obscure aspect of gardening, if memory holds.      

Joe had come up a street-smart Italian, Dave was the high-roller who owned a 50-foot boat, and I forget some of the other fellas.  But they all referred to pappy as “the encyclopedia.” He just didn’t know gardening well, having advised me from birth “Never put in a bigger garden than your wife can take care of…”

It wasn’t the answer that mattered in this case.  It was the form of decision-making that mattered.  One I’ve never forgotten.  Everyone needs a “board of directors.”

The concept has been around forever.  Some called it a “master mind group” in the early days of the PMA (positive mental attitude) movement, which was in some ways a precursor to the prepper movement.

When you look at most successful people, you’ll find most of them have a “board of directors” or master mind group.  Some, especially in politics, just get called the “inner circle.” If you’re a drug dealer, it’s your posse, and so on.

Without further delay, I have an important announcement to make.

YOU have just been appointed to my personal board of directors. 

As luck would have it, there’s a thorny problem that is bugging me (in a literal sense as you’ll see):  We are being over-run by June bugs down at the hangar this year.

Oh, I’ve sprayed.  Even got the security light turned off.  But there’s some magic about my hangar in particular that had become incredibly attractive to June bugs. 

Since I spray the place religiously – and since we don’t live in the space – I took the electric leaf blower down Sunday and dispatched 5,000 of them – carcasses-  back out onto the grass from whence they came.

But they keep coming back.

In fact, by the time I was done on one side of the taxiway, the hardy (*Boston marathoner type) bugs were already headed back to the finish line inside the hangar.  Invisible to Ures truly.

So your first problem has a Board Member for you is to figure out how to solve the problem.  Selling the airplane or moving to a different hangar are off the table.  The poisons work, but the smell of dead June bugs is not particularly nice.

It eats about 80-minutes a week says my time log. Get the blower, drive to airport, blow out hangar, lock up, 10-minutes for social chit-chat at the airport office, and then back out to our place..

The mechanic, who’s doing the annual maintenance check in the hangar presently complains about running over them with this creeper.  I expect he’ll ding me a bit on the bill, too, since it’s no fun to pick up a June bug instead of the 10-40 screw for an inspection cover. 

Ideally, someone would come up with a simple answer for something to repel them.  I’ve thought about a mothball at opposite corners of the hangar, but I don’t know if they’re legal anymore.

No trap suggestions, though.  I don’t want to have another project like emptying traps every day or three.

Send me an email – and ask all your friends, too, since I assume you already have an informal board of directors yourself. 

“What repels June bugs?”

By the way, Wikipedia reports mothballs do, indeed, have some risk to them:

The US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has determined that 1,4-dichlorobenzene “may reasonably be anticipated to be a carcinogen“. This has been indicated by animal studies, although a full-scale human study has not been done.[8] The National Toxicology Program (NTP), the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), and the state of California consider 1,4-dichlorobenzene to be a carcinogen.[9]

Exposure to naphthalene mothballs can cause acute haemolysis (anemia) in people with glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency.[10] IARC classifies naphthalene as possibly carcinogenic to humans and animals (see also Group 2B).[11] IARC points out that acute exposure causes cataracts in humans, rats, rabbits, and mice. Chronic exposure to naphthalene vapors is reported to also cause cataracts and retinal hemorrhage.[12] Under California’s Proposition 65, naphthalene is listed as “known to the State to cause cancer”.[13]

Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder revealed a probable mechanism for the carcinogenic effects of mothballs and some types of air fresheners.[14][15]

Mothballs are a neurotoxin – especially those made of 1,4-dichlorobenzene – and need to be treated as such. They have been used for solvent abuse, causing a variety of neurotoxic effects.[16][17]

Mothballs and other products containing naphthalene have been banned within the EU since 2008.[18][3]

Toxin-free alternatives to control clothes moths include freezing, dry cleaning, washing in hot water, or thorough vacuum cleaning.[19][20] Camphor is no longer recommended as a moth repellent, due to its toxicity.

I’ve thought about cedar oil as an alternative, but I’m not sure if that wouldn’t just mask the smell of dead bugs better. And, it ain’t cheap.

So send them answer along pronto.  Operators are standing by, this is a free call, this is a special offer, ends soon.

Oh, and congrats on your appointment to the Board of Directors.  I did mention, I hope, that this is a non-profit and no liability protection for board members is offered?

Read More

Prepping for a Nuclear Nightmare

Having covered one nightmare scenario for the future in Wednesday’s Peoplenomics – The drought impacting Mexico and Central America gets much worse and 40-million people simply walk to the US border – we might as well put our the Stephen King hat one more time this week with a look at potential nuclear disasters.

Don’t get me wrong:  I love nuclear power.   But I don’t like what it does when it breaks, the risk of terrorism shows up, or various and assorted governments (and other nutters) get their hands on assorted dial-a-yield technologies.  That this hardware is still out there somewhere has been an established fact since the breakdown of the Former Soviet Union as the Cockburn and Cockburn classic One Point Safe documented during the loss of administrative inventory control of things like MIRV warheads during the Soviet version of Collapse of Empire.

Before we have a (bad pun alert) “rad” conversation about how to prep for this next set of nasty’s we’ll scan the news headlines and see what’s shaking.

Read More

The Money Printing Festival Keeps Getting Crazier

Remember in yesterday’s column how I told you I would have a stiff drink at the ready and be on the edge of my Lazy Man recliner waiting for the Fed’s latest money printing confessional due out in the weekly H.6 money stocks report?

Well, NSS, it was worse than I thought.  On a three months annualized basis, M1 is exploding at 16% and M2 is printing blasting away at 9%.

But as bad as these are, the monthly change rate – when you annualize it – works out to?

M1 = 29.8%  and M2 = 13%.  Monthly change, annualized.

Yee gads!  The hidden Weimar is here. 

One of our readers, obviously a genius, sent along a fine explanation which I will have to paraphrase because his original is lost somewhere in my 6-terabyte wasteland. 

The real deal is that the Fed is not gong to raise rates.  For the past several years they have been saying a rate hike is just six months off.  but see how it never happens?  It CAN’T happen.

The reason the fed will NEVER be able to raise rates is the instant they do, the whole compounded national debt balloon will pop and America will be bankrupt on the spot.

So they really have driven us into a box canyon and there’s no way for the herd to get out…

So yes, that IS (take it to the bank) the hard reality  that no one seems to be wanting to talk about.

It also underscores how BAD DEFLATION IS RUNNING.  Just in general terms, if M2 is going up 9% and reported consumer inflation is going up somewhere between 0 and 2% (toss a dart, it doesn’t effing matter) where is the other missing money going?

Into the rat hole of dark pools of capital.

The rich are piling up money left and right because falling interest rates have driving them into cash accumulation mode and it’s going to blow up the country – like it does in every Great Depression.

Here’s why:  When I graduated from high school, I dreamed of making a million dollars:  That would give me $70,000 a year income for life, I figured, with interest rates running 7%.  After I made a million dollars in a 7-year period “playing the game well” I noticed something was wrong.

With inflation missing in action (despite the Fed’s printing festival), care to guess how much money you’d need salted away to get $70.000 a year of income at 0.5% interest – which you’d be lucky to find?  (and without drawing down capital?)

$14-million!

Sadly, this is all true and it’s only a matter of how long it will take the rest of the country to wake up to the -ugly as sin- economic reality.

Oh, sure, when it happens, everyone will come back to the UrbanSurvival campfire,. pull up a rock and exclaim “Why, no one saw it coming!”  And, as always, they’d be wrong.

The ONLY game in town is estimating how high this steaming lump of shit can get stacked on made-up money before it all comes down in a putrid heap.

I’m guessing we could have as long as three more years.  The market ran up 5.6 times its starting level from its 1921 lows to the 1929 high.

Since the 2009 lows, 6,627 on the Dow roughly, you can run the numbers out and see we’re only about 2/3rds of the way to completely bazitzu crazy. 

Which is why you can buy 50 new cars with zero percent down, while we all sit in the Roaring Twenties replay and kid ourselves about what geniuses we are at picking the right investments.

The question isn’t whether you’re nuts…only whether you’ll be a winner or loser when “all comes down.”

Shall we move on to brighter topics?

The Slow Collapse of Globalism

It’s coming – it’s just that the “free traders” don’t see it yet.  We – unburdened by million, minions, and a Gulfstream – are able to see things a bit more clearly.

Take this morning’s just release report on import/export prices.  They argue that thinks are far from Hunky and Dory Land:

“Year on year export prices are down 6.7% and import prices are down 10.5% year on year.”

Another sign of dropping international trade is the drop in the Baltic Dry Index – which (yet again) continues stuck at levels not seen since the 2009 market lows.

Then there was this part of the Retail Trade numbers – inventory is building: And pardon the bad highlighter but you see how inventory tends to build before crap hits the fan?

This is no guarantee that trouble is on the way.

It’s already here – circling the block.  You just don’t see it yet.

Doesn’t matter to the market – futures are up.  Here, have some free money kid , and shut up.

No Wreck on the Freeway?

I know how important it is for gawker nation to slow down and look at video of breaking news.  So the Blaze had some links to the tornados in the upper Midwest overnight that should burn half a cup of coffee’s worth.

It’s OK, no one works on Fridays any more.

So Much for an Iran Deal

Yes, the Supreme Leader of Iran says the White House is lying and that we have devilish intentions toward Iran.

Could it be that the more centrifuges are spun up, the greater the odds that nuclear materials will be used for something other than keeping the lights on? Naw….

Madness on Bordering

While a man popped in Aridzona has been deported to Mexico 20 times, we’re also reading how another human wave of 40,000 kids is on the way.

As we reported for our Peoplenomics™ readers recently, the drought which is getting so much press in the USA is actually WORSE in Mexico so you ain’t seen nothing yet on border crossings.

The Price of Freedom

…to roam the internet is likely to be going up, figures this report.  The recent FCC decision/power grab means there may be higher fees coming to support rural phone improvements. 

When can I get fiber out here in the outback?   Right now it’s a fog mirror vs. fiber race – rural phone providers are in no hurry to speed up the net in the hinterlands…but like so many government programs it’s big on talk and tax, yet slow to actually change things here in fly-over country.

If I could actually get a due-by date on 10 MIPS I wouldn’t mind the Universal Service Fee but it’s mostly not helping us a bit.  If you live in a big city, it’s JAT (just another tax).

It’s a trade off, likely to be arranged by gubmint:  Ure doesn’t get fiber, you don’t get to keep your money.  That is the game, right?

Is She Really?

Hillary Clinton is set to announce on Sunday.  In truth she’s been running for the White House a lot longer – probably since marrying Bill.

As one radio bloviator noted, this signifies the great change from race being the hot ticket in politics to gender coming out for 2016.  Man-haters of the world unite!

Gridding for Trouble

From “warhammer”:

George,

The U.S. national power grid’s vulnerability has been a poorly kept secret for at least two decades:

<http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2015/04/08/power-grids-failing-infrastructure-at-risk-of-cyberattack/?intcmp=latestnews>

The backbone of America’s critical national infrastructure, the grid enables virtually all communication, commerce, heating, cooling and lighting. Taking it down would be crippling.

A wise adversary would diligently work to exploit any weakness or dependency in the grid. Taking down any aspect of the grid could cause serious disaster readiness delays, not to mention degraded military emergency action responses.

It seems the seriousness of these infrastructure vulnerabilities, particularly to a surprise EMP attack, is behind the decision to reactivate the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado Springs.

Read More

Coping: With a Time and People Study

The notion that humans are little more than self-programming computers (programmed by parents, society, and social media) may have some validity.  We bump into others and situation that we can add to our programming, or not.  With this in mind…

I had an odd experience at the store earlier this week that I’ve been meaning to mention to you.

I’d done a fair bit of shopping, but there was nothing frozen in the grocery cart, so I was fairly mellow about it and not in my usual 10 MPH over /blood pressure rising A mode.

With nothing but the working end of a shovel and rake waiting at home, I decided to watch people and try to enjoy them – much as you’d do on a trip to the zoo.

I knew there was something wrong with the checkout line I picked.  There was no one in it, and the checker was standing with an impatient look, hands on her hips.  Her customer (a little overfed and not sharply dressed)  was also fidgeting, rummaging through her purse and judging by the lines around us, I figured this had been going on for 5-minutes of so.

“Your computer down?” I asked as cheerfully as I could.

“No, we’re just waiting for change.”

Ure’s steel trap mind sized up the probabilities.

“I’ll just load my stuff on the belt,” I reckoned.  “Surely, this can’t take that long…’

I was wrong.

Seeing my slow-motion loading of my cart onto the conveyor belt, a busy-looking woman had bustled up behind me.  She was nervously looking at her watch.

So another five minutes goes by.  My stuff is on the belt.  Life in our lane was stopped.

And after a further three or four minutes of everyone standing around watching a lot of nothing, the busy-looking woman behind me, who apparently hadn’t heard the “Getting change” part of the conversation burst out “What’s the hold-up?”

“We’re waiting on change.”

Another minute of two wanders by; why this is almost like watching kittens about to scrap.  The busy-looking woman behind me was tapping her foot, but obviously was letting her clock and blood pressure get the best of her.

“Just how much change are you waiting for?” the busy lady blurted.

“10-cents” announced the customer who was overweight and had a lot of ‘tude.

Quick as a wink, the busy-looking lady had pulled out a dime, tossed it to the customer and the logjam broke.

I’m not clever enough to make this stuff up – but a finer lesson about human behavior, served up at the local Kroger checkout line, could not be had.  Who would have thought?  Human nature lessons come at the damnedest times.

I’m not kidding about the time we all spent standing there:  The customer had decided to stand her ground for a dime even though it took at least 15-minutes on the clock and who knows how much more before I got there.  The math on this was simple:  The customer waiting on the dime valued her time at a whopping 40-cents an hour.

The Busy-Looking Lady, on the other hand, valued her time much more dearly.  A 5-minute delay was totally unacceptable – especially for the price of a dime – so I knew that the Busy Lady valued her time somewhere north of $1.20 per hour.

Me?  Well, I was there strict in “watch and report mode.” On the way home, though, I had 20-minutes to try and select which of the old sayings best fit this situation.

“I bargained with life for a penny and life would pay me nothing more.”

“If you want something done, give it to a busy person.”

“Look before you leap” (at least at grocery store lines)

Intellectually, it was exhilarating.  Until I got to the part where it wasn’t just the customer waiting for 40-cents an hour – it was four grown ups including (gulp!) me.

Wowzers.  Time to park the observer mode again and get back to being a good little Type A.  But it sure is fun to drop into “observer mode” now and then to see what lessons are out there, waiting for nothing more than some idiot to come along and catch them.

A Compliment to IRS

I habitually overpay our taxes.  I always want the government to owe me – not the other way around.  Keeps our relationship on an even keel.

This year, doing the TurboTax / e-filing thing, our refund hit the bank account in 13-days.  I’m not easily impressed, but this one deserve mention.  Well done!

I was just talking to John the other day, the fellow who delivered the pea gravel, about this problem with the flow of news.  People always say they want to hear a little good news now and then, but the ratings don’t show it.  The yellower and more riled up and self-righteous, the better.  Ask faux.

The proof is out there, too:  Next time you’re lined up to pass a wreck on the freeway, which everybody is slowing down to look at – hoping to see blood, I imagine – ask yourself “Do people really care when something goes right?”

Sadly, you know the answer.

The Idiot’s Chronicles

The ‘Merican people must not be terribly bright.  There’s a whole article in Wired this morning that explains in excruciating detail “Why Obama said Global Warming gave his Daughter Asthmas.”

Google “Obama Smokes” sometime.

I don’t run a casino, but I’d wager that you know where my bet is on this.   And no, I don’t think Michelle’s organic garden is turning out enough GMO-free food, either. 

But what do I know?  I’ve only had asthma for 66-years.  Flo-Vent. Albuterol, or Singulair, Mr.

Read More

Rearview or Windshield? On the Fed & Shareholder Letters

The Federal Reserve meeting minutes that came out yesterday were no surprise.  Well, except for one thing:  If size matters, the Fed meetings are getting to be a very BIG deal.  I might be off on my count, but it looks like 75-people attended the meeting.

Other than the usual FedSpeak like…

“Many participants judged that the inflation data received over the intermeeting period had been about in line with their expectations that inflation would move temporarily further below the Committee’s goal, largely reflecting declines in energy prices and lower prices of non-oil imports. They continued to expect that inflation would move up toward the Committee’s 2 percent objective over the medium term as the effects of these transitory factors waned and conditions in the labor market improved further.”

But this gets us focused on this morning’s first neuron collisions:  Which way are rates going to go – and what will it mean?  We assume that rates going up in the medium term means five-years or so, although definitions matter hugely.

I’ve always believe short-term was as long as a person could hold their breath.  Long-term (and this is according to OECD data) marriages typically last 8-years in the USA anymore.  So I guess four-years would be medium term; halfway between breathing and divorcing.

Here’s the problem with the Fed’s happy-speak:  The Swiss have just started to sell 10-year bonds at a negative interest rate.  That’s right – you have to pay the Swiss to take your money and hold it for 10-years

Part of the reason for the Swiss skating on the interest problem is the CHF is one of the few currencies out there that was (by law) 40% backed by gold until 2000.  Ah, you’re thinking, those clever Helvetics!  They seem to be adhering to the belief that a currency that holds something (other than ink, like the US currency) is a good idea.

Not so in America, which has more or less completely given up on “solid money” because it’s much more expedient to follow the dual mandate (full employment, stable prices) than actually have money of reliable value.

It’s for this reason that you may look forward to tomorrow’s report because we will be looking at the next Fed H.6 money stock report because it has been showing increases of M1 in the 15%+ range while M2 is going up at around 8.9% (basis: 3-months annualized).

That’s why Ures truly will be sitting on the edge of the recliner by late afternoon about 4:30 PM Eastern when the next confessional is expected.

Near as I can figure it, the disparity between the Swiss honest deflation scenario and the 75-fedsters thinking inflation will be along, is because the fedsters will be printing money in nearly Weimar-like wheelbarrow loads to put a thumb on the scales.

JP Morgan’s Jamie Diamond offers a grim assessment – forecasting a major increase in volatility of markets when the next panic comes along.

Read More

Coping: With Liberal Glee and Snakes

One of my liberal friends called me this week to announce that the NRA was requiring convention-goers to their national gathering up in Tennessee to remove firing pins from their guns before entering the show.

I had to just sit back and listen – since once wound up on gun control, I can invest hours I don’t have in listening to anti-gun propaganda.

But here we have it this morning, over at the Bearing Arms dot com site that no, the only firing pin removal that would be required would be from display guns.  You know, the kind anyone wandering the show could pick up, touch, test the action, weight, balance, and such on.

Otherwise, notes the article is it really big news that the N.R.A. expects its members to follow local laws – whatever those happen to be?

As a gun owner (and user) I have to point out that guns are – like any other tool invented by the crazy upright bipeds – useful for good, or evil.  It all depends whose hands the tool is in.  Criminals who use guns are no different, as I see it, than hackers who turn off traffic signals or mess with air traffic control.  Yet so far we don’t have to register mice and keyboards.

The problem here is, every year, seems, we get a wandering snake come around the house or shop.  Nothing 20-feet long like in Anaconda.  Just your common everyday copperhead, cotton mouth, or coral snake.  I know where the coral snake family lives and we have a deal:  I leave them alone and they leave me alone.

With the weather warm again, we are on the lookout for our first slithering visiting.  When they show up it will depend where they are and how I decide to remove them.  #4 bird shot from a 12-gauge  is a nice stand-off approach while the .22 with rat shot is good for closer –in work.  A Glock or Ruger with rat shot is a kind of middle ground.

Last year, in honor of my liberal friend, when the first snake of the season showed up, I tried an experiment.  I was bound and determines to try liberalism.  So I  began by trying to talk the snake to death.

I’ll told him about Newton, MA, the Boston Bomber, and since he didn’t seem to trust me, I reviewed most of the major gun crimes cases of the past 100-years.

Read More

NBC/HI Prepping: What No One Talks About

Yes – NBC as in nuclear, chemical, and biological. The HI is hunger immigration which we’ll come to presently.

Our thinking this week?  It’s time to get a lot more serious about our prepping, why we do it, and the “other agenda” that may be working.

Read More

Markets Enter “Upside-Down” Mode

You may be wondering “How did you manage to blow the outlook for Monday so badly – usually Ure much closer to right?”

The answer is simple:  The markets have entered “Upside-Down” mode.

Here’s how it works:

In “right-side up” mode, the market would have looked at the trashy job numbers of last Friday when the market was closed.  The futures seemed to have it called right – down well over a hundred Dow points in the pre-open.

This would be a normal reaction to sucky data. 

When markets entered the “Upside-Down” mode, however, bad news becomes good news.

The market fears higher rates like some people worry about a heart attack.  What’s going on now is that the bad news is seen as running the Federal Reserve out of the rate-raising game.

This upside-down (bad news is actually good) would persist a while, too.  2,100-2,150 on the S&P is not out of the question. 

The risk of such insanity is also why I have made no secret of my love of cash – the third way – and in Depressions, in which –  as the history books teach us –  Cash is king.

Critical Fed Data Due

The one thing to be aware of in markets today is the release of the Federal Reserve’s Consumer Debt figures.  Called the “Consumer Credit Report” (because they’re on the receiving end of the debt – on this side of the table it’s the yoke of debt slavery) it looked like this going into today’s data due out at 3 PM Eastern:

There are two types of debt reported:  Revolving which is things like credit cards.  Non-revolving is the other and that includes things like student loans.

One of the real problems with the data is that it is aged well before release.  The numbers coming out today will reflect data for February and this is April, right?  So trying to get much more than a general sense of things is like trying to drive by looking in the rearview mirror with binoculars.

This data series, along with retail sales and consumer price data are conditions where “upside-down” market thinking could be a plus for bulls.

I forget where I read it, but the term “best dirty shirt in the laundry pile” certainly is a fair summary of how the US markets look compared to Europe and many other places.  Our Peoplenomics™ Trading Model has been consistently right through this market – proving my gut (although smaller from dieting – see Coping) is still not as good as my math.

Here Comes Paul

I think Rand Paul would make a dandy president.  He comes from good stock, my ultra liberal friends hate him, so he can’t be all bad.  And he’s trying to walk a fine line between Tea Party ideals and conservative GOP purse strings – not an easy hike at best.

The announcement will be coming up at Louisville.

Since we’re months away from football season, this morning would be a fine time to kick off the UrbanSurvival Fantasy Politicians League.

That’s because the American public is denied real choice because of the duopoly that the R’s and D’s have used to smother good ideas.

Hence, I think it would be dandy if voting laws could be changed so we could elect president and vice presidents from either party.

I think a Rand Paul/Elizabeth Warren ticket, for example, would make a lot of sense.  It would chill the reactionary right, be progressive on TP and conservative D issues, yet not wander off the board on the socialist path.  I believe the two personalities would keep each other in check, too.

The Wikipedia discussion of how the VP process worked early in the Nation’s history is worth review:

“Under the original terms of the Constitution, the electors of the Electoral College voted only for office of President rather than for both President and Vice President. Each elector was allowed to vote for two people for the top office. The person receiving the greatest number of votes (provided that such a number was a majority of electors) would be President, while the individual who received the next largest number of votes became Vice President. If no one received a majority of votes, then the House of Representatives would choose among the five candidates with the largest numbers of votes, with each state’s representatives together casting a single vote. In such a case, the person who received the highest number of votes but was not chosen President would become Vice President. In the case of a tie for second, then the Senate would choose the Vice President.[28]

The original plan, however, did not foresee the development of political parties and their adversarial role in the government. For example, in the election of 1796, Federalist John Adams came in first, but because the Federalist electors had divided their second vote amongst several vice presidential candidates, Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson came second. Thus, the President and Vice President were from opposing parties. Predictably, Adams and Jefferson clashed over issues such as states’ rights and foreign policy.[29]

The key part was the development of adversarial political “parties” which is really an American tragedy – it really spelled “The End” of more directly representative government – and the “forced consensus” that the TP still riles against today.

“A greater problem occurred in the election of 1800, in which the two participating parties each had a secondary candidate they intended to elect as Vice President, but the more popular Democratic-Republican party failed to execute that plan with their electoral votes. Under the system in place at the time (Article II, Section 1, Clause 3), the electors could not differentiate between their two candidates, so the plan had been for one elector to vote for Thomas Jefferson but not for Aaron Burr, thus putting Burr in second place.

Read More

Coping: With the Ongoing Personal Chemistry Experiment

It’s not going in the Guinness book of whatever, but Ures truly is making considerable progress on my slow-motion road to seriously improved health.  Thought you might appreciate an update.

The first item of the agenda this morning is to state emphatically that THIS IS NOT MEDICAL ADVICE and I might even go so far as to say you’re a dang fool if you don’t involve multiple healthcare types in a consultative role.

Recapping the Experiment:

If you’ve just tuned in to the craziness around here,  the Great Personal Health Experiment is a semi-organized way of optimizing how you feel.

Core to the idea is that your body will give you all the feedback you need – provided you give it a chance to tell you.  That means becoming aware of your body’s signals.

Everyone lives in a water & bone bag of some sort.  The awareness part is learning to recognize the feedback at something other than “emergency medical” times.  Which means listening to your breath while stressing, exercising.  Feeling your heart and being able to pretty accurately peg pulse rates and so forth.

Then there’s the chemistry angle.  The six most important additions to nutrition – for me – have been the addition of:

  • Magnesium
  • L-Arginine
  • Very high quality Men’s multi-vitamin
  • Eye supplement
  • Large doses of Vitamin C
  • …and Apple Cider Vinegar tablets

There are also two important deletions from my nutrition.  Except for the occasional cup of cocoa, sugar is gone, and along with it: Wheat.

Update on Results

One part of this operation has been managing blood pressure – which was kicked off three or four years ago when I went to the doc for PVC’s due to too much seriously strong coffee.  In the process of doing the 12-lead, I was found to be 156/90’ish on the blood pressure which was too high.

The medical response was HZTZ (or some such) which dropped about 10-points instantly.

My objective now is to reduce the BP far enough that I can wean off the prescription meds.

119/67 pulse 73 was the blood pressure as I began writing this morning.  And that was after spilling a cup of coffee on the rug and cleaning that up.

Read More

2,040: The Only Battle That Matters

What we were mentioning the past couple of weeks to our Peoplenomics™ subscribers could show up today, or this week, as the S&P 500 does battle royal at the 2,040 level.

My friend Robin Landry and I talked about this at some length when we flew up there to huddle weekend before this one.   Here’s part of what Robin had sent out to his managed account clients:

“Once the MACD has crossed the signal line and begins to drop sharply, in the past it has paid to get defensive and raise cash. The 2040 level is also about to be tested as well as the trend line from the low last October which I referenced above was broken earlier today and then the market rallied into the close to the underside of that trend line.

I call this the Kiss of Death, when it happens, because of the high percentage of times when this happens the decline resumes and accelerates.

There are also a number of other technical indicators, not shown, which are supporting my concern of the potential for a large decline.

The following support level are ones, which if broken on a closing basis, would cause my concern to rise further. This is a time when the know your client rule really becomes even more important and the risk profile of each client needs to be reviewed. “

While our Peoplenomics Trading Model has continued to be positive, I’ve been reiterating that “cash is a position, too.”

I have to say, with the futures down nearly a percent in the earliest going today, the softening of auto sales and the sadly sucky jobs numbers Friday, this week promises to be…er…interesting.

For those of us who look at the market in the longer view, failure at the 2,040 level could be setting up the first leg down of a larger move.  Dropping below 2,040, rebounding and then a much, much larger decline, would only be the start of it.

Ideally (at least in my work – and this is not financial advice) I’d like to see a decline under 2,000 on the S&P, a run back up to 2,040-2,100, and then a drop to 1,740 before June, say.  Then, a strong rally – up to maybe 2,100 over summer, and then the whole bottom falling out this fall.

If that fall decline were to coincide with the September Blood Moon, that’d sure be mighty graceful, too.

Except for some minor import-export data Friday, which we already expect to be soft, the real “news” won’t come until a week from tomorrow.  That’s when retail sales will be out.  And that could be a tumultuous moment.  The question that will answer is “How much mostly useless crap can 200-million couch potatoes buy?” My guess?  Not enough.

Then consumer prices come out on April 17th.  Somewhere around there, things could become entertaining.

The Fed’s Preemptive Strike

One month worth of data does not a trend make. 

But let me run out the month-on-month change of M1 and M2 for you. 

If you take the latest H.6 money report (preliminary Feb data) you’ll see the most recent increases in print rate annualize to 29.7% for M1 and a somewhat more modest 12.9% for M2.

Read More

Coping: With the WoWW and Dream States

A while back, I mentioned what I thought was a deficit in WoWW (world of woo-woo) reports.

This was promptly followed by not one, not two, but three sets of keys to the farm truck disappearing, although with my favorite Beechcraft flying hat.  This last one being where my FAA WINGS Basic and Advanced pins live…so that ticked me off.

Last week, though, everything showed up – including the missing hat – but neither Elaine or I can recall putting it where it was found:  Back of my closet behind some clothes.  Then again, the missing truck keys appeared in places I remember looking for them, too.

All this and CERN isn’t even operating.   Boy, I can hardly wait for that to start up.

On topic, a note from the “radio ranch” (a fellow ham in North Carolina with similar tastes in old-school vacuum tube radio gear) showed with with a number of thoughts that I forgot to pass on.

…about the perceived Woo Deficit.

Several possibilities self-suggest:

1)  There really is an ebb and flow to strangeness.  (of any kind)

      Seems likely.  Nearly everything else pulses with change.

      The work of Terrance McKenna, while called psuedoscience,

      may contain some indicator of strangeness — or “novelty” as

      he called it — being a human-mind influenced quantum effect.

      “When you’re paying attention to It, It’s there: when you look

       away, It vanishes until re-called into Being.”

2)  It’s only something (the woo drought) we notice: the rate of

     woo-ness is a Random Variable With Limits, and while the

     curve of event counts is jaggy, the longer-term mean is smooth and

     constant.  Consider buying a new car.  Suddenly you notice hundreds

     of the same model, where you once thought you hardly ever saw one.

3)  The People slightly tired of it.  After reading nineteen reports of

     missing keys suddenly turning up mysteriously, the twentieth carries

     somewhat less impact.  Most excitable people have by now reported

     their oddball event, and there are fewer left in the Not Reported Yet

     set.

4)  There’s no “Ah-HA!”  moment:  no Answer, no Resolution, no

      satisfying denouement.   A riddle without an answer grows dull

      after some time.  Now, if somebody made a Great Call-out for New

      Input, promising a vigorous and solid scientific probe and analysis

      of It — perhaps with the hope of Discovering A New Truth — then,

      I wager a new tidal wave of reports would pour in.  The novelty

      and interest level will have been re-stimulated. 

My 2¢

Which gets us around to two ponders.

The first one is “How does size fit into all this?” 

There are multiple reports of large objects simply ‘winking out’ and ‘winking in’ – perhaps the most notable of these being aircraft that disappear from otherwise normally operating radar, only to reappear a few seconds to minutes later.

This phenomena is most often cited along with references to the Devil’s Triangle or the Bermuda Triangle.  But appearing and reappearing planes happen all the time.  Including one incident mentioned in the book “Ethics of the Royal Netherlands Navy” where a disappearing and reappearing jet turned out to be a civilian Brazilian aircraft.

More interesting are the UFO reports – like this one – where they pop in and out of radar tracking.

We’re back to our old friend – the spectral issue.  At a low dose, woo-woo, nothing is out of the ordinary.  At a more gross level, events become noticeable.  But then at still higher levels rational responses appear.

Things may be blinking out all around us, but unless your attention rests on something that’s “missing” it will likely be there the next time you go looking for it.

Read More

+ More