Coping: Soup Kitchens In View

The regular “heartbeat” of the Kondratieff long wave in economics has been jiggered with. 

By all rights, we should be in the Greater Depression right now, not still looking for it to develop over the next couple of years.

I’ve been telling you about this “Big Ugly” that’s set to visit the generation since 1997, so some skepticism on your part is, indeed, warranted.

Nevertheless, my buddy Robin Landry up in Shawnee, OK, who’s one of the best technical analysts ever, figures that his worst-case numbers (which in the very long term put the Dow at levels not seen since the early 1960’s) will be along sooner than later.

We passed an important milestone with the ^TNX (CBOE 10-year Treasury) trade”  Landry’s immediate concern is that we have already set up to take out the “2-handle”  (e.g. the TNX trading at under 2%)  But the real worry is that the 1-handle (an interest rate of one percent) will be taken out as well.

And this morning, with oil now down under $50 bucks in a convincing way, we have to sit back and review harsh realities around here.

Landry expected $80 oil would pause at $75…and that didn’t happen.  We then took out $70, then $60, and now $50.  The reason to hope oil will stop at $40 on it’s wan to the $30-handle is what, exactly?

We can already sketch in some of what the “NEW – New Economic World – will look like.  It just won’t be pretty:

    • In the 1930’s depression “job sharing” was a common feature.  Today, we’ve already half-shot that gun with so many part-time jobs without benefits.
    • Ditto in the front-end of the 1930’s government was actually solvent.  Today, we’re sitting on a stack of bills for free lunches that total just a bit more than our National Product annually.
    • And unlike the 30’s, we’ve been holding shooting wars about every six months over in the sandbox countries, so we’ve spent a lot of resource there.

    Looking ahead, to the end of this month, the Fed has a terrible problem:  If they attempt to raise rates, it will collapse the “employment recovery.”  But, if they lower rates, it will send the message that deflation is really here and that will spook the markets into a 4,000 point collapse before summer.

    Their choice might come down to another quantitative easing because easy money is what had been holding up oil prices.  Without more QE, we could see not a 30 but how does a $20-handle on oil sound?

    Our government folks are showing their lack of common financial sense in foreign policy:  Take the Russia “sanctions” for example.  This is driving the Russians into a 4 to 5% drop in their GDP this year.

    You don’t really think a nuclear-armed, serious player is going to just roll-over and honor the Nobel-winner and his posse, do you?

    Hell no:  Russia and the bomb-lusting government of Iran have both announced that they will be pumping more than ever.  Repeat after me:  The Player’s just been played.

    Now we see no restraint on the Saudis, either, as they want as much dough as possible since they are writing the checks for the Global Caliphate to be set up. You don’t really think that mosque-building world-wide was strictly for fun, do you?  No sir.

    All of which makes dandy strategic sense, if you can still stand looking at the world as a 12-sided chess game where all the players are using slightly different rules.  It’s how the world really works.  The Saudi version of “win” is different from the Russian version of “win” – and so forth.  Which leaves each of us to look for the next capture en passant and try not to be swept up in the passing.

    How do we manage that little trick?

    The Major Systems of Life

    Count them up:  There are just seven of them:  Food, shelter, energy, transportation, environment, finance, and communications.

    If you are able to provide for minimal levels of each of these items, your life will go on just fine, no matter how nutty the world around you becomes.

    Just last night, my son called me up to inquire as to whether he could move down here to the Texas Outback (bringing a wife with him…he’s still running filters on that process) so he could build his own house.

    As he explained it, none of his friends knows how to do bupkis – and he wants to pick up the old man’s ability to pour concrete, run wiring, do plumbing, put on a roof, and so forth  without paying of government along the way.

    Oh, sure, building codes are nice (and we follow them – or better) but it’s the seeking permission part that gets him.

    He’s seen us put in a simple (works great) septic system.  It cost next to nothing:  $750 for a large tank, another $350 in drain field and supplies plus $300-bucks in rental for the backhoe.  They are great fun to run, by the way.

    All perfectly legal in Texas because if you observe 100-foot setbacks from property lines, have more than 10-acres, and other fine print, and no one complains of smells and such as you’re doing it, the process is easy-peasy.  But the cost differential is huge. A commercial septic is on the older of $18,000.  I know because I priced it out.

    This is sweat equity.  Get used to it.

    If you’re going to elevate yourself from the “run of the mill masses” who do nothing but play video games and RENT THEIR LIVES from da Man, then you’re going to have to figure out how the real game of life can still be played to win.

    OK, he gets that with a house.  If you build your own, it will be easy to keep it in good repair virtually forever because you will have intimate knowledge of how it works.  And you’ll have both the sink wrench and basin wrench instead of needing to call a plumber.

    And when comes to food?  You’ll be able to grow your own.

    Dad, what’s this Homesteading stuff I’m hearing about?”

    Late-comers to the party, son. 

    We’ve left a few back issues from our old Independence Journal site up over at our www.ruralpioneer.com website, but right now everyone with two flower pots and a home-schooling book thinks they are a homesteader. 

    As we edge closer to the financial brink we will add content over there, but in the meantime, how to design/build a grid-tied solar power set-up is covered in our www.peoplenomics.com library which is almost 700-back issues deep and only maybe 50% of that is economics.

    Still, the point of this morning it to try and figure out how to reduce your outgo, build your income, and try to avoid the position of believing too much about what people tell you the future is going to be like.  They’ll be wrong.

    Classic example:  The US Department of Labor’s Occupational Outlook does not use the word “robotics” to describe the future of automation.  The word robot is used a few places, the the world they are describing?  Pure fiction and not a very good guess.  They still project a huge increase in carpenters, for example, which means they miss the social reality scene completely.

    the LBGT movement means a lot of historical singles are happily coupling and that takes less square feet.  And childless unions sort of impact school and teacher projections, you think?

    Someone in government “gets it” but then turns on a policy of Stupid by importing illegal high-risk kids with a propensity to gang and tosses them into the works in every major city.

    Trust you saw the report that 700 miles of US border with Mexico is still ineffectively managed?

    Trusting the future to government is like trusting the hen house to a dog that’s being used in LSD experiments.  Which is why, to our way of thinking, the closer you can get to freedom now the more you might be able to enjoy down the road.

    Given that it’s now the first week of August 1927 (with a chance it’s August of ‘29) we should mention that the main point of this morning’s ramble is to alert you that the Fed could do something really stupid at the end of the month.

    With the 10-year note headed for 1.5%  (my consigliore’s model) or at least down to the 1.75% range, you really need to figure out which part of the coming soup kitchen’s you wish to occupy.

    Here are your choices:

      • You can be a small-scale farmer and sell whatever is excess at rock bottom fair prices to the soup kitchen.
      • You can manage or cook in the soup kitchen
      • Or you can be in line to eat.

    To me, this don’t sound like a terribly difficult problem to solve.  We’ve already decided (back in 2003 when I finished up my next-to-last big turn-around project) that when financial engineering collapses, the wise person will have a water source and the 4-Gs:  ground, gun, gold, grub.  Toss in a tent and a few tools and that’s how America was hacked out of wilderness.

    OK, that and screwing the First Peoples over, but that a two beer discussion for another day. 

    For now, the only question is: How long do you rent your life and do you ever go out and own it?

    You can either voluntarily reduce your lifestyle on your own terms (as we have done), or you can wait for financial engineering to collapse and trust da Man to do it for you.

    Which either makes us crazy, or just not very trusting of people with poor track records of getting things right.

    Computer’s ARE Out to Get Us

    Some reader feedback on our adventures with our media computer/Win 7 attack:

    Oilman 2 contributes this map which shows the computer war in near real-time.  (Awesome find!)

    Grady at our future-predicting web-scanning project (www.nostracodeus.com) offers this:

    My anti-malware program caught an interestingly named Russian site in the scans yesterday: 

    matchbox.alfatarget.ru 

    Reader Rick (here in The Republic) offers this (with no warrantees from me!):

    George, you may not know it but I am a reseller for Bluecoat https://www.bluecoat.com . They have a free Web filter program called K-9. You can download it here for free: http://www.getk-9.com/ It has NO adware etc. Bluecoat gives it away for free because it passes the URLs that people use to the Global Threat Analysis system (WebPulse) they use in their commercial products. All of their products send url requests to this system and it goes out to those sites and automatically classifies them for over 80 different classifications with up to four possible classifications per site. So, if K-9 asks WebPulse what a site is and it does not know, it checks the site and if the automated analysis is not 98% sure it knows it flags for a human to look within a few hours. In the meantime it classified as “unknown”.

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    Oil Collapse Threatens Universe

    Go ahead, scoff if you will. But for the past many months I have been telling you what? ‘ That right: Oil could collapse into the $30s per barrel. That’s because the world is in the grips of a gigantic deflation the likes of which have never been seen before and that in itself is remarkable and worthy of discussion.

    Coping: Grist for the Truly Paranoid–Computer Prepping

    This wasn’t much of a weekend.

    Most of it was spent fighting computer attacks and here’s the odd coinky-dink:  my buddy Gaye up at www.backdoorsurvival.com was also having her fair share of problems.

    Not that they were insurmountable, in either case, since we are both “children of the Halt and Catch Fire days up in the Silicon Forest.

    I don’t think she’d mind my sharing this from a New Years Day email about how her new year started:

    About 4PM yesterday Malwarebytes started popping up with “blocked malicious site” message every 20 seconds.  Looks like I got the SysWOW64 virus.  Tried to remove it but finally posted in the bleeping computer forum – eta for help is 5 days.  Don’t know how the hell I got it.

    Like us, she keeps computers in reserve/offline ready for this kind of emergency and by noon on New Years, she reported:

    Good news.  It pays to have the premium version of Malwarebytes.  They responded to my support request within an hour, gave me a list of things to do, and all is now well.

    Unfortunately, that’s right about when things started to hit the fan around here. 

    Remember last week when I was telling you about how our internet service was terrible?  Still is dreadful, but about noon Friday one of our computers – the one hooked up to the big screen in the living room, and the one which streams YouTube, TedTalks, and Amazon & Netflix – kacked.

    Antivir  which is one line of defense, started telling us we had a virus – which when removed, reappeared in less than an hour, and without being online.  Bad sign.

    So that got me to running a full virus scan (clean) followed by a Malwarebytes scan (found one virus) and thought that would be it.

    Wrong.

    By Saturday, the computer was up to it’s terrible performance again – but neither Antivir nor Malwarebytes was finding anything. 

    In fact, the only indication of something wrong was a buttload of .js and .json files up in the (sometimes hidden)  user local and roaming files; this was a Win-7 box.

    Even with no viruses found, the system kept on creating these Java files and it was really bizarre.  In fact, the first time I ran Windows onboard file clean-up, it found somewhere north of half a million files up there.  And even when deleted, they would come back.

    So that led (Saturday afternoon) to me going to war with the computer.  I got out an axe (figuratively) and went after everything.  Killed everything in the StartUp, uninstalled programs that I didn’t use often (*like Java, thinking that might have something to do with all the .js  files showing up) and then I took off Chrome (which was being spawned into background activity, and even Firefox which was suspect.

    That led to a read of the Mozilla warning on the Java Deployment Toolkit.

    To continue, I downloaded a fresh database for Sophos Virus Tool, and decided to let it run overnight.   No soap.

    Again (now into Sunday morning) there was no virus found and our files that were just removed had appeared in the hidden user directory.  The files count was up to something like 255,000.

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    Confiscation in 2015? Probably Not, But…

    A number of readers have asked me, in so many words, “If government can simply steal all, or part of our money through confiscation – as in Cyprus – what the heck should I save and what are ‘cash equivalents?

    That is a question near and dear to the heart of preppers.

    Fine question, not too long an answer, but worth kicking around because a country which has more debt that annual GDP is (in a very real sense) and economic time-bomb waiting to go off.  And when governments go off (on the people) the results are often infuriating and outrageous as any Cypriot, Greek, Italian, Irish, or Icelander will attest.  Prepping of the most extreme sort, but….

    First, however threes the ever-important Trading Model and coffee…

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    Is It Really a Rally?

    Although the market looks to open up this morning, it’s not really “up” in the sense that everything in relative.

    For those who missed Wednesday’s trading session (Dow –160 and S&P down to 2,058.9) it wasn’t a whole lot of fun.

    Later today, I’m sure my consigliore will call to scream victory since he’s been a fan of the End-of-Year rally for several months now.

    Normally, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.  Except that if the top of this pig is really in, then we ought to be able to test some of our long-standing theories.

    One is that from a top, a real “crash” develops around the 55-day mark.

    Since Yahoo is kind enough to keep daily trading stats on the S&P in public view here, all we would need to do is thumb back through the data until we come to the recording closing high from 2014 at 2,093.55.

    Looking at the intra-day highs, that occurred on December 29th, which is more than ample reason for my consigliore to score the point.

    Since Excel is better at math than me at this hour, that means a crash date around February 22nd.

    Since that is a Sunday (and I was supposed to be a cruise ship that day) the collapse will happen either before, or after that weekend.

    One possibility is Friday the 20th, but there’s a problem with that:  It is a holiday-shortened week.  President’s day is February 16th.  So the week before should see a minor bounce (the holiday effect) and then the market should be retesting lows put in back in October 2014 (or even lower levels) since it is axiomatic that crashes don’t happen from market tops:  They happen from bottoms.

    Whether this just sets up the final manic run for a couple of more years to money-printing-delirium highs, or whether this is the Big One remains open.  But we are confident enough of the look-ahead that we will not be going on a cruise with friends.  We’ll be staying home to watch the money pile up.

    Of course, there’s another possibility:  The market will put in new highs this month, which would push the crash period out two further months.  In which case, it will be revealed to the world that I’m a cheap old Scrooge who didn’t want to spring for a nice balcony room on an NCL cruise which would not doubt be almost as much fun as staying home to count (and make) some money.

    Time will tell.

    The real point of this morning is to welcome you to the first Friday of 2015 and note that even though the market is looking bullish at the open, as the high-end graphic upper right indicates, whether it will really be an “up” day, is questionable, indeed.

    What Really Matters?  Budget

    The mainstream media has unwittingly fallen into unquestioning belief in press release language manipulating the playing field.

    In a column this morning, The Hill looks at the looming budget battle in 2015 between president Obama and the GOD controlled congress.

    It’s a generally good article, but I’d draw your attention to this little bit in here:

    “….with entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security a potential target for cuts…”

    Hold the phone, there Bucko. 

    Since when is Social Security an “entitlement?”

    It’s a subject for future analysis as a Peoplenomics piece, but take someone like me:  In my lifetime, myself and employers have paid in $400,000 to Social Security. 

    Now, there are those who would argue that this isn’t quite right because my “out of pocket” was around (for example) $200,000.    And where can I get the kind of payout I anticipate with that kind of pay-in?  Glad you asked.

    Unfortunately, the inflation game gets played on everyone at this point, because 99% of the American public isn’t as smart as you and me. 

    In 1982, for example, I made $39,500 per year.  And about (round numbers) 14.5% went into Social Security.  In today’s dollars (those dirty, watered-down, mostly made up [96% made up]) things, that would be $98,392.

    What’s more, in 1980, if I had taken the 14.5% of $39,500 – my part and the mandatory employer part came to $5,727 – and put it into the S&P 500, which at the time was what?   Well, December 22nd (1982) the S&P was 138.03.

    For the REAL $5,727 at that point, had I been managing my own money and just tracking the S&P  instead of being held at gunpoint by Uncle Sam, that year alone would be worth today how much?   14.9 times the original sum and that’s just tracking the S&P for that period.  That would be $88,000 and change and that’s for just one work year.

    I worked 50 years with those kind of numbers.  Some much higher, some lower.

    Would results always be this good:  Hell no.

    But I want to be extraordinarily  clear on two points here:

    1.  If employees had been paid the “mandatory employer part” and invested it, we would be the richest country and the richest generation alive ever.

    2. The fact there never was a “Trust Fund” – it was “invested in agency paper and other idiotically low returns” reveals that Social Security, while well-intended, had turned out to be a payoff of the poor and a terrible swindle of middle class and up earners.

    Since I’ve now worked 50 years, what Social Security should be paying me on is actually well into the millions.  Watering down the money is key to the swindle, though.

    So when someone dares imply that Social Security is an “entitlement” take ‘em out back, slap them around with a calculator, explain inflation to their thick skulls, and tell them you’ll wash their mouth out if they can’t see a swindle when they’re the victims.

    Oh, wait, seniors are remarkably slow learners on inflation and they are largely dumb enough to believe politicians.  Two strikes.  Shall I mention the third?  That’s failure to pass on hard-fought mental acuity to the next round of suckers…

    Wrong Message to Terrorists

    This one caught my eye:  “Death penalty for Tsarnaev? Why Bostonians don’t favor that possibility.”

    To my (admittedly jaded) way of thinking, this sends exactly the WRONG message to would-be terrorists.  The liberalistas of Boston have just painted a big target on themselves.

    I’m sure my liberal pal will call incensed that I am going down the path of eye-for-eye justice.

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    Coping: New Year, Same Problems

    The calendars may have turned over to a “fresh year” but near as I can figure, the problems are the same ones we had last week. And the month before that. Come to think of it, they are the same problems (mostly) that we had back in 2000 when the stock market fell into major decline and (oh, so mysteriously) along came terrorism and the security state to create instant employment and spin the country around into a new bubble – the Housing Crisis. There are many ways to figure where we are in history: I mean, there’s a case that we’re already in the Greater Depression as lifestyles are not getting much (if any) better despite additional work.

    Coping: With New Years “Revolutions”

    Yeah, I know:  Holiday morning and what the hell is George doing up writing a column?

    Well, lemme see:  Elaine got up for a snack, the cat wanted in, it was cold and I was wondering if it snowed.

    Since I was up, I made a pot of coffee and spied a dandy picture from SoCal sent in by our friend Jeffrey out there. 

    Yee-gads!  Snow down to the what level?

    “In a rare event, snow fell on the local mountains here in Orange County. A picture is attached. Apparently, the snow level went all the way down to 2000 feet.

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    Modeling 2015 Part 2: This is When?

    The nice thing about intellectual honesty is that it’s OK to make mistakes.  Especially when being suckered by history.  As it turns out, what our Trading Model is forcing us into, in light of recent action, is a complete reassessment of where we are on the calendar in terms of economic replays of great/catastrophic historical events.  But no, it doesn’t look like 2007-2008 was the all-time high as some readers have suggested.

    Not that our postings on the replay of the Great Depression (since 1997) have been totally wrong:  They have been useful thought tools and we’ve made a little money along the way.

    Still, “as the wheel turns” we acquire new information, such that the future is becoming more clear before us every day.

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    Housing–Pretty Much What We Expected

    Hot off the press (release):

    New York, December 30, 2014 – 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 October 2014, shows that the pace of home prices across the country continues to decelerate although eight cities did see prices rise faster.
    More than 27 years of history for these data series is available, and can be accessed in full by going to www.homeprice.spdji.com. Additional content on the housing market can also be found on S&P Dow Jones Indices’ housing blog: www.housingviews.com.
    Year-over-Year
    Both the 10-City and 20-City Composites saw year-over-year declines in October compared to September. The 10-City Composite gained 4.4% year-over-year, down from 4.7% in September. The 20-City Composite gained 4.5% year-over-year, compared to 4.8% in September. The S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, which covers all nine U.S. census divisions, recorded a 4.6% annual gain in October 2014 versus 4.8% in September.
    Miami and San Francisco saw prices rise 9.5% and 9.1% over the last 12 months. Eight cities, including San Francisco, Denver, and Tampa saw prices rise faster in the year to October than a month earlier.

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    Housing Data Foreplay

    Oh, that time of the month, already, huh?

    Check back at about 8:20 AM Central and we should be able to present the latest Case-Shiller, S&P, Dow-Jones, Corelogic (and whoever else wanders by) monthly Housing Price Index report.

    As our super high-tech graphic shows:  What I would expect going into this is a sideways report.

    In other words, just as the Fed’s withdrawal of “easy money” has led to a collapse of prices in oil since there’s quantitative pleasing to blow up the balloons of the oil bubble, so too, there are some incredible bargains in housing out there.  Oil is back down nibbling on $53-bucks, so someone is likely about to get into trouble in the oil patch, if they aren’t already.

    The reality is (likely) that since the Fed is trying to act like there’s a recovery, the amount of free money being dispensed to keep banks owning repo’ed homes is likely starting to tighten.

    Elaine and I have been looking at homes, too…something closer to the kids would be nice.  And prices have sure come down.  Places like Dallas, once off the charts, have come down to where you can get a livable (nice enough) home for under $150K.

    Prices in the Pacific Northwest and down the West Coast haven’t come down much (yet) but as the bank and speculator money comes off the table, those homes are going to come on the market.  And with rates still rock bottom low, it’s getting hard not to buy a home, if you can afford it.

    But we shall see how quickly the dynamics change. Do check back.  For now, a SWAG (simple wild-assed guess) would be small pick up in volume, level to declining price, but that’s with no meds and plenty-coffee.

    Financial Trouble Today?

    There is a BIG Crack in the World financial model developing.

    Japan was down more than 1.5% overnight and China down 1%.  In Ure-Up, the frogs, krauts, and kneelers are all down 1% or more.  Which despite the premarket opening activity here (down 40 points) argues that some news item, or other, will be ceremonially blamed and down 150 or so is where the morning dart landed.

    Ukraine:  Dictatorship?

    What do you call it when the president of a country (put in power with Europower and US cookies) threatens martial law if the “peace process” is derailed?

    Say, didn’t anyone send this fellow the new Russian Military Doctrine unveiled last week that pointed at the West/NATO as major threats to Russia?  And didn’t Ukraine just drop non-aligned nation status and throw in with the bankster crowd?

    Naturally, they promise a vote, but say, those wouldn’t be ex-Florida machines, would they?

    Crash Debris

    That plane crash a few days back (Airbus A-320) has yielded some bodies and gloating debris.  My guess (as a pilot) is that the plane experienced a catastrophic engine event and attempted a descent, or the turbulence of the storm was simply too much.

    Pilots in recurrent training are taught that what rips wings off in turbulence is keeping on too much power.  Airspeed needs to be cut at least in half, but there’s a natural instinct from pilot training to keep on power because that gives you climb if you need it when the “bottom drops out” – which is where the too much power for conditions reaction comes from.  Just a guess, however.  Having been in severe turbulence I can tell you instincts are a terrible beast to be overcome when it’s like being in a blender on the frappe setting…

    Passings

    Luise Rainer, at 104. First winner ever of back-to-back Oscars back in the 30’s.  Oh, and who were the other’s to do that?  The story has more Trivial Pursuit questions than most, which why it is worth reading.

    Speaking of People (as in Magazine)

    Had to grab the ViseGrips with this headline:  “Argentina’s President Adopts Jewish Boy to Keep Him from Turning into a Werewolf.”

    Even in rehab, this would be a tough one to make up.

    Another Obama Golf Story

    OK, so Obama plays more golf than Eisenhower.  Unlike Ike, I don’t think there’s an Obama Tree on any course yet.  There used to be an Eisenhower Tree up until this past February, however.

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    Coping: Finding Your Personal Retrograde

    Aha!  The learning never stops around here, but this morning we’ve managed to sneak up on a key bit of personal learning.

    First, let’s talk about the trip to the Social Security office yesterday. 

    It turned out to be a pleasure.

    First off, the fellow at the front desk recognized us from before.  And, when we weren’t getting enough/right answers from him, he was kind enough to provide access to the fellow who ran the office.

    There had been a clerical error on my address – but there was also a calendar issue, so we will find out when that rolls around in about 2-weeks if all our problems miraculously disappear on that date.

    Meantime, we had some waiting to do…and I got to talking with the guard.  Nice fellow, planning to retire in three years himself, get a Winnebago and travel all 49-states you can get to without swimming.

    I was going to explain to him that by then, he might want to include the states of Tijuana, Sonora, Baja, and perhaps as far south as the state of Quintana Roo along with Campeche and Yucatan.

    There was a bit of blood on my tongue, as I continued to bite it, realizing that explaining how the North American Onion was gong to work, how British Columbia would also be a state by then, and within 5-years, it would just have to be the “State of Columbia” because the British were not the grand guardians of social welfare as any of the real historians of BC would attest.  And the word British part would have to be axed on political grounds simply in honor of the suffering of the coastal bands such as the Haida Gwaii..  (You can probably see why I dummied up:  It would have been a long discussion.)

    Instead, I asked him about the short office hours, and if someone shows up at 2:30 for an appointment whether they would be kicked out at the 3 PM office closing time.  No, he assured me, they actually stay open until 4:30 most days (sometimes later) to make sure everyone is seen.

    That was reassuring and I get better about my tax dollars.  Private sucktor folks still end up about 200 vacation days short in 50 years, but did I have a cheese to go with that whine?

    By the time I’d met all the folks in the office, it was pretty clear that the office doesn’t have a 27-hour workweek, as the sign says.  That’s basically the “Public should show up time.”  They get seen, the guard fellow explained.

    Good one to know.  Rather than “hours” the sign really ought to read:  Show Up Between (and then list the hours). But not everyone is as literal as us.

    In the case of my own application, I screwed up by questioning Social Security’s income record.  I had noted in my application, at the time of filing, that my records of income and theirs had some discrepancies. 

    Turns out that part of Social Security’s public face says Social Security benefits are based on wages.  But, after two of the trips to the office, turns out they were based (in my case) on the IRS SE Worksheet.

    This has had me buried in the research into how Schedule SE was supposed to work in 2008, for example.

    Schedule SE is the Self Employment worksheet.  And my income there was $xx,xxx.  However, the amount of income that I paid income tax on was $xxx,xxx.

    What hadn’t been clear to me at the time (and I think there’s still something smoldering in all this) is that the SE schedule was lower and that is the number used by Social Security. 

    A little history check here:  No wonder government called it a “tax credit” rather than what the reductions as a “tax credit” for self employed persons is:  It makes a definite reduction in Social Security payments in later years, when the SE number, not the actual “paid tax on number” is used.  Definite lack of candor at the time, typical of the PTB.

    In fact, to my way of thinking, it’s typical of Washington doublespeak:  Tell small business they are getting a tax credit for small business owners.  And then screw them on the back-end when comes time to collect Social Security.  But I’m not going to change that – it’s just the way it is…the problems are almost always with the people who write the laws, not the federal workers who are generally good folks. Vacation and bennies differentials aside.

    Speaking of which…let’s not forget that president what’s-his-name has just made matters worse in regard to turning federal employees into praetorian minions:  Remember the feds minimum wage is $10.10 but for the private sucktor, the min-wage is still $7.25.

    When I tell you federal employees are “special” I’m not a-kidding.  But, how soon we forget them pen-strokes.

    “OK, you fixed your Social Security problem (for now) so would you please get to the retrograde stuff?”

    Ah…Well, I got home and then spent a full hour on the line with CenturyLink tech support.  Our internet connectivity has become unacceptable.  Day before Christmas.  Too many retried and I’ve been working on that problem for six days, now.  They issue credits, I call the next day for another because it’s still broken.

    The good news:  I will be getting free internet access until they fix it so it will stream again.  The bad news:  The won’t be until January 30th until 7 PM says the tech.

    I bet you didn’t know that CenturyLink actually has a Bandwidth Exhaustion Department, did you?  This is what one of the techs told me.

    Apparently, there’s no point to stopping additional sales just because there’s insufficient capacity…just add a department to fix it.  Then you can justify six ways to Sunday, rolling in the money, and loving it!

    No worries in terms of UrbanSurvival/Peoplenomics:  We have a high speed satellite connection which gets us 10-down and 3-up, but only when the weather is clear.  Less in rain and not at all in storms….but I will be needing to buy more bandwidth.  We eat 3-4 GB per day around here, up to 6-when I run multiple Nostracodeus runs.

    About here, I got to wondering  (lights went off between my ears, a truly unique experience)  if I was somehow in the “Mercury retrograde penalty box?”

    You see, Mercury is retrograde in January (the window is the 16-24th with the hot day being Jan 21).

    I’ve been a reasonably lucky guy most of my life, but I do have some retrograde periods, and I’m in one now but coming out of it.

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    Markets: Wake Me Up Tomorrow

    There’s not much point rushing into work this morning. This’ll be a quiet day, more’n likely, with people giving what about the victory speeches around the coffee maker. In terms of economic news? A few minor nit today, like the Dallas Fed report later this morning, a bunch of interest rate yawners, and if that doesn’t pump your blood pressure up, there is last week’s money supply data. Tomorrow things return to “normal” for this time of the month:

    Coping: The How Many Hour Work Week?

    Once again this morning, Elaine and I will be going down to the local Social Security office when it opens (9AM) because they can’t seem to be able to generate a benefits verification letter for me, nor are they able to handle an in-person request for spouse benefits.

    This will be our third in-person visit.  We’ve already spent 8+ hours on the phone, and so far all we get is the administrative run-around.

    Nevertheless, I got to looking at their office hours and concluded that I’ve been in the wrong businesses for the past 49-working years.

    The local office is “open” on the following hours:

    Hours:

    Monday
    9:00 AM – 3:00 PM  

    Tuesday
    9:00 AM – 3:00 PM

    Wednesday
    9:00 AM – 12:00 PM

    Thursday
    9:00 AM – 3:00 PM

    Friday
    9:00 AM – 3:00 PM

    “Open” doesn’t mean problems get solved.  Just “seen”.

    What’s more, it doesn’t appear that more than one person (plus one guard) actually work in the place, because the times we’ve been there, there’s only been one window open and no other office activity noticed.

    And no other cars…

    With my problem (and about 12-hours invested in time, phone calls, travel, research, etc.) I figured the place would be hopping with activity.  But no, not so far.  They have room for bowling and archery in the halls.  Maybe today that will change.

    What did catch my eye is that Social Security locally, anyway, seems to be open just 27-hours during a full week.  This week, however, it will be open just 24-hours.  If I was being mean-spirited, I would mention that Federal workers enjoy 10-paid holidays per year.  In most of the private sectors I’ve worked for, the average was six holidays, although one had seven.

    Again, not to quibble, but if you’re in a real job (you know, the kind with accountability, unpaid overtime, and all the rest), you should RUN not walk to the local Social Security Office or get online and fill out a job application.

    Click over to the Federal Employee Retirement System’s details and you’ll be able to compare how it works when held up to the private sucktor.

    These people have mastered the system.  With over 20-million government workers, it’s past the point where we can ‘lick ‘em” – it’s time to join ‘em.  Get a high-paying government job as soon as you can. 

    The four-holiday per year part especially bothers me.  Since I will have worked 50-years, by the time a benefit shows up (that is if they can ever get off their butts and do something besides shuffle problems, rather than fix them)  people like us (of the working class) will have been screwed (comparatively) out of 200 work days which is 40 freaking weeks over a working life.  This old-man view is important to see when you’re young enough to do something about it.

    Yeah, yeah, I get that they have 50-million customers and some of them are scammers.  But they also have 60,000+ people.  Sounds like a lot?  I mean 833-customers per year?

    Consider in a reasonable 2,000 work year.  That should be 2.4 hours per customer per year.  We’ve already passed 13-hours invested in what should be simple problems.  But before we get these insolvable bugs fixed, I’m willing to be on at least another 10-hours.  The magic of automated 2-hour hold times, huh?

    That’s OK.  It has given me time to consider how to respond, in kind.  A complaint based on age discrimination seems to be a good starting point.  Plus letters and filings about employee performance to the office of the counsel general.

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