With another weekend of bar-hopping with the Dancers and Prancers over, it’s back to work on the Street.  Santa is due to appear this morning, but will he crap out and call it good after the bell?

What last week’s market action was should be abundantly clear this morning:

It was the financial industry slamming Washington up against the wall and threatening to bring down the whole kit and caboodle if folks back there didn’t quickly pass the pork-ridden feral (sic) budget which unwinds Dodd-Frank and gives all kinds of new deals to the greedsters and their henchmen.

Already in the pre-open, almost two hours before the open, we could see Dow futures were up 100 and the price of crude oil had inches up toward the $59 level.

So is this the Santa Rally people have been so anxiously seeking?

Maybe.

But I wouldn’t bet on much of anything past the first hour today:  The Japanese market was down more than 1.5% last night, China down almost a percent, but in Europe, practice for Santa was well underway.

What we might see this week would be a bit of rally going into the holiday and why not?  The world hasn’t ended this year and the absence of Peace on Earth means the economy should do well next year.

Or maybe not:  Oil was down in the $57 range this morning and the Baltic Dry Index this morning dropped another 18-points to 845 which means 2008 kind of levels, so disaster in Q-1 ain’t off the table.

Hug a jolly old fat dude if you see him and beg for him to winter over. 2015 looks like disaster waiting to happen.

Another Survey to Ponder

The Empire State Manufacturing Survey is out, but I’m not sure what-all is still made in ‘Merica anymore..

The December 2014 Empire State Manufacturing Survey indicates that business activity declined for New York manufacturers. The headline general business conditions index dropped fourteen points to -3.6, its first negative reading in nearly two years.

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My buddy JB Slear, who’s my commodity guy, made an interesting observation here last week.  He was asking if I had noticed a general decline in the amount of mail people are sending – and that includes junk mail.

Frankly, I hadn’t given it much thought, but when a commodity broker (who has a 10-foot high banana tree in his living room, by the way) takes time out from trading and writing his traders column – well, that set me to thinking, even if it was the weekend.

After going through some exercising of the brain cells and such, a startling fact arose:  JB  was Right!

There has been a decline – a long, slow one, perhaps starting in 2012 – of the amount of junk email that’s come in.  And, unless I have signed up for alerts from like a Google News or a Trulia, the number of people sending unsolicited emails is really starting to drop…your mileage may vary,  however.

This is something that I’d anticipated would arrive, sooner or later, and I wrote as much in my book “Broken Web:  The Coming Collapse of the Internet.”

It’s possible that some of the decline is due to increasing government regulation of the net:  The New Yorker had a good article on point about how it’s becoming popular for “authorities” to restrict internet use and comment.

Another factor is the proliferation of new digital time-wasters.  I pay scant attention to my Facebook page, or my Google Plus page, but that’s because I’m time constrained and don’t feel like making a free contribution to the website owners getting rich instead of me.  I am, after all, the one getting up at 4 AM to figure things out, so why should I steer you to some one else’s website where they will monetize you six-ways to Sunday….

It’s quite the switcheroo of a business model, when you kick back and look at it, as we did on the Peoplenomics side of things a number of months ago:  It is a business model that depends on people’s time and habit-forming in order to make money.

Here’s how it works:  Suppose this morning you and I do a little bit of coding and start up FaceGeorge.

We make the service initially free.  And we make it fill some kind of social hole in the soul.  A need, for example, of nearly everyone in America to sound off, be heard, and become famous.

After a few years, we have more users than you can shake a stick at.  The whole world is now going to FaceGeorge as the hottest social platform out there.  ( thought about GeorgeBook, too)

So now I take the big companies (who are using FaceGeorge) and I send them out ransom demand notes:  You either pay me, or only 7 of your 3-million customers will get emails about that brand new zillion-dollar product introduction you have planned and posted on FG….

Money-grubbing Kapitalists are anxious to pay…whatever it takes.

It works for a while (holding third party customers hostage from the companies that brought them to FaceGeorge in the first place.  But over time, companies wake up and decide to do some other kind of social.

Websites that don’t use social have been historically penalized by Google in rankings…and perhaps is because we eschew using social media that UrbanSurvival traffic has been declining (slowly, thankfully_) sine the Internet Social Bubble peaked in about 2011/2012.

But peak is what it seems to be doing.

One driver is companies are trying to do a better job of keeping all customer needs met on their own web properties.  I finally decided to relent last week and open up UrbanSurvival for comments.  You can make comments on anything you want, but the main reason is to fine tune our content, direction, and improve customer service.

Another driver for the decline in “old line” social is that there are literally no barriers to entry.  I can assure you that with start-up capital of $10,000 you and I could start up a social platform of some kind and that would bring us some money.  Just maybe not enough to do an IPO…

And this gets us to a very interesting “Gotcha” for people who predict the future.  You may remember a few years back there was a lot of talk about 2012 of a coming catastrophe and how there would be lots of people moving north and diaspora was going to impact us all hugely.

The good news is that it hasn’t been a physical diaspora, but it has been a virtual one.  People who used to be fully present and conscious are now plugged into their cell/mobiles tor ridiculous hours each day.

The net human migration from local face-time with people to the virtual sort has been incredible.

Not that it has made us any better…just different.

Yet you look at fads and you’ll find a national (US) ramp up takes about 6-years (Hoola Hoops, 19i57-1963 ramp-up) and if there is not existing infrastructure, perhaps 7-8 years internationally.

Alth0ough Part 15 of the FCC allowed for CB Radio (a much longer fad) from 1947 until it collapsed with the arrival of cell phones in the 1980’s) it was still almost a 30-year fad.

But we look at when fads peak:  When they are on television is a good indicator.  And when a replacement technology comes along, is another.  With social media, I would think that the flurry of IPOs is a good sign as to when a fad is peaking.

I last told you to keep an eye out for the decline of social media on March 27th of this year.

On March 27th, Yahoo reported the closing price of the Social Media ETF SOCL as $19.35.

On Friday of last week it closed at $18.01.

To be sure, it has been higher…the 52 week high was $23 and the low $16.12.  Even in a sideways market, there will always be people who can spot a bargain and sense a top.

But the decline JB noted on the amount of junk email coming in may mean something much larger.  We could be starting down the slippery slope of a passing fad.

There’s a reason Santa’s credit card is not bulging with Hoola Hoops and CB radios this year.

We pride ourselves as smart people, generally.  But when barriers to entry fall, as I wrote in the fall of 1999 in an article Death by Dot Coms, things quickly turn down.

• In 1832 a panic hit the US and was caused by the emergence of automation in the linen business. As textile prices dropped like a free-falling safe (through the early 1840’s) the supply-demand equilibrium was set to the breaking point and a panic ensued.
• In 1873, the rightful freedom for 7 million Blacks, liberated by the Civil War, coupled with the front end of a huge immigration from Europe, that caused excessive labor in northern cities and pricing power collapsed as working wages fell. Naturally, financial panic ensued. The over-supply of labor echoed in the 1897 panic, too.
• In 1929, the crash occurred when farmers, who had produced 7 million horses a year in 1920, planted excess grains as horse demand died in the 1920’s thanks to Henry’s Fords. This drove down commodity prices, and although low commodity prices fueled the Roaring Twenties, the back end of the deal was that the worst depression ever followed.

Each time we have seen barriers fail, there has been a major and rapid decline in general public well-being unless a series of sequential bubbles occurs, or war works, too.

Thus the 1987 mini-crash led (indirectly) to Desert Storm, and the Internet Bubble led to 9/11, the I-Wrong war, and the Housing Bubble.

It’s just how history works out…so when we look at Social Hoops, and CB Media, pardon me if we all take comfort knowing “This, too, shall pass…”

Ain’t no point to Social Media if it doesn’t change anything…and judging by the slam-dunk of the feral (sic) budget this weekend, I’d venture social media has been a great “steam let’er-off’er that simply keeps the old line Ruling Class in place.

Comments

You will see we have finally started to provide for comments.  They will be reviewed a couple of times a day (as time permits, but likely not until this afternoon because of a busy schedule).

The idea is to collect topic, site, direction, and anything else that may come to mind.  Good manners and PG-13 language is appreciated.  OK, R-17 then…

The Pechewzelwhacker’s Diary

Yet more trivia relating to the origins of this particular term:  Reader Jim (who was laid up with the creeping death) sent in this linguini note:  (*when you read this site long enough you’ll instantly figure out the correct word is linguistic but we’re just word play’in…)

So the reason of my note was the statement from another reader saying that “Google doesn’t think pechewzelwhacker is a word.”.  When I read that I was immediately taken back to my childhood when the accepted term for that part of the male anatomy in our house was “Tallywhacker“. Use of the other unsavory names would result in a ass whuppin and time in the corner or anywhere I could not access any of my toys, tools, hunting & fishing gear and such. 

This term followed me to my family, 2 girls & 2 knuckleheads. One day when knucklehead #1 was about 6 or 7 we were out back playing some catch getting ready for a baseball game later in the day. A couple of neighbor boys joined us over the fence but being older they were a little overwhelming in their tosses.

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I made the mistake of putting a market prediction out on this site a long while back – saying that I expected we would begin our next collapse around November 10.  I was wrong – early on that call, but as subscribers know, we’re always fine-tuning models.

Still, just because we’re early isn’t a bad thing.  The S&P closed yesterday below where it was on November 10, after all.  But the downside potential (although a Santa Rally is possible) is starting to look like a higher probability event.

The trend-leading Baltic Dry Index is down to 887 – so around those 2007-2008 levels.  This means seat belts should be fastened.

Right now, the only story in the markets is the collapse in the price of oil.  It was trading in the $59 range this morning.  Back when I expected the collapse to begin it was around $78.  Then, by November 15th, it was down to $75.  By the end of November, we had touched $65 and this morning we took out $60.

Two words for the critics of my call: Piss off.  Yes, Nov. 10 was a bit early.  Better a bit early than a second late.

Longwave economics is based on overall – general – moves of the economy.  .Individual stocks will always go to the moon, and there were stocks that rallied even in the Housing Bubble Collapse.

The Oil Collapse upon  us now will be interesting to see:  What $59 oil means (if you followed the links previously offered) was that drilling outfits would begin to “lay down” rigs in here.  And from there things will take a bit of time, but sure as a snowball on a mountain, there’s an oil price avalanche building.

No small portion of it can be laid at the dirty feet of the Republican Party:  The House passes a $1.1-trillion dollar spending bills which basically gives five major banks the opportunity to hold up the public again with another made-up crisis.

My friend and author Howard Hill (one of the world’s first financial engineers) explains that you have only to look at Greece to see how the public fleecing has gone global.

There, bonds were in trouble, so those who piled on to short positions made money.  And then, the bondholders were eventually made whole by the EU…which is what all that German Constitutional Court stuff was about:  Was it really a crisis when the bondholders didn’t lose, the short players made oodles, and the only loser was all citizens of the EU who had to pay for the wild-eyed gambling?

You tell me.

Consider the budget charade in Washington and this is particular:

Statement from FDIC Vice Chairman Hoenig on Congressional moves to repeal swaps push-out requirements

In 2008 we learned the economic consequences of conducting derivatives trading in taxpayer-insured banks. Section 716 of Dodd-Frank is an important step in pushing the trading activity out to where it should be conducted: in the open market, outside of taxpayer-backed commercial banks. It is illogical to repeal the 716 push out requirement. In fact, under 716, most derivatives — almost 95% — would not be pushed out of the bank. That is because interest rate swaps, foreign exchange and cleared credit derivatives can remain within the bank. In addition, derivatives that are used for hedging can remain in the bank. The main items that must be pushed out under 716 are uncleared credit default swaps (CDS), equity derivatives and commodities derivatives. These are, in relative terms, much smaller and where the greater risks and capital subsidy is most useful to these banking firms.

Derivatives that are pushed out by 716 are only removed from the taxpayer support and the accompanying subsidy of insured deposit funding — they will continue to exist and to serve end users.

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I sort of knew this was going to happen – but whether pro sports is a good thing, or bad, particularly when it is underwritten by public funds and/or public bonding authority absolutely is  a matter of public policy.

This all got started with our Peoplenomics.com report Wednesday.  While inconclusive on the good or evil question, we did serve up a large helping of facts that range beyond just the public funding of the rich man’s clubs and preferential tax treatment to the other stuff no one talks about:  Sports injuries that last a lifetime.

It’s seldom we get such articulate spokespersons come along, but two parents, different parts of the country and real leaders in their fields (real estate and law) have offered some dandy point-counterpoint.

Let’s start with the case FOR team (migrating to spectator) sports:

George,

While there are exceptions, I disagree on RJ’s comment on sports this morning. We were one of those families that encouraged sports participation. My kids sports were baseball and women’s softball. Both my son and daughter did the travel ball circuit from age 12 through high school. Some of those travels were the best times of their lives…mine too. Lifelong friends…camaraderie…etc. Those trips to tournaments from West coast to East coast and many trips in between were our family vacations and we wouldn’t  trade it for the world.

RJ mentions that when his kids quit soccer, they had a chance to actually play outdoors…

?Well….so did my kids?…playing outdoors isn’t exclusive to non sports participants…enjoying free time isn’t exclusive either…our family enjoyed a lot of free time. When we traveled to tournaments, we had a chance to see parts of the country we normally wouldn’t experience…going to local ?landmarks?,?

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The market going into the open looked like it would open down just a tad.  But is this the beginning of collapse?  No.  A “dead cat bounce” is likely out there in the short-term.

Collapses of the Black Monday sort have (almost) never happened more recently than 37-days from a stock market high.  More often, it’s in the 55-days or longer range.

December 5th, the intraday high of the S& P was 2079.47, so if you add at least 37-days to that you come up with January 11th.

The real time to be wetting your Depends will be January 29th, or thereabouts.  So for now, more likely is a dead cat bounce and remember the Santa rally is still due and options expire next week.  Odds of global disaster are slim until then.

Not that it couldn’t happen; it just wouldn’t be the smart money bet.

Retail Sales

Take an auto salesman to lunch today.  Thank him (or her) for doing more to save the economy that the whole collection of slick-talkers in DC.  Why?  Well…

From the Census folks this morning:

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for November, adjusted for seasonal variation
and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $449.3 billion, an increase of 0.7 percent (±0.5%) from the previous month, and 5.1 percent (±0.9%) above November 2013.

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Reader Note:  UrbanSurvival will be opening up comments early next week for a test period.  It’ll give you a chance to post feedback and to pass along thoughts on articles easier…now where were we?  Ah…..

Home Handy-Bastard’s Notebook time…

I don’t often mention that UrbanSurvival and Peoplenomics are “solar-powered.”  But they are:  Outside, just down from the garden and before you run into the ham radio tower, there are two racks of solar panels.  Each holds 10-solar panels; one rack is of 170-watt panels while the other is 180-watt panels.

All 3,500 watts worth of power is shoved underground down to my office/shop area where there are two Outback Power Systems Outback FM60 Charge Controllers , and a pair of OutBack FX2524T Sine Wave Inverter 2500W 24VDC 120VAC 60Hz sealed w/turbo and two racks of six-volt golf cart batteries (a total of 16-batteries, Interstates, and they work fine.

When we put in the system (which is grid-interactive, designed by Ures truly) the price of solar gear was considerably higher.  With the falling price of solar, you can now pick up panels for about half what we paid for the raw watts just 8-years ago.  (There are two in depth reports on designing and putting in your own solar panels and various design considerations over in the Peoplenomics archives for members and one can be found in the Master Index by searching the word “robust” – as in robust home power.0)

Which has what, exactly, to do with air tools?

Hold onto your horse, I’m getting to that:

Since we’ve built our little compound in the woods to be fairly robust, in terms of whatever the future can throw at us, I made a decision a number of years ago that we would want to have all kinds of power tools in an uncertain future and that’s what the solar panels are about (besides lowering the month power bills, which goes without saying, or does it?)

What was an eye-opener was when I went looking at the variety of tasks that could be done with air tools versus the number of jobs that could be done with electric tools, there was almost no contest.

This was proven to me yesterday when I went looking for a powered (electric, solar, air, natural gas…I don’t care what) caulking gun.

We’re using this winter to refurbish one of the few areas of the house that has not received its “designer treatment” from Elaine.  It’s the “screen porch” which is a common room in the South:  It’s where people can go outside when the temps are 90 (or lower) and not be carried off by wildlife and bugs to be eaten alive.

The problem with our old “screen porch” is that it was put together using 2-by-6 joists and 2-by-6 decking.  I can improve the floor stability easy enough with some house jacks and additional joists (I actually enjoy that sort of engineering) but when done, we will still have the problem of the decking.

What covers it now is old indoor-outdoor carpet which sucks.  Over the years, the cats have turned it into a killing room floor from a slaughter house:  Eating birds, squirrels, mice, rats, snakes, and even large bugs on it. Elaine’s a meticulous homemaker and she’s tired of cleaning indoor-outdoor carpet so we’ve decided to put on a couple of coats of this new super deck paint that’s become vogue in the last 10-minutes of home remodeling.

And that is where we get to the air tools.

Turns out, you can buy an air-powered caulking gun for under $40-bucks, which is what I did yesterday.  Campbell Hausfeld PL1558 Air-Powered Caulk Gun $35.

Reason?:  At age 60-something, you start to run the numbers of everything.

So for example this screen porch is 13-by24 feet and it’s decked with 2-by-6’s as I mentioned.   Everyone knows that a 2-by-6 is only about 5 1/2” wide,  so with the deck being 288” long, that leaves us with 52 boards too be caulked and since each one is 13 feet, that’s 680-lineal feet of caulking.  Not counting edge seams.

But wait! (As the late Billy Mays might have said…There’s more!).

Since we are going to put deck paint on the top side, Elaine figured that we would be smart to caulk both the top and bottom layers. 

Holy smokes!  Now we’re north of 1,300 lineal feet of caulking and if neither one of us had carpal tunnel before the project, I figure one, or both, of us would by the time we’re done.

No thank you.

Hence my decision to postpone the start of this mega project until the proper tool shows up, and as long as I was thinking about it, I remembered that as part of your prepping, you might want to have a good assortment of air tools for after whatever calamity comes along.

We’ve got several power sources:  The solar and the old diesel genset, so power shouldn’t be an option.  And with the welder (gas) I could cobble the 10 KW power head off the genset to a tractor-run genset and that, in turn, could power the big compressor in the shop, which could if need be, used to fill the pancake compressor for small stuff.

I know that doesn’t explain everything:  Why not just buy an electric caulking gun?

It’s true that Amazon carries several battery powered caulking guns.  Example:  Makita LXGC01Z 18-Volt LXT Lithium-Ion 10 oz. Caulk and Adhesive Gun (Tool Only, No Battery) but check the price.  With electric tools, you’re buying a motor and either a battery charger or long extension cord problem with every too.  But check the price; yee gads.

This may sound odd, but there are several safety issues that come to mind when dealing with power tools:  Air tools aren’t going to shock you if you drop one on a wet worksite.  You can use them with relative impunity, even barefooted (yes, steel toes are required, but let’s pretend for a moment that it’s 97F and dripping hot and you’ve got flip-flops on).

Air tools are cheap, in comparison.  I can do die-grinding with my die grinder air tool, or I can dig out the Dremel, but for many jobs the air grinder is better.  Ever try to find a big framing nailer or electric-powered finishing nail gun for those fun shop projects? t

That cabinet at the top of this morning’s report was a 3-hour project (excluding paint drying time) because using a chop saw with stops, a dado set, and a belt sander, everything can be make quick-=as-you-please and then out come the air tools and some clamps (to keep everything square) and Presto!@!  Done project!  Elaine gets her cabinet (lower part is where the vacuums for the house live), with this and that’s on shelves above) and I get to build another piece of whatever we call it look furniture.

With Christmas just around the corner, if anyone in your circle doesn’t live in a coop (e.g. rent instead of own a home) then there’s only two things you really need:  Air tools and a book on how to build real-life dioramas.

“What’s a Diorama?”

Well, it’s the secret to taking a kind of average-looking mobile home on the outside and turning it into a kind of museum like experience on the inside.  The general idea is that there’s a kind of interior decorating that is a cross between television and film “set design” and museum-level dioramas that flips just being in a “house” to being “transported” is Elaine’s word for it.

The Wikipedia entry will get you started:

The word diorama /?da???r??m?/ can either refer to a 19th-century mobile theatre device, or, in modern usage, a three-dimensional full-size or miniature model, sometimes enclosed in a glass showcase for a museum. Dioramas are often built by hobbyists as part of related hobbies such as military vehicle modeling, miniature figure modeling, or aircraft modeling

To be sure, there is a certain amount of trial and error to it, but do some looking around for hotels with “period rooms” and go check out museums which have large dioramas and next thing you know, air tools and dangerous thoughts will be wandering through your head – all but displacing the visions of sugar plum fairies at this time of year with dreams of a Wild West Man Cave, a Trader Vics-looking dining room…and oh, yeah…the air tools that Santa needs to bring you so you can actually build some cool places.

“You mean if I wanted to build my house so it looks like Superman’s Fortress or the inside of a Mayan temple like in an Indiana Jones flick, I could do THAT?”

Shoot yes, Bubba.

I’ve got designs for an tropical ocean beach diorama that may turn the washer and dryer off the dining room into a shipwreck bar in the South Pacific.  I’ll do before and after pictures.

It’s all according to the limits of your imagination and problem-solving ability.

Oh, and how much you’ve let yourself get sucked into social conventions that burn out your life with nothing in return which gets us to Wednesday’s Peoplenomics report…

Sports As a Waste Of Time

“Where am I going to get the time to do thing kind of radical home treatment?”

As I explained in a discussion of sports economics over on the Peoplenomics side of things Wednesday, people let their lives dribble out into television sets without getting anything of substantive value in return.  At huge public costs, too.

Let me share a dandy letter from a reader who whole-heartedly agrees with our unconventional view around here that while do-it-yourself sports are great (exercise and so on) the spectator sports, especially those that depend on taxpayer bonding authority are a rip.  We then got into the nubbins of the problem:  Pro spectator sports are now a major output of the USA.

Subscriber RJ gets it:

LOVE your commentary on sports today.

I’ve been lamenting about the parental hysteria around youth sports for some time, and after receiving grant money will be embarking upon a documentary film on the matter: working title is currently “What is Winning?” Many double-entendres within.

There was a great article in The Atlantic back in 2013 on the youth sports topic: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/the-case-against-high-school-sports/309447/

But what truly stands out is a comment my mentor, Dr.

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There has been a quiet exodus among some of us “grays” that should cause young people concern.

An increasing number are exercising their ability to (as the old airline commercial put it) “”Get up and move around the country.”

A cousin of mine, a year or two older, has picked up a winter home in Arizona.  My sister is eyeing Sequim, WA, and a long-time pal and her husband are looking at those hills north of Phoenix, too.

Their reasons vary, of course.  One likes more sunshine, another hates the traffic south of Bellevue, WA, and another has grown tired of the gray winters.  All super-legit reasons to move – on the surface.

But, when you stand back like you’re watching a herd, you that they are dispersing.  You know, like the animals that dispersed and headed up into the hills of Banda Aceh before “the big one” tsunami down there in 2004.  When I look just so, I see a kind of dispersion movement going on.

Not that they’d be wrong about dispersing.

I assume you’ve read the latest from super-brain Stephen Hawking.  According to this newspaper report, Hawking has seven ways that our run as dominant species on this rock could end.

Let’s run through them, one at a time, and see how realistic “The End” might be ands how to address those worries with just the right gifts at Christmas…:

1. Cataclysmic Asteroid Strike.

We don’t have to go any further than this morning’s report by the Christian Science Monitor to discover that a group of Russian scientists have spied a mountain-sized asteroid heading our way.

The good news is that while earth-crossing (goes ahead or behind Earth’s orbit every three years, or so) the asteroid is not at present dangerous.  It will miss.

Still,  you can feed paranoia for Christmas by giving a decent telescope like the Orion 09007 SpaceProbe 130ST Equatorial Reflector Telescope (Black).  For just $300-bucks, you could be the first one on the block to see it coming.  With a CCD eyepiece, you might be able to pick up some spare income from photographing the comings and goings from the motel down the street, too.  (Everything’s a what?)

Oh, and if you do find Planet X…..

2.  Artificial Intelligence

The way Hawking as it figured, humans might be judged as extraneous to the needs of AI..and so it could do away with us. 

In the meantime, notice that a group called Sqreem has been hired by the United Bank of Switzerland (UBS) to advise their high-end wealth clients.  Worth noting that Sqreem is not US-based, is it?

For gifting try Person of Interest: Season 3 ($40 bucks) along with The Arduino Starter Kit (Official Kit from Arduino with 170-page Arduino Projects Book) ($90) and some USB cables and a copy of Excel and Access so you can whip up spreadsheets for logic and Access databases until you, too, get a TV series about you AI project.

3. Genetically Created Plague

I bet you didn’t know that there’s a current outbreak of plague in Madagascar, did you?

The truly paranoid will want their own rolls of  Roll Products 142-0004 PVC Film Biohazard Warning Tape with Black Imprint, Legend “Biohazard” (with Logo), 55 yd.

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This about the easiest Monday morning column I’ve ever written.

That’s because of two phone calls Sunday from my list of “designated smart guys.”

Everyone has them, or should.  They’re the people who work in an industry, have a specialized practices, or some skill or exceptional expertise that sets them apart from run-of-the-mill people who don’t think, don’t store intellectual capital, and who couldn’t connect two dots to form a line to save their souls.

The world is full of “average” people, for a reason: Laziness.

It’s simple enough to cure, fortunately:  All you need is a design template:  If you want to be like smart, successful people, all you need to do is spend your time talking and learning from (care to guess?) smart and successful people..

I like to share the thoughts of my “Designated Smart Guys” (Ure’s Brain Trust) because they are extremely smart people and when they nod in a particular direction, you’re best advised to look where directed, because something BIG is likely coming from off yonder thataway.

The first call was from my friend Howard Hill, who recently published the definitive book on how the Housing Bubble collapses.  The book hasn’t sold particularly well, but that’s because it was late to market.

In the world of high finance opinions are made quickly, but unfortunately, it can be argued that books prior to Howard’s missed key aspects of the crisis.  They simply got it wrong.  Howard’s book, on the other hand, really takes things apart, gets it right, and extracts a lesson which is useful to UrbanSurvival/Peoplenomics readers who invest in the longer-term  and don’t so much care about scalping a dime today and a nickel tomorrow.

Howard doesn’t write enough, but when he gets into a serious writing mood (three very excellent posts in one weekend) I feel compelled to share Howard’s work with you as incredibly useful in developing your understanding of high finance.

So part one of this morning’s column is to read the following (in this order):

Are We There Yet?

The Next Big One Might Already Be Warming Up

Three Conditions and Three Warning Signs

How to Tell if the Next Financial Crisis is Upon Us.

It’s a Wonderful Business

Bailey Bros Building and Loan

The last one will particularly appeal to people who enjoy Jimmy Stewart’s role in the Christmas Season classic – it’s a reminder of just how deeply ingrained our canonization of the financial industry is. 

Oh, and it also is yet-another reason to believe that “The Movie is the Message” as our Gulfstream-crowd sources have mentioned on many occasions. 

When one of the inventors of Financial Engineering as a craft calls, I listen.

But that wasn’t the only call to pass on from Sunday.

The second call was from a very knowledgeable smart guy in a different field: Military affairs. 

While we can’t reveal his former rank or other personally identifiable information, what I can tell you is when a former US Defense Attaché calls, I pay strict attention..

In particular, as we are watching The Global Caliphate get rolled out, watch Constantinople closely and check the Wiki entry for Ottoman Empire.  The hint of future from that exchange was simple:  Watch the Turks. 

During the 16th and 17th centuries, in particular at the height of its power under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire was a powerful multinational, multilingual empire controlling much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia, the Caucasus, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa.^[11] At the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries.^{[dn 4]}

With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, the Ottoman Empire was at the center of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries.

The advice from our source is simple:  Notice that religion in Turkey is 67% Sunni and that their most recent leader has been turning from his predecessor’s Western-leanings back to a more traditional Sunni social structure.  Which, in case it’s too early to connect the dots, makes Turkey a key ISIS player, even while they may put on some NATO duds now and then.

Turkey has “run” the ‘Stans before, all the way to Mongolia, so while we watch the birthing of the Global Caliphate, I expect relations to warm between the Saudis and the Turks and for ISIS to continue gathering resources in that part of the world.

Also, you may find one other part of the conversation interesting:  Why Russia may be expected to double-down on any Ukraine bets. 

It comes down to two things:  Most Russian military hardware depends, at least in some measure, on parts made in Ukraine.  The other key point is that Ukraine is Russia’s breadbasket, not to mention the Crimea being their only warm water port.

The EU desperately needs another financial date rape (ask Cyprus, Greece, and others about how much fun this is), but Russia is not about to be bullied by cookie-pushers into a Western rollover.  Not without bigger trouble than we can afford. 

2017?  We should be in the depths of the economic collapse, and that will speed up Armageddon since many of China’s five-year plans for 2020 are working well ahead of schedule.

Not later than 2020, seems our front row seats at World Collapse will be ready for prime time and if you haven’t resettled well away from a major city by then, please take a few moments of which country invented firestorm attacks on civilian populations. 

Two hints:  Dresden and Hamburg.

Along with Nagasaki and Hiroshima, these kinds of highly successful attacks on civilian populations set the USA up for a 70-year run as a global superpower.

Surely, you and I can’t be the only ones who have noticed?

Around the Ranch:  Leaf Me Alone

It you ever wondered about living out in the woods, there is one tiny detail that is NOT it any sales brochure.

It’s the matter of how many leaves come off the hardwood trees around here in the wintertime.

Sunday I finished up hours and hours of leaf blowing because if we don’t blow the leaves off, what passes (barely) for a lawn gets covered with so many leaves that sunlight doesn’t reach the plants and then the grass dies….all of it.

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