Anyone who has studied their Scripture knows we ought to be seeing the next Horseman of the apocalypse pretty quickly now, since the oceans are bittered (at  least off Japan) and Death is riding around Africa and trying to hop plane rides to the U,S,

But mainly, the world end is taking its own sweet time getting here.

Take Ebola, for one.

OK, there’s a second confirmed case in Dallas and we’ve got some spare change on two more cases being discovered in America before the week is out.  That’s just looking at numbers.  Another number to think about: PR Department overtime (if any) at CDC keeping people from panicking.

The other BIG Slow-Mover is the market.

The decline of last week was fairly painful, but we’re due to get a break because options expire come the end of the week and Wall St. doesn’t like to pay bears (short side players) their due, so a modest rally is quite predictable.

But the really bad part about the world ending slowly is we’re being treated to examples of mass stupidity in the political arena.

Real Clear Politics makes the point this morning that the democrats are now blaming the republicans for Ebola.

The Gallup polls numbers, that I follow fairly closely, paint a picture of a country that is slowly losing its belief in elected officialdom.  Over time.

This would not be particularly concerning if it didn’t fit with some some macro-scale anthropological prototypes, such as the decline of the Anasazi.

Instead of watching news channels for clues about the future, a read of Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter is a good starting point.  From Wikipedia:

Tainter begins by categorizing and examining the often inconsistent explanations that have been offered for collapse in the literature.^[4] In Tainter’s view, while invasions, crop failures, disease or environmental degradation may be the apparent causes of societal collapse, the ultimate cause is an economic one, inherent in the structure of society rather than in external shocks which may batter them: diminishing returns on investments in social complexity.^[5] Finally, Tainter musters modern statistics to show that marginal returns on investments in energy, education and technological innovation are diminishing today. The globalised modern world is subject to many of the same stresses that brought older societies to ruin.^[5]

However, Tainter is not entirely apocalyptic: “When some new input to an economic system is brought on line, whether a technical innovation or an energy subsidy, it will often have the potential at least temporarily to raise marginal productivity” (p. 124). Thus, barring continual conquest of your neighbors (which is always subject to diminishing returns), innovation that increases productivity is – in the long run – the only way out of the dismal science dilemma of declining marginal returns on added investments in complexity.

And, in his final chapters, Tainter discusses why modern societies may not be able to choose to collapse: because surrounding them are other complex societies which will in some way absorb a collapsed region or prevent a general collapse; the Mayan and Chaocan regions had no powerful complex neighbors and so could collapse for centuries or millennia, as could the Western Roman Empire – but the Eastern Roman Empire, bordered as it was by the Parthian/Sassanid Empire, did not have the option of devolving into simpler smaller entities.

Another dandy read is Jared Diamond’s Collapse:  How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive:

In the prologue, Diamond summarizes his methodology in one paragraph:

This book employs the comparative method to understand societal collapses to which environmental problems contribute. My previous book (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies), had applied the comparative method to the opposite problem: the differing rates of buildup of human societies on different continents over the last 13,000 years. In the present book focusing on collapses rather than buildups, I compare many past and present societies that differed with respect to environmental fragility, relations with neighbors, political institutions, and other “input” variables postulated to influence a society’s stability. The “output” variables that I examine are collapse or survival, and form of the collapse if collapse does occur. By relating output variables to input variables, I aim to tease out the influence of possible input variables on collapses.

While it’s fun having access to real cutting edge futuring technology such that we expect a China spying story to pop any minute now, and we know that people gifted with prophetic dreaming are about to go have another look, most of the look-ahead can be gathered with only the faintest of headlines and a decent framework.

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(Reader note:  I promised shorter columns this week.  Let’s see how we do.  Our usual precisely timed reports may be somewhat off schedule due to lightning storms which are wandering through East Texas this morning.  Our editor (Zeus the Cat) has taken the morning off to hide out in places unknown until the racket dies down.  He showed me how to smell-check once, but I fergot.)

You may not remember the early Peoplenomics reports.,  But you’ll find this tale pretty interesting.

In one of the earliest of what are now around 600-back issues of Peoplenomics – December 1, 2001 to be exact – I hypothecated the existence of something called Directorate 153.

The concept was that somewhere in the West there would be a multi-purpose government tool (yeah, sort of like one of those Leatherman tools) so that governments could do what needed doing without being “found out.”

Secret agencies, which includes the likes of the NSA and CIA, are fine for large scale intelligence operations.  But the military-intelligence operations have an “iffy” history of getting things right.  Or, keeping secrets.

To be sure, operations like Iran-Contra were  – at some level – well-intentioned.  But they also were large enough that they had a considerable “footprint” and this is a very bad thing because it meant over time, their existence and operations were almost sure to leak out.  They did.

Like the multipurpose tool, what government needs (or thinks it does) is something small that can be pliers, tweezers, pea shooter, futurists, high-level henchmen, and all more or less under wraps.  Oh, and under budget, too.

The December 2001  “Inside Report” (the name Peoplenomics had not yet been cobbled together) was based on the reports that someone knew more than was being told to us about the events surrounding 9/11.

For one, there were a flurry of reports about a group of “5 Israelis” videotaping events on 9/11.  Sure enough, we can find lots of references to this through a Google Search, but whether they were “genuine” or not is a little more ethereal.

In 2001 there were several incidents that suggested an “almost visible, but not quite” Invisible Hand was operating in the background not only of 9/11 but also the OKC bombing and other events as well.  Even now, a conspiratorially open person might wonder about some of the claims of “others”.

And the HYPOTHECATED Directorate might have gone back even further.  Remember, there are reports many people miss in the high-volume flow of the news that point to a “hidden hand” even going back to the Kennedy Assassination in 1963.

Besides the “grassy knoll” shooter, we also hear reports that Lee Harvey Oswald’s name was quietly added to the CIA wall of heroes.  What to make of the report?  I’ll leave that to you.

To me (back in 2001 and ever since) this “hidden hand” with future forecasting technology has been a real possibility.

Until this weekend.  Now it may be real.

That’s as the Washington Post began to report on (loved the choice of words here) a hidden Navy Directorate in a case involving the manufacture of illegal silencers.  From the Post report:

“The silencers — 349 of them — were ordered by a little-known Navy intelligence office at the Pentagon known as the Directorate for Plans, Policy, Oversight and Integration, according to charging documents”

The specifics of the Post story are less interesting to me than the generalities of it because it substantially “bulks up” our logical conclusion that there not only could be a few of these multipurpose tools, squirreled here and there, but they may have (and may still be) engaged in exactly the kinds of behaviors that would fit our Directorate 153 profile.

• Burn bags of documents are missing.  Someone doesn’t want anyone – including Navy brass by the sound of it – knowing exactly what was going on.
• Fake law enforcement credentials were made available to the group.
• The group (likely) had unlimited access to the highest levels of “national technical means”.  This would mean Keyhole satellite data, data surveillance, and so forth.
• And, by the time the Post gets done, I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t some angle of “futuring” that would come to light.

But this last is highly speculative.  A little more background may be useful.

The December 2001 report sketched out a need for Directorate 153 on the basis of continuity of government and initially it was sited in the UK as an  outgrowth of MI-6.  This is because the British really had “the reins” of spy networks 30-years ago (and longer).,  They’d been the “seat of empire” and so it would be logical for there to be a major foreign component to Directorate 153.

Most Americans don’t have a clue why this is so, but here’s what the British were so important.

American government officials are barred (courts and law problem) from wiretapping whoever they care to when they’re off sniffing our problems for the country’s future.

How do you “solved” the legal problem of blocked wiretaps without a court order?

Easy!  You simply route the calls through a foreign-staffed telephone exchange and employ foreign nations to do the listening.  In this way, while the intelligence so gathered might not be admissible in a court, the quality of the intel was above reproach.

And technically it was legal.

One of the better-know communications intercept sites is Menwith Hill RAF station in the UK (Yorkshire).  Another is  outside of Alice Springs, Australia.  Known in the trade as Pine Gap and part of the Echelon arm of “national technical means.”

Even as the NSA operation up in Provo comes on line, the future of such earlier circumventions of strike constitutional law remains bright because two-way radio coms don’t always make it onto the PSTN (public-switched telephone networks) which is why from the KH-17 series and on, surveillance satellites have been equipped with broadband radio receivers that can frequency hop wherever needs in order to hear what’s being said behind pretty much whatever rocks you chose in the Middle East.

Even that is not perfect, however, which is why the graduates of Fort Huachuca (AZ) include folks who schlep  computers and scanning radios into the front lines of conflict (and beyond front lines) in places like Afghanistan.  (Thank you for your service, BTW.)

One of the real difficulties if my hypothecated Directorate 153 is real, is that compartmentalized intelligence is a real beast of a management problem.

Sure, you might cut up the functionality into multiple agencies (part of the group might be with the Navy, another part secreted into the Department of Agriculture, maybe Commerce, or the other uniformed services), but in doing so, there would be a huge level of trust required.

Still and all, even with congressional oversight of intelligence, there’s nothing to stop a group of super-patriots within government from creating their own “meta agency” and that may be the case in real life.

And sometimes the line between national interest and “that piece of paper” becomes a bit blurred.

So we’ll be watching the Post story develop and see how many of the pieces of our “hypothecated” Directorate 153 can be pieced together.  Just one, though, is a damn good start.

Just maybe it’s just seeping into media….uh, what it it?   13-years behind the theoretical work.  Not bad for a “nutter in the woods.”

A recent hypothecated episode is here.

Home Handy-Bastards Workshop

Say, not to pick a fight with the reviewers at Family Handyman, but I disagree with their assessment of the importance of a laser line sighting device and LED work light being built into a circular (e.g., Skil) saw.

While it’s true that any good journeyman carpenter can follow a line by instinct, those of us with only marginal skills can use any help we can get.  Bring on the lightshow and lasers!  Check out the latest issue for the lowdown on which two saws in their “saw off” had the laser.

I don’t get paid to mention this, unless you ante up $12 bucks for a subscription to The Family Handyman (1-year).  I think I get a nickel of that if you do. 

My real motivation is to remind you that regardless of how much money you (don’t) have, you can always add to the appearance and convenience of your own home with very little effort.  That’s what God made weekends for.

This week, we’ll get hip-deep into this in Peoplenomics and how it may pay large in the Depression to come.

War Between  the Wheels

Was it Peoplenomics or here that I was mentioning the showdown between Old Paradigm and New Capitalism as we discussed how Uber.com and Lyft.com were making a real go at the traditional taxi cab industry nationally.

So reader James is in Pennsylvania where the Public Utilities Commission is trying to jam a $6.9 –million fine up Lyft’s ying-yang.

George,

On the Uber and Lyft issue in Pittsburgh. If you want a cab now and are going anywhere but the stadiums,airport or the casino, call a jitney. Cabs in this city are strictly a gravy sucking reprobate stain. Period. Call a cab and pack a lunch.

They show up late or better yet, they take calls and just never show up. They don’t have to if they don’t want to. Its the rules they operate under. The only time they try doing ANYTHING is when some other transportation method is suggested.

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You know?  I really should stop looking at the “crap-coming-at-us” list between now and 2025 because – sorry to say – I don’t see a happy ending.

Not that we can’t “get happy” for however long a good hit lasts, or the effects of whatever you poison your liver with.  Those things will always be around.

But what’s missing is economic growth of the organic kind.  And since that’s heading for the exits almost every turn, it’s time to do some real straight-thinking about supply, demand, shortage of resource, longage of humans, and where we fit into the mix as things head for “10-years in the blender.”

And toward what end?  To redefine what (and maybe IF) we can do anything about it.  Prepping, as you’ll read in this morning’s report, misses much of the point.

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Given how the market turned into a trading turd Thursday, and just looking at the futures a couple of hours before the open (down about 9 on the S&P), I’m beginning to think that we will touch (and likely bounce) off the 1,900 level sometime in the next five trading days.

Or (and this is an increasing possibility), we could have a drop to somewhere a good bit under 1,900 by the 23rd, or so.  Then a bounce up to the trend channel, and then a further retreat such that by our November 10 target date, we could be dancing around 1,750 on the S&P.   Or we just crash to that level…my crystal ball short term is in the shop.

Long wave econ argues Toast is the correct answer long term.

Say, that’s a pretty glum outlook!   Yes – including our outlandish 2025  rate :28% unemployment rate forecast, but that’s how cookies crumble.

Well, maybe it’s not so glum….

You see what’s going to happen here shortly (with oil down to $84 and change this morning), is it will shortly occur to someone besides me that deflation is screaming.  And, as it does, what else is likely to tank in a major way? 

In the very short term, gold.  Unlike paper, though, gold can’t be watered down, so I wouldn’t be a seller…a real slump in gold prices could be the investment of a lifetime.

OK, what does Janet Yellen (et alia) do about it?

They MAY have started to “UNprint” the money supply.

The evidence is right there in your face:  M1 is down 1.7% in the last month and if we take the M1 annualized rate, basis the last three months, M1 is down to 2.3%.  That’s a hell of a chance from a 12-month print rate of M1 of 9.9 percent, I’d say.

M2 is down  to 5% from 6.4% over 12 months.

Which means?

We know that money’s cost is a function of supply and demand.  If the rates are low, there’s no real incentive to spend.  Why buy now if things are going to be cheaper down the road?  But with the Fed doing some visible tightening, they’re basic ally saying money commanding a little more interest might be a good thing.

Especially in the oil patch where oil under $85 puts the fear of God in drillers.  At these kind of prices exploration falls apart and if it gets much lower, rigs will start laying down.  And there will go yet another crop of high-paying jobs – off to harvest.

So watch today quite closely:  We have four Fed officials speaking and they may have something to say in unison if we listen closely.

Tomorrow’s Peoplenomics report looks at the “different kind of prepping” that comes into view in the times ahead, if what develops in coming months is indeed “The Big One.”  You may find it useful.

Import Export Prices

Here’s Festive for you:

Prices for U.S. imports fell 0.5 percent in September, after declining 0.6 percent in August and 0.3 percent in July, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Each of the 3 monthly decreases was led by falling fuel prices.

The price index for U.S. exports also declined in September, decreasing 0.2 percent following a 0.5-percent drop in August. Imports All Imports: Overall import prices continued a 3-month downward trend in September, falling 0.5 percent. Prices for imports decreased 1.4 percent from June to September, the largest quarterly drop since the index declined 1.4 percent during the final quarter of 2013.

In September, fuel prices drove the decrease, although nonfuel prices also declined. The price index for overall imports fell 0.9 percent for the year ended in September, the largest 12-month decrease since the index fell 1.1 percent in February.

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The Great Cleaving has begun in earnest.

In case you’ve missed it, this morning (sorry to do this to your schedule), we’re going to inspect four mighty interesting pieces of the Great Puzzle Called Life.  At the end of it, I hope you’ll find some worthwhile thoughts so that you’ll be4 able to assemble, tear-apart, reassemble, (rinse and repeat), as you work out how to prepare for whatever it is that comes next on either side of breathing.

The four concepts are both guiding and troubling…and should you have thoughts, please feel free to drop me an email.

The Big Picture

The first puzzle piece involves the currently being waged war between old technology and new.  We’ll explain the World of Two Travelers, 2014.

The second picture (or puzzle piece) involves breakthroughs in microelectronics that will (yet again) revolutionize technology. Cheaper, smaller, and more ubiquitous.

The third piece is a YouTube video which gets into the little matter of aliens, abductions, and related phenomena that edges us toward….

The fourth puzzle-piece.  In this, we see within recent works retranslating ancient texts, how Earth is (hate to break the news to you like this) a kind of a “planted planet.” 

The literature is clear, depending on how you read it and whose translations you trust: A super-race of beings is afoot in Universe, doing the bidding of a central Ruler of All.  And these Johnny Appleseed types, who “planted planet” are fabled in stories handed down through generations of humans now called simply “religion.”

Yet when we get into it, and you read translations of ascension language, suddenly ancient prophets “showing their faces as the Sun” might be descriptions that would have been used by desert tribesmen who have never seen a transporter beam on Star Trek in operation.

It’s an interesting stew and of first-order importance, worth the time to be taken as a whole cross-sectional sample of a very strange world, indeed.

1. The Tale of Two Travelers

When I write our Peoplenomics  reports – like the one this weekend on prepping for the guts of the Depression still in its infancy – I like to use examples that illustrate how the creative rebirth of capitalism is contained within the new technology that is presently set to destroy old-technology controlled by the (One Percent) who rule of Earth.

Nowhere is this more clear than in something I call The Two Travelers:

Case 1:

Two travelers awaken in their home town of Palestine, Texas.  They need to meet with an important client in Houston, Texas.  It will be a long meeting and it will start promptly at 8 AM, so the travelers decide to go early and stay overnight.  They arrange for the meeting to be held at their hotel in a conference room.

They fly from Tyler, Texas to Houston.

Upon arriving in Houston, they pick up a rental car for 24-hours ($60) and check into an inexpensive corporate-run hotel ($135).  Their total cost is  $195 plus a $5 tip for the bellman resulting in a total of an even $200.

Case 2:

All the other variables are the same except they call Lyft (www.lyft.com) and a private driver shows up and takes them to an AirBnB.com member’s home where they pay the driver $15 and the AirBnB bill comes to $75 for a nice room for the night.   The client picks them up at 7:00, and after breakfast, the meeting gets underway at the client location.  As they fly home, they add up the bills after paying, another $15 to a Lyft.com driver.

Their transportation cost was $30 instead of $60 and instead of a $135 hotel, they spent $75.  New trip cost:  $120.  They tipped the Lyft drivers and left a bottle of beer for the AirBnB owner.

Case 3:

“Screw this travel stuff” says one of the two travelers.  “Why should we go to Houston when we can video conference on Skype?”

“Hell yes… – let’s take the money we save and go mudding…”

“That’s what I’m talking…No Ebola on Skype, right?  lol…”

Cost zero.,

In each of these cases, various levels of infrastructure are used to accomplish the same business objectives.  A meeting “face to face”.  All that is missing from Skype to make it 100% competitive with physical meetings would be the electronic thumbprint/signature plugin that I’m sure someone is working on (or I just haven’t found it yet).

That’s how the “worlds  are merging before us right now.  www.lyft.com is real and they threaten the “old way” which is the taxi cab industry.  So is www.uber.com.  And so is Sidecar (http://www.side.cr/)

AOf course, this means war so both companies are under attack by the “old paradigm defenders” in places like Tampa, FL and Pittsburgh.  Oh, yeah, and did I mention that in the Pennsylvania case, the paradigm defenders are trying to sock Lyft with $6.9 million in fines?  I didn’t check to see if taxi meters are made in Pennsylvania.

California, meantime, is trying to figure out how to deal with the insurance side of the equation.

By now it should be clear:  Change is afoot in the personal on-call transportation and lodging fields.

I figure it won’t be too long before the corporate hotel industry goes after AirBnB claiming something or other about licensing.  Life’s a bitch when change is in the air, ain’t it?

2. The Internet’s Next Leap

And it won’t stop there.

There’s been some breakthrough movement on getting chip size and cost down for linking appliances around the home (and even internal engine parts if you want to put them there, for all I know).

A good write up on it here.  Rice-sized addressable chips.  Perfect solution for any problem  that comes along and can be networked.  Look for these in future robotics.

For now, there is still a future in mechanical engineering, but the more upward mobility you want to have, the more it may depend on integrating “smart” into “dumb” mechanical assemblies. And pretty quick, a lot of intricate hardware will become web/’app enabled so that mechanical assemblies may become simplified and chipped instead of mechanically linked in more expensive ways..

“Holy shit, Batman, the Singularity is here…” wrote a reader who supplied the link. 

I have to say, we’re not surprised.

3. Watching the Watchers or the Greys

If the Singularity is here (and a convincing case is there for those to see it) then we start edging towards this little matter of End Times.

Regardless of your religious affiliation (even none), the End Times are just about here when “All things become known” and advances in Tech  are certainly on the upswing.

If you’ve followed some of our other discussions in this column, you’ll remember that there is this Johnny Appleseed thing going on – where some kind of Super Race (which may be able to transcend regular space-time constraints we enjoy) – has “seeded” the Earth.

And accounts of the “seeders” if you will show up as religion.

A lot of research has been done on the alien abduction problem, as the jury is out on whether the abductees are being taken by “aliens” or whether there isn’t something “demonic” involved.

Check out this interview with Budd Hopkins…

Along with the alien encounter and abduction data, we have a whole field of emergent data suggesting that ancient contact between humans and “others” is how we were “bred” to be what we are now.

4. The Digital Rapture Problem

As I explained in yesterday’s column, whether there are “watchers” or “babysitters” or just outright “demons” around doesn’t much matter because we seem to be in a kind of digital rapture.

People are “leaving the earth” and joining up as a mass consciousness “in the air”. 

I did promise you this:

I’ll have to ask Chris up at www.thechronicleproject.org to run Thessalonians 4:16 through their filters and see how it comes out…

Thess. 4:16 is where we get into the meeting “in the air” part of The End.

Chris Tyreman was kind enough to share a very long, but thorough discussion of the whole “rapture thing” from his scholarly perspective.  I’ll let him explain…

“The rapture as described by many modern churches, is an idea based upon this concept given by Paul.  This is not a historical concept, but relatively new.

1 Thessalonians 4:16-1721st Century King James Version (KJ21)

16 For the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first;

17 then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so shall we ever be with the Lord.

The term “rapture” is not biblical and the event is merely a description of Jesus collecting his followers at the end of the rule of the anti-christ to defeat the fallen angel Azazel’s (anti-christ/beast) forces at the valley of Migado.  He is the one who arises from the pit where he was placed after causing the destruction of the Earth at the time of Noah.  Peter mentions those angels in his letters.  One can see the book of Enoch for the complete story which can be found online as “The Book of the Watchers”.

The rapture concept is one of the best ideas that those who control the Earth have come up with to dilute the strength of the church followers of Jesus.  Liken it to two people being told war is coming and they have to train.  One trains very hard, but the other is told not to worry, he will be taken to an observer position where he will be safe.  The day comes for the war and both are put in.

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Hum-dinger. 

A discussion and chart is up on our premium content site, www.peoplenomics.com.  The report link is here.

The rally might have had something to do with the release of the Fed meeting minutes for last month which included this downright supportive of low interest rates for a while longer:

In their discussion of monetary policy for the period
ahead, members judged that information received since
the FOMC met in July indicated that economic activity
was expanding at a moderate pace. Household spending
appeared to be rising moderately, and business fixed investment
was advancing, while the recovery in the housing
sector remained slow. Fiscal policy was restraining
economic growth, although the extent of restraint was
diminishing and would soon be quite small.

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UC:  ubiquitous computing.

A New Pet Theory (NPT) is rattling around between this ears this morning and while it’s simple enough there are profound implications.

Let me lay out some (rather large) data sets here and see if you get to the same conclusion, shall we?

Dataset #1

Peak oil is real and fracking is destroying the earth..  I get tons of email on this point from Oilman2 because it’s what he does.  As good a petroleum engineer/bit designer/rig operator as he is, he’s even a better thinker and writer.  Some examples:

You know I travel a lot to Mexico – and while there is a different mind-set, it is simply because they have been living in an oilgarchy much longer than we have. They have Chili’s, McDonalds, malls and even outlet malls – just like we do. But they have no way to set things right, as their hyper-corrupt government is connected at the hip to the largest military power in the world – us.
https://news.vice.com/article/inside-the-mexican-college-where-43-students-vanished-after-a-violent-encounter-with-police

This is where we are headed as the economy continues to decline, mi amigo…

---

Here you are:
http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/10/07/central-california-aquifers-contaminated-billions-gallons-fracking-wastewater
http://www.bakersfieldcalifornian.com/business/kern-gusher/x167883935/Farmer-lawsuit-blames-crop-loss-on-oil-companies-waste-injections

Kern County has tricky geology, and there are few traps that do not leak to surface (this is the place where “bubbling crude’ existed, a la Beverly Hillbillies…). Injecting anything into that geology is problematic…

Oilman2

The extraordinarily caffeinated might be able to discern two data sets here:  Mass migration for economic reasons (all over the place) and the implicates of Peak Oil and Really Desperate Frackers.  Either way, let’s just look at them as one data set.

-Dataset #2

The things people put into their minds in general.  Lots of it just doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny.  Blood moons and a certain enterovirus, as an example. 

I won’t go into all of this except to say that the “alternative press” gets things right about 50% of the time.  Sometimes, it’s the other way around, like the Judicial Watch story about ISIS agents sneaking in from Mexico over the nearly non-existent “border…”

“Judicial Watch  Confirms: 4 ISIS Terrorists Arrested in Texas in Last 36 Hours”

We can argue for hours, I suppose, on whether the congressman who made the claim is basing it on accurate information. but that’s good coverage at JW.

On the other hand, the peripheral coverage on Ebola (and other viruses like D68) has in places been hysterical.

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Hmmm… we were on such a beautiful track, too…

Remember Monday morning I was telling you how the Dow was scheduled to zoom skyward?  Well, I was right….sort of.

The Dow had opened at 17,010 and then sipped up to 17,099 and change, which is close enough I’d say to call it an 89-point gain.  Call me a liar over 18 points come the close, but what about mid-session?

It was then cold feet set in.  The market was tossed for an 18-point lost (less a stick of chewing gum if you want to argue the decimal points) maybe because of the Spanish Ebola case.  That’s not a bad working theory…since markets in Europe are mostly down this morning…and the US futures are back pointing to another quick flush with Charmin due in about mid-session.

Besides the broadening top, we have to go back to some longwave economic theory.

Remember what happened on September 19th of this year?  Answer (you look too sleepy to figure this kind of thing out without prompting…)  That’s when the S&P hit a 52-week intraday high of 2019.26.

We also know from working with the data for what…17 years is it?.  The big collapse risk zones come around 27 days and 55 days after major peaks.

Look at 1929, for an example.  Back then the market peak came on September 3rd and by the end of October the country was reeling in the rubble from the Wall Street Crash.

Can it happen again?  Why sure…

Putting the math to it, we could expect the major decline for the year to come either around 10/23/2014 or 11/10/2014.  Just based on past performances.

Historical market action is always interesting stuff.  The market collapse in 1929 is no exception because it actual focused on two dates:  Black Thursday was October 24, 1929 (51 days past the peak) and Black Monday was October 28th – our 55 calendar days past peak..

October 29th (Black Tuesday) was the 56th-day.

Students of “When to panic about the market” should be advised to carefully read upo on what was going on in the markets back then:  For one, there was a lot of “trading on margin.”  Basically, you’re gambling with borrowed money when that happens.

Margin is still around (and widely used) today.  But much of the gambler’s penchant for risk has been laid-off onto options which is a whole separate discussion.

Look what happened though as the SHTF back then:

Over the weekend,  (following the prequel Black Thursday on the 24th) the events were covered by the newspapers across the United States. On October 28, “Black Monday”,^[12] more investors facing margin calls decided to get out of the market, and the slide continued with a record loss in the Dow for the day of 38.33 points, or 13%.

It was asymmetry of information at work: Once the momentum of margin calls passed a certain point, the collapse was bound to happen.  These things take on a life of their own.

The current “modern” thinking is that such a thing could not happen again.  But I beg to disagree.

The reason is social media.

Imagine what would happen if all of a sudden, a credible meme began over in social media and a rumor was set up that a “huge  crash is coming and the only way to survive will be to move everything in your retirement account into bonds…”

As prices began to fall, this hypothetical warning would be sent to more and more people – who upon seeing prices collapsing, would pile-on and the modern collapse would be on.

“You can be safe with just one telephone transfer…” would go our hypothesized market-panicker.  “If you don’t move your money right now, half your retirement could go down the drain…?

Of course, lots of events could trigger such an event.  Someone might, for example, set up a fake “doctor” who would announce some quite saleable doom-porn onto Facebook and the rush would be on.  “I’ can tell you with certainty that the government is behind Ebola and it’s all part of a worldwide conspiracy of the very wealthy to massively reduce world population.  If you don’t get out of markets before they are collapsed, you will have no hope for a bright future.  You will die like everyone else…”

People are dumb.  They eat doom-porn.

Social media has been a lot of fun.  Like CB Radio and Hoola Hoops.  And Beanie Babies.  And collecting Coca Cola memorobilia.

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Don’t ‘cha hate it when the damn alarm goes off on Monday?

Most Mondays I would have to agree with you but this one?  It’s a bit odd…almost surreal.

You see, there’s a massive global rally underway and it’s something worth discussing because it deals with an intriguing aspect of economics; namely that there’s only some much wealth (in aggregate) throughout the world.  So where does it go and where does it come from to drive these fits of elation and collapse that we go through?

In Asia, both the Japanese and the Chinese markets were up better than one percent.

Gains in Europe were on the order of one-half to one percent in the early going, too.  Except for the French, who you’ll pardon me for saying, can be a bit slow at times.  Even they are up a quarter of a percent.

The market futures were looking like a 60-point rally in the Dow, something less in the S&P and the metals were going zombie on us: Rising a bit from the dead.

OK, Detective:  Why?

For one, the weekend hype machine has just about convinced the world that the “U.S. is Safe from an Ebola Outbreak.”  Spit fire and save matches – that’d sure be gasoline on the market IF TRUE.  (You’ll pardon me if I wait a month and see if it’s just the initially exposed folks in Dallas…and whether there are more in the wings.)

Don’t let the Calendar get in the way of a good story, though:  The market loves the Jobs report out Friday and we have clear sailing statistics-wise until the the inflation numbers come out after the 15th.

The ugly under-belly of economics here is that money creation is being dialed back by the Fed.  When there is less money being printed, rates tend to firm…and if it’s carried far enough, rates will actually rise.

Over the past year, creation of M1 (the narrowest measure, basically a look at cash) was up 10.2%,  Notice how – in the six-month view it drops to a 7.2% annualized rate and then down to a 3.9% annual rate basis the most recent three months.

If you’re planning to buy a house, car, or other big-ticket item, it may be getting on toward time to close on that purchase because it begins to look like rates will (very, very slowly)  be firming.

Proof World is Not Ending

Baltic Dry Index – holding over the 1,000 level with a read of 1,029 this morning.  If the world was going to end, wouldn’t we be down into the 600’sd again?

Out Peoplenomics trading model still hasn’t turned down, despite end of world pronouncements left and right.  Damn little bugger just keeps up the smiley faces – for now.

Rude of crude to point out demand is still slack: Under $90 for crude this morning.  Is gold about to kiss the underside of $1,200? 

Week Ahead

Gee, how about the Fed’s Consumer Debt of Yoke and Oppression due out tomorrow afternoon?  Of course they call it the Consumer Credit report – which is the nice way of handing you a loaded revolver, I suppose.

Fed minutes Wednesday, and the Treasury Budget on Friday, but nothing to keep you from hitting the “snooze” this morning…

Ebola Historical

No more cases reported today (be patient, er, so to speak).  In the meantime, the actual facts of the case are being collected on Wikipedia, which will be as good a contexter of the hype as any.

Breaking Up Ain’t Hard to Do

Want an HP Computer?  You may soon be asked whether that’s a Hewlett or a Packard….as the once technogiant is on the verge of breaking up in order to be more in the business and personal marketplace, reports the NY Times.

It leaves me asking embarrassing questions, though:  Like “How come ya’ll just don’t do this internally through internal accounting?  Unless, of course, the idea it to do a stock-deal so the execs can make out…know what I mean?”

Are two options packages better than one?  You might want to check out how Bell breakup execs really did…

Art of Cheap Living:  Falling Gas Prices

Check out the “selected market” tool over at the AAA’s Fuel Gauge Report.  Shows that prices are really coming down – in fact down to $3.289. nationally when I checked out prices for Texas.  The Seattle area, where we just spent a month considering the possibility of moving, shows up with some of the higher prices around $3.702 per gallon.

This compares with $3.102 in   both Dallas and Houston…Granted the price of gasoline is not a particularly Big Deal when we’re creeping up to the retirement finish line, but 19% is 19% on any line-item in a budget…something worth paying attention to.

One other note abut retiring to the “Outback.”

Our property tax bill for the year came in Saturday.  Right around $873.  That for the house and 28.82 acres +/-.

Granted it’s a highly customized modular, but stay with me on point:  Our friends up in the northwest seem to be averaging around $3,000 a year in property taxes.

Effectively, this means our “rent to the government” (which is what property taxes really are) pencils out to $73/month for retirement.  Up north, the tax bite would be $250 per month.

Planning retirement is still pretty simple:  Take whatever your projected income in, then downsize the lifestyle until there’s more coming in than going out.

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Since we didn’t go up to Shawnee this weekend as planned, and since most of my Sunday was spent cleaning my office and writing code for the “Big Secret Project” we had some time to discuss a new book that arrived:  Mathematics 1001: Absolutely Everything That Matters About Mathematics in 1001 Bite-Sized Explanations.

Elaine had opened the book to the page (2/3rd’s) of the way into the book in which a simple discussion of the Monty Hall Problem was being discussed among the finer points of Probability and Statistics.

The Wikipedia entry on the Monty Hall Problem runs down the set-up this way:

The Monty Hall problem is a brain teaser, in the form of a probability puzzle (Gruber, Krauss and others), loosely based on the American television game show Let’s Make a Deal and named after its original host, Monty Hall. The problem was originally posed in a letter by Steve Selvin to the American Statistician in 1975 (Selvin 1975a), (Selvin 1975b). It became famous as a question from a reader’s letter quoted in Marilyn vos Savant‘s “Ask Marilyn” column in Parade magazine in 1990 (vos Savant 1990a):

Suppose you’re on a game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, “Do you want to pick door No. 2?” Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

Vos Savant’s response was that the contestant should switch to the other door (vos Savant 1990a). Under the standard assumptions, contestants who switch have a 2/3 chance of winning the car, while contestants who stick to their choice have only a 1/3 chance.

However clear this application of Bayes Theory is, Elaine wasn’t buying it.

To her was of thinking, if the contestant on the television show can now pick either door out of a Universe of two doors, the odds are down to 50-50. 

Of course, that’s not right…switching doors will “win the car” 0.66 of the time.  Not the 50% which would be the case if the contestant just picked from an initial Universe of two doors. 

The contrast in probabilities, a 2/3rd’s chance of winning the car if you switch) versus a 50-50 chance if you look at the problem wrong, brings to light a fascinating aspect of Bayes theories that (extended out to infinity) have some really shocking spiritual implications.

At the core of it is something I can “event-chaining” in real-life.  The concept of “event-chaining” is already well known in computing, it’s just that most of humans are right on the front steps of computer science and haven’t grasped that computers are teaching us about some very subtle aspects of Reality, if we’d only be quiet long enough to pick up on it.

The difference between the host and contestant and two doors, two outcomes being a 50-50 and a host and contestant grappling with three doors is just this little matter of event-chaining which is not well-described in spiritual matters.

Chains matter immensely, however.

Accident chains, specifically:  And there’s a little form you can use to see how what people do results in “accidents” but this is almost always a series of chained events.  Which gets us back to the Monty Hall Problem in statistics.

Accident-chains are very big in aeronautics, too, by the way.

The usefulness of Bayes is that it views the world (even after Monty opens a door) as still being part of an event-chain.  The choice problem does not “reframe” just because it now looks like a two factor two-door choice.

So in addition to everything else you do this morning, on your way to work, see what happens when you go through the implications of this statement:

“If by opening a door, the Monty Hall Problem results in a pro-change shift of adds, does that mean that other factors in Life may be working the same way in my life?

Or, as I got to on Saturday…

“Am I facing a Bayes choice problem because I am fighting a Firewire from hell problem in my studio while I have the Secret Project still pending?  Is Universe trying to bias me (my activity choices) from my natural inclination to do one thing (fix the damn Firewire problem) before doing the other (finish the Secret Project Server mods)?”

I decided (since Universe wasn’t budging on the Firewire problem) that I’d move to the Linux problem (hairy Squid proxy issues related to mixing content from eth0 and wlan1 in a secure way.

I should know in a week, or less how this will work out, but in the meantime, it’s yet another one of those “off moments in Life of George” when I frame something up (Universe shoving me this way or that) and the next day, UPS has left us a book which we happen to open and which happens to frame the Monty Hall problem and that happens to deal with how this Universe pushes topic.

So the ponder is (if Elaine and my sensibilities about reframing aren’t correct) Just how many discrete chain-steps removed are we from the set-up for the game of Life?

And then (depending on how far back you can see Bayes at work) is there any probability or is Free Will really not more of an illusion that we previously have been led to believe.

Or (weirder still) is this just a further hint verging on mathematical evidence that Life is a Big Game and we are nothing more than The Bayesian Blind” not being able to see back up the causative chains far enough in real-time “play” to really grasp more personal control over the Outcome of the Game?

I wrote this on Sunday immediately before firing up the Linux server.  I’ll make a note in a few hours on how programming went (sparing you the details).  The question before me is “Is finishing the Linux project a key “event-chain” that needs to be done right now?

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