(Gig Harbor, WA)  One of our long-time readers is a hard working east coasterly fellow who works a good ways up in one of those NYSE-list companies that if I told you, you’d go “Sure, I use their stuff every day…”

He sent me an email last week that is more that sobering because it looks ahead to “America After””.”

After what?

Well, odds are fair that the S&P will crack 2,000 today or later in the week.  And that (trigger effect) means that we could be in one last parabolic stock market blow-off for a few months to come.  BUT then we expect the Mutha ofs All Crashes – the one that will dwarf the 1930’s and make us all broken and beyond.

Markets go Up and markets go Down.  It’s just no one in “modern times of the nanny state” really plans on the Down part.  Except for a few diehard preppers, like us, and the other 16 people left in America who live below their means and prefer being financial icebergs to being professional victims.

So read this carefully and think through what it means:

G- I was in the land of [redacted’s] Inc’s HQ the last week in meetings. Had several interesting things happen to me so I will number them in order.

1. Had a meeting with a Big Sales Exec here and told me that “They” fully expect economic implosion next year or so. I never ever heard that type of talk from someone here at [redacted] in my entire time here.

2. Met with a young sales rep that I recently placed with one of our [redacted] companies and she as a 27 year old was just as awake as me. Again I have never heard a [redacted]sales rep that was awake especially that young. She is actually prepping herself. Unheard of in the last 8 years of me glooming in this doom business haha.

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Damn, I hate futuring on mornings like this. 

One of our SF area readers felt that 6.0 quake in the Napa country this morning:

Hi George! 

A little wake up call from Mother Nature this morning. Felt like being in a washing machine down here on the SF peninsula. A good reminder to all to be prepped!

Good news – and bad – it was something that Grady had called from  our www.nostracodeus.com data…

“A week ago we told you Earthquakes are coming. Now they are here. With the recent solar activity, we already seeing quakes of larger magnitude around the planet. Expect more. And since writing this, the headlined the San Francisco has occurred. Note also the beginning of volcanic activity under the ice in Iceland. Aircraft are being warned to avoid the area. There will be more, including aftershocks in the Bay area of San Francisco.”

And like that’s not enough?  Chris over at the National Dream Center which is now using some of the linguistic analysis tools Grady developed for Nostracodeus (he calls ‘em DreamBots because he uses the tool to read language change of predictive dreams) – has come up with four possible future-headlines that center on Dallas.

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Both the S&P and the NASDAQ hit new records Thursday and while not rich, my long-term out of the money call options on the S&P look less stupid this morning than they did two weeks ago.

Before we get into the Janet Yellen FedSpeak this morning in Jackson Ho Wyoming, where the Fedsters run to confab in the summer when it’s miserably hot in most of the rest of the country (48F and rain there this morning), I thought we would push back with a cuppa and do some serious thinking.

Biggest problem in the world today?  Lack of jobs.

Biggest cause of lack of jobs?  Oh, try machines and automation.

Biggest cause of machines and automation working?  The Internet.

Solution to all the above?  Beats hell out of us – we just sit in a dark fugue about it and wonder why the world continues on present course, but then we review antidepressant medication sales figures and everything sort of falls into place…

This morning, Fed Chiefette Yellen speaks on Labor Markets.

When you are in charge of ‘steering” the Great Ship of Economy” through difficult storms, it’s useful, methinks, to keep an eye on the eventual destination.

Since we’re in the midst of a great economic storm (all the time, seems) it would be key insight into the captain’s mindset to see what they talk about in the middle of the storm.

Since we’re big into language, we went looking for words that might matter in the long-term labor outlook for America.  Words like “outsource” and “robotics” and “automation.”

When the speech is released (check here for it after 10 AM Eastern), you can look for robotic references and outsourcing remarks, but I don’t expect much, if any.

On the other hand, terms like “Market expectations” and “economic growth” ought to be all over the place…

As of press time, the market seems to be swallowing the pre-comments about her comments with all the enthusiasm of a cough-syrup addict.  Futures were about flat.

I am a total worrywart about robotics eating what’s left of the economy. 3D printing and archived software code.  But I’m a whacked-out ex-corporate rainmaker who views everything with suspicion.

And Janet Yellen isn’t likely to mention it this morning.  Perhaps that’s a defining difference between a strategic outlook at a tactical outlook.    Strategically, though, we’re in a heap-o-trouble and the people at the top of the decision-making food chain aren’t exactly inspiring confidence that they have a grip.

Like passengers on an airplane – which has lost all its engines at altitude, having the captain come on an talk about how nice and quiet the ride is, it sort of misses the point that a soft landing becomes a very important problem if the pilots would just look ahead a little further.

How far ahead is the Fed looking?  2016 or 2025?  It’s not an impertinent question.

More after this…

      

Drone Scoping

The Los Angeles Police Department is taking some heat from plans to use a couple of drones they got from Seattle.

Russia’s Peaceful “Invasion”

Oh the press’ knickers will be twisted up on this one:  All those aid trucks are now crossing into what Ukraine says is its turf in eastern parts of the country.

You ever see a war before where the first “shot” was a delivery of food aid to people ravaged by their own governments?

Watch closely, this may be a tactical first…

Terror in the Wings, Politics of Terror

Speaking of which, Chuck Hagel is expecting an up-turn in terrorism. 

The Secretary of Defense says the threat posed by ISIS is way beyond anything seen to date…

Of course, cynics may wonder how much ISIS has been helped by all that war materiel left behind in the sand box and all the aid given to AQ affiliates on the pre-text that they would help topple the (elected) government of Syria, which although we may not exactly love hasn’t declared war on us…We (the lobbied West) have been party to almost 200,000 killed on both sides in Syria’s ‘civil” war now.

The term “snookered” comes to mind and yes, I believe there’s some basis for federal criminal prosecution of US political organizations which have interfered with the orderly (non-political) operation of foreign policy development by Congress  under the Logan Act which says:

§ 953. Private correspondence with foreign governments.

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply himself, or his agent, to any foreign government, or the agents thereof, for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects.

1 Stat. 613, January 30, 1799, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 953 (2004).

I won’t name any particular Middle East country, but I don’t see any exceptions here and I don’t believe the people involved registered as agents of a foreign government despite multiple citizenships, if you follow.  But big political campaign donors are seldom prosecuted, in case you haven’t noticed.

See my earlier comments on the two kinds of justice in America:  Fast/Rich, slow/poor.

I believe we face peril as a nation when multiple citizenship holders are placed any elective or appointive office.  And the blowback from past lobbying around Syria is just a single current example.

Would we tolerate such influence from holders of dual-citizenship from Yemen, for example, or China?  Russia?  Oh-oh….there we go off on the egalitarian track, again.

Ah, but let’s spin up ISIS as having chemical weapons and hush-up the Western support for anti-Syrian efforts a year to three back…

As a nation we just awful memories.

Israel Losing Sources?

Hamas has executed 18-people accused of collaboration with Israel.

Date Night Note

ISIS has seen to a man being stoned to death for being an adulterer.

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Have you ever wondered who invented Time Zones?

Well, I have.  And in the process, I have solved all the world’s Big Problems – like poverty.  Takes a bit of explaining, but follow along on this…

One week ago, Elaine and I took off on this adventure to the Pacific Northwest where we are living for a full month.  Mostly it’s business, but lots of kid time, too, including the dinners out with family and so forth.

And that’s where Ures truly turns into a wet dish rag party-pooper:  I am still getting up at 2:30 AM (local time, 4:30 AM (indicted governor time in Texas) to write my column. So (local time) I like the idea of going to bed about 5 PM.  Being married in this time zone?  Ain’t ever gonna happen.

Same guy, same country, same snarfy markets comments, and – as far as the circadian rhythms of the body are concerned, the same body clock.  UrbanSurvival is a more institution.  (Comments welcome on whether it would be useful any other time of day…)

People of the Left Coast don’t seem at all bothered by the fact that they (rather arrogantly) can’t tell Washington, DC time…and DC’toninians live (as a result) displaced from the prevailing reality of the Right Coast.  Ever place in-between (like Ferguson) is screwed up.

Is it any wonder we are a deeply conflicted country?

So, I got to thinking (in a moment of Dementia/Minutia Disease, perhaps), who’s the sonovabitch who decided we should have one voting country and  11 clock countries involved in the Superpower America brand of products?

Bet you didn’t know that US outposts Baker and Howland Islands are at one end of the US Time Zone conspiracy while Wake Island in the western Pacific and McMurdo research station down in the Antarctic are 12-hours off, did you?

Turns out, that “local time” has its roots in what else?  Industry…sayeth Wikipedia here:

Local solar time became increasingly awkward as rail transport and telecommunications improved, because clocks differed between places by an amount corresponding to the difference in their geographical longitude, which varied by four minutes for every degree of longitude. The difference between New York and Boston is about two degrees or 8 minutes, the difference between Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, is about 7 degrees or 28 minutes. Bristol is 2°35? W(est) of Greenwich (East London), so when it is noon in Bristol, it is about 10 minutes past noon in London.^[1] The use of time zones smooths out these differences.

The first adoption of a standard time was on December 1, 1847, in Great Britain by railway companies using GMT kept by portable chronometers. The first of these companies to adopt standard time was the Great Western Railway (GWR) in November 1840. This quickly became known as Railway Time. About August 23, 1852, time signals were first transmitted by telegraph from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Even though 98% of Great Britain’s public clocks were using GMT by 1855, it was not made Britain’s legal time until August 2, 1880.

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(Gig Harbor, WA)  A couple of Julys ago, a friend of ours lost a son to suicide – a problem which continues to grow in the world.  So at this time of year we reflect on what kind of world we’ve made that drives people to end life prematurely.  A look at headlines is only part of it, but an important part, I expect.

But here lately, with the problems of Ebola, the stress of Ferguson, and more, we begin to wonder if increasing socioeconomic pressures globally might be ramping up (generalizing, if you will) the human death rate.  Against this backdrop, might the methods and techniques of medicine be used to study socioeconomic issues in a new way by using patterns of analysis similar to those employed in epidemiology?

There’s animal research, human psychological research, and the evidence right before us with things like road rage and the like.

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The market has had a couple of great days leading into the CIP report this morning, so let’s ruin breakfast with that one, first if you went short.  (Here, let me turn on your camera on your computer…aha! You could skip a meal, or two…)

“The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.1 percent in July on a seasonally adjusted basis, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 2.0 percent before seasonal adjustment.

The all items index posted its smallest seasonally adjusted increase since February; the indexes for shelter and food rose, but were partially offset by declines in the energy index and the index for airline fares.

The food index rose 0.4 percent in July, with the food at home index also rising 0.4 percent after being unchanged in June. The decrease in the energy index was its first since March and featured declines in the indexes of all the major energy components.

The index for all items less food and energy increased 0.1 percent in July, the same increase as in June. Along with the shelter index, the indexes for medical care, new vehicles, personal care, and apparel all increased in July. Along with the index for airline fares, the indexes for recreation, for used cars and trucks, for household furnishings and operations, and for tobacco all declined in July.

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If you’re in the “Immortal years” (age 10-60) you might not find this very pertinent yet.  Print it up and save it a few years.  When you’ve used up 6-7 of your nine lives, it will begin to make sense.

The first time I ever moved, it was a simple matter of throwing a couple of bags of clothes into the back of my black ‘64 Ford Falcon and heading south on (then) newly minted Interstate-5.

By the time I was moving for a second time, it was all trimmed down to a single suitcase and I got on a Western Airlines jet and flew off to Alaska to be a microwave tech rep on a remote radar site.

In subsequent moves, I was mostly married and so it was two people – half the work.

Except for divorce, which is a “special case” – which is back to the throw your clothes in the back of a car adding the all-important checkbook and key financial records, and off you go down the freeway again…

One of the reasons for our extended stay here in the Pacific Northwest, other than business and such – is to test-run the idea of moving.

OMG…what a problem!

Neither Elaine or I is very fond of the idea of dying in the East Texas Outback.  But, as I ask her every couple of days, “When we get old enough, just exactly where would we like to die?”  No place has come to mind, yet.

Not a morbid thought – just an practical thing to ask when you reach a certain age.  Thinking the unthinkable (at least in the Immortal Years).

When we decided to rent a condo/apartment up here for a month, we knew (sort of) what we were in for.  We have been in the outback long enough to really appreciate the lack of traffic.  We thought it was exceptional to have to drive 20+ minutes to get to the closest store, for example.

Well, guess what?

Turns out, after going to the store during rush hour up here in the suburbs of Tacoma, near Seattle, that people do the same damn thing.  Except, instead of watching the wilds of East Texas roll pleasantly by, they are staring at the tail lights of the car in front of tem.

Note to inventors:  Come up with a way to monetize the rear end of the car in front of you.

Turns out that in terms of the “hassle factor” of shopping is about equal both places, but a better view in the outback) our other big learning was that we really, really don’t want to be on a second floor…ever again.

About 150 pounds of supplies and consumables got lugged up the stairs, followed by 200 pounds of bags and such, and all this on top of a meal of fish and chips.

No, second floors are definitely off the list.

Through the trip, we have kicked it around…what would it be like to sell off a gazillion dollars worth of shop tools, for example…as opposed to what would an 80-year old man be doing with welding and turning gear?  I figure to at least live that long, right?

That same problem comes to the hobbies, too. 

Figure I won’t be flying much past 70…maybe 72, or so.  Won’t need space for all the airplane crap.

Table saws can also become a problem by age 90, or so.  By then, my one bucket-list woodshop project ought to be done:  turning a 2-by-4 into a toothpick.

And when the hearing begins to seriously roll off, and I did test and yes, 12 KHz is starting to roll=-off pretty good now, in a dozen (or two) years, I won’t be mixing strings, if you know what I mean.  And my snares and high-hats will likely be way too intense.

I’m not saying 66 is a magical age (although it is a kind of financial “finish line” that we’ll cross next year) but it is when you need to begin getting “real” and having the conversations with yourself about the “next to last move” in life.  The last one is easy – small no-bedroom place that’s dark and in the end, many of us will get to try out underground housing.

But yes, 66 is harder than 16, 18, 21 or turning 30.

It also begins to change one’s outlook on prepping (don’t tell Gaye over at BackdoorSurvival this!) but on the way up here, Elaine asked a very pertinent question:  “When we get really old (as in older) do we really want to spend our last year on earth prepping?”  OK, what about the last month or week, then?

I have to admit I’m still thinking about that one.

Life is one prepping exercise after another: You go along prepping for college, then a job, then a series of higher-paying jobs,, and then you prep for retirement.  And then you prep for Ebola or whatever this week’s latest worry stone of the mass media happens to be.

In a sense, we’re starting to feel more kinship with our kids, who are adopting something of a minimalist lifestyle.  In their case, it’s because of economic reasons, sure, while in our case its more “Got to the point where things own us” instead of the other way around.

We’re all in a footrace with the Grim Reaper.  While it’s only a fool who would toss in the towel on that race prematurely, it’s also a fool who denies there’s that race to the finish the GR always wins.  We want to live a life that’s hardest for the GR to hack.

Working 12-hours a day, seven-days a week on this scheme or that is still acceptable, don’t get me wrong.  But the hard reality showed up at 2:30 AM Pacific as I sat down in a strange home with a cranky computer that decided to ignore my USB keyboard:  If this is “fighting the good fight” what would be a brilliant finishing sprint before we move into that final solution  ‘underground housing” not that many years down  the road?

It’s definitely something to think about as I try to figure out how to run an unfamiliar stove, adjust to a new toilet, stumble into walls, and realize life’s still a maze now, as much so as it was back age 13 when we started working..

An optimist is a person who takes out a new 30-year mortgage at age 66.  The bigger problem would be where, exactly, would that house be and what would it be like.  So far, damned if we know.

But it’s sure thought-provoking to look at this whole problem of “moving when you’re older.”

Reader’s Writes

I’m going to either solve this damn computer keyboard and mouse issue by Thursdays’ column (joys of win 8.1, huh?) or steal Elaine’s laptop which with Win-7 runs fine… I might as well be banging on a cheese sandwich this morning.

Nevertheless, the mail does get through…like this one:

I’m enjoying your travel logs.

May I suggest a link to your RSS feed somewhere on your site?

I guessed urbansurvival.com/rss which redirected to https://urbansurvival.com/feed/ which works great.

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