Coping: Fashion Kills and we “Skirt Profits”

[Reader Note: Yes, the ad at the top of this column on  UrbanSurvival.com is gone.  Turned people off, so it goes away.  Yes, I do listen.  Now your part of the deal is to tell your friends it’s safe to come back now…]

If you happen to be up in the Toronto, Canada region, you might want to put a swing through the Bata Shoe Museum on your list of sightseeing adventures.

Not for the shoes alone, though that’s kinda kitchy.  No, I’m thinking more about their new display of “Fashion Victims:  The Pleasures and Perils of Dress in the 19th Century.”

It’s not like you’ll need to call in sick tomorrow so you can take it in right now:  The display will be open through next year (June 2016).  But it’s a reminder that we live in a world that has gone from “mad as a hatter” due to the mercury used in shrinking headbands and the like, to the laughingly labeled “modern era” which sweat shops and labor camps make today’s fashions, including the electronica sort.

Mind candy to a sick or crazy like me:  It gets me to thinking in design pattern terms. “Fashion Kills” is a concept that has “scaled” nicely.  We’ve taken the concept from articles of clothing to political decision-making on all manner of issues, ranging from war to immigration and whatever else you want to lump under that other most dangerous fashion:

Political correctness.

To be sure, you can still find George Kotsiopoulos of ‘Fashion Police’ talking about this season’s “must have” looks.  But I wonder if he might not be a good consultant on the socioeconomic/political side of things, too.

After all, we know that fashion and the stock market do have an immodest relationship:  Huge market peaks are often accompanied by rising hemlines.  And with the market set to do a mega-burst blow-off high, I’m  waiting for the return of the mini-skirt.

Oh, wait…here it comes:

“Ferne McCann shows off her tanned legs in cream mini skirt….”  I’ll skip the snide remark about correlating anything “British” with fashion, only because I have a pile of long-term call options.

And here’s more bullish market sentiment to feast Ure eyes on:  “Sienna miller rocks a metallic detailed mini skirt…”

And even more?  “Fabulous at 50- why the mini skirt will live on forever!” headlines the Liverpool Echo.

This is my idea of “skirting profits.”

Renting Your Life: Data File Inputs

New Jersey has the dubious honor of having the highest Obamacare prices in the country.  Way to go go!

Just over the bridge, we see than Manhattan condo prices have fallen a bit since Q1 records were set.  Guess you might hold off for a while on tossing the offer in on the $50-million townhouse, huh?

But price manias are everywhere.  Housing prices are going up in Taipei at incredible rates, but while the story about what this is doing to one couple, reported over here puts a “human face” on the housing prices there, am I the only one with the brains God gave chickens?  Don’t people in Taipei remember who’s on the other side of the Straits and who has had eyes on their island since Mao’s time?

That would be like buying a border home in Arizona.  Might make sense sometime in the future, but not this week, thank you very much.

Oh, sugar prices have hit an 8-month high.  Sweet.

GameStyle

Good discussion over on Dr. Zorpix this morning (Wii-UJ)about the changes coming to Nintendo’s Zelda.

I’m stuck with our early Wii and Sports Resort, but with the controllers and balance board it still gets us off the coach once in a while.  I’ve often wondered why more senior care facilities don’t push virtual bowling and vid games, but maybe I’m just not exposed to the forward-thinkers of the elder-care community.

Living the last parts of first life, playing lots of Second Life, while getting queued up for third life (after) seems an interesting enough sleigh ride.  Especially with the right brownies and a smoke.  (wink-wink, nudge-budge).

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Driverless Cars: An Opportunity Matrix

Happy Fedsday! While we wait for the rate decision this afternoon, let’s talk nu-tech and where it leads: We all know driverless vehicles are coming. It’s just a matter of how fast they arrive and how many of the currently-employed driver-jobholders will be axed as a result. What to do?

Cost of Living Data & Housing Data

We know that the recovery is picking up steam.  And we know this how?

Because the amount of goods coming in through the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles has gone through the roof.  Between them, up about 8 percent over year-ago numbers.

What this means is that China is not really falling off the edge of the Economic Earth.  And it is just another reason I told Peoplenomics readers recently about a pretty interesting option play I’ve put of for next year:  I think we could have one hell of a blow-off top (as in semi-parabolic market rise) over the balance of this year, into next, and possibly as high as 4000+ in the S&P before the whole house of cards collapses.

To be sure, the size of the rally could be debated.  After all, the same week a year ago, the S&P closed 1,592.43.   So tacking on 8% on top of that might argue we could still collapse in a heap down to the 1,720-1,740 range. 

Still, if war is “good for economy” (and yes, it does stimulate things) then the decision to send Marines into Iraq ought to be just what Wall St. ordered.

But, of course, bigger international trade, the returning health of China, and the economic stimulus of war, are old school thinking and thus, out of vogue.  Instead, we have in the place of common sense substituted things like the consumer price index.

Which gets us to the first hardcore data point of the day

“The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.4 percent in May on a seasonally adjusted basis, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 2.1 percent before seasonal adjustment. The seasonally adjusted increase in the all items index, which was the largest since February 2013, was broad-based. The indexes for shelter, electricity, food, airline fares, and gasoline were among those that contributed.

The food index posted its largest increase since August 2011, with the index for food at home rising 0.7 percent. The increases in the electricity and gasoline indexes led to a 0.9 percent rise in the energy index. The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.3 percent in May, its largest increase since August 2011. Along with the indexes for shelter and airline fares, the medical care, apparel, and new vehicle indexes all increased in May.

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Coping: Soccer as a Social or Market Marker?

An interesting investment indicator to kick around this morning…The economic idea?  Reader Bill has it:

George,

A theory being batted around by myself and some armchair economist friends is that Soccer, a sport that has entrenched itself in most of the world, really gained foothold in 3rd World nations, and war torn continents.

In the United States, soccer fandom was historically limited to those who had played the sport growing up, and eventually blossomed into a trope of the hipster left (the folks who look down on anything American, but like the romance of the exoticism of soccer).

In recent years, in the United States, the MLS (Major League Soccer) has vaunted itself as one of the “major” sports leagues (allegedly shoulder to shoulder with MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL) with stadiums filled with fan bases (who have co-opted the traditions of fans in traditional soccer hotspots such as singing incessantly, and riling themselves into almost hooligan enthusiasm).

Some have asserted that there is a corollary between the devaluation of the U.S. dollar and the popularity of soccer. That as we attenuate, slowly and mercilessly into 3rd World status, soccer becomes a more pronounced national obsession.

I’s an interesting concept, but one that doesn’t really hold water when studied from the longwave economics view, at least insofar as the valuation of the US dollar.

When you plot the value of the dollar over time (from the setting up of the Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Service in 1912/1913, you notice that the majority of the US dollar decline happened once we got into the 1960s and 1970s.

If “soccer marker” theory were really to hold, we should have seen a major increase in soccer interest much earlier than we did.

So I’d offer a counterpoint:  Soccer may be a sport that is limited to the back-side of economic growth, so the observation may be valid, but from a longwave perspective we need to look deeper.

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Hell Week for Obama?

Eek!-o-nomics is our second story this morning. I’m  more worried about what’s going on in the mind of that fellow who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania.

Ever since that Obama golf game site stopped updating, I’ve been worried that things were going to start to piling up on our legislator in chief.

Believe me, this is NOT the week you’d want to be President.  The workload and how things are going is just  horrific…let’s sort through the issues quickly:

For one, there’s the mess in Iraq.  There, the ISIS forces (*Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also called The Levant) is pounding toward Baghdad (another town gone overnight)  while seems like everyone in the world has an opinion, but there’s no apparent plans to do anything – yet.

Oh, that huge US embassy (built with your tax money, thank you) has been abandoned now and there is a lone aircraft carrier headed into the region.  But, as we pointed out Friday, there has been no shooting from US forces yet and that – it appears to me – is indicative of a “deal” of some sort with al Qaeda in order to take out Syria’s government which is friendly to Russia.

And why would we want to zing Russia a good one?  Well, they’ve shut off the nature gas from Gazprom to Ukraine this morning.  And this comes amidst reports (and NATO sat-pix that show) Russian tanks have entered Ukraine.  Not to say “I told you so” but Ukraine ain’t over.

Iraq asking Iran for help is problematic, too.  The Iranians, nuclear reactor customers of Russia,; now have Iraq calling in Iran, which is mobilizing forces, to stop the Sunni aligned ISIS forces.

Grady has been doing www.nostracodeus.com data runs, and seems like the best dart for actual action to be underway will be around the 23rd of this month, at least based on how things were looking this weekend.

Then there’s the matter of Kenya:  48 people were killed there when they couldn’t answer a question of about Islam correctly.  The State Department put out a travel advisory on Kenya last month.  Impeckerble timing.  What?  Government and leaderly types are calling for “quick action to restore security…”: which I think is coded words for kill some more people in return.

As you can see in the UK travel advisory map, the highest risk seems to be for travelers in the eastern part of the country near the Somalia border.

I trust this won’t upset your vacation plans, but Kenya just now would fall somewhere below Disney World on my list of places to visit.

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Coping: The Further Course in Scanner Monitoring

A person only pretends to be a prepper if they don’t have a basic ham radio and some kind of scanner capability, as I see it.

A fair number of people (OK, one…) mentioned how useful last week’s notes on emergency services scanning was.  And, since he was kind enough to send it a good write up, reader Bill’s ‘Part 2’ on how fire department lingo has changed over the years in useful stuff to have…

“I am yet again honored.

Thank you.Your advice to listen and get the feel of the way the channel sounds is good.

Fire department training has become somewhat universalized and has moved to standardization of terms and procedures — for a lot of good reasons.

Here are a couple of useful “heard over the air” firefighter expressions. When a building is said to be “fully involved,” that is exactly what it means — visible flames shooting out the windows, and maybe from burned-through holes is the roof. Fully involved buildings are rarely saved. It becomes more a matter of letting them burn down in a controlled manner, and preventing damage to adjacent buildings and forest.

Hay barns are notorious for burning super-fast.When an engine first arrives at the alarm location, they might say,”nothing showing,” which is usually good news. It might be a false alarm,or the fire is still relatively small. Everybody inside COULD be dead from carbon monoxide, but you can’t see that yet till you get inside.As the engine arrives, and sees the building for the first time, they will begin referring to the “A-side,” the “B-side,” the “C-side,” and the “D-side.” The “A” is the front on the street side, the “B” is the side to the left, the “C” is the back of the building, and the “D” is the right sid eas you see the building from the street.

This is like “port” and “starboard.”The designations are the same no matter which way you are facing.A “Y” connector for fire hose is called a “Siamese.”

A “booster reel”is like a heavy-duty garden hose. Usually mounted on both sides of a pumper truck, these can be very quickly spooled out and fed with water from the pumper’s own tank.

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An Ultra-Long Range Market View

With our recent views on immigration and what’s happening in the Middle East, we have gotten right up to the boundary where the rubber meets the road, or more correctly, where economic forces meet the headlines. As part of our work around here, I recently began to wonder if the current market run-up might somehow look like another 1920’s period; perhaps 1927, or so. This morning a couple of graphs to ponder as we ask with more precision whether the analog might be to May7th of 1926? And, if it is, what could lie ahead for the market? After headlines including the fast-moving events surrounding Baghdad…

Iraq: Has the US Cut a “Deal” with al Qaeda?

It’s a shocking concept, I know.  But the data is beginning to shade exactly in that direction.

The US stock market is set to open down 100 points, or so, on the Dow this morning because things have gone to crap this week in Iraq. 

Starting off in Mosul, Sunni militants/al Qaeda, are now pressing toward Baghdad and we find many people wondering how we could be so stupid as to think that Iraq could “defend itself” when that’s obviously not the case?

You will also see the price of oil has popped up to the $107 range.  Even though that oil doesn’t come to the US, it does go to other markets, like Europe, which will be going elsewhere for supply and that is going to play havoc with geopolitics going forward.

I spoke to Oilman2, a friend, rig engineer, and designer of specialized drilling bits, to get his assessment of things:

“Oil industry facts:

1) Largest recent find of natural gas is offshore of Israel/Lebanon/Syria – the Levant Basin. Egypt could also lay valid claim to southernmost part of Levant.

2) Working O&G drilling hub for Iraq is Kirkuk, freshly annexed by the Kurds today (officially – unofficially they been getting paid to conduct business freely by many service companies)

3) Just look at the map .

[Map courtesy of www.theodora.com/maps used with permission]

Mosul controls oil from Iraq overland. Kirkuk sits atop the largest oilfield in Iraq. Note the proximity of Kirkuk to Iran.

Note the distances: Tblisi Georgia to Damascus Syria = 1000 miles; Tehran Iran to Kirkuk Iraq = 550 miles

For comparison: Houston to Washington DC is 1500 miles…..

Azerbaijan is right there – as is Georgia go the north, Iran to the east and Turkey to the north….

The DC Idiocracy’s al-Queda rebels working in Syria suddenly have the firepower and manpower to actually take Iraq – wonder where they got all that??

My Egyptian friends working in Kirkuk left Monday for homes in Egypt/Dubai, etc.

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Coping: Friday at the WoWW–Shoes

Here’s one of our reader reports from the World of Woo-Woo which you might want to noodle on:

Hi George,

Got one that has my family perplexed.

Couple Sundays ago, June 1st, we had some friends over for a BBQ; Hoss and his lady-friend.

Spent a nice afternoon, into the early evening with them, had some beers and wine.

The next day went to get ready for work, couldn’t find my “good” running shoes, NB brand.

I have two pairs of running shoes, the oldest pair for gardening and the newest for casual, going to work, running errands.

When I buy new running shoes, always NB, then my casual shoes become my gardening shoes and I toss the oldest pair out. So I only ever have two pairs of “my” running shoes at any one time.

So, couldn’t find my casual runners, but there was a slightly used pair of NB runners near where I keep my shoes. They looked almost like mine, but are not. Same size, just not mine.

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Retail Post Mortem: Rigor Carrus

I don’t know why, but I had in my head that we would be getting the retail figures on Wednesday, but for some reason, I was running a day ahead of time.  So this morning, RoW catches up and we can get on with the reconciling the Retail figures with the Consumer Debt report from the Fed last week.

So here’s how the retail side looked:

“The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for May, adjusted for seasonal
variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $437.6 billion, an increase of 0.3 percent (±0.5)* from the
previous month, and 4.3 percent (±0.9) above May 2013.

Total sales for the March 2014 through May 2014 period were up 4.3 percent (±0.7) from the same period a year ago. The March 2014 to April 2014 percent change was revised from +0.1 percent (±0.5)* to +0.5 percent (±0.2).

Retail trade sales were up 0.4 percent (±0.5)* from April 2014, and 4.3 percent (±0.9) above last year. Auto and other motor vehicle dealers
were up 11.1 percent (±3.2) from May 2013 and nonstore retailers were up 7.4 percent (±2.3) from last year.

“What’s a  “nonstore retailer?”  Folks like Amazon.  Who needs to go to the store when you can have UPS, FedEx, and the Post Office simply deliver the life you’re renting?

And STILL the only thing keeping us out of the crapper is?  AUTO SALES!!!

Gimme a big Hallelujah, brothers and sisters of the Church of the Almighty Dollar and let’s all go for a test drive.  We need to keep America solvent so we can support Mexico. Uh…..

Mexification? Right On Track

In light of my comments this week on the War with Mexico that we’re also losing, and in light of yesterday’s in depth treatment in Peoplenomics, we heartily recommend you read the Bob Unruh story over at WorldNetDaily this morning: “Ex-Border Agents:  Immigrant flood ‘orchestrated.”

All proven by the numbers in Wednesday’s Peoplenomics report.  Twice the Budget and almost 2/3rd’s less apprehensions.  That kind of stuff doesn’t happen by accident.

That’s a plan.

When you see headlines like “Indiana Sheriff: We Need Military Equipment Because USA Is A War Zone” realize we aren’t really a war zone yet.

But the fine folks in Washington are trying to import one, just as fast as they can.  And they’re doing a fine damn job of it.  Unfortunately.

About to Lose Iraq

Al Qaeda now owns 1/10th of Iraq.  They are on track to grab the whole thing in a blitz war which includes shooting Iraqi soldiers in order to inspire fear in the hearts of those who would otherwise defend Baghdad and other key cities.  This is “instant ugly.”

Anarchy is spiraling in Iraq and the government of Iraq is asking the US to come back in and wipe out the al Qaeda forces that have overrun Mosul and which, if my read of things is right, are about to wipe out the rest of the country and link up with anti-Shiite forces in Syria.

Ain’t gonna happen, not with these people we have in Washington.  And wasn’t McCain supporting arms to al Qaeda in Syria? What was he thinking?  Where did the arms go?  The headlines out of Iraq should be a hint…

See last night’s special www.nostracodues.com scan of the Middle East here.

I’d give it less than a month before Baghdad falls.  And a congressional investigation into how the Obama State Department screwed this up ought to be tremendously (although uselessly) entertaining after it’s all too late.

Oh, that was the plan by the Obamanistas all along, you think?

Keep a close eye on Israel now.  Since Obama has effectively abandoned Israel, and left the militants to run wild in the Middle East, the return of revolution to Egypt within a year, once militants seize Syria, would complete the encircling of Israel.

Headlines like “Al Qaeda forms up to march on Baghdad, gathering up Iraqi Sunni rebels. Maliki cries treason…” are already making the rounds.

Don’t mind me, I’ll just be the guy setting up the pool on when Israel will go nuclear in order to hang onto it’s homeland as the encirclement cinches up.

Must be something in the wind this summer:  Borders are a mess everywhere.

Eric Cantor’s constituents just happened to figure it out.

Repeating: My Breakthrough Idea for Term Limits

1.

And if we can bank online from home, how come congress can’t legislate from home districts?

More after this…

Tomorrow’s Earthquake

Well, we can’t tell you where, exactly, but there’s a weak statistical argument that when the remnants of X class solar flares hit earth that we seem to get some quakes.  So, we have this from the Solar Influences Data Center earlier this week:

The impulsive X2.2 flare peaking at 11:44 UT and originating from NOAA AR 2087 situated close to the east solar limb was reported today. The flare was accompanied with narrow CME (angular width of about 70 degrees) which will not arrive at the Earth.

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Coping: With the Reality of Demographic Change

Warm up the coffee, mama, got us a lot of “big picture” strategic thinking to cover this morning.  Starting with the borders, but as you’ll see, the inquiry leads to Vietnam, China, Iraq,and  – for good measure – the return of Peak Oil.  To begin…

A number of emails have arrived in response to this week’s comments on the “war with Mexico” that we’re presently losing.  It’s a topic covered in additional depth in Wednesday’s Peoplenomics.com report.  In that, I explain how the whole business process/workflow analysis of presidents Bush and Obama give Mr. Obama about a 50% effectiveness compared to Bush on total inbound from Mexico and South America.

Demographic (the age, sex, racial factors) of population are constantly changing.,  Small variations in birth rates, relocations within a country, and so forth, are an everyday reality.  But when so-called “leaders” ignore law, well, that’s another item.

Reader CJ opines:

Twenty plus years ago when I was volunteering in the local public school system although I was homeschooling my daughter and yet son attended… the librarian told me (I was working on a database entry for her) in 2025 whites would be a minority with Spanish speaking persons equal to or exceeding Blacks (local and from other countries) yet with Asians in the mix. Whites are a minority at the school now. The school district is a first ring suburb from Minneapolis, MN. This area started growing after the war in 1948.

My neighborhood is as such, whites as the rule own their home, with some moving out/dying and renting homes to Mexicans, Blacks, Asians (mostly Hmong and Vietnamese. Though some non white are homeowners in the area, it is not the norm. Presently there are 3 homes on this average city block that are rentals. 35 years ago (we “bought” (LOL- i know the deed says we are tenants, taxes prove it) our home in 1979), there were zero rentals, with only white couple “homeowners”.

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What Business Process Mapping Says About Immigration

A friend of mine called Tuesday morning, after I had posted the UrbanSurvival report and claimed that president Obama had “deported more than any other president in history!” Not ready to believe anything, until at least noon local time, I agreed to do a serious look at the immigration statistics, and (not surprisingly) this is another case of Ure being right, much to the consternation of many of my friends. The main lesson this morning is not to be critical of the administration’s immigration policies, but to demonstrate how Business Process Re-Engineering (BPR) is a very useful tool when you come across a complex issue, such as immigration. More for Subscribers ||| SUBSCRIBE NOW! ||| Subscriber Help Center

Amnesty: Political “Fix” in, or Economics

No, you’re not alone:  A LOT of people are asking  a bit WT(actual)F is going on with the political parties in America on this child amnesty disaster of the administration’s making?

One outfit wondering where has the real GOP gone is Investor’s Business Daily which wonders on the Investors.com site:

“Instead of sending them back home to their parents, Attorney General Eric Holder made it a priority to hire taxpayer-funded lawyers for them. Why don’t we hear Cantor, Ryan and other GOP leaders shout that Democrats are exploiting children to further their political agenda?

Moreover, this whole crisis is of the administration’s making. Its Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program two years ago prevented minors’ deportation for two years, and now Obama has added two more years. As the immigration system becomes overloaded, disease and hygiene issues are coming into play.”

Is it a corporate/government conspiracy to rob us of an America that we knew, by brining in tons of people who historically out-produce the majority races in America by 37%?

As I noted yesterday,  perhaps.

But something else is going on, methinks and it is something so bad, so ugly, so terrible, that no one in government – on either side of the aisle – is talking about it.  So let me take a whack at it for you:

Let me remind you of what Forbes included in this 8/28/2013 story “How accurate is the concern that Social Security will one day run out?” (Emphasis added)

The Simpson-Bowles Report of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform had a large section on Social Security, and a chart that showed this effect, was projected to happen in 2037. Now, only three years later, the new guess might be 2033.

Now, let’s look at the Simpson-Bowles report itself which is summarized (in part) over at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

What most people don’t realize is that starting in 2020, there will be reductions in the benefits for maximum income Social Security recipients.  So the people who paid the most in will get the biggest penalty.  How’s that for fair? 

THAT in turn depends on who you ask:  All of my liberal friends will spew a cleaned up version of “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need” while the rabid conservatives will be screaming “Socialism” but that’s really a cover for “screw the needy.”

None of this stuff is simple.

But the point this morning is to suggest that the government likely knows more than it is telling us – which is likely why Ryan, et al, at turning turncoats and rolling over on amnesty.

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