Jeez-Louise…this could be the shortest column ever.

US markets, banks and whatever’s have today off for President’s Day.

The end.  Have a nice day.

Just kidding.  there’s all kinds of crap going on in the background, but we thought we’d dispense with the usual high falutin economic BS and get a little more real today. 

Not without first doing the overnight scores, however:  Japan was up half a percent, China up a full percent, England is up 1%, while German and French gains are minimal.  And gold is still on its way up to the $1,400 bounce target while bitcoins have rallied a bit.

There.  This being a holiday, I won’t take a cynical pill.  I’ll take two tomorrow, however.

Earth Changes

Now, on to what matters:  Three hots and a cot.

There’s an article this morning over on Wired about the “Ephemeral nature of magma prior to eruption” which I’ve made a note to send to our Indonesia Bureau Chief Bernard Grover who sends this pithy report on conditions in the vicinity of the latest volcanic mess:

Hiya chief!

We’re getting a major ash kicking here, if I can indulge in a cheap pun, from Gunung Kelud, located in east Java.  The seasonal easterlies are carrying significant ashfall as far as Jakarta.  We got a good dusting Friday and the air quality was worse than bad.  Up at the mountain house yesterday, you might have thought it had snowed a bit if you squinted just right.  Rooftops and cars were coated with ash, and the usually clear mountain air was very hazy.  One result is much cooler temps.  Here in Jakarta, the mornings are actually pleasant, if just a little on the damp side.  Up in the mountains, it was down-right cold last night.  Not entirely unheard of, but much more than usual.  The haze was too heavy for me to see the steam plume from Gunung Gede (20km from the mountain house), so couldn’t tell if she is stirring (for the first time in 700 years).

As far east as Bandung (about an hour and a half west of Jakarta), airports were closed and the largest refinery in Java, at Cilacap, is shut down, which will likely play hell with gas prices and LPG supplies for a while.  The body count so far is 5, with about 100,000 folks displaced.  Word is that things have calmed a bit in the last 24 hours, but that’s no guarantee of a return to normalcy.  Look for an increase in lung-related problems.  I’m wearing a filter mask outdoors, in any event.

In the past few months, Tankuban Perahu south of Bandung has been rumbling.  Also, the weird situation at Banten – the sea has gone out as much as 2 km for more than a week now – suggests that something is rising, rather than sea levels falling.  That area happens to be in eye-shot of Anak Kerakatau, by the way.

No major shakes around these parts lately, but plenty of the tiny suckers that tingle the spine of those of us who aren’t used to the ground moving.

From the land of liquid rock and ash blizzards,

Bernard

Meantime, we keep thinking that this is going to be one of those “years without a summer” because of all the volcanic activity of late.  So against this background (of common sense thinking) go ahead and flip over to the NY Times which is maintaining impartiality with the headline “Science linking Drought to Global Warming remains matter of dispute.”

Not to SecState John Kerry, I’m afraid.  He’s still pimping global warming on his current Asia road trip.  Yep, in case you missed it, the globalclimatists are now claiming “extreme weather” as their code word of the day. 

While the US is having a cool winter (which is what winters are, last time I checked) we can’t help but notice that even in Oman’s capital Muscat it’s a wintry high of 13C today.

Oh, and one other earth note:  No luck for the hide under the bed with the dust bunnies crowd…you know the ones: Predicting BIG QUAKE soon.  Sorry, no cigar yet.  6.9 last week in China and northing since over a 5.8.

Squaring Off in Asia

Our military affairs/wargamer pal, warhammer, has been keeping an eye on the coming fight for oil rights in the South China Sea…

George,

Usually a key diplomat or lofty politician will make public statements regarding U.S. treaty obligations.

The fact that the sitting Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Greenert, would do the deed by assuring the Philippines that America will support our treaty obligations to prevent Chinese bullying in the oil rich S. China Sea, is interesting from a number of perspectives.

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Maybe you haven’t been watching closely, but read Ure’s lips:  Food (and its sidekick water) are the ONLY issue that we need to be worrying about in the intermediate term.  Oh, sure, you can debate endlessly the pros and cons of Hillary versus Cruz, but that would be yesterday’s problem.  The “art of the deal” around here is being ahead of, not behind, the curve.

So I pass along this from Oilman2…

Europe was inundated with flooding 18 months back – poor crop yield.

We have beef prices soaring, even at fast food places things are moving up in price – grocery stores even faster.

California is in huge drought, and even if it rains reservoirs are not going to be filled this year.

Now one of the most productive agricultures in South America is getting hit, officially, although friends working there have been saying it’s bad.

You need to tell your investor types to have a look at crop futures….and the other no-investor types to buy up on food now, before the price crush hits. Ask Gaye if she is seeing this out her way, or others?

I am changing modes, after paying $9.41 for a double whataburger, fries and a drink up your way today. That’s up 33% from last spring – found receipt for same meal from April when cleaning out Yota today – was $6.57 then.

Oilman2 family is officially packing breakfast and lunch when going farming for the foreseeable future. And I am laying into buying and canning up this springs crop too…

Nice going on the What-A-Burger – their website is over here – and, curiously enough, OM2 and I both spent time Sunday in the local Lowes and What-a-Burger.  I had a triple meat, which is why mine was a little more expensive.

It may seem paradoxical to you, but both OM2 and I have a keen appreciation for something called the “planner’s paradox” (that puke orange drawing).

The way this work is simple:  If you drop something, the shorter term future you’re looking at, the more certain you can be of your predictions.

When my free-falling son flips himself out of an airplane at 13.5 in one of his “horny gorilla” skydiving exits, he’s pretty sure that he will accelerate to terminal velocity at something like 32 feet per second per second before friction coefficients kick in and the rate of change diminishes as he come up on terminal drop speed.

On the other hand, if you were a good little sheep and saved a $100 bill into the bank, your would have how much today?

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Valentines Day, snowed in?  Looking for hot economic news?  Other than our discussion of bitcoin being in the crapper in the Coping section this morning, about the most exciting them to anticipate will be Miller time, today. And then whatever you have lined up following that. 

This is one of the few days of the year ugly people can celebrate…think of all the money they’re saving by not having plans and spendy relationships.  Singlehood is cheap, except on the rent side.

One other seasonal note:  My friends who don’t have kids have present net worths about $1-million more than my friends with kids…who by comparison are mostly destitute.  Thank healthcare and college. Facts is fact, though: vet bills are cheaper than healthcare bills. And I haven’t seen a dog yet that goes through orthodontia.

”So Mr. Cheerful, what else you got for the cornflake review, you being the flake and dishing out corn like this?” you’re wondering.

Other the Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization numbers, check the Fed stats page around 9:20 Eastern if you care, there’s snow falling in the northeast and it’s still winter.  Like that’s a shocker. 

And Global Warming is going to take another hit with all those volcanoes down in Indonesia spouting off.  Doubt it will stop the rumored plan to dump poison into the atmosphere at 80-thousand feet from a balloon…the geoengineering people are gonna kill us all to save us all seems to be the thinking.  Ma Nature will beat ‘em, it looks like.

Terrorism Alert/Left Field Watching

“So what was with the Heads Up on the Nostracodeus website all about, then?”

Oh…that… well, seeing as you asked…

Remember the Westgate Mall attack in Nigeria back on September 21, 2013?  Wikipedia summary:

On 21 September 2013, unidentified gunmen attacked the upmarket Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya. The attack, which lasted until 24 September, resulted in at least 72 deaths, including 61 civilians, 6 Kenyan soldiers, and 5 attackers. Over 200 people were reportedly wounded in the mass shooting, with all of the gunmen reported killed. However, an investigation on the incident conducted by the NYPD suggested that the attack had been carried out by only four perpetrators, all of whom had likely escaped.

Well, as I’ve told you, we’re in a kind of “high danger window” since there are certain patterns that pop out of word frequency analysis of news on the internet, one of which is a very soft tendency of data to come around in a cyclical manner that seems somehow related to the fine-structure constant.

“The what?”

Keep up… Wiki it

In physics, the fine-structure constant, commonly denoted ?, is a fundamental physical constant, namely the coupling constant characterizing the strength of the electromagnetic interaction. Being a dimensionless quantity, it has the same numerical value in all systems of units.

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The other day – Tuesday being the other day in question – I had a little heart-to-heart with you about using a disciplined approach to bitcoins and how the use of charts, and Elliott Wave projections in particular – was a particularly good way to “bound” expectations about the future.  It doesn’t always work, but it beats two tokes and a dart a lot of the time.

So here we are three trading days later and I think we can safely revise our thinking now because the two bullish cases being presented have warrants out for “failure to appears” to put it in legalese.

The two choices before us are the stasis/decline (lower) under which the price of bitcoins drops back down to the baseline price region.  Or, under the Elliott thinking, the decline is turning into a third wave down and this morning’s data is just the start of The Bitcoin Uglies.

First the Good News:  Under the stasis model (I was asleep when I drew the charts, so ignore the misspelling), the first outcome to consider is that the decline now underway will take bitcoins down to about the Wave 1 down low.  The problem is?  That’s going to vary, depending on which bitcoin clearing outfit you want to look at when you go quoting prices.

And there’s good debate here:  Some coiners are likely to quote Mt. Gox but others will “go with the flow” [failing to notice that’s the flow of hype] and will use (for their purposes of citing the bullish case) to the highest prices quoted.  Beware those who change data sources when they don’t like the numbers!  That’s like quoting the Dow on the way up and the NASDAQ on the way down:  Intellectual dishonesty is a bitch.

Unfortunately, coiners may simply be recreating how the (already corrupt) world of nominal/real currencies works:  They ought to all be buying all the coins they can from Mt. Gox (where they are cheap) and then selling them for a good spread on higher priced coin clearing operations where the prices are higher.

Welcome to the world of intermarket arbitrage.   Under this model, the Bitcoin price would have to fall to about $550 (bitstampUSD basis).

Except, (putting on my Lt. Columbo voice (you do own the series on DVD, right?)  “Ders diss one ting dat bothers me, Sir…”

If bitcoins were going to stop at the $550 level, they ought to do it, more or less, across all bitcoin houses.  And they haven’t stopped….which gets us to the next (and seemingly more likely) scenario:

Third waves are generally bigger than first waves.  Under Elliott, the third wave must be at least as large as the first wave down which means, depending on which chart you look at, things could get worse – of far worse – depending on how much mental rigor you apply.  And if you skipped your meds this morning.

OK, stopping at $550 is the extremely optimistic (under Elliott) decline scenario.  Most often, however, the Wave 3 declines are in the area of 1.5 to 1.618 times Wave 1 down.

Two charts will help us range the outcome.,  These are both available at www.bitcoincharts.com./

The first chart to consider is the 6-month average price quote “bitstampUSD”.  In  this chart, it looks like Wave 1 down was from about $1,150 down to around $550.  That’s a $600 dollar decline decline.

Given that the Wave 2 rally was up to $925, this suggests that a minimum $325 may be in the works.

However,  remember that the more typical declines are in that 1.618 times area.  So a 600 decline becomes (at 1.618 times Wave 1)  a $970 decline.

And, given that the top of wave two was 925, this suggests that there’s a chance the value of crypto currencies (at least on some exchanges) could go to zero, since Wave 2’s high ($925) minus the possible decline ($970) leaves us a negative number which would mean the end of bitcoins.

Not that it would be unexpected.

Thus, within a month, or three, we might see reports of various bitcoin clearing operations going bankrupt or shutting down.  Others may survive.

Ures truly has been consistently warning, in the face of much derision, that there are no barriers to entry into creating new digital currencies.  In fact, when I read about Max Keiser’s plans for a “Max Coin” I laughed at some length and began to gin up an UrbanSurvival currency to be named in honor of my editor in chief Zeus the Cat.   I was going to call ‘em ZeusCoins.

ZeusCoins would have as much inherent values as any other cryptocurrency, or maybe more, since instead of “making up  “work”” to do on the internet, I was going to set up an International Dead Mouse Exchange (a take off on carbon credit trading) and make a shit-load more money than coiners. We even had a plan for dog owners to participate by buying rat terriers and sending them out to “mine” their local neighborhoods.  Made as much sense as sending a PC to do stuff on the Internet, I figured.  But I digress. 

(Though I want to go on about the virtues of mouse tails, which can’t be copies with computers, and we were working with all the major 3D meat printer companies to ensure no one could scan and 3D print faux mouse tails as a hack.  In fact, our anti-mouse tail scanning code is already deployed, so go ahead, try and 3D print a mousetail and I’m sure you’re find our micro encrypted serial numbers.  Just like when you color scan a dollar bill.  Seriously!  [Or  nearly so…])

Alt. Outcome:  You need to go over to the Mt. Gox trading charts (thankyou again BitCoinCharts) and see how Mt. Gox overnight 6-month charts look and see how a recent quote on Bitcoins there was down to $378.5.

Again, lesson in Elliott basis the Mt. Gox data:  High around $1,180 – high for Wave 1 up.

Then a decline to $580, or so for the bottom of Wave 1 down. 

That ($1,180-$580) is our $600 decline.

Now, the Wave 2 high (the bounce) was up to about $1,050, call it. 

So the expectation table would pencil out something like this:

100% of Wave 1 decline = $450.   <— off the table, we blew through that]

150% of Wave 1 decline = $150   (a 50-50 chance of this?)

161.8% of Wave 1 decline = $79.50 (25% chance of this?)

The rest of the odds?  Well, sometimes, declines go 2.5 or 2.618 times and even more rarely 3.5+ times the original price decline.  In which case, we should be reading about our first digital currency collapse in short order (3-6 months, say).

Or, the $79.50 level might be reached (or the $150 level), concurrent with the announcement of a major bitcoin clearing operation declaring bankruptcy.  In a way, this is really the preferred option, because it would leave the concept intact, sort of like Iraqi Dinars are still around waiting for the next run-up.  ZeusCoins would be back on the table and MaxCoins might take over from Federal Reserve Notes, yet.  But I’m not exactly holding my breath.  Know why?

The guiding case for all this is the long wave economics study of Tulip Mania, which peaked in Holland in the 1630’s.  Then, a single stinking tulip bulb was trading for the price of a home.  Yeah, “How could people be so stupid?” you’re wondering…

Look around, dammit:  See who’s in office?  See the world we live in?  Have you thought about treatment options?

Open Ure eyes, get a little more disciplined in your approach to reality; vape less, discipline the brain more, and let the numbers rule. They will, whether you agree, or not.  There ain’t no bullshitting human nature…it’s the same now as it was in Holland back when.  Ain’t no free lunch.  There’s markets, there’s bubbles.  Housing?  Internet?  Now Bitcoins….seeing a pattern?

It’ll be no comfort to me or my friends in coming weeks if our grim outlook for bitcoins comes to pass, but George Santayana said it best:

“Those who do not remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.”

Don’t be too hard on yourself, though.  A tradesman in Tulipmania times made about 300 guilders per year.  Prices of bulbs back then peaked well over 4,500 guilders – ten years wages for a working man.

That’s just how bubbles work.  Pat, present, and future.

Global Warming Follow-Up

Reader Curtis is da man….has the right thinking on how to approach this global warming question:

Hey George, I’ve got an idea you might enjoy.

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All kinds of people are likely to be disappointed by the morning’s financial developments.  I mean besides the median price of Bitcoins at Mt. Gox showing $514.50 although other places are showing a more optimistic $647.

No, we have larger (and more mainstream) fish to fry.

For one thing, Asia, which has been playing its Lazarus role (rising from the dead, you getting this?) seems to have suffered a relapse overnight.  Japan was whacked for a 1.8% loss that pounded the Nikkei down to 14,534.75 while the behemoth China was thrown for a 0.54% loss, but hasn’t completely given up the ghost yet.

Which then circles us around to Europe where, when I looked early, the kneelers were being tossed for a 41-point loss on the Footsie, the Huns were down 27 points (and probably still pissed that the US can’t deliver all their gold they entrusted us with, but that’ll show ‘em who’s boss, right?) and the French weren’t exactly toasting, being down almost 14 points.

Which brings us to this morning’s early look at the futures here, which suggested a Dow down 60, or so.

But that’s only the start.  It’s a long ways to Friday;s close,  And with that as foreplay (which I was never very good at, not being patient and all) along to this morning’s Number du Jour:  Retail Sales just out.

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for January, adjusted for seasonal
variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $427.8 billion, a decrease of 0.4 percent (±0.5%)* from the
previous month, but 2.6 percent (±0.9%) above January 2013. Total sales for the November 2013 through January 2014 period were up 3.4
percent (±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. The November to December 2013 percent change was revised from +0.2 percent (±0.5%)*
to -0.1 percent (±0.3%)*.
Retail trade sales were down 0.4 percent (±0.5%)* from December 2013, but 2.6 percent (± 1.1%) above last year. Nonstore retailers were up
6.5 percent (±2.3%) from January 2013 and auto and other motor vehicle dealers were up 4.1 percent (±3.2%) from last year.

You go ponder what a nonstore retailer is for me, would you?  Is that like eBay Motors, or what?

All of which would be fine except that the reality of the non-recovery just keeps leaking out all over the place.

For one thing, as measured by the Fed’s M2, there was 5.3% more money sloshing around the country this December compared with ghost of retail sales past.  (I didn’t make this up, and I modestly left out the 8.2% increase in M1 sloshing about.)

And as that little chart on the right says (IF you take the time to look at it with the brain engaged) the ONLY thing that is keeping the economy out of the double dip recessions I told you to expect was auto sales.

And as our way of thanking the Auto Industry for saving America again, I plan drive by a dealership this week.

There will be some additional numbers out tomorrow in the form of import (ant) prices and the Fed’s industrial production and capacity numbers.  But fundamentally, the market is trying to figure out what to do with what I’ve been writing about for months now:  The arrival of Ure’s Vortex.

That’s when America (and the whole world, but let’s stick with the US because it is all about us, right?) will have to come to terms with some ugly realities:

• We have a lame duck president
• The people lining up as possible successors are also mostly lame
• Robots are coming to take all our jobs and Google’s self-driving car should scare the shit out of you.
• Resource depletion is real
• Abiotic oil can in no way keep up with thirsty world.
• There is deflation in the wings and…
• We can’t seem to figure out what to make with all these people and factories, except war…since no one seems to remember our Peoplenomics report on Dr. Ron’s Leisure Class and a society of consumers who are hell bent on tourism and fine living ain’t something the powers that be want to share.

All of which will go (toilet-flushing vortex like) down sucking the economy with it, until some geniuses figure out (near the exact bottom of the Long Wave low) that the best way to get bootstrapped up is by even more inflation – like never before, and – long as we’re at it – let’s have a war.

Speaking of which, some reader took me to task and said he’d never read another column of mine because he figured that I’m pro war.  Sent me a poison-troll note hoping my kids would be on the front line.

Well, a couple of points, just so we’re clear (and don’t let the door slam you on the ass on the way out):  First,  I am not in favor of war.  Killing people isn’t fun and it’s messy.  BUT second (and the point this former reader didn’t get, which is why he’s a former reader now bound for lower IQ-oriented reading) is that ALL THE DATA SAYS WAR FOLLOWS DEPRESSIONS.

Now I can stand here on the shoreline and scream at the tide of human history all day along and be a bleeding heart liberal.  Or, I can look at the facts, admit “Say!  This doesn’t all end pretty, does it?” and get on with life in the meantime.  Planning a few hedges along the way, including not hanging around major population centers and becoming as close to self-sufficient as I can.

And being ready at a moments notice to get the kids on  airplanes, busses, or even horseback to come down to our place at the end of civilization to chill while the world flushes itself.  You missed yesterday’s Peoplenomics on the mess of 1342-1345 and the 100-Years War that followed.  Your bad.

It’s not a matter of IF humanity is going to screw up again, only this time in much nearer world-ending ways.  We have a few hundred thousand years of history that argue this is how the gene pool gets cleaned out and only aggressive, self-interested and violent people rise to positions of power.

And for those of us who aren’t?  Well, we can parallel-trade the bad guys and make a few bucks for the kitty in the middle of the flush, can we not?

Only a fool would look at the fan (spinning so fast you can’t see the blades) and assume they are not there.  Painful surprise, trust me.

Similarly, only a fool would read the daily news and not notice a peculiar (and none-too-pleasant) odor and wonder  “Gee, what happens next?”

If may not happen fast, today, or next week, but long wave economics argues that cyclical destruction of ‘life as you knew it” is baked in the cake with the interest-nearing models. 

Anyone ever done a study of whether business cycles happen under Sharia banking?  Another research project is born.

One of my designated smart-guy friends (Stephen R) sent me a very good note and chart on where things are going: “Russell 2000  Fast Stochastic (blue line) versus Slow Stochastic (red line) (Say get out of Stock Market) Picture is the same for the Dow Jones and NYSE.”

And while you’re at it, have you given any thought to getting out of Dodge, too?

The Dow looks to open down almost a hundred and my gut (going against my own trading model) makes me feel like a gunslinger, for sure.  (Or it proves I’m an idiot, all things in time…)

Oh look!  Futures are down a hundred now.

More fun, merriment, and nasal entertainment  after this…

Buyers and Sellers

Big Story in the Wall St. Journal this morning about how Comcast has agreed to buy Time Warner cable for $45-billion smackeroos.

Despite my high-powered consulting operation, somehow they overlooked calling me – either side.  Which is a damn shame because whether this merger makes sense comes down to one ugly/nasty:  Technology shift.

Everyone know that the future is fiber – I mean that’s be just obvious as hell for how long?  Forever?

So, with the local telcos laying in fiber, and with lambdas coming to the desktop, seems to me that the company that groks the impact of more fiber, more fiber, repeat after me, “More FIBER!” best is the one that you should invest in.

Unless someone is going to start buying up telcos with their money in order to start owning more backbone…. Hmmm…

Iran’s Getting Nervous Again

In case you’ve missed “the big game” here, it’s that the Israelis are patiently waiting to see what compliance levels will come from Iran as a result of the nuclear deal.

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My head’s beginning to hurt again.  This whole topic is like a cross between an Excedrin headache and the Energizer Bunny – it hurts like hell and it just keeps running, and running, and…..

So here’s this email from Oilman2 to launch with the first cup of bean:

Global Warming – pander no longer… unless it is generating you lots of profits…

[ Link to Dr. Roy Spencer’s site “95% of Climate Models Agree: The observations must be wrong! ]

Remember that I once told you that the entire industrial revolution is as thin as the hair on a gnats ass when looking at geologic timeline??  Remember me telling you we had 20+% more CO2 in the Permian and more still Carboniferous periods??

George, remember your adage, like Occams Razor…??
“Everything is a business model”

I think the science is unraveling the hype at lots of levels, but especially when the UN starts backing away.  Time, I think, that you took a stand. Just back it up with good links about the solar condition, its effects on our other planets and sites like the one above.

Unless it will lose readers…??  But I think it will actually gain some, with an article like, “Climate Change: Who Is Making the Money?” or “What Will Institutions and Goverments Do When People Refuse to Believe Pseudo-science?”

Oilman2

Well, we already know some of the answers to that.  We know Al Gore, for example, would have to cobble up a different speech for the rubber chicken circuit without the marketing angle of warming.  We know that Agenda 21 and the move by non-representative government to keep the public off public lands has skin in the game.  And we know that carbon trading is like swapping wife-beating credits. Or husband-beating credits, to keep the analogy egalitarian…

It’s like the old joke around Wall Street:  “So, where are the customer’s yachts?”  Guffaws among the rich follow….

Obviously, Global Warming is a marketing deal, but then look around you and ask “What isn’t?”

Yesterday’s Peoplenomics discussion about why studying earthquakes is important if you want to understand financial markets is related to the issues raised by global warming.  Except in a different sense.

You need to go back to the classic Report from Iron Mountain ( On the accessibility and Desirability of Peace)  to come up with the real driver:  People only accept the “rules of government” if there are some damn good reasons to.

Although Leonard Lewin’s book was widely discredited as a hoax for pointing this out, there’s another group that believes Lewin may have changed the names and places around, but as to the ideas?  Nope…they’ve stood up to the test of time really damn well.

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Normally, this is the kind of topic that would be reserved for Peoplenomics subscribers, but because it’s a broad interest area, and because speculation is so damn much fun, and since you’re going to share this article with 5 of your closest friends (right? right?) I’m going to have a discussion with you this morning about the outlook matrix for bitcoin.

If you have been following the press reports lately, you’ll know that there have been some real issues for the cryptomoney folks over the past week and this is on top of the US feds moving against some of the bitcoiners who MAY have been involved, ever for peripherally, in the Silk Road case, which – if you live under a tree – was the net’s largest [purported] clearinghouse for online drug deals.

Whether or not the $164-million worth of bitcoins is actually recovered by Peter Ward is something that’s only of passing interest.  As far as I know, he’s not a subscriber.

Seeing as or own drug use us limited to the OTC and Dr. prescribed sort, we naturally wouldn’t know about anything else, unless we were in Colorado or Washington, and in the latter case, we’re properly licensed and might have some additional insights…but I digress.

Bitcoins, when I looked this morning were being quoted on the MtGox boards showed $571 –$575 dollars to the bitcoin. And bitcoiners had every right to be nervous Monday because of problems at Mt. Gox.

While I’m in the “Who cares?” camp – even now – there is a huge learning opportunity that comes from a review of charts of bitcoin prices.

As you can see (right, click to enlarge), there are at least four ways the market could react going forward from today.

Left to right:  The first possibility is that there will be a larger Elliott wave “three up” arise.  In which case, we wouldn’t be surprised to see bitcoin prices soar to perhaps the $3,000 range.  No, that’s not a prediction, just how that Elliott count works out.

Our second Elliott outcome isn’t so pretty.  Under this one, the peak is in, we have had one wave down, we’ve also finished the “wave 2 bounce” and we’re now headed straight to perdition.  Again, not a forecast, just one of the chart options on the table.

The third choice would be that price action is telling us this is a pendant and when pendants appear, they often roar ahead so that the next move up, starting from the pointy end of the Pendant formation, will be about the same distance up as the “flagpole” part of the move.  Pendants (says my copy of Technical Analysis, 7th Ed.) tend to be “middle move” indicators, which often happen about halfway through a major market rally.

And then, last, but not least, is the “fading into history” which is also a possibility.

If I were a lot younger, I might speculate and buy a few hundred bucks worth on the chance that the Elliott (1) count or the Pendant are in play.

Historically, Bitcoins are a terribly important marker of where we are in the Second Depression.  That’s because they are an almost perfect rhyme off the S&H Green Stamps phenomena that took root and blossomed in the Great Depression:

S&H Green Stamps (also called Green Shield Stamps) were trading stamps popular in the United States from the 1930s until the late 1980s. They were distributed as part of a rewards program operated by the Sperry & Hutchinson company (S&H), founded in 1896 by Thomas Sperry and Shelley Byron Hutchinson. During the 1960s, the rewards catalog printed by the company was the largest publication in the United States and the company issued three times as many stamps as the U.S. Postal Service.^[1] Customers would receive stamps at the checkout counter of supermarkets, department stores, and gasoline stations among other retailers, which could be redeemed for products in the catalog. ^[2]

S&H Green Stamps had several competitors, including Gold Bell Gift Stamps (in the Midwest) Triple S Stamps (offered by Grand Union Supermarkets), Gold Bond Stamps, Blue Chip Stamps, Plaid Stamps (a project of A&P Supermarkets), Top Value Stamps, and Eagle Stamps (a project of several divisions of the May Department Stores Co. of St.

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“Fool me once…” seems to be the right way to face the snow and ice in the US Southeast.  There is no end of hand-wringing and one press report I read was lamenting how a local store the reported had checked on was down to “corn and asparagus” – which may not be such a bad thing.   Especially because of the purported anti-cancer effects of a heavy asparagus diet.

I don’t know about you, but for me, the joy of eating asparagus is eating some, then racing to the closest restroom to “beat the smell.”  I haven’t won yet, but next time I eat asparagus, it will be in the throne room with a stopwatch rolling.  Science will win eventually.

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A couple of readers chimed in on the “wintry mix” note Monday.  One being Tom in Illinois:

It seems like in the old days ( pre-2000’s) we only got significant icing (“ice storms”) very infrequently….

but my point is, something seems to be changing, I don’t know what.

I used to blame it on global warming, ( makes sense, you need warmer layers of atmosphere for winter rain) but who really knows, with the demise of that paradigm? Just more food for thought. We seem to be wrecking the planet  in many unexpected ways.

Right Tom is, of course.

Our next item of note is how the National Weather Service is moving into the space of preppers by putting out an advisory like this one:

WINTER PREPAREDNESS KITS FOR VEHICLES.

IN CASE YOU GET STRANDED IN YOUR VEHICLE DURING WINTER WEATHER…IT  IS IMPORTANT TO HAVE A WINTER PREPAREDNESS KIT IN YOUR VEHICLE.

THIS KIT SHOULD INCLUDE…A SHOVEL…WINDSHIELD SCRAPER WITH A SMALL  BROOM…FLASHLIGHT…BATTERY POWERED RADIO…EXTRA  BATTERIES…WATER…SNACK FOOD…MATCHES…EXTRA SOCKS…HATS AND  MITTENS…A FIRST AID KIT WITH A POCKET KNIFE…BLANKETS…JUMPER  CABLES…EMERGENCY FLARES AND A FLUORESCENT DISTRESS FLAG.

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Stock markets around the world are an an interesting juncture this week, according to our Trading Model.  Seems if there’s a decent rally, the market could zoom off to new highs before our usual “Sell in May and go away” period.  Except, the other side is that if the markets do break down in the next week, or so, we could be in for a major bloodbath in roughly the same period.

Anyone who is even halfway serious about making free money from Wall St. knows it doesn’t matter which way the market is running; trades can be put on either way.  And, despite the periodic demonization of short-side players, there always has to be someone to take the other side of a trade – or there’s no market!

A look at Asia shows a pretty decent (1.77%) rally in Japan overnight and a small quarter percent loss in China.  European markets are nearly as exciting as a bowl of spaghetti.

Which I mention in case you’re trying to “noodle” what to do with your vast fortune:  Don’t think…wait for the market to make its mind up and go with the flow.

The market could “tread water” until the end of the week, too.  It will be Thursday before we get retail sales, which should be down a bit, partly because the number of jobs added in last week’s unemployment data was weaker than the Hallelujah Choir was hoping.  But the real numbers to watch will be out Friday morning when the Fed’s industrial production and utilization arrives only to be followed within the hour by the leading economic indicators.

Sure, the market might move one way, or the other, a bit.  But the real direction may take a bit of doing to sort out.  So if you work on Wall St. this might be the week to take a few days off before things begin to get nutty again.

As the World Spins

I mean this very (or at least mostly) seriously:  This is a very hard week for serious news junkies because so much of the stuff which is making headlines is either inevitable or just plain “don’t matter.”

Take the case of the first NFL football player, Michael Sam, coming out as being gay.  It that going to change anything in the NFL?  Nope, not likely.  Other than  the LBGT movement is one of the few growth “industries” around anymore, it’s not going to impact my plans to try out for the NFL.

What’s much more likely to impact my relationship with football is the fact that I don’t think there are any (repeat ANY) 65-year old walk-ons in the game.

Since media all have to come up with different “angles” on what’s essentially one story, we can’t help but notice that the fact Sam is from Missouri has made it into a few headlines. 
What, like there aren’t gay people in every state?

In our never-ending efforts to point out how the Universe serves up wryrony in heaps and gobs to aware observers, I’ll remind you that Missouri is  what?  The Show Me State.

You can make up your own ending, punchline, or social comment from here:  I just give you the set-up material.

My Swiss Cheesy Immigration Note

By a thin margin, voters in Switzerland have voted to bring back a strong immigration policy.  Which means that now they have crossed the uber klassen of the European Union leadership (a term used advisedly) because the EU thinks that people should be able to come from all manner of poor and oppressed downtrodden backgrounds and be free to trash the home of the gnomes of banking.

Needless to say, the home of the gnomes ain’t to keen on the idea.  For one, it might bring down the term  “average” a few notches.

Not that this has anything to do with the immigration mess here in the US where we have put ourselves into a “must do” on immigration because without it, government programs like Social Security will blow up sooner than later.

But it does get us to wondering if there is anything like a global ranking of national IQs of registered voters.

Well, lookie here!  There is such a ranking.  It shows that Swiss are still ranked 101…slightly above the 100 average IQ.

What’s more, a little study of the data says that Canadians have gone from an average of 97 in 2002 to a more recent (2006) reading of 99.

The average IQ in America, says the data is actually 98 and that prolly explains a lot about voter apathy and who we put in office, doesn’t it?

And, as for my contention that opening up the floodgates of immigration with Mexico would bring down America’s average IQ even more is supposed by the data that says Mexico’s  average IQ was 87 in 2002 and it’s only up to 90 as of 2006.

Know why we won the Cold War with Russia?  I mean besides bankrupting them on defense with the help of the Marcos Gold?  Russia’s average IQ  at the time was 96…up to 97 more recently.  Freedom makes people smart.

So what we SHOULD be importing, instead of Mexicans (suggests the data, not me) is North Koreans.  Average IQ 106…or better, Singaporeans or Honk Kong(ese?)?  Average IQs of 108.

Unfortunately, Canada’s already got that locked up, but look at data on India where all those special visas are being handed out by the high outfits.  You see what?  Maybe people from India aren’t supermen at all…maybe it has more to do with corpslimes trying to get the work done by the cheapest available resource. And yes, that’s why the corpslimes have their eyes on Africa, next…exploitation is profitable as hell.

Gee, what a novel concept, huh?

Ruthless Hillary

No, I have no idea why the Drudge Report is covering the stories about Hillary Clinton’s bid for the White House so early.  Reports like “The Hillary Papers: Archive of ‘closest friend’ paints portrait of ruthless First Lady” aren’t going to make her quit the run…

Clinton has been busy retooling her Benghazi actions and now looks like David Petraeus is endorsing her.  If she wins, expect Petraeus to get a gov gig…which is how this stuff rolls.

Meantime, if someone could slip this Wikipedia entry to Matt, that’d be useful, methinks.  Familiarity Heuristic.

In psychology, a heuristic is an easy-to-compute procedure or “rule of thumb” that people use when forming beliefs, judgments or decisions. The familiarity heuristic was developed based on the discovery of the availability heuristic by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman; it happens when the familiar is favored over novel places, people, things. The familiarity heuristic can be applied to various situations that individuals experience in day to day life. When these situations appear similar to previous situations, especially if the individuals are experiencing a high cognitive load, they may regress back to the state of mind in which they have felt or behaved before. This heuristic is useful in most situations and can be applied to many fields of knowledge, however, there are both positives and negatives to this heuristic as well.

Which is why ‘Merica is F/U’ed:  We vote for the familiar rather than best, novel, or different.  Which is why we have a couple of national aristocracies, and the Clintonistas is one of them.  So after Ma Clinton is done in the WH, it will then be time for the daughter to move up ther food chain…kinda like the Bushistas are working their aristocracy.

It’s a brand, don’t you get it?  We keep shopping at the same stores and electing the same has beens because we’re what?  Idiots!

Say, maybe our national IQ is lower now than it was in 2006 – you think?

Power Mongering

Turn about it fair play, figure the Iranians.  So they are sending some military might (a couple of ships) close to the US in order to make it known that we are not the only country that can project force.

Meantime, back home, the Iranians are getting simulated bombings of Tel Aviv and of a US aircraft carrier.

When we do it, it’s called Hollywood.  When they do it, its suddenly propaganda. 

Syriasly

More talks in Geneva.

You know, Syria has a government.  Just like we do.

Now, how would the world act if China or Russia started arming street gangs in LA and calling it a “resistance movement?”  Obviously, that wouldn’t go over well.  But when we do that in Syria it gets labeled peace talks. 

Weirder and weirder every day, ain’t it?

Meantime, the US/West/EU are promoting the uprising in Ukraine the same way, selling the EU and the kinder, gentler brand.

And so, Ukraine government (backed by Russia) has upped the ante by putting anti terrorism forces on alert, and that’s a kind of code word for “Look out for those western backed trouble makers…”

I just wish a big war would break out somewhere:  We need it for the economy otherwise we’re going to be reading forever about stories like creating government jobs for a million a pop.

You see?  This is the kind of back-end problem war fixes….

Do Process or Due Process?

Here we go again…another report that an American citizen – dumb enough to throw in with al Qaeda – will possibly be the target of a US drone strike.

So when you leave America, do you give up rights to due process?  I must have missed that in the Constitution…I was pretty sure I’d read the whole thing.

But then again, I probably missed the part of IRS taxing you after you leave America even if you renounce your citizenship. 

Being an American anymore is kind of like having a tattoo  that won’t come off…   Which gets us to…

Bye-Bye ‘Merica

Say, you don’t think that’s why a record number of Americans renounced their citizenship in 2013, to you?

You gotta read the Forbes article because it’s a girsly reminder how (just as in pre-War Germany) we’re slamming the exit doors shut and punishing those who do escape from citadel ‘Merica.

Quaking Hills

Three minor quakes in the hills of Hollywood are making news. But if you put out a big SoCal paper and it’s a slow news week (like now) what do you write about?

Personally, I’m guessing a big truck on Barham or on the Ventura could have done almost the same thing, but if L.A.

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This week’s “Monday ramble” begins with a note from reader Chris that really made my day Sunday…and I think it will yours, too…

Periodically I do searches for unclaimed property for myself and people I know. Today I decided for shits and giggles to also throw in a few other people’s names including yours. I usually use this site www.missingmoney.com for my searches. Then I end up going direct to each state where more details are available. This one is for Texas: https://mycpa.cpa.state.tx.us/up/Search.jsp where is shows that Direct TV owes you $51.58 from 2011. Also looks like George junior is owed some money in Seattle. You have some small amount of money waiting there too: http://ucp.dor.wa.gov/default.aspx . George juniors appears to be in the amount of $50-$100. Just thought you might like to know.

Near as I can figure it, the www.missingmoney.com is a semi-official collaboration of many states – but not all.  I was going to run a check for a buddy of mine in Hawaii, for example, and was disappointed to see that Hawaii doesn’t appear to be one of the states taking part.

Still, there were other people we know who were due for some cash: One of Elaine’s boys, in addition to G2.  And one of my flying friends.

I was going to tell one of my neighbors that he’s got several items worth claiming, but I though he might think that I’d gone over to the dark side with computer surveillance of neighbors…

No, you’re not likely to get rich, since most of the money is small amounts, sees liker $50-bucks, or so.  But overall – at least insofar as our little slice of dough – the work to fill out the online claim form, and then gather up and mail the related backup documents worked out to working for $300/hour.  Hell yeah…I’m that guy.

Have fun with it and save some of that new-found money for a Peoplenomics subscription and a Valentine for your S.O.

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