Coping: Weekend Project Warrior Notes

I have a slightly sore set of stomach muscles this morning, now that we’re putting up the overhead insulation in the new audio/video production room.  One of these days I will go back to doing occasional YouTube and other media.  May come out with the .MP3 version of Peoplenomics, but we’ll just have to wait and see on that one.

For now I’m content with spring being here and being able to get a lot of outside projects back on track.

Putting up overhead insulation is a lot easier than it used to be.  Mainly because the right tool for the job is at hand. 

That last time I was putting in fiberglass insulation I was doing it with a manual stapler.  After a day of serious insulating I ended up with a terrible blister on might right hand in the valley between the thumb and forefinger.

Not being a complete idjit, I now own not only an electric staple gun, but also an air-powered one.  Turns out both have been a good investment.  For the insulation, we have a Stanley TRE550 Electric Staple/Brad Nail Gun which will set you back about $30.  Free shipping with Amazon Prime, too.

You might be asking “Why the air stapler if you have an electric one….are you that lazy you fat so-and-so?”

No, not at all.  It’s just that with a little higher than book pressure, the air-powered stapler is better for heavier work – like upholstery.  If you already have the air compressor and hoses, the Surebonder 9600A, Heavy Duty Staple Gun with Case will only set you back $25.

Earlier this week, the Elaine and I took a 20-question quiz which is in the new issue of The Family Handyman (1-year) ($12).  The questions were all about the arcane arts of home repair like how to prevent corrosion when joining dissimilar metal pipes, for example..

Elaine came in as an “advanced” DIYer in the scoring and I came in as a “”DIY pro…”  but you wouldn’t know it to look at some of my work.  Not that it’s slap-dash.  It’s just that there’s only so much time and too many things to do in life.  I just seem to lose interest after flowing on more than 2 or three coats of varnish…that kind of thing.  Two more and projects would look like glass, but is that worth the time?  I mean we’re talking golden weekend time, after all.

Today we’ll finish up the insulation in the ceiling of the A/V room and then tomorrow the floor will go into the sun porch, which was insulated earlier in the week.  That and a new storm door and Elaine will be able to move the drum kit outside that’s presently occupying the guest room.

And that, in turn means we’re having a guest.  My friend (and coauthor) Howard Hill will be coming by for a visit Monday on his travels about.

Besides being a genius of collateralized mortgage analysis, what I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned about Howard is he actually grew up in the White House, because his dad was the sound engineer for both JFK and LBJ.  So, as you might expect, the two main topics on the agenda Monday will be figuring out where to put the speakers (just so) in the new room.  I’ll run the wiring for them (and some XLR’s for instrument recording) before I button up the walls.

I’ve managed to talk Howard out of a pair of Bose 901’s which will augment the subs I have for the front of the room.  And we can debate whether the 201’s will work for rear-fill, or whether the Interaudio SA-200’s (a bit smaller, brighter, but less bottom to them) would be a better choice.

Howard’s forgotten more about audio and high-end sound gear than most people have ever learned.  As a serious (and I mean serious like heart attack) audiophile, he’s got a couple of the pieces from the original Grateful Dead Wall of Sound, before they decided to stop packing around the really heavy gear like the big tube amps that sound so warm and smooth….

I’m working on Howard to write the definitive book on cheapskate audio.  There’s been so much good gear produced at the consumer level that all you really need is a few hundred bucks and some smarts to be able to “rock the house” (and break windows if that’s your deal) and an eBay account.

The problem is knowing which gear is good and he’s a kind of walking encyclopedia about such things.  And if a performing artist like, oh, say Dave Brubeck, ever needs you to mic a performance in a 35 MPH wind on the White House lawn, Howard’s dad can tell you where to put five mics to make the outside sound better than 99% of indoor venues. 

The difference between fanaticism and audiophile may blur at times, but this is one of those areas Homeland Security doesn’t seem to get worked up about….

Like anything else around here, we’re doing the A/V room on a budget and the sun room is all recycled windows.  A fair number of the 2-by-4s are new, along with the insulation.  But it’s all done on a shoestring.  No room around here for a 10% markup for architects (sorry).  Two more rooms on the house and not a single drawing made, so far.  We should be in a position in another couple of months to let you know whether that’s a good thing, or bad.

Meantime, the drum set ought to be out of the way before the weekend is out.  Nothing like tripping over a snare drum in the middle of the night to wake a fellow up.  Go ahead, ask how I know….

Next Hobby:  Ham Radio Q & A

Reader Jason sent in a question:

So at bar trivia tonight the question was what has more bandwidth at night. AM or FM.

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Markets: Bad News is Good News! (But it’s really BAD)

The markets are on crack.  A special kind of crack called “Easy Money.”  We’ve gone from Helicopter Ben to Jump-shot Janet. Let’s  run through a nickel-bag’s worth of data:

    So what does the stock market do when the Fed hints in its meeting minutes that there might be a  delay in interest rates going up?  The market rallies!

    The lone (but very reasonable) dissent noted in the Fed Minutes came from Board member Narayana Kocherlakota:

    “Mr. Kocherlakota dissented because, in his view, the new forward guidance in the fifth paragraph of the statement would weaken the credibility of the Committee’s commitment to its inflation goal by failing to communicate purposeful steps to more rapidly increase inflation to the 2 percent target and by suggesting that the Committee views inflation persistently below 2 percent as an acceptable outcome. Moreover, he judged that the new guidance would act as a drag on economic activity because it provided little information about the desired rate of progress toward maximum employment and no quantitative measure of what constitutes maximum employment, and thus would generate uncertainty about the extent to which the Committee is willing to use monetary stimulus to foster faster growth.”

    Now, let me explain the mechanics of this, in case you’re not clear on it:  The reason the Fed is not already raising rates is that the the economic recovery has been buried.  Hiring more police and bureaucrats is just barely able to keep up with core jobs going down the tube.  The unemployment rate is stuck at 6.7 and institutionalized  unemployment has become a sad fact of life.

    Let me put it this way, if the coffee hasn’t hit yet:  Recovery is sick and on life support.

    What the Fed minutes mean is what?  They are admitting that things are bad!

    So what rally?

    Well, we get back to interest rates.  The longer rates are held low, the longer the hedge funds can get (essentially free) money from the Fed though puppet bankermediaries, and this gets spun up and poured into even more stocks.  The higher they go, eventually the further they’ll….what?

    And since there’s not enough IPO action of late, the existing stock prices are bid up anyway even if sales are flat and the profits go offshore.

    So that’s why the market screamed ahead yesterday:  the bad news (that the Fed might not have the pricing power to raise rates as soon as their own press hype held) means that the upper class will continue to get free lunches like they’re going out of style.

    If there was anything to the notion that trickledown worked, we would see a 20% across the board increase in money for Social Security recipients.  Oh, and the money’s there if anyone in Washington would fix their low-T issues.  For instance:

    There are wire service reports that there are $2.1 trillion in untaxed US corporate profits laying around offshore.  Got that?  UNTAXED.

    Let’s run some numbers, shall we?

    OK, let’s assume that $2.1 trillion didn’t all pile up in the last year.  Let’s say it’s only $1-trillion worth.  And let’s then figure that could all result in a 20% corporate tax revenue increase.  $200-billion.

    Now, it says over on this Social Security site that we have 63.4 million people on social security.

    That means that IF the government would get off its ass and go collect the tax-evading money due, we would be able to send out a $3,000 bonus check to everyone on Social Security this year.  ($3,154 and change to be more precise.)

    And that would jump-start the bejesus out of the US economy.  Some seniors would buy a new car, eat out now and then, and in the even, since we grays are always handing money out to the kids, this would really “trickle down” to the family level and would allow employers to raise wages and all kinds of other happy outcomes.  Force multiplier.

    Solutions like this should be obvious as hell to anyone with a lick of common sense.  Oh, wait.  I may be at the root of the problem here… How else can government officialdumb keep ignoring the chance to snag a fat gift for We the People that keeps on giving? 

    THE ANSWER is simple, but ugly:  Payoffs to the people in office.  Via unlimited campaign dough.  K-Street Mafia.  Interstate election buyer co-ops…you know the drill.  You’re the one being drilled here…

    Who needs a Don Corleone when there are special interest groups with unlimited dough?  Political crime is the new organized crime and it’s been legitimized by the courts.

    Between taxing corporate profits and selectively hitting back at K-Street America could be won back.  But the fix is in because good people – people who went to Washington with integrity – have failed to keep their on on the real problems of this great land.

    While attorney general Eric Holder, argues “vast discretion” over the enforcement of laws (selective enforcement/tolerance policies), I’d venture the American public is sick of the ruling  financial class which just got a green light from the Supreme Corporate Court to keep out-bidding the regular people who live in America. 

    Ain;’t gonna happen, but it would be nice.   If Holder can’t answer a  subpoena in more than a year, it’s hoping too much that he’ll be able to tax offshore money in the short time before his boss if out.

    Corporate feudalism is the future.  The Obamanista “change” was just another marketing slogan repeated ad nausea to the simpleton voters.  And sure, it suck to be us…because the Fed minutes belie the truth:  that recovery is more smoke and mirrors than walking-around money in you pocket.

    And that’s why the market rallied: Out of your pocket, safely into theirs.  America’s just been bent over again.

    More after this.  And after my blood pressure comes down enough to continue looking through the crap rolling off the wires this morning…

    Nevada: Research on “The Jackboot Cycle”

    My consigliere counseled me Wednesday:  “What the government is guilty of in Nevada is gross stupidity…”

    It was hardly a breakthrough thought, since I’d just read that story about the town of 7,.000 in Ohio getting a tank… but still, fair point.

    The long story made short is a Nevada rancher who disputed land grazing bills from the Bureau of Land Management is now surrounded by 200 federal agents who are picking up his cattle to pay the bill. And it is not like this hasn’t been going on for a while.  The court order against Cliven Bundy in the case has been on the books since July 9th of last year:

    IV. CONCLUSION
    IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the United States’ Motion for Summary Judgment (#18)
    is GRANTED.
    IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that defendant Cliven Bundy’s Motion to Dismiss (#28) is
    DENIED as moot.
    IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Bundy is permanently enjoined from trespassing on
    the New Trespass Lands.
    IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the United States is entitled to protect the New
    Trespass Lands against this trespass, and all future trespasses by Bundy.
    IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Bundy shall remove his livestock from the New
    Trespass Lands within 45 days of the date hereof, and that the United States is entitled to
    seize and remove to impound any of Bundy’s cattle that remain in trespass after 45 days of
    the date hereof.
    IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the United States is entitled to seize and remove to
    impound any of Bundy’s cattle for any future trespasses, provided the United States has
    provided notice to Bundy under the governing regulations of the United States Department
    of the Interior.

    So in comes the government to collect its due.

    Except that they came in with helicopters, road blocks, and more.  Which has many people in Nevada upset including one reader who advises us:

    I’m deeply involved in the ongoing effort to transfer the Federally managed public lands to Nevada as promised when Nevada joined the Union.

    Nevada BLM was found by a judge in  the Hage case to have committed fraud and to have been in violation of Rico.  Nevada BLM is a criminal organization.  Use of snipers on Nevada’s public lands is outrageous, and the Clark County Sheriff is negligent and in violation of oath in not enforcing state law.

    All of which brings up a critical question every state legislature in America ought to be asking at the end of all this:  Should the federal cessions of land be rethought?

    The state cessions are those areas of the United States that the separate states ceded to the federal government in the late 18th and early 19th century. The cession of these lands, which for the most part lay between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, was key to establishing a harmonious union among the former British colonies.

    The areas ceded comprise 236,825,600 acres (958,399 km²), or 10.4 percent of current United States territory, and make up all or part of 10 states.[1] This does not include the areas later ceded by Texas to the federal government, which make up parts of five more states.

    The further west you go, and the later in history, the murkier things become.  Don’t forget that the Texas Independence Movement figures the federal government still owes the state (in 2003-2004 dollars) about $7-trillion for the lands it got. 

    Present legislatures and (effectively) eBayed politicians are not likely to make an issue of such facts as cession of land to the central government.  But the Nevada case puts this whole issue back on the table. And it’s one that won’t be gong away any time soon, as the central government continues to kick the public of public lands.

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    Coping: New Learning from Meta-Studies?

    I mentioned Leo (Tolstoy) the other day when we were talking about markets and that’s gotten me onto thinking about how information delivery is changing because the world has become a woefully attention-deficit place.

    By some studies, the average length of a novel is presently running 64,000 words, but that’s just on average.

    Still, considering the length of War and Peace (528,287 in the New American Library translation), we can generalize that “Knowledge is becoming more compact.”

    And that means something terribly important for writers:  More time editing and less time to be spent tossing in colorful asides and in-depth scene-setting.  Everything is moving in extremely tight, well-produced bits, and everything else (to use the old Hollywood term) lands on the cutting room floor. 

    If you’re under 50, that’d be the recycle bin (Win) or trash (Mac).

    This week I’ve started a very interesting project doing two meta-studies.  A meta-study is a “study of studies” in and attempt to distill new insights from existing material.

    The first meta-study involves anti-gravity.

    The method is simple:  Get merely set up a OneNote folder, then go through all the books on anti-gravity we have around here and see if there’s anything in the way of a “rule” or soli description.  Once we get done “distilling” then it’s a matter of getting back to he sources cites to see if additional details may be gleaned.

    It’s almost like building a scatter chart.  You toss on the data points up and then look for clusters.  And then you mentally work on the concepts within a cluster, trying to find replicable experiments.

    One early set of experiments here, for example, involved high-powered magnets spun up in a lathe to several thousand RPM.  No, the lathe didn’t seem to change weight, nor did the crude (but sensitive) instrumentation that I cobbled up to move around the fields involved looking for something other than the expected induction of electricity into wire.

    Honestly, that was disappointing because Joseph Farrell;’s book The SS Brotherhood of the Bell: The Nazis’ Incredible Secret Technology is a wonderful story.  I’ve always pictured the story as being a latter-day Indiana Jones book where the hero would be a cross between Bill Nye and the fedora-wearing whip-cracker.  Same cast of Nazis, though, since there is plenty of evidence that they really were chasing all the data outliers looking for breakthroughs in their desperation to win WW II.

    Of course, whether some of the top the Nazis “got away with it” remains debated because of this quote in Wikipedia:

    In 2009, DNA tests were performed on a skull Soviet officials had long believed to be Hitler’s. According to the American researchers, the tests revealed that the skull was actually that of a woman less than 40 years old. The jaw fragments which had been recovered were not tested by the American researchers.

    All of which leaves the sincere researcher looking for serious work on the past and finding it in places like The Truth About History: How New Evidence is Transforming the Story of the Past but it will be year, if not decades before forensic history makes its way into the classroom.

    Until then, stories like National Treasure and other historically-based semi-fiction remain intriguing.

    All of which only gets us back to the point that meta studies (studies of studies), also known as meta-analysis offers some good insights:

    Conceptually, a meta-analysis uses a statistical approach to combine the results from multiple studies. Its advantages can therefore be interpreted as follows:

    • Results can be generalized to a larger population,
    • The precision and accuracy of estimates can be improved as more data is used. This, in turn, may increase the statistical power to detect an effect.
    • Inconsistency of results across studies can be quantified and analyzed. For instance, does inconsistency arise from sampling error, or are study results (partially) influenced by between-study heterogeneity.
    • Hypothesis testing can be applied on summary estimates,
    • Moderators can be included to explain variation between studies,
    • The presence of publication bias can be investigated

    The second area of meta-study is this whole matter of being able to “open third eye” and see into the future a bit.  There’s a ton of evidence (including personal experience) that argues the process is real.  The difficulty is in the control of how the process works.

    I can describe “how to get there” pretty well, but getting there and not doing so with focused attention that “runs off the good stuff” is entirely a different matter.

    The process seems to work best if you are well-rested, have a bit of food, and don’t have anything pressing on your schedule, since relaxation seems to be key.

    The way to get to “that place” begins with laying down (for me, on my back) and then closing my eyes in a darkened room. 

    Usually when you go to sleep the process is pretty simple:  You shut down your vision (staring at the dark at the back of the eyes) and then – as sleep/dream state comes along – you move – usually quite smoothly – into the land of imagination.

    What I discovered is that in the hallway, if you will, between the “staring at back of eyes” and the “active imagination, there is a doorway or state that you can catch and that’s where the magic lives.

    It is distinctly different from active imagining and, if forced, it is incredibly fleeting.  Sometimes the information that pops in comes across almost teletype fashion – word scrolling.  Other times, like the “Serious, Personal, Woww” report on an experience back in March, this “other optical sensing place” will be like an open window, with light, and through it you can get a sense of the future.

    Don’t be disappointed if the technique doesn’t work for you the first time.  And no, it’s not astral projection – that’s something else.  This is just a kind of “alley” that you go by (visually) on the way from seeing the back of eyelids to seeing in the active imagination.  Is if the ‘seeing through third eye?”  Perhaps.

    The key thing is that it happens in a place where you are not “awake” as in being able to see through the eyes, nor are you asleep where imagination slides into dreams.  Instead, you plug into this alternate video source and gently watch what comes along.  You’ll find that intent and ego, and words like “I want to” or “Now show me…” will flip it off and you’ll have to reconnect with it another time.  Delicate stuff.

    But that gets me back to reading and redistilling everything I have about 4th dimensional thinking.  That’s because there are certain descriptions in, for example P.D. Ouspensky’s Tertium Organum (the Third Principle), which will now make sense.

    As part of that process (meta-study #2) I’ve ordered everything I can find from Mei Ling and Jessica Madigan.  I haven’t had time to work with it, but their Journey into the Fourth Dimension seems to be a collection of altered states reports from many sources, and may (in and of itself) be an early meta-study without calling it such.

    Oh, sure, maybe it’s an odd thing to pursue, but I keep a pen and paper near my bed on the odd chance that a stock tip or lottery numbers will show up.  In the meantime, though, the process of plugging in to the alternate video source on the way from awaken to dream states may yield some interesting insights into how Mei Ling/Jessica Madigan got the whole Joe Brandt’s Dream thing.  Even if it doesn’t happen in our lifetimes, or ever, there’s still an amazing “play” of the archetypes of the reader found only in other great storytellers like Berlitz and Charles Fort of Fortean Times fame.

    Don’t ask me where I’m going to get the time to read his The Complete Books of Charles Fort: The Book of the Damned / Lo! / Wild Talents / New Lands but anomalous phenomena is as much fun to pursue as anything else.  Especially when it occasionally yields tangible results and it is another one of those “assets you can take with you.”

    Arrival of the WoWW

    Naturally, when I’m not off chasing down crackpot economic theories, or doing any of the million and one other tasks in my life, I don’t think at all about the World of Woo-Woo (WoWW).  Not everyone is going to experience it, but once you do, is rocks your world, opens your head, and causes you to look at the whole world in a very different way.

    Reader Mark, an upscale professional reader of ours in San Francisco, had been highly skeptical of our focus on the WoWW and with good reason.  Until you encounter WoWW directly, there’s a perfectly natural tendency to blow it off as just so much horse poop.

    And then it happens:

    George…

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    Making Money with "Non-Work" (Part 1, Angling for Dough)

    Mark Twain, I think it was, said “Work is what a person is obligated to do. Play is everything else…” or words to that effect. With the opening of fresh-water fishing season at hand, we “cast about” for some ideas on how to make money by doing what you like. All in a very personal set of recollections about business learned from (of all things) fishing.

    War and Peace – With a Side of Put Options

    Tolstoy I am not. Although we seem to have a gambling streak in common, I remain confused just what a “non-violent and spiritual anarchist “ is.  But I do have a good grip on the gambling side, which is why tomorrow morning’s Peoplenomics report will be so interesting.  I developed something called “The Trading Model” which was designed to keep your 401-k or saving from being run over and tossed in the ditch.

    Still, we have to admit the title “War and Peace” is a pretty novel way of framing the morning’s news, especially because it’s Tolstoy’s homeland that is warning of civil war if Ukraine uses force to put down the Eastern uprisings which will (unchecked) cede more of the former Ukraine back to Russia.

    War in never civil, even if that’s the term.  And by now, you have likely read James Dunnigan’s works on war, what goes into them and so forth.

    The hell of it is that  I’m pretty sure that Donetsk will fall, say next week, and that should put us in a position to rally from pending lows (specific targets tomorrow) back up before the Russian moves on the whole of Europe ramp up in May, if I have anticipated their timing right.

    This morning, the market is not taking the news particularly well.  After killing 166 points in the Dow Monday, another loss seems likely today, and into next week’s options expiration at which time U know who will be buying up armloads for the next cycle (May).  I generally don’t play options anymore, but when news events and history seem to lay out a path to “rob the bank” with limited risk, it’s a WTF decision.

    War isn’t the only thing weighing on the market this morning.

    The Federal Reserve’s Consumer Credit (it’s really debt, but in banking it’s always about me, me, me, and the me in this case is creditors) Report that came out yesterday.  Revolving credit card use is cratering again, going down at an annualized rate of 3.4%.  Sure, there was some improvement in non-revolving debt, but that was from things like student loans.

    See footnote #7 and the gain under major types of credit by holder to “federal government” over here.

    I’ve said before – but it bears repeating – that in a real recovery, the consumers is doing something besides buying cars, borrowing money to pay taxes, and scrimping to pay HUGE healthcare premiums.  The real solution is found is barring credit card companies from charging delinquent people more than regular interest – knock off this 30% whack on the pee-pee stuff that jams people down into debt and just fattens up the banks stress test line and ultimately just grows the divided between the haves and the have-nots.

    I know this is dirt-simple and should be apparent, but it seems to be beyond the grasp of more than 500 Fools on the Hill or the guy down the Pennsylvania Avenue from them.

    Hence, this morning’s outlook:  People are buying gold because they don’t trust a) Russia and b) the US.

    Of course, there is the falling tech angle, too.  This is making headlines in places like the Financial Times.  Of course, if you had read my March 27th report (A “Social Decline” in Motion?) you would not be the least bit surprised.

    Thus, we fearlessly forecast an S&P that could hit 1,751 within a week or two, (or Friday) which could jam gold up to the $1,375  range, or maybe even higher.  Fear is predictable.

    This is a great time to be thinking like a financial doctor:  If this morning’s headlines are the symptoms, what would the patients be doing to self-medicate?  Cutting debt, buying gold, holding breath would be a fair stab at it, I would think.

    And since no one in Washington can stand up to the K-Street Mafia, Bankster Division, there will be no real reform of punitive/oppressive lending practices, and, as a result, the cycle of boom and bust, not to mention class divisions at the human level, will only continue to get worse.

    From the longwave economic perspective, we’re at the tail end of falling interest rates and as yesterday’s chart showed, this is when the odds of financial discontinuities is highest – when interest rates are nearly zero.  Think about negative interest rates for a second…and mull it over.

    With that as a backdrop, it’s no wonder KGB judoka are warming up their irons to strike.  Sound-bite media are paving the way and superficial analysis isn’t the work of the devil, but it may help the sons of Lenin a good bit.  An under 35-state department and leftovers of the Bushistas and PNAC aren’t likely to help, much, either. 

    So the close (shortly?) under S&P 1835 should take us down tdo our next trading target.  Give it a week or two, and let’s see how it plays.  Economics and war is just like golf, with just slightly different ballistics.  Tee time, as always, is 9:30 Eastern.

    More after this…

    (We’re always prepared to celebrate something around here…)

    Sun, Grand Crosses, and Jittery Times

    One of my biggest worries is that NASA has become a political football, of late.  Not only has the US decided to tank relations with Russia, but the “Oh, D’oh!” moment comes from the fact that we no longer have a way to get astronauts into space without relying on the Russians for lift.

    So it’s in this kind of “caught in our own thinking” and budget drops, that we eagerly wait each month for the Solar Cycle Projections, knowing that if any more cuts come to NASA they could start dropping important data, like this monthly chart.

    The reason this is key?

    Large solar flares happen on the backside of the solar progression (11.something years) and so we’re now in the high risk period.

    Line that up with an astrological Cardinal Grand Cross, (details part 1, and part 2) and while we’re at it, let’s also serve up this year’s four blood moons starting next week, and you have a greatly simplified explanation for why my inbox is filled up with emails like this one:

    “Got a creepy feeling about this Friday —

    Flash crash on Friday???
    I got a creepy feeling.  A couple of 11’s, a 22 and a 13.  And of course the Grand Cardinal Cross next week with the influence of Uranus being found in the disappearance of MH370 (that also = a 22 and a 13), and multiple earthquakes making the nightly news.”

    Like the old saying runs, as above, so below.  Just keep Robin Landry’s 1,740 S&P level circled as an interesting intermediate stopping point.

    In the meantime, the alignment of Earth, Mars, and the Sun today does lead to an increased chance of earthquakes, worry others.

    MH370 Search Claim

    China’s Xinhua news agency is going wall-to-wall on the MH370 debris story claiming their patrol ship Haixun 01 was first to hear the pinger.  We’ll see…

    Island Fever’

    The Senkaku’s are back in the news…those being the small islands in the East China Sea where Japan has laid claim.  None of which would matter except that the world is running out of oil, and there’s oil under those reefs and so it is a really BIG deal.

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    Coping: With How the World Unravels

    It’s not often that a reader sends in a dream about Ures truly, so I thought this email was particularly interesting, what me having a vested interest in it…

    Hello Mr Ure,

    Had one of those dreams that seemed to really jump out at me a few nights ago that I wanted to share with you.

    I dreamed that I was reading urbansurival and it stated that basically a messiah type figure was going to show up in the next 2-3 weeks. This wasn’t a real messiah but that 98% of the world would fall for it. The other 2% wouldn’t buy it and they’d be right not to. It was laid out very matter-of-factually and straight forward. After reading it all, it seemed that nobody including myself seemed upset, just another oddity to look out for and not get tripped up by. Could be something, or nothing. Anyway, have a great week! Keep up the good work.   ~Mario

    I was really good with all of it, except for the dates.  In case you missed our “three wrecks” summary of Monday’s news, the play is likely over the next two or three years and should go something like this:

    Now:  Russia is facing the potential for HUGE war with China over Siberia/Mongolia in 2018-2020 because of all the resources and open land up there.

    The Russians want the former Soviet Union (FSU) manufacturing resource in their back pocket before then, so the former proxy states of (Czech, Pole, Bulgarian, etc…basically anywhere that made an AK-47 or parts is prized) are in Russians sights.

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    Monday: Waiting for the Wreckage

    We have three stories this morning which can be broadly lumped under the “waiting for the wreckage” concept.

    The first, as always around here, is financial in nature.  This is because in the Grand Long Wave Theory of things, we’re getting down close to the bottom of the trough of long-term interest rates and we are nearly at Ure’s Paradox.

    A chart in one of the recent Peoplenomics reports sums up the problem graphically:

    What this means is that as interest rates fall, stock prices with stable earnings will go up.

    But there is a boundary zone, because as interest rates approach zero then suddenly the value of stocks drops precipitously because confidence in the whole economy just got crushed by inflation.

    And this, of course, explains neatly why a) the market is continuing to replay the spring-summer of 2011 so nicely and b) why the stock market fell on its butt on Friday.

    This morning, has anything changed?  Well, no. 

    The Market is waiting to open down about 50 on the Dow and somewhere in here we will begin edging down to the 1835-1840 S&P level. 

    Unfortunately, our Trading Model will have announced a sell signal somewhere before that (at least likely so) and that will set up further panic down to the next lower level, which is around S&P 1740, by Robin Landry’s calculations.

    But if/when THAT fails, then we finally get around to an S&P with a target of 1,565 (my work) or as low as 1,540 (Landry’s work) as possibilities along in August, but perhaps earlier.

    The next Biggie, in terms of market data, will be the Consumer (yoke of) Debt (credit to banksters) which will be released by the Fed today.

    With M1 interest rates jacked up to 18.3% annualized (printing money is the apparent replacement for QE’s going away) we will be holding our breath to see if people are putting on the yoke of debt at high enough levels to sustain the economy going forward.  The yoke is presumably very comfy if you’re a Fortunate 500 corporation, but the credit card money-changers don’t give a rip and so they’re still screwing people with 29.9% rates on delinquent payments.

    And it is EXACTLY this spread (the 29.9% F.U. Consumer Rate – versus the 0.25% we love you bankster rate, that Her Yellinness doesn’t seem to be addressing.

    Until that spread is narrowed (with a return to usury laws, perhaps?) it’s only a matter of time until the economy goes off to become the poster child for wreckage, also to be known as the Second Depression.

    Our #2 Wreckage story after this shameless bit of self-promotion…

    The Pinger-Dinger

    The media hype machine is going full blast this morning.  And once again, it’s the hunt for MH370 and reports that a promising signal has been heard.

    If this is starting to sound a little suspect, I can tell you as someone who has worked on battery powered projects involving battery instrumentation (and yes, on patents for it) there is not a lot of reason to put stock in these latest reports.

    Batteries, you see, are chemical and the colder they get, the less energy they put out.  I don’t have the specs on the pinger’s battery in front of me, but a month, under cold water and “keeps on running?  Count me skeptical, for sure.

    Another reason to be skeptical is this note from a source:

    Following my previous emails to you regarding flight MH370 going north and not south I wish to update you and point out to you that there is still no public technical evidence to support that the flight really did go south as the media reports. I am an expert in RADAR, RF, IP networking and Doppler theory/capabilities. You, I am certain are well versed in radio and RF theory. You will thus understand that the so called Rolls Royce Engine satellite pings that were received by the two satellites could only measure transit time and RF Doppler shift. Thus:

    1) East/West relative direction could be determined for the plane by measuring message transit time and Doppler shift.  I believe the MH370 flight path was certainly in the west side of the map ellipse depicted in map-1 below.

    2) But the Doppler shift of the carrier frequency of the RF ping will not allow anyone to ascertain whether the plane went north or south, but only along with the signal transit time that the plane moved as far as the limits in the black arc on map-1.  North or south cannot be known from this data

    As you can see (look at map 1 of the 2 maps below) if the flight went north it would have ended up in one of the “Stans” such as Kyrgyzstan or Pakistan or very close to it.  Terrorism in Kyrgyzstan has increased since the U.S. military invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban in 2001. Southern Kyrgyzstan is increasingly sympathetic to terrorism and radical Islam according to Wikipedia. Western governments would not want terrorist organizations to know that they know where the plane is now located.

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    Coping: With Dreams, Dream Work, and the Dream Center

    Once again, the mind of George was busy delivering either the future or a frappe of leftover thought stubs last night as I had one of those odd dreams with content that has – on occasion – old me about the future before it arrives.

    I won’t go through the litany of past experience – I’ve done that enough in the past – but the dream last night centered on the concept “The Sudberry (Sudbury) Incident” which would be fine.  Except, of course, I know no Sudberrys and have no idea why it should pop up in a dream. 

    The word Sudberry (possibly Sundberry or Sudbury) doesn’t mean jack to me and it’s not a word that has cropped up in the previous conscious thought in the past year.  Hell, I don’t consciously remember ever thinking about it.

    The problem with this kind of dream (with no apparent cause) is that it may be part of the greater subject area known as dream work.  This is where dreams are seen (almost shamanistically) as tools to help the conscious and unconscious/preconscious parts of the Whole Self have discourse.  Helps to have guidance.

    The follow-up work on Sudberry/Sudbury incident, for me, is to wonder if there is a military aspect to it, since my retired SF/Ranger bro-in-law made an appearance in the dream.  Has me wondering about hostages, and unpleasantries down that road because he was a Delta nominee who was cut (glasses) because uncorrected vision was a requirement.

    I’ve also sent a note to Grady up at the www.nostracodeus.com project to add the words to our web-scanning efforts.

    So where is Sudbury/Sudbury?

    Massachusetts:  City of 18,000 roughly

    Massachusetts 2: A school in Framingham.

    Ontario:  Greater Sudbury

    Britain: A place in Suffolk, also historical area of London

    Australia, reef in Queensland

    I’m sure there are others, but whatever the hell “the Sudberry Incident” is will likely either pop into headlines in no more than 10-days, or this was just a leftover piece of brain-cheese that somehow ended up in a fight/conflict with aspects of military.  I’ll ask Panama, when he gets up and about, whether Sudberry is meaningful to him, and report back tomorrow.

    And this gets us to the whole reason for this discussion in the first place:  I have had enough personal experiences – about a dozen so far – in which aspects of the future have shown up that I started a project back in 2008 called the National Dream Center.

    I also believe I mentioned a while back that I wanted to divest myself of the site so that the important work of the site could continue.  Which was (and is) a kind of central repository where dreams about the future could be posted and results tracked.

    My problem – is that as much as I loved the research, especially the charts over time showing how people’s dream content was drifting about, I just didn’t have time to devote to the daily postings that growing the site would entail.

    And the idea was,; I think you’ll agree, just too damn good to drop.

    So today, the www.nationaldreamcenter.com site is under the control of Chris McCleary who is a professional working in what?  Dream work!  Perfect!

    You can read his bio and introduction first post over here.  And whether you have an oddity to post, please post it to Chris’s Dream Center DreamBase because the idea is to capture as much content as possible and try to and develop tools for working in this really odd land.

    Oh, and my Consigliere called from Aspen over the weekend (life’s tough, huh?) whining about his broken foot was still not back into skiing condition, but then he warmed up to his subject.

    “I don’t know if you noticed, but there is a post over on the Godlike Productions site about an earthquake warning for Wyoming for this week…which is kind of odd. You might want to take a look at it…

    I did – the posts are over here.

    Say, you don’t think the Sundby Reservoir southeast of Medicine Bow Peak got garbled up in my dream, do you?  We’ll just start the clock and wait, I suppose.

    The only news item close is the death yesterday of a worker at a smelter in Sudbury, Canada… I don’t think that was it, but who knows?  A prequel?

    Letters We Like to Get

    This weekend’s Peoplenomics report deals with how to write a good “Dead Letter.”  In today’s digital age, a simple note to an executor of a will is NOT enough.  What about all those passwords and intellectual assets that will be under digital lock and key?  And would your survivors know where your online assets are even stashed?

    George,
    Very mature, well presented Peoplenomics report today.
    Takes the organized life and closes the door softly.
    Since I attend the local monthly meeting with speakers who
    have had near death experiences, and I know a couple of
    counselors who have had their own experiences and they
    worked with hundreds of people with NDE experiences,
    writing an instructional letter to finish up the unfinished
    business of life…as you have done…seems practical.
    …and when you get to the other side, evaluating your own
    checklist of what did I get right and what still needs to be
    done or corrected next life will be a wonderful
    experience for you. And the fact that you shared
    it with all of us earns you a…
    “WELL DONE GEORGE!!!”
    My regards,
    Roger

    Another subscriber – an attorney who specialized in wills and estate planning, seconded the concept and cited from personal experience:

    My beloved client fighter jockey had a 3 ring notebook he called his “Croak Book”. It contained copies of insurance, wills, powers of attorney, brokerage accounts, bank accounts, treasure maps, and so forth. Key original documents were in a safe for obvious reasons.

    When he died, we opened the Croak Book and everything was easy peasy. Except the World was never quite as much fun, in some ways, after he croaked. I truly look forward to seeing him again sometime, somewhere. And I always tell my clients about the croak book concept.

    BUT.

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    Estate Planning: The "Dead Letter"

    Most times, our topics in Peoplenomics follow a logical sequence: How to keep the “wolf away from the door” is the starting point. Then we get into “wolf trapping” and finally, throwing in with the bears now and then (as in yesterday’s market action) to skim a buck or three in trading. But there are unpleasant tasks in finance, too. Like doing up a Will.

    Rally On Jobs Report

    Oh, I can feel the stampede of bulls in just a half-hour when the market opens.  Nothing helps climb a wall of worry like a solid jobs report just out…

    Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 192,000 in March, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 6.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment grew in professional and business services, in health care, and in mining and logging.

    Household Survey

    Data In March, the number of unemployed persons was essentially unchanged at 10.5 million, and the unemployment rate held at 6.7 percent. Both measures have shown little movement since December 2013. Over the year, the number of unemployed persons and the unemployment rate were down by 1.2 million and 0.8 percentage point, respectively. (See table A-1.)

    Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for adult women increased to 6.2 percent in March, and the rate for adult men decreased to 6.2 percent. The rates for teenagers (20.9 percent), whites (5.8 percent), blacks (12.4 percent), and Hispanics (7.9 percent) showed little or no change. The jobless rate for Asians was 5.4 percent (not seasonally adjusted), little changed from a year earlier.

    The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more), at 3.7 million, changed little in March; these individuals accounted for 35.8 percent of the unemployed. The number of long-term unemployed was down by 837,000 over the year.

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    Coping: Friday at the WoWW

    As I await a boatload of research materials, that may give some additional insight into “Joe Brandt’s Dream” to show up, it’s nice to know that The World of Woo-Woo is still presenting life in very non-ordinary ways.  Such as this report from Susan…

    I’ve had a couple of woo events happen this week, completely out of the norm for me, the first one didn’t strike me as anything odd until I experienced the second one that completely freaked me out. 

    I take my five month old lab for a walk around the property every evening at sunset, she always carries her tennis ball with her on these walks.  I always keep an eye on where the ball is because we are walking in a hay field and it needs to be kept clear.  So we are out for our walk and she runs from behind me and as I look down at her she still has the ball in her mouth.  It’s a purple and red tennis ball and she’s a black lab, so it’s very easy to see.  She runs in front of me about 20 feet and stops, starts sniffing the ground, and looking around.  When I get up to her I can see she doesn’t have her ball, so I start looking around, It is no where to be found.  We still haven’t found that ball after four days, the area is completely flat, there is nothing but low cut dead grass, mud, and a few sprouts of green coming up, no shrubs no trees.

    The second one is unnerving for me personally. I was building a new raised bed for the garden.  I’m making it out of some left over galvanized panels and some 4×4 from previous projects. I’m doing this by myself, wrestling 10 foot pieces of tin to make them stand is not the easiest thing in the world, so I basically tacked it together and then go back and square it up.  I was on the last post and the bottom of it needed to come over a little for the post to be standing straight.  I am using 3″ brass wood screws with a star head and some nuts with a metal lip around it to act as a washer since I didn’t have any left.  They fit perfectly and there is no way for the screw head to go through the hole of the nut. So I start backing out the screw and it was like my field of vision did a quick little quarter turn, the nut came flying at my feet and the screw was gone.  I only had the screw backed out about a half-inch-if that.  I just stood there, still bent over, drill still in place from where the screw USED to be, looking at the nut between my feet.  So once I snapped out of it, I tore that area apart, I couldn’t find the screw or any piece of it.  So I went ahead and put another screw in the same hole and had no problem getting it in (thinking the screw had broke off in there).  I don’t know how to explain it but it was just gone.

    Love Ure page, Susan

    Love Ure report, too.

    The problem with it is that it’s typical of the kind of reports we get all the time.  Someone will place an object somewhere – and when they go back – POOF!  Object gone.  Then – anywhere from a few days to months, the object will appear back where it is supposed to be.

    I have lots of theories about things that could make such phenomena occur.  But on the screwing part of your report, I would be very interested, both cases, actually, about the weather at the time.

    A lot of these anomalous phenomena seem to be associated with darkness or very low clouds.

    I’m sure you’ve come to the possible conclusion that humans are sort of “on an ant farm” for a higher intelligence?  It’s a logically consistent line of thinking because it fits a whole passel of facts into one neat little box.

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    Good News Ahead of Unemployment Data

    Tomorrow will be an interesting one – it’s when the new unemployment report (for March) will be released.  It’s almost predictable that the report will show either a stable, or slightly improving jobs picture.  But what may not be clear is how many jobs are real (not taxpayer supported) and what portion are thanks to increased government spending.

    But we do have a couple of clues to help guide us, in this regard, which are out this morning.  The Balance of Trade report and the Challenger Job cuts.  Cuts first:

    New figures released Thursday by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. show employers announced the fewest first-quarter job cuts in 19 years, providing further evidence that the economy continues to gain strength as it enters the sixth year of recovery.

    The first quarter closed with 34,399 March job cuts, the second lowest monthly total since January 2013. The only month to see fewer cuts during that period was December, when just 30,623 job cuts were announced. The March total was 18 percent lower than the 41,835 planned job cuts reported in February and 30 percent lower than a year ago when March job cuts totaled 49,255.

    The other big number this morning is the Balance of Trade report.   It wasn’t good.  Somewhere in here, we were expecting the US deficit in trade with other nations to begin to improve because of demand or US resource products and food.,  No such luck.  Trade gap is widening.

    The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of
    Economic Analysis, through the Department of Commerce,
    announced today that total February exports of $190.4 billion
    and imports of $232.7 billion resulted in a goods and services
    deficit of $42.3 billion, up from $39.3 billion in January,
    revised. February exports were $2.0 billion less than January
    exports of $192.5 billion. February imports were $1.0 billion
    more than January imports of $231.7 billion.

    The January to February decrease in exports of goods reflected decreases in industrial supplies and materials ($2.7
    billion) and capital goods ($0.9 billion). Increases occurred in consumer goods ($1.2 billion); other goods ($0.6 billion); and automotive vehicles, parts, and engines ($0.1 billion).

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    Coping: With Aftershocks & Joe Brandt’s Dream

    To pretty much no one’s surprise, there was a major aftershock in Chile overnight, a 7.6.  And yes, this is large enough to cause more damage and perhaps kill people.  While the reality of the April Fools quake sets in, and the prospect that things are about to “get moving again” along the eastern perimeter of the Pacific’s Ring of Fire, it’s the other stuff…the memories, the slight hints at Woo-Woo, and what the animals are telling us that may help guide our thinking about the future.

    This morning’s quake aftershock  details are pretty straightforward 7.6 is the headline number:

    What escapes most people is the potential for a series of mega quakes to (as my friend warhammer puts it) “unzip world..”  It’s what happens when you apply modern military (if—>then) planning to earthquake ramifications…

    George,

    I’m sure you’ve seen this . . . very peculiar goings on in Yellowstone.  The animal behavior alarms me far more than the associated quake activity.

    Add the Chile quake and today’s aftershock along with LA basin activity and Mamma Earth is definitely movin’ and a shakin.’

    As I tend to look at worst case scenarios when planning courses of action (COAs – pronounced ‘Koh-ahs’) – and thinking about the U.S. either suffering a large magnitude quake or a Yellowstone eruption, the financial and social chaos would surely be momentous, especially with a Yellowstone eruption. 

    A natural disaster wrought by a large quake or massive volcano would be the perfect time for a geopolitical nemesis to detonate a high altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) over the East Coast of N. America.  The double whammy would almost certainly be crippling and could well prove fatal to the viability of America as a nation. 

    Do I think this will happen?  Shoot – that’s for the folks at Farsight Institute and your own Nostracodeus site to divine, not little old me.  But ‘IF’ (note the BIG if) some extra-natural event does happen, we should be on the look for adversaries eager to exploit the situation in any and every way possible for their own benefit.  Let’s look at the list:

    – Russia:  unfettered influence in Eurasia, the Med, Cuba and S. America

    – China: fronts the global economy, instantly becoming the global economic and military superpower

    – Iran:  its radical brand of Islam is unleashed in the Middle East and particularly against Israel and Saudi Arabia as it prepares for the prophesied imminent arrival of the Hidden Imam, or Mahdi

    – Syria: no holds barred vengeance against rebel forces and the prophesied epicenter for the coming internal Islamic war before the Mahdi’s arrival.

    – India/Pakistan:  the most likely area for a hair-trigger nuke exchange in the world, including between Iran and Israel

    – Africa: the Dark Continent would experience previously unseen religious/tribal/ethnic violence and bloodshed

    Yep, pretty damn depressing what could happen if the U.S. is fatally or significantly crippled.  The world could essentially unzip.  So let’s hope (and pray) the Yellowstone animal exodus is over exaggerated and nothing of note will come from the reports.

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