Ures Truly Hedges a Bet

Yes.  If the market collapsed between now and the end of June, I will be fabulously wealthy. 

And I was doing fine living out this delusion until three things happened Wednesday:

1.  The Fed took a middle road.

2.  The Peoplenomics.com  Trading Model was back in bullish mode this week

3.  I ran out of Tums

When all three things stack up like this, I buy the most highly levered insurance policy I can find.  In  this case (one minute before the Wednesday close) I bound a put option on a triple levered downside (bear) ETF product.  That way, if there is a melt-up, the ETF bear product will drop like a free-falling safe and my put option will protect me from losing my shirt.

I might have just gone to cash, but it I wanted to do that, what’s the point of gambling?

With that, Personal Incomes are just out:

Personal income increased $78.4 billion, or 0.5 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $68.0 billion, or 0.5 percent, in March, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $107.2 billion, or 0.9 percent. In February, personal income increased $54.3 billion, or 0.4 percent, DPI increased $47.6 billion, or 0.4 percent, and PCE increased $54.7 billion, or 0.5 percent, based on revised estimates. Real DPI increased 0.3 percent in March, the same increase as in February. Real PCE increased 0.7 percent in March, compared with an increase of 0.4 percent in February.

And the choice parts:

Personal outlays — PCE, personal interest payments, and personal current transfer payments — increased $109.7 billion in March, compared with an increase of $57.2 billion in February. PCE increased $107.2 billion, compared with an increase of $54.7 billion.

Personal saving — DPI less personal outlays — was $487.7 billion in March, compared with $529.4 billion in February. The personal saving rate — personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income — was 3.8 percent in March, compared with 4.2 percent in February.

The market looks to open about flat, though gold is down.  But the real thing to watch is the Baltic Dry Index which continues to decline and is now down to 943 in this morning’s reading.  Which means choppy to down more often than not.

Still, I one a put on a put (which is like a call, but without having to give up being a bear to do it) because…well…either money in that or in Tums.

Waiting on War

Notice how since pro-Russians are taking more real estate the story has been driven from lead item in most media outlets?

Ethics of state death penalty and the Dow closing at a record high (not accompanied by the S&P or NASDAQ, so it reeks of painting the tape) displace it.

You’re not supposed to think through the implications of China becoming the world’s largest economy, either.

Nope, nothing to see here, move along, citizen…

Hey, Al! Department

Dear former vice president Gore;

Did you see what the National Weather Service delivered this morning?  A frost advisory for parts of Texas.  Here it is MAY and where is our you-know-what?

Here Come the Drones

Quietly released as a safety advisory to pilots:

April 21, 2014, the FAA announced that the first of six selected test site for performing unmanned aircraft system (UAS) research is now operational in North Dakota.
The FAA granted the North Dakota Department of Commerce team a Certificate of Waiver or Authorization (COA) to begin using a Draganflyer X4ES small UAS at its Northern Plains Unmanned Aircraft Systems Test Site. The COA is effective for two years.

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Coping: With Life in the ‘Rock Tumbler

This morning’s column is a little shorter than usual due to Universe delivering our favorite “theme” live and in person.

Life’s theme for Thursday may be found online here.

“So, Ure, what exactly is ‘piling up?’”

Brother in law was admitted to the hospital Wednesday.  A kind thought or prayer is appreciated.

As you may remember, this man is the closest thing you’ll find to a shortened  “Rambo.”  Rangers, SF, two tours in ‘Nam and usually last guy out of the LZ’s.  Endlessly sharpens knives…

He’s had a persistent cough for three months and northing seems to be touching it (cipro, the whole spectrum of stuff) and so he’s in taking advantage of TriCare to name down just what’s going on.

Best case?  I’ve got my money on walking pneumonia because the other bet (CHF but we don’t talk about that possibility) is not one I want to think about.  Symptoms fit, though.  Worse at night/laying down/at night.  Gradually improving through the day.  Time for the pokenprodders.

Instead of jumping online and writing my usual long, glib column, I was busy looking for homecoming gifts this morning and now (is it time yet?) we get to the rock tumbler part.

Panama Bates, like all good foot soldiers (even ones who hid too well in a training exercise and had to walk 600 miles out of Turkey years and years back) always keeps his eyes on where he’s walking.  And he likes archeology.   So he finds things (like curious rocks and old coins and this and that’s.

Besides, rock hounding is fun.

Here lately, he’s been talking about going up to Arkansas just after a good rain has come through in order to look for diamonds.

If you haven’t looked yet, a gander at Crater of Diamonds State Park over here will give you a worthwhile destination for your RV’ing.

Sifting though yards of dirt sounded suspiciously like real work to me, but intrepid rock hounds are driving by things like the 6.19 carat White Diamond found up there.

Oh sure, states always have their hooks out for money, but this one place (Arkansas) gets a little slack in my book for at least giving state residents an even chance.

Naturally, his trip has been postponed.  (We haven’t figured out how to lash a hospital bed to the pickup yet.

So when he comes home, he’ll be arriving to find a rock polishing kit consisting of  a 6 Lb Rotary Dual Drum Rock Tumbler Lapidary Polisher along with assorted add-ons and grits and bags of stones.

Nothing aids recovery better than projects around that you’re looking forward to.   If nothing else, the getting up to turn off the clatter ought to get him up and around quickly.

All three of us around the ranch have somehow missed the lapidary/stone polishing angle to life.  I’ve thought about it many times, as has he, but it was time to find the right stuff this morning to cheer his recovery.  Priorities matter.

Elaine will be the ultimate beneficiary, though.  She loves decorating with odd things and a bunch of polished stones ought to keep her busy for months plotting “just the right thing” to do with them.

The Major’s Visit, I

This afternoon, meanwhile, my buddy who I grew up with, will be arriving for 11-days of boys reliving childhood.  Except instead of riding bikes to Tacoma from Seattle or being chased by a hatchet-wielding hobo, we’ll be flying the Beechcrate up to KSPS where his son is in fighter ace /air combat school.

And that meant…

Spending hours Monday polishing the Mouse(keteer).  Just rubbing out and polishing the tops of two wings ate a three hour hole in the day.  And (along with everything else) may have something to do with sleeping through the alarm this morning.

Junior, the Inventor

So here’s my son trying to fix a light that used to come on over “hot files” in the med clinic he works in. 

“Hold on a minute, I have an idea…” he said when the light above stopped working.

Enterprising as always, he hung an LED lantern from his “at desk prep kit” and presto!  New light called a  “Portable Chart;s Up Indicator Light  (PCUIL)” system.

I’ve advised him not to get too excited about patenting it…

But in today’s medical market, it may warrant a startup and high dollar IPO.  Yes, things really are that crazy in medicine.

Quips

Making the Rounds: 

“If Cliven Bundy had name his ranch Benghazi, the feds would have NEVER shown up…”

And…

I happened to be in the airport office when one of our local pilots came in and while rat killing (Texese for shooting the bull) said something that wasn’t 100% politically correct.

“Watch it, or you’ll never own an NBA team,” I warned him.

Consider yourself warned, too.

Canine Cause and Effect Dept.

Local delivery driver lady for a large national moving things absolutely, positively, overnight company dropped off my latest prize from Harbor Fright yesterday.

In the process went into some detail about how her jacket was ripped up by a local dog a few miles away.

Which led to her going into some detail about how dangerous this dog was (coon dog of mixed heritage and all).

Turns out, when I got deeper into the conversation, she’s a dog owner herself.  Has a female Pit.

She swears it would never hurt a fly and is perfectly trained.

My money’s on the dog surprising her one of these days.

Killer breeds are, near as I can figure, very much like politicians.  They all seem OK.

But then when you least expect it….

A daily search of Google’s news engine for [dog bite] makes my case air tight.

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Grist for the Inquiring Mind: Timewaves Post 2012

Every so often I accumulate ideas, clusters of this-and-that’s which don’t fit neatly under a single heading. Timewave Zero’s follow-ons post 2012 fit this mold. So rather than spend (waste?) a lot of time coming up with a logical framework for “hanging it all together” I thought instead this morning I’d share what amount to a series of “Post-Its” for folks like us who are trying to make a buck, minimize our tax consequences, and then hide it from the ravages of inflation and deflation. Oh, and along the way make a few more bucks.

Just Out: Happy–Talk on Housing?

Well, it depends on which chart you want to look at, I suppose, as the Case Shiller/S&P/Dow Jones monthly housing report is out.  Based on a consistent 20-city sample, I take this one as the “gold standard” of real estate price reports:

New York, April 29, 2014 – Data through February 2014, released today by S&P Dow Jones Indices for its S&P/Case-Shiller1 Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, show that the annual rates of gain slowed for the 10-City and 20-City Composites. The Composites posted 13.1% and 12.9% in the twelve months ending February 2014. Thirteen cities saw lower annual rates in February. Las Vegas, the leader, posted 23.1% year-over-year versus 24.9% in January. The only city in the Sun Belt that saw improvement in its year-over-year return was San Diego with an increase of 19.9%.

Both Composites remained relatively unchanged month-over-month.

Thirteen of the twenty cities declined in February. Cleveland had the largest decline of 1.6% followed by Chicago and Minneapolis at -0.9%. Las Vegas posted -0.1%, marking its first decline in almost two years. Tampa showed its largest decline of 0.7% since January 2012.

“Prices remained steady from January to February for the two Composite indices,” says David M.

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Interplanet Janet and the Choice From Hell

If Ben Bernanke was “Helicopter Ben” for his plans to try and “out-print” pernicious deflation, as I’ve been forecasting for months now, Fed boss Janet Yellen may be about to surpass Bernanke and play out the role of Schoolhouse Rock’s Interplanet Janet. I’ve been telling you for months that in lieu of the Quantitative Easing (QE) scam, the Fed would quietly turn on mass money printing as an alternative to ending up with another few trillion on their balance sheet. And thus, we arrive at this morning’s rantings of Ure local economic madman. Suppose the market is doing a huge pump and dump ahead of tomorrow’s Federal Reserve announcement? Here’s how Janet Yellen’s week could turn ugly:

Coping: Scanning the Alt. Futures

Somewhere along the line, it may have occurred to you to ask”Why is this Ure fellow so wrapped up in research related to longwave economics?”

I hope you won’t be too disappointed:  For me it’s all about being prepared for the future.  As I have said uncountable times, there are two ways to win in Life.  You can play for maximum gains (in which case I assure you I would be stinkin’ rich by now) OR you can play for minimum loss, in which case you find me with a lone gold coin, surrounded by large trees, money in the back, wonderful wife, debt-free, and so forth.

OK…this has what to do with the future?

Well, if you don’t have a pretty good idea about what the future holds, you won’t be able to project what is coming.  Thus, if you hold to the “plan for minimum losses” approach, you won’t know what to plan for.

Take any number of past topics around here that we have seen coming well in advance.  Like the present shortage (in some areas and some calibers).  I first started to write about this back in 2007 or 2008 when the Gun Owners of America noticed something odd happening.

Research followed and a few selected bets were made.  And so I never have to worry about that aspect of future.

Same thing with food prices and shortages. 

Researched the hell out of things, and sure enough, we think the outlook for food, especially in light of the energy and bee picture is pretty grim.  How to hedge?  Coauthor a book on hydroponics and have all kinds of preps in that regard and the large (20 panels worth) of solar power to ensure we will be cool and fed into the future.

When that first appeared, the critical items (MaxiGrow and MaxiBloom) were picked up in bulk.  Again,; another problem we won’t have to worry about.

And so it goes:  Future appears, gives hints, one proactively plans and then kicks back to watch how the play follows as 7-billion people follow along behind.

—

Economics is not the only way to play this game, of course.  I used to write a good bit about an approach called predictive linguistics.

But the goal posts are now moving in that arena.  In fact, just yesterday, a EurekaAlert offered this:

A system detects global trends in social networks 2 months in advance

Works using just 50,000 Twitter accounts

This news release is available in Spanish.

A new method of monitoring identifies what information will be relevant on social networks up to two months in advance. This may help predict social movements, consumer reactions or possible outbreaks of epidemics, according to a study in the Universidad Carlos III of Madrid (UC3M) is participating.

The aim of the research, on which scientists from the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid, the NICTA of Australia, and the American universities Yale and the University of California-San Diego have also collaborated, was to test what is known as the “sensors hypothesis” on the social networks: Is it possible to find a group of people (sentinels or sensors) with a special position that would allow the information that “goes viral” globally on the internet to be monitored? “If we could do that, we would be able to predict that viral spread, which would allow us to better understand social mobilization, debates regarding opinions, health, etc., and to determine how they become global,” explains one of the researchers, Esteban Moro Egido, of the Interdisciplinary Complex Systems Group at UC3M (Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos).

Nice work, huh?

Of course the problem with this is that we (you, me, the genpop at large) will never see all the outputs from this because why?  How about “We’re not writing the checks…”?

A good bit can, however, be done with simple tools like word frequency analysis, which is why our very public www.nostracodeus.com project runs daily and posts bits, clips, but mainly words that are either ascending or descending and these give us a sense of future.

While yesterday’s data has us looking for some kind of replay or referencing of Nelson Mandela over coming days, we are intrigued by the present word groupings Sanctions, War, Attack, Economy, Collapse.  Grady will have an update on the www.nostracodeus.com site this morning.  Main thing is this is not a system where so much interpretation is left to the discretion of an informed analyst.  Rather, the data is the data and we can all look at the tea leaves using the tool.

And that gets us to the point.  (At last!)

The other way of “seeing alternate futures” is by paying attention to dreams.

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Sleep Till Thursday–or War

Like every Monday, this one started as all Mondays do; looking with disbelief at how transient the weekend was and wondering “What the hell did I really get done in two days?”  and “Where’d the weekend go???”

A check of the sky, the radiation survey meter next to my desk, and noticing that the sky was still devoid of glowing mushrooms, led me to conclude that War didn’t break out this weekend over Ukraine and thus, predictable, the market ought to rally this morning until the next turd-in-the-punch-bowl shows up in headlines. 50 up at the open, call it.

I figure about Thursday the punch will turn undrinkable.

Here’s Ure’s Impeckerble Logic:

    • The only major economic news this morning is a “Who cares?” housing number on pending home sales.  This ought to be down, but figuring out “How far is down?” is hardly worth the calories needed to fire neurons.  So there goes Monday.
    • That gets us (still snoozing) to Tuesday when the Case-Shiller/S&P/Dow Jones (and whoever else wanders by) 20-City Housing Index comes around. This one ought to tell us we’re still stuck at 2003-2004 prices, but, as usual, only the top 2 percent of the assembled multitude will wonder what $100 in 2003 would buy today.  (The correct answer is $77.82 worth, since to hold purchasing power of a $100 bill printed in 2003 you’d need $128..15 today.)  Yes, dear, that really means something but not to the nation’s lamebrain financial press which can’t adjust inflation to save their sorry souls.
    • The other tell-tale tomorrow is Consumer Confidence (emphasis on the “con” parts.  More than anything, an economic realist, such as you-know-who, will use this to calibrate “Kentucky Windage” on how slow-thinking the ‘Mercian public is with all these pills in ‘em.
    • You’d need to be a subscriber to Peoplenomics.com in order to hear the blood boil about the advance GDP numbers coming Wednesday.

    Then we get to Thursday and by about here, we ought to figure out what “Mayday!  Mayday!  Mayday!” is all about because…

      • Challenger job cuts come out.
      • Personal Income (always a giggle) will be released along with it’s hysterical side-kick “personal savings rate” which includes (you’ll love this…) paying down credit card debt. (Honest accounting would book the depreciated value of the crap you bought, but that’s a longish rant you are too busy for…)
      • This all comprises something to do with Personal Consumption Expenditure tables, which is sort of like the trauma doc’s notes on why your wallet (OK, or purse) is bleeding red all over the place.  (“Change!” remember?  Which, in turn, is kinda like “One born every minute” but with a voting lever.)
      • Construction spending (down on single family is my bet, up on chicken coops for the poor and disenfranchised to keep ‘em in hock to The Man, I figure).
      • And if that’s not enough, once the morning’s tears have been wiped away, along with come auto and truck sales just in time to ruin an otherwise pending Miller time Thursday after the Fed Money Printing Festival Revelations are disclosed.  (Seems like I’m the only guy saying “Holy crap!  Printing M1 here lately at almost 19%…where’s the inflation?  None?  OMG that means DEFLATION has really started to dig in!!!”)

      To wrap up the week, we should get the unemployment rate, hourly earnings and factory orders (What factories?  They’re all in China, FCOL).

      Now, perhaps this is a somewhat elongated soliloquy to get to my first point:  But here’s the deal, plain and simple:

      Since we talked Friday, a story came out that US factories are gaining on China.  In longer versions of the story, like this one in USA Today, what you read is all about how productivity is increasing in America.  Which, no doubt, it is.  I mean, the Boston Consulting Group is shooting straight, right?

      To me, however, this is one of those good-news, bad-news kinda of stories.  Why?  Well, I’m sure all the productivity stories are true and yeah, sure, you betcha there will be jobs building the factories.  But what’s going to be inside? 

      Machines.  Automation.  Robots.

      And it sets the baseline for a deeper discussion which I’m going to keep harping on you about until you want to puke:  Productivity reaching the mystical 100% means no jobs for humans.  And that’s the bugger in the whole equation of modern capitalism.  One of two.

      T’other?  If you’ve been paying attention, it is that even with lower interest rates, we have falling behind the power curve, so that compound interest still eats the global economic system in short order, which is why the New World Order clowns are all scared shitless because they know that periodic global economic depressions don’t end happily. (Look around you for signs and portents.)

      While we wait for the unhappy ending (which some prescient/RV/seer types figure will be 2015-2016, the Big Slide is on and this year’s “Sell in May and Go Away” could be one for the record books. Just a hunch, mind you.

      There’s no point in worrying about it this morning:   This is still Monday.  And like the headline this morning said in just five words and a punctuator:  Sleep Till Thursday – Or War.

      We’ll get to that next…

      War!  (Of words, so far)

      President Traveler is taking time out from his Asia cuisine to announce “New U.S. Sanctions on Russia over Ukraine.”  (I had leftover spaghetti this morning, but the national press seems to have overlooked my side of it.)

      Poor move. On Sanctions, not my spaghetti.   No, make that really, really dumb move for two reasons that ought to be obvious.

      1.  If you tell Russia what we’re going to do, before it is in place, then Russia will hit the push buttons on their programmed response and the net gain is nil.

      2.  Secondly, Russia made it through the weekend without going into eastern Ukraine, so now is NOT the time to be slapping on sanctions.  Unless you’re trying to pick a fight, of course, and in that case, must be some really bad news about the economy on the horizon because the #1 reason for most wars is socioeconomic…

      3.  Third:  Putin will be really pissed when he reads in the NY Times how the US/West is after his personal hidden wealth around the world, figures our tipster Madison Avenue Mike.

      So with this (mild, restrained) analysis, let’s see what warhammer sees as he polished his spectacles and oak leaves…

      George,

      It is vital that leaders in the West examine all the viable motivations for Russia’s annexation of the Crimea and its apparent intent on safeguarding the bordering Eastern Ukraine. While I do not agree with all the points laid out in the article by the Guardian . .

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      Coping: Monday in the WoWW

      Ure’s Grand Universal Theory of Reality (GUT-OR) was shaken from the ether at exactly 12:56 AM this morning.  A time that will live in infamy.

      There I was, laying in bed as a huge lightshow appeared outside and a few minute later the rains arrives, part of that weather system that’s now killed about 20-some people as it meanders up the midsection of the country.

      A few minutes on from here, the soft “splaht, splaht” of rain on the screen porch metal roof changed to “ting, ting” as barely pea-sized hail began falling.

      “You’ve got better hearing that a dog sometimes,” she offered.  “Why is it you can’t hear me when I ask you to…”

      Oh-oh…Quick!  Time to fake a ‘snork’ like I’m only half awake.

      But I was more than half there.  My brain was working through the arrival of UFO’s over the Roswell NM area in 1947 only about 94 miles from the Trinity Test site where the first atomic weapon was exploded that eventually was credited with ending World War Two.  Would something like that happen, oh, about now?

      The mind was working through the odds of a UFO being brought down in one of our fields in the Texas Outback.  You’d assume they wouldn’t crash at an airport or in a big city, if possible.  But there was something about electrical discharges involved and my mind then went to work on whether that indicated that antigravity was ultimately going to be solved with a static discharge system like the Biefield-Brown experiments, or whether it would be broken with the rotating B-field theory that my buddy Vince and I keep working on.

      Somewhere about here, the B-fields (turned so as to make a spacetime vortex pulled into the lead as I thought back on an email that had some in Friday from reader Warren.

      Warren, in case you’ve misplaced the memory, was the fellow who took his lawnmower out a while back, mowed a BIG yard, and put the lawnmower away.  He then discovered (later) that the mower had use no gas.  Zero, zip, nada. 

      That was Warrens first face-off with the World of Woo-Woo, but his note Friday revealed it was back…

      Has anyone else been ‘gaining’ or ‘losing’ time? e.g., take a look at the clock and it’s 12:30 PM, look at it again an hour later and it’s 11:30 AM. That sort of thing? That’s happened to me several times over the last week or so…

      Nope. No ‘free’ mower gas this year…not yet, anyway.

      And that got me back to the lightning storm going through here overnight.  Will be have an uptick in WoWW reports this week because of so much “static” around with the tornadoes and such, or at the WoWW events more likely because unlike 1947, when they showed up too late, are the UFO drivers making a baseline survey before 2015-2016 when some of our remote viewing readers have run into a “road block?”

      WoWW 2

      And that gets us to another intriguing report…this time from reader Dana…

      Dear George,

      Your reader Mark, whose books and almond butter disappeared/reappeared, asked if anyone else had two or more items go missing at the same time. A couple hours after I read that post in your blog, I had a WoWW of my own:

      Working at my home office desk Friday, having a cigarette while doing a writing assignment.

      About 11:30, went downstairs to replenish coffee cup & get a new pack of cigarettes.

      There were two packs in the pantry. I took one, removed the cellophane & foil, grabbed coffee cup

      and returned to desk.

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      Strategic Living Deal Points – The Wait for War

      This morning a few “notes in the journal” about how life (finance/tech/rural) is changing and how our strategies may change as well as aging shows up and world conditions are anything but stable.  Think of this morning’s notes a waypoints along the path. 

      Worthwhile thinking points with the world at the edge of global war. The attack on Net Neutrality, in this context, is my long-predicted replay of the government seizure of the radio waves via the Communications Act of 1934 come to life.  You might remember, my friend Gaye at www.backdoorsurvival.com and I wrote a short book titled “11-Steps to a Strategic Life” which is available on Amazon.  But times are changing so we’ve begun thinking about an update because stability in life is starting to hit the fan. 

      Changes in conditions are likely to change the definition of “the good life” in large and chaotic ways.  Some notes on where that leads makes sense. After we get some coffee, of course.

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      No Point Thursday, the Headline Circus

      There are times I wake up, look over the headlines, and am convinced that the news media has invented a three (maybe four) ring circus judging the crap called “news.”

      And that the markets basically went nowhere Thursday, is just icing on the cake.

      I’ve always been suspicious of the fourth workday:  Not quiet or optimistic like Friday, so a long lunch if off the table.  No rejoicing in the halfway mark that accompanies “Hump Day” the day before.  Monday is always a fiasco, and most weeks Tuesday is when any real work gets done.

      You don’t see this very often in markets: Back-to-back identical Dow closing prices: 16,501.65 on the Dow Jones Industrials on both Wednesday and Thursday of this week.  Is it a sign of something? 

      Maybe so.  Maybe the market is just plum tuckered out.

      It has happened before, like 1995.

      That should change today because in the latest Money Supply figures out from the Fed last night, the annual rate of printing up money was 15.9% basis the most recent three months.  Eventually, someone besides me will start screaming “Here comes hyperinflation!”  Still, people are a little slow and we often run 6-months to 6-years early on things.

      The Michigan Sentiment Indicator is due out this morning at 10 (Eastern), but since Americans take more mood-altering drugs than anywhere else on earth, as long as no one makes any loud noises between 10 and 10:30 this morning, the slumber should continue.

      Still, we are a big perplexed to learn that a 700-page economics book has surged to the #1 spot on Amazon.  Thomas Piketty’s book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century is $24 bucks (with paper) or $22 bucks without.

      Speaking of books and Amazon and such, Howard Hill’s masterpiece (Mortgage Market Mayhem) is being updated and should be released this time.  It is the finest bit of financial writing I’ve read in a long time and I’ll let you know when it’s ready.

      700 pages on economics?  #1?  Perhaps there’s hope in the world after all.

      But Elaine and I were having the discussion yesterday about “What’s the right length book?”

      The topic came up because I just tried out a free Audibles.com book.  Even though the book I chose was abridged to three hours and something (a geeky business book) it was still boring as watching paint dry.  Elaine, who was out mudding the sheetrock in the sun room, came in and asked “How many times are they going to say the same thing?  How ‘bout some tunz?”

      Point taken.  So I wondered off to www.summary.com where I’ll be trying their sample/freebie later today.  (“The Power of Habit”).

      Now that the Obama Administration is emerging this week about having lied about Net Neutrality (see the New Yorker piece “Goodbye Net Neutrality; Hello Net Discrimination” in today’s editions) figuring out your preference when it comes to information density will become evermore important.  High density will be high cost.  Hard to beat paper for some things.

      Oh, and if you don’t like the internet being stolen, you can change your name to Ben Dover, try to out bid the cable industry (cable is toast, topic of our Peoplenomics report tomorrow) or ask your family doctor for meds…You know, the one you got to keep, right?

      None of this is what’s driving the Dow to open down 50 this morning…we’ll deal with that next.

      More after this…

      Center Ring: Mobgov Under Pressure

      [We begin with some theme-setting music, over here, to get you in the mood for this..]

      Let me see:  Since 1999 the US has pumped $5-billion in your tax money into Ukraine and in return for what?  A rhetorical question at best, unless you are a gas pipeline owner in Europe.

      So this morning, SecState John Kerry accuses Russia of “destabilization” (spelt Englishwise as “destabilisation” over here on the BBC site).

      While this may be the case, we wryly note that Russia, not NATO/the EU, or the US has had a naval base in the Crimea for a couple of hundred years.

      Against this backdrop, the New York Times is reporting this morning that “Ukraine says it will ‘blockade’ pro-Russian militants.”.

      And if they do (remember where you heard it first), Russia will intervene to protect their homies. Except instead of the usual “Whassup, homie?” It’s more likely going to be “Here, take this AK homie, and stand behind our “humanitarian assistance…”

      As I’ve told you previously, we instigated a coup, things didn’t work out right, now Russia is pissed, and the US has enough sense not to send troops to Ukraine since Putin’s objective is Poland’s industrial capability prior to the 5-year out standoff with China over Siberia land and resource at about the time Peak Oil will be in-your-face (*and walking more).

      Investors are a fairly cowardly lot.  Always thinking about returns and surety of the deal.  With the weekend ahead full of Eastern European question marks,  a drop today of a couple of hundred points toward the close can’t be ruled out.

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      Coping: With Idiocy – It’s Alive and Well

      Here we go again:  Another “Planet X” claim.  The inbox (and the recycle bin) usually dispose of them without me so much as getting a look at them.

      But the catchy headline this morning “Midwest quakes surge caused by Planet X/Niburu, not fracking!!!” strikes me as a new low point in mental acuity.

      A few facts, if we can? Not to ruin the doomporn business, but let’s face it, the end of the world from a runaway planet is not something to be taken lightly.

      So we look at the latest 30-day map of 2.5+ earthquakes around the world, zooming to North America and what do we find?

      This is not particularly hard shit to figure out:

      There are a whole bunch of quakes that are going on up and down the west coast.  No scientist in his (or her) right mind would place the burden of that on Planet X.  No, this most assuredly has to do with the long-term activity of the Pacific Plate which has something to do with mountains running into it – like the Sierra Nevada and back a ways, the Rockies.  And more importantly, current times coastal ranges.

      And that explains everything from the Continental Divide and west.

      The little cluster of quakes down in the area of Puerto Rico is (again) plate making mountain ranges.

      Maybe this hasn’t been widely explained enough in school: Most of the Caribbean islands are sitting on top of undersea volcanoes.   If you buy that – and the idea that the earth had more wrinkles on it than the average 100-year old, then we are left with what?

      A gob of quakes in what Midwest state that has fallen ass-over-teakettle for what?  FRACKING!

      I will go so far as to admit that the link between fracking and earthquake is maybe only 95% probable.  However, even in states like Oklahoma if you read this 2011 report, you’ll find admissions like this (highlighted part):

      What’s going on right now is a clever (more or less global) move by the Oil & Gas industry to “negotiate” an acceptable level of earthquake increases in order to address the problem of Peak Oil.

      Oh, that.

      Yeah, well, as I pointed out in this past week’s Peoplenomics report, the USA is consuming about 6-billion barrels per year and we are only producing 2.8 billion per year (in spite of the BS about “unlimited oil” which is a pantload).  At best, therefore we only have about 12-years of domestic US oil reserves left.

      It’s not like the US is alone, either.  The British Parliament has a report that says, in so many words if you understand the playing field, that the Brits will bend over as much as needed not to be the “first out” in the oil depletion wars that are forming up now.  (Like Ukraine is the gas war, right?):

      The Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering have reviewed the risks associated with fracking. They concluded that the health, safety and environmental risks can be managed effectively in the UK, by implementing and enforcing best operational practice. However, they made several recommendations including calling for more research on the carbon footprint of shale gas extraction.

      So that’s where life is going:  More and more drilling.

      And last night, I politely explained to the folks who want to drill some 60-foot deep seismic wells on Uretopia Ranch lands (and load them with 2 1/2 pound charges for a 3D survey) that I’ve turned that whole matter over to my attorney to deal with.

      Believe me, I understand the game here, I know the problem, and I am not amused to find that virtually everyone in Texas (who doesn’t own their subsurface rights) is, in effect, a squatter on a problem waiting to come by and make demands that their (superior) subsurface right not be infringed.

      My friend Howard mentions a horrifying reality – far more urgent than Planet X:  “You ever look at the red/blue maps and the oil/subsurface rights maps?”

      All of this, no matter how you cut it, is going to come down to a process and the object of the game is always a deal because the supply of oil is NOT unlimited and Big Oil knows this and doesn’t want people to figure out that over time we’re going to be moving (more and more) into a world of trading seismic impacts and surface rights for energy consumptive lifestyles which are marvelously profitable for Big Oil.

      So if someone sends you bullshit about Planet X being the cause of Oklahoma quakes, suggest they go back to wherever they went to school and demand their money back:  Clearly they got conned.

      You might also suggest, if they can handle something more than a picture-book, that they pick up a copy of  Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.

      Still, if you insist on demonstrably stupid ideas, I’m sure the Oil & Gas trolls will be along with another whopper next week, rather than explain the real trade-off in play. 

      “Second Gunman on Grassy Knoll Responsible for Quakes…”    Way more probable…

      Meantime, I’ve penciled out a budget for the pending “My attorney is better than your attorney” if reason doesn’t prevail. 

      I figure to cut the checks and watch the floor show.  Sometimes in life (oil exploration and divorces come to mind)  delegating to a good attorney the least stressful way to approach things and they’ve been trained in the art…

      But I have mentioned that  an effective radiated power of 5 kW at 14,300 MHz is not the kind of power you want to be mindlessly using electric blasting caps around.  Just sayin…

      The Friday Twofer Woo-Woo

      Reader Mark has been vexed by missing almond butter and reference books, in our latest tour of the world where things just happen that shouldn’t:

      “…when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” – Sherlock Holmes, from The Blanched Soldier

      Hi George, 

      This is a twofer woo-woo. 

      Case #1. About six weeks ago I was working on a client project and needed to access a couple of my writing/marketing reference books. I have an ordered library system, where my reference books are always in the same place on the same shelf. I went to get my two books and they were gone. There was also an empty space where the books would normally be. So I’m thinking that I must have pulled them out and used them previously and left they somewhere else. 

      George, I literally pulled my office apart looking for these books, not once, but three times! Nowhere to be found.

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      What Happened to Home Sales?

      I don’t know if you’ve had enough coffee yet to be able to form up a question at this ungodly hour, but did you happen to catch the data out Wednesday from the Census and HUD New Residential Sales report?  This is the poster child for “Train wreck…”

      Sales of new single-family houses in March 2014 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 384,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 14.5 percent (±12.9%) below the revised February rate of 449,000 and is 13.3 percent (±9.9%) below the March 2013 estimate of 443,000.

      The median sales price of new houses sold in March 2014 was $290,000; the average sales price was $334,200. The
      seasonally adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of March was 193,000. This represents a supply of 6.0
      months at the current sales rate.

      This was followed by today’s report on Durable Goods:

      New orders for manufactured durable goods in March increased $6.0 billion or 2.6 percent to $234.8 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This increase, up two consecutive months, followed a 2.1 percent February increase. Excluding transportation, new orders increased 2.0 percent. Excluding defense, new orders increased 1.8 percent.

      Year-on-year, the data shows non-defense growth of 3.7% which might SOUND all peachy-keen, but remember the scoreboard is cockeyed:  the report is in dollars.

      And this matters HUGELY because there are 6.1% more dollars sloshing around the US economy than there were a year ago, according to the Federal Reserve’s money stocks report.

      Next Tuesday, we’ll get the Case-Shiller/S&P housing figures.  But unless I’m completely out to lunch (which is a real possibility, by the way) what’s happened to housing numbers is something called “deflation.”

      And while we’re getting ready to unload federal land onto the Chinese, who have been bailing us out, the ugly truth is that Russia is rubbing our noses in it.

      Did you see where Vlad Putin has just come out with a HUGE silver coin to mark the Russian conquest of Crimea?  At this morning’s prices that’s a $675 coin in silver.

      So while Russia gloats and we’re swimming in our sewer stuffed with bad paper, the Russians are eyeing more land and China’s gotta be looking at more land deals.  And in case you haven’t figured out that you people are smart enough to see the big pix, that’s what’s happening to home sales, I’m afraid…

      More after this…

      FDA:  Blowing Smoke?

      Electronic smokes are in the sights of the Food and Drug Administration.  As the agency points out on its website:

      E-cigarettes have not been fully studied so consumers currently don’t know:

      • the potential risks of  e-cigarettes when used as intended,
      • how much nicotine or other potentially harmful chemicals are being inhaled during use, or
      • if there are any benefits associated with using these products.

      Additionally, it is not known if e-cigarettes may lead young people to try other tobacco products, including conventional cigarettes, which are known to cause disease and lead to premature death.

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      Coping: With the Oily World of Woo-Woo

      Sometimes, I mean like every so often, you have to look at coincidences and ask “What does it all mean?”

      Yesterday morning ( 8 AM) I posted an article for Peoplenomics subscribers called “What Ever Happened to “Peak Oil?””  Pretty interesting article – and it supports what both comments here (and from Oilman2) have been saying: Peak Oil isn’t gone, it’s just a jagged peak.

      So there I was, outside, working on the Never-ending Project (the sun porch) and who calls?

      A man identifying himself as being with an oil exploration outfit who wants me to sign off (for $10 bucks an acre) permission for the company he reps to come through and set off seismic charges to see if there’s oil under the property.

      Of course there is.

      1.  This is East Texas which has already been mapped pretty well.

      2.  I mentioned a couple of years ago that we have friends who pioneered an electromagnetic pulse system of oil exploration so we already know what’s “down there.”

      Well, now, this poses certain “difficulties.”  I mean yeah, sure, it’s a kind of an odd thing:  Write article and within 8-hours, here comes a seismic crew.

      But the difficulties go beyond the World of Woo-Woo (WoWW) come-a-knocking. 

      We didn’t buy our little place in the woods to be disturbed.  In Texas, if you’re a surface rights owner (we are) the holder of the subsurface/mineral rights does have the right to develop their property.

      That said, they have to do so in a minimally invasive way and compensate the surface rights owner for any damage.

      Since our property is a tree farm, if any trees are cut down, then that would be an economic loss for us. 

      But here’s the delicate part:  I’m an extra class ham radio operator and I don’t take kindly to the quiet enjoyment of my hobby being disrupted.  And I operate (at times and as conditions warrant) at power levels (on all the HF bans) that go up to 1,8-29 MHz. 

      And yes, the property is posted with signs that inform people that RF fields here may at time exceed the maximum recommended for the general public. 

      And that’s the problem:  Electric blasting caps.

      Typically, these kinds of seismic studies are done using ammonium nitrate explosives placed about 25-feet down a 3-inch diameter hole.  Then a web of wiring is stretched out and off goes the shot. 

      So besides the “normal” issues of surface owners, I’ve got a tree farm and I have radio equipment which may interfere with electric blasting materials.

      Is there an alternative?  Oh course.  There are various “thumpers” that can be used, along with the new electronic pulse technology.

      But this is one of those situations where I have to trust someone besides George:  So I will have my (local) attorney send them a letter informing them that I don’t take kindly to disruptions, potential damage to property (as had been experienced many places) and I sure wouldn’t want to have any blasting accidents.

      Sometimes, it’s better to let an attorney do the talking.  Not all the time, but now and then…

      What Cost of Living: Canadian Style

      From a reader out on the great flatlands who’s enjoying the “negligible change in the cost of living” than Canucks hear from their hype-monster, just like we get here:

      So as per usual we are being told that our inflation up here is negligible.

      Here’s my list of negligible

      Gas is now over $6 a gallon

      Packs of cookies have dropped 50 grams out of the packages and are still the same price as the 350 packs

      Cheese Whiz was $10.39 a 900 gram jar.  I bought it on sale last year for $5

      This is just a skim of the increasing food prices around here.

      Apartments are over $1000 for a two bedroom

      Cheapest crappy war time house is over $250,000

      Minimum wage is $10 an hour for comparison.

      Apparently, our reader has a serious addiction problem:  Eating. Near as I can figure it, governments have worked out “quantitative squeezing” to cure us all of that one.

      Speaking of the World Oil Picture

      Got a nice lead from a subscriber in response to Wednesday’s report:

      George,

      This is related to your post today on Peoplenomics. It’s an article describing talks between Gazprom and Turkey about expanding the capacity of the pipeline to Turkey.

      Notice the name of the Deputy Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee … Alexander Medvedev. 

      I believe I saw a quote by someone in Congress saying Obama is playing marbles while Putin is playing chess.

      I can’t swear to Putin playing chess, or not.  But I am bright enough to figure out that our “Golfer in Chief” is just playing a round…

      Example:  The president is skipping the funeral of an aunt to play golf, reports The Daily Caller.

      Oh…and if you’re looking for a real conspiracy to dig your teeth into this morning, how about this one:  Why is it the “Obama Golf Counter” site hasn’t been updated since February, huh?

      But except for the occasional mention (in articles like this one) the press seems to be giving our favorite duffer a pass.

      On the OTHER Weight Loss Program

      While I’m presently at a new, lower, weight this morning, a note from Doc Zero came floating across the desk:

      Saw your link to the Mega One Meals.  They look pretty good. I have read The Gabrielle Method years ago after he was on Coast to Coast.  Didn’t help me lose weight.  But in the last couple of months I heard one nutritionist on Coast (Who’s name I can’t remember) say, the way to lose weight was easy.  Take your weight in lbs.

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