Coping (Prepper Notes): Ham Radio Presents/Lessons

My friend Gaye (www.backdoorsurvival.com) and her hubby are proud new ham radio owners, having picked up a pair of Baofeng UV-5R 136-174/400-480 MHz Dual-Band DTMF CTCSS DCS FM Ham Two Way Radio at under $30 each, along with a programming cable (USB Programming Cable for Baofeng UV-5R UV-3R+ Two way Radio With Driver CD) for less than $7-bucks.  Dandy season gift, huh?

Which means, they’re about to pick up ham radio licenses and become part of a US population of hams which presently numbers (as of a year ago) in the area of 710,000. 

I think a couple of things have driven them to ham radio.  The most recent being that they live in the San Juan Islands of Washington State.  And, up there, they were recently part of the 20,000 people, or so, who were impacted by a major Internet failure when fiber optic cable serving the islands’ population was severed due (apparently) to a small undersea earth slide and accompanying small quake.

That little adventure left them without communications which became very spotted.  Ever check the cost of roaming from the US to Canada?  That IF you could get a connection.

A good bit of the San Juan island group is covered by radio services, such as the Mt. Constitution tower site which puts antennas up at 2300 – feet, or so. In addition to things like public safety (fire and police agencies) such towers (around most of the US) provide television coverage, cell phone antenna space, and more.

What was interesting during the Internet issues, was that the two-way services kept on working, since the AC power to the island didn’t fail.  And, even if it had, there is plenty of back-up and emergency power at the typical such mountain-top site.

And it’s on tall towers that this that ham radio clubs often put their “repeaters.”

The operation of a repeater is pretty simple:  A person transmits on one frequency (called the repeater input frequency) which is “heard” by a receiver on a high location (like Mt. Constitution).  The “repeater” then rebroadcasts this on what’s call the “repeater output” which is a different frequency, often times 600 kilohertz above, or below the input frequency. 

This difference between the input frequency is also commonly called the “off-set” of the repeater.

Only one more little addition:  Sub audible tones.

Pretend, for a moment, that you didn’t want random interference to “key” (begin transmitting) of your repeater on a mountain somewhere.  How would you prevent it?

One simple way is to encode a low-frequency audio tone – something that would almost never happen with interference.    All you need to do is inject a low frequency tone, say 103.5 Hz, into the audio of the handheld unit and tell the repeater (using a very selective audio filter) not to transmit until this tone is heard.

This technology has been around for a long time and is called a CTCSS tone and most ham radio repeaters (as well as public services) use them.  It stands for Continuous Tone-Coded Squelch System.

A few other useful things to know about tone encoding systems:  It’s a variant (quite audible) of this tone-encoding system that is used by the National Weather Service to trigger NOAA Weather Radio Alerts.  You can read move about the alert system (as well as discover the tone frequency they use is 1060 Hz) and get a list of receiver manufacturers over at the NOAA website here.

Gaye and I spent a fair bit of time figuring out which ham radios they wanted as “beginner rigs” and the Baofengs are very good.  For under $30-bucks, are you kidding?

But Gaye’s a stickler for detail, so this led her to learning about the UV-5R reviews over at eHam.net, which is a favorite watering hole for hams to post reviews and thoughts on equipment, both new and old school.

As long as you’re over at eHam, check out their review of the Nagoya-771 antenna here.

Here’s how the antenna discussion game up:  Gaye and Shelly are both in Seattle and the Eastside often.;  And, since Mt. Constitution is about 80 miles (liner of sight) from Mt. Constitution, the odds of making a reliable connection  at that distance is fairly low with the “stock” antenna with the Baofeng.

However, the odds improve after seven bucks per radio spent on the Nagoya NA-771 dual band 144/430Mhz U/V SMA-F antenna for Baofeng UV-5R radios.

That ought to get them coverage from most of Anacortes up into the Islands from the ferry terminal in Anacortes.  But will they be able to connect into Seattle?  Or, into Bellevue?

This is where budding hams, like our friends up north learn about the differences between antenna height above sea level and  HAAT, or antenna “height above average terrain.”

So Can They Communicate?

Pardon the crude drawing here, but here’s how the question (can they communicate?) will be solved:

We know that the Mt. Constitution ham repeater is at 2,300 feet elevation (*above mean sea level) and so we click over to the one of the convenient online calculators to keep us from having to find a calculator to work out the formulas by hand.  Their output frequency (the one to listen to) is 146.740 MHz.  Tone is 103.5.

A good one is located over here.  And we can see that if the mountain is 2300 feet to the antenna (or thereabouts) and the handheld radio is at 100 feet up, then it should work.

But there are a couple of variables here that are still flapping around in the breeze.

The first is that we don’t know how strong the signal from a 5-watt handheld will be from Seattle up to the mountain.  Radio waves, you know, propagate at the “inverse square law.”  This simply means that at twice the distance, there’s only a quarter of the power.  Do that several times because of the distance involved in getting 5-watts to “talk” 90 miles and a LOT of whether this works will depend on how a) sensitive the Mt. Constitution receiver is – and where its squelch threshold is set and b) how high the handheld radio is above average terrain.

If you look at a map, there’s a lot of high ground between Seattle and Mt. Constitution.  And while height above sea level is useful, it’s only applicable when you’re using boats and open water.  In this case we have a good chunk of Whidbey Island in our way.

By the way, this map is something I snipped out of Streets and Trips 2013 with GPS which is now under $40 at Amazon.  You talk about a great stocking stuffer? 

We always fly our old Beechcrate with my traveling computer (with Streets and Trips) and the USB-GPS antenna) as a “just in case” tool.  No, it doesn’t given airport data, but if I can just find an airport, I can land by just looking at it.

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FedCoins: Peoplenomics Annual Forecast (Part3)

This weekend, we wrap up the remaining four subject areas in our Seven Major Systems model of how (physical) life works for humans as we peer into 2014. We’ll hatch an answer to Bitcoins in our discussion (finance: subset virtual) about a concept I call FEDCOINs. You will be flat-ass amazed at how many of our financial woes they could solve both short and long-term. (Doing our annual forecast is a joy when a decent breakthrough concept bonks me on the head.

Triskaidekaphobia for Markets?

I don’t think so, but the devil is in the details.

When I looked earlier, markets had taken on a slightly bearish bias as the Dow was heading toward a lower opening.  But the news du jour that we should focus on is the Producer Price Index report that’s just out:

“The Producer Price Index for finished goods edged down 0.1 percent in November, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Prices for finished goods decreased 0.2 percent in October and 0.1 percent in September.

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Coping: With Blood Red Moons

A number of readers have asked me “What do you think the four blood moons will bring?  ould you discuss it in your column sometime?”

Huh?  About here, the I-Ching Inbox, that seems to deliver hints and clues about how the Universe operates came through…in spades.

It was an email from my friend Chris Tyreman who’s head of that small Jewish studies group up in Canada which for years now as quietly been working an embedded “error correction” system built into ancient Hebrew.  Upon discovery they have become quite expert at getting to the original meanings of many thinks Biblical.  An example may help.

One of the larger linguistic debates over interpretation deals with the often-cited “Thou shalt not kill” Commandment.  In some versions of the Bible, this is said to be taken literally.  Others, however, tune the Commandment to “Thou shalt not murder.”

This distinction is important, especially if you’re trying to raise an army to go conquering far-off places.  But, when the Chronicle Project’s technology is applied, the meaning comes closer to “Thou shalt not leave a member of your tribe alone in the wilderness…:” or words roughly to that effect.

Since the “wilderness” is a big, bad place (before the days of GPS, beef jerky, trail mix, Sig Sauer small arms and AK long arms) leaving someone in the wilderness might be sort of like killing them, or murdering, or a combination of both.  Plus, as an added bonus, that person’s bloodline dies off when they do, so only the cooperative members of a tribe survive.

That approach to Human Resources is a longer topic for another day, namely how humans can either breed totally at random, or, over generations of cooperative efforts, can reduce the prevailing level of anti-social behavior with a few “rules” that effectively prevent the “worst of the worst” of humans from reproducing. 

Eventually, though, social rules that differentiate fade into the background.  Along comes a modern day movement (like young Christianity)  based on “best practices” of those who came before.  But as their good/right/tuned efforts to move along get bigger, they are – as always seems to happen – taken over and changed-up.  And this is where something like a “corporate Church” begins to reinterpret the “best practices” and monetize it.  It is spun into something new and in the process, some of the “best practices” get all wrangled up and wrapped around the axel.

Which is why Led Zeppelin’s “…buying a stairway to Heaven…” lyric is so powerful, poignant, and historically astute.  Who would have thought? 

So what does this have to do with an email from Chris Tyreman about his irritation about Blood Red Moons and his irritation with end of the world theories?” 

Read for yourself:

Jews and the Blood Red Moons.

Ed has been sending me info on the next upcoming blood red moons in Israel as some Pastors have been touting them as a harbinger of things to come.  So I did an article on it for our upcoming newsletter.  I thought it might be up your alley

Seven back-to-back, blood-red moons have fallen on the first day of Passover and Sukkot, with the eighth time coming in 2014 and 2015

Ed was wondering what my thoughts on them are.

So let’s muddle everything with the facts:

First, you might want to know what a blood moon is, so… Here’s an article from EarthSky that’s on point.

It is the Hunter’s Moon, in skylore, is also sometimes called the Blood Moon. Why? Probably because it’s a characteristic of these autumn full moons that they appear nearly full – and rise soon after sunset – for several evenings in a row. Many people see them when they are low in the sky, shortly after they’ve risen, at which time there’s more atmosphere between you and the moon than when the moon is overhead. When you see the moon low in the sky, the extra air between you and the moon makes the moon look reddish. Voila.

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The Pause then Claus

Editor in Chief, Zeus the Cat, suggested “Paws then Claus” as our opening headline this morning instead of our obscure reference to the drop in markets in order to build a base for the “Santa Claus Rally” that often happens at this time of the year.

“What the hell do PAWS have to do with the market” I asked.

“Scratch profits, you idiot!” he meowed back. “What goes with PAWS is CLAWS in my world and that would be a nice play off the other fatso  – the one in the red suit.”

It’s comments like that had get him kicked out even on sub-freezing mornings.

Still, Katzenclaus is too strange a way to begin, so how about we start putting down some bets on the Fed meeting next week?  More than anything, the market is sending a message to the Fed about it’s deepest, darkest fears:  Namely that rational economics might return.  think of this decline as lobbying.

To be sure, the (bad) joke of a budget agreement isn’t gong to qualify, but. NBC’s got a handy guide to use how it will impact your life is on their site over here.  The main feature I can see if that if you’re planning to travel next year, buy the tickets ahead of time, although that may not insulate you from the financial thuggery.

Oh, and think about shorting airlines, hotels, rental car outfits, and anyone else who depends on people moving about the country for revenue.  But not till we maybe get one more pop into January…we’ll see.

Of course the budget deal would also reduce cost of living adjustments for military retirees under age 62, which when you think about it is breach of contract for someone who has served the country for 20-years under one “deal” and gets out, only to find the crap-hounds from hell are then going to rewrite “the deal.”

But such behavior (decline of honor and bond of a man’s word) don’t mean crap anymore, which is why ‘Mercia stands where America Great used to be perched.

You ever wonder how many other “Snowdens in the wings” are out there watching the nation’s ever-expanding tendency toward breach fealty to contract?

Out here in Texas, you can still shake a man’s hand and have it mean something.  You might be mightily disappointed to try that in Washington…know what I mean?

Retail Sales

Figure are just out this morning…

“The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for November, adjusted for seasonal
variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $432.3 billion, an increase of 0.7 percent (±0.5%) from the
previous month, and 4.7 percent (±0.7%) above November 2012. Total sales for the September through November 2013 period were up 4.1
percent (±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. The September to October 2013 percent change was revised from +0.4 percent (±0.5%)* to
+0.6 percent (±0.3%).

Retail trade sales were up 0.6 percent (±0.5%) from October 2013, and 4.6 percent (±0.7%) above last year. Auto and other motor vehicle
dealers were up 10.9 percent (±2.1%) from November of 2012 and nonstore retailers were up 9.4 percent (±2.1%) from last year.
The scheduled release dates for 2014 are as follows: January

The news out this morning didn’t breathe any fire into the markets which look to open flat to down, since the number was right at consensus. 

While this is for the month of   November   it still demonstrates a sense that people are out on a a ”get it while we can” spree.  The big towering gray bar on the chart up above is retail general merch and it was up strongly.  Cars are falling compared to past deal-slinging…

Speaking of which…

Warhammer Notes: That New Military Command

As if the world wasn’t a dangerous enough place with three new wars threatening in 2014 (We have Israel-Iran, China-Japan, and West versus Central African Republic) we now have another military player flexing muscles:

Nature abhors a vacuum. So too do certain Gulf states with similar economic interests. 

Note the “Gulf nations to create joint military command” report.

As the U.S.

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Coping: Wujo and Personal Clinical Trials

“George, you know that favorite frying pan of yours, the one you love to do eggs in?  Have you seen it?” Elaine asked at breakfast Wednesday.

Oh-oh.  Not again…

We live in a very modest little manufactured home out at the end of the string (life past cell phone coverage) and there are only the 2 1/2 of us who would know anything about this frying pan:.  Elaine, me, and my retired brother-in-law.  But his quarters are off in another building with its own cooking capabilities, bathroom, and so on.  Sure, he comes over for breakfast most mornings, but except for boiling water and making oatmeal, or toast, or whatever, it’s just me and Elaine in the kitchen.  He doesn’t borrow dishes.

And we do have a few more pans, I suppose, than some people.  But we both get a tremendous amount of enjoyment from cooking, and I like to keep the “chef-wrist” tuned up, but doing perfect flips of two eggs over easy.  Great for hash browns, too.  To do this, you need a particular kind of pan.  One with very gently sloping sides to it. It went missing – on its own.

So there we were…wondering if the local ghosts (“the visitors”) had made off with another one of our goodies.

So we took the kitchen apart, including the oven, in which our cast iron gear lives so we don’t have to worry about mixing it with the Cuisinart hard-alloy, which would likely be ruined by just being around the cast iron.

Anyway, we both looked for about 15-minutes.  Then passed it off as simply gone.

And hour later Elaine exclaimed “Found it!”

Turned out that it was under the pizza pan, also in the oven.  We also season and dry it there, yada yah.

The problem is that it was there earlier…at least I didn’t see it when I looked, as the pizza pan was right on the rack…not above it as it was when Elaine showed me.

All of which was pretty damn interesting…It points out how Wujo-like events can often be solved:  You are simply tricked by perception and expectation.

Or, did it just return from the “wherever” and decide to pop up under a pizza pan where neither of us would put it, at least while in our right minds.  Deep rabbit hole there.

Still, the experience underscored for me that when people experience Wujo, they may simply be experiencing absolutely “normal” things going on that live below the perception threshold.

And then there are stories like this one from reader Georgann:

Hi there George,

A few weekends ago both my husband and I had something weird happen. I woke up in the early wee hours, with extreme time disorientation. I thought it might be weekday. And in my mind I was trying to find something to reorient myself, then I remember that I hadn’t met a friend for coffee yet, which was scheduled for Sunday morning.

Later that morning my husband wakes me up thinking it Monday and I needed to get up for work. He was surprised that it wasn’t. And you know, the whole day was off about 3 hours for both of us. It was very unsettling.

Would this fit as a WuJo?

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Peoplenomics Annual Forecast (2)

Housing, Food, and Communications are in our sights this morning. In Saturday’s subscriber report, I put forth some market expectations for 2014 and it seems only right to look at the translation of that forecast into possible cost impacts in specific areas of life. While the (false) glee of a budget agreement may seem like a grand thing, it is merely an effort to postpone the inevitable conclusion which must occur when demand for service – paid for by taxes – runs into the hard reality of limited taxing power as the number and wages of working humans declines. As the old demographer said, “If you want to know the future, start with birth rates…” But first, we’ll have coffee, check out some headlines, and see what our Trading Model says about the period immediately ahead.

Pick a War–Any War

“Dot connecting class is now in session.  We have a whole string of dots, but do follow along and you can connect them as we go…”

In an article back on Monday, November 25th, I had a crazy dream described in “Winds of Noumenon” that related to Harriers on carriers, sitting on the deck.  I thought it was a goofy, although potentially revealing dream at the time about what’s ahead. 

Two days later the news stories begins to increase around the word Harrier.  As in “Harrier by Jonathan Glancey, review” and lots of others.

Heck, the word pops up all over the place.  Shows up as a video game (Space Harrier for Nintendo 3DS) and it’s the name of an oil exploration ship the Sea Harrier which is on the move.

But while things like this slowly come up in the language surveys from our www.nostracodeus.com project, we also can’t seem to put down the idea that maybe there’s a war out there on its way.  Mid to late 2014.

OK: Where?   As of this morning we have two leading candidates.

Our first nominee for Harriers to be used (thus fill some more headlines) would be in the Central African Republic which (since trumped-up Syria didn’t work out so well) is coming in as the stealth replacement war to keep the West solvent based on war spending.

Two French soldiers, for example, has been killed in fighting there, as detailed in this BBC report.  And, since your tax dollars have made it possible for us to wage war everywhere, the US has ordered support for the efforts to disarm people in the Central African Republic, (CAR)  as well. 

As soon as that was done, US SecDef Chuck Hagel put out the world to start moving war materiel to the region.

OK…why?  Well, a check of the CIA World Factbook tells us (among other things and to borrow from their work (paid for with tax money, so WTF)…

Timber and diamonds account for most export earnings, followed by cotton. Important constraints to economic development include the CAR’s landlocked position, a poor transportation system, a largely unskilled work force, and a legacy of misdirected macroeconomic policies. Factional fighting between the government and its opponents remains a drag on economic revitalization. Since 2009 the IMF has worked closely with the government to institute reforms that have resulted in some improvement in budget transparency, but other problems remain. The government’s additional spending in the run-up to the election in 2011 worsened CAR’s fiscal situation. Distribution of income is extraordinarily unequal. Grants from France and the international community can only partially meet humanitarian needs. In 2012 the World Bank approved $125 million in funding for transport infrastructure and regional trade, focused on the route between CAR’s capital and the port of Douala in Cameroon. After a two year lag in donor support, the IMF’s first review of CAR’s extended credit facility for 2012-15 praised improvements in revenue collection but warned of weak management of spending.

We could also toss in that China is looking to expand its influence and ties with Africa and (look surprised here) this is likely a new front in my (hypothesized but real-looking nevertheless) Manufacturer’s Resource Wars with even more at stake than Afghanistan.  Cheap labor and resources plus diamonds.

Oh, and you did catch the involvement of the IMF which – if you’re read John Perkin’s The Secret History of the American Empire: The Truth About Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and How to Change the World, ought to have caught your eye.  Wars for banks and industries, eh?

Well, seems to me that Harriers would be well-suited to a country which may not have a lot of long airstrips.  So maybe this is where things point?

The other war-in-the-making is the one between Japan (or what’s left of it post Fukushima) and China.  This one, says our resident war gamer, could be a dandy:

“George,

The headline sure is an attention grabber! “China-Japan Could Lead To WW III.

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Coping: Business Model or Exploitation

I’m just fond as hell of the phrase “Everything’s a Business Model.”  But now, I may be forced to a revision of that outlook due to a conversation I had with a buddy of mine (Howard) last night which has really given me “cause to pause” for a bit and rethink the whole EBM concept.

I don’t think Howard would mind me sharing this.  He called and we got to talking about this, that, and some of the very high-end hi-fi gear he’s selling on eBay. 

Turns out, one eBay lately, there’s a new kind of exploit which has been developed by unethical buyers.  They buy something, take delivery, and then swap out a bunch of parts.  In electronics it might be tubes, highly prized original knobs, and things like that. 

Then, they turn around and exploit the seller by demanding a return – and they send a stripped out piece of junk back!

Doesn’t happen on every sale, of course.  But it has led to sellers ((including my son, who sells things once in a while) putting in long, involved disclaimers about “no returns” and “buyer agrees to no return under any condition” and that kind of thing.

You see the point?  Yes, I’m sure eBay has had issues with unethical sellers, but now they also seem to have occasional unethical buyers.  And might that, I wonder, over time imperil the eBay business model?  Hmmm…

And  we got on to talking about the book he’s writing and how economics of ebooks push out.  He’s been writing a cookbook (it’s really good since he is nothing short of a phenomenal cook) and he was thinking about releasing it as an Amazon ebook.

One thing led to another and I explained how ebooks, while fun, and not a major source of income like they once could be.  The reason?  Everyone and his mother/brother/son who has delusions of becoming a famous writer is cranking out ebooks on Amazon, hand over fist.

Some of the ebooks there, self-published and in the 99-cents to $3-dollar price range are really good.  But, the other side of it is that there’s a lot of trash and slop out there as well.  Collections of crap copy-pasted from Wikipedia and then sold.  That takes either some gumption but more fitting is the word exploit.  

You might remember that I’ve written a couple of ebooks myself, such as “How to Live on $10,000 a Year, Or Less…”  When that ebook first came out, before Amazon self-publishing came along it was sold directly on the internet as a .pdf delivered by email, it was $9.95 and it sold maybe 1,500 copies over a 5-year period.

That was then.  Along came the digital thieves and the book value has gone pretty near to zero now, although I think it’s still full of good information.

But it has been something of a turkey on Amazon, due to the huge increase in the number of ebooks for Kindle.

Then there’s a rise of writing “schools” which are now teaching people how to crank out 99-cent to $3.99 ebooks all day long, and flood the market with a huge number of titles instead of flooding the market with highest quality.  The theory is that if you write enough you will get some sales.

In other words, Amazon has been part of the very “commoditization of writing” that mirros what has gone wrong in many other parts of life.  Everything’s a commodity, now.

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Monday At The Rock Pile

OK, corporate wage slave, up at an ‘em:  Time to jump on the treadmill like a good little hamster and press your nose toward the cheese for another week…all so we can pay interest which will accrue to the Uber Klassen so they, in turn, won’t have to work and can reinvest their money in continuing to buy corrupt politicians who don’t listen to the people, preferring instead the poison lies of the lobbyists instead.

Boy, am I ever a motivator, or what?

The good news, such as it is, holds that we are likely to see a 25% decline in the Dow and other major indices when people figure out how bad the economy really is. 

If you didn’t catch it, the UK Telegraph article “Europe repeating all the errors of Japan as deflation draws closer” is a real eye-opener.

What people don’t remember is that the Japanese Nikkei 225 index (roughly the Japanese equivalent of our Dow Jones average) was up nearing 40,000 points (yen) back in 1989. Overnight, the Nikkei had a huge rally (2.29%) but even so, it’s been stuck in this area (closing  at 15,650) seemingly forever.

“Wait!  You mean the Japanese market was 2 1/2 times higher 25-years ago?”

Well, yeah, duh.  Welcome to Depression economics.

That’s evident when you look at the “max timeline” chart of the ^N225 over here at Yahoo Finance, dude.  It also shows the problem that Europe is running into and where the US is going, as well.  The only thing we’re missing is the killer radiation levels, but give it time. 

Crude Lingo Alert: [Remember SBD – silent but deadly – farts?  Fukushima’s like that…]

One of our readers asked this morning if I could explain the robust growth in GDP.  Well, one way to look at it is “channel stuffing” by manufacturers, who are desperate to hit year-end sales targets so they are pushing crap into the warehouses of retailers.  No target hit?  No bonus…

The retailers, in turn, because of the collapsing cost of money (read: zero percent interest rates effectively) can lock in goods cheap today (they believe)  on the theory that prices will come zooming upward as soon as the “recovery” kicks in. 

“Rut Roh” Scooby. Lil’ tardy on that one…

This is all quite circular, don’t you see?  Channel-stuffing makes jobs which makes demand, which creates jobs, which creates spending, which creates channel “sell-through” which is why Ures truly expects some hellacious deals to be had on everything under the Sun in January. Someone in retail is going to wake the ‘f up in January and start to dump.

Check this out:  A chart (through November) of the total business inventories…got it?

Now, let’s look at inventories in 2009 because that was a pretty good indicator of how these things work.  Back then we had…um….call it $1.33 trillion in business inventories.

What would the equivalent level be today?  It would be about $1.447 trillion, using the Minneapolis Fed inflation calculator over here.  But, as you can see, inventories are at about $1.68 trillion (plus or minus a can of soup) today, which means inventory levels are 16% higher, on an inflation-adjusted basis, in the last four 1/2 years.

That’s a mighty big swing.

So:  Here’s what I’m speculating will happen:

a.  The Fed will hint at increasing rates when they meet in late January.

b.  People in retailing will look at their inventories (up 16% on a real basis, remember?) and scream “Holy shit!  How are we going to afford all this inventory if we actually have to pay interest on it?”  Free money was such a nice ride….

c.  Inventory dumping will begin…

d.  Which means profits will fall…

e.  Which means stocks will fall….(*because earnings will fall)

f.  Which means the Fed is now locked into permanent money printing in order to keep the whole financial system from going KA-BLOOEY!  We become like the Japanese!

g.  Which will set off another round of job cuts…

h.  Which will set off a further decline in real estate prices…  (Also due in part to the prospect of those real estate-binging venture groups facing the prospect of actually paying someone back with interest, which is why housing prices are about to level off and maybe head face down…Banks being under pressure to unload their REO (read estate owned) too…

i.  As soon as this dynamic is realized, then what’s left of commercial real estate falls on its butt (again) since with home office automation, what’s the point of paying big bucks for an office?  Everyone has Skpe, Broadband, and Starbucks!  Toss in online banking and who needs a building?  Ever use Quickbooks Online?  Your accounting department can be in Bozeman.

I could, of course go on, but it would make a mighty messy and depressing report.  So I decided to keep it really light and uplifting this morning (and this is the best I could come up with?):

OK, corporate wage slave, up at an ‘em:  Time to jump on the treadmill like a good little hamster and press your nose toward the cheese for another week…all so we can pay interest which will accrue to the Uber Klassen so they, in turn, won’t have to work and can reinvest their money in buying corrupt politicians who don’t listen to the people, preferring instead the poison lies of the lobbyists instead.

If you’re not saving money hand over fist, you’re screwed. 

And even if you are saving money, you’re screwed anyway, because when all this begins to roll (it’s the Debtberg, remember?  90 percent of the Debtberg is invisible…) you’re going to be subject to a “wealth tax” which will roll globally in order for the PowersThatScrewedThingsUp (PTSTU) will take one last turn at the global citizens financial gang-bang before the global version of the French Revolution comes around.

I expect America, unlike other countries (think Iceland) will call BS on what’s coming, but we could roll over Cyprus and Greece-like.  Depends on the marketing.  But if Healthcare is a template, there is no alternative to becoming a Prepper.

The realities were Friday (and still are, Monday) that:

  1. You can’t have more people getting free money than paying taxes
  2. You need REAL jobs in order to pay taxes.  Flipping burgers is counted as a “manufacturing job now” notes a similarly cynical reader.
  3. You don’t have jobs because of automation and robotics and 10-an-hour foreigners.
  4. Until robotics are taxed on parity with humans, and the lie of job-wrecking imports is dispensed with,  this is a one way ride to the financial slaughterhouse.

You see why I love getting up and writing on Monday?  Things are just so crisp and clear…

See Dr. Marc Faber’s comments along the same line, too: “World Center Bankers are going to Bankrupt the World.”  Yeah, we noticed…

In spite of reality, the markets looked flat this morning because the 7% unemployment figure is all based on free money which is unsustainable and as some point the markets will think that part through, too.  I sense one more blow off to the upside and new all time highs.

Then duck.

More after this…

Obamacare:  The latest nightmares

…is the report that “New affordable Care US health plans will exclude top hospitals.”

I don’t know as I’d go so far as to write something like “Shock Claim: Obama worse than a communist.” 

The Russian people brought the Soviet Empire down.  But here in ‘Merica, the People can’t bring down the Lobbyist Empire…far most entrenched. Which is why the Russian peeps had a leg up on us…

Making the rounds on discussion boards are posts like this one which claims “Obamacare seeks to segregate patients/doctors by ethnic races…”  Is this “giving the customers what they want” or something more sinister?  I look forward to my liberal pals to arguing both sides of this one…

Madness on Bordering

Over on the “Tea Party Command Center” site, we see “Texas defies feds: We shut the border down ourselves, said Lt. gov…”

NK: The Urge to Purge

Morning seems like a fine time to cover this:  A purge in the ranks of the North Koreans as the kid at the helm has kicked out the party old-line power broker (uncle) who was not playing nicey nice with the People’s resources…

Clearly Kim Jong Un “gets it” – namely you have to feed the People…and feed them an occasional scapegoat to hold hunger at bay.  And Uncle will do, nicely.  Shows that no one is above the “law”.

Good management.  But what about Auntie?  Remember, she (and her hubby) defected to the West, had plastic surgery and are in hiding…

Just a guess:  These North Korean leader/people have some serious unresolved family problems!  Poster family for dysfunctional.

Global Warming Joke

The joke’s on Al. It was the Sun, all along.,…d’oh! 

Here’s the latest just out this morning from the Solar Weather Prediction Center which has been counting the extreme lack of sunspots in what I’m selling as Ure’s Minimum…

Australia is getting snow in their summer.

Record snowfalls around Texas from the storm this weekend.  None here, thanks, but colder’n hell.

Cold snap in Oregon.

Point for Gore: Record cold temperature in the Antarctic is being disputed.

I run hot and cold on this climate thing…(wink-wink, budge-nudge)

Laughable Headlines & Stories Department:

“Congress Readies a Year-End Dash” flashes the Wall St. Journal.  That’s as believable as Ures truly joining the Bolshoi.

Blah, blah blah, Kardashian, blah,blah, yada, yada…

“US Tech companies call for more controls on surveillance.”  Yes!

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Coping: With a Rare Book Review

It’s not often that I find very much useful in life,  maybe because my life is so damn complicated. 

There’s this here website, there’s the odd client project (slow due to the “recovery” that’s going on, lol), developing a server for a “black project” with a friend/client, building the new room onto house, finishing restoration of a tube-type ham radio for my son, and planning for the kitchen rebuild ahead.  All while keeping up the accounting/taxes and staying current on flying.  Then there’s the www.nostracodeus.com project and fine-tuning our Trading Model for Peoplenomics subscribers…Say…did I mention the four books I’m writing?

Like I said: Complicated

But I’m not the only person in this pickle – since you’re either there or remember it from your own recent experience,

So this morning I can’t say enough good things about Gary Keller’s book The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results which will run you $17 bucks at Amazon. Or, if you have a Kindle, it will set you back about $15 bucks here: The ONE Thing.

If you’re already struggling to find time (but still somehow have $264(!!)  laying around, there’s the The One Thing in 30 Minutes – The Expert Guide to Gary Keller and Jay Papasan’s Critically Acclaimed Book.

Now the reason for the recommendation:  It’ll help you focus on doing what needs doing.

In a way, it’s similar in thinking to William Oncken’s classic book Managing Management Time which is still available.  Oncken’s been writing about time management almost forever, seems.  My friend Gaye of www.backdoorsurvival.com and I were talking bout his work (and others in time management) back in the early to mid 1970’s.

Two points from these:

First, a couple of readers have asked “How do you do all the stuff you say you do?”   Well, here are some hints:

  1. Build “walls” in your life.  Allocate only so much time to Task A and when it’s done (as much as it ever will be in allotted time).  Move on to Task B.
  2. Make a list to keep yourself focused. A short list of a dozen “outcomes” you’re building.
  3. Streamline and find every efficiency you can in order to get things done.  The idea is to get things done, not to reinvent the wheel at every turn.

Here’s what I did Sunday, just for discussion:

a.  Tested a new breakfast (details in the “Around he Ranch” part in a minute.

b.  Solve a half-dozen damn difficult computer issues around the house: All kinds of new security updates, anti-virus and the firewalls, defrags, file checking, speed tuning, network rearranging.

c.  Made spaghetti.

d.  Searched for the  easiest way to build a LAMP server… and found the Linux version of XAMMP

e.

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Just out for Subscribers: Peoplenomics Annual Forecast (1)

While it’s true that I have made more money on the short side of the market than the long side, it’s also true that I’m pretty much an agnostic. That’s because the market is going to move as it will. So anyone who undertakes to manage their own money is well advised to understand hard reality. Toward this, a few classic books exist, such as William Gann’s “Truth of the Stock Tape.” This morning’s report will be nice, short, and to the point as we consider what may be out there in 2014.

Numbers for Breakfast and a Side of Sausage

A nice cold, snowy, wintry morning deserves something nice and hot for breakfast.  So along with the usual two-cups worth of reading material today we’ll serve up some hot economic data and a side of sausage.

Our first serving is the Jobs Almighty number which lives more formally in the Employment Situation Report just released by the Labor Department.

The unemployment rate declined from 7.3 percent to 7.0 percent in November, and total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 203,000, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in transportation and warehousing, health care, and manufacturing.

Household Survey Data

Both the number of unemployed persons, at 10.9 million, and the unemployment rate, at 7.0 percent, declined in November. Among the unemployed, the number who reported being on temporary layoff decreased by 377,000. This largely reflects the return to work of federal employees who were furloughed in October due to the partial government shutdown.

As always, we look at the Labor Participation Rate which is 63% this morning, and in a Christmas-sized miracle, it’s up 2-10th’s of one percent.

Dow futures have spikes to 86 up on the Dow.  Crack may be this good, but the jobs number is legal.

“OK, Ure, how’d that come about?”

Heck if I know.  Looks to me like the economy might really be getting some traction.  Free money has to go somewhere.  And how many quantitative whatchamacallits are we at now?

Even the CES Birth/Death Model which estimates jobs into existence decreased the happy talk by 15,000 jobs.

As to whether people who had extended benefits run out this month (many more in coming months) are in some kind of statistical limbo won’t be known for a few months.

Meantime, we have the monthly PhD’s flipping burger’s number which is the underemployed and underutilized people which show up in the U-6 data.  This improved a good bit down to 13.2% from 13.8% last month.

Magic of seasonal employment, methinks.  Pardon me if I hold the Ho-Ho until March.

Or, at least hold it until you read about disappearing incomes in the Bureau of Economic Analysis data which is also out this morning:

Personal income decreased $10.8 billion, or 0.1 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) decreased $23.6 billion, or 0.2 percent, in October, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $32.7 billion, or 0.3 percent.  In September, personal income increased $64.3 billion, or 0.5 percent, DPI increased $62.1 billion, or 0.5 percent, and PCE increased $23.8 billion, or 0.2 percent, based on revised estimates.

More people working – for less money!  Exactly the kind of thing to expect in a lifestyle collapsing economy, like I’ve been saying.

The punch line part is the Personal Savings Rate reference; always a knee-slapper:

“Personal saving — DPI less personal outlays — was $604.9 billion in October, compared with $660.7 billion in September.

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