Thank you Congress.  By running back to the printing press you have jammed up the price of gold more than $35 bucks (some are excitedly saying $50), which is fine by us, but is this really the rational thing to be doing in here?

With stock futures pointing to a slight pullback at the open this morning, down may 50-75 points after yesterday’s nosebleed-inducing rally, there I was by the phone when long-term reader Nick called.

“So, George, let me see if I have this right:  Congress needed to pass the debt ceiling so that we could keep paying our creditors, right?”

Well, uh, yeah….

“So wouldn’t it be safe to call this just one big Ponzi Scheme – you know – like the one Charles Ponzi set up where the new “investors” coming in had their money paying people their “returns”?”

I bet you know what happened next, don’t you?  I spent the next few half-hour on the phone with him explaining that the difference is that when “crime” is done by government, (not Chuck Ponzi) under the color of law like this, it’s call monetary policy.  It’s theft, but Theft Lite.  It’s good for you.  (“Git those hands back up where I kin see ‘em pardnah…”)

OK, just more smoke and mirrors, since there are some who argue that there never was a crisis in the first place.

You mean theater to perp the bigger shake-down?  Gee, gosh, golly, look surprised!  Emergency! Emergency!  Everyone run from Street!

If you just went out back next week, printing up hundred-dollar bills when you happened to  overdraw your checking account, you’d be a guest at Uncle’s (we’ll leave the light on for you) Iron Bar Hotel.  The main difference, of course, being that Congress has an Army, and consequently taxes (including Obamacare) is magically not an insurance industry shakedown (look up protection racket).  Instead, it’s national health care.

Of course, any competent business man can see that this just “kicks the can down the road” and as of this morning I think our next attempt at actuarial suicide will come in just 73-days.

Still, the Markets ought to now roll on to new heights, at least until the called-back federal workers getting a 16-17 day paid vacation (for not going to work) in this shows up on people’s screen.

All of which sets up furloughed workers who do get paid with the future prospects of getting almost four months a year of vacation.  Here’s how:  Say you’ve been around a good while and you get four weeks of regular vacation.  Maybe you could roll up some comp time and get that up to five weeks, right? 

Now, let’s say that this kick-the-can crap (coming back shortly, remember)  can be scheduled to occur four times per year.  That would make it…uh…64-calendar days or about 9.1 weeks, which when added to the five weeks of earned vacation is 14.1 weeks.  OK, it’s only 3.68 weeks of vacation.

If I had suggested this to you six months ago, you’d have been right to call Ures truly a raving-mad lunatic.

Now, I’m an economic policy realist and I’m kicking myself six-ways to Sunday for not getting a cushy federal job back in the day.

But it certainly explains a lot of past government hiring actions, like those thousands of new employees at IRS and DHS, for example.  My theory, waiting only to be proven out by events, is that the federal government won’t really be doing any more actual work.

They’ll just be beefing up to handle all the vacation time.  God, we’re generous with all that free tax loot, ain’t we?.  Makes me ever so much more anxious (even eager) to send in my Q4 tax payment in January.  You too, I bet?

Oh, here’s another meaty morsel in all this:  Mitch McConnell cut his state a fat hog – to the tune of $3-billion in earmarked funds for Kentuckians, as part of this..

Best government money can buy.

It’s just too bad that voters can hold multiple state residencies, otherwise I’d be inclined to take up residence in California. Nevada, and Kentucky, just so I could vote against the folks who jammed this through, rather than fixing our underlying (we’re bankrupt, right?) problem.

The way I figure it, about 3/4th of the senate needs to be shown the door at the next election and a like fraction on the other side of Ponzgress.  Which leaves only the matter of keeping the country from being repo’ed out from under us by corporations (and China) between now and then.

Reader Charles figures it this way:

…All that was done is the Clowns all crowded back in the car to drive in a circle in the Main Ring and get out to do it all over again several weeks along!

Bread and what?

Look, if this was really such a big deal, how come the president is waiting until this morning to sign this and get things back on track?  I know if you or I were in the White House, we’d be up till 3 AM, or whatever it took, to get ‘er done.

So the urgency is, how shall I say, a little suspect at a minimum.

Who’s Healthy?

Meantime, that blip on television of a House stenographer is out and about on the ‘net.  In case you missed it, this woman got up from here House job writing down what was going on and blurted out:

“

“The greatest deception here is this is not one nation under God. It never was. Had it been, it would not have been. No. It would not have been. The Constitution would not have been written by Free Masons. They go against God. You cannot serve two masters.

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As promised, reader Bill (he’s about the 200th Bill around here, so it’s easy to get confused) sent in his WuJo experience:.  Wujo being, if you’re a first-time reader, those events which DO happen but logically should NOT happen…

A couple of weeks ago, my wife was sitting at the head of the kitchen table going through the Sunday coupon insert. Sitting at the other head of the table was my mother and under the table was the dog. On the chair to her right (a 90 degree angle) was a plastic shopping bag that she was putting in the pages that she didn’t want so that they would eventually go in the garbage. I was going to eat my bowl of cereal for breakfast, so I took the bag and put it on the back of what is now my chair, as I was eating, she was still putting the unwanted pages into the bag. At some point, she stopped and we were talking, I don’t remember what we were talking about. With our small conversation over, she returned to her coupons, she reached for her bag and it was gone from the back of my chair. We looked all around and found it on the floor, behind my wife and to her left. It was laying there sort of like if you took a bag in your left hand, put it behind your back and dropped it. We were both amazed and sitting there puzzled. In no point in time did anyone of the three of us (My wife, my mother nor me) got up or move and the dog was still laying on the floor under the table.

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Take me off your contact list, please.  The latest pisserlation (a revelation which causes you to get what?) is that the NSA – already seized by Gestapo-like management, is now ripping off your email address book contents, according to the Washington Post this morning.

What the article doesn’t get into, in much depth, is the why they’re doing it.

So here’s the deal, down and dirty:  The intel agencies (Stasi lites?) believe that they can build up a who profile on every single human being in America by bits and pieces without outright breaking the law.

You need to closely study the Wikipedia entry on “social mapping”

In social geography a social map is the cartographic, twodimensional representation of social institutions or processus projected on a plane. The first social maps date from the early 20th century. A recent example is the mapping of the residences of U.S. Facebook users and their social links [1].

In marketing a social map is a visualized analysis of a digital identity of a person, brand or company. A social map shows exactly where a digital identity is created, formed or discussed and sets each element in context and proportions.

These social map created an intense discussion about digital reputation and digital identities. For companies a so-called Corporate Social Map is still very new and an unusual methodology, but also very effective and meaningful.

Conspicuously missing is what it means to government and law enforcement.

Basically, it takes guilt by association (an address book entry) and attempts to electronically morph it into probable cause.  

Since everyone on earth is connected to everyone else on earth, the wet dream here is to develop software that will ‘see through’ the six-degrees of separation’ problem and will turn everyone on a contact list into a suspect.

Of course, by weighting other contacts into the mix, we can see how it might, in theory, actually work.  But, the downfall is that the digital underbelly of everyone is exposed…except for the HMFICs who are running their own game.  Yes – the same guys who talk about –  but don’t deliver what?  TRANSPARENCY.

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Sheep, banksters, and Tarriers served up this morning:   A Monday slap of Reality is ready.

There was (predictably) no breakthrough this weekend on the debt ceiling or the budget, so this morning, the market is looking (at least in the futures, and early on) to open about 80 points down.  And to see the market blow down several hundred points between now and Thursday shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

The Rest of the World (RoW) is becoming afraid of two things:  Namely that we American’s really might be as crazy as claimed by some and that worse,  the fear-mongering bankster class might actually be partly right about their “End of the World” yammering’s.

Me?  I don’t buy it. 

Americans were told by the hundreds of thousand just four years ago about how we should tighten the belt a notch and get on with working and spending.  We did our part and then some.

Now, when the same is expected of government, there’s a tremendous hue and cry about how whole this isn’t the country isn’t sailing off the edge of the Earth, yet, but you can hear the waterfalls from here…  (There’s a famous painting, or two, devoted to that…)

So here we are Monday and as we begin another “…work all day for sugar in your tay…” (the Tarriers part) we can assess the overnight global picture this way, looking for signs and portents as we do:

China up 1.16%

Japan up 1.48%

France down 0.10 %

Germany down (0.08%

And the UK up 0.14%

“So,” you’re thinking “If the end of the world is really that close, how come the global collapse is not on right now, then?”

Fine point:  At least in the early goings today, what I’d expect is a lot of ‘hot’ money blowing town looking for a more rational parking place.  That’s why other countries are UP.

The Hype du Jour this morning is that Senate democorps have a new budget front to push.  Yippee skippy!

The House is playing with (itself and) another short-term debt bill accompanied by the most bolloxed-up inability to articulate the concept of “Up to our collective asses in debt” in a way the sheep can grok as you’ll ever see.

Scare stories galore including this one about ripples at the State levels.

Hats off to our Veterans who went to the Memorials this weekend and tossed the barricades back to the White House.

Not to downplay the technical dangers, here, especially with IMF Money-Princess in Chief Chris Legarde calling things “very very disturbing,”  (no shit?) but a lot of our 99er-friends who lost homes and savings in the 2008/2009 collapse see poetic justice in the wings. Want me to mention the MF Global screw-job perp in here, too, long as we’re sharpening our words?

What the Fools on the Hill may not comprehend: “Too Big to Fail” may no longer apply.  And if that’s the case, we could be “Look out below!” for the markets.

A short story and  further smack of reality here, if I may?

Every so often, when Capt. Midnight has time, he called me from the rural part of Virginia or other east coast areas when he’s off adventuring.  And usually, our phone calls will be interrupted with cell drop out once or twice during a call.

When he rings back, the common laugh-line is “Damn third world phone system…”

Except we both know that is not a joke.

This morning there’s a really good interview by Kopin Tan with legendary trader Jim Rogers in Barron’s online over here.  The paragraph I’d point out to you is this quote from Rogers:

“When I was selling my New York house, I almost backed out; I just couldn’t bear the thought of leaving. But now I’m very happy here. I fly to New York and I realize I’m in a Third World airport. Then I get into a Third World taxi onto a Third World highway. The difference now just slaps me in the face. New York is a wonderful place, with the people and the vibrancy, but I can find the same vibrancy, if not more, in Asia. “

As an occasional trader who is one foot in technical analysis and one foot in fundamentals, what I look around and see is very similar to what Rogers is describing.

What we have before us is a country on the verge of technical bankruptcy, an administration which has promised more than it has performed, backed up by a congress that’s the laughing stock of everywhere but Greece, Iceland, Cyprus and the other Euro countries which are are the same track.

When we should be taxing machines that replace humans, we instead provide real (tax and other) incentives to rip jobs out of America and stash untaxed money offshore.  Slick, huh?

Businesses here, no longer fettered by monopolistic requirements such as make sense when placed on utilities (which telcos are) have systematically underinvested bare minimums to make as much money as possible.  But at its core, we’re still coasting on infrastructure investments made a decade ago.

Free lunching is not limited to the masses of the poor – works in telecom too, which is why you can’t hardly find American tech support to save your soul.

So yeah, people are a bit skitterish.  Like reader Andy:

G,
If the gov defaults, any recommendations in terms of having cash on hand, paying off debt ect
that you might share.
What will happen to the banks?
I can’t believe it has gotten this far.
But maybe it is good.
After all, you have been preaching that this insanity must stop and so this could be where it does.
What then?
Andy from Ohio

In order:  Yes, always have 90-days of cash on hand, but own a gun and keep your mouth shut.

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“She travels like a rocket with her comet team, and there’s never been a planet Janet hasn’t seen…”  That’s one of the lines in the Schoolhouse Rock episode which I mention this morning because I loved the rally yesterday.  OK, so a little later than I expected, but the bottom line here is this:  The prospect of a new Fed boss who’s going to make Ben Bernanke’s helicopters look puny could just push the market on to new highs any old time.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but the latest Money Stocks report from the Fed shows M1 up at an annualized 8.3% for the month recent three months and similarly, M2 is up 8.2% for the three months, so maybe Led Zeppelin should rename word the song printing a stairway to heaven…

But, before we go there, the troublesome 1,690 line on the S&P remains and it’s best captured in Forbidden Zone’s “Bim Bam Boom” in terms of how it all works out.

As long as I have my world’s first EconoJay  (e-J) hat on this morning, here’s a song to play which summed up what we figure will be Interplanet Janet’s Fed policy in a nutshell.

Now, this is where things get interesting. I don’t think the prospect of buying a stairway to heaven (or printing it, either) will work, so Ures truly waded back in to his next wild-ass short side trade at the market highs yesterday.

NO!  This is NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE.  This is a crazy man barking at the moon, but is there a chance that the market could briefly venture over that 1,690 level today and touch back down on Earth before the close?  We should know in a week or two who’s more irrational: me or the markets.

Budget Follies Will Decide

I should play poker with John Boehner sometime…and hopefully, if we ever do, he should bring a big bankroll with him because I’m gonna get rich off off him. 

Why?  Lousy poker player.  Obama called his bluff and Boehner folded…so this morning more talk is expected, but Boehner, who’s quickly losing support of the Tea Party wing for being to accommodative on the debt ceiling is also basically handing over the GOP’s future in 2016 by not hammering on the reality of what’s going down.

The issue, as I’ve tried ever-so-gently to explain is compound interest…and nothing more.  All Boehner would need to say is “Our Country is Blowing Up and the American people will not see their home foreclosed, the job-jacks to India, and then bless this administration’s bankrupting the US dollar to boot!”

Boehner won’t have the balls to get down and call it like it is.  Nor will he point out the heresy of claiming poor on budget and then having shock troops enough to turn away veterans from the Memorial while allowing pro immigration promotion at virtually the same time.

Nor, will he say the boondoggles which Faux News has been rolling out, are mostly at the feet of Fearless Leader not actuarial science.

Still, the government remains shut down, and despite the Interplanet Janet blastoff to the markets, I wouldn’t be surprised by a first stage burnout when people figure out that gravity (and pernicious debt-driven inflation) are not so easily fooled.

But for this morning, we should see a few more of the people, some of the time as futures are pointing to an effort to achieve orbit.  My money says it may look like Sputnik, but remember, the first satellite was up only 90-days. 

The markets should be so lucky.

With public confidence in both the poker player in chief and the inarticulate budget-aware realists cratering, polls are showing a high level of distrust and disgust.

It’s one thing to say the markets can “climb a wall of worry.”  It’s entirely another question when we ask “Can markets climb an asylum wall?”

More to the point, when was the last time a market staged a serious rally when 60% of poll respondents said to fire every member of congress?

Look for video later this morning as truckers plan to Ride for the Constitution.  And to be followed Sunday by a Million Veteran March at 9 AM at the National World War II Memorial.

Enough is too much and potential is high that this will be a change point weekend.

More After This…

JP Bleedin’

So, how does it feel to post a loss of a third of a billion plus?  Might want to ask the execs at JP Morgan which took a $7.2 billion legal hit this quarter.  Meantime, where there’s a fail, there’s a sale, as we say around here.  So word’s out this morning that JPM is looking to sell its commodities biz. 

Always ready to snap up a deal, I’ll call a couple of buddies and I’m sure we could make an offer.  I’m thinking about a $1,000 in cash and the seller to take back a note with no recourse to buyers.  Want in? LOL….  Oh, did I mention the no liabilities for past transactions clause?

Mideast Killing Fields

There’s so much murder and mayhem going on in the Middle East these days it could provide many lifetimes of storylines for someone like Joseph Wambaugh.  Here’s the latest body count:

Syria:  190  Number of civilians executes says Human Rights Watch.

Iraq: 42:   Number of people executed in a “clean up the streets” campaign following sectarian violence.

Also related:  the dynamite-paid Peace Prize has gone to a chemical weapons watchdog group.  Wiki fact check:

Dynamite was invented by the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Germany, and patented in 1867.

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The heat is on in Washington where headlines questioning the omniscience of the Obama administration are popping up all over the place.  For one, there’s the matter of the GOP digging in on the debt ceiling, although admittedly, Obama may win on this one when the GOP caves in, which should (predictably) happen in the final hours going into next week.

And the rabid right is making the most of it with one writing “Democrats to America: We own the government!”  Another decries how inarticulate republicans are, while the bloviator-in-chief notes Obama’s approval ranking and questions how repubs can question how they’re losing…

One of our well-connected sources called from the low-rent district of “203-land” to bemoan the obvious:  Actuarial reality is that America’s debt monster is anything but solved and appointing Janet Yellen to the Fed won’t change any of the hard physics of compound interest.

Sadly, the brief respite in debt growth claimed by the administration’s apologists is more attributable to falling interest rates and debt growth will go absolutely crazy when rates begin to rise.  The same for the mis-named “shutdown.”  Looks good on paper now, but when the back pay comes through…

But we have other problems as well:  For one, TechDirt is bemoaning the quality of the Affordable Care Act website and “We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404…”

What’s more, a growing chorus is beginning to wonder “If the system doesn’t work, how can people be penalized?”

Well, the answer here is simple:  Read Kafka!  Wiki it!

During 1914, Kafka began the novel Der Process (The Trial),^[124] the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. Kafka did not complete the novel, although he finished the final chapter.

And it’s here that we find the delicious irony of a Thursday morning:  Just as Kafka didn’t finish his novel, so too ‘Merica seems to be in a terrible rush to finishing the final chapter without filling in the blanks along the way.

Amazingly, the stock market is buying it:  Futures this morning are up 123 on the Dow which should about finish off the “Princess Janet” rally.  Like fans of Kafka, who seemed not too bothered by the holes in “The Trial” fans of Yellen are happy that easy money and keep on printing is the route ahead.

Besides, the holes in economic thought are probably just those damn actuarial realities that an East Texas curmudgeon keeps mentioning.  That and the mistaken belief that there are jobs left to puff-up with again.  The reality of automation’s contribution to structural employment won’t been seen until too late.

In the meantime, the Janet Express should drive the S&P back to 1,700 and maybe new highs  just as soon as the GOP caves in.  If it doesn’t happen?  Well, cue the Big Distraction and let’s grab some more powers once reserved to the States and try again, shall we?

More after this…

Jesse Ventura in 2016!

Already a Facebook site trying to get him on the ballot in all 50-states.  I, for one, would vote for him.  And if Hillary runs?  Can I vote twice, please?  Hey…maybe if I could lose my proof of citizenship, ya think?

Middle East Roulette

Our first spin of the Big Wheel of Life landed on Saudi Arabia where the powers that tent are looking for how to deal with the US burying the hatchet with (instead of in ) Iran.

Our second spin came up Triple Zero…but that turned out to be a typo, so it must have been Tripoli where the prime minster was held by rebel gunmen  for a while, then released.  No accounting for how that works…if this was any kind of ‘Merican gang, he’d have been dropped and popped, but maybe there is a different code of honor there.

Our third spin of the Big Wheel came up “6” which I can only assume means the six soldiers who were killed this week near the Suez Canal which is starting to look like its own little craps table.

“Big Shooter Coming Out?”

Speaking of gambling,  the odds and such: We have to comment on the blessedly lousy aim of our scheduled “Murder Cycle/Outrage” case which came along one day behind schedule, showing up in Wheeling West Virginia, of all places.  Turns out that although 15-20 shots were fired, no one was hit but the would-be killer who was taken down by  security officers.

And, in terms of a better date match, a curious “open carry” report came out of Green Bay…but no harm was intended there, seems.

We’ve set an alarm to mention this cycle when it comes up again in March of next year, or so.

Climate Disaster,  Big, Ugly Winter?

Despite there being a government shutdown, thanks to the hard working people at NOAA who track such things, the monthly solar cycle update is out, and it continues to show the current Solar Cycle is in epic fail mode.  I mean seriously colder sun…

Now, this is not meant to send you scurrying for the dust bunnies under the bed, or anything, but please think through what a return to a Dalton Minimum would be like.  I suppose I could suggested a petition to the White House to name this the Ure Minimum when it is eventually realized as having occurred, but I haven’t seen petitions get much done there, so I’m thinking it may not be worth the effort.

Nobel Dreams

Still, while I wait for my Nobel Prize in Mental Clarity (a prize they haven’t seen the wisdom of awarding yet, but what do you expect when dynamite money hands out “peace” prizes, right?)  I should mention the Nobel Prize in lit to Alice Munro.

We have an arrangement, I think:  I haven’t read any of her books, but I doubt she’s read any of mine, either.  Fair’s fair.

Buzz Word of the Day

Cyberchondriac:  Someone who self diagnoses on the web.  Although yes, your voice dropping into a falsetto could mean low-T… or it’s time to call 1-800-genderbend.  Operators are standing by, this is a free call.

Licensing Beggars

Sounds like something out of India (OK, without deliberately maiming kids so they make more money) but if you ever doubted my contention that ‘Merican’s lifestyles are being systematically flushed down to old crapperoo, here’s proof as Middle Township, New Jersey wants to license pan-handlers.

In order not to be confused with Kafka, the permit is free.

Backassward Edjumacation

Used to be that students would go to school to learn, and come how to do their writing (as in homework).  But Madison Avenue Mike’s find of morning in the NY Times is a story about how kids are being sent home to watch video lectures and then come to school to do their homework there…

Amazingly, it seems to be working.

Lonesome Planet

One of those oddities around the net is the notion that the planet Venus just sort of showed up at some point in our remote past, swept into our solar system, caused a calamity on Mars and finally took up station in its present orbit.  All stuff of internet lore and we could argue the science of it all day long.

But look this morning at the NBC Science story about how a lonesome planet – without a Sun – has been spotted and this means that yes, there may be orphaned planets out there waiting to be captured and in the process, yes, they could cause Velikovsky-sized planetary calamity.

Truth of Chinaquenses

We’re please by a report from reader Roaming Ron, that UrbanSurvival is once again available in China:

Hi George,

As I had to report last time here UrbanSurvival was blocked, I’m happy to report now I found out coming back to China for some months to stay yesterday that some Liberalization’s coming here luckily: I can (and so everybody else here) access your site again.

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