A number of people have written over the past couple of days that I must surely have lost the remaining bits of my mind to question something so “obviously true” as Stonehenge, which as a video recounts was substantially “made up” in the period of modern history since 1900.  No, I don’t think so…and you may have more questions when I waltz you through a few…well let’s call them inconvenient truths.

I use the term “made up” advisedly because I am not entirely sure of how much latitude should be given to the Stonehenge “reconstructors” who went about finding stones on the ground and then placed them where they believed them to belong and then insist that theirs is the only true possibility and that none other may exist. How much of the embedded “advanced knowledge” and presumed astronomical usage was due to liberties in stone placement?

Let me back up a bit for some broader context where I’ll give you some important insight into how our view of history shapes modern thought.  On the one side of this discussion you have alternative archeology where a wide range of names like Eric Von Däniken, Graham Hancock, and Anatoly Fomenko may be found.  Some hint of extra-human events is in these, for sure. 

Yet on the other side are the defenders of the current ruling paradigm and those who (citing the science they were taught) espouse a worldview that may also not be precisely as presented. 

No worries, this other side also believes in extra-human events, except that they hold the current intellectual high ground having their views “officialized” in rituals promoted at the State level in numerous Western and Middle Eastern countries. And toss in an Italian area city-state, if you care to round it out.

To make this a short dig into intellectual archeology, we begin with a fellow by the name of Julius Caesar Scaliger.  “Who?”  Right on…Wiki me, bro:

“Julius Caesar Scaliger (or Giulio Cesare della Scala) (April 23, 1484 – October 21, 1558) was an Italian scholar and physician who spent a major part of his career in France. He employed the techniques and discoveries of Renaissance humanism to defend Aristotelianism against the new learning. In spite of his arrogant and contentious disposition, his contemporary reputation was high, judging him so distinguished by his learning and talents that, according to Jacques August de Thou, none of the ancients could be placed above him, and the age in which he lived could not show his equal.’

“Well, what’s wrong with that?” you’re asking.    Nothing, except some puffery in his bio if you dig into it, but follow the trail with me:

Julius had a son, by the name of Joseph Justus Scaliger who rewrote a good bit of history in his “Study on the Improvement of Time” and elsewhere.  This, in turn was in some respects what the early Brits thought their heritage was all about, along with a 9th century monk by the name of Nennius.  While there were others we can get a sense of how British history was cobbled up. 

Let’s back up.  Takeing a few “liberties” with historical accounts was not uncommon.  A careful read of the Wiki entry on Scaliger (the elder) hints in this direction:

On his own account

When he was twelve, his kinsman the emperor Maximilian placed him among his pages. He remained for seventeen years in the service of the emperor, distinguishing himself as a soldier and as a captain. He studied art under Albrecht Dürer.

In 1512 at the Battle of Ravenna, where his father and elder brother were killed, he displayed valour, and received the highest honours of chivalry from his imperial cousin, who conferred upon him with his own hands the Order of the Golden Spur, augmented with the collar and the eagle of gold. But this was the only reward he obtained.

He left the service of Maximilian, and after a brief employment by another kinsman, the duke of Ferrara, he decided to quit the military life, and in 1514 entered as a student at the University of Bologna.

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My consigliere called Monday to point out that Art Cashin on CNBC had noted that the last time we had this many Hindenberg Omen’s we had the 2008/2009 financial mess.  “Aw shucks, I think we have a while to run yet…after all, auto sales have been strong and this oughta take a bit more time to roll over….” I explained, having just taken a gram of optimism pills.

This morning, the happy pills have worn off and we have a less than thrilling Retail Sales report just out a few minutes ago:

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for July, adjusted for seasonal
variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $424.5 billion, an increase of 0.2 percent (±0.5%)* from the
previous month, and 5.4 percent (±0.7%) above July 2012. Total sales for the May through July 2013 period were up 5.2 percent (±0.5%) from
the same period a year ago. The May to June 2013 percent change was revised from +0.4 percent (±0.5%)* to +0.6 percent (±0.2%).

Retail trade sales were up 0.1 percent (±0.5%)* from June 2013 and 5.6 percent (±0.7%) above last year. Auto and other motor vehicle dealers
were up 13.3 percent (±2.1%) from July 2012 and nonstore retailers were up 8.8 percent (±2.1%) from last year.

Are the good times in auto sales ending?  Sure looks that way.  Consumer super-saturation we call it around here.  Eventually everyone buys the last new car anyone can afford or the last possible iPhone…

Where we are now is simple:  Waiting for the other shoe to drop.  While some are suggesting around November 1st (like Steve Quayle and the Guerrilla Economist) its as good a crash date as any, although it could come a month before, or next spring.  In the meantime, the market should open up a bit this morning, but the premarket optimism was halved by retail’s fail.

In the Big Picture, we should see a modest decline begin shortly, and its then that many will be tempted to toss money into short positions.  Inevitably, this will be followed by a “running of the shorts” and it’s right there (with blood running in the streets) that Ure’s truly will enter the short side in a meaningful way…along with the commercials, of course.  It may not play out exactly this way, however, so constant vigilance and a good supply of tea leave to read is important.  We have our libretto and the tea has been ordered.

Ignoring implications from the effects of tax changes, I built you an infographic that explains why you feel like you have been working harder for little or no gain…

Meantime, real prices have continued up, and that’s why the old joke “The harder I work, the behinder I get!” is no longer an old joke.  It’s present-day reality.

Obamacare: It Just Got Worse

Breaking story in Forbes this morning reveals another bait and switch in Obamacare (my words, not theirs):  The promised out of pocket caps have been delayed for a year until 2015.  I’ve given up counting backpedals on this stuff…

The one thing that surprised me was that the story was written by Forbes contributor Avik Roy.  I would have expected a different reporter like, oh,   Ben Dover.

The Hot/Emotional LBGT Story du Jour

Rather than have a bunch of people figuring out that their lifestyle is going to decline, since prices have been going up faster than GDP growth in real terms since 2007 by my scrawlings, we instead are being flooded with hot-emo stories about how California has now strengthened the state’s treatment of transgender K-12 students in public schools, signed by Calgov Jerry Brown.  Depending on which side of gay rights you’re on, this is either a good thing or one of the dumbest, most insane things ever to come down the pike. 

So here’s what the bill actually says:

An act to amend Section 221.5 of the Education Code, relating to pupil rights.

[ Approved by Governor August 12, 2013. Filed Secretary of State August 12, 2013. ]

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST

AB 1266, Ammiano. Pupil rights: sex-segregated school programs and activities.

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Oh-oh….here we go off on anyone one of our “question everything” trips:  Got a hot tip from long-time reader Teresita in Manila who stumbled over something on YouTube  with less than 1,700 views, and one is extraordinarily odd: 

“How true is this?  Just got it today and for some reason, why would anyone want to fake this – Stonehenge!!? 

Just experiencing another typhoon since yesterday.  It seems to be  leaving and hopefully it does soon.

Boggles the mind and yet here it is. Just wondering what is going on.

First thing you need to watch is the video over here. 

Well, yes, if sure looks like Stonehenge pictures and since the site originally posting was Russian, seems to me that there’s a chance that this is based on black and white pictures that the Russians had in their spy archives.

Whether there’s anything to this video, I will leave to you to discern.  But, if one accepts that it is footage from the original site, and then you begin to piece together why would anyone go to such lengths to make us believe in “ancient wisdom” with a high-precision astronomical calendar, maybe it has something to do with bolstering the legitimacy of ancient “orders” and such.  Or, people like me would ask why does the calendar and astronomical calculation series based on Stonehenge work out to so many decimal places of precision?  Wouldn’t Earth’s rotational change have changed over time?

Kim’s Got WuJo

What’s better than a good WuJo report to ponder?  This one’s a peach!

Good morning George,

I’ve been an avid reader and off/on subscriber for years. I love your Wujo reports, but never thought I’d experience anything worthy of reporting. The other day something occurred that might make the cut. I held of on sending it until reading your column today. Your theory that the disappearing/reappearing items might correspond to the writer’s emotional attachment struck a chord.

I purchased a Wi-Fi hotspot device a while back because my daughter and I travel frequently for softball tournaments. I am the team’s scorekeeper and broadcast a live “scorecast” to our parents at home over an Internet application.

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Say, isn’t this a fun way to wake up after the alarm doesn’t go off?  Rereading a weekend email from reader Todd who quotes a lot of rhyme and verse in this YouTube video over here which explains why the last week in October – and most likely November1st – could be see a major collapse – to be followed by a US bail-in – of most of the world’s financial system.

Todd, like me, was already looking for the Pandora’s box of of economic wasps to be opened around then when he noted this wasn’t a big change from his earlier estimates:

“Deadline was revised due to Fannie withholding a $30 billion payment to the U.S. gov’t…please share this video with as many people as possible so folks will have ample resources on hand by the end of October.

From a note this morning by economists at Barclays:
The US federal budget deficit has been improving at a dramatic pace in recent months. As a percent of GDP, the deficit peaked at 10.2% of GDP in the four quarters ending in Q4 09; over the past four quarters, it has totaled 4.2% of GDP, down from 7.7% one year earlier.”

Not that he’s wrong, mind you, but I expect we will need some “out of left field event” in the preceding week or three before that so that Wall St. will be able to maintain “plausible deniability.”  You know, like the post-Internet Bubble collapse has been buried by effectively having the “pain and suffering sectors” of your brain’s hard drive overwritten by the events of 9/11..

In fact, following that brain and hard drive analogy, maybe it was more than a simple file re-write…maybe it was a whole low-level reformat!  Everything is terrorists, terrorism, War on Terror and that (other than the Housing Bubble) has really taken America’s eye off making money and other old-fashioned American ideals.

China was up more than 2% overnight, Japan down 3/4’s of a percent, or so,  And in the early going in Europe, France, German, and the UK were all down earlier, so a short, coordinated dive off the low board is about all we can expect this morning when markets open.

Todd’s guess as the real diving action (off the high board) will be along in 11-weeks, or so, which means you still have plenty of time to prepare.  Or, if you’re not inclined to do that, at least you have time to invent some creative denials.

The Week Ahead

The Treasury Budget out this afternoon is expected to show the US ran a –96 billion deficit this month.  More amusing should be the accounting to prove we haven’t really blown through the budget ceiling…and we know the answer to that one:  Off-books accounting!  Plus short-term transfers from Peter to pay Paul… 

Accounting is a very precise science, but if airliners were designed with this level of integrity, we’d be surrounded by crashes because in aeronautical engineering reality isn’t so easily papered over.

Tomorrow we see retail sales, which I expect will continue to show the Auto Industry as the only sector doing better than inflation dollar-wise.

Producer prices Wednesday will be another one worth watching…since it may be something of a barometer on how much of the Fed’s noodle pushing has actually strengthened prices.  My guess is not much.

The week’s “biggy” will be Consumer Prices and a rise of 2-10th’s of a percent for the month which means about 2 1/2-2.6  percent annualized is the consensus view.

Which means, with the Fed printing and QE’ing M2 at a 5.3%, the implied deflation rate is likely in the 2.7% range which  (considering all the jobs which corporatists have moved to Mexico and Asia (that includes China and India, right?) is not totally bad.  But close enough for home use.

More after this…

Madness on Bordering Dept.

As you might expect, as grim as the US economic outlook may be, there are many countries were things are much worse and so, as a result, lots of people want to move to America.  Well, as it turns out, it’s a lot easier to ‘talk your way in’ if you know the right key words to lay on the border folks…

Bordering on Madness Dept.

Is it really news when the presidential pooch going bye-bye for vaycay is a headline?  How many first families have done the same?

Unable to pass a budget?  Stuck in sequester?  Pernicious unemployment papered over?  Forget the pooch, let’s get on to the presidential golf outing for the rest of the week’s “news.”

If I were Vlad Putin, meantime, I’d be smoldering pissed:  Stiffed on a summit and yet time for golf?  What was the Nobel Committee thinking?  (If at all…)

Holder’s Latest Non-Answer

I don’t like “tolerance policies” – I went through a lot of that as a 21-year old radio news beat reporter when I started my news-chasing addiction back in 1970.  I watched development in Seattle and King County (Washington) and after a series of corruption cases, concluded that “tolerance policies were a bad idea.

So later on this morning attorney general Eric Holder will unveil what amounts to a tolerance policy for certain kinds of non-gang related low level drug offenses. In telling his US attorneys to come up with local guidelines, it will be effectively a tolerance policy left to individual regions.

But, as I see it, this is the wrong policy and just another cluster-mawhozit instead of doing the right thing.  The right thing is to tell the booze lobby that “Time’s up…no more penalties for home grown and home use of marijuana…ya’ll have had 50-years of profits and now you’re going to have to deal with a drug that seems to fight cancer and certainly is better on the liver.”

Admittedly, Holder’s got a tough one here:  Oh, sure, a tolerance policy would allow some rebranding of “criminals” from Mexico who aren’t gang-related and yes, it might play in the Colorado region.  But is it even application of law, equal enforcement?  Or, is it just another stupid “special class” and a further abandonment of equality?

More chasing around of their tales…but if that’s what it takes to balance prison over-crowding against booze lobby fund raising, I get that’s how complexity in End Times works.  Fair laws, evenly administered?  Gone are the days, gone is the foundation that made American jurisprudence exceptional.  Tolerance policies and the erosion of contract law…

More Jailhouse Rocks

An al Qaeda boss vows to free more jailed AQ members on the Arabian Peninsula.

Bathroom Bill or…?

Ah, the delights of following mis/dis info around the net.  I bet you’ve heard by now that a bill sitting on Calgov Jerry Brown’s desk would be a “bathroom bill” which would allow males to use girl’s bathrooms in school IF they felt gender-leaning.

Well, there’s another take on which over at Media Matters which says this isn’t what the bill does:  It merely reaffirms current law….

But wait!  Cynical George wants to know if that all it does, who are the idiots in Scrotomento who pass laws that don’t actually do something new?  (This might be why California’s in bad financial conditioned and the most over-regulated state in ‘Merica…) Or are both sides of this story….oh, you know:  MARKETING!

From the Compounding Economic Pharmacist:

I’ve counted well over 6,000 bank branches having been closed as I meticulously did whenever the FDIC filed a bank closure report.  I did this going back to IndyMac before finally giving up at about 6,300 branches.  There seemed little point to it.

Fast-forward to this morning and here’s report on Russia Today (RT) that “20,000 bank outlets closed in EU since start of downturn.”

We need to talk seriously here about economic prescriptions.  Here, let me slip into appropriate professional wear so I can at least look the part, OK?  Hand me my lab coat, would you?

The whole/Big Picture Truth of what’s going on in Bank Land is complicated.  But if I were an old-fashioned compounding economic pharmacist, I would mix up:

• Seven parts bankus disrectus au finance for balance sheet collapse.
• Nine parts consumus todeathtus for transitioning out of paper on into all plastic.
• 21 parts connectus onlineus since digi-dollars don’t need a roof or staff time and last but not least
• 12-parts automatus tellus which has the financial alchemical symbol “ATM”.

Mix in a mortar, crush with the pestle of regulatory reform, and package as troches.  Avoid taking before elections, may cause systemic reactions including monetary diarrhea.

Foreshocks?

6.2 quake this morning off the northern coast of Peru.  If you are expecting the global tsunami when the southern part of the Pacific Plate breaks off on a line from Polynesia to South America, this is more dust-bunny sniffing news, for sure, since there was also a 6.0 along the Kermadec Islands 500 miles Northeast of New Zealand….  The black line would be the plate crack and the black circle is the Peru quake…

What about the 6.3 in Indonesia?

Earthquake charts of the long-term view tomorrow morning!  Oh, and reader Hank out in Hawaii sent this Sunday morning:

Big Island had a 4.8 earthquake at 6am local time this morning.  Not huge, but worrisome is the location.   It was on the southern cliffs of the volcano where the massive ‘crack’ in the south flank is located.  Someday that chunk is gonna slide into the sea…  ala-Canary Islands… and we will have about 20 minutes before the wave inundates Honolulu.

Yes, there are several undersea landslide run-outs from Hawaii undersea slide that send 50-100 foot tsunamis into the US West Coast in historical times.  Float us some Kona Roast and Macadamias on a long board when it happens…I’ll wander out to Phoenix to pick ‘em up!

Eyes on South Americas

This from our Winnipeg news analyst is interesting…

Dear Mr.

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With all the revisions to the UrbanSurvival website, I can now post comments a lot easier and so every once in a while I’ll post charts like the one below.  First, however, let me explain what this chart is and why I developed it.

The stock market goes up, the stock market comes down.  Most non-professionals don’t pay a lot of attention to which index they look at.  If you hear “The Dow is up!” most folks assume that if the Dow is up, everything must be peachy.  Well, that ain’t the case.

What a lot of people gloss over is the size of the Internet Bubble collapse and its impact on long-term investment performance.  The way I figured it, if Dow Jones & Company could pick and choose 30-stocks to make up their Industrial average, why couldn’t I take three indices and add them up and come up with something which would be an “index of indexes” and thus, get a little keener insight into the big game?

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Thursday morning, we recounted one of our Wujo tales, wherein a reader reported on the case of mysterious sandals that seem to have gone walking about on their own.  At the end of the column the WjD (wujo detective degree abbreviation) asked a number of questions which might lead directly to a simple solution to this apparent contradiction between observed reality and more or less normal events.  We have some answers:

“Logically, the dog fetched them from the stairs, brought them inside (do you have a pet door?) went up stairs looking for the kid, not finding him, notice someone in the recliner and dumped them under there…???”

LOL, nope no doggie door.  Also “Indy” is a 8 month old German Shepard Rottweiler mix.  It would be hard to miss if he had fetched them and placed them under the chair.  Though Indy could have moved the chair since he is coming in at 80lbs now.  The sandals were under the chair to the point that you could not see them unless you lifted the chair.  Weird to say the least.”

Unless someone comes up with a way to physically reduce paper, we’re going to have to add this to what’s turned in to an overstuffed filing cabinet that is labeled “Unsolved.” 

The Four Horsemen’s PR Failure

A reader asked me recently to give my personal assessment of what’s coming our way in the immediate future so as to help figure out what would be the right preps to lay in and so forth.  I thought about this, and while it’s never easy to lay out a whole future in a quick two minute read, I decided this morning to take a whack at it since reader JC and I were just talking about this one the phone this week.

Markets

Without the specifics of a Peoplenomics report like the one planned for tomorrow where we’ll dig into more detail, the current decline of the market, seems to me that over the course of this fall we could see a decline of the S&P 500 down to the 1,540 range (or lower) and that would set up a rally which would last either into next March-April, or it would continue upwards until next summer and then begin a massive decline which could go lower than the 2009 lows.  Even so, this picture may take an additional year or more to work out.

What will determine how that plays out will be how long the financial system can hold together globally in “synchronized printing mode.”

Earth-Changes

We are in a curious place where the arrival of comet C-ISON which should be quite bright in November, is being described as being the “blue Kachina” of Hopi lore.  This series of native tales has been handed down over the years into the New Age crowd and there are continuing resurrections of the story, including this version of things posted in July.

Reader GC has been thinking some of this stuff through and he points out that NASA has been running its Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy down in the Southern hemisphere again.  After doing three weeks of flying down there, another deployment is planned in 2015.

“SOFIA PREP FLIGHTS ARE VERY SIGNIFICANT FOR THE VERY FACT THAT THIS IS TAKING PLACE IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE !!!!
THIS FAR-INFRARED TELESCOPE IS KEY TO THE OBSERVATION OF A BROWN DWARF STAR ENTERING OUR SOLAR SYSTEM MASKED IN A MASSIVE DUST CLOUD !!!!
IF A KILLSHOT TAKES OUT ALL COMMUNICATIONS TO SATELLITES THIS IS SET TO KEEP AN EYE ON THE DARK STAR. “

To be sure, running through a cloud of “red dust” (which seems likely to include a lot of rusty water) seems like it might cause a lot of rain and a “red moon” we need to recall that the red moon part of predictive prophesy could come from earthbound dust, too.  And what about the Australian dust storms of a while back – in January?

Also in the end times discussion there are other parameters and the one that is really falling into place is the “third of the earth’s oceans” being “bittered” which Fukushima is doing a splendid job of.

So ONE possible future looks like massive market collapse, bounce, heap this fall.  Wars and rumors of wars when we are collapsing economically.  Blue Kachina is due right on schedule, we’ve got the bittered waters, so all we need are some left field events and that would wrap things up neatly.

Still, these left field events will be the make or break, so we just keep scanning the headlines for hoards of locusts, pandemic diseases, and lost Horsemen on variously colored mounts. 

If you see four lost-looking riders, tell ‘em there’s a natural-born cynic over at UrbanSurvial who’d like a word with them about their marketing roll-out. 

Unless we get a few mega quakes to spice things up a bit, and really damn soon,  the locust swarms in Kazakhstan, Madagascar, even here in Texas, are hardly worthy of 2,000 years of hype!

Any real Four Horsemen, LLc  worth its rep ought to be embarrassed to fall back on trivial, annual, and quite natural occurrences and setting up their appearance.  Why, even Tepco’s crappy smokefest on Fukushima is such a slow-motion affair that any reasonable “End of Worlder” would get bored spitless by now and simply wander off.

Not that I don’t get people writing to me everyday, as they come up for Kleenex after sniffing the dust-bunnies over this headline, or that.  But they’re mostly getting rewrite of decades-old material. 

The Four Horsemen really need a new media strategy so as a stopgap measure, we’re going to suggest a massive event involving social media and in the next month or so.  Their that or an 8+ earthquake…you know…something with some pizzazz to get this roll-out of the End of the World back on track.

Reader’s Writes

Reader Andy, of in the hinterlands of the Northeast (as much as they are hinterlands) makes a good note about my recent discussions about fracking and in particular those waste water injection wells:

In your recent discussion of fracking (“When the Saudis Speak…”, July 30), you mentioned “shark tooth spikes,” links between water injection wells and seismic activity, and other issues.  Conspicuously absent was the issue of possible contamination of water supplies.

I know you’ve mentioned this subject in the past; I recall that you once linked to an article about fracking-induced contamination of the Susquehanna River with radionuclides.

Some shills in the MSM are claiming that the EPA has “debunked” the “myth” of fracking-related water pollution.  I disagree.  For instance, a University of Buffalo study found that fracking can release uranium from Marcellus shale. 

Some academic researchers are also questioning the EPA’s numbers about methane leakage from natural gas production.

I hope you can explore fracking in more depth in US/Peoplenomics…

Yessir, Andy as soon as the weather cools off about 20-degrees and Oilman2 and I can have a glass of interview juice on the screen porch.  He’s been busy as heck with things in the oil patch (Including just going through some kind of periodic ‘rig control school’ which I think readers would also find interesting as the Dickens).

And as long as we’re on shaky ground…

Try on this from reader Jeff:

“Hi George,

Love your site and your insight.

I was reading about the sun’s current magnetic pole flip. A couple of items got me thinking in particular –  first that it happens every 11 years at the solar maximum and second, it’s usually accompanied by CME’s, flares, and other fun space-related events.

You have probably already referenced this (because you have foresight like that and are ahead of the hip curve), but I did a quick Excel pattern auto fill with 11-year increments and some interesting dates showed up. I’m not a huge numbers person or sign seeker, but I found it interesting that 1969 (lunar landing) and 1859 being the year of the Carrington Event (specifically interesting about this is that it happened during the first part of September, which according to the news story is the same timeline as the completion of the flip) caught my attention.

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Ure’s truly did not win the PowerBall last night, and if you have time to read this, neither did you by the looks of it, although a number of lucky people did.  Turns out the winners included one in Minnesota and two in New Joisey. (sic) The good news, such as it is, may be that there’s another column to read although I was anticipating being able to post my farewell, audios, sayonara letter.  Maybe (hopefully) next time.

This leaves me stuck in my “get rich slow” rut, which isn’t bad, but I’m an impatient cuss.  Markets are due for a modest rally at the open today since even a bleary-eyed amateur chartist should be able to count five waves down, so we should get a wave two in hear sometime, perhaps seven points up to the S&P 1,700 level, but we shall see.

One of the charts we serve up for Peoplenomics.com readers is a Global Index I devised a number of years ago.  And looking at it, reader Yohan wonders if I have considered an unhappy ending of global finance that would look like this (with his counts added)

It might work out that way, after all Japan was down another 1.59% overnight, but Europe is up a tad this morning, we the real key will be whether we get a quick bounce to S&P 1,700 for a day or less and then head down globally next week.

The bad news is that if we have just been through a Wave 1 down, and we scramble up a bit for a Wave 2, then Wave 3 down could be interesting since economic fundamentals are less than encouraging.  Particularly the Federal Reserve’s Consumer Debt report out late yesterday which showed, importantly I think, that Americans are back to sitting on their credit cards.

In the report, credit cards and the like are called “revolving” credit (like a revolver being pointed at you, I suppose) while “non-revolving credit” includes mobile homes and education loans.  The part that matters is shown to the right.

Yes, overall consumer debt was still going up at the 5.9% rate, but revolving debt (which I think of as largely consumer discretionary, except by people who have to bend plastic to eat) was down nearly 4%.  Again we see non-revolving debt (like student loans) up 10% but a lot of what’s driving that is likely to be people driven (from desperation) to buy education thinking there might be a job out there if they could just complete that online brain surgery degree.  Either that, or the number of people who said “Screw it!”  and just bought a pair of jet skis and headed to the lake is up.

Hard times make desperate people, and desperate people recognize that low interest rates won’t last forever and when they go up, no telling how bad things will get for the US dollar.

Oh, and on an inflation-adjusted basis since 2000, the Dow would have needed to hit 15,897 by January 1st of this year.  Since we can kick in another 3% for the year-to-date’s wild-eyed printing, that would point to an inflation-adjusted double top of the ultra long-term Dow around 16,373 but this isn’t an exact science because I haven’t been able to find any credible papers on the effects of quantitative easing on the effective long-term inflation rate.

Still, if it’s any help (and from an inflation standpoint it is) the reason we don’t see more inflation like  we should from all the printing by the Fed is that the money is going into dark pools on the sidelines and consequently, M2 Velocity continues to crater.  With it, job creation and some other inconveniences (government running out of dough and such) wander along.  But, we can’t have a delicious concentration of wealth omelet without breaking a few workers now, can we?

Which is not to call workers “eggs” – more like chickens or sheep would fit – so come this fall it’ll be “over easy” as the corps skate on ‘Bamacare and we the people will go nicely with cheese and toast again as we get “crack up” and the yoke is us.

Say, This is Exciting

Well, not really, but it is an employment indicator that some people (with no lives otherwise to speak of) follow closely:

In the week ending August 3, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 333,000, an increase of 5,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 328,000. The 4-week moving average was 335,500, a decrease of 6,250 from the previous week’s revised average of 341,750.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.3 percent for the week ending July 27, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending July 27 was 3,018,000, an increase of 67,000 from the preceding week’s unrevised level of 2,951,000. The 4-week moving average was 3,023,750, a decrease of 2,250 from the preceding week’s unrevised average of 3,026,000.

If you have a job, this may not matter much…

New Concept: MultiWar

In most of the MSM (mainstreammedia) there’s a propensity to cast wars into a simple binary model for ease of reporting purposes.  But, in fact, due to heavy communications, massive social and religious complexity, we are beginning to appreciate that there is a new form of warfare emerging which we call the “multiwar.” 

From a design standpoint, it means a war with multiple sides and instead of a traditional mano y mano (man and man) binary, we see developing in Syria the idea that there may be three (or more) sides. 

Obviously, the MSM reports on the Assad (existing) government, which is backed by the Russians.  And, in good binary simplifications, the “rebels” are oft shown as “freedom fighters.” 

But now we see some US intelligence types as drifting toward our multiwar construct with as Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell considers that al Qaeda taking over the Assad government is becoming a real possibility.

This trilateral war might even become quadular (other Ureism)  in nature, depending on interests of  nearby Gulf states. 

From an analytical standpoint, we hark back to early Star Trek days and 3-D chess. Yet even here, the propensity to confine the game to simply two players was persistent.  In hypercomplexification, the global geopolitical game is multiplayer and multilevel.  So perhaps as a thought model, the Langley crowd should drag out the 3-D chess set, make up some basic rules, and have three players now, instead of the binary baseline?

From the War Gamer’s Desk: 

EBM Holds True, Again!

Love to see my high-powered theories work out in real-life:

Good Morning George,

Here’s a supporting piece of evidence for Ure axiom that “everything is  a business model.”

Eisenhower’s farewell address warning comes to mind:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”

~ President Dwight D.

Read More

Ure’s truly did not win the PowerBall last night, and if you have time to read this, neither did you by the looks of it, although a number of lucky people did.  Turns out the winners included one in Minnesota and two in New Joisey. (sic) The good news, such as it is, may be that there’s another column to read although I was anticipating being able to post my farewell, audios, sayonara letter.  Maybe (hopefully) next time.

This leaves me stuck in my “get rich slow” rut, which isn’t bad, but I’m an impatient cuss.  Markets are due for a modest rally at the open today since even a bleary-eyed amateur chartist should be able to count five waves down, so we should get a wave two in hear sometime, perhaps seven points up to the S&P 1,700 level, but we shall see.

One of the charts we serve up for Peoplenomics.com readers is a Global Index I devised a number of years ago.  And looking at it, reader Yohan wonders if I have considered an unhappy ending of global finance that would look like this (with his counts added)

It migtht work out that way, after all Japan was down another 1.59% overnight, but Europe is up a tad this morning, we the real key will be whether we get a quick bounce to S&P 1,700 for a day or less and then head down globally next week.

The bad news is that if we have just been through a Wave 1 down, and we scramble up a bit for a Wave 2, then Wave 3 down could be interesting since economic fundamentals are less than encouraging.  Particularly the Federal Reserve’s Consumer Debt report out late yesterday which showed, importantly I think, that Americans are back to sitting on their credit cards.

In the report, credit cards and the like are called “revolving” credit (like a revolver being pointed at you, I suppose) while “non-revolving credit” includes mobile homes and education loans.  The part that matters is shown to the right.

Yes, overall consumer debt was still going up at the 5.9% rate, but revolving debt (which I think of as largely consumer discretionary, except by people who have to bend plastic to eat) was down nearly 4%.  Again we see non-revolving debt (like student loans) up 10% but a lot of what’s driving that is likely to be people driven (from desperation) to buy education thinking there might be a job out there if they could just complete that online brain surgery degree.  Either that, or the number of people who said “Screw it!”  and just bought a pair of jet skis and headed to the lake is up.

Hard times make desperate people, and desperate people recognize that low interest rates won’t last forever and when they go up, no telling how bad things will get for the US dollar.

Oh, and on an inflation-adjusted basis since 2000, the Dow would have needed to hit 15,897 by January 1st of this year.  Since we can kick in another 3% for the year-to-date’s wild-eyed printing, that would point to an inflation-adjusted double top of the ultra long-term Dow around 16,373 but this isn’t an exact science because I haven’t been able to find any credible papers on the effects of quantitative easing on the effective long-term inflation rate.

Still, if it’s any help (and from an inflation standpoint it is) the reason we don’t see more inflation like  we should from all the printing by the Fed is that the money is going into dark pools on the sidelines and consequently, M2 Velocity continues to crater.  With it, job creation and some other inconveniences (government running out of dough and such) wander along.  But, we can’t have a delicious concentration of wealth omelet without breaking a few workers now, can we?

Which is not to call workers “eggs” – more like chickens or sheep would fit – so come this fall it’ll be “over easy” as the corps skate on ‘Bamacare and we the people will go nicely with cheese and toast again as we get “crack up” and the yoke is us.

Say, This is Exciting

Well, not really, but it is an employment indicator that some people (with no lives otherwise to speak of) follow closely:

In the week ending August 3, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 333,000, an increase of 5,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 328,000. The 4-week moving average was 335,500, a decrease of 6,250 from the previous week’s revised average of 341,750.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.3 percent for the week ending July 27, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending July 27 was 3,018,000, an increase of 67,000 from the preceding week’s unrevised level of 2,951,000. The 4-week moving average was 3,023,750, a decrease of 2,250 from the preceding week’s unrevised average of 3,026,000.

If you have a job, this may not matter much…

New Concept: MultiWar

In most of the MSM (mainstreammedia) there’s a propensity to cast wars into a simple binary model for ease of reporting purposes.  But, in fact, due to heavy communications, massive social and religious complexity, we are beginning to appreciate that there is a new form of warfare emerging which we call the “multiwar.” 

From a design standpoint, it means a war with multiple sides and instead of a traditional mano y mano (man and man) binary, we see developing in Syria the idea that there may be three (or more) sides. 

Obviously, the MSM reports on the Assad (existing) government, which is backed by the Russians.  And, in good binary simplifications, the “rebels” are oft shown as “freedom fighters.” 

But now we see some US intelligence types as drifting toward our multiwar construct with as Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell considers that al Qaeda taking over the Assad government is becoming a real possibility.

This trilateral war might even become quadular (other Ureism)  in nature, depending on interests of  nearby Gulf states. 

From an analytical standpoint, we hark back to early Star Trek days and 3-D chess. Yet even here, the propensity to confine the game to simply two players was persistent.  In hypercomplexification, the global geopolitical game is multiplayer and multilevel.  So perhaps as a thought model, the Langley crowd should drag out the 3-D chess set, make up some basic rules, and have three players now, instead of the binary baseline?

From the War Gamer’s Desk: 

EBM Holds True, Again!

Love to see my high-powered theories work out in real-life:

Good Morning George,

Here’s a supporting piece of evidence for Ure axiom that “everything is  a business model.”

Eisenhower’s farewell address warning comes to mind:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”

~ President Dwight D.

Read More