I’ve been debating overnight whether to mention this, and Grady may (or may not)_ post some of this over at the www.nostracodeus.com website. But the term BF has been showing up in our various scans of the web and it’s not clear whether there has been an outbreak of new “boy friend” or whether this is some kind of obscure mention of “black Friday” of some sort.
To be sure, on the business side of things, I think Robin Landry (who I’ve been meeting with) has a pretty good handle on how all of this may piece together and we’ll get into that in tomorrow’s Peoplenomics report for subscribers.
But for now, the whole “bf” is somewhat perplexing.
We are already watching a couple of things, like the bit astro conjunction next week with long-term astroecon experts like Arch Crawford are eyeing with some suspicion. And then there’s the whole blow-up over Obamacare.
But the one that really concerns me, because it seems to have been foreshadowed by the data work of others, is the possibility that the Israelis are about to make a huge mistake and go pop Iran by themselves.
The key data point to watch, suggests our resident war-gamer, is that Iran may only be one month from having enough enriched uranium to make a bomb:
Hi George,
Iran is reportedly reaching an important ” window” in their race to craft nuke weapons: See this USA Today story.
Israel and Saudi Arabia cannot take the news lightly. Israel’s very existence is at stake, and Saudi Arabia, the Sunni Islamic center of the universe, is rapidly distancing itself from an unreliable U.S. administration. Robles is, Israel has nukes, the Saudis do not. And Iran want both nuke weapons and religious control of Islam in order to shepherd in the prophesied Hidden Mahdi.
Watch for an unlikely Middle Eastern alliance forming against Iran, giving credence to the old Arab saying: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Why else would the Saudis drop nuke powerhouse America and stand seemingly defenseless against the growing power in Iran?
Happy Friday!
Curiously, we need to keep an eye on what the Saudis are doing, too, since the US relations with the Saudis have seriously chilled in recent months and there’s not much to drive a thaw in right.
Plus, if you were in a position to decide when to go to war (Israel against Iran) wouldn’t it make sense to drive down the price of oil in advance, knowing that there might be a real pop to the upside in the event of a strike? So with that, we note the resuming decline in oil prices and wonder if we’ll see any outbreak of unusual call option buying in coming days…
For now, the markets are looking to open sideways, but next week could see a violent breakout – either to the upside, in which case an S&P of 2,200 comes into view, or we take out recent support and plunge. You’ll want to plan on extra Maalox, perhaps.
Durable Goods
Just out…
New Orders
New orders for manufactured durable goods in
September increased $8.2 billion or 3.7 percent to
$233.4 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced
today. This increase, up five of the last six months,
followed a 0.2 percent August increase. Excluding
transportation, new orders decreased 0.1 percent.
Excluding defense, new orders increased 3.2 percent.
Transportation equipment, also up five of the last six
months, drove the increase, $8.4 billion or 12.3 percent
to $77.0 billion. This was led by nondefense aircraft and
parts, which increased $6.9 billion.Shipments
Shipments of manufactured durable goods in
September, up two consecutive months, increased $0.5
billion or 0.2 percent to $231.8 billion. This was at the
highest level since the series was first published on a
NAICS basis in 1992, and followed a 0.8 percent August
increase.
Primary metals, up five of the last six months, led the
increase, $0.2 billion or 0.8 percent to $25.8 billion.Unfilled Orders
Unfilled orders for manufactured durable goods in
September, up seven of the last eight months, increased
$8.6 billion or 0.8 percent to $1,041.2 billion. This was
at the highest level since the series was first published on
a NAICS basis, and followed a 0.1 percent August
increase.
Futures were pointing to a flattish open except in tech where twitter is due out as an IPO in a few weeks, so some froth in that sector.
More after this…
Now Hear This
Dueling hearing in Washington, DC seem to be the order of the day as the republicorps are trying to paint the democorps are inept computer software artists. Unfortunately. political appointees are not generally grilled on their expertise in IT decision-making.; Instead, the partisan crap in Washington tends to focus on the also-ran issues: What is your philosophy of this or that. Not “How much savvy do you have actually running a company?”
Government is the biggest company we have…but this makes far to much sense to ever work, of course.
So now the democrats are starting to debate whether this should be pushed back. Like recent budget and debt ceiling charades, I may run out of popcorn before anything gets done.
“Lightbeam” Arrives
If you haven’t heard about it yet, Mozilla has released an add-on for the Firefox browser which will give you some important clues as to who is looking over your shoulder on the web.
You can click over to the Collusion (Lightbeam) website and read up on it here. But the main thing I see is that people really DO care about who is looking over their shoulder, and so Microsoft may have just lots a key battle in the browser race.
So what does it do? Well, it tells you what sites basically are linked to off a website and the display looks like this.
This is what the DrudgeReport looked like when I clicked on Collusion to see what’s up there…
What this will mean is several things – some of which will impact how you see the UrbanSurvival site. When I ran Lightbeam on it, I got to wondering “What is the link from here to staticflicker.com? The answer is Backdoorsurvival.com’s ad image…
So, on the agenda in coming weeks will be going through the UrbanSurvival site and hosting some of these images ourselves, in order to cut down our “hot links” which should, in turn make Urban a better site.
But the main thing here is you can now start looking back at whoever is looking at you.And while I understand most of what is there, I am curious about a few and should be able to report back next week on this…
Meantime, I see how the CIA.GOV site has no other links showing…
NSA Spying Goes to the UN
Meantime, the rather serious question of runaway NSA surveillance is headed for the UN. Seems that Germany, and others, are not happy with the rigmarole from Washington when it comes to secret communications where no longer are…
Crime Is Up
…by some 15% over the past year. So you don’t think being broke, in debt up to our eyeballs, being sexually confused, and doing psychotropic drugs has anything to do with it, do you?
Caught the eye of reader DJ this week, too:
Hi George,
Hope you & family are well. Sorry to be long-ish – just had to report. First a question: are other readers reporting a sharp uptick in crime? The closest small-medium city to here (relatively rural) is appprox 30 miles. There’s been a terrible increase in violent crime & gang activity the last 12 months – no big cities nearby, & since coastal, this area could only be a dead end for drugs as opposed to a major thoroughfare. Local news reports 125 gang members in jail, 100 gang incidents in 3 months, multiple daily shootings, police chief says “no control over it.” I think major civil disorder may soon be coming from many directions.
Could be, but unless the market’s next decline is on the order of 30% or greater, I wouldn’t bet on much of anything changing in America.
Next?