We begin this morning by noticing that although a decline in the markets this week to the S&P 1,900 level might be graceful from a chart standpoint, it was almost magical how the decline last week stops adjacent to our Trading Model’s support line.
This morning look for a +40 (or more) opening to the Dow, but there’s still maybe one more leg down to go…and that will depend to some extent on the data this afternoon from the Treasury auction.
I’d explain the mechanics of this, but that would turn this column into an academic thesis instead of a light-hearted look at global disaster…which is usually our intent.
Curious to note how last week’s Gallup study of consumer confidence eroding presaged the market sell-off. Yet another indicator to watch.
The rest of the week is “busy” but not terribly important. Until we get to Friday morning when we’ll be able to look over the Federal Reserve’s consumer debt figures and from this we can infer the PT Barnum of the market.
“What’s the PT Barnum of the market, Ure?”
Uh…why that’s the “How many people, how much of the time” or, to play off another one of his famous quotes, we’ll find out how much of crowd has a silver lining.
There are plenty of other numbers to diddle with this week, like the Factory Orders tomorrow and International Trade data Wednesday as well as some government energy data. But this gets us to another Barnum quote useful when considering such reports:
“Be confident, without pulling the wool over your eyes. A lot of people have remained poor, or ruined themselves, because of this destructive tendency. .”
Whole countries, now that I think about it. I’m thinking even the Once-ocracy.
Water: World
Remember that Costner movie? Waterworld?
Is this another play on how long-term, the movie is the message? That world was cursed with simply too much water. And our world, contrary-wise, is quickly running up against the stops, being “tapped out” as it were.
Take Toledo (holy, or otherwise) where more than half a million people have been banned from drinking water after tests showed high toxin levels from an algae bloom. If we didn’t have Ebola and Israel to distract us, this would no doubt be spun into climate change, but we wouldn’t put anything past the MainStream. You can find a scientist who will say just damn near anything in front of a camera, so be looking for it.
Meantime, the water problems of California just keep getting worse. A while back we discussed the matter of drought-driven migration from California in one of our Peoplenomics.com reports, but (as so often happens) we were not wrong – just way early – again.
T?his morning people in Santa Cruz are waking up to the toughest drought laws in the state, but it’s bound to get worse, I figure. But when local thunderstorms open up over the parched Southland, what happens? You get thousands stranded and at least one killed by mudslides.
The Southwest has a long-term history of drought, and if you look at the US Drought Monitor picture (over here) you can see that the lower left 25% of the country just about plain sucks.
We know this isn’t the first time this has happened: The Anasazi People likely saw their civilization collapse in the Chaco Canyon area because of drought. It’s an inhospitable place nowadays.
I’m not telling you how to shave your bets, but I wouldn’t has put money on their implementation of a climate tax would have changed the outcome…and only a damn fool would believe the lairs and….but I digress, sorry.
My point is (and it’s a frequent topic when I rant and rave to my consigliere) that the mislabeled “civilized world” has multiple “soft underbellies” that few people other than worrywarts like us consider: With no water, there are no people. No crops, no life, no tax base…and all the rest.
It’s in that same category along with the grid failing, the arrival of a global pandemic (Ooops!) and all the rest of it. We won’t like to think about it, we don’t really do much about it, and in the end, taxing ourselves to “cure global warming” is little more than a social vibrator.
You know who does get it?
“ISIS Seizes More Towns and Possibly Control of Iraq’s Biggest Dam.”
You can lead Americans to water, but you can’t make them think.
More after this…
Ebola Watch
Cautious optimism out of Atlanta where the first of the Ebola patients flown in is said to be showing signs of improvement.
Call me skeptical, but let’s revisit this in a month or two, shall we?
The latest reports from Customs and Border Patrol show the border leak hasn’t stopped this weekend (like that would happen, right?) and as a result people from all over hell & gone as sneaking into the US.
How many with Ebola? Back in the days when we actually had a freaking border it wouldn’t have been such a critical issues, would it?
The Problem with Cease-fires
With the report that an Israeli airstrike has killed a militant leader just before (another) cease-fire in the Gaza fighting, it’s nice to see that (another) cease-fire is in the works.
Here lately, it’s been a little confusing to an elderly guy like me: I’ve been working on what the definition is between “cease-fire” and “reloading time.”
Results of this deep ponder are inconclusive and certainly not aided by the news flow from the Middle East.
China Quake
Many dead (about 400 as of press time) as a major quake hit China’s Yunnan Provide and premier Li is out for a first-hand review of recovery efforts. And big money is already moving – 600-million yuan which pencils to about $97-million is US money.
If I was going back to school for a second MBA I might consider a paper on “public cost per death” of different kinds of disasters. Still might show up as a Peoplenomics.com research piece one of these days.
Farts and the Art of Futuring
I’ve allocated a couple of hours to writing up Peoplenomics today which will basically be a note to Grady of www.nostracodeus.com and Chris of www.nationaldreamcenter.com who continue to push back the curtain on looking into the future using both web-scanning technology and dream content.
A note from Chis at the Dream Center is worth sharing:
Head’s up: GOLD Crash perhaps 1-4 weeks away.
http://nationaldreamcenter.com/wp/2014/07/gold-what-exactly-is-dreambot-seeing/
Linguistics: “Finished gold bar system known acting crash totally”
With updated news out of the Ukraine as possible sourcing for the possible crash.
And, a couple of other notes on futuring: All the Project August reports are now public AND in one of the weirder “hits” to come along in a while, we got a good laugh when one of the Project August forecasts was for a “fart machine”: to be invented.
And yet here’s the headline: “British man builds giant fart machine, aims it at France…”
