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Dream A Little Dream...

If you have an especially vivid dream that seems to have something to do with the future, please write it down so others can look it over for possible future/predictive values. Simple go to http://www.nationaldreamcenter.com/ and click over to the DreamBase - commercial-free and open registration...

Cookie Video

The folks at Maxa Research have put together a short video (sound track by guess who?) that shows the Maxa Cookie Manager. You can see it here.

I don't usually get all whipped up about software, but this is one of those dandy tools that just simply works great. First thing I put on my new computer when I got it was Avira Anti-virus and Maxa Cookie Manager (MCM). Either follow the on-screen download instructions of simply click:

Once you try it out, to upgrade to the fully functioning version, just click the upgrade button (!) on the upper right hand side for the $35 unlock to get it to remove even those nasty and highly intrusive 'non-browser specific' cookies. Bonus: You computer may run faster.

"Live on $10,000" A Year

Having a hard time making ends meet? (Like who isn't, right?) A good starting point to better match up income with outgo is our $10 e-book "How to Live on #10,000 a Year...or less!"

It's an automatic download. It's written in an information dense style: The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the cheap, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you have a little hustle left. A bonus section called "How to Build Anything" should instill confidence if you've never taken on a home improvement/home creation project before, too..... Click here for the index and details.

Yet Another A Gardening Pitch

No time like summer to do the work to get ready for bountiful harvests in the future, regardless of what the economy does. My friend Gary Seman, who's been an avid 'make do' gardener for years has put together a 70-page ebook on survival gardening using things like old tires to make raised beds and it's really worth the $15 bucks, IMHO:

What makes his ebook so interesting is that it is all based on a few hand tools and he has this back-friendly "no tilling" approach that saves a whole bunch of effort...to get there, he's big on kill mulches and such, too.

Also not to be missed is the vertical hydroponics work of my commodity broker JB Slear and I have written a simple book to get you started on high density hydroponics. It's an example of how someone with a little creativity, access to a few 'dollar stores' and willing to try out some new farming techniques can grow an amazing amount of produce sin a very small space - like even an apartment balcony (if it gets some sunlight). Sound interesting? It's just $10 bucks here...

You may get sick of me saying "Learn to Garden!" so much, and I'm certainly no expert on the subject, but short of running out of water, which is why you want to live on a creek or river if you ever have the opportunity to make a choice, gardening and full stomach is extremely important.

Pass It On

A different take on things - that's what you'll find here most mornings. If you know of anyone who might also like our content, simply click here and send a link to them. Or, if you hated what you read, send the link to all your 'worst enemies'. Like they say in Burbank, "Ain't no such thing as bad press..."

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Thursday July 29, 2010

Beethoven Does Wall Street

Shade of "Roll over Beethoven" the markets may have started to roll over yesterday and although the futures were flat at first check today, we might see one more pop into early next week...to drive us closed to the 10,600-650 kind of level which would make for a really grace end of financial life on earth high water mark before we descend into the abyss.

Main driver this morning should be the weekly unemployment data just out:

"In the week ending July 24, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 457,000, a decrease of 11,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 468,000. The 4-week moving average was 452,500, a decrease of 4,500 from the previous week's revised average of 457,000.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.6 percent for the week ending July 17, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate of 3.5 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending July 17 was 4,565,000, an increase of 81,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 4,484,000. The 4-week moving average was 4,548,250, a decrease of 18,000 from the preceding week's revised average of 4,566,250.

The fiscal year-to-date average of seasonally adjusted weekly insured unemployment, which corresponds to the appropriated AWIU trigger, was 5.037 million.

You'll recall last week's data was soft...

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Gold was up for a while early on this morning and then turned down. It's been buoyed by good earnings from outfits like Eldorado and from Goldcorp.

Several readers took my to task over my recent skepticism about gold, noting that there is almost always some downward pressure at the end of the month. True, but I cautiously hold that some of the price move is more than that and that when the Fed consumer debt numbers come out in a week or so, we will see that deflation is really a threat to be considered. And, in such case, gold may go down in nominal terms, but should do better than retain its purchasing power.

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While the futures are likely to pop up a bit, off in the background, there are still BIG issues to deal with, like the year-to-date foreclosure data:

RealtyTrac®, the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, today released its Midyear 2010 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which shows a total of 1,961,894 foreclosure filings — default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions — were reported on 1,654,634 U.S. properties in the first six months of 2010, a 5 percent decrease in total properties from the previous six months but an 8 percent increase in total properties from the first six months of 2009. The report also shows that 1.28 percent of all U.S. housing units (one in 78) received at least one foreclosure filing in the first half of the year.

Foreclosure filings were reported on 313,841 U.S. properties in June, a decrease of nearly 3 percent from the previous month and a decrease of nearly 7 percent from June 2009. June was the sixteenth straight month where the total number of properties with foreclosure filings exceeded 300,000.

Foreclosure filings were reported on 895,521 U.S. properties during the second quarter, a decrease of nearly 4 percent from the previous quarter and an increase of less than 1 percent from the second quarter of 2009. Default and auction notices were down on a quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year basis in the second quarter, but bank repossessions (REOs) increased 5 percent from the previous quarter and 38 percent from Q2 2009 to 269,962 — a new quarterly high for the report.

“The second quarter was a tale of two trends,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. “The pace of properties entering foreclosure slowed as lenders pre-empted or delayed foreclosure proceedings on delinquent properties with more aggressive short sale and loan modification initiatives. Meanwhile the pace of properties completing the foreclosure process through bank repossession quickened as lenders cleared out a backlog of distressed inventory delayed by foreclosure prevention efforts in 2009.

“The midyear numbers put us on pace to exceed 3 million properties with foreclosure filings by the end of the year, and more than 1 million bank repossessions,” Saccacio continued. “The roller coaster pattern of foreclosure activity over the past 12 months demonstrates that while the foreclosure problem is being managed on the surface, a massive number of distressed properties and underwater loans continues to sit just below the surface, threatening the fragile stability of the housing market.”

Doesn't exactly make me want to run out and buy property..,. think I'll put on some Beethoven and go Rip Van Winkle for a year or two...maybe then...

Quake Watch

With linguistics pointing toward a possible large quake in the next few days, as possibly Northwesty, reader comments are coming in like this one:

Hey George I find it interesting that here in Oregon where I live in Portland and My roomie which works in Salem for the state as a server administrator in charge of lots of data was called to go to Washington state on Monday thru today(wed) to do emergency drills to back up and protect data in case of an emergency. Just saying, since so many times drills precede the actual event sometimes by a day or two.

Yeah, funny how that timing of emergency drills and the real thing work out somethings.

Not escaping notice was the 5.2 quake off the coast of Oregano last night.

The aware observer (or old news nose knows news) would observe that there has been a tremendous amount of energy released in the Western Pacific around the Moro Gulf, west of the Mariana Trench over the past week. And even a 6.4 shaker in that region this morning.

So....lots of energy on ONE SIDE of the Pacific, but not much on the other.

Toss in the Orange County Register's story on "Green slime in surf zones still a mystery" which some quake predictors are wondering if it's linked to undersea somethings...and you've got a real question about whether SoCal might be where the next big quake comes from.

Clif offered this further bit: "There were SO CAL geographic pointers in the mix. I chose the PNW due to a *slight* preponderance of those geo references. Probably i am wrong. "

Not sure why earthquakes seem to be one of the highest 'hit rate' areas in data - wondering if it's because the archetype concerns are so strong - many it has something to do with DNA programming of the prehensile brain? Who knows...

Arizona-Go-Round

Police in Arizona have been barred from asking about a person's immigration status as a federal judge blocked key provisions of the state's tough new anti-border jumper law.

Best bet seems that this will head for the US Supreme Court since while under the Constitution, the feds have lead on border issues, the question is what can states do when the feds were deliberately not enforcing all the laws on the books? Oughta be a real fine money generator for the right wing email fundraiser brigades.

Before the Supreme Court, though, a trip to the Ninth Circuit is on for today.

No Dough - You Go

Another California budget crisis looms as state furloughs are planned to help California deal with a $19-billion budget hole.

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Interesting technical question here which I plead ignorance on: When a worker is furloughed, with the expectation that they will return, is there a way that the Labor Department can NOT count them as unemployed? Just thinking out loud here that thousands of Cal workers could be 'involuntarily unpaid vacationed' and wonder if there's a way to weasel out of adding these workers to unemployment numbers (or adjusting the workforce down by that many)?

Quick: Be surprised either way.

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A report that "One in five Californians say they need mental health care" sure sounds low, doesn't it? Maybe if one in five don't need it, yah think?

Speaking of Paranoid Dept.

You see the USA Today article on how "Doomsday shelters making a comeback"? Gee, let me see here...uh... oh yeah... "China conducts naval drill in disputed southern seas" comes to mind as a reason. Here's another: The KGB Lite is getting expanded powers...

Another psychological benchmark from Wired "iPad owners are 'selfish elitists.' Critics are 'independent Geeks.' is sure an interesting read.

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Speaking of elites...you see the tab for the Chelsea Clinton wedding?

Let them eat what? I have no idea why I'm not on the guest list...

New Highpoint in Skype Phishing

Usually, the phishing messages around the net are easily spotted, but I got one this morning which is a phishing message for Skype users that you ought to be aware of: This morning offers a €10.00 Skype credit if you're dumb enough to click through the link.

What makes this one especially dangerous is that the use of the logo is good, the offer is very believable and is bound to snag a few.

Remember: Whenever er you get such messages, look at the link the email is trying to get you to click. If it is anything other than the name of your expected destination, don't click! This Skype phish making the rounds goes to a non Skype site. but otherwise it's very well done!

Oh, What a Feeling Dept.

Yeowch! Toyota is facing another recall: 412,000 Avalons from 2000-2004 and some Lexi 470's from 2003-2007. More details in this story link. The good news, such as it is? The company has been doing a stand-up job on the repairs and isn't trying to weasel out of anything...which is a nice business ethic to see.

Tanker Boom

An explosion on a Japanese tanker in the Straits of Hormuz is being investigated. No one is saying terrorism, pirate, or Iran - yet - (or are they? ) but a Japanese ship certainly is a twist...

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Coping: Back in the Saddle at the Ranch

Cool being back at the ranch after 10-days of working vacation in the Pacific Northwest. A number of observations about life in the Big City versus life in the rural parts of East Texas are with considering..a nice set of contrasts...

For one thing, there's the matter of noise: In the Big City we were constantly assaulted by the noise of people on the public fishing pier out front of the hotel - even at 3 AM, there were people out tossing in crab rings, along with various other baits and tackle trying to catch dinner.

Back at the ranch, there was plenty of noise but it was of a different sort. A rain shower or two had come through and so on the trip in to the ranch from the airport we had what seemed like a Biblical flood of toads jumping across the road in front of us. Getting out of the car, our ears were treated to the chorus of toads and the various night critters. Big change, that.

Another thing we take for granted out here in the outback is dark. May not seem like a big deal, but in the city it never really gets dark. Out here, when the lights go out, unless you've had the sense to put on the head-mounted night vision gear, you're going to trip over objects in the dark that you'd swear were somewhere else.

Not altogether a 'big city is bad' experience. There were some parts of city living that I'd forgotten about. For example, the close proximity of restaurants meant it was super easy to put on 6-pounds in 10 days. If I had stayed another week, I'm sure the BP would be up into the danger zone. In the country, if you're hungry, there is no fast food joint down the street, or in the case of Tacoma's waterfront, no assortment of fish & chips options within a 5-0minute walk. Out here, if you want to eat, the choices are a) drive into town (16-miles) or b) make it yourself and ain't no room service to pick up after you like there is in a hotel.

The last point of comparison is the water. In the Outback here, we have very soft water. Why, you can simply say the word soap and spend the rest of the week rinsing to no apparent effect. Pacific Northwest water is different. You can soap up all day and then about 16 drops of water is all it takes to rinse off. The Northwest water is more drying to the skin, the water here much gentler.

May seem like little things, but taken as a whole it's these little textural differences that make Place 1 different that Place 2.

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A couple of travel notes, since I haven't been out on the road warrioring for a while:

The Microsoft semi-ergonomic keyboard (USB) was really not so bad once I used it for a week, or so. A number of readers asked how it was that my typing had improved so much on the trip, but I assured them that back at home, I will quickly get back to higher levels of errors.

The Iomega 1TB hard drive - a back-up - failed to booty on anything when I got back here, which seeing as it was only a back-up, was not a complete catastrophe, but it was disappointing. Tried everything I could think of, different cables, different computer, the whole lot and nada, zip, kaput. So I have another unit to add to my collection of $100 paperweights.

Cousins, a restaurant on B concourse at DFW (near gate B27) has pretty good BBQ (brisket & pulled pork) and is a local to Dallas place. Nice to see fast food has not entirely taken over the planet. After so much time see-fooding/sea-fooding, there's something warming about BBQ brisket and corn on the cob (plus a Bud) to reestablish presence in the South.

TSA was really on the ball...Elaine had forgotten to sign here passport, so she had to get out other forms of ID and sign in front of a TSA fellow, who then closely inspected the signatures and looked at Elaine several times to make sure it was the same person. The time getting through the cattle chute was fairly short and like I said, they were really paying attention.

I'd show you a million slides from the trip, but you'd be bored - and so would I. Already seen it all first hand.

Government's Leading Edge

Reader sends this note about how the government is [at last] looking at the web in order to figure out what's going on by investing (apparently) in several outfits that can possibly 'see into the future' using web-based technologies...

"Looks like the word is out, George: Link to article here.

Look on the bright side:

You have 10 years of experience in a business that the US government is just now getting into. If those aren't marketable skills I don't know what is! They are going to need a sage interpreter of the data.

On my end, I don't have to feel like such a lunatic when I tell people about your site.

Do you know about Nielsen Buzz Metrics? You're a marketing guy, so you may. They monitor the web and give companies perception analysis about their brands based on how people talk about the brands online. I'd bet that your technology is more in depth, but it's the same basic principal.

What's interesting about outfits like Recorded Future is that in some ways, they are a bit late to the party. In the months after 9/11 - back in 2001 - Clif & I proposed the web bot technology be used by government to get ahead of coming events, but all we got was a "Sorry, Charlie" from I think it was DARPA that reviewed the first round quad-charts and in a separate submission a nice letter from the Big Alphabet Agency that said "We find your technology meritorious, but we don't have specific funds for such.....yada, yada, yada..."

Still, interesting to watch the development of such things, for sure. Many different approaches are possible, including data-mining/cross correlation efforts, predictive linguistics and so forth.

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There's a very interesting (if not downright Orwellian) question here: To what extent can (or should) citizens of a country allow government, or more dangerously, corporate interests, access the future?

Think about future marketing programs where predictive sciences would be used to fine tune a marketing message in order to get the maximum results. A campaign would start, a predictive future for its outcome at a particular budget level figured, then tuned to optimize return on investment (ROI).

All of which leads, I suppose, to the larger question about whether marketing is the new 'global religion' since predictions (which is right next door to prophesy) were once the domain of religious leaders and spokespersons with their revelations about what's coming down the pike.

In this version of Brave new World, it may be that marketing departments will start moving into prediction space...clearly, there's money to be made there. The only question is whether that's right. In other words, as we have figured from some of our successful experiments that we don't talk about, it really does seem the future is somewhat malleable. Who you gonna trust to hammer it out?

In a three-dimensional world, government has been very aggressive in controlling/sanctioning air pollution, water pollution, and simple things like speed limits.

Questions going to come up in a few years "Should government regulate messing about with the future?" Like broadcasting, the future is something that was (once upon a time) just there until science came along with tools to exploit the technology. Then it went to market and eventually became so powerful that regulation was desired.

Same thing can happen with futuring or predictive technologies, which is covered a bit in last week's Peoplenomics report: How long before we get to a place where people will 'subscribe' to a particular kind of future via software? Move over Orwell, you didn't press the line of inquiry far enough.

Something to think about isn't it? You have until Nov. 8-14 or so to formulate your answer.

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One other thinking point on this stuff: Clif's website www.halfpasthuman.com features a 'dancing skeleton logo' and now we're seeing the logo pick up interest...a graphic getting traction in the global mindset. Evidence? Oh, sure: The Dancing skeleton t-shirt/tie dye on sale here - nothing to do with Clif, BTW.

Fine example of how seeing even a glimpse of the future here and there can help harmonize with it. You don't really think names like half past human or the logo were just random ideas, do you?

Seeds and an August Seed Special

Everlastingseeds.com has an UrtbanSurvival/Peoplenomics seed special going which you might want to click to here. Complete garden seed kits of heirloom seeds in a hermetically sealed can...which is really neat. I figure if the corporate and global PTB are putting away seeds in a seed fault, we might want to think about the same thing.

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A couple of readers have asked about Everlasting Seed's business name "AIG Services" - no, that has nothing to do with the AIG of government bailout infamy.

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Don't remember how we got on the topic of seed collecting a while back and a reader sent in this really useful write-up on what to do with your harvest of heirloom seeds and how to hold over seeds for future years...the kind of information that is NOT taught in most schools...our thanks to a reader named Chuck for his efforts here...

I first have to give credit to the man that taught me to collect or harvest seeds and the importance of it, Daniel J. Hinkley. He has collected and grown seeds from just about everywhere on earth.

Seeds are essential for most of us gardeners in the sense that most of us don't do so well growing plants from cuttings or slips. Then there are those that buy starts and I'll try and persuade them to learn to grow seeds.

Buying starts isn't very cost effective for growing food and I'm writing this for all of us, considering the state of the world and that seeds may be something hard to come by at times in the chaos that could get much worse as time goes on. Sewing seeds is an art within in itself, but with a little practice, patience and understanding, along with a little failure, most of us can learn it.

I say learn, and I mean this in the sense that many gardeners try, try and try to imitate what they THINK they see. Understanding is the key, because if we try and understand, then we can learn from our failure or mistakes, and yes, successes. Sometimes what we think of as mistakes, can later give us some spectacular results, which can make us feel like brain surgeons! I'm going to talk about vegetable seeds here, because food is what we are after in tough times, or even medicine.

Growing our own medicine can become just as important as food in some cases as I'm learning these days, which is the reason I'm sitting here in front of this machine, instead of being out in my garden.

First I guess we need to figure out what kind of seeds we need to collect, meaning which plants we want to select for this purpose. There can be many versions of this, but most of all we want production. Watching what we grow for special qualities such as size or weight is a simple place to start. Many times growing a row, if we really look, we will see qualities of size or density that we might want to carry on.

I've been growing a winter squash that seems to get sweeter and better tasting each year, because I save the seeds from the very best. With squash, I don't necessarily pick the biggest for this, as big squash are too hard for me to use. I can cut one of these in half and have a huge helping for one meal and so on.

Squash and relatives are a good place to start for beginners, because they are quite easy. You can spread them out on a paper towel, or if you wish to not waste even a paper towel, old news paper is just fine. You don't have to worry about cleaning them up too much, but do get them spread out, so they are only a seed deep. All of the orange crud will dry and you can get a handful when dry and rub them between your hands and all of the pulp will separate from the seeds and you can just puff on them a bit and the "chaff" will blow away. A hair dryer or fan can do the same thing.

This method works best for most big seeds as the weight of the seed usually keeps the seed from blowing away. Have fun and do this with children, because you'll both have fun experimenting with how this works and you might even come up with a better way than what I'm telling you, or one YOU prefer, along with some good seeds and maybe some better plants than you can imagine.

All you need to do after this is put them in a paper container, like an envelope, which will allow for the seeds to continue drying if they need to dry a bit more. Putting them in plastic, can give disastrous results if the seeds aren't dry enough.

Smaller seeds can be a bit more of a challenge for some. For instance if lettuce seed is to be collected, one must first determine if the seeds are "ripe". Lettuce will have multiple flowers on a stock that grow from the rosette of leaves and each flower will look much like a tiny dandelion flower and you must wait until the flowers are about at the stage where the little feathers are ready to fly away in the wind. You can pick the stocks as they start this and put them into a paper bag to finish ripening and to come apart. The paper bag is about the most valuable tool in saving seeds and processing, as it will pull moisture from the stocks and seeds, plus capture what you have gathered.

Once they are dry and coming apart, you can rough them up and get the seeds to fall to the bottom of the bag and then pull the stocks out and pour the seed from the corner of the bag into something like a cake pan. You can try and blow the chaff out gently or run them through a sieve or screen, which ever works best for YOU. With just a bit of ingenuity, you'll learn to do this quite well. When I say rough them up, I mean just that, because you want to rub or break the little feather off of the seeds. You can package these in little envelopes as necessary and label them "Moms Best Lettuce" or whatever.

Some plants or vegetables are biennial or they don't go to seed until the next year, as they grow the first year and then go to seed the next year. Some of us have wintered over parsley or something like that, only to find that it only grows a little while and then goes to seed. You will get a feel for all of this as time goes on and be able to tell when seeds are ripe and ready at a glance.

Some seeds come in husks and you can either get them to fall out of the husks by hand or you can do what Dan taught me. While at Edmonds Community College we did a lot of seed saving and had "garage sale" food processers, which we put duct tape over the blades as to not cut the seeds, but beat the seeds out of the pulp. This works very good and you can also pick up some old screens and sieves for separating small seed from chaff or the other way around.

You always want to share your seeds and teach others to do all of this, in case you might for some reason lose a particular variety that you love. If you are growing a hybrid, chances are that you'll come up with something very different from what you had , so it's best to grow open pollinated or non-hybrids.

Corn is one thing that is almost always a hybrid unless you buy your original seed from a seed saving club or a company that sells the open pollinated or organic seeds, which brings up another subject. There is a lot of price gouging and the likes even from your so called "granola" sorts and any gimmick to raise seed prices is used. Yes, greed is everywhere. Think about this: If you buy "organic seed, this is kind of like splitting hairs, as not very much of any chemical is going to survive the planting, growing and harvesting process, where you are not going to get any more than a few atoms of something. There will be more contamination from the air you are growing your plants in.

Most seeds are not treated with anything anyway. I can see supporting an organic farm for what they do and how they do it, but I don't support ridiculous pricing no matter who does it!

Corn can be saved for seed and is very easy. Let your corn get that starchy texture that says it's too ripe to eat and peel the husks back then hang the ears by the husks. I've done this with the "Seneca" variety and had very good results. Seneca is a good one for the Pacific Northwest, because it germinates at lower temperatures and isn't so likely to rot in the ground if our spring is cool.

Loosening the seed from the ear is easy to do and all you have to do is firmly grasp the ear in both hands and twist.

This is all pretty basic stuff to learn and is quite easy with a little practice, and I do stress practice, so you learn how to do this. I compare this to imitation and trying to do this by recipe, which is kind of like learning to ride a bicycle by diagram and directions. This will get you going and you'll probably get good at it with a little practice, so by all means have fun and eat healthy!

By the way, among the new in-laws that resulted from the wedding Elaine and I attended up in the Tacoma area were some folks from Maine (the Maine-iac) side of the family now... They offered a really simple gardening hint: To keep raccoons away, simply plant a little mint around the garden. They swear it works...but I'll have to see if to believe it. With our luck, raccoons around here will likely take to mint as a new favorite seasoning...just the mere thought of getting corn past the raccoon-feeding stage would be a miracle. Every corn crop we've done so far has ende3d up in the belly of the masked monsters.

Speak Easy

I noticed that Nuance Software has release plans now for DragonSpeaking 11 and the home version is only $99 bucks or so.

Details: Dragon Naturally Speaking Home 11 from Amazon.

This is Sick File

Wall Street Journal has figured out that "Americans cut back on visits to doctor".

Gee, lemme see: Got record numbers of unemployed and disappearing workforce members with little, or no, dough to go. A lot of us are waiting for the free lunch to get here.

Be nice if we had a few more jobs with benefits...but now that we're gonna get taxed on health benefits... wait... I need to take some meds. Wonder what Capt. Morgan has in the way of Thursday medication.... isn't it 5 PM somewhere?

Send your comments to george@ure.net

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Dream A Little Dream...

Cookie Video

The folks at Maxa Research have put together a short video (sound track by guess who?) that shows the Maxa Cookie Manager. You can see it here.

"Live on $10,000" A Year

Having a hard time making ends meet? (Like who isn't, right?) A good starting point to better match up income with outgo is our $10 e-book "How to Live on #10,000 a Year...or less!"

Yet Another A Gardening Pitch

Pass It On

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Wednesday July 28, 2010

What the Market Is REALLY Saying

The first look at the futures this morning said it all in the ugliest little four-letter word in the world of investing: flat or the other one - down. To be sure, there were a fair number of optimistic headlines about that world markets were going up in part due to strong earnings, but olde timers in the market sit back patiently and wait for the quality of earnings to come out and - in conjunction with that - the prospects for equal - or better - earnings yet to come.

As a gut check, I called Robin Landry Tuesday and asked if we had made it to the kind of bounce levels we discussed a week or two back and his answer was "Minimally, yes, but I'd like to see a bit more upside toward the 10,650 area into early August before we go down." But, Landry is eyeing additional short positions as am I. No, THIS IS NOT TRADING ADVICE - just midweek ramblings as we pack up our 10-day, wallet-busting but heart warming, trip to the Seattle/Tacoma area and head for the ranch in East Texas.

There were other signs, too, that the market is nearing another turn. The Dow Transports, for example, dropped 1.31% yesterday and even folks with only a few years experience trading ought to recognize that under Dow Theory, that'd be considered a negative divergence. Back when it was started, Dow Theory looked at rail traffic, which turned rail stocks, and these were a pretty good indicator of future economic activity.

Times have changed and there are a lot more moving parts than Midwest grain moving to eastern markets. Why toss in a few airlines if you will, some trucking companies, and a few what-have--you's, but the idea's the same. Closely related is the Baltic Dry Index which has just hit pretty serious lows and is bouncing a tad. A longer than one year look at the BDI trend is even more worrisome.

All of which might be easily explained if that was all there was wrong. But, it's not. Tuesday's trading looked to me like the classic painting of the tape to try and round up a few more bulls for slaughter...and coincidental, or not, one web site I use for my daily review of the previous day's activity decided today, or all days, to reset most of the previous day's results to zero. Perhaps so people wouldn't notice elsewhere that the NASDAQ Composite dropped Tuesday, as did the venerable S&P 500. "Nothing to see here, move along..." was what monkey mind was supposed to think.

Maybe the market is just taking a breather before making one more assault on 10,650. But under Joe Granville's favorite metric - on balance volume - the market was turning. On the NYSE, the upside volume lagged downside - but only slightly but the NASDAQ was better than 2:1 down and the AMEX almost 3:1 down.

Adding to what I consider limited upside is the consumer confidence figures from The Conference Board:

"The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index® which had declined sharply in June, retreated further in July. The Index now stands at 50.4 (1985=100), down from 54.3 in June. The Present Situation Index decreased to 26.1 from 26.8. The Expectations Index declined to 66.6 from 72.7 last month.

The Consumer Confidence Survey® is based on a representative sample of 5,000 U.S. households. The monthly survey is conducted for The Conference Board by TNS. TNS is the world’s largest custom research company. The cutoff date for July’s preliminary results was July 21st."

Then there was the news out of Case Shiller/S^P which publishes what I reckon to be the gold standard of housing reports. And no reason to believe in mythical recoveries here, either:

"Data through May 2010, released today by Standard & Poor’s for its S&P/Case-Shiller1 Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, show that the annual growth rates in 15 of the 20 MSAs and the 10- and 20-City Composites improved in May compared to those reported for April 2010. The 10-City Composite is up 5.4% and the 20-City Composite is up 4.6% from where they were in May 2009. While 19 MSAs and both Composites reported positive monthly changes in May over April, only 12 of the MSAs and the two Composites saw better month-over-month growth rates in May than those reported in April."

Sorry if this is starting to read like one of my subscribers-only Peoplenomics.com reports, but there's a message about the future in here, even if you don't invest in stocks directly.

The weakness of the economic "recovery" is becoming apparent especially if you own a home which has recovered only part of its asset value since the mark-downs from 2005/2006 through 2009.
Under Elliott Wave Theory, which Bob Prechter's work extends to social phenomena, as well as markets, housing sure might be viewed as having done a "one down, two up" movement, which under Elliott dramatically increases the odds of a three down which could throw housing for a further 35-35% decline from present levels.
We're only a week, or so out from the new Federal Reserve Consumer Debt (which they insist on calling credit) report. If consumers don't pick up the spending - dramatically - we edge into the zone long expected under longwave economics - the appearance of Depression Thinking.

Depression era thinking is really simple. In normal expanding economic times, people see prices generally rising and have an incentive to take on debt. The two most common mantras in real estate (just to pick on one obvious sector) are: "Buy which the prices are low" and "You'll be paying it back with cheaper inflation-ridden dollars.

So much for the normal case. When a society is going through the macro econ move away from what's labeled "The Virtuous Cycle", its reciprocal, "The Vicious Cycle" sets up - which is where I think we are right now: People notice that prices for many things are not going up as fast and they notice that housing prices are now just back to 1998 valuations! If you'd bought a home then, you'd be 10-years in and still with about the same pricing power in the market.

As people become more thoughtful in their spending, the number of jobs created slows, the burden on people with jobs to pay for those not working goes up, whole governments get into trouble (take California, please!) and we sit nervously by trying to see a clear path to the future.

There may not be one.

Even gold is getting a a proper ass-kicking as inflation and deflation duke it out to see who will win. The LA Times headlines, for example, that "Gold falls to three-month low as economy jitters fade."

The headline belies an asymmetric kind of thinking: That in times of economic uncertainty, people will invest in gold as a "safe haven" - a hedge against rising prices. But what few contemplate is what happens to gold when incipient deflation is rolling to the fore: Its price goes down.

Well, long-winded enough, already. But the main point is that I may add to my short positions later this week to dollar cost average down my entry costs and then wait for the market to come around to my way of thinking.

Since I'm flying today, think of this as the 40-thousand foot view of things: Deflation on the front end, and then as the Congressional Budget Office warns, the national debt will be pushed beyond sustainable levels and in the wink of an eye, the conditions for a massive Weimar-like inflation will be in place as a consensus develops around renouncing debt through inflation which the Weimar Republic masterminded as a way around war reparations in the early 1920's.

Of course, along the way, our collective nuts go into the vice as the Center for Economic and Policy Research asks in a Dean Baker article "Has the Congressional Budget Office Joined the Push for Cutting Society Security?"

Along the way, first we get deflation, then we get hyperinflation which will give the 20-somethings their chance to buy into real estate and other long term assets including, yes, equities, just like the OFG (olde farts generation) had its buy-in window in the early 1970's.

There I go, again, getting long-winded. My whole point as the blood pressure comes up to high/normal is that the market is saying something here that should be pretty obvious with a little study. And you know what that is? I'll tell you:

WTF?

Reading the Bots?

The BIG WAR to Come

A report in the well connected Middle East watching www.debka.com has it that Iran's president thinks the U.S. and Israel are plotting war within three months.

The way long-term data sets are adding up in predictive linguistics over at www.halfpasthuman.com it seems he'd be better off putting his window at 4.25 months, but he's got the gist of things right - seems the Nov. 8-14 window is where the world 'glows up' although the gory details really have to wait for the next web bot run - focused on long-term value sets - which should be out around August 10th, or so.

Of course, no war until the markets are well into free-fall and that means we can expect something tied to Iran to pop us as an excuse to launch warfare. It oughta be a bait & switcheroo to keep the public's mind off the horrific loss of retirement nest eggs when the market implosion comes along and nothing builds a better demon than one that is blamed for taking money.

Only question is how this will be dressed up so as not to be too apparent to the masses.

Leaks Case

As the Pentagon has gone looking for the source of 91,000 documents on the various wars in the Middle East/Sandbox, the Found of Wikileaks, in a BusinessWeek interview, has defended the release of documents that get into the nitty gritty of the wars.

The Border War

A group billing itself as "Americans for Legal Immigration" is calling on the "Obama administration to ensure a smooth exit for illegal immigrants who are trying to leave the US" because of the weakening economy here.

---

Meantime, a move to merge the federal case against the Arizona immigration law into another case is being opposed. And, on the other side, the State of Arizona is asking a federal judge to dismiss the Obama administration challenge to the state law.

All of which sets up a much broader question which is extremely important to Constitutionalists like yours truly: Is the concept of States retaining all powers not specifically ceded to the Federal government still in place? Or, has Washington declared it self lord & master over local government in all matters, ceded or otherwise?

So there's a very much broader issue in Arizona's immigration law...the way Washington has been able to throw its weight around traditionally has been by tying requirements for things like national speed limits and what have you, to revenue sharing with States. But, since there's no money on the table, can the Feds keep up the push? And worse (from the centralist's perspective, anyway) is the prospect that States reasserting control over their own destinies is anti centralist.

And, just to keep the larger context here, of the real battle over State-Federal relations in focus, did you see the Boston Globe's story about Massachusetts legislature angling to get around the Electoral College?

If you are tuned into it, the larger contexts are a lot of fun to watch - intricate choreography at times.

Death Sentence for Gang Member

As long as we're on the topic of leaking borders and such, did you happen to catch the death sentence handed down in the case of an MS-13 gang member? Here's the Department of Justice summary:

Chief U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Conrad Jr. today formally imposed the federal death penalty sentence on Alejandro Enrique Ramirez Umana, aka "Wizard," announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Anne M. Tompkins of the Western District of North Carolina. A 12-person federal jury in Charlotte, N.C., voted unanimously on April 28, 2010, to impose the death penalty against Umana after convicting him on April 19, 2010, on charges related to the murders on Dec. 8, 2007, of Ruben Garcia Salinas and his brother, Manuel Garcia Salinas. Umana is the first La Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13 member in the United States to receive the federal death penalty.

Of course this opens the discussion of whether the crimes in question would have ever occurred in the first place, had aggressive border control been in place, and to gain a gang member conviction while at the same time fighting tougher State laws (talking Arizona here) sure seems like a program of closing the gate after the horse is out...but I suppose that's how government grows - by being reactive instead of proactive.

Viagra Extension?

Very good piece in the NY Post this morning details how the Pfizer folks may get an extension of the patent on Viagra by coming out with a kids version to treat a lung disorder.

Swell. (Get it? Swell...damn I need to bring a crew of headline writers with me on road trips...)

Might change prospects for Pfizer's earnings going forward, maybe?

Plane Bad

Not the kind of headline I like to read on a day when I'm living on airplanes: A crash in Pakistan has killed 152 people.

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Coping: Net Crash Plans

Speaking of crashes, a reader from the UK sent along this note about government planning to reboot the internet after a catastrophe:

Relevant to the memes of Internet Kill Switches, this little article made front page in the London local paper "Metro", a free paper (funded by advertisers) distributed to London commuters. Doesn't seem to have been picked up by too many other sources - maybe it's not newsy enough.

Key quote: "UK businessman Paul Kane has been selected to form part of an elite “chain of trust” charged with rebooting the web in the event of a catastrophe that sees it having to be shut down, according to Metro..."

Been watching the whole "Internet Kill Switch" discussion with some concerns, since my consulting from the East Texas Outback depends on a robust net.

One thing that Clif mentioned in a chat earlier this week is that the 'data gap' which is evolving may turn out to be the turning off of a lot of blog sites. Think of it as an (only slightly) warmer and gentler form of net censorship.

We can see the topology of this news space changing dramatically based on two recent developments.

One is the evolution of serious legal action against web sites that are posting whole articles on the internet, and often with minimal or no attribution. A recent Wired story covered how this is developing. As tempting as reposting and cross posting of stories may be, it's in the same dishonesty category as people who rip off my ebooks and distribute them as torrents, or the slime bags that rip off the www.halfpasdthuman.com reports.

It's one thing to outline a context and link to source material - but its quite another to build a business on the backs of others. Original works and original contexting is one thing; wholesale theft of IP is another.

The other angle developing is the shutdown a week, or so back, of Blogetry.com operations hosted by Burst.net. The hosting company involved offered a press release explaining why 73,000 blogs were taken off line:

"July 19, 2010 - Scranton, PA - BurstNET Technologies, Inc™ (http://www.burst.net), the largest web hosting and co-location provider in the Northeast Pennsylvania (USA) region, has been the subject of recent news headlines regarding the termination of service to popular website Blogetery.com.

BurstNET® is releasing the following information, in order to set the record straight regarding the matter:

On the evening of July 9, 2010, BurstNET® received a notice of a critical nature from law enforcement officials, and was asked to provide information regarding ownership of the server hosting Blogetery.com. It was revealed that a link to terrorist material, including bomb-making instructions and an al-Qaeda “hit list", had been posted to the site. Upon review, BurstNET® determined that the posted material, in addition to potentially inciting dangerous activities, specifically violated the BurstNET® Acceptable Use Policy. This policy strictly prohibits the posting of “terrorist propaganda, racist material, or bomb/weapon instructions". Due to this violation and the fact that the site had a history of previous abuse, BurstNET® elected to immediately disable the system. "

Since the web bot project depends on postings made by the general public on discussion boards, the shutting down of 73,000 blogs at a whack turns off millions of words of context from which language shift can be evolved.

We hear that other governments are making similar moves, and a recent CBS News story about blogs being shut down in China is worth your time. Other countries are experimenting, too, such as Australia and I have to wonder if government rewiring there has something to do with Australia being 50th in global internet speed measurements done by Akamai Technologies.

As the summer progresses, I'll be continuing to evolve ways to make sure UrbanSurvival and our premium www.peoplenomics.com content is still around. For now, seems pretty easy to accomplish: All that's needed is to limit/eliminate public posting and keep content in line with common sense...not posting how to make a bomb details and such.

Still, the news space topology is changing and for anyone from rabid activists down to small home-based business users, it's something to keep an eye on, along with internet ID plans which will no doubt follow a (real of put-up) terrorist attack on the net which could be sold as the reason for even further restrictions. And that could chill public discussion to such levels as to put a stake through the fledgling science of predictive linguistics.

Unless we roll into an SMS approach....hmmm....

Shake and Quake

Reader wants to know:

George, I think I have a fair grasp of what Clif and you do in the predictive linguistics. Therefore, I kind of know the answer to my question, but would appreciate it if you could address it and clarify the projected event coming on or near to this coming weekend as much as you can. My question is: What does the data show that keeps you/Clif from concluding the PNW EQ is not a North Korean nuke into Seattle, Portland or wherever hell they can hit?

Thanks, (Reader in Bend Oregon)

East answer! Things like War come from other entities. Earthquakes come from the collection of dots called the Terra entity. Things like North Korea, Bomb Iran, etc come from other entities like PTB or GlobalPop.

Which gets us to some noodling another reader offers as we blow out of town in advance of a possible Northwesty quake late this week...after hearing Clif on CoastToCoast Monday night:

"Ahh,

Nice interview! I agree with the illmnti use of numerology to control! The year after 9/11 there was another terrorist attempt (unsuccessful) on 8/12. Maybe 10/10 of this year?

However, there are rules for the universe as to the use of the numbers. It must be for the right and not the wrong. Doing wrong can be done, however If I remember, this is one that the universe cuts off for incorrect use. Why 9/11 worked and 8/12 didn’t. Especially since we are entering the cycle of light, it may soon be impossible to use for self worth.

Earthquake! Wow. So on the waning of the full moon is where your data lays.

Scenario 1: PacNoWest earthquake in Seattle or north 20 miles into Canada. This scenario has a Mega thrust fault pushing inland and possible tidal wave and volcanic eruption within a month after. Recent activity off the southwest coast of Canada and small inland quakes support this. Bad scenario for the sound residents. Possible large loss of life.

Scenario 2: NorCal Earthquake of the San Andreas strike slip accompanied by a minor inland thrust. Quake would occur from Santa Cruz north to gold coast, but most likely near the bay area. Recent quakes on the San Andreas near the bay as well as quake directly inland as far as Reno support this. This would permanently destroy half the city of San Francisco if it hits too close as well as taking many lives and wiping out coastal towns . (e.g. Pacifica, Ca) of all life. The entrance to the S.F. bay would get more shallow. Possible tidal wave ( this one leaves me bothered when I block all out of my mind except the bay area – Could be the most probable).

Scenario 3: SoCal Earthquake of the San Andreas or San Jacinto at either Victorville or San Bernardino/Loma Linda area. May Continue to Lancaster or Bakersfield. Would cause widespread damage to IE, LA, orange county and Riverside. May shift sea levels at L.A and orange county bays and ports. Would be really expensive due to all the people that lived. However, it would be fixable with permanent change to some coastal cities. Will set the stage for more near salton sea quakes. Recent quakes near San Bernardino and a few smaller quakes making a direct line to the coast as well as a fewer yet larger string of quakes in calif. pointed toward Henderson NV, are in line with the string going toward the coast.

I pray for none of this!

But these seem most likely if the linguistics are correct..."

You might think so, but sorry to say, after you've been a time monk for a while one of the terrible truths that Clif has evolved is "If George can think it, that's no doubt NOT going to happen..."

That said, you've thrown three darts, so here's another dart from a different reader:

"If this quake unfolds as predicted (interesting that my dream a couple years back had a 9.6 affecting a region from the Lake Garibaldi provincial park in Canada, about 60 miles north of Vancouver, stretching down to Ft. Tejon in CA, had the date as January 29 ... in this realm, it's easy to confuse January with July), then I assume you're going to be on the water when it occurs. Or maybe not. It had Seattle going underwater which would mean you're going to be on the boat, like it or not ... the point is, this could well be the end of emails through November when everything goes to Hell anyway (who knows what things are going to look like after that?). Remember that in the rebuilding effort, and the "enduring the shift" effort, my role is to develop and PROPAGATE tech that makes things happen. Agreeing on a simple radio frequency wouldn't hurt. It could end up being the only way of making contact, down the road. Yes, it's extreme, but it never hurts to prepare for the worst case scenario.

I personally like 3980 KHz (KILO Hertz, not MEGA) but most radios don't go that low. You're going to be on marine frequencies. If you have something specific in mind, I'm all ears (ho ho ho)..."

Hmnmm...already all in place...don't need to reinvest anything - just get active in the National Traffic System which is designed to handle life & death matters, property, health & welfare traffic in event of a major emergency.

It's a very well thought out system with local, district and section levels. One of the easiest ways to get involved is to join a local ham club. The Palestine, Texas ham cloud's quarterly hamburger dinner is next Tuesday night at the club house. If you don't live nearby (not expected) a visit to the www.arrl.org site can hook you up with a local club (with lesser burgers to offer than ours, of course) and you can get starts from there.

The most important part is becoming a regular on any of the traffic nets - such as the Maritime Mobile net on 20-meters (14,300 kHz USB) or a state level net like the Texas Traffic Net, nightly on 3873 kHz, LSB.

With a quake possible, good excuse to dust off the ham gear...

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So global warming will lead to an increase is Mexico to US migration says a new study out.

Tuesday July 27, 2010

An Earthquake Warning

In case you missed Clif, chief time monk, High's appearances on CoastToCoast last night during the show's first hour, the most important thing he had to say (very near term) was a heads up for the West Coast over the possibility based on predictive linguistics of a major quake toward the end of this week or maybe into the weekend...

"Within the immediacy data sets there are clear indications of a major [damaging] earthquake on west coast of america (MOST likely north america due to angular momentum issues of planetary alignment) and more probably than not, in the PNW perhaps down to mid CA. This quake shows as being completed with problems, *such as yet more [wedding interruptions] by August 3, however the data accretion patterns point to the last two days of July as the point of impact and largest number of after shocks. Damages are indicated to include [roadways] and [bridges] such that [transportation/movement] is [restricted (in some places)] for months afterward. Water flows are also to be affected and even altered for long time (months/years) which is how i found it. By noting the odd number of longer term indicators for [water pathways change] in the data accretion patterns for November and onward in 2010. A significant majority of these traced back to something in the immediacy data that turned out to be this pending earthquake in very late July. "

This just fell out' from the processing of the long term data set values which should result in a longer view of the data...out to beyond the end of this year. The expectation is that there will be a new report available sometime around the August 10-period. But, the reason for mentioning this now is that there is still plenty of time to get the stored water checked, food, first aid kits, and such on the West Coast.

With any luck, this will be one of those calls that is wrong, but if you live on the West Coast the cost of even modest preps is very low and the past hits of the predictive linguistics project, such as the spectacular 2008 China quake argue that there's a chance the call will be right...

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The fact that Elaine & I are exiting the Pacific Northwest tomorrow (Wed.) morning shouldn't be viewed as cowardice on our part, but got to admit, the timing is interesting. And don't forget the astrological Cardinal Climax starts in the Thursday-Friday period as well. Which gets us to...

Fading Hours of Pump & Dump?

First look at the futures this morning showed a drive to open to the upside is likely to carry over into this morning's trading - baring sobriety arriving.

One thing likely to drive markets will be the 10 AM (eastern) release of the Case Shiller/S&P 20-cities housing index. Reason is not just the high quality data, but that CS/S&P has been most excellent at providing deep history so you can 'return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear" when housing prices weren't referencing year-ago ** already depressed ** levels. This report lets people (who have a mind to root around a bit) suck out what the situation is like compared with the peak.

Same kind of thing with the Dow: Stock pimps talk about the fine gains we have had since March 2009 but most won't mention that stocks are at levels lower than they were during the Internet Bubble when the Dow as over 11,000. Don'tcha hater having a long memory?

Dudley at BP

Robert Dudley might be well advised to remember the words of (I think it was Ed Acker) who upon taking command of Pan American World Airways said "It's like taking the helm of the Titanic..."

The losses by BP are put at $17-billion or so, which gets me to thinking about a question to ask an old friend of Sillycon Valley venture/Dow 30 finance experience today who I'm hoping to see today: "Say, how would you book the losses from something as big as The Spill? I mean, do you book the liability in the quarter incurred, or do you only book the loss once the cost of clean-up in known? Don't remember the chapters on booking catastrophic losses from the accounting texts.

Tony Hayward is throwing in with the Russian oil interests...one of those "aha... I see..." moves when watched from the standpoint of "Is there a schism in the oil patch?" standpoint.

Leaks & Wars

Researchers are poring over the documents on the Afghanistan War released by Wikileaks which total something in excess of 90-thousand pages.

One finding making the round already is that the Western side has a 'hit list' of key individuals and that seems to be managed down in stories that refer to "When it comes to war, killing the enemy is an accepted fact."

Accepted? By whom? Why, the people doing the killing, of course! Certainly not the folks on the other end.

Then - in conundrum wrapped up in a burrito, served inside a number of nesting dolls way - we are reading about people who thinks some of this may be disinfo or packaging how the wars will fail...

Especially with the Brits holding a (well-buried) public inquiry into the Wars which will hear from from chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix today who will repeat how there were no weapons of mass destruction and how Western leaders blew that off....because of what? Another agenda, maybe?

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Key thing that military planners seem to under-estimate is the veracity of the 'enemy'[ which they are facing invaders to what is a 'home land/home soil' theater. The Russians learned about that the hard way and I would have thought we might have learned a little something from our Southeast Asia stint...but apparently not...

History books are chockablock full of countries replaying the mistakes of others - and since there is some continuity of the PowersThatBe - we get some continuity of the techniques used to control civilian populations. Why toss in runaway media moguls who have war as an agenda and we've arguably made only the smallest moves forward as humans since the Spanish-American War circa 1898.

Damn, you drive a hard bargain. None then. War settings change, but runaway media tycoons seems to rhyme.

Climate Migration

Not exactly what you want to read if you bought a McMansion a few years ago within 50-miles of the border...

Venezuwarla

Hugo Chavez is still angling to invade Colombia, looks like from here. Chavez pictures himself the Simon Bolivar of the region.

It's OK, and since I picture myself the Einstein of economics, no reason Chavez can't dream bigt (verging on delusional), too...

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Coping: With What We Call Money

Jack Lessinger's books - as you'd expect from a professor emeritus of business from the UW here in Seattle - view economic history in terms of its social component and really as a dance between me, me, me societies which turn into us, us, us societies and visa versa. Business history suggests that when Socionomics argues that when you roll from me to us, you also get little economic disorder which we call 'depressions' - which if no one has mentioned previously to you - is exactly where we are right now.

Part & parcel of the period is a rethink of money and there are a number of stories that get around to the fundamental change in our relationship with this particular section of the fundament.

"Record number of fake ₤1 coins could force reissue" reports the UK's Telegraph. But it doesn't stop there...counterfeiting seems to be on something of a tear lately.

Kentucky TV outlet WHAS has a story on how counterfei ting tied into a dope ring. Elsewhere, we read how fake $20's are showing up in southern Maine. And on, and on the stories go.

The amateur long-term investor would probably also keep an eye on other stories, too, which get into this whole area of humans defining values. Ah, here's a story about "Counterfeit smoke, unchecked, growing in NY".

This revaluation is also causing stress along the southern border with Mexico where FrontPageMagazine is headlining "Mexico Drug War spills into U.S."

Not like Clif & I are noticing the shift - the meme showed up a couple of days back in another Telegraph story; this one by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard "The Death of Paper Money": which gets around to how a rare book on the Weimar Inflation is being bought up like crazy by Fleet Street types who are trying to figure out what's ahead on the money front.

---

The main feature of the me, me, me (Little Kings) kind of world is an excess of all kinds of just plain old stuff.

The problem at its core is that our relationship with money is going through one hell of a large (think 40-80-year cycles here) change.

While up here visiting with long-time friends who live in Bellevue I was turned onto a neat Peter Walsh book titled It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff and well worth the $20-bucks or so, we were told. In fact, this couple we know has gone so far as to resolve not to buy a new thing unless and old thing is thrown out. I've thought about getting a copy for my shoe-a-holic sister....but that's another story, Imelda.

The point I'm making this morning is that although I've written about the meaning of all these self-storage operations opening up around the country over the past 15-years or so, I've been a little remiss in rolling their appearance into a change continuum that encompasses our whole relation with values.

What I'm seeing now can almost be laid out as related - hierarchical - mass social change:

The boom provides excessive goods and commoditization occurs
- this brings storage problems
  - This brings the rise of stuff-storing
- this brings organization problems
  - thing brings garage organizers, Walsh's book on stuff, etc
Relationship with money changes
- Virtualized Money
  - Naked short selling
  - Derivatives scams
  - Madoff and other paper scammers
- Drugs as a new currency
  - Afghanistan war for poppies
    - decline of America's global dominance
  - Mexico drug war
    - Failure of Mexico as a free democracy next 10-years
  - Counterfeit coins in England
    - Global counterfeiting as foreign policy tools
  - Drug money counterfeiting
Which leads to whole social reordering as a 20-30 year change washed through the whole of the world
- War on competing money systems
  - PTB raid on the Liberty Dollar alternative
  - Tax/1099 plans for all gold/silver deals over $600 in next year or so
- Increasing use of barter & exchange
  - Corporate early adopters of barter as a money substitute (see "Tata Motors in barter deal for Commonwealth Games" - an amazing shift!
  - PayPal's continued growth using 'digital dollars'

All of which has me head down, deep in thought and working on a report for Peoplenomics this weekend about "What are the "New Monies" and how do we pick the future winners?"

Too much to go into now, but since there is the long socioeconomic cycle and since our relationship with money is changing at a deep archetype level, there's a huge leap forward available to the early adopters of this new next that is out there is almost ghostly form right now.

No Homer Simpson "Doh!" moments yet. However the 'prepper movement" seems to be part of this larger meme (thought virus) going around. The preppers (like us) are already 'getting it' that there are things which money can't buy in some situations so we're storing food, getting into gardening, eliminating debt and so forth because in a curious way, freedom still isn't free and a lot of people in America are actively engaged in buying their freedom at a very personal level.

"We can always go live in the motorhome somewhere..." or "We could live in the car..." or "We need to put in a garden..." -- all expressions of the change continuum, where faith in traditional stores of value are quickly eroding: One dollar that bought a steak dinner in 1913 will buy whast was about 4.6 cents worth of goods today. So the change is driven by money's purchasing power being hollowed out.

Like I said, deep ponders, and much research to do before this weekend.

I'll leave you to wonder: If there was no such thing as money, what would you add or subtract from your life? Maybe some insights from that Walsh book about too much stuff....but the real indicators of fundamental change are right in your face when you think about it: "Micro-credit pioneer Yunus to start on The Simpsons."

"Doh!" Blind George just trips over the elephant...again...

Buying the Future

OK, so this is all about more conventional money, but the US News/Yahoo story "The Best -- and Worst -- Places to Build a Nest Egg" is a pretty good read. Best state they figure is Wyoming...

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Monday July 26, 2010

Gertrude and the New Math

So, you wonder, as you tighten the ViceGrips and apply them to an unbruised part of your forearm this morning, trying to "Pinch me!" because reality has become so fleeting: "How much did all those bailouts cost us US tax chattel?"

Umm...think it was $1-trillion or so? Why, that's be 7-8% of Gross Domestic Product for a whole year...and that'd be big, right?

You'd be wrong - way too low. So how about $13-trillion, then? Nope. Still waaaay low.

No, the New Math is that Wee the Sheeple are on the hook for as much as (gulp!) $23.7 trillion dollars. About 2-years worth of everything made by every man, woman, and child in America.

Or, about $76-thousand for everyman m, w, and c in the country. Toss out the retired/dead, and underage and put it in the context of about 155-million in the workforce (don't worry, that number if constantly shrinking, in another sleight of hand show up the statistical midway a bit...) and it pencils out to about $152,903 for every worker bee in the country.

I mention this 'inconvenient truth' as a tone-setter for the rest of this morning's cheer with the Cheerios: The European markets are flat after their stress tests last week - a kind of open-book pass/fail exercise with only a passing outcome allowed - you don't really thing the whole sorry mess of the financial collapse is going to be unveiled in prime time, do you?

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A little later this morning, when the Long Island set gets its coffee, the new home sales will come out, but to me, tomorrow's Case Shiller/S&P 20-city index is a lot more meaningful. The reason is that while the sales may be up compared with last year, it's the longer-term view that matters.

Pretend for a moment that you've pushed aunt Gertrude off the edge of a 40-story building and she bounces one or two stories off the pavement below. "Aunt Gertrude is up!" you cheerful report.

Well, not quite.

(Somewhere along in here somewhere, I have to put in a disclaimer that any relation between the wild-ass examples used here and any person living or dead, is purely coincidental. Don't try this at home. Offer void where prohibited, Member FDIC, operators are standing by, and this is a free call. However, if you're name is Gertrude, stay out of tall buildings for a while - doubly so if you're with nephews and nieces...).

The point is that housing numbers comparing things with last year's eye-to-eye with the pavement is not going to capture the larger context.

Consumer confidence, also due out tomorrow may give a better hint. Less so, the durables orders Wednesday, the ritualistic weekly employment report at 7:43 AM Thursday, then PMI on Friday.

Layoff, George

Now that we have firmly in mind how deeply in a sling our collective financial butts are, we can move on to some genuinely good news on the mass layoff from just out from the Labor Department:

Employers took 1,647 mass layoff actions in June that resulted in the separa- tion of 145,538 workers, seasonally adjusted, as measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single employer. The number of mass layoff events in June increased by 235 from the prior month, and the number of associated initial claims increased by 9,749. In June, 298 mass layoff events were reported in the manufacturing sector, seasonally adjusted, resulting in 29,384 initial claims. (See table 1.)

During the 31 months from December 2007 through June 2010, the total number of mass layoff events (seasonally adjusted) was 61,852, and the associated number of initial claims was 6,213,880. (December 2007 was the start of a recession as designated by the National Bureau of Economic Research.)

The national unemployment rate was 9.5 percent in June, seasonally adjusted, down from 9.7 percent the prior month and unchanged from a year earlier. In June, total nonfarm payroll employment decreased by 125,000 over the month and 170,000 from a year earlier.

Real reason for the improvement? How about this one: No one is left to fire.

Leaks To Come

Heads up from a reader here:

"Wikileaks dumps thousands of classified docs on Afghanistan war ... sounds like the table is being set for 8/1 to 8/12. Seems we're paying Pakistan a billion or so per year to fund and manage the Taliban that our guys are fighting and dying to destroy. Hmmmm...."

Its only money...filthy, disgusting, soiled money. Send along all you care to...LOL

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Predictably, the US is not very happy about all this, and no doubt, this will turn out to be a very damaging problem for the Obama administration. But, tell me again: Why are we there?

Road Show

President Obama is hitting the road this week to talk about how 'things could be worse.'

Yup. Elections could be further away than November, maybe? stopped, I suppose.

Unless he's got a Santa bag full of presents to hand out, I don't see much change in ratings from all this - just larger tax bills to 'filler up' for Air Force One.

Health Rationing

While the US is rolling into a national healthscare system, we notice that the UK's much hyped-about National Health Service is starting to ration many types of care. Bit off more than they could tax, it seems.

Royalty excepted, of course.

Speaking of which...

BP Takeover?

Speculation is starting up whether an American will take over the helm of BP.

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On any other Monday, I would launch into a diatribe about how this is all going to come down to a demonstration of corporate superiority over just plain humans.

Look, if you pushed aunt Gertrude (earlier disclaimers still apply) off a building, the cops would come, haul you off, CNN would have a dandy trial to talk about and that'd be that.

Now, if you were a corporation doing the pushing, you'd just cut off a toenail and say "There's your real culprit" while the rest of your body flies off to the Cayman Islands or Bermuda.

That's essentially what I expect here. The US toenail of BP will be sliced off and the rest of the company will go on its way.

And the funny part? No one will say WTF?

So, since this ain't most Mondays, and I'm on vacation, I won't mention it.

Slow Speed Bot Hit

Remember a couple of years back when the old ALTA reports from www.halfpasthuman.com were talking about "...the fungus among us..."? This is a really interesting prediction to be seen coming true, but at almost glacial speed...But once again, the "Lethal fungal infection" in the Pacific Northwest is popping up in near cyclical fashion.

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Tah Tah - some lady named Gertrude's holding on line 2.

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Coping: Time of Dreams

First thing this morning to note: My friend Clif will be on CoastToCoast AM with George Noory tonight (check local radio listings). The topic seems to be a little discussion of how things are going processing the longer term data sets in the predictive linguistics project ()web bots) and some of the issues which keep building toward this monster 'tipping point' this November 8-12.

If you're new to this site, the broad brush overview from 90-thousand feet is that yes, Clif can see some aspects of the future based on language shift on the internet. And the present period we've just been through (roughly March to July 8/15) marked a major period of 'building tension'. These are global emotional periods when tensions are building - the breathe is sucked in (in an anticipatory way - as opposed to release language where the word "Wow!" and an exhalation of breath/emotional release is experienced.

As the summer progresses, we are in a period which is saw-toothed in nature, having peaked, we go through some number of (smaller) up and downs until a week or so from now (maybe even later this week) when we begin to see serious degrading of the financial system. I mean to the point where the mass hypnosis that purports paper-with-ink has some almost magical power about it (depending on the number of zeroes on it) breaks down.

As a reminder of how funny humans are in their relationships with value, I have a number of Z$1-trillion dollar notes pasted up over my main multiple monitor display at the ranch down in East Texas; testimony that Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe Dollars we indeed a current affairs rhyme off the Weimar runaway inflation of the early 1920's. While the market decline most people think of as the Internet Bubble Collapse of the 1920's was likely the modern analog to the US market break in the early 1920's, we're left with a body of further research to be done into the 'two-part' nature of massive economic depressions, none of which will likely matter, since by the time the fall gets finished up at the winter solstice, there will be perhaps hundreds of millions fewer people around due to 'release events' of the early to mid November release language that the focus on paper and zero's will likely be replaced with more practical pursuits, like finding enough calories to keep eating...little details like that.

So serious is the potential for caloric disaster (on top/in addition to whatever other foibles humans gin up, that I ordered a small greenhouse for the ranch in order to have a way to grow cold-weather veggies this winter in a controlled environment. Over at www.harborfrieght.com they are under $600-bucks for now (shipping extra) and while we will get a lot of cold frames in, this is certainly and easy off-the-shelf solution to expanding food storage.

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Getting off the ranch has been a great exercise in discipline (getting the columns done in a timely manner from out here 'on the road' and it's brought with it a certain reprioritizing of life's choices. For example, we are contemplating a small business acquisition which is in the pipedream stage, which would give us an excuse to spend time both in Texas during the fall/winter/spring and then spend summers in the Pacific Northwest. The old saying "You can't have your cake and eat it too" was obviously half-baked by someone without an MBA. Of course, there's the high workload issue, but the upside is a never-ending supply of challenges, the overcoming of which in large enough piles constitutes personal success, regardless of the number of zeroes on the table.

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OK, so much for the philosophical stuff, back to focus now...

Remember on Friday morning of last week, where I wrote in part) about a strange dream in which...

"The locals had decided to make one last attack on a locally prominent sympathizer with the northern army using a pipe bomb (and somehow angle iron was involved, strangely) and they made a 'just barely escape into the woods where they hoped their retreat would sound like a few deer crashing through the woods. " ???

An alert reader sent in a note Saturday going to the idea "Say, did you happen to notice that there were three pipe bombs in the woods story popping on CNN and other media that was about one more more pipe bombs being found in a California park?"

No, I hadn't caught that but it's not too surprising. However, all the context my Thursday night/Friday morning was clearly woodsy setting and pipe bomb, which is admittedly weird as hell.

Just like dreaming about a murder/fire in an oil warehousing facility of some kind about 18-hours before the blast and problems of the BP oil rig...which again, was one of those advance dreams of things that were in in our 'future'.

In a subsequent conversation with Clif, he mentioned that my characterization of his views on dreams were not quite right. He admits that dreams may occasionally have predictive content but there is so much 'noise' around them that most people can't pull enough of a signal through to make sense of things.

It's here that we find agreement. True, I may have the odd/occasional dream that seems to precede events by roughly18-hours, or so (the oil dream and the pipe bomb dream both giving about that much lead time) but the deeper issue is how does one filter that kind of noise out?

Which is why, in terms of 'getting the future right', Clif's approach is superior. There's only the odd dream that I experience, and the number of daily inputs on the www.nationaldreamcenter.com site is fairly low, so I can't hold up dreams as being anywhere near as accurate and language-shift...no two ways about it. Dream-based predictions (like Friday's pipe bomb dream) may be interesting, but from the scientific perspective that lack key validation handles.

One dreamer, getting two for two at an archetype level (oil/warehouse/murder and woods & pipe bomb) may feel like a solid "hit", but statistically 'n' is too small to be meaningful. In predictive linguistics, we've got a a fair number of 'n's and what develops as a hit rate higher than the noise floor - which is both way cool, and something of a bummer, since to stare into the future, especially when there's crap coming down the pike in November, anyone looking out in that timeframe can get seriously depressed about things.

Nevertheless, tonight's appearance by Clif on Coast will be worth staying up for, since he'll be chatting (presumably) about the long term data sets which are now processing, and which should be out in Shape of Things to Come report form around and likely before August 10th.

My personal expectation is that as we get closer to that date, we'll see the prequel to the disastrous fall/November period ramping up, which seems likely to include terrible market action since the so-called "Cardinal Climax" begins later on this week - a period astrologically which no one alive today has seen before.

Guys like Arch Crawford, Robert Hitt, and Jeff Harman see it plain as day in the astro charts. Arch summarizes what's going on 'upstairs" this way...

"The most exacting and powerful alignment of planets in ALL of Human History takes place from July 26- Aug. 3

Astrologers are calling it the Cardinal Climax being ALL near Zero degrees of ‘Cardinal’ signs.

Of course, that means it’s as important as anything that has ever happened - WWI, WWII, Great Depression, Black Plague, Fall of Rome (and everyone else).

More specifically July 30-Aug 1. Represents a Maximum of a Strange Attractor in all kinds of phenomena.

What should we expect? Well, from chatting with Clif, the middle east war and other possible flashpoints and problems seem unlikely before the global economic meltdown; no point having a global whatever until the last possible reflation of the global money system has been completed as the last drop of blood wrought from that turnip, right?

I know, I know..."George all your focus on seeing the future...predictive linguistics, dream work, astro-economics...are you nuts?"

Well, yes, certainly. But that doesn't stop me from 'running the Greeks' (click here for an explanation of what the Greeks are from the Options Industry Council) and augmenting judgments about market choices with predictive linguistics, astro, and dream hints. It only takes a slight difference in rates of return over time to make a huge different in outcomes.

Or, as my friend Howard Hill sagely explained once, think of only a quarter point spread between one market player and the next. Over time that quarter percent difference compounds such that the small change on the front-end becomes a massive change on the back end. A short study of long tail analysis puts all this into proper perspective.

Some investors make decision based on pure technical analysis and I have no problems with that. Except that when non-technical works - whether predictive linguistics, astro, or dream - show potential the improve returns, then rigorous pursuit of those fields becomes a worthy effort.

The only major drawback I've seen is that it's often times hard (ok, impossible then) to figure out how to make money on some of the bigger web bot hits. How could anyone have profited from 9/11 (and what did happen to all those option buyers, huh?), or the Shuttle Disaster, of the NE Power Outage, or the China Quake, or any of the other 'hits' which Clif's work has produced?

If the period in early to mid November does result in some blinding flashes of light/flash frying of humans, not sure what to do with that information - I mean other order some more goodies from Shane over at www.ki4u.com.

Of course, the predictive linguistics project could be completely wrong. In which case, 105-110 days from now the world will be going on about its 'normal' path and I will be holding a bag of far lesser valued short positions. Next new moon is August 10th, says a reader.

Speeds of Discontent

Just when I thought I'd purchased the be-all, end-all in computers, along comes an email this morning with the latest out of TigerDirect:" a 24GB, 160 GB SSD monster i7 box. Now I'm wondering how out of date I'll be with just 12 GB....

Hmmm...more sparklies to tempt the monkey-mind, I suppose. But on Monday mornings it's always nice to have some reason to get out of bed and go start working on client projects and what have you. Hunger works, too...

Send your comments to george@ure.net

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