Marketing the NuWar

Yeah, sure, the jobs report, which we'll get to in a second, is important and may result in Bulls dancing down on Wall Street, but if the whole world blows up, having a job will not matter much, will it?  So we start this morning with the latest round of tough-talk coming out of the Middle East.  There, Iran is offering to support any nation that "...wants to fight the Zionist regime."

Meantime, there's a report (here) that Iran has completed material to build a bomb and with that, their missiles could reach the US. 

So does that mean Iran has an ICBM?  No, but they have demonstrated an at-sea launch capacity so put 400 kilometers/250-miles of Scud range on a freighter off our coast and you can figure the consequences.  Or, it's just a war marketing campaign rolling out - you make the choice.

Still, we shudder to think what could happen should Iran (or any other country, for that matter) blow up a HEMP device (of six) technically outside the US above the Kármán line and over the ocean?  Technically it would have been in off-world space and outside our borders, which wouldn't matter in suddenly-1870 America, much.

A check of the US Navy website still shows six US amphibious assault ships in the Atlantic, and if I were a betting man, I'd expect them to show up in the Fifth Fleet area in a week or two.  And while the US carriers underway count is down to five, that could be a temporary port call for last minute provisioning.  Give them a couple of weeks to get into positions, last minute drills and then....well the first week of March to the middle of June could be very interesting.

The Washington Post headline Thursday "Is Israel preparing to attack Iran?" doesn't seem far off the point, at all.  Close to "Doh!"

My bet is still on the first 15-days of March, but then that's just the kind of thing that could cause the language disturbance seen in predictive linguistics, but we've been nattering on about this period for months now.

Happy-Talk Jobs Report

Oh, look for the market to rally mightily on this peach from the Bureau of Labor Statistics just out:

"Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 243,000 in January, and the unemployment rate decreased to 8.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job growth was widespread in the private sector, with large employment gains in professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, and manufacturing. Government employment changed little over the month.

 

The unemployment rate declined by 0.2 percentage point in January to 8.3 percent; the rate has fallen by 0.8 point since August. (See table A-1.) The number of unemployed persons declined to 12.8 million in January."

What we're not clear on in this report is how the numbers were derived, since there are lots of people dropping off unemployment counting who have now exhausted their unemployment benefits.

Where the numbers leak is when you dig into the civilian noninstitutional population which gained a lot more than the jobs did, so what's called the labor participation rate dropped 3-10th's of a percent to 63.7% being in the workforce with a corresponding improvement in the "headline rate."

Alternative measures of labor underutilization (PhDs flipping burgers index) went from 15.2 down to 15.1% - so pardon me if I hold back on applause.

Meantime, the annual adjustment to the CES Birth Death model (estimated jobs) dropped 367-thousand  jobs.

This is going to be like passing out free nose candy down on Wall Street later on, so look for a moon shot today in the trading numbers.  Maybe I'll even get my 2-billion share blow-off top day, after all.

BDI Bye-Bye

If you got up on the cheerful and chipper side of bed this morning, how about a look at the Baltic Dry Index, which has just taken out the lows of the 2008 into 2009 decline which presaged the last major market bottom in spring 2009?

Read 'em and weep.

Cyber Warning

CNN's story about FBI fears of a cyber attack on America is something to be watched closely. 

It would sure fit in with my expectation that government might be looking for a reason to institute licensure of the Internet.  Why, with that, a lot of social media could be throttled and with that, down with criticism and wide-ranging thought.  And we all know how dangerous that can be.

Besides, since we are in the Greater Depression, we absolutely expect the analog to the (Radio) Communications Act of 1934 to come along, since government needed to do with the same thing with radio last time around.

One wonders why a currently campaigning poor historian isn't talking about this kind of stuff...or not.

Systemic Collapse Signals

The problem of bureaucratic agencies is "What to do when there's no growth?"  Such seems to be the case with the FDA which last month started a real publicity campaign to crack down on doctors doing stem cell work.

What makes this such a fine example of dumping "sand in the gearbox" is that the FDA is trying to make the argument that stem cells - created in your body - are a drug and are therefore under the agency's regulatory authority.

But, no, say the medical types, substances produced in a patient's body are not drugs,  and what the stem cell docs are doing is the practice of medicine which is regulated by the states.

We're watching this one with the popcorn at the ready, because its likely - in the longer term - to mark a schism developing between the doctors who have already been buried in chemicology (upsold as pharmacology, although fluoride to pick on one obvious example is an industrial waste product) lobbying, advertising, and marketing campaigns, who are slowly coming to realize that their profession is more than simply being order-takers for the big Pharma companies.  And, there's enough science that says stem cells can do remarkable things, that the big pharma companies are willing to throw a lot of weight - not to mention captive regular promises at FDA officials when they leave the agency - behind anti-stem cell actions because curing people is not as economically beneficial as making people drug-dependent.

Which, of course, gets us around to wondering WTF was the FDA doing when left hand sugars (which are directly correlated to increases in diseases like autism and diabetes) were being rushed to market, but don't get me started.

Maybe they were at lunch with the regulators who were too busy to watch Madoff and MF Global, you think?

My vote is with the doctors since they have an oath to uphold: "First do no harm."  I judge doctors like I judge the competence major league baseball players - by their numbers.   I can find no governmental equivalent, particularly at the unelected bureaucracy levels.

Tornado Watch

Might want to keep an ear on the weather radio up in Okie-lahoma down into the ArkLaTex this morning due to storms.  Sure seems early this year...but that likely relates to changing weather patterns which we need to chat about next...

We had rain here at the ranch last night, and both drops were appreciated.

More after this: 

Coping:  The Serious Climate Change Story..

...that no one seems to be "getting" is that it may be going on right before our eyes.  Either that, or a lot of people I know are being taken in by the statistical phenomena known as the "spread of the data."

Let's start with the spread issue (Statistics 101):  As we start into munching data sets in school, we are taught that data has a range (think of this as the maximum up and down value on a horizontal chart) and a spread which is how wide that horizontal chart is.

Since most folks are familiar with the Bell Curve and how it looks as IQ distribution, for example (though we carefully excluder Washington DC), the range of the data might represent the number of people from a large sample size (n) who have the particular IQ represented by the horizontal scale, each of which would be one column for each IQ point, or group of IQ points, depending on sample size n.

So with a small data set  (say n = 100) we might make up our histogram of IQs falling into ranges of five IQ points.  We might find the range of the data to include (making this up) 25 people in the two columns IQ95-IQ100 and IQ101 to 105.  Out at the extremes, we might find only one person in the IQ45-IQ50 column, and similarly only one in the IQ170-IQ175 column. 

Which is why, on average, people are, well, average.

I mention this in passing, and particularly the small sample-size group ( n = 100) because Life, and particularly observations about the weather are - not unlike IQs - spread over 100 years worth of observations.  Since we may not begin to even consider harsh winters or, in the present example, mellow, easy-going winters, until we are at least 25, and since we may not have enough mental acuity left over after breakfast past age 90 to make any observations at all, we can see how the value of "n" declines even more.

Let me see:  We start with what would be a convenient sample size  (100) but recognize that most people don't live that long, so maybe 90 if you keep eating lots of fiber and getting exercise.

But then we figure some number of people are going to lose acuity 10-years before check-out time, so maybe an average high acuity age of 85.

Which wouldn't be too bad, since 85 is still a decent size for n since it would still give a decent (though quickly deteriorating) confidence level.  Then things fall apart.

The problem is that we don't get into high acuity observer mode until we're 25, or so.  The reason for this is that observations while young are colored by the small time base involved.  A two month long event (like winter) is 4.166% of a four-year old child's life so recall from childhood sucks and is subject to perceptual distortions due to durational effects.  By age 25, perception of the same two months occupies under 7/10th's of the lifetime duration.  And by 63 (like me) a two month event is down to  0.2645% of lifetime duration.

As you can see, how the brain of a 6-month old child perceives two months (one third of their life) versus how us old farts perceive things (0.2645%) even though they are the same event is hugely different.

So ends the statistical set-up to the following:

• There is a huge change in the US Department of Agriculture Zone Maps which, in so many words, have moved "cold winter" lines (and along with it, spring planting dates) North a good bit.  On gardening websites (example: Today's Garden Center coverage here) you can read up on what some of the implications of this are.

Our digs (a poor pun for sure, but go with me on this) are now in Hardiness Zone 8b.  That seems to mean our extreme winter temperature is now only 15-20 degrees, but the main thing here is that it may have come - and gone - for this year so I'll be working on the green house this weekend getting our starters laid in...just amazing - so I figure to plane March 1st which means come June 1 (sooner for a few things) we ought to be up to our ears in corn and peaing all over the place....er...so to speak.

Toss in your Zip code on the USDA site and see where you live by clicking here.  Hardiness zones has nothing to do with how long you can party, though...

The second implication of this is:

• My consigliore (who in real life is a high powered tax attorney in Ohio) was wandering around the state earlier this week and called with a WTF moment:  "George...there's no ice on Lake Erie!" 

Yeah, yeah, and there's no f'in chocolate, either, I thought.  Inquiring more, turns out this was in the Cleveland (rocks) area, although seems like it also applies over in (holy) Toledo. 

Sure enough, a check of Cleveland's heating degree days shows they are running (at 50 compared with a normal 72) - about 30% less heating than usual. 

Even up in Clif's area, what had been a kick-ass winter seems to be passing with a report overnight that Bellingham (admittedly about 70 miles north of Seattle) just tied an all time high temperature record.

So does all this mean that climate change is real and is here?  Not necessarily - spread of the data issues - got to have them outliers.

But, on the other hand, Elaine and I are getting into gardening mode - and way, way early.  Plus, we've shelved plans to launch a billion dollar IPO to launch an ice-boating company up in the Great Lakes area.

I'm going to keep that one handy, though.  Winter still has a couple of months to run and there's few things less dependable than the weather, though we grudgingly admit, government is giving Ma Nature a real run for her month.

---

Speaking of gardening related items:  Rhome out at Everlasting Seeds had a breakdown of his #3 (size) canning machine - so a slight delay is some orders is possible, he reports - waiting on parts.

Better than Niburu Department

Say, if you are a worry-wart, and you think the economy melting down in March (ort going to wage, we've covering both bets) is a problem, toss this one on your worry pile:  Hercolubus (or Red Planet) written by a fellow in Columbia who died in 2000... 

Don't feel bad if you haven't heard about this one...there are plenty of interesting links out there if you Google it, though.  Like this site.

Wikipedia has a whole string of names for the whole phenomena.  Which, when you think about it, seems like a variant on the familiar "something gonna save us"  (or get us) meme which is so popular in modern culture.

Looking for Loosh

As along as we're wondering down this path, you might also want to study up on the word "loosh."  The idea behind this one is that some kind of non-human life form eats human emotions and especially delectable to the other-worldly palate are human emotions spent or launched in periods of high emotional stress.

You can read more on it here, and of course, there are several entries over at the Urban Dictionary to ponder, but the main thing is to be aware of how you spend your emotions, since it may be a different life form's meal and the more you feed the animals.....

Lingo Lango

Been reading a new (for me) publication, Light Plain Maintenance, which for $20/year does a fine job teaching the ins and outs of airplane ownership on the maintenance side.  Think of it as to airplanes, what Practical Sailor is to sailboat owners.

Anyway, I mention both these gems for a reason:  They are both great sources of language that goes with either of these two high arts - flying and sailing.

For example, this morning I learned in LPM the difference between a scat tube and a sceet tube.  Since you're on the edge of your muffin, dying to refine your thought processes, here's the answer:  A scat tube is a fiberglass ducting while a sceet tube is a silicone ducting.

Worth remembering because the boundaries of your thinking are vocabulary-dependent, which is why wordsmith matters and precision of language often is found in close companionship to precision of thinking.

Except around here, of course.

---

Our reader in the Philippines sent me a note this morning on how odd the English language is, and how odd a place America is in general.  Example?

I WENT TO A BOOKSTORE AND ASKED THE SALESWOMAN, "WHERE'S THE SELF-HELP SECTION?" SHE SAID IF SHE TOLD ME IT WOULD DEFEAT THE PURPOSE.

Which was right up there with "If a parsley farmer is sued, can his wages be garnished?  (rim shot)

Words mean something but we're not sure what...

WuJo Car-Hop in Toronto

Say, this is another one of those "odd things in traffic" to noodle on:

I was driving westbound on a six-lane commercial road in suburban Toronto (Keele and Highway Seven, Vaughan, if you want to open Google Maps). I was waiting in the left-turn lane to turn south. I saw in my RV mirror that the Chevy van behind me was holding three South-American looking males with bandanas--an unusual sight, even for multicultural Toronto. I looked at them for a moment, thinking that they seemed to have stepped out of a scene from CSI;Miami. I looked away, focused on the radio program, moved up a space or two--directly behind the sedan in front of me. Sat some more. A short time later, I looked up and saw the rear of the van instead of the sedan. No one moved. No one passed me. But somehow, the van was now in front of me. When we finally made the left turn, I was able to pass the van on the left and get a look at the driver and passengers. They were the South American guys with the bandanas.

Just like the car-hop a while back from our friend up in Oklahoma - remember the case of the guy going to the movie theater who left his wife and daughter at the car repair emporium, drove directly to the theater via the most direct route and they'd been there waiting for him?  This kind of stuff happens often.

Redefining TGA

May mean "temporary George Amnesia" was going around yesterday.  Seems I posted one WuJo report twice this week.  Could have fooled me...

Still, not taking any chances, I threw some salt over my left shoulder last night in the kitchen, hoping to his to loosh-suckers with it.  May have missed, but Elaine got the kitchen floor wiped up free (or for the cost of a harsh look) and we're left wonde3ring whether the throwing salt over your left shoulder works with that Morton 50% sodium reduced/potassium-rich substitute.

---

Well, that is enough till Monday morning, same time, same website.

Tomorrow's Peoplenomics report will be a dilly as I keep repeating the same antigravity results and we may actually have a workable theory to toss around which could be the basis for zero-point energy.

But that's tomorrow over at the www.peoplenomics.com site, otherwise see you back here Monday for coffee and brain candy.  Meantime, keep your emotions in check and check-in on your emotions...

Now on our premium content site: www.peoplenomics.com:

1970's Housing Prices to Come

Several readers wrote in after our "simple investment system" which is based on price channel charting in the long term.  This week, I have borrowed a few common charts (gold, oil, wheat, and housing) to give you some examples of how the "simple system" can be applied to almost any class of investment for which you have a chart of past performance handy.  That's a good thing - but also a bad thing when you consider the implications for Housing.  First, however, a romp through the headlines...

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Thursday February 2, 2012

This Wrong-Headed Rally

I don't suppose anyone but me noticed that there was a huge layoff announced this week by American Airlines, which is planning to whack 13,000 jobs but this is just the kind of thing we would expect when my charting system (which I've been explaining to Peoplenomics subscribers over the past week) shows a trend if over, done, finis, kaput, and toast:

So, if the declining trend channel is being busted, about the best we can hope for is an ugly muddle-through and unfortunately for the US/West, there's not time before the March (whatever it is) period gets here to avoid global financial calamity.

Now, toss in some fresh numbers from this morning, and a massive decline in the Baltic Dry Index, and there may be some reason to stay in bed this morning and call in well.  The Baltic was down to 662 Wednesday:

Hey Mr. Ure,

I'm still a n00b when it comes to running numbers - but I'm trying. Looking at the new BDI numbers - at an historic low (662), compared to the Dow - closed yesterday at 12,774.02. now - if I go BACK to 2008, the BDI low was 663, and the dow closed that day at 8,635.41. The Dow then went on to drop ABOUT 25% (rounding numbers for the new guy using crayons) down to 6,626.94 about 4 months later.

If the recent drop in BDI is supposed to correlate to another drop in the Dow, as you've been saying - how is it going to test the 2009 lows? as far as i can see, it would only correlate to (again, rounding off here), about a 25% drop - to the neighborhood of 8,4580 - which is nothing to sneeze at, but still not really testing the actual low of 2009... can you please explain (in the manner in only which YOU can) what I'm missing. I have extra crayons if you need them.

We don't use crayons, since one of the reasons to talk at boardroom-level meetings like this one is to get that sniffing high off the whiteboard markers...where were we..ahhh....oh yes...

The simple answer is that we can't use simple correlations like this.  At best, we can maybe hope for a general correlation in the downward direction.

Just as one example, think about the money supply impacts.

If we look at the Fed's M2 number (how much cash is sloshing around the system) it's about $9.64 trillion dollars, plus or minus a cheese burger.

Since the closest month for the M2 in 2008 was December, and since I'm awake enough to go look up data (you owe me) here's where things we three years ago.  Sitting down? $8.2317 trillion.

So just the money base is up 17.1% which means, just to throw a first dart, that Dow 6,627  level (the approximate 2009 low) times this may give us a guess as to where things could land later on: 7,760.

No one in the investment world likes to deal with pure inflation=adjusted numbers...ruins many a good story - like the myth that stocks are higher than they were back in 2000.  Sorry to tell you this, but the market needs to be in the mid 15000's in order just to have kept up with money creationk but I digress...

And then things get complicated:  Earnings have changed, there have been stock splits, buy-backs, and all kinds of other factors.  Honestly I'm going to be happy if we just get a decent collapse.  How far down is, doesn't really matter.

I trust you saw the TGyler Durden piece over at ZeroHedge on how the heat is being turned up for negative interest rates?  There's a word for the Treasury and Fed policies in times like these:  desparation.

---

The whole trick this year - like last - will be getting to the end of the year with your starting net worth intact.  Do that and you ought to be ahead of 95% of people.

And in the meantime, when there's this kind of rally coupled with the kind of outlook for the period ahead, both earnings-wise and consumer spending-wise, The rally yesterday sure has the potential to be the last of the "strong hands" unloading their dough into weak hands...which would make participating in the rally in here "wrong headed" but you make your own decisions.  We don't offer financial advice, just a different way of looking at things.

Pass Me a Number?

All kinds of data to consider this morning if you have more than 21˘ left over in your checkbook:

• Weekly unemployment looked somewhat improved: "In the week ending January 28, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 367,000, a decrease of 12,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 379,000. The 4-week moving average was 375,750, a decrease of 2,000 from the previous week's revised average of 377,750. " The big number tomorrow is the unemployment rate - which I'd call flat.

• This morning, the Challenger jobs report came out:

  "CHICAGO, February 2, 2012 – Last month, the nation’s employers announced plans to cut 53,486 jobs from their payrolls. That was the largest monthly layoff total since 115,730 job cuts were announced last September, according to job cut report released Thursday by global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc."

• Then we have to ponder the ADP Jobs report:

  U.S. Nonfarm Private Employment Highlights – January 2012 Report:

   Total employment: +170,000

   Small businesses:* +95,000

   Medium businesses:** +72,000

   Large businesses:*** + 3,000

   Goods-producing sector: + 18,000

   Service-providing sector: +152,000 Addendum:

   Manufacturing

• And if your head isn't spinning out of control (plenty of spinning going on, yah?) we have the BLS productivity report:

  "Nonfarm business sector labor productivity increased at a 0.7 percent annual rate during the fourth quarter of 2011, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The gain in productivity reflects increases of 3.6 percent in output and 2.9 percent in hours worked. (All quarterly percent changes in this release are seasonally adjusted annual rates.) From the fourth quarter of 2010 to the fourth quarter of 2011, productivity grew 0.5 percent, as output rose 2.3 percent and hours rose 1.8 percent. (See table A.) Annual average productivity increased 0.7 percent from 2010 to 2011.

Say, you do know at least some of that hiring is for staffing of welfare and unemployment offices, right?

With all these numbers flying around, and with the jobs report tomorrow, there's all kinds of happy talk bound to be flitting about.  But the main questionmark will be what happens tomorrow morning with the annual corrections (confessions) about the CME BGirth/Death Model which is changed up each January.  This is a time when the statistics get (however briefly) closer to the truth.

Which is what?  Yes there are a few more jobs around this year.  Is this thanks to economic stimulous impacts?  Not no, but hell no.  It's because we have more people and despite the talk about ending wars, the colonial empire-building is the glue which is keeping people off the streets, but only for now.

As soon as California goes bankrupt and we see an economic secessionist movement as states try to recapture some of those "powers otherwise not delegated are reserved to the state..."  things promise to get really interesting.

Might want to keep an eye on state banks movement and anything having to do with what's legal tender.  Do some research on that and show me where the sole power to create "money" was turned over to the central government.  Let us know what you find?  California might find that useful here shortly.

Blah Blah Quake Watch Blah Blah

OPK, so it's late and not as big as expected, but there's a 6.9 down off Vanuatu this morning.

Also a 3.0 up near HAARP this morning, too.

Big Money At Work

We continue watching all the Big Money Boyz line up behind the disgraced House Speaker.  Oh sure, got forced out of congress, and we're supposed to believe he somehow has changed his stripes.  So it comes as no surprise if later today Donald Trump would through in with the republicorp gang's pick.

Linguistically it could be read as the countdown is on to Mitt's "great misfortune' which I'm sure the Big Money crowd is desperately working on.  Cash talks, voters walk.

Death's Fan Club

70 dead from a riot at a soccer game in Egypt. You were wondering how a country could elect religious extremists?  Here's a big hint for you.

Gone Batty

Not sure what Bat Man would say about this, but there's a really curious flap (with poor pun intended) going on over the closure of a lot of caves around the country to save the poor, little, defenseless white note bat.

Spying this one as an outlier, a reader writes:

George the first thing that popped into my mind would be the Government closing caves to keep people out, possible new construction for safety caves during some kinda shit storm, or something along those lines.

A cave would be a very nice secure area to be in case of some kinda issue, ( i dunno what. something from space, some kinda attack, riots or all of the above.

Of course it could be that a illness is killing the bats and they want to shut the caves up to keep people and their germs away.

I dont know but this story red flagged me for sure.

Our reader is not the only one, in Iowa a state lawmaker is trying to get local caves up there reopened to the public.

All this interest in caves could sure get a person to wondering, particularly if you have an eye on the calendar this year.

More after this: 

Coping:  Wujo: Notes to the Adjustment Bureau

There aren't too many movies I will watch more than once, since the plot and the rest doesn't change on second viewing.  But still, there are some, like The Adjustment Bureau that are so close to filling in a huge number of questions about how people live, and how small changes ripple into the future, that we watched in again last night.

The premise of it is simple:  Yes, we have "free will" but it's a bounded thing which means, if you remember set theory from your school days, that our range of motion is not totally constrained - more like the choices are usually limited.

A fine thinking piece comes from reading a few books on electronic voice phenomena (EVP) where supposedly, The Dead are living in a world of exaggerated colors and some are purported dead scientists who are trying to get back into contact with our present reality to get messages to loved ones and so forth. 

By the descriptions "coming over" as reported in some EVP books, the colors in this "other world" are far more intense than is this one - and there are other colors  completely.

Anyway, back to point, this is an example of a "bounding problem" - since we all know that the color wheel is a pretty well established thing in this world.  Since we are creatures of bounded sets (where color and the limits to color are set by societal conventions and limitations of the optic nerve, and so forth) we accept unconsciously or otherwise that we can only see so many colors and that's that.

Here's a simple little task to keep you occupied:  Come up with a color that is non-existent in our shared reality and is truly from "outside".  Then you will have gone somewhere.  Or dream up a flavor that has never been built before - that kind of thing.

And it's here that The Adjustment Bureau is such a fine movie.

---

Since I watched it last night, I've noticed a few small adjustments in my life.

For one, since my son's visit, our digital bathroom scale now lives in a new location in the master bath.

Now, you have to understand that I don't weigh myself with my glasses on (they weight something, right?) and we have a dressing chair.

Took the glasses off, thoughtless tossed the glasses on the chair, weighed myself, and then sat down to put on my socks and just as I sat down, guess what?

So now I have a broken pair of glasses to get fixed - minor thing - maybe - as it looks like the nylon rimless part just snapped.  But that sets up a trip to the eyeglass emporium and for all I know, I will do something on that previous unscheduled trip that somehow causes  (or saves us from) World War III.

Butterfly effect.

---

But it wasn't just the glasses broken.  That would have been fine.

Nossir, that lead to tearing apart my flight bag looking for my backup glasses (no luck, of course) and then the search for the spare pair in the office.  Case was there but the glasses missing.

---

Earlier this week, I got an email from a reader who I knew from my rock & roll news director days back in Seattle.  Got the computer fired up only to learn that the email I'd sent to her got rejected by her server (in Canada).

And then, while I'm trying to get that resent  (it was rejected by her server again, so WTF?) my wireless keyboard decides to stick in the "won't type anything" mode.

And this in turn leads me to my #3 server to look up how to turn the Microsoft wireless keyboard back on, which leads to the discovery that Server 3 needs to have its wireless card reset.

No time for that, so on to Server 2, normally used for audio-video production, such as an upcoming interview for the Strategic Living site, and for the www.fifthorderhouse.com sites.  After looking up the information I need, but just barely. that server decides it needs to restart but by then I'm back at Server 1 which has by now gotten ready to restart.

All of which would be fine, except that now Server 1 thinks we need to perform a disk integrity check, but I tell it no, gambling I can make it through this morning's column and will have plenty of time later to accomplish that.

By now, I've pissed away 45-minutes, don't have anything written for the column this morning, and since this is garbage day, I have to spend an extra 10-minutes before publishing time taking out the garbage.

So apparently, Universe, Adjustment Bureau, or whatever, wanted to detail my writing about something this morning because sure as hell it's been every tripwire in the book getting even this far.

Don't know if you've ever had days like this one, but today is sure off to a strange beginning.

It'll be interesting what else pops up between now and upload time....or  maybe it's all just an intricate way of reminding Clif to get the movie and watch it while we still all have power.  Hard telling.

After locking myself out of the house while wheeling the garbage out to the road, I finally went through the flight bag and there was a pair of glasses.  I was back in business; and apparently that was all the adjusting I needed.

Marketing of WuJo

Reader idea:

Hey George!

I was thinking that you might consider putting up a place to record wujo events like your dream center. A national wujo center? I LOVE reading the wujos!! That would be so cool!! Just a thought.

There you have it!  Proof readers in Missouri are capable of thinking!

Look Out - Above!

Mention of a new sunspot rotating around, which oughta be earth-directed pretty quick, might be worth watching brought this passing thought:

·        There's a new sunspot emerging in the shape of a ring and it goes by the name AR1413 and it's thought that it may be a harbinger of a large solar flare, since there seems to be some science behind that idea.

Could this have anything to do with the 314 number?

If it is, then we can add huge sunspot/coronal mass ejections to our worry list for the March 2-9 change window.  I'm still hoping it amounts to nothing.

And speaking of that:

Mornin’ G,

Just got done reading the future report…. So if the economic/monetary system is going to collapse, and ( from what I infer ) the fed gov’t is going to become irrelevant over the next year or so…. Who are we going to be paying our taxes to? Are we even going to be paying taxes ( as we know them today )?

If you don’t have the time to answer this email, maybe you could address this question in your column.

Have a good one George and pet your neglected cat for me… I hope I’m not the only one looking forward to all the chaos coming this way…. adapt, evolve, and overcome.

Well, let's put it this way:  I am only slowly working on my income tax prepping so far.  I've gone far enough to see that we will have a (small dammit) refund coming, but it is a little lower on my  tax list.  That's was just scrambled with the glasses trip today or tomorrow...depending on if/when the other pairs show up.

Oh...and Zeus the Cat has hired a class action lawsuit outfit to sue Elaine and me for everything we have (which ain't much) since we put a flea collar on him and Pusscilla Catly this week.

Zeus's demand letter (runs about 10 pages) says he gets to eat fresh shrimp, fresh chicken, and so on plus, if I'm reading it right, we're supposed to start raising mice for him to hunt at his pleasure.  It's a rambling letter, but he goes into some detail how humans already raise animals for bloodsport (he mentioned fish farms specifically) and it's the least we can do.

Otherwise, goes the rambling, he and Pusscilla want all our dough ($58.12) as damages for putting collars on them which contain poisons.

I've hired a law firm locally to respond, and I've got some pictures of ticks - one half an inch long and all blown up like a balloon, that have fallen off of him.  So our defense is going to be "greater good" while his team is going down the pollution, contamination, and may cause cancer route.

We're hoping to come up with an out of court settlement.  Wait till I tally up the cost of his calls to 900 numbers like the  HOT KITTY and so forth.

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Meantime, back on this "314" case:

Hello George,

 

I meant to write you back on Monday January 23 (Pie Day) but did not get around to it. Now it may have been for the better because something came to my attention just yesterday that goes along with what I was going to write about. Anyway, here goes...

 

You've been writing about people having the numbers 314 come up in various ways. Then you mentioned that National Pie Day was coming up. Seeing both of those together I couldn't help thinking pie -> pi -> 3.14 -> 3/14 -> March 14th -> Pi Day.

 

So I had to look that up and found that July 22 (22/7 in non-US locations) is considered Pi Day but I say March 14th makes more sense. That's what I was going to write.

 

But then yesterday I was realizing that I hadn't received any updates from an astrology site (www.laraowen.com) I like to read so I went to the site to find out what was going on. I found out that she had updated her site(s) and the old email list was no longer being used. Anyway, she did have a new post with a forecast for 2012. Imagine my surprise to find her forecast contains a specific reference to March 14 as follows:

 

In the first half of the year there is the potential for wealth creation and for some practical solutions to improve the global financial situation, with several trines in earth signs involving Mars, Jupiter and Pluto, and a spectacular grand trine between the three planets on March 14 at 9 degrees (lucky and opportunity-rich especially for those born around April 29/30, September 2/3 and December 30/31). The shadow side of the amplified earth energy involving these particular planets is an overweening and arrogant greed. It highlights desires to dominate property or land and to ensure ownership and control (the conflict about Scotland’s potential independence from the UK is coming to center stage, for example).

Note the shadow side part. Need I say more.

Uh-huh...say, want a cat?

Another TGA Report

Say what?  Oh!  Temporary Global Amnesia....what we we talking about with all these missing time reports?

Hi George

Sounds like transient global amnesia -- at least that was the diagnosis my neurologist gave me after multitudes of tests showed... nothing wrong. (a relief). I was sitting at my computer, late afternoon @4:30p, checking the traffic going north from Orange County, to see if it would make sense to meet my pilot cousin for dinner near LAX (I was to call him back). The next thing I know, it's dark outside. After 6. Where was I? What happened? Did I have a stroke? (I ran to the mirror to check my face, noting to self that if I were running, ... probably not). I had a vague sense of going to the kitchen for a glass of water during the blackout time.

The neurologist conveyed: it happens, usually only once, never in circumstances where the brain is truly engaged, but when it's in an "idle" state. Think of it like rebooting a computer -- takes awhile to rebuild. No ill effects, except I didn't trust me for awhile -- scary. Or... welcome to middle age (I'm not going to live forever?)

By the way, I noticed the humming over Christmas while I was visiting my sister in Mariposa (Sierra foothills). Her house sits on top of a granite dome. Seems to sync with the findings this morning. Interesting.

I'm not sure what to make of it:  Maybe the worldwide web really is like a new, breakthrough technology and a lot of previously unreported phenomena are just starting to get noticed.  Or, maybe there is something in the water, chemtrails, medicines, food supplies, or whatever, that is causing it to happen now and then.

Or maybe it's something else...just connecting with our inner selves where time stops being relevant.

Now on our premium content site: www.peoplenomics.com:

1970's Housing Prices to Come

Several readers wrote in after our "simple investment system" which is based on price channel charting in the long term.  This week, I have borrowed a few common charts (gold, oil, wheat, and housing) to give you some examples of how the "simple system" can be applied to almost any class of investment for which you have a chart of past performance handy.  That's a good thing - but also a bad thing when you consider the implications for Housing.  First, however, a romp through the headlines...

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Wednesday February 2, 2012

Housing Report:  Price Slide Resumes

Just in from Case-Shiller/S&P:

New York, January 31, 2012 – Data through November 2011, released today by S&P Indices for its S&P/Case-Shiller1 Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, showed declines of 1.3`% for both the 10- and 20-City Composites in November over October. For a second consecutive month, 19 of the 20 cities covered by the indices also saw home prices decrease. The 10- and 20-City Composites posted annual returns of -3.6% and -3.7% versus November 2010, respectively. These are worse than the -3.2% and -3.4% respective rates reported for October. In addition to both Composites, 13 of the 20 MSAs saw their annual returns decrease compared to October’s data. New York and Tampa saw no change in annual returns in November; while Charlotte, Cleveland, Denver, Minneapolis and Phoenix saw their annual rates improve. At -11.8% Atlanta continued to post the lowest annual return. Detroit and Washington DC were the only two cities to post positive annual returns of +3.8% and +0.5%, respectively, in November. While positive, both cities saw these annual rates fall versus October’s data.

Main thing, as I see it, is not the percentage chart above but rather the resumption of the decline in prices shown in this chart:

US markets are up a tad...but we'll see how that holds over the course of today's session...  Remember, the December government figures were bad, so a continuation of the decline in this chart into December's report - a month from now - should be...oh, you know....a shocker....

The War Between the "D" Words

While the main event, center ring, in the global economic circus is occupied with the Case Shiller/S&P Housing figures which we will post shortly, the bigger action is out back where the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) is about to decide the fine line which exists being something being a "credit event" and when that becomes a "default" - most likely this week.

We've be wondering how this will play out, especially after a couple of readers sent us the link to the Ellis Martin interview with Jim Sinclair Monday covering this point.

Before looking ahead, however, let's look at what's involved in the ISDA decision-making process.  When a large company runs into financial trouble (can't pay its bills) one of two tracks becomes likely:

• In a bankruptcy, if I'm following how all this works, there is an auction of the credit derivatives swaps.  That's why when the ISDA determines an event - like the recent case of Eastman Kodak going toes-up (a rather telling of morgue & cop shop term), an ISDA determination like this one (definition decision) pushes the company decision onto the agenda here.

Now, with a company which has been in the decline mode, for a good long while, this isn't exactly unexpected; digital cameras and Fuji Film have taken their toll.

On the other hand, there are at least five major US Banks who have huge exposures to the pending Greek [mess is as good a word as any] and the ISDA has been pondering how to "make the call" on Greece.  A bankruptcy decision would force an auction, or if it's called a "restructuring even" then securities holders take the haircut, not the banks.

The way this plays is the application of processes called the Collective Action Clauses (CACs).  Truly a question of "Who to screw?" as this explanation leaps out of the ISDA Greek Debt Q&A:

"...the inclusion of a CAC would not, in and of itself, be expected to trigger a Credit Event. On the other hand, the use of such a clause to effect a reduction in coupon or principal or one of the other events set out in the definition of the Restructuring Credit Event could trigger if the other requirements of the Restructuring Credit Event were met (for example decline in creditworthiness), as its effect would be to bind all holders of the relevant debt."

So that's due shortly:  If the Greek mess is called a restructuring, then the debt holders are "bound" to their paper.  If it's called a bankruptcy then there are some major banks (as guarantors) who will be screwed.

This is truly a war between the "D" words:  If "default" can be painted up with enough lipstick and sold as "a restructuring", and holders given the haircut, then that is likely to set off one chain of dominoes.  But, on the other, if it's a default and in "bankrupt" then another set of dominoes falls.  All roads seem to lead to Greater/Worst Depression.  Thesde are the noises of the dominoes going one way, or the other.

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At the heart of this, while we wait for the Comptroller of the Currency's office to issue the Q4-11 derivatives, this rather telling chart shows how US Commercial Banks - after all the hype in the wake of the Housing Bubble's implosion have continued to rack up ever-higher levels of notional debt.

Want to see the chart of bankers acting badly?  I ask you:  Is this the picture of financial restraint and good judgment?

Don't look now, but this levels of debt just held by US banks is more of less 16.66 times total US GDP.  I know the term is notional but all it takes is the wrong decision by a governing body somewhere along the line and the whole world falls apart, since at least in credit derivatives, there's no analog that I'm aware of that provides the functional equivalence to continuous settlement in foreign exchange, which almost collapsed the global economy way back in 1976 in the Bank Herstatt affair.  That's was the financial world's analog to the Cuban Missile Crisis, but few people have studied it closely and understand how really bad, bad can be.  Seems like something we're going to find out shortly.

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Parallel discussion:  Some talk emerging about the value of breaking up Bank of America...

Leaky Nukey

News tip of the day:

George - Longtime reader, P-nomics subscriber, and former news director. I find it ODD there's been NO network (lame-stream media) or even Chicago local coverage of the above event! I found it on a FLORIDA TV news report: a nuke power plant losing power and venting radioactive steam toward millions of residents in Chicago?!? NRC issued a Level 4 (Don't worry - be happy!) alert, calling it an "unusual event!" Not a nuke plant engineer, but I'm thinkin' venting radioactive steam to reduce pressure and heat are NOT the early steps toward avoiding a disaster. Hello? 3-Mile Island? Fukushima? Those were downplayed by the gubmint and media lapdogs, too - only later did we find out how really REALLY BAD those were. Now Chicago bein' dusted by Tritium? On the day before the news-grabbing FL GOP primary vote? What an inconvenient truth! Stay tuned! Oh - wait; nevermind, since the MSM ain't talkin' about it!

Er.....you got it, cowboy:  Which gets me to "What does Ron Paul have in common with nuclear accidents?"  {MSM won't cover either...}

Vote Like It Matters

Florida goes to the polls today.  Pretend it matters and vote. Just not for that guy who took all that consulting money from the federal GSE in housing, OK?

March to War, Redux

If you're playing the home game of "When to nuke Iran" there's a report from Israel National News says "It may be too late to attack Iran after the summer..."

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This ain't exactly proper English, but the shit's about to hit the fan, wrong as we'd like the predictive linguistics/  And I make this claim why?

The US Navy site lists five US aircraft carriers out, including two in the Atlantic and two in the Fifth Fleet and SIX amphibious assault ships including one in the Fifth Fleet and four in the Atlantic.  Wanna make a bet where they're going?

If the carrier Carl Vinson (CVN 70) transits Hormuz in early March, or is attacked, I'll be the guy under the the table three days later for the Big Show, since that's one way to read references from older predictive lingo runs.  Fortunately, our rule of thumb is "If George thinks it, it will not work out that way.."

I assume you have the new one that looks back at the now present from the 2020 perspective?

But, Syriously

Syrian president Assad seems to be coming down with a light case of paranoia...massing loyal troops in Damascus and worrying about a coup.  Gee, who'd want to replace a mean dictator (emphasis on the dick part)  who's killing protesters?

Bee Scam?

Say, if you think a large company might be behind efforts to kill off natural honey bees, have you read this article off a Chinese/English board?

More after this: 

Coping:  Living Through an Earthquake

We begin the "softer side" of this news this morning with a report from a reader who just lived through this earthquake in Peru:

Hi George. I sent you an earthquake statistic analysis a couple of years ago; this just to let you know i'm an aware guy with some preparation and experience (50 yrs old) and not a scary type of average guy.

I'm spending a couples of nights with the family at a resort here in Ica, Peru. It's located 200 miles south from our home, capital city Lima. Last night we had a 6.3 earthquake at 00:11 hours. Happily, we all were having a good time at the karaoke bar, the complete family.

I've been through a couple of big earthquakes: 1970, 7.9, 100,000 deaths; 1974, 7.2, 180 deaths; and 2007, 7.9, 8.0, 520 deaths (120 miles away from Lima). You know, after living all your life in a highly sismic region, growing up with relatively strong earthquakes around you, you may think you are somehow used to it and prepared.

Last night's 6.3 was located about 18 miles away from were we are spending these days, 15 miles depth. I don't feel able to describe how strong the movement was. Being with the spouse and three under-15 years old kids, feeling that strong movement, seeing all the tables, chairs, walls, floor, big glass windows, everything shaking, lights going away in the middle of the quake, feeling that maybe you, or your family may not be able to reach a safe place, the 20-seconds quake feels never-ending. So scary, don't ever take in account all the years of preparation for such a situation.

I used to think 5.0 earthquakes were almost nothing; and 6.0 are just about something. And the really important ones are 7.0+'s. Now, I don't want to be around a 6.3 again in my life. My 14-yrs old boy resumed it like this: "when the lights went out and I was so away from the door (about 15 feet away), I was convinced I wouldn't make it".

I was 12 years old in 1974, the biggest earthquake I ever felt. And it reminds me that we are aggregating risk and pressure under our ground. The day earth frees al that energy, we will be in BIG trouble.

Kind regards from Peru.

Every so often, it's worth reviewing two important items:  First is food and water for two weeks of minimalist living since an earthquake may ruin water lines and such and a gallon per person per day is minimal - add more for cooking.  Calories aren't as important, but water is something most people can't go without for more than 48- hours, often less, since Americans tend to be chronically dehydrated.

The other thing to review is the ongoing discussion / debate in emergency circles over whether to look for a Triangle of Life or head for a doorway...a discussion of the debate is in Wikipedia here.

Trust you have tagged February 7th for the Great Central US Shakeout?  Universe telling me I need a little exercise?

Tuesday at the WuJo

Not a time slip, but here's a reader adventure involving a door that shouldn't have let the dog in..

George, I really hope to keep this short damn it. I sent an email a while back about an odd grasshopper and have wanted to email again to tell you of another prior experience but had not had the freedom to do so. Well tonight I am back in the WuJo and I firmly believe many more people are stepping in to this school I've been attending for a long time. Here is where it is hard to keep it short. I say that I've been in this school for a long time because I have/do study this stuff, not in books but in real life. In summary, I know how MY soul/spirit responds and feels inwardly and outwardly and can move it out to other areas if I so desire. I also know my physical body and am gifted with many attributes that are discovered only once effort and usage is applied. Only as of late have I ever been subjected to an outward force that affects both my spirit and body at the same time on a level that I do not have a clue about. The unfamiliar and unaccounted noises or hums heard around the world right now I heard and felt more than a year ago for about 4 months straight and that is when it started for me. Near as I can tell the low frequency vibrations and the outward force moving upon us that I feel more and more every day are one and the same. Many people I know can feel it, something, ominous and right on time. I can imagine the old evangelical churches and pastors I used to know so well are jumping up and down twice a week, I only wish they would, ahh never mind..

So for today's lesson… I walked inside past my not feeling well spouse who is asleep on the couch complete with hot pad and blanket, and up the stairs of our wooden floor home and stopped in the mirror to admire my shabby beard when I heard the home alarm beep as it does when a door is open, the scrape of the door sweep across the kitchen tile floor and the creek of the hinges. Nothing..then pitter patter across the floor, one of our 100 pound dogs has pushed his way inside. So I think well I guess I did not close the door good and I should get down there now to close the door since it had to be wide open based upon how long the scrape sound lasted and the fact that I did not hear it reverse or the door close. As I do I hear the dog settle in as he circles before thudding himself on the floor. There he is guarding the wife as he should and she is in the same position, same foot out of the blanket and hot pad in place. She is deep asleep. I turn the corner to the kitchen door and the door is firmly closed! I walk up to it and pull the handle, it is latched! Someone had to close it and it is possible my dog or wife did but the odds are very very slim. You see the house, floor and door are all very noisy with all wood and tile on pier and beam with no insulation underneath. Where I was upstairs is right in line with the stair case and all sounds from downstairs can be heard very easily. I would have heard my wife move off the couch, walk across the house, the scrape of the door sweep followed by the door slam. Or had the dog closed it when he came in I would have heard the sweep and slam since that is the only way to get the latch to secure..Well the rest of the doors are locked and my dogs do not come in and out as they wish, only when invited, question is who invited him in tonight and how did they close the door without making a sound? And how long was I looking at my beard?

The previous WuJo experience isn't a time slip but WuJo for sure. I took my laptop apart to attempt a repair and if you have ever seen some of the screws that are in small electronics you know that some are about the diameter of small paper clip. During reassembly something very odd happened and I have to explain how I use the screwdriver so it makes sense. I point the tip of the Phillips screwdriver up and place the screw on the end. Then I place my index finger along the side of the screw touching both the driver and screw, effectively holding the screw in place. The I use my index finger as a pointer and easily place the screw into the ever so small holes. well about an hour into reassembly I pointed my finger and screwdriver down at a hole and the screw fell off and landed directly in the hole and was perfectly centered. I thought it was cool because I was about 12 inches above the laptop and luck was on my side. Shortly after that it happened again only this time my finger was not pointed at the hole where the screw fell, it seemed to bounce off the plastic and somehow landed perfectly centered. Here is the really neat part. The screw holes are labeled and I was pointing to the wrong type of hole but the screw fell into the correct type of hole. I nearly crapped my pants, went inside and demanded that my wife come out and allow me to show her what happened. She came out side and I went through the explanation just like I have done here, showing her how I use the tool and how it happen. Wouldn’t you know it, IT HAPPEN AGAIN with another twist. When the screw fell off I was not pointed down at the laptop I was moving my hands, screw at the ready, horizontally towards the laptop. As if I flicked the screw, it sort of jumped off of the screwdriver into the proper hole again pointing up and perfectly centered. I imagine that one of two things is true, either I am really good with my tools or the screws knew where they were supposed to go. Then again maybe it is the WuJo school paying off and this is just a glimpse of how mankind might perform when operating above this level of consciousness/reality.

I had a run-in with the WuJo myself, this week:  I was looking for a bottle of a particular vitamin I take - and I went through all the usual places for it.  Elaine came up with a great way to organize our vitamins in the pantry - she got a new shoe holder - you know, one of those things that holds shoes, made of clear plastic and hangs on a door?  Well they work great for all kinds of organizing tasks!  Like cup of Noodles, dry this and thats, and in this case, vitamins.

So I patiently and carefully inspected the contents of the pantry organizer and no vitamins!

Disgusted that we'd run out, I went over to my office and started work after asking the semi-sleeping Elaine if she had seen them. She told me they were where I had already (quite meticulously) looked.  "No, they're not there..."

I come back a half hour later, and there, sitting on the kitchen counter where they weren't before were the vitamins.  Inquiring, E told me they were right where they were supposed to be and she remembered seeing them.

Having been though the organizer in a most thorough manner, I'll be danged if they were... I'd swear on a stack of bibles, or whatever else you want:  They weren't.

Fortunately, I have had enough of this kind of thing happen, so like the screws reported by the reader, it just takes the right person remembering them, perhaps, to make them pop back into the reality track I think I'm on.

Still, no telling...although it's a clear-cut example of the dangers of taking vitamins, for sure.

TGA Maybe?

This reminds me of that reader report t'other morning about the young woman who "lost" several hours and woke up at home after being in college. We received this interesting email...

"Hi George

Sounds like transient global amnesia -- at least that was the diagnosis my neurologist gave me after multitudes of tests showed... nothing wrong. (a relief). I was sitting at my computer, late afternoon @4:30p, checking the traffic going north from Orange County, to see if it would make sense to meet my pilot cousin for dinner near LAX (I was to call him back). The next thing I know, it's dark outside. After 6. Where was I? What happened? Did I have a stroke? (I ran to the mirror to check my face, noting to self that if I were running, ... probably not). I had a vague sense of going to the kitchen for a glass of water during the blackout time.

The neurologist conveyed: it happens, usually only once, never in circumstances where the brain is truly engaged, but when it's in an "idle" state. Think of it like rebooting a computer -- takes awhile to rebuild. No ill effects, except I didn't trust me for awhile -- scary. Or... welcome to middle age (I'm not going to live forever?)

By the way, I noticed the humming over Christmas while I was visiting my sister in Mariposa (Sierra foothills). Her house sits on top of a granite dome. Seems to sync with the findings this morning. Interesting."

These scattered reports of TGA might account for who knows how many accidents, though.  Have to wonder about that, since a time when the brain is in "idle" might be a long cross-country airplane flight (which is why we have autopilots, I suppose) or long drives in autos across the country. Hmmm...what were we talking about?

Titanic Implications

Reader note about the Concordia disaster worth sharing:

Hi George,

Really enjoy your site, especially the wo jo section. I hope you will list out this fact about Costa Concordia. The CC sank just 3 months shy of 100 years in relation to the Titanic. So take 100 years - 3 months = 99 years & 9 months. Which upside down = 666. I do not believe this is just coincidence. As there has been suggestions that the Illuminati were involved in sinking of theTitanic too.

I figured this one myself, have not seen it listed elsewhere.

Thanks for sharing the number with us...er...so to speak.

Readings

Dennis Kingsley, author of The Struggle for Your Mind: Conscious Evolution and the Battle to Control How We Think (Amazon, $13) has launched a newsletter which you can sign up for at his website.  (lower right corner of the page)

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The whole world is going through an interesting "birthing" process of a real time mass consciousness via the internet and in a sense, the internet is like a big freeway:  The problem is should there be speed limits, licenses to drive, and soo forth?  Or, should the internet be a kind of mental autobahn - no limits?

Tough one, that...

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Meantime, if you want to read a savory 48-pages, my "designated smart guy" for the past dozen years, or so, has been Andrew Odlyzko at the University of Minnesota, but before that Bell Labs.  His papers are wonderful brainfood and yet this one "Charles Mackay’s own extraordinary popular delusions and the Railway Mania" (just updated a few days ago) is a real gem describing how humans tend toward the (wrong-headed) belief that someone it's going to be different this time.

Sorry, it's not as likely as the optimist in my would like to think. 

While Dennis and his colleague Ervin Laszlo (WorldShift 2012: Making Green Business, New Politics, and Higher Consciousness Work Together, Amazon) make a convincing case for the new and better world ahead, and I hope at a core level they are right, there's the convincing case by Odlyzko that people in the midst of manias can miss the point.

As I read the headlines every morning, it's not with the idea of "getting well-informed" so much as it is to see which team of high IQ genius types are going to  prevail....and the Greater/Second/Worst Depression have any happier an ending than the first?  Which was, in case you've forgotten, tons of human suffering and WW  II.

Anti-Gravity Research - 5% Success?

Oh...one more item:  Saturday in Peoplenomics, a report on my home anti-gravity experiments and how I appear to have reduced the weight of some objects by as much as 5.6%...maybe even run a short video of it.  Most interesting results...which is wonderfully exciting because a 5˝ percent reduction in gravity would translate to about 120-more pounds of capacity in our 2,200 gross weight airplane, or a an extension of our plane's range out past the 1,000 mile mark.

Credit to my friend Vince Cox of The Heritage Archives for pointing me down the right research path...magnets in opposition and the "b" field which is what Edward Leedskalnin somehow perfected down at the Coral Castle.

You don't really think out flight out to Palm Springs in November was for play, do you?  Anyway, that's coming Saturday.  Tomorrow more on my price channel charting methods and how this morning's Housing Report figures in that work...

Write when you break even: george@ure.net

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A Simple System of Investment

This is one of those Peoplenomics reports that we're going to forward to our kids so they can make a little money over the course of their lives if (and this is admittedly a big "if") the world hangs together in anything approaching its current form, after March-July of this year.  Even if it doesn't, the core idea, which distills down to "Look for a general trend and play that..." (with a chart technique explained) will likely reassert itself in human affairs - we all have similar software between the ears.  There are just too many cases where charts and cycles are semi-predictable.  What trends and how to use them?  We'll get to that after a romp through the headlines.

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 Safer Computing:  Swearing Off Cookies

It has been a while since I roared the praises of the Maxa Cookie Manager which you can download and install for a free test drive by clicking here.

To upgrade from the demo to full working is still less than $50 and one heck of a bargain at that, if I do say so.

I am a high-reliability computing kind of guy - and near as I have it figured, the road to a hassle-free computing experience is (like flying an airplane) a matter of going through a proper checklist before popping onto the web:

• You need an active cookie manager - because sites you visit can put small bits of code on your computer and some of these are designed for Flash, have no expiration, and can really bugger-up the computing experience.  This part gets handled by Maxa Labs' product which on my system says 184,380 cookies have been removed, 73,881 "web bugs" which can track movement from site to site and such, and I have only 10-active cookies.

• Second thing you need is a good antivirus program - and I happen to really like Avira's Antivir pro.

• Then you need to deal with Malware  so for this Malware bytes is updated and run daily.

• And last, though certainly not least is the firewall and the one in Win 7 works fine.

Like anything in computers, updates are critical so before work every morning, the computer does its update ritual - Check of Maxa (5.3.02 is current) Avira, and Malware bytes. 

Toss in a good bit of common sense (example:  Don't open email purporting to be from UPS, IRS, the US Post Office, or anything else that even has a hint of fishy odor to it) and first thing you know, the internet's actually a useful tool.

"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.

Do Tell

Please pass along word of this site to your friends by simply clicking here to send 'em a short email.  - Thanks!

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Last week's report is always here.

Monday January 30, 2012

The One Number that Matters

We burrow into another Monday with all the zest and vigor of an aged and lame elephant, since plodding along slowly with a few investments and slow decision-making seems to work.  Still holding to our gold decision (2001) and silver (2005) and bonds (2009) which thanks to the Fed last week announcing free money, or something near it until 2014 means we may not have to make any further decisions until later in the year after we see what March brings in the way of wars and such.

Meantime, however, Economist's Disease is having one of its Herpes-like flare-up since this is the week of Big Numbers.

Tomorrow we'll get the Housing report from Case Shiller/S&P and while working on our ongoing discussion of price channel technique for Peoplenomics subscribers Wednesday, a "quickie" chart of housing price channels is at least somewhat depressing, in that we're in what looks like a heavy downturn and it will take a miracle report tomorrow to convince me there's any reason to think the housing bubble isn't still somewhere around mid burst:

I'll show more details about where this leads in Wednesday's Peoplenomics report, as I continue my "How to construct price channels and what to do with them once built" discussion, not to mention how to construct the probable outcome of the above chart by applying dash of Elliott wave theory rules to the already obvious decline.  By doing this, we hope to answer one of mankind's most perplexing questions:  "How far is down?"

Even with a peek-a-boo rally over the red (dashed) trend line (unlikely as I read it), tomorrow's Housing number seems more likely to indicate a continued decline in prices, especially since last week's terrible housing start report which was down 7.3% from year earlier levels, although in fairness the error possibility was +/ 16.6% so maybe (we can hope) its all just one of those quirks of large numbers, like all the molecules in room ending up in one corner, which they do with some regularity every 85-90 quadrillion years, plus or minus a weekend on Long Island.

Why my focus on the Housing data?  Much as we keep thinking about moving closer to our kids (Washington state and Colorado, which makes Twin Falls (or Boise) Idaho attractive, we look at the dashed lines I've drawn on the Housing price chart, look at the backlog of foreclosures in the pipeline, and wonder if we will ever get to a meaningful bottom in Housing.

As usual on Housing Index Day, we will publish at our "regular time" and will then issue an update about 8:15 to 8:20 AM (Central) after I have a chance to get the press release and quickly digest it.

In some of the cruelest wryrony delivered by Universe this early in the week, we notice that even the well-intended works of Habitat for Humanity up in Ohio are running into tough times as 25 Habitat homes are nearing foreclosure, reports the Columbus Dispatch.

The Christian Science Monitor reports some activists of the Occupy Movement are considering targeting of the foreclosure process, and we wonder if some language descriptors unfilled from several years back in the predictive linguistics might not year arise, in particularly one I've labeled 10XCSN..but we shall see as the year unfolds.

You did see Matt Taibbi's latest?

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Housing is not the "only number that matters" this week.  A pretty good case can be made that today's personal income and expenditure report, including the alleged "savings rate" (always good for a chuckle) might qualify.  To give your monkey-mind something to go with the Cheerios, consider this:

Personal income increased $61.3 billion, or 0.5 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $47.1 billion, or 0.4 percent, in December, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) decreased $2.0 billion, or less than 0.1 percent. In November, personal income increased $7.4 billion, or 0.1 percent, DPI decreased $4.1 billion, or less than 0.1 percent, and PCE increased $11.4 billion, or 0.1 percent, based on revised estimates.

Real disposable income increased 0.3 percent in December, in contrast to a decrease of less than 0.1 percent in November. Real PCE decreased 0.1 percent, in contrast to an increase of 0.1 percent.

And the Savings Rate?

"The personal saving rate -- personal saving as a percentage of disposable income -- was 4.0 percent in December, compared with 3.5 percent in November."

So, let me see...people saved more money over the month Christmas occurred?  Don't know about you, but this one ain't passing my "smell test." 

Oh, but wait, what's this little bit in the fine print?

Real PCE -- PCE adjusted to remove price changes -- decreased 0.1 percent in December, in contrast to an increase of 0.1 percent in November.

Oh...

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That leaves only the Consumer Confidence numbers at mid morning Tuesday along with the ADP and Challenger job numbers which should be a nice Bernankenaise Sauce to serve over Friday's Unemployment Report. the utter collapse of the Baltic Dry shipping index to 726 just about guarantees us further deflation is yet to come.

Since the Baltic Dry tends to lead the market by some months we expect to profit from the likely decline (again) but as usual, this is not investment advice.  I've evolved a certain set of tools to go with the outputs from the "rickety time machine" but additionally, you might want to include a set of socket wrenches, rosary beads, and some darts in your investment-picking toolkit.

All of which has me looking at selling gold, which is down this morning as the rest of the world seems to be grasping straws trying to find direction and hope.  Or, search for what we call around here: "The One Number that Matters."

Fear, Loathing, and the NWO Failure

Stock futures are off to a great start this morning, that is, if like me, you've been quietly accumulating a decent bearish position.  Dow was down 75 points on the futures when I looked, but that's only a taste of what the real decline will be once it gets underway.

In case you're not comprehending (and that's OK, it's Monday and it's early...) the Global Libretto reads like this:

• NWO seizes a whole region (Europe) by installing a layer of government which is not responsive to one set of humans, a kind of model of how their NWO one-world government was supposed to work.

• Unfortunately, it didn't go well, since those nations which were not already bankrupt are now being dragged kicking and screaming into it.

• After a lot of abuse, it looks like Greece will be the first real NWO coup victim, as essentially the EU is trying to take over the direct running of Greece which is not sitting well with Greek nationalists/patriots/independents/ and NWO-haters.

There...now that we're clear on that, markets are nervous, not sure if the EU will be able to take over the financial reins of Greece so the markets are down.

Reports that EU confidence (emphasis on the con part) is higher after a 10-month dive, are noticing that Italy is still an exception and I expect that you're aware of the grassroots anger toward Rome, the burdens of excess taxation to "feed the machine" and all that.

The fine distinction between how the corporate takedown of Greece is happening (versus how it was pulled off here) seems to my cynical eyes like Greece's lack of Washington law firms and lobbyists to act as bagmen... 

From the corporatist super-state perspective, these economic beatings are really for Greece's (and anyone else who dares think independently) own good, you understand...  Which is why the Second/Greatest Depression shows up:  War by other means.

Tromping Tweedle Dum

Mitt Romney's change of tactics seems to put him out front of Tweedle house speaker.

If you're wondering, Herman Cain was part of the king's horses, was among those trying to put Tweedle back together again this weekend. 

What we're left wondering is whether Cain's endorsement (or perhaps Sarah Palin's) was the "kiss of death" in Florida polls?  Or, perhaps voters are just seeing support of Newt as the political establishment self-sorting for us.

Regardless, the further ahead Romney gets, the more we worry about great misfortune for him, since the political machine tends to be a spiteful, sore a sore loser.

Taming the Ruling Class

You did see where a bill which would have required drug testing of welfare recipients in Indiana has been scuttled since being amended to include our favorite class of crack-monkeys:  legislators.

Now, if we could just ban Washington lawmaker travel on anything but coach and no first class lines for security, we'd be moving in the direction of egalitarianism.

It's never happen, of course, despite the claim that America is a land where equality rules.  Some are still more equal than others.

March to War, Department

So, as we continue falling into the linguistic gravity well of March, we notice that the Arab League has pulled its mission to Syria.  There are plenty of better vacation spots I can think of that are safer including Ciudad Juarez and Compton, just to mention a couple.

My Sanction is Bigger than Your Sanction

Let's see here:  WSJ reports the Reserve Bank of India is trying to find workaround to keep buying oil from Iran.  There's been talk gold might be used.

South Korea is looking for alternatives, too, says this VOA report.

And Russia is saying that the EU ban on Iranian oil is counterproductive.  Not that it matters, since Iran is saying it will halt some oil exports, soon, too...a kind of one-downsmanship.  (That's the reciprocal of one-upsmanship...)

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Meantime, Debka reports the US is delaying decommissioning of the marine helo carrier USS Ponce until after we get through the spring danger window...

Bank Wars

You do know there's a kind of economic war going on between secret Swiss banking advocates and the tax authorities in the US, right?  An interesting update to that over here.

Space Goat Farts

Speaking of the Baltic, though this time in non-economic terms, did you happen to catch the CNN "Saturday Night Mysteries" segment (which is already on YouTube here) about the possible discovery of a flying saucer on the ocean floor?

Now, if they could just get film crews into the Russian and US bases which are racing to get at what's down in Lake Vostok and the mascon there, we'd have some first-rate grist for the sci-fi mill.

More after this: 

Coping:   Web Bot Runs:  FRH2020

Delayed by the snowstorm up in the Pacific Northwest which brought down internet connectivity at Clif's place for more than a week, the latest data set should be available for download later today from his site, so check back later on and the link should be working.

A word is perhaps warranted to explain the odd name of this report:  Future Recent History (from the perspective of) 2020.

Just so we're clear on the naming conventions and what they mean, let's go through this as there is some underlying logic to it.

• The original reports on the technique were simply done as dispatches which I posted here on the UrbanSurvival site in 2001 (pre 9/11) and on through the anthrax attack and so forth.

• Clif then began to publish the ALTA reports, meaning Asymmetric Language Trend Analysis  which were very detailed reports covering all entities in modelspace and which usually ran anywhere from 50 to maybe 100 pages.

• Recently, however, as we got close to the "data gap" period we're in, which seems to be coming in March as "too many things happen at once" in modelspace, what had been analysis of the "smoothly unfolding future" stopped being smooth since we have this huge bulge in language coming in March.  So since there was this "wall" in the data, the reports changed name and became (after H.G. Wells reference)  The Shape of Things to Come reports,

• Now, this left the project in a bit of a bind, since there is so much crap  that's going to be happening from (roughly March 2 (+/- 3 days) into the summer, and then we sputter off into the future at a vastly different level than current ways of living, so Clif spent some hundreds of hours building a set of filters (and views in processing) to "tunnel through" this March to mid summer crap, and get a look at what language changes exist out into the far/distant future.

So that's the evolution of the Future Recent History: 2020 report.  Should be available later on this morning...

Monday at the WuJo

#1  That Mysterious Hum

OK, so Clif's been watching the spiders returning snips on this and that, and you know that humming noise which has been heard all over the world lately?

"...looks like an emp source meter in belgium has captured the 'wave' of the sounds as they appear and they are coming from the earth as a distorting wave through the granite. Thus the reason as to the 'where' that the sounds appear...over and in granite rocky outcropings or such geology. The idea is that the earth is shifting in space and the inner core is groaning relative to the mantle...so far no thoughts of a crustal shift, and no  neutrino's involved, just the whole  fucking planet moving....

This is  the planet moving into our new position relative to the sun. Good news for us, as we will have better gardens up here, but bad news for george ure as it will be very much more equitorial there. Plus i get near mediterreanan conditions (in a dozen years) here in the much more full puget sound.

wow the woo woo is flowing fast...."

No kidding it is...and speaking of Texas conditions and such, you did see the final numbers for the dry weather driven forest fires down here?  Just a shade under 4-million acres worth.

Toss in millions of trees dead and dying from the drought last year (we have some that we have to take down out here at the ranch) and you have a prescription for an even worse fire year in 2012.  Prayers for rain don't seem to be working too well.  May have to look at building a few cloud busters.  Keeps things properly orgonized, lol...

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Speaking of faster woo-woo/ WuJo circulating, try this one

"George,

I am pretty concrete, and prefer to exercise Occam’s Razor first. Still, as a hypnotist, I've hypnotized a lot of sane people and have become convinced that they had had some kind of mystical of abduction experience that they didn't generate with their own minds – whether the abduction was physical or not.

I myself don't have a lot of non-ordinary experience. There are unexplained bangs around the house occasionally, and I woke up one night feeling like someone had been sitting on my chest.

Also, I have ADD. This means that I misplace things and can't find them. 30 seconds later. Sometimes I have to engage others, and they usually find them. Sometimes I find them much later, right where I had left them. However, the other night I was alone at home, using my good folding knife to open an old TV remote, just to find out how it's made. I got it open and left the knife in my lap. I stood up. A while later, I couldn't find the knife anywhere. It's been four or five days, and I think the thing is gone.

My friend just told me a story about his friends who dropped a pencil once, and they couldn't find it. Five years later, the same pencil hit the floor near them.

As concrete and scientific as I am, I think that Something Unknown is doing we don’t know what.

Yeah, no kidding.  And just to make the case, how about a Monday morning serving of "missing time"?  This from a serious medical type in the L.A. area late last week:

"Hey George!

Last night I get this 5'9 140lb 21yr old white female through the ED for a Stroke workup. She had two hours of missing time! She said she left class with her homework done but instead of leaving it she took it back home along with her back pack and boarded Cal-trans on her 2hr trip. She said to me she could not remember leaving school and getting on the train back and reaching her house. She said she got spooked when she awoke? on her couch and not in school. No drinking or drugs were used since she had to be @ school early. Her teacher said that he thought she was going for a bathroom break but never returned. They called campus police and eventually her mother found her sitting on the couch with a pale look on her face. She said she is happy that somehow she made that whole journey back safe and sound.

Did not see any evidence of stroke on her MRI but than again it could be anything.

Yeah...like those shadow people crossing....and on that, you did know Travis Walton (of Fire in the Sky fame) was on CoastToCoastAM with George Knapp hosting last night?  Might want to catch that podcast..

Mythbusters Busted By Banksters?

You ever wonder why Myth Busters hasn't ever done a serious RFID tracking chip story following up?  Here's the lowdown in case you missed it on YouTube. Fine example the power of corporations.

Another fine story on the public's right to know can be seen over here.

Around the Ranch:  Fancy of Flights

We have been tickled pink with the iFlyGPS we use in the plane (we have an Airmap 2000C for a back up).  Word is the guys at www.adventurepilot.com have an update in the works:  the iFly 720 is coming:  Wireless connectivity to our ADSB weather unit and sunlight readable.  Likely will get it next week...I'm in the beta program...

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Fine weekend in the ham shack, too:  Got my Hallicrafters HT-37 and SX-122 playing (after a good alignment).  Nothing quite matches that hot dusty/Bakelite smell off old tube type radio gear.

More tomorrow...  enjoy the crop and being a bear works some days better than others.  This promises to be one where it works...

Write when you break even: george@ure.net

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A Simple System of Investment

This is one of those Peoplenomics reports that we're going to forward to our kids so they can make a little money over the course of their lives if (and this is admittedly a big "if") the world hangs together in anything approaching its current form, after March-July of this year.  Even if it doesn't, the core idea, which distills down to "Look for a general trend and play that..." (with a chart technique explained) will likely reassert itself in human affairs - we all have similar software between the ears.  There are just too many cases where charts and cycles are semi-predictable.  What trends and how to use them?  We'll get to that after a romp through the headlines.

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 Safer Computing:  Swearing Off Cookies

It has been a while since I roared the praises of the Maxa Cookie Manager which you can download and install for a free test drive by clicking here.

To upgrade from the demo to full working is still less than $50 and one heck of a bargain at that, if I do say so.

I am a high-reliability computing kind of guy - and near as I have it figured, the road to a hassle-free computing experience is (like flying an airplane) a matter of going through a proper checklist before popping onto the web:

• You need an active cookie manager - because sites you visit can put small bits of code on your computer and some of these are designed for Flash, have no expiration, and can really bugger-up the computing experience.  This part gets handled by Maxa Labs' product which on my system says 184,380 cookies have been removed, 73,881 "web bugs" which can track movement from site to site and such, and I have only 10-active cookies.

• Second thing you need is a good antivirus program - and I happen to really like Avira's Antivir pro.

• Then you need to deal with Malware  so for this Malware bytes is updated and run daily.

• And last, though certainly not least is the firewall and the one in Win 7 works fine.

Like anything in computers, updates are critical so before work every morning, the computer does its update ritual - Check of Maxa (5.3.02 is current) Avira, and Malware bytes. 

Toss in a good bit of common sense (example:  Don't open email purporting to be from UPS, IRS, the US Post Office, or anything else that even has a hint of fishy odor to it) and first thing you know, the internet's actually a useful tool.

"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.

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Last week's report is always here.