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Financial outlook by the People's Economist of www.urbansurvival.com:
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May 16, 2012 Helicopter Ben, "Terrorism," or Global Revaluation? A lot of people called him "helicopter Ben" when Fed boss Ben Bernanke referred (2002) to dropping money out of helicopters in order to stave off massive deflation which is one of the hallmarks of economic depressions. Inflation is something people can deal with, however grudgingly. But deflation is a mighty dangerous beast and as you'll see in this morning's analysis, central banks worldwide might want to start running pre-flights on their choppers, since Global Depression's confirmation in the charts is (as we'll show you) very nearly upon us. After a few headlines of the day, of course. Then we'll put some MegaCrash dates up in case the helicopters don't get up in time. We might even speculate that if helicopters don't work, terrorism could provide another last-ditch employment and economic stimulus needed to postpone a worse-than-the-1930's event that would come with a global derivatives collapse.
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May 14, 2012 A Personal Market Note If you are a serious investor, or just trying to hang onto your retirement fund, you may be amused by my latest move...
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May 12, 2012 The Coward's Guide to Tough Markets America is in tough times - and they are about to get worse, despite all the hype and campaign promises that one can hear in the run-up to the elections. But the fact is that although times are tough there are still plenty of opportunities to preserve capital - and maybe even make a buck or two - by playing the markets (and that includes retirement funds) smart. This morning we'll offer some thoughts on the coming decision point for markets as we briefly review Henry George's way of seeing things and how that matters in today's world. First, though, a few overnight headlines...
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May 9, 2012 When to Go Long? (Vicksburg, MS) We have two major scenarios to ponder this morning about where markets will go over the next year, or so. Not that we care much about them per se, but our nest egg protection team (NEPT) has been eyeing things including the recent weakness in gold which is under the $1,600 level. So this morning's project here on the banks of the Mississippi is to sort through some of the confusing signs and see if there are some common sense moves available. After we check out the overnight news flow for recent hints, that is.....and some dark thoughts on the chances of a Second Civil War in the US.
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May 5, 2012 New Battles for Internet Supremacy (Macon, GA) "What does a columnist's conference have to do with the future of banking, commerce, and how people live in the world today?" you could well be wondering to yourself. Well, as we'll discuss here this morning, the whole point of going to a professional conference is to add to one's personal recipe book; that composite model we each carry aroundf in our heads that let's us figure on the fly how everything fits together twhich - in turn -allows us to spot opportunity. These, on occasion, can be used to great financial advantage, or at least to help steer clear of potential pitfalls. Interesting stuff which we'll get to after we parade a few early headlines.
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May 2, 2012 What Will Save America? (Vicksburg, MS) We had a fair bit of time to think coming east from Palestine to the our writing convention in Georgia which kicks off tomorrow and one of the big questions to ask was "Where does America go next?" as we flew over the rich ag lands of Louisiana. What is it that will drive the next round of growth once we get into 2015 and beyond if, as promised by the president in his travels, we really hit the troop drawdowns in the Afghan corner of the sandbox by 2014? The answer is hard to nail down, but we've got a hammer and attitude... after, as usual, we trip through the headlines a bit.
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April 28, 2012 A High Beta Investment System It has been a while since we have discussed high beta investment systems, but with the market more or less stuck in "boring" maybe we should see if there's a way to play it, shall we? But not, of course, before tromping through some of the headlines that will push markets around next week, Still, it's the poking around looking for new and different ways to make money (or hold onto value so you've got a little something for a rainy day) which is fun. Think of it has entry-level forensic economics...
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April 25, 2012 Why 15.3937577 is the ONLY Number that Matters What is the most important number in America right now? The $150,000 bail in the Zimmerman case? Whoever is batting .400 or better in the National League? The President's golf score? The number of times Newt Gingrich can turn a deaf ear to "No more professional politicians!"? The price of gold? How much your tax refund is for (if that's not an imaginary number...). Well, fact is, near as I can figure it is none of these holds a candle to 15.3937577 for reasons we'll get into in a minute. But first we roll through some headlines, so as to keep up an air of journalistic respectability before launching off into economic theory land.
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April 21, 2012 Decision-Time For Markets Next Week Are global markets out of the woods for a while, since the Spanish bond sale this week didn't result in the gates of hell opening? No, not hardly, and so in the ChartPack this morning we'll try to discern what's going on. Then, in the Coping section, some discussion of the real public service work involved in ham radio as we look at incident management and how to get more involved volunteering to help in community disaster response planning. Coffee ready? Let's start with an odd-ball story and see where it leads us, shall we?
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April 18, 2012 The Retirement Planning & Preservation Problem Elaine and I have been eyeing a very difficult problem - the ugly one spelled out over at the Strategic Living site this morning...that being whether people have lost the ability to retire, because it seems to me like we're not getting much closer to "the Dream." Worse, and as I spell out in "Working to Death" the numbers seem to be pointing toward a future where working to 70 - and well beyond - seems to be peeking out of the data. The role of Peoplenomics is "OK, what do we do about it?" We'll start tackling that one this morning with a few "get-started" thoughts, but this is a "toughie." Now, on to the earthquake problem where something new has popped up:
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April 14, 2012 A Round of Financial Golf I've been looking for a way to teach personal finance lately, because our kids - like so many today - don't have much of a grubstake to get started with. So this morning I decided to put events into a much more accessible context - playing a round of "financial golf." Of course, like all golfers, we'll be focused before teeing off on the Rules of the Game and surprisingly, the golf metaphor works out nicely.
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April 11, 2012 Double Trouble Wednesday Markets at the brink and two major quakes... Enjoy this morning's rally while you can when US markets open. The Global Depression may be game on and if it it, it should become evident in the US/West in coming weeks. This morning we assess what some of our indicators are telling us, and if this may be a good time to get really defensive in order to minimize your family's upset quotient. We also roll out a new tool for timing such trade. Then, after sizing up those two massive earthquakes in the South Pacific, well consider the question of whether the web bot March danger window was merely a month early in its timing....
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April 7, 2012 The "Flip-Side" of Virtual In Wednesday's report on the future of virtual reality glasses, a new technology which I think had pretty good potential to "pop" (standing 10-feet from a virtual 102" screen is pretty snazzy stuff) which qualifies it as one of our serial get-rich-slowly paths, which usually seems to take years instead of days, but that's another matter. What matters this morning is that as a friend (Oilman2) told me this week, there's a really horrible side of virtual and he's been kind enough to share details of how virtual is getting ready to start whacking jobs down in the oil patch. As usual, before we wade into the grim, we can recap the market and some of the major week ending headlines to see where that points...
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April 4, 2012 Visions of Virtualized Housing We were working on research this week for an upcoming article on the Strategic Living site (should be up about April 29) but what was amazing is it triggered some fascinating concepts about how far "home virtualization" could be taken. So this morning - after the usual dissecting of the markets and such, we will peer into the future because I'm becoming more and more convinced, just like old man tipped the kid in the movie "The Graduate" - "Plastics!" - I'm only gonna say this softly so we all have time to cash in on it: "Shhh! Virtualization!"
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March 31, 2012 Trouble Wave Trayvon Martin is not the only problem to crop up in America in recent weeks, although certainly one of the most visible. Yet there is other evidence becoming visible of "sand in the gearbox" that could indeed lead coming months to be the "summer from hell." In addition to unveiling some of theses none-too-cheery prospects, which could lead in to a "summer of hell" being this year, we'll take our usual look at the news will set a lot of this into perspective, so more coffee and seat belts, please.
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March 28, 2012 Rethinking Real Estate I'm not sure if the cats poured something in my coffee, or whether my natural sense of good humor and optimism is peaking through. But this morning I'm in a nearly bullish mood since one possible way to read the Tuesday housing report is that housing prices are stabilizing and that once the economic reality of Obama II and a few other realities begin to sink in, the stock market could be headed to new all-time highs. Or, I could be the classic marker of "Ure's gone bullish - Sell! Sell! Sell!" Before we go there, however, a stumble through a few headlines as a mood-setter is in order.
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March 24, 2012 Civilian Conservation Corps 2.0 Due to pressures of work (yada, yada) I don't think I spend enough time pointing out the ever-growing body of evidence that the USA is in (and has been sin 2000) in a Second Depression which by many measures is worse than the first. It's not apparent oftentimes because events which accompany economic collapse and unwinding have been spread out over time, so much. But sometimes I notice things which are almost totally "in your face" facts of a Great Depression return - like the current period's rerun of the Civilian Conservation Corps. But, before we roll back the curtain on this one, a tromp through some of the Friday headlines and a look ahead into what seems to be shaping up in our charts as a big downer. [May load slowly due to lots of graphics this week.]
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March 21, 2012 Did Planet X Arrive in 2002? This morning we discuss (in non-mathematical terms, but while looking at charts) what kind of declining response governments around the world are getting from their various prop-up efforts to keep the paper market afloat, while moves continue trying to stampede people (as in Sweden) into the cashless society. But, before we put on the lab coats and wander into the "clean room" of data, the dirty old headlines demand some attention first, especially that 188-189 day cycle of major earthquakes. Did something happen in 2002?
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March 17, 2012 Prospects: Heading Off Intergenerational Warfare Slipping by, in the wake of the evening news, there's something in the froth that has been bothering me for a long time. It's a sense of rising frustration and desperation in the voices of the under 35-crowd. I hear it from my kids - if I listen between the lines and loan requests - and I see it in the headlines, now that I know what I'm looking for. And it shows up in everything from voter demographics to the viral Kony vid to the report this week about kinds moving back in with their parents at rates not seen since the early 1950's. Does it have a peaceful, happy ending? But, before we get into that, we first need to romp through the morning's headlines and see if we can make at least a little sense out of the evermore irrational world around us...
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March 14, 2012 A Short Course in "Enterprising" I oftentimes get emails from people (though not subscribers) who deride me this way and that for having too much fun in life. "I don't want to hear about your gallivanting about in an airplane, going on trips, or how much money you're making on (this or that, fill in the blanks) because it's not what regular people do..." is the general tone of it. To which I decided to write a short learn-it-yourself course is how to be more motivated and enterprising so that at some point in life, you can have just as much fun (or more) than we have. But, before we go there, our first duty it to report on the news flow of the morning and then flip through the charts (where we explain who Newt looks like) before moving on to a much more important topic: How to be more "enterprising" in order to have an above average life....
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March 10, 2012 Rounding Up Luck Which event is changing the whole world into a new way of being? Is it KONY2012 or is it the Greek debt restructuring auction which will come on March 19th? Just a few of the things to ponder this morning - along with some much more practical work: A review of the ways some people (including me, at least experimentally) round up that elusive stuff called "Luck." With St. Patrick's Day showing up shortly, seems a fyne topic o' conversation....
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March 7, 2012 Last Minute Details With the end of "building tension" likely going on around us right now, we have a short (but very important) laundry list of items on this morning's agenda. We'll begin with the morning's productivity numbers, then look at the Dow which should bounce either 66 or 100-130 points shortly after the open in a predictable "dead cat bounce" but then we'll slide right into the discussion of the trend charting technique I showed you a couple of weeks back and consider what that portends for the future. After that, a smorgasbord of the usual monkeymind crap (productivity numbers, consumer debt this afternoon) and then we'll wind up with additional action-items including prepping for the DNS_Changer virus and a few important IP addresses to keep in touch with what's going on with my sites. Busy morning? Yes, and decidedly "fluff-free." It's almost like real work, except we fired the PC police and we can be straight with one-another about where all this heads...
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March 3, 2012 Chasing the Winds of Luck: Vernunftschlüsse We're off on a hunt this weekend to connect some dots on why some people are decidedly more lucky than others and to reframe some "givens" of modern society which have been brought into question by our old friend, the I-Ching inbox, which has an uncanny way of delivering just the right dose of information from related fields at precisely our moment of need to break into new realms of thinking. But, as usual, before getting into our discussion which ranges from UFOs to Zurich, to Jung, and the floor of the exchanges, we'll pick up the morning papers along the way to see what's happening outside the lab.
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February 29, 2012 Psyching Out Spring Friday morning, most people in the world will NOT realize that we have entered into "release language" in predictive linguistic work, yet as we assess the trends in plain view, there really has been a crescendo building process underway. That includes Markets, which is our focus, but other factors figure in, too, like gun sales (and sadly, use). So as part of our efforts to be well-informed and reasonably coherent, we'll take this news this morning and apply a little basic understanding of psychology since we're living in a world which may be clinically defined as crazy...and in the ChartPack we consider whether we're in a Big Rollover...
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February 25, 2012 Let's Make Some Money on War! Park those pesky morals and ethics at the door, kiddies and let's see if we can't make a few bucks on NuWar. Seeing as we're getting really close now to the predictive linguistics window when all kinds of things begin to happen all at once, a lot of readers looking at the tea leaves are figuring it probably means war in the Middle East. Judging by Friday's oil prices, that seems like what the oil traders are shooting for, too (and yes, bad pun intended). Before we completely sell our souls for paper and ink, however, a tromp through a couple of the morning's headlines...keep flash goggles ready, OK?
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February 22, 2012 Portrait of Market's Rolling Over? The "Going Into March Checklist" is only part of the fun today. We may be watching one of the coolest-ever market rollovers. And since we know that money can be made on the downside as well as the upside, the need for Tums is minimized. But along with that comes serious change this spring, so we haul out some old familiar tools...and admittedly, as high as we keep our state of readiness around here, we we nevertheless have a good-size list under the general heading "Re-Prepping" that needs to be polished off in the next week. We will also try to comprehend how coming events would be managed by our thinking tool (Directorate 153). Busy times are here. Not that we don't always have time for headlines and charts, although it's just possible that they won't encompass outliers to come...since no one's quite sure how global collapse is going to work out.
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February 18, 2012 Difficult March? Easy Prepping Although it's still hard to say how the game-changer period ahead (March-June) will ultimately finish, there are fresh "signs and portents" at every turn, and although most seem easy to prepare for, there are a number that are downright disconcerting. So today in addition to the quick run through the headlines, and a pointer to the www.strategic-living.net site where an article on "portable knowledge" will go up later this weekend, let's focus for now on what's before our eyes and understand how to prepare for whatever this way comes and we "Prepare the Ides of March."
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February 15, 2012 How to Eat a Book & Reinventing Chess As we sit around waiting for the (alleged) Consumer Prices report on Friday, I've had time this week to work on all three of the book's I'm writing at the same time, plus having enough time left over to write a daily column, play with the cat, and plan the upgrade the avionics package/wireless network on our old beater-that-flies airplane. Of all the work, though, none has been more satisfying to pursue than the thought-trail which began with Monday's UrbanSurvival report "Grand Master's Monday." It turns out to have dovetailed remarkably well with that book on life as a series of nested recipes or, if you're an old BASIC writer, it might be stated as Life is an endless string of nested GOSUB commands. Fine brainfood to be sure, but before we get into what I think might lead to breakthroughs in chess-playing ability, we stumble first into the mundane of the morning: our slog through the headlines which begin with Iran playing hardball on oil...
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February 11, 2012 Playing the Game of "Top-Calling" Over the past couple of weeks here, I've been explaining in step-by-step fashion how I use a simple price-channel system for making long-term market decisions. Although it comes with no guarantees, a look at its latest is worthwhile, especially for people who are in retirement systems which offer limited fund-switching. But, before we get into that let's have a romp through the news seeing first how our build-up to tensions in the Middle East is going but then considering the possibility that instead of war per se, we may simply be facing the Mother-of-All Crashes next month.
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February 8, 2012 Reading Ben and Timing War Say, there's a chipper and cheerful sounding side order to wolf down with breakfast this morning. I had an insight last night into how to read Ben Bernanke's Fed confessionals to Congress and we have lots of movement in the Middle East to ponder, plus the usual charts but before we get into that, how about another round of good old-fashioned divisive, us-against-them politics?
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February 4, 2012 A Real Anti-Gravity Effect? I'm very cautious about making claims which can't be substantiated, but this weekend we will delve into the world of anti-gravity briefly because while it is not economics, per se, it does have amazing implications for all of the world's economies should the effects documented herein turn out to be replicated by others, and oh yes, we've done that, too. And we will outline some further experiments after reviewing the work of Edward Leedskalnin (of Coral Castle fame) and showing you some of the results of my friend Vincent Cox who turned me on to the whole concept of "B-field" effects. But before going further, let's wander through the news flow and see if there's anything more than disaster and March and a wild rally on Wall Street based on a falling labor participation rate...
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February 1, 2012 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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January 28, 2011 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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January 25, 2012 HOAs as PTBs Psst...looking for the Powers That Be? They may be as close as your Homeowner's Association. This morning, after our usual tromp through the headlines and review of what the charts may (or may not) be telling us about the market, and what the Fed has in store this afternoon when Ben Bernanke holds his press conference, we're going to study the operation of the PTB a bit...and we'll show that even when the PTB are accessible and local, they are still prone to runaway power tripping. But first things first: Is the Baltic Dry Index telling us a huge decline is imminent?
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January 21, 2012 How Prepping is an Investment We already knew that being a "prepper" was a good thing in the event of sudden unemployment. But now we can add weather to the payoff list, too. That massive snowfall in Washington State has revealed some of the long-term payoffs from prepping. But, before we get into that, it looks like the birther issue is back, bank failures are on again, and we examine whether the stock market high close Friday at the end of options expiration week may be the high water mark for a while.
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January 18, 2012 Matters of Liberty Yes, Peoplenomics has its mid-week edition up per usual, despite "blackout day" in protest of the mis-named SOPA push by corpgov. The problem, as we'll outline it, is really related to competing methods of product distribution which has broken out into a legal skirmish...all because old ways of doing business aren't properly understood. But we'll get onto that right after a check of headlines and the rally in markets which is pressing up on Dow 12,500. Apparently, investors are expecting a large herd of "greater fools" to show up. Oh, and I explain why we should see the blow-off top in the market tomorrow...
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January 14, 2012 What Carries Value Forward? The Big question from a reader this morning is "Would you buy silver? and gosh, this gets into what as a b-school jock I'd call a serious multivariate problem. Serious because we are in such a sloppy world financial right now that whole categories of "variates" are coming at us from every which-way. And those might include? We start with our review of a few news items. Relax - it's like playing pool....my break and we're playin' slop....
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January 11, 2012 Goodbye, Survivalist Label? No, it doesn't mean we are "coming off the farm" and I'll go back into the mahogany-line foxholes up on the top floor of some corporate tower somewhere. But what it does mean is that there's a whole new way of thinking possible now - an evolution of the term "prepper" or "survivalist" into something new. We have turned onto the onramp that leads to developing a fifth order house or two from which to test-bed transitional economics into whatever it is that comes next. Next being what comes perhaps this year as the current system runs out of greater fools, to buy the bonds, to print the money, to tax the people, and buy that votes that live in the town that George built. Washington, not me. But like the off-stage announcer says, more after these headlines...and what better place to start than looking in our bird flu developments?
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January 7, 2012 Assessing the New Year With the parties and resolutions out of the way, we can begin the serious work of plotting a course through what promises to be a very difficult year in terms of Personal Destiny Management - which is our high-level label for this week. Some thoughts about the web bot run (back on due to reader demand and due in February) and some thoughts of others on what the year could hold. Plus, we do our annual assessment of what long-term inflation has been running on average since 1913, the year the Fed was founded. The answer is mighty interesting.
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January 4, 2012 Electile Dysfunction, Too Our penetrating insights are on the magical effects of Cashagra this morning, which did an absolute stand-out job in Iowa Tuesday. And besides getting close to some target levels in our ChartPack section, we will also have a discussion about how to best spend your money to buy and "education". Coffee at the ready? We examine swelling caused by a reaction to cash and high profile twits...
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December 31, 2011 Scenarios of 2012 As our last bit of serious noodling on the outlook for the year that starts at midnight tonight, I thought it would be instructive to run through some scenarios which have been kicking around. You know - test fit a few and see how they'd feel. But before we do that, we'll begin with a last check of the news events that will propel us into the first trading day of the year - next Tuesday [Monday being off for New Years] although it may be a week or three before the underlying trends assert themselves.
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December 28, 2012 Economic Survival in 2012 and Beyond In sports, this might be a "blocking and tackling" discussion, or perhaps in baseball it would be "the basics: swing, hit, and run." After a review of this morning's headlines and what ahead over the next few days, some perspective on the age-old problem and an attempt to answer "Why do we get up and go to work? Why are we doing this?" How to make & accumulate wealth in 2012.
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December 24, 2012 Annual Forecast Issue Part 2: Tall Tales in Housing In last week's report, we covered some of the major global "systems" and what a reasonable outlook would be for 2012. As we reported last week, since a very minor dip in the global derivatives market in 2009, we have since zoomed up to a US portion of global notional values just north of $247-trillion, which is just a shade under 16½ years if every single penny of US GDP were used to pay on a catastrophic "left field" event, such as global war, or planetary-level crisis. This week we focus on an equally large problem which is far more likely: The further meltdown of the real estate markets and how that could ripple into the financial sector, ending the world as we knew is this year, much sooner. So much so that by this time next year, we could meet our projection of a Dow under 2,000.
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December 21, 2011 Testing: "Sell The News" Axiom The old Wall Street axiom "But the rumor, sell the news" is our immediate subject of concern this morning as global markets keep sliding to the brink of oblivion, a rational response to the arrival of the bear sleigh (financial) packages which include a disappointing report from Oracle and a pending update to housing sales figures. Is it enough to change our strategic plans? In uncharacteristic brevity, we "line 'em up" for events teeing off around Winter Solstice (technically tomorrow) which will propel us into what threatens to be a bearish 2012.
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December 17, 2011 Annual Forecast Issue Part 1: The Tripwires of 2012 As we do every year about this time, we haul out the Carnac the Magnificent headgear and do our damnedest to come up with a reasonable strategy to cope with the year ahead. Although there will be an outline piece over at the www.strategic-living.net site as early as Sunday, the details on a sector-by-sector basis are something we hold closely for subscribers. Think of it as being invited to sit in the front seat as the car involved careens toward a brick wall. Now, label the brick wall "March 2012" and you should get some insight into what's ahead. This is Part One (or two) with Part 2 due next weekend, after we see the National Association of Realtors' sales revisions middle of next week. But we start with the hugely important Comptroller of the Currency report which boils down to Bankers haven't learned squat from the financial mess.
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December 14, 2011 POV School: The Placebo Effect Really Works Several sources have reported that about December 21, the National Association of Realtors will release revisions to home sales data going all the way back to 2007. No telling how large the revisions will be, but anecdotally several people in the real estate industry - and current home shoppers - have told us they, too, have noticed there's a gap between what was reported and the number of deals they've seen closed - something real estate agents all over the country tend to be painfully aware of during the holidays. It all swirls around this way - and that - in our morning news-blender this morning and what comes into focus is the need for a short course in "Point of Viewing" when reading news stories. Some examples of how POV works - and its implications for public policy and economics - after we wade through the usual flotsam and headlines.
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December 10, 2011 Time for a Houston/Seattle Political Party? "Hi, this is Newt Gingrich. Under president Obama...." It was Tuesday night and as I received this automated outbound telemarketing system call it sparked the answer to most of what ails America, and even most of Europe. Strangely, there actually may be a for non-millionaire humans to bring the political system back to heel - serving the people instead of corporate interests. But it will take consensus and a little work and maybe those rare commodities will doom it to failure. Oh, and maybe borrowing the franchise concept from the NBA....
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December 7, 2011 Gaming the New Depression A bit of Peoplenomics group effort will launch this morning, since the Second/Greater/New Depression is slowly been seeping into people's consciousness despite claims from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner who "sees encouraging progress in Europe." Not for a while, but my friend Gaye at www.backdoorsurvival.com who is recently back from unpublicized world travels on a big float-around, did some onboard polling of cruisers in the past couple of weeks and dug up an amazing statistic about the New Depression, which she'll write up in a couple of weeks...so be aware that's coming. But it's safe to say, based on her experiences, what's in Clif's bot run, and many of the longer term outlooks here that yes, D2 is upon us. This morning, we romp through the news and chart only to start the task of figuring what to actually DO about it. It may be easy to cheat Death, once in a while, but cheating economics? It's a bit harder, so we'll be pooling ideas on this one.
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December 3, 2011 Mirage Effect in Complex Economic Systems This weekend, we concern ourselves with the nasty bugger of a problem that arises within complex systems that we'll call the "systemic mirage." Which is to say that many of the items which could be read, seen, or thought of as "conspiratorial" in nature may be something else: The logical outcome of "actions at a distance" within complex systems. Sound boring yet? Maybe, but I wasn't sure how to put "A view which explains why reports of domestic concentration camps continue, why no one is in jail yet over MF Global, and why Ure's Semi-Constant had an epic fail this week into a headline that made any sense at all, although proposing a strange new pseudo-science of Quantum Economics did come to mind. In which case, our Semi-Constant may really have scored a major success in a paradoxical, quantum economics way.
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November 30, 2011 Got Stored Food? Are You a Terrorist? (Tucson, AZ) Several amazing stories to get into this morning, including the revelation that having more than seven days of food in your home my make you a terror suspect. Then we have the daily flip on the fortunes or Euro to contend with. But the long term perspective of greatest import is "When is it time to get back into real estate investing?" Dandy line up starting with...
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November 26, 2011 Broad Brush of the Future (Tacoma, WA.) Although short-term the fate of humans looks pretty grim, our meeting with Clif of www.halfpasthuman.com this week had a number of surprises not the least of which is an expected "turn of things for the better" in a few years. But, between now and then, lots of crap to wade through. What's more, while we await the release of the pending web bot run, there's a curious correspondence developing in our flow of emails which we'll highlight in part this morning as we review big news of items of the week...
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Novemberr 23, 2011 Big Picture Day: Why Dow 1,651 in 2012 is possible (Tacoma, WA.) We're are now well into the Second Depression and one of America's "traditional values" - the Thanksgiving Holiday Rally - looks to be in trouble as a falling outlook for the US and China seem to be conspiring to bring home the economic reality we've been warning of since the real top in the US Economy in 2000. From here, as data lines up, "it only gets worse." A few notes on how to hedge and what to avoid seem appropriate this coming weekend...but for now I'll get out my Carnac the Magnificent headgear and tell you I expect a surprisingly weak Christmas retail period and a truly dismal New Year. And Dow 1,651 in 2012.
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Noverm,ber 19, 2011 Is the Post Office Obsolete? (Morongo Casino, CA.) Boy, do we have a lot of ground to cover this morning: The usual tromp and trash of the daily headlines, then a look at the stock market charts and what it suggests about our future. And, sure, we will have another chapter in the "Coping Section" about what happens when a couple of nearly grown-ups take an old airplane and set off to travel arfound America. But, the most important part of this morning is to ask (as we do, every so often) the Big Questions. Like the one which has been vexing me since our departure: Is the Post Office obsolete? First, though, an off-planet look at today's headlines...as I present today's whole report as an episode of Star Fleet character intereactions in an effort to make the "same old news" a little fresher and up to date. Data?
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ovember 16, 2011 Looking for the Next Gold Rush Before we get into this morning's "focus" piece, a few comments about the overnight news reports, our usual "flip and cynical" commentary on news hysterics and distractions, and sure, let's toss in lousy politicians while we're at it. But the real focus here sometimes sneaks up on practical advice and there's a good bit of that to follow, perhaps because we plan to fly over Gold Rush country on our trip...which flight briefers seem to think may actually happen this morning. But first, the headlines and we'll see how far the "Wednesday Wedgie" could go...
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November 12, 2011 Taste-Testng "Secret Sauce" Economists, turns out, have a lot in common with the venerable Arctic Circle Drive-In chain, founded back in 1950 by Don Edwards and now operating about 70-franchises in mainly Utah and Idaho. Until recently, I hadn't understood the importance of "Secret Sauce". Back when there was an AC in Aberdeen, Washington, I had my first encounter with Secret Sauce (with fries) but after 40+ years in business and management, I see how "secret sauce" has become one of those widely-borrowed concepts. Especially in Politics and Economics, as we shall explore this morning as we update "Ure's Semi-Constant." Sorry if this gets a little "too mathy" this morning, but sometimes a little math means a little money. If you hate math there's our usual assortment of "news viewed cynically" and more on our "Half Around America" flight which begins next week.
November 9, 2011 Europe, News Media, Currency Affairs The Hair-Trigger is now in motion: Although when we looked this morning, the markets in Europe were down a bit (OK, more than one percent, then) on the latest zig-sag in the "balance of idiots" game, we nevertheless may be seeing something much more nefarious going on: The global push for a layer of "un-elected" government, which schematically is like the global body politic "giving birth to a new layer of the cake." Which, and we'll explain, is a major challenge - if not outright death knell - for freedom worldwide. But first we discuss "Ure's Semi-Constant" which explains why the Dow should close between 12,025 and 11,953 today if the Dollar/Euro ratio ends at 0.7310.
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November 5, 2011 Special Update as of 09:30 AM Saturday 11/5/2011 Knowledge Engineering for the End of the World After our usual dance through the morning headlines and review of the week's charts we'll be off with our usual light-hearted look at something related to the longer term prospects. In today's case, it's knowledge engineering for the end of the world. Say what? Yeah, strange how many people prep for "the usual" (gun, grub, and gold) but forget that the whole point of surviving [come what may] is not simply to die after everyone else, but to get the world back rolling in a positive direction [if the survivors leave anyone alive]. But first, the economic week in perspective....including the possibility of a nuclear Monday for metals...
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November 2, 2011 Riding the "News Wave" Anyone who has been reading this column, or Clif's Shape of Things to Come reports is has no doubt figured that what we've called the "{Global Mind F***}" certainly bears at least an initial resemblance to the dying 900 pound gorilla MF Global. If you figured that out without coaching and coffee, award yourself a gold star and take an extra 10-minutes at lunch, although admittedly, initial coincidences like this happen frequently around here. We're only pausing briefly on the economic mountainside though and then we ought to be hitting the slopes again. A fine time, indeed, to be clearing the decks and making sure of what? Last minute preps, of course! First up, though, our usual assortment of charts and wry commentary as in this morning's report you get to peak over the news editor's shoulder and look at "news" decision-making in progress...
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October 29, 2011 The Great "American Divide" In its role of sorting our various socioeconomic issues, we occasionally afford ourselves a kind of "kick it" weekend where we roll around a number of topics and then mull the overarching trends, which we can then extend to see if there are any obvious intersections ahead in the future which we ought to be making plans for. A time to "Duck!" We do this because while we can't individually do much do much about the future, we can maintain a high freedom of response by keeping our eyes focused on something other than mainstream pap.
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October 26, 2011 Europe's Cloudy Outlook We begin this morning by noting that the leaders of the EU are still at it - trying to work out a "last minute" deal to bail out Greece. If Greece were the only problem, things would be much easier, but it's not. There are problems of Italy yet to be fully resolved and still more problems lurk. Despite this, as we'll see in a moment, the world's stock markets seem to be under the impression that something will be worked out. But whether that's wild-eyed optimism, or a reasonable assembly of facts deserves further inspection.
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October 25, 2011 Special Update Landry's Latest My friend Robin Landry is considered one of the country's best Elliott Wave readers so when it comes to figuring out what's ahead for the market, I often look at the emails he sends out to colleagues in the industry to see where things might be headed. Here's his latest:
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October 22, 2011 What's Important Now? Let me see if I've got this right: Obama is winding down Iraq after nine short years (!), Libya is less a Gadhafi or two, so is peace on the verge there? And the market put on a major rally Friday that smacks of good times ahead. But has anything really changed? Isn't the velocity of money still cratering, banks screwing us out of additional charges, there's no brand new "gotta have it" goods coming to market, and so I find myself with a kind of arch-ponder this morning: What's important right now? We need to do some serious weighing of factors since at my core I like to make one big investment decision and stick with it for a number of years, like we've done with our core precious metals holding.
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October 19, 2011 Sliding Toward Options Expiration As the market opens this morning there is a predictable next round of EuroZone happy talk going around. Later on, downside action through tomorrow is possible because options settlement comes late this month - and maybe it'll be as good as Halloween for Bears. No matter, since it occurs to me that the OWS movement may already be behind the power curve and setting itself up to take the hit when the Big Crash does eventually get here. After we whiz through some of the morning's routine headlines, we'll delves into whether OWS is too little, too late and explain the mechanics of how a Herstatt II in CDS could end the world as soon as....you got the time?
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October 16, 2011 Some Additional Notes We were wheels up from Shawnee, OK at about 07:29 local time on Sunday morning after a wonderful (and early) evening with Robin and Mrs. Landry over in Oklahoma City on Saturday night. With the exception of a fast-moving WW II vintage fighter northbound at 4,900 intersecting with our course, which was at the wrong altitude, it was a perfect flight. (Trip notes at end.)
October 15, 2011 Sizing Up The Rally (Shawnee, OK) I was not able to log onto my server at home for the part of today's report written before heading up this way - the Revolution Part 2, comments. So, as a result, a further Peoplenomics report may be expected tomorrow. Today (Saturday) Robin Landry has generously offered to show me his latest - which is still evolving. The plan (at the moment) is that there will be another update prior to tomorrow night that will include the R2 comments and additional discussion of the market outlook.
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October 12, 2011 Marking Time to Earnings How to preserve the little we've got - that's the task here. First there's the little matter of earnings and the mechanics of massive paper dollar inflation going on behind the scenes. Then we move along to the Europe and check the latest from our Aggregate Index. And do we spy a little choreography in this "assassination plot" story? But the serious part is in "Coping" this morning " as we go through some "Rethinking Revolution" since the term is making a resurgence in popular use that hasn't been seen since the late Beetle John Lennon asked us if we wanted one, back in 1968. Was this half a long-wave economic cycle back?
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October 8, 2011 Waiting for the Shock of Shocktober ...with many types of Buzz this weekend: Consumer Credit announced by the Fed in the final hour before closing was down both in revolving and non-resolving. But worse, there's a virus that's been logging keystrokes of America's drone aircraft fleets. And rumors persist that Germany will wheel out a new currency within weeks. And in another installment of "13 Acres and Independence" we start assembling home media gear to capture the sights and sounds of our civilization "blinking out."
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October 5, 2011 99ers and Tripping Through GlobalRev While the suffering of the 99ers continues, the problem for the remaining (still employed) Americas is a toughie: How to preserve what little savings we have while trying to steal some back from the greedster? So, even though is doesn't seem like the move down on Wall Street should be over, we've got platefuls of ponders this morning to serve up this morning in light of GlobalRev and what's ahead over the coming few weeks. Oh, and some notes on what the MainStreamMedia and the partisan press has missed about the Roseanne Barr phenomena...
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October 1, 2011 What, Exactly, Are We "Defending"? Since we have sent so many of your best and bravest to the hinterlands of the planet, and since defense spending is such a large chunk of the Gross Domestic Product, not to mention a huge source of employment and corporate profits, we might as well begin today's report with a very hard question: What are we defending? then we move on to our usual market analysis and ask where's the Brinks' truck? Then, on the practical homesteading side, how to drill your own water well...if you're too cheap to write a check to have someone do it for you....
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September 28, 2011 The Most Worrisome Chart of All... Several readers have suggested that I've taken leave of my senses by not even trying to play the major dead cat bounce in the market this week. But as crazy as you might think I am, wait till you see what happens next in Europe. There, not only are markets sobering a bit, but a top EU official says what's needed is more government. In medicine such irresponsible BS would be grounds for malpractice. Medicine's minimum effective dose (M.E.D.) has no corollary in political science or law...which is why this morning we zoom back to the Most Worrisome Chart of All to see our way ahead.
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September 24, 2011 Mr. Ure Shoots Fish... Yep: Like shooting fish in a barrel now. Why? It's not too often that all my indicators can be seen as synching up in a perfect trading period, and while I'm only going to outline what I expect will happen this fall in general terms, this is one of those periods which I'm as confident of the outcome as I was when I bought a boatload of UAL puts prior to the 1987 collapse. In other words, my sense is that this is a second chance of a lifetime to make some pretty good money in the market since charts, wave counts, predictive linguistics. and underlying trends in the news flows seem to all point toward a predictable, tradable, nevertheless scary period just ahead. So though it's subject to change without notice, this is a mostly excellent fitting of a wide range of data sources.... Oh, and the PTB may wasted gas going to Denver. But suppose we start there...
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September 21, 2011 If You THINK a Crashing is Coming... Later on today, the Fed is expected to offer another one of those finely crafted word collections (Fed Statements) that will read as though prescient 6-months from now regardless of what happens. As usual, we'll review overnight events, but first let's look at the biggest question of all: When (or if) to sell metals. Then we size up the odds of another oil embargo in light of the upcoming Palestinian homeland issue and push some numbers around on that topic....which might fit some of the panic/fear/global crisis language in Clif's report out Tuesday.
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September 18, 2011 Sizing Up Disruptive Technologies Almost six months ago, we pondered - in Peoplenomics Issue # 504-B - the possibility of a new and highly disruptive technology appearing. We speculated there could be ripples throughout the economy should a new technology show up that dramatically extends a product life and simultaneously creates a massive wave of unemployment. Camp, as it is, to talk by the Kurzweil "Singularity" the adherents of every-accelerating change reveals they have their heads up somewhere (go ahead and guess...) because they overlook two axioms of fast change: Unemployment and capital that demands a return on investment (ROI). All of which would be fine if disruptive technology was just theory. The bad news this weekend is a disruptive technology is now showing up...
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September 17, 2011 Laying on the Train Tracks ...is not something to be taken on lightly; neither is wealth preservation or investing. This morning we'll jump right into trading strategies, the troubles in Europe and the difficulty of identifying our next 10-year, single-decision investment - like gold in 2001 was.
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September 11, 2011 A Vision and People Skills for the Second Depression Two items on the agenda for this weekend, and due to the nature of both, we won't have as many links to off-site sources, since this is is more of a 'visioning' exercise for the coming fall, rather than a hard and fast economic conclusion: It's about developing a Big Picture of what's going on, along with some interesting speculations. First we'll consider what the breakdown could look like and then address issues related to managing other humans in what could be the highest stress period in more than a century.
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September 10, 2011 Depression Indicator Check The signs of an economic depression are here - if you choose to look at them, so this morning we'll run through some stories and update a few facts and figures that make the bearish case. Which, if you didn't notice yesterday's drop in the Dow of more than 300 points - seems to be coming along whether people are aware of it, or not. You'll see when we talk about the 87 year political cycle...
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September 4, 2011 Anaphylactic Debt Been noodling a whole lot lately on 'what ails the world' with the idea that whatever our problems are, there is likely a solution to be found if only we can identify the right analogs in other fields. This is the core of my "Substitution Method of Learning" that we've used in previous adventures. So this weekend's report is a kind of 'vision piece' which considers medical analogs beyond "debt is a cancer". While it is in some ways, the standard treatment is to maintain standard of living by upping the flow rate on the money meter. There is another analog, though, which may come into view over the next year. And if a bee sting will kill you, you're already a leg up on this possible future.
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September 3, 2011 Collapse Starts Here Since I've been writing this website since 2001 (and UrbanSurvival since 1997) it's always been somewhat debatable whether the events foretold by long wave economic greats like Nicholas Kondratieff (various spellings) would ever come to pass. Nevertheless, being a 'bad news bear' hasn't been a bad strategy since 1999 when in September of that year I wrote the terse warning piece "Death by Dot Coms: When Barriers to Entry Fall" which you can still read here. Not bad for four-months before the peak in the dotcom madness. This fall and even larger context changer begins as the forces which now question government's role and price tag begin to take action and we suffer through a modern analog to the Depression-era bond collapse. So this weekend we'll lean toward "Big Picturing" of what's ahead and what there's still time to achieve. But, like we used to say back in my broadcasting days: "But first, the news...."
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August 28, 2011 Banking Skills for the End of the World I was half-thinking in background about Hurricane Irene as the sun, a hot orange crescent, was just emerging this morning over the bits of ground fog and scattered clouds east us as we flew southeast toward a small airport at Crockett, Texas (DKR) to [finally] finish off my long-delayed re-entry into serious small aircraft flying, something I'd hung up back in 2000, and before that, 1976. As I set the mixture to rich, touched up the trim tab on the elevator, and announced on the Unicom frequency for the 4,000 foot long runway below, I asked myself "Why are you doing this?" The answer has everything to do with versatility and a strong survival instinct. I bank skills like rich folks bank money. And as we shall see, all the money and good looks in the world can't buy the one thing that might save your life: competence at precisely the right instance in exactly the right thing.
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August 27, 2011 Bouncing Through the Bounce Although the weather is one big story (with the arrival of Hurricane Irene in the populous Northeast this weekend) there's also a drought (some pictures from the plane in a second) and some important Middle East goings on to be aware of. But, around here, the curious thing to watch, more than any of the other headlines, has been this odd big 'bounce' that markets have been in, whether you're looking at gold (up about $58 Friday) or the Dow (up 134). It's all likely part of the Holiday Run-Up to Labor Day which is fast approaching. And a fine time for a Big Bounce, it is, indeed.
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August 21, 2011 The Problem with "Money" Besides not having enough, which is a whole other problem in and of itself, is that people don't seem to have a very good idea just what constitute "money." Is is a storehouse of value? Well, sort of. Then how about a medium of exchange? Sure, this too. But what about those other qualities: divisible, transportable and all the rest? Because this seems to be THE weekend of people asking about the "right role of money" my coauthor, Howard Hill, has kindly agreed to allow me to unveil one of the chapters from our forthcoming book "The Never-ending Argument." This is especially timely since we're now entering the period of the Kondratieff Long Wave when even members of the global public are asking "What is money?" I hope you enjoy this "sneak preview" of Chapter 3...
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August 20, 2011 Stealing from the Rich We're back to pondering how long to hold onto our [lone] barbaric yellow dog round since both gold and silver seem to be continuing to advance. At issue is not whether the dollar is debt-bloated. Of course it is. But, the fact is that - as my coauthor/friend Howard Hill explained on his site this week, "The Bond market is shouting at you..." and (gulp) that means deflation. So just like in the sailing days, when all hands kept a weather-eye to the jib and mainsail for signs of 'luffing' so too, in the present circumstance, the modern-day Robin Hood keeps an eye on incipient deflation and wonders how long before the parabolic rise in metals hits the 'saturation point'. It's far from an idle ponder...velocity of money and global food prices on the menu this morning...
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August 14, 2011 Spontaneously Ventured Companies We have a tremendous amount of territory to cover this weekend: To begin with we'll be talking about some major philosophical groundings, which I believe will be important as the second depression unfolds before us. As part of this exercise we will review some of the conflicts between socialism and raw capitalism as well as some newly emergent technologies which may provide workable alternatives. But the real guts of today's report will involve the formation of spontaneously ventured companies. This should be an extremely useful thing to keep in mind. Especially if you become unemployed and the economy falls to pieces. Like it didn't do that already.
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August 13, 2011 Whence Hither Thy Economy? Seems, with apologies to the Bard dude, the most righteous thing we can do this morning is to lay out how the economy (and thus markets) should go over the next six months, or so. The 'way ahead' is perfectly clear, since the 'hidden agenda' of my trip up to Ohio this week was not to pick up my airplane, although it was a fine way to get home. Rather, it was to spend some time with my consigliore who continues to have the best overall view of times ahead and the market (next to Robin Landry's work). While I won't offer you trading advice, what I will do is let you look over my shoulder and you can maybe get an idea how I've moved my account value up 37.54% YTD. While I'd specifically tell anyone "Don't try this at home - use with adult supervision! Call your Broker! Get Professional advice!" the numbers at this point annualize out to something near a 'rock star' rate. But only because of our first topic this morning: Learning to manage trading inputs - and it applies whether you're using a payroll deduction into a 401K plan or whether you're a ferocious day-trading fiend like....er...Look! What's that over there?
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August 7, 2011 That Damn Velocity Problem Given where the economy is likely to head this fall, and this week could be a poster child for it, or foreplay at a minimum, we need to spend a bit of head time on two important dynamics which assure us that we are not yet in the absolute depths of the Second Depression and that things are going to get much, much worse. The two villains killing the economy are falling velocity and corporate offshore expense allocation schemes. Some perspective here may help us 'small fish' keep swimming just a tad longer.
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August 6, 2011 Damage Control, Black Monday Ahead? I'd like to put on my "emergency services training hat" this morning and walk you through some of the rubble that's piling up around the foundations of the global economic system since the first pre-quakes this week of the coming fall crash date (which I'll give you, plus or minus three days in a second) means the larger financial collapse can now be sketched out as a distinct possibility. We also should be able to work backwards and see when this puppy should rally, how to play that, and so on. Oh, and we'll also fill you in on why we're on alert for a major earthquake, today or tomorrow... Sit the coffee down: The S&P Downgrade sets up 1987, Redux.
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August 5, 2011 Tactical Trading Notes: What a Real Crash Might Look Like In light of my post from Thursday ("No! No! No! This is NOT 'the Crash'), I wanted to show you the long-term chart that makes this point ever so much more eloquently than a bunch of words...
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August 3, 2011 - Special Midweek Update Tactical Trading Notes: Renovatio Monetae 5:30 AM: We're in "crash country." For reasons that will be apparent when you read it, here are some of the key outputs for this weekend's Peoplenomics report (to be posted on Saturday afternoon) along with some trading notes (pass the Band-Aids?) along to two important thought-models which may help you gain some insights into the market action - all of which could prove useful if you're still trying to hang onto some value in that retirement account, like we are. Grab some coffee: got a couple of charts and renovatio monetae to discuss...
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July 31, 2011 Deconstruction Sunday Seems like the only common thread in this weekend's work around here is the theme of "deconstructing" things. Big things (comet Elenin, for example) and small things (like the debt ceiling) and in between things - like the Standard of Living. I've often been heard "Ask George what time it is and he'll build you a watch." Except, time is short so we'll skip right to sight reductions on celestial objects first...and before we're done, we'll get into the roasting and toasting of our Saturday report on the debt ceiling being the wrong thing to attack. Let's not stop at the ceiling, though: "Look, up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's an Internet comet!" ought to be a good starting point....
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July 30, 2011 I'm Not a Left-wing Radical, BUT.... Some of the emails around here have been pretty harsh lately, including one advising me that "You need to pull your head OUT OF YOUR ASS and get off this partisan left wing BULLSHIT TALKING POINTS!" So this morning, I'm serving Peoplenomics readers a large helping of Reality Stew. So if you've been given the bum's rush and have been stampeded into premature conclusions about the whole budget ceiling debate, time to look at some very provable data of the nonpartisan type. There is life beyond the Boehner budget bill beatdown by the Senate within hours of his passing, and a quick inspection this morning shows no, the sky hasn't fallen - at least, not yet. Although my conclusions may - at times - sound partisan, they are instead data-driven, based on historical precedent, and there's a bunch of data the MainStreamMedia hasn't been trumpeting...beyond their own playing it fast & loose with little items like "truth" and "context". Time to line up George's Data Buffet for the Saturday brunch...
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July 24, 2011 The Rally in the Big Picture (Snowflake, AZ) These have got to be some perplexing times to be investing, so some effort in this week's report to make sense out of what the road ahead may look like - beyond the obvious: bumpy as hell. We face problems in Europe, a debt ceiling showdown here in the USA, and contrary indicators on inflation & deflation. Still, there's at least a tradable outlook short term, but let's back up and start at the beginning before we jump to Boolean Event Trading, and the idea of offshored marriages....
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July 23, 2011 Rally In the Face of Facts (Snowflake, AZ) The old Wall Street adage that "Markets climb a wall of fear" ought to be updated to something a little more reflective of available data. Nothing in particular seems to be going great - which would at least give some solid foundation to the market. To the contrary, the absence of good news seems to have merely given HF trading a chance to run the market up more on what's arguably very thin computer-driven volume. So we begin this weekend's work with a quick summary of economic fundamentals and how the market was able to blow past good sense. I think it's a demonstration of how even at their most rampantly bullish moments, markets today are hinting at inflation to come in a serious way and as soon as this fall.
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July 17, 2011 Outsource Government! Cityware, Stateware & Guvware There was a joke that circulated on the internet a while back which went to the idea that the US government (and major portions of many state and local governments and even the Presidency) could be outsourced to India or other lower labor-cost countries while still delivering the same service levels. Most people dismissed that as a fanciful joke an moved on. But around here, we're slow to dismiss humor, knowing that one of its elements is embarrassment. This 'joke" is 'funny' because it contains a large kernel of a truth that we - as a semi-free country and people - are unwilling to look directly in the face. Except in Peoplenomics, where kernels of truth are honored and planted along the pathways to an improved future for everyone. In doing so, we discover that what passes for Business Progress Engineering (BPR) in business school may, indeed, have a counterpart which we'll label "Government Re-engineering" [GR] and table as something all American voters ought to think about.
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July 16, 2011 Propagation & Dispersion in Complex Systems
This being the weekend, with
a break before a whole flurry of travel over the next couple of weeks, I
found myself relaxing, scanning the headlines, and looking
for the one underlying common thread that would tie it all together.
The answer is quite simple, really, a book by Everett Rogers: Diffusion of Innovations, 5th Edition
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July 10, 2011 Rethinking Nomadism While contemplating the End of Civilization (see last week's Peoplenomics here) the thought occurred to me that there is some risk in being totally committed to a single point on planet Earth because there are just so many wild-cards that could influence whether the choice of place will turn out to be a good one. What if it changes? That means a lot of different things, depending on who you talk to, but surely sustainable, defensible, hydrated, stocked, well communicated, and properly peopled are thoughts that come to mind. Unfortunately, the recent spew of events seems to be tossing up warnings which must be considered: American Monsoons, Fukushima in Nebraska, increased tectonic activity - the whole lot of it. So, what's a rational approach? Maybe nomadic thinking as a back up plan...
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July 9, 2011 So Much for Inflation Fears Although the Dow and S&P averages might give you the sense that "Good times are here again, brother!" a more diligent inspection of the underlying data suggests that not only is the Dow over-priced, but that there must be a machine somewhere stamping out 'Greater Fools' by the boatload. The Kondratiev long wave - and rules of economics in general - have not been repealed. Instead, after our excesses earlier in the previous decade, we're in a period that follows when self flagellation stops: "It feels so good..." While de Sade state of affairs continues, some of us bears expect more of a pullback next week. The answer is revealed by a new econ term I've christened called the "URLD"...
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July 3, 2011 The EoC Problem
No, we're not going to
talk about an "equal opportunity commission" nor will be gaming an
"emergency operations center." Nope, this week a few thoughts on
something a little more important comes into view: The End of
Civilization. It's a problem distinctly economic in nature,
but a rather common one, particularly if you've taken the time to read
any Joseph Tainter ("The Collapse of Complex Societies (New Studies in Archaeology)
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July 2, 2011 The Wounded Bear The markets handed me more of a rally than expected this week, by loading on another another 168 Dow points on Friday. In a word, "Ouch!" But that gets us to a fine discussion of where to exit a trade gone bad, which at times like this is just as important buying low and selling high. Getting out "whole" - or nearly so - takes patience, but many times the markets reward that and the main thing is never sell when your losses are at maximum. So we begin with a chart to explain the exit technique...because even when a trade goes bad, you can be a small loser or a big one.
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June 26, 2011 Detroit Versus the Economic Longwave (Detroit, MI) It's a story that has happened before: Key employer in a major U.S. industrial city goes into hibernation due to a market change and the community pulls together, goes through a metamorphosis, and comes out a better - reinvented - place with a brighter future for all the pain. But Detroit, Michigan where we've been wandering around this week has one more problem: The economic long wave which didn't threaten to pull the rug from under other cities which have been down this path before: Seattle when Boeing's downsizing generated the famous "Will the last person leaving Seattle turn off the lights, please?" And the problems of Detroit aren't just 'flash-in-the-pan' city budget bankruptcy headlines. This one is deeper; much, much, deeper. So brace yourself with coffee (or something stronger). We'll size up the Long Wave, poke around Detroit a bit, and see if we can use Motown as an economic 'canary in the coal mine' to improve our trading outcomes in coming months.
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June 25, 2011 Economic Street Fights (Detroit, MI) Tomorrow's report will attempt to assess a difficult problem facing America: Can Detroit be saved - a second time? There is a huge economic gamble shaping up here in Motown but to understand it, keeping up with some of the major trends in suicidal finance is necessary, which along with slurping down much coffee this morning, is the immediate task at hand. So let's begin with....
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June 19, 2011 Dow 1,701 Within Three Years: Depends on Greece In last week's report, we demonstrated that there is a case to be made, using Elliott Wave theory applied to the broad socioeconomic spectrum, such as Bob Prechter has done at his www.socionomics.com website, that we've still got many years of seriously declining standards of living ahead of us, and if this indeed turns out to be the case, we might wish to address the pending (continuing) decline in the urban standards of living in advance so as not to be time constrained by coming events which could force suboptimal decision-making. Or, in less formal terms, this week is about dodging the SHTF before the fan is plugged in. Except the Markets may have one more massive rally of several months duration before we head for the scary Dow target!
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June 18, 2011 Drought and the Food Disaster The power clicked off at our ranch around 3 PM Friday. A mile and a half down the road from us, a limb had broken off a tree due to high winds in the area. That dropped onto the powerline serving about 300-homes out this way, and...thanks to the tinder-dry conditions in the woods....set off our second forest fire of the year. For a second time, we were lucky...the fire was confined to a few acres and never got up into the crowns of the trees, but it served as another reminder that what kicks a recession over into a Depression is oftentimes drought or other disruptions to the food supply, so we pick up the forensic economics trail there since that trail seems likely to cross the path of longwave economics and cyclical collapse sooner than later.
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June 12, 2011 The Ugly - Extensible - Depression Contrary to what you might think, we're not really in the guts of the Second Depression yet. We are still in the "fixing to get ready" part, where people have not locked up their wallets and where new cars are still occasionally sold and politicians can still get away with says "Good times are just ahead..." and have enough fools around to believe 'em and vote 'em back in again. That changes later this year if we apply a little "extensible thinking" to navigating the Second Depression. Times are about to get much tougher...and some of the developments I'm forecasting based on solid data series may astound you.
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June 11, 2011 Charting Disaster The main things to focus on in coming weeks will likely be a) making a few bucks, or at least preserving your net worth as markets unwind, b) adjusting to the realities of the Second Depression Mindset (tomorrow's report), and c) playing the rallies which are bound to be short and sharp as demonstrated by Thursday's 24-hour marvel this week. The human who can do all of these things will be in a better position than most when we run into the "data wall" in spring 2013. In fact, the public recognition phase of the Second Depression may be little more than a series of survivable inconveniences. Which is why we start this morning with a low-key discussion of options trading.
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June 5, 2011 How I'm Buying "Net Worth" Insurance Not familiar with the term, eh? Haven't seen a line of insurance salesmen outside your house trying to sell you the concept? OK, probably not. But we may be at one of those precipitous moments in financial history when writing your own "net worth" insurance could be a good thing. And fortunately for me, it hasn't been too tough to figure out.
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June 4, 2011 Down the Road Sorry for the delay in posting this morning's report - the hotel we are staying at had internet issues - which I had a gut feeling about on Friday, I guess, or I wouldn't have mentioned the possibility of a delay in this morning's report. But hey! It's still morning and except for me wasting the first six hours of daylight on computer issues, the market has turned down as we projected last week, so that's a good place to begin our wanderings from Branson, Missouri. Think of it as one of those "Missouri breaks."
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June 2, 2011 Special Market Update from Robin Landry
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May 29, 2011 The "Last Days of Cash" No, we're not talking about the day before payday...that happens all the time. instead what we're going to consider this week are some of the real, longer term impacts of the transition to a cashless society. If you're a control freak, it sounds appealing, alright, but is there a downside to it? Unfortunately, as we shall see, 'fraid so....
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May 28, 2011 Are They Coming for the 'Net? Now that we know Clif's "Data Gap" in the spring of 2013 is really a "Data Wall" beyond which there is no more spidering of free-wheeling discussion groups for hints about our collective future, it's with some trepidation that we're reading how the PowersThatBe are putting on the full court press to slam on internet controls, just as the Chinese have...at this week's G8 and eG8.
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May 22, 2011 The "Real" End of the World I'm sure there are bound to be a few people disappointed that the 'world ending' apparently (since we're reading this) didn't happen yesterday. And to those true believer types who were planning to be "raptured out" - avoiding this year's tax bill, all I can say is "Sorry, but we're here, too..." But there is a consolation prize: The possible end of the world in the spring of 2013. March, or so, for the first part of the 'great blink out' and then May/June'ish to finish off the event. But let's back up a little and start with some additional details about that "Data Gap" in predictive linguistics from www.halfpasthuman.com, since they get an above chance number of 'hits' on what's out there in our future. To make The End even more fun to prep for: Cash is being outlawed right in front of our faces...
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May 21, 2011 AstroGlide & Law Books Dept. Depends What You Mean By War We begin our usual Saturday morning ruminations by noting that the GOP - always edging for a fighting with the Democorps - are now making an issue about whether president Obama can use US forces inside Libya without reporting to Congress and asking consent under the War Powers Act. It's another dandy example of how people elect representation but the real running of the country anymore has fallen to the hands of wordsmiths and lawyers who miss intent by a mile and instead drag out absolutist perspectives which, if I've got it right, "Depends what you mean by "we're so screwed..."
More for Subscribers To Subscribe, CLICK HERE Need Logon Assistance? Click here. May 15, 2011 The "Oil & Autos" Conspiracy There's a body of circumstantial evidence developing that suggests the American public has been seriously hoodwinked by the auto and oil industries through a kind of collusion over how the future will continue to 'deal them in' which means how they will be able to 'feather the nest' going forward and how we - the consumer types - will stuck in the background by deftly manipulated circumstances designed to exact as much of our labors from us and put them in corporate bank accounts for the already rich and it gets ridiculous. Which we suspected but now we're getting data that confirms it...
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May 14, 2011 Corporate Madness Disease One of our tasks is to always be aware of any macro-trends which if studied may give some great insights into how the world operates. Most mornings that hard and requires a lot of headwork, evidence development, and so forth. However, some days the macro-march to corporate feudalism should be obvious even to the most sedentary of thinkers. Impressive pile of evidence this week, indeed.
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May 8, 2011 Stalking Our Next Great Investment - Part 1 Our track record is better than most: Into gold at $275-$280 in 2001. Into rural/sustainable land in 2002 which has actually appreciated while much of the country has been in decline. Into silver at $7 in mid-2005. But now we have to start wondering "What's the next Big Thing"?" where we might put a few dollars and make a better-than-inflation (or deflation) return? Deceptively simple-sounding, the problem is difficult, but not insolvable, especially if we begin by breaking things down into their separate parts... And remembering to never, never, never falling in love with any class of investment vehicle - even our beloved metals.
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May 7, 2011 The "Sell In May" Axiom Since we like to spend weekends doing thinking that's 'a little deeper' than headlines, the main task before us ought to be a bing of ultra-large balance-scale about here, since we've got crosscurrents that could be argued both for - and against - the two main investment classes; those things which hedge deflation and those which hedge against inflation. We'll start with a review of the 'major arcana.'
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May 1, 2011 Crackpot Theories & Observations You know, some of the best brains on the planet have been trying to figure out two or three things: "When in the next major earthquake going to be?" Thursday is one highly tentative answer. And, "If the government is saying inflation is running around 3½ percent, how come I don't see it - all I see is inflation?" Because you don't run your personal balance sheet is the tentative answer here. Simple stuff for a clear-eyed Sunday morning, indeed. As long as we're at it, let's solve the healthcare crisis, too. Seriously: This week we explore how new "truths" arise and then apply that thinking to personal and national economic problems.
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April 30, 2011 The Trillion Pound Question Thought it would be fun this morning to tromp through a couple of stats about how this month has gone, since this has been a rip-snortin' doozy...screaming metals, collapsing banks and a cratering US Dollar. Makes it easy for a financial columnist to write on mornings like this; there is no shortage of subject matter. But the "one trillion pound question" in New Madrid does grab our immediate attention. We're on high alert for a major quake.
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April 24, 2011 Bracing for a "Disruptive Technology" Disaster That the world has seen a lot of different types of disasters over the past several millennia isn't disputed. There've been floods, hurricanes & typhoons, earthquakes, conquests of despots, and the usual sort of stuff that shows up in history books. But what's coming into view - thanks to the recently evolved global mass consciousness of the internet - is something entirely new: And Information Disaster which could destroy the world. But, as always, we'll try to start at the beginning which in this case happens to be found in a mix of old Superman comics, Kurzweil's Singularity is Near, and WikiLeaks & Stuxnet.
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April 23, 2011 Get Ready for "Sell in May"? This morning, a couple of "decompressed thoughts on what could be ahead for the markets - and especially metals - over coming weeks and although it's oftentimes a kind of chicken and egg discussion, we may be able to get a bead on some important news developments which ought to be showing up, as a result. Why in no time at all this morning, you'll understand why I have been wandering around my 'man cave' this week muttering "Velkommen zum Wipperzeit zwei!" which up until this morning, maybe would have only made sense to only the most financially literate among the gnomes of Zurich...
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April 17, 2011 What's Better Than Gold? Something has been bothering me for a couple of months that formed first as a hazy kind of question in the back of my mind and now has come bursting forth into (writeable) consciousness: What investment is better than gold? The answer is surprising: There may be several. But the way I got from the question to the answer has everything to do with Saturday's Peoplenomics report, a chance reading of a chapter from a book I haven't read, and a good night's sleep to sort it all out. The answer, I think you'll agree, is pretty interesting and I'll be acting on the answer's ramification this coming week. I have a plan to beat even gold's returns. I call it "familysteading."
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April 16, 2010 Actually, a Boring Week I shouldn't start off, first thing out of bed on a Saturday morning complaining about the lack of real "news" this week, but compared to war-starting weeks, country-leveling, or record market-setting weeks we had a string of, this was certainly and anti-climatic week, unless you own silver and gold, in which case, it was fine. Gold closed north of $1,486 and silver over $43 on the spot market. Still, FDIC has been busy...
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April 10, 2011 Forensic Macroeconomics 635 Morgan Freeman's fine performance in the movie "Deep Impact" was not the reason for proposing this course, although the possibility of an E.L.E. (extinction level event) being timed in a 1998 movie to be temporally coincident to the election and term in office of a black president, we hope is merely coincidental. However, other than space-based threats, there are a wide number of catastrophic possibilities in humankind's future. If any of these was specifically known, giving foreknowledge of such events to leaders at any level of government, then even if relatively closely held, definable economic evidence well in advance of events is likely which could in turn define for investigators the most likely vectors of threat arrival and provide for autonomous (nongovernment) threat analysis and individuated action. This course is intended to take first steps toward identification and modeling of foreknown events.
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April 9, 2011 The Newsual Theatrics Behold, our latest Economic End Times libretto: Everyone's working the public opinion poles as the 2012 presidential wannabes are trying to position themselves and their parties in the best possible light prior to the mock-elections. Note I say "mock" since "electing" was once something where issues mattered as much as how a candidate delivered on campaign promises once they'd been in office a while. Today, presidential elections in particular, are more a matter of comparative marketing exercises; replete with branding, positioning, and demographic & persuasion subgroup niche campaigns, just as one would sell a more useful product. Like soap, for example. In this light, the silliness of the "11th hour" budget deal worked out in the final hours before a government "shutdown" really shows itself for what it is: another EET (economic end times) indicator...which we explain this way:
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April 3, 2011 A Starfaring University? "If we're ever going to be a starfaring world, we need a university that will teach people a different way of being....that's what we want you to consider." A heady challenge if there was one, rebuilding higher ed with an avowed 'get off Earth bent', but that was the gauntlet thrown down by a prospective consulting client I spoke with this week. "Let me mull it around in a Peoplenomics report, because it's a big topic and I don't want to see your business plan details," I told the caller. As the week wore on, the topic came clearly into focus as one that humans could be working on, but because of our preoccupation with the ruling money paradigm, we aren't pursuing. Nor is it likely we're about to. The good news? Our old paradigms die, or we do...and that watershed event might be a good time to reinvent how humans purpose themselves and learn.
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April 2, 2011 Problems With the Paradigm On a multiplicity of fronts, we can see where the 'ruling paradigm' of the West/U.S./ is in danger of breaking up. But before we look at problems around the edges (like chemtrails and Charlie Sheen) we need to begin with the big stuff that's falling apart like the nuclear power paradigm, wars for liberations. But then, even more fundamentally, a quick lesson in how to infer high precision from imprecise charts and a discussion of the ongoing housing collapse which continues to weigh on everything...
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March 27, 2011 Death By JIT Collapse and Wars Assessing the impact of the Japanese earthquake and melting nuke stew is, admittedly, not the happiest of tasks to undertake. But gaining some kind of sense of eventual impact on the global economy could be worthwhile, since the Japanese economy is so closely tied to the West in everything from autos to air conditioners to semiconductors and beyond. So it behooves us to apply a few brain cells on task in order to set some reasonable expectations. Plus: a preview of new Greater Depression confirmation studies by Jas Jain..
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March 26, 2011 500 Weeks Later This is a special weekend around here. Not only because my younger sister is visiting, or because the problems from Japan and the US oil/resource wars continue their feeble efforts to save the inevitable outcome of paper money (again), but because this marks the 500th edition of Peoplenomics. Won't get maudlin about it...except to note that with a few errors due to server glitches over the past nearly 20-years, the archives here have covered all kinds of ground - everything from grab & go bags before that was camp, to design of a home solar power systems, to reasons why we jumped into gold and silver early on and then to why the just in time manufacturing system may be fine for monetizing inventory, but may suck where it comes systemic resiliency. (More on this in tomorrow's report). For now, though, pull up a fresh cup of coffee and let's look into America's challenging future.
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March 22, 2011 Mass Layoff Notes Two quick items to mention about the Mass Layoff report issued by the Labor Department this morning. First is the long-term chart which looks like...
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March 20, 2011 The "Global Observer-State" Problem What happens when you take predictive linguistics and zoom-out from even that macro-view of developing reality? Among other things, you begin to discover that yes, indeed, markets do love war (although on specific terms which we'll discuss) and yes, some of the PowersThatBe appear to promote emergent social movements for crassly capitalistic reasons. But what it's all part of an even bigger process which I've labeled "The Global Observer-State Problem" for reasons I hope this week's report makes clear.
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March 19, 2011 Foolish Optimism Say, not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but seems to me that although much of the world is going through a weekend of relief, the staunch realist will - when the gift-givers are otherwise occupied with down time, quickly steal an inspection of the equestrian incisors, along with checking out a few financial items related. On this morning's list we've got nukes, a broken uptrend in markets, and preps for the next quake which could come as early as late next week. This is not a time to be horsing around. Some of the key elites are gone...so this could be a BIG week ahead..anyone for Beat the Clock?.
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March 13, 2011 Clear-Headed Thinking About Japan's Nukes Much as you'd walk into a gym and ask someone who seems to know what they are doing to "spot you" just in case you get into trouble in a particularly tough exercise, so too, we need to take the same kind of care in our thinking about the risks presented to the US - if any - from the nuclear issues fast developing with failing reactors. Then, we can assess both environmental and economic fallout more clearly.
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March 12, 2011 - 12:10 PM Special Saturday Update & Advisory Radiation Contingency Planning As always, the MSM is still the best source for breaking news out of Japan, but in our efforts to stay well ahead of events, the blow out of the Fukushima reactor building walls does raise the possibility that radiation in non-trivial amounts could be released from this reactor, or the other two which various reports indicate are only being moderated with pumped sea water which is a dicey situation, as well.
Coincident with this, chatting with Clif this morning, the blow-out video of the Fukushima plant has rapidly started to fill the linguistic sets from earlier predictive linguistic runs.
This is important because in the meta set involved, the expected "Israeli mistake" which we had anticipated would be the 'smoking/bombed out remains of Bushir' where Iranian nuclear development continues (a plan which has apparently changed) the data suggested that shortly after the radiation/ill winds began to reach the West Coast USA that a major West Coast/US earthquake would follow within a few days/weeks.
We are now concerned that in the event there is such a release, for one (or more of the damaged plants) that we will then move into language which suggests 18-days - or so - of release related to the 'radioactive volcanoes' which seems to be in fill mode right now.
So this leave people, particularly west coasties, with two contingencies to prepare for: Arrival of potential radiation from Japan, and the possibility (small but non-zero) that an earthquake of even more devastating size could arrive semi-concurrently (roughly in the same temporal window) and we're now also watching the release language for the March 25th period since tyhe timing is a little too close to be ignored.
All of which is neither fear-mongering nor stress-inducing; we have in the past been very good on quakes such as out China quake call in 2008 a mere three days ahead of time, and wanted you to be aware of this.
I'm sure you remember the fish kills on the West Coast over the past week or two and a big one in So. Cal. the odds of the linguistic 'going real' do seem to increase.
A Note about Mental Acuity & Language: We need to be clear that humans in every-day speech use terms like "earthquake" but in talking to Clif this afternoon, he made the distinction that we need to understand that what may be going on in Japan may not be a 'quake' quake as we have come to think of them as "slip-strike"/ echoes as things settle, but a long tearing of the Earth's shell which has a whole different connotation to it not the least of which is events over time.
--- Now: What to do about it?
First, everyone should have a minimum of one month of food and water in their home for emergencies at all times. The half-life of cesium 137/139 is the issue.
The best single article on the mechanics of dispersal is over at the KI4U.com website run by Shane Connor.
He told me during a phone call this morning that they are swamped on the phones this weekend, but people can buy Thyro-Safe, which is a postassium iodide drug, which can lessen impacts of radioactive exposure.
Shane tells me that as a back-up his firm's built for this kind of event, they have put together 6.3 million doses in the event they run out of Thyro-Safe (which is manufactured in Sweden, by the way).
So, at least in terms of medication, no issues, although stocks on other items, like detection units and such could be different.
Now, about the radiation levels from Japan. On a single event with a one-time only release, Shane isn't too worried. However, is we get into a situation where a core goes critical and then does a melt-down and then spews radioactive by-products into the atmosphere for several weeks, which would fill Clif's language expectations, then yes, 1,500 rads on the West Coast while not likely would be possible. Comes down to a question of what kind of insurance and what do you buy question.
In order to help you gauge things for yourself, you might want to read Shane's article on the KI4U.com site: When An ill Wind Blows From Afar! (Like from Japan, Iran or North Korea!) --- To sum up: IF the radiation releases in Japan become more serious and we get talk of arrival of radioactivity on the US West Coast then predictive language exists which supports a major/larger earthquake event.
How you address these possibilities is up to you, but we tend toward belt & suspenders kind of thinking and suggest that in the modern world of UrbanSurvival, the game isn't to get the most.
The win comes from losing the least.
More tomorrow on the Peoplenomics.com site.
Sparks in the Match Head World
The combination
of potassium chlorate, sulfur, starch, neutralizer, silica,
diatomite and glue (sometimes antimony, also) in the
presence of sparks is not a perfect conceptual
starting point for our in-depth overview of socioeconomic
developments this weekend, at least to a
literalist. However, to those willing to
generalize their personal threat-assessments a bit, the
analog holds since on a number of fronts, we're only a spark
landing 'just-so' to set off the most massive slide in
civilization since, perhaps, the disappearance of the
Anasazi and other complex cultures before ours documented by
Joseph Tainter in the ultimate "big picture" survivalist
grounding tool The Collapse of Complex Societies (New Studies in Archaeology)
($39.10)
The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age
March 9, 2011 Landry Update Market is near a critical juncture today and through the next few days. Robin Landry sent out an update to his colleagues in the investment community and a couple of charts of interest...
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March 6, 2011 Installing a "New Duality" Your Last Chance to Travel & Other Math Programs A couple of major lifestyle changes are obviously ahead, if there is anything to reports that oil will be going back up to old highs - and beyond before summer gets here: There are certain aspects of your lifestyle that are going to change, not the least of which is vacations, air conditioning, and modes of travel... on top of the obvious fraction of personal finance paid for energy and for food. Seat belt fastened? Monitor in the upright and locked position? Life as you knew it may be preparing for a lifestyle crash...although I guess I could have called this "Disposal Income Disposed..."
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March 5, 2011 A Week of Trading Seriously In last Sunday's report, I told you about the chart technique that I use to move in - and out - of positions in the market. This wasn't a bad week for my "system" but it took more time in front of the monitors, since taking money from Wall St. isn't without some effort. Still, more than what banks are paying, so it's a good place to start. From there we'll move into what the PTB may be lining up in the way of "coming attractions."
February 27, 2011 Looking at the Future Using Charts Several readers have asked me "How do you make your stock, commodity, and long-term financial decisions, anyway?" Damn fine question. Usually, I look at charts and because we seem to be at a major turning point for markets, metals, and darn near everything else out there, I though I'd grab a few obvious charts and show you my little "back of the envelope" method works - when I don't get into denial about using it. Although it's not foolproof (otherwise, what would I be doing with it, huh?) it is fun and it seems to help me make some "decisive decisions."
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February 26, 2011 Are We Rounding "The Turn"? Let's see: The Dow closed Friday at 12, 130.45 and the S&P was at 1,319.88, both down from the previous week's closes of 12,391.25 and 1,343.01 respectively. So with those kind of losses, is this the start (at last) of our P3 (or P5, depending on how you count it) decline which is likely to at least challenge mid 2009 lows by....well, you'll see that as I lay it out.
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February 23, 2011: Special Update Technical Outlook and Trading Notes The stock market had a crappy day Tuesday, so I wanted to share some shorter-term outlooks just in case things go from bad to worse...
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February 20, 2011 A Personal Operating Plan This being my birthday weekend, I thought I'd share with you how I "run my life by a spreadsheet." Sound a little harsh? Yes, it is. But given developments out of the Middle East, the overall progress of "GlobalRev" there's no time like yesterday (but today will work) to get extremely conscious of what you're buying with your money...are you spending on things that will gain in value over time? Let's explain my personal pro forma P&L to you....
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February 19, 2011 Some Relaxed Weekend Other than another night of "full moon/wild dreams, I had delusions of sleeping in this morning, doing a relaxed write of this morning's column, then a leisurely weekend. Fat chance! Both the satellite and private microwave internet links were down (where's that dial-up number?). Then Libya's blowing up, more economic data piles up, and then we've got four more FDIC reorg's to talk about. But the fun stuff is there today, too - including our adventures in "fire gardening"....so best hop to it...
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February 13, 2011 Geocaching 101: Famine, Disorder, and the Livingston-Penn Minimum "Dude! There's no way we can feed the whole planet! We've got that freeze in Mexico which will hit US food prices inside 45 days, we've got Australia offline, Brazil offline, part of Africa, China's got drought and they are upping their grain purchases through the roof!" Doesn't anyone have any idea how serious this is? I know you know this but how can you get people to see it?" Not sure we can, but since we're still ahead of the problem we start with the latest on an emergent new solar minimum, back that up to how that heralds famine, and then back to planning your exit should mobility mean staying alive.
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February 12, 2011 Trouble by Four's So we begin this morning looking, as usual, for some pattern or discernable drift in the direction of events. Today we seem somewhat well-served by focusing on events coming in four's. Foreign affairs and banks being a good start...
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February 6, 2011 Hiding Survivalism in a Hobby Had an interesting epiphany this week while pondering the events of this weekend, which I hear might include a football game. The 'extensible thinking' was around football as a socially acceptable war substitute, and how that might be an analog to war-making among tribal cultures. We're one of those too, but don't like the label. Football is about survival, I concluded: It teaches one or two players after each snap, the fine art of dodging a crowd of angry people running after you. Why Major League Baseball and the National Football League didn't send scouts to Egypt is a fair question. So this week some thoughts on hiding prepping under more socially acceptable coverings - like hobbies - and stick around for the 'surprise ending.'
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February 5, 2011 Behind the Rally Even seasoned investors are a little stumped by the market's action this week; what could just have easily been a slow decline getting underway has persisted for reasons that are at best murky. Today, we go looking at data to see if an additional clues can be uncovered. But the real story is how Solar Cycle 24 is failing and the climate impacts of that could be life-changing for all of us...
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January 30, 2011 Computational Revolutionary Dynamics With the situation in multiple countries now feeding into the predictive linguistics around the idea of a global revolution (GlobalRev) it's time to consider the multiple tiered threat structure facing the globalistas/PowersThatBe who are heavily invested in continuing a social paradigm of production and control which (how convenient is this?) puts them at the pinnacle of the food chain and very much above/aloof from the people who thought they were really in power in various semi-democracies worldwide. Sounding too academic for you? How about "Government gets virtualized?" Also: How to read a web bot report...
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January 29, 2011 How Far (is) Down? Egypt, markets, FDIC closures, falling wages (relative to inflation), and famine & disease lurk in the aftermath of major floods. Makes the world a double dealing, cash-strapped, exploitive, and resource depleted place, as I see it. In other words: Normal. But not quite. So first thing out of the box this weekend, before getting into a discussion of 'computational revolutionary dynamics' tomorrow (less the floating point math) time to juice up on the bean and make an irreverent walk through the debris field; mistaken referred to as 'news' by the less informed.
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January 23, 2011 Beyond Adventures in Insurance Land One of our readers asked me to focus a little bit on insurance companies and looking back on things, I see that I haven't done much writing in that field, so why not use this as a dandy exercise in learning how to really "learn" an industry, by applying some of the basics of our Everything's a Business Model outlook on life? If, along the way, you get some ideas that can help you save a buck - or more - then that's fine, too. Insurance companies are and are not a threat to the economy, as we shall explain.
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January 22, 2011 Blow Off Top? One of the reasons the market didn't collap[se in a heap on Friday was possibly that sneaky change in accounting that I hinted at in the Friday column. You know, the one which basically takes regional reserve banks and shunts them off to the Treasury instead of having them hit the Fed's own balance sheet...explained nicely in this CNBC piece here. But is the economy out of trouble? Are we out of brains? Of course not! Let's march out to the wall and see which banks got blindfolded and popped this week...
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January 16, 2011 On Paranoia and Business Models One of the more common labels pasted on paradigm-questioning, thinking, and surprisingly rational adults - once they begin to see the Big Picture - is that friends, neighbors, and colleagues begin to whisper "...Oh...he's paranoid..." under their breathe. Note that you'd expect these folks to have read the Cracked.com article "6 Crackpot Conspiracies (that actually happened)," since that would involve dangerously high levels of thinking; such is to be assiduously avoided, particularly with the lack of mental activity between the end of deer season and Super Bowl. Truth is, as we fondly point out - and often - everything's a business model. Paranoia included. Here's how to cope....
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January 15, 2011 Supply, Demand, and Business Models We begin this week's expository with due consideration of hype and counter-hype that's making the rounds in a number of topics - oil prices, weather, quakes, and so forth - and see if we can make sense of the business models involved which are lurking in the corner...
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January 9, 2011 Descending into Chaos? We now have a pretty clear sense that the shooting of Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords was what the locus of the anticipated January 7 near vertical drop in 'release language' in the predictive linguistics from www.halfpasthuman.com was about. One day off from the forecast date, but the linguistics all, sadly, seem to fit. Some analysis is now in order...
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January 8, 2011 Some Hardcore Realities There's been a lot of "soft pedaling" going on about the economy this week and the reason should be obvious in two old sayings: "As goes the first week of January, so goes the month." And..."As goes January, so goes the year." So far it's worked and the first day of trading closed at 11,670.75 while Friday the Dow closed at 11,674.76. The obvious concern? There's a helluva lot riding on four lousy points. And there's plenty of reason for that concern, starting with Fed data...
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January 3, 2011 The Shaky New Year, Redux Some additional earthquake notes and speculations to expand on the article about the Chilean earthquake and what may be a related great circle quake in Utah this morning which seems to point in the direction of Alaska.
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January 2, 2011 Planning, Prayer, Or Something Else? Despite last week's report out of the UK Mail that most new Years resolutions don't last more than a week, or so, I still start off every year with a simple exercise in goal setting. But is it worthwhile to go through the exercise of setting some general goals for ourselves for the upcoming year? I think so and since I've been working on it for the past week, I thought I'd share some ideas. Then we have a new 'hot business' to watch for 2011 and we'll wrap up by "HAARP'ing on an odd coincidence..."
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January 1, 2011 2011: Off to a Shaky Start Not to put too serious a light on the year so early on, but overnight we had another major earthquake along what I've taken to calling my "line of concern" regarding the Pacific tectonic plate. Perhaps its the 'nature worry-wart' in me that likes to try and assess all threats as soon as possible when they appear on the horizon, or perhaps it's all the major quake information in http://www.halfpasthuman.com last Shape of Things to Come report. Doesn't really matter when the news headlines are filling in the linguistic expectation right on schedule, or nearly so. I think this 7.0 in Argentina this morning is extremely significant and it deserves our special focus...
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Mine is the 4th edition, but you'll see how this ties the news together
before we're done with the first cup of coffee this morning. We'll
begin with Rogers' discussion of why
refrigerators hum....and how that relates to the federal budget talks
and the implosion of Europe's financial system.
") or Jared Diamond's "
."
Oh, yeah: The problem may be closer than you think. And we've been "mapt"
(sic) along the way.
and John Michael Greer's
($10.85). The generalization being when asked "Got a
match?" the well-verse survivalist might reply "