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September 2, 2010

A Short Preopen Market Note

I received a short note from Robin Landry on Monday which you may wish to consider as input in your thinking on things financial.  Here's his latest notes to colleagues in the securities profession.  Remember this is NOT TRADING ADVICE , rather, part of our continuing discussion on the general operation of markets:

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August 29, 2010

Depression 2.0: Starting Over

I publish a little ebook ("How to Live on $10,000 a year or less...") that helps to offset the cost of site operations for the www.urbansurvival.com site and got an email from a reader this week who asked "What about those of us who have NOTHING - how to we claw our way back?"  Well, in past issues of the ebook we've talked a bit about that, but since it's time for the annual update it's probably time to go through the whole bootstrapping process again and update some of the examples from previous years.  If you don't have the $40/year for Peoplenomics, I'll get this incorporated into the annual update of the ebook in the next week, or so...

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August 28, 2010

MDR:  Mexico's Drug Revolution is Now Underway

A major issue is developing along the US - Mexico border that the MainStreamMedia (MSM) is so far keeping out of your consciousness is this simple fact:  There's a drug gangster revolution underway in Mexico and the international community - as usual - is slow to 'get it' since it's not in the interests of corporatists to let this one out of the bag and onto the front pages yet, but it's there if you give the situation even a cursory glance.

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August 22, 2010

Move Over, Marx

The fundamental tenet of Peoplenomics is that it's well within human brainpower limits to come up with a better economic system than the one we now have.  However, getting it actually implemented is nigh on to impossible because special interests (large corporate flavor and the corporate-government (corpgov) alliance kind) stand squarely in the way.  Nevertheless, with just a little bit of

noodling, we can do better than Marx and redress some of the man vs. machine economic inequities.  This week:  Some radical economic ideas...

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August 21, 2010

Pilgrimage to Shawnee

Always been a fan of Robin Landry's work, ever since I bumped into him on the old University of Colorado Long Waves econ discussion group in the mid 1990's or so.  As soon as this morning's column is done, I set out the kryptonite around the office and leave Panama Bates on patrol with the cats while Elaine and I hit it & git it up the road to Shawnee Oklahoma for a bunch of face time with Robin Landry.  Now that the market has posted a couple of back to back gobbler weeks, we may not have to wait for Thanksgiving for the turkey to show its colors. Bears loving turkey as we do, our portfolio is up for the year, which is something the Dow hasn't managed to do as of this week.  So let's begin with the 8 bank closures for the week and the big stink around one of them, shall we?

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August 15, 2010

Getting The Future Wrong

Call this the Labor Department Big Lie Report, if you must. Or, 'Higher Education's Big Lie' as an alternative: I have raised this issue previously, albeit in short form, as a simple question:  If a young person makes an educated guess as to where the future growth in the economy will be -based on widely touted government figures - and then secures an education and training for a field that collapses, is it morally 'right' for the student to be held accountable for what the government got wrong? That question is critically important to millions of US citizens who took the time and money to head for school and train for areas which looked promising as recently as 2002-2003.  This weekend a romp through the ugly numbers you really have to dig to find. When you do, the results  stink.

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August 14, 2010

Which Wave Is This?

One of the 'olde stands' in music is the tune "What a difference a day makes' which has been done by a fair number of female jazz vocalists.  It would sure be nice for the half -dozen, or so, remaining day trading bears of this world if it would be updated to "What a difference a week makes..."  That said, the second line of the tune falls apart as "...24 little hours..." would have to be retooled to "...168 little hours....." and the changes proceed to wreck the original intension of the song from there.  So instead of rewriting jazz standards, I suppose I should keep with our main focus around here; doing the play-by-play on the death of Wall Street as the Second Depression enfolds.  Still, maybe I could get Elaine to update the old "South Pacific" song "... (I'm going to) Wash that man right out of my hair..." to a pertinent "Wash those stocks right out of my portfolio..."

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August 8, 2010

The Economics of Yardwork

Not something most folks think about, but there are some surprising economics - not to mention a whole bushel basket of social programming involved, in the evolution of the 'perfectly groomed' American yard.  Given the market's midsummer doldrums (last week's move wasn't very big, really) and given that many readers do have property-related to-do lists, this week some thoughts on trends, social drivers, and costs of  yardwork.

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August 7, 2010

Midsummer Doldrums

Slow Motion Directional Change

If you remember our linguistic sets for this period, we went through a good-sized period of 'rising tensions' between about March and early July and by the last Shape Of Things to Come forecast from www.halfpasthuman.com, we could then expect some minor see-sawing (minor release/minor build) through most of summer before we get into the gut-wrenching change levels (as release language) this fall.  A review of this week's headlines - and what's coming next week - sure supports that view, but in the very short term, some hopeful signs have appeared.  How so?...

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August 3, 2010

A Personal Account Trading Note

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August 1, 2010

13 Acres and Independence

Chapter 9:  The $500 Home Survival Kit

In (extremely) slow-motion, over the past year or several I've been putting down various notes and sharing points about building out a homestead in the rural south, which it has been our pleasure to be engaged in off and on (when consulting doesn't have me elsewhere) since we 'bought the farm' so to speak in 2002.  Useful information, I've been told, but a fair number of people have asked "Fine if you have no kids and can work from wherever you have a phone and an internet connection, but what about the rest of us who are tied to the Corporate Beast and have to live in cities.  What about US?"  Fine critique, that.  So this week the Lite version of everything.

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July 31, 2010

So Much for Vacation

No rest for the FDIC teams which are traveling around the country shutting down, reorganizing, and otherwise disposing of troubled banks.  39 more were 'actioned' this week in Oregon, Washington, Florida, and Georgia which brings our total for the year to 108 banks with 927 branches.  The latest?

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July 25, 2010

The Case for XFII

Once in a while in more reflective moments, I find ask the question "Am I smart enough to find The Next Big thing before half of creation beats me to it...and six ETF's are built around it, and 33⅓ insiders make all the money on it?  What I keep looking for is some simple way to sort through all the opportunities that come by us in life and why hasn't someone reduced it all to a simple algorithm? Doing so seems like a worthwhile task.  Lots of variables, but most of them seem nested in some way, so why not build an algorithmic approach?  Think about this: rather than trust the touting tag teams from various investment outfits or certified (whatevers) we ought to be able to look at their courses of study and come up with a pretty good pass at automating financial advice. And in a bigger sense - a whole life management system...and all it will take is an industry standard for data exchange...

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July 24, 2010

Sharks, Blood, and Banks for the Memories

Now and then, a tasteless headline writer will try to get the whole story, flavor, and nuances of a week's worth of financial activities into a single short headline.  While this morning's modest effort won't win any prizes, it's not a bad umbrella to open under which we can dissect most of the week's activities.  Effect Market Theory does, after all, seem to show up like some uninvited guest now and then, so let's unwrap FDIC's latest cigarettes and blindfolds...

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July 18, 2010

So You Finally Got Some Dough...

A number of emails have popped in lately asking (in one form or another) "What do I do with this big...[Pick one or more:  inheritance, pension fund buy-out, 401(k) roll-over, or lotto jackpot, etc]... that just landed in my lap?"  And "What's the best way to spend it?"  Wow - for a doom & gloomer, I never thought I'd be asked to write up an answer to that one, since my inheritance was small enough to pay off a car and get a six-pack.  Still, even the worst streaks of bad luck break now and then and it may be useful to have a plan to make sure the money is well-spent, no regrets whatever and always grateful.  But, what about BIGGER sums?  And I mean MUCH bigger?

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July 17, 2010

Why I Call This A "Crash Window"

Several weeks ago, I began one of the Monday morning UrbanSurvival.com reports with the headline "Why We're So Screwed".  Except for BP getting a temporary cap on it's 'death of ocean' event down in the Gulf (where pressure testing will continue this weekend) not much has changed.  Housing numbers still largely suck, the rate of deflation is coming into clearer focus with CPI, housing, and other key indicators rolling over.  The little drop on Friday of 261 points by the Dow is just a reminder than I'm not the economic realist out there. As our charts show, over the next couple of months, we move to the precipice of what could be a market-closing decline; a period when daily drops are likely to trigger circuit breakers.  The period between now and year-end will probably feature the largest (paper) financial decline in our lifetime.  So we'll start today with my favorite chart...We'll also get to the Kurdistan war breaking out a ways in to this morning's report...

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July 11, 2010

Is Civilization Not Working Out?

Prior to shooting a video about how the rickety time machine project got started back in 1997 and how I took it public with Clif in 2001, we've both been wondering if there's not a huge - uber - grande - overarching problem that has escaped everyone else's notice:  "Is civilization not working out?"  Not that I mind civilization's upside, which includes the internet, hot cars, fast planes (at least once you get past the Draconian check in rituals),.MP3's and even things like the new Disney movie Sorcerer's Apprentice (which opens this Thursday, BTW).  All 'cool beans' as it were.  But then there's this ugly downside what brings [resource] wars, economic depression in the wings, soil depletion, global warming, pandemic threats and all the rest.  With a huge/life-changer for all humans due this November, we have to ask an initially silly-sounding question:  Is this all working?

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July 10, 2010

Common Sense Economics

Call me a fool (you wouldn't be the first, trust me), but I went 'all-in' on the short side Friday since earnings season is coming next week and I can't help but think the market will drift down from this week's levels.  A check of historical prices (or 'hysterical' prices maybe) shows the Dow put on a 5.28% rally for the week. Will there be enough 'happy upside surprises' this coming week to put on a repeat performance?  I don't think so.  While bulls and bears might debate many things, retail sales and people's expectations are the key to what's ahead.  And despite the protestations of the quants, economics is always simple at its core.  Let me give you an example....

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July 4, 2010

Delivering US from Evil

This being the celebration of America's founding, I thought it would be a right/proper thing to do this weekend to present some of my 'notes to self' on how governance in America could be improved.  you know, in light of the wars, spill, global financial crisis and such, seems to be that a level-headed person ought to be able to find multiple ways to improve government.  Or, lacking one of those level-headed people, I thought we could take a whack at it...

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July 3, 2010

"How's Our 'Crash' Doing?"

Just peachy, thanks.  But let's back up a bit in case you're a new subscriber and not used to our sometimes 'excessively direct' way of writing about things.  We start by going back to the Peoplenomics Saturday report #460-A June 19, 2010 which began "Near as I can figure it, the stock market crash window is now opening."  If you had jumped in on the short side of the market the first day of trading after that report when the Dow was at its intraday high on June 21st (10,627.10) you would have enjoyed a decline of 8.8 percent, which if you played something like a triple bear ETF on financials (FAZ) which went from a low on June 21st of $13.68 to a closing level Friday of $18.31 -- an astounding 33.8 percent gain (before commissions) which is OK for a two week trade.

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June 27, 2010

   A Diaspora Handbook - Part Two

Kitting Out the "New Nomads"

Universe mostly speaks in a voice quiet enough to be ignored.  But this week it was screaming at me about finishing off the "Diaspora Handbook".  Not only did a client call and ask me to write up an 'escape plan' which would involve potentially fleeing from the south Florida area, but a different friend called and described his situation in South Florida and wondered "When do I need to be out of here?"  To which my obvious answer was "You're still there?  What part of yesterday isn't clear?"  So this week a discussion of some things you may wish to quietly ponder if there's any chance at all of you becoming one of America's "new nomads" in the future.  Where's the VW Microbus when we need it, huh?

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June 26, 2010

The Adventures of "Greedy George"

We begin by returning to the thrilling day of yesterday, or Friday's UrbanSurvival column, where I wrote:"...my prayer is that the market puts in a test down around 10,050 or maybe even down to 10,000 on the Dow today and then sees a several-hundred point rally on some nonsensical news late in the session."  The Friday intraday low was only 10,081 on the Dow and the high actually got up to 10,202 and change.  But around here, that's close enough to shove a couple of bucks into the cookie jar with the usual rejoinder that "This is not financial advice or a massage parlor."  Rantings of a market-watcher who has occasional winners and occasional losers.  Problem is, where next for this market?  No one is safe on G20 weekends.

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June 20, 2010

A Diaspora Handbook - Part One

Likely tomorrow (Monday, June 2 late afternoon) the latest "Shape of Things to Come" report from www.halfpasthuman.com is planned for release.  Because there is so much content in the Diaspora area  (the scattering about of humans) this week might best be spent exercising the brain a bit around the general topic of Diasporas; the how to recognize, when to act, how to act, nut & bolts kind of information.  This week's report is only Part One of a Diaspora Handbook which I envision as being useful for people worldwide who may be facing the requirement to 'go mobile' in order to survive over the next year or two...

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June 19,. 2010

Crash Window Opening

Near as I can figure it, the stock market crash window is now opening.  In this morning's report, we'll go through some of the factors which are mounting up. Our usual disclaimer is "This is not financial advice" but if I were responsible for anyone else's economic future, I'd be out of all long positions before the end of this coming week, because as you'll see when we click through them, the reasons for optimism are few and far between. We'll start with the BIGG (banks, Israel, Gulf, and gold) problems, but there's a lot more, such as the TINF (treasury, inflation, negative employment outlook, famine prospects) problems.  Taken as a whole, this ain't no time to be playing in The Street.

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June 13, 2010

Tax the Golem

In Jewish folklore the Golem is described as "an artificially created human being that is given life by supernatural means automaton: a mechanism that can move automatically..." but elsewhere it's simplified to simply an automaton, robot, or machine.  This weekend, with my knee bunged up, Universe delivered some raw wryrony: The realization that the problem of economic displacement of humans has now reached a 'knee' such that there may be no long-term recovery from the current decline short of near, no make that total economic collapse.  The case is laid out in a hypothetical lecture by a vaporous Professor Ure as he describes "Ure's Knee" - a kind of unrecoverable economic stall condition caused by a lack of widespread productive employment.

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June 12, 2010

Where is Job Creation?

I have warned many times in the past. although perhaps not saying it in so many words, that what has damned the world to increasingly sluggish economic recoveries - from the longer historical perspective - is that each iteration of change gets us closer to the Golem's world in which somehow, incomplete economic theory can function and rule the world.  Bad news for the Golem: It all falls apart first.  This morning we'll set the stage by putting on "job colored glasses" to highlight the Big Ugly behind the headlines.  T'ain't no jobs being created in sufficient numbers to get us a viable recovery...which although obvious to most working folks, seems to escape the ken of the PTB on top.  After decades of admonishing consumers to 'embrace change', they're about to be overwhelmed by an economic reality of monstrous consequences. 

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June 6, 2010

Life Through Meta Set Glasses

Many times, our Sunday report will feature a single article that we pursue 'in depth' but occasionally, I feel compelled to line up a whole series of seemingly unconnected data points to see where they will lead.  Remember those TV shows where the trick-shot pool player lines up the balls just before making an 'impossible' shot?  Well, think of it that way, except the balls being used are yours & mine.  Just as the future of the trick-shot is determined by the placement of the balls, so too our collective future is determined by what pops up in meta data set we all create on the fly.  Which would be our cue to see what has been popping from the dream Collection over at our free to the public National Dream Center project...following that, sone discussion of trends in FDIC data...

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June 5, 2010

Time to Sell Monday?

Sometimes, it's what the MSM (MainStreamMedia) isn't telling you about what's going on in the world that matters the most.  As an example, in Peoplenomics 455-C of May 16, 2010, I discussed how a few minutes with a calculator  tipped us off that the MSM had been passing out corpgov lies about the extent of the BP/Murder of Oceans/'blue flue'/ oil volcano in the GOM.  Finally the media gets it figured and it's closer to my estimate range than the early-on crap the MSM was fed and passed on.  So this morning a pleasant departure from gloom and doom with a discussion of a very simple way to make some dough in the coming few weeks ----- maybe. 

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May 30, 2010

Discovering "Reality Waves"

Every once in a while, we depart, ever so briefly from our pursuit of economic knowledge to discover more general knowledge, which may be obscuring economic truth.  So this long weekend, we will look at the over rated -- but very it not make and trance inducing phenomenon -- called causality.  Not only does the core concept directly relate to market behaviors in general, such as economic cycles, trading activity, and arbitrary valuations of companies, but it also ties together in an almost Unified Field Theory sort of way, effects as divergent as nuclear radiation, meditation and prayer, UFOs, and more traditional paranormal beliefs such as ghosts.  And what happens after death.  Indulge me; we have until Tuesday to figure out our next trades, and in its own way, this might improve our aim a bit.

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May 29, 2010

 Memorial Day In America

What Did They Die For?

We start - as we do most mornings - with an overall theme, problem, or question that frames my daily excursions into the goings-on behind news headlines and no reason today should be any different.  This being Memorial Day weekend, we need to inquire after the fallen and wounded, not only of present conflicts in multiple countries, but over the longer stretch of human history.  Quite a sobering question it is, too.  Just what did they die for?  A worthy framing question to ask; the answer isn't pretty.

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May 23, 2010

ELE 2: Extinction Level Economics

Let's see what Santa has in his bag of goodies this week, after last week's fine demonstration of how dangerous a calculator can be when used as a BS Detector around ridiculous low-ball claims about the size of BP's Gulf Ocean Murder.  Ah, here we go:  A nice discussion of Extinction Level Economics, an assortment of new acronyms that are about to go mainstream (including GOOD, GOOF, GOOL, and GOOT).  Plus a few follow-up notes on how Hollywood programs society (at some pretty interesting levels).  Like the guy at the cash register says, change in inevitable.

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May22, 2010

Four Envelopes

Before we get deep into the current problems of oil & gas pressure events starting to pop around the world, a couple of strange 'feeling dreams' off the National Dream Center which give 'cause to pause' and before we get to the big uptick in Mass Layoffs, and oil washing ashore and all that, I'm reminded (for no ascertainable reason) to tell you the famous Four Envelopes story, which is told around business schools, because it may be a useful parable for modern times.

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May 16, 2010

Lying About ELE's Part One

Not too many times I can think of in my life when the whole planet has faced multiple ELE's - extinction level events - but we have several that are coming into view now.  Just for fun, sport, and amusement, I thought it would be a worthy project this weekend to put some of them on the table:  The extinction of fiat money globally, extinction of the Euro, the extinction from the Gulf oil spill, the extinction of the US government due to economic unsustainability...well, you get the picture.  But first up, we need some framing references.

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May 15, 2010

Building Tensions: Notice 'em Yet?

Looking over the headlines on (and since) May 6th, an aware person can get a sense that maybe the predictive linguistics are right:  Now through about July 11th is definitely a period of rising tensions and they seem to be coming at us from all directions.  That said, just the financial stuff is scary enough with big chunks of retirement about to disappear now that the Dow is where it was 10-years ago (2001 levels) and the future of the Euro's in doubt.  Why, add to that the march of another four banks to the wall by FDIC this week and you have good cause for worry.  This is what 'building tensions' feels like, especially in places like Greece.  Let's click through a few of the headlines and see if we can arrive at some operating truths, which might better guide our shorter term outlook, although our 'play money' portfolio was up another 10% for the week and back in cash-on-the-sidelines by late in Friday's trading.

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May 14, 2010

Special Trading Note

Although Peoplenomics does NOT offer financial advice, and  what you do with your money is your own business, I am nevertheless always more than willing to share what I am doing in my personal account.

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May 9, 2010

Time to Regulate Computers?

This being Mother's Day, our report will be somewhat brief, since lots of folks take Mom out to dinner and I don't want to be accused of wrecking the day by offloading more economic misery coming in the very near future from my shoulders onto yours.  Instead, we'll take up an interesting discussion about computational horsepower and wonder at what age does a new technology need to be brought to heel by the public - or it's so-so representatives, government - before it does too much damage. With oil gushing into the Gulf based on computational drilling studies, and with Wall Street slammed under 9,800 on the Dow briefly this week, I will take up my Ned Ludd memorial computer hammer and advance threateningly on my i7 quad core with a menacing look on my face.  Oh...and the buzz among us time monks this weekend is that the  real 'dog poet' shows up - and it's a real canine!

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May 8, 2010

Change of Fortunes: Desperation Arrives?

The May 6 turn of events in predictive linguistics modelspace from what had passed for 'normal' if we overlook a few (huge) problems like the 'death of oceans/blue flue' and a few other uglies has been almost undeniable this week.  To be sure, we haven't been tooting our horn too much about it.  Not because we haven't known and seen it coming, but there's been so much attention paid to our project that it's now being imitated by newcomers since seeing the future does have some social management aspects that are 'powerful important' (as Mark Twain might write it) to ThePowersThatBe. 

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May 2, 2010

Twilight of the Jets

As we've got the remnants of that oil spill lapping at the mouth of the Mississippi River, and no doubt a reaction to near-shore oil drilling will follow close on its heels, could it be Universe is dropping serious hints about ways we need to change our modes of transportation?  This week we ponder whether a planned vacation this summer will ever come to pass since since outcomes and 'changes of fortune' are already in the air (and water)  in a serious way and we're not even to the changing fortunes period. Time to start front running 'restrictions on travel"?

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May 1, 2010

George Is Short

A number of reasons to be short (or at least out) of the stock market started to pile up this week, so our first task this morning will be to run through a set of nasty - but undeniable indicators - saying this bull may be mortally wounded.  In terms of conviction, this marks the end of my bullish phase which started in March 2009 decision in my own account to end shorts and be long (Peoplenomics# 395 03/29/2009 "What's this? George becomes bullish?").  Since my April 17, 2010 report "Is the top in, or nearly so?" (Peoplenomics #451) I've been accumulating a short position in financials, and on any rally next week I ought to finish 'loading the boat'.  Not financial advice for you...just revealing what I'm doing in my personal account with the few dollars (very few, come to think of it) that are involved with paper assets.

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April 25, 2010

Alternative Endings

"Holy crap, George!  What is going on with Cliff's latest post "Wolf and the other Biltzers, the new War Season, a terrible choice" that begins "World War 3 is here..."  That particular email then went to some lengths pondering whether Cliff's taken to heavy drinking (no), or if there was maybe something else going on (yes).  While there isn't a lot of evidence, except a few places where molten glass from sand appears as evidence of ancient warfare, the anecdotal, written, and verbal traditions largely point in that direction.  While it's fair to claim we haven't found any evidence of higher social development, I'd have to ask how much 1/4-inch magnetic tape you've see last more than 10-years, let alone a several thousand. This week, we skip past the philosophical/religious part (did that in last week's report anyway) and simply skip ahead to the ugly borderland between econometric modeling, common sense, systemic incentive bias, and oh....alternative endings.   Grab your lab coat, goggles, and dosimeter while we play the exciting new game "Runaway competing economic systems armed with nuclear, chemical and biological incentives...

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April 24, 2010

Top Watch and GlobalRev

Last week's Saturday column was largely about waiting for the 'top' of primary wave 2 from the all time nominal high of October 2007 (14,066 weekly print basis) and the purchasing power top of 11,723, basis the weekly Dow, but not corrected for inflation, or it would be somewhere north of 15,000, to show up.  Once again this week, my target of 11,244 which I have been nattering about, or Robin Landry's 11,241 - which we'll get to in a second - have not appeared.  But it's so close I can almost smell it.

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April 18, 2010

Implications of a Self Defining Hebrew System (SDHS)

Several times over the past few weeks, I have made reference to a group I call simply the Jewish studies group in Canada. Although not composed of highly papered Hebrew scholars, the group has spent several years refining a discovery they call the Self Defining Hebrew system. At the core of the system is the concept that within the basis of Hebrew, there is a definite structure of how words and concepts are formed, which provide for an error correcting built into the language. This week, we depart some distance from our normal economic content in order to step back and do some extremely big picture concept framing, which provide social boundaries within which economic systems must operate. And yes, I will of course share the website address of the group. So you can take a look at some of their work first hand.

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April 17, 2010

When is The Top In?

Markets go up, markets go down - and implicit is that there's a 'time to hold 'em and a time to fold 'em'.   Stories are popping up on the net this weekend suggesting that maybe 'fold 'em' is getting close....

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April 11, 2010

Eating in the Post-Prosperity World

This week's report is a triple serving of food.  We'll consider start by exploring how BLS covers up food price increases you might be seeing and government somehow doesn't, how to start seriously rethinking what you eat at what price points (including what should be a fine discussion of what I call dim array (food), a systemic way of considering food's different values and then we'll get into ways to actually beat high food prices with a load of reader-supplied one pot recipes along with a couple of my own.

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April 10, 2010

War Around the Edges?

Word today that the president of Poland, Lech Kaczynski was among those killed in a plane crash landing in thick fog in western Russia brings a couple of questionmarks with it.  For example, Poland was getting very close with the US on missiles and was scheduled to host US long-range interceptor missiles plus they'd receive Patriot missiles for closer in defense.

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April 4, 2010

Accelerated Learning

I've mentioned - perhaps too often for some - that one of my most significant 'personal discoveries' so far in life has been an amazingly simple personal 'knowledge engineering ap' that quite literally changed my life.  It took me from being a C+ to B- kind of student to straight A's in school, but beyond that it also made it possible for me to learn all kinds of new skills at a remarkable rate.  I don't think I've ever written it down before - and since it is broadly applicable in both education and the work environment, this week a short discussion of accelerate learning and what I've found in my quest to "know it all' and 'do it all'.  This really may help you get more out of life.

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April 3, 2010

So Much for "Recovery"?

I admit to pretty much flaking out on Friday - I mean being up for 24-hours with about three hours of sleep t'ain't the kinda thing gentlemen of my ilk normally do...but sometimes we just have to press ahead.  And sometimes the clarity of a situation only becomes clear as a 'hidden variable' comes into view.  Take the Emergency Fed meeting this coming Monday, for example...

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March 28, 2010

The "Great Conversion"

This is, sorry to say, something more than a 'theoretical discussion this week - we need to have a discussion about transitioning the role of that we call "money".  Besides the linguistic clues, there are some compelling reasons to think that what's now takes for granted - like city services and infrastructure - may fail and that Homeland Security and local police departments are planning to add 'checkpoint training' which we can only assume will be used to protect key infrastructure. An example is the report that "Houston Police to begin training officers to Staff Checkpoints."  Can you honesty think such a change will come with no modification of society's underlying value structures and lifestyles?  So we begin by reexamination of....

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March 27, 2010

The 120-Day Pressure Cooker

A cool thing about the latest predictive linguistics report out of www.halfpasthuman.com is that we get a sense from peering at language changes on the 'net what the feeling of particular periods will be.  I mean if you had to come up with an overall descriptor the the periods in Cliff's work they'd be something like 'building tension' from now to mid-July, then some small release periods - then a big 'release event' Novemberish, and then a 'tipping point' in the spring of 2011.  The rest you'll have to buy the report ($10 and you're a big spender, right?) and/or catch CoastToCoast with George Noory next Thursday night when (if all goes well) Cliff will be on talking about 'what's out there'.  Our immediate focus, though, is on looking at the 'just ahead' period to see what 'building tensions' looks like.  So we might as well start with the global political scene this morning and that means a look at North Korea...

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March 21, 2010

The 'Core Competency Culture' Problem

A funny thing happened on the way to the future.  Cliff had the 'pipes open' [spiders running to catch language change around the SOTTC report] and started to notice a growing body of 'fear' language about something which reduces (after a little software 'simmering' to reduce essences to half, or so) to fears of an emergent 'core competency culture' which seems to have the PTB pretty worried.  My, ain't that strange?  Anything that scares the 'establishment' is  important to us...so off we go tromping through the literature to find...what?

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March 20, 2010

March of the Dead Banks

A not-so-pretty end to the week financially speaking as the FDIC continued to ruin banks out to the regulatory 'wall' and with the expiration of triple-witching, the stock market started a decline which may have some significance; something we'll ponder in tomorrow's ChartPack. The headlines, naturally, were not particularly focused on events inside these United States, opting instead to blame the underlying queasiness of markets on 'over there' forces at work in Greece.  As one reader asked "How long before we US taxpayers get stuck for the bill on that one, too?"  Patience, patience..

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March 14, 2010

The Nightmare Scenarios

Having read the latest SOTTC Report from www.halfpasthuman.com, monkey-mind has been keeping me up late, popping Tums and wondering how the future's gonna show up.  With - or without - the predictive linguistics to seed your thinking, it doesn't take very much imagination to figure out that as the whole 'global system' has evolved, there are certain eventualities for which human have no plan at a general 'civil defense' or 'civil survival' level.  Oh, sure, maybe some of the elites have bunkers in the waiting, but for the rest of us?  Grab some Tums and keep reading...just how bad could it get?  Worse than you ever imagined.

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March 13, 2010

Seeking Signposts

Although monkeymind distractions like reading about UFO's and woo-woo may be entertaining pastimes, the real work of an investor is not to 'pass time' but rather to ensure the integrity of the nest egg, and if circumstances allow for, gain a positive return as conditions permit.  Thus, once again this week, we'll be spending a lot of effort trying to divine which direction the market will turn next.

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March 7, 2010

When Are We In A Depression?

Although I've been writing about the emergence of the Second Depression for more than 10-years, it wasn't until the housing bubble started to implode that people started to admit in some number that maybe I wasn't completely nuts.  Still, if you were to go out on the streets of America, I doubt that more than 1% of the population would admit it, even now that this is a Depression.  Still, the evidence continues to mount for those with 'ears to hear and eyes to see..."  This week, a few data points as we arrive at a key inflection point over the next two weeks.

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March 6, 2010

Secret Government Mega-Projects?

Everyone once in a while a reader email, or a news tip, comes along which just screams for more follow-up because it fits with a lot of 'rumbles' being heard lately.  That was the case this week when the following email arrived from Australia:

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February 28, 2010

Time Travel & Financial Markets

With the arrival of either the first - or with Haiti's large loss of life, arguably our second - "Great Quake" in Chile Saturday morning, I find myself compelled to jot down a few notes about time travel and financial markets, perhaps because in a very particular way, time 'is short' for all of us and, in another, because quite literally time is money and to the extent that you can accurately forecast what happens over some period of time correctly, your fortunes should improve.  However, fortunes are not just limited to a big pile of 'paper assets' or even silver & gold.  The real fortunes are those between your ears.  Still, it seems a worthy project to better understand the future and how it foreshadows its own arrival...since there may be a method to its apparent madness.  Oh, did I mention 2012 has moved?

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February 27, 2010

Pondering 'the Quake'

In addition to the note this morning over on the UrbanSurvival site about the earthquake today, a couple of things have kept me up most of the night swilling Pepto and worrying probably all too much about what's ahead.

The main thrust of my thinking is "What caused the quake in Chile?"  "Something other than a 'normal' quake?"

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February 21, 2010

Notes On The Revolution

Because of last week's "Crash Heard 'Round the World" in Austin, we began Saturday's Peoplenomics report with a start to some serious 'contexting'.  In other words starting with the notion that the HalfPastHuman predictive linguistics suggest an ad hoc grouping of language change as a meta (ad hoc) set called "revolution" we explored a bit of history including the Report From Iron Mountain suggestion that there may be few (if any) really 'good' substitutes for the 'war' function in society at a cultural level.  In this report, we can assess trend drivers that hopefully will allow nonpartisans to avoid being caught up in events as they accelerate through 2010, bringing with them economic consequences, which is our focus here.

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February 20, 2010

Bank Failures to Taxacide to Iron Mountain

The ugly arrival of the lowest common denominator standard of living.

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February 14, 2010

Anatomy of An Option Trade

Several readers have written in - over the past year or so - and have said something along the lines of  "How do you actually trade options...and isn't that a game for 'high rollers?"  Well, no, playing options is not for everyone - or, as my first broker taught me "It isn't for widow's and orphan's money..."  But then I went on to do OK getting my feet wet with options, warrants, convertible subordinated debentures, and some other types of products that aren't as in vogue today as they were way back then in the early 1970's.  Still, with a fairly small stake (a couple of thousand dollars) a person can trade options and under certain conditions can actually make profits that are pretty decide.  Plenty of trip wires along the way - sure - but good returns are also possible.  A good prerequisite for this week's discussion might be Peoplenomics #436 "A simple Tactical Trading Plan for 2010 and $1000" when some of the basic concepts of options are discussed.  This week, I'll walk you through the mechanics of entering the order, holding the position, and exiting with a profit.  And we'll do it with what turned out to be $1020.63 to start with....

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February 13, 2010

A Short-Term Outlook

In the in-depth Sunday piece, I'm going to walk you through a couple of trades in options - step by step - since it is possible to enter into highly leveraged financial speculation for very little money.  A few thousand dollars is all it takes and to prove it, I started the current round of market mayhem with a small pot ($3-thosuand) and as of the end of this week - one month into this particular little financial 'what if?' the account value (availabel for withdrawal) is $3,973.14. which is a 32.44% return.  While that may not sound terrible exciting on the surface, if you could put a whole year of that kind of trading together with no losses, a starting $1,000 would run up to more than $29,000.  If you could somehow do that for 24-months, you'd be over $848,000 and if you could run that was for three years (36-months) of that kind of return, you'd be north of $29-million, which is the whole point.  But that will never happen for reasons that deserve some discussion along the way.

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February 7, 2010

Life After Trading?

A good friend of mine was recently let go at a major trading operation in Chicago where he was supervising a group of bond traders.  I had a chance to pick his brain a bit about what's "out there" and, since he's got an excellent handle on generational turnings (after Strauss & Howe) what he sees on the road ahead is useful.  Following the interview, be sure and flip over to this week's ChartPack where the 'end of the world' is slowly resolving into view...

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February 6, 2010

It's What?

The big snowstorm on the East Coast is causing people to chill out this weekend.  The national weather service has continued its blizzard warning through 10 PM this evening.  Some places outside of Washington/Baltimore could get upwards of 30 inches of snow.  Yes, it will go into the record books.  No, it's not unusual for records to be set somewhere every few winters.  It's just when it hits the Washington area, it gets more press in the MSM.  The word for this 'phenomena' is: winter.

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January 31, 2010

The "Art" of Social Engineering

I have only written about Directorate 153's social engineering mission a couple of times previously; once when its existence could be hypothecated in the wake of September 9/11 (Peoplenomics #6, Dec. 1, 2001) and we covered the hypothetical hiring of a new fellow at the Directorate - an economics/applicant named simply Rick in our September 5, 2004 report #150.  As you'll recall, we hypothecated that a new head of strategic economic planning for the world's hidden perpetrators of 'peaceful war' had been hired from senior global banking ranks in order to ensure social engineering and orchestration of global banking went smoothly.  In today's report we look at how that project has been going or late (hypothetically) and look ahead to future inflection points where terrorism/social distracters may again be desired by the PTB.  Let me emphasize again, this is all hypothetical.

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January 30, 2010

The "January Effect"

There's an olde saying down on Wall Street:  "As goes January, so goes the Year."  and when I popped open the Yahoo Finance site this morning to pull out how this January had done, there it was in glorious black and white:  the Dow opened the year at 10,430.69 and then closed Friday of this week at 10,067.33...a drop of 363.36 points.

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January 24, 2010

Markets Rolling Over? 

In a number of hobbies, I've watched an amazing number of people mistake blind dumb luck for skill and daring.  Ditto the markets.  Still, my March 29, 2009 report "Me Bullish?  Where to Play the 401(k) Game"  (Peoplenomics #395) was nearly perfect.  A good entry point would have gotten one in around 7,500 on the Dow.  Similarly, if one had read Peoplenomics #436B January 2, 2010  and started to accumulate put options as I'm doing in my personal account, the entry might have been short from the 10,600 range if your intrasession sniping skills were sharp.  This week, an update from Robin Landry and some ideas of where things might go from here.  While some weeks we get way off into the weeds, we don't need to talk about market this and market that every week.  Big decisions over the long term make more money and disturb sleep less. 

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January 23, 2010

Five More to the Wall

It has become somewhat of a grim custom around here to put aside the function of fully awakening around here in order to start each Saturday with a recap of the week's actions by FDIC which is trying to manage the banking collapse of the US without setting off bank runs 'per se' as occurred in the 1930's.  So we once again begin with the list of banks given their last smokes and sent out to the wall with a blindfold this week...this morning's envelope of the damned, please?

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January 17, 2010

Fight, Flight, and Diaspora

With the grim events in the aftermath of Haiti's quake this week, time for us to consider that if the predictive linguistics are correct about more 'terra entity' displacement/diaspora to come later this year - as in maybe up to two billion people moving about - we ought to consider how to cope with adrenaline-driven outcomes.  What we'll be talking about in this week's report is how to preplan for 'unthinkable' events.  Just like fire departments have 'running cards' - where fire responses in big cities are preplanned, so too, in matters of 'personal survival' the six P's are immortal: Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.

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January 16, 2010

Diaspora, Part One

As I explained in a couple of special postings to the UrbanSurvival website on Friday, looks like the linguistics about the context change are squaring up to be earth/terra related and over the next year we should be expecting no less than six 'great quakes' although the interpretation is difficult since there are some very, very hard processing and interpretation issues that go with closely-spaced events of an archetypically similar flavor.

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January 10, 2010

Making It to 2012: The Latest "Surprise" Disaster

The "Gathering Gloom" has arrived.  No, it's not the world waking up this spring to find food production is falling apart.  That one's easy to see coming in the wake of record cold and possibly large-scale floods in the Mississippi Valley to follow along with drought and groundwater disappearing in California and Arizona.  Easy stuff that:  Obvious and evident to anyone who even pretends to scan headlines looking for economic drivers.  No, the surprise is the additional 7.65 million people  I estimate will lose their jobs between now and the end of August (at the latest).  That'll be shocker.  So, if you're pondering buying a new home 'on the cheap', you might want to factor my logic into your decision-making processes.  Warm up the calculator...George is at it again...

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January 9, 2010

Checkbook Republic Rules

Ah, fine stuff to begin the coffee with:  Word in the NY Times this week that a whole series of legal decisions are piling up that will make it easier for corporations, unions, and above all special interest groups to buy their legislative agendas.  Why we don't just subcontract congress out to eBay is beyond me.  At least there we'd see who the high bidder is and be able to leave negative feedback, know what I'm sayin'?

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January 2, 2010

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January 1, 2010

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December 27, 2009

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December 26, 2009

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December 20, 2009

Several readers have asked me for an update to the August 30 Peoplenomics report (#418) in which I expressed growing skepticism of the rally which was then in the are of Dow 9,544.  What is difficult to find in investing are clear signals when one should flee from a particular investment and see something else.  So this week I'll pick on a couple of markets (gold and stocks) and show you just how close I think both are to the 'fight-or-flight' technical level.  Along the way, some discussion of an indicator that very few people seem to use anymore - exponential curves.  Before we can do that, however, a little math and long-term perspective is necessary.  Not hard stuff - unless you were math-averse in school - in which case we'll make this as painless as possible.  As usual, this is not trading advice, and I assume you've read our comprehensive disclaimer here.  True, that's like holding you a lit stick of dynamite, and saying "Now - you hold this....while I go hide behind that rock..."  But, that's how today's litigious world operates, isn't it?  So we'll start with you holding a chart and me lighting it like so....

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December 19, 2009

'Tis the season to be jolly..."   Yada, yada, yada.  The inbox loads up this time of year with people screaming "Doomster!  I don't care if there are millions of people unemployed...things are not that bad and you're a doomster Ure."  Yeah, sure, you betcha.  Why just in the past day or two we've only  had global climate talks implode, seven banked refried by FDIC, and if that's not enough, gold has dropped from a shade under $1,220 an ounce December 3rd down to intraday lows under $1,100.  This morning I'll try to put all my personal prejudices aside ("World's going to hell in a hand basket!") and try my very best to spin things in a MainStreamMedia kind of way so as not to jolt too many people out of their comfort zones.  I'm making this heroic effort in order to be rebranded from 'doomster' to a more seasonal "For he's a jolly good fellow" instead of my more accurate descriptor here lately which is....

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December 13, 2009

13 Acres and Independence Part 8:  Small Farm Economics

A couple of readers have asked for a more detailed explanation of goat ranching, since that's our second cash crop; the first being a selective cut of timber on the property that netted about $14,000.  "How does it work?  Can you really make money at it?"  The short answer is it's not too complicated, but there are design patterns behind the scenes that require a good understanding. This week, a look at farm business models, crop or output selection, and how to go about these things in a reasonable fashion. 

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December 12, 2009

Anyone with a calculator, magnifying glass, and a sense of humor can figure out that the Dow - which closed this week at 10,471.50 compared with last week's close of 10,388.90, gained a under 87 points for all the hubbub. However it's more difficult to put into context what this really means to an investor's outlook.  The two main scenarios I'm watching are the possibility of a sideways market through March and then a long slow decline or a drop down early in the new year toward the March '09 lows and then one last moon shot toward the 14,000 range by late July or early August when a whole constellation of forecasts start to come together in a most ugly way.  That includes linguistics, astroecon studies, and a number of major cycles.

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December 6, 2009

Support of Bernanke?

Why, sure! I offer a detailed answer to the questions readers sent in asking "What are you smoking?" in response to the Saturday note that I'd have to go along with recommending Ben Bernanke for another term as Federal Reserve Chairman.  Don't misunderstand; I'm haven't been turned into a cheerleading Fed supporter.  But this week, let's get real about what managing the  Fed really means in terms of continuity, predictability and an operating plan...and ask the Bernanke critics "Where's the concrete alternative operating plan, staff, strategy, and political will behind it to prevent a global meltdown that only a madman would promote?"  Besides. how much does it matter who's at the controls when the global economic airplane is likely in an unrecoverable spin? 

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December 5, 2009

It begins almost like one of those 'good news/bad news' jokes.  I have good news for you in the sense that the market put in a nominal 2009 high this week, but the bad news is that when the party ends, the structural problems which are being papered over (along with the painting of the tape and the prohibition on using common sense in conjunction with P/E ratios) will still be necessarily reckoned with.  Although I don't offer specific financial advice, there are multiple data points which bear watching; most of which ought to be figured into market pricing and individual investment expectations.  We'll start with our calendars out and the latest from the FDIC...

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November 29, 2009

Fingerprints of the PTB

Don't know if you have noticed the same disturbing trend I have, but when one sits back on a cool morning with no work to think about and reflect over a hot cuppa joe, I get a growing sense that less and less of what's being 'piped' into human melodramatic consciousness can be trusted.  It starts as a feeling, but when I started start to add up all the Big Lies of the past few years, the number became  impressive; 9/11, the supposed naturally occurring flu, the 'need to war', and more recently, climategate.  This week, we review a few of these Big Lies and ask an almost impossible question: "Why?"  The answers are few, but we can at least begin framing a large and potentially life-altering answer set.

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November 28, 2009

Dancing With Disaster

The little  154-point hiccup in the Dow, or the slightly larger 1.73% drop in the NASDAQ Friday should not be the focus of any sane investors thinking this weekend.  Not that sanity and investing belong in the same paragraph, but if we were to go there, what would be our 'right focus'?  On December 7th we'll get out next look at the G.19 Consumer Debt figures - and we should have a lot more clear idea on whether there's green shoots, or not.  If the Consumer Debt levels off - or increases - then there is hope of a muddle-through outcome for several more months.

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November 22, 2009

Increasing Your Personal Efficiency

Without going overboard into the Human Potential Movement, I thought this week I would address a question I get asked with surprising frequency:  "How do you get so much done?"  The answer is really pretty simple - yet it's one of those invisible decisions that people generally don't spend any time thinking through.  I have at least 14-weeks a year of productivity (based on 40-hour workweeks) that most people don't have the sense to reclaim as their own.  Since the holiday period is when many people get enough time off work to spend at least a little on introspection, I thought this week I'd share a few thoughts on how we can each increase our 'personal efficiency'.  I don't claim to be perfect at it - just a little better than average.  But thanks to the fact that effort compounds over time almost like interest, it's a worthwhile study.  We then apply this to some disturbing and quite possibly irreversible trends in today's headlines.

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November 21, 2009

Global Climate Change - A Scam?

A newly circulating 60 MB ZIP file has all kinds of  incriminating information in it - on how schools are using climate change to build reputations and revenue - and how climate data has been fudged - as a WTO-type agenda by the shadowy PowersThatBe. Link to download the file included.   Plus - Fort Hood follow-up...

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November 15, 2009

"Life Through Business Model Glasses" Ever wonder what would cause a person (like me) to ask "What's the Woo-Woo business model worth?" Here's the cause...Ever since I got serious about trying to understand business back when I was a newscaster, I'd come to a working conclusion that almost all human activity may be viewed at some level as competition between business models.  Whether you talk about religion, government, family, or more conventionally-structured businesses like the traditional plumber six blocks over, everyone it seems is running a business model - although most will deny it's their sole motivation.  Using this approach, we can not only develop clearer focus in our personal lives, but also gain understanding through questions we never thought to ask before.  Like: "What's a UFO worth?" and "How big is the woo-woo business?"

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November 14, 2009

My report today deals with four converging data sets which could spell disaster for humans at an unimaginable level - in fact, unlike the movie 2012 and it's 'neutrinos increasing' indicator, this one is a bunch of hard data sets with potentially horrific implications - and it's all quite real.  Because of it's content, this report available only to Peoplenomics.com subscribers since subscribers are the ones that keep the servers up.  Also, when I post this kind of material on the free side, I typically get flooded with emails from non-subscribers and I'm not here to debate the general public.  The data speaks for itself when assembled in a particular way.

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November 8, 2009

Common economic wisdom is that a home is the most important investment most folks make, but I respectfully disagree.  I'd suggest it's the partner you choose to put in the home that is really the biggest investment you make in Life since you can lose money faster than any market in history through the mechanism of divorce. Half to 65% net worth - or more- can disappear in an instant.  And you thought stocks in the 'pink sheets' were risky? See this divorce rate chart.  A number of subscribers who are single have asked for advice, so I thought it might be useful to apply some basic marketing principles to finding a significant other.  This may seem a little irreverent here - and to be sure the line between sociopath and social butterfly is a thin one - but it won't be the first time one of these in-depth reports has stepped over a line or two.  Such is the danger of inquiry.

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November 1, 2009

Think you have a handle on 2012?  Ha!  Not hardly!  On Tuesday night of this week, Cliff High will be rolling out his research - along with some spiffy graphics on his site www.halfpasthuman.com as part of an interview on the Jeff Rense show.  We will hold off on "the Single Person's Marketing Plan" until next week because I wanted to spend some time this weekend bridging the gap between the historical basis of 2012 - and the critical issues of survival of possible events in that timeframe.  What do the Dogon People and their stories about Sirius (Later Osiris in Egyptology) have to do with the breakdown of the former Soviet Union?  And what does that have to do with economics?  Get ready to grab your blinders firmly...you ain't gonna like this at all.

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October 25, 2009

While we wait patiently to see which big commercial real estate outfit will be the first to hit banko, what the public reaction to the Obama declaration of national medical state of emergency and so forth will be,  we're at a fine point to consider one of my pet economic theories.  I call it "Economic Island Theory"  and it works with countries, states, cities, neighborhoods, and people right here on your block.  If you want to understand who has power, Economic Island Theory is the ticket...no fancy formulas needed.  Job, home, and Life counseling - all in one byte-sized theory. 

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October 18, 2009

No woo-woo to this:  A surprising amount about 'the future' can be inferred about a specific point in time by merely projecting present events.  This week, we'll use a few simple tools that TV assignment editors use and see what we can infer about a particular date in the future - October 26th, in our case because that's when the predictive linguistics 'go hottest' - and then see if we can block out a reasonable set of expectations about how the local evening news ought to look on that day...

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October 11, 2009

Like it or not, I think it's time to start thinking the unthinkable about the future of the US dollar.  In a paper "Improving CIA Analytic Performance: Strategic Warning", Jack Davis of the Sherman Kent Center for Intelligence Analysis makes a key distinction assessing "substantive uncertainty and strategic warming",  pointing out that while "Identifying when, where, and how a declared or potential adversary will strike the United States directly, mount a challenge to US interest abroad, or make a weapons breakthrough is the highest priority of the DI’s current intelligence effort..." there's a different kind of threat - the strategic variety - given what I reckon to be underweighting in financial contingency plans. As Davis points out "A thoughtful senior policy official has opined that most potentially devastating threats to US interests start out being evaluated as unlikely."  Do we now find ourselves in a world where the strategic failure of the dollar is being "evaluated as unlikely"?

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October 4, 2009

Three parts to this week's report:  Part 3 will deal with the very worrisome report from HPH modelspace which was posted on the UrbanSurvival site on Saturday.  Part 2  reviews some of the macro "myths" were that came out of the first Depression and how the systematic dismembering of those hard-learnt lessons set the stage for the great pain yet to come here in the second Depression; which brings us to Part 1 - a much larger/further housing price collapse, and massive (and rising) unemployment. It's unfortunately simple when you look at implied housing prices resulting from even modest declines in aggregate loan-to-value (LTV) rates...

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September 27, 2009

A number of readers have asked me (at various times over the past six months) “I have X dollars in my in my Y account…what should I do with them?  This week we’ll start trying to get some ideas about where the economy is going by considering the views of those very bright people who work for the government (JASON Defense Advisory Group) which we tripped over in our circuitous adventure to the fringes of woo-woo areas last week.   From there we will hit a number of other government agencies and see what their vision of the future looks like.  (Hint: Screwier than yours or mine, which is not very comforting…).  Ultimately we’ll draw some conclusions about the Zero Delusion, that once uniquely Zimbabwean monetary disease that spreading faster than swine flu on a formerly healthy Navy ship.  We begin by developing....

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eptember 20, 2009

This week, we step back from our usual fare of non-traditional economics (of the sort that recognizes the cyclical nature of economies, population demographics and resource depletion rates, since such topics are taboo among peer-reviewed cowards) to expand our vistas to just beyond the frontiers of the science we know to where some recent developments bring into focus the possibility of a supra-normal reality, thanks to a contributor who has gone to great lengths to protect his identity.  This week we'll digest enough data to trigger a curious mind to look at seemingly inexplicable events in today's headlines and examine the possibility that there is - as Arthur Conan Doyle called it - a bigger game afoot.  Behind all that most humans accept 'entertainment' there may be a far more elegant yet troubling explanation for scores of 'unexplainable events' right before our eyes, 9/11, UFO's, the whole spectrum:  It's a battle with roots in Roswell, Philadelphia and tests Able and Baker in the Pacific, chemtrails and all the rest.  And it has tentacles reaching past today forward a thousand tomorrows. Welcome to the ultimate in asymmetric warfare: The War Across Time.

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September 13, 2009

We begin with a discussion of the pricing mechanisms that have facilitated the corporate coup in America  especially via the Supreme Court as evidenced in a case returned to a lower court last week that seems destined to further expand corporate supremacy over humans.  We'll demonstrate using options pricing theory how the corporate will always trumps regular humans in government policy-making.  Our second article projects future relative values of gold, stocks, and real estate for the next couple of years - some simple investment choices become evident.  Then on the lighter side, a discussion of  hyperchroniacs and how that may actually have some solid grounding in science.  Except for one little catch:  It implies the world getting weirder than it already is.  But first, let's go buy us some government...

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September 6, 32009

Not to be a stick in the mud, but as much as I like to watch television as much as the next guy, I'm definitely in the came of not wanting to pay for it.  At various times, we've had the pay TV services and it gets to be spendy - month after month and in these uncertain times promising to pay even $50 for an assortment of news and business channels mounts up.  Over the usual 2-year commitment, you're talking about as much as a couple of thousand bucks - and in some cases equipment is on top of that.  What's a guy to do?  One of the answers is "Free-to-air" television.  No, you won't find the assortment of stations and no, not much out there that is HD, but that's what NetFlix is for - the occasional good/worthwhile movie.  This week's report (since it's a holiday weekend and all) is something other than our normal 'grim' fare of economic outlooks.  A simple how-to which can save you a thousand dollars a year and free up 2-hours a day.  The grim stuff is in the chart section.

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August 30, 2009

First up is a short look at 'immediacy values" from the predictive linguistic work which  could impact personal and business expectations between now and when the next "Shape of Things To Come report is issued around September 15th.  The good news is that while some things look better, other prospects have grow more ominous.  Then we'll consider some of the recent developments in the market and whether it's time to get back to bearish since I became bullish in late March (Issue #395: "Me Bullish?  Where to Play the 401(k) Game).

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ugust 23, 2009

In Saturday's free report on the UrbanSurvival site, I made a passing reference to the implications of S-curves in the study of bank failures in the US.  This week, a longer term look, using the same technique.  And once we've got a grasp of that, the next issue would be "What to do?" about it.  Then, since we're all about new ways of looking at markets, why not apply S-curves to the recent Dow, over the past 10-years or so, and see where that points?  Got'cher Cray warmed up?  We're off....er...maybe that's not the right word, since people have been applying that to me for years, although I insist they are incorrect...

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August 16, 2009

Three items on the agenda this week.  One is to address a reader who wondered how I could say something to the effect that 'government was doing a pretty good job, all things considered' when I also happen to think we're in the midst of dropping into the depths of the second depression.  Good question...I'll see if I can explain.  Secondly, there's a 70+ slide PowerPoint that you can download as a PDF which was given to the East Texas self-organizing collective meting in Tyler, TX Saturday afternoon.  Great fajitas and fellowship.  And then, there's the matter of what's it's gonna be as we are now in that August 16-22 window where something becomes a prequel to events to follow over the course of this fall.  So grab some popcorn, we've got a front row section reserved for us at the economic train wreck.

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August 13, 2009

East Texas Peoplenomics/SOC Meet-Up

Information and directions to our Saturday (8/15/2009, Tyler, TX)  gathering...

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August 9, 2009

We are now less than two weeks from the August 22 'hot date' in the predictive linguistics work from Cliff at www.halfpasthuman.com and it's as good a time as any to have a little chalk-talk about how this fall could work out.  The earthquakes in Baja, occurring with almost uncanny precision as expected, and the following 6.1 in Japan fulfilled all of our 'duality' expectations, so we're left with a very hard set of linguistics to deal with for the fall.  So dire are the possibilities that I told my son, who starts his EMT re-certification program in September in the Pacific Northwest, that he may not be able to complete it.  Moreover, there's one critical path into our future that could result in him hiking to Texas (from Washington state) as a wandering medical practitioner in 2010.  Action point:, He should pay particular attention to the EMT-W content on the side.  If you're not familiar with  EMT-W (sometimes WEMT) curriculum, it's designed for first responders in a wilderness setting where you're basically on your own.  It's one thing to save a life with 4-minutes response times, one minutes from an AED, and withy 150-drugs and a 12-lead ECG 7-minutes out. It's entirely another when there are no communications and you've got only a trail first-aid pack, OTC medications, and a good pocket knife.  From an emergency medicine standpoint, we may all be at either extreme of that spectrum within a year; such is the breadth of critical path possibilities.

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August 2, 2009

Now that last week's report on how banks are, in effect, swapping write-downs and garnering tax credits as their reward for crashing the housing market, we can put enough pieces of the Great Puzzle of Life on the table, using diverse source materials, that a kind of 'rough out' (as some tradesmen would describe it) of the future can be tabled.  When I tell you that this 'rough out' draws on diverse backgrounds, everything from Federal Reserve notes on the economy, news clips from major media including the BBC and even old UFO-studies books, don't be alarmed.  Nor should my looking to the recent "The Shape of Things to Come", the follow-on to the ALTA series from www.halfpasthuman.com, which only a few people have figured is connected to the much earlier book "The Shape of Things to Come by H.G. Wells."   Grab your tinfoil hat.  We're off this week on a major dot-connecting mission, which should things collapse as expected this fall, might be a dim star to steer by on what for most will be very dark times indeed.

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July 26, 2009

A lot of readers have been asking lately "Are banks really losing money on real estate they foreclose on?"  My answer: probably not. If you thought the derivatives game was hot, let me bring you up to speed on how to banks can get rich foreclosing.  "How Not To Lose Your Butt In Real Estate 101".  Everything from basic use of leverage to how to buy dirt cheap.  No 2-hour infomercial, either.  Just some core ugly concepts.

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July 19, 2009

This week’s Peoplenomics report is a little outside of our usual economics perspective but worth sharing since I’ve been doing a lot of personal research this past week into the upcoming expected outbreak of virulent novel/swine flu in the USA this fall and winter.  Because it’s expected to result in a fair number of fatalities, and since I need all the readers I can get, I’ve put together a reasonably comprehensive look at what to expect and some personal courses of action when (more than if) swine flu comes to your neighborhood.  This is not medical advice – for that, see your health care professional (or local shaman). This is a survey of what’s out there to be learned and some thoughts on how it may be individually applied.  My market outlook as usual accompanies in this week’s Chart Pack. 

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July 12, 2009

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July 5, 2009

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une 28, 2009

June 21, 2009

June 14, 2009

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June 6, 2009

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May 31, 2009

This week my report will focus on a couple of historical points which folks seem to overlook.  One is the comparison of bank failures in the 1930's to bank failures of the present day (Oh, and it's worse, BTW than the Great Depression already even if you don't count the latest three closures last week) and the other is the 500-year 'hemisphere cycle' of history.  So get out your calculator and let's see what's hidden in plain sight:  Depression Two is now well underway; albeit cleverly hidden in plain view for any thinking person to see...

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May 17, 2009

I was genuinely surprise last week to learn about the number of people who hear "voices" in their head so I got to thinking "Gee, does this have any implications for investing?  After a little research into such diverse areas a use of microwaves to generate specific 'voices' with subject's heads, I've concluded that not only is there something (good) to be said about "tinfoil hats", but in addition, there are some implications about investing and some things you may wish to consider trying which could influence your own investment and whole life decision-making processes.  It is, as this week's headline implies, where "woo-woo" meets investing and where we might really profit from rethinking the old computer term GIGO...

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May10, 2009

We seem to be hearing that maybe, at long last, there is some light at the end of the tunnel that's not another trainload of economic mayhem coming our way. Don't believe it for a minute. I'll admit only that the Dow, which closed last week at 8,574.65 has put on an impressive rally since March 2, when it was about 1,948 points lower...6,626.94. But are we really out of the woods yet? Ha! I think you already know the answer to this, but let's revisit an indicator I've used in the past to see if the world is in any danger of going back to making sense any time soon. It's called the....

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May 6, 2009 11:20 AM

Special Midweek Trading Update

Click below for access.

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May 3, 2009

Before we launch into the two main items of this week's report, namely the concept of installing a client-server architecture on the federal government and a deeper analysis of bank failures that makes the case we're really much closer to a 'clean replay' of the 1930's Depression than MainStream Media (MSM) let's on, I'd like to begin with a huge "Thank you!" to the subscribers who keep the IndependenceJournal.com, UrbanSurvival.com, and Peoplenomics.com web sites going via their subscriptions. With this weekend's report, Peoplenomics is now 400 issues along...so if you count back 400 weeks that's when our first edition hit - October 19, 2001. The focus of that first issue, written just a few short weeks after 9/11? Two items that are very much current today: The first real discussion of my "systems perspective of life" and "Clash of Civilizations? Cyclical Aspects of Major Religions at 1,000 and 1,500 years..." Back in 2001 when Peoplenomics got started, I wanted to write something that would be a useful 'look-ahead' source news and financial analysis. Thanks to the predictive linguistics work of Cliff at HalfPastHuman.com and more than 13-years of major market journalism by moi, I think Peoplenomics has hit the mark more often than not and we've been far enough ahead of the MainStreamMedia as to make it almost humorous. So it's with some considerable pleasure I'll begin this week's report with a discussion of how the current flu scare makes an even stronger the case for modeling our physical government after client-server architecture topologies in computing....

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April 26, 2009

Readers of the (free) www.urbansurvival.com site have been pondering the meaning of 10XCSN since I first mentioned it in early October 2008. In this week's report subscribers get to see what that was all about plus a little more insight into the web bot project. From there, we move on to assessing economic impacts of a massive pandemic, and we'll finish up this week's report with a discussion of how to find a good business to be in during this Second Depression. Mask up, glove up, pick a bale of cotton - it's time to rock & roll...

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April 19, 2009:

Although I gave up cigar smoking several decades back, if there's a mindset to be in for this week's report, it'd be the fresh cup of coffee, a cigar, and being in no particular hurry, since we have a lot so much to cover. Over in the ChartPack section, we'll be pondering the meaning of the pending Armstrong Turn date. Here, we'll be asking a few questions about hidden archeology, which in case you're wondering, may have a lot more to do with how modern-day investing works than you might think. And we'll get into the future of the web bot project and a couple of thoughts on what it's like to touch the future. So clip the end off that virtual stogie and let's get to it starting with...

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April 12, 2009

Although it may be easy to pass off my particular 'take' on the economy as a marketing man gone over-the-edge at times, it may surprise you to learn that there's a low key group of folks who have been working on the problem of long wave economic collapse since the mid 1990's when a bunch of us who 'live 10-minutes in the future' held serious discussions about it on a list server run by the University of Colorado. It was a great crowd: My deflationist friend Jas Jain was there, TheBondDube, and a few dozen others that contributed on a regular basis. One poster in particular, whose posts always made sense (i.e. I agreed with most of his positions), was a fellow by the name of Stephen Swaim. His 'day job', if you will, is he is an Ohio attorney specializing in tax litigation with an emphasis on real property tax issues. His undergrad work was at Miami University, then Washington & Lee ('78) for the law degree, and then his CPA certification in '82. I often refer to him as my 'consigliore' as his advice is almost always spot on. This week, I'm pleased to have convinced him to publicly reveal some of what we have spent hours and hours talking about: A long wave economic perspective that incorporates not just the formulaic approach of conventional economystics, but the practical view that "Ooops! Maybe cycles are real, too..." It's with some satisfaction I offer you the following...

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April 5, 2009

In many of the weekly Peoplenomics reports, I pick a single topic and delve into it in some depth. But, this weekend we have a lot more ground to cover than usual, so I got to thinking "What's the overarching concept that ties all this together?" What's on the plate? Well, for openers, there's the usual "Which way for the market, next?" Following that we've got a major web bot / predictive linguistics hit developing with muckers/amok and the developing sense of 'surreal' that will get to the point of paralyzing people sometime over the next year or so. Closely coupled, there's the matter of getting control of your 'framing/reference' systems that either confine or liberate your thinking, and following all that we get into timing the purchase of real estate in these record low rates, a fine point or two about gardens, and as it all that isn't enough, I'll fill you in on the alpha test plans for the 'crop circle spinning software' that my friend Cliff has been working on, and which you, if all goes according to plan, will be able to take part in testing. So as I scratched my head this morning I got to thinking "What's a broad enough headline to take in this wide range of topics. And then it hit me: This is all about "Living well, in spite of..."

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March 29, 2009

Short term - yes. Long term - no. But there's a bit of time in between now and next fall's problems. In fact, as I see it, there's a pretty good case to be made that if the market doesn't collapse this coming week for about a one to 1.5 week decline into the week before Easter (which wouldn't surprise me - with a huge rally thereafter) the odds are increasing that the US stock market is about to put on a doozy of a rally which should make it through the 9,500 area and perhaps even as far as 11,200+. And a few of the global markets could be even better. This week let's focus on some things to consider with your 401(k). Not investment advice, just things to noodle and ruminate on as you try to hang on to 'what's left' of your life savings.

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March 22, 2009

The "Singularity" is Going Bust

There's a theory that suggests that people have a predisposition to denial or unjustified optimism, which might be labeled a 'save-us gene'. Not specifically religious, per se, the predisposition spread across many cultures is that at some point in (name that) crisis, a new [something will save us] will come along and all will be changed, all wrongs made right, justice restored, balance in the Universe returned, and the good guys will win. I'm not talking religion here, since discussion of religion covers such a wide range/diversity and is largely verboten in the workplace, I'd point to the non-religious 'saves us' concept is making the global boardroom rounds: the "Singularity". This particular 'save-us' concept/belief posits that humanity will get so creative, and so computationally empowered and so quick to market, that bumps in the road (such as our current recession-morphing-into-depression) are just a few formula and code libraries from being solved. But are they? The concept exists, in part, because Business Schools don't teach this one course...

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March 15, 2009

Inboxes are funny critters. But since I write about economics and a sort of going-along-to-get-along level of personal preparedness, my inbox seems to attract a tremendous number of questions. Some of them I can answer, some of them I can't. In any event, while I don't offer financial advice, I will go so far as to propose some things you might wish to consider in your own financial and life-planning. So I thought what I needed to do this week was pull out the Top-10 questions and discuss them so you can make your own best call as to what the 'right' course of action is for you, given that everyone has a different set of circumstances and we don't live in a one-size-fits-all world. Let's begin with this one: THE most asked question I get is...

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March 8, 2009

In 1938, the federal government held a series of hearings into the causes of the Great Depression of the 1930's. And, no surprise, the outcome of the hearings that made it into the history books was the Keynesian version of things which in effect said that "more government intervention and better intervention" was the 'right' course for government. Of course, since telling an already big government that more government was needed, this was very much like pushing drinks at a drunk. There was, however, a much deeper cause of the Great Depression - which I'll explain in a moment, championed by sound economic professionals, who just didn't preach the right Gospel to the big government choir. In case you haven't noticed, the 'bailouts' that have been passed have about zero job creation power; 3.5 million admits the Obama administration, of of these, some will be counted if jobs are just 'saved' - making accountability all but impossible. But, in case you haven't noticed, the "more government mantra" of the 1930's is being replayed in spades today. But what's really causing this Second Depression may come as a surprise to you...and it's not the move to make District of Columbia residents income tax FREE... But it's sorta related...

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March 1, 2009

Lots of readers enjoyed Peoplenomics Issue #389 ("A Steely-eyed Survey of 2012 Prospects") of 2/15/2009. However, after doing a lot more chart work, it turns out that one of my threats for that period may have a little more 'going for it' than I early figured. But even more interesting is the related chart work which I was doing at the time that may give some additional insight into just where present market trends could be taking us. Before we get into that, let's first step back and look at where we are in the Kondratiev economic Long Wave and see how Kondratiev might be improved upon... But first we have received this important warning about gold...

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February 22, 2009

A large number of readers have asked me to opine on 'home defense' during what shapes up linguistically as the 'summer of hell' just ahead and a whole bout of economic collapse to a larger degrees next fall and on into 2010. The requests take various forms, but typically proudly tell me that "I've just bought a (such and such) gun and (xxxx) rounds of ammo...is this a good decision/good planning? Maybe yes, but more likely no, unless you are planning a life of combat and violence in whatever comes. A far better investment for most folks would be Army Manual 3-90 of July 2001 (or later). Its title? Simply "Tactics"...

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February 15, 2009

In one of those 'great minds tracking' kind of things, Cliff over at www.halfpasthuman.com and I have both been putting in time last week looking at prospects for 2012. His approach is to use the telescope afforded by his proprietary predictive linguistics work, while mine is much more conventional, using trend forecasting techniques. As you'd expect, our results are somewhat different, but there's enough 'buzz' coming off language shift, and enough in-your-face trends that could culminate in 2012, that it seems like a good investment of effort to sort out how the d�nouement of the 2012 could work out and then develop at least a framework for personal action should coming events present a hedging opportunity. So we being by defining...

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February 8, 2009

A number of readers have asked for some discussion of whether 'barter systems' will replace "money" as the economic washes up on the rocks of economic history over the next couple of years. I sincerely wish the complex future could be reduced to a single concept, like barter, but it can't. Instead, we'll all face a tapestry of exchange mechanisms - probably quite different from what we're used to in the current economy - which will be driven by major fundamental shifts in underlying values at a societal level. What's clear from a read of Dmitri Orlov's Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects is that barter is not a 'single tool that solves all' - and it's only one of numerous ways to get those things we all need to hold life together as a tolerable event sequence. So we begin this week by stepping back to the key action verb of life: "getting".

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February 1, 2009

I'd be lying if I didn't admit to some degree of envy of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's economic study of the Great Depression because in some ways, it uniquely qualifies him to lead the world's more important monetary authority. But while his economic scholarship may be peachy, there's the ugly matter of its limited scope; I hold that economics is a result of the social contract, a foundational element of it, but that the social self-interests are superior in most regards to just money. I'd point specifically to a passages in "As We Go Marching" by John T. Flynn (Doubleday, 1944):

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January 30, 2009

Special Mid-session Markets Note

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January 25, 2009

The arrival of an email this week about a group planning to do something called 'seasteading' - setting up whole new countries on the high seas, reminded me that I've never tried to summarize my experiences having lived on a 40-foot sailboat on the US West Coast for a bit more than 10-years, although there's plenty of learning to share from the experience. Although there may be something to be considered in the possibility of a 'global coastal event', there's a lot to be had from such a lifestyle...enough so that I could write a longish book on the topic, so pardon this week's report being a bit longish compared to most. Why, the subject of placards alone covers plenty of territory; everything from the sign that "Marriages performed by the Captain are only valid for this weekend" to the more serious (and required on vessels >40') MARPOL compliance placard not to mention the various oil pollution and disposal plaques. So pull up a long glass, me hearty - we're going boating, arghhh. Like other big decisions in life, it's a matter of trade-offs. Hate boating? See the earthquake discussion toward the end...

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January 18, 2009

There's something that's been bugging me ever since my friend The Bond Dude reminded me of it. What he said was that over a long enough period of history, if you have two different rates of return, the higher yield will always swamp the lower yield. Each one dollar of face value on a 10% bond over 20-years compounds out to $6.725 while a 9% rate comes in at just $5.604 per dollar of face value. As you can see, that measly one-tenth of one percent may not sound like much at the time the bonds are issued, but run out over 20-years, it's a huge 20% difference in yield. OK, nothing profound to think about yet, right? Ah, but let's now apply that little compounding trick the question of how humans have lost control of governance to corporations. A little exploration of tax rate differentials suggests we will all, sooner than later, be working for the 'company store'. Sorry, no harm intended, especially if you work in one of those 'in process of being nationalized' banks, it's just that's how the numbers come out. You're just going first.

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January 11, 2009

Remember the talk about how an early test of the Obama presidency was expected early on? Those comments which 'came and went' during the presidential campaign might now materialize in real-time later this month. So, in order not to be caught flat-footed by possible future events, we mix up the latest outputs from the predictive linguistics project, dump in a handful of high tech Land Warrioring suitable for a Tom Clancy novel, and then season it with just a spritz of 'collision of civilizations' to come up with a contingency planning framework for a late January 'international crisis' which could become the modern day analog of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Details are for subscribers only, but even for non-subscribers, the personal action points might be: That high gas mileage car may turn out to be a good idea, if indeed Camelot 2 meets Missile Crisis 2 in the waters between Jazireh-ye Qeshm and a little island names Abu Musa.

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January 4, 2009

Denial is powerful stuff, so our next task is to blast through some common misconceptions about how closely we are rhyming with events of the (First) Depression and other economic watershed events. I refer to the study of cycles - the periodic waxing and waning of human events that may be driven by, or causative of change. It's the topic "Nobody wants to talk about" in mainstream academics. Using cycle studies, we might speculate about the date a coming World War. Or, we may be able to see some repetition in patterns of malinvestment by 'common folks' in stocks and bonds over innovation cycles. It all adds up to a viable alternative to "pure market dynamics" as those focused hypnotically on quantitative analysis would otherwise have policymakers believe. Invention and innovation, not the application of formulaic obscura, is what creates your future. Be warned that the trance of formulas and symbols is not about your prosperity....

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December 28, 2008

The little ebook I wrote called "How to Live on $10,000 a year...or less!" has been incredibly successful. No, it hasn't been stocked by Amazon, nor has it been picked up by a major publishing house. But it's been successful by the number of lives it has changed & improved; things publishers and retailers may give lip service to, but when comes right down to brass tacks in publishing, everyone's got to make a buck, and that's cool. I'm undeterred from my personal mission, however, which is to open people's heads a bit, give them new ways of looking at old problems, and above all remind people that the only wealth that survives death is the bank vault of riches between your ears. If that vault is empty, then Life hasn't been properly lived. So over the course of the coming month or two, we'll step back far enough from the theoretical trading and investment side of Peoplenomics to address the nitty-gritty of "Whatcha gonna do when?" Because that "When" is getting really damned close now.

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December 21, 2008

Every year about this time, at least since 2000, I've made it a practice to issue an 'annual forecast' in order that to have a set of expectations against which investment decisions can be benchmarked. To accomplish this, I've used numerous methods in the past include nonlinear trend projection, basic econometric modeling, and even to some extent predictive linguistics. But this year, due to the special nature of the times just ahead I've worked up a new 'graphic modeling' approach that avoids the heavy-duty math and is quite intuitive. Hopefully, you'll enjoy the approach but as we get into it, you'll discover, as I did while doing the research, that the results give a nearly dire outlook for 2009. Not unsurvivable, at least for most, but at the same time it's clear in this modeling exercise that the Depression of the 1930's could look like a 'walk in the park' compared to what's coming.

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