Because of reader requests, I’ve started to put together a book which will be a
kind of “Best of 13-years of Peoplenomics. Everything major is in there:
A macro view of longwave economics, peak and trough wars, but more importantly,
what to do with that information. In our own case, that has meant making a
long-term tactical decision to flee the big cities which is curious in it’s own
right because the big cities were the beneficiaries of the previous cyclical
depression. We’ll launch into one of the early chapters – echoes of last
time around – after the usual Saturday morning news review and the introduction
of a new chart as we look at what market action closed Friday and what could be
ahead for next week’s action and beyond.
George Ure
Murder Rooms and the Slow Death of Bonds
Two rather distasteful subjects to cover this morning, each involving death, but
at least we have a choice: Do we extend ultimate home prepping to follow
the construction plans of the S.A drug cartels, or do we die when the bond
market implodes? The one certainly fits with building a solid home defense
plan verging on the paranoid, while the other comes along to some extent no
matter what due to incredible assumptions about returns built into many pension
plans. Fortunately, before we get to the blood and gore on either front,
we’ll first have coffee and remind you not to sit too close to the monitor for
this morning’s report. We assume no liability for your cleaning bills.
Low-Cost Prepping for a Troubling Fall
No, don’t panic. The world is not going to end without more notice than we
have now. But yes, some decent-sized problems could arise and IF they do,
and there are a lot of things regular folks, even those on Social Security, can do to
improve their personal prospects. In the worst case you’ll have simple
pre-purchased a lot of goods that you’ll need in coming months anyway. How
long does a can of cream of mushroom soup last? Or a can of tuna or
chicken breast? So today we’ll go through the thinking and the planning
because while we always hope for the best, we’re also ready for something less
than that. Before we roll up our sleeves, though, a drop of two more of
that Kona roast/decaf blend. If you think the headlines are jittery now, just
give it a few months.
Crash? The Kondratiev (K-Wave) View of 2013
We will keep our review of current events a bit shorter than usual this morning in order to focus more on some of my recent work in Kondratiev long wave economic cycles, which are a kind of heartbeat underlying much of our economic, thence social, political, and military activities. This is the first part of what will be two parts: This morning we pencil in some timing scenarios (duck this fall!) and then in Saturday’s report we’ll deal with the prepping side and how to deal there. So hop to it! We begin with hot PPI numbers just out because the next couple of trading days will come down to that: Numbers…
Displacement Shock X: NLO
Future Shock was heady stuff when Alvin Toffler wrote the book. And yet, as things have turned out, most of the futurists have, and do, continue to miss the graceful artiness of complex systems. Like Kurzweil in his Singularity: Cool conceptually, but it glosses (OK, ignores, then) the financial backplane. In other words, who pays for the future and who gets run over in the process. The run-over social remnants what I call victims of displacement shock…and since we’ve had a large number of such shocks (starting with solid-state diodes, jet engines, transistors, chips, embedded processors…well, you know the list) so we’ll just call the next shock ‘x‘ to keep life simple. What’s coming with it is NLO – next level optimization – as we more and more into robotic production and the demise of human inputs. We wonder what’s left to make an ‘economy’ of? First, a few headlines before we wade into the quicksand of deep thinking…a land where we wonder “What happened to the TV Repairman and the Fix-It Shop?”
Serious Prepping: Service that Radiation Monitor
Kidnapping prevention, jail break plans, and coping with loose nukes is on the menu this morning. With the increase in public concern about potential terrorist threats, I wanted to see how we stack up against new terrorist (terrs) tactics. This morning we’ll look in on the thinking of al Qaeda and what we Americans can do in response. But we won’t do this until after a cup of coffee and some cogitation on the meaning of a new Army manual explaining new doctrine (principles) called “monetary shaping operations….” Say what?
Historical Changepoints
A number of readers have asked me to write about how what’s come to be known as “prepping” helps a family to prepare for an economic depression. You know another one is inevitable, I assume: It’s what happens when the USA is forced to devalue the US Dollar because despite made-up statistical changes to our reported GDP numbers aside, the fact is that we’re quickly approaching the debt saturation point where we won’t be able to even make interest payments – let alone principal payments – to our creditors. This means folks like China and they’re not likely to be too happy about us stiffing them. But, before we get into that in detail in coming weeks, we need to develop a well-grounded perspective on the historical drivers of the arriving changepoint. After headlines, coffee, and our review of this week’s charts, of course.
Colors of Money
Although I can fairly be accused of being something of a whiner about how the US
economy is managed, I’m usually right more than 50% of the time in the end.
And president Obama’s likely nomination of Larry Summers, if it happens, likely
would improve my batting average even further.
Nevertheless, I’ve come up with an idea this week which would – at a stroke –
make congress, the White House, and the American people seem 50 IQ points
smarter when it comes to money and economics overnight. While you let that
one roll around in the noggin, we’ll stop to smell the headlines and the
coffee…Say, did I mention growth sucks?
CJ’s Boolean & Investing in the Ganzfeld
This weekend, reader CJ in Connecticut (who sadly missed out meet-up back there in June) has a very well thought-out question about how economics works…so we will dig into that. Then we’ll ponder how comparative risk between assets classes may be starting to come loose from its moorings…and the ice cream Saturday…er…sundae will be considering how to invest in the Ganzfeld. Before going there, however, a twinge of Gestalt from our usual quick survey of this morning’s headlines. You’ll want to pay close attention this morning because we’re going to use the news to do some ad hoc “Event scoring” as a way to intuit the future and make better investment decisions…as we arrive at another system of handicapping the future on our way to the $2-dollar options window…
A GroupThink Project: Sectorial Dependencies
[Long report warning: >7,000 words]
When someone says the word “GroupThink” I’m sure that there are some negative connotations. But in this morning’s context the term “groupthink” is not a bad thing since we’ll to be using it to help (as a group project for our mutual benefit) to come up with a different way of looking at financial data. Specifically what we’re after is to define interlocking dependencies which can then hone our investing returns not just in the market but also in day-to-day decision-making about life in general. Before starting this new look into mechanistic causality in complex systems though, there’s nothing to starting the day with some headlines as we wait for the idiotic mainstream press to deliver word of the first royal diaper being filled. Oh, wait! That’s already been done...so back to our battle between complexity theory and good old-fashioned economic reductionism.
A Course in Surveillance Algorithms
An algorithm is simply a set of instructions for a computer system to follow in a particular order. In the case of Big Data, the steps are capture, organize, integrate, analyze, and act. Using this approach, we can build a fine example of the many trip-wires an innocent civilian could stumble over in the modern surveillance society. Plus we have our monthly check of west coast port data with is oftentimes a decent truth detector about the economy and an update on many headlines and our trading model. You may need a third cup for this morning’s report…
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A Digital Tulip Progress Check
It is reliably reported that during the peak of Tulip Mania,
offers were made to buy as much as 12-acres of land with a single tulip bulb. Surely, something was amiss, a reasonable person might have argued at the time, but the market price was what it was….and until the mania broke (and fortunes were spilt right and left) it seems for a while like tulips had become a kind of
money. In a previous report, I pointed out some of the fallacy of
Bitcoins, not the least of which is their total reliance on electricity (which
makes them useless in a post-collapse economy) but I also projected a major
decline from then peaks. This morning, we shall update our thinking and
look ahead. After, that is, a nibble of this and a sup of that…this
being breakfast and the sups of Mrs. Olson’s half-caf to brace us for the
descent into digital madness.
The “Grim Oiler”
With our detailed synthesis of the future from Capt. Midnight wrapped up this week, is it time to reconsider the lost spectre of Peak Oil? More important: Can we make (or save) a buck by timing our actions in response>