Because of our travel plans, Peoplenomics may be posted on Sunday morning instead of our usual Saturday. Please excuse the deviation from our normal schedule.
george@ure.net
Gambling, Economics and "Fact-Based Living" (FBL)
Events in Eastern Europe have been moving quickly in recent weeks, as predicted. They so far reveal US leadership is (look surprised here) somewhat deficient. Not just in foreign affairs, either. There have been a whole host of “wrong answers” piled on America in recent years. Laws and programs with fine intent but terrible implementation and execution. How does it happen? For one thing, the American public has largely made a conscious decision to remain stoopid (sic). Today, a quick fact-check of some of the reasons why self-governance by idiots may inevitably result in (care to guess what?) at the top. After a rasher of morning headlines, and gallons of bean, we’re off thinking the unthinkable again. Which seems to be increasingly popular, here lately. So we trudge into the swamp of statistics, gambling, and investment…
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Blame the Future on ERP
Can commercial real estate implode? We began Wednesday looking at the Star Trek economy and wondered if Bitcoins might be one step on the path to that kind of idyllic world. As far as I know, Star Trek hasn’t yet had a banker or investment advisor in a script yet and the reason’s pretty simple: Accounting is (and ever-increasingly trends to) a background task that can (in most businesses) be totally automated. This morning a short course in how this and the field of ERP (enterprise resource planning) with integrated accounting has been changing business models for the past 15 years and where it leads in the future. Possible serious declines in demand for commercial real estate… First, however, some headlines and we’ll try to sort out how the stock market managed to blow though a 100-point gain in the final hour of trading on Cowardly Friday…
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Beyond Bitcoin: Transition to the Star Trek Economy?
As Russia puts troops on alert this morning, we have our “Phasors locked on stun” this morning as we consider how the Star Trek economy worked. There are some very interesting possibilities, especially when we see the arrival (and momentary decline) of the new cryptocurrencies. Did “the Federation” have its economic root in something like ancient Bitcoins? Hmmm… First, we’ll beam up some headlines, do the Sevastopol dance, then blast-off for the Forbidden Sector of Finance…
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Ukraine’s Economic Future
We take a closer look at what’s ahead for Ukraine this morning, given that there has been an agreement, followed by protesters taking Kiev overnight. It’s a timely matter following on the heels of our Wednesday report on commonalities of civil wars, the potential for it in former Soviet buffer states, as well as here in the USA. We’ll also point out how the EU is stealing the foundations of democracy. But first coffee and a few headlines, plus a check of port traffic (in order to pierce the veil of mumbo-jumbo surrounding the state of the economy) and a very telling chart that argues this economic cycle peaked in early 2000 and continues tracking to expectations…
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Economic Causes of Civil Wars
Curiously, Issue 650 comes the week I turn 65 – a sobering time of life when one looks both back and ahead and realized time is limited. As a result, the importance of using time wisely (nearing the finish line) comes more into focus and with it, concern for the future of the country and our children who are, as my late grandmother pointed out, really our legacy and immortality. So we look this week at what civil wars are, how they start, and the degree to which economics figures in. And then we look at the hardest question of all: Could it happen, here, again? Ukraine? The numbers matter. After coffee, headlines, and charts, of course. We can’t be marching off into a battle against cloudy thinking unarmed, so we’ll prep with 20 ounces of Mrs. Olson’s finest, backed up with reinforcements – a tablespoon of beans from Kona…
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Investing in Yourself: The $500 Idea Department
When was the last time you invested $500 bucks in yourself? There are half a dozen really good “truths” out there that can help you live a much richer life that the modern education system does a horrible job of sharing. Little things like “You can learn anything you set your mind to...” and “There’s a method to learning that can be applied to anything…” a template that’s really one-size fits all. But that’s not economic or immediately useful. So today we’re going to focus on one aspect of another truth: Investing In yourself. The way you do that is with what I call a “$200 Idea Fund.” I’ll show you how I use it, and how it has sometimes paid off out of all proportion…after we skim some of the week’s headlines and have coffee…
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The 1342-1345 Problem
Not to go completely “long-hair economics” on you, but we only have about two weeks from today before I expect the whole European-expansionist crap (backing through economic proxies dissent in Ukraine) to begin blowing up in a serious way because THAT will be when the Sochi Games are over (closing ceremony: 10 AM on the 23rd) and it give enough time for the visiting PTB to get out of town. So this morning we look at two important questions. The first was asked by my friend Cesare Marchetti in a paper included in “Kondratieff Waves, Warfare, and World Security” [NATO Security through Science Series, E: Human and Societal Dynamics Vo. 5], 2006. And that other nasty bugger, the socioeconomic collapse that Rolfe A.A. Witzsche writes of in his “Roots in Universal History.” Both of which are potentially quite useful to study in light of the coming end of not just the Sochi Games, I’m afraid, but the period of quiescence we’ve been in since the initial decline off the global market peak in December. But enough! We’ll have no further deep thoughts until we first have coffee and agree the world is just as FU’d this morning as it was yesterday…
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Social Security: Why I’m Retiring Early
This is not one of those “I’m going to retire early because I want to get something back for all those payments I put in,” kind of stories. This is a story about how to optimize when a person who is just coming up on the NRA (normal retirement age in Social Securitese) has to “run the numbers” which was one of this week’s important projects around here. Even if you’re not going to retire yourself shortly, odds are that you know someone who is just about to hit the “graying out” age and it’s useful stuff to know. Oh, and along the way? You’ll find how the Social Security rules screw people born before June. Truly strange. It’s a fine exercise in my “find the recipe” approach to learning. After, as usual, the morning bean and brain of the charts and what-have-you. And a long rap about what our trading model is telling us…
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"The Enterprise" and the MMMR Problem
I assume you know, if you’re web-literate, that the Enterprise is what the runaway group that pulls the strings of governments all over the world calls itself now and then. If you’re not aware of the group, a simple Google of the Black Eagle Fund Trust that has been swirling away in background should be enough of a clue to at least get you started on the path of discovering for yourself just how far reality has strayed from the “way things used to be.” But other than confirm that “absolute power corrupts, absolutely” – which we all kinda knew anyway – the trail we’re on today has more to do with whether systemic corruption is part and parcel of how great civilizations end; management of multiple matrix realities (MMMR) reaching simultaneous dysfunction. Heady stuff, and with 100+ pages of recommended reading as background, the stop at the coffee pot this morning will be a short one… Just think of this as a quickie course in stratification of conflicting economic realities resulting in conflict. Oh, and we’ll table an initial answer to the question “How far is down for this market?”
A Customer Service note: Please notice that our account-self-service function is now updated and offers lots of additional bells and whistles, including much easier username and password retrieval. The few people who were having trouble renewing their subscriptions should (fingers crossed here) find all their issues resolved, as well. You should be able to manage your subscription now at this link: http://peoplenomics.com/amember/member.php
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Computer Update Advisory
Please note that you may experience a few new looking screens on the Peoplenomics site as we are presently upgrading to new software which will fix from the bugs (like the white screen at renewal time) and other nits.
I will post a note when all of the changes have been complete, but it should not prevent access while we complete the upgrading process.
Still, best laid plans of men and software designers…. thanks for your patience….
Has the Long Wave Been Defeated?
With the departure Friday of Fed Chair Ben Bernanke and the elevation of Janet Yellen to the position of Fed chair, have we seen the demise of the long wave cycle in economics? Or, has there simply be so much “creation” of “paper money” that we can no long see the true scale of what’s going on? These are some mighty juicy morsels to ponder as we survey this week’s action in markets. Which we’ll get around to after a few headlines and coffee, as always…
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Crashes: “Shock Timing” and Futuring
While we are sitting around clearing the financial wreckage and waiting for the Fed to be put in its place by the PowersThatBe Wall St. Division, let me share with you a revised chapter from my book “Real Time Machines: The Future is an Ap,” This arises from ongoing discussions between www.nostracodeus.com brainpower Grady, Mike, and Ures truly. It gives key insight into the danger of getting “married” to a particular method of predicting the future both in terms of crashes as well as secular events. If you’re a radio-frequency engineer, it will become apparent why it was so important that we develop the “tunable intermediate frequency” approach to analysis of the internet in our Nostracodeus project. But first, headlines and coffee to wake us up. This morning’s report may be a bit longer than usual, but trust me, it will give you new methods with which to consider the always-arriving “next.” Including a fresh look at Vlad Putin’s “Gentleman’s War” with the EU at the Ukraine front…
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