The Return of “Sweat Equity”

How would you like a brand-new home at less than half price? Not only is this possible, but there are people who do this all the time.  So this morning, we push around some numbers and show you how you can build your own and make a sweet pile of equity in the process.

There is, however, one underlying educational requirement:  You will need some basic woodworking skills.  You can pick these up by volunteering to help others who are building property, there are night classes, and even books like David Snell’s book “Building Your Own Home (18th edition)”  which makes the point that about a third of all new single-family detached homes are “self-built.”

In today’s world this means a $350,000 home can be self-built for about half that amount – and how would YOU like to step into a new home with $175,000 of equity and a house payment half as large (and about half as long) as others in your ‘hood?

First, though, some fresh data to sniff and then a tackle of the ChartPack as we try to wrap around the insane rally Tuesday.

Caffeine and calculator ready?

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Keyword Roulette

Wherein we replace the programmatic news decided by the Powers and minion Editors.  And instead, we use a “What keywords really matter in my Life?” approach.

We’ll give you the idea and you can dial it in to whatever your circumstances are.

It’s a reaction to wife Elaine’s sometimes habitual listening to the “all news” station out of San Antonio – a practice which loads her mind and weighs her down, oftentimes.

Cast off the control of media is then followed by our discussion of Christmas in July with the commercial’s big payday as the shorts were run to the ground at the options close Friday by a short-squeeze rally.

Pour and then pore to avoid poor.

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Power in the Second Depression (Updated eBook)

When TSHTF a lot of people will be in the dark wondering “What happened?”  A few years ago, we presented a multipart series on keeping the lights on and the beer cold as economic collapse came stumbling across the world.

Today – in 160-pages of downloadable PDF eBook for subscribers, a discussion of D.C. power system design in the context of social collapse.

This is the first of two inexpensive eBooks I have plans to release publicly this year, based on past Peoplenomics reports.  The other one – which will be along in a few weeks is “The 100-Year Toaster”  which gets  into the nuts and economic bolts of our global “disposable things” society.

Plan is to upload both of these as Amazon ebooks for Kindle over the next month, or two. They will not be expensive – thinking $4.99 each which is reasonable, even on this last Prime Day, lol.

Before downloading the .PDF, however, we’ll first roll out this morning’s C.P.I. report and see how markets take to that.

Which then segues neatly into the ChartPack where some of the mystery of ongoing decline will come into clearer focus.

Shall we, then?

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Inflection Week Ahead

On multiple levels, the markets are poised for a major turn over the next month.  We get into some “nimbleness training” as events across the board are ready to “hit the blender.”

The checklist for this morning includes Biden’s suspect trip to the Middle East, and odd trading patterns in our ChartPack.

Then there’s the whole “War Thing” including the possible financial collapse of Europe touched on this week on Urban.  Where the “strength of the dollar” is a misnomer for the “grand weakening of European prospects.”

Your choices of “hot liquid caffeine’s include coffee, cocoa, or tea,  We’ll keep it short enough so that a single cup may suffice as we size up the close-in views.  Don’t want you getting “all jittery” from the bean.

Events will do enough of that, soon come.

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The Canals of Earth (and Mars) II

Who needs Russia and Ukraine when drought is coming and famine is in the wings?  As so often happens, our political tools in office are trying to fix the barn after it’s on fire and the horses are gone.

The world needs water – because without it, kiss off crops and light the fuse of survival. Most people in America how much water they need even minimally per day (1.5 gallons for reasonable hydration, more if exercising) and how to get it locally when the power is down and services are shut down from hackers, EMP, of direction action by all those military-aged males sneaking in unopposed by the derelict president’s actions.

Time to “get real or get dead” in our thinking. While government focuses on “continuity of government” in their self-centered way, our reality is more along the lines of Continuity of Life for all citizens, not the pocket-lining few.

Oh, this is not a whine today.

Rather it’s a simple discussion of the longer-term avoidance plan if Drought turns into a city-emptying event for little bergs out west like Las Vegas, Denver, Los Angeles, and Phoenix.

But – unlike the nonsense of the Witch Trials over Trump, or the too-cozy Biden relations with Ukraine and China, there are specific, concrete, measurable, long-term actions the U.S. could be implementing right now.  These could make up the core of what we would really like to see: A retooling of America as Depression sinks in during 2023-2025.  The mother of all public works projects lies ahead.

Remember:  The Great Depression wasn’t even called that until an economics book used the term in 1934.  This informs us that we might already be IN a Depression and not even realize it – YET.

Rather than complain, we explore some major American canal building public works projects that will reform America for centuries to come.  Much like China has reinvented itself.  And in the process become a much more robust and sustainable country, overtaking the U.S.

After a few headlines and our ChartPack, of course.

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Crap Metrics of 2022

Event Arrows have been loosed that will shape the balance of 2022 and form our entry into 2023.  We need to look closely at some of these. The Fourth of July has always been a good time to kick back, assess the year to date, and see where the “arrow of events” is pointing for the balance of the year. The bad news?  Not too much is going as hoped. 2022 has turned into an historical turd, if you’ll forgive my directness.

Still, all work and no play is no good, either.  With goodies on the men u like BBQ, maybe playing in water (if you can find it), and enjoying some well-deserved time off – that’s what makes for a good holiday.

This morning’s report will therefore be “not quite PowerPoint bullets.  But we won’t mince words, either.

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“Second Sight,” Apnea, and DNA (Part 2)

Dreams, probability clouds, and sleep apnea is not the most mainstream economics and stock trading discussion you’ll run into, today. But it’s been an interesting journey following up on the many research forks apparent in our last discussion on point.  Which was Prophecy, Cardiac Insufficiency, and Hypoxia.

Today, we’ll be looking into additional data and I’ll be showing you some “strip charts” from a recording pulse-oximeter that may – in a very round-about way, influence investment decision-making.

Of course, before that, a few headlines and our ChartPack view of long-term market trends which – if Bitcoin is any indicator (which it may be) – is decidedly grim. We told you this was likely in the cards, though, so no surprise there.

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Vacation Uncertainty

So much for deserving a break today.  While summer should be time for picnics, trips, time with friends and family, a good deal of that has been blown up this year by bad policy, good court decisions, and angry people. Oh yeah, gas prices, too.

We wonder “What is America coming to?” with good reason:  It ALL impacts the markets.

A few “notes on nuttiness” as we stick mainly to the economics in this morning’s outlook.

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The Fall of Babel 2.0

While our rise as a technical society has exceeded past efforts, over time it seems destined to fail.  Not everything is ultimately extensible.  Limits to resources is a hard thing for the bacteria in the agar dish to accept.

In this morning’s discussion (other than the ChartPack and a few news items weighing on Future) we’ll explore that continuum of human thinking which is circumscribed by religious fables, education, and then the well-monetized attachment of symbols.

From here Life changes a bit.  For not only are we “processes of doing things” collectors, but we are also the “template pickers.”

A role which defines the future and makes serious human folly semi-predictable.

We’ll start with a few headlines to make the case..

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Prophecy, Cardiac Insufficiency, and Hypoxia

My latest adventures in the world of medicine – like a recent nuclear treadmill test – have lit a series of interesting linkages.  This morning we raise some fascinating questions about prophesy, the role of hypoxia, and then wonder is sleep apnea exists to “pave the way” into our personal future.

This may seem like woo-woo but it’s really more “science behind the woo-woo” stuff.

A few headlines and the morning ChartPack get us into a summer weekend mood.

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Second Depression – Survival Gardening Guide

Let me see: The stock market has dropped 10.6 percent in the last 12 calendar days and you wonder why this topic and why now?  You are welcome to remain skeptical of our long wave economic views, but unfortunately, the replay of history is continuing as a bad rhyme with little reason. Seen BTC yet today?

You’ll miss the Future if you don’t see the whole woke/virtue/me-me as being a spin (or rhyme) on the Flapper Era.  Which was a kind of sexual blow-off in 1920’s society in which young women expressed their sexual liberation.

Here in rhyme-time, the new and “improved” version, men, women, and even a few species of barnyard animals have been “liberated.”

Today begins Closing Time. for the long wave Replay. There’s no denying what’s in our ChartPack.  Seems that no matter what the Federal Reserve does with rates today, it will be adjudged wrong by someone. Smelling the smoke in the crowded theater, yet?

Our outlook for the coming year ranges from famine to mushrooms.  Soaring prices, falling spirits.  National emotional bankruptcy is at the door.

Of course, if you pass off the presently devolving drought as “just a dry spell?”  Well, just remember de Nile is not just a river in Egypt, is it?

No matter what happens next – geo-econ-and-sociologically – we do plan on continue eating a couple of thousand calories per day.  Gardens matter.

No B.S. Our Biden Garden is bound to help out – especially in 2023 as runaway inflation will likely (in our view) place food out of reach for many.  Today’s No B.S. Survival Gardening was written as a useful compression of many scattered gardening resources.  We’re coming to a period when compressed knowledge will matter.

While our story leads there – to potential for a failed “American families dream”  the information age is going bankrupt. Late from the theater may not work out.

Today’s First Things data will include the Retail Sales, Empire State Manufacturing, and Import/Export prices report, too.

These and our long wave ChartPack – are today’s “snow markers” as we plough blindly along the abyss.

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Crash and Depression Weather

Economics is much like meteorology, we reckon. Today’s report is as much for me (personally) as it is for subscribers as we line up the “match points” between the Great Depression and what’s evolving.

Rather interesting exercise to try next time you can’t sleep and it’s 2 AM.  Really ought to try it.  Many have observed that when the Earth faces away from the Sun, there’s a certain kind of “mental quiet” that occurs.  Perhaps as radio bands change, the F2 layer lowers, and summer noise abates if only for a few hours…

What really matters now is that our long-term view – hence outcome – is gaining, not losing in strength.

Which should scare the hell out of the FedGov.  Which is all too busy missing historical contexts while selling 2022 hysteria against a former president.

With so much that might be done, we live in Ostricheville.

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Think over “Detirement”

This is really a report on faddish Accounting, because it drives so much else. Including retirement. Or, given there is a shortage of workers in the country, de-retirement.

Jacob Soll’s book The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations provided some of the impetus for the ideas herein.

Soll’s  next book, Free Market: The History of an Idea will be released in early September, perhaps just in time for collapse this fall. Free markets are a good idea, but when jobs go offshore – and when vulture capitalism reigns – let alone when we live with a U.S. central bank that “makes up bonds” and they buys those bonds itself?  Well, let’s just say that the “free market idea” gets complicated to say the least.

Which has no doubt been set-up by an excessive focus on pure financializations.

As his first book, Soll points out with genuine historical pedigree, that Accounting wasn’t supposed to be that way.  CDO’s and Enron and whoever will be along shortly…

Instead, accounting was once used in Rome to really imbue excellence in government and in a People.  Behind economic cycles, Soll nails changes in accounting. FASB notions aside, we think of Accounting in  the same light as the Supreme Court.  Not supposed to change with fads, but what’cha going to do?

All useful grist for understanding today’s world.  Though we’ll warm up to it slowly to avoid sudden thinking shock.  Some headlines and this morning’s ChartPack should be the right tonic for that.

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