Lingo Lango Department
The 'Summer of Hell' Gets Rolling Now
Lemme see here, how is that 'summer of hell' meme working out? I mean assuming you're not in Iran, sneaking a read of this infidel rag while being hunted by "The Butcher" because you got 'twitted' into attending a demonstration/confrontation with the existing power structure there.
Please note, linguistically that in the West, the Iranian situation is described as a 'protest' as in "Security forces attack Iran protesters." On the other hand, in the JPost this morning we see the headline that "Khatami calls for harsh punishment of riot leaders".
Seems to me if I were spinning in favor of something, I'd call Iranian participants 'protesters'. Neutrality might warrant calling their actions 'rioting' awhile outright opposition might use a term like 'revolutionaries' and 'attempted coup leaders'. See how easy it is to read this stuff? Wonder why the MSM (MainStreamMedia) doesn't have the goanies to mention this, at least now and then?
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I see this morning where Time Magazine is reporting on "The Honduran Coup: How should the U.S. Respond?"
Let me help, if I may. I can squeeze a three-minute strategic consultation in this morning, if anyone at State is interested...
First, a check of the CIA World Fact Book, the indispensible source for responsible capitalists like me:
Honduras, the second poorest country in Central America, has an extraordinarily unequal distribution of income and high unemployment. The economy relies heavily on a narrow range of exports, notably bananas and coffee, making it vulnerable to natural disasters and shifts in commodity prices; however, investments in the maquila and non-traditional export sectors are slowly diversifying the economy. Economic growth remains dependent on the US economy its largest trading partner, and will decline in 2009 as a result of reduction in export demand and tightening global credit markets. Remittances represent over a quarter of GDP or nearly three-quarters of exports. The US-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) came into force in 2006 and has helped foster investment. Despite improvements in tax collections, the government's fiscal deficit is growing due to increases in current expenditures and financial losses from the state energy and telephone companies.
Next we summarize: poor country based on bananas and coffee plus "maquila" (sweat shops for Nortes would be closer, but not PC to the democons).
Nope, nothing there worth invading over, so pocket the purple finger plans and stick to jaw-boning and let's keep our focus on countries which are either key pipeline routes with drugs galore r massive oil deposits. The banksters will end up with Honduras in time, and we'll set off an engineered bio bomb down the road a bit to thin down the herd there. If you live in Honduras, might want to keep your distance from hogs and hens the rest of the year, just to be safe.
Think I'm kidding?
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Some 'riot-lite' activity in India this morning over power and water woes.
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Riots in Israel over the Sabbath opening of a parking lot.
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Prison riot injures 7 at Pelican Bay State Prison in northern California.
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China factory riot.
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Markets likely to open higher, end lower this week - that according to my blindfolded dart throw of the week. Data coming could be a bumming. Not only that but it's also....
California to the Wall Week
Lots more to discuss in today's "Coping" section (below) but here's a perfect example of how the Federal government is participating in the screwing of California.
Headline: "Air Force tests fires missile from Calif coast."
Perfect example of how fast federal money is leaving the state - which wouldn't have a budget crisis if 100-cents of federal tax money came back to jobs and services within the Golden State. But no, only 94-cents on the dollar. Compared with many more republicorp suck-em-up states getting more than their tribute to Uncle back... Seems like a violation of equal protection to me, but who asked? I know - little early in the week to point to the Constitution and equal protection and all that. Maybe we should revisit that one later.
Howdy Flu-dee
With reports out this weekend that the 'swine'/hybrid flu may have already infected over a million, two developments. First, the US case count is at 27,717 building toward some magical number when the flu makers...I mean vaccine makers...will twist the arms of folks in power to demand mandatory vaccinations, which in turn, will have negative consequences (linguistically late fall maybe into winter), but it will be important because it will give a reason to clamp down on us rabble-writers in the population for 'our own good'. Yeah, sure, you bet'cha.
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Yes, I read about the "Journalist Files Charges against WHO and UN for Bioterrorism and Intent to Commit Mass Murder" No, they won't dare put that in the MSM.
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I just happen to be allergic to flu vaccines and have a letter from my MD....got yours? May - or may not - be honored, but an ounce of prevention (I like self quarantine and quinine, thanks) is worth ten ML's of "cure".
Good Countries for Investment?
Curious article in the "World Time News Report". What they've done is put together a map of the world with countries suffering deepest consequences of the global slowdown show in darker and darker shades of blues (Get it? Slow down, get the blues? LOL) and countries where the depression won't bite - at least as hard.
To my simple-minded way of thinking, the countries less bitten should make better investment speculations...I mean, wouldn't you think? Or, is it too early in the day for that?
Telling Headline?
Washington Times headlines "EXCLUSIVE: Cheney fears Iraq withdrawal will 'waste' U.S. sacrifices."
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Translation: oil deals aren't secure yet.
Wonder if they're building gulags in Wyoming yet?
The New Electrics
Feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and sharp on math, this morning, are we? Well, if you're interested, a German scientist has posted a complete "Free Energy Documentation" online at Scribd (link here).
Once you sort through "Conversion of the Vacuum-energy of electromagnet zero point oscillations into Classical Mechanical Energy" (3 Excedrin worth of reading) ya'll just build up the whole thing on a levitating platform and come on by to take us for a spin...we'll go up north and show it off to the time monks, while we're at it.
Liars Poke Here
Some intelligent musings on the 60-Minutes piece about a new kind of lie detector that seems to evolve from marrying an MRI of brain activity with questions and some massive computational horsepower. A sort of super-collider of lie detectors.
Not going to be on the shelf down at the local precinct any time soon, since MRI machines aren't down to pocket-sized yet. Besides, where we really need this technology is Washington, and you know it'd be banned there.
For our own good, of course.
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Coping: "Correct George" Weekend & "Beat the Reaper"
Occasionally, like all publications of more than a few words in length - and in particular, if a site has a little original content - which seems few do on the 'net, I'm bound to get a thing or two wrong, here or there.
For instance, when I mentioned the Reconstructed M-3 over at Trader Bart's site, where you can find that stat which was conveniently thrown under the train by the Fed which really knew all this was coming about three years ago, I improperly attributed it to John Williams of Shadow Stats. Nope; dumb George got it wrong: M3 Reconstructed is Bart's original work (and damn fine, I'd add). Running 16.3-16.4% annualized when I squint just so. No wonder the Fed pushed it under the train...
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Then there was Peoplenomics this weekend wherein where my 'source' of the revelations about how some of the 'Gnomes of Greenwich, Connected-Up' are likely to cut a fat hog when California defaults, called to point out that in my example it's not 1,000 people who have to buy the insurance (CDS's) - only 100. Sorry, that won't make sense unless you read the Peoplenomics example about how in the derivatives world, people buy 'insurance' on things they have not interest in...
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Someone else called to ask why I had forgotten to change the issue number to 408 and put the right date on both the main report and the accompanying ChartPack.
Details, details, details.
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Sometimes I feel like a cursed man: Given the occasional insight into the Big Picture and then busily setting about trying to fill in the blanks, but swarmed (just as one might be swarmed by Africanized bees of ill temper when messing about on the back 20) with details and minutia. Not that giving credit to Bart is minutia - his hard work deserves recognition and I should slow down sometimes.
But the details...why they are like mosquitoes there are so many of them. "Dad, did you send my check for school yet?" Damn, another detail. Ugly one.
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I live Life for the joy of free exploration of concepts and to piece the Big Puzzle of Life together. But I found myself again this morning reduced to listing out most of every waking second this week in my Outlook calendar. Seems about everything possible this week, from doing the wiring move so the new wall mural/diorama can be installed (followed by the wooden roof) in what we're calling the San Francisco room in the house remodel, to the client projects, to the truck's annual inspection tag...in fact everything down to the sitting time on the porcelain throne has been scheduled. If my eyes look brown by Friday it's because my scheduling efforts have collided with reality.
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Both Cliff at HalfPastHuman and I have been struck this week that 'Universe was just kidding about 'bringing some help along' as a relative of his who was going to be working on his projects won't be able to, and despite Elaine's resigning from a head-hunting search project, it seems like she has no time to provide back-up (or even filing) over here in my office.
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There's a fuzzy 'feel' to modelspace between now and 2013 where the apparent sense of time goes all wonky...things get to feeling like they are speeding up; only to speed up some more. till this 'moving in quicksand' feeling arrives.
The only way I've found to barely keep even is to periodically throw everything into Outlook and then simply click through the list in dogged, determined fashion, paying no mind to whatever new inputs come along that are just screaming for attention.
For example, my commodity broker JB called lat night to tell me "Silver's in fast trading which I haven't seen in a long time...something may be coming up this week...."
"Yeah, yeah, get back to me when it pops over $15..." Didn't mean to sound rude, but 3-minutes per phone call this week, unless you happen to be one of the folks with time blocked out in Outlook.
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Every once in a while I get to thinking to myself "Maybe you're trying to do too much: Write an award winning web site, keep up on the rickety time machine, write a cracker-jack subscriber column, write a novel, reconstruct a house with an almost Disney kind of interior to it, write a novel, build a goat ranch, stay active in ham radio, drill a well (60-' feet down now), keep the truck and two cars in roadable condition...and the to-do list stretches down many feet more.
Then I pause, take another hit of coffee and remember: This is Monday and that's what Mondays are all about: Make the list and plough mindlessly through as much of it as you can, ignoring that any projects on this list this week that you're dumb enough to get done will simply be replaced by more items next week, such that The List is Never-ending.
I think, in the end, that's why people die. They wake up one morning and come to the realization that "OMG: My LIST is longer than ever and I'm 60-something years old! Isn't there some point in here where I get everything done and I can kick back, get high, do creative writing and just stick to my hobbies with no deadlines? A little el Don, or Remy, a cigar, a 14-days cruise with the wife with no phones ringing, a leisurely walk on the beach with no agenda whatsoever, and a chance to just appreciate Universe without nervously looking at the clock?"
Can't speak for you, but there are mornings when I feel like the Grim Reaper's standing just off stage with a stopwatch. running some kind of sick perversion of "Reaper Reality" - and that gets me to wondering if television's inane 'reality shows' aren't just poor imitations of Life and Mr. Sickle.
The word for the feeling of overwhelmed, behind schedule, over-worked, under-staffed, and pushed to (and beyond) your personal limits while strung out on caffeine is Monday. So if you feel like you've been set up as a contestant on a 'reality show', best I can figure is that's really close enough to the truth of the matter.
Wanna make a little side bet bet who gets the most done on their 'list' this week during this latest round of "Beat the Reaper"? On your Lists, get set......
Peoplenomics Feedback
See details below, but the revelations this weekend about the gnomes of Greenwich really garnered some darned interesting emails. Like this one for openers:
"Just to raise the question in your mind (not that I know the answer). There is a PBS online timeline of the repeal of Glass-Steagall here.
You’ll see that, according to the supposed left of center PBS, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (a former Goldman Sachs alumnus of 26 years) spent about 4 years lobbying Congress to repeal Glass Steagall. He was the first to approach Congress in 1995 saying that Glass Steagall should be ‘modernized.’ And only 4 days after Congress voted for repeal, he went to work for Sandy Weill at Citibank. The PBS “Frontline” story leaves little wriggle room that it was Sandy Weill/Robert Rubin and a couple lessers who orchestrated the vastly bipartisan demise of Glass Steagall. The rest is history with regard to Citi.
A couple personal observations. I was with the FSLIC and FDIC during the ‘80s on bank takeover crews and in the ‘90s was interim CFO, CAO, or President of several insolvent institutions (a baby sitter). Money market institutions (investment banks) offered higher rates than banks and S&Ls. Had Glass Steagall not been repealed or, conversely, investment banks regulated, commercial banks would have simply gone away. That’s from watching our bank’s deposit liabilities run off day in, day out during the 90s.
Another observation. Glass Steagall regulated 1) interest rates and 2) reserve requirements. Initially, the target was a 10% reserve requirement (as I imperfectly recollect). But Greenspan, in the early ‘90s, made an administrative ruling that ‘sweep accounts’ were not considered deposit liabilities on a bank’s books. Well, take a $100M bank that must maintain $10M of tangible equity reserves (10%). It can offer commercial sweep accounts and pay competitive money market rates and not count the sweep accounts in deposits for purposes of tangible equity. Neat trick. If that bank can obtain $30M of commercial sweep accounts it will be a $130M bank but only need to maintain $10M of tangible equity. Greenspan’s Fed (with Ben Bernanke sitting in) wiped out much of the reserve requirements of Glass Steagall. I recall reading in the late ‘90s that the effective reserve requirement for banks was more in the 4% range.
Given that banks were thinly capitalized (regulatory and tangible equity), the coup de grace was, in my opinion, collapse of FNMA and Freddie. Banks that sold loans to FNMA or Freddie were required to own FNMA or Freddie stock. As I watched the slow motion train wrecks last fall on CNBC I recall catching a tidbit of information on CNBC that, on average, US banks write off of the value of FNMA and Freddie stock vaporized 11% of tangible equity capital. That day that FNMA and Freddie went into conservatorship, the vast majority of banks in the US likely became insolvent according to the definition of regulatory capital (at least based on what I heard on CNBC).
Now, if you want a really interesting conspiracy (THEORY!-G) , follow the Goldman Sachs tie ins to Clinton, Bush and the Fed. Paulson bails out AIG, Goldman collects $15B from AIG that would have been worthless, and Goldman pays out $12B because it had its best year ever!!!!! I wonder if they’d have had that good of a year had the taxpayer not bailed them out?
Thanks for all the good work,
Say, didn't AIG handle the retirement accounts of Congress? Seems to ring a bell somewhere. No wonder they'd be 'too big to fail', if my recall is right, huh?
And another one:
"You really hit a nerve with this week's [subscriber] column ("Marching to the Wall") - AZ is in the same boat at CA- maybe not as much $ but the percentage is actually higher when factored in. here are some of the headlines that are local;: we are facing are first ever government shut down due to the way the constitution for this state is written:
"Tax Proposals stall Action till Monday"
"Legislators seeking to avert AZ shutdown"
Your suggestion on a practice run is also interesting- now I just need to get with my husband to make a trial- we are in better shape than many, I now have some supplies ready, and we moved 5 years ago to the country between NM and Tucson- we have 5 acres and are hoping to do a geodesic green house- to help with planting. I do have a solar oven- and hand grinders for the wheat in storage- but I haven't tried any of them- I also have gotten medicinal herbs to plant- (got them in too late for this year) I guess it is about time to try some of the things I have prepared. I know that starting in October I will start making hard copies of all of the info in my computer!
Yeah...my point was that we no longer need an Internet bubble or a Housing Bubble to turn the economy around. instead, we can go right to the loot and pillage stage of government with something near carte blanche because even once rolled and beaten, government will just print up more Band-Aids, LOL. What a glorious scheme, isn't it?
Missing "Dollars"?
Seen any 'dollar' stores closing lately?
"Why aren't people catching on to the Dollar Stores (or whatever derivative name is used) closing almost en masse? Wouldn't you think halfway intelligent people that are driving from location to location looking for a cheap dollar store and finding virtually every one of them closed, would wonder "Oh my, I wonder why all of the dollar stores in my neighborhood are closed all of a sudden?" - maybe its because China isn't sending us the cheap s--- anymore! Maybe China isn't sending us anything anymore! So frustrating....
I understand valium helps...little light blue pills like th....ooops!
Quote for the Week
Here's a good one:
George, thank you for keeping everyone so well informed. My brother just sent me this email dated from 1931. It is a quote from Adrian Rogers:
"You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."*
Adrian Rogers, 1931
Seems he was right on the money.
But, only as far as he went. There's this Big Quote I carry around in my head (and drag out on overload Mondays like this money):
"Remember: You can have anything. But! You can't have everything."
Till the whole of society breaks out of the 'everything mindset' and focuses on a few quality things in each of our lives, we're all marching to the Wall...got a smoke? There's not enough 'things' in the whole damn Universe to give everybody everything. The simple math just doesn't work out. In everything there aren't two everything's for ev everyone. Simple and obvious, huh?
That we haven't figured that simple truth out is why we're (as the Mogambo says) 'so freaking doomed... Nice to dream about a simpler life, though and why Elaine and I belong now to the Society for Creative Anachronism. Trying to find the New Renaissance...which I reckon you are, too.
Around The Ranch: Here Kitty, Kitty...
Neighbor across the road called Sunday with the latest cougar report (No, not the 'party to excess' cougars that (used to?) frequent Pullman, WA). He reported that he found two more prints out by the mailbox, only this time the cougar was headed east. The size of the paw print? Measured 3 3/4" across.
Hmmm...no room for cougar hunting in Outlook this week. Lucky cat...probably doesn't even have an iPhone. Cougars are so damn backwards, aren't they? Just walk around, snag dinner when it runs by, sleep...wonder if cougars experience Mondays?
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Send comments to george@ure.net
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The UrbanSurvival Mall:
Have a blindfold and cigarette handy? The next year or so will see lots of people and entities being 'marched to the wall'. (Thanks; gotta light?). Our biggest problem is who to march out first, but that easily solved thanks to a source of mine that keeps track of the Gnomes of Greenwich who have California lined up to march out next. California defaults, the Gnomes make billions, and guess who is left behind to mourn? Then shortly thereafter will come 'small investors' who can see the wall, but can't break out of the lock-step march towards it, either... Ten-hut! Forward march!
