Replaying 1929: Business, Financial, and earth change news

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Quake Machine Thoughts

A bit of follow-up to yesterday's report "Warring with Earthquakes?  US Next?".  Just a couple of points.

 

The first is that I did a little study looking to see if I could find something of interest by correlating the magnetometer readings which are part of the HAARP program (and freely available on the HAARP site in the Online Data section.  I'll leaving it to our readers who are geologists to figure it out, but you can get different data from the HAARP site and then compare it to both recent and longer-term historical data which is available from the USGS web site.  That's if you don't have anything else going on this weekend.

 

The next point is that I sent an email to the information folks at the HAARP project which is pretty self-explanatory:

"Hi

I write a daily financial blog and this morning I reported (in summary form with links to sources) on the stories floating about the ‘net that HAARP might somehow be connected with the earthquake in China and the cyclone in Myanmar, among other things.

 

It occurred to me that a simple way to dispel such speculative reporting would be to release HAARP dates of transmissions, power levels, and directional antenna headings.

 

As a ham radio operator, I reckon that the antenna steering and transmission schedule would certainly dispel such discussions and would likely have no (or low) military value.

 

Is this information available to the public? If not, why not?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

George Ure

www.urbansurvival.com 

ham call sign: AC7X"

I'll let you know if I hear back from anyone, or if the black Suburban's show up, and my column goes missing, you can draw you know what conclusion, LOL.  OK, don't laugh...

 

My thought is that if the government really wanted to stop rampant speculation on the internet, it would be a simple enough thing to do: Publish the transmitter logs for the 48-hours before and the 12-hours after the China quake, and for the whole period while the Myanmar Cyclone was building.  Seems like a simple solution to me, but then again, maybe the memeering on the net is the desired outcome.

 

Speak of earthquakes, guess what was going on under Nebraska?

George,

FYI...there was a 6.6 earthquake antipodal to central Nebraska around midnight on 5/31. Check out the USGS earthquake hazards website.

Quake?  Oh!  This one...

"PRELIMINARY EARTHQUAKE REPORT ==

***This event has been revised.

Region: MID-INDIAN RIDGE Geographic coordinates: 41.293S, 80.474E Magnitude: 6.6 Mw Depth: 10 km Universal Time (UTC): 31 May 2008 04:37:55 Time near the Epicenter: 31 May 2008 09:37:55 Local standard time in your area: 31 May 2008 04:37:55

Location with respect to nearby cities: 446 km (277 miles) SSE (148 degrees) of Amsterdam Island 3195 km (1986 miles) SE (142 degrees) of PORT LOUIS, Mauritius"

It's a little early for radian math, but maybe, let me see, that would put antipodal about midway on a line from North Platte to Columbus. Nebraska.

 

I wouldn't be too worried about this being important, as the antipodal point to the 6.6  is about 580 miles northwest of the center of the New Madrid fault activity, which is more down in the four-states area where Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas and Tennessee meander together.

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If you go back more than a decade, there was some discussion in the open press circa 1997 that the Russians might actually have been working on an earthquake warfare scheme, but that was to be powered by timing underground nuclear explosions if I recall correctly.  Here's a document which is sometimes cited from a 1997 SecDef (William S. Cohen) press conference.

 

Transmitter logs and directional antenna steering around events like Myanmar and China would answer so many questions, not to mention freeing up gobs of bandwidth, but whatever...

 

The Tegucigalpa Slide

People in the airline business have mostly never been thrilled about the airport in Tegucigalpa.  One of those one-way kinda of places (like the Cusco airport in Peru.  Once you commit, you're going down.  Five died in yesterday's accident in Honduras where an A-320 didn't get on the numbers or brakes right.

 

Change That Index!

Market juggling is expected in June as the annual Russell Investment indices are about to be updated.  Oh goody!  Market volatility!

 

What's Their Beef?

A rally against US Beef imports in South Korea this morning, Asia time.  Hey!  Bring back the ban and leave the T-bones here for us!

 

Ah,  Gassed

High petroleum prices are showing up at the pumps worldwide.  Although it's hard to believe, our gasoline in the US is taxed much more lightly than other countries where who social and health programs are built on the backs of drivers. 

 

It's not just gas prices, it's everything petro-based.

 

Iran Next Department: Bomb Plans

The International Atomic Energy Agency has been telling its members that Iran actually has a blueprint of a nuclear weapon.  Say, you don't think they got it online, do you?

 

US Human Rights Violations

Amnesty International's latest report assails the US for its Guantanamo Bay prisoner operations.  The report also mentions The Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Myanmar.  But two others are problematic for the neocons: They mentioned Iraq and Gaza.  What do you want, peace or gas?

 

Around the Ranch: Fencing On Schedule

If you notice this morning's column is a little shorter than most it's because by the time you get this far into today's report, I will already be out working on fencing.  Putting in fencing is something that goes with owning goats, ranch, acreage and so forth.

 

Normally it's not a bad gig, but on nearly-summer days, when temps will be pushing into the mid-90's that nothing beats getting started on the job while it's still reasonably cool out.  And that goes with the sun being low in the sky.

 

It does remind me to mention a couple of points that most citified people don't give much thought to, and that's the notion of the 'schedule of operations' in your life.

 

A 'schedule of operations' is an old machinist's term and it means roughly the 'order in which you go about something'.  To lathe machinist, it means specifying whether a part is cut or drilled first, or whether it goes in the milling machine first, or the lathe first, depending on the workpiece.  It's usually the fastest and most efficient way to build a part commensurate with the tolerances and finish to be delivered.

 

In city life, there's not much difference in how one goes about things.  Occasonally, if you go to the store first it means your groceries will thaw out if you get groceries and then go to the mall for a few hours.  But for the most part it's single decision scheduling for things that are right-in-your-face obvious.

 

You get out on a ranch and you end up thinking three days to a week ahead of time.  Example: Fixing the air conditioner in Elaine's car, for example, means that if she needs to run to the store, she won't be taking the pickup.  That's good, because doing that project first let me leave three rolls of fencing and a couple of hundred pounds each in the truck where it's much faster to thread the rolls onto the 'fencing dispenser' I built up a while back.

 

And that, in turn was part of the larger fencing plan for the property, all cobbled up so as to require minimum in m what I call 'excess work'.  Guys like me (and chief time monk Cliff) every so often amaze folks with all that we do.  Cliff in the past week, besides doing the linguistics runs also put up a 35' long metal frame building so he could continue resin work on his boat project.  That kind of thing.

 

How do I get so much done? It's all a matter of 'schedule of operations' which is why I should be good for a couple of hundred feet of fencing this morning and have the project nearly done tomorrow. Might be some fencing ties to put on, but that should be about it.

 

And, did I mention that that out-in-the-open fencing will be done at first light, while the fencing that's in the shade of the big oaks, gum trees and pines, will be done as the morning progresses, so that as much advantage is taken of the shade as possible?  Lots of angles to projects; subtleties that ease the way if you think them through.

 

There you have a free bit of 'out here' wisdom, to start the weekend (when you really get to work for yourself and your own great purposes in life); start with a solid 'schedule of operations'.

 

It's damn useful at getting the most done with the best result for the least effort.  On the other hand, it may explain why most women hate going shopping with men: too damn outcome oriented/'git 'er done and on to the next part thinking.  Oh well...where's the tractor key?  Light enough outside.

 

See you Monday morning...

 

Peoplenomics.com 

Advice to the Kids: So, You Want a Pension, Huh?

Not that I would ever expect someone like Warren Buffett to come out and say "Second Depression!" as I've been writing about for 10+ years as the inevitable outcome of consuming ore than we make and printing up phony financial instruments ala Ponzi to do it, but when someone of Buffett's standing "sees "long, deep" U.S. recession" ahead, then perhaps there's still enough lead time to actually get ready.  So, if you're willing to ride out and meet Fate, it's time for some contingency planning for the aftermath of what may have been America's Golden Age.

 

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"Live on $10,000" Updated

There's now a single-page website devoted to my little ebook "How to Live on $10,000 a year (or less) at www.liveontenthousand.com.  Yep - still possible.  I also took a bit of additional material that was pertinent from recent issues of Peoplenomics and included them.  The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the aforementioned dollar amount, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you make a little more than that and do some active savings...  Click here for the page with more details on it.

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Last week's report is here.    For back issues of this site, click here.  (Goes back to 1997!)

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I promised Elaine that I would unload some of my equipment, so if you're looking for ham gear, especially the older tube-type (EMP resistant) type, send me a note and I will send out the list of what I'm selling off when I get it together.    Click here to  Put Me On Ham Gear List

 

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Friday May 30, 2008

Warring With Earthquakes, US Next?

With the predictive linguistics folks noting the chance of a major US earthquake between the summer solstice and fall equinox and maybe in July, I've been paying more than the usual amount of attention to the 'chatter' on the net about a supposed 'battle' between the current occupants of the White House and the rest of the world using advanced technology to produce things like massive earthquakes as weapons.

 

This is right up there with the Denver alien video coming out later today and yes, this kind of speculation is admittedly right out on the edge of woo-woo.  Still, there's enough traffic on the subject to at least warrant some discussion. 

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Benjamin Fulford, for example, has a video on YouTube (reposted on Google Video) that says Japan is among the country's being blackmailed with earthquake machine threats...and it leads, it seem, to a showdown between the US and China using earthquake machines.  Eye opening stuff...

 

Tying in HAARP as an earthquake machine would make sense, especially since there has already been speculation that the US used HAARP ground-penetrating capability as an intelligence tool before the attack on Bora Bora sometime back.  And then there are the patents...

 

Worse, as early 2004/ 2005, there was discussion on the net not only about the potential of HAARP to be used for intelligence gathering, but also to be used to steer hurricanes and the like.  Again, more patents.

 

And, as one reader asked in an email "Doesn't it seem a little strange that US (and other) Navy ships were so conveniently close to Myanmar?  I suppose one could ask that...

 

I also should not need to remind you that a lot of web traffic has been devoted to discussion of government weather control programs, such as the Air Force 2025 "Owning the Weather" report, the ground-breaking work of Scott Stevens, although his www.weatherwars.info site seems not to have been updated for over a year.  But others have taken up the line of inquiry, including Steve Quayle's recent book "Weather Wars: and other unnatural disasters".  In Steve's book, you might want to flip to chapter 11 "Manmade Earthquakes".

 

All of which would be entertaining reading except that the story (or meme if you like) seems to be gathering steam with www.whatdoesitmean.com reporting Thursday that "China Orders Strike Against US for Catastrophic Earthquake."

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So why are we discussing this on a hopefully somewhat respectable economics oriented site like UrbanSurvival?  The way I see it, a cautious investor would collect the dots here which would include:

• Reports (with video here) that there was something strange in the sky 10-minutes before the quake in China - enough so that there was video of it.  Also video of oddly behaving clouds 30-minutes before quake here.

• Reports of strange behavior of weather in a possible war-like ways summarized in the Quayle book.

• A report China may retaliate.

• And the capper for me, a quake in mid-summer in the US seems to be in the linguistic runs.

 

If I were still playing with paper assets, I wouldn't be in a hurry to own insurance and re-insurance companies over the summer, just in case.  Might also be an interesting play to buy a few building material stocks.  If such a quake did occur, it might spin the beleaguered building supplies stocks on a dime.

 

No, this is not investment advice.  Just an observation that when there's smoke showing up in several places, the odds of finding someone running around with matches seems a little higher than random/chance, and excursions from random do impact markets as exogenous events.  The idea's to spot them before the herd.

 

'Them Winds'

Hot video out of Nebraska...  The latest chart of tornados YTD from the Weather Service shows how 'out of ordinary' this year is so far:

 

 

While Hurricane Alley has been busy living up to its name, we should note that the Hurricane Season starts on Sunday and the experts are guessing that up to nine named hurricanes could be coming along, although around here, my bet is that the number might go to 12 or even 13.  Just a hunch, nothing more.

 

Personal Consumption and Expenditures

New figures out today.  The press release stuff first:

"Personal income increased $20.1 billion, or 0.2 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $23.4 billion, or 0.2 percent, in April, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $21.4 billion, or 0.2 percent. In March, personal income increased $44.7 billion, or 0.4 percent, DPI increased $35.4 billion, or 0.3 percent, and PCE increased $41.7 billion, or 0.4 percent, based on revised estimates.

Real disposable personal income decreased less than 0.1 percent in April, in contrast to an increase of less than 0.1 percent in March. Real PCE decreased less than 0.1 percent, in contrast to an increase of 0.1 percent."

Hmmm...let's see: Personal income goes up, but you don't get to keep any.  Splendid.  Just splendid.  And savings?

Personal saving -- DPI less personal outlays -- was $75.0 billion in April, compared with $78.9 billion in March. Personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income was 0.7 percent in April, the same percentage as in March. Saving from current income may be near zero or negative when outlays are financed by borrowing (including borrowing financed through credit cards or home equity loans), by selling investments or other assets, or by using savings from previous periods.

But, lest we forget, I seem to recall about a year back the personal savings rate was refigured because it kept running in the red, so it was 'corrected' something like 1.3%, so if it's up in this report, it likely means your savings are likely being depleted slower than last month.  Is this happy news, or what?

 

Say, here's an 'extra-credit' question:  Are the government number-twiddlers counting the principal contribution from your home mortgage as "savings"?  LOL - care to bet me?

 

Banks, Insurance, and Runs

Because of the problems of Northern Rock (a bank run) a while back, I've been paying extra-special attention to emails from sources in the banking industry who are also watching things even more closely.  So, when the FDIC issues its "Quarterly Banking Profile" and I don't have time to read the whole thing (because I would doze off at about page 9, or so), I trust my learned colleagues in mahogany fox-hole land who summarize it like so:

"Insured Deposits increased by $150 billion, while the Deposit Insurance Fund increased by only $430 million. Might explain FDIC’s rush to hire more liquidation specialists."

24-pages to say that?  Whew - I am thankful for friends who can summarize...

 

Wal-Mart Power

Fortune magazine reports that Wal-Mart puts the squeeze on food costs - using its huge purchasing power to hold prices as well as they can.  Still, the reality is that with diesel over $5-dollar many places, there's going to be increases for the rest of the rest as producer costs do have to get passed up the food chain, so to speak.  Farm milks prices could go up $5-per hundredweight later on this year, reports the American Agriculturalist.  Pencils to 33% possibly - and maybe more.  Tell me what will happen to oil prices and I can give youi a better guess...

 

Oil Impacts

Once again, the casual investor is being pulled in two directions by the headlines.  One says "Oil prices ease further after sharp falls", but at the same time another says just hours before that "Oil prices surge on surprise drop in supplies".

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Don't know how the traffic has been in your town; there hasn't been a strange car on our single-lane road here at the ranch for months.  But, youngest daughter Allison reports her motorcycle-riding boyfriend has noticed a slight drop in traffic in the Seattle area.  If you want to get a sense of such things, bikers are a lot more sensitive than car-drivers, being much more alert to car spacing and such.

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As for July Crude, it was hovering between $126 and $127 when I last looked, but the price at the pumps is mostly over $4 for gas and over $5 for diesel.  Elaine's youngest, Brandon, reports that with a little shopping of the right truck stops in the Seattle area, he was able to load 21-gallons of diesel for $100... I  think he said the Flying J in Tacoma...showing $4.81.9 this morning.  In California, prices are bumping up against $5 a gallon.

 

An Inconvenient Opera

"La Scala to stage Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth' as an opera.  Well, I never was much of an opera fan...

 

Media Concentration

If you care, there's coverage of Rupert Murdoch's thinking in the WSJ OL today. 

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Speaking of media and all.. a reader sent this in Thursday morning:

"Not five minutes ago,…watching Faux Business talking heads dissecting the Great Depression of 29, the comment was made that the 29 depression was nothing more than an over reaction to a nominal recession!

And then another pundit (a regular) stated yes, but we didn’t have the Federal Reserve back then!

These people are the respected financial pros?"

I would hope the guest talking-heads are better at finance than history...

 

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Coping:  Still Sucking Them In...

So here I am, sucking down the first cup of coffee, and I get an email from a friend I've known 50-years or so, which says "Very Urgent -Very Urgent" in the subject line (SL=).  Goes like this:

"TWO SUBJECT LINES TO BEWARE OF:

BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY. READ AND HEED.

I just verified this with Snopes and it is REAL. ALSO WENT TO TRUTH OR FICTION AND IT'S on their site also.

PLEASE INFORM EVERYONE

Emails with pictures of Osama Bin-Laden hanged are being sent and the moment that you open these emails your computer will crash and you will not be able t o fix it!

If you get an email along the lines of 'Osama Bin Laden Captured' or 'Osama Hanged', don't open the attachment.

This e-mail is being distributed through countries around the globe, but mainly in the US and Israel

Be considerate & send this warning to whomever you know.

PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS:

You should be alert during the next days: Do not open any message with an attached file called 'Invitation' regardless of who sent it.

It is a virus that opens an Olympic Torch which 'burns' the whole hard disc C of your computer.

This virus will be received from someone who has your e-mail address in his/her contact list, that is why you s hold send this e-mail to all your contacts.

It is better to receive this message 25 times than to receive the virus and open it

If you receive a mail called 'invitation', though sent by a friend, do not open it and shut down your computer immediately.

This is the worst virus announced by CNN, it has been classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever.

This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair yet for this kind of virus.

This virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where the vital information is kept.

SEND THIS E-MAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW

Oh, no, not again!  OK, I respond with...

Even More Urgent

Gullibility runs amuck on the net. Just because someone says that ‘it’s on SNOPES’ doesn’t mean it’s current. If you read here: http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/osama.asp  you’ll see the Osama hanged/captured virus dates from 2004 (yawn…)

The version of the "warning" that included the subject line “Invitation” you’re getting a warning that first circulated back in 2006.

And, if you did forwarded this to everyone in your email address book, you are still a computing newbie (sorry!) and you know just how far from the leading edge you really are.

I hope my friend's feelings aren't hurt, but I pay lots of money to anti-virus and other computer security providers (go ahead and guess, LOL) so that I don't have to worry about this kind of thing.  Next time some email says "send this to everyone you know", toss it in the digital dumpster.

 

In fact, I finally decided I have had enough so I wrote a couple of rules in my email router so that if the phrase "send this to everyone you know" or "send this to all your friends" shows up in an email, it's now routed right to the dumpster.  I got better thi