Replaying 1929: Business, Financial, and earth change news

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Oh Crop!  Summer Bummer

A long conversation with chief time monk Cliff at www.halfpasthuman.com left me thoroughly bummed out yesterday, in part because it seems that linguistically, the weather in the Midwest may continue extremely wet for the balance of the summer and the "gouging winds" we have had this year (see the NWS chart here) will be morphing into 'them  floods' for the rest of this year and into next.

 

If you look at the latest satellite imagery, you can see the mid Pacific high (highs rotate clockwise in the northern hemisphere) and the low over the upper US Midwest about the Canadian border (rotating counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere) are continuing their conspiracy to make this a wet summer.

 

All of which would be no big deal, except these systems seem relatively stationary and the result is that warm moist air is being sucked up into the central US from the Gulf of Mexico where it's colliding with the cooler air dragged down from the north by the mid Pacific high and you get precipitation.  And, at least as seems likely by the language shift, we will be getting lots and lot of rain. 

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A little Saturday morning diversion here: I don't claim any credentials to comment on the weather other than what was required to get a private pilots license back when weather was relatively new, but I remember enough about colliding and occluded fronts to remember to use extra caution flying under VFR (visual flight rules) conditions thereabouts. 

 

One of the 'must have' books in your library, even if you don't ever fly an airplane is the Airman's Information Manual which you can pick up for a few bucks used on Amazon, or its successor, the FAR/AIM for 2008 which will set you back a whopping $11.53.   (FAR/AIM nowadays means Federal Aviation Regulations and Aeronautical Information Manual; I guess Airman's information manual was just too simple. 

 

The weather section is a definite keeper.  It explains things like wind shear, what transponder codes to squawk if you're hijacked, not to mention why onshore and offshore winds occur. When you read about how to figure the wind direction by looking at a lake when trying to land a seaplane, for example, you'll figure out where the calmest part of the lake is for fishing, for example (up wind side).  Not that you wouldn't have figured that out anyway with a moment's thought, but it's a book crammed with general purpose knowledge in addition to pilot-specific knowledge. Where was i?  Oh yeah...

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The scope of the weather disaster is just barely taking shape this weekend.  Already, I told you the 'them winds' meme meant that insurance companies had more adjusting crews out in the Midwest  than during the peak of the KatRita disasters.

 

Although we don't know how big the hit will be to insurance companies yet (and we may not know the whole damage price tag for a year or more), what we do see in headlines this morning are terms calling the flooding "Iowa's Katrina" and the like.

 

Although the Washington Post today headlines that the "Iowa Flooding Rivals 1993 Deluge", the linguistics seem to suggest that a wide section of the Midwest could be passing 1993, 50-year flood levels and even 500-year or 1,000-year kinds of impacts.  As usual, our caveat is that the language studies tend to err on the extreme side, and on the personal side, I hope they are really off base on this forecast, because the implications of them being right involve some major inconveniences for the country - like mass hunger.

 

Without going into a long discussion of a phenomena which we call either the 'George Postulate" or simply 'print through' on the timeline, remember last year we had all the linguistics about 'flooding' and either 700,000 or 7,000,000 people being displaced?  Along with airplanes in the water which was 'filled' by the Teterboro airport video?

 

We had a number of parts of that descriptor set that were not filled, including the problems along the Red River as well and some descriptors that I read as pointing toward the lower Mississippi Valley.  Then there's the resolution of the 700,000 or 7,000,000 and how this would fit into a modern (post-modern?) Diaspora.

 

If the rains keep coming for another three or four months (and then into the fall), we can begin to see how the Old 'Miss could become barrier to the movement of goods and services across the country.  I haven't researched it very far - maybe because it's not written down anywhere convenient, or because I don't expect I'd like what I might read) but picture a Mississippi that is suddenly a mile or more wide here in the next four to six weeks down much of its length.

 

That could put a terrible damper not only on food production, but also on just the movement of goods and services across the country.  Recall, too, that 'restrictions on travel' should be busting out all over this summer, although with the price of gasoline well north of $4 a gallon many places ($4.22/gallon in Las Vegas, for example), and with the cost of air travel going up and airlines canceling flights, it's a safe bet that things will be feeling extremely restricted shortly.

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The old Talking Heads tune "Lifetime Piling Up" comes to mind not for the drug references, but for it the psychological imagery of colliding realities.

 

It's with this in mind that this Saturday morning free update becomes a launching pad or prequel for Peoplenomics this weekend, which will deal with 'lifetime piling up' and how to cope with a very different future than the last several decades of relative easy living in America which are perhaps best summarized by the Tony Bennett song "The Good Life". The report's title?  "Change of Status"..

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Besides helping one to be mentally braced for some not-so-kind developments, another reason to study the future is to make a buck by getting a handle on coming events before the rest of the herd wakes up.

 

In this regard, if the rains seem to lighten up going into early next week, I would expect we'll see a pullback in grain prices, but if the lingustics which go to the idea of more rain in our not-so-distant future are right, that might open the door for a few select commodity investments in things like grains for December.  No, that's not a recommendation, just something to gnaw on (pun intended) as we see what grows as the spring goes on.

 

"Knee high by the Fourth of July" ain't going to happen many places.  Something that is coming through in a number of reader emails like this one:

George, today's [Friday's] report on the problems in the midwest farming country may explain something I noticed while flying from Michigan to California on June 3rd and back on June 11th. Both times, we had to detour around the Iowa area because of storms so I didn't see any flood damage, but I did notice that unlike previous trips this time of year, many of the fields were fallow with no sign of green. I would estimate that close to half the fields between the Rockies & Lake Michigan were still brown. Having been raised on a farm, I know that by this time of year crops are planted and up or on dairy farms the fields are green with grass for the cows to graze. From about five miles up, I couldn't tell if the fields had been worked or not and wondered if the high price of fuel and fertilizer has caused farmers to cut back on how much land they can actively use for production. I always get a window seat if possible because seeing the landscape from the air is fascinating. I spotted what might have been a small forest fire in an area south of Bryce Canyon, Utah.

I suppose this gets us around to a discussion of how the rest of the summer could like up.  If you cut the country into three bands (at an angle leaning top to right) we ought to have the Western band with a cooler than usual Pacific Northwest.  Earlier this week, we had snow in Spokane, which is an incredibly important marker because that just doesn't happen very often.  And, it brings some food impacts along with it.  We're hearing that apples in the Wenatchee Valley are only about 40% of normal for this time of year and some growers and some growers may hire workers to pick off the smallest of apples so the remaining ones will grow.

 

To the south in this band of weather, I'd be expecting a drier than normal summer with a whole bunch of forest and range fires.

 

The Middle Band we've covered - the prospect of a miles-wide Mississippi is the scenario that worries me most because we depend so heavily on those freeways, rail bridges and pipelines that cross the Mississippi.

 

The Eastern Band will likely be dry, hot, and we've got a regional power outage ahead, and because of the high temps, I'd be betting on this band for where it could hit.  Healthcare impacts, people injured or dead from the heat, all that seems to be in the preconscious buzz about the period just ahead.

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Not to start the morning on with a heaped up serving of 'bummer' but the ABC News site headlines today: "Scientists from around the glob join ABC news in a forum on Surviving the Century"  Pretty optimistic, as I read it.  If we get through the next 10-years seems a much better question - over even the next five, but HalfPastHuman subscribers will get the backstory to that remark when the last of the current time-scanning run is posted later today.

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Got a fall garden planned?

 

Huge Taliban Jail Break

A Debka.com report says in part that the "...Taliban 'breaks 1,150 inmates out of Kandahar main prison." 

 

If you're into news propagation theory, let's see how long before this goes mainstream, shall we?

 

Iran Attack Delayed?

If you're wondering why the US has not yet attacked Iran, there's a little story out of San Diego that may hold a key.  "Fire damage on carrier USS George Washington assessed" which means repairs will need to be made and that puts us on track for a September'ish kind of timeline, especially if the George Washington rolls past our old stomping ground/liveaboard home at Kona Kai Resort (back in our sailing says) on Shelter Island in late August..

 

Oil & Finance

The "G-8 concerned about rising oil prices" reports the A.P.  Rocket surgeons, these G-8 guys...

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The headline "Wall Street ends turbulent week with sharp gains" has me scratching my head - which may account for the bald spot developing.  Up 97.54 for the week.  During a week which revealed foreclosures are up 50% compared with a year ago, when the price of gas continued to climb, a natural disaster set in for farmers, and the balance of trade getting worse was supposed to be sinking it.  Go figure.

 

We Are So Screwed Department

"NYC company markets Obama & McCain-themed condoms..."  I couldn't make up a story this good...

 

People Notes

Normally, I steer clear of the 'people' stories, but once in a while when the Big Picture gets depressing, the 'people' sidebars are a nice distraction.  People making news:

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NBC commentator Tim Russert has died of a heart attack.

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R&B singer R. Kelly has been acquitted on child porn charges.  Took six years to get the case to court - all for not guilty on 14 government counts.

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LA federal "judge Alex Kozinski recuses himself from trial of porn maker Ira Isaacs" says the NY Daily News headline.

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And the on-again, off-again romance between Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson is on again.

 

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Coping: It's Really Pretty Good Here

A reader in Nepal writes in...

"Hey George, I follow urbansurvival on a daily basis although i m not the biggest economics buff in this planet. All the time that i ve read your daily newsletters i ve realized how much the Americans are dependant on the most basic amenities. I m from Nepal and i would wonder how would anyone from America survive here, we dont have electricity atleast 3-4 hours a day, yesterday was 22 hours. Thats when it occured to me that people over there complain so much ( i m not saying they shouldnt) but why dont they understand that they are probably the most gifted people in terms of the basic lifestyle. you could correct me if i m wrong about that. btw, have you heard of this kid by the name, Boriska or Boris Kiprianovich(sp). He is a russian and if you read about him you ll be fascinated as you re into predictions. he predicts a major catastrophe in 2009 similar to webbot. good day."

Even stop and go traffic on ther 405 in LA isn't so bad when you keep in mind how unreliable things are elsewhere.  Until the regional power outage that's probably coming here this summer, that is.,..and then there's the linguistic and astro 'hot date' around July 8/9... but still better than most places.

 

Gas Station Consolidation?

It was one thing when Citgo retailers stop selling gas, but now it looks like Exxon-Mobil will also get out of the retail gas station trade and is planning to sell off its 820 company-owned facilities.

 

A correspondent in Tucson writes that it's not just Exxon, but many Union 76 and Shell stations have become generic independents, as well.

 

Bottom line?  get to know someone who owns a gas station!

 

Something Fishy in Aridzona

Seems like authorities in Arizona are looking to put minnows in the swimming pools of foreclosed homes, which have turned into large-scale mosquito hatcheries due to foreclosures.

 

So, we wonder how long before banks start selling fishing licenses to drop a line in foreclosed home pools?  Hmmm...would the state have authority over these private mini-lakes?

 

And, given what's ahead for the world's protein supply, has anyone come out with the $10 ebook on how to convert your swimming pool to a shrimp farm?

 

On the Ground in Europe

A reader share this on th4e situation in Europe:

"My mother wrote this to me today. She lives in Holland, and here she is talking about the status in Europe.

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The news around this part of the world is not good. –The truckers are striking because of the higher diesel prices. Greece is reduced to chaos. Highways are blocked limiting the transportation of fuel and trade fruit and vegetables. We hear stories of tourists from other parts of Europe unable to get out of Greece because of the gas stations closure. The fishing fleet has remained in port because of the excessive cost of fuel. Frozen fish travels across Europe from Greece. Here in Holland, the buses have been on strike for two weeks. The engineers on rail cars are threatening to join the drivers in strike. The truckers are engaging in orderly strikes in Holland by only blocking the major roads during scheduled hours. Yesterday, at the market, I noticed the shelves are not as full in many stores. In some, empty spaces I had not seen before. The summer is just starting, unfortunately much of Europe functions on goods transported by truck.

This morning it was long sleeve cool. Weird temperatures and weather, after days crowding ninety degrees, now this!"

Of course, this is just the very extreme leading edge of what Robert Kaplan wrote about in his book "The Coming Anarchy" which was summarized waaay back in 1994 in an Atlantic Monthly article which, as luck would have it, is online here.

 

It would be a pretty good look ahead, if we weren't about to experience Terra Bites in a number of ways between now and then.

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Send snip and save notes to george@ure.net

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Peoplenomics.com 

11,893: Edge of the Financial World?

Although there's a good chance that the markets will continue the decline set up last Friday as the markets open on Monday, the drop even if a thousand points, would only be a 'drop in the bucket' compared to some of the longer-term counts in Elliott, some of the predictive linguistics work, and just common sense. The macro-problem is that somewhere between 2000 and 2015, a Grand Super Cycle top will be in. As that occurs, we won't be looking at a decline from 14,000 to 12,000 that became evident last week. Nope: it will be more like 14,000 to 2,000 to a