Rambling, Incoherent Thoughts

So it's been a while. My last post was in June of 2018, after my first in March of that year. I got caught up in looking for a new job, and moving back to the Midwest later that summer, and my writing has suffered because of that. I'm not sure exactly where this Dreamwidth account will fit in to my efforts, but overall I find it to be a pretty slick site and easy to use. Up to this point, I've used it mostly to follow John Michael Greer and his "off-blog" posts.

As I was reviewing some of my past posts, I noticed the first one I referenced Bill Gates and a news story about potential pandemics. Indeed. Queue up the Twilight Zone's theme.

Anyway, after getting a bit more organized, I hope to be back to post some more comments on current events and some of my writing. I cranked out quite a bit of fiction and other stuff a few years ago while attending some classes and workshops in Portland, and I need to get back in the groove. My hope is to blow the dust off a few things, polish them up, and see if I can get some stuff published. Stay tuned...

So the S&P decided to crash down early this week, as the contagion in Italy was finally a force to be reckoned with - except it wasn't. Dropping from the low 2720s on Friday, the market emerged in risk off mode after the three day weekend, as traders decided to sell after stuffing themselves silly on beer, hot dogs and burgers. But the scare only lasted overnight, as news that Italy somehow wasn't a problem, that Trump may actually meet with Kim, and with the Middle East not immediately beginning to burn, decided that "sell in May and go away" was not going to be the mantra quite yet. Personally, I feel somewhat like Charlie Brown in his own version of Groundhog Day, where Lucy continues to yank away the football just before I strike it with my bloody foot, only to never learn the lesson, and knowing I'm going to be fooled again soon.

Meanwhile, what's not so humorous is the economy continues to sputter along, everyone has their fingers crossed, and nobody is willing to accept anything but their own personal hopes and wishes for the future. As Chris Irons on Quoth the Raven might say, as long as the Fed continues to keep pushing the flames back inside the Hindenburg of what passes for capitalism, free markets and the American Way these days, "All is Well!"

In other news, Roseanne outdid her normal low-brow humor with a couple of vicious tweets this past weekend, resulting in ABC canceling her show. To the uninformed, this may appear to be a story about insensitivity. To the cynical, it's about money - and why canceling a supposedly successful show doesn't make a lot of sense, there's something deeper going on here. What that is, I do not know, but something tells me down the road the motive will become more clear. Mother Nature continues to get a chuckle, as the volcanic activity on the Big Island of Hawaii continues unabated, cutting into the tourist trade. Imagine the fun when Mt. Rainier kicks loose and starts tossing Volkswagen-Bug sized chunks of flaming lava into downtown Seattle. That'll make Pompeii look like a Boy Scout campfire that burned grass one foot outside the circle of rocks.

The latest Star Wars movie is a dud. Snooze. I saw the latest one, VII?, and thought it was a remake of Episode IV - BECAUSE IT WAS! In political news, the Trump fiascos continues with the investigation, and that pesky Stormy Daniels still getting headlines. If aliens showed up tomorrow, and the human race was left to defend its right to exist, we'd be in big, big trouble. Hillary continues her tour of whining, and now speculation is running rampant about her back brace which appears under her bulky clothing, since she's shown up a recent public events dressed like an Eskimo celebrating the Winter Solstice. There's not even much humor in the news these days, as the insanity of what passes for journalism these days casts too murky of gloom on it all.

The weekly cup of news bytes runneth over, so here we go....

The U.S. dollar continues to fall, the stock continues to go up (S&P up nearly 100 points over the last month), and “all is well!” proclaims the night watchman. Except in Argentina. Where the peso continues to fall, and the Central Bank is faced with rolling $30B of paper this week, after $2B in intervention on Friday failed to halt the decline. If the canary in the coal mine, the U.S. could face this same scenario - perhaps sooner rather than later. Some bond pundits say the jig is up when you can no longer pay interest on your debt, and others say just PRINT, baby, PRINT! Bloomberg, like the night watchman, declare that the U.S. economy is not overheating. Well, that makes me feel better. (oops, forgot the /sarcasm hash tag). I believe a more accurate picture of things can be found on my favorite pod caster, Quoth The Raven. I share his twisted sense of humor, although....

I listened to a podcast on QTR from early April in which Tesla, the company, was discussed, with Ross Gerber (bullish) and Adam Spittler (bearish) along with host Chris Irons (very bearish). It became obvious to me, a person who wouldn't know the first thing about reading a company's financial statement, that Tesla is not the kind of company that shareholders value based on traditional metrics. So much of the bearish arguments were invalid. On the other hand, putting all your faith in Musk The Magician is risky too, as Gerber pointed out. He believes that global warming is real, and a transition to electric vehicles is a must. With that kind of opening, I was disappointed to see Spittler and Irons leave that little morsel on the table untouched, as both those assumptions are clearly - and I mean very clearly, erroneous. Global warming may be real, but it's the least of our worries when considered alongside of overshoot, pollution, peak (cheap) oil, and the decline of the American Empire. Furthermore, perform a few calculations on using up lithium reserves solely for Tesla's future production quotas (per Chris Martenson of peakprosperity.com), and you end up stiffing the cell phone industry with their battery needs. Hmmmm. So, as far as debates go, I'd award Gerber the win (although points off for his constant interruptions ) because he clearly stated his case for a risky venture, and Irons/Spittler (points off for bad-mouthing the opponent after he hung up ), while bringing up good points about financial numbers and the mass exodus of executives, did a poor job refuting that strategy.

In other news, the U.S. opened an embassy in Jerusalem, which apparently resulted in violence and death of 52 Palastinians protesting in the Gaza Strip (1700 injured). It's difficult for me to be interested, as I've been seeing these same stories, different verses, since the early 1970s when I actually started watching the news. I am numb. I've got my own problems. I feel for the poor people of the world, as the elites continue to support regimes bent on violence, but there appears to be no solutions in this particular part of the world. We've got about 3000 years of history to back that claim up. On a lighter note, the hubbub over who gets invited to the Royal Wedding (Harry and what's her name) continues, and again it's difficult for me to be interested. Though I must admit, this Lady Amelia, whom I've never heard of before and is dissed from an invite, is quite a dish.

The recent volcanic eruptions in Hawaii have “raised concerns” that similar processes could occur in the chain of volcanoes that run down the west coast of the U.S. The article (from AP mind you) goes on to state that Kilauea, the volcano on the Big Island, sits in the middle of the Ring of Fire (true) of volcanoes around the Pacific, but then points out the volcanism is different in the Cascades, which of course are caused by plates being sub-ducted where the Pacific ocean side plates go under the continental plates of North America. Since Hawaii is located over a geologic “hot spot”, in the middle of oceanic plate, I don't get why concerns have been raised. When it's raining outside my house in Vancouver, WA, USA, I don't think it raises concerns of local flooding in San Diego. But I could be wrong. Since I'm sitting less than 40 miles away (as the whooping crane flies) from Mt. St. Helens as I type this, I'm already concerned - and get more so if the wind shifts to the NNE. But the recent eruptions on the Big Island just makes me want to postpone my next vacation to paradise.

A man from (ironically) Paradise Valley, Arizona, has a problem with a stalker. Apparently, a 31 year-old woman he met on a dating site showered him with no less than 65,000 texts after a first date, sending up to 500 per day. No details on when this first date happened, but my quick-back-of-Lincoln's-gettysburg-address-letter-calculations show it to be around August 13th or so of last year. Apparently, with such dittys as “Don't ever try to leave me...I'll kill you”, “I hope you die...you rotten filthy Jew”, “I'm like the new Hitler...man was a genious”, it still took this guy 8.5 months to come to the conclusion she was a little (to be kind) off? Accused stalker is now in jail, without bond, and declaring this fine gent is her soul mate. It would be funny, if it weren't so tragic. Ah, who am I kidding? It's still funny. An example of the alternate reality that technology can shape. Sending 65,000 telegrams would have sent her to the poor house and ended the drama so much sooner. While this gal looks semi-normal in some photos online, we get the obligatory bug-eyed mug shot, just in case you weren't paying attention to the details, and had any doubts.

Enough of the water and tide references with the markets. For now it's all about indecision, as the S&P bounces around between 2600 and 2700, range bound and coiling for a bigger move. I thought the bearish side was getting awfully crowded, but now I see bullish tidbits creeping back into the news flow. Whatever your working "thesis" is for the markets and economy, there's bound to be data on the Internet (somewhere) to support it. We continue sailing through uncharted waters, with several rounds of QE (read PRINTING) behind us, short interests in bonds at super high levels (meaning everyone is betting on inflation), and a wall of worry hinging on nine years of UP, up, and UPPP!

And while the fundamentals don't look good, and the bears insist the ocean of debt is bound to deflate and cause chaos, for now the whole world is on the same side of the financialization experiment in progress. As pointed out in a recent podcast from Quoth The Raven and a group of Green Wizards down under, when TSHTF, the misery will not be equally applied everywhere. Winners and losers (more of them) came before, during and after the Great Depression, and there's no reason to think that characteristic won't apply again. As the gent running the show for the Green Wizard's podcast pointed out, it comes down to values and personal choices for what you can do about it. While I still think the "adults" in the room are mostly just rearranging the deck chairs, like the wise old Alfalfa once said, "I have to live my own life."

Trump, obstruction, lawyers, investigation and those damn Russians continue to hog bandwidth in the news cycles. Really? Just kill me already. Socialism continues to gain in popularity, or so say the pollsters, as 46% favor government guaranteed jobs for all. Good thing that PRINT button is handy, because apparently money (or what used to be money) really does grow on trees. Color me skeptical of both socialism (stealing other people's money) and capitalism (stealing other people's money) until we get back to an economy of actually making things, and not treating the planet the same way yeast treat their fermentation bottle when making ale.

Backup cameras are now required on all cars, along with seat belts, air bags, black boxes and anti-lock brakes. Pretty soon it will be mandatory to be bundled in a protective bubble before rolling out of the house. I've got nothing against safety, and maybe it'll help keep health care costs down (I know, try not to laugh), but there's something about "mandated" versus the risks of freedom that go against my grain. While in Florida a couple of weeks ago, I got to ride a Harley, without a helmet.....and.....it was awesome! I've hit a couple of deer over the years, and live in a state where a helmet is required (and it saved my life once), BUT the Founding Fathers and their kind just shake their heads at so many of the laws we have today.

And finally, yesterday 22 police cars here in Portland were vandalized by having white paint tossed on them, all in a parking lot in the Northeast part of the city, with most of the cars assigned to the youth services division. When I saw the story on Drudge, the headlines indicated May Day mayhem, caused by Antifa. Or rather, the "Antifa hotbed" in Portland. I watched the local news last night (KOIN 6) to get more info on what MUST be the lead story, but it was buried 10 minutes in with 10 seconds of coverage. Cause maybe it wasn't a communist plot?

After a plummet below 2600 in late March, the S&P 500 has zig-zagged its way back above 2700 over the last couple of weeks, with the VIX falling from over 20 back to the mid-teens. Apparently the mis-adventure of a declining empire tossing around a 100+ cruise missiles is good for the economy. Until it’s not. The leaders of the United States continue with a policy meddling and not making friends in the world, and there comes an inflection point at some time when that will be a problem. How many of us held their collective breath, waiting for a Russian or Chinese cruise missile to be tossed back for fun?

Meanwhile, employment data a couple of weeks ago continue to show a very tight jobs market, with the unemployment number irrelevant, and hours, pay, and participation numbers showing more of the real story. Take away the crazy “paper-pushing” jobs being added in health care, and the American employment numbers would be a horror story going on a decade now. Dig deeper into the reports, and part-time, non-technical and service jobs are the ones propping up the numbers – not the good, family and middle-class lifestyle supporting jobs of yesteryear. Retail is showing stress, and reflects the weakness of the “real” economy, and not the proclaimed strength of Trump’s (and wealthy people in general) world. Oil is inching up near $70 now, and more theater in the Middle East would tip much of the economy, already teetering on the edge, over and into the abyss.

The gun control furor has died down a bit, and it remains to be seen what the next news incident might be that triggers the non-nonsensical knee-jerk reaction to a complex issue. When people “demand” changes that defy logic and undermine what little freedoms we have remaining in our society, it makes me reflect on our poor education system. Did outlawing drugs work? Did outlawing alcohol work? If we want to get to the root cause of mass shootings, shouldn’t we look at how mental health services in this country approach the problem? The Parkland incident involved a young man who’d been suspended from school for bringing a gun, had been reported to have pointed a gun at someone’s head, and was considered for a mental health facility for threats to others (Baker Act), and unfortunately with all these warning signs, his specific case was not addressed properly.

The other big issue over the last couple of weeks has been the Facebook story, and how the big Internet interests track you, analyze you, categorize you, and monetize you. I’ve even experienced getting an unsolicited call from a assisted care facility “finder” service, after mentioning that phrase on a cell phone call with my brother. Everything done electronically is scanned, swept, sliced, diced, spindled and mutilated for economic gain. Privacy is non-existent. Data security is anything but secure, and therefore participation should be questioned. It’s beyond belief that some find it worthwhile to have active microphones in their home to facilitate shopping or obtaining the weather forecast.

And yesterday, an exploding engine on a Southwest Airlines flight from NYC to Dallas resulted in the first passenger death since 2009 on an American airline. Kudos to pilot Tammie Jo Shults who parlayed her Navy experience and pilot training into getting the plane safely on the ground in Philly. Since I fly later today back to Portland, I’m hoping my pilots are equally skilled.

So once again, a savvy trader would have made money fading (going against) my stock market prediction, as the S&P has continued in "BEAR" mode, falling over the past week, in spite of actually getting above 2650 with a big day on Monday, followed by a sharp selloff yesterday. Today it was Whipsaw City, a sign of bearness, and once again I got chopped a couple of times for losses. D'oh! The pool is still deep.

In market news the dollar showed some strength, and Facebook and Amazon have weighed the market down - Facebook due to leaks about how extensive the data collected on users really is (well, duh!), and Amazon as Mr. Trump grumbled about taxing them, along with making the military pay for the wall with Mexico. You would think a guy in the White House would be happy with over $3T in taxes rolling into the government coffers each year, but no. Apparently the hailed recent tax cut needs to be paid for, as the recent 2,232 page spending bill doling out the $1.3T "extra" dough we don't have, essentially vaporized the tax cut in one fell swoop. DC seems intent on ensuring "business as usual" right up until the country plunges over the falls.

It makes me shake my head, as I weed through the other news from the past week. Stormy Daniels and Trump. Who cares? Really? Why is this news? Reboot of Roseanne? Well, ain't that special. Kim Jong Un goes to China? That's like the Home Office meeting with a sales rep, and not even the top rep in his region. The March for Our Lives pro-gun control event in Washington was criticized for exploiting the Parkland victims and for being too white. Apparently the participants are not well-versed in history (as in why the 2nd Amendment was included in the bill of rights), and why outlawing "things" are only as effective as to the level of the law being enforced. Speakeasies and pushers never have had a shortage of customers. Just another example of lack of critical thought and priorities are tell to the pain ahead. It'd be nice if Congress and citizens would some day address a minor problem or two that needs addressing - say, considering changes needed to the economy to function with more expensive fossil fuels, growth in the homeless numbers, an education system that is mid-tier compared to others on the planet, and irresponsible government spending, wouldn't that be a nice switch?

But fortunately there was worthwhile bit of news today on Drudge - an article from the UK's "The Sun" paper tells us of the story of a chicken in Thailand, headless, that's apparently survived for nine days now. (Perhaps related to certain members of the U.S. Congress?) This plucky, "Lucky Clucker" had its head bitten off, and is now an Internet sensation, still being fed and given antibiotics (huh?). Why it's easy to feel sorry for this bird and the rather extreme injury, I can't help but think the worse thing about not having a head is you can't stick it firmly in the sand...

So I figure I need to make a few posts to figure out how the dreamwidth site works, as I've joined some sort of "Fellowship" proposed by John Michael Greer on how to write a work of fiction (at least I think that's what it's about).

This morning, I made a few quick trades on the /ES (S&P futures), as it appeared to be nearing a critical trend line upwards, established on March 2nd. The increase of volatility over the last six weeks has made the futes more jumpy, and liquidity is still just a fraction of what had been typical prior to the major selloff that began on January 29th. After some chart work, I figure the S&P is going to rattle around abut between 2765 and 2745 before making a new thrust upwards. As I typed that in, the /ES just dove 10 points (from 2763 to 2753), for fun. Gotta have nerves of steel to trade this days with the violent moves.

My scalps earlier were good for $250 or so of profits, and I bought a short-term call option of 2800 for $230, which expires next Monday. So my prediction is see a nice sharp move up of 40-50 points by end of week or over the weekend, and if I'm wrong - oh well. Risk/reward looks like a decent play.

A couple of news items over the last couple of days caught my eye. The Brits are getting in a urination contest with the Russians over a couple of spies dying from a nerve agent (yikes!), and 23 Russian "delegates" (er, intel operatives or spooks) were tossed out by the Brits today. Revival of the cold war continues.

Another news item was a bit more unsettling, with both Bill Gates and the chairman of the World Health Organization warning of a pandemic triggered by bioterrorism is a real and concerning threat. Perhaps I shouldn't have declined by pneumonia shot down the clinic a couple of weeks ago. D'oh!

(Update, /ES dipped to 2748.75, and then took off north in a big green candle. Amazing.)

The other boring thing I did today was review a thread on Pace Advantage Forum (horse racing site), where the Off Topic section had a post about a new update to surrogate laws in Washington State, which quickly devolved into a debate about Pizzagate. As usual, both sides were talking past each other, and the only useful takeaway from my perspective is how strongly people stick to their personal views when evaluating news, regardless of the "facts" verified. This was precisely one of the points by JMG last week in his post on a lack of proper rhetoric in today's debates. Speaking of JMG, I see his weekly post has hit the streets. Gotta go.