Been one hell of a week, hasn’t it? Market’s set to take a breather this morning. Fed regional chieftess Michelle Bowman’s likely to offer some level-headed assessments after the quarter point cut. And the markets are trying to figure out “Where next?” They hit the top of a trend channel on new highs Thurday, but we’ll get to that.
Captain Gooding’s Assessment
Sounding a lot like a recently retired, modern-day officer corps warrior, Captain Gooding has blessed us with another fine sit-rep on where Middle Reality moved this week, after the red lights were turned off in New York:
“Festus and Uncle Remus ran into Captain Gooding down at the big box hardware store yesterday. Naturally, the topic of the election came up. Festus and Remus were still elated over President Trump’s victory, but Captain Gooding was surprisingly pensive. He suggested the three meet up at a nearby coffee shop a bit later in the day and discuss the matter in more depth. (The Captain had a bunch of home improvement items in the cart, and wanted to get them back to the house first, he explained. Plus, lunch was waiting.) Festus noticed there were a couple of discounted cans of returned paint in the Captain’s cart, and made a mental note to ask the Captain about them later.
At the appointed time, the three met up at the diner for coffee. It was mid afternoon, and the place was just about empty.
Once the three gents had settled into a booth and gotten their coffees, Uncle Remus broke the ice and asked Captain Gooding why he hadn’t seemed quite as excited about the Trump victory as Remus thought he’d be. Captain Gooding took a slow sip of coffee, set the ironstone mug down carefully, and looked about the diner. From the serious look on the Captain’s face, Festus figured he and Remus were about to get an earful, and he wasn’t wrong.
Mary, the waitress, was obviously listening in, and tha Captain started out by making a point of inviting her over to sit with them, which she did. Satisfied he had a quorum, Captain Gooding took one more sip, and told Mary it was especially good coffee that afternoon. (“Fresh pot”, she demurred.) Pleasantries out of the way, Captain Gooding commenced to talking.
Lookahere, neighbors, he began. I’m as happy as you are that a resounding majority of this nation’s adults had the good sense to reject the so-called “progressive” left’s agendas by voting against their chosen candidates. Chief Executive, Senate, Congress, all will see Republican leadership or majorities. Maybe not unbeatable 60% majorities, mind you, but solid enough majorities to get most business items passed and moving along. President Trump has the makings of a Cabinet of savvy leaders, who include enough former moderate Democrats that the next administration should be a solid representation of moderate, mainstream viewpoints. They might even be able to make some progress against the blob, at least at national level. But that’s the first point. Make America Great Again supporters have got to realize that President Trump’s focus is going to have to be at the national and international level. He’s got to captain the ship of state. In fact, just dealing with the State Department is going to occupy a bunch of his time. No way he can avoid that.
The new administration is also going to have to deal with the realities of energy issues at a national level, too. Drill, baby, drill will pay off in time, but it will take time before the results start showing up in terms of prices at the pump. And if he chooses to refill national and regional petroleum reserves emptied by profligate Democrats, that substantial diversion of petroleum away from consumption will, at least for some time, result in holding retail pump prices higher than they might otherwise be. Savings always come with the costs of differed enjoyment. It may be the prudent, adult thing to do, but there’s less to party on now if you are saving for future needs. Plus, the electric grid needs help – a lot of help. Block chain computing and AI (artificial intelligence) are notorious energy hogs. Solar and wind are OK in their place, but they both have issues. Solar works well during the daytime, on sunny days. It is far less reliable when those solar panels have a layer of snow on them, or at night, and hail storms and tornados and hurricanes are not kind to solar farms, either. Wind generation works when you’ve got Goldilocks winds: not too weak, nor too strong. And the physics of high energy density mass storage for renewable power generated in excess of immediate grid needs remains problematic. Pumped storage power projects work well, but I can’t think of a single Appalachain Mountain state that wants to see its mountain trout streams turned into giant impounded water battery systems. And Florida and the Gulf Coast states generally don’t have sufficient elevation to make pumped storage power projects viable anywhere near the coast, where most of the people and industries are.
Captain Gooding took a sip of coffee.
Donald J. Trump is a builder of large projects, and a promoter by trade. He’s going to have his hands full these next four years, at national level. I have no doubt he’ll do well for this nation and its citizens. But as for Making America Great Again, well, he’ll be a passionate leader and figurehead, but rebuilding true greatness can’t come from his words or his work. He can help reset conditions that will allow for MAGA, but he can’t do that work. No, folks, that is going to be on us, right here at home. And we have a lot of work to do. A lot of work.
Captain Gooding took another sip of coffee.
“Lookahere. Make America Great Again is a declarative statement. It’s a charge, an order, a dream, and a wish.
“Making America Great Again, on the other hand, is a huge task – a monumental task of sweeping proportions, and frankly, a whole lot of work. And the folks who are going to need to do that work, neighbors, are you and me and the communities we live in. Not the Feds, not even the states, but you and me – local folks getting together and doing the work. And I mean doing the whole job, and doing it right.
“Well,” said the Captain, “It’s not one job. It’s many jobs. Many, many, many jobs. It’s the same sort of broad mission that General of the Army George Marshall gave General Eisenhower in World War II: “Cross the English Channel and free the continent of Europe.” Doing so would take a couple of years and an almost unimaginable amount of time, talent, treasure, and tools – many of those tools invented especially for the invasion landing and the rest of the mission beyond the beach heads. Things like the mulberries and PLUTO. Mulberries were giant floating breakwaters, and PLUTO stands for “pipe lines under the ocean”.)
No, friends, Makng America Great Again is going to come down on the heads and shoulders of folks like us, all across this land. It’s not going to come from the White House, or Congress, or anywhere inside the DC Beltway. President Trump may be able to provide top cover for us, but it is going to be up to us to do tbe work. If you all see me as being serious, well, it’s a serious job we’ve got ahead of us. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how we’ll get ‘er done here locally. Way I see it, we’ve got four years to accomplish the mission – or at least get a good start done and behind us.
Captain Gooding finished his coffee. Mary asked if he wanted a refill, to which he replied no, he had work to do at the house. Festus was incredulous. “What do you mean? You are headed home now? Aren’t you going to tell us HOW we’re supposed to make America great Again?”
Sure, I’ll lay it all out for you, step by step, said the Captain, but not today. There’s work to get started on at the house, and the jobs are likely to keep me busy all weekend. What say we meet up again for coffee next week, and I’ll lay out the way I see the MAGA mission unfolding and what roles we can all play. But for now, duty calls on the home front. Anyway, I already mentioned step one, although you may have missed it.
With that, the Captain laid coffee money and a tip on the table in cash, stood up, excused himself, and headed home.
We’ll catch back up with him and the gang next week and see what he has to say when he lays out the nuts and bolts and gets down to the nitty gritty. Until then, happy trails!”
We appreciate the insights and focus from “the Captain” though it understates his rank. What he may not know is that Ure keeps a “hot website in his back pocket” and if this sort of thing “gets traction” we may collect the Captain’s wise counsel and launch him onto web under his own brand.
The Musk Paradox
Not knowing that a dispatch (above) was pending, I awoke at 2 AM today in an economic sweat. The problem is the prospect of a Great Economic Depression. And there’s one looming, if we don’t get things just right in the next four years.
The potential source is likely to be “catastrophic technological change” – or what I’ve dubbed “The Musk Paradox.”
With the election just done, there’s still been little awareness of the issue underlying some of our Peoplenomics discussions. Let me put out the corner posts so you can see it:
- Even after the dawn of fire, humans were not generally overwhelmed with tech or bandwidth. Sure, water wheels for milling grain were good, as were those windmills and such. Still, it wasn’t until the past 200-years that humans hit the nonlinear part of the growth stochastic.
- What is found, on close inspection of the “hockey stick” inflection (I have a consgiliere who religiously audits for such things) is a major change in multiple industries all about the same time. Leading into the Great Depression, massive change had occurred (radio, networks, the steam rotary press, high-speed (at least comparatively) rail, and so on.
- Toss in those 7-million acres of land (once use to raise draft animals, then obsoleted by Allis-Chalmers and the like) and you have excess ag production, too. Which arose because farmers still had their bills to pay and the only option was to plant more. Which paradoxically caused the Great Depression to also become known as The Hungry Years.
- It turned out, in the rear-view mirror, that it takes society anywhere from 10 to 50 years to really get used to the changing Nature of Changing Times. Sure, construction of Grand Coulee Dam began in 1933 and yet wasn’t completed until 1942. Which, as it turned out, was just in time to power a massive PNW aluminum industry and those reactors and centrifuges at the Hanford atomic works just a hundred miles southwest.
- So, we see that just inventing nifty cars in the thirties (for Jay Leno to collect) the build out that mattered was “Regulation and Staffing.” For each “new or improved” tech would bring new jobs. We’re certain there was no Licensing Plate Industry in 1900, for example. It went along fire until the EPA was created on Dec. 2, 1970. That was another stepping stone to annual car inspections, fees, and whole buildings. A central office, a massive computer system to track all and ferret out neerdowells. This caused a legal mess, so for this we branched into lawyers and soon things were so out of hand that HR departments were required. Then Legislative Committees, and more than one Accountant in government finance to count checks, chase the bouncers, and set the overpricing for government services.
- It was all beginning to “restablize” before the election. The current tech was finally done “niching out” but some were clearly filled. For example, the number of rioters seems to have peaked and fallen. DEI and SGE had peaked with the fortunes of that airplane builder in Seattle which has now reverse course, having discovered that “correct” wasn’t really so.
- I have been mightily impressed by Elon Musk and his engineering ability. But the potential for Depression is clearly in sight again with the arrival of Ultra Tech. Some examples, if you’re not seeing the problem?
- Elon Musk is a genius at electric cars. But, how many people *used to be employed making mufflers, catalytic converters, and the whole employment chain (something no one (but us) bothers to consider.
- Worse, the FedGov’s $3-billion charging station buildout has completed (at last check) less than 100 completed bays. (Not even locations.)
- Musk is also a genius at Space. But, should the Trump admin do the logical thing, Elon Musk would “change the course of mighty rivers” in the public space industry. There was a time when a long-ago company (Pan-Am) ran NASA tracking ground stations on such rocks as Grand Turk. Great spot if you don’t mind the odd donkey on the runway…
- But we see now The Musk Paradox. Trump has got some real whiz bangers in tow. JD Vance is cut of the same cloth. Things are going to rock.
- Yet The Paradox is how many people want (as The Captain was alluding to) to “put on their big boy pants” and go get some rock-ripping Made in America work done?
- How many people will be left when the immigration of drug gangs is ended? As I pointed out my book “The Millennial’s Missing Manual” there’s a balancing act. Educate and incentivize a whole society out of illegal drugs and crime and now what do you do with all the left over Police, the end of all police car fleet purchases, no more radios and security tweaks, not to mention NCIC would be finished, public prosecutors would be defunded, criminal lawyers out of a job and there goes how much of the Judicial?
People don’t weight – let alone see and discuss social balances like this. As you might have guessed, the Captain and I have talked about this because it’s so absurd to have killed middle and high school industrial arts programs. The kind where I learned to turn on a wood lathe, use a milling machine, (green sand) cast aluminum and so much more.
Like the South Park episode put it “Annnnd…it’s gone!”
There’s a term reader Hank, our retired broadcast engineer out on the Big Island, is totally familiar with: it’s called Impedance Matching. And it’s the concept America is about to “Tune Its Way Through.” You see, it’s about matching “the source” to “the load.”
Now in a 5,000-watt AM radio station (let’s say a Collins Type 21M) if you get the impedance matching wrong, you get a phenomenon called “letting the smoke out.” Until the plate overload breaker pops.
And that’s what a Depression is. There’s a lot of change and moving about during massive tech changes. And the Musk Paradox is simply stated as “When the world is all-electric, what do you need the air quality industry for?” What new demon will maintain lives fighting climate change? Any openings on Mars, yet?
Now, if you watch Rogan and caught Musk on there, he has already admitted that all-electric is insane. As any wise South Floridian who worries about Hurricanes will admit after trying to plotting escape routes with charging stations.
That’s the reality of Trump this week. The WORK hasn’t even started yet and in four years color me skeptical that there will be a widespread adoption of woodworking shop classes. Because wood, unlike 3D printers (I own three of ’em) doesn’t produce “microplastics” and doesn’t need a boat ride to get here.
The Big Change? How about we wait and see how long the “renegotiating our Future” part takes, shall we? We have too many humans already, which in part has driven the overbuild in HR and “correctness” industries. We need non-regulatory, physical, jobs. That once existed here (farming) but the Machine got that. AI is likely The Machine 2.0 in economic terms.
Fortunately it’s not ’29 all over again. But then again, ’29 is only five-years off.
The Traditional Modulator of Population?
War.
So we track and project from Putin Congratulates Trump on Election Win, Offers Dialogue with Moscow and tie that in to how Hungary’s Orban calls on EU to review Ukraine aid, citing Trump’s resolve. To us, it means odds are better of war in Europe being contained – at least for now.
Taiwan? ‘nother problem entirely. Why China Won’t Stop Ally North Korea From Fighting Ukraine but should be obvious. A strong South Korea held back by the North. Except maybe this time, John Bolton won’t screw up actual peace which the neocons so fear.
Tariffs on Chinese goods are likely to go up and that could hurt them. Every country has their own version of the Musk Paradox to deal with. As a reult Taiwan says will help firms leave China to avoid Trump tariffs. And depending on the long-range weather for Taiwan, keep December 7th circled because we read how January 20th could be a “safe zone” for Taiwan. China braces for tensions after Trump victory in U.S. And in the meantime, Taiwan Says Received First Batch of HIMARS From US which leaves the Biden/Harris administration unbound for 70 more days.
Trend Channel Changepoint?
See what happened to our yellow trend channel? Smacked into it on the close so we COULD turn down any time. Depends if Israel and Iran “play nice” this weekend…
There are as many ways to Elliottize the count as Carter had pills. Not the one in Plains, silly.
Bitcoin is up holding $76,137.96. Gold is criss-crossing $2,700 and silver $32. The good news (sort of…) is that the War Metal (copper used in, oh, you know…) was down to $4.33 this morning. Since copper’s big uses include bullets and wiring, a slow winter in housing – because people still want mortgage rates lower before settling their genitals in the Banker’s interest vise.
6.79 percent is, oh, spendy when prime was 8.5 percent. Bank of Japan overnight held at 0.25 percent – so is the Bankster Class cutting a fat hog on the yen carry-trade spread, you think?
The News Grindings
We can see some of our Bigger Perspective units starting to move around – on the People side. How many will be here? Judge Strikes Down Key Biden Immigration Policy Days After Trump’s Election | TIME
Much as we love wood, it’s not a simple solution. Southern California wildfire destroys 132 structures as officials look for fierce winds to subside.
And another blow to Slow Joe on the GenPop HR botch front: Judge Throws Out Biden’s Legalization of Illegals Married to Citizens.
Putting Poison in Water to get the “brushoff” RFK Jr: Trump White House Will Recommend Removal of Fluoride From Public Water.. This is GREAT NEWS because it may lead to a decline in new Alzheimer’s cases if we read the 2018 report that gets glossed over, correctly: Potential Role of Fluoride in the Etiopathogenesis of Alzheimer’s Disease – PubMed. Maybe it wasn’t just bare aluminum cookware, huh? OK, is that real? Alzheimer’s disease and aluminum: Is there a connection?
Speaking of Longevity, Peoplenomics subscribers who got the final chapter of my latest book, may want to be aware of this paper just out in the journal in vivo: Effect of Nattokinase in D-galactose- and Aluminum Chloride-induced Alzheimer’s Disease Model of Rat – PubMed. What kind of chloride is used to induce what in the rats?
Can you keep an eye on the Chef when you go out? Most fooderies use aluminum pans on their fry lines and such. But guidelines mention on aluminum cookware that you should use non-abrasive cleaning products and cooking with citric acids. Which gets us wondering about the risks from wine sautees when out…better and faster at home – and no DWI risk…um…did I just go off ‘prompter?
Feel like monkeying around? 43 monkeys escape from research facility in US state of South Carolina: Report, We’ll demur with “Monkey hunters are all bananas, anyway…” But wait, we have even more “poor form” distasteful cynical old newsman perspectives. Try this:
“You’ve Got Dead!” Elwood Edwards, Voice of AOL’s ‘You’ve Got Mail,’ Dead at 74. We reckon he will remain so at 75, then, 76, and maybe….
At the Ranch: Renaud’s Season
Elaine is hot. Of course, children, such things are a little different at 81, better than lukewarm still, but, um, less smoke. You get the idea.
This is the time of the year some of her “hotness” clicks out. She has Raynaud’s disease. That’s where your fingers turn white and you lose feelings in your fingertips. Happens if the fingers get cold – an easy trick in winter.
Like a good hubby, I got her another “kit” this year consisting of a fleece sweatery thing, some open fingertip gloves, plus I’ve resolved to make more soup since it’s often a best of class nutrition choice in winter. I’ll talke a CoJack fried cheese sandwich, please…hold the popsicle…that’s Colby & Jack… (I make better soup than jokes…)
But that’s not what this-here at the ranch note is about.
It’s about the timeline shift we just experienced.
Because before events of the past couple of weeks, the ‘cold fingers” disease used to be spelled everywhere as Reynaud’s. Think back and see if you don’t agree. R-E-Y Not “Ray.”
Now – and it’s a huge Mandella Effect moment for Ure’s, truly. Fortunately, we covered earlier this week how randomness is positional. But it’s curious to see it wander through, now and then. The Adjustment Bureau may not have aset things right forever, but for now the language damage noticed in our seldom-visible time wake is fairly minimal.
(Didn’t mean for this to be such a Peoplenomics type report, but consider it your early Christmas Present or a Black Friday Deal.)
Write when you get rich,
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