Friday, July 31, 2015

Montreal Fail

During the 1970's, Montreal seemed like it was about to boom.  Instead there were a number of epic failures that occurred that have scarred the city ever since.

First of all, the Olympic stadium, nicknamed "the Big Owe".  It was supposed to have a retractable roof and an inclined tower overlooking it.  It was supposed to cost C$134 million and be finished by 1972.  Instead there was a strike by workers, delays caused by its unusual design, and massive cost overruns.  It cost C$264 million by the time of the 1976 Olympics, where it was used even though it was uncompleted.  The roof wasn't completed until 1987, however, soon after it was opened it ripped. In 1992, it was decided to keep the roof closed at all times.  In 1998, the Kevlar roof was removed and replaced with a blue roof that didn't open at a cost of $26 million.  In 1999, a portion of the new roof collapsed. The new roof was unsafe during heavy rainfall or snowfall (in Canada!) and it "rips 50 to 60 times a year".  The cost for a new roof is an estimated $300 million.

The bizarre looking inclined tower was not fully completed until 1987. During the contruction period, at one point it caught on fire, and chunks of the tower fell on to the playing field.

The cost of the stadium continued to skyrocket, and the total cost came to C$1.6 billion, and it wasn't paid off until 2006.  All paid by the taxpayers of Quebec.  And now it sits empty most of the year.   "With a history of numerous structural and financial problems, it is largely seen as a white elephant."

 Second, and closely related are the Montreal Expos, whose home was the aformentioned Olympic stadium. They were an expansion team, and struggled to build a winning team. Finally, in 1994, they had the best record in Major League Baseball. But then there was a players strike, management sold off the best players, and attendance declined to 11,000 per game (in a 56,000 seat stadium) by 1998.  Part of the problem was the horrible stadium, and there was a proposal to build a new $250 million baseball park.  But it finally relocated to Washington DC where they were renamed the Washington Nationals.

Third, last but not least, is the Montreal-Mirabel Airport. It was a massive airport and opened in 1975 just in time for the 1976 Olympics. It was designed to accommodate 50 million passengers per year; however, it never exceeded 3 million passengers per year.  The existing Dorval airport (now the Montreal-Trudeau airport) could easily handle this traffic. The Mirabel Airport ceased passenger operations in 2004 and converted to cargo operations, but it only handles 64,000 tons of cargo per year (the 6th busiest in Canada).  The empty passenger terminal building was finally demolised in 2014. It is also considered a "white elephant".

Ok, and fourth, a failure on a smaller scale.  The Habitat 67 project, a utopian apartment building.  It was supposed to be built cheaply with prefabricated parts, but the budget spiraled out of control. It has been labeled a "failed dream".

Update: Montreal has the third best subway system in North America, behind only New York City and Mexico City.

Initial Jobless Claims

2015-02-21  308000
2015-02-28  327000
2015-03-07  293000
2015-03-14  293000
2015-03-21  288000
2015-03-28  267000
2015-04-04  282000
2015-04-11  295000
2015-04-18  296000
2015-04-25  262000
2015-05-02  265000
2015-05-09  264000
2015-05-16  275000
2015-05-23  284000
2015-05-30  277000
2015-06-06  279000
2015-06-13  268000
2015-06-20  271000
2015-06-27  282000
2015-07-04  296000
2015-07-11  281000
2015-07-18  255000
2015-07-25  267000

Source: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/ICSA.txt


It bottomed out last week.

How does this compare to earlier cycles?  It was at 259,000 on 2000-04-15, but it wasn't clear that it was in an uptrend until it hit 356,000 on 2000-11-15.

It was at 282,000 on 2006-01-28.  It was 296,000 on 2007-01-13.  It was 297,000 on 2007-05-12. It was 302,000 on 2007-09-22. I would say that it wasn't clear that it was in a recession until 2008-04-26 when it was at 370,000, more than 2 years after hitting bottom.

So there is magic number of about 90,000 from the low. We can pretty much ignore this until it breaks 350,000, which is a sign that the recession has begun.  It could take a while.

New World Order to be implemented on September 25

Notice: I do not subscribe to the views advocated below. I am just noting it for the record.

EMERGENCY BULLETIN!
The New World Order Will Be
Implemented September 25th!
The New World Currency Will Be
Introduced October 20th!
We Are At the Brink of Total

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Stock Market Crash Imminent




















Source: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/an-expert-that-correctly-called-the-last-two-stock-market-crashes-is-now-predicting-another-one

There are a unique combination of factors, including:

  • new record high
  • less than 27% of investment advisers are bearish
  • Schilling P/E greater than 18
  • more than 40% of stocks below their 200-day moving average at the same time.
This combination has only occurred 4 times in the last 50 years:
  • in November 1972, seven weeks before a market crash of 50%
  • in March 2000, marking the exact weekly high (although the crash did not occur until Sept. 2001)
  • October 2007, marking the exact weekly high (although the crash did not occur until Sept 2008)
  • on July 17, 2015
So, it is pretty clear a market high has been reached.  Although the crash may not occur for another year.


Compare and Contrast

Bernie Sanders is an alternative "quirky" Democratic candidate.  It seems like we have seen his type before.  I don't have time to develop this theme, but compare and contrast him to these candidates of yesteryear.  Don't forget to comment on his hair, facial features, and other irrelevant factors.

Jerry Brown (1992)
Ralph Nader (2000)
Dennis Kucinich (2004)
Howard Dean (2004)
Mike Gravel (2008)

Sunday, July 26, 2015

New Social Security Report

The new 2015 Social Security Report just came out. Key points:

The dollar level of the theoretical combined trust fund reserves declines beginning in 2020 until reserves become depleted in 2034. Considered separately, the DI Trust Fund reserves become depleted in the fourth quarter of 2016 and the OASI Trust Fund reserves become depleted in 2035. 

Yes! This is one year later than predicted in last year's report.  If we keep kicking the can down the road, Social Security can be solvent forever.

What about the 75-year deficit?

The open group unfunded obligation for OASDI over the 75-year period is $10.7 trillion in present value and is $0.1 trillion more than the measured level of $10.6 trillion a year ago.

That's only $100 billion more than a year ago.  That's almost a rounding error.  Good job actuaries.

The only problem is the DI fund being depleted.

The DI Trust Fund reserves become depleted in the fourth quarter of 2016, at which time continuing income to the DI Trust Fund would be sufficient to pay 81 percent of DI benefits. Therefore, legislative action is needed as soon as possible to address the DI program’s financial imbalance. 

Friday, July 24, 2015

You've been annexed

When it became clear that outright annexation was a political non-starter, [David] Rusk and his followers settled on a series of measures designed to achieve de facto annexation over time. The plan has three elements: 1) Inhibit suburban growth, and when possible encourage suburban re-migration to cities. This can be achieved, for example, through regional growth boundaries (as in Portland), or by relative neglect of highway-building and repair in favor of public transportation. 2) Force the urban poor into the suburbs through the imposition of low-income housing quotas. 3) Institute “regional tax-base sharing,” where a state forces upper-middle-class suburbs to transfer tax revenue to nearby cities and less-well-off inner-ring suburbs (as in Minneapolis/St. Paul). 

If you press suburbanites into cities, transfer urbanites to the suburbs, and redistribute suburban tax money to cities, you have effectively abolished the suburbs. For all practical purposes, the suburbs would then be co-opted into a single metropolitan region. Advocates of these policy prescriptions call themselves “regionalists.”

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/421389/attention-americas-suburbs-you-have-just-been-annexed-stanley-kurtz

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

The market top was May 19


















What does it mean if the stock market can't recover previous highs?

Monday, July 20, 2015

How long between the peak and the crash?

I am using the Dow Jones as the reference.

The Dow reached a high of 11,522 on 1/7/2000.  The high in 2001 was 11,339 on 5/21/2001, and the crash occurred on 9/11/2001. The markets closed for a week and reopened on 9/17/2011 with a loss of 684 points (-7.13%).  If we use the 2001 high, it happened 110 days after the high.

Next, the Dow reached a high of 14,000 on 7/19/2007. The high in 2008 was 13,058 on 5/2/2008.  The crash occurred on 9/28/2008, losing 777 points (-6.98%).  If we use the 2008 high, it happened 149 days later.

The average is 130 days.  So if past is any sort of guide, and I am suggesting that it is, what is 130 days after May 19, 2015? It's September 26, but since that is a Saturday, lets use September 25, 2015.

So we can expect a stock market crash of at least 1200 points (-6.5%) on September 25, 2015, plus or minus 20 days.  So anytime between September 7, 2015 and October 15, 2015.  I've been predicting some big event on September 11, 2015 as the most likely day. If it doesn't happen on September 11, it will probably happen on September 17.  But it could occur anytime between September 7 or October 15.  I hope I am wrong.

The Financial Crisis of 2015 was predicted in 2011 to start in Singapore.

There was an interesting article entitled "The Financial Crisis of 2015 - An Avoidable History" was published on Jan 31, 2011.

What I find interesting about this is that Mr Wyman predicted a very specific place (Singapore) and date (April 26, 2015) for this to begin. "John Banks was woken by his phone at 3am on Sunday, April 26, 2015. John worked for Garland Brothers, a formerly British bank that had relocated its headquarters to Singapore in late 2011."

The STI (Strait Times Index) is the index for the stock market in Singapore.  It reached an all-time high on 10/11/2007 when it reached 3876, which it has never exceeded since.  The 2nd all-time high occurred on April 15, 2015, when it reached 3540.  Wow, that's pretty close.

The FTSE 100 index from London reached an all-time high of 7103.98 on April 27, 2015, within one day of the prediction.

Some other highs:
DAX (German) index reached its high on April 10, 2015 of 11,680.
Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its all-time high on May 19, 2015 at 18,312
SP 500 reached its high on May 21, 2015 at 2130
Shanghai SE Composite Index on June 5, 2015 of 5023
Russell 2000 index on June 23, 2015 of 1295.
Hang Seng (Hong Kong) Index on on June 24, 2015 of 27,405
Nikkei 225 (Tokyo) reached 20,868 on June 24, 2015.  The last time it was higher than this was in 1996.

Now it is possible that new highs could be reached.  But it appears that for this business cycle, the stock market highs have already been reached. 

Update: The NASDAQ Composite Index (XIC) just reached its all-time high on Friday July 17, of 5210.  So maybe the boom is still continuing, and the Dow and SP500 will follow. Something to watch.

Update2: The NASDAQ closed at 5218 on July 20. But this appears to be the high.


Friday, July 17, 2015

September 15

"Due to some research I noticed that almost every major market collapse happens during this year and usually on this one day when the Shemittah year is finalized. It is the final year of the Shemittah. I looked into it and this year it happens to be September 13, 2015. The last Shemittah was in 2008. That was the day that had the biggest point drop in the stock market of all time. Seven years before that was 2001, just after September 11th. On the final day of the Shemittah, September 17th, the New York Stock Exchange reopened after September 11th and fell, I think, the most in history at that point.
I have been just looking at these dates and then I start to put together that there is this massive military exercise going on in the US right now called Jade Helm. It runs essentially from July until September 15th. On September 15th there is also a meeting at the United Nations for their 70th Jubilee session, and most major world leaders are going to be there in New York. There are so many things. The pope also is going to be speaking at, I believe, the UN or Congress on that day or around that day."
Ok, that's the last one. I may make another post listing all of the key dates.

November 15, 2015 is the estimated X Date

The US has bumped up against its debt ceiling of $18.15 trillion dollars and it is playing games to keep from going over.  But by the X date, it will no longer to able to do that and it will have to default if the ceiling is not raised by the date.

The current estimate for the X date is "the months of November and December".  So I am arbitrarily picking November 15 as the X date, to be revised as the time gets closer.

October 20

Some conspiracy theorists believe that the IMF will introduce a new currency on October 20, 2015 that will replace the US Dollar causing it to collapse.  See for instance "New World Dollar". I think it is possible that they tweak the SDR to include the Chinese Yuan as a reserve currency.  But I don't think it will have an impact.  Still, its another date this fall that might cause something to happen.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

October 23 and Pi

"Black Tuesday" was when the stock market crashed on October 24, 1929. October 23 is 86 years after that date, less a day to make it fall on a Friday instead of a Saturday. What is so important about this date, other than the anniversary?

Well, once upon a time, there was an economist named Martin Armstrong who had a theory that the number pi influenced economics.  Every 3141 days (8.6 years), the economy would crash.  He predicted the stock market crash of 1987 to the day. So ten cycles of 8.6 years mean the cycles will repeat.

See also: The Business Cycle and the Future

He sees a significance in 6 cycles, which total 51.6 years.

For the record, he did see a cycle starting in 1929, but he used "1929.75" (Oct 1, 1929) as the start date.  And he sees something happening on 2015.75 (October 1, 2015)

=================================
While we are speaking of cycles, the Mayans of course had their 260 cycle which repeats every 52 years.  The Mayan prophecy of the end of the world on December 21, 2012 of course was a bust, but that doesn't mean the 52 year cycle is invalid.

So what happened 51.6 or 52 years ago?.  Well, November 22, 2015 will be the 52nd anniversary of the assassination of JFK.  Another important day. Or not.

Some people believe that he was assassinated because of Executive Order 11110, which would have replaced Federal Reserve Notes with silver certificates.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

September 17

This is another key date in the drama that will unfold this fall.

There will be a Federal Open Market Committee meeting on September 16-17.  At that time, they are likely to raise interest rates by 0.25%.  While this is nothing, it may set off a panic chain-reaction.  Or not.

Total Business Sales


















Source: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/TOTBUSSMSA

What does it mean if this drops below zero?


The sun will turn into darkness, and the moon into blood

Fun fact: September 13, 2015 will be a partial solar eclipse, and September 28, 2015 will be a total lunar eclipse, (aka "blood moon"), where the moon appears red because of dispersed light from the Earth. "This lunar eclipse will be particularly rare, because it is a harvest moon lunar eclipse, taking place also on the day of the closest supermoon of 2015". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2015_lunar_eclipse).

Query to an astronomer:  When is the last time this sequence of events occurred - a solar eclipse, followed shortly by a harvest moon lunar eclipse, which is also a supermoon, which is also the fourth moon of a blood moon tetrad?

Apparently this happens about every 600 years, see http://www.watchmansview.com/Blood_Red_Moons.html

D minus 58

We do not like to put specific dates on when this will happen but we do note that the IMF has postponed a meeting to decide how to proceed without the United States until September. We note that a year of jubilee has been predicted by the Vatican, religious Jews and many others to start on September 13th, 2015. September 13th this year falls on a Sunday so the last trading day before that will be September 11th. Remember, remember, the 11th of September. Also remember the blood moon on September 28th.
--http://financearmageddon.blogspot.com/2015/07/benjamin-fulford-july-13th-2015-full.html

Um, the Year of Jubilee announced by the Vatican starts on December 8, not September 13. But it is interesting that it matches the seven year cycle.

Rosh Hashanah is the start of the Jewish New Year, and the next one will start on the evening of September 13, 2015 and continue on September 14. It is the First of Tishrei in the Jewish calendar.  The previous day (evening of 9/12/15 to 9/13/15) is the 29th of Elul. The last day of a 7 year cycle is a special day known as "the Lord's Release", in which debts to neighbors will be released.

At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release. And this is the manner of the release: every creditor shall release what he has lent to his neighbor. He shall not exact it of his neighbor, his brother, because the Lord's release has been proclaimed. Deuteronomy 15:1-2

The last trading day before Elul 29 is September 11.

===========================
Update:
The first Shmita year in the modern State of Israel was 1951 (5712 in the Hebrew calendar). Subsequent Shmita years have been 1958–59 (5719), 1965–66 (5726), 1972–73 (5733), 1979–80 (5740), 1986–87 (5747), 1993–94 (5754), 2000–01 (5761), and 2007–08 (5768). The last Shmita year began on Rosh Hashanah in September 2014, corresponding to the Hebrew calendar year 5775. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmita

So the Shmita year will end on September 13, 2015

Thursday, July 9, 2015

Margin Debt












Source: http://www.nyxdata.com/nysedata/asp/factbook/viewer_edition.asp?mode=table&key=3153&category=8

What happens when Margin Debt reaches an all-time high and then declines?  It is either a leading indicator of a stock market crash and recession, or ... nothing.  This is prone to false signals.  But you can't discount the first possibility.

In March 2000, margin debt reached an all-time high of $278.5 billion.  The recession began in March 2001, 12 months later.

In July 2007, margin debt reached an all-time high of $381.4 billion.  The recession began in December 2007, 5 months later.

In April 2015, margin debt reached an all-time high of $507.2 billion.  The recession will begin in .. maybe October?, 6 months later.

Initial Jobless Claims


Source: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ICSA

What does it mean when initial jobless claims reach a 15-year low and then start to rise?  The low number was 262,000 on April 25, 2015, and the latest number is 297,000 on July 4, 2015.  It's all uphill from here.

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

The crash is happening now



















This is the Hang Seng Index (from Hong Kong).  The high was on June 24, 2015 when it reached 27,405.  Now it is at 23,517, a decline of 14.2%, which is officially a "market correction" (10% decline) and almost a "bear market" (20% decline).

The Shanghai SE Composite Index reached a high on June 5, 2015 of 5023. It had a slow decline until June 16, when it fell to 4887, and then it fell off the cliff. It is now at 3507, a decline of 31.2%.

The blue chip Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its all-time high on May 19, 2015 at 18,312. It is currently at 17,596, a decline of 4%.

The SP 500 reached its high on May 21, 2015 at 2130. It is currently at 2056, a decline of 3.5%.

While the Dow and SP500 aren't down that much in percentage terms, they have both had failed attempts to recover the high.  It's all down hill from here. We can just expect a slow decline from here until the big crash and recession officially begins, variously predicted as occurring on September 11, October 1, or October 20.

I have been rooting for a crash for a long time, as a way of cleaning out the dead wood and zombies.  But in the short term this will cause pain for a lot of people. If there are smart people in charge of the system, they should be engaged in fiscal and monetary policy now to ward off the harshness of the coming crash.  But of course the people in charge are idiots and never think a crash will occur again and don't see this coming and will only react after the fact.

I think I will start a countdown to doomsday, September 11.  Today is D minus 64.  The last time I did a countdown like this was for a supposed Mayan end of the world on December 21, 2012, which turned out to be nothing.  I am probably wrong here too, but it is fun to make predictions.

===========
Update: NYSE suspends all trading on a technical glitch.