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January 29 The Prophecy has been fulfilled...My readers may remember a couple of years ago (Almost 2 years to the day, actually) I published a blog entry which described what might happen in the event of a major economic catastrophe. You may find the entry here.
Well I think the current clusterfuck going on right now (ie the collapse of the US dollar and housing markets at the same time) would qualify as an economic catastrophe, and lo and behold! This article appears on Yahoo. Here's an excerpt from the article:
Pets "are getting dumped all over," said Traci Jennings, president of the Humane Society of Stanislaus County in northern California. "Farmers are finding dogs dumped on their grazing grounds, while house cats are showing up in wild cat colonies."
When will people listen to me? When? January 22 It's a BloodbathGranted, I've been given to hyperbole in the past, but there really is no other way to describe the markets today.
After last night's emergency phone meeting at the fed, they slashed interest rate by 75 basis points. A full week ahead of schedule. They may do another cut at the meeting, it's hard to say. Cuts this deep are unprecidented since 1991. But what's not hard to say is the result - an image of rats on a sinking ship comes to mind.
The idea behind the rate cut is thus: "If we cut rates, people will spend money and that will make the economy move again." The problem with this line of thinking, is that people would have to borrow money for that to happen. And as we all know, everyone's credit cards are already maxed out. They could cut the rate to 0.0% and still nobody would borrow. If the US consumer is the engine that drives the global economy, then what we have here is vapour lock.
If you aren't long on gold yet, do so now.
"But gold is already topped out. It has nowhere to go but down." Thus spake the conventional wisdom, anyway. Need I remind you that the conventional wisdom also thought mortgage backed securities were a good idea? Go ask those brain trusts at Merril Lynch and Citigroup how that all worked out for them. That's if you can find anyone in their offices who hasn't jumped out of their windows yet.
Mark my words, Gold will see $1000 before it sees $500.
January 20 Everyone in My High School Owes Me 5 BucksOne of my favorite blogs has just reported on an interesting variant of network extortion, and it made me think back to my days in high school.
Jump into the way-back machine, and let's take a ride to 1983:
It's an amazing year. Lotus 1-2-3 is released for IBM computers, Pioneer X leaves the solar system, and a little known movie starring Matthew Broederick and Ally Sheedy is making waves on computer bulletin boards all over the world. The movie is called "War Games".
Some of you might remember this little flick. In this movie, David Lightman (Played by Broedrick) hacks into the US defense computer network and accidentally sets in motion a series of events that could lead to a total global thermonuclear war. Pretty dark stuff. But not to worry, it's total science fiction, right?
Wrong.
Of course there is always the chance that some rogue individual might accidentally penetrate the most secure network on the planet and trigger armageddeon without knowing it. But in reality, there is a very low probability of such an occurance. No, the real risk is within networks on the "outer edges". Even 20 years ago, I knew the likelyhood of "some kid in Iowa" unintentionally ending civilization was a remote one. But I was not blind to the very real possibility that a supposedly "invulnerable" network could be penetrated, to disasterous effect. This movie reached me in a way to which most others were completely blind.
Fast forward 10 years...
Sitting in my keyboarding 101 class, I was able to penetrate the supposedly "safe" systems at school and change my official typing speed from "84 WPM" to "140 WPM". I upped my grade from a 78 to a 94 instantly. I said to myself "Computers will control the world. Therefore, whomever controls the computers, controls the world by proxy". Apparently, I was right. 15 years later, and 1 hacker sitting in his room can shut down all economic activity in multiple cities for indeterminate periods, with but a few keystrokes.
Everyone who told me I was a spaz owes me 5 bucks. I'll use the money to buy myself a decent router and keep all of the David's out of my box. |
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