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The 1929 & 2007 Bear Market Race to The Bottom
Week 113 of 149

Electric Power Consumption Declines 5.04%
Global Warming Research is Not Science
Global Warming & a Second Great Depression
Death-Row Economics
(Waiting For Rising Interest Rates)

Mark J. Lundeen
Mlundeen2@Comcast.net
11 December 2009

Color Key to text below
Boiler Plate in Blue Grey
New Weekly Commentary in Black

Here is the BEV chart for the Bear Race.

The DJIA is going nowhere fast. For weeks I've wondered when the DJIA's Blue Plot would bump into my little statistics box, and for weeks the answer has been - not yet. Earnings and dividend considerations no longer drive stock valuations. They haven't since Alan Greenspan took over the Fed 22 years ago. Since then, the Feds' inflationary flows have been the key to stock valuations, and I believe will continue to be until interest rates start to trend upwards.

But today's market is weird. No one cares about dividend income, yields are still too low. But it just feels like the Fed's "Liquidity Injections" aren't keeping the credit junkies in the stock market as happy as the old shots in the arm use to. And then the financial news they feed people. Every week the Treasury has another hundred billion dollar debt auction; President Obama is promising the UN that he will force the US to cut Carbon Dioxide emissions by 17%. This week I've gone into detail on the "National Debt" and "Global Warming", but what in today's financial news is really exciting; Gold and Silver? Nope! CNBC has made it clear the precious metals have been in a Bear Market these past 10 Years!

So Gold is -8.05% from its Terminal Zero (last all-time high), big deal. Look at its Step Sum. The fact is the "Policy Makers" keep whacking Gold, but Gold doesn't stay whacked like it did in the 1990s. You can see this in its Step Sum. Before 2001, Gold's Step Sum was either going nowhere or plunging down. Twenty years ago, gold just couldn't compete with the high tech shares, and this chart shows that. But after 2001, how things have change! And at the start of the 21st Century's second decade, we Gold Bugs can celebrate our first 10 years of outperforming almost investment recommended on CNBC.

Silver is looking good too!

So what is the DJIA going to do? Well if you still have chips in that game, my guess is that it will continue to Baby Step higher until it starts dropping like a rock. When will it crash? When US Treasury Yields begin trending up to much higher levels. It's going to be really bad. A DJIA, BEV -60% Bear Market? What's there to stop it?

Rising Treasury Bond yields are toxic for Stocks, Bonds, and what do you think housing values will be with interest rates above 10%? Far below where they are now! And I would not guarantee the mortgage market will survive all the way to the top of the next interest rate cycle, I expect it will become extinct long before. So with Fed Funds rising, from 0.12% to over 10%, the financial landscape will be unrecognizable from what we see today. But what about Gold and Silver? When bond yields begin rising in earnest, Gold and Silver will really start to fly. The day is coming when once again, the sellers of Bonds, will be purchasers of Gold and Silver. But expect the occasional Gold price whacking from the "Policy Makers." It's what they do.

Below is the DJIA Volatility's 5 Day M/A & BEV Chart

No volatility in the Stock Market. That's actually nice. Think back to October 2008, & March 2009, now those were exciting markets. But as I recall, not much fun. What spoiled October 2008's DJIA BEV -40% Bear Bottom was that Gold and Silver crashed along with everything else. But interestingly, at the DJIA BEV-50% bottom in March, Gold and Silver jumped the gun and had established a three months up trend. That is darn impressive.

When the DJIA crashes again, I think Gold and Silver will mostly ignore other people's problems and continue to go higher.

The DJIA's Step Sum is looking really good, it's a shame you can't invest money in a Step Sum, so you're stuck with the DJIA. And stuck is exactly the correct word to describe the DJIA in Wk 113.

It's as if the "Policy Makers" understood they couldn't abandon the Tax Payers' IRA's and 401K Plans when the DJIA fell to its BEV -40% and -50% lines. But, now that they drove the DJIA up to its BEV -25% line, and the angry shouting coming from the stock market is at a minimum, they have decided to allow the DJIA to flounder on the BEV -25% line, and focus their "Liquidity Injections" in the derivative markets. Uggh - the mortgage market is a nightmare that just will not go away!

The only certainty in this world is that central Banking just isn't as much fun as when Doctor Greenspan had the Fed.

The Step Sum is an indicator of market sentiment. When the underlying sentiment is bullish, the Step Sum rises. When bearish, it falls.

Think of the "Step Sum" as the sum total of all the up and down price "steps" in a data series over time; an Advance - Decline Line for a data series derived from the data series itself. Logically, bull markets will have more net up days, while bear markets will have more net down days. Understanding the Step Sum is no harder than that.

Electric Power Consumption Declines 5.04%

Since Barron's 04 August 2008 issue, where EP's 52Week M/A saw its Terminal Zero (last all-time high) the decline in EP has been relentless. Now in Barron's 07 Dec 2009 issue, EP has dropped -5.04%. This is in contrast to the Commerce Department's GDP report of a 2.80% increase in US GDP. But unlike the Commerce Department's GDP data, EP is a real world measurement of economic activity, going back to 1929, and for 80 years, EP has used a standard unit of measurement - the Kilo Watt - in measuring economic activity.

Contrast the Kilo Watt to the Commerce Department's unit of measurement for GDP: the US Dollar: a fatally flawed unit of measure.

The chart above illustrates the changing nature of the dollar's purchasing power in terms of foreign exchange since 1975. The same is true for the dollar's purchasing power in terms of domestic goods and services. Variations in national Kilo Watts consumption provide us with unambiguous information of domestic economic activity, while variations in GDP may, and then * may not * contain actual information on actual production of goods and services. The dollars GDP is measured in are greatly impacted by Foreign Central Banking operations, as well as the success, or failure, of Wall Street's Banking industry's efforts in funneling the Fed's "Liquidity Injections" into financial assets.

Does anyone doubt the United States has lost a significant proportion of its industrial base since 1993? So exactly what does GDP's chart below tell us about actual economic growth since 1993? I suspect not much. But seeing the Commerce Department report a +2.80% increase in GDP, as the economy's demand for EP is in its third steepest decline since the Great Depression, is a bit of a stretch, if GDP is actually measuring economic activity.

But GDP is measured in dollars, and CinC is always growing. The data below illustrates how the Government can report an increase in economic activity, as real economic activity actually declines. The Government is measuring GDP with inflationary dollars.

Why would the Federal Government do this? Because the purpose of US Government's statistics is to keep entrenched politicians and political interest groups: entrenched.

Here are two more charts on economic growth for your consideration.

Exactly how "Economic Growth" should be measured is a subject I claim no specific expertise. I just doubt the validity of the Commerce Department's claim that GDP (the American Economy) grew 2.80%, when other metrics of economic production, published in Barron's, have been trending downwards for years.

Global Warming Research is Not Science

Since I left the Navy, and returned home in 1995, daily I've driven past a local lake. The changing seasons never ceases to amaze me as Minnesota flows from one season into the next. Currently this lake is freezing before my eyes. In two weeks, fishermen will be walking to their favorite fishing hotspot, no boat required. But in six months, this same lake will provide welcome relief for children from Summer's heat and humidity. That is, if 2010 is not like the Summer of 2009.

The Summer of 2009 was different; this lake failed to warm sufficiently to allow swimming. Its beaches were a Children-Free Zone all last summer. But last summer, Minnesota wasn't hot either. My electric bills were very low as I seldom used my air conditioner, and my sister's tomatoes never ripened on the vine. I've never seen that before. In 2009, Minnesota from May to September was unseasonably cool and very comfortable.

I know one summer can't establish a weather trend. But the resent E-Mails from the University of East Anglia, makes it apparent that the last ten years of Global Warming Community's research, doesn't either.

From: Phil Jones. To: Many. Nov 16, 1999
"I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." (Decline in Temperature)

From Phil Jones To: Michael Mann (Pennsylvania State University). July 8, 2004
"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

From: Kevin Trenberth (US National Center for Atmospheric Research). To: Michael Mann. Oct 12, 2009
"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't... Our observing system is inadequate"

These E-Mails are damning, and prove that a decade of "Global Warming Research" is at odds with scientific practices established hundreds of years ago. These Universities' Administrators who provided laboratory and office space, as well as a yearly six figure income (?) to these "Researchers" are complicit in this fraud against science. One does not need to understand the data to understand that a trillion dollar fraud is being committed. Here's why I've concluded this.

Real Science is dependent on forming a testable hypotheses based on data. The "Peer-Review" process is an invitation for others to evaluate the data: an actual challenge to colleagues to disprove the proposed testable hypotheses. Einstein's Theories of Relativity are almost 100 years old. But still today, practitioners of Real Science are attempting to find flaws in his theories, currently with studies of Gravitational Black Holes far off in space. To prove some aspect of Einstein's Relativity is incorrect, would certainly guarantee a Nobel Price in Science and be news even on CNN and MSNBC.

However, it's apparent to me, as it * must have been * to someone in the administration of Penn State, that Dr. Phil Jones, Dr. Michael Mann & and Dr. Kevin Trenberth obstructed all challenges to their "Global Warming Hypotheses." As Al Gore has stated: "the debate over global warming is over" as billions of tax-payers funds flowed to a University System that stopped doing science.

And it's not just Penn State's administration that have debased science and discredited themselves. The administrators of Harvard, Yale and every other university must have known what was occurring under their roofs.

Has any significant University taken a public stand opposing the use of "Global Warming Research" for use in forming public policy on the grounds that Drs Jones, Mann & Trenberth refused to submit their work to a proper peer-review process? Not to my knowledge. Have they opposed "Global Warming" dogma's entry into curriculum intended for primary and secondary education? Not that I've heard. There is good reason for these high officers of the University System to have stayed silent. Congress was very generous to every University who looked the other way, as the "Global Warming" fraud was being perpetrated. It was a silence that was bought and paid for.

These Administrators must be confronted with what they've done, and an explanation demanded from them. By the standards of science, did they, or did they not accept public money for the purposes of conducting fraudulent research? We all know that Wall Street has grown "to big to fail", growing fat off the Fed's "Liquidity." This "Global Warming" scandal has shown us what has happened to our University system. With school loans and government grant money coming their way, Big Education has grown to big to care about the truth.

So never confuse "Global Warning" research as a legitimate scientific endeavor, because its not! "Global Warning Researchers" have violated every protocol of honest scientific enquiry with their dubious stand of: "No one opposing us is allowed to examine our data, and any attempt to debunk our 'science' is committing a hostile act against life on Earth. We, and the university system that has freely allowed us to speak in their name, will retaliate everyway we can."

Global Warming & Engineering a Great Depression

Weak Economy Puts U.S. Halfway to Obama's CO2 Cut

By Simon Lomax
Dec. 8, 2009 (Bloomberg) -- Carbon dioxide output from the U.S. energy sector has already fallen half as much as needed to meet the 2020 emissions reduction target the Obama administration took to the Copenhagen climate-change summit. ---

--- White House officials said the U.S. is willing to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases "in the range of 17 percent" below the 2005 level by 2020. ---

--- Falling U.S. emissions are the result of the "weak economy," which grew at an annual rate of 2.8 percent in the third quarter after shrinking for a year, and a cleaner fuel mix in the electricity sector, the EIA said in its December Short- Term Energy Outlook.

(There's that 2.80% again! MJL)

- End Bloomberg Snippet -

Proponents of "Global Warming" are demanding a significant reduction in Electrical Power Consumption, as Electrical Power Consumption is a major source of Carbon Dioxide. Note I don't say Electrical Power Production. The difference between regulating Electrical Power Production, instead of its Consumption, may be a minor point in the minds of most people, but regulating the Consumption of Electrical Power will devastate any Economic System that attempts it.

The dirty little secret of reducing America's emissions of Carbon Dioxide is that it can only be accomplished by driving the American's Economy into a second Great Depression, or worse. This is no unsubstantiated claim on my part. Anyone with even an elementary level of understanding in Electrical theory can prove this point by using Ohm's Law.

For those who don't want to read my brief technical explanation of Ohm's Law relationship with Carbon Dioxide production, feel free to skip it. But if Ohm's Law is new to you, you should make the effort to understand its "Global Warming" implication. Because what President Obama is committing the United States to, during his visit to Copenhagen, is promising in an economic collapse deeper than the Great Depression's.

- Start Ohms Law Example -

If you can understand that 6 = 2*3, you have the math necessary to fully comprehend the financial depression now being engineered in Copenhagen.

Ohm's Law, or E=I*R, is a very simple electrical expression of the relationship you have with your electrical utility.

Where E in Volts = Voltage (Electrical Pressure from a Generator)
Where I in Amperes = Electrical Current (similar to Gallons per Minute)
Where R in Ohms = Resistance to Current Flow the Voltage must work against.

While Electrical Power (measured in Watts) is computed by the formula: Watts = E in Volts * I in Amperes

Let' say your house is using a portable electrical generator, delivering 120V at your power receptacles (or power points in some countries) and your house is using 1 Amp of current: then your home's electrical system has the following relationship to your portable generator:

120 (Volts) = 1 (Ampere) * 120 (Ohms)

The Generator is generating 120Watts of Electrical Power, as 120V times 1 Ampere results in 120Watts.

120W = 120V * 1 Amps

I only gave the voltage and current values in my written description, but with these values, Ohm's Law demands that your home * must * have a resistance of 120 Ohms when 120V of force is pushing 1 amp of current. There is no getting around it! There is also no getting around the fact that the house's portable generator's fuel governor (actually the Voltage Regulator) is feeding the generator's engine a precise measure of gasoline, exhausting precisely so much Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere, to maintain these Ohm's Law relationships.

But then someone turns something else on. When we turn on additional electrical appliances, we are decreasing the R Value of our home's electrical system. So in our home example, let's say Resistance is cut by half when another light is turned on, and to keep things simple, we'll assume our portable generator maintains its 1 Amp current flow. What does Ohm's Law say will happen to Voltage? Voltage is cut in half.

60 (Volts) = 1 (Amps) * 60 (Ohms)

Note: it was the * consumer * of the portable generator's electrical power that changed the Ohm's Law relationship, not the generator itself. So, the portable generator must now send twice as much current through the home to maintaining its designed voltage of 120V.

120 (Volts) = 2 (Amps) * 60 (Ohms)

Note the power provided by the generator has now increased from 120Watts to 240 Watts.

240W = 120V * 2 Amps

Watts are what you're paying for! So to double the Wattage, the Generator must double its fuel consumption as well as its emission of Carbon Dioxide.

- End Ohms Law Example -

The critical point people need to understand is that Ohm's Law tells us that the Electrical Utilities only control their distribution network's Voltage, which by necessity is always fixed and constant. So crafting government regulations from the "Save the Planet" point of view, exactly what would they have the utility do to comply with Carbon Dioxide limiting regulations? Consolidated Edison will be providing current at the same Voltage, in a business as usual manner, before, during and after Carbon Dioxide limiting regulation is enacted. So by necessity, the actual intent of "Global Warming" regulations has to be directed at the consumers of Electrical Power, those who turn electrical devices on and off. "Global Warming" regulation is intended to force the private sector to turn things off, and keep them off.

As per BLOOMBERG, President Obama is committing the US to a 17% reduction of Carbon Dioxide below its 2005 Levels. This can only be accomplished by reducing Kilo-Watt consumption by 17%. And this can only be accomplished by regulating consumers of Electrical Power, not the Utilities. The successful implementation of "Global Warming" regulations will result in a reduction of economic activity not seen since the Great Depression.

So where President Roosevelt's "Rural Electrification Program" plugged rural America to the electrical grid in the 1930s, President Obama's "Global Warming Initiative" intends to unplug employers and residential air conditioning systems from the electrical grid by 2020.

Someone really needs to sue the pants off Penn State for granting tenure to a charlatan like Michael Mann, and so contributing to this insanity.

Death-Row Economics
(waiting for rising interest rates)

The pending Cap & Trade (Carbon Tax) is insidious by itself. But with the Supreme Court ruling that Green-House Gases are environmental pollutants (based on Penn State's Doctor Mann's bogus science), President Obama's EPA has a green light to regulate Carbon Dioxide without legislation. They will too! But President Obama and the Current Congressional Leadership don't need to regulate Carbon Dioxide to reduce America's emissions. Not when they have an environmental friendly, thermo-nuclear device at their disposal to knock Carbon Emissions significantly below President Obama's promised 17%. It's known as the US Treasury Bond Market.

So how can President Obama, and the Congressional Leadership make the Treasury Debt Market a nuclear event?

1. Borrow massive sums of money they know the United States can never pay back. That's the whole point of our soaring National Debt. To the committed socialists who now control our government, they have nothing but contempt for private wealth, those people risking their capital in hope of investing in a profitable economic activity. So scheming to rip-off private citizens is only a good day's work for them.

2. While US Treasury yields on short term debt are below 2%, like now, they restructure the US National Debt away from long term T-Bonds to short term T-Bills and T-Notes. I don't have the data, but when I hear the details of our weekly T-Bond auctions, the bulk of the new issues are 5 years or less.

3. At some future point, this debt will have to rolled over, as that is what the US Treasury always does with its maturing debt. This is when Doctor Bernanke will begin raising interest rates.

4. Rolling over our short-term debt, when interest rates for T-Bills and Notes are massively higher than the current 2%, will create a situation where interest payments on the national debt will exceed national income, and then some! The over regulated and much diminished Private Sector's employers are forced to close their doors as their taxes and now higher interest costs consume their operations cash flows. Massive lay-offs and unemployment forces the American Population to reduce their consumption to bear minimums. Retail outlets, for lack of business, turn off their lights and go out of business. And President Obama receives a standing ovation from a grateful United Nations for his success in cutting America's Carbon Dioxide Levels below his promised 17% from a 2005 baseline.

This is now all a possibility because the Administration of Penn State, and other Universities, allowed Researchers of Global Warming to skirt a proper peer review, in return for some of Dr Bernanke's "Liquidity."

What happens to EP when interest rates go up? Our heavily indebted economy will contract further, and EP will continue its current decline. Will EP fall to levels not seen since the 1930s? With our current Congress and President Obama, I believe that is a real possibility.

Is this what President Obama and the Congressional Leadership actually intend to inflict on the American Citizens who voted them into high office? Well, I have to say that the last time I talked to the President and the Congressional Leadership, they assured me this was not so. You can be sure that if you were to ask them, they would tell you the same.

But it really doesn't matter whether this apocalyptic vision of the future is by design or due to innocent ineptitude. The result in either case is a drastically increasing National Debt, being financed with short term T-Bills and Notes. This new debt is being assumed during a period when the Fed is holding down interest rates; currently the 5 Year US T-notes yield below 2.5%.

How long will these low interest rates last? As long as Dr Bernanke wants them to. But the day is coming when he is going to raise interest rates, or the Bond Market will do it for him. If Doctor Bernanke intends to save the US dollar as a financial asset, as Paul Volcker did in 1979, he will have to raise rates way above 10%. As interest rates soar, chaos will come to the Federal Government's finances, when hundreds of billions in short term debt instruments rolled over - weekly, and at rates over 10%. It might be a few years from now, but this is going to happen.

If the Justice Department really pressed a RICO Investigation on those responsible for the "Global Warming" hoax, I suspect dismissal notices would be issued to large proportion of the staff of every college and university in the United States. But with the rules of evidence used in a courtroom, I can't prove a conspiracy between "Global Warming" and a scheme to bankrupt the United States.

But in our daily lives, we don't function in a courtroom, or have access to information a Federal Prosecutor is able to obtain, and innocent until proven guilty is the standard defendants hold the American legal system to. We live in the Court of Public Opinion. Most of our information is actually dis-information from people we don't know, and who frequently wish us harm, and you're a damn fool if you don't believe in Guilty Until Proven Innocent when it comes to money matters over $10.

So take care of your personal financial situation while you still can. Financial assets and real estate have not bottomed, and Gold and Silver are nowhere near their ultimate tops.


Mark J. Lundeen
Mlundeen2@Comcast.net
11 December 2009


Dow Jones -40% Declines From 1885 to 2008 is the article that inspired this race of 1929 & 2007 Bear Markets. You may want to read that article to understand my "BEV Chart."

Dow Jones Industrials Average Market Volatility is the source for my volatility studies.

The Lundeen Bear Box and Step Sum is the source for my Lundeen Bear Box and Step Sum Chart

Note For the Record: Mark Lundeen does not want a devastating bear market in the next two years. However, in full view of Congressional Market Oversight Committees and under the supervision of Government Regulatory Agencies, things were done that I believe will make a historic bear market inevitable. If you have a problem with this bear market, contact Washington, not Mark Lundeen.



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