Hooray for Google!

Google will no longer be conspiring with the totalitarian regime in China to censor web searches. Finally! I guess Google isn't evil, after all.

(As I sit here and use a free service provided by Google. . .)

North Dakota Still Looks Good

A year ago, I drew up a little map showing the unemployment rate in each state.

Here's another one, with the same color scheme:



Green states have unemployment below 4% (none in Sept. '09).
Olive states have unemployment between 4% and 5%.
Yellow states have unemployment between 5% and 6% (none in Sept. '09).
Maroon states have unemployment between 6% and 7%.
Red states have unemployment between 7% and 8%.
Magenta states have unemployment above 8%.

Things don't look so good this year, huh?

What should the government do? Perhaps they should take money away from citizens when the citizens need it most and also make it difficult for business owners to hire new employees? Does that sound good? What, no? Because that's what we're doing. . .

Politics, Religion, etc.

The larger the organization, the inherently less I trust it.

Topical Humor from Twenty Years Ago. . .

autoexec.bat

16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

AMENDMENT XVI

Passed by Congress July 2, 1909. Ratified February 3, 1913.

Note: Article I, section 9, of the Constitution was modified by amendment 16.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Curses! What were they thinking??

Zimbabwe's Dollar

Back in 1983, the Zimbabwe dollar traded at par with the U.S. dollar. Now, taking into account devaluations and revaluations, the Zimbabwe dollar has gone down by a factor of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. (That should be 24 zeroes, by the way.)

In the UK and South Africa, poster campaigns using real Zimbabwean currency have gone up to draw attention to this catastrophe brought upon the Zimbabweans by once-elected dictator Robert Mugabe.

Mugabe became Prime Minister in 1980.

In 1983, the Z$ passed 1:1 with the US$. Before that, it was worth more!

Mugabe made himself President in 1987. He was "re-elected" in 1990, 1996, and 2002, but those were shams. In 2000, he began destroying the farming system by forcing whites from their farms and giving the land to blacks who had no farming experience. And that was just the beginning of the catastrophe.

In 2002, the Z$ hit 1,000:1 with the US$. They then introduced new currency and revalued the Z$, making the new Z$ worth 404 old Z$.

In November 2006, the new Z$ hit a mark that would put the old Z$ at 1,000,000:1 against the US$.

In December 2007, the new Z$ hit a mark that would put the old Z$ at 1,000,000,000:1 against the US$.

In May 2008, the new Z$ hit a mark that would put the old Z$ at 1,000,000,000,000:1 against the US$. They then introduced new currency, dropping ten zeroes.

In August 2008, the third Z$ hit a mark that would put the original Z$ at 1,000,000,000,000,000:1 against the US$.

In September 2008, the third Z$ hit a mark that would put the original Z$ at 1,000,000,000,000,000,000:1 against the US$.

In October 2008, the third Z$ hit a mark that would put the original Z$ at 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000:1 against the US$. They then introduced new currency, dropping twelve zeroes.

Things leveled off a bit after that. Now, in April 2009, the fourth Z$ is not quite yet (but very close) to a mark that would put the original Z$ at 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000:1 against the US$. Maybe next week.

How bad can it get in Zimbabwe? Will race-based socialism strike in the U.S., too?

Go Stocks Go!

The good news is that the ETF I bought a couple days ago is finally back above the level I bought at. Yay.

Maybe it's because I put in a buy order that would be triggered when the DJIA got to approximately 5000. That must've scared the other traders into a mini buying frenzy.

Wall Street

Stocks are going to go back up at some point, right?

Oh. 2013. I remember now. So please remind me why I bought an S&P 500 ETF this morning?

DJIA

I hope that yesterday wasn't the stock market's high point for the next few months. I'll feel like such a fool if I didn't sell my IYJ stock when it was within 0.4% of my pre-arranged selling price. It lost 3.58% today.

Blargh.

400 mph

Thanks to the drop in oil prices, my mileage per hour is back above 400 miles per work hour. Yay!

Civic Duty

I did my civic duty today.

I paid $2 in voluntary taxes in exchange for slim chances at big money. One Mega Millions ticket (drawing tonight, odds of 1:175,711,536 for the big payout of $31,000,000 before more taxes) and one Lotto ticket (drawing tomorrow night, odds of 1:6,991,908 for the big payout of $8,900,000 before more taxes).

I didn't vote, though, and don't plan to. The odds are even worse in that arena.

Revision

Based upon my sunspot calculations, I'll revise my stock market predictions and state that a good time to invest will be 2013 -- when the solar cycle starts its decline, more or less.

It's Time to Move to North Dakota!

September unemployment rates for every state were released yesterday. I drew up a little map so you can see it easier.

Green states have unemployment below 4%.
Olive states have unemployment between 4% and 5%.
Yellow states have unemployment between 5% and 6%.
Maroon states have unemployment between 6% and 7%.
Red states have unemployment between 7% and 8%.
Magenta states have unemployment above 8%.

Watching the Peaks and Valleys

If the Dow Jones Industrial Average doesn't hit 5,000 anytime soon, I'm going to wait fifteen years before I invest any more money in the stock market. If it does get down to 5,000, it'll be buy buy buy!

No Subsidies, No Bailouts

Let failures fail.

'Nuff said.

220 mph

220 miles per hour -- work hour, that is.

A month ago, I only got 200 miles per work hour, so things are looking better. Unfortunately, two years ago, it was around 400. I wonder what changed in that time?

How many miles per work hour do you get? Take your car's miles-per-gallon, multiply by your hourly wage (after taxes), and divide by how much you pay per gallon of gasoline.

(mi/gal)*($/hr)/($/gal)

Sunspots and the Stock Market

As a corollary to the previous post, I looked up the chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average to compare it to the solar activity cycle.

Curiously enough, the Dow doesn't follow the eleven-year sunspot cycle, but it does relate to a smoothed-out version of the cycle, on a decade-to-decade level.

The solar maximum in the late 1920s was weaker than the maximum in the late 1910s, which then correlates to the drop in the stock market leading to the Great Depression (and some rather nasty weather in the early 1930s).

The solar maximums of the late 1930s, the late 1940s, and the late 1950s are each progressively stronger, with the period of solar maximum in the 1950s being almost three times as strong as that of the 1920s. During this time, from the bottom in 1932 until 1965, the Dow Jones Industrial Average steadily climbed (discounting hiccups every few years).

What happened in the late 1960s to kill the Dow's climb?

The sun got weak.

The solar maximum in the late 1960s/early 1970s was weaker than even the maximum in the late 1930s.

The Dow didn't recover until 1982 or so, which corresponds to a stronger solar maximum.

The next climb lasts from 1982 till 1999, which just so happens to be the start of a slightly weaker solar maximum (but, contrarily, one with even hotter temperatures).

The sun is now dead calm. Solar scientists had predicted a strong cycle peaking in 2011, but have recently revised their predictions to perhaps a very weak cycle peaking in 2013. In other words, don't expect great things from the stock market until 2020 at the earliest.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I must be getting pessimistic due to the lack of energy from the sun.

Weak Sun, Pessimism, Unemployment

I saw, today, a graph of the United States' unemployment for the past few decades.

It hit me rather quickly that the peaks and troughs of this graph are almost exactly the opposite of the highs and lows of the solar activity cycle. Unemployment is highest when the sun is less active (and thus the Earth is cooler).

High unemployment peaks centered in 1961, 1975, 1983, and 1997 match up with the solar activity troughs centered in 1964, 1975, 1986, and 1995. Low unemployment valleys centered in 1969, 1979, 1989, and 2000 line up with solar activity peaks centered in 1968, 1980, 1990, and 2001.

Perhaps it has to do with pessimism brought on by the lower temperatures and "bad" weather. After all, it's well-known in real estate that the market is hottest in the spring and summer, when folks are all rosy-eyed about their future in their brightly lit new homes. In the winter, people hunker down.

And so, with longer winters and cooler summers, business owners stay hunkered down, hiring fewer people. Unemployed men and women are less inclined to go out searching for new jobs.

So, what does this tell us about the near future?

We are at an (extended) extreme low in solar activity. Unemployment should be rampant. In fact, it peaked in 2003, but then dropped till 2007, but is now back on the rise. I guess our economy had been doing better than usual.

I predict that unemployment rates in the United States will continue to rise until the sun kicks into gear again, which might be tomorrow or might be 2010. The peak of solar activity will likely be in 2012, which will thus be a low in unemployment.

I further predict politicians to claim responsibility for the reduced unemployment in the coming years, especially in the 2012 elections.

Vote for Gramm!

From what I've heard of what Phil Gramm said this week, I just want everyone to know that I agree with him.

Thanks to the Liberal mentality, we have become a nations of whiners, incapable of taking responsibility for our personal actions. We always blame someone else and expect the government to take care of us.

Thanks to the news media, we are in a mental recession -- not a real recession, but just in our heads, thanks to the news media pounding gloom and doom into our brains every hour of every day.

And so, when John McCain denounced Gramm's words, it really made me throw in the towel on the Arizona senator. I never liked his PC-pandering liberal streak, and I never will.

I won't vote for McCain.

Sous-Premier

Apparently the French are having a hard time translating the word "subprime" into their language. While some news reporters are using the English word when discussing the mortgage problems of the US, the government says they should use the phrase "prets hypothecaires a haut risque," which means "high-risk mortgage loans."

It's not as if "subprime" by itself makes much sense in English, so I don't know why they're reluctant to use a similarly nonsensical, yet easy, phrase, like "sous-premier." It has the same Latin roots. Why not?