Subject: Things are never so bad that they can't get worse
From: "Bill Howell. Hussar. Alberta. Canada" <>
Date: Sun, 26 May 2019 12:34:08 -0600
To: Einar "Davison." Treasurer & "Firefighter." "Founder." StrongPoint
Cc:

Here is this month's "UNIVERSAL CYCLE THEORY FINANCIAL NEWSLETTER" by Steve Puetz, which I started subscribing to last February.  It's been several decades since I've been subscribed to a financial newsletter, which are among my favourite reading. 
http://www.uct-news.com   E-mail:
WARNING :  My updated email package corrupts the hyper-links below, so you must select the entire URL with your mouse, copy, then paste into your broswer URL destination box.    Also, I just changed a few filenames, so you might have to look at the directory of my website to find a few.


1.  Market crashes, recessions, depressions

As I mentioned, Puetz is a bear among bears.  He has a "long-term view" going back 16 Giga-years (age of the universe type stuff), and an understanding of [context, interconnectedness] with his own special brew time series analysis (somewhat like signal processing) that I don't find outside of the Mayan calendar system (perhaps all ancient civilisations had this, but it may not be so easy to see).

Here are titles of back-issues to give you more of a flavour :
  • 21Dec2018 The Grinch archives  : 
"...   Today, Mark Decambre of MarketWatch interviewed Peter Schiff, who describes the situation as follows: “We’re in a lot of trouble.... This isn’t a bear market. We’re in a house of cards that the Fed built.”   ..."
  • 13Jan2019  Banking crisis looms
  • 14Feb2019  Massive, bursting debt bubbles
  • 16Mar2019   The national debtor's trap
http://www.billhowell.ca/Cool stuff/Puetz - mortgages, serious delinquency of non-agency RMBS loans.jpg

"...   The national debt trap continues to rear its ugly head in a variety of ways. In a recent MarketWatch report entitled Why bubble-era home mortgages are a disaster waiting to happen, analyst Keith Jurow exposes a lingering delinquency problem from the housing bubble 10 years ago. Jurow explains how the problem developed: “In 2012, just 2% of all these delinquent borrowers had not paid for more than five years. Two years later that number had skyrocketed to 21%. Why? Mortgage servicers around the country had discontinued foreclosing on millions of delinquent properties. Homeowners got wind of this and realized they could probably stop making payments without any consequences whatsoever. So, they did.” ... And they did so in large numbers, as the table on page 3 shows.

Major cities in California are not included in the table for a technical reason. Even though delinquencies remain problematic in California, the terms for many of these troubled mortgages have been modified in  recent years. When a lender modifies mortgage terms, the delinquency clock is immediately reset to zero.  After adjusting for this technicality, Jurow claims that delinquencies in California are just as problematic as   in other parts of the country. In conclusion, Jurow predicts: “The non-agency mortgage delinquency fiasco will not go away just because Wall Street and the pundits act as if it has. I am confident that this entire charade will start to unravel within 6-to-12 months. It is wise to prepare now.” This is just one more example  of the extent of serious underlying financial problems that are widely ignored or unrecognized. Yet, these  problems continue to simmer and erode the stability of our financial system. The national debtor’s trap has   reached a terminal stage where even record-break federal deficits and extensive new lending now fails to stabilize economic activity and the faltering financial system.   ..."

  • 16Apr2019  The developing liquidity squeeze 

"...   A recent CNBC article (Cox, 2019), entitled Shadow banking is now a $52 trillion industry, posing a big  risk to the financial system, describes the risks associated with lending outside of the traditional (FDIC  insured) banking system: “Nonbank lenders, often called shadow banks, have $52 trillion in assets [at  yearend 2017, certainly far more now], a 75% increase since the financial crisis ended. The industry was at  the center of the financial crisis when the subprime mortgage market collapsed.... These institutions helped  fuel the crisis by providing lending to underqualified borrowers and by financing some of the exotic  investment instruments that collapsed when subprime mortgages fell apart.... Within shadow banking, the  biggest growth area has been collective investment vehicles, a term that encompasses many bond funds,  hedge funds, money markets, and mixed funds. The group has seen its assets explode by 130% to $36.7  trillion. It poses particular danger because of its volatility and susceptibility to runs and is part of the  significant risk DBRS sees from the industry.... The sheer size of shadow banking and its peers in the  nonbank financial industry poses potential risks should [the current] ideal conditions change.... Nonbank  financials, which also include insurance companies, pension funds and the like, have grown 61% to $185  trillion. Traditional bank assets have increased 35% to $148 trillion during the same period.... DBRS  identified three specific risks that shadow banks [face during] times of market stress: [1] they are not  structured to deal with periods of low liquidity and heavy withdrawals; [2] a lack of experience in dealing  with periods of weakening credit conditions, and [3] a lack of earnings diversification that would hurt them  when parts of the markets deteriorate.”   ..."

While a few graphs are repeated each month or every few months, many graphs are specific to the month's theme, providing a fascinating and diverse view of the markets and economics.

Note the inverted yield curves, negative government bond rates (Germany, Japan), rising personal debt levels.


2. The Rise and Fall of [markets, nations, civilisations]

http://www.billhowell.ca/Cool stuff/Puetz -  financial crashes since 1310 & 88 year Gleissberg cycle 191013.png

The Kondriatieff cycle is mentioned in a book co-authored by Puetz :
Stephen J. Puetz, Glenn Borchardt 2011 "Universal Cycle Theory : Neomechanics of the hierarchically infinite universe" http://www.OutskirtsPress.com   ISBN: 978-1-4327-8133-0

Puetz's [innovative, solid, consistent] statistical analysis of periodicities is impressive!   The UWS is a a haunting concept, and if correct, unbelievably powerful.  However, it does NOT reproduce most long-known, often found astronomical cycles.  By the way, although innovative and often [interesting, insightful],  I am not comfortable with Borchardt's physics as described in the book, although there is much to learn from it.
http://www.billhowell.ca/Cool stuff/Puetz & Borchardt 2011 p503 Table of civilization collapses.jpg

Here is a chart of the [naive, lunatic, one-dimensional] theory of history of my father and I for the last 7.500 years :  the rise and fall of civilisations :  

http://www.billhowell.ca/Civilisations and sun/Howell - radioisotopes and history.jpg

Earlier graphs were used in a book that acknowledged us as the "two fools who rushed in" :  
Steven H. Yaskell 2013 “Grand phases on the sun: The case for a mechanism responsible for extended solar minima and maxima”  Trafford Publishing www.trafford.com,  195pp ISBN 978-1-4669-6301-6

3. Minor extinction events

Go to the Tyrell Museum for a wall mural on the "Great Mammalian extinction" event of 12,000 years ago.   There is significant fringe talk (and a very old CIA report!) on a 12,000 year disaster cycle, possibly micro-nova by our sun.  Doing the math - due soon!   ?Vogt?  says Dec2049 (or 2046?)


4. The ?five or seven? mass extinction events over the Phanerozoic era

Visit the Tyrell museum! 

Here's a web-page on my site from years ago that I posted from a friend, who had his own theory.  I think he references a few other theories, but there are tons more.

http://www.billhowell.ca/Wickson website/_Wickson.html



Bill Howell
Volunteer firefighter, Member of Hussar Lion's Club & Sundowners
1-587-707-2027     www.BillHowell.ca
P.O. Box 299, Hussar, Alberta, T0J1S0



-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Kondriatieff time for the markets?
Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2019 11:55:33 -0700
From: Bill Howell. Hussar. Alberta. Canada <>
To: Tin Man. OH3. Ottawa <>


Denzil -   Yesterday I received 3 back-issues of Stephen Puetz's financial newsletter http://www.uct-news.com , to which I just subscribed for a year.   It's amazingly cheap (120$US/yr for a monthly, including a rash of great charts (2 months to <1,000 years), some which seem to be included with each issue, many that are special to the month. 

My main point is the attached graph, which resurrects the seemingly long-forgotten Kondriatieff economic depression (54 year) cycle, but instead using a Gleissberg geological (solar) cycle of 88.8 years (literature states 75-90 years).   Puetz pegs the next 1929 crash as being likely in the period 2017-2022 based on his cycle analysis.  I always found it strange that when I was younger, Kondriatieff's cycle was mentioned for almost all major depression crashes, until (if I remember correctly) the 2000 (hi tech) or 2008 (financial) mini-crashes.  Of course, there are more depressions that don't fit, than there are that do...

I've also attached a fun South African paper on climate cycles, but couldn't find an even more fun South African paper on ancient Egyptian records of Nile river flooding, which was used to follow crops and taxation (it's probably a paper printout in a box somewhere).

One might expect modern sophistication to have eradicated depressions, just as modern medicine and public health has eradicated major pandemics.  Perhaps, but perhaps discretion is the better part of valor, as Puetz himself shows how barley prices in ancient Babylonia, rice prices for ~700 years in China, and wheat prices in central England ~1700, are the same as today's commodity price behaviour. If I remember, William Herschel presented the English wheat prices as the first evidence of sunspot cycles on Earth effects.  He go the data from Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations".   However, I am probably mixing up my references ...


Bill Howell
Volunteer firefighter, Member of Hussar Lion's Club & Sundowners
1-587-707-2027     www.BillHowell.ca
P.O. Box 299, Hussar, Alberta, T0J1S0


**********************
Background

I subscribed to Puetz's financial newsletter because of his stunning analysis of a broad range of [astronomical, geological, biological, economic, social, etc] cycles,  plus his derivation of a "Universal Wave Series" unifying cycle (that does not include solar cycles, which are different).   I first heard of his work in ~2015, when I read a paper that he co-wrote with :
  • Glenn Borchardt, an ?amateur? physicist (I bought one of his books back in ~2012 while attending either an Electric Universe or Natural Philosophy (physics) Society conference), 
  • Andreas Prokoph at CarletonU in Ottawa, whom I read 10-15 years ago because of his work as a consulting geologist with Tim Patterson at CarletonU (I met him once when visiting Patterson, wavelet transforms), and
  • Edward Mason, who I don't know. 
I've just finished reading the [math, statistics] appendices of the Borchardt, Puetz book "Universal Cycle Theory", and I'm extremely impressed by the quality of the work.  I always have huge reservations about the mathematics used in such studies, but Puetz has done a very competent and innovative job with the [math, statistical ] tools that he has chosen.  I will read my way through the main part of the book slowly, as I have time.  Borchardt's physics is totally unconventional, and even if I am uneasy about many of his assumptions and analysis, I've learned to shut up and listen, as I take a "multiple conflicting hypothesis" approach. 

I've never seen ANY cycle-related work of the [breadth, depth, innovation] of Puetz's.   The ONLY rough equivalent I am aware of is the system of 20 or so ancient Mayan calendars (some of which apparently came from the much earlier Olmec people), although I suspect that all ancient civilisations may have had somewhat similar concepts.  If I ever find the time, it would be interesting to derive "rough equivalences" between the Mayan and Puetz concepts, some of which do pop up in the results.

There is a mental disease "cyclo-mania", of which I've long suffered but control tightly.  I have a much more cautious, general, attitude towards the concept of pseudo-cycles, as I've seen great work (some good wavelet analysis - but that is still immature) that is not mainstream (surprisingly, this is still often Fourier series based), but even that falls short of a solid approach to pseudo-cycles.  We just don't have the [concepts, math] yet.