Update what’s happening with the Economic Undertow website: There are a lot of maintenance and upgrade issues that have to be addressed. As some remember, I shifted from Blogger to WordPress after the Blogger system crashed in February for no reason. Moving over here was — of course — more complex and time consuming.

In addition to creating content I am also instant webmaster, a task for which I am unqualified. There are ‘issues’ such as Google Friend Connect not working on Firefox while it does work on Opera, which is what I generally use. I also have a large and increasing number of subscribers but I don’t know how to make them ‘appear’.

These ‘issues’ require solid 15 hour days of head-banging futility to unravel. Meanwhile, the process of adding to quality content over here has become much more demanding. The old days are done: I can’t just rush in and scribble down some shit and get away with it. People actually read this stuff! It’s therefore important to connect dots because others will criticize and disagree and pick, pick pick!

The absence of dot-connection is the fatal flaw in most otherwise-excellent analysis found elsewhere. I want to do better, it’s not enough to sit over here in cyberspace and yell ‘Buy gold, bitchez’ like so many others, I want to have explanations for buying or not buying that make sense. If they don’t make sense then to find an idea/concept/understanding that does.

All this blogging is education for myself. YOU are guinea pigs in the Steve From Virginia writing science experiment.

Dot connection in an analytic framework is important. I don’t have all the answers but indicating a sense of direction with a rationale is part of the craft. Solid, well-thought arguments take time and require research. The more that ‘goes on’ (and blows up) in the greater world the more work I have to do. This fixes my attention here: I used to do more commenting here and there, message boards and forums — and I still do occasionally on Automatic Earth and ZeroHedge — but this is becoming more limited as the Economic Undertow content requires more of my time.

I intend to reconfigure the site so that it is more user friendly and less cluttered. I don’t the site ‘Logo’ taking up so much space at the top of the page. I’m getting rid of the sidebar. I want the page to look like a page in a book. The twitter feed and a few other items such as subscribers will go to the bottom. I think it will look better, be more attractive to read and be less distracting.

Right now, the current format is what I am stuck with. I can change the format by recoding … but these are not all ‘browser friendly’ and any site/system upgrades overwrites the recoding. I forget what I did in the first place.

The necessary step is create an entire new front page that I like which means reconfiguring the directory in the host server.

This means a few more 15 hour headbanging days and nights, a life measured in 15 hour increments. Meanwhile, I’ve already lost all of my Blogger subscribers once, I don’t want to lose them again …

Another issue relates to how the blogging sites operate: ‘Things they don’t teach you in blogging school’: Generally, most blogs don’t get much traffic. This can be increased by taking on advertising. If I ran ads on my site I would increase my traffic overnight. Why? I don’t know, it has something to do with Google and how they run their search platform. The Google system favors its own paid advertisers over others as well as non-advertisers like myself. Sites earn money by charging Google for click-throughs which is why there are sidebars and whatnot all over every web-page on Planet Earth. It’s all designed around ads and Google ranking which means more ads and ad revenue for Google. The more click-through traffic, the more ‘hits’ the higher Google score, the more advertising returns which are amplified by taking on more and more ads.

This is why many sites are incomprehensible, thwarting gibberish, all ads, with top and bottom ‘tool bars’ and more banners than a Nascar race car, annoying pop-ups and pup-unders. There might be a tiny bit of content down at the bottom of the page — then again, maybe not any content at all. As reported in studies, viewers tend to avoid banner ads and teasers but do go to reference links within the articles — which explains the ‘stealth’ ads in content that masquerade as real content links. What happens is ads => more visitors => more bandwidth/server costs => need for more ads. Those who take ads get more traffic but are ‘underwater’ with server costs and web site maintenance.

If the site author persists, the visitor count eventually increases so that website cash flow shifts from negative to positive. At this point the blogster is making money from the ads that are running on his/her site. A good example is Mish who has a fifty- to a hundred thousand page views per day. Mish has one of the top twenty finance blogs, there are dog and cat blogs with much higher visitor counts. I don’t know how many visitors I have, I don’t really care. More than five is pleasing to me!

I won’t have ads, they detract from the content. The plan is for no ads and to eliminate sidebars. If someone wants to visit Goldline, Automatic Earth or Yves Smith’s Naked Capitalism they certainly can do so. I would really like to have a ‘Front Page’ that I could add to daily with long articles on ‘Page Two’. We shall see, I have to find appropriate pages elsewhere or design my own: more hours of headbanging.

Once upon a time I built my own site from the ground up. I wrote up the style sheet and it was okay but extraordinarily labor intensive. I also had insignificant traffic. Within Internet-landia there are teams of eager young things fueled by Red Bull and cigarettes working all night(s) on WordPress updates and widgets, they oblige me to keep up or die the slow Internet death that overtakes the refuseniks.

This is not fair!

Other possibilities for the distant future is to shift to an exclusive newsletter format, charging for ‘premium content’ as Chris Martenson or Reggie Middleton do. A benefit would be better graphic content for the newsletter. I could use Acrobat, which produces a much better looking page. The downside is that I would have to find ‘hot’ stocks to tout. Right now, none of the stocks in the world are to tout. Shorting? We can discuss that later …

At some point I have to write a book, a real one, with a publisher and a pile of rejection notices. Of course I have been working on the damned book since 2009.

Another possibility which is a long-shot is for this site’s content to become part of an amalgamation website such as ‘New Deal 2.0’ or Chris Martenson. Gregor Macdonald now produces articles for Chris and I like the fact that he has longer articles that have more depth and are entertaining to read.

Bottom line: there are going to be some changes but the constant will be No Ads.

Speaking of newsletters, there are many I subscribe to but two I recommend: you obtain by sending an email request and the newsletter appears like magic in your inbox. The two are Master Resource Report by Jim Hansen and the other is ‘Things That Make You Go Hmmm’ or TTMYGH by Grant Williams.

Subscribe to the Hansen newsletter by emailing: jim.hansen-at-kmsfinancial.com whilst putting ‘subscribe’ in the subject line. I had the chance to share dinner with Jim and his charming bride last week post ASPO conference and it was a highlight. Even though the world is coming to an end there is no reason to suffer for it. Mr Hansen has an unbiased (un magical thinking) petroleum viewpoint.

Subscribe to the TTMYGH by clicking and filling out the little form. I doubt if I will get a chance to have dinner w/ Mr Williams any time soon b/c he is in Singapore but his newsletter has an ironic take on humankind’s foibles as it attempts with increasing desperation to obtain that free lunch.

Meanwhile, here is a bit from the latest TTMYCH:

 

Bankenstein’s Monsters.

Amazingly enough, before the Financial Crisis, the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet consisted of $800 million worth of treasuries. Now? It’s pushing $3 billion – a large chunk of which is toxic mortgage debt – and, with only $50 billion (give or take a billion or two) in capital, the Fed itself is leveraged approximately 54:1. I’m just saying…..

 

Well you know the Fed (ECB) can never fall insolvent because it(they) can always print some more money, right?

Yeah … the Fed can … it can expand its balance sheet by putting the asset — the currency — on side and the liability — US Treasury bonds created for the purpose — on the other. In order to get out of the hole the Fed is in the Fed must dig a much bigger hole. There is the hole that the hole fits in, within which is another hole and another.

The EU has no treasury with which to create liabilities. How sad. It cannot dig more holes, it cannot buy more time. ECB cannot print money without simply printing it, making counterfeit. Without a liability anchor, it cannot issue currency. It cannot buy debt of EU countries above the amount it has in deposits unless it can fix a liability. That it cannot fix the liability onto an insolvent country’s account so as to bail it out is self-explanatory.

The EU needs to federate tomorrow. A friend of mine was just in Europe speaking to EU finance ministers. He said, “Whatever you do, don’t do what we did,” we being the United States. Unfortunately, there is no option but for the EU to do what we do. It is part of the money dynamic that goes along with exponential debt growth. Europe must buy time. It must federate. By doing so, Greece, Spain and the rest are instantly solvent … for a little while. The EU would become Japan, able to borrow and monetize until its interest costs equal revenue. This might take decades. In the meantime, Europe can prepare for Economy 2.0.

The economy with all the incentives for conservation and capital improvement. The economy that we grasp willingly or is shoved up our asses.

The EU is walking the gangplank. Looking for that ‘end of the gangplank’ experience before Christmas.