Socionomics Alert—NBA, NHL Contraction

Contraction talk is picking up for hockey and also a bit for the NBA.

Sprint Center doing fine without NHL or NBA franchise

“A prospective owner or management group is going to look at the attendance potential, because ticket sales are so much more important in hockey than it is in other sports,” said Patrick Rishe, an economics professor at Webster University in St. Louis. “In other sports, ticket revenue is the second-leading source of revenue. Media is first. In hockey, ticket revenue is first, and media revenue is second.”

NBA commissioner David Stern told The Star in April that his league hasn’t ruled out Kansas City as a potential market. But while the New Orleans Hornets are often rumored to be a relocation candidate, Rishe has his doubts, even if LeBron James and the Heat sold out the Sprint Center for an exhibition game last fall.

“They have more revenue overall, but 17 of 30 teams are losing money,” Rishe said of the NBA. “… I think if you’re going to see anything in the NBA, it’s going to be contraction of two teams at some point in the next couple of years rather than seeing a relocation.”

Islanders arena vote fails: What now?

Hamilton: We have to throw it on the list because, quite frankly, the number of markets is drying up fast for the NHL to move in to. You have to wonder if Gary Bettman and the Maple Leafs would be OK with another team in southern Ontario when faced with a possible alternative of contraction. No commissioner wants to have that on their resume.

NBA Lockout: CBA Changes NBA Must Make During Lockout

Some are calling for contraction, and I am one of those people.

It's like pruning a nicely kept yard. If your bushes get too big, you cut them back down to size, don't you?

The league doesn't need 30 teams. Not at all. The league could conceivably contract 4 or 5 teams and be perfectly fine, if not better off, on even just a competitiveness level.

Sports leagues expand during periods of rising social mood and they contract or go bust during periods of declining social mood.

Social mood in China extremely negative

Fury unabated on websites

Despite signs the government may be clamping down on traditional media, internet users were still furious over the handling of the accident on July 23 near the eastern city of Wenzhou , in which at least 40 people died and 190 were injured after one bullet train rammed into the back of another that had stalled.

I saw one television report where the anchor lashed out at the government and listed a number of scandals that have occurred in the recent past. For the first day following the accident, the station spent 30 minutes on the story, but the next day, coverage was down to a few minutes and avoided the most sensitive issues. Anger is in search of a target here and the rail disaster provided one.

Against gold, the Chinese stock market is at a new post-2008 low.

How deep will the change in social mood reach?

Possibly very deep, overturning several generations of cultural change. And it will have some help from new developments, such as incurable STDs.

Scientists find first superbug strain of gonorrhea

Euro spec bulls jump ahead of the big drop in the euro

So I go to a 4th of July Party

Bruce Krasting sets off the fireworks early.

I go to a 4th of July party

-The local Pastor is having a set-to with an accountant.
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-A nurse is fighting with a doctor.
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-Two mothers are ganging up against the middle school principal.
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-The soccer coach is arguing with two Wall Street wives.
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-Two oldsters are defending the fact that they get SS benefits with five younger workers who are complaining they will not see a penny of what they have paid. The grey hairs are losing big time. “Boomers Suck!” is heard.
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-The car dealer is fighting with the insurance salesman. This is getting physical with both sides pushing. (I learned later that infidelity, not politics or economics was the issue)
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-A guy who runs a decent sized lawn business is fighting with two of his customers over the fact that illegal aliens are mowing the lawns. One of the wives is screaming at the poor bastard.
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-Four people are fighting over the local nuke (Indian Point). Some wanted it closed, those who work there were fighting like hell.
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-Young kids are crying. Dogs are barking. Adults are shouting.
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-Husbands are trying to pull back wives. Wives are pulling back husbands.
..
-Fingers are pointing and swearing is happening.

And then it got ugly.

Euro speculative positions

SoCal wants to secede

Interesting, this may be politically possible depending on which party the Senators would join. A Western New York secession movement has been discussed for some time, but since it would mean two more Republican Senators, Democrats would oppose it. I know some of these Cali counties are Republican and the guy proposing it is Republican, but if it leans Democrat, it could be a balance to a New York secession.

Either way, social mood in action.

Official Calls For Riverside, 12 Other Counties To Secede From California

Borders up!

Danish committee approves government’s controversial border control plans

A Danish parliamentary committee has approved the government’s contested plan to re-establish permanent customs checkpoints at Denmark’s borders.

Opponents to the plan, including Germany and the European Union, say it would violate EU rules on unrestricted travel in the Schengen zone and regulations on the bloc’s internal market.

More on the Alipay dispute

Caixin is stayaing on top of the Alipay dispute, with this latest article giving a background to the situation.

Getting to the Bottom of the Alipay Dispute

Signs of the Social Mood: The End of Gender?

In bear markets, culture heads towards androgyny.

The End Of Gender?

The article has a long list of news and events that describe the trend. Then again, Lady Gaga's CD sales are dropping...

Social mood headlines

In case you missed them...

The ongoing antibiotic resistant stories continue, this time from Hong Kong, which also has an outbreak of scarlet fever.
No halt to scarlet fever's spread

Doctors blame drug resistance caused by abuse of antibiotics as infection continues its path across the city, with 28 children falling ill yesterday

No need to guess the mood in this one: 'We can't contain our anger any longer'

More than 4,000 workers at a Korean-owned handbag factory in Guangzhou's Panyu district spent a third day on strike yesterday, demanding better pay and more respect.
People working for Simone Limited at the Hualong plant in Meishan village halted production on Monday in protest over what they described as a "harsh working environment" and to call for better pay in light of the surging price of goods.

Could a Dangerous Fungus Lurk in Your Dishwasher?

Chinese all over the Goldman yuan short call

高盛为何唱空人民币

Several of the articles on the site breakdown this WSJ article: Investors Hazard Bold Bet on Yuan

There's also an article on Soros' position (one-third of assets betting on the yuan), hedge funds short China, discussion of economic indicators and a possible slowdown in the economy.

Battle In Burma

YANGON: In its first public comments on a week of fighting in northeast Myanmar, the government said Saturday that ethnic Kachin rebels fired first and the army had to act to protect a major Chinese-built hydroelectric power project.

The skirmishes were some of the fiercest in nearly two decades between government forces and the Kachin Independence Army. They erupted June 9, displacing at least 10,000 people over the course of about one week. The rebels have blamed the government for launching an offensive after militia fighters rejected a call to leave the strategic region.

The government says it did call on rebels to leave, but accused them of firing first after threatening Chinese technicians and detaining two army officers, according to a report Saturday in the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper.

Extremely Disturbing Barely-Noticed Story of the Week

Alipay fiasco

Caixin has a summary of the Alipay fiasco and they've also written an editorial very critical of Alibaba founder Jack Ma. In sum, Jack Ma was seen as one of the country's leading entrepreneurs, earning widespread acclaim abroad as well as at home. His actions fit the foreign stereotype of shady Chinese business practices, stripping a company of the good assets while leaving the foreigners with the stub. Thus, he has caused damage not only to his own reputation and company, but to all of China.

Alipay Dispute

Of course, prices are falling anyway due to declining social mood and pure fraud cases are piling up, as overseas listed Chinese shares face intense scrutiny from short sellers.

The Australian sums of the current protest wave in China

Beijing battling protest fires on all fronts

Western media likes to hype the instability as reflecting poorly on the Communist party, but this is just the manifestation of negative social mood. There is no organized movement here, it's much less organized than Greece and other European protests, for instance, where national government policy is at issue.

A Monday editorial in the Global Times, a tabloid linked to the Communist Party, warned against trying to connect the recent incidents of unrest and draw conclusions about China's social stability. "China is not a nation where public anger collectively seeks to topple the existing order. It is time to debunk this ludicrous lie," it said.

It is ludicrous, but there's probably more public anger on the way...

Facebook losing popularity?

Facebook loses 1.5 million users in Canada

Privacy concerns, yada yada. Privacy is slightly better now, why are people suddenly deciding to quit Facebook over privacy issues? Social mood...

Social mood and "The Hum"

Tiny village is latest victim of the 'The hum'

Now a tiny English village is the latest community to claim to be being hit by the phenomenon known as "the hum".

Residents of Woodland, in County Durham, claim that every night a noise permeates the air similar to the throb of a car engine.

It is sometimes so strong that it even shakes the bed of one of the householders.
But no matter how hard they look, the community cannot find the source of the problem and, at their wits end, have called in the council to investigate.

Sounds like a social mood related phenomena and according to the article, "The Hum" was strongest during the last big trough in social mood.

It's most famous occurrence was in Bristol in the 1970s when more than a thousand people complained of the consistent drone causing nosebleeds, sleeplessness and headaches.

It vanished as mysteriously as it arrived and was never explained.

Updated Elliot Wave analysis of Bitcoin

What a difference a few days make...

It's now looking as though what I though was Wave 5 should be classified as Wave 3, in which case the terminal value for Wave 5 could be north of $37 per Bitcoin (based on Fibonacci), assuming another reworking of the wave count is required. However, I'm mainly interested in the Elliot Wave analysis as a tool for clarifying the socionomic causes.

I predicted the government would become interested if Bitcoins became more popular and this prediction was rapidly fulfilled. Senator Charles Schumer says Bitcoin is money laundering and the DEA is concerned about it and other digital currencies.

Aside from hard drugs mentioned in my last post on the topic, I noticed in my Chinese microblog feed that one guy is offering VPN services for Bitcoins. VPNs allow Internet users in China and other countries to circumvent web censorship. The government constantly blocks free, advertising supported VPNs as soon as enough Chinese use them, and they've been finding ways to disrupt the paid VPNs used by many foreigners.

Finally, I found a better chart site for Bitcoin prices at Bitcoin Charts.

Elliot Wave analysis of Bitcoin

Bitcoins are a digital currency with restricted quantity in order to keep their value. The price of Bitcoins was down around $1, but has recently exploded to more than $18 as the currency gains widespread media attention. Whether this is a one-time move or not—that's wholly dependent on how successful the currency becomes—but several mainstream articles on the currency appear to mark the optimistic and bubbly spike of a fifth wave higher.

Thinking in terms of a social phenomena that is expressed in Elliott Waves, odds favor this being a one-time spike, to be followed by a return to obscurity. Bitcoins are popular with a small portion of the population that understand how the system works. Media coverage has pulled in the bulk of the early adopters and there's unlikely to be enough buyers left to push up the price. This move will exhaust itself soon and the price will collapse in a Wave 2 correction. In order for the next move to take place (Wave 3), a new pool of users/buyers will need to emerge and this is where the rubber will meet the road. First, this pool will be much less sophisticated and they will need a reason to use Bitcoins...possibly some type of "killer app." Second, this second move will attract the attention of government because it will be far more conspicuous. Considering that there's already a "black market" that accepts Bitcoins and has a wide assortment of illegal drugs, an impossible conflict between one and two seem very likely. Based on history, I'd bet on black—the G men.

Disclosure: I have some Bitcoin that I generated by using the Bitcoin application.

Up-to-date charts are available at Mt.Gox.

An update to this post is available here.

European food scare and social mood

Disease outbreaks and food scares are more likely to occur during declines in social mood.

European food outbreak soars; mystery deepens