Chicago! Go Chicago!

The Chicago PMI surged to 62.3 on Friday, pretty much off the chart. This was way above expectations and accompanied by a similar stellar reading from the Milwaukee NAPM. Media attention decided rather to focus on the second quarter GDP release and the hefty growth downgrades during the recession quarters (i.e. the rearview mirror). In my book the Chicago data hints that the slowdown in the economy, following the first rush of recovery, is temporary . One interesting ratio is the Chicago PMI new orders component relative to prices paid. New orders up, prices paid down. This is a great dynamic for a resumption of business energy and a pattern often seen in previous cycles. This is not double-dip action. The QSL is from Newsradio 780 WBBM Chicago IL received in 1989.

Basque-ing in Stress

Only a small handful of European banks failed the 'stress test' this week. The failures were pretty well signalled ahead of the results and equities rose on the (not much) news. A few Spanish 'cajas' were singled out as well as a German and Greek bank. The test had a low hurdle rate but hey! what's wrong with a bit of good news, given all the gloom that's sloshing around. There's one group of economists hogging the limelight at present, preaching ongoing misery for years to come. Maybe, maybe not. German economic data is stellar right now - the IFO business expectations index for July was the highest in 16 years. The QSL is from a Spanish AM station - Cadena SER, San Sebastian in the Basque country. I have quite a few of these, heard in SA and the UK. Local Spanish stations have brief time windows when they run their own programming and identifications. It's fun to hear them. On some frequencies there are several so it can be quite a job trying to sift out one from another.

Man of Stalin

Stalin was born in Georgia, Trotsky in Ukraine and Nikolai Bukharin in Moscow. Bukharin was an economist and after the 1917 revolution returned from exile to edit Pravda. After Lenin died, Stalin aligned with him to defeat Trotsky in the Politburo. In time, however, Bukharin's anti-statist tendencies brought him into conflict with Stalin. In particular he opposed Stalin's brutal collectivisation of agriculture, particularly in the Ukraine. Stalin exacted tribute from the farming peasantry and eliminated the price mechanism. Small wonder the Soviet Union had decades of grain shortages. Eventually Stalin destroyed Bukharin, subjecting him to a show trial and he was executed in 1938. Today, Georgia has aligned itself with the West while Ukraine is playing the middle course, despite the Orange Revolution. The QSL is from Radio Moscow's transmitter site in Simferopol, Ukraine. At one time you could send a reception report to Moscow asking it to mention the transmitter site on the QSL. I collected a whole bagful of these. (Orsha in Belarus is also on this one). Later it was revealed that it was by no means certain that these were indeed the sites. Today we watch agricultural prices oscillate at fantastic speeds. Wheat has shot up in recent weeks while cocoa is making a multi-year high. Sugar plunged after a huge run and rice is rolling over. It's a trader's paradise!

Empire State of the Nation

Empire State business confidence survey released today continued a series of weaker readings on the economy over the past few weeks. A debate is raging among economists as to whether this loss of momentum is the start of another downward spiral or merely a normal pause after the first phase of a recovery. My take is the latter: we have lots of history showing that activity slows following the first blush. Choose your economist and you'll get the answer you want! Your economist's view may well be a function of his/her personality rather than any mystical insight into the future. I'm a glass half full guy. The Empire State is so named somewhat cryptically for its 'variety of wealth and resources.' Alongside is a QSL from WINS, one of NYC's most famous AM stations. I first caught it in the 1960s and it still wafts into Cape Town today. One morning in 1968 I happened to pick it up relaying the shocking news of a crash of a South African Airways 707 near Windhoek in what is now Namibia. It was very strange hearing news from so close to home from somewhere so far away.

Running amok

Really getting into this. Here is a utility QSL. Used to make these little cards myself and send them to the station with a report and also a local picture postcard. I heard Naha Aeradio quite a bit in the 1980s while living in Joburg, RSA. A low-powered 1 kW station on an island group that certainly contributed to the downfall of Yukio Hashimoto, the Japanese PM, a few weeks ago. He to'd and fro'd on whether to move the US base there. This was not a smart thing to do in a country that has been getting quite sniffy with its politicians recently, having thrown out the long-ruling LDP. Now Naoto Kan, who replaced Hashimoto, is wriggling after the current ruling DPJ lost the upper house in today's election. Will it impact the yen and Japanese stocks? Probably not much: politicians of whatever hue in Japan have their hands tied by the huge debt burden and declining population dynamic.

PDF to JPEG and straight to Sana'a

I discovered that Windows Picture Manager converts pdf files to jpeg. Using the snapshot tool in Adobe Reader you copy the picture. Then paste it onto an existing pic in Picture Manager and Export as a jpeg. This creates a new file which is also much smaller than the original pdf file and can be uploaded into Blogger. This QSL is from Sana'a Radio in Yemen. It was a relatively easy-to-hear station in English just off-frequency on 9780 kHz. Over a period of 10 years I must have sent in about 15 reports, along with postcards, return postage etc. Finally out of the blue this rather smart card rocked up with full details.

QSL gallery

I scanned all my radio station verifications (QSLs) into pdf, only realising afterwards that Blogger doesn't accept pdf images. I found some freeware to convert pdf to jpeg and this is how it looks. This is from All India Radio, Andaman and Nicobar Islands. You don't get more romantic names than that.

Cairo chaos

I've travelled to many cities but Cairo has to rate as the most chaotic of my experience. The driving is truly scary. We saw the pyramids - 4500 years old, astonishing. The picture is from our hotel balcony. We checked every few hours to see whether the pyramids were still there - they were!

Sailing in Greece

This is the Bavaria 46 cruiser we sailed in around Corfu and Paxos last month.