It's July 27th, 2022, and the stock market is surging up after the The Fed announced a .75% hike in the Fed Funds rate, which sets the pace fo rall other interest rates. Have stocks hit bottom, and they're going to head back up? Or is this a bear market bounce? This video takes a really solid look at those questions. Check it out if you are wondering about the direction of stocks over the next 6 -12 months.
What about real estate? Are we in for a minor correction overall? Or is there a major downturn coming? This is a great video, also brand new, that looks into the mid-term and long term demographics affecting real estate. If you're wondering where it might be headed, check this video out.
Thanks YouTube algorithm that usually sucks these days. But it clued me into this perfomrance, which happened yesterday at the Newport Folk Festival. Joni Mitchell, more than 50 years out from the height of the Hippie era, Woodstock, and the big wave of folk music of the late 60's and early 70's. Brandi Carlile and several others helping out. This is pretty dang cool. Groovy even.
I listen to several different types of music now, as a middle aged guy. 80's and 90's punk rock usually gets me going every morning. But I listen to some classic rock often, and a bit of old country now and then, even a few show tunes, since my sister turned me on to Phantom, Les Mis, and Rent years ago. But as a kid growing up in rural and small town Ohio in the 1970's, my favorite music was one person with a guitar. John Denver was my favorite back then, and I discovered Jim Croce in high school. Years later, I got to know the incredible singer/songwriter from Newport Beach, Kerry Getz. These days, when I'm working on the computer, and especially when doing artwork, singer/songwriters with guitars is still my favorite music while doing my Sharpie art. Joni Mitchell is one of the legends of this genre', so it's cool to see this video of her from the Newport Folk Festival yesterday.
This is one of those blog posts that started with seeing the Joni Mitchell, "Both Sides Now," video from yesterday. That spawned a Tweet, then a Facebook post. Then it was like, "Well, I could do a blog post about this..." Now that I'm on the subject of singer/songwriters, guitars, and acoustic music, here are some of my favorite songs and performances.
Harry Chapin- "Sniper"- This song is about an event that was virtually unheard of when happened in 1966. The song was released in 1972. Unfortunately, this kind of event has become all to common in today's world.
Music is how human beings make amends for all the stupid shit we've done as a species.
After I wrote this original blog post, Kerry Getz added several of her favorites in a Facebook post. The first three are acts I've seen live, thanks to Kerry turning me on to them. The other musicians are her picks. When serious musician tells you to check out another musician, it's wise to listen.
Mohamed El-Erian is one of the few people you really want to listen to on the direction of the economy. He's been saying for many months that The Fed was behind the curve on attacking inflation. That had him worried that they would have to "slam the brakes on" at some point, raise interest rates dramatically, and... here we are, at that point.
The F.O.M.C. meeting (Fed governnors), is Tuesday and Wednesday, July 26 & 27, and they are expected to announce a .5% to .75% hike in the Fed Funds rate Wednesday afternoon. But the recent, much higher than expected inflation rate, has led to rumors of a 1% interest rate hike. That would be historic, and the stock markets could react poorly, particularly after this recent rally. At this point, a .75% hike in the Fed Funds rate seems most likely. But someone seems to have floated a rumor that The Fed might lower rates, and go back into bail out mode for stocks (and everything else). With inflation as high as it is, that seems pretty much impossible. That would just drive inflation much, much higher.
Then, at close of the stock market on Thursday, July 28, Apple will announce its earnings, followed by its quarterly conference call. Because of the way both the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 are weighted, Apple has a huge effect on both, and has been holding up both averages during this summer's tech bear market, though down around 14% recently, from the peak. But signals are that Apple expects lower earnings and slower growth in future months, for multiple reasons. If Apple's numbers and conference call are worse than the expectations of traders, than that could also have a big, negative effect on the markets. If stocks take a dive, which is very possible, crypto could do the same thing, and drop back some as well.
These two things give the potential for a really negative week in stocks, and some carry-over negativity in crypto.
Blogger's note- 7/28/2022- 2:30 pm, Pacific time, 5:30 Eastern- So... Stocks dropped some Monday and Tuesday, before the FED (FOMC) meeting announcment. On Wednesday, The Fed hiked the interest rates by .75%, making loans of all kinds more expensive and harder to get for everyone, and the stock market rallied. Today, Thursday morning, we found out that, yes, by the actual definition, we are in a recession, two quarters of GDP contraction. But it doesn't matter, because Uncle Jay and Aunt Janet say that there isn't REALLY an actual definition of "recession." Stocks rallied again, since the economy will get worse, but we don't call recessions recessions anymore.
Then after market close, Apple beat earnings, crisis averted, so everybody pile into the rally tomorrow! Maybe. If you own stocks, just follow the rabbit down the hole and smoke whatever the worm on the mushroom is smoking, and life will be great. Just don't try to sell your house for the price they sold for 3 months ago, if you're market was hot last year. Tragedy avoided, and I feel like I've walked into a rave where everyone is on E but me. New soundtrack for stock trading... Hey, it's the end of July, we have five months left in 2022, and I'm sticking with my March 22, 2022 predictions for stocks. But who cares? Nobody reads these updates. Time will tell what happens. And whatever you do, don't listen to Ray Dalio, Jim Rogers, Robert Kiyosaki, or Michael Burry. And here's Joe Brown of Heresy Financial, making fun of people saying this recession is not a recession. Absurd, yet flacid.
David Bowie with a Bowie knife Sharpie drawing. I accidentally left this finished drawing at a bus stop in Richmond, Virginia one morning in 2019. Being homeless, I didn't sleep well, and I was just half asleep. After having breakfast at a McDonald's, the bus came, I grabbed my backpack, and just spaced out, leaving my sketch pad behind. I fell asleep on the bus, and didn't realize I left the sketch pad until I was across town. 18" X 24", #sharpiescribblestyle
In 2002, living in a tiny room that I rented, on the side of a Mexican family's house, I saw an episode of MTV's House of Style where they talked about doodle walls. The idea was to get big rolls of butcher paper, and draw things on it with markers. My little room was like a cave, so I got this idea to draw a mural, like I was looking out the mouth of the cave at a sunset. I had never really painted, but drawing a mural on paper with markers seemed like something I could do. So I got a pack of 12 generic markers, and a roll of banner paper, like the stuff high school cheerleaders use, and I taped it up on the wall. I started drawing a sunset. But when I started to color it in, it just looked like shit. So I tore the paper down, and I put smaller pieces up, cut photos out of my BMX, skateboard, snowboard, and rock climbing magazines, and I started making huge collages of sports photos. It was just really fun.
But it bummed me out that I couldn't do the mural. I figured that there had to be some way to shade different colors, blend colors with markers so they didn't look lame. On the collages that I made, I tried weird little squggles, circles, lines, and dots, and tried to figure out a way to do better shading with markers, but I never found anything that worked.
I was drawing rock stars a lot, and wanted to try a cool looking animal, so I drew this Sumatran tiger in 2018. 18" X 24", #sharpiescribblestyle
In 2003, I got my driver's license again, it got suspended in late 2000 due to a clerical error at the DMV. I went back to taxi driving. I was homeless at that point, so I went directly into living in my taxi, with all my stuff packed into a storage unit. So I stopped drawing, and worked 7 days a week driving my cab, for the next 2 1/2 years. During that period, I only took 5 full days off in 2 1/2 years. I gained about 150 pounds, working more and more hours, eating to deal with stress. I was working 80 to 110 hours a week, by the end of that period. I got really, really burned out.
Then, in the late summer of 2005, another taxi driver offered me a deal. I was still living in my taxi, because the industry was changing, and the companies were putting more and more taxis on the road. More cabs meant less business for each driver. So we had to work more and more hours to just survive, to pay my $550 a week to lease the cab, and by $300 or more in gas each week. Into that burnout time, a driver named Richard offered to let me live in this indie art gallery he had, if I would drive his taxi on the weekends. He owned his cab within the company, but still had to pay $335 a week in lease. So I drove all weekend, 2 1/2 long days, and what he charged me paid most of his taxi lease, then he would drive the cab during the week. I made $200 or $250 a week, and paid him $50 a week rent to live in the gallery. At the time, it worked well for both of us. Monday morning through Friday afternoon, I was in this industrial unit in Anaheim, surrounded by local artists' work, and a momma cat, and six kittens.
On day two of sleeping in the gallery, I drew a funny little picture on a Post-it note. Within a week I bought some more banner paper and generic markers, and just started playing around with ideas. So I would crank the music, and just draw a bunch every day, trying different things. I upgraded to regular size Sharpie markers, a 24 pack of colors, and went back to trying different ways to draw with Sharpies. One day, in the Fall of 2005, I was drawing a tree. I scribbled several different colors over each other, and it looked pretty cool. I got not only the color, but the texture like tree bark. Sharpie Scribble Style, as a technique, was born. I kept playing around with that idea, doing big drawings on banner paper. Eventually I bought the ultra fine Sharpies, which worked much better for the scribble style, and lasted much longer.
I started trying different ideas, and began learning which colors blended with which other colors, to produce a final color. I always start with pretty much the opposite of the final color. If something is going to wind up orange, the first layer of scribbles is lime green, then yellow, then I work towards orange. I lived there in the gallery for about 9 months. Around June of 2006, I went back to driving full time, but I took a small sketch pad, and would draw sometimes, while sitting in front of the hotel where we hung out in the taxis.
This is a drawing I drew for myself, Harley Quinn and the Jokercombined with the "Tainted Love" song lyrics. This is still my single favorite drawing. I had to sell this to get a room one night, after spending a week in the hospital, then a night in a homeless shelter. I went to the ER in Richmond for cellulitis (leg infection), and they accidentally gave me three full IV bags of a medicine I was allergic to. That led to anaphylactic reaction, my throat nearly closed up, and I got incredibly sick. I could barely walk to the bathroom for about four days. So they kept me for a week, trying to save me from the reaction. I damn near died. I still had cellulitis when I got released, and had pustules all over my chest and legs, little blisters that were drying out and opening. It was 95 degrees out, and I had to carry my bags everywhere. I sold this drawing, and another one of Bob Dylan, to a gallery in the Arts District of Richmond, to get a motel one night, and try to recover a bit more. 18" X 24", 2018, #sharpiescribblestyle
From 2006 to 2015, I moved around, and in late 2008, I wound up living in North Carolina, where my family somehow ended up living. I drew now and then, and I'd figured out which colors worked best with my scribble style, but I wasn't sure what to draw with it. I drew dark pictures with weird little characters, then I drew big, Georgia O'Keefe style flowers, which looked pretty cool. But I didn't like drawing flowers. Then I drew goofy aliens smoking cigarettes, something that just made me laugh. I called them Grey Trash, in 2009. The idea was they were aliens who got stuck on Earth, so the government built them a trailer park way out in the desert to hide them. Eventually the aliens turned into trailer trash. Instead of White Trash, they were Grey Trash, and I drew a bunch of them just for fun. Then I drew two or three animal drawings, starting with a tree frog. I didn't draw that often, and I tried a bunch of different ideas.
My drawing, of a painting, of a sketchy early 1970's photo, of motorcycle legend Malcom Smith, hauling ass. Sean Ewing asked me to do this one, and then donated to Malcom Smith's shop. So it should be on a wall in their collection by now. Sean had a little fun with Photoshop in this pic. 18" X 24", 2022, #sharpiescribblestyle
I wound up living with my mom, in a tiny town, in North Carolina, after my dad's death in 2012. I couldn't find any job, not even a cashier or part time restaurant job. I needed something to make some kind of money. So in November of 2015, with some Sharpies, a dollar store sketch pad, and a refubished HP laptop that was still running Windows XP, I started trying to sell drawings. I spent three hours on the internet one night, looking at all kinds of art, asking myself, "what I would want to put up on my wall?" I kept coming back to graffiti art and stencils. So I drew a drawing of a Bruce Lee stencil, in my style, and put it on Facebook. Somebody bought it for $20, I think. Then somebody wanted another one. And it just kept going. I've been selling Sharpie Scribble Style drawings pretty much continuously, for 7 1/2 years now.
I've drawn over 200 drawings total, the first 50 or 75, got lost one place or another. But I've done over 100 drawings that I've sold, and my skills have improved a huge amount over the last 7 years. My drawing sales price plateaued at about $150-$200 each. But the big drawings take me 40-45 hours to do. So the math still works out to $3 an hour to do something no one else in the world does.
Maybe my art's cool, maybe it's not, that's anyone's call. But my stuff is unique, though I've mostly worked from well known photos of rock stars. That's what people kept asking me to do. I needed to make money to eat, so I kept drawing things people asked, mostly rock stars. Every drawing had some little part of it that gave me a new challenge, and I just did the best I could on each drawing, and kept progressing as an artist. So I've managed to become a "working artist," when I was not at all known for artwork before 2015. But I have just barely scraped by financially, and I've been homeless most of that time, unable to get totally back to "normal life."
At this point, I'm just taking a break, because I need to figure out how to make a living of some kind, and then get back to drawing once I get that going. I like doing the drawings, but I also like eating, and renting apartment again would be really cool, too. So I'm taking a break for a while, maybe a couple of months, maybe longer, to work on some other ideas. I'll get going again when the time feels right. You can check out most of my drawings that I've taken photos of on my Sharpie Scribble Style Pinterest page.
Kobe Bryant face close-up. This is a small section of a much larger Kobe Bryant tribute drawing I did, after his death in 2020. This is the single best piece of Sharpie drawing I've done. All around his face, there are the words "work ethic" over and over, under the shading. I sold this drawing to a business that has a two story mural of Kobe and Gigi on their wall.
Not many people have seen this one. Stevie Ray Vaughn, the guy Austin, Texas has a statue of on their jogging trails by the river. I actually got to see SRV play in a bar on 6th Street in Austin, in 1988, I had no idea who he was. I was down there for a BMX freestyle contest, and some locals took us to 6th Street. We did tricks for the crowds for a while, and then locked up the bikes, and went into a bar for a couple of beers. When we came out later, I said, "Man, that bluesy guy on the guitar was pretty good." One of the locals said, "Pretty good? That was fucking Stevie Ray Vaughn!" 18" X 24", 2018, #sharpiescribblestyle
The late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsbuerg, aka, The Notorious RBG. Yep, like Biggie Smalls, she's from Brooklyn, and even has her own music video. I drew this shortly after death, actually planning to send the original to someone in the media who was a huge fan of hers. I put it up on Facebook, and it instantly became the most popular drawing I've ever done, out of about 100 big drawings. 18" X 24" 2020. #sharpiescribblestyle
This is one of the recent ones I've done. As crazy as it sounds, there's no really good photo of Evel jumping (and landing it). In all the photos he's tiny, compared to the buses or whatever he's jumping. I drew an Evel drawing in about 2016, and it sucked. The only good close up photo is him going over the bars at Caesar's Palace. But this wheelie with a chillin' photo of him worked well. 18" X 24" 2022. #sharpiescribblestyle
Way back in the 1980's, I used to sketch isometric drawings of all kinds of ramp set-ups, when a quaterpipe or basic halfpipe was all that actually existed. One day I thought, "What if M.C. Escher designed a skatepark?" So I drew a few sketches. Early this year (2022), I didn't have my Sharpies with me, and I sketched a few more, just screwing around. I put them Facebook, and somebody wanted to buy them. After a few sketches, I decided to get a pencil, protractor, and ruler, and draw a real one. This is the first of those big ones I drew. 18" X 24" 2022. #sharpiescribblestyle
I've done about 8, maybe 10 art decks. This one of Kobe I did in early 2021, and put the original drawing on the deck, like and idiot. It sold on Hollywood Boulevard in like 20 minutes, to a crew guy setting up for a movie premire (a job I used to do BITD). Sharpie Scribble Style drawing and acrylics on a blem skate deck. A wall hanger, not meant for skating. 2021. #sharpiescribblestyle
This is the original art I did for an autograph card for Hall of Fame skateboarder Robin Logan, of Logan Earth Skis. About 5" X 7", I think. #sharpiescribblestyle
My name is Steve Emig, and I drew this Harley Quinn drawing in November 2019. "When the world gets crazy, step up to meet it." Then down below, in pencil I wrote "Shit's about to happen." I'm a futurist as well as a Sharpie artist. I had been writing about the crazy, "coming recession" for a couple of years at that point, and I knew things were about to begin getting crazy. That wasn't some mystical revelation, it was 30 years of reading books, watching trends, and trying to figure out why things play out the way they do.
Harley Quinn drawing for a skateboard art deck. You can see about 175 of my Sharpie Scribble Style drawings on my Pinterest page (because Pinterest is way cooler than Instagram). #sharpiescribblestyle, #harleyquinn, #fanart, #steveemigart
Thrasher magazine drawing, that I sent to Thrasher mag's offices, to show them what my #sharpiescribblestyle was. I never got a single word back. I hope somebody is happy to have it on their wall. I also hope every old school skater that sees it says, "Dude, can I get a copy of that?" Because that's what my friends said when I showed it to them. 18" X 24", 2022, #sharpiescribblestyle
One of my latest drawings, the late cat of a librarian I know. She said one of her other cats stared at this framed picture, appearing to recognize the cat had once lived with him. I can't tell you what that cat was thinking, but it's cool to hear stories like that after spending 45 hours drawing something. 18" X 24", 2022. #sharpiescribblestyle
Classic Jimi Hendrix picture of him burning his guitar, with "Hey Joe" lyrics in the background. 18" X 24", 2018. #sharpiescribblestyle
This is a teenager named Erin who got my drawing of Lana Del Rey, her favorite singer, as a 16th birthday gift. Lisa, Erin's mom, wrote an artist profile of me for the newspaper in the Winston-Salem Journal, for my first art show, in the fall of 2017. We chatted a couple of times, and then she asked me to draw this a few months later. She said Erin was "over the moon," when she got this on her birthday. That's another cool thing to hear, after spending 45 hours drawing it. I was living in a tent, in the woods, across the street from Hanes Mall, when I drew this picture. I worked all day, every day, drawing, at a local McDonald's, or one of the libraries in Winston, drawing this picture and many others. I was drawing about one drawing a week, to survive at the time. I also became a fan of Lana Del Rey's music that week. 18" X 24", 2018. #sharpiescribblestyle
One of my better drawings of my first full year trying to actually sell my drawings, 2016. I invented my Sharpie Scribble Style technique in 2005, while actually living in an indie art gallery. I played around with the technique for ten years. In late 2015, I decided to try to start trying to sell drawings, which meant dramatically steeping up my artwork. I started selling drawings online not because I wanted to be a famous artist, but because I could not find any "real job" while living in North Carolina. I could think of no other reasonable to make any money, at the time, in that situation. My Sharpie art, and the social media marketing and blogging skills I learned along the way, brought me back to Southern California, where I lived most of my adult life, and plan to live the rest of it.
Princess Leia, which I started drawing right before Carrie Fisher got sick, and I was working on this drawing when she actually died. Yeah, that's weird. But when you're a serious artist, you know synchronicity is a thing, and weird stiff happens on a regular basis when you do a lot of creative work. 18" X 24", 2016. #sharpiescribblestyle
Las Vegas auto industry veteran, Lucky Lopez, talking about the huge wave of repossesed cars piling up at car auctions, and heading to dealers soon. He shows an auction lot with thousands of vehicles, in the video. If you are looking for a good, late model used car, there should be some great deals coming along for several months.
I've been blogging about jobs since at least June of 2017, when I couldn't find any job in North Carolina. This is one of those posts from September 2017. I've been blogging about the "coming major recession" (possibly a depression) since early 2018. It's here now, we're heading into it. I started selling my Sharpie drawingsin late 2015, not because I dreamed of being a famous artist, but because it was the only way I could find to make any money while stuck in North Carolina for years. The Sharpie art has helped me scrape by for 6 1/2 years now, and squeak through the pandemic. My blogging is about the things that interest me most. I think we are in a crazy period, I call The Big Freakin' Transition, in between the Industrial Age and the Information Age. That's a lot of change by itself, and now we're going into another recession, adding more change to the mix.
But now, it looks like the gnarliest part of this economic downturn is really beginning. Prices have dropped a lot on stocks, crypto, some collectibles, and real estate is beginning to head south. Seeing this turning point really get going, I just spent three weeks writing a report on why this coming recession will be a great time to find epic bargains on major items... if you have some cash to spend.
Doing research for that report, I wanted to see which items were already falling in price, and which were still holding up. In that research I found this video by Business/Hustle YouTuber Graham Stefan, "The Car Market Bubble Just Popped." Obviously, the title caught my attention.
Did you know that Americans have $1.5 trillion in total auto loan debt? Even crazier, the auto loan industry now has a subprime loan problem, pretty much identical to the subprime mortgage crisis that sparked the 2008 Great Recession meltdown. Since 2009, auto loans have been sold, repackaged as investment securities, and sold to banks, pension funds, and other institutional investors. To keep those loans rolling in, some lenders didn't do all the due diligence in verifying people's income during the pandemic. In short, a whole lot of people bought cars and trucks in recent years that they couldn't really afford. Remember MBS (Mortgage Backed Securities) from the 2008 crisis? Yeah, auto loans and leases have been packaged as ABS (Asset Backed Securities). That same thing has also happened to student loans, packaged as SLABS (Student Loan Asset Backed Securities), and business debt, packaged as CLO's (Collateralized Debt Obligations).
These securities are viable, as long as nearly everyone is paying their loans. But guess what, a bunch of people bought cars and trucks they couldn't afford, especially when living large on stimulus money in 2020 and 2021. Enter Las Vegas auto industry veteran Lucky Lopez. That's him in the top video. He calls those people who bought cars they couldn't affordby using stimulus/PUA/PPP money "Stimulus Ballers." They bought a pimpin' ride, dropped pandemic money on a big down payment and then... never made their monthly payments.
That causes two problems. Number one is that thebanks or auto lenders have to spend time and money having people reposess all those vehicles. Then they have to try to sell them to get as much of their money back as possible. Number two is that when lots of people don't pay their loans, then the investments made from bunches of loans (ABS) lose value, or become worthless. More on that in a minute.
Because of the Stimulus Ballers, and others who just got behind on payments, there's a record number of car and truck repos happening right now. How many? According to Lucky Lopez in the video above, there were 2.2 million vehicle repos from January to late June 2022. To put that in perspective, there were about 1.7 million, all year, back in 2018 or 2019. So there are a ton of cars and trucks getting repoed now, that are just beginning to show up in car auctions, and in used car dealer lots. Since used car prices SOARED in the last couple of years, that's good. Used car prices should start dropping.
The bad part, also according to Lucky Lopez' info, is that a lot of those car loans were 110%, even up to 130% loan to value. That means someone may have gotten a $130,000 loan for a $100,000 car. So a lot of the banks have bad loans, with vehicles that are worth quite a bit less than what the loan amount is. So banks and auto loan lenders will be taking losses. Also, banks and big investors who bought the ABS securities will be taking losses, at some point, when those securities lose value, because so many people aren't paying their auto loans now. This could lead to a banking system crisis, much like 2008, at some point. There were $1.3 trillion in subprime mortgages in 2008, and there is now $1.5 trillion in auto loan debt. There's also $1.7 trillion in student loan debt, and $1.1 trillion in credit card debt, in the U.S.. Want to see how much total debt there is in this country, take a look at the U.S. Debt Clock sometime. But not for very long, it's depressing.
What this means for you is that there's a tsunami sized wave of car and truck repos happening, and there should be some much better deals on used cars coming in the next several months. If you are thinking about buying a car in the next year, check out all these videos to learn more.
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